nocturne

This college class takes an odd turn at the halfway mark.  Aside from the little weekly essays we're supposed to write, we're supposed to turn in a more extensive paper after six weeks, and another one when the semester's over.  The first was a personal essay, attempting to answer the question, who am I.  The second though, is a research paper.

We can research anything we want, and it can even be something we're already well versed in, except that it needs citations and a bibliography.  The teacher gets oddly quiet when asked for specifics or help figuring out what to do the paper on.  As if there's some significance to making us wing it. I'm thinking growth hormone deficiency, or something more precise, like the impact of growth hormone deficiency on protein metabolism.  I'm substantially less comfortable with whatever this vague assignment is supposed to be about.

My personal essay is here, though.  Too long to paste into my blog.

 A+

I've been thinking some more on why I'm not a night person anymore.  I don't get drunk and play video games anymore.  I don't do much of anything imaginative or enjoyable anymore.  Not because of any sort of value judgment about it, but because everything has to be about utility for the time being.  I need to do everything I can to get myself out of this hole, and when I think about how gradual this has been, how long ago I stopped watching television shows and movies, gaming less and less, I wonder how long my mind has been secretly planning all this.  First, I had to get my head out of the clouds.

It all helps, but none of it ever feels quite good enough.  Life is not supposed to be this difficult, but adversity itself is not the problem.  It's every little thing I need to do, all day long.  It's still quite a struggle to focus on whatever's right in front of me, but I'm doing it.  Maybe in another year or two, I'll feel like I can handle it.  There are even a few classes I look forward to taking, once I clear these lame pre-requisite hurdles.

For now, I can't risk eating poorly, or drinking beer.  Getting absorbed in a video game, or messing up my circadian rhythms.  Jogging on the days when I'm not kickboxing.  I wake up early every day because that's what's most conducive to being functional.  I've finally resigned myself to the notion that "who I am" has been problematic.  I don't know who I am anymore.  Scattered memories, dubious proclivities, so much nonsense.

Maybe someone with a functional pituitary gland can go to bed late or scarf down coffee and donuts without worrying about it.  Many an obese alcoholic still manages to be way more functional than I am.  I've had to take drastic measures, and I'm still skeptical of how well it's working.  I don't even particularly want to be functional.  Just seems that I need to be, and it's taking everything I've got to figure out how to get there.

It's as if I couldn't fathom that any road worth taking could be this long and arduous.  If I've understood what I've been reading lately, that would be a function of the pre-frontal cortex, which develops last.  Usually late teens, early twenties.  I was still losing baby teeth and wetting the bed, until I was about eleven, so yeah, sounds vaguely plausible to me.  Hormones are involved in triggering numerous developmental phases.  Probably even neurological ones.