I run into the night in pajamas, hastily stepping into sandals on the way down the stairs.

On the phone, my mom’s voice urges, “Quick! It’s disappearing!”

I stumble into the Mirrielees courtyard, but all I can see is the dark mass of buildings, trees and bright electric lights.

I spot two others pacing the sidewalks, searching for something in the sky. “Are you looking for the moon too?” they ask, and I say yes. There is supposed to be a total lunar eclipse. I trot here and there, my path resembling a drunkard’s stagger as I crane my neck to see if there is a better perspective to be gained. The sky is an opaque mass.

“I can’t find the moon,” I tell my mom through the phone, sounding strangely plaintive. “It’s covered by clouds.”

The eclipse has long passed, but I keep walking further. As the distance grows behind me, I recall the blur of the past two months: going to the gym, making breakfast, going to the office, staring at the computer until it felt like the text bored through my eyes into my skull, coming back, cooking dinner, sweeping the floors because they became unendurable, looking sidelong at the kitchen counters and considering if I could clean them next time, and then – here, a dim recollection of my personal priorities would surface. Maybe I should think about my major, maybe plan for next year. I would furrow my brow to hold the thought in place, then give up, it being too much of a strain.

If that’s too hard, maybe write something for fun? Or read? But the thought of using my eyes brought the strain to my forehead again. I was spent. I could not do anything important, nor anything pleasurable. All I could do was to be tired.

I would sit on the brown couch in the tiny apartment, and all of a sudden it would feel horribly suffocating.

It was on such an evening that my mom called, “Hurry, hurry!” and I ran outside to find the moon.

But the moon is not to be seen. I am almost frantic. I have been wrapped in a blind roil of wool the entire summer, and now I cannot escape, for it covers the whole sky. 

My franticness recedes with distance, however, until I can let out a breath into the new quiet. I trace slow circles around the deserted amphitheater of Meyer Green.

I have drowned in the business of living, and forgotten to live. When I was not working, or cooking, or thinking of what comes next in the day, I thought I should be having fun – talking with friends, going out. I crammed my life full and forgot to leave room for myself. I have not had a thought of my own rise to the surface in a long time.

No wonder conversation became stale, revolving upon the same worn topics. No wonder I felt directionless, following the glancing paths of other people without one of my own.

And the tiredness, the feeling that there was never a moment to rest. As a student, I envied working people; eight hours a day seemed luxurious when I felt like I was working every waking moment. But I learned that the monotony of a job has its own peculiar grind. Furthermore, even if the job is confined to eight hours a day, which is rare, there is the business of living: cooking, cleaning, grocery shopping and a thousand miscellaneous tasks that I don’t have to deal with as a student. The older one gets, it seems, the more are the demands of life, and the slimmer the bit of space one has for oneself.

For all my complaining, I was in the best of circumstances, more playacting the working life than living it. I hardly had a commute, the tiny apartment didn’t require much maintenance and I wasn’t supporting a family. The thought does not make me excited for real life after college. 

Perhaps the future is not so disappointing. Perhaps everything seemed hard because I was new to it; likely it was because of a residue of burnout from the year. Yes, I can imagine a working life that is full of meaning and pleasure, but I also see how easily one can relinquish one’s goals and oneself to the grind of daily life, how much heavier one’s burdens become. So let me take my summer experience as a reminder to appreciate my life now – the variety, the gaiety, the freedom of college – and to resolve, somehow, to bring these things into my life after I leave.