Pressure.

It's all on you. It's all your fault.  It's your life to make or break.  Your time to shine, your time to crash and burn.  There is a sense of potential but an unbearable rushing sound and feeling of an immense weight on your chest and mind prevent that potential from being pure and gold.  If this semester doesn't go as planned, it will be your fault and yours alone.  Is this true?  Yes, you know technically it is, but you feel like there are always other things to take into consideration, as well.  This sounds a little like an excuse but it feels honest so, whatever at you, neasayer.  It is better to walk around with that letter grade floating around in your head than to wander around with a question mark.  Only time will tell if you can pull it off, and only you will be blamed if it doesn't.  What will you do if this bears not the fruit you sowed?  Reap it anyway, I suppose.  Embrace the life you've gone and made.  Move to Walden Pond?  I heard it's directly next to a landfill, these days.  Nothing lasts, I tell you.  Sometimes all this effort feels forced and silly.  Sometimes it feels impossible to get by in life without the product this effort all goes towards.  Sometimes you wonder about it all.  Sometimes you haven't got the time to wonder; sometimes all you can do is do.  I don't enjoy not being able to consider what it is I am doing but I go on about my business anyway because without producing some sort of valued contribution to  the "discussion" I will fail, and not just in compositional terms.  I could have been a gypsy, nomad, vagabond...I see Youtube videos of dirty looking semi-famous indie stars who travel around in make-shift tour busses with make-shift studios, close friends and heart-felt strangers...they are living the life of my dreams and all because they chased a personal passion of theirs to the fullest extent.  Should I have stepped into the academic world without first looking at the world itself as it could have been presented to me in it's entirety?  I doubt I would have been successful in that realm and if I had, without certain connections, money, skill, it would have been a miracle; but one i would have worked very very hard for.  I guess the same is true here, but with less glamour and more argyle.  Just food for thought, musings really.  Thanks for listening.