Spring break

My spring break is coming to an end. However, I also got Monday off for a snow day, for which I am very grateful. I just wasn't ready to face school yet, though I doubt that I will be any more ready to face it on Tuesday.

Overall my spring break was pretty underwhelming. I'd hoped to read a lot, watch lots of movies, get some exercise, clean my room, see some friends, etc. All I really did was read a tiny bit, see friends once, and watch a few episodes of TV shows. It was pretty lazy, but it wasn't really satisfyingly lazy. I don't really feel recharged or well-rested. I don't feel like I'm ready to go back to school and get down to business.

I don't really know why it's so difficult for me to sustain motivation for school. I used to be so good at it. Now it's just hard to even get out of bed most days. It's not like my schedule is really even that taxing. I'm only taking 16 credits this semester. Having a lot of anxiety makes it difficult to get up and go, I guess.

Sometimes I get into these awful patterns with my attendance. I'll skip a class for some reason (mental health day -- whatever), but then I get too anxious to go to that class on its next day because I stress about what I might have missed, what the professor might think of me, and so on, and then sometimes I'll skip another day. Then the anxiety and stress just continue to pile up, making it harder and harder to go, but also making it more and more crucial to go. It's stupid, really. I never miss anything that's actually important, of course. I always show up for tests, quizzes, presentations, and to turn assignments in. Still, I'm sure that a lot of my professors don't think too highly of me. I do want to note that I don't always get into this pattern, nor do I get into this pattern with every one of my classes. I don't want to paint myself as so totally lazy and ridiculous. Anyway, I feel guilty when I do this. It's a waste of money and it just reflects poorly on me, on my character. I know that anxiety is very real, but a small part of me worries that maybe it's not a legitimate enough explanation. Maybe I'm just stupid and lazy instead.

I've been feeling very lonely lately. I always hate admitting that I'm lonely -- it makes me feel pathetic for some reason. There just aren't enough people in my life anymore. I keep missing people from the past, but I guess I have to accept that they've moved on. Some have drifted from me, some I've drifted away from, some have changed... It happens in life, of course. I'm just not good at making new friends, so now that my pool of friends is getting smaller and smaller, it's not getting filled back up with new. I keep worrying that I'm wasting my youth. I keep worrying that I'll wake up one day and be 40 years old and full of regrets. I know that I'm not actually old at 21, but I often feel very old.

There are a lot of changes that I could make in my life that would most likely make me feel a lot better and happier. I could identify a ton of these changes. For some reason, though, it's just so hard to get started. I completely lack motivation. I'm simultaneously full of care and full of apathy, if that even makes sense. I'm too scared, self-conscious, and anxious to go through with a lot of these changes. Obviously it's just easier to maintain the status quo even though I'm not exactly happy with the status quo.

Neighborhood

I just shoveled a bunch of snow. I'm not sure how much we've gotten so far. Half a foot?

It's still windy and snowing, so the shoveling was difficult. I'm not in as good of shape as I'd like to be either, so it definitely got my heart pounding, which did feel good.

After I finished, I sat down on the frozen steps to cool down but also to enjoy the stillness at 4:30 AM. I could only hear the faint beeping and whirring of distant snow plows. The only sources of light were the streetlights which would fade in and out at discernible intervals. Occasionally a car or two would pass slowly.

I got to thinking about the neighborhood as a whole. As I was sitting on my front steps, I could see directly down the avenue across from my street. There are two rows of houses on either side of the avenue. There were many people sleeping in their little boxes--all rambler style, just like mine--and it occurred to me that I didn't know a thing about any of them. I really only know the neighbors directly to either side of our house, and I barely even know them. How strange that there are so many people who have such similar experiences as I do. We all get up and leave our houses from approximately the same spot. We all deal with the same snow plows, same mail carriers, same trash pick-up days. The world looks pretty much the same from all of our individual lots. While those experiences are overwhelmingly similar, there are plenty of experiences where we differ, and I don't even know what those would be.

Maybe I'm being overly verbose and flowery with all of this, but it just suddenly struck me as so odd that there are so many people who live in such close proximity to me...and I don't know a thing about them and they don't know a thing about me.