assignment six - Hannah Pulley

-pick an album, any album you want. clear your mind, instead consider your thoughts in the context of what you hear: lyrics, sonic aspects, etcetera. what do you feel, do you see a story in your head? does this have any connections to your current feelings or situation? you have the length of the album to write, but you can take as much time as you want afterwards to finish thoughts that you have started. you can choose to divide sections with paragraphs between tracks, or not, but the point is to work through your interpretations and feelings on paper.

(a creative writing prompt that I’ve been wanting to write)

or just some questions:

-if you were given the chance, what would you change about your school?

-how well do you think you deal with stress?

On the topic of stress, I don’t remember being this tired this time last year. Not tired in the physical sense, which comes later, but tired mentally and physically. I’ve noticed that one of my favorite ways to deal with stressful days is procrastination, possibly one of the least constructive coping methods of all. My parents have almost always thought of me to be a responsible kid, so maybe I’m just cutting myself down for some perceived laziness. Every week, I resolve to put empty weekends to good use and start early, maybe even leave myself a whole day with no pressing deadlines on my mind. Yet most of my Fridays nights and Saturdays are spent lying in bed, surrounded by books, tangled headphones and thoughts of all the work that I should be doing at that moment, but instead I’m listening to music with my friends through a Skype call. (A word document with the first two sentences of this blog post finished is lurking somewhere in the background.) I know that I have a lot of homework to do when I can’t even let myself relax and push the thought out of my mind. It’s usually around 10 or 11 on Saturday night when I sign off and decide it’s time to start. I work until 2 or 3 in the morning, taking twenty minute breaks every so often. I usually spend this time pacing around the house; I’m hoping not to wake anyone, even though they seem to have accepted my odd habits. Then I set my alarm for 7 to finish what I haven’t already. I don’t even know if the total of an hour a day that I sometimes spend walking in circles around my house is helpful at all in refocusing myself; all I know is that the side of a two-lane highway that my mom lives on is not the best place for going on walks at any hour of the night, or whenever my mind needs it.

I know I am completely capable of handling the workload that we as students are given, but sometimes it’s my mind that wants to rebel against me. I’ve been smart, making decisions on the basis of what I fear will cause me to burn out. I’ve heard horror stories about the physical effects of stress: sleep deprivation and the eventual insomnia that can result from the body becoming accustomed to it; hair falling out, a product of hormones remaining at abnormal levels for extended periods of time; and the dark circles glassy-eyed look in the mirror, looking back at someone who could snap over something totally unrelated at any moment. I’m doing well; it’s written on my bathroom mirror as a reminder that “[you] have survived every single day that has passed, taken everything that life and the people around you have thrown at you, and still managed to keep living.”  I’m walking around with unanswered questions and decisions that I know have to be made in my head. I deal with stress and the rest of life pretty well. That doesn’t mean that I’m not terrified of what the future holds: things that aren’t as easy as a deadline for a paper, tests to study for, applications that need to be filled out. I couldn’t write it down if I tried.