It is Monday, and it has been raining spitefully all day. No titillating thunderstorms or cathartic downpour sessions ending with rainbows – just evil, shoe-filling globs of water.
I’ve tried a lot of tricks throughout the years to pull myself sanely through these kinds of days. Most of these tricks involve sugar and escapism. Just for fun, I thought I’d record their evolution thus far…
The first I can remember is books. Somewhere around 2nd grade, I began to like them (The Boxcar Children were my first real addictions). I developed a system wherein, if I got bored in class, I would pretend to drop a pencil. Then I’d lean down to pick it up, and crawl into the large closet at the side of the room. I would then read books in the light of the crack under the door. I truly believed no one noticed, until roughly the 100th time I’d ventured forth, when a fellow classmate hissed “she’s doing it again!” — and I picked up the ‘dropped pencil’ and resumed my seat. It was the end of an era.
I kept reading books, lots of them. I signed up for a GoodReads account the other day, and just ranking the obvious ones took a few hours — but it was a blissful few hours.
Then, for freshman orientation, my college dean taught us the following mantra: “No matter what you say or do to me, I am still a worthwhile person.” It doesn’t work. Sorry.
A mantra that works better, which I wrote on my arm in sky blue ink during a drunken rage at an innocent then-boyfriend, is: “Remember puppies!!!!!”
Serotonin supplements help, but I think they make me lazy, so I cut back.
Caffeine is AWESOME.
Today I am assaulted by feelings of insignificance and the sense that the world is spiraling inward to death by boredom and self-disgust. Every once in a while I snap out of it and realize I’m just bored and irritable. Hence the title mantra. I’m alternating the boredom mantra with the fact that my grandparents went to a “Senior Prom” at their retirement home two nights ago and danced romantically. So there might be hope for the future, after all.
Senior Prom
