I made a grave mistake.  And it's paralyzing me.  Nothing exciting, purely school related.  I don't know how to bounce back and be productive in this moment as I so desperately need to be, I basically lost a much needed day.

Ahh *super large and long sigh*. When budgeting my time to ensure I keep all my reading and paper assignments on schedule, I was careless.  I have two papers which were technically due yesterday, the professor kindly granted the entire class until Monday to complete said papers.  The assignment was reading journals.  We were to read one or two primary sources relating to the ancient Christian church and the Greco/Roman period between 64 CE to 604 CE (CE means common era, same as AD).  I had chosen to read John Chrysostom's On Virginity.   We were also to choose two or three secondary sources, academic writings about the information we have in the primary sources.  I quickly located a few of the suggested monographs (books) online and skimmed through a few mentally noting an average page count of under 30.   Easy, a couple hour read each.  ahhhhahah.  This morning as I was already panicked in trying to finish the text--another after sight (read the 250 page book yesterday, destroying my eyes and making my brain fuzzy), I thought I'd find my secondary sources to start reading.  *muffled cry* That was when, to my horror, I learned that what the online library had found in regards to my searched author and book requests a month earlier, was in fact peer review articles of the original work--not the actual work.  My budgeted time to read two, thirty paged documents all of sudden became two books of over three hundred pages each.  My brain was already over-saturated from the plus 200 pages absorbed the night before.  I have humbly emailed my professor, but haven't heard back.

I have had the entire day to at least finish the paper on the On Virginity work and even get a decent start on one of the other books.  But I haven't.  I have instead, bathed, thinking it would relax me and help focus; needlessly researched the Encratites, an ascetic people, possibly who Chrysostom was referring to when talking about heretic virgins, or so the notes inferred, but the Oxford Classical Dictionary dates them with the Essenes (think John the Baptist) who were wiped out along with second temple Judaism in 70CE, and Chrysostom wrote in 400CE.  None of this relevant to my paper or academic future, or even curiosity- I just found the coined term "heretical virgin" funny and wanted to know who could have pissed John off so much that he begin his first paragraph directly and angst-fully addressing them in their heretic virginal ways.  What else did I do? Watched a few tv episodes on my computer: Whitney, Big Bang, and The Neighbors, damn you ctv.ca; facebook of course-my niece posted a picture of me from about 10 years ago when I had dreads, which distracted me, burying me in thoughts of then time and then hair; I decided to soak the at-least two year old chick peas found with plans of making hummus-they will likely stay in water for three days before I find them again and have to throw them out; showered-eventhough I had bathed only two hours previous, I hadn't washed my hair and a friend mentioned possibly coming by.  So of course that lead to doing my hair and getting dressed and creating a new outfit with my ridiculous 4inch stiletto chinese red heeled booties, sigh; Oh and I cleaned my entire house.  And now here I sit, listening to music and writing my woes away.  Note: friend never came by, so add being bitter from wasted time cleaning hair and house.

I hate wasted days. I hate not bouncing back fast enough.  I hate the crippling effect of discouragement.  I know I will be fine.  I am rather hopeful I will get an extension, and if not, what does that mean? I lose up to 10%- I think that's it.  I get a B grade instead of an A grade, or God forbid a C.  But perhaps that's where it is.  I get admonished-LOTS for being too hard on myself, for expecting too much from myself.  Perhaps it's not so much I am disappointed with myself, but each of these minute challenges often measured in pass or fail, for me anyways, are affirmations or disapprobations to choices sometimes being blindly felt through.  When I do well in school or a business venture or a relationship, it's feels right, it's the high-five of approval to being on the right path, doing the right thing, in the right time for me.  I know that's silly thinking, especially seeing it in writing, but when being involved in things which require heavy investments, such as time and money and identity, it's often required to feel confident that your investment will not be wasted.

hmmm...I somehow don't think I'm talking about school anymore.