eat great even late

kiel: kinda tired
kie: home in PA
kio: computer hum, crickets outside

well, i did it again. i'm awake. and it's 330. maybe going out for coffee every night then coming back around 130 is not the right approach to this. i don't know, i kinda feel that i have to do it. it's like my home holding pattern:

get up
eat lunch
run necessary errands
screw around til dinner
dinner
talk it up with parents til about 10
go out, either to brian's or dunkin donuts.
return around 1:30
watch the history channel or other enticing learning networks
fall asleep
be woken up by dad when he goes to work at 4:30.
repeat.

yeah.
tonight i am on the computer because i didn't want to fall asleep in front of the tv. however, i'm having some sleeping troubles due to previous coffee consumption, so here i is.

i have checked every away message. i have surfed every news site. i have checked my email 10 times. i am tired, but i refuse to go to bed!

i think it's because my parents tell me to do it. ever since i was a kid i never wanted to do anything my parents explicitly told me to do. examples:

• clean your room
• break up with shannon
• mow the lawn
• vacuum the pool

this is just a short list, but the point is i refuse to do these things not because i am being reticent, nor because i don't realize that they are things that need to be done, nor because i don't see that they are in my best interest. i would normally do them, when the time came that they needed to be done. but the fact that i was told immediately puts this out of the question (without appropriate coaxing).

why? am i trying to assert my independence by direct disobedience? even now i sit here, just waiting for them to get up and go in that squinty-eyed whispery voice: "it's 4 in the morning! go to bed!" (side note: why is it that when you're whispering and you want to say something loudly, you just whisper louder? that loud whisper kills me. especially when the intended target doesn't hear it the first time, so the whisperer repeats it, LOUDER and WHISPERIER, further distorting the message. classic.) where was i? right. disobedience. perhaps i have answered my own question.

perhaps i have, since childhood, been asserting my independence from my parents. how very trite. so much for my psychologically groundbreaking bildüngsroman. i guess, though, people do it in different ways. it could be worse.

does anyone else have this passive-agressive need? when someone tells you to do something, do you purposely avoid doing it BECAUSE you've been told to do it?

what other reasons could there be?

maybe it's a control issue. i like to be in command and i don't need to be told what to do cause i am runnin this ship!

maybe it's a discipline issue. discipline was never really big around here. when i was supposed to do something, i was never threatened with grounding or loss of privileges or the like. i was always guilted into doing it. damn if there is one thing my parents are good at, it's laying down the guilt. and if you're not used to it, it can come down hard. perhaps this averse reaction to direct commands is caused by a need for guilt. i.e. the more guilty they make me feel, the more loved i am. i was raised catholic, anyhow! unlikely, but still a possibility.

thanks for bearing with my auto-analysis. i have decided under my own advisement, to go to bed. night.

ed: i am happy to report that i have since been learning to "play the game", preferring appeasement to war. -9/5/06