Chronic
<<2003-03-30 - 3:05 p.m.>>

There was inertia, there was reading the entire archive of The Vine, there was more inertia...I did it again.

I sent Eddie this email:

I do not believe that I'm doing this *again*, but I guess it's better than just not communicating about it at all. I just pretty much got paralyzed with this paper. False starts, difficulty concentrating, organizational trouble, the works. I'm really sorry to do this *again*; I know it makes me look like a total flake. It's genuinely not that I'm incapable of writing a paper or sticking to a deadline (I think), but I can't say I know what it *is*.

I should be able to have this paper to you tomorrow, but more importantly I'd like to commit to meeting with you a few days before the next paper is due, just in case this is in danger of happening again—I have a hunch it's related to my admittedly rather dramatic personal life of late, but I do have a longstanding tendency to allow tasks in which I am invested to overwhelm me, and I'm having a hard time pinning down a cause here—but I do want you to know that I am concerned about this, and that I want to deal with it before it becomes crippling. Then again, I'm also a little concerned that I'm making a big deal over a fundamentally small problem and using it to beat myself up. Or something. Or perhaps this is all too much information, I don't know.

In any case, that's where I am.

(Mollie)

I got this one in return:

Stop beating yourself up, girl. You're a natural writer, and I can assure you this won't turn into a chronic problem. Just take a take a deep breath and help yourself to an extension until conference on Mon. Let's definitely meet ahead of time for next paper if you think that will help.

Cheers,

Eddie

But it already is chronic. He thinks too highly of me, he's being too nice to me.

I get all flustered thinking about this. Why am I doing this? I did this in high school all the time. All the time. And there it was treated like this Huge Big Deal, but here...not as much. In high school, I was this underachieving, potential-squandering fuckup. But here Eddie tells me to stop beating myself up and Jackie gives me pep talks.

What is this?

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