Getting Stuff Done

Ah Life! It never stops does it? It doesn’t stop for contemplation. It doesn’t stop for downtime, sleeping in, or chilling out. It doesn’t stop for dealing with emotions, grief, sadness, or struggle. It doesn’t stop for joy, excitement, or happiness. It keeps moving, chugging along, racing past, whether you care to be a part of it or not.

That’s where I find myself at the moment. Trying to keep up; trying to hold on to this amazing life that is whizzing past me.

Here’s my situation: I am a university senior, and by senior I mean a fifth year who is graduating, and I must say, I am ready to go.

Don’t get me wrong, I love my school and I have had an incredible university experience, but I am ready to move on with whatever is next in my life. We all know what it’s like when the end is in sight. It’s like it’s right there within our grasp, yet still, so far away – there is still so much to do before we actually reach the end.

Graduation is so close; I am already practicing moving my little tassel from the left side of my cap to the right. The hard part though is that I seem to have come down with what appears to be an incurable illness: Senioritis.

Senioritis causes students who are in their final year to suffer from a bad case of the lazies and struggle to accomplish any sort of work.

Assignments fly by without notice, meetings go unmet, and grades begin to plummet.

Unfortunately, my class schedule this semester is frustrating – my classes are either way too easy or way too difficult, and I’m finding myself without a set routine, thus leaving me kind of floating in this lovely little vortex of nothingness.

To top off my seemingly incurable senioritis, I have also had to deal with some emotional trouble over the past month. The loss of a young girl who I used to coach for volleyball hit me really hard and I struggled with some serious questions of life and fairness. I allowed the grief to come, the tears to come, and the questions to come. However, I recently came to a conclusion that I have come to many many times before:

No matter what is going on in life, it still moves forward.

In our lives we encounter speed bumps and rocky patches that make the daily activities difficult to cope with. Personally, I have had trouble getting out of bed in the morning; I would rather the days not come than to have to deal with my responsibilities and obligations.

The problem with that is that while I am lying in bed, the world keeps turning.

And there are other people out there, just like me, who have gotten out of bed and have faced their day.

As of last week, I have chosen to do the same. No matter my responsibilities or my fatigue, or even how comfortable my bed is, I am going to get up and get things done. In fact, I have a board on my wall that says, “Get out of bed. Quit your whining. Get [stuff] done”. (I definitely substituted the stuff for an expletive that motivates me way more!)

So here’s to getting out of bed, working hard at what we do, and not letting the world go by without us because no matter what we choose to do, time is going to carry on whether we use it or not.

Taylor Hall

Taylor writes on relationships, depression, and general mental health.