So I have spent the last week back in Ohio. I left for the San Antonio airport last Thursday shortly before noon, and I arrived back at my apartment today shortly after noon. I was away for almost exactly one week. Pretty neat.
Aside from being a nice change of scenery, my little excursion was also planned around getting a few medical items dealt with, as well as allowing me to pick up my cat, Salem, and bring him back to Texas with me. Everything went smoothly, including the nearly day-long plane trip back to San Antonio. I'm actually surprised that Salem did as well as he did, considering that he spent the entire time from leaving the house in Ohio to arriving at Rory and Rachel's apartment some eleven hours later inside a small animal carrier bag thing. He is a patient animal, however, and only complained when he was being physically moved about. He was very pleased when the door was opened up for him at the end of the journey, too.
Today has been a rather uneventful one. Once I got back to my apartment, I set up the cat's box and food, sort of unpacked and finished replacing the trash bags that I had left undone when I left. Oh, and I discovered the source of a rather unpleasant fruit-like smell that I encountered upon returning, too. I initially suspected was the apple cider vinegar fly trap that I left out over the week - which, happily, had collected at least another six gnats while I was gone - but the smell persisted in strange places after I had emptied and washed the jar I was using and still after I had sprayed some air freshener around. It turns out that the too-strong, fruity smell is coming from my shirts. I blame the dryer freshener thing that my Mom is using in lieu of dryer sheets for that. The smell is both too powerful (gives me headaches anytime I catch the scent), and is considerably not a masculine one. Yes, as if I was masculine to begin with. [Strikes pose.]
I did accomplish one thing of relative (in)significance, though. I believe that I have discovered why I'm having so much trouble focusing on schoolwork and other such things requiring concentration. I realized that I spend the vast majority of my time in a semi trance-like state in an effort to not notice the passage of time as intensely as I otherwise might. I do this because I very often have absolutely nothing that I want to do. My rule of thumb is that if it involves me doing it by myself, I have no interest in it. In any case, while in this trance-like state, it is incredibly hard to actually put my brain to work. I'm basically forcing it to go into a liquid state, so of course its not going to perform very well under any sort of pressure. It is effective in making the sheer boredom of my life more manageable, but due to the length of time in which I've been doing this, it has apparently become my default mode of operation.
I've never enjoyed doing tedious and repetitive tasks in the first place, but alas, in order to master subjects like math, tedium and repetition are sort of required. I was good at it back when I was in high school, depending on the week - but I've gone several years now without having to strain my brain very hard at all for any reason. (That and a series of unfortunately stressful and dramatic social encounters have both led to my not liking to apply much effort to things in general.) Essentially, I am at a point where it's so much easier to exist in a vegetative state than to attempt actually using my brain - in which state the passage of time would be more acutely noticeable - that it is incredibly hard to be able to focus on anything, even things that I really rather enjoy doing. It's unfortunate and I'm not entirely sure what I will have to do to change it. At least I can see what the problem is, though. Well, at least I think I can, anyway.
