Europe, Yoga, Concerts: The Mantra
Last night I volunteered to pick up a shift at work for a friend, because I am the best. I was already scheduled to work 9-11:30 and then again from 12:30-2, but I thought hey, what’s a few more hours? I don’t have anything else to be doing. Those, my friends, are the thoughts of a student in denial.
“Are you really not that busy?” Hannah asked last night when I’d told her what I’d done.
I really didn’t think that I was. We leave for Thanksgiving break tomorrow, so what could possibly be that pressing? Then I realized the following things:
- I had yet to even think about what I was going to post today.
- I had three fiction stories to read for Tuesday.
- I was also behind on two neurology labs.
Hannah and I locked eyes and I whisper-yelled, “FUCK.” (Note: this is not remotely the first, nor the last time this will happen to me. I could write an entire post about times I’ve said fuck too loudly in quiet, public places. Yoga studios, libraries, CVS pharmacies, you name it.)
But here I am. I left work at two, managed to not fall asleep for an hour, and came back to the office for three. Slaving away, and by slaving away I mean writing this blog post. It’s not the end of the world, because there’s always one mantra that I keep in the back of my mind while I toil away at my work-study job. Hannah and I like to refer to it on rainy Mondays when we’re feeling down.
Europe, yoga, concerts. Over the summer, when I briefly held both a full-time and a part-time job, Hannah helped me maintain my sanity by reminding me why we were doing all of this. We have an end-goal, a reason for our strife.
First and craziest, we’ll both be spending the upcoming spring semester in Europe. I’ll be in Ireland and Hannah will be in Spain, and neither one of us wants to starve while we’re there. I thought of every paycheck I got as another plane ticket to spend a weekend in a different country. And with that mindset, I can do pretty much anything.
Second and third, our yoga memberships are tragically not free, and we have no self-control when it comes to buying concert tickets. I told myself at the beginning of the summer that I wouldn’t buy tickets to any shows this fall, I really did. Then everyone we loved announced that they were going on tour and before we knew it we had tickets to four concerts in four weeks. The giant picture above is us straight-facing with a band that opened for Walk The Moon.
Just in case you didn’t catch that, Hannah and I will be studying abroad next semester! You’re probably wondering what will happen to this blog. You’re probably also wondering how we’re going to manage to live in separate countries for five months. Now please, stop hyperventilating. It’ll be okay. We’ll be posting from our respective countries every week, and Hann and I think that going on our own separate adventures will be a growing experience for both of us. And until then, we’ve got the mantra to keep us going.