I finally admitted to myself that the quarantine was getting to me when I realized that I was learning how to juggle.

It’s an easily missed snowball effect, one that you don’t realize you yourself are engaging in as you begin to resemble a plummeting ball of frozen ice rolling down a mountain steadily picking up more and more hobbies to distract yourself from the outside world. It starts with succulent gardening, eventually gets around to sourdough baking, and, for me, at least, it ultimately lands on juggling.

It’s something everyone has tried to do at least once, it feels a little childish, but also kind of fun, and secretly everyone has thought about it and realized that they too could learn how to juggle if they focused and put a handful of hours of work into it.

But as cheesy as it sounds, obvious metaphor acknowledged, learning to juggle helped me juggle online learning.

If you want to, you can imply that juggling is very much like studying for your Astronomy midterm on Tuesday while also remembering that you have a Zoom meeting at three in the afternoon for your Intro to Fine Arts class, and having the back of your mind focused on how your boss has asked you repeatedly to do a better job washing the store’s windows and you really need to watch a couple tutorials on YouTube before going to work at five. You are tracking, catching, and tossing what feels like a thousand different things at once. It can be complicated, stressful, and requires a great deal of conscious thought.

You could imply that that’s what juggling is like. But, personally, my experience with juggling was the exact opposite of that description.

After digging around the dim garage and procuring three somewhat musty smelling and Valley dust filled tennis balls, I was naively readying myself to engage in a focused mental task coordinating my hands with my eyes, and fighting through frustration and accomplishing my goal anyways: to continuously juggle for at least thirty seconds.

It started out that way, I could barely catch what I was throwing, my eyes were all over the place, and I spent more time chasing dropped tennis balls than I did juggling them. But, incredibly quickly, the “intellectual” element melted away. There is an intensely primal aspect about something as physical as juggling. After a while, you’re not thinking about juggling, you simply are juggling.

An hour into throwing around these three tennis balls, I could only juggle for ten seconds at a time before accidentally reenacting a Looney Tunes scene and having to scramble around to pick up everything that had fallen. And yet, every time I reached those ten seconds, I drifted into a trance. The stress and confusion of a million different school assignments, job necessities, and social obligations, all floated away from me. I was no longer “Nathan the college student”, “Nathan the supportive friend”, or “Nathan the good employee”… I was just “Nathan”.

That first hour zipped by in a flash, and when my timer went off telling me to go back to my laptop and hammer out the next essay, I was refreshed. Revitalized. That stress that had melted away didn’t come back.

You’ve probably figured it out already, but I’m not really advocating that you should learn to juggle to become a better student, I’m advocating that you should take care of your body and mind to become a better student.

Online learning is new for a lot of us, and it can be stressful and confusing and sometimes even feel unfulfilling. I could blab on for literal hours about how I organize my life on color-coordinated planners, post-it-notes, highlighters, and weekly phone alarms just to make sure I’m getting those grades I want. But you probably already have a system for that that works for you. But have you found something that doesn’t require thought yet? Something that works your body more than your mind?

Once I started juggling, it became easier to hash through my school to-do list. I started to plan my days with the words “Juggling Break” worked into my schedule. That all-consuming stress and worry about fulfilling all of my different roles as student, son, friend, and worker, became a heck of a lot more manageable when I started dedicating specific blocks of time to not thinking.

For me, juggling is just goofy and skilled enough to fit into my personality, but for you it could be anything. Maybe it is juggling, maybe it’s yoga, jogging, lumberjack axe throwing, cowboy action shooting, meditating, or playing Just Dance for hours at a time until your body is sore and you’re standing in your own puddle of sweat. (I may have experience with that last one… maybe).

But if you feel like it’s becoming harder and harder to “juggle” online learning, then maybe it’s worth it to look for another new hobby. But not one that takes thought, and not even one to take very seriously. Just something that will help you zone out, detox, and have a little bit of fun with. Before you even realize it, you’ll meet your initial goal and zoom past it. Soon you won’t be juggling to reach the next goal of forty seconds, or a minute of continuous juggling, you’ll just be doing it for the sake of it. And it will be relieving.

This is a question I had to seriously ask myself. The world is on fire, both literally and figuratively. We are in the midst of social change, a global pandemic, an election year, and the single greatest coordinated problem humans have had to face in recorded history: global warming.

AND I have to turn in a paper for my Communication Theory class by Wednesday.

Isn’t that ridiculous? Isn’t it funny that that’s the thing that my mind focuses on? That amidst this world of change and uncertainty, I’m still just little old me hoping to get a good grade on my paper. Sometimes I think that I have my priorities a bit out of whack. I think people would have a pretty good argument if they tried to tell me that my priorities are out of whack, in fact.

However, I take solace in a notion that I picked up from Neil Gaiman (author of Coraline, Good Omens, American Gods, and more) from when he gave a commencement speech to the graduating class of the University of the Arts in 2012. The quote goes like this:

I adore this speech and find it incredibly inspirational. Gaiman’s undertones are clearly a bit more humorous than the situation that we find ourselves in now, but if anything I think it enhances his message rather than detracting from his point. And said point is, that when times are tough and the future is uncertain, sometimes the best thing we can do is put our nose to the grindstone, and create.

The year is 2020. There’s a global pandemic and the California sky periodically looks as if it’s going through a nuclear winter. Is now really the time to start a blog? Yes.

The year is 2020. There’s social unrest and you’re left uncertain about your own personal safety and the future of our society. Is now really the time to start that side project you’ve always intended to? Yes.

The year is 2020. It’s the hardest year some of us have ever faced in our lives. Is now really the time to start going to college? Yes.

And here’s the rub, I have my own little addendum to Mr. Gaiman’s beautiful speech. He was talking to a crowd of fancy shmancy art majors (art majors I love you don’t be mad at me for calling you shmancy) who have spent thousands of dollars and hours of time and energy contemplating the nature of “art” and what it means to be “art”. But what does it all comes down to?

You are art.

You don’t have to be a painter, a writer, or a photographer to make good art. You just have to be you. I may be a tad sappy, but I truly believe that every single human’s voice is unique and individual, and that each one of you matters in this crazy topsy-turvy world. In the same way a piece of art is unique and beautiful and creates meaning in those that see it, you, whoever you are, are unique, beautiful, and impact the people lucky enough to come into contact with you.

If you are able to work on and improve yourself in the “Now” then there will be nothing in life that can stop you once we get through “Now”.

Hi. My name is Nathanael Heisler, most people call me Nathan. I’ve been allowed the privilege of writing this blog for you, with the express purpose of detailing my experiences as a Stanislaus Warrior in the current era. I will be doing my best to make good art for you, and to write things that are funny, informative, and at least a little bit weird as we all try to turn ourselves into good art and get through this time together by not just surviving but thriving too. My hope is that you’ll not just come along with me on this journey, but make good art with me too.

Stick around for new posts every Tuesday!