Prioritize your Life

You would think with my chronic and excessive worrying that I would be really good at prioritizing my most pressing obligations. My particular branch of worrying does not function that way.

Until my junior year of high school, I would say I was the opposite of a procrastinator. I would get an assignment, start working on it that day, and have it finished way before the deadline. Friends and acquaintances, panicking while throwing together an assignment at the last minute, would always blame their habit of procrastinating. Sometimes, they would ask me how I was coming along on said assignment, and I would lie, faking a procrastinator lifestyle myself. Why did I want to appear to be a procrastinator? It could have been because I wished that I had tons of cool things to keep me from doing my assigned work, or that dreaded "learning isn't cool" attitude that plagues not only high school, but college students as well (I see this play out in my Spanish class all of the time). Maybe because "everyone else" was procrastinating, I wanted to too. By my junior year of high school, I began to embrace the thrill of procrastination, as I adopted a more, *ahem*, well-rounded lifestyle that mixed work and play. Now, my very definition of self revolves around this balance between work and play. While I might not go out as much as I did in my undergrad, I cannot function in the academic realm without cramming in many hours of (what I call) recreation.

So now I am a procrastinator, I guess. At the very least, even if I do something productive, I do not prioritize. Exhibit A- This very blog. I should not be writing in this now, and if you get right down to it, I never should have started "La Pajarita Dice" in the first place. At least not until I knocked out my (supposed) number one priority, my master's thesis. (by the way, I just looked it up, and master's thesis isn't supposed to be capitalized).<-web of procrastination. In general, I make myself productive in some way to prove to myself that I am still as diligent as my early high school years. So I will feel productive after I write this entry. I will also feel productive after I look up 5 different versions of "Welcome to Tijuana" by Manu Chao to find the one most appropriate to play for my Spanish class, then think of some discussion questions to go to the song (will I write them on the board or use powerpoint?) Oh yeah, and I already planned today's class in its entirety, so I really shouldn't be adding anything. We rarely get through my whole lesson plan each class period anyway. This is my Exhibit B. Exhibit C- Then there are things I feel guilty about putting off, but when I do them I will be putting off thesis work to do them. Like working out. I have Wii Fit so I can have no excuse not to exercise. It's too cold outside, Ping Rec Center is too far, I can't leave the house right now. Well, that's what exergaming is for.


In case you haven't guessed, I am about to go do some Wii Fit to rid myself of this guilt. What will I do about the guilt I have about not even looking at a thesis-related document today? Maybe I will get some reading done for my Women and Gender Studies class, and that will be academically productive. Right? RIGHT? Ooo maybe I'll go grocery shopping! Needless to say, I will probably leave the most important thing for last.