It must have been late 2004. I had just dropped out of college after failing a semester. I had only a few credits to get in order to graduate and pursue higher-level academic goals. I was good at school, but I hated it. And unfortunately, I had not a clue of what I wanted to be as an adult. I always thought it would come to me as an epiphany - somehow, someday. It never came.
Through the years following my school dropout, heavy drug use and alcohol binging added to my existential confusion and eventually, depression hit me, until I just wanted to give up on life. Procrastination became a way of living as I stopped envisioning long-term objectives. Travelling over the country, hitchhiking from coast to coast, was my way of spending the time until the miracle would happen. Going from one town to another, from one job to another, I started thinking of myself as a seed in the wind, waiting to drop at a location where I would germinate and root myself in. The method was risky, but proved to be good relief from the depression. I just never wanted to be an adult. I had no professional or academic ambitions anymore, no long-term plans. I wanted to drop out. I wanted to be free. I wanted to be the hero of a Jack Kerouac novel. I wanted to find out who I was, but the more I looked for it, the less it seemed attainable. I was better off making my own daily adventures - finding the next foodbank on the road, or shelter for the night and such; it became my full-time job. It felt great. I had a purpose, and it was exciting. At least for the first months. I temporarily went back to my hometown to get some rest before the next expedition. Those periods were always times to reconnect with old friends and old habits of drinking and substance abuse. On the one hand, I was becoming enraged and furious that I was not able to give my life meaning, while on the other, I was struggling to take the steps I needed to. I just could not wake up and make it through a day without the numbing state alcohol helped me to achieve. Numbness felt better to me than failure, at least. The alcohol brought out my impulsive anger that was triggered by successive concussions. I would confront anyone at any time for any given reasons I could find to justify my anger. It became clear to me that although I was physically and geographically moving, I was not going anywhere. There was nothing down the path but more frustration and anger. I spent so many days & nights alone on the road, re-thinking my life, that I lost track of time. This cycle went on for years until there was a sudden break in the pattern. One morning, in 2014, after a week of camping on the outskirts of Oliver, I went to an employment advising office in town. I browsed the job opportunities around South Okanagan when I spotted an ad that seemed to be the ideal: asking short-term commitment and giving me a revenue source, so I would be able to take to the road again as soon as I could. I called in, went for an interview and got the job. But this time, I never quit and never went back home. The exile from my homeland that I forced upon myself not only broke the vicious cycle of alcoholism and substance abuse, but it also gave me the stability to see things clearer. Eventually, after three years of juggling with the idea and developing a support network of friends and loved ones in my new hometown, I chose to get back to school. Maybe it is aging, or maybe is it just that I stopped procrastinating, I cannot tell. As I slowly drifted away from ambition, the years went by fast and now, here I am, in my thirties, back to college. My procrastination was my fear of making the wrong choices. My fear that my choices would trap me into being someone I wasn`t, or worse- that they would never even matter. I have hundreds of Kerouac-worthy stories to tell. I haven’t found my way yet, but I know I am taking steps towards in the right direction, because I am making choices despite the fear.
1 Comment
an admirerer
4/7/2017 12:06:33 pm
beautifully written
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OC faculty, staff & studentsWe made this space available to share our sometimes sorry, sometimes heroic, stories of procrastination. Please scroll down to read all the entries. To submit, send your entry to [email protected] Archives
November 2021
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