My Days and Nights

My days and nights pour through me like complaints

and become a story I forgot to tell.

-From Marie Howe's poem Prayer

Awake. Mindful. One day I aspire to live in both of these mindsets. Unfortunately, with my current health, all I can seem to do is settle for getting by. Getting by usually means my days and nights are more like chores than gifts. I love that part of Marie Howe's poem, "Prayer," because that is how life slips by most people. We don't live in the moment. We complain about what we don't have instead of what we do have. I've been feeling really sorry for myself lately. I'm not going to put the actual complaints in writing. I don't want to give them that power. Most of them just involve how much effort it takes me to live and how a lot of other college students don't have to think about everything as much as I do. I also understand many college students have it worse than me. The depression doesn't think like that though.

My life is so different since the hospital. I hear people comparing stress loads, how many credits their taking, how many hours they work, how much homework they have, how many exams, how little sleep, etc... I used to be one of those people. Now, I can't even compete. I used to be jealous of the healthy people, thinking I would one day see some sort of "reward" or pat on the back about how I pushed myself to the limit. I discovered it doesn't work like that. I have a friend who just graduated in 3.5 years. He said he wished he wouldn't have pushed himself so hard so he could have enjoyed his time in school more. Now he doesn't even know what he wants to do.

That was my big epiphany after the hospital--I realized I was rushing and overworking myself. And for what? These were years of my life slipping away from me because I was waiting for some miraculous future that doesn't exist. Life is just as much the struggle to achieve our goals as is the actual achieving and celebrating. Plus, one can only celebrate so long before there needs to be new goals.

I'm going to the doctor about my wrist tomorrow. I fell off my skateboard exactly one month ago. I did have x-rays, and they said it wasn't broken. It's still bothering me quite a bit, so hopefully the doctor can help me in some way. I don't really know what they can do, but me trying to use it as if it is fine is not helping.

I've noticed the thing about blogging more regularly--I have less insightful things to say. Yet, I still try really hard to come up with some sort of purpose for a post. It's my blog. Who says I need a purpose? I will say that blogging is a form of writing, and the writing process usually slips in sentences and paragraphs of value in the middle of my two-cent entries. Insight appears in writing like it does in real life--slipped in between all of the mess, and it is up to the reader to decipher and use what wisdom is helpful to them. Who am I trying to impress, anyway? I have this blog because I like to encourage truth--telling and seeking.