It's some sort of given that if you have a week of little sleep, you're going to finish the big project or two or three that you've been working on and then you're going to wake up sick. I mean, sure, you might have been feeling a bit sick before you wake up -- say: just enough to make working on the project as much fun as licking sandpaper -- but it's really going to hit you that moment you think: "Hey, now I can relax!" This isn't exactly a theory or law or anything fancy of the sort, but… Yeah, not sure where I was going with that.

But, yeah, this week was pretty much as hard as it's going to get for this semester. Finals were once a thing to be feared back in the days of taking real classes like Discrete Math (though I never did take that final -- dropping out was way cooler) and Calc I/II/III… But with the English-based finals it's just like "Hey, write an essay about blahblahblah" and sure it helps if you've actually read blahblahblah but it's pretty easy to rant your way into an A on any essay question. The one class I felt handled final essays right was a class I took last spring entitled "What is Literature?" and instead of in-class essay writing we had a variety of topics to handle in our own time. The midterm and final essay compositions ended up being about seventeen-eighteen pages each, but they were actually fairly difficult essays to write. Now, in comparison, the midterm for an English class I’m taking this semester (I only have two classes with tests, Spanish and one of my three English classes) I was able to get an A- having simply shown up to 75% of the lectures and having read one of the numerous books for the class. And, simply as a point of interest, the class with the hefty take-home midterms is still one of the most enjoyable and interesting classes I've taken at the
So, when I posted this last night do know that it was posted purely as a diversion from the task at hand. This particular task was my writing a six-page paper on… poetry. John Keats' poetry; specifically, "Ode on a Grecian Urn" and "Ode to a Nightingale." I didn't actually mind these poems as much as I've minded others, but the fact remains that writing a paper on these is about as fun as being the guy who thought taking a detour through the Sahara would be a good move for the roller-blading excursion he was a part of. Either way, though, I did finish the paper, and I composed a separate piece of my very own which I call "A Memo to John Keats."

Dear John Keats,

Die.

hugsandkisseslol,
Trent Polack

PS. Oops, too late!

Heart-warming doesn't even begin to describe it.

And to take this in a completely different direction, I'd just like to say that whenever I go to the gym and lift some absolutely itty-bitty girlie weights, I feel like I would imagine a Sea Monkey feels like in his first trip into the ocean via toilet. I actually used to have some mass to me, but I lost that last summer along with like fifty pounds. Now I still give the illusion of being a big guy -- it's the broad shoulders -- but as soon as I trade in my long-sleeve/t-shirt combo or button-up shirt for just a t-shirt the common revelation is: "Huh." I don't mind being scrawny, it helps the whole running thing a bit, but weight rooms can still be a touch intimidating. There are almost always four or five guys who have forearms with sizes that rival my torso. Thankfully, though, I'm generally in such a psychological shock from enduring lap-upon-lap around a track that I don't notice it anymore. But if you ever happen to enter a gym and see a six-foot tall guy dressed in blue gymwear huddled in a corner whispering something about how "the giants are coming" just kick him. It may not actually be me, but I think that's what makes the whole thing fun.

This makes me sad. I am looking forward to senior-level Creative Writing, though. That'll be a good time.

Speaking of writing, the feedback that I've received from my novelthing so far has been so incredible that I now feel it my duty to follow this project to its end. I'm planning on making some renovations to the first chapter so that the introductory pages don't sound so alien from the eventual style/tone I settled on, which I think will help the people I prod into reading the thing ease into it a lot easier. The first chapter is still quite a mess of chopped together scenes and the like that it really is a unique beast, but it is a beast that I will tame because… I'm… A beast-tamer? I really need to stop with the analogies, I'm just embarrassing myself.

For future reference just ignore the Trents. They're an unpredictable creature.

but i will only conceal just a little more