Catch Up

When you can’t do question 1i), let alone 1ii), let alone questions 2) or 3), and have been trying to do so for over an hour – and when you couldn’t do the last homework either but had to work through with the solutions – and when you don’t even understand the lecture notes four lectures in – …

Time to blog!

Erm, so yes! We’ve had internet for a while now, but let’s just say that fourth year doesn’t get any less busy than the previous three. That’s in a good way, mostly, but the new routine and the new house and the new people-circumstances are still taking some getting used to. I am still trying to learn to spend time on my own in the house positively, and more importantly I am still trying to learn how to work again, as it’s something I basically haven’t been doing for eighteen months, and, well, you just get out of the habit. I’m doing a lot better than I thought I would, actually, but I think I still give up too easily when the going gets tough – and that’s still way too often. The pressure’s on, to say the least.

In other news, J continues to be wonderful, I’m doing quite a bit with Quaker Meeting (and seriously considering applying for membership; explanation may follow in a subsequent post), and my Mum thinks I’m bipolar (, which I think is utter rubbish). I got out my clarinet the other day and had no lip muscles left whatsoever.

And that’s about it, really! I need to go and make lunch and head out. Oh, except that when I have a chance I will take some pictures of my new house, because it’s kinda cool, and some pictures of the garment that I made the week before coming back to Durham and am so incredibly proud of!

A Note On The Door

(I am still here, I am still alive, I am back in Durham where the internet has yet to grace our house with its presence. Nice to start with, but increasingly annoying when everything in the university relies on it. In the words of Christopher Robin, BISY BACKSON.)

Still At Home

I am ill. Not scary swine flu ill, but ill enough to feel pretty shit and not to have used the train ticket that I had booked for going up to Durham on Saturday. This sucks, although as lectures don’t start ’til Thursday and I was planning on avoiding all things Fresher-related anyway, I guess the timing could be worse.

My Dad is convinced that I have brought on the illness by anxiety, and as such the path to getting better is to leap out of bed, (wo)man up, and deal with it accordingly. I am yet trying to convince him that as much as there may possibly have been anxiety-related incidents involving crying and shaking and burying into duvets, a bug is a bug and the prospect of travelling again is even less inviting if I haven’t first got rid of it, which I can’t do by willpower alone. Grump. Parents. If he’s trying to persuade me that staying at home isn’t such a great option after all, he’s doing a bloody good job of it.

However the upside of one of the above incidents is that after yet another well-intentioned invitation to Talk About Things To Us, I am increasingly sure that I am going to take a gap year after university. Or a gap six months – whatever – because the wonderful freedom about leaving the educational system is that no longer will my life have to revolve around September starts and May exams. Maybe I’ll work, maybe I’ll travel, or maybe I’ll just stay at home and remember what bonfire smoke smells like in south Birmingham on November 5th, but what I will not do is refuse to give myself time and space to breathe. Maybe, just maybe, my ideal job will come up in the meantime and I’ll go straight to there.

But I won’t have to, because I will be free! I think that I need that light at the end of the tunnel.