late

“i keep stalling out
i just can't keep up
there's alarming doubt
am i good enough
but you keep comin' around
to remind me
it's still far from over.”
- mute math, “stall out”

i have a problem and i am out of control. i cannot seem to show up on time for anything. ever. there's a point that's usually approximately 30 minute before i have to be somewhere that will take me 30 minutes to get to where i decide whether or not to leave. inevitably i always decide that whatever i'm doing that normally has to do with personal busywork of little importance normally overrides. sometimes it IS important. but why couldn't i have done it hours prior? is this a disease? what is wrong? this is robbing me and i'm becoming increasingly concerned. i mean, what the hell happens, predictably, every single day at just the right time such that i can not be punctual?

normally i expect to be late to things i'm inclined against. for instance, anytime i would have to make a trip back to my hometown, it seems like everything else that i would rather have done became of paramount importance, because i didn't want to go in the first place. finally, hours later, i had either cancelled my visit or severely cut short its length due to “matters beyond my control”. but now it's begun to affect things that i care about, and i need help. like any other problem, i'm loathe to write it in a public place where perhaps potential clients and employers could read it, prejudge and disqualify me, but at this point it's becoming more of a problem to smother it under a pillow and deny that it exists that to just put it out there and get on the road to curing it.

it's either be punctual or be prepared. one or the other and rarely ever both. this first became an obvious problem last year. i was taking a design class where i'd obtained an unusually high personal stake in my performance with the assignments. if i conquered, it was exhilarating. if i faltered, it was near crushing. i loved the time spent even when the work was nerve wracking, so why was it so hard for me to prioritize things and prepare such that when 6pm rolled around, everything that needed to be done was done?

i asked my pastor about it (she also happens to be a part-time professor at the same university) and she shed some light on the subject. she let me know that many professors consider it an affront for you to walk into their classroom late. some of them lose their place in their lecture and consider the disruption more than odious. some of them take it personally that you don't care enough about what they're saying to be there when it starts and stay until it's finished.

this was news to me. why was this news to me? i think the roots of this however are selfishness. just today i decided i needed to eat more than i needed to return to my class within 15 minutes of the start of our break. my assignments weren't quite done, so i delayed leaving for a previous class until the next class's requirements were prepared.

and then there's the tunnel vision. say for instance, it's 2am and i'm in some artistic mode where i'm fully ensconced in whatever music, art, or frivolously pointless task i'm focused on. at that moment, accomplishing what is in front of me is more important than the very real factor that every hour of sleep i sacrifice after a certain point is a likely hour that will be cut away from something else (because it has to be of major importance for me to cut my sleep short).

most of all, there's my pointless day job. when i know that showing up at 11am instead of 12pm would at best result in me sitting at my desk for an hour waiting for the paint to crack, and at worst result in me getting pointless busy work that someone else didn't want to do, getting me to leave the house at 10:30am is like trying to push a sitting elephant over. you might as well give up.

in a perfect world, i would love to be able to say. i had this problem. but i prayed about it. God answered me in 6-8 weeks. and praise the Lord, i've got the victory manifested in the natural, amen, halleglory. that ain't the case here. i'm not “fixed” yet. i'm not “all better”. i'm still having to exert great effort just to keep things running. and all this exertion is making me tired. i'm afraid that this type of thing could be my undoing. i loathe to say it, but my hamartia. the thing that keeps me from being a storybook worthy hero. the thing that just barely disqualifies me from being “amazing”.

“mark was pretty talented, but...”

“yeah, mark had potential and could have been a lot, but...”

“it was lookin' pretty good for him, but then...”


i don't want to be tragic. so what do i do now?