Reasons Why Today was a Failure:
- Slept through alarm clock
- Didn’t have time to shower —> dry-braided hair in an attempt to look like less of a hot mess (only slightly successful)
- Missed bus
- Had to ride bike onto campus at 8:30AM, when the temperature was a refreshing 30 degrees
- Discovered, while riding, that I have lost one of my gloves
- My left hand nearly froze off
- Had to ride a bike for 20 minutes while toting my book-bag AND a bulky 50 ton tote bag of the design reports for the class I TA because they had to be back to my boss’s office today (note: making the bus on time would have really helped)
- Had to bike up to the engineering quad in the afternoon to deliver said reports and almost hit half a dozen students, because somehow engineers are even WORSE at not walking in the bike path than normal people
- Ran into my newly-ex boyfriend for the first time since the break-up. Nothing to make you feel worse about breaking up with someone than seeing them two days later, walking through the Talbot parking lot, clutching a coffee, and staring at the ground to avoid eye contact with you while you chain up your bike. Could have tried to make small talk/ any amount of contact, but figured silence and walking away was better, considering today’s track record with luck/fortune.
Reasons Why Today was not a Complete Failure:
- In my systems class, I successfully installed Linux on the crappiest, most issue-prone Dell desktop computer with little/no real difficulty and consequently felt like a computer goddess. (It’s all about the little victories, folks.)
- I just took the longest and hottest of showers and consequently feel like a person again.
- In the last 72 hours multiple people have offered me hugs, (alcoholic) drinks, non-judgmental listening ears, shoulders to cry on (NOT THAT I CRY, EVER, YOU GUYS), ice cream, and ever-so-needed and pleasantly distracting trips to the movies. Biggest lesson learned from recent situations: life will sometimes throw endless amounts of shit at you that you will in no way be able to deal with on your own; it really helps to surround yourself with ridiculously amazing humans who will talk you through your problems, tell you when you need to get your shit together, accept your tearful post-break-up call, take you to see Girl with the Dragon Tattoo instead of letting you wallow, and let you come over to eat Oreos and watch British sci-fi.
- EDIT: Also, my online class professor’s description of today’s guest speaker: “I like to think of him as the Stephen Colbert of digital humanities, for his Jesuit mind and his tendency to catch one by surprise.” I am now officially pumped for my evening class.
