No. Actually, today was fucking awesome. I got up early, took a shower, cleaned my room a bit, printed out my homework and even had time to grab breakfast all before class. And my alarm clock was doing the thing where the little hammer gets stuck and it doesn’t ring at all, so I could’ve been really late this morning, but for some reason I woke up at the exact time I set my alarm clock for.
Then in class we did editing workshops and some of those early drafts always make me laugh from their terrible-ness (including my own. I just laugh at bad writing, I can’t help it. In no way do I mean to make any writers feel bad. We’ve all been there). Then I got some great feedback and even though my piece was three times longer than we were supposed to have, and I stopped reading out loud after 1000 words like we were supposed to, my group members were interested enough in my story that all three of them kept reading to the end. That’s a good sign, right?
After class, my group members for Children’s Fiction and I worked on our presentation and timed it and everything, and our timing was perfect. Then I had lunch and the cafeteria had some fancy risotto today, and I managed to do some non-school writing, which is always great because there’s no pressure and I can do pretty much whatever I want.
I was going to take pictures of my cute outfit (we all know a good outfit makes us feel more confident) for Outfit of the Week while the sun was still up, but instead I fell asleep because I’m always tired Monday afternoons. I woke up in time for dinner which was also delicious, and then watched some TV.
Now I’m writing a blog post, and after this I’ll design my first sports-themed book cover for someone, and I’ll spit out a few ideas for my creative piece for tomorrow’s morning class. I’ll maybe do some editing on my piece for tomorrow’s afternoon class before I bring it in. I’m still riding the high from the positive feedback my lecturer gave me on it on Friday. He said, “It’s not like anything I’ve ever read” and “It’s quirky, it’s funny, I like it!” and “Ivy, you’re crazy, you know that?”, all three of which I take as enormous compliments. If you’re curious about what he was talking about, I could show it to you, but not yet. Maybe after I get the marks back, like I did with this and this.
I could’ve had a bad day. I could say, I woke up and my stupid alarm clock was broken again, the teacher told us to bring four copies of our work when we needed five, my group and I had to sit on the floor of the library for half an hour because someone was taking their time in the study room we booked, I should’ve gotten stir-fry instead of risotto, I can’t believe I fell asleep in the middle of the day again, now I’m not going to be tired and I’ll fall asleep at four in the morning and I have to be up at eight again tomorrow, I don’t even know what I’ll bring to class tomorrow! The teacher for tomorrow’s afternoon class thinks I’m weird, and I have a week-long waiting list of book covers to make even though I’m not getting paid.
But honestly, even though I’m very much a pessimist, today was a good day.
I’m wondering though, what if things were different? What if I woke up and thought, my alarm hasn’t gone off yet, might as well go back to sleep. Then I came to class late, dirty, hungry, and unprepared, then threw up my lunch all over my notebook, and a bunch of shitty stuff happened instead. I could still write about it on here, right?
A bad day is just that. It’s not a bad week, or a bad month, or a bad life. It’s just a day, and then it ends and I move on. I forget about it completely. But it’s still nice to write about it and get it off my chest, and keep a record of it which I can look back on. Maybe tomorrow will be the worst day of my life, and I’ll write about it, and in a few months or years I’ll find the post again and think, “I didn’t need to worry about a thing. Everything turned out fine.”
I’m lucky enough to have friends who show concern with minimal reason to. Like one time, I tweeted “I don’t wanna :(” and a friend replied in five seconds flat, “you ok? :)”. All I meant was I didn’t want to get out of bed because it was really comfortable (but I did). While it’s nice to know that there are people who would notice if I disappeared into a wormhole, it’s also nice to just complain about a bad day without anyone overreacting, you know? And I know these days you’ve got to be careful with people having bad days, with high rates of anxiety, depression, and suicide, especially with high schoolers and university students. But you know something? Talking about bad days decreases all of that, it doesn’t increase them.
Human beings need to be listened to know we are not alone. It might not solve everything, but it makes burdens easier to carry. The thing is, I don’t want to talk about a bad day if I think a friend is going to worry themselves over it. To me it’s not a big deal, I’m just blowing off steam, so why should I tell someone who’s going to worry about it more than I will? But if I don’t talk about it, everything will just build up, whether I notice it or not, and this is why it’s good to keep a journal or a diary. For me, that’s what this blog is. Of course, then I have friends who read this blog and get worried over everything I didn’t tell them anyway. Which is why I’m writing this today:
I had a good day, and that’s okay. And I wanted to say that if I’d had a bad day, that’s okay, too. That’s life.
Precarious Writer 