Tips From A PROcrastinator

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Welcome back from winter break, everyone, and hello to our new friends who have joined the AP Lit blogging game. As I’ve stated before, my blog is kind of a mess without any one central theme, but I will always do my best to make these pieces interesting…or at least, I try to. You see, even with my heart in the right place and despite my love for the catharsis of blogging, I can never start these godforsaken things on time. I am always either forgetting a due date or being too busy or just generally having no idea what to write about. I know it is a new year, but I’m still the same old me and I’m not so much of a hypocrite to force advice onto you that I don’t even follow myself, so here you have it folks: my most tried and true tips for maximizing your procrastination.

1. Download lots of “meaningful” games on your phone.

Now, this tip may seem obvious, but you would be surprised how important that fourth word is. Choosing a task that is actually engaging to you will stop yourself from becoming bored and moving on to other games which may also disengage, and god forbid actually bore you into doing your work. If all else fails and you cannot find anything better to do online, try not to forget the built-in anti-productivity games every human comes equipped to do. My personal favorites include seeing how long you can hold your breath for, saying the alphabet backward, making up histories of the people around you, or even just mindlessly dancing around. It doesn’t matter if you’re having fun at this point, as long as you’re not doing your work, in my book, you’re succeeding.

2. Trick yourself into thinking you’re being productive.

Though it’s decidedly a bit meta, making yourself believe your procrastination is actually helpful can help to ease the guilt of wasting your life away and the total panic of destroying your grades. Maybe make lists of all the things you need to do, maybe categorize what all you’d like to buy from the grocery store, or even just learn how to change a tire–you never know when that might save your day! (How can you expect me to do school work when I could be learning the skills which might one day save my life???) You’ll both be doing something AND avoiding the undesirable something else. Whoever said procrastination wasn’t useful?

3. Contemplate the meaning of life and the inevitability of your own demise.

AHHHHHHHHHHHHH! Work is futile, death is inevitable. Streak naked in the streets, kiss your loved ones. Pray to your gods.

4. Don’t worry about it.

Historically, procrastination has been a brand of laziness and unworthiness, HOWEVER, in recent years there has been some research to come out saying that procrastination is actually very beneficial to the staller. It allows you to examine your priorities, become more creative, unconsciously process and streamline the task, and eventually act coherently and confidently in one fell swoop of efficiency. In all honesty, this one grade or assignment does not have the power to totally tank your grade, so take a deep breath and relax. Nothing is worth the sacrifice of your mental health. 

[Bonus pro tip: If people are accusing you of being “lazy” and “inefficient” or you’re just generally tired of forcing yourself to do half-baked assignments at the last minute, just remember that procrastinating is defined as the act of delaying or stalling; so it goes to argue that if you never actually complete that task of deliberation, you never procrastinated.]

Well, folks, at the cost of ever having this blog sponsored by the school (a girl can hope), there you have it–my favorite tips for procrastination. In all honesty, procrastination can be extremely serious and not at all worth it, but if you’re committed to doing it, please  ̶d̶r̶i̶n̶k̶  procrastinate responsibly. 

Creeping Claus: Christmas’ Increasing Presence in Our Lives

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Driving home from work a few weeks ago, I was met by a painting of red and green as thousands of twinkling lights colored which colored the city for all the world to see. Compounded by the ungodly early snow, I couldn’t stop myself from thinking this time of year’s biggest cliche: it was beginning to look a lot like Christmas.

But was it really? See, when I was confronted with this scene whose beauty would make Monet combust in ecstasy, it was still the first week of November, just a few days after Halloween. I love the winter-time festivities its celebration brings, but even I had to wonder if it was too early for Christmas. And further, when was it appropriate to the question when was it appropriate to officially begin the holiday season? Granted, I couldn’t really blame mother nature for the snowy catastrophe we caused with global warming, but I wanted the justification to blame my fellow humans for the reds and greens which blinded my eyes. So I began my research.

Though varying websites give different projections based on biases and sampling methods (the AP Stats student in me is going off), many believe the population of Christian-identifying Americans rests around the 210 million person range. Despite that number declining with every year, both the number of people celebrating and the length of Christmas is increasing. One NBC affiliate even claims that 40% of people begin their holiday shopping before Halloween. Why is this the case? Do people really love the gift exchange ritual so much that they’ll defy their own beliefs to do it? With all of these questions in mind, I set out on a mini-exploration of public opinion of Christmas over time. 

Many are aware that the original subset of Christianity was tiny and blasphemous to the government-sponsored beliefs of the time; as such, the original celebrations of Jesus’ birth were confined solely to that day with occasional spillage into the days around. The explosion of popularity created a frenzy of passion to celebrate the joyous season for as long as possible. Nowadays, if you look at it quantitatively, Christmas festivities take up roughly three months every year–that’s over ninety days straight of the jolly fat man (and Jesus, too, I guess). 

Brought with the excitement of celebration, the number of gifts each person needed to buy steadily increased as well. Little by little, the holiday began moving earlier to allow lower-income families the opportunity to comfortably participate and space out their monetary contributions. Cynicists and skeptics alike tend to blame the creep on the commercialization of the holiday, yet they fail to take into account why those who struggle on a day to day basis support this rampant materialization. 

As disappointingly unsexy as the explanations of struggle are, they’re true. People have been complaining about the Christmas’ impending approach and its Halloween connection since at least 1968; yet if the holiday truly was getting earlier every year after that initial jump as many claim, it would have clearly overtaken the spooky times by now. Easily. It is simply just the faulty perception of humanity which allows us to have this very same conversation year after year after year–a conclusion which allows me to feel both heartfelt  and still justify my saltines, if only a little.

So the next time you see your neighbor leaving their Christmas lights until March or encounter a friend who wants to celebrate June’s midway celebration, take a deep breath, relax, and just try to enjoy the eggnog. After all, (when you’re not trying to write a blog and prove the opposite) is there anything really wrong with bringing out the joyous cheer a bit earlier than December in the names of giving and familial love?

Tiny Living: Finding Happy

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Recently, I’ve been feeling incredibly overwhelmed–for some reason, even more stressed than I was during the college application debacle. So, in the art of anxiety, I’ve been putting off all my meaningful work until the last minute (if even doing it then) and wasting away my day mindlessly on my phone. While I wouldn’t really recommend this habit to anyone, I’m not an advice blog, I doubt my words of caution would really stop you at this point anyway, and I don’t feel like being a hypocrite today, so I’ll let it be. 

A few days back, I was scrolling through my YouTube recommended and saw a video pop up that intrigued me: How YouTuber Jennelle Eliana Spends Her Money Living in a 2.5k Van. I understood this video had no relevance to my life and would likely be a total waste of my time, but I didn’t have anything better to do (read: I didn’t have anything better that I was going to do), so I clicked play. As the title suggests, Jennelle lives in her van (yes, a literal car) full-time. And she does it by choice. She remodeled the van so it likely costs $10k-15k in total and it’s absolutely gorgeous, but that doesn’t change the fact that it’s still a van. I absolutely could not wrap my mind around what happens in someone’s life to make them choose this lifestyle over, you know, anything else, so I dove deep and binged watched every video her channel. 

Jennelle has lived in her van for a little over 2 years, regularly travels all around California for fun, has a pet snake named Alfredo, and is honestly just a little hippie girl, living her best life. Most of her videos center around her van and what it’s like to live in one, but my favorites are the ones in which she chronicles her daily life and what it’s like to live freely on her own time; they range from casual chats about her past life while she cleans her space to joyous, tearful confessions about how far she’s come and how happy she is now. So far she’s amassed 2 million subscribers in the four months that she’s had her channel–1 million of those came in the very first month–and it’s clear that I’m not the only one enamored by her lifestyle. Her unique brand of chaotic tranquility has a special way of putting everything into perspective and making it feel like everything is going to be alright. 

Fairly obviously, I don’t know her personally, but even I can tell how unequivocally happy this girl is. She wasn’t happy with her life, so she put aside the pressure of the world’s expectations, silenced the cacophony of voices telling her “no,” abandoned everything in her life that does not bring her joy, and set out to live her every day in the most meaningful ways possible to her. While I’m not sure I’d ever be able to live in a van, I just can’t help but admire that too. Everything she does is purely for herself–not in a selfish way but with an importance which gives new meaning to self-love beyond mere indulgence.

Jennelle, for as little that I really know of her life, is an incredibly pure human being who deserves all the love and adoration which has come her way so far. She’s happy in such a way that I rarely see people nowadays and brings a certain positivity/outlook to everything that is truly to be commended. In life, you have the autonomy to do literally anything you choose at any given moment in time, you just have to try. Want to change up your style? Go for it! Want to shave your head? Rock that look, Britney! Want to live in a freaking van? Do it–you never know what opportunities it might bring.

It’s so easy to believe that the path we are going down is the best or the only one possible, but that will remain true so long as you let it. In a world with so many possibilities, it would be such a shame if you wasted them away without trying to put yourself first some of the time. Let Jennelle be a model for all that you can become if you listen to your heart’s desires occasionally instead of always relying on your head’s logic. As high school students, there’s only so much we can do of our own volition before being stalled by the restraints of age, but you should never let that stop you from chasing your happy. 

Shattered Beyond Repair

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How much would you be willing to sacrifice for the greater good? Your hope? Your sanity? Your own life?

 

According to the utilitarianism principle, you should be willing to sacrifice just less than what is gained; this concept can span from giving up an extra jacket to a homeless person who needs it more to confessing to a crime you didn’t commit and risk life in prison to save a culprit who is the sole supporter of a family. Utilitarianism is the mindset of maximizing pleasure, so as long as an action would create more joy than despair, then you should do it.

 

The apparent simplicity and merit of such a philosophy begin to fall apart when you consider extreme but no less real dilemmas in life. Over 100,000 people in the United States alone are on the organ transplant list with a new name being added every ten minutes. If you are healthy, by this model, shouldn’t you be willing to give your life to help save some of theirs? By donating all five of your vital organs you would save five lives at the cost of only one–your own. Though we all have altruistic cores, unnecessarily giving your life for strangers’ seems absurd straight from the get-go and doesn’t require much thought. Most of us wouldn’t even have the non-fatal surgery of giving up a kidney to an outsider, for goodness’ sake!

 

But how would the situation change if those five people were your friends–your family? This is the principal concern in Kurt Vonnegut’s short story “All The King’s Horses.” The title is derived from the commonly known children’s rhyme, Humpty Dumpty, but the rest of the story does not follow such a light, juvenile tone. The piece chronicles American Colonel Bryan Kelly, his wife, two young sons, and his platoon’s time as Russian Pi Ying’s prisoners of war. In a sadistic bout of boredom seeking entertainment, Ying challenges Kelly to a game of chess–a game wherein the sixteen Americans are the chess pieces (versus the Russian’s wooden ones) in a fight for their lives because capture means execution. 

 

The absurdity of the situation is reflected in Kelly’s inability to properly strategize and grasp the weight of the situation. Simply put, the stakes are the same as in war, but Kelly is being forced to acknowledge the unreliability of his actions and face the loss of humanity he caused in a way he never had before. He cannot shirk responsibility for his actions onto the enemy or hide under the name of duty as the dehumanization he usually requires to continue fades away. Even I, despite being exposed to this unfamiliar atrocity in such a condensed period, became somewhat desensitized to the violence of the situation and repeated executions over time.

 

Pi Ying, despite his megalomaniacal lunacy, does raise a somewhat valid point (he’s definitely proving it in the wrong way, but a valid point nonetheless): what is the difference between the game of strategy being played here and the one of senseless killings on the battleground?  As Colonel, with every decision he makes in the field, he is gambling the lives of his soldiers in a fight to survive/win. As the Chessmaster, isn’t he doing the same? Yes, the circumstance of “normalcy,” advantage, and consent differ, but not much else strays from expectation.

 

Written during the midst of the Cold War, Vonnegut is making a point about the vicious, almost dystopian rhetoric (read: propaganda) America consistently uses to tear down our enemies in tandem with our inability to see the cruelty of our actions until they are reflected back upon us. According to researcher Stanley Milgram, “Systematic devaluation of the victim provides a measure of psychological justification for brutal treatment of the victim and has been the constant accompaniment of massacres, pogroms, and wars.” The desensitization we require of our soldiers and the social disenfranchisement we consistently employ upon those we perceive to be related to our enemies (McCarthyism, Japanese internment camps, the war on terror) allows us not only to win the war but to destroy everything outsiders once held dear.

 

I find this idea particularly striking (and horrifying) as we can still see similar tactics going on today. It’s easy to think of historical events such as the Cold War or World War II as so far removed that they could never happen today, yet you could argue similar things are happening in Syria and North Korea. History is not behind, rather happening all around us and it’s important that we have our eyes open wide enough to leave a legacy we can be proud of. 

 

Simply put, America is an absolute powerhouse, both economically and defensively, which has been able to proceed virtually unchecked since its birth; barring the Vietnam War, we have never lost any major battle due to our willingness to use brute force and place victory above any morals. Pi Ying, through all his insanity, is the perfect symbol and general foil to the trademark sadism we take on during a war. The thousands of nuclear warheads the United States has amassed, and even more tragically the ones that have been used, as Ying agrees, simply show our hubris and disregard for external human life, killing more innocent civilians than soldiers. By initiating such a game of chess, Ying is trying to emphasize a greater point that people, no matter their backgrounds, are not just pawns to be thrown away; in the end, we’re more than just physical bodies we can utilitarian-ly throw away for others’ worth, but human beings with so much inherent work that cannot be replaced. The price of war and hating each other is never worth the price.

 

Though I’m still very unsure of whether I liked the ending or not, for the majority of the story, I was on the edge of my seat, waiting anxiously in fascination for the next move. Ying’s craze yet safeness contrasted with Kelly’s stoicism and vulnerability provide an amazing stage for spiraling the reader into deep thought along with a side of existential crisis. I believe Vonnegut’s personal experience in war allowed him to question the validity of having helpless pawns fight someone removed’s war and how everything can change when we just talk to each other. Though it’s a cheesy conclusion to draw, on a scale of the global superpowers, it’s a necessary one. I’d really recommend this story to lovers of history and anyone willing to relook their perspective on reality (and especially urge it for those who aren’t).

 

So, the next time you find yourself so adamantly hating something, try to talk to your opponents and reconsider what is really the greater good instead of demonizing them on the word of others. Don’t tear them down or initiate a game of death chess, simply communicate. You may be surprised by what you find.

Fifteen Minutes of Fame and (Mis)Fortune

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FLINT, MICHIGAN. THE SUDANESE GENOCIDE. THE AMAZON RAINFOREST FIRES. ABORTION BANS. BLACK LIVES MATTER. HURRICANE MARIA.

These are some of the many tragic stories which, for some reason or another, rose above the hundreds of tragedies reported every day and captured the public’s attention. The recognition quickly garnered monetary support and rallied the momentum of change. Countless posts were made to spread awareness, dozens of petitions were signed to demand government intervention, thousands of profile pictures changed, millions of dollars were raised to provide adequate support; but after awhile, the world began to forget. The mobs which cried out from the injustice moved on to newer, more tantalizing issues–no matter if they were more important or not. Like children presented with a shiny, new toy, we abandoned our old friends we vowed to protect and left to fend for themselves. Without the contestation of thousands or the scrutiny of the public eye, corruption and disinterest stall any progress the media fought so hard to bring.

You’ve likely heard of every last one of these aforementioned issues, yet despite their damages persisting, you probably have not thought about them or what you can do to help since that original online frenzy. This realization should not bring feelings of impotence, rather those of reflection which begs the question of why you cared in the first place–and even further, why it stopped. The type of change these movements covet requires as much dedicated energy as a full-time job and presupposes that you are okay with ignoring the dozens of other tragedies reported every day. What good is all of this attention if nothing ever gets done? It’s incredibly easy to forget when the industries which supply our information profit off of redirecting our attention as often as possible. 

In a world where we are constantly bombarded with negative information detailing the pitfalls of humanity, it is not hard to feel distraught and wonder if anything we are doing truly makes a difference; afterall, the brief “feel-good” stories which finalize the news don’t really do much dissuade the thirty minutes of abject horror they follow. So what can we honestly do? If those few seconds of posts and changes and donations just aren’t nearly enough to create meaningful change, is there anything within our power than can? When our little gifts of empathy aren’t enough, what is?

Well, my conclusion is neither simple nor pretty–I cannot, in good conscious, espouse the typical “you can do anything!” narrative of most blogs–it will take concerted time, effort, and the acknowledgement that you cannot do it all. But you can legitimately make a difference if you follow a few simple steps.

    1. Pick and issue and stick with it. Although it may be easy to allow yourself to be swept up in the chaos of social media and fixate on the next issue du jour, you cannot accomplish anything if you are trying to accomplish everything. There will always be another tragedy that demands uproar
    2. Figure out what others are already doing. In your quest to make a difference, it is all too simple to put aside altruism in the name or recognition and approval. Joining a project someone else has already begun will not garner as much praise or feelings of importance so you may initially set their ideas aside; however, be honest with yourself and ask: can something I come up with genuinely make more of a positive impact than something already tried, established, and proven? If the answer is you, you know how to proceed.
    3. Don’t allow others to become bored or forget. In recognizing how many of the catastrophic events people have so easily forgotten, you may be quick to try and shove your issue down everyone’s throats and demand acknowledgement; what this approach fails to consider is that overexposure forces desensitization and an ambivalence just as strong as ignorance.
    4. Know that your little actions are meaningful. It is not realist to believe that you can and will eliminate every problem you encounter. Some are so much bigger than you are, but that does not mean you can’t knock them down a peg and make it easier for the next person to tackle.

Living amongst seven billion people, it is easy to feel that one person cannot make a difference. But we are not alone. While its may feel like every action is a mere drop in comparison to an ocean, these little drops continue to accumulate until, eventually, we have an ocean of our own. Our ocean of action may not be as big or as powerful as its opposition, but if we can make a difference for even one person, won’t it all have been worth it?

The double-edged sword of social media’s attention brings with it both hope in accountability and toxicity with mob mentality; but it is possible to twist both to your advantage. By choosing to focus on what really matters to you and refusing to allow yourself to be drowned out by the noise of negativity, you can help make the news just a little bit happier.

Please consider my light-box that contains several successful images in the “STYLE” that I have developed.http://www.istockphoto.com/file_search.phpaction=file&lightboxID=7644037A grungy, grainy black and white collage made up of newspaper clippings pertaining to topic of the December 2012 School shooting massacre in Newtown Conn.