Man's Search For Pretty

     I was comfortable before. Classwork took up a fair chunk of time, but it was easily doable. I was figuring out how to feed myself and improving recipes in the New World. I'd even begun to take regular time out of my day to swim and improve my slightly worn and badly folded trench-coat of a body. This was a mistake.

     As I began trying to improve myself, the world around me pitched a perfect storm. Midterms ended, and suddenly my professors expected me to perform miracles of perfect recollection and transmogrification of blank pages into essays. People outside of my minuscule peer group appeared and were awesome, causing me to spend more time chasing down friends. Deadlines began cropping up in every class, multiplying like rabbits that know the end is nigh. (This assignment included. Ten blog posts is a LOT when you go on and on, taking up time with irrelevant tangents and asides. Like this one.)

     On top of this, my brother resurfaced. I hadn't heard from him in months, which wasn't really anything different, and he'd come back with a Minecraft server, which was even less surprising. I agreed to play, mostly because I felt sorry for him, living in his apartment alone with his girlfriend and three incredibly spunky cats. I figured I'd play a bit, make appearances when I had time, and then say that Minecraft just wasn't for me.

     But Minecraft IS for me. I'd forgotten just how much I liked the stupid little game. It didn't help that my brother had introduced an entirely new mod-pack, which in Minecraft changes EVERYTHING. Literally thousands of hours of new content. I'm a college kid. I was running out of time already, and now there's one of the greatest timesinks in the history of mankind just waiting for me to play.

     When I began trying to improve myself, all I wanted to do was replace some of the body mass I'd lost during the starvation diet (I only realized later that pancakes and cabbage on alternating nights, with no other food, didn't count as healthy eating) and turn some of what I had left into muscle. Before, I could say that I had muscle hiding somewhere underneath the fat, but now I've found that that's just not true, and it's making me all sorts of ashamed. Swimming has always been something I wanted to get back to, and college is the perfect place for that, but I didn't realize the earth would conspire against me to stop me from being pretty.

     Looking back, I should have known. The earth sent me a warning shot before it decided to wage war, and arrogant fool that I am, I decided not to listen. It was the fourth week of the semester, and I'd gotten situated enough to think about things like exercise. So I thought I'd get back into swimming. There's a myriad of reasons for this, among them a call to water and childhood, but the real reasoning went more like swimmer body=girl magnet=do want. I thought it would be that simple. I wish it were.

     The first time I went swimming, I had forgotten how good the water felt. I had forgotten how soothing it was. And I had forgotten how easy it is in an soothing environment that feels great to push yourself far beyond your limits. I swam until my arms felt like lead and I gasped for breath. I swam until I forgot what my mouth tasted like when it didn't have chlorine in it. I swam until my eyes hurt more opening them above water than underneath. I loved every second of it. I should have known it couldn't last.

     It wasn't until after that I faced the consequences of my actions. I planned a leisurely trip home, starting in the sauna, heading up the Long Stairs,(It seems evil to put the stairs right next to the workout areas, so I'm calling them a torture device and capitalizing the name.) and finishing with a long stroll up campus to my bunk. It was a good plan, but immediately I knew something had gone wrong. It turns out that basking in a warm sauna after overexerting yourself is a bad idea, and when I grew suddenly dizzy exiting the locker rooms I remembered that. I sat down, hoping it would clear. It did, slowly, until I felt up to walking the Long Stairs, One thing I like about BYU is that it's bad at torture. I walked the Stairs without a hitch. It was only when I realized I was a mite thirsty and stopped in for a drink in the SWKT that everything went horribly wrong. If going to a sauna  after over-exerting is a bad idea, drinking cold water while queasy, overly warm, and malnourished is worse.

     I know enough to know when I'm being threatened. The slightly queasy feeling that came over me was the same one you'd feel when you'd eaten bad food, stepped out into the alley for a breath of air, and then had someone put a knife to you and stolen your wallet. It had all the same hallmarks- nausea, followed by needing to get outside, followed by a feeling of impending doom.

     I hurled not long after. I'm not proud. But more importantly, I know that this was just a warning shot. After this, it's war.

     The powers that be have declared where they stand. I thought it was coincidence the first time, but I'm not that lucky. Now that They know I am resolved to be pretty, no matter what the cost, They have declared all-out war, increasing homework load, throwing me into the social rings of people I could get along with, and generally trying to drown out any chance of progress.

     They don't know me. If arrogance can said to be a personality trait, I have it in spades. Icarus himself may have eventually turned back, but I? I am resolved. I have thrown my lot in with the pretty people, and there is no turning back.