Inadequacy

Right now, I'm sitting here coughing away in front of my computer while listening to the gurgling of the humidifier and thinking about when dinner is. This humidifier somewhat fails; while my room does feel a little less dry, the air that comes out is cold. :( Brr; I'm freezing now. Being cold is definitely not a good condition to be in during an illness, if this can even be counted as one. I don't necessarily feel horrible, but sometimes that "sick feeling" washes over me at completely random times, and I feel absolutely exhausted. In addition to those fun things, my eyes are sore, my sinuses are constantly clogged, my ear feels really stuffy, my voice is dying, and I keep having random coughs of varying severity. X_X Ugh. I read in a useless biology case study that stress reduces the amount of white blood cells in your body. Obviously, I wouldn't be surprised if that were happening to me.

Well, now it's time to complain about (academic) life, which is all I do on here anyways. A while ago, I blogged about how I felt incompetent. Going through the past few months, that feeling slowly ebbed away. Unfortunately, it came back today in English class, when I got one of my lowest essay marks ever. Okay, so it's better than that life-shattering 12/25 I got last year, but only slightly. And that's the thing: such a mark decided to impose itself on me at a highly inconvenient time, since it's the middle of Year 2, and predicted marks are coming up pretty darn soon. I don't even know if I deserved the mark or not; he seemed to mark me down mainly for being a bit vague on some things. I overheard him mentioning grammatical issues to other people, but he didn't even say anything extremely significant to me... He then proceeded to round it off by saying that on some days with some topics, I may not be able to succeed. Still, I don't see how in the world I could go from 6s and 7s to... this. I thought everybody's supposed to be moving forwards, not taking steps backwards. I honestly feel like giving back my IB English 11 award and giving it to somebody who actually deserves it, not some loner fob of a failure.

Nevertheless, I'll have to admit that something's up with my English and language skills. It seems like I can't connect ideas and make them flow as well anymore. I'm guessing it's a combined factor of how I always thought in French for the latter part of the last schooling year, the fact that I spend most of my time at home during weekends simply sitting in my room and not communicating with anybody and my concentration on other subjects besides English.

On top of all that, I'm completely hopeless for piano now. I may have memorized all of my pieces at some point in time, but I'll have random splurges where I'll just forget what to play next. Also, there are some works that I can't even play that well in the first place. I know I need more time to practice, but how am I supposed to fit that in with schooling? Four hours of practice each weekday would simply be impossible unless I subjected myself to even later sleeping times...

Yes, it's sad how school and academics seem to affect me so much. What's the reason? Why can't I just let go and live? Is it a desire to live up to the expectations of my parents? Is it a worry for my future? Is it just my personality?

As melodramatic as it sounds, sometimes I wish I could just shake the shackles off and live: to feel the wind on my face as I forget about it all... If only.