Zzzzz.

Soo sleepy.  I guess that's what you get for staying up til almost 3am on a "school night"...2 nights in a row.  Sometimes I miss the structure I had as a kid...a definitive bedtime, whether you liked it or not...a time where you had to turn off the tv and do your homework (usually at 4pm in my house growing up...enough time to come home, have a snack and watch some tv).  As an adult who lives alone, I'm not good with structuring myself or giving myself rules.  I go to bed too late.  I start my "homework" (lesson plans, report cards, etc) at 11pm though I've been procrastinating since 6pm.  I rarely eat well-balanced meals.  I wake up late since there's no threat of getting yelled at and having the covers ripped off.  I put off chores until they all build up, since there's no one to say, "Turn off that tv and come unload the dishwasher NOW!"  Hmmm, I got yelled at as a kid a lot for not doing things the first time or ON time...I sense a behavior pattern here.  But since I'm now the "responsible" adult, and, like I said, I don't set schedules or rules for myself (not ones I actually follow, anyway), I'm always behind with stuff.  I think somewhere in my growing up and maturing, I got stunted.

I'm the type who waits til the last minute to do most things.  And then I have to work like there's a fire under my butt.  I do get things done that way, but it's obviously at a stressed, frenetic pace.  I've had to pay lots of late fees, because I push off paying a bill one more day.  I often stay up late doing teacher work that could've easily been done between the hours of lets say, 5pm and 10, or spread out over a few days.  This of course leads to 3am bedtimes, and then feeling like I do now...where I just wanna show my students a video all day.  Of course, I won't do that, but I might make snack time last a little longer, or drag out silent reading time.  And then I start to feel stressed because the other teacher is accomplishing more in her week than I am.  Gee, I wonder why.  So then I'm back to that frantic catching-up pace.

You'd think realizing and knowing all this about my behavior pattern would be the catalyst to change it.  But...I'm 32 and have been this way all my life.  In the rare times that I do get a lot accomplished in a day, or finish something ahead of a deadline, it feels fantastic.  Ah, so THERE'S the incentive to keep it up...right?  Nope.

I read my friends' statuses on Facebook.  They've had a full day of work/taking care of house/kids/errands/cooking, etc.  And now it's 9pm and they are curled up on the couch with a glass of wine watching a movie, relaxing.  I get so jealous, because though I may be on the couch watching a movie, its with a cloud of a million other things I know I should be doing hanging over my head.

I would love to know what other people do to conquer procrastination.  I even bought a book .."Procrastination for Dummies" (seriously).  It was really good, for as far as I got in it.  But I guess I never got the the part with the real solutions, cuz I never finished the book.

Figures.