BitterSweetLife

The last three days I have paid my dues, you could say, for Wednesday's indulgence. Bookish reveries are now merely a pleasant memory.

Aiming to collect a few "extra" credits, I enrolled in one of those accelerated "J-term" classes...the kind that meets for roughly 10 hours a day...three days in a row. Add a "surprise" research assignment that's due the next morning, and, viola!—instant redeye. Even the most resilient of minds had to feel the impact, and my grey cells are beginning to lose their mad elasticity.

This was the kind of experience that turns your mind inside out and dumps the contents on the carpet. A good vacuum was hard to find.

The first couple days I jumpstarted my hours in the classroom with a pot of coffee, and repeated the dosage at various strategic points throughout the day. This morning, tired of feeling "stoked" and slightly jittery I decided to fall back on that old tool from my undergraduate days—mental toughness and cold, hard discipline.

This was a pivotal decision for me, one of those crucial moments when character and knowledge collude to yield an epiphany: Despite what the self-help books might tell you, caffeine works better.

No doubt there will be other occasions for me to put this new-found knowledge to use, but...why do I always have to learn the hard way? Experience, I was thinking all day, Something you never get until after you need to drink it.

So that's the story of my weekend. But, somewhere, I do have a notebook filled with copious scribblings...which, for inexplicable reasons, become somewhat disjointed about 2/3 of the way through. Now, if I can just remember what the notes were about.

And where I am and what I'm doing.

*blink*