Sometimes You Just Have To Say No.

I have a 45 minute drive home from work. I have a 20 minute drive to school every morning. These long drives give me time to think about things.

Usually on my way to school I think about what I'll have to accomplish that day and on my way home from work, I think of what I have accomplished and what I have yet to accomplish. Today, I thought about the same thing both times.

I'm a busy person. It keeps me from being bored and from getting in trouble, but sometimes it catches up with me. Now would be one of those times. I know, I can't be too busy if I'm spending time typing this up here right? Wrong. I just really don't want to do what I need to.

First, and I bring this up a lot, is my online design class. I'm done Monday (whoop whoop!) which means my final is due Monday (awwwwwww....gross). Of course, like any true procrastinator I have yet to work on it. Probably because I HATE CODING. I find it to be useless, time consuming, and confusing (which makes it even more time consuming, thus making it useless.) When I signed up for the class, the description said it would be about learning the set-up of the page, including learning color options and designs that would please viewers. Not a thing about "This class is all about coding-the boringest thing in the whole entire universe! No, nothing like that.

Secondly, I have to be a good person. Why? Cause I just do. It's in the fine print. But of course you be nice to one person and suddenly you get sucked into  a vortex where everyone is asking (but really telling) you to do this and that for them and you can't say no because if you do they'll use it against you in some way or tell you that you have to because your dad is a teacher and they'll be dumb and stupid and you end up doing it for them. Ugh.  I hate that too. And I can't get away from it. Blech. It disgusts me so to the point where I can't even form real words to describe how repulsed I am about it. Like this: JABBERFLABBERWAKKAWOOTRACHERNESS!!!!! Yeah, I'm that frustrated about it.

Then there is school itself. I used (being the keyword in this phrase) used to be overly worried about my grades and my assignments and school in general, but all of the sudden I had an epiphany; I don't really care. It's probably the best thing that's happened to me for a while (Not including Steve, he's probably the best thing that's happened). The only problem is that the teachers still think that I care. They pull me aside and say "Hey Emily, you do realize that you only got an eight out of ten on this assignment, right?" Yes, I do and I don't really care as long as I'm getting the credit because truthfully, my grade on this assignment won't matter in a year anyway.

Finally, there is just life in general. People expect certain things from others and truthfully (and I do mean this) people are expecting way too much from me. I can't do it all, yet when I try and fail people ask me what wrong with me if I can't do this or that-it's because you expect me to do both this and that. It's not happening.

So what do I do? I don't really know, but I do know where to start. I'm saying no. No more doing everything to make everyone happy. Because really, I'm not getting anything out of it except for a shallow good job and the satisfaction of making someone happy for a moment. But never me. I need to be happy. I need to make time for myself. And that's really hard. But it needs to be done, and soon. It's time to say no.