Ahh

Nov. 6th, 2015 09:02 pm
localfreak: (carryon)
It's been a funny old day. And yes, here I am, it's Friday Night, typing away at Task B of my course work.

Oh, hang on actually, I better save the buggering thing. Haha. Wordcount 800-1000 and I have written... 1,880. And still feel like its not enough for me to pass. It is ridiculously unrealistic.

We still have next to no lights upstairs in the house. Mum did have a brief look in the loft when it was daylight, but realistically I think it needs an electrician.

Also realistically, we've needed an electrition for two other jobs for over twelve months so it's going to be hard work pushing the mother to accept this and I may be dressing in the dark for the forseeable future.

It's been a funny old day today. Lots of good things but also quite a lot of worries for the future...and money...and things like that. But I am going to do my best to ignore them because I can't do anything about them and, also, I need to get on as I am off to Sheffield tomorrow to visit a friend of mine who has just become engaged and it will be LOVELY. I'm getting the ten past nine train, so everyone pray for an early sunrise, as I will have to pack my overnight bag in the morning when I can see my bedroom further than the lamp by my bedside will reach :-/.

Poetry

Oct. 7th, 2013 08:45 pm
localfreak: avatar which I have used as mine since scarboard days 10 years ago (Default)
I thought that, since August, I hadn't written any poetry. Or, at least, not any poetry fit to share with anyone ever, only dark half-dressed scribbles in the way that sometimes your brain disconnects and writing might help put the pieces less painfully together. But I've found at least one poem which, whilst unsmiling, is not unusable so that's something. It is poetry group later this week and the Mayor is coming, so I've tried to hammer something out tonight about home.

A friend of mine picked up a poetry book for me, recently. I tried to read it last night but it is absolutely terrible. I mean really, truly terrible. It clunks. I managed to read about six poems, with my pencil in hand making pained scribbles but I think I'm going to have to admit defeat. William McGonagall, eat your heart out, in the age of self-publishing there are some things far worse than your Tay Bridge out there for public consumption. Reading the book had a dual action for me, in the first I think perhaps I have learned something from it - learned to trust ear over all else, learned that really, truly, I can actually identify BAD poetry on occasion, and heard for perhaps the first time in a long time, the awkwardness of the forced rhythm or forced rhyme. I rhyme a lot, it comes to me that way and I like poems generally that rhyme (I like poems that don't rhyme too, also). They please me in their rhythm, balance and bounce and that always made me somewhat concerned when people far more learned than I would lecture about the dangers of the 'forced rhyme' the 'clunky turn of phrase'. I worried that perhaps I forced my rhymes and didn't realise it.

Now that I have read truly abominable forced rhyme, I feel somewhat comforted that I have not, at least not knowingly, pulled some of the trite tricks employed by that writer.

I hope I don't sound like a poetry snob. I try not to be, in fact I often feel far more of a poetry prole (The Waste Land continues to pass me by, unmoved, but Macavity is far more fun), but I promise you it isn't just me, I read a few verses aloud to share the pain and really, tin ear or no, the clunking was very, very present. Even more embarrasingly the author on his blub had commented that the poems 'were written down as they came to [him], barring a few edits for grammar'. The grammar was DREADFUL. There are wayward apostrophes, typos and whole sentences that simply do even less than scan, they make no sense, indeed, some had their sense altered in order to Make The Words Rhyme.

And that rant over I'm dashing now to watch The Dresden Files.

memoriam

Jul. 25th, 2013 08:06 pm
localfreak: avatar which I have used as mine since scarboard days 10 years ago (Default)
Just finished reading The Quarry by Iain Banks.

Three years ago I nearly had the chance to go to a writer's conference at which he was one of the keynote speakers and was running a workshop. But I'd just started my job, and only two people allowed off at a time, and Induction Week and ...and...

So I couldn't get the time off. But I consoled myself thinking "He seems to go there quite often. There'll be another chance."


How bloody wrong can you get.

(Also, I love the book)
localfreak: avatar which I have used as mine since scarboard days 10 years ago (Default)
I haven't been online much lately. This is because we are currently in the middle of a heatwave and my poor awld computer just can't take the strain of being on in this weather. I worry about it. Particularly as I have still yet to work up the nerve to take it to pieces to give it a deep clean that it needs.

Went to poetry group last night, which was excellent and quite refreshing. I read two pieces one which is a little old, Scratch and a new one which is actually a song (I didn't sing it!) called Witch Song. I quite like them. Scratch is quite malevolent, like its title. The Witch song is much more playful, but is ultimately a song in the veins of the Rambler song ("I'm a rambler I'm a gambler I'm a long way from home/and if you don't like me then leave me alone/ I'll eat when I'm hungry, I'll drink when I'm dry/ And if moonshine don't kill me I'll live till I die"). One of the others wrote a little haiku about me which was charming, but mentioned in passing that most of my poems were often sad, or at least a little dark.

When I got home, Mum was watching a programme about mental health and trying through various means to improve one's natural inclinations away from pessimism. Right, I thought, for this month I will ONLY WRITE ABOUT UNCOMPLICATEDLY CHEERFUL TOPCS. More than that, I will find ONE THING PER DAY that makes me happy and think about it hard!

And it can't just be my dinner!


This morning, on the car park, muttering as I tromped the long walk to the office: "Who did that stupid sod think she was, driving round here... with her bloody car... going the wrong way in the one way bit because she's obviously tried to get nearer and then I have to go round TWICE because I can't get round her...rant, rant, rant...Look at these people parking on the bloody pavement because they can't walk like the rest of us stupid mugs who abide by the rules. I'm very disappointed in Car Park E. I felt a sense of camaraderie with us before but now it appears to be full of stupid sods who get in the way. I should write a poem about that..."

I haven't...yet. It seems like impotent furies are the only things that get my passions piqued for poetry.
localfreak: avatar which I have used as mine since scarboard days 10 years ago (Default)
With the money I've made from selling some old stuff I didn't want anymore on ebay, I've entered two writing competitions. *gulp*.

It was especially painful because I was considering using that money to give me an excuse to buy one of the many e-books I currently have my eye on. I suppose I should feel a little virtuous that instead I stuck to fulfilling my New Year's promise (a minimum of two writing competition things a month).

Off to church in a minute to set up the DVD for Mum's Liturgy before preparing for Mass. I'm quite jealous of the liturgy kids- they get to watch The Miracle Maker. Also, how can it be 13 years since that came out?!?

I might get my DVD back afterwards and watch it for myself. :)
localfreak: avatar which I have used as mine since scarboard days 10 years ago (Default)
I'm sure everyone is sick of us brits whinging about the weather so I shall try not to moan. Simply it was slushy and grey today and because of that our original cleaning-out related tasks had to be disbanded.

Instead I spent the morning with my textbooks reading and making notes and generally feeling hard done by, and then the afternoon cleaning things and attempting to write. I have actually managed to write two things. They are both probably dreadful but I am trying not to get to hung up on that- at least I have written something without being crippled with second thoughts and self-doubt. And okay, if the first 'story' is an extremely thin bit of self-insert daydream to anyone who knows me that's okay. I'm not intending to publish it or do anything with it. It was an excercise to try and get me writing, and following that I then wrote about 2,000 of a not self-inserty short story. I'm going to step away and then look at tidying it up. I promised myself I would enter two competitions relating to writing per month and this month I am lagging behind.
localfreak: (Drunken Sailor)
I broke my Lenten promise yesterday. I am SO STUPID. I’ve been doing so well even with daily emails from archive of our own that fics I’m subscribed to are updated, let alone another throwdown on tumblr and [personal profile] copperbadge posting a list of recs. But Mum has been recently motivated to go through some of the boxes of papers in The Hovel (I know!) and when I got in from work yesterday I thought I’d show solidarity by going through the Last Unopened Plastic Wallet in my room, the first page of which was an innocuous hand-out from a parish sing-a-long with lyrics to songs like My Old Man’s a Dustman and Maybe It’s Because I’m A Londoner. Underneath? Ahahahah.


When I was fourteen we had a dial up internet connection that was rather pricey considering how little money we actually had coming in, so I was only allowed a very short amount of time per week on the internet. What I would do, then, would be to click as many pages as possible in my allotted time and then read through them via the history buttons when I was offline. Sometimes, particularly in the case of fics where the sites’ history didn’t always save, I put them on word and printed them off, for enjoyment and/or distribution among friends. In this folder, discretely hidden away, were three such fics: two Savage Garden onesand a Bucky O’Hare one. I read them through and made the executive decision to recycle them, so I brought them downstairs, popped them in the recycle bin and sat down. Then realised what I’d just done. DAMMIT FANFICTION. DAMMIT SELF!

I spent the evening re-reading last November’s failed attempt at Nanowrimo. I still like it, I still think I have something of a story there, even if it isn’t as strong an idea as some of my others, but I’m also still stuck on how Gerry (my main character) is actually going to find out (and stop) the blackmailer before he ruin’s Mask and Ophelia’s lives forever. I know who the blackmailer is, but trying to find a way for this to be discovered still eludes me.
I started reading another of my library books Mobile Library Mystery #1: The Case of the Missing Books by Ian Sansom it was blurbed as humorous but I’ve had to give it up after a few chapters. Some of it was funny but I found it very frustrating as the ‘humorous’ disasters that happened to the main character went on, and on, and on. Not really my kind of humour. I’ve started re-reading Charitable Getting by Sam Starbuck instead.

But I need to stop all this for now and get on with some uni stuff.

Study Day!

Jan. 21st, 2013 05:19 pm
localfreak: (carryon)
Off work today, of which I am glad because of the snow, despite it not being too deep it has been melting quite a lot all afternoon and the long walk to the car park would have been exceedingly wet and horrible.

I have completed and submitted both my Essay and Virtual Presentation. This means The Module of Doom is OVER. Free, free, free! Of course this now means I need to make good on promises I made in my head (that when I no longer had the essays looming, I would arrange a catch up with one of my relatives who I see very rarely these days and should try harder to keep in touch with). I've submitted them now anyway so that's a relief, I spent all that drafting, redrafting, cursing, cursing some more, redrafting, finding other words for "arguably" (which is one of my tic words for essays. Every sentence, arguably, requires an 'arguably' in it.) apart from a quick trot around the block after dinner to get a bit of fresh air (very fresh!). I also finished reading Gerald's Game by Stephen King, which I started last night. I had picked it up at work on Saturday because the last time I'd been in shelving a whole load of new copies of Kings I had read the blurb on the back and thought it quite interesting. I wanted to know how he managed to sustain a book with what would undoubtedly be a very limited viewpoint in a very confined parameter, but I was very nervous. Apart from one aborted attempt at Tommyknockers when I was about fourteen, I've never read any Stephen King fiction. My friend K LOVED them as a teenager, she always had one in her bag at school, and I remember catching a glimpse at some random passage in Misery once and just thinking "I don't really have the stomach for this." Scary books are harder than scary films, because with scary films you can look away from the screen, look at the light streaming in from outside, or look at your friend watching with you or even go and hide on the stairs until the really vile bit is over, with Scary Books you can close the book all you like but if you want to go on you have to GO BACK AND READ THROUGH IT. I found that out at a very young age, maybe sixish, with the part where the soldiers are in Giant Country in The BFG and any moment the giants might wake up and squash them all, and it still holds true. But this book I think I quite liked. It was clever (and a little bit grisly) rather than downright scary, which perhaps explains why there seem to be a lot of negative reviews on goodreads from people who otherwise love his writing- maybe this is an exception to the rule? Who knows. I thought it was pretty decent anyway.

Currently waiting for it to be time to cook the peas to go with the cottage pie in the oven for our tea, pondering the universe. I only wish it would ponder me some inspiration- I've got at least three writing competitions I wanted to enter and it's all just desert dry in my head, or else, with the poetry, crippled by self doubt and lack of rhythm.
localfreak: avatar which I have used as mine since scarboard days 10 years ago (Default)
A day off today for essay writing purposes. I am happy to announce that I have completed: A First Draft. For possibly one of the first times in my life I am under the wordcount (if I include the bibliography at the moment I'm still within the 10% marker, without the bibliography...well. I have a little more work to do. Ahahah) however I am immensley pleased to at least be this far along. I have another Study Day on Monday so my aim is that by next week I will have completed both the essay and the redraft of my presentation submission in plenty of time to quadruple-check and submit. I just have to be focussed for a little while longer *tries very hard*

Yesterday was a write-off in work anyway because we had team meeting and then I was doing an IT drop-in-and-let-me-teach-you session so I got very little of my own work done, which was frustrating. I also had some sort of melt down on the way home: I locked up with the others, tramped the long walk to my car, de-iced my car, half way through the commuter crawl to get home I realised I had the master key, which they would need today to lock up with, so I turned around drove back, bombed it into the building, put the key somewhere hidden and then realised that I didn't have what I call my 'double set' - a set of keys that will only open the front door and one office door- in order to get out, so I had to get the master again, go and borrow someone else's 'double set' from their desk and lock all the way up again and drive home all whilst...wait for it...DEVELOPING A MIGRAINE. Because that's what anybody can't do without for an evening. So I took the pills and lay down in the dark for the rest of the evening. Damned wasted time. I blame our team meeting which began with the beautiful sentence "Welcome to our monthly team meeting, we have these meetings once a month for the team." I AM NOT EVEN JOKING. I had to bite my pen and not look at anyone for ages. Actually I think that sentence encapsulates everything we dread about meeting days.

Anyway, migraines, yargh. Topped off by a horrible horrible nightmare last night involving people I love commiting suicide and me getting into a fight with a yob.



So today was okay! (Apart from the 'I woke up at five with a bad dream' bit). Mum went out and I have pretty much worked consistently today on the essay, with only one break for dinner until around three. At which point I cleaned the bathroom, because I promised myself I would.

THE DRAFT is printed off ready for my Red Pen of Doom all over it, and hopefully I can think of something to plough out an extra couple of hundred words about. But I'm having a pause for now and making posh coffee (posh as in it doesn't come in a jar that says 'Nescafe' in a foreign language, although it did still come from B&M...). What I really want to do with my break is write either a poem or a flash fiction piece just to get my brain going again but I'm running short on patience. And high on procrastination.
localfreak: (Avada Kedavra!)
I need to get some perspective I think. I signed up to nano whilst telling myself firmly it would have to be at the bottom of my priority list and, quite frankly, that there was a distinct possibility of failure. No plot, no problem is all very well but: Exhausted, Overwired, Going To Fall Over is somewhere more of a problem. I'm quite a bit behind now but I've actually attempted my readings for this week's lectures now which I think really is probably more important (read is a bit of a strong descriptor though, there truly is nothing more irritating than an author who keeps going "this is an interesting concept" "this is an interesting supposition" when actually it's so terribly, terribly dry that following the thread of the thing becomes nigh-impossible. I read about twenty-five pages and I think the only things that have stuck from the reading is there are some...structural theories about states, that there was a Chancellor called Bismarck who was fired by Kaiser Willhelm in 1890 and his successors led to WW1...somehow/somwhat. And that the 'domino effect' was fundamentally flawed because the natural movements of states leans more towards a 'checkerboard'. None of this, I fear, will help me answer this week's tasks which are:

To understand war as explained through an ‘international systems’ approach and the importance of human agency in the decision-making process.

and
To consider the nature and impact of The Great War – on society and the international community.

*sobs*

I have also written ONE WORD of Nano in the past 24 hours. ONE WORD. It does hurt...
localfreak: (Kutner's Blog)
A good day today, all things considered. After a brief conversation with the Uni yesterday we have settled that yes, I am doing international history but I have also made sure that they are aware that I do feel concerned about my ability to cope with the module. I am actually hoping that, once I get going with it, it will magically be revealed that my incapability is mostly neurotic. I'm not fooling myself in the sense that yes, there does appear to be a section on Empire and one on The Cold War (topics of which I know absolutely nothing about) you see history and I have a very twisted backstory here. On the one hand I am convinced I am shit at History I like it, always did, but am shit about it. I don't particularly read 'Historical Novels' for the most part, my Mum is nuts over History which is why I find it interesting but somewhere in my brain there is a little goblin reminding me that I am shit at history. Point the fact: When Lycoris, Mum and I played Trivial Pursuits on holiday History was always my most evil of triangles to get.

In actual fact I took history up to GCSE Level. We did The History of Medicine (which I loved, even though Galen and it was really hard to remember whether it was him who did the Pig Thing or someone else, and which person did the first sucessful transfusion recorded ete) The Economic Situation In Germany between World Wars and The Vietnam War. It was interesting. I sat next to a guy who used to spend the whole time quoting episodes from Blackadder under his breath.

I remember all of this, cramming trying to remember before the exam to get the right names in the right places, remembering who did the survey of the streets and discovered that Typhoid carried in water and so on and, for coursework, wrote about the factors leading to, and the political climate of The Vietnam War, hampered only a little by the fact the school, in its wisdom, had recently installed a Safe-Search internet wall that for some reason decided that 'Vietnam' was a banned word for a while. I worked really hard at that coursework and I got a B.

When I got my GCSE results (I was already a bit of a mess that year to be honest) I gave them only vague glances and I told myself I would not do history at A-Level as it was obvious I just wasn't good enough. I'd got a B(!) and that meant I should gracefully sit back and say 'Okay it was fun, I'm just not good enough'.

I applied to University with my GCSE scores saying I had a B in History. In fact it was only years later when I dug out my transcripts for some job interview or other I found out that actually I'd got an A overall in GCSE history. My crippling disappointment at the B, with critical commentary, over my Vietnam piece had completely blinded me to Reality.

So maybe I'm shit at history, but also maybe my brain is having a bit of a barking mad moment. Time (and cramming) will tell.

I got four books out of the library today, anyway, three of which are about History- I couldn't find anything that said 'The Cold War For Dummies' but I got an overview of the British Empire, Andrew Marr's History of Britain from 1945-2000 (It won't due hugely well I know in terms of the international aspect but there was a bit of a dearth of material in the local library) and a book about the Berlin Wall.

I also caved and took out Stephen King's 'On Writing' again, which is a terrible temptress of a paperback. Every time I go in on Floor 1 I start convincing myself to re-read it. So I am.

After the library I tried on some things as I require outfitting for the Staff Christmas Party which is a masquerade and then went and got my hair done to stop it before I could no longer see my face. I sat with Nanny's and drank tea whilst she showed that, with Auntie Irene and Fern off visiting Auntie Maura, she had sewed four purificaters, three lavabo cloths and a corporal. Then I went home and read until now, when the noise of the TV (and the flickering lights, mostly the flickering lights to be honest, I am very used to TV and radio noise although it does sometimes drive me up the wall) have driven me out of the room. I love my computer chair but somehow it isn't Right for curling up with a book. As a kid, I would oven lie on the floor- here or on the lino in the kitchen, bruising my elbows- but it is cold down there and I am an old fogey now I suppose- I can't quite get comfortable and besides I take up too much space.
localfreak: avatar which I have used as mine since scarboard days 10 years ago (Default)
I would say that the three bags of clothes which are too big for me at present in my mother's car ready for charity-shop-dropping on Monday are signs that the diet it working. This however would probably be a delusion, as not only have some of the items been up there for donkey's years, others I recall being a little too big to start with and others still I don't recall ever wearing at all so I'm not going to take them as indicative of anything but the family's weird thing about Stuff.

On the bright side the fact that these are now In Bags In the Car is a definite positive. The box of books I sorted still remains grumpily on the floor by my desk. I have worked out that I am probably owed time however from all the late nights at work last week so perhaps the opportunity will arise that I could arrange to leave early one day. Logistically it is either this or putting the books into carrier bags (because boxes are precious don't I know?) and then subtly landing them on my mother to take to charity when she least suspects. (Also on the plus TWO BAGS of COATHANGERS in the bin! Huzzah!)

In other news: Prawn is back from foreign climes (yay!) and soon will be off back to Uni to do his Masters. Also, the Awards night went passably well. In some ways I didn't feel it was quite as good as last time but that might be the fact that I must have had one major adrenaline high after that one was over considering we were cobbling it together and still flipping putting the awards in the envelopes when people were arriving. It didn't help, though, too that I suppose people who came last year knew what to expect so they weren't quite as excited, and I was all in pieces because I'd wanted everything to basically be ready done and dusted and then we'd only have to pour the wine and sit back and let things go, which completely didn't happen.

I have been berating myself about writing, both academic and non-academic, lately because I know that I should get off my bum and do more but ....life..and...FANFICTIONADDICTION...it's just hard. Regretting it know because I think it's that poetry group thing next Wednesday and I've not written a verse- the only thing I have written is a flash fiction piece. I did end up yesterday reading one of my old Nanowrimos (excitingly titled on my computer as 'Cath and Jim's story', and I was please to find out that despite some gaping flaws (passage of time issues, too many minor characters who appear for a scene, a little flimsy on some sections, inconsistent language from the five-year old) it wasn't actually as dreadful and unfinished as I thought it was. So that was something. I have a feeling I may have been disheartened on it when I tried to research something and was told by my Nanny (should clarify, story set against WWII home front background) that I'd got one fundamental scene completely wrong.
localfreak: avatar which I have used as mine since scarboard days 10 years ago (Default)
Last week I went back to the poetry group again. This time we all did an excercise where we each made a word out of scrabble tiles and then had to write a poem containing all (or as many as we could) of the words.

I don't know what happened. I don't know how. But literally the minute the words were listed and the challenge given I was pen-to-paper hammering away, knowing just what rythm I wanted and everything. A couple of lines took a bit of drafting but by gum I was away.

And yet for the whole month before that the only thing I'd written was the poem for C's leaving do, which, yes, I'd sweated over but that was it. Nothing else had come. Or maybe it is more that I never give anything chance to come any more. I'm always doing something else. Start to stare at a blank page? Wikipedia, the OED online (which my library card means I get access to), blogs, facebook where I'm playing scrabble with three people, twitter, youtube, fanfiction fanfiction fanfiction. Another refresh on AO3 and that's it, time has just gone.

So I pulled out my writing magazine today, took it to the park opposite where I work and had my lunch far away from people talking to me or asking questions or me having to be sociable. When I came home I did a bit of fanfiction-reading and then I decided to try and write flash fiction. I am shit at short stories, and truly I didn't have any ideas but then- wham- a bit of quiet and there's something written.

I'm not saying the challenge poem or the story I've just done are good- they very likely are not, but it's the first actual writing for random fun that I've done in ages. That feels good all on its own.
localfreak: avatar which I have used as mine since scarboard days 10 years ago (Default)


I hate DIY. I hate it. I know we're not rich, I know that unless the numbers come up or I magically invent a way to write a novel with the use of trained house elves it is not going to happen but I tell you this: If I ever get my own place I am going to Support Local Trade and pay a little person to come in and Do This Shit for me.

This evening I haven't got any further scraping my room. The daylight just got sucked out and dammit I'm tired. Of course I then felt horribly guilty but by the time the guilt compelled me to prize my fat posterior from my perch it is too late to do any scraping without disturbing the nice neighbours (wouldn't actually care much about the unneighbourly one except a vague fear that he might Come Around And Smash My Face In). I just feel like it takes so fucking long and even when the walls are done it won't be over because then they have to be done up again- some of it blatently needs filling in on the plaster and then there'll be paste and wallpaper and all sorts of other effort and it's just a bloody awful thing.

I've also put a call out on facebook to see if anyone can reccomend me a handman who will do both the fence and the hard-standing. So far I've had reccomendations who will do one or t'other but it'd be so much better I feel if I could just get one bloke in and go "This is what is wrong, make it better please. Here is your money."

Haven't found anyone yet which is a bit disappointing. I was hoping if a friend reccomended them I'll be less likely to get ripped off.

Work is absolutely insane at the moment, but to be honest that might be a good thing because the hovel is currently being seriously demotivating. I've been working on this poem and I've found it actually easier to write during my break in work despite constant interruption than at home at the moment. I'm on the final draft now so I'm hoping that's sorted and then I need to type it up and make it look nice ready for presentation.
localfreak: avatar which I have used as mine since scarboard days 10 years ago (Default)
Yesterday, whilst at work I started thinking about writing. I am mostly quite shit at it these days- chiefly due to lethargy and a fanfic addiction, if I'm brutally honest about it. With my current existential little crisis (mostly being dealt with by Ignoring It As Much As Possible) I have been thinking how shit it is that I write stuff I never finish, and even when I do finish I don't get my arse into gear for rewriting. Pondering this I made myself a list. It went something like this:

1. Convert 'Cath and Jim Story' into screenplay (two parts?)
2. Rewrite MARKed and make longer (don't be afraid of bulking things out)

and then overleaf, I listed three short stories I currently have half-written somewhere on my computer:

1. Graveyard Children's Book (man meets Smiths-style emo?)
2. The New House Children's story (change it to a short by making the new baby arrive?)
3. Molly and the haunted cottage.

With this new determination that only ever comes upon me when I'm meant to be doing something else, I resolved that yes, I would DO THESE THINGS.

But so far it's not happened and now, on a Sunday afternoon, replete with my dinner and pudding, would be the perfect time to work on any of these. And I'm not.


I know that I could block it out on a calender, make it regimented, formalise the listing process but in all honesty I know I wouldn't stick it out. My course readings should be appearing next week ready for my next module, and between regimenting my day during working hours, where my day is made up of lists and segments of allocated time for this and that, fitting in the coursework (allocated time), the extra job (monthly allocated time) and the hovel clearing & health stuff the only time left would be these Sunday afternoons. There would be no time to just be Outside of a schedule.

I may love deadlines and being on time but even I need a break for a bit!

Productive today though- took three lego sets and the skateboard to Nanny's as Auntie Irene knows someone who would use them, and then two boxes of books and things to the charity shop. There's still mountains more already sorted (and mountains more still to sort) but at least it's something.
localfreak: avatar which I have used as mine since scarboard days 10 years ago (Default)
...when you know you're procrastinating.

I've already concluded that there's just no way I can do Nanowrimo this year. It's sad but the fact is that I already have a lot of time-consuming demands and my pessimism keeps screaming: "Yeah, go on Michael, do Nanowrimo and then when you FAIL your masters it will be ALL YOUR OWN FAULT." Ergo: not going to risk it.

That said, I am still finding it difficult to focus on work. It's stupid to do studying ALL THE TIME because nothing sinks in, but at the same time the immense guilt that finds me for knitting and watching the Gadget Show/Stephen Fry's Planet Word/Kirsties' Handmade Britain, thinking about baking cakes, having a bath, writing this post is somehow a little paralysing. Am also on a fic-diet. Not giving it up entirely because Fic Makes ME Happy, but I am aware that it is an obsession which eats up most if not all of my free time. So I am trying to limit myself, which is not that easy with the Cliche Fest over on Snape_Potter, a new season of House and Esama's recent burst of activity on the crossover genres.

C'est tres difficile.

*goes to sell some shit on ebay because I have bought A MILLION TEXTBOOKS AND A SHINYGADGET and I now am in need of moneys*

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localfreak: avatar which I have used as mine since scarboard days 10 years ago (Default)
localfreak

July 2021

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