Highs and Lows

<This post is not intended to be fluid. Fluidity was lost somewhere along the way, probably in between 'there is nothing to do' and 'this was a lot more fun when i had work to do'.>

This void in me knows no bounds. After an eventful year as a freshman in college, I'm back home. And I'm left empty. This has been a year of information. Living with hundreds of other like minds and reaping fields of sown wealth from a matrix of file sharing, there has always been something to do. Difficult course matter makes studying always a good option if you ever seem knee deep in time. So many things come your way on a daily basis: scheduling the perfect time to break your fast so as to have garnered enough sleep - yet to not be so late as to lose out on the last morsels of this timed meal, choosing wisely which hour could use a bunk, choosing wisely whether you should watch a TV show that meets its DC release an hour before an exam, choosing wisely whether to eat something before play or to just go empty and go all out on dinner, choosing wisely whether to eat dinner or to fast until the night canteen opened, choosing wisely an hour to hit the bed so as to get either six hours sleep or eight, nothing in between.

Music was another aspect which developed massively, with the possibility of downloading entire discographies in minutes, and deleting them in seconds if they didn't match up to most compelling band names. Bands you thought you knew well would force themselves upon you with the insistence of your peers, and leave you wondering whether you'd actually ever given any of their songs a listen.

This campus offered me a new life. New people to be surrounded by, new opinions to get perturbed by. New personas to explore, new personas to reject. Even after a year there are more people to be amazed by, or to be let down by. Each person an endless stream of himself-ness or herself-ness. It's like an endless stream of endless streams. Drastic changes in character accompanied different settings. The quiet library worm is a beast in the regular group hangout spots. Who knew moving house a few kilometres would make you a sociologist and psychologist?

Here, there are distractions aplenty. Every week usually had some kind of special night or event or exam or match or online page or controversy. There's always someone to vote for, always something to watch, some beginning to witness the creation of a future symbol. And if this gets overwhelming, you can project yourself inwards alongside the rustling leaves of a truly beautiful day.

Now I'm back home and I'm broken. I don't have access to endless lines of information. The people here are people I've known for eighteen years. Everything is so static, so welcoming, yet more than a little bit disappointing. Yes, I am happy to be back, but even my large to-do list seems tiny in comparison to the time I have before me.

I seem to be suffering from information withdrawal. I match the symptoms shown in Steven Wilson's Fear of a Blank Planet record. The fact that I don't have to bother about life's trivialities such as waking in time to break my fast gives me even less to do. During the harsh heat of April and the grueling exams of early May, I thought being released from the excessive workload would relieve me. But it's just left in me a hole instead. The things that seem 'fun' during exams, like browsing through meme pages on Facebook, seem decadent and drab right now. I guess the exams serve as a sort of foil. My father always told me to take with the sweet a little bitter. I'm currently drowning in rich milk chocolate.