I'll do it tomorrow

Cyanide & Happiness @ Explosm.net

In the days leading up to winter break, I always make a set of grand, hypothetical plans to enjoy a hyperproductive few weeks off. I imagine that all those things I was too busy or stressed out to do during the school year will magically get done as soon as my school workload disappears. This year's list included:

1) Go to the dentist
2) Call my doctor and apologize profusely for forgetting to go to my scheduled check-up YET AGAIN. Then, reschedule and actually go to my appointment
3) Cash in my TeamBuy for Taekwondo lessons and become a martial arts master
4) Pre-write enough blog posts to sustain me for the next month or so
5) Do a lot of creative writing
6) Read all those books I've been wanting to read, including Slaughterhouse 5, The Belljar, and anything written by those classic depressing Winnipeg writers.
7) Clean my room
8) Read all of the heaviest required reading for next semester so that I will not have to deal with the same Wave of Stress that accosted me last semester.

However, on the first morning I wake up and realize that I don't have any pressing assignments, no interviewees to chase down for awkward news articles, and no reason to get up before 9 am, I inevitably curl up in a warm, mind-numbing cocoon of inactivity. It turns out I would rather work my way through an entire season of 30 Rock while sitting in the bathtub (this is what happens when I discover I can take my laptop into any room of the house with me) than actually do, well, anything.

I have been out of classes for a little over 2 weeks now. So far, I have attended one Taekwondo class, called my dentist and doctor and then hung up on both of them before their automated messages finished playing, read a book by David Bergen, and watched--wait for it, prepare to cringe-- American Pie 2.

No, I am not proud of what I have done. But I find that, with enough sleep, even the self-loathing feeling of knowing I'm wasting my own time goes away.