My Shit

I wanted to go to sleep last night at midnight. I went to bed and realized it wasn’t going to happen. I got up, worked on my first year paper a little more, then tried again at 1:00am. It worked this time. But then at 5:30am I wake up to my dog puking on his bed, which is right next to my side of the bed. I had a hard time falling back to sleep after that. Every noise I heard woke me up because I thought it might be Angus throwing up some more. Then my girlfriend’s alarm started going off at 6 o’early. She takes dance classes in the morning, but sometimes, like today, she hits snooze for an hour and doesn’t go to class. So, from 5:30 to 7:30 I didn’t sleep much. Then my alarm started going off at 8:30, I bumped it up to 9:30, then hit snooze until quarter after 10. I don’t know how much sleep that works out to, but it doesn’t feel like much.

Maybe what I feel like today is partially driven by a lack of sleep. But I’ve got a confession. I’ve got doubts.

This grad school stuff, at least in a college of management, is high stakes and high pressure. It’s more than just grades. It’s produce or go home. I’m doing really well too. But I think I need to back off some. I am having fun, but I don’t think I am enjoying myself. I don’t know if I know how to back off though. I need to figure it out, and I need to figure out how to do it without felling like I’m dropping the ball. If I feel like I’m dropping the ball, all it will do is stress me out, and I’ll go back to working my ass off like I do right now. You might be asking, “well, if you’re doing good, why do you need to back off at all?” It’s a good question.

• I like my girlfriend and it is unfair that the only time I spend with her is from 10:00pm to bed time watching TV.


• You can’t be creative by trying harder. I’m a creativity researcher, so I know this is true. When your busting ass at 120mph you’re simply going to fast to notice the little issues that end up being big indicators to problems that block your path around the next corner. You have to take some time to incubate ideas. Yeah, the time pressure is good, but if you’re sitting on top of the problem all the time, you can’t back out to see another path, a path that may be shorter and better.


• I need more experience than what I’m getting from the chair at my desk in my bedroom and the chair at my desk in my office at school. What exactly, I don’t know. I don’t have money, so it isn’t like I can have big money fun. The general “attractions” are generally uninteresting anyway. And I certainly don’t have the time or space to work on the Superbee.


• I’m terribly out of shape. I haven’t weighed this much since I was in my undergrad. I don’t like a thing about it. I don’t like the way I look and I don’t like the way I feel. Running around this goddamn apartment complex sucks ass. The hills sap your energy before you can go a mile. The stupid ass Atlanta drivers scare the shit out of me. They drive around like retarded kids without helmets. And there aren’t many roads around here with sidewalks. And sidewalks suck for your knees.

This whole grad school thing is supposed to be an experience and I think I’m missing at least part of it. But, the best way to change your life is to first change your mind. Today may be the day, or I may just be tired. Guess we’ll see.