Day 1: Monday

Mondays are by default one of the worst days of the week according to the majority of school-aged kids who have ever had to wake up to the doom of the sounding alarm. However, the Monday morning after prom weekend is a totally different story and in much worse shape. In my 7am AP Biology class, the whole class was in zombie mode and kids had their eyes half open. I was no different. If it had not been for my bottle of Naked juice, I would have gotten a concussion from my head dropping onto the desk.

The classroom was completely quiet except for the teacher constantly making comments about our lifelessness, which no one bothered or had the energy to respond to or deny. Usually, I am annoyed/entertained by this particular teacher because of her peculiar habits in not grading work and her quirkiness that I have yet to become desensitized to even though it’s nearing the end of the school year, but this morning, I was feeling too tired to even care or bother feeling anything towards whatever the teacher was doing or saying.

This behavior wasn’t the most mindful in that I paid very little attention to my environment, to what the teacher said, and to what even happened in my 7am class. I was too preoccupied and disabled from my own tiredness to also try to pay attention to my emotions, although I am pretty sure I was hankering very strongly for a nice warm bed. Concerning acceptance without judgment, I can report first hand that I was less consumed with my annoyance towards the teacher than I had ever been before mainly because I was too tired to care or notice. My lack of feeling made me indifferent to everything around me, and even though indifference isn’t exactly judging, indifference still isn’t the same as true acceptance.

During my 7am, I also had the nagging feeling in the back of my mind that there had been Spanish homework over the weekend and a lot of it. Even through my tiredness, I could feel the apprehension building up and my urgency to complete the homework before the next period, where a zero for homework could really bring down my grade. However, I was too tired and lazy to try to complete it then, so I ended up worrying about it even more to make up for the lack of work I actually (don’t) do, disobeying my first guideline to mindfulness.

All in all, this morning was not exactly off to the greatest start. I had not fulfilled any of my four guidelines/goals and had completely gone against many of them without even thinking about them or being conscientious enough. The rest of my classes/day was much the same. I continued to be tired and unfocused until I finally got home and went into a deep slumber for the afternoon and early evening.

From what happened today, I can definitely conclude that it is beyond important to be fully rested and in the right mental state prior to trying to give it your all in practicing mindfulness in daily life. I unintentionally flunked many personal goals with my lack of sufficient rest, and this left me in the dust for the whole day. With a whole day now wasted, I must take this more seriously and do everything in my power to make the best/most of my week/experience.

Tonight, I will get more rest. Tomorrow, I will be well rested and will do better to follow the guidelines to be more mindful.