September Notes from a Slacker

Hi, everyone, long time no see! How have you all been? Where are all my friends starting school? Is school fun? Where are all my friends going to college? Is military training treating you okay?

(Sigh! Don't hit me, don't hit me, don't throw hands. Let's talk this out.)

Ahem, ahem, no more fooling around. (Bruised and swollen ing)

Before I knew it, August had quietly passed, and it had been over a month since I graduated and left school.

For me, this period had been calm with the slightest of ups and downs.

All my friends and classmates were busy working, preparing for graduate school entrance exams, or struggling away in big cities.

But unlike them, I went home.

It felt like the steps of my life had suddenly come to a stop.

Before this, my life had been school, vacations, exams, school, then heading off to the next place. But now I had stopped, with no plans for what came next.

It was like I had skipped the process of entering society and somehow gone straight into working from home.

Throughout August, I got up close to noon every day, checked whether there were any new messages on my phone, looked through the backend notifications, and wrote in the afternoon. Sometimes I wrote until evening; sometimes I got stuck and wrote until midnight. Then, at midnight, I thought about having to write again tomorrow and didn't want to sleep, so I stayed up scrolling through dumb memes and jokes.

The only people I got to see were my parents—once at noon and once at night. I really couldn't get up in the morning.

There was nothing special to do, no one to go see. No friends, no partner either.

I stayed in my room every day, sitting in