A Life of Pictures
by Savannah Laux
Many cringe away from the grainy awkward pictures of everyday life. Those pictures that were taken with no skill or lighting, only raw reality. Those pictures that capture the truth of a moment. Pictures are not only aesthetic photos with gorgeous lighting and the smooth skin of Photoshop. Some pictures grasp the depth of a situation by keeping the unflattering, the real.
Everyday life is not always beautiful. It is usually exhausted eyes with bags and dark circles. Life is messy hair and washed-out lighting, acne, flushed cheeks. Life is not always beautiful, so I will not pretend that it is. I won’t edit or smooth over the cracked edges of my photos. I won’t pretend like my neck doesn’t hurt in some sitting positions or that my hair always looks perfect. That would be unfair because I promised life in pictures. Life in all its messiness. The everyday life of an online student.
I find that the days where I wake up around 8:00 am are my good days. Though all online students know those days are few and far between. Usually, my sleep-addled brain will hit snooze for another hour before I drag myself out of bed. It is a hard give and take for those who are not early risers. There are good days where I will wake up happy and refreshed, while other days are a rude awakening to a blaring alarm clock and the inability to muster the courage to get out of bed when you know you can sleep another hour. It is easy to let yourself keep sleeping when there is no bus to catch.
Cooking breakfast in the morning is both a relaxing ritual and a struggle. After possibly waking up later than intended, cooking breakfast can seem like a daunting task which requires an amount of energy which makes me wish breakfast had to power to spontaneously generate. Looking at the clock ticking down while I make breakfast knowing I need to get school work done can be anxiety-inducing but also reassuring. Every morning I have made the promise to myself to take the time, no matter how late I have woken up or how stressed I am, to make myself breakfast. For those fifteen minutes, as I cook myself eggs, sometimes with my niece on my hip, I have nothing else I need to be doing but making myself food. It is a promise, no matter how stressed I wake up or the things I need to do, I have fifteen minutes to make myself breakfast and that makes quite a difference.
Making a face out of mismatched eggs, toast, and a banana is also another great way to relieve stress and remind myself of how I can still be amused by things that were funny when I was three. Our inner child is always present.
As an online student, I am constantly aware of the things that need to be done besides school. Instead of removing myself from the rest of the world for hours to focus on school, I am still present in the thick of life. School can be pushed off for a couple more minutes at a time as more things pop up. Doing a load of laundry, washing my dishes, helping a family member, watching my niece, all of these things can add up and because of this, a fifteen-minute breakfast can turn into two hours. In the end, I may start school later than I wanted but late is better than never and I am still able to get it done. Juggling work and life is a skill that will need to be learned eventually and online students have the blessing of learning it earlier than everyone else. Even if that blessing feels like a curse.
Starting school for the day is always difficult. I have always compared it to starting a new book or movie. It can be hard to get into at first but after a while, it gets a lot easier.
Once my motivation and energy start to lag distractions can become unbearable. Blank walls suddenly become a lot more interesting when staring at a textbook for too long. A break and a change of scenery is always a good idea. After taking the time to make myself lunch moving my workplace to another comfortable but quiet place always helps my motivation. The change of scenery is refreshing and makes me feel less stagnant.
There always comes a time where work is not entirely done but night has fallen. After taking some time to spend with family or myself, I always end up doing work in the late hours of the evening. This is where the true test of concentration lies. When it is dark outside and sitting at a desk or a table is no longer comfortable I will sometimes commit the sin of doing work while snuggled in bed. This method only works for so long before my bed will start to sing me to sleep while I fight to stay awake to finish a project.
In the end, work gets done or it doesn’t. Sometimes I have to stay up late and sometimes I don’t, but I always try to take small chunks of time for myself even if it is just breakfast. As an online student, life can be messy, unorganized, and not go as planned. Things need to be done and I am very aware of that even as I try to focus on Physics or Math. Small tasks can build up, but in the end, the messy can be fun and no day is ever the same
Not all these pictures are beautiful, I find fault in many. Many of those faults I find in myself, the position of my hands, the tilt of my neck, the bunching of my shirt. The lighting is off and the background of an unfinished mural looks atrocious. However, it is real. It may not be aesthetically beautiful but life never is. That does not mean life is not beautiful in its own way.
Savannah Laux is the editor-in-chief of the Navigator and founder of the Navigator class at NSA. She is a senior and has been with NSA for three years. Savannah hopes to have a career as a lawyer and work in the area of human rights. Some of her hobbies are reading, writing, and music. She has a strong passion for writing that fuels her love for the Navigator.