Rekindling the Inner Fire

I have spent much of the past few days in a blur. After writing my first exam on Monday and immediately coming home to frantically finalize Chris's residency application my brain seemed to shut down. On Wednesday, Thursday and Friday I arose early to see Chris off to work and then was confronted with the realization that I have a week before my next exam and nothing to look forward to but days of battling my longing to relax and procrastinate with my desire to excel in my remaining exams.

But each day the high performer in me seemed to slip further and further into the recesses. Even my inner procrastinator had lost motivation. The internet had become a tedium of information. Not even Facebook was providing me with mindless distraction. All I wanted to do was crawl under the covers and sleep for a month. I spent hours wondering where the overachieving Alicia of years past had disappeared to. While my motivation has taken a nose dive this semester it really has been years since the fires of ambition have burned as bright as they had in my teenage years. Is this a part of getting older? Is it a loss of optimisim and naivety that has squashed my desire to stand out and make a difference in the world? I like to think that I am softening as I approach my thirties. That I have mellowed into a wisdom that happiness doesn't come with being lauded for the accomplishment of extraordinary feats but rather the acknowledgement that there exist ordinary events in the every day that also deserve to be celebrated.

Even with this maturity I am not entirely conflict free. There is still a small inner voice screaming that my mellowing is simply masking the weakness that I will never accomplish all the dreams of my youth. So there is still a need to strike that balance between lazy nonchalance and health readjustment of expectations.