I can't get anything done. I just failed my Physics + Chem + Multiv + English + Stats tests and behind on a huge CS project. I'm rage quitting on IMO 1/4s without being able to seriously try them, and my comp skills are miserable (even multiplying big numbers feel weird). I'm also becoming extremely antisocial - finding my legs instinctively move the other way when walking by familiars in the hall, afraid to leave the library just cause I have to bump into people on my way to class. I can't even articulate everyday vocabularies properly, allowing others to easily overwhelm my weak voice.

My binders are messy and overflowing with scratch work of equations and diagrams (bunch of gibberish as almost everything I write down lead to dead ends basically), and whenever a new event comes up I don't even have motivation to write it down, and instead just make a mental note which I always forget.

...Oh right and I have my first paid tutoring session tomorrow with the girl, nervous af, and I've no idea how I'll survive without getting a heart attack.

I feel like wanting to do something other than math - do some physics, research on some applied math topics, join a club, etc. but yet I can't seem to pull myself away from the increasingly-long list of problems I've yet to solve.

My alarm clock rings every morning at 5 AM to the yelling of Eric Thomas (motivational speaker) but even my body has slowly given up on me - it won't even budge or acknowledge that it's awake until the very last second (literally), when I have to move lest another list of tardies, absences, and talks with my counselor pile up on my profile like last year.

My math skills are deteriorating as well - my mental toughness has become soft as well - for some reason my Geo 3 and Combo 3 sets (which I progressed on during summer) seem like a far stretch to me, and even my computations on easy AIME problems are getting messy. Creativity and inspiration feel like words on the last page of some fairy tale story, that of which has been snap shut at the end of summer.

Life feels like a bumper of a car incessantly pushing me from the behind to budge; my subconscious doesn't seem to acknowledge I've already begun the most important year of my high school journey - a year I've long fantasized about as a breakthrough year of glory and personal achievement.

...and so it was, in 8th and 9th grade I was the kid who was always the last to leave school (even the ayes and guards know me), getting home at 7: 30 every night, sleeping at 2 AM every night, the kid who broke down an entire door when he got an A- on his first PE quiz, a never-quenching hunger and a killer mindset

...I wonder where that Michael has gone.