Hard-to-Swallow Pills

I am finally done with my last submission for this midterm. I was actually done by 11:50pm and I had submitted my paper on time. But I realised much later (nearly an hour later) that I had botched up by not including my Works Cited page in my essay. I panicked because if I resubmitted my assignment, it would show as a late submission and that is something I cannot deal with, especially when I had submitted my essay on time and had only committed one stupid mistake (a pricey one nonetheless). So I resubmitted my paper while writing a comment for my professor to note that it wasn’t intentional but by a rather unfortunate turn of circumstance that I had messed up and was submitting again. I am hoping it won’t have much of a consequence because that would make me really sad, but I don’t have a big say in this, I believe. My only defence can be that I had my paper done and in-text citations in place. The Works Cited page could be an excused mistake (provided I don’t do it again, of course).

One of the things that had been really bothering me these last few days is my own sleep schedule and how I have been leaving it to go to hell. I have not been getting enough sleep and right now I am bogged by concerns about packing for tomorrow. I generally abhor packing because it means that I am forced to make choices and decisions that I do not want to make. It is quite simple, really, because I am one of the most indecisive people I know. Coupled with my own crippling fears and insecurities, indecisiveness is the perfect accompaniment to make me the hopeless choir that dreams are made of. In a sense, that is not a very nice thing to say about myself but I also believe that because midterm break has officially started, I need to give myself (read, force feed) some really hard-to-swallow pills. The pills shall cure my diseases, right?

And that’s my memory for the day.

Small Battles and Smaller Victories

After many days I wrote (or rather completed) a poem today. It was for a class since midterms are approaching, every professor has created their own prompts and their grading schemes are all different. But the assignments are still there to be done, each requiring from me a lot of hard work and energy. And I am slowly working through the pile, it is difficult and I really want to just burrow into my blanket and not wake up and do anything at times. But it is my battle and I continue to fight in the hopes that one day, it will end in my favour.

The poem took me nearly 24 hours to write. This was especially so because I was trying to follow the Iambic Pentameter (not that I was successful) and an ‘abab’ rhyme scheme. The Iambic Pentameter is strictly not followed by the poem though, but I have maintained ten-syllable lines. A pretty good achievement, especially considering the rhyme scheme, if you ask me.

Just yesterday, around this same time I had been hopeless and wondering how on earth I was going to finish the poem. It made me so stressed. Moreover, the rhyme scheme made me feel quite silly. And the more I thought about my assignment and my topic, the more I felt like my idea was useless and quite dumb. But I persevered, pulling myself up and being stern with myself and finally managed to finish it and I found myself to be so happy and proud. For me, it was my victory against myself, in a way.

And these are the victories, the everyday victories to battles you continue to fight every day of your life. The battles that likely don’t leave battle scars but are battles nonetheless. It is so surprising how much disregard and contempt we hold for these things. We convince ourselves that these things don’t matter. That my decision to hold back my craving for that bag of chips in favour of having a proper meal was not a worthy battle or decision. That it is somehow ‘normal’ (oh how we misuse that term!) and expected of you. It takes away from the overall magnitude of the power of your decision. Funnily enough, these decisions are what constitute a large part of my life. If I were an epic hero, these things would be the central conflicts in my life (how privileged am I!). And that means that what I am feeling right now is valid and worthy. And that is an empowering thought, is it not?

And that’s my memory for the day.