Oh Alicia, with your vaginments

I do not like assignments. No thank you. They stink. I prefer vaginments (pronounced like vigina, with the long i). This was a system I worked out with my best friend at the time Sean back in my senior year of high school. I was taking six AP classes, and I'm pretty sure I came (get it?) up with the term when the time was coming for the barrage of AP exams. Yes, I have had an eight-hour day of tests in the middle of a week of test taking. Hehe, testes taking. See where the high school comes in? Get it, comes in? Alright, enough of that.

The point is, I got so fed up with assignments that I had to create something new- vaginments. Vaginments are a lot like assignments, only they're a lot more fun, and you look forward to doing them. You give them all the time they need to reach fruition, and you don't get frustrated. You just let whatever will be, be. And become. This is actually how I've written some of my favorite stories and some of my favorite papers and projects. It's more right brain, it's more artsy. It's feminine, and it's evolved. People tend to rush assignments, but with vaginments, it's all about taking your time and enjoying the process.

So today I was facing a lot of assignments. And I was panicking and hyperventilating and debating dropping out of school. I mean, Omar's moving to Lebanon for a year. Not like that has anything to do with it, but I could... do something here. I could go be homeless and become a franciscan monk. I could be a zen master. I could give up all my worldly goods and walk the earth bare foot. I could do it. But then maybe I can just bring zen back into school. Maybe I can be okay with Bs, and maybe I can take things slow, count my breaths, be awake. Maybe I can embrace my inner feminine and do my vaginments with pride. Become one with my ideas. Believe in them. For once.

In zazen (meditation), you are sitting at a train station, and trains of thought are zooming past. If you board a train, you'll be way off course. You'll be lost, and you'll have to find your way back. But in the station you can watch the trains go past. You can acknowledge them and then let them go. So these fears, these anxieties, these feelings of failure and hopelessness and anger that have been plaguing my dreams- they don't have to consume me. I can let them pass. And maybe these vaginments won't be works of art. Maybe they won't get As. But maybe I'll discover something important while doing them. And maybe just doing them is enough.