what its like to feel neurotic (or thereabouts)

now that i'm done teaching i'm able to come back to this post (from 3/30 at 11:42 pm) and read it and kind of laugh at myself. in the throes of teaching, this is what was going on in my brain. certainly it sucked then and i'm happy to not be doing it now but there's more to it than that...

i don't know what has been going on with my brain since late last week, but I feel like I've been physically unable to create anything for my lesson plans. there's no investment and no desire to start work. i'm afraid of it and it's getting to me. i sit at my computer in fear of starting because i don't know exactly what i want to do and i feel like there's so many options for how i could teach something or what to do, but i'm afraid of new things and i always end up just doing what i always do. especially now though, i don't think what i've done is working to its best and i think there are probably better activities or things to do or whatever, but i just don't know what they are.

time is my enemy. instead of getting things done i fuck arouund on the internet and then look at my watch and realize anotehr 43 minutes has gone down the drain without me doing anything. that's another thing - the internet has consumed my life. i probably check the same web pages 10-15 times a day for no fucking reason and i get sucked in each and every time. i need to set up some system where i figure out how to control my internet addiction because it's runining my abilities to be productive at all. i think part of the reason i never do good lesson plans anymore is because i know no matter how amazing the lesson is, something will fuck it up or set it off course or i'll forget to do something or kids won't know what's going on or they won't be able to do something or it will take too much time or whatever and it's just making it hard for me right here and right now at 11:47 on monday night to sit down and make a lesson plan for tomorrow about introduciton paragraphs because i don't know exactly what students need to improve on and even if i did exactly what i'd do to help them get better at it because i suck at coming up with creative ideas and its killing me and my students but mostly me because then i feel awful about myself as i sit at my computer or as i got to sleep or when i get up in the morning sleep deprived and depressed that i have to go teach another crappy lesson. there's also a ton of stuff piling up that i haven't done like grading journals and grading quizzes form last week and tracking them and sending themt rob at some point to check student progress, which i really don't think there was any of on the last assessment i gave.

the added pressure of more and more things to do makes it less likely that i get any one particular task completed and when i do i think its some great victory and then start fucking around when really i should be moving down the list of things to do but i don't because i hate doing these kinds of things and putting in the work after nine oclock on a fucking weeknight and i jsut wish i could chill out a bit because it's tough to get up at 7 in the monrning, teach all day then go to track practice and then to the chiropractor and after that i stopped at the grocery store to buy some necessities and then i rememberd that i needed a gift for gilson but i already told karl i'd run so i got home and we went out running then i ate dinner which i luckily didn't have to make otnight because i did it last night, so after that i went to rite aide to pick up gilson's gift and then talked to brittany on the phone for a half an hour and then wasted time utnil karl and i made a lunch and am now wasting more time but i think it's been important for me to get down these thoughts so that i can come back to them at some point and remember how awful, nervous, scared, helpless, powerless, uncreative, tired, and pathetic i feel because i can't come up with a solid lesson plan in the last two months of school.

i thought running would do the trick but because i've been such a fuck i haven't gotten anything done and it's too late to get up in the morning to run especially since i told one of my students i'd meet him for tutoring today at 7:30 in the morning and i think running might be something that could help me but i've got to get to bed before 11 to do that. maybe i just need a change of scenery and should do my work somewhere else. i wihs my brian wasn't so clogged with things to do, especially those little unimportant things or those long term things that i can't qutie hammer out the details for yet but i know i need to have them on a list or something so that i don't foret about them.