Opinion | Winning the day

Luca Evans, Managing Editor

I’m officially done with this hellscape of a semester. 

I moved into an apartment approximately 10 minutes away from campus in early August with my best friend. We were excited for what possibilities having our own place could bring, despite the circumstances of remote learning. Through the first few weeks, I was having an indoor ball of a time playing video games, taking online classes and writing stories for The Panther.

Flash forward to a month later and I sit here typing at my cheap accent table that I’m attempting to use as a desk, having absolutely bombed a midterm half an hour ago. I haven’t eaten today and it’s currently 12:55 p.m., a problem since I, as a hollow stick figure of a growing boy, need approximately five solid meals a day to properly subside. I slept probably five hours last night. On Wednesday, I started a midterm 20 minutes late because I forgot – yes, forgot – that we had class that afternoon and not on Thursday.

I’ve been outside maybe a total of two hours over the past week; I haven’t exercised once.

This is quite possibly the worst my mental state has ever been in.

I’m disconnected. My mind is operating at peak capacity: I’m working overtime to handle the responsibilities of school, a job and my relationships in the midst of unprecedented circumstances. My brain, however, is operating at a low battery: I need to take care of it with proper nutrients, exercise and vitamins. But that aforementioned mind is so occupied with the stressors of other tasks that it’s forgotten completely about how to be a healthy person. 

In a gruesomely snide twist of irony, during the 20 minutes I had forgotten about my midterm that day, I was studying for the midterm that I would fail two days later. I’m marooned on an island, desperately trying to assemble a rickety raft of mental stability to float toward civilization like Tom Hanks in “Cast Away.” Yet I feel like I can’t even repair the overworked, tired, hungry mess my individual body has become because I don’t even have the time.

I don’t think I’m alone in this feeling. My friend told me the other day that over the past week, it seemed like everyone she talked to was just … beaten down. Tired. Angry. Sad. 

And I’ve realized something. It might not seem like it, and sometimes it’s out of our hands because we have responsibilities and feelings we can’t always control, but in many situations, we have the final say in many of our emotions.

It feels like teachers are somehow assigning more homework in a global pandemic, like Zoom meetings are slowly sapping away every tiny filament of our souls, like nothing really matters at all because this election is massively depressing and the coronavirus will never go away and climate change is unstoppable. But honestly, I’m so tired of blaming my own problems on the stresses of our current reality. At the end of the day, I’m the one that’s not eating, not sleeping well, not taking care of himself. I’m doing it to myself.

I called my dad a few days ago, and he gave me a simple piece of advice: Win the day. Just win the day. Maybe it’s as simple as listing the tasks you need to do, then sectioning off blocks in your schedule for eating, exercising and down time. Just crossing those off can win you the day. There’s no sense in trying to be productive when you’re operating inside of a body that’s biologically losing its functionality.

Writing this opinion was on my list of things to do to win today. I can cross that off. I’m one step closer. Maybe, just maybe, that’ll bring me some satisfaction.