Debugging a Case of the Post-Break Blahs

As its title suggest, this post is an expansion on my last post.  In addition to discussing the symptoms of the post-break blahs, I take the liberty to type at you about stress in my life, in general.  It is something that I have worked very hard to manage over the past year and while this may not be a complete summary of the stressors in my life, I try to cover both the primary and most amusing ones.

Because of my inactivity over winter break I now find myself incessantly stressing over a multitude of things, some of them directly caused by said indolence while others are merely exacerbated by it but ever present.  This is what I like to call "a case of the post-break blahs."  Two weeks, three weeks, perhaps a month spent doing not much more than that which is absolutely necessary to continue living; such is the life of a college student on break.  For most college students this is enough -- to be relaxed, to be content doing nothing.  For someone like me that bases his worth as a human being on how much he accomplishes -- whether that be the goals he set for himself or projects completed on a whim -- doing nothing for the entire break is gratifying at the time but every goal not achieved by the end of the break is a cinder block on his mind.  That isn't to say I can't ever allow myself to relax; like I said in my previous post, winding down every now and then for a period of time long enough to relieve stress but short enough so that it doesn't become a habit is a good thing.  It is when I do absolutely nothing for weeks or even days on end that it becomes a problem and leads to the post-break blahs.  And with each passing week of inactivity the "blah" gains momentum.

The blah-momentum gained over an entire break of lethargic wanderings from meal to meal smashes me into the next quarter like a fly that hasn't annoyed anyone into the windshield of an Infiniti EX37 traveling at top speed.  (For a more impressive statement, I was going to say a Bugatti Veyron instead of the Infiniti but my tuition isn't quite so high as that.  It only would have convoluted the simile even further).  I guess what I mean to say is this: the fact that I have to be a functioning, productive human being again after weeks of sloth-ing about is a bit of a rough transition.  I beat myself up for all the things I didn't get done in addition to now stressing over things that I need to do for school.

I'm sure I'm being too hard on myself and should instead focus on the things that make me happy in the moment and not care so much about keeping to such strict time limits on achieving my goals.  As nice as that sounds to me, it's not how I'm programmed.  Sure, I can go in and change some code here or there now and then to increase my overall happiness or what have you, but trying to make any really significant changes to the code will only result in some bug that creates more problems than what I had to begin with. #CSmajorProbs

Anywho, back to the blah.  When I get back to school the first thing I do is stress over getting everything unpacked and organized.  Usually organizing things is very relaxing but, for some unknown reason, following a break I go bonkers until everything is where I think it should be -- clothes are hanging up or folded neatly, food is arranged in the drawer corresponding to its proper meal, my backpack is filled with any binders, pencils, or notebooks I'll need for the upcoming quarter.  Once that's done I'm left free to worry about the first day of classes.  I don't think this has so much to do with the blah as it does with me always being slightly anxious for the first day of anything new to me.

A relatively recent development is that along with the stress -- or any thought that worries me, particularly those concerning the future -- my neck and jaw tense up.  This may be where my body has always stored my stress and I just didn't notice it until I started college but now whenever I'm feeling overwhelmed my neck and jaw get very tight, as if I'm cold; which, as a matter of fact, is how I started to notice this as a side affect of being stressed.  When I'm walking around campus with nothing particular on my mind and it's cold enough that my neck and jaw automatically tense up, I automatically start to think about something that stresses me out.  I don't know if this is because my body now associates stress with tension in the neck and jaw but it always seems worse at the start of a new quarter, especially winter quarter.  As the chill passes, so too does feeling stressed.

That's really all I can do: Wait until the stress passes while doing my best to not let it get the best of me; at the same time facing the stress, analyzing it, so I can type out a new snippet of code that covers the base case and recursively reduces the amount of stress associated with a certain stressor.

Now on to the fun part where I reveal the silly things that stress me out.  A brand new stressor from this quarter was the amount of food in my dorm room.  Looking at it now I don't think it's a particularly large amount (maybe because I've already eaten quite a bit of it) but when I first moved back in and got my homemade soup, lefse, butter, brownies, orange juice, milk, and various other perishables all organized I was honestly stressed about how I was going to eat it all before it went bad and, if I did manage such a feat, how fat I'd be as a result.  These are, of course, irrational things to be stressed over but at the time they were serious enough to warrant a tweet.

Just as silly though slightly more serious -- getting to bed by a certain time stresses me out.  I've always been fairly diligent about getting the recommended 7-9 hours of sleep (National Sleep Foundation) and if it seems like I'll need to stay up late enough that I won't get that amount I get stressed out.  Silly, I know, but true.  Instead of working on the paper or program that's keeping me from bed in the first place I'll sit at my desk all tight-jawed, not getting any work done, glancing at the clock every few seconds, calculating how many hours of sleep I'd get if I went to bed right that second; and that's if I fell asleep the moment my head hit the pillow -- a rare occurrence as my mind is usually too busy thinking about the contents of this post.

I've worked very hard this past year to not worry so much about the time I get to bed or any other stressor in my life; I simply focus on what I absolutely need to get done that day and after that do whatever will be relaxing and make me happiest -- such as staying up until 1:30 in the morning blogging -- even if it prevents me from getting as much sleep as I'd like.

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That's all for today.  I hope it's been as entertaining for you as it's been therapeutic for me.  To give you an idea of what my next few posts will be about, I'd like to resume where I left off (duh) in the story of "The Past One and a Half Years of My Average Life."  If you've forgotten where exactly in the story that is -- don't worry you weren't the only one -- you can go back to A Lahar of Tea and Fruit Snacks to refresh your memory.  I hope that by the end of the week I get caught up to the present day so that when I resume my normal posting schedule of once a week I'm free to blog about whatever catches my fancy.  Who knows, I might even get into the habit of blogging more and continue to post more often than just once a week.  We'll see.  For sure, though, I'd like to get back to writing sonnets because it's been too long.  I don't even have a terrible pun to leave you with today.  Oh well.  Thanks for reading! -NLD

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Unpublished material, ©2014 Neal Digre 

Absolutely Nothing and Virtually Everything

Well, this is embarrassing.  It's been almost a full month since I last posted and for this I apologize profusely; Not to you, of course -- I can guarantee the world kept on spinning despite my lack of babbling nonsense to clog the internet -- I'm apologizing to myself.  Before winter break began I told myself I was going to get a lot of stuff done: keep up with my Japanese, blog more often than once every week, start editing my NaNo novel, teach myself old Norse. (That last one is only half a joke.)  I didn't do any of those things.  Granted, I did read three sizable books but it still feels like I let myself down because I didn't accomplish the goals I had set for during my time off.  If this blog post can't eliminate sloth and make the world a perfect place, it'll at least -- I hope -- put everything in my own mind to peace.

Once finals were over and winter break began I had much to do but did absolutely nothing and virtually everything.  By this I mean my days were spent racing cars and crashing into fences in the virtual world of Asphalt 8: Airborne.  At least I was able to multitask and watch Netflix, too.  Instead of working on the things I told myself I would work on over break, I sat around in my pajamas all day either playing Asphalt 8 on my iPhone, watching Netflix until I felt hungry enough to get off my butt to get a piece fruit because it involved less work than making myself a peanut butter sandwich, or reading a book that I couldn't put down.  I'd like to think that the book being so captivating is what kept me from working on other projects -- specifically, the editing of my own novel -- but when I wasn't reading there seemed to be plenty of time to play Asphalt 8.  If I can't balance turning pages with tearing them apart word by word, I'll never be the level of writer that, in turn, can keep a reader glued to their seat and prevent them from getting other, more important tasks done.

As pleased as I am with how much I read over the break, it did not occupy the majority of my time spent.  As aforementioned, most of my time was spent playing games on my iPhone or watching Netflix.  No.  That isn't right.  A significant majority of the day was actually spent reading but I'm so distraught with myself over how much time I "wasted" playing games -- as little time as that may have been -- it seems far more important than the positive things I did over break.  Such is the way of my mind: A small negative devours larger positives until only wrongs in my mind remain.

During break, I would have said that it has been excellent.  I was able to spend time with family, see a myriad of movies, watch U.S. Olympic Trials, and, in general, engage in activities that were very relaxing.  I felt that it was a much deserved hiatus.  Even sitting around doing nothing can be beneficial.  However, I now find myself with a case of the post-break blahs.  A little break is good but taking a break to the point where I panic when I have to be a responsible human being again is definitely not.  I do nothing for so long that I forget what it's like to have structure in my day, to have things I need to get done.  This is a mental state I go through during and after every break but more so after winter break because it is so long (nearly an entire month).  All I can do is stay busy, take a day at a time and wait until the stormy sea of my thoughts calms down.

To anyone else this may seem like absolutely nothing more than the idle ramblings of an anxious college student but to me it's virtually everything.

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Forgive the stream of consciousness writing, unless you dig that sort of thing; I'm a little out of practice.  To make up for everything I didn't write over break I'm going to try and post every day or at the very least every other day until I think I've caught up to where I want to be.  I hope that I'll finish a sonnet or two along the way but I can't make any promises.  This week, instead of a sonnet I'll leave you with a poor excuse for a pun.  Have a good one! - NLD

Not with Asphalt 8 but sitting on my ass, fault lies in my mind.

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Unpublished material, ©2014 Neal Digre 

The Truth: A Change of Plans

Okay, time to try this for the third time.  I started out writing this post about how I thought that in my two previous posts I favored one grandfather over the other.  I intended to use that as a springboard to write about truth but less than two paragraphs in, I couldn't think of anything else to write.  I realized that I couldn't think of anything else to write because the truth was illuminated in a light shade of blue and a single keystroke; I deleted most of what I'd already written and started afresh with a new angle and an anecdote to prove my point.  I got three and a half paragraphs in before Blogger decided it hates me.  I mean seriously, how does hitting the undo button delete everything I'd written in a previously saved draft of the blog?  Thank God I'm not doing something stupid like going to school for Computer Science in order to get a job intimately working with computers for the rest of my life.  Oh, wait... that's exactly what I'm doing.  So here I am writing this post for the third time after four episodes of Archer, a thousand more words in my NaNo Novel, a peanut butter sandwich and a few shots of tequila (just kidding, Mom).

And if you're worried I've forgotten, I'll conclude the epic saga, "The Past One and a Half Years of My Average Life," next week but I just had to change my plans a little bit to work this out with myself.  Once I'm done with my introspective/philosophical blogna and if you didn't stop reading after that terrible pun, there's a sonnet waiting for you.  Okay, now I'll get to what I actually want to write.

While it is true that as a child I was always more excited to see my paternal grandparents because they lived so much further away and, hence, I didn't get to see them as often, that doesn't mean I cared about one grandfather more than another.  But it was on this uncertainty, in addition to the fact that I didn't have the same reaction when my maternal grandfather died as when my paternal grandfather died and a few sentences that didn't make it into the final drafts of my previous posts, that I tried to base my argument.  Even though I edited out those sentences for a reason, they lingered in my mind and festered.  I asked myself, "Could it really be true that I cared about one grandfather more than the other."  So with this post I set out to seek the truth.  Like I said, my failed attempts at writing about it was enough evidence for me but I'll break the rest of it down for you.

My primary internal conflict came from the fact that I didn't (and still haven't) really cried for my maternal grandfather.  But there are many variables -- variables that have nothing to do with the amount of love I had for each grandfather -- that go into my tear ducts.  When my paternal grandfather passed away I was also dealing with the struggles of my first quarter of college: making new friends, papers, exams, projects, upcoming finals.  In comparison, I wasn't in school at the time of my maternal grandfather's death so the absence of that stressor made things much more emotionally manageable.  But because the only other major loss in my life was accompanied by a total mental breakdown I thought that because I didn't experience one when my maternal grandfather passed away meant I somehow cared about him less.  I now realize that the mourning process doesn't work like that.  It's different for each person; for each loss.  Another variable is that I was unable to attend my maternal grandfather's funeral but was able to be there for my paternal grandfather's.  Being surrounded by hundreds of other people mourning the loss of the same person makes the tears flow a little easier, I think.  Not only that, but my dad and the rest of his family have always been very emotionally strong people.  They were there to be strong for me, allowing me to lean on them and cry if I needed to.  When my mom's father passed away, she was stretched emotionally thin as it was having just celebrated her eldest son graduating from college and moving out into the real world; I had to be one of the ones she could lean on.  Similarly, when I went to spend a few days with my grandmother before going back to school for summer classes, I felt that I needed to be strong for her.

There may come a time when I subconsciously decide I no longer need to be strong and will allow myself to cry -- to mourn -- for my grandfather, but that aspect of the mourning process just hasn't come for me yet.

Both of my grandfathers were very, very special people.  Certainly, they each had their own areas of grandparenting at which they excelled and personalities that made them very different people but I loved them both the same and couldn't imagine what my life would be today if I hadn't had the privilege of knowing them both for the extraordinary men they were.

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I was also going to write something philosophical on the subject of truth but I decided these last few posts have been long enough already.  In place of eight extra inches through which you'd have to scroll, I wrote a sonnet:



Traveling East

The sun traverses cobalt skies but in
Its rightful place is standing still, while ants
Below the earth are swept away by wind;
Among them spiders try to hide but can't,
By ninth commandments they abide; a bright-
Eyed youth perceives it all through outcurved lense;
The contradicting paths of those upon
An anthill layered deep with sands of sense,
That coalesce to form one paragon --
Unknown except to those of passage earned;
Now traveling west to where we'll never come;
It seems so far away yet if he turned
Around, it's little more than twelve steps swum.
Though multitudes of things the bright-eyed youth
May never know, he only writes the truth.



If you only want to read this blog for the poetry (I'll completely understand if you do), from now on just skip down to the second section.  I sincerely hope, though, that you'll start/continue to read the journal section of my blog.

That's all for now, so have a great rest of your week and if you're doing NaNoWriMo, don't give up!
- NLD

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Today would have been my Grandpa Benson's 87th birthday.
Happy Birthday, Grandpa.  You are profoundly missed more than I can express.

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Leave some feedback and let me know why!  I'm always seeking to improve.
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Unpublished material, ©2013 Neal Digre

A Long Time Coming

This post has been a long time coming.  Though I have posted here and there it never amounted to more than a few sentences.  I wanted my first post in a long while to be a good and proper post and not some feeble, four-lined "I promise to post something soon," devised in the company of a lazy 18-year-old's excuses.  I'm 19 now - almost 20.  And I'd like to think these past one and a half years have made all the difference in the world.

One and a half years ago -- when I was too busy studying for tests to write (ha) -- I told myself that once AP tests were over I'd get back to writing.  My AP tests came and went, yet I did not resume my writing.  My high school graduation fell upon me but I didn't capitalize on any of that stuff called emotions and write a single line of poetry; I didn't write during the brief respite before I started packing my life into boxes for the move out to Washington -- even when long forgotten memories made an appearance in the form of ties I wore to dances or doodles drawn in the corner of my biology notes.  Not long after, most everything I'd known in the first 18 years of my life became nothing more than a fading horizon in my rear view mirror.

I, oh yes, I was a soon-to-be college freshman and nothing in the world could scare me... Until the night before move-in happened.  To my utter and complete amazement, life, the real world, and my own inhibitions hit me like a sack of alarm clocks fired from a high powered water cannon.  Drenched in my own excitement, anxiety, optimism and misgivings I somehow made it through my first few weeks of college as most college students somehow do: hyped up on caffeine while drowning themselves in new people, new clubs, new classes, Halo 4, Angry-German music, and exploring the new freedoms of living away from their parents -- all just to keep their mind off how someone as stupid as them could possibly think they belong in this academic world of people far more intelligent than them.

As time went on I found a group of friends and started to fall into a comfortable routine of class, schoolwork, YouTube, Doctor Who, sleep, repeat and, on rare occasions, venturing beyond the confines of my dorm room to try those crepes or Russian dumplings I'd heard so much about.  Classes too became easier and less stressful with each passing week.

While many of my fellow freshman found enjoyment in getting drunk in a crowded apartment where nobody knows you and no one would remember you anyway, I became a moderately content, introverted student, finding happiness in reading, YouTube, and even a little writing. Still, at the back of my mind discomfort lingered; I somehow thought I was incompetent and too stupid for college.  I pushed it down, though, and simply set to work on my next six hour Calculus assignment or five page paper.

I attempted NaNoWriMo and managed to balance 39,204 words with classes and homework before I was dealt one of the shittiest hands in the history of a college freshman.  I was feeling confident I'd win NaNoWriMo, having just broken 39,000 words the weekend of Thanksgiving. The day I got back to school, though, I got a call from my dad saying my grandfather had just passed away.  Being so far away it didn't seem real at first.  I felt sad, yes, but the grief didn't really hit me.  All my other insecurities did: the pent up feelings of incompetence, a three hour Calculus exam, finals in two weeks.  All this in addition to the first major loss in my life made that week after Thanksgiving a struggle.  I coped, though.  I made plans to get back to Minnesota for the funeral, I studied the best I could for my Calculus exam and tried to focus on one thing I needed to get done at a time.  Very slowly, though, it sunk in that I just lost my grandfather -- a grandfather who always found his greatest joy and pride in his grandchildren and made us his highest priority at the many Christmas and Easter gatherings, school concerts and plays, weekend visits and family reunions, never forgetting to bring his many quirks I found so endearing and an endless stream of stories.  I began to feel down but it wasn't anything I couldn't handle.  That is, until the five page honors paper I hadn't started yet was due in 24 hours.  At ten o'clock the night before it was due I began to experience minor panic attacks and by midnight I couldn't even look at the Word document let alone think about writing three more pages without shaking uncontrollably and feeling like my head and throat were collapsing in on themselves like some old building that had just been dynamited.  I called home and between many tears my mother helped me calm down and decide that the best thing to do was try to forget about school for the moment, email my honors professor and ask for an extension on the paper.  Even so, I didn't get much sleep that night.  But I lived through it.

With many tears, hugs, stories, and laughs I made it through my grandfather's funeral and -- with more tears, an emergency nine o'clock pm ride to Mom's house, a lot of encouragement, hot chocolate and hard work -- made it through my finals, specifically, the two three-page papers for my honors class.

Though Winter Break provided respite from my worries, it did not dissipate all the apprehensions left over from Fall quarter.  In the days leading up to re-move-in, I again suffered from small panic attacks and couldn't stop worrying about homework I didn't even have yet, in particular, the first paper I'd have to write for my next honors class.  The first few days were hard -- much harder than the first few days of Fall quarter.  But through the process of finding ways to cope with the stress I found a new group of friends -- a group of people that accepted me into their friend circle and made me feel like I fit in when most everyone else had already found their niche by the fourth week of the previous quarter.  While a friend group I felt comfortable with was helpful, it wasn't enough; I decided to get some counseling.  I came out of my first session with the desire to not only control the stress in my life to prevent another breakdown but to understand the stress that inevitably will invade my mind and body no matter how much I prepare for it.  The only way to do that was to understand myself.

The honors class that at first was so stressful soon became an aid to philosophical thought, introspective thinking and my favorite class of Winter quarter.  In addition to trying to understand my mind I took up climbing and swimming laps in an attempt to understand my body.  With the development of good habits and a fresh view of the world, school, and myself I made Winter and Spring quarters some of the most fun and rewarding moments of my school career thus far.  It wasn't always easy but I worked hard and took life one thing at a time, all the while developing an appreciation of self.  I do what brings me happiness, and if that includes other people so much the better, but if what I want to do on a Friday night is plop my butt down with a good book and cup of tea, well, by golly that's what I'll do.  Even those activities that are frustrating and taxing -- like de-bugging a program or rock climbing -- provide their own brand of happiness; the euphoria when I finally get a program to work or finally ascended that route I'd been working on for a week is worth it.  

I've learned to not be afraid of what lies a mile ahead of me and instead focus on what is at my feet; it is only by one step at a time that we as human beings may traverse great distances.

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When I started writing this post I intended to cover everything from the end of my senior year of high school to the present.  As I kept writing and writing and writing, though, I realized it was becoming far too long for a single post -- and I haven't even gotten to the sonnet! -- so I decided to break it up into two posts.

This is obviously a transition post for me.  I'd like to transition from this being just a blog of poetry and more a blog of my life, thoughts, and experiences, which is more of what I intended when I originally created the blog but I fell into focusing just on the poetry.  My journals will probably not be this extensive in the future but I'm definitely going to try to do more of it than I previously did, even if I don't have a sonnet to accompany it.  It is my hope that by doing so I will get into the habit of writing a little bit each day.

I appreciate you having read this far and I only ask that you bear with me a little while longer so as to allow me to introduce the sonnet.  It is the sonnet I wrote in the first few weeks of my freshman year -- the first sonnet I'd finished since before graduation.  As a part of the "getting to know your floor mates" process, we were all asked to put something up on the bulletin board that describes who we are using the acronym SIVS (no it's not a disease).  It stands for Skills, Interests, Values, Strengths and this is what I wrote:



SIVS

Like pleasant murmurs heard from humblest rill,
Regard such discourse that which I observe;
Peripheral voice in silence speaking still
With skill and care, for that what's said preserve.
Expanding knowledge -- this is my pursuit;
Of land, of lore and more, of me, of thee,
I'll learn such forms from those far more astute.
Reveal perspectives few would deign to see.
Conflagrant suns emit creative light
Upheld by values deep engrained.  Should dark
Pernicious clouds obscure this inward sight
A runnel new shall wash away the blight.  Hark!
Amidst all these, a multitude of strengths --
Conviction.  Aye, for this I'd go great lengths.

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Liked my writing or blogging skills?  Didn't like them?
Leave some feedback and let me know why!  I'm always seeking to improve.
Thanks for reading!

Unpublished material, ©2013 Neal Digre