Showing posts with label writing. Show all posts

To make up for my silence these past couple of months, I'm linking to some of the things I've written for the YU Beacon recently.

On Monday, I sat behind a table with a poster bearing the title "Creative Writing & Poetry Club" and a sign up sheet right next to it. It was the annual Stern College Club Fair, and I was there as the president of the Creative Writing & Poetry Club. My mind flashed back to last September, a year ago, when I was a freshman and had stayed late in Stern after classes to wander through the Club Fair. I had signed up then for a number of things -- so many clubs and organizations caught my attention. I also clearly remember the Creative Writing & Poetry Club's table and talking to the president about the club. And this year, there I was. President.

Choices are not easy to begin with; you have to live with your choice and it can completely change the direction of your life, whether for good or bad. But at some point you feel ready to make that choice, because after much deliberation you have reached the conclusion that it is what is best for you. You've agonized, spent sleepless nights thinking, scrutinized all the choices before you, spoken to people who would understand where you're coming from. And you're ready. You're ready for yourself.

It is written in corners of pages

Always at the very back of notebooks

A place none but I flip through

A truth none but I see.



It is drawn in the margins

So small it is barely seen

So insignificant it never matters

To none but to me.

Hello fellow bloggers,

I was browsing a Jewish classifieds website today, looking for a possible part-time job opportunity. Truthfully, I don't have that much time in my schedule right now, especially with midterms coming up this week and all the other work that has been piled on, but my usual reaction to discovering that I don't have the money to permit myself even a cheap shopping trip is to start looking for sources of income. As I was looking at the different ads, once caught my eye. The title was "Writers needed." Perfect, I thought. I'm a writer, and writing gigs are generally short and sweet and convenient. So I read on. This is what the ad said:

The Jewish Press recently published a piece I wrote, which was inspired by my transition from a high school student to a college student studying in the heart of Manhattan.

Read it here.

In life, you want to have progress. You want to continue to always get better at what you do and work harder and achieve more. But sometimes, no matter how much you want it, it's difficult and you become frustrated because you just don't know what to do. Well, that's how I feel right now about my creativity.

People ask me what I'm doing and how I'm doing in Stern, and my first reply is always in the form of a huge smile -- because I'm doing great. Since classes started again after Sukkot, there has been so much going on that I barely have time to breathe. In addition to the six classes I am taking this semester, I signed up for a whole load of clubs and events and activities, filling up almost every free minute of every day. It only caught up to me now during midterms, when I have a few subjects to study for and a couple of papers to write (one of which will be six pages long) and 100-page readings on topics such as "Time, Work Discipline, and Industrial Capitalism" and "The World the Slaves Made." Those long readings will eventually translate into long papers to write. But despite the length of my to-do list, I am having the time of my life right now.

Juniors and seniors always seem surprised when, in reply to their questions, I say that my freshman year is going great so far and I'm loving it. They also seem surprised that I actually know what I'm going for -- English major, art history minor. I, on the other hand, am always surprised to hear that many students don't yet know what they would like to major in. I would have thought that the direction you want to take career-wise would influence which college you choose, since different colleges have different strengths and weaknesses, but oh well. I suppose they will eventually know what they're doing. (But there are always those people who never really know and end up going back and forth between different fields.)

Apart from academics, I have been having a lot of fun in Stern getting involved in all these amazing clubs and going to various events. I just became a board member of the Creative Writing and Poetry Club, which had its first event of the year earlier this month -- a discussion on Shakespeare and Milton as dissidents. Future events might include readings, workshops, and poetry slams, so it's going to be absolutely awesome! I am also involved in the Stern College Dramatics Society's production of Pirates of Penzance, which is going to be a blast. The result is that I often come home late, since I commute. The benefit of commuting is that I have 40 uninterrupted minutes each way in which to do homework, reading assignments, and studying for exams.

Aside from that, I am going to start writing for Stern's official student paper, The Observer. Actually, there is a deadline coming up right after midterms so I might want to start writing. And speaking of The Observer, I was mentioned on the front page of the October issue since I was one of the Dean's Scholars who received a free laptop at orientation.

Just in case everything else I'm doing now is not enough, I am also in the process of becoming a docent at the Yeshiva University Museum on West 16th, so I hope to see some of you. I went to the YU Museum this past summer to see the Braginsky collection, which was on display for a limited time and is unfortunately no longer there. It was kind of surreal and so incredibly meaningful. One of the manuscripts on display was a handwritten one by the Vilna Gaon, and I could not tear myself away from it. The exhibits at the YU Museum change all the time, so there is always something new to see. As a docent, every time there is a new exhibit I will have to attend a training and get to learn all about it, so that should be fun!

Yesterday, the art club had a scavenger hunt at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Although I had been there many times over the past few years, this was a completely different experience because instead of focusing on one gallery at a time and examining each piece of art separately or lingering by the ones I found the most interesting, we were hurrying through all the galleries and covering most of the museum. We were going back and forth between the modern art, European art, Egyptian, and Greek and Roman and trying to find the answers to all the scavenger hunt clues in our booklets. That definitely gave me a new perspective on the Met, so it was fun.

Oh, and YU has a Russian club! I was actually pretty surprised at how many Russian students there are in Stern. I absolutely love those "whoa-are-you-Russian-too?" moments that I've been experiencing a lot lately. Even one of the ladies working in the caf is Russian! She actually complimented me on my Russian.

By the way, Stern is having an open house on November 14th, so anyone applying to college for next year should definitely come! I want to write up a post about Stern and my experiences here so far for prospective students, so look out for that. :] And meanwhile, if you have any questions you can feel free to comment below or to send me an email at myinkstainedhands [AT] gmail [DOT] com.

Tisha B'Av is a time of mourning and sadness for the Jewish people, but its message is also one of hope and redemption. Knowing what led to the tragedy which we now mourn, we also have the power to prevent more suffering by striving to fix the mistake which led to the destruction of our beloved Beit HaMikdash. It is time to replace baseless hatred with love and to reach out to one another.

Perhaps it is fitting then that a piece written by me about the unity and love I witnessed at the Salute to Israel parade was just published by The Jewish Press. I think that is the message we need to focus on now. Unity and love should not just be reserved for a parade that happens once a year or for the occasional demonstrations in NYC. It should be a way of life.

You can read the piece in the June 16 edition of The Jewish Press or view it online.

Wishing all of my readers an easy and meaningful fast, as well as the strength to rise above the negative emotions that seem to come so easily and to focus instead on the positive, even when it is difficult.

I found this little piece from March 2008 in one of my notebooks, and I thought I might share it in honor of my reaching the 100 mark. It has also just been published on Teen Ink's website (Teen Ink is a magazine by teens and for teens), and if you are so inclined, you can vote for it here. One vote is allowed per day. Apparently, the more votes I get the higher my story will be ranked, so that sounds cool.

~

My ink stained hands, pure white with smudged black puddles covering the fingertips, are the finest poetry I have ever beheld. They tell of far away mountains, impossible romances, the racing of the heart as it is exposed to the most beautiful work of art. They are witness to those many late hours spent dreaming, writing, creating, and being inspired as I inhale the intoxicating perfume of the ink. They caress the paper in imitation of the paintbrush that tenderly kisses the canvas before it. These black, dirty fingers glow in my eyes like the darkest obsidian, hinting to unexplored depths in its impenetrable darkness – to eternity.

I see midnight skies, the mysteries of their unattainable spheres bewitching me as I hold my breath. I see passion – brilliant, maddening, beautiful – in the intimate way the quill rests between my fingers, everything covered in ink.


There is beauty in that stain left behind by the completion of a beautiful verse, and there is poetry in the blemish covering my index finger like the most faultless rhyme. There is enchantment in the way the ink smoothly flows out, seductively posing on the lines of the paper. The very wind races, spurred on by the magic.

Its very blackness is the sunlight at dawn, rising to illuminate the world. It is the happiness that suffuses the heart, making life worth living. What drug can be so presumptuous as to claim to be more entrancing than the art of the writer or more exhilarating than the fragrance of that ink, set on paper in elaborate swirls and smeared all over my fingers in shapeless blotches? This is the immortality we so desperately seek and the bewitchment we have been dreaming of unraveling and possessing.

When I began this blog in April of 2009, I was not sure how far it would go. But now, after less than a year, here I am with my 100th post!

A huge thank you to my readers and to those who comment. Feedback is always appreciated, and I love when my posts provoke a discussion. I have no problem just writing everything with pen and paper, but when I know that I have an audience here, it encourages me to share more of my thoughts and ideas in hopes that it will be helpful, informative, interesting, or entertaining to someone. So thank you for being my audience.

I suppose that the next goal is to reach 200!

Check out the latest issue of The Jewish Press (January 8, 2010) for a story written by yours truly.

You can also read it online.

Part of blogging is letting a large audience of strangers into your world -- your life, your mind, your thoughts. It is sharing a part of yourself with people you have never met or heard of, in the hope that your writing will put a smile on someone's face, teach someone an idea he/she had never heard of but finds interesting, inspire a person, or show them that they are not alone in feeling or thinking a certain way.

But opening yourself up to this vast, unidentified audience also has its drawbacks, such as a loss of privacy to a certain degree. In fact, one of the things people have said to me in trying to expose the 'evils' of blogging was, "Why would you want your life to be out there for everyone to see? Why do all these people and strangers have to know this about you?"

Well, first of all, this is not my whole life. I am quite selective about what I put up on my blog, and I have often started or planned blog posts that never materialized only because I decided that the subject was unnecessary for me to share.

Also, I choose to share some thoughts or happenings because I hope others might benefit from it. It might open new channels of thought, provide them with information or inspiration, or help them come to terms with things in their own lives because they see that they are not alone in some of their doubts, frustrations, thoughts, or emotions. And, of course, it might on occasion provide people with some much-needed entertainment after a long, hard, or boring day. I personally love reading blogs when I feel stressed because it helps take my mind off things and sometimes even makes me smile. And if one of my anecdotes about my life does that for someone else, then it's worth it.

One of the interesting things about blogging though is that you are tricked into feeling that you know the author of the blog when, in reality, you are only skimming the surface. When I blog, I am not putting my life out there. My life is not a book or a movie for others to jump into. I will not give you detailed stories about my day (unless there is something highly interesting I can relate or I am in a foreign country and feel as if I already am a character in a story). I will not tell you what I am thinking about now or what I have been struggling with the entire weekend. Unfortunately though, some people assume that because I have a blog I have no more privacy left; that my personal life is on display and I am making a story out of my feelings. I am a writer, and that is how I express myself, but that does not mean that everyone has to see it. Those who care to observe me (or simply cannot help noticing) will see that I am constantly writing in notebooks. I write pages and pages about my life and what I am experiencing, and not even a tenth of that ends up on my blog. I know quite well how to maintain my privacy.

Sometimes, when I read other blogs, I think, "This is getting kind of personal... How is he/she comfortable with sharing so much?" But obviously, for every one thing that a blogger shares, there is another one or two or even twenty that he/she does not allow you to see. It is all a matter of deciding what you want to make public and what needs to be kept to yourself.

Another thing that is important is not only knowing how to maintain your privacy but knowing how to respect that of others. There are many bloggers who are anonymous and can freely write about their families and friends because nobody knows who they are anyway. It seems as if they have a license to write whatever they want because of their anonymity. I, on the other hand, am somewhat limited in what I can write about. My family reads my blog, as do my friends, and I cannot write much about them because I never know what they might object to, and people will read it and know who I am talking about. So for the most part, I am limited to writing about myself and about unrecognizable acquaintances or strangers (and of course ideas).

But even when I write about myself, it is not quite enough to let other people know me as a person. It will give my readers little snippets here and there as well as some general ideas about who I am and what I care about, but that is about it. In order to get to know me, you would have to actually talk to me and develop a personal connection. You would have to get to know me not as inkstainedhands, but as Hannah.

Conversely, I feel that those of my friends who do not read my blog do not know a certain side of me. One of the reasons I keep a blog is that there are messages and thoughts that I would like to discuss and put out there that I would be unable to bring up in casual conversation. There are so many things I want to let other people know and I want to talk about, but it is impossible to do so face to face. What I write about is important to me and it is a part of who I am, but even my closest friends would be completely unaware of it if they do not see my blog or my writing. I feel more comfortable expressing myself through writing, so a lot of who I am is contained in it.

It is all summed up quite nicely by a remark one of my friends recently made: "There is a lot more to you than meets the eye." That applies to each and every one of us. We are complex and human, and it takes a lot of effort to get to know each person. It is not so easy as reading a blog, nor is it as simple as being my friend.

The bottom line is that in order to know me more closely you would have to both get to know me through my writing and as a friend, because each of those paths will lead you to a different side of me, which combined make Hannah Rozenblat.

Now that's a good title for a blog post written by a girl who just turned 18, isn't it? But I'll explain. ;]


A lot of people have been asking me how my writing is going. Well... um... how do I say this? It sometimes goes and it sometimes just does not go. (For some reason, the former was the case more often in the past few months.) I am working on some short stories now as well as school writing assignments, but I don't feel that surge of creativity as often when it comes to words.


But I like to feel as if I've done something creative recently and I want to have what to show for my effort, so for now I am focusing on my artwork. I have a few pieces hanging in my school's hallway that I did for an art class assignment, which I would love to take a picture of and post here once I get them back. For now though, I have a picture of another assignment. We were told to make a colorful ketuba (without the text, just with the first letter), and I decided to have a little fun with mine.





The brown background is just the back of my drawing pad, not part of the ketuba.


Here's a closeup of the gold detail on the yellow arch at the top:





I loved using that gold marker -- it just made everything more interesting and sparkly. The same goes for the silver sharpie, although that was being very moody, often refusing to cooperate. But since nothing ever goes exactly how you think it will, something was bound to happen, since I was having too much of a good time with the gold and silver. What happened? Oh, just a slight mishap which left my skirt, my hands, and a pile of papers on my desk covered in little drops of gold and silver. I actually found it very amusing. Much water, soap, and scrubbing was later involved in trying to get rid of the sparkly stuff on my hands, but traces of it are still there, so I now sparkle! Lesson for the future -- there is a reason why the instructions always say to shake the marker with the cap on! Ah well, it was fun. :]

One of the things that always used to frustrate me about Jane Austen's books was the fact that their endings were invariably happy and immaculate. She would tie up all the loose ends, write out in the last page or two exactly what happened to each of the characters (and obviously, only good things happened to the heroes, while the less-than-stellar characters would simply live unhappy lives or something of that sort). I felt that some of her books just lacked depth. Don't get me wrong; I thoroughly enjoyed reading them and there are some that I can read over and over, and they leave me with a smile on my face, but when I think about it, I feel something is missing... and that's reality.

Not all endings are happy. In fact, many of them are quite the opposite. Those who are good and strive to make the world a better place are often the ones who are left heartbroken and have the bitter endings. Characters who should logically live happily ever after because they 'deserve' it often find that life doesn't work that way in reality.

That is something I occasionally struggle with when I am writing fiction. Will I write a tale of hope and redemption, with a happily-ever-after ending, or will my hero die alone somewhere in a ditch, abandoned and broken-hearted? Will my hero learn the hard way that life isn't usually what you want it to be? And if he does, will he afterwards learn that life can also be worthwhile and rewarding, or will he then be disappointed yet again and his hopes dashed? I so wish for my hero to have a happy ending and to see that life can be good and there is still some goodness left in mankind to counter all the ugliness, but what are the chances?

All I know is that the main character of the short story I am currently writing will die under the moon-lit night sky, heartbroken and betrayed.

I thought I had decided on the fate of my novel's hero too, but now I am not so sure.... My novels cannot have fairytale/Jane Austen endings.

I was thinking about happy endings versus sad endings before, but today is the first of November and therefore the beginning of NaNoWriMo, so I had to make some decisions.

Anyway.... Back to my avalanche of school-related assignments. I am a bit amused though at how I did not blog for a few weeks and then -- BAM! -- I started writing one post after another. When it rains, it pours.

I see that over a month has passed since I made my last blog post on September 18th, in honor of Rosh Hashana. So where have I been all this time? I could give all kinds of excuses.... My rats hijacked my keyboard, I was too busy to post, I was preoccupied by this thing called real life, etc. All of these excuses have some truth in them, but none of them are THE answer (although Mr. Knightley did just jump onto my computer desk and start trampling on the keyboard).

Speaking of my rats, I have introduced them to a few of my friends, all of whom were delighted to meet them. I got to say, "Told you they were cute," on a few different occasions, so that was nice. Some of my friends who declared that they would never come to my house again if I got rats actually fell in love with the creatures as soon as they met them.

So, what else have I been up to in the past few weeks? School has obviously been keeping me busy, but I also managed to keep myself well occupied during Sukkot. After weeks of doing what my sense of responsibility told me to do, it was nice to relax and do what I wanted to do. I took full advantage of my one and a half weeks of Sukkot vacation by visiting the Frick Collection, going to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and seeing Hamlet on Broadway, among other things. I cannot help but smile every time I think of that week. And for now, I will have to rely on those memories to bring a smile to my face, because it does not look as if I will have any more time for that sort of thing until the end of November, after midterms.

People have been asking me about my writing and how that is going. Well, to tell the truth, it's not really going. I have been more involved in art and drawing the past couple of months. I did write a few quick dialogues in the form of poems, but that was simply for fun after an overdose of Shakespeare. I also finished a few books, some of which I considered blogging about. Perhaps once I have more time, I will do so. I also hope that my writing will pick up its pace in November with NaNoWriMo. I'm still working on one of my novels from 2007, but I would also like to start a new one on a completely different topic, with a Jewish theme for once.

I just wanted to update everyone, because otherwise it looks as if I disappeared for no reason. Hopefully there won't be such a large gap again between this post and the next.

I have been thinking of a few blog posts I wanted to make before Rosh Hashana, but it seems as if I will start off with something completely unplanned. I was tagged by BTS for the superpower meme, which I see almost everyone has already posted by now.

The rules are as follows:

Rule number 1: Read the rules.
Rule number 2: Write one superpower you would like to have and what you would do with it.
Rule number 3: Write why you chose that super power over everything else.
Rule number 4: Tag and link 7 people, and write why you think they will have an interesting meme.
Rule number 5: fix your broken links.

This is one of those memes that I just feel useless in attempting. I mean, I've gotten the hang of life. I know for the most part what my abilities are, and I try to use them to the best of my ability. I used to spend a lot of time dreaming about a more ideal me and a more ideal world, in which I would be capable of knowing and doing more. Daydreaming is a powerful thing -- it sometimes convinces you that impossible things are a reality, and although you consciously know that it is impossible, there is still this small subconscious part of you that says, "It's true, it's possible, this dream can be a reality." The descent to earth and to true reality then becomes even more difficult when it must be done.

So I try not to dwell on the abilities I only wish I had. I want to make the reality work. Perhaps that is why when BTS tagged me, my first reaction was, "Oh no, not this meme. I don't want superpowers. I just want to be the best that I can actually be."

If I had been asked this as a child, I would immediately list a dozen superpowers I would like to have. But now, it is not at all something I would want.

So while I am still doing this meme, it is going to be less about 'superpowers' and more about actual abilities.

Since Rosh Hashana is coming up, the correct thing to say would be to say something nice and fluffy about how I want to be a perfect Jew and be able to immediately know what is sinful and what is not and to refrain from sinning. But I'm not going to say that, because perfection does not appeal to me.

I suppose that the ability I would most like to have would be to understand people and their motives thoroughly.

BTS wrote that he would like to have organized information on every single person, and BoSD wrote that she wants to be able to "get a glimpse into the minds of other people" so she could understand them better, be more sensitive to them, and not hurt anyone unintentionally. Shlomo's post was along those lines as well, although he went off on a tangent about Jews and Nietzsche, and when he finally wrote what abilities he would like to have, it was to read minds and manipulate them. So we have the spy, the sweet blob, and the manipulative Israeli, all wishing for similar superpowers. And here enters the writer, with a similar wish, for completely different purposes.

I would like to see people's intentions -- why they do the things they do. I would like to understand their thought processes, whether they lead to good actions or to crimes, and I want to be able to see the world from their point of view, so that I could create realistic, human characters based on them. I want my characters to have depth and complexity, so my readers should connect to them whether the characters are generally perceived by society as 'good' or as 'bad'. I suppose I want to do away with those terms entirely; I want my characters to be not good or bad, but human -- to be real, since that is perhaps one of the greatest things a writer can achieve.

That sounds like it can be easily solved by majoring in psychology. The truth though is that although I can study psychology as much as I want, the ability to see every facet of a person's mind and heart is impossible for us mere mortals. So that is why I am writing this down as the 'superpower' I would most like to have.

And now, for the tagging. This is proving to be a bit tricky, especially since Google Reader greeted me this morning by informing me that there were nearly thirty new blog posts, a large amount of which were for this meme, so there are few people left to tag. So here are the people I am tagging:

Subwife, because she sounds pretty stressed in her posts about work, and I would like to see if she wishes she could make people just disappear.

Dina, because I would like to see what she would do to the world with her superpowers.

Oh, and BTS asked when he tagged me, "so what did you write in your private diary today, Hannah?"

All kinds of fascinating things. :]

I realized I have not written any works of fiction in the past couple of months. I have not made any progress on the book I've been working on for a while either.

Perhaps later, once I sort my own life out and commit it to writing, I might take better care of my fictional characters. But for now, I have enough of my own experiences to work with that I need not resort to them and their lives.

I suspect that when school starts I will come running back to my fictional characters, escaping into their world as I sit somewhere on a staircase or in a library during breaks, trying to ignore the noise and the chaos around me. I noticed that I often do that in school -- just immerse myself in my writing, in the lives of my characters, and escape for a bit.

But for now, I must face my own life and contemplate it thoroughly.

By the time you read this scheduled post, I will be on the airplane to Israel, hopefully amusing myself with books, writing, and music. So I thought I might as well amuse you at the same time with something I found when I was searching for unfinished stories to work on. (And who knows? Perhaps you will amuse me too by leaving comments, which I will read once I get to Israel, jetlagged and exhausted.)

This is from November 2008, and it gives a general idea of what my evenings and nights are like during the school year.

~~~

The view as I look out the window is a bleak one; all I can see is blackness and nothing else. It is as though the world has been put on pause, and all the living creatures are frozen somewhere in their homes, away from my eyes.

My turtles, however, continue to splash in their aquariums, their shells often hitting the glass with a thud as they swim about. As the female comes up to the surface of the water for a breath of air, she gives out a slow whistle. My eyesight being somewhat fuzzy without my glasses, I cannot see her very well, but I clearly hear every sound she emits. The male turtle, for his part, leans against the raised stone platform in his aquarium, his limbs tucked into his shell comfortable. As much as I stare at him, I do not see him move more than a centimeter. Such is the usual order of things; the female does not sit still for a moment, while the male is always calm and relaxed.

Don’t they ever get tired? I wonder, my own eyes drifting shut and then hastily opening up again. Especially Chapa. If I moved as much as she does instead of sitting all day in the same spot, I would be even more tired than I am now, and that’s saying something. From where does she get all that energy without drinking coffee?

Coffee is, as some would say, my drug of choice. It is the remedy for a late night combined with an early morning, its hotness soothes a sore throat, and I somehow find a reason for it at every moment of my life. Now, as I am sitting and looking at my watch, which reads that it is past one in the morning, I think about my morning coffee. I calculate how early I will have to wake up to have time to have a coffee at home before running out the door to go somewhere. Fortunately, it is the weekend and I do not have to worry about getting to school on time, so I am able to sleep in a few hours later than I normally am able to do.

I have a few scenarios in my mind of what would happen if I ever missed my morning cup of coffee; most of those mental images are based on things that happened in the past, when I was both sleep deprived and caffeine deprived. Needless to say, I would not wish to repeat any of those experiences, so I diligently prepare and drink the same black coffee every morning.

My eyes turn back to my turtles, both of whom now seem to be resting.

It’s about time, I think to myself. I mean, you can’t just play, play, play all day. There’s got to be some time in there set aside for resting and grabbing a few hours of sleep.

I squint, trying to make out Tyapa’s facial expression. I am pretty sure that his eyes are still open, so he can’t be sleeping. His perfectly still body could have fooled me, though.

Another sound reaches my ears; deep snoring is emanating from the door leading to another room. I smile slightly, imagining my adorably chubby pug curled up on his blanket, sleeping and snoring. The snoring part, however, I don’t have to imagine, for I am able to hear it perfectly well from where I’m sitting. Pugs have this tiny little button of a nose, which causes their breathing and snoring to be often louder than that of other dogs – not that I mind. On the contrary, I find it absolutely cute that my dog snores like that. It does not compare to the other comical sounds he makes, though, like yapping at something to which he objects or whining in frustration when he cannot get the door to open so he can run free through the house, wrecking everything in his path. That little cutie pie can be dangerous when let loose, and that I know from experience.

I yawn, my eyes closing up and desiring to remain closed. Not heeding their pleas, I wrench them open again and continue to write in my journal, racing against the clock and hoping to go to sleep before two.

Fondly, I remember those few days when I went to sleep once the sun rose. I still do that sometimes, although not as often as in the summer. School does not allow for such luxuries; time becomes precious and every minute matters. Did you know that if you put your brain to the task, you can memorize a simple mathematical formula in only a minute? And yet, it can take as long as five minutes to apply it to a problem on an exam and a further five minutes to actually solve the problem? Then there is always that moment of panic when you realize that you have less than two minutes to complete your exam, but you have more than five examples left to solve. Those two minutes are of the utmost importance, for they can very often be the deciding factor between a passing and a failing grade.

When you need the time most, that is when you feel it is most unavailable to you, but when you do not need it to accomplish anything, it stretches on until you wish you could kill it. Many, indeed, attempt to do so. I often hear people saying that they “killed time” by doing certain things such as watching television or movies, going shopping, or eating three different snacks on a full stomach. What a slow, agonizing death for Time. Why, I almost feel sorry for it.

At the same time, I cannot help but worry for myself. As my friends are not here to help me kill time, the natural result is that I sink into thought. That, my friends, is often an even more dangerous hobby than killing time, for it conjures negative memories, fears of the future, and other such terrible things that end up keeping you up at night, worried about life.

I wonder, What are other girls my age doing? Are they killing time, blissfully unaware of all these thoughts floating around?

I, too, have the opportunity to make myself blissfully unaware of what is going on in life. Sleep smudges reality, blurs the line between the possible and the impossible, and erases some of the pain that is otherwise part of your existence.

Sleep, then, is what I want to do now.