We do a lot of stuff. Scroll through your Google Drive and look at the documents you’ve edited, or look through your email inbox and see the mail you’ve sent. We are constantly revising and corresponding and working. 

It makes sense we’re tired. I for one am exhausted, but I think I’m also fulfilled, and I know this couldn’t be the case if it weren’t for the work I do. 

I think people are meant to work, and that life is pretty mundane without it. The trouble most have is working at the right thing, either because the “right thing” pays too little or seems inaccessible. 

We’re in high school, though, so a lot of what we’d get pleasure working at is inaccessible. All we have left to do is work, regardless of whether or not we like it. I wondered how rewarding this could be in comparison. 

It’s certainly not as rewarding, but doesn’t the satisfaction of getting to mark things off your checklist mean something? 

People gripe about this assignment and that one, but there’s no getting around having them. I tried to explain this to my nine year old sister, and I don’t think at this point in her life she has the experience to know what I mean. If you don’t do your work the first time, they haul you in the second time; you spend lunch in detention and, not to mention, your grades suffer. 

A lot of what we do seems preordained, and knowing this makes people apt to spin out in the little space they have open. This is a large part of why people do dumb things like bring drugs to school, vape in the bathroom, or talk to strangers on Snapchat. It’s not a ‘cry for help,’ it’s someone trying to make more room for themselves. 

It would be a nice reminder right about now that soon a lot of the world is going to open up, and it wouldn’t be wise to act in a whole world how you’d act backed into a corner. 

I look after my sister and feel a profound pity that she’s still got such a way to go, but all I can say is that soon the world will open up, and you’ve got to be ready for it. 

If that means slaving away at schoolwork, so be it. If it means ‘just getting it done,’ that’s fine for you if it works for you. Either way, you’ve got to show up and you’ve got to get things checked off your list, no matter how tiring. It is necessary for the long run and may even yield some unexpected enjoyment in the short run.