Last Monday's stats lecture was on regression and correlation (whatever that means). In keeping with the rest of the quarter thus far, it took a herculean effort for me to sustain the will to live for the entire 2.5 hours, let alone absorb the information. This was made more challenging by the fact that I blew off last week's class to go see the Beastie Boys, and had no memory whatsoever of the lecture from 2 weeks prior. About 5 minutes in, I gave up any pretense of following along and followed my usual train of thought around whatever jacked-up path it chose to take, rejoining reality periodically only to find out, with great horror, that the lecture was still going on. Hence my choice of title.
I mention the whole wandering-mind thing because I am in the midst of yet another bout of insomnia (it's after 1am on Wednesday, and I have a desk buried in paperwork and the clinic from hell coming my way in under seven hours). I wouldn't call myself a chronic insomniac, but my sleep habits are less than optimal. There have been nights when I have literally slept through earthquakes (the last occurrence only a few weeks ago). Other nights, no matter how tired I am, my brain does a stellar impersonation of a hummingbird on crack and I can't sleep at all. I used to blame this on the five years spent working predominantly night shifts after I graduated from college, but honestly, I remember this happening as far back as grade school. I would find myself at 12 or 1 or 2, staring at the clock and fretting about whatever constituted a stressful event at age 9 - reading a book report aloud in class the next day or trying to elude bullies on the playground.
And I've never been a morning person, either. When I was in high school, my father had the pitiable task of waking me up in the morning. He would untuck the covers at the foot of my bed and tickle my feet; I would generally respond with a solid kick and some barely intelligible curses muttered from beneath my pillow (luckily my dad, being no stranger to foul language himself, was not easily offended). Now my wakeup routine consists of the snooze alarm being slapped down at least twice, and an eighteen pound cat loudly lamenting the fact that he has not been petted in several hours. On work days, I stay in bed until I am guaranteed to be at least fifteen minutes late, then leap from the bed in a frenzied state, loathe to accept that I have not yet figured out how to rupture the space-time continuum and arrive at work before I've actually woken up.
Some nights I do try to get my act together and go to sleep early. I like the idea of being one of those people who wakes before the alarm, makes the coffee, waters the plants, reads the headlines, and still makes it to the office early enough to get some work done before the 8am mayhem commences. I have a hard time accepting the fact that I am not, as yet, that person, nor do I show any convincing signs of becoming her in the near future, and instead choose to berate myself for being thus far unable to rework my personality and obtain the desired result. Which brings me to my next set of ramblings.
What makes us who we really are - what we hope for ourselves and aspire to be, or how the world perceives us as the result of our actions ?
Example: one of my bosses has repeatedly suggested that I put myself on the chopping block known as Match.com (my employers aren't so clear on the concept of personal boundaries). I've blown it off and told her that I'm not interested, but in truth, I did check out an online dating site some time ago. I gave up on it because I was confounded by how I should answer the questions and create my profile. They ask you all sorts of things, about your personal values and habits, and how you deal with different issues, in order to get a read on your personality and link you with potentially compatible mates. But I found myself wondering if I was presenting myself as I actually am, or as how I'd like to be.
I think I'm pretty self-sufficient and have a decent sense of humor, for example, but that's just my opinion. I'd like to think that my opinion is the one that matters the most in this situation, but over the years, in relationships with friends, employers and others, I've been alarmed at times to find out how another's perception of me can vary so greatly from my own (I suppose we all have this, but me being me, I have to fret about it, beacuse that's just so productive). And the fact is that we don't live life in a vacuum. We deal with other people and their opinions all the time, unless you're a hermit or far, far more resilient and self-assured than I am. Life is, I think, meant to be lived in the world and not solely in our heads. But as someone who gets chronically stuck in her head, I find it hard to merge the two, to use my head enough to stay out of trouble, then get out of my own way and get on with living my life.
And now, of course, I'm also thinking that I've just told a whole bunch of people about this blog - I eased my way into this by telling just a handful of friends when I started a few months back- and you are doubtless reading this and thinking that perhaps I am not well medicated enough, or I need to find a hobby. All of which may be true.
But it beats cleaning the bathroom at 1am.
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