Homework is probably your vice, too.

I am a student and I am 21 years old. Inane facts by themselves, but if you add them together, you will find that I have been doing homework for sixteen years. Out of my 21 years on this planet, 16 of them have been devoted to my education. That's 76.25% of my life.
Ohmygod.

I come home. I do homework. I have always done this, whatever "homework" has entailed at the time. Coloring, long division, balancing equations for chemistry, reading The Great Gatsby for a second time; It hardly matters. The point is, homework has been the structure of my day for the majority of my life.
Its squeeze holds me in order.

What a terrible thought. Of course education is important, but this important? To this obsessive degree? Is there a line? Was it overlooked?

Last year, I considered dropping out of college. I didn't pay tuition. I withdrew from classes.
When I was free from campus, I looked around and went Well shit. Now what?

And there was nothing. Muncie doesn't have a circus to run away to. There weren't options. Out there, there was no order to things. Not for a person like me, a scared kid without a degree.

So I dropped back in.

I'm back to doing homework, obviously. I hate it. I probably always will. But, there's something structured in it—ordered—even if it is vice-like. I know exactly where I'm at. I'm in a vice that, for better or worse, will not let me go.