o green and glorious! o herbaceous treat!

there are a lot of reasons for this, hard-wired & learned behavior, voluntary & involuntary. i'm totally functional which is the important thing, but i can still feel unbelievably shitty about it when confronted by someone who has always kept normal hours, without effort, and has learned to see 'abnormal' hours as somehow dubious (reserved perhaps for sex workers, addicts, night security guards, casino bouncers and other persons of ill repute). a sense of "wasting the day" or "lacking discipline".

it rubs up against that very ancient adhd bruise of being considered like, biologically engineered to be a loser. you get middling grades because you don't turn in work (because you can't really conceptualise the deadline, or you forget as soon as you leave the classroom). you get up after noon and go to sleep at crackhead hours; you're always nursing a strong coffee in the morning at work. it's a joke. you're not a morning person. this is all you'll ever be is a lazy C-student who shuns the sunrise like a vampire (that one gets a couple of laughs too, try it out)

but the thing is, like. it turns out i am smart as fuck, a competent writer and critical thinker (always room for improvement but yk), a quick study, a careful reader, and most importantly curious, and social, and resourceful and stubborn. i'm on the point of getting my [censored as not to tempt the evil eye] for fuck's sake and if all goes well it won't be the last one either. how many markers of success do i gather before it stops mattering that i sleep like a medieval peasant?* do i stop being lazy and undisciplined—or plain weird—if and when i get a doctorate? when my monograph comes out? when i'm a keynote speaker? when i put down for a house with my shitty academia paycheck? when??

this is not even skimming the other unsavory habits you can develop coping with chronic mood/executive problems. that's a can of worms for another time and place (read: my therapist's office, lol)