lizzy's love affair with stayfocused

how i feel when i attempt to do homework

Did you know that sometimes I hate homework so much I want to kill it with fire? You think I am exaggerating, but I assure you I am not. When I sit down to do homework, my blood turns into burning and becomes intent on destroying everything in the world. This is somewhat problematic. After attempting to do my homework for about six minutes, I become a rage-filled war machine. I have thoughts of burning down my school, becoming a sniper, or taking up pickpocketing, all to avoid having to complete college. You can imagine this is quite depressing, so naturally I get into bed and watch six episodes of House, M.D. in pitch blackness eating anything covered in chocolate and with no nutritional value and then it is 3 am and I still haven't done any of my homework and all of it is due in 4 hours and I am back to never getting a degree and pickpocketing.

This is also when my procrastination cycle kicks in, except it is all, "Who cares about steps one and two?!! I hate steps one and two!! I am going to skip directly to step 3 and make that last as long as steps one two and three combined!!!!!"

Thanks to being a robot of doom every time I try to do homework, I have watched every episode of every season of The Office, Gilmore Girls, and 30 Rock. Actually, I have seen every episode of every season of Gilmore Girls and The Office three times now. And some 30 Rock episodes twice.

Because I am brilliant and there is clearly some glitch in the space/time continuum, I have so far managed to get away with almost never doing my homework. But one day I realized how SHOCKINGLY GENUIS-Y I could become if I actually DID my homework.

This is not a small feat to accomplish. How does one defeat becoming a rage-filled war machine from the inside?

Naturally, my first thought was, "Let's install something new on the computer!" That is where I met StayFocused. If you have the internet browser Google Chrome, you can install mysterious things called "gadgets" that do stuff to your computer like tell you when you get an email or predict your death. You can also install something called StayFocused. StayFocused is like your mother, if you mother is an all-knowing robot controlled by computer programming. You can type in websites where you waste time and set a time limit on them, and when your time is up, it will kick you off. For the entire day. You can bypass StayFocused, but it requires thought and work and if you are the type of person that needs to install StayFocused, you know you won't do work to try to avoid work. That is clearly counter-counter-productive.

I installed StayFocused and put an hour per day time limit on three sites: Facebook, Blogger, and housemdvideos.com. "Now I will HAVE to do my homework out of sheer boredom!" I thought.

StayFocused has kicked me off of all three sites today and I still haven't started my homework. I am actually resorting to writing this blog offline to avoid doing my homework.

I'm still underage as far as owning handguns…how hard do you think pickpocketing really is?

Love,

Lizzy

lizzy's brain fights itself on another pointless issue

Look! Another internal monologue!

To Work Out More or Not to Work Out More, that is the question...

I already ran for an hour today. Should I work out again? I feel like I should work out again. I am all jittery and anxious because what if I get fat because I didn't work out enough? But what if I'm just being compulsive? Then I should rebel against my compulsion so that it doesn't get to be all compulsive-y. But what if I am being compulsive about not being compulsive? WHAT IF THE WORLD IS AN ENDLESS VORTEX OF COMPULSION ABOUT COMPULSION???

Also, I have to be, like, awake by 11:30 am tomorrow, and for some reason this fills me with intense and crippling fear because WHAT IF I DON'T HAVE ENOUGH TIME TO WORK OUT BEFORE THAT?? Also it just fills me with fear for absolutely no reason except that being responsible for anything before about 10 pm fills me with fear. Actually, just being responsible for anything ever fills me with terror. It's like I can't comprehend possibly being able to accomplish anything and so anytime I tell someone I will accomplish something, it becomes an internal war zone where I try to accomplish the thing while living in almost paralyzing anxiety about not being able to accomplish the thing. It's even worse if there are 2 things, and I don't even want to think about 3 things. Now I'm thinking about 3 things. Oh no.

Also my phone keeps being like, "YOU HAVE A NEW MESSAGE!!!! ANSWER IT!!! NOW YOU HAVE 2!! NOW YOU HAVE 4!! NOW YOU HAVE 25!!" at the same time that my email is like:

1 NEW MESSAGE.

2 NEW MESSAGES.

9 NEW MESSAGES.

359 NEW MESSAGES.

1 BILLION NEW MESSAGES.

SO MANY MESSAGES YOU WILL NEVER EVER BE ABLE TO ANSWER THEM ALL AND THUS WILL IMMEDIATELY FAIL AT LIFE.

:)

Love,

Lizzy ;)

procrastination: at least i'm not in denial

A while back I posted Allie Brosh's procrastination chart. Since I'm currently procrastinating, I decided to get more specific with the 5 Stages of Procrastination.

Stage One: Denial

You feel safe and secure. You don't have stuff to do. Well, you have stuff, but it's not due for like two weeks. You have plenty of time. In fact, it would be a bad idea to start doing the stuff now. You are sure there are negative repercussions. "I work better under pressure!" you say loudly, usually to people who don't care and are confused by your psychotic outbursts.

Stage Two: Pain and Guilt

You haven't done any of your stuff, and now all of it is due tomorrow. What happened to all your time? You hide your deep-seated feelings of worthlessness by pretending you meant to not do the stuff all along. "I work better under pressure!!" you scream hysterically. Fellow patrons of the library look at you, pretending to be shocked, but you are sure they secretly all know how lazy and useless you are.

Stage Three: Anger and Bargaining

You still haven't done of the stuff, but that's because your boss/teacher is a horrible person for giving you this stuff to do. They are TRYING to make you miserable by giving you stuff to do. Your life is a facsimile of a sham. You shouldn't have to do the stuff at all. Maybe because you're a good person, you'll make your teacher/boss a steak instead. That is much more useful than doing the stuff.

Stage Four: Crippling Depression

You still haven't done any of the stuff, and now it is late and you know you will be penalized for not doing the stuff. You are convinced your life is pointless and you will always fail. You still don't do any of the stuff.

Stage Five: Ulcers and Panic Attacks

You suddenly feel a violent compulsion to do the stuff. You stay home from work/school for days to do the stuff. You do 80% of the stuff. Suddenly, you feel much better. You are such a winner!! You feel you should now reward yourself by not doing any stuff indefinitely.

REPEAT UNTIL DEAD.

Love,

Lizzy ;)