Procrastination and Nervous Breakdowns

Well. I am a month from the bar . . . awwwwwww freak out.

So, I create a slightly less stressed me, I have selected part of my "post-bar" trip. I am doing what a lot of other smart people did when they were young and unafraid and going to Europe. Since I am now old and fearful, I am using a tour group to "guide" me from place to place. I.e. I'm staying in decent hotels, which a strong likelihood of a private bathroom, I will have a guide nearby to ask questions about the cities I'm in, some of my meals are taken care of, and my luggage will be handled by someone in order to get me from place to place. I know, I know, I sold out and should have tried the whole Eurorail & hostel route. However, I'm alone on this trip and don't make friends easily. Also, I fit the horrible US citizen stereotype and only speak Americanized English. Lord help me, I'm sorry I just did not learn languages, ever. To let you all in on where I'm going, the trip includes Venice, Rome, Monte Carlo, Barcelona and Madrid. Each place is at least two days, and most are two nights. The tour group provides some orientation and "hard to get" tours for the group and then lets you spend your time being lost in Europe. Plus, there is forced interaction with other members of the tour at the group dinners. Hopefully, it will help me to get to a lot of places and see a lot of stuff.

I am sad that I won't get to other places, such as the rest of Europe, but to my knowledge it's not going anywhere and I doubt all the ruins and castles will disappear before my next opportunity to travel.

Next, I'm trying to figure out a way to go all over this fine nation and visit many of the lovely people I know. There are far to many of you living in places that no one else resides any longer. If you could, please, I would appreciate it if everyone I know would just move to the same location. Also, I'm trying to figure out how I can afford to do all this without a job. However, I think that I'm going to do something that I've, oddly enough, always wanted to do, and get a US Rail Pass for Amtrak and see this fine country by rail. I know it's not likely to be beautiful everywhere, but it will be an experience. It's also super cheap when compared to flying/driving to all the places I wish to go.

Finally, I've decided that I'm only really allowed to procrastinate in order to take care of real things, like financing, travel plans, talking to my family, etc. and no longer am allowed to read for fun. Also, I will be limiting all other "entertainment" until I'm either, less likely to cry when I perform a practice test and fail to achieve 50% correct, feel truly prepared to take the bar, or the bar is over. More than likely the last, the former are just likely to get worse as I continue down the spiral of frustration and horror that has become my studying of late.

PS Don't go to grad school, it costs way freaking too much in the end...

An Open Letter to Food Stuffs Makers

Dear Sirs and Madames:

Please stop making the bags in which you place your various food items, such as cereal, goldfish crackers, and the like, out of material that is weaker than the glue with which the bag is sealed shut. It is already difficult enough to open said bags properly given the Herculean effort necessary just to start the opening process, but then to have a giant tear in the wrong direction makes the process of eating your food, or more accurately getting your food into a dish, all the more frustrating. Therefore, the entire process, from start to finish of eating your bagged food becomes annoying.

While some might suggest that I simply use scissors instead, I say that you are the ones who recommend peeling the bags open at the glue strip, therefore the issue is yours to fix. Besides, it didn't used to be this way when I was little. I could open a bag correctly when I was little. Now that I'm older, it seems that you've improved your glue, but left the bag weaker and more subject to tearing.

Thank you for your efforts to improve this problem.

Sincerely,

Girl with too many bags of food which require extra sealing...

So much pain

So, in my effort at procrastinating, oh and to get healthier, I have started attending the gym with the boy. I dropped my membership that I wasn't using and joined at his gym which was cheaper. Now, I feel "motivated" to go, in that way that he's going, and he will encourage me to go. The boy is also a former personal trainer at a gym, so he's put together a routine for me. I have pain in the strangest places. And there are certain things that I have to do which just don't feel good anymore, like sitting up or reaching for things. But it's a good sort of pain.

There's a statement that doesn't make sense "good pain." Unless that's your thing. If it is I recommend starting over at the gym. If it's not, then you're with me on the fact that the statement "good pain" makes no sense. Productive pain sort of makes sense, like childbirth is, apparently, productive pain. It is pain that encourages you to get that alien parasite out of you, which is important. Or like an infection, it's telling you to get rid of the bad stuff, even if that includes cutting your arm off. Productive pain in relation to the gym is the light soreness that you feel more when your using your body to do normal things, it reminds you that your body isn't as strong as it used to be and that it is in my power to fix.

Now, if only I could find a way to apply that to my bar studies. It's just a matter of making myself sick to a realistic schedule which will really help me study. The hardest part is just reading and rereading stuff so that I can commit a lot of information to memory. It's not as easy to stay focused for extended periods of time to get myself to really read through the information. Instead I find my mind wandering or my eyes slowly closing as I fall asleep. I need something that will cause me to be un-distracted and want to read through this stuff. Perhaps I need a better sense of impending doom.

Perhaps instead of writing you people I should go study now.

Where does the time go?

So, I was doing good with the updating for about two weeks there, and then bam, back to my old habits. So very shocking for the rest of you, I'm sure.

I am currently enmeshed in my bar review classes. I spend 4-8 hours in class almost everyday -- including today, a Saturday -- and then I'm expected to study for 6-8 hours outside class. I'm averaging 2-3 hours of extra studying. That's just not going to cut the mustard kids. However, I haven't really felt the pressure I'm starting feel now. Now, I'm actually giving myself hard line hourly assignments and cracking the proverbial whip. I'm up to about 4 hours a day. I think that I need to find a way to motivate myself that doesn't end in the night terrors. I also need to stop finding excuses and just lock myself in my study room and demand more of myself. I mean, it's less than two months now, and I don't want to do this again...

However, I did distract myself with an excellent weekend at a certain persons bachelorette party last weekend. It was a lot of time spent NOT studying, but it was an awesome time and I'm really glad I did it. Especially since I can't make it to her wedding. Something about she did not want to schedule it around my bar exam!?!

So, that's where I'm at. I'll try to put updating this on my schedule regularly to avoid the two month gaps I normally end up with.

It's really too bad that the weather is so nice right now...