The Aftermath

Sorry about the late blog post, guys. I had trouble finding something to write about. It's been pretty uneventful around here.

It's been about a week since I arrived home after my first year of university, and it's still kinda weird to actually be here. It feels like I was living in that tiny little dorm room for an eternity (even though I was only living there for two semesters), so now that I'm finally back home it just feels...surreal, I guess.

But holy crap, having my bed back is fantastic.

I haven't started working yet, nor will I start to work for another week or so. I'm hoping that I'll manage to get some writing done during this time--if I ever manage to finish cleaning my room, that is.

I don't know why, but it always seems like doing something productive--no matter how enjoyable it is--is always a million times harder to do when you actually have time set aside to do it. It almost makes me want to go back to high school just to have something to make me want to write more. (Homework is a great motivator to do anything except homework. Go figure.)

It's not the act of writing itself that turns me away from it; once I actually start, I start to enjoy myself. It's the build-up to it that turns me away. The knowledge that "Oh hey, you have to actually do something productive instead of playing Sims all day" that makes me want to turn around and...play Sims all day. (Don't judge me.)

I wish I had tips on finding motivation. Things like new Sims games and other exterior influences only work for so long. But the fact is, what most of us just need to do is sit down and do it. This fact is annoying, but true. That's all there really is to it.

This blog post is short and took me way longer to write than it really should have. But hey, I made my point.

Until later,

- Justyne

How to Make a Blog Post

Step 1: Realize it's Friday, and that you have to write a blog post today.

Step 2: Proceed to forget that it's Friday about 50 million times throughout the day.

Step 3: Finally sit down to write the blog post.

Step 4: Go through several crap-tacular topics, rewriting the beginning multiple times until you finally settle on one that you like.

Step 5: Write it.

Step 6: Realize it's actually quite short.

Step 7: Decide you don't care because it's exam week and your brain is mush anyways.

Step 8: Reread several times for spelling and grammar, even though you know that no matter what you do, you'll still read this in a week and spot changes you want to make, anyway.

Step 9: Come up with clever yet somewhat useless tags / labels for the post.

Step 10: Click the bright orange "Publish" button that you somehow manage to misplace every freaking time you blog.

Step 11: Spam pretty much every social media account you possess with links to your new blog post.

Step 12: Spend the next day obsessively refreshing your Blogger dash because watching your view count go up is cool.



Betcha thought this was going to be a helpful post! HA! I sure got you.

So yes, I am in the middle of exams...and my brain is mush as a result. Normally I try to blog based on what I've been thinking about and what's going on in my life, writing wise. But, well, when you're rushing to study / finish assignments because you spent three days watching a 25-episode anime (I knew I would deeply regret this later, but that didn't stop me) and just generally put everything off as long as possible, well....you don't really have much time to think. (Unless you're thinking about Buddhist values and wondering why the hell you can never remember the names of the poems that Dylan Thomas wrote. Those are the topics that have most frequently been on my mind as of late. My brain is a party, I know.)


Stay tuned for next week, when I'll be blogging from the Charlottetown airport. The semester is just about over, AND I AM GOING HOME.


Until then,

- Justyne

And So...

As of 11:20 this morning (Canadian Atlantic Time), I finished my first year of university. (Excluding the exams I have to write during the next two weeks.)

And if you ask me, it's about freaking time.

I will never be able to understand how a semester that is at least a good month and a half shorter than any semester from high school can both feel extremely long and extremely short at the same time. It plays with my mind, and I don't like it.

But either way, it's over now. I only have one term paper to write, four exams to take, a lot of packing to do, two flights to catch and in two weeks I'll be blogging from my parents basement.

I'm shooting for the stars, clearly.

Seriously, though, it's gotten to that point of the school year. You know what I'm talking about. The point when it really doesn't matter what courses you're taking, where you're taking them or who you're taking them with--you honest-to-God could not care less about school anymore. (This is made obvious by the fact that I am blogging instead of writing the term paper that's due on Tuesday.)

I honestly think that everyone starts the school year with the best of intentions. We have shiny new binders and brand-spankin'-new paper and millions upon millions of pens and pencils just waiting to be used. We have our class schedules mapped neatly out before us, and we tell ourselves, "This year will be different! This year I will finish all of my homework the day it has been assigned, I will study for all of my tests weeks before I take them, and my notes will be neat and perfect!"

HA HA HA. We're so funny.

I can't even begin to count the number of times I've told myself this at the beginning of the school year. And for the first couple weeks or so, I somewhat manage to pull through with it.

But then something happens. Something comes up. I decide to watch a movie instead of doing my English readings. "It's no big deal," I say. "I can catch up this weekend."

And it continues. I leave entire papers until the day before they're due. I fall weeks behind in my class readings. My notes are either illegible or non-existent. "No big deal," I say. "I can catch up this weekend."

And then a day comes when I take one look at the calendar and one look at my ever-growing to do list and realize, "I cannot physically do all of this in one weekend."

And that is that point. That point in which I dismiss my unfinished readings with a careless wave of my hand. That point in which I stop trying to pay attention in class, whip out my journal and write for the entire period. That point in which I honest-to-God could not care less about anything my professors have to say, because hey, the semester's over, anyways, and I'll forget absolutely everything I've learned over the summer, because who the hell actually deeply analyzes literature in their spare time to begin with?

That point is also the point where you are avoiding pretty much anything school related, but you can't really do anything you truly love to do because then you'd feel guilty that you're not studying. So instead you end up browsing through Facebook or Tumblr or random Wikipedia articles, and even though you know that you'll totally hate yourself for it at the end of the day, it's still totally okay because at least for now you can push back that guilt and post 20 tweets in three minutes.

Clearly, we're all shooting for the stars.

If you're waiting for my point to this post, the conclusion to this long, drawn-out entry, the wise message hidden behind my run-on sentences and excessive use of italics...then you're clearly wasting your time and putting way too much faith in me. I have no message of wisdom to pass along to you guys this week; these are only my observations as I continue to procrastinate my own studies.

It may not have anything to do with writing, but hey, at least it gives me something to write about.


Until later,

- Justyne