Little Things

The other day I was rushing to finish a paper for a class. I had totally slept on it because I had several other tasks that needed finishing. Try though I might, I couldn't get it done. As of right now it remains in Word, half-written.

In the aftermath of missing the deadline on Friday, I felt absolutely awful. It felt totally emasculating to sit there in the aftermath of such a failure. It felt like all the work I had done to get my grades back up last semester had come to nothing. I felt paralyzed, stuck in the same moment for a half-hour before I had to meet with my Pathfinder group.

I sat there, and somehow it hit me: this too shall pass. I took a breath and thought about this whole thing. "It's just a paper," I thought. "It's important but not so important that you ought to lose yourself over it."

Little things like that are the toughest things to get over. Big things at least give you the full scope of the problem. When something big happens--you lose your job, a loved one dies, etc--you can at least understand the gravity of the issue. Once you understand that, you can move on and start to adapt to living with the aftermath. Something little happens and you either think you can overcome it with ease (only to find out you can't), or you subconsciously let it spiral into something big. It's like the creation of a pearl of problems: one little problem gets into the works, then more problems compound on top of it, till you have a solid ball of issues that seem impossible to resolve or dismiss.

I don't normally make posts like this, but I feel good writing all this out. This blog is an outlet for me, a means of getting my say out there even if nobody else wants to listen to it. I can post poems, rambles, and maybe some stories in the near future, and it feels like I'm still putting stuff out in the world even if nobody at present inclines their ear or their eye to what I have to share.

To anyone who might be reading this, thanks. Thanks very, very much. You, dear reader, whoever you are, you're a good man. I don't ask much, but I'm still thankful for your readership. I'll start updating this blog more regularly with stories or poems or rambles. Let me know what you want to see, and I'll do my best. :-)