Unsurprisingly, I’m sliding more and more into the realm of procrastination and resistance towards accomplishing my 365 day writing challenge. It’s 2am, and I have yet to write for what now constitutes as yesterday. I suppose it’s still before midnight in California.
Following through and completing goals has always been a challenge of mine. There are very few things in my life that I feel were executed fully, with adequate conclusion and satisfaction, at least in the context of major goals and significant projects. Most of what I’ve set out to tackle in this life has expired before coming to fruition, left to rot in the middle of the path where I gave up and wandered away to find the next thing that could scratch my itch of needing something stimulating to do.
The same applies tonight. I fell asleep with a laptop on my lap. I just came to, and am pressing publish for the sake of sleep. I guess that’s what editing is for!
**EDITOR’S NOTE**
It’s now the following morning. I left the original text mostly intact, aside from some garbled syntax around the point in time when I fell asleep. Admittedly, I had been drinking. It was Saturday night and I had been invited to gatherings. I always have a reason to avoid invitations; my current excuse is a good one, not having my own transportation. Staying with my parents in their condo and having to borrow a car every time I want to socialize makes me feel like a teenager. I’d rather do the mature thing and drink alone.
It’s growing increasingly difficult to view myself as a grown adult. As we speak, I’m sitting on top of a quilt that’s been in my family for generations, using one of my childhood books as a prop to keep my laptop from overheating on the bed. My stuffed animals have made their way from the boxes that still sit stacked in my peripheral vision, packed with mementos that I haven’t yet managed to discard. I sit here on the bed with a curved spine and the blinds drawn, piles of unsorted clothing and shirts that I couldn’t bother to hang up stacked around me, because I don’t want to write in the shared space where my mother bustles around, knowing she will try to engage me in conversation or recruit me to clean something.
I turn 34 in less than a month, and I’m living in the shadow of my 13-year-old self.
