These Few Months

April is coming to a close. If that wasn't obvious, look at your calender. Unless it's already May, for you. So, we're one third of the way through the year. Maths, easy. Only, these few months from January to April seem so long and drawn out, and I feel so desperate to write something to distract from the approaching May Madness, that I wished to reflect on the past few months.

January is easy: I started the year in Meath. Lots of people got drunk. People did things I wish I could forget. A good night was had. A couple of weeks later, I started to teach. This was, of course, preceded by lots of panicking and stressing and getting things done last minute. Then for two weeks my days became a monotonous repeat of: Wake up, go to school, teach, go to college, prepare lessons, go home, sleep, and wake up to start it all over again. At least, it ought to have been that way, except that I went into the city with a couple of friends during the weekend between teaching weeks to finish getting things and to generally burn off some steam, and I went to Eddie Rockets another night with a different friend. I had many days of panicking over everything and moaning to people about these new non-teaching panicky Things until finally getting them sorted out, and before I knew it, I was back in college and beginning the lectures that would bring me the rest of the way through the year. Thankfully, my teaching weeks ended with a script being written and submitted to a competition in the college, so I wasn't at a total loss for creativity.

February is where things become... different. I was blogging again. I was reviewing books and I was giving out some general advice I had procured over the years, and right smack-bang in the middle of the month I turned twenty. I was no longer a teenager, no longer able to cling to silly youth and childish games. The next day I got drunk for the first time. Take THAT irony. My best friend came down from Meath for the night - I hadn't really been fused about the whole affair, except that I got to see him for the first time since December. He got me quite intoxicated, failing to hear me say "No more drinks after this one." I still laugh about it, and the moment of realising I was drunk. Things were looking up for the month. Then the big issue with The Book arose in college, and I began to spiral down into this horrible mood. It got to a point where I didn't think I ever wanted to write again. Eventually I was snapped out of it, but not before a non-too-happy reading week.

Come March, I was back in the game of writing. I wrote a piece of fiction that I was really happy with, and I was thinking more and more about writing. I was getting somewhere happy, for a change. I had an essay to write in college, but I was okay with that. I liked the topic. I also had the pleasure of going to the O2 twice. I got to see The Script early in the month, and Elbow at the end of the month. I had a great time both nights, though they were wholly different experiences; the music was different, the company was different, and I got drunk after the Elbow concert. Throughout the month I was thinking about books I'd started and books I'd written and books I wanted to write, and constantly my mind was being changed and even more so I was thinking of ways to fix the broken constructs of novellas I wrote last summer. To bring the month to a close - before the Elbow concert, that is - I climbed Croagh Patrick. It was a good month.

April. Oh April. I didn't do very much in April. College ended un-spectacularly for me. The highlight of the last day was seeing myself in Writing Magazine. A good highlight, but not enough to make the next few weeks bearable. For three weeks I was off college. I did some reading. I did a tiny bit of writing, though not much. Much less than I'd have liked, considering I found study so daunting I couldn't force myself. Just the starting is the problem for me. During the weeks off I had a bit of a freak out - as is natural for me, seeing as I am completely insane - and I thought more and more about what writing I would do during the summer.

Now, with the month coming to a close in less than an hour (for me, at least), I have to face the horrible soul-sucking reality of May; we're talking thirteen exams, even less of a social life than before and only one thing to spur me on aside from the plans to write like a mad-man - the very last night of college. On Wednesday 25th, the people of God College will be getting drunk and it won't matter. They will be drinking until they're forced to go home, and some of them will keep drinking after that. Some of them won't ever be going out as college students again, some of them will be back in August to do repeat exams, and no one will forget the night. Or at least, no one will forget the buzz from the night. Probably half will actually forget the details of the night. But unfortunately, there are, as I mentioned, thirteen exams for me to do before that night of drunken debauchery, beginning with the oh-so-riveting topic of Christology and Revelation. And not the fun, apocalypse Revelations, but the not-so-fun "I see the truth" Revelation that Fundamentalist Christians think is all the rage.

These months have felt like such a long time. It feels weird to be able to summarise them like this, but alas that is the way things go. When trying not to bore people with the details of every single significant event, I subsequently report only the vaguest of details about most things. A whole month of summaries is due to begin as I prepare for my exams. If you don't hear from me, it's probably because I'm on the run for killing someone for trying to borrow a single page of my notes without asking first. In short, I will become even more insane for the month, and the chances of me reverting back to relative normality (i.e. my present state of mind - still totally insane) are slim. I do wonder if I will become increasingly strange and mad as the college work mounts each year... I suppose I'll just have to figure that one out when I push someone to the limits and he has to punch me in the face to snap me out of whatever it is I'm going through.

See you next month! (Or something...)