cool blueberry lavender

By Emma burden

Is it impossible for anyone else to finish a Vitamin Water? I’m genuinely asking. It seems like I have tried every flavor, and don’t get me wrong, I’ve enjoyed them all (well, except for fruit punch, but that’s my villain origin story). In the Ram Cafe, I always get a Vitamin Water to drink with lunch, and before my morning classes I grab one from the vending machine behind Argo. But, for some reason, I can never finish a bottle. Maybe it’s because it gets hot so quickly, or because I get distracted by the feeling of my wisdom teeth growing in, or, simply, I’ve become tired of my daily acai-blueberry-pomegranate concoction.

My relationship with the liquid gold that happens to be blueberry-lavender has offered me insight on my own work ethic. I’m always excited to finish things, but never to actually get things done. For example, I started brainstorming ideas for this blog post over a month ago, and a week beforehand I’m finally putting words onto paper. Or screen. Whatever Google Docs is. 

I’ve found that I can only carry stamina through projects that I am truly passionate about. I’m passionate about The Comma, and I planned out a schedule to submit one work per week, five weeks before the spring publication deadline. However, with my history class, where an essay due is 70% of my final grade, I didn’t begin my bibliography until the day before it was due; all because I couldn’t find a topic that piqued my interest. 

Yesterday, while venturing the halls of Lowenstien, I went to my normal stomping grounds— the fridges in the Ram Cafe— and I purchased a new Vitamin Water flavor. The label read gutsy watermelon-peach. I was interested, and I enjoyed the taste, but halfway through the bottle I sat it down. Today I woke up with the bottle on my desk, half-empty, and my dorm room smelling like peaches. 

I wish there was a way to fix my motivation, but from nineteen years of procrastination on anything other than fiction creative writing, I’ve learned that it’s best to do something halfway than not do it at all. So, I’ll continue drinking kiwi-strawberry until the liquid reaches below the label, and I’ll find bottles of dragon fruit in the back of my fridge. Because I’m trying, and that’s what’s best. 

Actually, what is best could be finishing what I start, and that’s never Vitamin Water, or paintings, or plans to walk three miles per day, or to take up a minor in philosophy. What I have finished, however, is sprawling lines of poetry, a passion project that turned into 120,000 words, journals spanning from childhood to adulthood that have ink on every page. Perhaps being a writer is the only thing I’m good at, and I’m okay with that. I’m certain that I’ll excel in other areas, I just haven’t found where. 

If Vitamin Water introduced a flavor including raspberries, my favorite fruit that I’ve eaten cartons of, I might finish a bottle. And I might not. Half a bottle of electrolytes is better than none at all.