I'm really very proud of that last post, in a written-in-one-sitting, couldn't-sleep, couldn't-think-straight-until-it-was-done sort of way, and, thusly, I don't want to detract from it by replacing it's "most current" spot with some meaningless sentimentality about things that reminds me a of people and people that remind me of things (and things and people that remind me of feelings, and feelings that remind me of songs, and songs that remind me of ootsy-cutsie butterflies, what have you), but I'm casually reading this book (meaning I've read a few pages into it and probably never will again) about writing life stories, and the author says, very plainly, that writers write.

What he means by this is the age-old advice that any writer with any credit to their name will tell you: A serious writer should devote one solid hour a day to writing, and be disciplined about it. The problem I have with this is that I highly suspect that my favorite writers would be those with no credit to their name at all, except of course that the problem continuing from that logic is that I've never heard of any of them, and that sort of wipes out my argument. I have more problems with this, many more, about how discipline and creativity are often mutually exclusive, and the staunchy quality that timed writing brings, and all that kind of rot, but it all boils down to creative and glorified ways of saying the following: I have no self-discipline.

None. Not a drop of it. My parents probably devoted considerable time in my youth to disciplining me, and hoping I would learn to take it on myself, but being, as I was, a bright child, I quickly learned that rather than the slow and tedious path of learning discipline, nature had provided me with the eternal shortcut: fussing, lying, and justifying my way out of any responsibility whatsoever.

There is a certain problem with being too smart when you're young. I'm not saying I'm a genius or anything, but it was clear that I was always at the top of my class, along with a few others. The lot of them are fairing pretty well today, come to think of it, which must prove that I was smarter than them all along, if you follow. I was never challenged by anything in school, so I learned how to half-ass things rather than how to apply myself, I never had to give anything my full attention, so I never learned how to keep my mind from wandering, and I never needed to be given directions before assignments, so, today, I just dare you to tell me how to get somewhere without google mapping it for me. You'll be one exasperated search party, let me tell you.

Of course, there you have, again, a list of excuses. Clearly, this is at the soul of my writing, and my self, to be truthful. If I were to be psychoanalyzed, searched through and through, and all my excuses, my lies, my justifications sifted through, I suspect at the end of it all what would be left would amount to an handwritten note, reading "I owe you: one fundamental truth about my being, ASAP. ~Linda :-)"

That is, if I bothered showing up for the appointment at all.

I could go on for a while, were it not 3 AM, about where specifically I think people went wrong in teaching me, where I went wrong in learning. I could talk about methods we could use, as a country, to create a different learning environment for children who learn at seperate speeds, much more so than we do today, and I could talk about the plausible benefits for this. I could talk about regrets and consequences, and I could even spell out a thorough, bulleted, step-by-step plan for change: a redemption that would take place just in time, saving me from the massive lethargy that is me.


But I bet you know where this is(n't) going!

On with it.