Blog Every Day April: Volume VI

Tuesday 1 April

This April began in a foul-smelling organic chemistry lab where one of my friends was synthesizing insect pheromones, which diffused through the air with the pungent stench of elephant dung mixed with burnt cheese—also known as the concentrated smell of cockroach "I want the frickle-frackle."

You can imagine I'm excited to move along with this show.

Welcome to Blog Every Day April, where, as the name suggests, I blog every day in April. Shocking, I know. It's the sixth (!) year I'm doing this, because someone once told me that if you find something that works for you, then you stick with it, and this, weirdly enough, works for me. To new readers, welcome! To old readers, sorry! But thanks for coming back!

Basically, shit happens in April because it is, to quote TS Eliot, "the cruelest month, breeding lilacs out of the dead land, mixing memory and desire, stirring dull roots with spring rain." It's a state of transition, of endings and beginnings, and of sheer bloody panic as the semester ends. Last year was a helluva ride, but it was a nice place to process things, and that's helpful because sometimes I think too much. That's me in four words: I think too much. So that's the gist of it.

I'll write about my day trying and failing to synthesize polystyrene (which is the Lab Project I'm Doomed to Fail Miserably) in chem lab, of fucking loving my revolutions class (today we talked about the Iranian revolution which is really fascinating), and of the perpetual eye-roll toward Norwegian author Knut Hamsun in my Nordic Literature class (core classes yaaaay). I'll write about my consuming hatred of organic chemistry, how much I like constitutional law, and the other perpetual eye-roll which is my writing class. I like school. It's a focus of this life and this blog.

I love Game of Thrones, and I'm definitely going to cry throughout this season (I'll try not to spoil things but I royally fuck up sometimes, sorry). Cersei Lannister, Elsa from Frozen, Yulia Tymoshenko, and Jennifer Lawrence are my spirit animals. I'm in love with English history, the Ukrainian crisis, Lord of the Rings, Rockstar, Benedict Cumberbatch, modernist literature, skiing, hiking, the Cold War period, feminist critiques of my favorite shows, pizza, and classic rock. I swear. Profusely. Sometimes I hate being a girl. And I hate raccoons.

That's it. That's the blog.

Blogs on Fridays and Saturdays will be late (usually) because I have what is commonly referred to as a "Social Life" and I don't sleep even though I should. I've also got a few papers due in the next few weeks so I might miss a couple here and there. Whatever #yolo.

(sometimes I use hashtags ironically because I hate Millennials. #sorrynotsorry)

So welcome along.

In twenty more years on this earth, most of the days of our lives will fade into the annals of history, unrecorded, forgotten, tiny blips on the seismograph of life. And that terrifies me because I have a bizarre fear of oblivion. So this is what April is about—it's a tribute to what it means to be alive, to be you, in these interesting times. It's making sure these thirty days aren't forgotten. Maybe it's important. Maybe it isn't. But that doesn't mean we don't try.

So thanks for reading, and cheers to April :)