Laziness, and other forms of childhood inadequacy
June 22, 2025
Should I combine all my blog entries into one page instead of having individual pages like this? I think it might save some space.
Maybe I could have all the posts from a specific month on one page and put them under summary tags? Or maybe I could sort them by topic?
But it might use more load time on the user's end... AHHHHH!!!
Anyway, I think I realized some things about myself.
1. I think I would benefit from being able to tell myself when to calm down.
2. I should do more stuff so I don't feel trapped. Just random shit to make me feel like I have free will.
3. I really, really should dedicate more of my time to art.
I think I might have to learn to practice. Yesterday, I was thinking about something that is really just astoundingly stupid and trivial, but something I think might have actually affected my thought patterns to this day and I never realized it.
When I was a little kid, I basically never studied. I took pride in being able to make achievements without having to try as hard as others. I hated anything I wasn't immediately good at because it made me feel stupid. I liked English because I was told I was good at it, and I hated math because I struggled with it.
I think this is part of the reason that 2015-era "art criticism" (Solar Sands is a wet shit stain under the art community) affected me as much as it did, and probably contributed to my issues with executive function. Having to practice felt insulting to me on some level, but I also never really learned how to do it. When I started struggling academically, I just shut down and stopped trying.
I think I always had a fear of being seen as stupid, whether it was because I was a girl, because I was autistic, or for some other third reason. Maybe subconsciously I always wanted to prove I was "smart", even if consciously I think that's dumb.
But here's the thing: someone that thinks you're stupid and lesser because you're a girl or autistic or whatever isn't going to change their mind. You could invent the cure for cancer and they wouldn't care. They feel that way because they're bigoted, shitty people, not because you've failed somehow. When someone expresses a sentiment like that, they're not inviting you to prove them wrong. They're projecting something they already believe onto you.
I think on some level, everyone wants to be a savant. That's not a real thing that exists in real life. Nobody is born with any innate skills or talents, besides maybe eating and shitting. And nobody can be correct 100% of the time. We make mistakes, not because we're stupid or unskilled, but because we're animals. The brain is a muscle that needs to be exercised. We learn based on "wrong" vs. "right", "good" vs. "bad". We have to make mistakes, because it's the only way our brains can process that information. You'll never be able to draw a "good" hand if you never draw a "bad" hand. You'll never be able to improve as a person if you never fuck up or feel shame. (Also, art is subjective and isn't inherently "good" or "bad"-- I can write a whole dissertation on that some other time.)
This is only tangentially relevant, but I've wanted to talk about executive dysfunction for a while.
I started having issues when I was around 12 or 13. I don't know why. Like I said, my fear of failure certainly contributed, but something had changed. I think this was the same age where I started having symptoms of depression, GAD, insomnia, etc.. As for why, I still don't know. It could've been puberty, it could've been environmental factors, it could've been self-wrought in some bizarre way; I don't know.
From 6th grade onward, I was the kid that didn't do work. My mom and I started fighting all the time. She would constantly press me about why I wasn't doing my work, and I would tell her I didn't know. I genuinely didn't. But I do think a lot of it was because I was depressed.
I remember an instance in algebra class when I was in high school. We had a test or something and I was genuinely trying to make myself do it, but when I tried to focus on it, my mind was flooded with a million different things. First of all, I didn't know what the fuck I was doing because I hadn't paid attention. But there were also feelings of apathy, despair, frustration, etc. that are hard to describe. I think the best I can do is "really bad intrusive thoughts". I remember being on the verge of tears just trying to push through this stupid fucking algebra paper and I didn't understand why, which just upset me more.
I regret that I never really talked about it with a counselor. To be fair, I didn't really talk to the school counselors because I knew they would tell my parents if they thought I was a danger to myself or others, and as far as I know, that's entirely up to their discretion. I was scared that I would make a comment that the counselor would feel some kind of way about and that would snowball into me going to a psych ward or something. My parents had already put me through several rounds of therapy against my will, so I had no doubt that they would send me off to a psych ward if someone else told them to. If my academic performance was bad then, it would certainly have been worse if I was removed from school.
I never seriously talked to a therapist on my own accord until I was 16, and even then I didn't tell her that I was suicidal because I was still a minor and she would have to report it. I seriously thought that I was going to kill myself before I graduated. Well, I spent a lot of time fantasizing about how I would kill myself and making plans, but never actually did anything, so maybe I wasn't really suicidal. I wonder if I really would have if things had gotten a little worse.
Still, maybe if I had just told my counselor that I really didn't understand why I wasn't doing work, or that I was too distressed to focus, maybe we could have come to some conclusion about that earlier. Instead, I fucked up my education and now I can't try again without paying.
Another tangent! When I was in 4th grade, we would do those "minute math" sheets where you have to do a bunch of equations in one minute. The thing is, I always had a shitty memory. I struggled with them, not because I didn't know the answers (I did), but because I couldn't remember them fast enough. The point was that you were supposed to be able to remember them instantly, but I just... couldn't do that. Again, I knew my math facts, I just struggled to produce them quickly enough. I didn't fail because I didn't know what I was doing, I failed because of something I couldn't really control.
My 4th grade teacher, who was otherwise always very kind to me, tried to "encourage" me by promising the class they would get a pizza party if I finished my worksheet. Now it's everyone's business that I suck at minute math, and kids are annoyed with me because I'm struggling. I did eventually manage to finish a worksheet, and we had that party, but it didn't feel great.
Again, I do have to give that teacher credit, because she did stick up for me when other kids would tease me for being a weird girl or wearing clothes that were visibly fucked up. But I really just... don't understand what she thought she was achieving there?
At some point, I do want to see if my high school has adult ed classes, which is something my therapist recommended to me. If they do, I think I would like to take some kind of math... thing. I am embarrassingly bad at math. I used to always say that I got the opposite of whatever Einstein had.
My high school geometry teacher 100% pity passed me. Right now, I could not calculate slope with a gun to my head. Yes, I technically have yet to use that in my adult life, but I still feel like a dumb baby for not knowing it. I don't want to be a dumb baby. I want to be a smart adult.
I also don't really remember how to do division, which is distressing to me. Definitely need math classes at some point. That should go on my bucket list.
