oh what a day.

Yesterday was decidedly one of the stranger days I've had.

I have a full week off of both my new job (which I really should talk about at some point) and grad school, which is glorious, but I'd so settled into an ultra-busy rhythm already that it feels weird. Anyway, I woke up at 6:30 -- far too early for a Monday off -- on my friend's bedroom floor. Her room is across the hall, & we had been watching a movie the night before, & apparently that was too much for me & I fell asleep. So I dragged myself up & across the hall to my room, where I decided that the smart thing to do would be to get started on my paper that was due in my professor's inbox in 11 hours. So I did. Sort of.

I started by checking my email, because isn't that a necessary thing to do before writing a paper? Then, of course, there was facebook. I must be growing up, though, because I was only on for a few minutes. Honest. I was so proud. My second email account was where I got caught up. A dear friend of mine with whom I lived in London for that semester so long ago had sent a freshly-written play to all of us (her fellow Londoners) in which she reminisced beautifully about the life-changing time we spent in that beautiful, grimy, overflowing city. I can't even begin to explain to you what that semester meant to all of us as perfectly and gracefully as she did, but suffice it to say that after reading it, my mind was utterly lost to reminiscence, & my heart ached happily under the weight of all of those fading memories. There is so much that goes into what I remember about who I was in London in the Spring of 2006, but that's for another time.

I tore myself away from the London in my mind to finish the assignment at hand. After sifting through the jumble of art & music & history & beauty for however long I'd let my mind wander, there was something even more unattractive about writing an artless, dull paper on five research studies that had themselves been poorly-done to begin with. At moments like that, when something one loves is so plainly and painfully juxtaposed next to something so lifeless, the outcome is never good for the currently lifeless thing. I could feel my thoughts spiraling into an minor existential crisis that I could not afford to be in with a paper, lifeless or otherwise, due in just hours, so I barreled on.

Then came the rain. Or so it felt. I was wading through a long list of very unhelpful resources, trying to figure out an APA citation (see? lifeless.) for at least a half-hour. Then I received a text that my grandpa, who went into the hospital on Thursday for one thing & was kept there on Saturday for a completely different thing, was not exactly doing better. The text wasn't quite as grave as it might have been, but when you love someone as much as we all love Pappy, any less-than-ideal news is, well, terrifying. Following that text was another from my mom, only this time she was asking me if I could watch my baby sister (who had of course been sick since Sunday. why not?) because there was another health concern with another person &...

The day more or less went on like this. Texts & emails & calls that just added to the stress. I did find out that my new apartment will be ready for me to move in on Friday, but in the midst of a day like yesterday, that was bad news, because OHMYLORD, I HAVEN'T PACKED & I HAVE NO FOOD & WHAT ABOUT THAT ALARM I NEED TO BUY SO NO SCARY PEOPLE CAN COME IN AT NIGHT WITHOUT ME KNOWING.

Really, I'm amazed that the paper ever got finished. But it did. I clicked send at 5:29 & sat back with a long sigh. Life's like this sometimes, I guess, but I don't think you ever grow accustomed to it. Not completely.

My apologies for the long, overly-ponderous post. It's really quite okay if you don't read it all the way through or if you don't read it at all. I'm willing to bet, though, that you've all had plenty of strange days like these. Their usefulness lies in their incredible ability to remind us of who & where we are, like it or not. And we really should choose to like it rather than not, because who & where we are, regardless of how it may look, is a necessary part of the who & where we will someday be. Which is, I think, a beautiful thing.