I promised myself that I would not procrastinate during my graduate coursework. That I would complete my work at least two in advance to save myself the stress, frustration, and panic that I have put myself through since elementary. And yet I am on DeviantArt, writing a journal about procrastination when in fact I have a paper about Shakespeare's 18th Sonnet due in four hours that I have not completed. The fact that it is only a page long means nothing: it is difficult write an "interpretation" page to the poem when the poem is as self-explanatory as "Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer's Day?"

So instead, I post the new comic, and decide to write a journal expressing my own frustration at myself. I know the techniques to avoiding procrastination. I know all the little tricks to using procrastination to aid in actually completing the task. I even know that it adversely affects my grades to wait until the last minute to complete these tasks. And yet, here I sit at my computer, wondering at my own inability to force myself into completing a task for a course I in fact enjoy. Why? Why do I have so much trouble dragging myself into a task?

It is not a problem limited to simply coursework. My laundry will pile up for weeks before I sort the loads and wash them. I will be hungry, but will not leave the couch to cook something or drive to a restaurant, even if what is on television is uninteresting to me. I hate having a messy room, but I rarely clean it. I have not even considered doing artwork, poetry, or comics since I entered my graduate coursework.

Though admittedly some of my lethargy is the result of working 25 hours a week since I returned to my job in the mall. The air is broken, and has been broken, for almost two weeks. For those of you who do not know where I live, it reaches over 100 degrees most days, not including the extreme humidity, a current drought is gradually, helping the temperatures increase, and I have no air conditioning in my vehicle either. So I leave the air conditioned apartment to a heat box, and I get no relief inside my job. When I walk out the door I literally feel the moisture being pulled from my face (I am not kidding). So when I return to the apartment, I simply lie on the couch and relax, and then I am unable to stand again.

So, still, I have wasted a while that I could be doing my coursework on Shakespeare, to write this journal. And this journal has been the most productive effort I have made in weeks. I need medication just to do the simplest of tasks and chores.



Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate.
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date.
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm'd;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance or nature's changing course untrimm'd;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st;
Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st:
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.