Black Hole of Academic Self-Loathing

Why am I so incapable of starting to my work? The closer the due date looms, the more entranced I get with the game of how long I can wait before it all hits critical mass and I have to remain hunched over my computer for 18 hours straight so I don't get myself booted out of this fine institution. So, in addition to stress levels verging on a full on panic attack (with the creditors still calling me about paying for my last emergency room visit - 100 euros to have some 24 year old med student tell me to breathe into a paper bag? I'll splurge on the brown bags for next time) I am left crippled with my neck twisted so far out of alignment that I have to drink my celebratory pint through a straw. 


This would all be fine and well worth it if I was even remotely interested in the paper topics handed down to me. Last semester I loved this time, just throwing myself into the phenomenology of faith and the outer-horizons of cups, but in all honesty, do I really give a flying flip about Rawls' Theory of Justice or the digression in Plato's Theaetetus? Not in the least. 


It's a good lesson, in a way. I'm finding my niche in philosophy. The stuff that makes my head explode, but in a pleasant way. This stuff, however, is pure chinese water torture. 


It will get done, I know. I've been in school too long to not know that. But it is precisely this conundrum that I face - I know it will get done, but I just can't seem to force myself to do it anymore. So, then, how will it get done? If, after years of school, its been drilled into my head that work just has to get done, I know longer panic about getting said work done, how will it? 


At least, at Sarah Lawrence, everybody is just as irresponsible about work as me - the countless nights in the library of Heimbold spent dry sobbing over your conference work, only to look over and see your own agonized facial expression mirrored in the face of your closest friends? Nothing beats that camaraderie. 


It's a sunny day in Dublin - the rays are taunting me through the gross victorian curtains hung in the window of our ornate living room. Give me the industrial austerity of Heimbold any day over the lonely purgatory hell of my fully-furnished front room. 


Oh, feck it. I guess I'll just keep typing. Socrates, you're a real ****.