Why I Suck At Updating

So, if you look really hard, under the title of my blog, it says that I will update it Tuesdays and Thursdays. It doesn’t say every Tuesday and Thursday, but that’s the goal most of the time. As the none of you who’ve been actively keeping up with my updates are probably aware, I kind of suck at keeping to this goal, though. I mean, some weeks I manage it, and others I’m in the desert or something and can’t connect to the internet. But most of the time, I just get swept away in my own life, and updating just kind of falls by the wayside.

Of course, this feeds into my existing neuroses pretty handily. I feel awful when I realize I haven’t updated in time, because I have this fantasy in my head where there’s someone on the internet who reads my inane whining and prattling and finds some comfort in realizing that someone else is going through the same things, or takes solace in the fact that there is indeed someone out there more lame and crazy than they are, or just finds everything I say tremendously hilarious. When I miss a day, I feel like I’m letting this imaginary person down, and it feeds into my ridiculous obsessive need to always be helping make someone else’s life a little better so I can feel needed even though I'm sure no such person actually exists.

At the same time, the constraints my life and my complete inability to maintain focus put on my ability to generate the kinds of things I put on this blog (angst-ridden personal diatribes and mildly entertaining stories from my past, mostly) make it really hard for me to manage this. For example, here’s how my day today broke down:

12:00-4:00AM: On skype, talking to a few people but mostly my friend Tara. Our conversations consist mainly of sending stupid .gif files back and forth, interspersed with the occasional REALLY EXCITED CONVERSATION IN ALL CAPS ABOUT SOMETHING REALLY NERDY. In this case, our all-cap conversation was me getting her pumped for the Hunger Games movie which OH MY GOD IS TOTALLY A THING AND I CANNOT WAIT. We also discuss one of the several hopelessly lame stories I’m writing; this one’s a sort of adventure series in which the main characters have various superhuman abilities. It occurs to me that I have these same kinds of conversations with a lot of my friends.

4:00-4:30AM: I initially try to sleep, but my brain won’t cooperate and shut up, so I decide to work on that story a bit. One of the action scenes seems a bit too abrupt, so I work on fixing the pacing somewhat.

4:30-5:35AM: I am exhausted, so I try to go to sleep. My brain is still having none of this, so I spend the next hour tormenting myself by doing my usual review of the past day’s events and highlighting every single thing I did wrong, with the additional joy of thinking through what I’m planning to do in the week ahead and placing bets on where I’m going to fuck up next.

5:35AM-2:00PM: I sleep in, because I have no classes on Tuesdays, because I am a winner. I wake up when my friend Noa sends me a text wondering if we’re still going to the mall that afternoon.

2:00-2:55PM: I do not respond to this text message, because that would entail opening my eyes and getting out of my warm bed to get to my phone, and I have never wanted to do anything less.

2:55-3:00PM: I come up with the gist of my response to this text as I haul myself out of bed, and then spend four minutes making sure that the phrase “Sure, how about we head over there at around 4:30?” is as inoffensive and non-threatening as can be, because I am a crazy person.

3:00-3:45PM: I read the new pages on my favorite webcomics, read the new Cracked.com articles, and play a little bit of Wakfu. It should occur to me to start working on a blog post, but I am still only half-conscious at best.

3:45-4:25PM: I shower, get dressed, and head out to meet the bus.

4:25-4:45PM: Even though it’s mid-afternoon on a Tuesday, I still have to deal with a drunk girl who decides to ignore the open seats and sit right next to me. She must be pretty smashed, because she starts flirting with me. I wait around a minute in the hopes she’ll stop on her own before I inform her of my homosexuality. She mutters something I don’t care to repeat, and then exits the bus a few stops later.

4:45-5:00PM: I browse the selection at the Aeropostale in the mall, before realizing that I have neither the willpower nor the money to be trying on jeans. To make myself feel less bad about being fat, I spend ten dollars on a video game, which will help to perpetuate the cycle.

5:00-6:00PM: Noa meets me, and we wander about Target. They’re in the midst of moving a bunch of sections around, so it takes us a bit to find everything we need. It was at this point that my stomach pointed out that I hadn’t eaten in almost 24 hours. This leads me to purchase two large bags of chips, in addition to everything else.

6:00-6:20PM: We ride the bus back to campus. Thankfully, no drunks accost us this time. By this point we are both mildly ravenous, and the prospect of food is all that is keeping us going.

6:20-7:30PM: Joined by our friend Annie, we break new ground in the field of devouring food.

7:30-11:00PM: Another friend joins us, and we engage in two of our favorite pastimes: playing video games and watching stupid/hilarious/mostly-stupid videos on youtube. We also determine that I will host a movie night this weekend.

11:00-11:30PM: I try to help one of my best friends with some emotional distress. I am no help, and manage to contribute nothing, and even though I am supplied with an idea for something to get him for his birthday, I can tell this is going to end up on my mental highlight reel at the end of the night.

11:30PM-12:05AM(Wed.): I play my new game. It’s pretty fun, but I think it would be better if any of my friends played it too.

12:05-12:15AM: I mentally berate myself for not updating my blog yet again. Truly, I am a terrible human being. I also feel bad for making such a big deal out of feeling bad, because I can’t even let myself feel entitled to my own sadness.

12:15-12:45AM: I whine to Tara about how bad a person I am. A barrage of hilarious .gifs later, I feel less terrible.

12:45-1:30AM: Inspiration strikes! I begin writing a piece on how my younger sister’s influence has worsened some of my own personality flaws and weakened my bonds with my other family members.

1:30AM: WRITER’S BLOCK. I can’t think of how to continue the bit on my sister, and I’m not at a good stopping point.

1:30-2:30AM: In the process of complaining to Tara, I prove yet again that I am an incredibly lame human being, correcting her use of “Bat-Shark-Repellent”  to the more accurate “Shark Repellent Bat-Spray”. I am familiar enough with Batman to make this distinction, and yet too unfamiliar with human interaction to get a date. This saddens me. I also start and finish this piece, checking with my friend/50%-of-my-readership Jaden to make sure this isn’t the dumbest idea ever for a post.

So as you can see, I do actually try to stick to my ideal posting schedule, it’s just that I kind of suck at doing so. I’m trying to work on this, so please try to bear with me.