A Midnight Montage of Musical Madness

For the first time ever, I decided to take classes during Spring and Summer.  Turns out that during spring term (since classes are accelerated) they don't give you that two-week-long "get your brains in gear" grace period.  They load you up starting day one.

First day of class.

So it was for this reason I found myself pulling an all-nighter within the first week of school.

If you know me at all, you know that I have a super hard time focusing for long periods of time (if at all) and I get distracted very easily.  You would also know that I procrastinate as much as possible.  You would probably also know that I love TV.  I get hooked on television shows like those people who get addicted to stinging themselves with bees.  Wait.  That was just one lady I saw on an advertisement for a TV show called "My Strange Addiction" which I will never watch.  Anyway, I had recently become infatuated with "Community" and I spent all the time I should have used for homework watching 1200 episodes of it in three days.

Community

As I finished the billionth episode and looked at the clock, I realized it was 4 o'clock in the morning and my project was due in six hours.  I tried working on it, but all that happened were several failed attempts where I ended up in the kitchen questioning my existence. 

I swear on my love for lemon bars that I tried.  I tried so hard to make myself work, but my brain did not want to concentrate.  I know this is something that not everyone will understand...but I was not physically capable of concentrating that night.

I was beyond frustrated with myself, and I didn't want this semester to be a repeat of the last one (where I miraculously squeaked out acceptable grades after slacking off for too long).  I locked myself in the bathroom.  I don't know why I did this, probably for privacy, even though everyone else was asleep.  I sat in the bathroom and cried.  Crying is not something I do very often, but I'm human, too, dangit!  I cried for a long time and then I prayed a little as well.

I made sure to compose myself before coming out of the bathroom.

"THIS IS IT," I thought, and I sat down at my computer.  I clicked "play" on one of my gigantic playlists and let Spotify pick a song at random.

Except it probably wasn't random.

The song that played was "Be Still" by The Killers.  Talk about an inspiring song.  Geez, my life could be a Romantic Comedy infused with dramatic themes but minus the romance. (Dramedy.  I think I mean Dramedy.)  I sang along with some of the lyrics at the top of my whisper-voice,

"DON'T BREAK CHARACTER
YOU'VE GOT A LOT OF HEART!

RISE UP LIKE THE SUN
LABOR TILL THE WORK IS DONE!"

And then I did my project.  All of it.  Thank you, Brandon Flowers.

I went to class and turned it in.  Then, because I had slept for 90 minutes and hadn't showered, I decided to go straight home.  In my rush to avoid further human interaction, I prematurely crossed the street, stopped traffic, and got hit by a bike.  The guy on the bike was some sort of super polite Irish hipster.  (I tried to find a picture, but apparently this particular culture of people are too cool for the internet.)  We were both fine.

When I got home it was past noon.  I ate one pudding cup and called it breakfast.  Then I had another pudding and called it lunch.  Then I had a handful of Raisin Bran and called it justification.

Next thing I know there are two or three maintenance guys in my apartment, and I was trapped in my bedroom with a bit of mud-masky goop on my face and...no pants.  I was just hoping nothing in my room needed to be fixed.  I pretended to be asleep a few times when I thought they might be coming in, but I was ready for anything.  I didn't notice until much later, but I was essentially the mom character that you see in the grocery stores on TV shows:

What am I turning into??

Nothing happened, and they eventually left.  I seized this opportunity to take a nap.

I was so tired I could have slept for days, but I watched another episode of Community first.

There Was a Miracle and Then I Saw the Devil

     There are two types of adventures:  real adventures and mind adventures.  Mind adventures take place almost exclusively in my head and are due to something called an overactive imagination.  I'm still trying to decide if what happened between the hours of 6 PM last night and 7 AM this morning was a mind adventure or a real adventure.  It was probably both, but I was supposedly awake the entire time, so it feels real.

IMAGINATION

     

     It all centers around a class I'm taking this semester.  It's technically called "Basic Media Production" (all us film majors call it 185), and it's almost exactly what it sounds like.  We learn a little bit of everything and we do a whole lotta bit of work.  This is one of those classes that you hear a lot about how hard it is...only this one lives up to the expectations.  It is HARD.  It's also one of the best classes I've ever had.  I've learned so much and made good friends and eaten so much Nutella because of this class.  I love it, which I guess is why I'm a film major.

     The final for this class was a final binder and DVD including our final fiction film.  It was all due at 7 AM this morning.  I had finished editing the fiction film and assembling the binder, so all I had to do was burn the DVD.  I started that at 6 PM last night.  Having burned several DVDs before, I figured it'd be smooth sailing and I'd be in bed before 11.  This was not the case.

     Fast-forward 9 hours.  It was 3:30 AM and my DVD was still not burned.  I tried every possible thing I could think of.  I got help from my Dad, my friends Cory and Payden, and my TA, Lane (who is the greatest TA of all time, by the way).  Though all their suggestions were great, nothing was working.

If you were to see inside my 

brain at this point last night, this 

is what you would see:

(It is blackness interrupted

 by a single white line. 

Interpret it how you will.)

    

     I found myself trying the same thing over and over and praying that it would burn.  Praying.  Boy, was I praying.  My Mother, who had heard about my troubles from my Dad, was also praying.  Apparently she was worried about me (and my grade, and my future) and couldn't sleep.

     

     At 3:45 AM I decided that I would click "burn" one more time, go to sleep, wake up in the morning, and turn in whatever it was I had to turn in.  In slow motion (partly for dramatic effect and partly due to lack of sleep), I clicked the button one last time.  All of a sudden, the progress bar jumped to 99% and the next thing I know I'm holding a working DVD in my hands.  If that's not a miracle, I don't know what is.  I don't know what I did to deserve it, really.

     I was so excited, happy and grateful, I couldn't fall asleep for another 30 minutes.

     After two hours of sleep, I woke up, bundled up (it was butt cold outside), and made my way to class.  It was dark and I thought I was the only person outside.

     (This is where I need to explain something and why it's been on my mind lately.  In my 185 class, there's been this recurring thing throughout the semester about a well-dressed southern gentlemen who represents the devil. Several of my classmates' fiction films and scripts featured a character like it.)

     So I was walking to school alone in the dark and I look ahead of me and the person I see (NO LIE) is a perfect mix between this:

And this:

       Naturally, I assumed this person was the devil.  To be honest, I'm still not entirely convinced he wasn't.  I was just glad that he was walking in front of me, so that I could keep an eye on him.  I was absolutely sure that at any moment this man would turn around, stare me down, and demand I trade my soul for a jar of pickles.  I could only imagine his low, Southern-drawl of a voice saying something like, "Pardon me, miss," and it made me shiver.  The only thing that got me through this incredibly long walk to class was the memory of the miracle that had happened only hours earlier.

     I guess you could say I got to see all sides of life this morning.  The good, the bad, and the ugly (me....it was a loooooong night that didn't include a shower).

     So did this adventure take place in my mind?  Maybe.  Is that going to stop me from remembering it as real?  Absolutely not.