Brettia

Ugh. Today I feel…well, I dunno. I’m in one of those moods where there are lots of things that I could be doing, but none that really interest or excite me. I just kinda want to sit back, put iTunes in Party Shuffle mode, close my eyes, and think about nothing. Nothing. It seems like such an easy concept to frame in one’s mind, yet I can’t ever focus on it. For every second of restful blankness there are five more of wonderings and worries. Rather than respond to my frantic pressings of the “mute” button, my mind just wants to remain stuck in perpetual fast-forward.

It’s not so much that I wish that I had more time to just relax, but rather that I look at all the things that I do in my life and wonder why none of them have a whole lot of meaning to me anymore. And I’m baffled by the idea that so many things can be so full of purpose yet lacking in meaning. School, for example, has almost completely lost my interest. English classes feel mechanical and uninspiring and are a far cry from the Pawlowski English classes of last year. History lectures are sometimes interesting but rarely fun. Citizenship classes cover interesting material but teach it with easy, boring assignments. And calculus has taken its place at the top of my list of banes of my existence. Spanish classes are a lone standout, but I still feel hindered by having to take a less advanced class than I could handle (because of IB requirements).

Last year, though I didn’t like some classes, I usually cared enough about them to try and do well. Now…I just feel apathetic. And it shows: I get more sleep than I did last year (though still not very much), mainly because if it gets late and I haven’t finished my homework yet, I just don’t do it. I used to get up early and finish things or do homework during class so that it would still be done eventually. But lately I don’t even do that. Even worse, I find myself spending a lot more time doing useless stuff like doodling in class when I should be taking notes or reading websites when I should be doing homework. My way of gauging how much I like a class is to look through my notes and see how many pages are covered in random scribblings. My biology notebook from freshman year had such drawings on more than half of its pages (I abhorred that class). My English notes from last year didn’t have a single one. My calculus notes this year have dozens. I don’t even like to draw.

Whenever I start to drift away from my studies to read an article online or play a video game or whatever, I always wonder why I do useless things like that when I could be doing something that I truly enjoy or that has real meaning for me (like, say, blogging). I think it’s because neutral things like doodling and reading websites feel like empty, excusable distractions. Blogging or writing code or reading a book would be much better, but they represent a conscious change in activity. Instead of being distracted from my work, I’m doing something else entirely. I dunno why my mind still seems to consider a two-hour game of Civilization 4 as a “distraction,” but things like that still fall into that category.

One of the few things that’s both meaningful and purposeful is my work on my school newspaper, but I’m becoming disillusioned with that as well. When I signed up as a member of the design editing team last year, I had no idea what I was getting myself into. When I put together an entire issue in a weekend (during which I also went to Six Flags and a Chiefs game) because no one else had done any work on it, I thought I was just doing what anyone in my situation would have done. When I continued to put ten to fifteen hours of work, and sometimes more, into each and every issue after that, I kept convincing myself that I didn’t have a choice, that I had committed myself to this effort and I had to see it through. Each time I wondered a little bit more why I was the only one who seemed to feel that way, but the writing and photography and editing improved ever-so-slightly in each issue, so I just pushed those thoughts aside. This year has been different, however. There are less writers and therefore less decent articles to publish. Our best photographer graduated, and though the replacement is nearly as good, he has a tendency to randomly not submit any pictures for an issue. There doesn’t seem to be any concentrated editing effort, and articles get sent to me for placement and formatting with simple typos and grammar errors. I know I shouldn’t expect perfection, but these problems are still maddening. I have the sense that my heart simply isn’t in it anymore, and it shows just like my apathy about my classes: the first two issues missed their original publication dates by an average of nine days, and the current issue looks like it might be late too. Last year, we didn’t miss a single date.

When I look at various parts of my life individually, I wonder why I’m stalling out on them. I think, “Well, I’ve had to deal with worse circumstances - I need to just plow onward like I’ve always done.” And truthfully, none of my problems alone seem bad enough to warrant my reactions to them: not doing homework, slacking off on newspaper work, etc. But altogether, they contribute to the overall feeling of being slowly worn down, eroded away like a mountain that was once full of fire and rumbling and shot upward toward the limitless sky but is now cool, quiet, and eaten away by wind and water, the tectonic plates motionless underneath. My first thought upon recognizing my slow decline into meaninglessness is that I just need to redouble my efforts. Just keep redoubling, I think, and I’ll pull through. Just keep going; it doesn’t matter where I end up - at least I’ll be finished.

For the end of all things is indeed nigh, but I wonder whether the outcome I’m hoping for is worth the effort. So I’ll get an extra piece of paper when I graduate for doing IB, but what will that paper mean? It won’t mean success. In my usual arrogance I’ve never once thought that I might not get my IB diploma, so it won’t be a reward for two years of impossible effort. I will have simply done what I always expected that I would do. So I guess it won’t really mean much of anything. Sure, it will be a useful thing to have, but not meaningful.

Now, all I do is look forward. I’m lucky in that I know I’ll be going to college somewhere, although I still don’t know where I’ll specfically be yet. Life will be better then, or so I am told. My experiences over the summer should be proof that college will be far better than high school, but I am ever the skeptic. I hope so…it would be nice to have something to live for again.

The robot-to-human-transformation obviously never happened.