Saturday, May 14, 2016

Why do I always think the words “suggested” and “possible” imply “optional”?

So, technically, they do. But it always evades me that an assignment being “suggested” is like hearing “I suggest you don’t leave your dog’s crap on my lawn.” Technically it’s optional, but… you also might end up staring at flaming dog poop at some point in the near future questioning at what point your life took this turn. Here’s to hoping my blog posts actually satisfied the suggested topics and weren’t just humorous sentences that left the instructors wondering, “Okay but where’s the actual assignment?”

I’ve also learned to triple check due dates. Just because you swear everyone has said “5 pm,” it’s equally likely everything is due at 11 am and you’re going to be the sad individual copying and pasting things that were done days ago into a box at 4 pm hoping you don’t end up staring at flaming dog poop in a week questioning the meaning of life.

My internal dialogue

Fairly often, I find myself thinking back to the saying “time flies,” but not just when you’re having fun. Judging from the number of times I’ve heard things along the lines of “those four years are just gonna fly by,” I think we can all agree that if we could take the derivate of time, its second derivative would be positive. Not to beat sayings we’ve all heard before to death, but it’s like we’re on a bus going downhill and the brakes don’t work and all of a sudden there’s no such thing as friction and the road is life and welcome to the struggle bus.

Sometimes I take a moment to admire the beauty of it.

Sometimes I pause, take a breath, and just stand there thinking about the game it feels like life is playing with us. Don’t get me wrong, I do not complain about the going being rough or having too much work. I know what I signed up; we all do. We wouldn’t be here if we hadn’t made an active choice to do so. But I bemusedly contemplate my outlook on life, how I desperately cling to the thought “next week will be better” or “these two weeks are tough but it’ll get lighter soon,” and I think a lot of us feel that way. Or when that moment to breathe finally comes, we find ourselves scared to actually relax.

Yup. 


I guess I should be frightened by the realization that this is probably never going to go away, but the truth is I don’t want it to. Life would be boring otherwise, at least for me. These blog posts are worth maybe 1% of my final grade, but there’s something strangely relaxing, pleasantly calm, about sitting down and having an excuse to get my thoughts together. Not “how am I laying this essay/paper/report out” thoughts, but straight up “what am I actually thinking” thoughts. It’s easy to get lost in your head but it’s also so easy to lose yourself in your head, to forget you are a person who exists in there and have your own thoughts and desires and needs and wishes. It’s so easy to forget how valuable you are as a person, that you’re more than all the assignments you have to do, more than that list on your calendar of things you need to accomplish today.


And even though I wrote 95% of this three or four weeks ago, it’s no less relevant now than it was when I sat there for two hours procrastinating on a Tuesday night. Bring it on, life. Although in a week I hope to be staring at a flaming grill, I’ll take whatever is thrown at me in stride, as I have and as I always will. And maybe I’ll learn to actually pay closer attention to not only the due dates, but also the times.  

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