Reporting from a pre-exam stress coma:

• I haven't gone to my afternoon classes for two days. One was for choir in music festival, one just because I couldn't emotionally deal with more classes. I drank tea instead with a group of an assortment of people I accidentally collected. 
• I finally got an article in the school paper only to find out that people actually read it and the fame is going to my head.
• A country music video was filmed largely at and around my school. It feels weird, especially because my city is quite east of Ontario so nobody really cares about us in Canada, not to mention the rest of the world. Local country fans are losing their shit and everyone else thinks it's kind of cool that something moderately interesting happened here. I have swam in that pool and may or may not have been on that rooftop, bros.
• And that's pretty much all for now because I'm practically in a pre-exam stress coma.

Hearts,
Julianne

Whispers of summer

Tonight felt like summer. Not pure summer, but a whisper of it. Moriah and I drove to Rachel's with the windows down and listening to King Charles, a personal summer favourite of ours. We had a bonfire with a bunch of youth people and some of Rachel's friends that I don't know. It's refreshing to be outside, and having casual banter with a different group of people than usual. Everything lately has felt overwhelmingly stale but this was comfortably different.

The last few weeks I've been in a sort of slump. Not depression, but rather a gradual bout of boredom with my life and feeling little motivation to accomplish anything. But I think I'm getting out of it. I have exactly eleven days left until I'm done with IB and I'm preparing for a youth weekend coming up in late May.

Then comes actual summer, which I have a new enthusiasm for after tonight. My sweater smells like bonfire in a good way, reminding me of why I love it.
Hearts,
Julianne

Bullying the mayor (again) and waffles.

• People have started romanticizing the 90's. I've decided that I don't believe in the 90's; they're a conspiracy. 
• In Rainbows is actually just a really good album. Something in my brain clicked and I like Radiohead now, which was unexpected.
• What do people use Saturdays for, anyway? I have my first one off in months tomorrow. Actually, IB exam studying will happen.
• I often instinctively stop at Starbucks, not even the one I work at, because I know there are usually cool people working there who can bequeath caffeinated beverages upon me. I usually yell "I love you" at everyone as I leave. I need to be drinking age so I can become a regular at a bar, where I can live out a sitcom existence instead of just bothering local baristas.
• I've decided to intentionally embrace the radio. There are stations that actually play reasonable music without ads (thank you, CBC). There's something refreshing about listening to the radio because it's a dying form of desirable background noise. Especially because evenings are jazz followed by chill music. CBC gets me.
• Pro-tip: take selfies, it makes you feel better.
• My entire English class is going out to breakfast on Monday and the thought of waffles has actually motivated me through this week.
• Working on a school paper in Journalism has lead to a small series of events to test how far we can push things and still get them published. So far a word search with 'booty' secretly hidden in it has been created. Also, with the blessing of our teacher who wanted a page to have a more local feel, we put a picture of our city's mayor with heart over his face on the back page. 
• Our mayor is a running joke and I'm not sure how it started. Someone in my Law class also tried to call him during a review game last week because we had a phone a friend option to answer a question. 
• Several months ago, Will also tweeted at him asking him if he was considering running for pope. A teacher told Will to "stop cyber bullying the mayor."
• Apparently people at work have been previously written up for doing latte art. My job is increasingly less fun as time goes on. However, the ban on latte art didn't stop one of my supervisors from giving me a brief lesson in latte art. We're such rebels.

Hearts,
Julianne

Make it stop.

I'm a person who finds comfort in routine and structure. I like when something happens at the same time every day or every week and I can find a rhythm. I find comfort in Java Tuesdays with Missy and Tea Wednesdays with Shawn.

However, finding routine is hard when there's so much happening around me. Especially when everything I do seems to come in intense bursts. I completed most of my yearbook section working day and night for two weeks. I write most big papers over the two or three days before they're due. Choir is occupying my lunch and after school time for this week in intense preparation for music festival. I'm suppose to be crunching and preparing for IB exams like crazy. Most of these things occupy a lot of time, then just suddenly cease to matter because they're done and over with. I can't find routine in bursts of crazy.

Sporadic shift work doesn't help, especially through this period when all the Starbucks in the city are simultaneously understaffed and determined to hire minimal new people. I try to schedule time to do school stuff but then I end up with shifts and being tired and things just don't get done. Six hours of school, followed by five hours of work, followed by the feeling that there's homework to be done but being too tired to actually do it is an exhausting sort of day, especially after a few consecutive ones.

I've gotten to the point where anything on top of the normal school and work responsibilities makes me want to tell people they're asking to much of me and proceeding to keel over. Balancing school, extracurriculars, a part time job and a social life is wearing me down.

Make it stop. Waiting it out is getting old.

In good news of things actually looking up, my IB exams are over as of May 9th, giving me two free periods and a thoroughly less demanding year end, plus significantly fewer reasons to try caring about anything at all. I have a maximum of two exams in June, for Law and possibly Journalism.

But for now I'll just listen to Sigur Rós and try to stop feeling bad about everything for a little while, blatantly ignoring my exam review because I'm tired and every little thing frustrates me. I want to read, drink tea, and not move for at least three days.
Hearts,
-J-

To YOLO or not to YOLO:

The question facing the hearts and minds of many an IB 12 student in the next few weeks of the long awaited exams. (because I am now Sufjan Stevens and will name my blogposts much as he names his songs.)

I've compiled some fancy multimedia stuff to express how I currently feel:

 

 

I'm so done with senior year. So. Done. SO DONE.

There's a week and a half until my IB English exams and I've come to terms that I'll never be more prepared than I am at this moment. I'll YOLO this thing for all it's worth, which is very little in the grand scheme of things.

IB History, however, is the sort of thing where I need to throw together some sort of outlines of knowledge. Probably almost entirely focusing on Nazi Germany because I think I can cover nearly everything I need to with that. 

Doesn't help that music festival is in a week and there's five choir practices between now and then.

I don't like knowing that I'll be facing a lot of stress and internal chaos until May 10th. I have a feeling that after that, real life is suddenly going to slap me in the face with I'll have a gazillion other realities. 

Note: so much wasted time compiling my above multimedia collection. But know what?

Hearts,
Julianne 

Unintentional hiatus.

 Lately, when it comes to blogging (or much of anything for that matter), I start typing things and then can't find the motivation to draw it to any conclusion or finishing point. Even now I'm struggling to keep typing this post instead of half heartedly hitting "Save" and going on with my unintentional hiatus. I've written all of a sentence in the entire last week of journalism class. I've written three points on my outline for my IB English exam prep that was due a week ago.

I'm hoping that by acknowledging my complete inability to finish anything will help me get out of my rut.

In other news, on a field trip to the court for law class I unknowingly took an almost identical picture of the same staircase that's on the cover of a math textbook:

My life is currently so exciting. *sarcasm.* I now see my future as a taker of stock photos, perhaps already existing one.
Hearts,

Julianne

Kiss Me Kate.

 

(It starts getting interesting at around 2:45)

Since I'm not in musical this year due to work, I stopped by early out of nostalgia.

I forgot how strange a culture musical forms: all these people who get used to being around each other all the time in all these different roles and levels of importance. During performance week, weird groups of people/ couples get attached to each other. Everyone is all pumped up all the time.

Apparently people also try to unsuccessfully make Kraft Dinner in the student council microwave and end up with an inedible clump of starch.

I collapsed on a comfy chair in the student council room while listening to Great Big Sea for a while, then I helped out with some hair and makeup stuff. I put foundation on about a dozen people, including some of my guy friends who looked really pretty. Victor combed my hair for a while as a sort of nervous habit and to prove to people that all girls' hair isn't that difficult to comb. Then I ran around pretty aimlessly until I took a seat upstairs.

Everybody in the musical was really good and so many of them are such good actors. Even though I wasn't a part of it, it's good to see so many of my friends accomplishing things like this. I'm friends with most of the cast and at least acquaintances with almost everyone else.

Noah showed up unexpectedly which was nice. Mike and I argued over who would get him. Mike said he should because he "slept with him all summer" (context: they worked at a camp together). Noah met Will which was a thing that needed to happen so that they can form a beautiful bromance based around the same obscure music.

I got and gave lots and lots of hugs and David tried to suffocate me with his cape. Basically everything that can be expected after a show.
Hearts,
Julianne

Haha (it's been an awful week)

Good things the past week:

• Gerald got the cyst removed from his brain and I believe everything went well. 
• I got a tenor ukulele.
• I went on a Thursday adventure.
• I've suddenly gained a new appreciation for Radiohead and it's been keeping me from losing my shit all week.
• Frappuccinos that taste like thin mints (one scoop vanilla bean, one scoop frap chips and one pump peppermint)  
• Finishing the last major IB assignment and only having exam prep left until the hellish IB stress is over after 3 years.

Bad things about this week:

• I had to drive the minivan a bunch.
• Tatyana announced that she's moving to Ontario permanently before the end of the month and I realized she's a lot of the stability in my life. I feel it's inevitable that somethings will fall apart when she leaves, for the worst and for the better.
• James' dad died. 
• That prompted James to break up with Katie after two and a half years. I spent time on this between comforting Katie with my miniscule levels of empathy and wondering if I'll be able to easily continue being friends with both of them even though I really want to.
• Will was inspired by Reeves and on Friday night he walked across town in a questionably sober state. I love the kid but (1) it was 10pm and (2) I had had a slightly traumatic incident occur 30 seconds before I walked out of my house. I was trying to react to too many aspects of my life while he was very bad moral support because he was amazed by and frightened by lights and was shoving commandeered coffee cake into his face.
• It's become painfully obvious that my parents' marriage is hanging by a thread.
• Knowingly consuming at least 800 calories, not including my actual supper, in one sitting in the form a frappuccino and a chocolate chip cookie because eating my feelings is happening.

 Hearts,
Julianne

After this week I need so much empathy candy but when you give yourself empathy candy it's just considered eating your feelings and you feel even more awful after that.

I could never quite get the hang of Thursdays.

Tonight was a strange series of events.

6:30pm: I went to Bulk Barn to get candy for the sole purpose of comforting my current abundance of emotionally distressed friends because I feel that I'm bad at empathy so I should compensate with mini eggs and gummy bears.

7pm: I went to a coffee tasting with Maegan at her Starbucks to bother her co-worker who was directing it and because we had nothing better to do. Lot of pretentious statements about cocoa and earthiness and smoky flavours were uttered.

8:30pm: We accidentally convinced Reeves to walk across town, because he was bored, angsty, and so high that he pretty much absentmindedly walked across the city to hang out with two girls that he is almost-kind-of friends with, mostly through mutual friends.

9pm: We went to Pita Pit because I wanted felafel.

9:15pm: Since the group of me, Maegan and Reeves didn't know what to do, we got on the highway to Rothesay, realized that we hate Rothesay and turned around.

9:30pm: We drove uptown and picked up Will from tech crew things at school. Will and Reeves together is a force to be reckoned with. They are actually the same person but in different evolutions, like with Pokemon. There were peals of Thom Yorke laughter and tries to give me direction punctuated by them occasionally yelling about their 5th grade teacher who now runs Grampie's Yummy Pizza and makes really great milkshakes.

9:45pm: We drove North and went down a treacherous hill to this sketchy place by the harbour. None of us were dressed for it, there was no light and tons of roots and dangerous things to trip over around. We got to the bottom of the hill.

10pm: Will realized he'd accidentally taken the tech crew keys and would be dead if he didn't get them back, right then. We had risk our lives all over again to walk back up the treacherous hill and drive back uptown.

10:15pm: As we were driving North (again) I told Will and Reeves to stop eating my mini-eggs and they were for people with more current emotional crises than them, but they are both angsty and continued to eat my mini-eggs. Due to some quick braking, there are also mini-eggs all over the backseat of the Jetta.

10:30pm: I finally got Will home and I think that Reeves was only beginning his Thursday night so he began walking who knows where. Will left us with an "I love you all" and Reeves left us with "I don't but I'm warming to you." Maegan and I drove back East wondering how the heck our Thursday night quest to a coffee tasting ended up including Reeves walking across town, Will bringing us on sketchy adventures and aborting for the greater good of tech crew, traveling literally all over town multiple times, and nearly all my empathy candy eggs being eaten in the backseat of my car.

It felt kind of like summer.
Hearts,
-J-