actions, not words.

I don't like the fact that I'm taking extra time out of my day to write this. I expect this post to be a long ramble through a series of thoughts which have been sort of chaotically swirling around my head recently, and although it's possible that observing them and writing them down will collapse them, like a wavefunction, I don't really think it's likely. I also don't like the fact that writing this feels like a waste of time. I'm writing this down to work through how I feel—that seems have some inherent value, beyond anything acquiring some additional points on a problem set or a final project could create. Besides, I'm going to pass these classes no matter what, right? Right? If I'm not doing this for myself, then what am I doing it for? If I'm not writing this for myself, then what am I doing it for? Some abstract audience? If I'm not taking these classes for myself, then what am I doing it for? A 'P' somewhere on a transc...

Today was a pretty okay day. I am not satisfied with the extent to which I am caught up, but I see no choice but to sleep now in preparation for an actual school day tomorrow. So I will write, I suppose, as a way of trying to prepare myself for a full night's sleep tonight. In the past—i.e. in high school—I used to write about the "post-debate blues." These were the feelings that followed the hectic tournaments that characterized my every weekend; after round after round of speaking and walking around high schools and a long bus ride, I would sit down on Sunday, tired out of my mind, all the adrenaline crashed out of my system, a laundry list of homework in front of me, and I would just be sad and lack all motivation to do anything. I would miss the tournament; miss my friends, miss my escape, but the overall pervasive feeling of sadness seemed to emanate from somewhere else deep inside me, a source which I never really succeeded in pinning down. This is the first tim...

Today was a decent day. I am much more on my feet than I thought I might be, but I still feel like I'm juggling so much that at any moment a task might slip out of my fingers and, while I'm not looking, fly out of reach and land on the floor, uncompleted, unsatisfied. Of course, the importance of dropping something varies drastically with the given task, but that doesn't mean I'm not concerned. The mild anxiety that keeps me on edge sometimes feels like the engine that keeps me going and allows me to do as much as I do, but other times when it's a little more zealous than usual, it begins eating up my mental state from the inside. It's something like the hydrochloric acid in your stomach—it's generally very useful and it's an inherent part of you, but if the mucus lining fails to protect you at any point, you're just toast, and it'll rot you from the inside. Gruesome analogy aside, I did manage to accomplish quite a bit. I woke up with my alarm...