slacking off

the problem with vacations is that they tend to set you off the track. being set off the track is the enjoyable part really, just letting yourself go with the flow reassuring yourself that you'll have plenty of time to catch up later. but getting back on track is the more problematic part. it's like trying to climb a steep mountain; sometimes it's so easy to just let yourself slide down (if you have your harness) than to go up.

that's what has been happening to me lately. ever since christmas break, or even before christmas, i've been slacking off. it doesn't really help that our professors this sem are inching their way towards retirement--their lectures are at times excruciatingly slow and their voices...well, they do tend to speak monotonously. cue music and off we go to dreamland.

the thought of having two weeks off creates an illusion that you have lots of time in the world and that a few moments of bumming around at the start won't really hurt--not until those two weeks are gone and you still face the same pile of readings.

then you console yourself at the thought that at the very least, you've lived vacation to its truest sense and you spent more quality time with your family. what could be better than that?

but then midway into january you still find yourself struggling to shake off that vacation mode. you look at the calendar--a little over two months left before judgment day, a.k.a. finals. it's half-way through the sem and you still haven't done half of what you're supposed to do. panic ensues...you resolve to do better, pour more hours into your study and do away with distractions.

then your relatives invite you to spellbound, or star city, or worse, shake, rattle and roll! would you say no? uhm, let me think about that for a minute...what the hell, times like these are rare so better make the most out of them. besides, it's not often that you get to enjoy these things without spending a cent. and you're not really wasting your time, it's your family!

and so off you go, you enjoy the moment. you scream at the top of your lungs as the flying carpet thrusts you up into the air, leaves you hanging in mid-air for a second and quickly pulls you down creating that funny sensation that you left your stomach somewhere up there. you go to the next ride scaring yourself to death at the thought that as the machine whirls, a cable might snap hurling you into the air and into your doom but while you're at it, you wonder if that's how superman must have felt, flying up there parallel to the ground.

and finally, after you've conquered your fears, you go scare other people off inside those not-so-creepy horror mazes and find yourself laughing so hard at the sight of people so horrified they'd actually fall on top of each other as they run clutching each other's shirts. star city really knows how to entertain.

then, as classes near, with your first class for the week barely hours away and you still haven't touched your readings yet, you wonder if you could've spent your weekend a little better. you wonder, too, if the time you spent writing about it could have gone to studying, er, cramming for the next day.

and you blame vacations for it.

but what the heck. there's no use regretting time spent. there's nothing to regret really because everything is an experience worth retelling.

and so when ma'am chit asks you what you did over the weekend that's not law-related, you tell her i scared myself to death and realized i can conquer my fears. then you make yourself believe that after what you've been through, no pile of readings is insurmountable (you wish!). that way, you would've made those times spent away from studying worth it--just by enjoying and learning from all the experiences...by living the moment.

who says slacking off has no value?


..........
pardon my pathetic attempt to justify my slacking off.