If you aren’t singing “End of the Road” by Boyz II Men at the top of your lungs, you should be, because I am. 

Although, full disclosure, that song is actually about a painful breakup in which one party is extremely hurt by the split. Content wise, it doesn’t actually apply to my situation because I couldn’t be more excited about being done with course work for the year. 

I battled through my last week of classes while nursing a head cold/sinus infection, but in the end, I dragged myself through to Thursday. I sat through all my classes and was properly engaged; then, at Omohundro, I handed back my OI library card and made five trips from the basement to the main floor of the library to tote back the year’s worth of books I’d checked out to check facts. Even though my arms were burning by trip number from the weight of some of those monstrosities, the feeling of complete and utter shack-less freedom I felt as I shoved the books across the circulation counter was entirely worth the pain.

 As I left my last class on Thursday afternoon, I was filled with pride and a smug sense of satisfaction. I’d had a semester for the books. I started out off kilter because of an entire class being cancelled on me, a sinus infection, and the confusion surrounding Donald Trump’s implausible inauguration. A few weeks later, I got a life-changing mental health diagnosis. Just when things were starting to feel within control again, I spiraled downward, suddenly and dramatically, until the only solution was for me to take a medical pause for a week from school. Just as I was coming back, my mom got sick— the kind of sick that lands you in the hospital for a week and some change and that keeps you more or less bed ridden for several weeks following.

I’m writing this the day after spending another few days in my hometown with my parents to help make mom a little food and to be a second nurse, despite also being physically ill again myself, to give you context. That’s more than enough to cause someone to withdraw from the semester or at least be drowning in work by the end. I’ve not only managed to make it through, I’m coming in with enough of a headstart to take a little break before diving in to my final papers. 

Friday was a self-declared “self-care” day; I took myself out for coffee before going to get braids, then my parents and I went to go see Fate of the Furious. I ended the day by making everyone baked salmon, rice and broccoli before finally crashing from exhaustion. The next day, I made my way back to the Burg and continued my well needed decompression weekend. I started watching “Dear White People” in between my normal feel-good “Gilmore Girls” binge. I took well needed naps. I’m starting to feel better than I had all semester. 

That said, today, I’m getting ready to get back in the saddle. At least for a little while. I have 10 pages of a 15-20 page paper written already and two other 15 pagers to go, with a full week before I have any deadlines at all. I can work at a somewhat less harried pace over the next few weeks as I try to get my work together. And this evening, I’m having a little pow wow with my New Woman seminar as we workshop the first drafts of each other’s papers. I’ve yet to even look at anyone’s papers (fortunately there are only 2 papers) so I’ll be doing that this morning/afternoon. Then tomorrow, it’ll be back to writing, at least for another week. But if there’s anything I can do, it’s writing. I’ll be okay. I’ll be fine.

I’m still not entirely sure what the status of this blog will be going into the summer. It will most definitely be going out of commission for a few weeks while I make it pretty, but then…? I’m not sure. I guess I was so busy trying to make it through the year I didn’t think about long term. But, even so, there’s always more years to document, which means, at the very least, I’ll see you in the fall.