Back to Normal

After a brief stint of student-ship, I am now back to the treadmill of life and the setting is probably just one notch faster than is strictly comfortable at the moment, but that might just be because I’m not making the effort to keep up.

The things I have done

Over the last couple of months that things have been a little quiet here, I have knuckled down to revise for my law exams and taken them to varying degrees of success, leaving 99% of my course complete, putting me in the position of a fresh law graduate, with the crucial difference of actually having a day job.
I have also experimented in not drinking alcohol; an experiment that reached a natural conclusion of “yes, this isn’t a bad idea” before normal service swiftly resumed and I was reminded about what hangovers are like. Further tests have proved that no, the Erdinger I had a couple of months ago was not in fact off, that’s just what it does to you.
Also, in amongst my academic activities, I have started a couple of writing projects that may reach completion and that I hope to push out to a few places to see if my writingness is of a capable quality and goodness.


The things I have learnt

First of all, it is possible to enjoy something you have resented for a good six months. Towards the latter days of my law studies, I found myself utterly detesting all aspects of the subjects I had to study. Criminal Law is rather depressing, Equity and Trusts occasionally confusing, and Land Law…well, you try and read through your lease or mortgage agreement carefully, making notes of all the little clauses and provisions, and you can get a glimpse of what Land Law is like. However, towards the end during my revision, I found myself enthralled by the intricacies (with the possible exception of Land law) and found myself debating the merits of the criminal justice system with strangers on the tube.

I have also learnt that just because you like something, it doesn’t mean it can’t stress you out to an inordinate degree. I suppose anyone that’s been in a long term relationship could tell you the same thing. The exams that I took, in particular the first one, were the most terrifying I have ever had. I genuinely wasn’t sure if I could make it through them, because in my mind, I just hadn’t put the work in during the year. Normally I get by on minimal revision because I’ve paid attention and remembered stuff throughout the year, but this time I found myself doing it the other way round, or what most people would describe as “the normal way”.

Another thing I have picked up on is my ability to be more content when I think I’m working towards something. At some point, it became relatively clear to me that I wasn’t going to end up training as a lawyer fully and that I would find a different direction in life, but the mere act of going to my tutorials and lectures every week let my brain assume that I was doing something that would take me somewhere and that it didn’t have to worry about that anymore. In truth, I think this is probably what most people do; they don’t know where they’re going or what they’re going to do when they get there, but there brain assumes they must have got it figured out, because if they haven’t, then why the hell are they doing that-particular-thing-that-would-naturally-lead-to-that?

The direction to take from here
For the moment I am staying where I am and doing what I have been doing. How wise this is, I don’t know. How plausible anything else is, I also don’t know. I have however heard that now is a good time to go into politics, so who knows? The next time I wake up with a hangover, perhaps it will be off to the local recruiting station and signing up to the front line of whichever political argument is the flavour of the month.


Additional Notes

Saying something like “I suppose anyone that’s been in a long term relationship could tell you the same thing” is a really good way for me to find out if my girlfriend does actually read this…

I’ve actually missed writing in this. I probably need to work on my blog-ability though. Having read a few blogs of late, I can see that slightly shorter posts are probably the way to go. My long pointless rambling style means very few people make it down this far.

If you made it this far by the way, thanks and congratulations! You win!

More Excuses

Life is one long opportunity for new and interesting excuses. Due to a busy streak at work, I may not be updating with quite the regularity of recent weeks, but I am still here.

It’s a nice reversal as well, making an excuse to not write a blog so that I can focus on work as opposed to making an excuse to not work so that I can focus on writing a blog.

Additional Notes:

I’m essentially honing my craft at excuses. My comics have been languishing in a “I’ll finish it some other time” state for about six months now. I know I’m bloody minded too, so by saying this, I might actually start working on them again, just to prove myself wrong.

A Few Inches of Snow

It’s amazing how everything falls to pieces when something unusual happens. The whole of London tends to collapse with just a little bit of snow, as I discovered to my joy yesterday. I was able to have the day off work, because if the HR department can’t make it in, they can’t tell if anyone else has turned up either, and I was able to spend the day doing frivolous things and relaxing with Fien. Of course, I should have been catching up on things on my “to do list”, or writing essays and blog posts, but I didn’t.

Our country seems to do this a lot. A little bit of extreme weather and nobody really knows what to do. Some minor flooding and people panic, some strong crosswinds and the trains start worrying about leaves on the line, a slightly heavier-than-usual rain and people can’t go outside for fear of hurting their heads. You try and get excited about the snow that we had yesterday to anyone from a country that gets snow on a more regular basis and they laugh at your pathetic enthusiasm and relate stories of how their bus network still ran in eighteen inches of snow.

I have found as of yesterday, that I am a bit of a herd animal, in that if everyone else has made an excuse that they can’t do anything because it’s snowing, I do the same. Unlike some people, I could have easily made it in to work yesterday, seeing as I live within walking distance, and failing that I could have certainly done a little private project work at home, but I didn’t because I was content with the national excuse of “it’s snowing, I can’t work today”.

However, all my careful efforts to get things done and to develop a good system of living that I’ve been working on for the last couple of weeks have been undone as of yesterday. This morning I was unable to get up when my alarm went off, I didn’t organize myself with lunch, I’m no longer really motivated to do things, and in short, my whole schedule has been completely thrown off by one day of playing in the snow.

I suppose it’s very easy to get caught up on a national excuse. If everyone else says “I can’t do this” then why bother being the only one that tries? I suppose I’m starting to develop a fear of standing out on some level, but maybe I’m just content to reveal my lazy nature.

In spite of everything, it was a great day yesterday. I still love the snow.

Additional Notes:

Saying how much I love the snow is almost definitely insensitive to some people who have had genuine issues as a result of the snow. Hearing the adventures that my boss had trying to get back into London sounds nightmarish and people having to spend the night in their cars on the M25 can not be too impressed by the whole thing. I know I’m not alone in my enjoyment of the snow though; Regent’s Park was full of people that couldn’t get into work as well.

I have also discovered that Fien has a vicious streak when it comes to snow balls. She'll scoop up a nice ball of fluffy snow, compact it down into a rock-like chunk of ice and then aim it with surprising precision at my neck. In retaliation, I persisted in trying to surprise her with random snow balls, but every single one sailed about two inches over her head without her ever realising.

Out of the Office Auto Reply

Unfortunately, I am unable to get to my blog today as there is too much snow.

Excuses

I was planning on just not mentioning my rather colossal break between updates but couldn’t help thinking of various excuses that I could use to explain it. This is exactly the sort of thing that I do if I’m running late for work; I go through a list of very plausible, very reasonable, and highly sympathy-inducing reasons as to why I’m late and then normally just end up saying “I’m sorry I’m late. It’s all my fault. I have no decent excuse.”
What follows are my potential excuses for not updating that I have considered using.

-I forgot my login details.
-The dog ate my login details.
-The internet wasn’t working.
-The dog ate my internet.
-I was unable to express anything because I was working on a highly secretive government project.
-I was busy.
-I took six months out to go travelling. To the moon.
-There was an embargo on my writing.
-The dog ate my embargo.
-I had Amnesia.
-I lost my keyboard.
-The people close to me introduced me to a twelve-step program in order to get over my writing.
-Due to a statutory quirk, keeping a blog had become illegal for the last six months.
-I overslept.
-The Planetary alignment was all wrong.
-Being embroiled in a secret plot to uncover a drug smuggling ring, any blog post could reveal my IP address and location, thus putting me at risk.
-I had nothing to write about.
-My flatmates told me not to write.
-The dog told me not to write.
-A breach in the space-time continuum required my attention and therefore I couldn’t write anything without generating a paradox and accidentally giving myself the lottery numbers for next week.

My real reason of course is that I am, as ever, a scatterbrain that struggles to stick to a single project for any length of time. I appear to have developed an addiction to starting new projects, but an absolute phobia of seeing them through to the end. Join me again in six months time for my next entry.

Additional Notes:
In my job interview I actually confessed that I’m frequently five minutes late. I’m pretty sure my boss thought it was a joke.