Dispatching the Lead Balloon

I say that because it appears that last post went over like one. (At least based on the lack of commentage -- I don't use counters or anything like that because I don't care enough about this to care about how many people actually look the blog, and yet, paradoxically, I do care how many people have something meaningful to say about what I write. Hmm...)

I'm kind of at a loss for where to go with this post because my last one was a hastily-assembled mélange of disparate ideas. Ultimately, this one will likely be organized no better. Which is fine by me because -- here I go reaching for a metaphor again -- the current state of my life is a huge mess of things that should, in my view, have some meaningful connection but don't.

For one thing, I'm going home this weekend and hoping to find more success at my productivity than I've been finding lately. To say that so bluntly isn't terribly fair to me, but I refuse to give myself the benefit of the doubt about this (though, I've been thinking, perhaps that's my problem). In terms of reading and the work associated with my classes this semester, I'm right about where I'd like to be: caught up in two classes, ahead in one, and ever so slightly behind on the last. On average, I'm up to date. But I'm still behind on the stuff I was finishing up last semester, and for the life of me I can't seem to stir up the goddamn motivation to sit down and just pound those fuckers out. I tell myself that I care so much about them, and maybe it's that I care too much about them that's keeping me from sealing the deal.

One might argue, at this point, that I'm stressing myself out too much and need to take a break. To that I say: one day ahead of you. Yesterday, for no good reason other than the fact that a working clock was not within my line of sight, I sat down on the futon and, instead of reading my Chaucer like a good boy, I picked up the old Classic Controller, turned on the Wii, and started playing The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past. I'd successfully completed both the original Legend of Zelda -- in two hours and nineteen minutes (and amassing 100% items), a time I will use as my benchmark for future completeness runs -- and Zelda II: The Adventure of Link, the oft-maligned but underrated NES sequel (which is, I should add, significantly more challenging), and felt that moving on to the SNES game was the right move.

So I started playing. And stopped almost ten hours later. (Somewhere in South Bend, I fear that Charles, for several years at Princeton my patron saint of productivity, is having a coronary event right now.)

And no, I'm not going to apologize for that, even though I'm still slightly behind on my Chaucer reading (and class is in 35 minutes). Because it was fun. For one day, I didn't give a fuck about deadlines and requirements and what-not because I didn't have to, and it felt wonderful.

Except that, like excessive intoxication, the hangover's always a bitch. I've spent lots of today simply regretting it, for no perceptible reason other than my slavish mental devotion to the ideal that one must do something productive every day save Saturday and Sunday -- which I'm beginning more and more to think is bullshit, by the by. Maybe I also feel a bit guilty that I can be that obsessively devoted to a video game, or to the many pleasure books I've read so far this semester, but can't find it in myself to devote a similar level of energy to some of my work.

Or maybe it's that I'm struggling to find some kind, any kind, of common ground between the two. Frankly, I'm getting really sick of the belief that I have to be two separate people: the responsible, hard-working graduate student by day; the laid-back, hanging-out, fun-loving guy by night. Why am I stuck in that rut where I think I should be more one than the other, where I feel like I'm not being serious enough and that that's a bad thing?

Don't get me wrong. I pissed away my Sunday playing poker and then watching the G-men totally bend Tom Brady, Bill Belichick, and the rest of the Patriots over and fuck the "perfect season" right up their collective asses and didn't regret it at all. Especially not when the Giants won. And, you know, ruined perfection. Like I knew they would weeks ago. Because the Patriots have been beatable since the Ravens debacle. And they got beaten. Badly. And left Tom Brady's pretty face subject to shit like this:



But I digress. No regrets. None at all.

I didn't even regret taking an hour and a quarter of my life and devote it to listening to the new Mars Volta disc The Bedlam in Goliath last week, like I promised myself I would. I regretted it even less when I discovered it was a funky, heavy, ass-kicking album that delivers the goods every which way but sideways and leaves you beginning for more. (Did I mention I really, really like this album?)

So why all of a sudden do I regret not taking care of other things when I was doing these things, which I very much enjoy? And will it all start going away once I, for better or worse, get my shit together and actually finish the things I've been meaning to? Because the last thing I want to end up doing is perpetuating a pattern of regret and obligation where I'm miserable working on a project and satisfied only when it's been completed. Isn't the joy supposed to be more in the journey than the destination? If so, why is that not working out for me?

So perhaps this initially random rant has congealed around an actual core problem, something that will involve more soul-searching and self-examination to unearth. The only problem with that is: with so much still on my plate, when will I have the time to do that thinking without the threat of impending remorse?

Oh, the movie never ends; it goes on and on and on and on...