grargh.

i'm having difficulty focusing. with all the other stuff i'm always going on about, if you had a bit of an outline of my life you'd maybe question why i'm not wondering about add. i'm kind of textbook, actually. but it's never really been something i can't get over. and i'm not about to start popping crack-cocaine....

to answer the question directly? i don't accept the existence of add. i think it's just an excuse to sell drugs to kids. sorry.

so, what's really going on?

well, i've been through this before. repeatedly. it's generally driven by a feeling of ineptitude. meaning it's more like a type of depression that sets in when the tasks in front of me aren't easy to complete. i think this stems from not going through a lot of difficulty as a kid. i was a gifted kid. i didn't learn to struggle. i didn't learn to compete; there was nobody to compete with. i wasn't faced with something i couldn't do with minimal effort until i was in my 20s, and i simply didn't know how to approach the situation. i kind of go into these states of shock, instead, where i can't address what i'm supposed to be addressing.

when i know i can get what i want out of my tools, i tend to be very efficient. it's when i'm not sure how i'm going to proceed that i start to procrastinate. it's the same thing with all aspects of my life. if i know how i'm going to approach an essay, it's done relatively quickly. if i don't, it's not done until the last minute, or a week past the due date.

what it exposes isn't some kind of chemical imbalance that can be fixed with drugs. it's more like a reversed value system. i don't have this "protestant work ethic". and i don't glorify hard work. rather, i expect to be talented enough to do things without trying, and i get depressed when i realize i'm not.

i don't find forcing it helps. it has to pass. but what's pissing me off at this particular point in time is that the amount of time i have left is probably limited. i'll find out on the 17th. but it's very likely that i will take my own life sometime between april and july, as my disability runs out and i'm left without further acceptable options. i should be getting as much done as i can...

instead, i find myself wasting time on youtube.

my goal over this period was supposed to be to get a whole lot done. but i've wasted most of the last month, and am not really clear when this is going to lift.

if i'm not able to focus on this track within a day or two, i'm going to have to skip it and come back to it.

the first time i EVER received ANY grade less than 70 was in the second year of university.

there's been a lot written about why c students end up managing things, and a students end up as drone workers. a big part of it is no doubt due to reducing independent thought in management, which is a fundamental tactic of the class war. that is, the big bosses don't want the little bosses to be smart - they just want them to be obedient. but i think another part of it is that kids with lower grades are more resilient. they have to fight harder, younger. it becomes a more dominant component of their life.

somebody like me that walks into the eighth grade, gets thrown out for picking on the teacher and then gets an a anyways because i was at a twelfth grade level when i was 8 just spends that whole process in stasis, whereas somebody that's moving at the grade level in the way the system demands is constantly struggling and learning.

at the end of it, i spent high school tossing planes and smoking pot - and still got an a average because i could have passed an equivalency test in the 7th, before i set foot in the place. the kid that struggled through with a B- consequently learned a whole lot more than i did, both scholastically and non-scholastically. when the kid that struggled walks out of school, they're walking into a world they were prepared for. when i walked out of school, i was walking into a world i didn't understand at all.

i guess it took me ten years just to figure that out.

and, at the moment, i haven't the faintest clue how to address it.

all i know is that, when i'm faced with a challenge, i tend to get depressed and give up rather than become determined and try harder.

he's missing an opportunity to make an important point.

the class war is all about reactions. that's what he's getting at with his cyclical thing (which is maybe a little counter-revolutionary, but whatever). so, the next thing that has to happen is that labour has to react to globalization. but, he's restricting his context to america.

you could pull the bangladeshi producers to their knees with general strikes, but the way things are nowadays is that they'll get up and move to cambodia.

so, action must be co-ordinated across borders to be effective. and that's hard..

..,.but it's inevitable.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1VbUBbvu4Co