Introductions and Procrastination Discussion

hi, okay so I am 23 year old female. all my life I have been different. I hate writing. actually I don’t hate writing, its just that I want to say so much, especially in an introduction like this so that everyone knows 'where i'm coming from' and will relate to me/understand me more easily. well I have always been different when I was young and now I have adhd. very severely, obviously as a child it went undiagnosed b/c I was little girl behaving like a bad boy so they all just thought I was bad. i’m an only child and I suffer from what one of my friends calls the only child syndrome. hahah which is that when I was growing up my mom or my babysitter did everything for me, made sure I had everything before I left the house etc. etc. so now I never do it myself. my mom has always done EVERTHING for me. I mean not everything, i’m independent but she always does shit for me like set up my phone account all that shit.

 I don’t know how but I graduated high school. after many high schools. got kicked out of some elementaries and one high school. but I always felt guilty about it. ive always felt guilty about EVERYTHING. (but then when im yelling at myself inside my head, i say "well, obviously not GUILTY ENOUGH- cause at least then you wouldda done SOMETHING ABOUT IT!") when I did the work I did it well, but if I didn’t think I could do a perfect job, I would just not hand it in. then I forced my self to go to uni in another city far away. I don’t know why the fuck I did that but I guess I was trying to do the 'conventional' thing, I wanted to be a lawyer and protect other ppl. I love working with kids though. also when I was 18 I was finally diagnosed with adhd.I had already seen many therapists and stuff and had been on a few different anti-depressants throughout high school. then when I got my official adhd diagnosis , I also got an official major depression syndrome diagnosis. the adhd meds helped, i’m still on them. adderal. I LOVE MY PSYCHIATRIST. i mean it, love. not sexual love but love because he is understanding, not pretentious or condescending and just a good man, and a good doctor.(even though i havent seen him in almost a year- hes in my home city) I used to sleep all day. ALLFUKING DAY! hahah and then during high school and uni i lived the crusty lazy disguting depressed student life: sleep all day, smoke weed, eat. or when I was younger and more rowdy, sleep, get up  and go to the fucken club. 
 
 I have been in a codependent relationship with a good friend who later turned into a crack addict and it rendered him unable to live anything other than the street life in and out of jail. I think about him always and it breaks my heart. I  have close connections, understanding, empathy and tightly pulled heartstrings (because of myself and others) to mental disorders/problems and addiction.

  anyway I did okay in uni, a fail one year when I went through a major depression, and straight as (and b's) a next year when I got myself into a good routine of smoking joints and studying. I was majoring in philosophy. very interesting yes, but not enough motivation to keep me going, to make me go to class and write all those fucken essays! as a hobby, yes I love it and am very intersted and enjoy analyzing things,but otherwise, I cant do it anymore. I NEED A START AND AN END TO THNINGS, m mind already has an endless banter between reasons and shit going inside all day. i live and think in the grey areas. philosophy as a degree- the whole philosophy university class, the power of the professor, the prentioussness and insecurity of the students, the self-righteousness, its just something I don’t wanna fucken be involved in. I always knew that but I liked philosophy and I thought I wanted to get my BA cause I was sure I wanted to  go to law school. can you imagine! what the fuck was I thinking? I mean I still would maybe one day wanna be a lawyer, but I barely learned how to write a fucken essay in highshool! in uni, it would take me HOURS AND HOURS to finally write something. days and days of NOTETAKING and  hundreds of these fucken notebooks filled up with point form notes and full pages of 'practice'' writing the essay. FUCK! anyway, now i’m in my last year. actually just finished it. haha I don’t know why I call it last year, cause it SHOULD be my last year but its not. my parents were always- teddi we want you to do something YOU want to do, you don’t have to go to uni just be happy. but I was all like "no" I have to go to uni, I like it, i’m smart. I thought only things that were excruciatingly hard and painstaking for me were worth doing.

  anyway, now i’m working. I failed this whole year. I spent this first term working out like  fiend, talking on the phone with my friends (including my addict love) and another close freidnw hile they were in jail. organizing my life around when they were gonna call.knowing that it was an escape, easier than actually living. feeling totally socially isolated. how could i talk to my jail freidns and then talk to these university students with their commerece and their theses and keg parties? i mean my other friends at home-yes, but not here. anyway, so i was wasting my life away. too paralyzed and anxious SOOOOOOOOOOOOO ANXIOUS. too anxious to go to class or try my work, I went at the beginning, obviously, as usual, but one thing, then the next. then it all slid out of my control.also, the older I get the depression which used to manifest itself in lack of motivation and constant lethargy has changed to manifest itself through extreme anxiety now. its better than it was during first term, but first term was the highest level of anxiety i've ever experienced. well actually it started in second year, I had a panic attack. it was more on the inside, but  caused me to physically flee where I was. in first term, my anxiety literally paralyzed me and I confined myself to my small bachelor apartment and the gym. then second term I was like fuck this i’m working, I know I love working, I finally knew at least that something wasn’t working and work makes me feel good and I had to do that. so I started working part time at a clothing store I like it I have a lot of responsibility. i’m top sales, so good an all that. 
 
 but now its summer, I don’t know what the fuck i’m doing here next year, I was gonna go a community college out here and get my drug counseling certificate but it was full. now I might go back and just try once more to finish up my fucking BA which I've already invested four years of my time and PARENTS MONEY And I feel like  a cunt for that. but I WANNA GO HOME! I miss my city at home (Toronto) I miss my friends, we all still talk and my friends at home are my family as well. absolute trust I have with my small group of friends.
 
 anyway, now i’m working. I procrastinate all day. I have all my life .ALWYAS.ALWAYS ALWAYS> I have dabbled with other drugs, I still use alcohol and marijuana, either recreationally or as a way of escape. I go through phases. I also use food as an escape, eat so much till I cant move. i’m not overweight though, luckily, as with my other vices, the food stuff is in phases. but there have been times in my life when one of these vices were my drug of choice. but my first drug of choice, the one I always go back to, the one I always use, is procrastination. escape. avoidance. when I found this site it was like a fucken goldmine. everything, as im sure everybody else felt was like HOLY FUCKING SHIT THATS ME. omigod.

  anyway. now I have these days where I don't work and I just sloth around. I don’t call ppl back. I isolate myself. my family worries there ARE SOOOOOOOOOOOOOO Many ppl I have to call. you dont even know. not only, but I am moving soon, so many things I have to do for that. my apartment is disgusting. I feel fat I need to go to the gym, I need to decide what im doing with  my life next year. I let ppl down everyday. I missed a fucking staff meeting at work. as always at my work I am so good, all the customers love me, my sales are the highest, but my organizational skills are  holding me down. I am so ashamed for that. I missed a staff meeting, its a big deal its only a small independently owned store. I am late. I fuck up because I am so disorganized. my apartment is like a shit room how the fuck can I find anything. FUCK! but I am trying. but anyway, today is one of my days off. I have so much stuff to do. I woke up at 2 pm. I got food at the cafe across the street, now i’m sitting here, drinking coffee , chain smoking cigarettes, doing this and playing online games. I got so high last night and kind of drunk at my friends house, then I wasted money I don’t have and took a cab home, but not all the way home, I had to get out at subway to get a sub. they had no cookies, so I had to go to the shoppers drug mart which is the only 24 hour store and I had to get a giant sized chocolate bar and strawberry mentos for 'dessert'.

  I use the overdraft in my bank account EVERTIME I can. they judge me at the bank. I have bad credit already. I have limited myself in some ways in my life that are almost getting irreparable. I fell like I have got the ball rolling for a pattern of life, a ce low-quality of life that I don’t want for myself. I believe in God. I love God, He helps me. I like some preachers and pastors especially.

 anyway, this was the longest thing I have written in like so many months. fuck i’m so sorry this is so long, but  even if ppl don’t read the whole thing, it was so cathartic to get it out there. but I have hope for myself. I have great parts of me that I love. im pretty good looking. esp on the days where i dont look slobby (which are becoming more often), ppl might never know that im about to go into a SHITHOLE, disgusting apartment. but sometimes i keep it SO CLEAN. anyway, right now im in that stupid 'optimistic' state of my mind after I take my adderal, have some coffee and am procrastinating doing stuff because the sun is shining and I still fell like I have all day to do  it. when the sun goes down, I will realize that i’ve wasted another day of my life and feel pangs of my guilt, self-loathing and anxiety of the impending doom that I feel I will have inevitably brought upon myself. iknow im a spoiled brat and that disgusts me. my parents didnt grow up like that-  but they worked so they coud give me things i love- but i take advantage of it.
 
 anyway I love you all already for being here on this website, I already have read so much shit. and now I feel like I can respond and ppl will know who I am if they wanna see who the broad was who responded to their stuff. I need help. I am asking for it.  I still havent told everything, but I gave a nice little (well actually, huge) TV-dinner serving of my situation. ill be more specific later. im gonna do that bookends stuff and all that. I cant wait. hahah. actually I can.

  but still I know its no laughing matter, but I still do, and when I was younger, I often used to laugh. me and my friends, I have three procrastinator friends. we have known each other so long. each different but we understand our avoidance among other things. we used to laugh like, haha so, it 5 pm and I just woke up, oh wow what a good person. hahah. but anyway, what I want to say is that procrastination has limited me from living more of my life and experiencing it. I have slept so many days away, computered so many days away, ate so many nights away etc etc etc. let down so many ppl, hurt my family and friends, hurt children who I look after and developed friendship or mentor-type roles with by not calling them back or staying in touch. I have fucked up my financial situation. education stuff. so many things. so much. just so much.and i wanna change. i am always trying to change. or at least all of the 'shoulds' that go through my mind all day make me think i am always trying to change.

       Ps. I just tried to ‘edit’ this piece of shit to make sure that it was at least understandable and I see now that I have started like evryfucking sentence/paragraph with “anyway,” hahah but that’s just how I do sometimes, I know its crusty but I am happy that I actually wrote some stuff finally, and the ‘anyway’ is just evidence of my above-average writing skills.ha ha. Such elegant transitions between topics..anyway. ughhhhhh.

My current theory is that these ethnic groups don't procrastinate as much, because it's a cultural "willpower" thing. I think we should learn from them instead of engaging in feel good BS that incidentally doesn't work too well in education either.

A popular newspaper wrote an article today based on a new book called 'The Rough Guide To The Brain'.

Apparently, one of the discoveries is that Computer Games stop you feeling pain. Here is the mini article printed in the newspaper in full:

Computer games stop you feeling pain: Burns victims who play virtual-reality games while having wounds dressed suffer less pain. Scans confirm that pain activity in the brain is reduced when patients play a PC game. Dr Gibb says: "They suffer a fraction of the pain and need fewer drugs."
Reason:busying brain cells with video games distracts the brain from what's going on preventing pain signals from getting through.

Hello NotDoingPros brothers, listen to my little story :

I've procrastinate on my Phd thesis for 22 years and recently in september 2006 I went on doing some meta-procrastination, I mean procrastinating surfing the web with "procrastination" as a Google search... I read info on the David Allen "Getting Things Done" methodology (GTD), downloaded the book (hum...) and yep! 4 months later had mine viva ! I'm pretty sure this come from the fact that there is no moral content in GTD, the psychological background and effect is very profound but the method is purely tactical, "mundane" as Allen says and that's essential for us procrastinator because as you certainly noticed, any moral content such as "you HAVE to" blocks ourselves like the emergency brake signal on trains and there is no ABS here, only the horrible brake noise and stuck sensation ! (in my case it's even worse : the single fact that I've already thought about something before, empty my mind and totally prevent me of working on it afterward. Think about such a disabling mechanism)

Here is the vicious cycle which I have found myself in:

1. In procrastination mode. When I'm procrastinating, I feel constantly in a low mood. I tend to stay in this low mood until something drastic happens - I get inspired by reading an article or just feel really motivated to change.
2. I go through a good period of being happy and productive. I start to think that I've finally changed.
3. All of a sudden, I start procrastinating again. And once this happens, no matter what I try, I can't seem to get back into that happy and productive mode again.

I've only posted once before and I have so much I want to say, but right now I just need to share my problem with people who understand. To skim the surface, my situation right now is that I have applied to retake my final year of my degree due to chronic procrastination problems.

Hello Fellow Procrastinators.

I didn't want to hear the P word, cause I feel I have become it, but the word doesn't seem so bad after skimming the website.
53, going on 54, and still haven't ....
Well, yeah...
I think I will just jump in and start
    bookin it to the book-in forum

Kaith, Recovering Procrastinator.

Hi. I found this forum about 3 months ago but I've found it really hard just to bring myself to make this first post. So at this very moment, my intention is not to write too much, even though I have so many things I have wanted to say on this forum. I just want to make the first post. Hopefully as I continue to write this post I will gain enough momentum to write more about myself and my situation.

I am new to this forum so I think I might as well introduce myself. I am a 26 year old male from Los Angeles who is currently going through school to become a Physician's Assistant. I am a chronic procrastinator and a perfectionist. Awww . . . . screw it. I don't feel like doing this right now.

I skipped class today because of procrastination. Im so tired of this crap. I really feel like its a physiological problem that I have. I thought I was clean when I quit doing drugs but I don't feel as if I am. This stuff is like a disease. It takes you over.

I am most certainly a chronic procrastinator.

I'd spent a long time, all through my high school and college years up until this point trying to figure out what was wrong with me. Why I acted the way I did , regardless of the direness of the circumstances and/or the importance of the task that needed doing. It was never that I didn't understand the consequences it was always that I could rationalize any thing to myself (ex: "Now isn't the best time I should do it later" and then it never gets done). The few counselors I've seen over the years haven't given me much in the way of answers, one helped quite a bit with getting over some of my shyness but that's about it.