Dear Kid,

Some days are easier than others.

Some days things come easily. It’s easy to pop out of bed and face the day. It’s easy to get to class on time. The lecture is easy to understand and the homework takes all of 92 seconds to complete.

You’re able to run an extra 3 miles during your workout and you throw in a couple of extra sets on the weights just for fun. At your group meeting, you work seamlessly with your peers, coming up with great suggestions and finishing your project in record time.

Then there are the other days.

The ones where the very concept of getting out of bed is more than you can stand thinking about. Where you just want to snooze no matter how much caffeine you mainline directly into your blood stream. Where the professors all talk in a long-forgotten Sanskrit dialect and it will take the next 16 weeks to finish your homework—and that’s just for one class.

Those are the days when lifting 3 pounds of books feels impossible, never mind lifting serious weight. Where people grumble and gripe and half the time you’re not even sure what they’re grumbling and griping about. They’re the days when you are not only overwhelmed by the big decisions in life, you can’t figure out whether to have pancakes or French toast. When there is no way to figure out the shortest distance between two points because there is no such thing as a straight line.

Hoping today is one of the easier ones.

Love, Mom

P.S. At least here, the answer today was French Toast.