On Not Knowing

I'm applying for colleges. I don't know where I want to go, or what I want to do.

Before, I was pretty closed-minded. I thought, "I'll be a teacher," or I didn't think anything at all.
I thought, "I'm not good enough at music to go into that."
I thought, "I'm not good enough or interested enough in sciences to go into that."
I never even thought about writing, acting, engineering.

Now, suddenly, I'm thinking, "I love movies! TV! Books! Everything! I'll write screenplays!"
I'm thinking, "I'll become an actor! I mean, I really do love movies and TV!"
I'm thinking, "I'll go into music anyway, and learn every instrument ever, and compose music!"
I'm thinking, "I love animals! I'll become a vet!"

But, to be honest, I still have no idea what I want to do, and I don't know where I want to start. I'm only a kid, by most interpretations, and challenges like college applications and career choices take a lot of thinking and planning and work, and, most importantly, a lot of starting, and I find myself coming up against this big wall of responsibility and freedom and it's scary, and, instead of climbing over it or going around it or breaking through it or something, I've just taken to pretending the wall isn't there and instead just staying on the side of it I was on originally and pacing back and forth, muttering about unimportant things that have nothing to do with all the very real deadlines that are fast approaching.

I see the freshmen walking around campus, and I just want to walk over to them and hug them. I want to do the same to the juniors. The freshmen are so far from where I am right now. The juniors are so close, but they still feel so far. EDIT: WOW, that sounds condescending. I'm pretty sure I didn't mean it that way.

Do you know what I mean about the wall? Do you ever get like that? And how do you get over/through/around the wall?
OK. Back to homework, and college-searching, and "Community."

Things I like doing when I'm sick

The following is a post I wrote a while back, but never got around to publishing:

I've been sick for a little over a week. Last weekend, it started to really hit me, but I (seemingly) slept it off. For the rest of the week, I had a runny nose, but that was my only real symptom. Now, it's back with a vengeance. So, here's a list of things I like to do when I'm sick (but can't do this time, because I really don't wanna have to miss school tomorrow and make up tests and homework and ugh it's just way too hard to miss school now):

• Sleep.
• Watch movies my family (and me, too) would normally give me a hard time for watching. Some past movies that fall into this category are "When In Rome" and "P.S., I Love You."
• Watch/catch up on tv shows. Last night, for example, I lay in bed watching How I Met Your Mother for a good few hours before going to sleep.
• Eat soup/drink tea/drink hot chocolate. I know eating or drinking dairy when you're congested only exacerbates things... but I like tea with milk and hot chocolate! And I'm sick! Leave me alone!
• Not doing anything that really requires a lot of thinking. Because... uh, I dunno.

So, you may have noticed that all of the above activities are also Things That People Do To Relax. I probably got sick because I was already stressed out and not in great health due to lack of sleep and the aforementioned stress and then someone else decided that they couldn't handle missing school*.

*It's ok, buddy. I get why you came to school sick. I get that the cons of staying home outweighed the pros. I get that you had a big test, that your AP classes have really unhelpful late work policies, that you had a lot of homework due and a lot of big lessons to sit through, and it was more stressful to think about doing all the late work than to just go to school despite being sick and power through the congestion. I get it.

On wasting time

School's started, and I feel like I wasted my summer online, scrolling down and down and down for hours on countless tumblrs (especially tumblrs that have infinite scrolling; oh, god), rarely leaving my house, rarely being particularly social, rarely doing any of the plethora of things I'd planned to do during my summer. Have you read that first post I wrote, "How to enjoy your last bit of summer?" Yeah, I didn't do any of the things on that list... Oops.

Now, I feel like I'm wasting my weekends, and I'm determined not to. This weekend, I will either go to a river, or I will go ice skating. I will practice instruments I have not practiced for a while. I will really study for the tests I have on Tuesday. I will maybe go swimming. I will leave the house and do something every day of this three-day weekend, and I will hopefully follow through on these goals now that they're being posted to the internet, because the internet is permanent and serious business and who am I kidding I could easily just edit this post after the weekend's over and I've done nothing again, as usual, as always.

I can easily make excuses for why I wasted my summer. "I had to recover from such a difficult school year! I can't drive! I'm lazy!" While they're all actually pretty valid excuses, I should've forced myself to make more of the two months I have each year in which I'm not forced to sit inside all day. I should've done something with those two months other than, well, sit inside all day.

But I didn't. Hopefully my regretting wasting my summer will encourage me not to waste my weekends.

Do you feel satisfied with how you spend your free time? Is that too heavy of a question? What's your favorite color? Is that better?