Existential Crisis Mode: Activated

It’s only five hours into half-term break and I’m already having my first mental breakdown of the long weekend. Honestly, I expected so much more from myself – I thought my over-worked mind would at least have the decency to wait until around 2 a.m. tomorrow morning before I was hit with the “Oh God I’m only one sixth of the way through matric and I’m already dying” avalanche of thoughts.

It wasn’t even that I had a huge workload that has set off my latest “let’s just remember how small I am in the huge scheme of things” crisis. It’s that I’m stuck in the middle of Magaliesburg, armed with only my laptop, a useless cellphone and my worn copy of Tess of the d’Urbervilles (which I swore I would finish this weekend if it killed me). So what’s the issue, you ask? What could possibly have triggered this “crisis” of which you speak? And what, pray tell, makes it so extreme that it inspired a blog?

Well, firstly I’m so not-in-the-right-frame-of-mind that it took me four tries to figure out whether to use “prey” or “pray” in that last sentence. Secondly, I’ve just answered the last question I asked myself first – something highly illogical considering we still haven’t figured out why I’m having this major crisis. Thirdly, did the previous point even make sense? I can’t tell. Fourthly, wait… is fourthly even a word?

DO YOU SEE THE PROBLEM WITH MY BRAIN AT THIS PRESENT MOMENT?

Anyway. Let’s just take a few steps back because I think I’ve thoroughly confused myself and gotten lost along a path I wasn’t even planning on taking – oh, hold up. That’s the whole issue in the first place isn’t it?

So back to the beginning: My latest and greatest “crisis” was triggered by the entirely self-inflicted thought that I would award myself with an entire afternoon to do anything I wanted. I promised myself that I would not let myself touch a single piece of schoolwork until tomorrow morning, and that I would not even think about that English film essay just waiting to be planned and written and scrapped and rewritten and cried over several times.

This wonderfully intelligent and well-meant plan didn’t work out so well when I discovered, after fifteen whole minutes of indulging in thoughts of what I could possibly do, that I had absolutely zero motivation to do anything.

So basically, I was bored. Simple. Except – BAM – add a few hormones, a body that hasn’t slept properly in just over a month, and a brain that’s still trying to figure out what “holiday” really means… Instant existential crisis.

Oh my word I don’t even know what I should do with myself for a couple of hours in one afternoon how am I supposed to decide what to do with myself after I finish school IF I even finish school wait didn’t I promise myself I wouldn’t even think about school today except that when I try not to think about school I can’t even think about anything because that’s how centered my life is on an institution that brings me nothing but pain and stress and heartache but also an extremely overpriced education that might just be useful to me in the future but not really because it’s a tradition kept in place by a society that tells us to sit in a building for twelve years and then get a job and pay for our children to sit in a building for twelve years so that they can get a job and pay for their children to sit in a building for twelve years when we could pretty much all live in harmony and farm our own food and have no form of currency and just barter for the things we need but America would never allow that because Capitalism is destroying all the hope in the world and is Communism even such a bad thing maybe I should move to China but then how am I going to pay to get there because I still have to finish my twelfth year in a building to get a job to receive income to pay taxes to fund the same institutions that teach us we have to go through this stupid process in the first place…

And so on and so forth.

Cue me lying on the floor listening to sad music and looking down on my life in utter misery.

But now I’m here writing this, which ultimately solved the problem of my boredom in the first place, so I suppose we can consider my existential crisis for the day officially over.

I just realized that ultimately this entire blog was totally without a point.

(Much like my life.)

(Oh my word, Amy, calm down life isn’t even that bad – you were bored, get over it.)

(I get the feeling that after I’ve posted this I’m just going to be stuck in the original situation again. Better start scouring the hotel for things to read that won’t send me into a state of mild depression.)

(…I am so going to regret posting this in the morning. Eh… Consider this blog as a glimpse into the mind of a 21^st century teenager when faced with the unavoidable and incomprehensive concept of having nothing to do. It’s pitiful.)

A Look Inside the Life of a Procrastinating Teen Reader

Let’s just cut straight to the point: This year has not been a great start to a very good “Reading Year” for me.

Wow. What have I even become? I – Amy Bouwer, literary freak and lover of all written things – have failed at the one thing I thought I could do best. Reading.

Now let’s not get all freaked out here – I’m still reading. I haven’t gone total illiterate-teenager-who-misuses-your-and-you’re. Of course, I’m guessing that stage in my life can’t be that far away, seeing as my ability to read three to four books per month has decreased to the extent where I probably read three quarters of a book per month. And that’s not all – I even watched an episode of Keeping Up With the Kardashians while at home sick this morning. I’m becoming the horrifying stereotype of a teenage girl. Somebody send me for counseling, and quick.

The problem is this: I can’t seem to finish anything I read.

And I know what you’re thinking. “Silly, naïve teenager… Obviously by reading you have to finish a book eventually. It’s common sense, but I wouldn’t expect you to understand because you’re so young and obsessed with Tweeter and television and your cellular device and Face Booker blah blah blah.”

Believe me, I KNOW that if you read you obviously have to finish something, SOMEHOW. SOMEDAY. Unfortunately, that “someday” is taking far too long for my liking.

Let’s just take a look at some statistics, shall we?

Last year, I read about an average of two to three books per month during the school term.

This year, my average is about half a book per month. HALF A BOOK. That’s like one hundred and fifty pages. That’s like the amount of pages I could (metaphorically, if I had no homework etc.) read in a single afternoon.

That is shocking. And for a girl who claims to be a reader… It sickens me just to think of it. So I began to try and logically figure out how on earth I had come to be such a failure at life. Was it because I was (gasp) too busy to read? Was it because I was spending too much time doing other things? Possibly. But eventually, I came to a conclusion.

The problem, my friends, lies not in how fast (or slowly) I am reading, but instead in how much I am reading.

It all makes sense. You see, I have to juggle my English set work, my Advanced Programme English set works, the books my parents want me to read, the books my friends want me to read, the books I want to read… It’s all just too much.

The amount of books I’m currently reading is a bit of a joke, really, but here’s a list:

• Atonement by Ian McEwan (English set work)
• Tess of the D’Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy (Matric English set work)
• Jane Eyre (AP English set work)
• Disgrace by J. M. Coetzee (AP English set work)
• Hamlet (AP English set work)
• Conquest by John Connoly
• The Covenant Series by Jennifer L. Armentrout
• A Clash of Kings by George R. R. Martin (YES. STILL. I KNOW.)
• Kurt Cobain by Christopher Sandford
• Z by Therese Anne Fowler
• Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese

This is pure madness. MADNESS. What sane person reads this much at once? It’s horribly perplexing, and I’m finding myself getting confused as to why Jane Eyre isn’t fighting the aliens from Conquest, or preparing for the long winter in A Clash of Kings. I think I’m going crazy.

And the problem is that every time I sit down and think, “Wow I actually have time to read. Cool!” I have to sit will all these books in front of me, and it feels like picking a favourite child. Scratch that – I feel like I’m cheating on my book-boyfriend with ten other men.

Oh my word I really am going crazy.

Anyway, I then begin to try and put off reading so that I don’t have to choose between them. To try and express to you what goes on inside my head during this process, I’ve put together a short one-act play.

'Why I Am a Disgusting Mess' – a One-Act Play by Amy Bouwer

Me: “Hey, I have free time! Why don’t I read?”

Me: “Well if I want to read I’ll need a cup of tea and somewhere quiet, obviously, but the builders are drilling outside so I’ll just have to put it off until they’re done and WOW I actually have Chemistry homework to do so maybe I should start that now except for the fact that I’ve had a long day so I should probably let my brain relax by doing something totally unintellectual like watching YouTube videos but only for like five minutes.

Me: *watches YouTube for hours on end, feeling guilty for not reading*

Me: “Oh, well now it’s getting late so I’ll only read for like twenty minutes.”

Me: *spends twenty minutes picking a book*

Me: *reads one page*

Me: *cries self to sleep*

THE END

Yeah… It’s a sad, sad process.

Anyway I guess the whole point of this blog was to try explain why I’m such a failure, and also to try and tell you all – indirectly of course – not to get your hopes up for the Nerd List that I should probably post tomorrow because it’s going to suck because I’ve read two books in two months okay.

*takes a deep breath*

And also remember that this is a “No Judgment” zone so keep all your judging on your side of the fence because didn’t your mother ever teach you that it’s rude to take your problems onto other people’s territory wow it took me like three tries to try work out how to spell ‘territory’ look the illiteracy is already seeping into my puny little brain oh and I also want to apologise about this blog because I know it was probably really long and boring but yeah I guess I’m kind of hoping some people will relate to it because we’re all human and nobody’s perfect except probably Liam Hemsworth oops did I say that aloud.

I’m sick and I’ve had a lot of medication today so don’t judge me on this post, please. I’ll probably come edit out all these weird bits later.

To any English teachers reading this: I swear I do know how to construct sentences. It’s called “artistic expression” and “poetic license” – look it up. (I’m kidding – please don’t expel me.)

Comment below and tell me whether you’ve ever felt the same way about reading too many books at once, or console me with your own stories about how you, too, are becoming illiterate.