“all of us were scarred from high school”

Nerd meltdown

Credit: graur razvan ionut / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

…..well maybe not all of us. I certainly was. However, I can feel eyes rolling and chests heaving and sighing at the idea of repetitive stereotypical bore. “the nerd, the jock, the popular kid, the weirdo”; the lists are endless.

What was i? Good question.  I didn’t define myself by any label, but I was forced onto one: the nerd.  It was cringingly awful. But my confession is this: I never thought I was a nerd (and that’s not modesty folks). Truth be told, I tried to achieve top class status, because other than that and my family, I didn’t have anything else to feel great about.  Honestly, I always loved reading and was an imaginative child. I guess if any human saw another human reading they’d guess nerd right? I mean, that’s the logic? That’s the environmental push factor that drives another isn’t it? Hm….

The problem was, getting use to the routine of achieving an A all the time, did something to my psyche, it made me develop an obsession and a constant need to over-achieve. It was an odd high. Getting the 90% was an awesome feeling, but it never felt enough. When the high was broken, I broke down in (public) violent tears and subsequently got teased for it. I hated the teasing, but I wanted that A. I wouldn’t kill or cheat, but I would study and be able to repeat shit ad verbatim if I had to (which I usually did).

“Dude, you cried because you got a B?”

Um….yea.

Where is this going?

Well, now a fully-fledged adult, over-achieving has rattled me. It’s given me a weird sensation of “I KNOW I can do it and do it AWESOMELY so I’ll do it later, no problem”…oh oh oh what’s the name for it again? Procrastination. It’s done other things, but procrastination has a nice recognizable feel to it.

I procrastinate like a muggafugga. No, I’m not particularly new at it, but I’ve perfected it.  I don’t know how I even came to this path.  Most over-achievers hustle and bustle and are immense control freaks. Me? I’ve mellowed and it boggles my mind. I typically wonder what I would look like if I kept that attitude going.

Would I be where I wanted to be in life? Would I have had my wedding planned to the last floral arrangement a la’ Monica Geller? Seriously……how did our obsessions subsequently result in our flaws?

Or am I analysing this completely wrong?