In the dog days of summer before senior year, something has possessed me to gut my entire room. One might ask why I didn't do this at any other point during these last three months, when the humidity index wasn't 94% in my room that lacks air conditioning, which is an excellent question. I think it has a lot to do with the fact that many of my close friends are leaving for college or a gap year, and so relieving myself of all this stuff is my own way of forcing myself to move forward and is also preventative measure--if I'm busy, I can't wallow in feelings of the self pity and abandonment that tend to accompany juniors this time of year. There's just something so satisfying about throwing away entire trash bags of nick nacks that for whatever reason once meant a great deal.

Sifting through eight years of pile up under my bed has also been quite the trot down memory lane, which is maybe why this project has lasted me twice as long as expected. Stumbling upon my old journals took up an entire afternoon. While I re-grew up with myself in this sticky bedroom, I realized a reoccurring theme: I was obsessed with the future. Not in like YELLO, MCFLY-science-fiction-cool way, but it seemed every other entry was riddled with anxieties about what was yet to come or unrealistic expectations for it. I just wanted to tell my past self to chill out, because life is actually a great and amazing event. Also, you're ten. Not a ton you can do about the then-current presidential elections at the moment.

This advice came with one exception. A 7th grade Past Margaret wrote an entry about how excited she was for high school, because this is where she could really improve her writing, she could submit to the school's literary magazine, write plays for the student directed one acts, join the newspaper. She could become a real writer. It hit me, five years later and three years of high school under my belt that I have yet to do any of that. I'm a perfectionist to the enth degree, and as a result as massive procrastinator. I have this idea that once I become older and more refined, smarter and more competent, then I will be a real writer who would be allowed by the universe to submit worthy work. Between then and now, I have gone to football games and Europe, kissed boys and gotten drastic haircuts when it didn't work out, I've found favorite movies, books, bands, and Jesus--all of which have been great, but I'm still sitting like a duck, waiting to become this "real writer" of my pubescent dreams, and by my own definition, someone who matters.

I love writing To Do lists, and my goals for this summer were as follows:

1. Finish all four seasons of Arrested Development (I'm halfway through the third season)

2. Learn Spanish (Hola. Yo cocino cebollas!)

3. Run 350 miles (stress fractures put a damper on that one)

4. Take a trip (Last minute to Colorado. Goodbye savings account, hello altitude sickness)

5. Get up off your ass already.

If I wasn't leaving that last one open to interpretation, I would have failed miserably. I am currently very much on my ass, sitting on my bed while it storms outside and I try to convince myself that a deodorant and dry shampoo combo is pretty much the same thing as a shower. I forget what exactly I meant by number five when I wrote it in early June, but I am now deciding that it means to write this essay. You see, the title wasn't so much of a headline as a warning: I am quite aware that this is a crappy stream of consciousness, and yet it is endlessly important that I share it. While the term "endlessly important" may seem a bit dramatic and egotistic--I'm sure the TeenInk staff could have gone their entire lives without reading this--this is pretty damn important to a certain Midwestern teenager. (And isn't it in The Official Teenaged Manual to blow everything out of proportion and be self absorbed?) I know PERFECTION DOESN’T EXSIST SO JUST B URSELF isn’t a profound revelation and at this point in an ABC family movie the audience would be wiping soft tears from their eyes as the end credits roll to an anthem about loving yourself. "Getting up off my ass" in this way naturally doesn't mean that I'm going to stop improving or searching. In fact, quite the opposite. It means I'm taking drastic measures in hope to get myself outside this constant-editing-until-I-realize-it's-all-s***-and-throw-it-out-and-oh-god-I'm-going-to-be-a-waitress-forever comfort bubble I've created for myself. For the sake of refusing to let my thirteen year old self down, I'm not waiting for my dream college, or prime internship, or a single moment more to hit the submit button.