This week, though, my Monday was a little bit different. Namely in that I was looking forward to the end of the day, rather than dreading each passing hour as part of the slow downward spiral toward another detestable Tuesday.
What was this joy? Lying in a plastic bucket with a three-inch needle in my arm, clenching and unclenching my fist as I waited for an un-nervingly vocal piece of machinery to help itself to a pint of my vital fluids.
.... I just realised how manically deranged that last sentence makes me seem.
No, no, I have not offered myself up as a vending machine to an underground cult of post-graduate vampires trying to stave off paying back their neverending student loans by preying on hapless undergrads. Honest.
Actually, my surpringly-viscious internal contents will be going to aid patients, trainee doctors, and medical researchers, whom I've no doubt will take just as much delight in receiving this bag of crimson glory as the tragically-nonexistent fanged horrors would.
Now, here comes the question flashed up on irritatingly cheery website frontpages: Why?
Why? Because I'm horribly selfish. And I don't like it.
I am a happy, healthy, and wholly functional (supposedly) human being, who can do whatever she likes, almost whenever she likes. I've been gifted with a wealth of opportunities - so gifted, in fact, that I don't even know about most of them before I stub my toe on them at three o'clock in the morning.
Being healthy is not, objectively, a bad thing. Nor, for that matter, is thinking of oneself.
I know it's important that I keep on top of all my commitments, be they doing my reading, writing up my essays, meeting with my study groups, renting a house for next year, sorting out my new financially independent status or chasing emails in the hopes of landing a job so I don't starve in a cardboard box out the back of the local Lidl in three years time...
But sometimes, I don't want to think about myself. I don't want to be the centre of my own little universe. I want to do something that matters to someone else, and gain nothing more from it than knowing that it will make someone else's life a better place to be.
That, my friends, is why I sat there, on a rainy Monday afternoon, peering at the dauntingly high ceiling and shooting sympathetic looks at the slightly nervy looking lady in the bucket next door. I knew that at the end of 50 minutes of mild personal discomfort (rapidly followed by the fastest hall-to-bathroom dash the world had ever seen), someone, somewhere, was going to appreciate it.
The fact that I spent the rest of the day with a dead arm, sporting a plaster that made it look like I'd been attacked by an angry cheese grater was more than worth it, just for that.
On the off-chance any of my UK-based followers are interested, here's a link to the NHS Blood Donation site. It's super easy to sign up - I did it over the phone in under ten minutes - and, as if this post had not made that abundantly clear, it's a marvellous thing to do.
Oh, and just so you know, most of your visit will be spent drinking fruit squash and eating biscuits. Just in case you needed any more motivation to inspire your inner altruist.
.... Seriously. They had chocolate digestives and everything.
~ Charley R
