Dear memory... Over the past week I have been largely idle, as I mentioned before.
On that Monday, I came into school and was unnerved and confused that the front doors were locked on a Monday morning. I had not remembered the short Family Day holiday; Monday and Tuesday classes were cancelled. The gym was not open either, and I would be unable to work out for my third time that week. I returned home, and slept long and through the day, and at some point, I scratched and pulled at some rough edges of the thick soles of my right foot, and restless, I pulled skin away that tore bloody at the end, and wound up with a patch that was thin and bare and painful to walk on.
I have not been to the gym for the past week, while I was being idle, and part of the reason is that I have been waiting for my foot to heal, and for the slight stiffness in my calf to recover after walking with a limp which puts more stress on different places. It seems to me as though my restless picking may have corresponded to a subconscious need for rest, and winds up working out quite nicely, although the fact that the way it works out involves temporarily hobbling myself is not ideal.
On Friday and Saturday, I turned my sights to work again, as the finished version of an important assignment in my Finance course was coming due. I worked for three and a half hours solid on Saturday morning before 6 AM in that special zen state I get into when I am under pressure to finish a document, in which the hours seem not to matter, as the document forms. Large pieces of writing produced, and then whittled and perfected and formatted step by step; like a drawing, increasing by stages, but not in a particular order. Just switching to adding or refining in some other place where additions or refinement can be made, and then coming back and adding to or refining the part I had just left behind to do so.
It is strange and beautiful and trance-like, and I think I always worry, as a deadline draws near, that I might not manage to fall into that alien and productive state of mind again, it is so different. But then I do. One of my team mates started out working on the wrong part, one that had already been done, and adjustments needed to be made at the last minute. I volunteered to take on part of his work and adapt the project to include the extra work he had done even though it had not been necessary, and it all worked out. I believe so, anyway. Our grades aren't in yet.
I have to say, I have been delighted with my team for this assignment. I think it's fair to say I have done the lion's share of the work on the project, but if so, I have determined lynxes pulling beside me. They show solidarity, they rowl in support and pride when we make a leap forward, and we make that leap together. My teammates have had my back and contributed resources I did not have by conferring with their friends in other sections to figure out segments of the assignment that I did not know how to proceed on. Their written segments showed effort and contained genuinely useful material, despite a few inaccuracies and some poor English. I don't blame them. For two of my groupmates, it is not their first language, and in any case some peoples' skills are not oriented towards writing well.
Mine are, and I spent some of those hazy, focused hours of vaguely happy-ish just-do-it-ive-ness stroking my chin and carefully rephrasing, reducing redundant statements, correcting spelling mistakes and structuring the flow of sentence to sentence.
I also made the report pretty, putting the original phrasing of each assigned question in italics at the beginning of the section that addressed it. It had a pretty header with all of our last names in it and collapsible headings, and I uploaded my current state of progress for my teammates to look at several times. They expressed appreciation for how pretty and comprehensible I had made it.
After the three and a half hours of solid work on the assignment report, I continued on to finish two quizzes for other subjects before sleeping, because they were there to be done and at the time, I didn't mind the expenditure of time in the way I normally do. I scored 100% marks on both, despite being so tired that words occasionally swam before my eyes. I think the difficulty and doubt made me focus and double-check myself more, and the fatigue to the point of feeling uncommon silence and stillness within my mind helped prevent restless distraction or overthinking.
I went back to my games on Sunday, but felt less engaged with them. I think I have had the rest I needed. But, even if this level of strange, zen productiveness were entirely sustainable, I don't think I have a task before me that demands it. Until the next time to crunch on school affairs, I mean.
My foot has healed to a point that the pain is minor and of a different kind. Only the slight pain of touch on scab. It barely hurts to walk. I think I will go to the gym again today.
I listen to another episode of Welcome to Night Vale while walking through the halls, feeling friendly and zazen. The weather comes on, and the gentle, romantic sound of strumming guitar greets my ear, and I experience a strong mental vision of myself laying in a field of swaying yellow grass, half feeling as though you were with me, and half wishing that you were. My heart yearns gently like the satisfying ache of a well-exercised muscle. I pause, and look out of a window, and gently touch the glass as I continue towards my Intermediate Accounting class after the weather is over. I want to go for a long, long walk to nowhere in particular, to be walking. The temptation is extremely appealing. I decide that to do so would neglect my duties at this time, and I continue on to class.
The class is review. I do not focus on it. I sit and write this blog, and listen to the gentle, comfortably familiar sound of my professor going through example problems in the background. I occasionally look up and acknowledge the subject matter. I occasionally hear the input of one of my classmates, and once or twice there is a little chuckle of laughter across the class. I am not focused on the lesson, but I am happy and feel a gentle, abstracted affection for my classmates and my professor and the community that we are together, in the context in which we operate together. Various things seem vaguely and peacefully right about the world around me. This may be partly attributable to my having consumed a Monster energy drink this morning. Those things don't just make me alert; even when I remain sleepy and tired, they tend to make me bizarrely happy.
And I continue to miss you. This, too, seems vaguely and peacefully right. I miss you, Eoin. I love you. Cecil's deep, pleasant voice during part of this episode of Welcome to Night Vale had said... You are never the same twice. You are different at every moment. Continue to do what is important to the you that you are now, until you are not that person anymore. I smiled. I appreciated that part. I feel it is very much what I am doing, and a vital part of the perspective that has been what I am doing since the original light of determined decision in November. This is what is important to me now, and it is true to myself to act upon it. What happens later will wait for later. My priorities will someday be different. I doubt I will regret this, though. How could I regret taking calm, gradual strides toward being as I wish to be? Being where I wish to be. Being with someone I wish to see again.
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