Directions.

Listen to some Coldplay, or the Mumford and Sons CD you just bought from iTunes even though everyone else has had it for six months or so. Play it loudly while you're in the shower, even though the jerks upstairs will probably get mad. Wash your hair with comforting lyrics and long, dripping guitar chords. Let them tell you that they understand, that it's okay. Save the rest of the workshops for the morning, along with your physics homework, even though some of it is due in half an hour.

Lose sleep for no good reason - give some to your homework, and some to the story you've been piecing together about the couple who met on a slushy sidewalk. Give some to a song you've been trying to play, even though it's indecently late or early to be playing a song.

Shut your door and keep people out - spend some time by yourself, staring at the ceiling and playing on figurative jungle-gyms that grow in your mind. Climb to the top, and then hang upside down in the middle. Realize they're hollow and see-through.  Desert them.

Talk to everyone you know and let them know how much you love them. Send your best friend a letter covered in Disney stickers. Tell them about your problems while they boil water for tea and mix pasta and vegetables together in big pans. Go for a walk. Wear a jacket.

Think of words that rhyme, or at least kind of rhyme. Frustration, temptation, deflation, damnation, sensation, translation, vacation, vibration, dalmatian. Think about coming back in your next life as a world-famous violinist.

Fixate on your loneliness and your stress. Dissect them. Put them in boxes and try to sort them by color, or size, or category. They won't make sense anymore.