I had a dream that started in the pure bliss of relaxation. The kind of relaxation when you don’t care about anything, but you should be. When you’ve pushed everything to the back of your mind, and think “I’ll deal with it later.” This place typically feels good, but only about between 50 and 75 percent good, because even though you have the satisfaction of doing nothing, the thought that you will inevitably have to do something keeps seeping into your unstressed thoughts. Back to the dream. I was in this stress limbo and I don’t quite know where I was, but suddenly I felt this wave of panic and urgency. My phone was ringing non stop, and I checked all of my alarms, which were blaring at me to pack my things. I was supposed to be at the airport with some classmates. I was supposed to be studying abroad in Australia. I grabbed a suitcase and started shoving things in it. I wasn’t quite sure of the house I was in, but my mother was in it and I rushed her to take me to the airport. Like any other time I’m rushing, things were going terribly wrong. I specifically remember realizing half way to the airport all the clothes I packed in the suitcase were very unfitting for a trip to Australia. A lot of the clothes I packed were winter clothes, and I had to think about ways I’d have to cut them in order for me not to have to buy a completely new wardrobe once I landed in Australia. “This is why it’s important not to rush.This is why it’s important not to procrastinate.” kept reverberating in my head throughout the dream. Somehow we rushed through the airport and I made it with my classmates *just* in the knick of time. I know because something like a door was closing slowly and I made it through.

The moral of the story isn’t that I made it through. It’s all the rushing and the energy it took just to make it through because I was relaxing beforehand…procrastinating. I know procrastinating is a recurring theme in any college student’s life, but I took that as a sign that if I continue procrastinating, I can possibly miss out on an amazing opportunity. That, and I’ll find along the way that I was completely unprepared for my journey and I’ll have to improvise. It might not exactly be studying abroad in Australia, or it might. Either way, I don’t want to have to rush and be stressed out all because I decided to procrastinate and bask in not having to think about something for a moment. I’d rather be 100 percent focused and get something done so that I can be 100 percent relaxed when I’m done with it.

Even though I already knew that, sometimes it takes your subconscious to tell you in your sleep to make you realize what can happen if you continue on a stupid path. To be honest, I’ll probably still procrastinate every now and then. But waking up disoriented, and my subconscious laughing at me as if to say “this was just a drill” was what I needed as a not-so-friendly reminder to pull it together and not bask in comfort. So, thanks for that subconscious. I didn’t like that, but I needed it.