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Exam Stress and Archery

Archery Recurve TargetYes, I’m alive! Barely, though…

My final exams are killing me, and I seem to be all too eager to help it along! All the stress builds up this nervous, restless energy that can’t be used for anything productive, so I have had to find a way to release it through getting off my ass and doing something physical. That’s bad enough as it is. Exercise never did anyone any good. You can eat healthy, get into shape, become a monk… You die anyway. Might as well not try to fight it.

Where was I…? Oh, yeah, getting off my ass…

I do a range of different activities for exercise… Martial arts, archery, pole dancing… All of which have the potentiel to freak out my neighbours if I practice in my garden. So I settled for the one where I get to carry a weapon in case anyone called the police.

Generally, archery is a great way to relax your mind and train your body. Which is why I usually go to my archery club once a week and shoot around 40-50 arrows. Great way to release stress!

But let’s just say I get really stressed during exams…

Going from 40 arrows a week to 300 a day might give you an estimate of how much I hate exams… On the bright side, all the weight I lost in body fat, I gained in muscle! I’m still tiny and underweight, but now I will beat the crap out of you if you comment on it.

I know this might not seem that stupid to you, but I might have gone a little overboard… I think I realized it when my arrows started to go straight through my target mat where the foam was falling apart. Or maybe when I thought about the fact that my neighbour hadn’t let his cats out for quite a while…

Could also be when I couldn’t hold a pen during one of my written exams, because the skin on my fingers was completely raw from holding the bow string. Even though I have been wearing a protective glove…

Strangely enough, I haven’t felt any pain in my muscles. My nerves might have disconnected… I wonder if I might spontanously collapse from the strain at some point. Normally, I would be completely beat and my back would be hurting after a normal training session, but apparently I feel fine after intensifying my training by at least 2000%. Some part of me thinks ‘great, I’m getting into shape!’, while some other part is telling me to wake up and smell the nervous break down coming. I’m blissfully ignoring the second one.

I’m getting kind of fond of the look I’m sporting lately, though. The backs of my hands are covered in small wounds where I have stabbed myself with arrows(Not. A. Word…), I have various scratches I’m not sure how got there and a couple of bruises turning purple from whiplash from the bow string. Not sure if I’m rocking the tough girl look, or if I’m looking like someone who belongs in a home for abused women. Time will tell, I guess!

I really wonder what happened to my neighbour’s cats, though…