Tuesday, April 8, 2014

What am I Even Doing?

     Lately, I don't even know what's happening. It is truly interesting to see how life works in the modern day. Often, I will wake up before class completely exhausted and wanting nothing more than to continue to sleep. Now this is certainly the fragment of being a teenager (I'm only a few short months away from 20... the adult-world is so close to grasp... very scary) and also a part of me being a college student, but in all honesty, I don't want to go to class because of my young adulthood tendencies, but because I don't want to go through my daily routine. I don't want to wake up, brush me teeth for one minute, put in my contacts, undress and put a towel on (all while being quiet in the dark so as to not wake up my slumbering roommate), take a shower, get dry, get dressed, and get on my way to class with only ten minutes before its beginning.

     I have a schedule for every day. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. Each day, I accomplish relatively the same thing, each day with its own unique changes here and there, though ultimately all the same. The sameness causes such a huge exhaustion throughout my body that causes me to just want to do nothing. Often, I find myself watching television for hours, or aimlessly doing nothing on my computer. I even catch myself sitting around my dorm room literally doing nothing. This is just depressing. I used to be so alive and full of energy. What happened exactly?

     Routine can be a killer. It is a perceived necessity in the modern world. You must have your daily routine, otherwise you can't get your work done. If you can't get your work done, you cannot survive in the world. We are no longer animals in the wild. Our survival is no longer food, water, and shelter. Our survival is money, making money, and spending money. To get money, we must work. To work successfully, you must have a routine. Welcome to human survival in 2014. Wether you are in the business of exchanging numbers and papers, or the business of creating arts, we all have a routine. I've talked to plenty of people from the different spectrums of life who are around my age, and it is nearly unanimous: we all have a routine. Every day. Every. Single. Day.

     So what happens when this routine is broken? Two life-changing events can occur. When a routine is broken, one will usually fall behind on their profession, become stressed, and work harder to catch up and to harden their routine. When you don't become a robot, you fall into the second event. You will fall behind on work, become stressed, and create something beautiful. Elaboration time. When I get out of college, I want to be a video game writer and a creative lead. While in college, I've fallen into my scheduled routine, and have had no time to think about my desired career (which is somewhat ironic with this being college and all).  I'll be honest, I've missed class plenty of times, and plenty of times, Ive fallen into that first event of unadulterated stress.

     A couple of weeks ago, however, I discovered that second event. It was a beautiful and sunny afternoon, around 1pm. I awoke to my roommate coming back from class. "Finally awake, I see", he said to me. I looked at my watch and notice I slept through my 9 am and my 10 pm. "Wonderful", I thought to myself. After the first horribly interesting events of my daily routine, I had a thought in my shower. "Why haven't I started work on any video game?" I wondered to myself as the hot water showered (get it?) my body. When I dressed myself, I sat at my computer, and I began work on my first video game. It was exhilarating! I was finally doing what I've wanted to do my entire life. A couple of weeks later, this game of mine is almost ready for release, and I could not be anymore excited.

     This break of routine has taught me something. I learned that life should not be a monotonous wasteland of modern survival. No, it should what we want it to be. Do not misunderstand this. This does not by any means mean we should all stop doing whatever our work is, because then we will fail at our survival. What it means, though, is that we should not be afraid to break away from the daily doings of life every once in a while in order to follow our creative freedom, and to follow our creative needs. While I will begrudgingly agree that we need a routine to survive today, I strongly believe this routine should be universally agreed on to allow the animal in us to create something beautiful every now and then.

Stay awesome and beautiful.

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