By Colin Tobin
It’s yet another slow Sunday afternoon with barely anything left to do for the day. I sit at my desk with my computer open, thinking about the upcoming week. It’s about 4 o’clock in the afternoon and my assignment stares at me from the center of blue light. From my chair, I can see the bright blue, cloudless sky and the golden sunshine reflecting off of the tree branches and buildings around me. My thoughts are flooded by several different things as I struggle to focus on just one. I cannot be bothered to worry about the things I still need to do; there’s still so much time left in the day. Instead, I decide to look at my phone for a while to see if anything has changed in the world since I last checked ten minutes ago. As I suspected, there is not really anything new or interesting for me to see online.
The thought of going back to work on the paper still seems daunting. I put away my phone and decide to open the same application on my computer as if that will make any difference. The sun is going down. My assignment sits untouched. “It definitely won’t take any time at all,” I think to myself, “I doubt it’ll take me more than half an hour”. Besides, refreshing and scrolling through Twitter and Instagram over and over again is more interesting than whatever I need to work on.
Glancing out the window again, the sky has turned a shade of indigo. Streetlights have turned on. I convince myself that any work I must do can wait until after dinner. “Who can possibly be expected to do work on an empty stomach?” I ask myself. It’s only 7:30 so I shut my computer and go get food. There is still plenty of time left in the day. I put on my shoes and my jacket and head out the door. Going outside and walking along the brick paths gives me a brief mental escape. A cool breeze blows as I get closer to the dining hall to pick up a meal. Tonight, I figure I should get takeout, considering I still need to finish that assignment. Working on it while eating could be a smart use of time.
***
Luckily, I get to Lowry before the big evening rush to the dining hall. I am quick to grab my to-go token and ask for my meal of a cheeseburger with fries to be boxed up. In a matter of a few minutes, I’m back out in the crisp air, heading back to my room. It’s the time of night when all of the streetlamps have turned on. I try to extend the final moments that I am outside before the undefined amount of time that I will be working. The leaves rustle as two black squirrels chase after each other across the grass and run up the trunk of a tree. I begrudgingly open up the door to my hall and walk back inside.
I’ve made my way back to my room after that short, twenty-minute trip. I’m pretty hungry, but I decide to take a look at my computer again, for old time’s sake. Work is the thing that should be on my mind right now, but with that in mind, I pull up an episode of the show that I’m watching and start eating. It would probably be too hard to use a fork and type at the same time anyway. Another notification pops up on my phone once I’m done. It’s a funny video that one of my friends found while endlessly scrolling, just like me. Once again, I’m back to checking the same couple of apps over and over in a cycle, not entirely sure what I’m looking for. The sky is a shade of purple that is a tint away from black. An old street lamp that has turned a shade of orange shines into my room. As I sit there, slouched down into my chair, I hear a voice in my head say, “Hey, don’t you have something to do?”
By now, the sky is pitch black and I blankly stare at my screen. I find myself to be fidgeting around in my chair, unable to get comfortable. My legs restlessly shift around and I crack my knuckles. The blank document before me is numbing to the senses, like a fresh blanket of snow that has erased discernible details from a hillside. My phone lights up with a notification and I quickly pick it up again. I read more about mildly interesting current events and the impassioned thoughts of faceless strangers. The digital clock to my right reads 11 pm. My assignment sits untouched. Now I must get to work.
***
My half-asleep brain and fast typing skills get to work as I rush to fill up this blank, white abyss with some smart-sounding words. I look up to the top right-hand corner of my screen every once in a while, to make sure that I still have enough time. Isn’t there a saying that “diamonds are made under pressure?” In one of the few short breaks I give myself to let my brain recuperate, I take a moment to realize the stillness of everything around me. Outside in the now freezing temperatures, it seems as though time has been put on pause. Every so often, a gust of wind blows, shaking the branches of the tree to remind me that time is, in fact, continuing to move forward. The sparse patches of snow that still remain from days before sparkle in the light of the moon overhead. It all appears so quiet and peaceful out there while my brain is caught in a whirlwind.
I snap out of that thought to get back to reality, where the collection of words I have typed out are far from a masterpiece. The need to be overwhelmingly focused overcomes my other senses as the clock slowly ticks closer to the deadline of 11:59 pm. There is increasingly intense pain in my temples as I realize the seriousness of my current circumstances. All of the spelling and grammatical errors will have to wait until the end to fix. Right now, I cannot afford to stop before getting these thoughts onto the page before I forget them. After a long stretch of nonstop typing, I look back at all of the red squiggly lines that I left unfixed in my efforts to finish on time. One by one, they are removed and corrected by the guardian angel known as autocorrect.
I do a quick proofread to see if it all makes sense. It seems like this is a situation that I’ve become way too comfortable being in. It’s not my best work, but at least it’s done. I quickly navigate to the site where it needs to be submitted. After a few seconds of upload time, this excruciating, elongated, time-consuming, distraction-filled evening can finally come to an end and a burden can be lifted from my shoulders. At last, I have relief and nothing else to worry about for the rest of the night. It’s not even that late, yet I’m ready to fall face-first onto my bed.
