The Great Preemptor

I feel so sick. Not emo sick, it's just that my throat hurts and I think I'm coming down with the flu. Thus I am using it as an excuse to be lazy. Last night, after reading Rizal's On The Indolence Of The Filipinos, I decided not to do the paper. Indolence is necessary naman daw eh. [Original argument: it's a tropical country and it we can't work in the sun the whole day.] Now I realize that the sun was not yet out at the time that I was attempting to do the paper, but hey. Anything for an excuse to waste my time on Facebook instead of being productive.

Aside from being lazy, I think I also do these kinds of things because I am the master of the preemptive strike. This is mostly because I am extremely apprehensive. I always try to think ahead, to have a Plan A and B at the very least. Throw me into any situation and my brain will, by default, think fast. Or at least, as fast as it can, in order to come up with a plan, no matter how trivial.

With this comes certain insecurities or whatever they are--the point is that, sometimes, in the process of thinking ahead, I just get the feeling that I can't do something. Then I think it over, then--most of the time--I drop the effort.

Exhibit A : PI100 paper. I knew my brain was not in the proper state for analyzing those five chapters and coming up with something coherent. No, I wasn't going grade conscious over it, I'm just fussy. Especially with writing. It's kind of all I have, you know. It's basically the only thing I can humbly say I know how to do. So when I write, I try not to shit-talk my way out of it (except in desperate cases, such as mind-bending STS essay exams). I may not be brilliant, but I like to try harder every time. Hence, I opted to pass the paper late. Maybe next week, if I don't forget. Haha.

Exhibit B: Dropping galore. Last last sem, when I made the decision to shift courses, I dropped seven motherfreaking units. That was seven thousand pesos' (and more, for the lab fees) worth of Chemistry and Computer Science subjects. Obviously, my parents were not the happiest people on earth at that time. But my begging and OrCom sales talk worked, and so I went from 21 units to an all-time low of 14 units. I was afraid I'd either fail, or have a stress-induced breakdown in the process of trying to pass. Later on, they all told me that I would've passed anyway, and that it was sayang. A waste of money, and a waste of an otherwise unblemished transcript. But I don't really regret it. I still am convinced that it saved me from a nervous breakdown (my whole life was just a pile of you-know-what at the time), and that it also saved my GWA from another bunch of 3's.

I also quit on people. I give up on establishing relationships when I know that it will just ultimately be screwed up. I quit on people who refuse to even try. And I quit when I sense that I'm forcing myself on them.

I'm going to hit you now, just in case you plan to hit me later.

So there, I'm a quitter. I know they say winners never quit, and quitters never win, but I don't know if the person who said that ever tried Chem14 or CS123. And even if they did, to hell with that. I'm a quitter. I'd love to try and make it, but I'd rather quit than not be able to deliver. It's not that I'm afraid of failure--I'm getting better at it, actually--just that I believe that not everything is worth the struggle. Some things; some people, maybe. But not all.

I realize that living life with a disclaimer on one hand and an eject button on the other isn't exactly the best way to go about it, but until I figure out a better way, I'm sticking to this plan.