breakaway

Maybe it is because I have so much to do, but I would really enjoy changing my entire lifestyle right now. Stress has a way of making me long for a completely different life. And right now, I've got the stress. Note the Spanish workbook due today, the Shakespeare mid-term tomorrow, the 5-8 page Shakespeare paper due tomorrow, and the teaching demonstration I have to do tomorrow night, including a fully-loaded KTIP lesson plan. So maybe it is all of this, but maybe those are just the things I have to do as a part of this cookie-cutter (Hanson, what?) life I've fallen into.

I guess I just oftentimes get so aggravated with the conformity and miserable cycle of life as it has come to be. I don't mean my life, really. The life that we're all expected to lead. There is just so much pressure. The pressure to succeed, which automatically translates to income. That has created the pressure to get a degree, which automatically falls back on somebody's income somewhere. So now that there is all this money, so dearly-loved money, tied up in this education, there is pressure to make it work. You have to pick the right thing, love it, do very well at it, complete it, and live by it for the rest of your life. Pressure. I'm all for education and the acquisition of knowledge, but when did it become the pseudo-be-all and end-all of human existence? By pseudo, I mean that it is this tangled up affair with money disguised as the pursuit of a greater, more educated humanity.

I find myself so many times recently experiencing true life, instants when I know I'm getting a taste of how life should be, when I'm disconnected from the life that has become my everyday experience. So essentially, it's not that I don't feel content. I do. In glimmering moments. Moments that are external to this daily life of mine, like when I am at home or with my family or doing something I don't "need" to be doing when I should be doing things for school.

I don't know if I am just blessed to have those moments and am too much wanting a life that is one big happy experience or if I am keeping myself apart from the life in which I belong. Honestly, what is the alternative to this? Drop out of school? No, that's not scary at all. I guess life is scary no matter what. But like I said, stress that comes from procrastination makes me panic. Something about it makes me step back and consider why I let myself get so caught up in and stressed out about a life to which I sometimes feel involuntarily bound. And by bound, I am implying the most literal concept of watching my life pass me by while I'm unable to break free and join it.