That's part of what's been freaking me out so much. I have one semester left, and then... what? The longest I've ever held an office job is for three months, summer internships. I don't know how to function in any situation other than school, really. I keep trying to get myself to come to terms with the fact that that is LIFE, but my mind won't listen to me. Aie.
Anyway, the last couple of weeks have been fairly sleepless for me. Lots of thinking, studying, worrying, overthinking, etc. But what helps me a lot is... go on, take a guess... writing. Of course. When it's 2, 3 in the morning and I'm sitting up in bed staring out my window, I finally have to accept that sleep is not going to come willingly, so I grab my notebook and start writing. Sometimes I write in a journalistic style and blah-blah-blah about my day, sometimes I pick a specific problem to write about, and sometimes, I do my favorite exercise: stream of consciousness writing.
I never used to like SOC until I did it on my own time. Writing it in school was frustrating because we were fairly limited. I would write a page worth of, "This is stupid. My hand hurts. I wish time were up. I'm hungry. This is so dumb." And that's a perfectly fine way to start SOC, but I never had enough time in class for it to go somewhere. But when I'm writing on my own now, I can write for as long or as short as I want or need.
It's truly a great stress reliever. If you've never heard of or written in a SOC style, I truly encourage you to try it. Here are the rules: There are no rules. You simply put your pen to the paper (or your fingers to the keyboard) and start writing. You can give yourself a set amount of time, or you can write until you just peter out (I prefer the latter). You just WRITE. And you don't worry about what you write. In time, your words will evolve to what you're really thinking/worried/anxious/nervous about, and you may find that you've presented yourself with a solution while writing. You may learn something that you didn't know you were repressing or frustrated with. You may not get anything special out of it at all. It's wonderful.
I've been doing SOC quite a lot lately, and figuring out a bunch of stuff. It's quickly becoming my go-to form of stress relief, but I can't let myself think about it too much, or it ruins it. Pen to paper. Go. Write. Be.
It's so amusing for me to reread what I've written, things I don't even remember writing, having written so quickly and letting the words roll from my mind to the page like water. Song lyrics and quotes and things someone said to me earlier and my own thoughts and feelings and emotions I was trying to hide, they all appear, and it's so random and yet exactly what I needed and wanted to say. And after I feel my writing's come to an end for the moment, I'm somehow able to finally fall asleep. It's like physically taking a weight off my shoulders and feeling so much more relieved.
I really do encourage everyone to try it if you have a half hour or so. Just write. No thinking about what you're writing. "This is stupid, this is stupid, this is stupid" is just as good a start as, "I had PB&J for lunch today", which is just as good as, "I'm frustrated with my day, and I don't know why." Go for it. I hope someone out there finds the peace that is waiting in writing to the degree that I have. :)
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