tick tock.

When things become difficult, I generally stop doing them. I stop going to the gym, I stop reading Marcel Proust, I stop asking the guys in the mail room to get those file folders down from that high shelf, and instead I just re-use the ones I already have. This tactic has so far worked out OK for me in life.

I am taking the GRE tomorrow, and I kind of wish I could stop it. Somehow this is not an option. It is so unfair how time eventually runs out. Deadlines arrive, checks must be mailed, the minute hand moves, the hour hand follows, and frankly, it's horrible.

I've been reading Hannah Arendt, but she has not yet agreed to write me a letter of recommendation for grad school. I forgive her, though; she just doesn't know what it's like to be me. She had Heidegger and Karl Jaspers write her recs. She just doesn't feel my pain.

Today, after I decided that I was not going to grad school, and instead I would write a romance novel and become phenomenally wealthy like Nicholas Sparks, Arendt told me: "Objectively, that is, seen from the outside and without taking into account that man is a beginning and a beginner, the chances that tomorrow will be like yesterday are always overwhelming."

This was comforting, but only for like a second.

Update: The GREs went fine. In fact, I ended up getting the exact same score on the GRE as I did on the SAT. Which means, of course, that Arendt was right.