It is now 1:00 a.m., one hour into the 17th?of June. I sit before my desk, and I have All the Best Memories are Hers from the Bladerunner 2049 original playing. Now, is the time for some contemplation and reflection on how things were, are, and will be.

I am not quite so satisfied with my current life. Time passes for me, like the sands in a hourglass: silently, yet without rest. I can barely feel its slipping by, as, one week seems to just pass without leaving so much as a trace in my mind. No, there are traces, but they are few, and are limited to but certain occurrences. Monday, a blink, Tuesday, a breath, Wednesday...a week just passes so, and at its end, I look back, and I see nothing: nothing in my mind indicated that such a week ever came to pass at all. Everything is the same as it was the week before, and that before that, and that before that one. Nothing, save for the changing of a few numbers on my watch that is the date. Yes, at school I certainly learned new ?things, but they are in slumber in my mind, and I do not see them unless I am confronted by a question as such that demands their awakening. The river of life just seems to wash forward without me feeling it do so. There is nothing memorable about each day, just...a day, to be left in the sands of forgetfulness, sundered from my mind by the next, and the next, and the next...Just what have I done? Many things, I could say, yet naught I could say also.

Find I not jollity in studying? Yes, but it has rounded down to but the joy of knowing things one previously did not know, barely rising up from a sea of awfulness. I am slow. I do not understand why. Slow, in speed of work, understanding and reaction to certain problems. Tasks like homework that may take others only an hour may take me one and a half, what others may do during a time during which I am occupied with other things may take me more time. I listen in class, and I rarely do homework whilst the teacher is speaking. I think it as a rule of respect, that as one speaks, I listen. Yet circumstances are forcing me to forsake this rule. I am almost always one step behind, struggling to even keep pace with others. I seem to not have enough time. Whilst others may complete their mandatory tasks and move on to extra practice, practice that befits their status, I linger still, in the marshes of uncompleted homework. I struggle even to complete homework, that is, by my teachers’ words, “the least of all requirements”. Each day, I see them do..more, while I do less. I can feel the gap stretching, I fear it, I grieve at it, I kindle my wrath...but I can do naught to change it. It seems as if I am already maxed out: this is all I have, this is as far as I shall ever get.

Yet, despite my struggles, my grades are not bad. Not even remotely bad. They are good, quite good, in fact. Better that it should be, perhaps. Odd, isn’t it? I have less time to do extra practice, yet I still have grades to rival those who practice more, even if the gap is widening and I can feel myself falling behind, slowly. Talented, say you? Nay, for if so my slowness is unexplained. Why, then? I know not. Oddly, you may say that my life is fine, for I do not even have to extra practice. No. I spend nearly every minute available studying: I do not nap at noon, I do not go exercising after class, all I do is eat and study. Yet, with all my time occupied, I can just barely complete my homework, the least of all requirements, and at times not even that.This leaves me with no sense of achievement: at the end of each day, all I can sum up is, well, you wasn’t able to get your homework done today, great. Have I done anything more? No. I purchase no drinks, and I have few snacks, as if I fear they would jeopardize what little...achievement...that remains still in my heart. ?This, I find worse than doing too much extra practice.

I have tried to become faster, but to no avail, it would seem. I push my self to work faster, but after a while, I slow down once more. It is as if being fast is unnatural for me...uncomfortable...queer. Or am I simply not trying hard enough? How hard would I have to push myself, and can I do it? I have always been like this, perhaps it is just personality, and it is a part of who I am? Or are these all excuses for weakness?

I feel dead on weekdays...but the weekends are moments of respite for me. I sapped my weekdays of all fun, and so all my leisure takes place at the weekends. I can, at least most of the time, compete the majority of my weekend work before its deadline. The time that is extra, the optimal place to spend which would be on extra practice that I had no time for during the weekdays as an endeavour to ease my falling-behind, I would, on the contrary spend it on other things. It is those things and memory of them that keeps me going. My book for instance.

Ah, and my book...at times I would look at it, and find it stupid. Who’s gonna read it, anyway? You’ll never see it published, and it is just god-damned pointless. You’ll never sit there amongst the accomplished writers. Still, I am able to refrain from these thoughts, and I urge myself to continue. All my that book needs is some mending, patching, and reworking.

It is no longer too late to ponder my future. What will I do? I find that difficult to tell. My road ahead seems vague and misty and intangible...a labyrinth of possibilities that may be false. Shall I ever make it out, or shall I forevermore languish there? I try to accept what I am now, but I keep telling myself that such an act is but the voice weakness in my mind, and that I must push on. Yet, will that push ever bear fruit, or shall it end in pathetic demise?

I find no solace...

It is now 2:05. I am done.