Completely Self-Absorbed, Kind-Of-Serious Post. You Probably Shouldn't Read This.

Do you know what my dad does when he gets bored? He reads the encyclopedia. Just grabs a letter from the bookshelf, pours himself an Arnold Palmer, sits down, crosses his legs, and sets about expanding his intellectual horizons. I, on the other hand, am a sporadic reader. My bookshelf is full of partially-read books, any one of which I will nevertheless claim to have read and loved if it comes up in a conversation. And if I get stuck comparing favorite parts, I'll just list a few things from the 20 pages I actually read, then I'll enthusiastically agree with anything the other person throws out there. I've never been caught doing this, but I cringe just thinking about the day that someone gets wise to my game and starts talking about the riveting chariot race in Catcher in the Rye. I have nightmares about this stuff.

Anyway, I tell you this for several reasons: to inform you that my father is better than I am or can ever hope to be; to alert you that I am sometimes a liar; but most importantly to establish that I have absolutely no follow-through. I don't stick with anything - books, commitments, relationships, jobs - anything. I'm not a finisher. One might say that "not a finisher" is a pussy-ass way of saying "quitter". And I say fair enough, hypothetical bullshit detector person. Fair enough. Whatever you want to call it, it's something I need to work on.

I guess the first step is to pin down some underlying causes. Sometimes, like when I can't finish a book, it just comes down to laziness. But I've realized that most of my problem is that I have absolutely no regard for my future self. I am really a fucking asshole to that guy. According to the old bromide, a stitch in time saves nine. Roughly translated, this means that a little consideration now can keep you from getting knifed in the balls later (figuratively speaking). I regularly fail to do simple little things that would save me testicular trauma (speaking in figures here) down the line. And I don't care who you are: when your nuts have puncture wounds (in the figurative sense), you want to do what it takes to stop the bleeding.

Take college, for instance. Miraculously, I am very close to graduating (with a degree that will limit my options to grad school or learning to give a killer handjob), but it has not been easy. The work itself isn't hard; even though I tend to do things at the last possible moment, it's only rarely made me contemplate quitting, and even then only for a few miserable sleep-deprived minutes. No, the worst part of college for me is this time of year, before school has even started.

It takes like 20 minutes to register for classes online. It is very easy to do. And considering the profound impact that your schedule can have on your quality of life for 4 months, it stands to reason that any semi-competent college student would free up a little time to register as soon as the system opens up. My school's registration opened at the beginning of April, with the earliest slots going to the students with the most credits completed. As a Senior, the system was obviously working in my favor. It's clear where this story is going: until this week, I hadn't registered for any classes, because I am an idiot. It's not like I forgot to do it; registering for classes is like all anyone talks about in late March/early April. For weeks, conversations like this were a regular occurrence around campus:

Guy: Did you register for classes yet?
Girl: No! I can't till the 6th!
Guy: That sucks.
Girl: Yeah, but I've been using the planner thing, so I kind of know what I want to take. I definitely want to take Western Civ. with Donahue because I heard he's super-chill and his class is at 2 on Tuesdays and Thursdays and I'm trying to get all late classes so I can party the night before but if that's full then I'll take blah blah blah blah (10 minutes of rambling about potential schedules and contingencies).
Guy: (bored, regretting that he asked)

I would regularly hear people having these conversations when I was already eligible to register. Sometimes I would hear these conversations in class, with my computer in front of me - registration literally at my fingertips - and I would instead choose to play online Family Feud or to type my full name into Word and attempt to come up with anagrams for it ("Shawn Christopher Davis" = "Christ, a dawn shivers. Hop!") for the entire class period. I didn't even think about what I wanted to take. Little did I consider that I was (figuratively) shanking my future self right in the (figurative) junk. Because here I am five months later looking through a bunch of booby prize classes that are going to make my life miserable starting in about two weeks, wondering what the fuck is wrong with me that I lack even the smallest shred of foresight when that little sliver would have been enough to prevent me from being in such a dumb situation.

The same applies for my living situation. I really have no idea where I'm going to live this semester, and school starts in two weeks.

And I do this every goddamn year, so early August is generally a pretty stressful time for me as I struggle to get my shit together before school starts. So I really, really feel like quitting. I feel the magnetic pull of the vagrant life: I'd roam from town to town, just me and my rucksack, working for food and impregnating the women with the fewest teeth. It would be great. But I guess I've come too far to quit now. There's plenty of time for vagrancy. For now, I need to finish what I started - if not for me then for my parents, not to mention my many, many future children. It's not that I want to be there for my progeny - I just want them to live. And vaccinations to protect against raccoon scratches don't come cheap. A college degree can be my first-ever stitch in time, because with a little work now I can not only save my future kids' lives, but I can more importantly keep one of their toothless, obese mothers from castrating me for being such a lousy bum, thereby saving my balls (LITERALLY!!!).