Stress and whats been up

Why haven't I been blogging? For almost 4 months, not a word!

Well, there's no single reason for this, but the biggest reason would be that my schedules tightened up under some formidable pressure. I've been reading for and writing my Matriculation exams, which are now over. This has taken up a lot of my time. What's interesting is how the actual reading hasn't taken that much time, about one to two hours per day, this time in preparation for the exams seem to have occupied a lot more of my life than that. I think it has affected me on a deeper level.

Shaded entirely using the words "LOSER LOSER LOSER...".

While it most definitely hasn't been as dramatic as this drawing would like you to believe, and I think I held up quite well, something strange happened to me last week. I woke up at 7 in the morning, sweating, with this weird, almost panic inducing feeling that I definitely hadn't read enough, but had to get up, quickly pack my lunchbox and go write a test. It made me think a little bit about how the exams and the stress actually affected me.

I've always seen myself as a person who handles stress quite efficiently. And I still do, for that matter. For the most part, I would attribute that to a healthy attitude, and I really think many emotional and psychological problems can be solved with a little bit of attitude adjustment. It doesn't make you immune to the effects of stress, but it's definitely a way of countering stress in the first place.

That didn't quite hold up, though. During this period, I definitely felt the stress in my body, but emotionally I was fine. I make sure to make enough to for myself, I always do. Which I'm sure is why the preparation for the exams took a lot more time than the actual reading.

In further introspection, during the last week before the exhibition I was a part of (Which I actually haven't written about on the blog... I'll have to update you guys on that in a future entry. An exhibition with my classmates.), when I basically worked all day after school for a week straight, I felt the effects of stress much more keenly on an emotional level, because then I literally had no time left over for anything else. No free time in the evenings to wind down, which turns out is pretty important. It's not like I lost my ability to function properly, the inevitable venting was just a lot more compressed and intense.

Anyway, during these last few weeks, it seems the stress also affected my needs. Rather than blogging, or going to the gym, which is another thing I stopped doing during this time, I spent my time with simpler pleasures. Socializing, time with my girlfriend, or just doing pointless shit on my PC. I didn't have the need to be creative, to blog, or to spend time at the gym, I needed a solid base of entertainment to counteract the stress and time spent reading. I couldn't do everything, and I accepted that.

Under normal circumstances, these things would have bothered me. Not keeping up with my routines, like my gym "schedule" and updating my blog, these things would have bothered me. But sorry readers, during these last months, I haven't even thought about blogging. I haven't had time. I guess that's just proof blogging is a real hurri-sport :P I mean, when you have too much time on your hands, you need to occupy yourself with SOMETHING, right.

Anyway, that's all for now. While I feel that I've written a lot more about my personal life than is traditional for this blog, I don't feel I've written quite enough yet. These are interesting times, and I figured I would also let you readers take part of my university applications.