I've been feeling quite off lately, which honestly isn't unusual for me.

I normally start my day off in the silence of my dorm room, except for the comfort I get in solitude from the music emanating from my AirPods. These tend to be normal days, where everything flows without any additional interruptions. I go to class with everything prepared and done the night before. My stress levels are low, and I feel stable as a whole.

These days I'm more talkative and outgoing. I'm more likely to participate in class, actually engage in group work and make myself feel like a leader amongst others. Productivity in terms of my outside work practically surpasses time, and I feel more motivated to go to marching band practice, which is ridiculously far from my dorm, meaning I'd have to get my car and park it back in the hell that is university parking. Better than walking for 20 minutes, I suppose.

There are other days where I wake up in a mild frenzy after staying in bed too long after my alarms go off. I don't know why, but I just don't want to get out of bed. I completely skip putting on music while I get ready for my day, and I focus more on just getting out of my dorm on time. Already, my day isn't flowing smoothly, and that bothers me and disrupts my workflow. Things are almost, but not completely, finished from the night prior, so I keep my mind on that throughout classes. I feel less stable with higher stress levels. I'm less likely to speak, so I participate in class less, and I dissociate from any human interaction at all. I'm undeniably way more exhausted despite any five-hour energy or coffee I could scarf down. I also find less time to actually eat or drink any water at all, so I feel lightheaded on top of my exhaustion. I get work done much more slowly, but I end up finishing some things before I head out toward my downhill trek to get my car for a possibly rainy and pointless band practice, where I'll start feeling disgusting and unkempt until I finally get home to shower off the stressful silence of my day.

I really tend to correlate my introversion with stress, seeing how bubbly and outgoing I am when my life is somewhat in order for a day. I could wake up the next day and repeat a cycle of extroversion. Maybe I'll have a streak of a few days of just that. Or maybe I'll just have a streak of my depressive silence and constrained dissociation. I get things done either way, I just have to acknowledge this struggle and power through my mental ups and downs.