Category: Thinking

I think that I am a rel­a­tive­ly dis­ci­plined and respon­si­ble per­son, but does­n’t that sound lame? I go to bed at 11:30 at night and wake up at 6:45 in the morn­ing. The sev­en hours and fif­teen min­utes I give to sleep are nec­es­sary for me. I do not like the way I feel when I have not had enough sleep and when I am grog­gy I am unable to per­form to the best of my abil­i­ty. Last night I was asked if I ever stay up late when I have to work the next day and whether I do this because I care so much about my job. The answer is no, I nev­er stay up lat­er than around eight hours before I need to func­tion­al and alert the next day. I don’t do this because I care about my job, I do this because I take pride in doing good work. I have tried to stay true to the idea that if I am unable to do some­thing to the best of my abil­i­ty then I should not be doing it.

This, I think, is the foun­da­tion of my efforts at orga­ni­za­tion and dis­ci­pline. The more I con­trol the minu­ti­ae of my life, the more ful­filled I feel. I am by no means obses­sive-com­pul­sive, I make plen­ty of mess­es, I just hate look­ing at them. I am always fight­ing pro­cras­ti­na­tion. If I leave dish­es in the sink for over an hour after I done eat­ing, I start wor­ry­ing about it. I don’t like leav­ing things unfin­ished. If every job is com­plet­ed, or at least orga­nized, I feel quite sat­is­fied in leav­ing it behind and direct­ing my full atten­tion to the next thing that con­fronts me.

I also wor­ry that with­out strong dis­ci­pline, I could lose all con­trol. When I like some­thing I don’t like half mea­sures, I get involved in it. I haven’t and prob­a­bly won’t ever use drugs and I don’t drink very often because I am afraid of what might hap­pen if I release my dis­ci­pline. When I seem quite detached with a new per­son, activ­i­ty, or what­ev­er, it is because I am judg­ing whether or not this new thing is some­thing that is worth invest­ing some part of my soul in. This method might be a bit strange, but it pro­tects me from myself and from the pos­si­ble hurt that a hasty deci­sion might result in. A bit self­ish I sup­pose.

As strange as this sounds, my dis­ci­pline allows me greater free­dom, I can now do things spon­ta­neous­ly. If a friend calls, I can typ­i­cal­ly take off and hang out. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, most of my friends around here don’t have jobs and are night owls. I haven’t hung out with them since my new job has start­ed because they aren’t ready to hang out until I am head­ing to bed. And when I leave some­one’s house because I have to go home and get some sleep, I always feel like a los­er. Maybe I care too much about com­ing home to an apart­ment where every­thing is pret­ty much in place, maybe I care too much about mak­ing sure I can pay off my debts as quick­ly as pos­si­ble, maybe I care too much about doing excel­lent work, maybe I should relax and not wor­ry so much about respon­si­bil­i­ty.

I just find it hard to be enthu­si­as­tic about what is in front of me if I have oth­er things to do.