I am severely avoiding grading papers right now. I always do this to myself. Grades are due by noon tomorrow, and I have at least 65 essays left to grade by 7:00. I have already succumbed to the fact that I will not be sleeping tonight, but here I sit, drinking coffee at 11:00 at night (to help with the aforementioned no sleeping), and doing everything humanly possible to not grade the damn papers. There are only so many times I can write "We do not use the letter 'u' to represent a pronoun" before I want to punch things.
All this procrastinating got me thinking though, which is bad thing to do at this time of night, hopped up on coffee no less. It dawned on me today that my 26th birthday is less than a month away, and the thought of that date getting nearer and nearer makes my stomach do somersaults like an Olympic gymnast. It's not the idea of getting closer to 30 that bothers me. It's that I will soon be one year older with absolutely nothing to show for myself. In the past year, I have watched seven of my friends get engaged or married, five friends move to exciting new locations, eight people I know get pregnant or give birth, six people start new jobs, and I have done...nothing. Not one thing. My life has remained stagnant. I have a job that frustrates me, live alone in my apartment, in a town that I hate. I have an awful fear of another year passing under the same circumstances. As much as I can change these things (which I have every intention of doing as soon as I can), I still feel like I'm behind all the people I know, whining, "You guys! Wait up!" I wish I could pause everyone else for a little while, so I could finally catch up, or better yet, be ahead of the pack for once in my life. I wish, come December 2, 2011, I could look back and say, "That was a great year!" instead of, "Damn, I hope year 26 is a thousand times better than year 25."
I need a drink.
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