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“That is not it at all,

That is not what I meant, at all.”

--T.S. Eliot, The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock

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The Awesome Power of Procrastination

*Trigger Warning: self-harm The power of procrastination is so awesome that even though I have been without Internet access for several hours and I have things that I think I want to do, I have spent that time lying on top of my bed thinking about how I would do all the things I want to do if I were to do them. Very productive. I think that the ideas I have are worth so much more in my head, I can fetishize every negative feeling and pretend that it makes me special or interesting in some way. But when the thoughts become words that I type out and read back, I realise how banal everything about me is. That's probably the real reason writing blog posts and writing in my journal gets a little harder every time. Here is a quick list of the things I should be doing right now: On Tuesday I had a very intense dream that was terrifying enough to make me feel slightly separate from my body all week. Even now, everything feels a little unreal and abnormal; I haven't stopped ...
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The Delusion

“It dropped so low in my regard
I heard it hit the ground,
And go to pieces on the stones
At bottom of my mind;

Yet blamed the fate that fractured, less
Than I reviled myself
For entertaining plated wares
Upon my silver shelf.”
--Emily Dickinson

Last night I finally had a look at my university transcript and it turns out that I really can't graduate this year. Worse than that, I had a look at my other marks and for the most part they were mediocre or terrible. It makes me wonder why I ever thought I was a decent student(yes, that was a real thing I thought). Obviously I wasn't because I got academically excluded from one university, but I had always believed (on some level) that I was a pretty good student before The Great Fall of 2010. And now I wonder if it is a delusion I have just been holding on to for decades. My matric results aren't that great either, so it's not like I was ever academically brilliant. But somehow I keep pushing for the life of an academically brilliant person. I keep going on about Masters and PhD like they make any sense in the context of my academic record. What am I trying to do to myself?

I know that if I get a higher degree, I'll get paid more money. But the same thing is true for having experience. I used to think that it was tenacity that kept me on this Astrophysics kick, but now I think it's bone-headed delusion and self-sabotage. Still, I have to finish what I started and I don't know how I would go about changing the way I have always seen myself. But I am not what I thought I was, I never have been. I played the role convincingly enough for a long time, but I am not some sort of intellectual whose brilliance just isn't understood. At my peak, I was mediocre. And that has passed. I am something less now, a bottom-of-the-barrel type with delusions of grandeur.

I will probably keep writing this blog because that that really is supposed to be for me, hopefully I will eventually come to terms with the sort of response my work deserves and see that I am already getting it. I'll keep trying with the poetry too because I don't really think I could stop myself. I have doubts about ever fully grasping how mediocre I am. I am, but now I have a transcript and a matric certificate to remind me.

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