It had been two years since we had gone on this vacation. It used to be an annual trip to my grandparent’s beach house in Fort Myers, but they had opted to sell it in fall of 2018 in favor of having money to travel. Unfortunately, mere weeks after the closing, my grandfather was told he was in no shape medically to be gallivanting around the world. This left my grandparent’s with a sizable amount of seller’s remorse and an equally sizable chunk of change to fix it. So, after some searching, they settled on a new place that ended up about a 5-minute drive down the road from square one. Quite the adventure.
A lot can change in a two-year span of time, and nothing emphasizes that more than when it came time to pack a bag full of school supplies to take with me. Turns out, the freshman year workload and the junior year workload are dramatically different. I’ve always known the latter weighs more on you emotionally but toting a 50-pound bag of textbooks, binders, and laptops through several airports brought the weight thing a little closer to home.
The trip was undeniably nice. We ate seafood, went on beach walks, and saw a lot of shirtless 70-year-olds (although only two of those could really be considered positives.) But, for the first time going on this trip, I felt a little bittersweet. There was a constant, dull feeling of concern crawling around the back of my mind, reminding me of how much crucial class time I was missing and how much homework I had yet to do before my arrival home. And that was with devoting a clean 3 hours every single day to the depressing monotony of writing papers and reading textbooks with 80-degree weather within reach. Finding a balance between giving myself a sense of relaxation and fighting the seemingly-endless pile of makeup work I had sitting back at the house proved difficult throughout the week.Turns out, the fear in the back of my mind was onto something. As of right now, I find myself closer to drowning than I ever did back when I was 2 feet from the ocean. Trying to regain my footing with a barrage of makeup quizzes and tests has been about as easy as wrestling one of the alligators I was hanging out with for the past week. But, I like to think I’m on an upward spiral. I’m at the very least up to speed with the rest of my class assignment-wise, so the next step is just getting familiar with all the stuff that was taught while I was getting a mediocre tan.
It’s go time.
Okay first off, I absolutely love reading your writing. Your style has remained consistent since like the seventh grade, and I'm saying that in the best possible way. But beyond that, I relate so much to what you're addressing here. I haven't had the chance to get my tan on like you have, but I experience a similar feeling pretty much every weekend. I always go into the weekend excited to relax, except it never ends up being that simple. It seems like I constantly have piles and piles of work to do, and on the weekends I do choose to relax, I end up drowning that following week. Ugh!
ReplyDeleteGlad you enjoyed! And less glad that it's relatable but ay that's how it be sometimes.
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