Fool’s Day, Indeed

I can’t tell you how angry I am at myself. They gave us until Tuesday – 9:00. That means that I could have gotten every last drop of work done on my grades, but didn’t. I could even have made a few fixes this morning, but didn’t. Why, because why not put off until tomorrow what you could very easily do right now seeing as how you’re not doing anything of value at this moment anyway because hell you can always read political ephemera on the web and that really penetrates deeply and informs your life and work. I could go on. Ugh. Why didn’t I know this? In part, because I didn’t read the “Principal's Percolations” sent out right before break. In part, because I don’t know that before the last day of the semester we ever got any notification – no one else seemed to know either when grades were due. But the real reason is because I never know this stuff. I never make it my business to. I simply fly by the seat of my pants and get done what I can get done when I can get it done, hoping that a strong constitution will allow me to will my commitments to completion. It’s not working anymore. I’m 33 and I am getting older. And now my chest gets heavy and my heart pounds when I’m stressed out. My sleep was even affected last night, and that never happens. I went to bed around 9:30. I woke around 12:30 thinking it was already morning. I woke at 1:15 to the sound of banging windows, but I can sleep through anything. I woke at 2:15 (or thereabouts – all listed times are approximate) to a cell phone alarm unhappily set for 2:15 AM that should have gone at the antipodal point of the next day. I woke at 3:15 because I thought I heard the alarm I had set for four – I hadn’t. I woke at four to my alarm and pissed away the next two hours through a feeling of fear and complacency reading politics and playing hearts. Blast it all.