Sunday, February 19, 2006

Dream

I remember parts of a dream last night.

I was enrolled in some kind of college.
There was a championship game between UNC and the Vols (UT),
but I can't remember what the sport was;
I think it was basketball, though I don't remember seeing them play.
I recognized one of the UNC players and wondered why.
Perhaps I had seen his face earlier in my dream.

Earlier I was supposed to be doing my assignments.
I wrote them down in a black notebook,
but never got them accomplished.

We were seated in a big auditorium where some kind of choral number was to be performed.
I had the notebook in my hand as I walked down the steep stairs on one side,
dodging people who were sitting on the stairs.
Then when I got to the bottom of the stairs, I realized my notebook was gone,
so I went back up to try and find it,
but of course there were many others like it,
and I remember thinking that I should've put my name on the outside.

Earlier in the dream I was supposed to help fill in a big hole in the middle of a path in the woods.
Something had been removed from it, causing a large depression right where people would be walking.
With someone else's help, I was moving dirt from a nearby pile to fill in the hole.
I noticed a wheelbarrow and thought that would help.
But nightfall came, and we had to stop.
The next day I found the whole place was covered with water - maybe 3 or 4 feet.
So we had to wait until the tide went out before we could resume our work.

All during the dream I remember thinking that there was something I should be doing,
but I wasn't getting it done.
This is a familiar feeling for me.
I was the world's worst procrastinator in college,
leaving important work until the last possible minute.
But starting each semester with the full determination to "turn a new page."

I also do that at work now.
I create little emergencies for myself
by waiting to do important tasks until the last minute,
sometimes being late.
Then always rescuing myself with a heroic effort.
But always knowing that I could have done much better.

I know this tendency to sabotage myself comes from somewhere deep inside me.
I can't explain why I do it.
It never has any value.
It always causes me pain in the long run.

This was present even in my elementary school years,
when I was always recognized for having great potential,
but never living up to it.

Maybe that's the message here.
My parents berated me for not living up to my potential,
and I took that message to heart.
I believed them.

Then there was my retarded sister,
who was always excused from any duties
and rarely punished as I was.

So I always had to live with the knowledge
that I had all this potential and never lived up to it,
whereas my poor sister was born with a deficit
and could not be expected to live up to anything.

Was I punishing myself in some way?
Why did I do that,
and why do I still do it?

It's one of those abiding mysteries about myself
that I'm continually trying to unravel.

Maybe the dream was a reminder of that issue.
As I sit here in the office with my taxes undone,
knowing that I should be working on them instead of blogging.

See how it works?

1 comment:

Bill Reed said...

Holy shit! When I was reading this, all I could see was myself. I'm wondering if I can just blame my same behavior on genetics. Boy that would make me feel better. However, that's not right either.

The strange thing is that you've nailed my exact procrastinative bahavior to a "T".

The question is, what now? I do the same thing all the time. I promise to do better next time and then again next time and again and again. Always feeling like I've much more important "emergencies" to work on before I get to the boring crap assignments that are due last week.

I freaking hate that! I hate it even more when people do that to me! I hold higher standards to the people who work for me than I do for myself! That just makes me a stupid hypocrit (sp?).

Like now for instance. I'm sitting here at work with a mountain of tasks that I need to complete and haven't even started most of them because they are really boring and I lose interest and do other things that interest me. Like responding to your blog....

Need I say more?? I could you know, because it's a lot more fun than re-writing freakin process documents in the new templates and putting the process flow dashboards together!!! TALK ABOUT BORING!

Can't someone pay me to just be creative all day on the shit I like?

Bill