With every day slipping by, I realize that the deadline is looming before me, dangerously close, and the taste of stress seems bitter, sardonic, and nearly heart-wrenching. I remember my happy-shopping days, and happy-reading days, and happy-cookie days, and baking-days and beach-walks. Now, its just working-days, and memo-making days, and laundry-days, and infrequent lazy-days, and hanging around the campus days, and the occasional (or not so) beer-drinking days. Excruciating amounts of work, coupled with less incentive, equals over-stressed person.

:

At this juncture, everything seems uncertain and hazy, and attachments seem trivial--work seems painful, and superficiality seems delicious--it's an acquired taste, I guess, much like beer.

Much as we wouldn't want to admit it, we do change. Life, people, and circumstances, mold you, squeeze you till you asphyxiate, and then breathe new life into you, making you more different--with different beliefs and principles.

So, with a twinge of nostalgia pinching my gut, I remember the happy, 'cookie-devouring, music-video-watching, sparkly-hair-clip-wearing' teenage me. And then I revert to the unending stack of chores, and the big question that keeps popping up. "what next?" And suddenly, all those nifty squabbles over 'who-said-what-about-you' just seem trivial and stupid. The big question needs to be answered. Soon.

In the process of being exposed, I seek to retrieve the lost pieces of the puzzle--they're not really lost, you see--they're hibernating in peaceful solace, hiding from the jagged edges of the objects that are hurtled towards it.