Well, I don't daylog but I'm daylogging... here it goes!
I was listening to music as I always do while I'm at my computer, with random play through my 3000-song MP3 collection. Bruce Cockburn's classic "Lovers in a Dangerous Time" came up and one line caught my attention, more so than usual:
You've gotta kick at the darkness 'till it bleeds daylight
The violence of this imagery is quite striking, especially for one familiar with the pacifism of Cockburn's earlier work. Yet at the same time it seems so vibrantly true, especially when combined with the previous line "Nothing worth having comes without some kind of fight". This couplet seems to me the core of Cockburn's message, a terse and vivid image that ranks up with the best song lyrics of all time.
But this is a daylog, and it's supposed to be about me, not about Bruce Cockburn. I am currently in the final stages of my bachelor's degree in physics; in a little over a week I will be finished. This last term has been very difficult, in so many different ways. The coursework has been demanding, but if that were it I'd be just fine. But I've also had my honours laboratory and honours project to do, which are both a lot of work. This was really exacerbated by me not working on them between the middle of November and the last week of January, something that came back to bite me later. My honours project report is due next Thursday, which is an extension from last Monday. I finished making measurements last week (that is, to say, the last week of March), meaning that I started really working on the report two days before it was originally due. I also had one exam this week and will have two next week. So there is a lot of work ahead of me.
School wasn't the only thing that's happened so far this year, either. On a whim, back in January I started taking swing dance lessons with a club up at the university and while I was there I met this girl... Sufficent to say, I fell fast and I fell hard, and for the first time in my life it didn't quickly become clear that the interest was unrequited. We even went out for coffee once. But, eight weeks after it all began she made it clear to me that it was just as friends that that happened, as she was in fact seeing someone else beginning about the time we met. I got over this surprisingly quickly, considering my history (the last time I was rejected it took six weeks to really get over it, this time was closer to six hours), and with a wonderful boost to my confidence. (I was let down so gently that it didn't even really hurt). So this took time and attention away from school which desperately needed it.
I've also had to take care of my plans for next year, i.e. grad school. Filling applications, getting reference letters, and so on and so on, all of this needed to be done. In the end the choice was between the University of British Columbia and McGill University, and I officially decided to take a place at UBC on March 25. So that's one thing settled.
So what does all of this have to do with that Cockburn lyric? Well, about three weeks ago now I realised that I'd run out of steam. With everything I'd been doing, from schoolwork to dance lessons to grad school to several other important things, I'd exhausted all of my reserves and was left with a large pile of homework, exams, and my honours project to do. It became a struggle each day to do what was necessary and then get out of bed the next day. It was a fight, every step of the way (and I'm not finished yet...), and then I hear 'Nothing worth having comes without some kind of fight' and I think "Yep, that's true..."
Forgive my ramblings, I didn't intend to write so much...