So much for a lazy summer vacation...

As the first year of my young college career came to a close, all I wanted to do was relax and be lazy for the entire 4 months of summer vacation I had in front of me. Maybe I could go for a tan, workout some, chat it up on AIM and Facebook. Yeah, so much for that, except for the tan part. Almost everyday, I am slammed with articles to read, tabla to play, Gujarati to learn, puzzles to solve, working on muscles I haven't worked on for months, doing experiments for five hours, etc. Despite having so much to do, I enjoy being busy. Sure, it sucks doing an experiment that isn't promising and redoing the whole thing until it works, knowing all well I can mess up the entire experiment by a simple touch of my glove. Despite this tedium and workload, I always tell myself "Well it's either this or watching 5 straight hours of SportsCenter".

After absorbing the wisdom of hundreds of people I have met/seen/admired in the 19 years of life I have lived, and through some life-changing experiences of my own, I learned that I cannot waste 4 months of my life waking up at 11 AM and sleeping at 3 AM. The most opportune time to do a 6 mile run has gone; playing tabla that extra hour in the morning is gone; even reading a book that you have always wanted to read will just collect dust as more time is wasted. It hasn't sunk in that I need to wake up earlier until a few days ago. I mean, fine, I wake up every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday at 7 AM, but what about Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday, and Sunday?If I were to get up at a time where the sun is halfway between rising and setting, well that just wouldn't be day now would it? I think it would be a half-lived, half energized, half appreciated, half day. I learned that this is not the way I should spend four out of seven days of the week.

So there is just one simple phrase that has been preached countless times to me by my elders:

Carpe Diem my friends. Carpe Diem. What a beautiful phrase, and so overlooked. When my Dad first told me that, I was an ignorant teenager and merely nodded to just move on with the conversation. Every year he and my Mom would always snare "Tejas, get up earlier. Don't live you life like this!" It hasn't hit me until now. Now, all I think about is living the best way possible without the need of materialistic monotonies to fulfill my life.

Only a few days can change a lifetime. Spoiled by the luxuries of home, I forget that life is too short even if I have only lived 19 years. I have begin to take order in my life, making goals for the day, smiling for no reason, help my parents even if I wasn't asked to, bug my brother (well that's just for fun), and living.

That's just it. This summer is all about me living.