REGULATOR: Not So Much

Here's the issue. I have trouble with self-regulation. I tend to either avoid completely, or dive in for extended periods of time. It doesn't matter what, specifically, I'm doing -- generally, this still applies.

This applies to:

• things I love doing, 
• things I hate doing, 
• things I don't enjoy doing until I've been at it for an hour, 
• and things I don't enjoy doing but enjoy having done.

My psychiatrist has been telling me this for a while. Literally for as long as I can remember, I'm talking 14 years of "MODERATION, LEAH!" and then super-important psychological sounding things to back it up. It took me a while, but eventually I began to understand what he meant. It took me even longer to admit how detrimental this lack of self-regulation often was. And, remaining true to form, I didn't grasp how many areas of my life were affected by this until I stopped my 26-year avoidance of the issue and sat down (twenty minutes ago) to spend an extended amount of time contemplating all areas of it. 

At least I'm consistent.

Here's what a lack of self-regulation looks like, at least when it comes to me:

ONE
I have difficulty running under 5 miles. Sometimes, I even have difficulty running 5 miles, and I have to bump it up to 7 or more. I love running so much, and I love pushing my body as far as it can go. I love the numb feeling you get when your joints feel like jello and it hurts to change position in any way.

Sidenote: I wasn't always like this. I was never very fast, but I could build endurance, and I had a high pain tolerance. I also realized that, proportionally-speaking, I get faster the longer I run. My two-mile pace is similar to my 4 mile pace. With that said, I used to love our "forrest" 2-milers in high school. I used to love when practice got cancelled due to rain.

Sidenote that corresponds to previous sidenote: Though I wasn't as bad in high school, my lack of self-regulation showed itself in between seasons. I was either all-in, 5-6 days a week of practice, or lazy McNeverRuns, until the next season started.

TWO
I have difficulty transitioning out of a diet. I get the sense that for many people, losing weight is the problem, but once they lose it, they can pretty much keep it off. I am the opposite. Give me an absurdly restricted diet, and I can stick to it for months. I had no problem with Atkins, South Beach, Jenny Craig, GetInShape, or Weight Watchers. The problem arose when I lost the weight and went into the "Maintenance" part of these programs. I don't know how to eat just one french fry. I find it impossible to measure out half a cup of ice cream and eat only that. When I measure out peanut butter, I lie to myself. Not in that "Oh, well, it's okay if it's a tad more," kind of lying that you're conscious of, I 100% convince myself that I am measuring truthfully, healthily and accurately. Then my pants don't fit. The same thing happens with drinking. I can quit drinking entirely, never taking a sip, for months. I do this fairly frequently, in fact. However, when I do drink, I get drunk. I don't mean to. It just happens. I can't just have two beers, feel happy tipsy, then go home and go to bed. Just like I can't eat two french fries and stop there.

THREE
I have a stressful relationship with television shows. I can't watch just one CSI: Miami. I have to watch five. Or, I have to watch two every night for four days. The alternative, is that I don't watch it at all. That's the stage I'm currently in with CSI: Miami. However, I'm currently in obsessive mode with about 12 shows.

Plus, now that I don't have cable, it's actually worse. I don't think I realized how bad it was until I started watching Lost in Thanksgiving of 2009. The sixth season premiered a few months after I started watching it from the beginning, and I was caught up, WITH TIME TO SPARE. One weekend I had the flu and I literally watched Lost for 9 hours. 9 HOURS. Who does that? I don't care how sick you are, there's no excuse unless you're a 100% ridiculous human being. Which I am.

Another thing that happens is that once I catch up, I get so impatient waiting for one hour of each show per week that I abandon shows until I have at least 3 or 4 episodes to watch in a row. Occasionally, this results in high numbers of unwatched episodes, which stresses me out further. For instance, I am probably 31 episodes behind in Gossip Girl, which I love. I keep meaning to catch up, but it's a daunting task, and even though I prefer to watch TV in large quantities, even I get overwhelmed sometimes. And I worry. What if I'm too far gone when I start watching it again? What if I forgot what happened, and have to start even further back? What if I think I remember what happened, and then it turns out I forgot a tiny piece of something funny Chuck said and I miss some super-witty-wonderful or super-awful-hideous connection? What if, when I start watching again, I am unable to suspend my disbelief that a group of 6 people can have sex with every person in that group in every combination possible, being in love at least 50% of the time? Wait... who am I kidding? That will never be a problem. I'll always buy into that.

FOUR
I'm getting better about this, but cleaning has always been an issue. My mother can attest to this: As early as age 12, I fell into the trap of spending 11 hours cleaning my room every three months rather than spending the corresponding number of minutes each day. This only got worse in college, with more stuff and less space. It was further complicated by the fact that, in my first post-college apartment, my roommates moved in "college-style" (leaving 70% of their belongings at their parents' homes) while my mother was forcibly emptying out my childhood bedroom and sending it with me in minivanloads. I also have this terrible habit of putting things in "random buckets" (which may be bags, bins, unused space behind the printer, or other illogical locations that seem perfectly sensical at the time (Stephanie: I found the duck tea thing. Inquire within): My underwear drawer is important. I'll definitely remember that I put my camera / nail polish / copy of Atlas Shrugged / car keys / latex gloves / tiny lightbulbs from Ikea that fit only the lamp I bought from Ikea / slinky / hairbrush 1, 2 and 3 in here). Then, I make this grand plan to empty out the random buckets either in one fell swoop (all or nothing mentality) or bit by bit. Neither works. I'm getting better, and I have improved so much, but that's not exactly saying much, if you know what I mean. I should set the bar a little higher. Like, only underwear goes in the underwear drawer.

Sidenote: Out of curiosity, I'm going to go check what's in my unerwear drawer now. My apt is mostly clean. This should be fun. It will prove that, no matter how on top of it I may appear to be, it is an illusion. Oh sweet God. Okay, here goes: What I found in my underwear drawer, despite the fact that my room is mostly clean:

forever 21 bag, cheap star of david bracelet I bought in Jerusalem, one of those bags you put bras in in the laundry, green bandana, picture of Robert Pattinson (a gift from a student), a Lexington Track & Field sportsbra that we ordered my freshman year of outdoor track, Spring 2000 (it hasn't fit in at least 2 cup sizes), a dust cloth (clean), 2 price tags, 7 bottles of chrome nail polish (remember that?) a murder mystery I got for free, and strange shiny pants that were reportedly Israeli.

Now I'm going to go put all that back in my underwear drawer. Well, maybe I'll put it in the Forever 21 bag, and then put it back in my underwear drawer. Or, I could put it in one of the three "random buckets" at the end of my bed.

Notice nowhere in there did I consider putting each individual item where it needs to go.

FIVE
Hobbies are an issue. I have over 20 skeins of yarn and dozens of knitting needles, but I knit every two months for several consecutive hours during a marathon CSI: Miami catch up session. Then, I store them and they collect dust.

Reading is probably the least problematic, because the most amount of good comes out of it. I love getting lost in a good story, and very often it helps me do one of the other 3.4 million things I have to do, because I can use it in a lesson plan, or discuss it with a student. At the very least, I use it as an escape from thinking about all the 3.4 million things on my to-do list (Yes, I do realize that I watch CSI: Miami for the same reason). But it has its downsides. For 2 weekends this winter, I didn't leave the house at night because I was reading all ten Sookie Stackhouse books in a row. I accidentally bailed on 3 New Year's Eve parties because I was so immersed in the books. I say accidentally because I finished book 4, looked at the clock, discovered it said 1:14 a.m., and said, "Oops." Then, I continued reading, not calling back any of the 14 people who had called wondering where I was.

Boxing works well because I don't have a heavy bag at home, so I really can only box twice a week when the class happens at my gym. Though I'm considering buying a bag. Hmm. Now that I'm writing this post, I'm wondering if that's a good idea. What if I box my damn hands off, due to my inability to regulate the amount of time I spend on the bag? Honestly though, that's not what I'm worried about. Boxing, running, all the physical hobbies have a built-in regulation mechanism: eventually, your body breaks down. Which is not to say that I learn how to regulate myself based on the negative reinforcement of bloody knuckles / blistered feet / inability to walk up stairs for 2 weeks. But at least it forces me to stop.

SIX
When I decided to write about my lack of self-regulation, the only area of that idea that I was really interested in was how it pertained to lesson planning and grading. Tonight, I graded and planned for 6 hours straight after doing very little all of spring break, and I started thinking, do I really plan better this way, or is this just the only way I know how?

YET LOOK AT THIS LONG-ASS BLOG.

I couldn't just write about the one piece I wanted to, I had to explore how this idea affected every area of my life. Well, no, not every area. There are some I left out. But I'm trying to regulate that right now by not going into the more minor rgulatory issues like buying 7 pairs of earrings, or 18 cans of tomato paste when it's on sale, even if I don't know what the hell I'd even make with it. See? I'm trying. But it's taking real, honest-to-God effort to not press the up arrow and elaborate on the earring thing, or turn the tomato paste thing into an entire subsection involving grocery shopping and shopping in general, because really, I could. I won't. Probably. Most likely. I'm sitting here, repeating "It's almost 4 a.m." in my head. Okay, I think I conquered that urge.

SEVEN
This brings me to the real reason I decided to write about this (aside from the fact that I find it very difficult to focus on a mere part of an idea if I can focus on the entire idea, the history of the idea, everything even distantly related to the idea, and random associations I have pertaining to said idea).

I always start vacations with these grand plans for productivity in mind. I'm going to plan for 3 hours each day! I tell myself. I'm going to plan ahead, so I can have a life for the next month or so! I'll actually be able to make photocopies in enough time, and I won't be on the phone with the copy center in a panic at 7 a.m., and I'll teach better, because I'll have thought it through more effectively, and I'll have more time to spend grading and giving thoughtful feedback, and I can communicate more regularly with parents, and I can even make time to call them with good news, not just "your child's cussing me out again" news, and... the list goes on.

Yet inevitably, I'm so residually exhausted from the 12-hour days I regularly pull that I need the vacation to do... nothing. I need to sit around and do... nothing. Except watch CSI: Miami.

Some of this is necessary, and has nothing to do with my lack of self-regulation. Inner-city middle school students are like very clumsy dinosaurs that stomp all over good faith effort and optimism, and leave panic, chaos, and exhaustion in their wake. They're stress tornadoes, and I know this. Even if I were a vampire (Twilight mythos) who didn't need to sleep / had more time on my hands, my students  would still do this. Even if my units were all dynamite fantastic, their rein of chaos would prevail. I love my job, I do, and part of that love is accepting that a certain amount (read: 300 tons) of stress comes with the territory.

However, some of it I bring on myself. Here's what happens: I'm so stressed that I do no work at home on Monday and Tuesday night, so I end up doing 6 hours on Wednesday and Thursday night. After teaching an 8-hour day. Then, I'm exhausted, so I'm useless on vacation. Come summer, I'm so panicked about the sheer volume of work I have to do that I become unable to break it into small, manageable pieces and I put it off until August.

I did realize this past summer/year that my goal is not to have a pre-made curriculum that I stick to. Good teaching is about planning in advance, and then changing your plans to fit the needs of your students. That realization took a huge weight off my shoulders. But it isn't enough. My units are better when I plan them in advance, because then I have time to change them at least 3 times: once before I start, and twice after I start. Which is where the inability to self-regulate comes in.

Just like with food, drink, athletics, TV, cleaning, and other areas of my life, I cannot do a little bit of planning. It's either all or nothing, zero or sixty, and nothing in between. I have this image in my head of how it should be. It's filed away in the "HAHAHA good luck keep dreaming" section of my brain. I come home, spend 20 minutes grading, then half an hour planning a unit that will take place no less than 3 weeks in the future. I don't grade all the papers in one night, and I don't plan the unit in one night. Both things happen in bits and pieces, appropriately spaced out to allow me to watch one, or maybe two episodes of CSI: Miami a day and run under 5 miles a day.

The fact that it took me 30 seconds to convince myself to write "5" miles instead of a higher number is crystal clear evidence of the fact that this WILL NEVER HAPPEN.

My real question is this: IS THAT A BAD THING?

This week was the most productive vacation I've had since teaching. Again, that's not setting the bar high. Usually I do nothing for 7 days then spend 10 hours on each final weekend day. I've gotten accustomed to it. But this week was different. I spent an hour each day doing something productive, even if it wasn't directly related to my job. On Thursday, I even spent 3 hours revising my self-evaluation for work. Then I stopped, even though I wasn't done. It was like a miracle. Angels sang.

Then Friday (today) happened, and the mountain of work began to block out the sun. I couldn't enjoy the Vampire Diaries because I was so panicked about grading, so I finished watching it while half paying attention and denying the fact that I was only half paying attention, then sat down at 9 p.m. to begin chipping away at that mountain.

I started with grading my 7th grade's most recent drafts. I love doing it this way, because I keep a notebook opened beside me, and as I grade, I jot down ideas for what to teach next. It's truly the best way to do it, and whenever I can, I do. After about two hours of this, I started inadvertently sliding into planning mode. This, too, is a typical occurrence. (SIDENOTE: F words with two double consonants). I go from grading story after story and writing occasional notes to writing detailed notes and grading an occasional story.

Today it was awesome. I did the usual: Opened a document, titled it "What do do for the remaining two-ish weeks of fiction with my 7th graders" and started listing, brainstorming, rambling, and generally thinking on paper (well, onscreen).

AND IT WAS AWESOME.

Everything came together so well. I'm trying to think of an appropriate metaphor, and there's yarn in front of me, so I keep thinking I should compare it to the strands being wound together, but that would imply that I had all the pieces to begin with and just needed to twist them together, which is not at all true. A french braid would be more accurate. I started with three important pieces, wove them together, and gradually, as I thought of additional pieces, I added them too. Sometimes I had to backtrack and fix a bumpy part (read: scaffold skills more effectively). Some pieces fell out, but that was okay. By the end, I had a unit that resembled a stronger, more elaborate, connected version of the three pieces I started with.

AND I LOVED IT.
My back hurts. My eyes are dry, and I want to rip my contacts out. My feet are asleep. My sleep schedule is shot to hell. But I genuinely love watching the pieces come together.
But what happens next? After this metaphorical 12-mile run, do I require a recovery period until my knuckles stop bleeding, my blisters heal, and I can walk upstairs comfortably again?

So I wonder: Do other people do this in several small, pieces of time? I guess I wouldn't know, but I suspect I would have trouble making a unit in 12 half-hour blocks rather than one 6-hour block. I don't know if I've ever tried that. I think every time I have tried, I've done by accident what I did tonight on purpose: Planned for 6 hours nonstop. To answer your question, yes, that was the plan. At 9 p.m. I started working, and I was 95% sure that I would still be awake and working at 3 a.m. God, does that make me a freak? Do I care?

Here's what I really wonder:

1. Am I capable of stopping? Typically, I can't stop after 30 minutes because I'm worried I'll miss an idea that I otherwise would have thought of. Or, I can't stop because I'm worried that I'll miss the next 30 minute chunk, so why put off until tomorrow what you can do in one inhuman 6-hour chunk in the middle of the night right now..? It's like preemptive procrastination. OH GOD. I don't know whether to be horrified or impressed by the phrase I just created.
2. What if it's not a bad thing? What if I really plan better this way? Can I keep going like this in a more organized fashion? Is there a way to regularly plan in 6-hour chunks so that I don't go insane / get unhealthy / get metaphorical blisters? Should I try? 
3. Is it because I'm wired to have difficulty regulating, or the nature of my job, or both? Let's ignore the nature-versus-nurture debate, and look at the facts: For 26 years, I have functioned in this way, in most areas of my life. I have failed many times and succeeded many times. Should I change? If so, in how many areas should I focus on this change? Is it possible? 
4. Would things be different if I hadn't chosen such an all-encompassing, 24/7/365 job? Would things be different if I left my job at work? 

 Something does have to change. Eventually, at least. It's fine now, when I'm completely alone and only responsible for myself, but eventually I'll have responsibilities beyond that, like marriage, family, children, etc. 

For now, I will have to be content writing overly-detailed blog entries about it at four in the morning. Yes, now it's 411 a.m. I should go to bed.

Well, I apologize for the length of this blog. Though this blog primarily functions as a way for me to write, and having an audience is not the primary goal.

You know, I am actually quite glad that I wrote this. This is the first time in my life I've really thought about this in any depth, and God knows it's been there the whole time. I think writing this helped me process it. And processing it will help me deal with it for the years to come. So oh well if it's too long.

Plus, no one made you read it, right?

UGH. I can't even regulate my rationalizations.