Feeling: Loose
Listening to: You're Pretty - "Pretending"
Reading/Watching: Terry Brooks, "Running With the Demon"

I need to tamp down these wild euphoric impulses and start concentrating again.

I am a big advocate of unfolding every once in a while and doing something unexpected, fun, reckless. "All work and no play, makes Meg a dull girl" etc. No one expects me to be a superhero, and I don't plan on it, so when I start to feel fried I do something calculated to give me a perspective about exactly how important this or that little test or class is.

I've been dragging my feet for a while, not liking the 20-hour courseload, wishing I could drop a class or take some time off or something, because it seems I keep procrastinating and losing sight of what a good night's sleep feels like.

Then Harry happened, and I had a really good reason to slack off and do irresponsible, fun things, like a kid with a new toy. But he wouldn't let me. He kept saying things like "Homework comes first," which from my parents would make me bristle and fly back with diatribes about how a life of drudgery isn't worth living, but from him, I smile, and want to kiss him for being so understanding.

Not going to say he's perfect, though. Our inability to say goodbye to each other is the cause of many of my late nights (not to mention the 2 a.m. phone calls... those are slightly less cute). But you didn't want to know that.

My problem is, maybe I've let myself slip too far. Because I'm beginning to get that very old, tight feeling in my stomach that says "You have too much to do and it's not going to be good enough so you should back out now."

I've given in to it twice before. Thought I was sacrificing my happiness for the sake of a grade, and let something go. I didn't regret it, but this is my junior year. Some of those dropped credits are starting to sting a bit, because I actually can't afford to do that any more. I'm not in trouble yet, I still won't need summer school in order to graduate as scheduled, but there can't be any more dropping and "I'll get to it later." This school is way too frickin' expensive for me to outlast my scholarships. I know that. It's a Sword of Damocles over my head.

...And how am I acknowledging this ever-present fact of life?

Well, today I skipped choir and english for the first time all year and went to IHOP with Bri, then shopping for goodies to make Halloween baskets for all our friends. We watched episodes of Gilmore Girls and Smallville at her apartment, and terrified her cat by having a screeching pillow fight with the couch cushions until we were laughing too hard to breathe and wound up laughing more because we couldn't stop laughing and didn't know what was so funny.

I try to be an adult, but there are times I need to act twelve. It felt really good to act twelve. Now that I've had a couple weeks of acting sixteen with Harry, and a day of acting twelve with Bri, I shall spend the rest of the month being twenty again, going to class, doing homework and whatnot. I promise.

I'm a smart girl. I'll figure things out. But by God, I'll have fun doing it.

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