A day like every day

The soundtrack of Pirate of the Caribbean starts. I reach over patting the bed next to me without opening my eyes trying to find my phone. Feeling the cold rectangle under my fingers I blindly hit it multiple times until the music stops. Blissful silence again, for exactly five minutes after which the song starts back up again this time louder. Groaning I pry my eyes open. Everything is blurry as I reach to the other side of the bed fumbling a second with putting my glasses on. The world was now suddenly available in crisp HD resolution. For a moment I just sat upright in bed staring at the middle distance while the soundtrack continued playing. I most definitely did not feel like a pirate today. Actually, I was kind of regretting putting it as my alarm, now I could never again listen to it without slightly cringing on the inside. I grabbed my phone and automatically swiped the alarm off while I stumbled into my kitchen.

The kettle whistled quietly as I listlessly scraped frozen butter onto my toast dreading the start of the day. It would be exactly the same as yesterday and the day before and the day before that. I’m sick and tired of it, I thought as I stirred my tea looking out at the flat grey sky. The weather did seem to want to change either, it was the same rainy and drab as ever around here. Sighing I turned on my laptop and entered the digital world that had been my life for what seemed like forever now.

I checked the little digital clock in the corner. 7:45. Brilliant, there’s still 15 minutes before the lecture starts. Muscle memory simultaneously opened up Reddit, Pinterest and YouTube on three different tabs and I worked my way through my morning routine of scrolling mindlessly while listening to the newest video that my favourite channel had just uploaded. My eye flitted down to the clock again. 8:03. Shit! I quickly closed all my tabs and opened up my uni login, go over to the online lecture theatre, cursing my laptop for being so slow at loading the screen, but then finally I was in and only like 5 minutes late. Not too bad, I just wish they didn’t display your name at the top of slides whenever you entered. It felt like the online equivalent of awkwardly making your way behind the lecturer to your seat. You know that most people don’t care, but still, it feels like everyone’s eyes are on you.

The lecture went on like so many before. I sipped at my tea trying to keep my eyes open. It’s way too early for this. None of the information seemed to penetrate the fog of sleep still lingering in my head. Thankfully this was the only live lecture for today. All the others were recorded. After 50 minutes or so the professor tried to get some questions from us without much luck. Muted and cameras turned off I knew some of my classmates had probably already fallen back asleep.

I spent the next three hours trying to comprehend my recorded lectures and then somehow try to make physical notes from them. It was the only way I could concentrate on them, otherwise I very quickly found my attention drifting this way and that. The familiar dull headache had already started and I had barely stared on today’s work, I thought, desperately rubbing my temples. Leaning back and straightening in my chair I felt my spine crack from being bent over my small desk for so long. I really should stand up more. My stomach gave a disgruntled rumble. Ah, yes, lunch. The kitchen yielded little, but I came back to the digital realm with an apple and a bowl of pretzels. That’s lunch, right?

I decided that for a change of pace I would try answering past paper questions instead of trying to make sense of more recordings. This helped for a bit, at least it was something different. After about question 20, I noticed that I had been reading the same line over and over again for about the sixth time. From experience, I knew it was useless to continue studying from this point. I needed a break, so I quickly loaded up Darkest Dungeon while continuing to snack on my pretzels. The game ended up both stressing out my adventurers and myself. I just haven’t seemed to have much luck lately and my people kept dying. I closed the game frustrated and opened Instagram. At least there was no wrong way to scroll through my feed. As always it was mildly entertaining, at least it took my mind off of the pathetic failure of a dungeon that I had just done.

I checked the clock. I’ve been on break for over an hour! That can’t be, I thought. Time is so unfair, crawling by when you want things to just be over and speeding by when you get even the slightest break. Back to work, I guessed, feeling not even the slightest shred of motivation. And I used to love this course, I sighed internally as I brought up another recording. The words and sounds started to blur together but I was slowly writing noted down, so hopefully, something must be going into my head.

A zoom meeting link popped up in a group chat. Is it Wednesday already? I checked my calendar as I rubbed my eyes a little, they were starting to burn. I had completely lost track of time; I barely even knew whether it was May or June so don’t even get me started on what the day was.

I opened the link and stared at my own tired expression in the camera check before the meeting. I looked terrible, my hair was sticking out at all angles, I seemed to have permanent bags under my eyes and I only just noticed that I hadn’t even changed out of my PJs. Whatever, no one cares anymore. I made some attempt to order my hair before joining the meeting. Six similarly tired faces looked back at me. We all made various amounts of effort to smile and ask everyone how they had been doing. Everyone replied with the same “Oh, just fine” as they do every week. We must have ended up talking about something but I have to be honest I mostly just zoned out as I stared at my screen, it was getting harder and harder to see it. My head felt like it was properly splitting apart now, but I still forced on a smile as we said our goodbyes. The call shut off and I blinked several times trying to sooth my poor eyes. There was a horrible glare on my screen. Looking away from the screen it took a moment for me to grasp the rest of the world. Somehow it was surreal to see things in actual 3D. It took me some to realise where the glare was coming from. The sun was shining through the window behind me. I turned my aching head in disbelief and slowly made my way to the back garden. Closing my eyes I just focused on the warm rays hitting my skin, the gentle evening breeze rustled through my hair as I stood there in my pyjamas and somehow I knew that despite how things are now: This too like all things, shall pass.