If you know me, you know that my Google Calendar is a mess. Each hour is blocked off in one-hour increments, all in the same shade of beach-towel blue. Readings for Gov. Rehearsal. Gym. Lunch with friends. Write discussion post. It all ends up looking like one giant day-long block. 9am-10pm. 11 hours. No breaks.
There is not much room for error. One time block gets missed, and it gets pushed to the end of the day. Suddenly, I’m up past midnight. My resolutions I set at the beginning of the term get thrown out of whack. Forget about exercising every day.
It’s only Week 3, though, and I still have some semblance of a routine. When my room is messy, I clean it. When I feel like I’m in a rut, I text a friend. Yet, I have a lingering sense that maybe there’s a reason I never end up sticking to my goals. Are they unrealistic? Not conducive to the ever-changing nature of a term?
I think I found my answer over the weekend. This was the perfect time to get ahead of all the things I needed to do. Finally, I could give myself the time to complete my tasks.
As it happens, over this three-day break, I did not do a single thing I needed to do.
I made a point during this stretch of free time to, in fact, do things that were unproductive. I curled into my twin bed and rewatched “Heated Rivalry.” I ate salty chips and tangy salsa at Tacos Y Tequila two times in four days. I mowed through fresh snow all the way to Woodstock just to eat a crunchwrap dupe and skate on the bumpy ice of its outdoor town rink. As I’m settling back on campus in this polar vortex, I’m realizing that while I have some sense of impending doom — I did not stick to my start-of-term resolutions this weekend — that doom is almost a sigh of relief. Like I was pulled away from the black hole of being on a schedule.
I will not deny that my Google Calendar is an eyesore. But its messiness is a nice reminder that as much as I try to stay organized, setting aside work for an intramural hockey game or two isn’t the end of the world. After all, the nice thing about those little blue time blocks is that you can always move them.
This week in Mirror, following the emotional ups and downs of winter rush, a writer talks to Rho Gams about mentoring those rushing. Another writer attends the Andrew Leland reading, and one student writes about something many Dartmouth students will consider a necessity this weekend: frackets. Lastly, Eli and I give some advice on a heated topic in this week’s Freak of the Week column.
Happy Week 3, Mirror! If anyone’s free, maybe I could get a workshop on actually color coding my Gcal.
