MIRRORED REFLECTION IN A DIMLY LIT ROOM

By Kevin Wetherall

I was filled with the notion that the class would be easy, simplistic, and straight forward. I didn’t give it a second thought and spent most of the time that I had free not doing the work to get ahead, pretending that watching videos and other time wasting schemes were more important. I enjoyed writing creatively, I enjoyed leisurely reading, but I had no idea that the things we would be learning and actually producing would be completely different from what I had encountered and participated in before.

Although I felt the tension of time and work accumulating on my shoulders, I let the distant thoughts of the near future scatter into the wasteland of procrastination. I only did what was acquired of me, taking a deaf ear to my calling conscious trying to steer me in the right direction. I waited until the last minute to do online discussion forum assignments and readings, because I believed they weren’t worth the ticking sounds on the clock they were producing. But, with each day, things became harder.

I believed that I had a solid discourse community that would lead me down the path of least residence---YouTubers---what I did not realize is that once I discovered there was no sourced material that I could use to give my inquiry paper credibility, I began to push the community away; and then when time started bearing down on me, I began to panic and in a flurry of adrenaline and ignorance, soon after, I began randomly choosing other discourse communities to fill the creviced pain---Catholicism, Golden Corral, Poets, and then back to YouTubers, before going back to Golden Corral.

Again with Golden Corral, I thought I would have solid piece of material to write about and make an inquiry into…but as being my luck would have it, time crunched even tighter to the bearings of my bowels, and I would find nothing that would give me the amount of information and sourcing I needed to answer my questions as to continue a paper for ten pages. The loathing hatred I had for Golden Corral was once again reignited with a burst of searing heat and inexorable flame.

I was suffering the consequences of my procrastination; everyone else in the class had solid, or at least manageable topics, I had nothing. I felt sudden urgency, expanding anxiety, and a feeling of unending sorrow and depression that I had not felt in years---In the dragon’s mouth I lay;Putrid stench, but I still stay. Blood stained teeth and filth not mentioned; Why I am here, no good intention. Its breath wreaked and charred, undoubtedly remains from its crematory oven; A caldron of bone, hair, and flesh stirred by devilish coven. Its tongue a rolled out rug, shards of glass on incrusted iron wool; Lashing violently its wielded tool, disordered cleaning, I feel its pull. Torn off my latching post, so down the demons void I plunge; Down and down past all hope known, into abhorrent sallow grunge. From the dragon’s mouth, bereft away; So now in darkness I must stay.

---I was in a sunken dark void with a broken ankle, but I needed to overcome the pain and realize I still had two arms and one foot to help me escape a treacherous end.

My long lost love would be the thing to save me from mental tomb---skateboarding. I had given it up over four years ago to make way for the overbearing load of school and work, I had no idea that it would come back when I needed it the most. One night the questions just poured out of me like a grand rapidest stream during the melting of the mountain peak snow---over four pages in my journal, of just questions--- I had acquired my start and now it was time for me to let the river of words flow into the ocean of my paper.

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From that point, things became simple. I no longer procrastinated, because I knew the consequences (i.e. the lowering of my grade) would be dire. I acquired my sources, along with interviewees for my questions to give my paper some context that was not only from my opinion. I wrote my annotated bibliography, I started working on drafts after developing my inquiry questions and starting points of each selective category, and soon after, with the information I had collected, I had completed everything--- one draft after another. I was freed from my cage of despair, awakened to the night air, and revitalized to go ever further towards my goal of completion.