On becoming an Organised Adult

or, the inherent difficulties in achieving such adulthood with an everpresent state of somnolence

Finals really put me through the mental wringer, and the recovery phase has turned me into a Jeckyll/Hyde character as I try to get back into a normal routine.

I think most people would be fairly surprised at the disparity between my last-thing-at-night and first-thoughts-on-waking personalities. Of course, I could be entirely wrong on that - the fact that this continues to give me annoying surprises doesn't necessarily mean that everyone else wouldn't have already predicted me recovering like a lazy bum.

It tends to go something like this: last thing at night personality - let's call it the Owl - is properly, properly switched on to life. Where I have been struggling during the day to keep a clear list in my head of what needs to be done in the next five minutes, Owl is bursting with ideas.

Not just any ideas, of course - me during the day is quite capable of running through random shit like "If I had actually been born as a goat, would I still be me? and who would have my current body instead of me? but would that body still be me? Ooh, there's a duck. What would happen if I just grabbed that duck?"

No, at a certain time of the day, when a sensible person would be winding down, I can feel a tiny switch being flipped in my brain as Owl's eyes start to light up. At this point, and sometimes only at this point in the day, it's possible to get the benefit of seeing things clearly, despite viewing them from a mental distance. On a rare, treasured occasion - well, maybe once a month or so - Owl is in place the whole day, getting everything done, and giving me the kind of productive day that any real adult could be proud of. Apart from that one day, it's an evening-only occurrence.

So, last thing at night, I am organised. I am sensible. I can take stock of what I've done in the day, what I want to do in days, weeks, or years down the line, and what I need to do to get there. I can have point-by-point lists of things that I must do, complete with deadlines down to the hour, and a set schedule for the next day based on the sensible order in which to do things. I can convince myself that it is easy to do all this, and I will definitely start right away.

The problem with all this, as you've probably guessed, is that Owl doesn't have the driver's seat first thing in the morning.

The morning personality could be called Sloth, purely based on the fact that every movement is slow and it is fairly obsessed with getting more sleep, no matter how long I've been in bed. However, having watched the video below, complete with the repeated shrinking from the outside world, I'm going with Mimosa instead.



Mimosa is good at precisely two things: falling back to sleep after an interruption, and convincingly disputing the logic of Owl's schedules.

Owl wants us to get up and do morning yoga? But we could relax better by getting more sleep.
Owl wants us to have finished the cleaning by 12pm? No one really notices the mess. Let's sleep more.
Owl said that really needs to be done today... but realistically, a few more days won't hurt.

Ultimately, I end up having really long sleeps, a really frantic run-through of the things that do need to be done in just about enough time, and a somewhat reproachful inward gaze the next time Owl wakes up for the night and realises just how much more use I could have made of the day.

It seems to me that adulthood is something that applies to other people - organised, sensible people who understand mortgages and insurance and pensions and don't get the occasional urge to climb trees, eat pizza for breakfast or buy a trampoline.

The thing that reassures me about all this?

Every "sensible adult" I've talked to, at one time or another, has been likewise secretly convinced that everyone else knows how to be an adult, while they themselves get by on just pretending, as hard as they can, that they know what they're doing.