By Ella Bilu Last year I wrote a truthful, accurate, real breaking news story titled, “Breaking News: Teenager Smiles for The First Time While On School Break.” Since then, only one other teenager has smiled, and it happened one year later, during winter break. It’s me; I am the second teenager to smile.
I enjoyed a relaxing, but too short winter break. I consider these two weeks the best weeks of my junior year. I found myself smiling on several occasions like when I didn’t wake up at 6:30 a.m. with crippling anxiety about my physics tests. Everything about my winter break daily routine was unconventional in my normally busy life, and that’s what made it beautiful.
7:00 a.m: Wake up to a gardener mowing outside.
7:03 a.m: Fall back asleep.
8:00 a.m: Wake up to sister blasting Nicki Minaj in the bathroom while doing a 30-step skin care routine.
8:07 a.m: Watch TikTok videos about the North Sea
9:04 a.m: Try to go back to sleep
10:37 a.m: Give up on sleep and eat Special K cereal for breakfast while scrolling through tweets about Gypsy Rose’s life out of prison.
11:14 a.m: Make a plan for break; includes deep cleaning my room (throwing out 2017 clothes, cleaning out two tote bags), studying for online SAT, getting ahead on 2024 readings. (This was enough productivity for the day as you’ll notice I didn’t do anything for the rest of the day)
12:31 p.m: Watch Sex and the City
1:04 p.m: Take a shit
2:14 p.m: Go on a walk, retreat to house after getting chased by a coyote
2:47 p.m: Eat an Uncrustable
3:00 p.m: Take a nap
5:14 p.m: Open a Google Doc and stare at it blankly for 17 minutes
5:31 p.m: Abandon my poetry career and play the New York Times’ Connections.
6:30 p.m: Eat rotisserie chicken and broccoli, and Trader Joe's cheetos for dessert
7:24 p.m: Throw laundry in the washer
8:24 p.m: Put laundry in dryer
8:49 p.m: Open a book and read 13 pages
9:13 p.m: Take out laundry from dryer, but fail to fold it
9:17 p.m: Scour through fridge to find cucumber for my DIY facemask (I did not have a cucumber)
9:24 p.m: Scroll on Pinterest, saving images of Italy and Greece for the Europe trip I’ll never take
9:46 p.m: Go to bed early, falling asleep to ASMR
Comments