rain cloud

Have you ever sat in the library for hours on end, the people at the computer kiosks next to you coming and going and looking all the same as they finish their work and leave you to yours-- the piles and piles of homework that are really only metaphorical because it's actually just posted online for you to read and translate, and all those foreign words just look exactly the same, and you wonder why in the world did you ever decide to study this language? What in the world compelled you to put off all this work until your last semester of college when you should be spending every afternoon skiing, because that's what you've always heard seniors in college do their last semesters at school-- show up for class in their pajamas every morning and ski every afternoon, right? Just ski every afternoon, even though you haven't ever gone downhill skiing, though this is your eighth winter living in Utah, in fact you haven't even touched a pair of cross country skis since you left New York, probably.

So there you are, still in the library, and your computer neighbors have changed again maybe, you can't really tell, and you're really distracted by the chip in your nail polish. You can't concentrate because of that stupid little chip in your nail polish, and I mean, what kind of person can't concentrate because of a dopey little chip in your nail polish?!? And of course there's also your phone sitting next to you, taunting you with its lack of incoming messages and tempting you to send out a few of your own so that you can smile smugly at it when the messages start to pour in after all. Of course all you really want is a text or something from a specific someone but you're a little too proud to text him yourself because for whatever reason you're still caught up in mind games, only they're your own mind games, you're in your own head, psyching yourself out, so it's even worse, you, sitting there with your internet homework and chipped nail polish and your silly one-sided mind games.

You distract yourself for a while, checking for facebook updates every 3.5 minutes and hoping someone has updated their blog when there are no more facebooks to check, but there aren't any of those either, so you start in on a blog of your own which ends up just sounding like an extended rant because what else have you got to say for yourself, sitting there in the library, hoping your homework might just go away if you shut your eyes and give it some time. That's another one of your mind games though, see, just another mind game since ignoring it will only make it stack up higher and more metaphorically, since the online pages just get longer and longer, and the passages are more and more alike, and you have to answer some questions about something you're not even sure you actually read, even though you know your eyes looked at all of those words at least once, twice, six times. But ignoring it, even just for a few minutes while you facebook and blog and check your phone to "see what time it is" and you finally scratch off all the nail polish on that nail so now your middle finger is naked while the rest are all polished-- but somehow it's fitting, that highlighted middle finger, and you snicker to yourself about it for a second-- ignoring it only makes you more antsy and you start counting down the minutes until you can meet your friend from high school for lunch.

Have you ever had a day like that?