I’m a pretty hardcore self-forcer. By which I mean I am constantly making myself do things I don’t want to do. The reason here is that if I only did what I felt like doing, some days I would just stay in bed and eat olives with my fingers. But it’s gotten to the point where I completely disregard my own volition and make myself unnecessarily miserable.

Examples: I made barbecue sauce for dinner the other night, even though I didn’t have molasses. It wasn’t the most disgusting thing I’ve ever made; we ate more than half of it with our fried tofu. But after a night in the fridge it was super bitter and literally made my eyes water and hurt my stomach a bit. Still, I finished it for lunch the next day on the principle that I don’t waste food as long as it doesn’t literally make me gag.

Yesterday I agreed to see a friend, more of an acquaintance really, a fellow Erasmuser for my Paris III days. I’m not a huge fan of this dude. He doesn’t make appropriate facial expressions while I’m talking and loves Terminator movies. I don’t have any real reasons to dislike him either though and I wasn’t busy so I accepted the invitation. We spent two hours talking about nothing in the Luxembourg gardens. The logic being, if I only socialized with people who have never ever annoyed me, I’d be all alone.

There are literally hundreds of other examples of this kind of situation from this past week alone, but I think you get the point. I think that I’d like to stop being a self-forcer or such a self-forcer anyway. There have been occasions, usually at the end of a semester when all of my willpower is used up, where I say fuck it and do only what I want to. This never lasts more than two days because I start to feel weak and moody from all the time spent in bed and the poor nutrition. My phone fills up with concerned text messages--What happened last night?!!!—and the worry that I’m wasting my life away becomes overwhelming.

So the next day I’m up early, running, eating protein, writing, and making plans with my friends, like it or not. So the idea now is to find a balance. I need to learn to make the most of my time without punishing myself. Right now I’m at Esplanade des Invalides for the second day in a row. Usually I force myself to find a different spot. I don’t like to go to the same place too often just because Paris is a big city with lots of neighborhoods each with its own personality. But here it’s clean and calm and unlike most other parks in this city, free of creepers. I just like this park better and for no other reason this is where I decided to go. That’s a start, I think.