Goodbye 2014

Yes, I've been away.
Yes, I've neglected this blog.

It's been long. Pretty long. It's been over a year since I last posted something here, and although I keep on saying I'll update this more, I fail in doing so. Maybe I'm a liar, maybe I'm a failure, maybe I'm both.
I can make many excuses for my absence:
1) I had a crap phone so I couldn't blog from it. [recently upgraded]
2) 5th year of med school. Senior cycle I. HAH. Death. 
3) 6th year of med school. Senior cycle II. HAHA. MORE DEATH. 
4) My crappy internet connection at my apartment, courtesy of **********m.
5) Laziness.
6) Procrastination gremlins. 
7) My mental status. 
8) Mental status.
9) Mental.
10) Status. 

With little left on the clock till 2014 ends, I thought I couldn't let a year mark pass without having at least one post on my blog for that year. That's a little too much of a fail, even for me. At least I still have a very minimal level of standards I'm trying to adhere to..

Anyhow, updates:
-I'm supposed to be graduating medical school June 2015. I'm donezo hopefully in six months. However, I haven't been studying as much as I'd like to in the past four months, so crunch time should ensue by the fourth of January by the latest.
-I quit basketball this year :( To focus on studying. Little did I know.............
-I'm going to Chennai, India for a community engagement medical elective sort of thing in about two weeks, hopefully I can post about that if time and internet connection allows. 
-My elective in California has been cancelled unfortunately, but I'm hoping that's for the better, and there's a reason I can't fully comprehend at the moment but it'll make sense soon. 
- During my hypomanic phase [I called it a hypomanic phase because it just felt like one. I was talking and acting in a hypomanic manner, and I also did NOT need to sleep at all. I went through 96 hours straight with less than 8 hours of sleep. I had to resort to sleeping aids eventually. It was pretty scary!] I don't know how or why it happened, but I managed to do many many things! I became part of my class's Senior Committee, joined 17 clubs in uni, became secretary for a club, joined on organizing a conference, became a writer for the school magazine, AND joined the university community engagement program. Also, I got a guitar and tried to learn a few things pending actual lessons.. In retrospect, my hypomanic phase was actually really nice. I'm now in a trough though, I don't know if it's because it's new year time or everything else but hopefully this can pass. However, that's another days post.

Moving on, as 14 minutes remain on the clock till the 1st of January, I think I'll end this post here. This is pressuring me. Reminds me of that time I submitted a paper 40 seconds before the portal closed. I felt like such a baws.

And with the accurate words of AWOLNATION playing this instant: "blame it on my ADD", I bid you farewell, and wish you a happy new year. Speak to you next year!

Pro-cras-ti-nate

The war has begun, my friends.
Finals are just around the corner, with just one more months time to prepare. The war I'm talking about, though, is the one between my willpower and the little procrastination gremlins that live inside me. Frankly, the gremlins are winning. They have set up their empire long ago, and I think disturbing them with this coup of willpower insurgents might not work.

It was exactly the Tuesday before the last when I decided to stop my recent plunge in the "no studying" pool and to start prepping for finals. I made a schedule that was fairly easy to follow; 4 lectures per day will land me fully ready at May 7, leaving me with 18 days to revise once again and practice exam questions. Seems pretty simple, right?

Wrong.

I started Tuesday well, completing the 4 I had assigned. Wednesday however I only did one. Thursday I did none. Friday I did none too. Slowly I started going into the negative part of the scale and over a week later, I'm officially at -39. I'm useless. I will fix this, though. Seriously. Enshallah. Tomorrow.

I must point out that time is a major issue here. To me at least. Why is it that it runs out so quick when I need it to stretch the most? I just went back to Saudi today, and I got to my grannies house in the morning, before noon. I was in the living room chilling when I looked at the clock on the wall and said: "Okay Reem, you'll start studying at 12 o'clock. You have two hours to waste. Enjoy them.. " With a blink of an eye, it was 12, then 1, then 2. I decided to have lunch at 2 and to start exactly at 3. FAIL. I ended up starting at 7, in which I opened up the first page of my lecture, got drowsy, and opted for a 20 minute nap. Funny thing is that I'll look at the clock when it's (hour):06. Exactly. Each time. But each time, an hour would've passed. So so quick that I didn't even feel it. It's like the 6 hours that went today were in fact only 3 in my world.

Moving on to procrastination:

procrastinate |prəˈkrastəˌnāt; prō-|verb [ intrans. ]delay or postpone action; put off doing something : it won't be this price forlong, so don't procrastinate.procrastination -noun.

Procrastination is googling videos about procrastination and then watching them. Aah, procrastination. Pathological in me, it's a disease I tell you. A fatal one that I'm going to cure. Soon. slowly adapting to? (Haha, who am I kidding.. I think I'm far past adapting. I'm adapTED.)

To establish a more comfortable relationship between you and I, I'll take you through a day in my life. That way, you can understand me more thoroughly:

I have procrastinated sleeping to write this post even though I must wake up early in the morning to catch up on some studying and even though I have a migraine (but it seems like the Excedrin is working, 7amdella.) I am easily distracted by everything and anything. I mean, the first video up there isn't lying. That's how my head works. Seriously. Minus smoking a cigarette, and picking your nose. Sometimes I think I have the attention span of a goldfish. If only there were a way to procrastinate procrastination.

Is there?