I have completed my application

Finally, it is submitted. Submitted one day before it is due, that is.

I wonder why, before any important due date, I feel a mounting sense of dread. I wonder why the dread affects my mood and my sleep patterns, and alters my attitude and my thoughts. Maybe it is because at the core I feel I am not equal to the task.

Maybe the dread leads to procrastination, the procrastination leads to shoddy and rushed work, and the result is a poor product or performance that I can safely reassure myself was not my best effort. Maybe it is all just self-comforting formula. Maybe I self-sabotage as a way of protecting myself from confronting the realization that I tried hard at something I believed in and still failed.

But this time it might go okay. This is a trial that depends not on an assignment or a project but on the product of several years of effort. And with some smiling and bluffing and a little manipulation of words I might pass through the trial and never have to confront it or its like again.