March Madness (Or Why I Really Need to Meditate)

One of my goals this year has been to meditate more. It calms the mind, soothes the body, and I need all of the above. Especially this week, when I really feel reality slipping and my consciousness dripping all over the floor around me and puddling up in the mattress beneath me, something to take the edge off without alcohol is appreciated.

That’s where meditation comes in.

But the last couple months, sitting still hasn’t been helpful. Making time to stop isn’t meditative–it just makes me more anxious, as in minutes I see all the hours of work I could get done–and then watch as time passes while I merely sit there. That’s not meditation. That’s torture.

What’s a guy to do?

Word Weary

I can’t recall a semester when I’ve been this exhausted at the end of the second week. Not when I had my first math class that was, for all intents and purposes, over my head. Not when I had fifteen credit hours plus work and family and student involvement. Not when I had physics and calculus and differential equations.

Yes, I came down with a stomach flu this past weekend and I think I’m not back to my full self again, but this is ridiculous. I yawn all day. I can barely focus on being awake. I could roll over asleep at any moment.

The culprit? Reading.

I love reading. I learn best by reading. But with four reading-intensive courses, the reading assignments are mountainous. Not only do I have weekly chapters to read in multiple classes, I also have “short” stories to read, reread, and annotate, stories for workshopping to read and review, and entire mythologies to tackle–and everything has a quiz attached to it. For example, yesterday I read the entire Iliad. Yes, I’ve read it before. But not recently enough to pass the test on it.

In a word, I’m word-weary. How can I read more in less time? How can I read attentively without expending all my mental energy on a single page? How do English majors do it all day long?

I’m open for suggestions.

Mirror, Mirror

On the one hand, 2011 was a great success. I did great in school, had lots of fun writing, finished my sixth consecutive year of NaNoWriMo, and became GTCC’s Student Government Association president. Not to mention I got to see the President of the Unites States speak in person, attend a conference on campus activities in Myrtle Beach and a conference on Jewish education in Jackson, Mississippi, and receive nominations for multiple scholarships and awards.

On the other hand, however, after looking forward to 2011 this time last year, looking back at 2011 only shows a picture of failure.

Photons Magnificent

This time nine years ago, the world was a different place. I was a different man. I was hardly a man at all; I was still a boy, draped in juvenile dreams, believed of a world that didn’t exist, or instead existed beneath the tide of the world we lived in. Mythologies were ripening inside me, thousands of stories stirring, yearning to get out.

It was somehow pristine, yet thoroughly in the dark.

I remember it clearly. Oh so very clearly.

That Which We Cannot Name

Yesterday I ate Christmas dinner. Twice. That itself may have been tiring, but it was the company that was most exhaustive. I’m an introvert; I can’t help but feel weighed down in large crowds.

Even if they are family.

Yet for all the anguish and agony, today I’m thankful for my family. Of course, I’m thankful for my family every day (or at least most days), but today I’m making something special of it.

Hold A and B to Start

Memories and bravery may get us far, but both are second when the world is a bottle of chaos and you’re stuck somewhere on the inside, shaken up and shaken apart. I tend to feel like this at the end of the semester. It’s all just a messy blur of moments and meaningful if miniscule messages of all the things I’ve learned. Dizzying, stomach-churning, exhaustive. That’s the life of a modern-day full-time college student with multiple jobs, a family, and oft-forgotten hobbies.

Alas, hobbies!

People like to ask what I do in my spare time. I grin a bit (I swear my eyes must sparkle with a mischievous light) and I ask them, “With what time?” Torn between studying, working, family, friends, and sleeping (as much as I’d love to go without it, physiology tells me I can’t), there is no time. Not until break at least. Or more specifically, not until the semester ends (those breaks in the middle? They’re for catching up, nor for resting, what did you think they were for?).

Free time. Sometimes I don’t know what to do with it, but when finally I’ve remembered how to use it, well, it’s the best thing all winter. Forget holly and mistletoe. Forget eight nights and everlasting light. It’s the free time that I’m thankful for today.

The Plight of Paper People

Have you ever seen the future crashing down before you?

Notice I have not said crashing down around you. That would imply an imminent end is becoming, slips of predictions passing into the permanence of the present moment. Instead I am speaking of the future itself, that which we can dream of and look toward but can never touch, can never taste, can never truly understand.

Have you ever seen that come crashing down?

My Chipmunk Buddy Says “Hi”

The weather is beautiful today. I’m sitting outside watching a tiny chipmunk smaller than the size of my palm dash back and forth between his shield of a pine branch and the edge of the grass. Past that, the sidewalk. People. Danger.

He’s testing his boundaries, trying to face his fears and (I presume, at least, since he hasn’t been really talkative) trying to become a better chipmunk. I feel like this a lot lately. There’s so many things I’m trying to improve about myself, so many things I’m trying to make better. I’m testing boundaries. Facing fears. Trying to become a better guy.

Four months gone, we’re a third through the year. I think it’s time to revisit my goals intimately and maybe make a few smaller ones for the summer months. With any luck, both me and my chipmunk buddy will reach our goals this year. He’s a brave little fella (just dashed onto the sidewalk and ran halfway past the building before darting into a pile of pine needles) and I think I can be, too.

Forward and Onward

I had thought, in reflection, that I would come to find some of my faults this past year that I could address them. Instead, I found none. Rather, I focused on the highlights–and the highlights certainly were not my faults, but what came between them. Needless to say, I’ll need a post all its own to speak of how I hope to improve myself this year.

It used to be (and in fact still is) that at the end of NaNoWriMo, the people at the Office of Letters and Light would host a sort of Year of Big, Fun, Scary Things (or something like that) to carry people from one NaNoWriMo to the next. People would post their goals for the New Year and then, having shared them with the world, would magically be more inclined to complete them before the November following.

I tried that. I most of the time forgot it. I all the time failed it.

But this? My blog? Much harder to forget about–and hopefully, through sharing my hopes for this year here, I’ll be more likely to keep to my goals than ever before. After all, I’ll have countless readers egging me on every step of the way!

An End to Reflection

How fast time travels when we’re having fun, right?

So far most of the year has gone by in but two days of recollection–the ups and downs and loves lost and found and lost again, the trials and triumphs of dire courses and cross-country adventures, the happiness of new friends and the sorrow being away from friends inflicts every day. And yet, the year is not yet over.