Skip to main content

At Long Last!

Source: Dafne Cholet
This Sunday I did... nothing in particular. It was just a normal Sunday.

Finally.

In practice, it was actually pretty similar to the first week of the blog; I had a bunch of math homework to do. But having the choice to do something else made a huge difference.

That's not to say that every Sunday this semester has been bad; in fact, many were far from it. Those days when I simply consumed media, whether it be through reading, watching a movie, or playing a video game were enjoyable enough, for at least most of the day. And some Sundays were downright productive; the day when I did nothing but homework genuinely gave me a head start on Physics 213.

But I think the most fun (and occasionally the most painful) days were the weird ones. Standing, playing French horn (though that one wasn't quite a day), writing, coding, lacking sleep. They were all new, and that made them interesting.

Until now, I wasn't entirely sure why I did this. Why spend almost a seventh of a semester with a completely inflexible schedule? I think I know the answer now: it was to try those new things. Sure, the day I spent playing video games had some rather unpleasant effects on my eyes, but on the whole it wasn't too different from any other lazy Sunday. The day I spent sleep-deprived, on the other hand? Now that was an interesting (though also unpleasant) experience.

And I suppose that's my message to the readers of this blog: try new things. It sounds trite, but I think it's a message that deserves to be said. And I mean genuinely new things, things that make people turn around and say, "How did you do that?" It doesn't have to be the kind of thing I did in the course of this blog, some activity you devote a day to; it could be something as simple as, say, starting a bottle cap collection, or maybe trying a hairstyle that's a bit out there.

Despite all of the "lost time" this blog caused me, I don't regret doing it. Even the more unpleasant weeks were interesting, and they taught me some of my limits. For example, my eyes don't like looking at a screen for 10 hours straight (though I suppose that one should have been rather obvious).

But I think that, after this semester, my Sundays are going to go back to normal permanently. I could handle one semester of this kind of strain on my schedule, but I don't know about another. I might still try something like this occasionally; maybe I'll use a free Tuesday to sit down and watch through all of Sátántangó, or spend an entire Sunday tackling the first tenth of Dune. Or stay up for 60 hours straight. Or not do that, ever

 And who knows, maybe someday I'll finish that screenplay.

Thanks for reading, everybody.

Comments

  1. Congrats on accomplishing your long ride of doing multiple things for an extremely long periods of time! I'll miss these blog posts lol.. they were so interesting.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Louis, it has been so exciting to find our what you spent an entire day doing each week. I knew this blog was a commitment, but you really went above and beyond. I think it tends to be hard for college students to pursue their hobbies and try new things just because we feel so busy with work. We have to remember that this experience is meant for growing and changing, and taking time to try new things is probably as important and doing our homework. For your sake, I hope you never have to stay awake that long ever again.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

10 Hours of Homework; or, 5 Hours of Learning

I suppose I should start by explaining what this blog even is. I like to think of myself as a relatively productive person. Despite this, I recently noticed that, with amazing consistency, I spent my Sundays lazing around in my dorm room, doing absolutely nothing of substance. This blog is my little experiment into changing that. Every Sunday of this semester, I am going to do one thing, and only one thing, for the entire day. Other than reasonable breaks for meals and hygiene, I will spend every free moment of my day (totaling about 10 hours on a typical Sunday) devoted to that one thing. I’ll start the semester with activities that one might realistically do for an entire day, like doing homework or watching a TV show, and explore stranger and stranger possibilities as the semester continues. My goal is to document the effects that these activities have on my mental, and in some cases physical, state, providing for you content that is both humorous and interesting. And hey,

Yawn

Source: Catriona Ward I made a point last week of getting a decent amount of sleep each night. I didn't quite get eight hours a night, but I came pretty close. This was partly because I wanted to improve my sleep schedule, but it was also partly because, over the weekend, I decided that I was going to stay awake for 40 hours straight. Now, I'd pulled all-nighters before. I knew what it meant to stay up into the wee hours of the morning. But every time I did that, I would get to sleep pretty quickly the day after. Before this past weekend, I don't think I'd ever stayed up for more than maybe 20 hours at a time. Oh, before I really begin, I should tell you: please don't do this. It's not good for you. Get some sleep! So, I woke up at around 8 AM on Saturday, and I spent the day doing, well, not much of anything. Most of my friends had gone home over the weekend, so I spent the day mostly just hanging out. I'd read a book, play some video games, check