Today was a weird one and it’s not even over.
It’s only 11:05 p.m. and by the time I hit the hay for real, it will be tomorrow.
This article probably won’t get posted for at least a day or two so my ever-so-gracious editor can help me catch all of my grammar mistakes and all the places that I put a comma where, clearly, no comma is needed, even though I tend to speak in run-on sentences and so write in run-on sentences, because run-ons are fun — they make you look like you have a lot to say and, quite frankly, I really like the sound of my fingers hitting the keys on the keyboard like clacky clacky — backspace — clacky clacky — insert more commas — like I am a real writer with a real job somewhere in the city with adoring fans who send me adoring fan mail with family Christmas cards included because I touched their lives so much that they cannot help but feel as if I am, as well, a part of their family.
And now, after struggling through that sentence, perhaps you understand why my roommates avoid me like the plague (shoutout to my realest roommates for putting up with my OCD tendencies to clean up and misplace your stuff and also my propensity to burn popcorn). Anyway. I was talking about my day. Because it was a weird one.
I got one midterm back and took another one. I lost my phone twice. I watched Harry Potter for the first time as part of my creative writing class and learned what a Muggle is. I walked down Lower Dorm Road at 7:50 a.m. this morning and back to my apartment at 5:05 p.m. only to go back down to main campus at 5:50 p.m. for my night class. Scheduled day, it was. I bummed it in Norts aka Nike Shorts and a flannel because that’s what was clean. I greeted friends. I drank coffee. I complained about teachers (sorry) and the weather (not sorry).
Sounds like a routine, scheduled day to me.
So what made it so weird?
I think it was weird because I said it was weird. Let me rephrase: we have the opportunity to make our days instead of have our days. Now, disclaimer: I did not come up with this saying — it is stolen from a speaker that I had the privilege of listening to last week. He changed a little piece of my life, the piece that lets days “happen.” Instead of dictating or letting myself dictate how the day went or how I feel about a day, I wonder if I could actually pronounce something on the day and then feel some kind of way about it afterwards.
What about your days characterize them as “weird?” Midterms? Friends, family, finances — the three F’s? Was it the soggy pizza in the Caf or the fact that one sock was more stretched out than the other one when you put them on this morning because the on-campus washers and dryers actually operate outside of time and space?
Whatever it is or is not or maybe there are many things … the point is that I think we should start making our days instead of letting them make us. So what you get a bad grade on a test — get yourself into your professor’s office with their favorite Starbucks and work out every problem. So what if you fought with a friend — get yourself over yourself and go back to why you liked that person in the first place. So what it is hotter than the desert in the summer at high noon with no cacti around to provide shade — see it as an opportunity to take a field trip to Ralph’s for popsicles.
Let’s make days, friends. Let’s make waves, too, big waves.
Bring on the weird days.
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Follow Taylor Nam on Twitter: @namnam330
