oh admiration in falling asleep

sufjan stevens

So apparently I wrote this down in January last year:

"JC 2 is really sucking the life out of all of us. The stress is incredible. We were all stressed last year, of course, but it's much worse this year, because everything's that much more immediate. No more 'next times', no more 'in the futures'; the future is now. The burden of that is gargantuan and it will last a whole year. All of us are suffering. By now the cracks are beginning to show. Blah and Blah are unreasonable, Blah is defensive, Blah is cranky and Blah never smiles. Blah and I find ourselves getting more and more irritable, and annoying to talk to for long periods of time. All of us are exhausted. I wonder how the heck my seniors survived last year.

In the end I suppose it's all about perspective. Worst comes to worst, I don't do that well in my A Levels. That's OK. It's not that big a deal, I think. In times like these the only way to stop your hair turning white is to worry less about everything. About the things you'd normally worry about. Let go of what's not terribly important. Be economical with your heart. I keep telling myself, you can't stop what's coming, as they say in No Country For Old Men. Best to just keep trying and see where you emerge when the dust settles."

I didn't even know that I would apply to US colleges at the time, I was just trying to keep sane while juggling the ISes. Recent history is funny, huh. Things change, things stay the same.