Now.

This post is another accumulation of almost a month of writing sporadically and never finding the willpower or creativity to finish a complete thought, not that this one has any singular purpose. Humor me, I'm tired.

This is a test.
Not an academic test, like one that assesses pseudo life skills, like math or chemistry or vocabulary. Even the well-designed advanced placements exams only measure our capacity to focus for one to three hours on one very narrow subject. They are hinged on chance; an accurate reflection of knowledge is dependent on the student's exposure to the chosen test-day topics. For the most part though, I commend our district's education program. Even bad teachers give good tests, even if pampered students protest about difficulty. I'm just bitter about my B+.

"The test will measure whether you are an informed, engaged, and productive citizen of the world, and it will take place in schools and bars and hospitals and dorm rooms and in places of worship. You will be tested on first dates, in job interviews, while watching football, and while scrolling through your Twitter feed. The test will judge your ability to think about things other than celebrity marriages, whether you’ll be easily persuaded by empty political rhetoric, and whether you’ll be able to place your life and your community in a broader context. The test will last your entire life, and it will be comprised of the millions of decisions that, when taken together, will make your life yours. And everything, everything, will be on it." John Green

This test is called life. However, this is still a different test. It's in response to a prompt, kind of, from the Peaceful Warrior. The point is to live in the now, to be at the here, to be, always, the moment. Something is always happening, everything is always moving forward. Entropy is always increasing (heho), time is propagating in only one direction. I think Socrates neglected reflection too much, but the idea is still the same - don't dwell, and don't worry. And this was an unnecessarily prolonged introduction to my first and likely last direct reference to inspiration.

***
I am sitting, for once, legs unfolded, on a hardwood chair, in a way such that my thighs don't touch the seat and such that the seat is only 25% occupied by my body. My eyes are very dry, my legs are bobbing impatiently, and my slouch is grossly pronounced from many months of switching between intense physical extenuation and then absolute loafing.

Cogito ergo sum. Carpe collum. What is the grass, captain?
There are so many things I don't know. I've wanted to take the easy way out of building my body, attaining my grades, writing at the bare minimum and studying at the last minute. It is, in general, effective, at about a B+/A- rate. For the most part, that satisfies me.
But once in a while, I find the energy to try. It comes more naturally when I'm doing math - that one, blessed hour I can't fall asleep. But once in while, it comes in during a timed writing, an SAT test, a French project, even though I don't remember a single physics lecture, and even though I have never remained conscious for more than half of a history lecture. In Hack the SATs (it'll help you connect to me and improve you standardized testing scores!!!), the author talks about pretending the love everything. Critical reading is boring until there is a falsely genuine and passionate attacking of the passage - and that is the approach I've started utilizing, out of nowhere, in seemingly unrelated periods and areas of my life.

Suddenly, history is almost fascinating. Physics is almost worth further investigation. Wikipedia is my new pasttime. Poetry is the big deal, and math has great dreams. But almost, and almost never. False passion dies, fatigue approaches, and once again, I'm laying alone on my bedroom carpet, wondering what to do with myself at 1 AM in the morning. The tiredness approaches more easily now, as failure becomes easier and disappointment comes faster. Reaction time to conversation decreases exponentially. The only component of my mind that becomes more active controls rash decision making, and it does so, so now, at the epitome of one of the deeper troughs, I am staring at nothing and hoping that stillness can settle.