I already mastered the art of creating a balance in my life

It was 6 am again. I swiped up to turn my alarm off and groaned into my pillow, pulling the sheets higher above my head. I knew what 6 am meant, it was “Get up and begin your day” for me but I didn't want to because I was pretty exhausted. Nevertheless, a girl had to do what a girl had to do.

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I picked my phone up and scrolled to my daily devotional, rising to pace so that the temptation to return to sleep did not overwhelm me.

After praying for what seemed like forever, (which was actually only 15 minutes), I drank a full cup of water, slid my anti-blue-light lenses onto my nose, and headed straight into the toilet. It was writing time.

I don't know why I did that, I mean writing in the toilet. Maybe because it made me have this feeling of serenity but in truth, there was no environmental noise and my roommate would not be up until the next hour.

I began to type away at my google documents app. Sometimes when I returned from school, if I wasn't too tired, I would begin to type scraps of the story I wanted to write the following day on my laptop. Jotting down ideas and doing mild character development. But yesterday was not one of such days.

I returned from school so exhausted that I didn't even make dinner. I just took my clothes off and slept till the following morning.

I was grateful that the following day was a Saturday, I would have time to sleep in because I concluded lectures early on Friday and so had time to write in the evenings against the following day. Then when I woke up on most Saturdays, I peeked through my food menu to see what was for food for the following week and headed over to the market with my roommate.

That was the only way I could survive the first few days of a new week.

On that same Saturday, I would wash all my dirty clothes and go ahead to arrange all my clothes for the following week on hangers, packaging all the clothes that needed ironing to the drycleaner just across my street since I didn't own an iron myself.

On most days when I didn't have so many dirty clothes, I sat back to binge watch Netflix. My roommate called it a bad habit but what did she know? She wasn't the one studying Theatre Arts as a course.

I left the toilet exactly 30 minutes after I walked in there and as I wrote, I paced the house. There was something about pacing when writing for me, it helped activate my brain. I had barely 30 minutes left to begin to prepare for classes so I needed to write as fast as I could.

Mondays to Thursdays were the most hectic days of the week for me. I had to attend 8 am classes every day, most of which ended at 2 pm. On those days, I hardly had time to grab a plate of food so I dished the food out into a small flask instead and took it to class. If I got lucky enough, I could eat when a lecturer walked into his class 10 minutes late.

Sometimes after school, I had meetings with the members of the Editorial board which I led as chairman. On such days, I left school by 3 or 4 pm. According to my roommate, my diet was pathetic, which was why I spent my entire weekend eating. I had even developed a bloated abdomen because of my poor eating habits.

At exactly 7 am, my roommate's alarm rang and I knew it was time up for me. I had committed to reading a short story every morning so I saved the document I was typing and logged into the short story site after which I would have to freshen up and hurry to class.

“Treasure, good morning,” my roommate said as she rose to give me a quick hug. She was fond of hugs.

“Good morning. Did you sleep well?” She nodded and walked into the toilet.

I did a quick scan of the story before me and hurried over to the kitchen to heat up the food my roommate prepared when she got back the night before.

I would have to complete my writing in the tricycle on my way to school if I didn't want to be late. I sighed as I stirred the Jollof rice on fire. If my life was already as overwhelming as it was, I wondered what would happen when I was done with school and went into full-time hustle.

I didn't know if the way I maneuvered my way around classes and my job was good enough to maneuver through life after school but I knew I could try, especially since I already mastered the art of creating a balance in my life.