When I look back

on my life, I find it hard to believe that I've been doing this whole thing for two decades now. I feel like although plenty of things have happened, I haven't really lived. I think this feeling is aided by the fact that my life has been fairly structured, especially with school. I think it's strange that how I perceive my life in retrospect is largely constructed by school. It's weird that our lives are like this -- that from childhood to adulthood we are engaged in these systematic institutions. It makes sense for the sake of efficiency because there are so many of us but it's also easy to get lost or consumed by it. I think these thoughts have become realized for me because of how I've been feeling about these past two semesters. I think because I didn't want to be overwhelmed by the bigger scope of things I lived so that I could focus on the day to day or the week to week. Except I became so engrained in this way of thinking that I should focus on the short term that I became ambivalent about what was going on just as long as I could get the day over with, so I could get the week over with. I mean, I think that's how plenty of people work -- especially people with heavy workloads. It's hard to see what is going on or even want to bother with what's going on when you have something to do. Not that this semester was terribly difficult, but I definitely found myself just plowing from task to task with nothing in between. I would fill the time between with senseless, mindless things merely to pass the time. For a while the monotony was comforting. It was placid and stable. But now I realize that a little turbulence is good to keep your mind active and alert. Because if you're life is a flat line, you may as well be dead.