And Finally

Less than a week before Christmas, my first semester of college at a Masters level came to an end, all assignments submitted, all the panic over and done with until the results officially come out in February. (I suspect the reason for the wait is actually because of the courses that have examinations after each semester, so we have them to thank for the delay in finding out how we did. Thanks guys!)

Despite the fact that being a Masters student is in some way supposed to be an indicator of maturity and adulthoodness (Blogger's spell-check doesn't recognise that as a word, but neither does it recognise its own name) we decided to go the way of the Undergrad. Namely, we went out for a few celebratory drinks.

Thirteen weeks before this, we hadn't even met each other. We had our orientation, in which we were commended on being mature, responsible adults, capable of the anticipating the challenges of adulthoodness. I might be paraphrasing. The point is that we were strangers, save for two trios who either (a) were in the same classes at Undergrad level or (b) were one year apart in the same Undergrad programme. That's about a quarter of the class entering with some sort of familiarity with someone else, even if that was just a face and a vague memory.

(Side note: as I mentioned in a previous post, one of my friends' girlfriends is actually sort of a neighbour of mine, whom I've never met. It also happens that someone else went to the same secondary school as someone else's boyfriend, the someone else originally from the States. And about a quarter of the class - at least - have some connection to Galway. We're not sure how to explain these small coincidences. Retrospectively, someone might say we were meant to come together as a class group, and I like to think that means we did/will do well enough after the programme to warrant mass-stalking of the group. Or just someone reading my blog.)

I could, once again, break down the thirteen weeks of the course for your reading pleasure, but it's much easier if you just read the previous posts about my progress in the Masters. What you'll find in there, aside from a brief overview of what I've been doing in the course and how sentimentally attached I've gotten to the group (on the few occasions we've gone out for drinks, I estimate I've been between 1-3 drinks away from "I love you guys!" Those of you reading this - that's how you know you've reached 100% completion in the game of Get Paul Drunk! Alternatively, just re-read this.)

[Insert incredibly subtle segue here!] 

No, today I want to talk about me, because eventually my egocentricity had to come to the fore.

Back when the course began, I hadn't considered much of myself. I didn't immediately introduce myself with "I've published 7 books on Amazon, and written a few more on top of that." I could have. The opportunity was there. Instead, I chose to talk about The Curve and my desire to get into publishing, and the fact that I come from an Education background but never managed to escape retail. Now, I want to talk to about another book - one I haven't gotten to actually read yet, but which I've taken part in a small section of a course based on the book: The Motivation Manifesto, by Brendon Burchard.

Early into the course, homework was set: write your own Manifesto. So I did. I'm not going to share the whole thing here. There are some things on it that are still quite personal. But the main point I want to make from it is the ending of what I'd written.

Life should be fun. Life should be full of joy. There will always be struggles. There will always be fear. But they don't need to define how you live. Let yourself be happy. Let yourself get to know people. Let yourself get hurt. It's all part of the adventure.

Okay, it's a little bit...dramatic? Sappy? I don't know. It's supposed to be something that keeps me motivated. And did it?

Well, as it happens, yes. Inadvertently. I guess putting it into words helped immediately. This is where we get a bit personal. Very early on, I got a feeling about one of my classmates - like, a vibe, not a crush. It's hard to put this into words - easier when drunk and talking with someone who knows him. The feeling said to me that I could be friends with this person. I won't name him. I'm sure my classmates know who it is. What was significant for me was that I hadn't felt this way about someone since I met one of my very close friends four years beforehand, and a year beforehand with pretty much everyone else from my Undergrad college I still talk to (including one who wasn't in my year.) I didn't get much of a chance for this to happen with other people, in fairness, but I hadn't felt something so certain in a long time.

And it was a scary feeling.

Historically, I'm not great at close friendships. I don't tend to be close in the right way. I know exactly why I behave this way, but when the other person doesn't, that's very difficult to deal with. So, I have a tendency not to talk about myself. At all. It's not healthy, I know. I didn't really break that habit until the summer of 2010, and not again until 2012, And then, nothing. Not until late October this year, and much more much quickly than any other time.

End result; more panic. More worry. It wasn't enough to talk about myself, if I wasn't sure it was the right idea. I promise that in due course this will all make a lot more sense, but the effective result of everything going through my head was a belief that I needed to alienate myself from that one person who I'd actually let myself open up, and who had been ridiculously supportive about the whole thing.

What happened next completely shocked me, and this really goes to show how far gone I'd become. A little bit of madness on a Monday morning was dealt with rationally and compassionately, and not with anger. Not with vehemence. Not with any sort of disdain for me having a freak-out in the same week we had deadlines for assignments. I hadn't thought that this specific person would react in this way; my fears were - and I suppose still are - founded on how I think everyone would react in this situation.

The conversation we had wasn't especially long - at least it didn't feel that way - but it was incredibly important. He talked me down from a freak-out, asked all the right questions to help me understand what was going on in my own head...and it seems like that was what I'd never experienced before. Historically, whenever I had a similar sort of freak-out (and it only ever seems to happen with people I feel like I'm getting too close to too quickly, because how unfair is it on me to dump any of my personal stuff on them) I didn't deal with it very well. It usually repeated itself on a regular basis. We're talking daily, here. But since Monday, nothing.

See, I didn't really pay much attention to the Manifesto I'd written for myself, despite the fact that it's within my eye-line so often. I didn't pay attention to a part near the top - Be Yourself. Be Honest. Be Open.

The thing is, I'm trying. I'm trying really hard to pay attention to my own Manifesto. I'm trying to be a good friend. I'm trying to be a good son, and brother, and uncle (as well as nephew, grandson, cousin, godson, etc.) I'm trying, and it's difficult coming from the point of view that getting close to people isn't necessarily the best thing I can do (there's a whole set of stories about that one, but basically things got better for a while when I started my Undergrad, and then plateaued until recently.)

I don't believe life should be spent alone. I'm not very good at practising that belief, but I carry it with me every day, and I try not to be alone when it matters, when it can be helped. It took a long time to get to this point. I definitely wasn't ready for this way of thinking a year ago. I wasn't ready for adulthoodness and the accompanying pressures, expectations, and maturity that come from it. Similarly, I was completely unprepared to make even one extremely valuable friend - valuable not because I'm allowed to talk about whatever's going on in my head, but because I'm allowed to just be myself and speak my mind, and even when our opinions don't match, they still fit. I'm not sure I can really count how many I've made this semester, and I can't quantify the good it's done me.

These past thirteen weeks have brought me almost entirely out of my comfort zone. I have practically no technical background that would have helped with the course. I didn't study art or the media at an academic level before. More significantly, more personally, I don't do well meeting large groups of people for the first time when the expectation is that I should be able to work with them. (The first three days of teaching placement every year were especially terrifying in that regard.) I haven't been in a new class group since 2009, and I've never started in a new educational institution without my twin brother. We've been with each other the entire way, from the first day of primary school to our graduation from Mater Dei in 2013. I was scared. I was nervous. And bit by bit, as the first couple of weeks went by, I started to get the vibe-feeling about other people. Bit by bit, I started to feel like I was in the right place. Finally.

How Did We Get Here?

I have a single week of lectures left in the first semester of my Masters. I'm still coming to terms with that one. How did we get here so quickly?

Let's go back, to before the Masters started. Let's go back to March. In March, I was acquiring copies of transcripts to be sent off as part of my application. In January, I moved from one bedroom in the house - the largest - to another - the smallest, and ended up misplacing a few things as I tidied up. I know where my original transcripts are. Unfortunately, there are also about three thousand other sheets of paper in that one place, and that may be an underestimation.

So, new transcripts, application completed, and I waited. I got an interview, I was offered a place, I almost cried (yep, that happened) and I paid my deposit. We've reached May. By July, I know how much the course will cost. I checked my budget, and I knew then that I could afford a laptop and a camera - specific ones that I'd had my eye on for a while. I practised with the camera. I got used to framing things, to playing with depth of field. I didn't know much about photography, except that depth of field was cool.

I was still shooting in Auto. Then: September.

The month dragged by after I paid my fees. I was waiting all the time. The day of my orientation, I met up with a friend of a friend, from Germany. The orientation was boring. It rained heavily as I walked home, and for the next two weeks I was sick. Brilliant start, right?

Well, yes. The first lecture was moved forward in a timetable change, and even then I didn't meet my classmates properly until Wednesday - everyone was in, and our lecturer encouraged us to meet up for coffee after the first lecture. And that lecture was, in itself, an ice-breaker. We went for coffee, we set up our own little Facebook group, we added each other, marvelled at how many people were from Galway, and at the little coincidences that seemed to pop up. I had a couple of mutual friends with various people already, and live near one of my friend's girlfriends. (By near, I mean she's essentially around the corner. And we've never met. Whatever happened to suburban values?)

Week two, lectures started.

So, we'll fast forward through this. We've been through this, mostly. I put together my audio drama, I took some photographs that I love, I gave a presentation on the Selfie, as understood from a reading of Susan Sontag's On Photography. Pretty early on, I considered many of my classmates friends. By Halloween, having only just parted from someone's company, I was texting to say I considered him one of my best friends.That was perhaps the most embarrassing thing to happen that night, and it's not really all that embarrassing. (I did try to teach people to do the Time Warp, but I'm not embarrassed by that.)

The path became clearer the further I walked.

By the end of week eight, I was exhausted, stressed out, and feeling entirely comfortable in the company of my new friends. We were also getting ready to start our next projects, including creating a new soundtrack for a video - foley, dialogue, environmental noises, music, everything. By the end of week eleven - that's where we are now - we're getting ready to write essays, and complete reflective journals. We've met industry professionals who work as photographers, marketers, a social media strategist, a videographer, to mention just a few.

I can remember it all, yet I don't understand how we've gotten this far. We're almost done with our first semester. We've had several varieties of home-baked food. We've been to see some less-than-conventional films. We have our in-jokes. Some people have nicknames they don't want. We've gotten used to using ProTools - I even composed some music for it for my group's soundtrack in our second project - and we've been dabbling in various aspects of the Adobe suite. We've had to use Macs for everything, to the point that when I return to my Windows laptop, I scroll in the wrong direction way more often than I'd care to admit.

But see, it's more than all of that. I'm now at the point of wanting to produce short documentary pieces. I want to create audio dramas, to actually release to the public. Eleven weeks ago, I thought my main focus would be on photography. And while I love photography, while I still want to pursue it, to develop (ha!) my abilities further, I'm not restricting my options so much anymore. I want to work on sound design more in the future. I want to write about visual culture, and new media. I know that by the end of next semester, I'll be looking to learn more about multimedia authoring. I'm dying to learn more about video production already.

I feel like I've come a long way with a lot of amazing people, and I'm not entirely sure how I managed to get here. That said, I love it. I love every bit of it. Choosing this course was one of the best decisions I've ever made, and I refuse to apologise for getting sentimental over it, not after everything I've done in the past eleven weeks, not after the people I've met. I can't be sorry for that.

What's New(s)?

As I begin week five of my Masters, I'm faced with a unique and oddly vague assignment: make the news.

The Mirriam-Webster Dictionary defines news as:

- new information or a report about something that has happened recently
- information that is reported in a newspaper, magazine, television news program, etc.
- someone or something that is exciting and in the news

It's the definition supported by Google, and it doesn't really help.

By the very notion that "news" is merely "new information", then this blog post becomes "news". For some, it certainly is. An account of what I'm currently doing in life, about what's different, adheres to one definition of "news".

Given the gap between this post and my last, back at the time of Robin Williams' death, a lot really has happened. While I have many good intentions on setting up a dedicated site to tell all about my new college life, an exploration of events to date does, by the definition of "new information" require something to written about here.

So, what's new?

For one thing, my cinema experiences. Regular readers will know that I have formed a habit of attending the cinema on a weekly basis. That hasn't necessarily changed, but recently, college life has forced upon me the option of attending something a little more...arthouse.

The Lighthouse Cinema in Smithfield, on a monthly basis, hosts a series of short films. At the start of my second week in college, myself and a few of the others in the course were in attendance. We barely knew each other. We weren't regular attendees of short films. We had no idea what to expect. But I did bring cookies with me, and that certainly made things that much easier.

That hasn't changed. Baking, whether it's cookies or brownies, has continued to serve as suitable tender for friendship. Mostly recently, brownies have made a presentation on Susan Sontag's On Photography that much easier to get through. That baked goods still manage to put people into a good mood is not news.

They did, however, appear as a bribe for class rep nominations. I use the word "appear" intentionally here; no one really wants to be take up the role. The fact that I shrugged in response to the proposition essentially secured my nomination (which became official when, last week, the head of the course took note of it during our Multimedia Imaging lecture.)

And that is news. That's something I haven't announced on social media. That's something that's so far only known to the twenty-odd other people in the course. It's a new role in my life, and whether that's of interest to anyone is inconsequential. Not everyone finds interest in every news story by the traditional media.

On top of the changes in cinema viewing, the types of books I read have changed drastically. Dropping the last book I had been reading, I was required by sheer time limits to read exclusively from the reading lists and module assignments as they presented themselves on a weekly basis.

This has meant turning to books like Nicholas Mirzoeff's An Introduction to Visual Culture, with the additional text Visual Culture Reader to turn to when I eventually work my way through the first tome.

On top of that, the beginning of my Masters has required an in-depth look at art and photography in very particular and specific ways. Susan Sontag's On Photography and John Berger's Ways of Seeing became books for the bedside locker. While the latter had an accompanying series of documentaries on art to make digesting the text that much easier, Sontag's book was a 180 page collection of essays that insisted on being supported only by intuitive thinking.

It was on Sontag's book that I was required to make a presentation, with a week to read and prepare a 20-slide piece on the subject of The Selfie.

I have never been so fed up with The Selfie as I am now. But that's just an aside point.

The advantage to reading such texts is that I was forced, by sheer reading requirement, to learn more about photography. The importance became evident when I began work on my photography project. Portraits were suddenly on the table.

While I would love to say I'm an expert in the making, that would be stretching the truth. But I have been practising, and I at least feel as if I have a fair enough understanding of portraiture and photography (at least in using the camera) to take a few half-way decent pictures. I have no doubt that many of them will be dismissed almost instantly by my lecturer. I wish that was a joke.

While my photography project is still a bit up in the air, with about four weeks to pull it all together, and a few hundred more photographs to take to really get there, my audio project received a warmer welcome. That is to say, aside from the sheer workload involved in it, my lecturer agrees it fits the project brief.

That's a start. It was also the call-to-action that led to my writing of an extensive and incomplete check-list. For my project, I'll be writing and producing an audio drama, tentatively entitled Love at First Date. And that, I think, is something newsworthy in relation to the context of this blog. It only took a few hundred words.

Beginning a Masters was, a few months ago, a very exciting proposition. Exciting, but terrifying. I had no idea how much my life would change as a result of a decision I made last February, except that I wouldn't know anybody. And that was worrying. I'd had enough of not knowing people. But I'm glad to say that, on top of approaching new subjects and new ideas, I'm getting to make new friends. That, though, is the topic of a whole other post.

A Bad Seven Months

A recurring question in interviews seems to be to ask someone what the most difficult period of their life is. I don't understand that. I don't know why, if there are no guarantees that someone has moved past that period, anyone would ask that question.

So here's the thing - I don't want to be asked that. If anyone wants to know what, at the time of writing this blog post, the worst period of my life was, they can just look here, for a glimpse at that time. There's some stuff I'd rather not talk about at all, online, which you'll just have to accept. Anyway...

It started in February 2010. In the space of a week, I lost my job, an online friend went missing, and - less catastrophically, more upsetting with the others happening at the same time - my iPod broke. (Actually, it was dropped on the floor by someone else and broke, but that's not the point.)

I felt broken inside, lost and confused and with no idea how any of this was going to pan out. I didn't know how I'd fund any sort of writing career, if I ever hoped to have one, and I didn't know whether or not my friend was going to turn up safely.

While Darren Shan helped me cope with the job-loss-writer-problems, bad news was around the corner. My friend, a young writer by the name of Jonny Havron, was found. He had fallen into a river on a night out with some friends.

A couple of months later, my aunt was admitted into hospital, having just given birth to her second child. She went into a coma, and stayed that way - undiagnosed - for several weeks. During that time, while studying for exams, we had to accept that this was not going to end well - if she woke up, she wouldn't be the same. If they couldn't wake her up, she would remain in a coma. And if they couldn't fix what was wrong with her, she would die.

I can't say I coped very well with that idea, the finality of which hit the week after my exams. It took a lot for my best friend to calm me down over the phone.

A couple of weeks later, after a "successful" diagnosis of vasculitis in her brain, she entered the recovery stages. When she eventually woke up, she had no memory of giving birth, of naming her daughter, of feeling ill before her hospital visit.

There's more, things the family as a whole are still dealing with, but four years later she's still in permanent care. She's not the same woman she used to be, emotionally, mentally, in terms of personality, but she recognises her children, she recognises her husband, and she has some good days when she makes her family laugh.

Anyway, back to 2010.

After six months of hell, between the job (which I got back - Rise of the Phoenix sort of stuff with the company), my friend, my exams, and my aunt, I was on edge. That's putting it lightly.

The icing on the cake came in September, when my best friend - the same person who calmed me down after our fears over my aunt - left college. (There were circumstances, but that's not my story to tell.) That tore me up inside in ways I can't really describe (not without explaining the circumstances, anyway.)

It felt like I'd lost him as a friend - which I didn't, not really - and after everything else I'd gone through, it just felt like too much. It was a couple of months before I really integrated myself back into social groups properly, and longer still before I could talk about a lot of this stuff with people without getting upset all over again.

I'm putting it all down now for one very clear reason: this isn't something I want to talk about all the time. This is a time in my life I want to put behind me. I will always remember it, but I don't want it to rule me, and I don't want it to be something other people fixate on about me.

Let it be clear: I have moved beyond these seven months of my life. I finished my degree. I published my first book. I'm about to start a Masters - which I saved up for myself. I'm happy with my life, and the fact that it took me a long time to say that doesn't make it any less true. Sure, this isn't the full story, but the end result is the same. In the four years since all of this, I've learned to cope, I've learned to grow, and I've done a lot to make myself proud.

What I Studied At College

Anyone who knows me can pretty much skip this post entirely. It'll be of no interest to you to read about my college studies.

I won't go through a year-by-year analysis of modules and courses, but I can break it down into three major categories: Religion, English, and Education.

The Religion aspect of my Undergrad degree covers:
- Church history,
- Liturgy,
- Scripture,
- Philosophy,
- Ethics, and
- World religions.

What that meant was trying to balance my strengths and weaknesses across several completely different fields in an effort to attain the best possible grade for Religion overall. As it happens, the history and scripture modules were always my worst in terms of grades. I put it down to (a) the amount of material and (b) the marking style of the lecturers. It's a known fact that grades at third level vary according to the student doing the writing, and the lecturer doing the correcting.

All in all, it was interesting. I loved the Religion and Science module we had in third year, and surprised myself with a high grade in one of the scripture exams in first year. And, it's safe to say, I'll never want to be examined in Religion as a field of study - like that, anyway - ever again.

The English aspect of the degree was split into:
- Fiction,
- Poetry,
- Theatre, and
- Film.

Yes, we got to watch movies as part of our lectures. Yes, it was fun. And, if you did the same course as I did, it was all scarring. Blue Velvet is just one of the prescribed texts that will forever haunt me.

The English lectures were my favourites by far, because they focused on my longest-standing interest. While I came to enjoy Religion and Education lectures, I had always been excited about what we were studying in English, whether it was Shakespeare, Tragedy, Epic and Romantic Poetry, or Adaptations - even if I had no interest in reading the text, I loved learning about them.

The Education aspect of the degree was split more dramatically than anything else into two sub-categories: theory, and practice. The theory consisted of learning about the history of education, child psychology, methodology, and other such things that are Department-prescribed. The practical aspect of it... well... did I ever tell you the story about someone throwing a table at me in the middle of class?

I won't name names, but it happened. It's my horror story. It was a one-off event, in a heated situation, and I had to learn on the spot how to handle that - because no amount of theory of education can prepare you for the real thing!

Teaching practice was, and will probably always be, the most difficult and formative experience of my life as a student. I couldn't just talk to the students blankly about the topics - which usually covered someone I might have studied myself in college. I had to figure out how to make it interesting and engaging and relevant to them - even if that meant asking them, openly, what was the first thing they thought of when they thought of Muslims? (I won't lie, 9/11 and terrorism were offered as answers most of the time, a fact of which they were ashamed. Don't worry, I set them straight during my time as their teacher - they really didn't know any better.)

Of course, that was just my Undergrad degree. From September onwards, I'll be entering the world of the Masters, with war stories from the classroom to share with people when we're introducing ourselves to one another!

Future Books and Future Plans

My friends poked fun at me when I said, in response to the challenge to come up with a book idea in thirty seconds, that I had a wall full of ideas, and I could easily pretend I just came up with one of them. I got the whole "Oh, I just have so many ideas..." line.

Well yes, yes I do.

I don't have plans, but I do have ideas. The ones I really like, I make sure to focus on. They're a mix of fiction and non-fiction, and I don't know how many of them are actually good yet. I have to see how they pan out when I try planning them, when I try to find the story around the idea.

My general plan for the next couple of years with books looks like this:

- I want to release the third Modern Irish Myth book. It'll require re-planning, and writing from scratch, but it's going to happen. Then, the series will be put on hiatus.

- I'll be releasing a series of books set in an Irish college. To put it really simply, it'll be creating a fictional world around my own college experience, inspired by events rather than people. I'm fleshing out a lot of it at the moment, but it's been exciting me for a long time, now, and it'll be appearing sooner rather than later.

- I'll be focusing on a couple more writing books in the future. Some will be specific genre-related titles, others more broad, addressing all writers. Without just giving away ideas, that's all I can say.

- After my Masters, I'll be turning my attention to researching and writing about mental health. I want to make the material accessible. If my experience on teaching placement in 2013 was any indication of the trend, even the people who should know about mental health don't. This is something I've been wanting to write about for a long time, and for the time being it'll remain in my fiction, but in the future I'll be taking on a more proactive role in the field in Ireland - and maybe even abroad.

That's just the books, of course. There's a lot else to focus on in the future, which I can't really discuss until I actually get started (I have books on mental health, and have read a bit of some of them, so I'm not breaking my own rule there). This isn't just a secrecy thing. This is a hype thing. As in, I don't want to create any hype in my own head over this stuff.

Being a writer can be a scary thing, especially when public announcements are concerned. It's with that in mind that I'm keeping a lot of things quiet until I'm ready to talk about them, and why I haven't given any indication as to what's actually going to happen in my new books. For now, you'll have to do with the vague answers I can give, and accept the fact that new material is on its way.

A Professional Focus

I have a theory: I'm much more likely to get my Dream Job if I'm already working in the field in some respect. As far as theories go, that's not awful, right?

For me, it's publishing. I'll always be a writer, but there's only so much help I can offer to the writers who are looking for it from a desk in my small bedroom. I want to be able to help writers complete their books, publish their books, see their books for something more than a vague idea in their head.

However, since I have the whole "Do a Masters" thing to consider, I can't do either of two things at the moment: get a full-time job (period) or start my own business. With that in mind, I decided I would re-evaluate my plans for some books. Specifically, I would take the books that looked like I was just piecing them together and turn them into something more useful.

Seriously, though: I literally had a book that consisted of vaguely related ideas. Not. Any. More.

I'm taking what I call a "professional focus" on this. Yes, I've been treating my books professionally from day one, but to the end of being a writer. I've decided that my books should also be related to what I want to get from life.

I've already got Planning Before Writing and 25 Ways to Beat Writer's Block. To them, I'll be adding a few other titles, covering various areas of life as an author. The focus will be split between the craft of writing, the business side of things, and the lifestyle side of things - the three areas I had originally wanted to focus upon in my vaguely-connected books.

I don't plan on bombarding the market with them all in one go, of course. I want to take the time to write the properly, and to mix things up a bit so the books don't focus on one single aspect of writing. Today, while on my break in work, I put together short plans for four books, two of which I've wanted to write for a while regardless. It'll be an interesting project, and it fits into the general aim I set myself at the start of the year: establish myself as an "expert" in the field of writing.

To make a long story short, I want to be able to say to a publisher - either one I'm applying to, or one I'm submitting to - that I know a thing or two (or ten...) about what it means to be a writer, and I know how to make the process of writing and publishing a book so much easier than a lot of people make it for themselves. It helps to be able to prove it with more than a CV.

This is where the "professional focus" comes into play. I'll be working as a publisher, and working around the field of publishing, for pretty much the entire duration of my Masters. The entire time, I'll be preparing myself for the opportunity to say "This is what I can do; this is what others have said about it, and these are the pieces of paper from an established university that say I can do other things too."

I have to believe that I'm on the right track here. As it stands, I've already been told my experience is impressive. (It just didn't help that the company wasn't in a position to hire, because that's the publishing world for you.) I have a plan for myself, as difficult as that may seem for some people to believe. It's not so specific that outside variables can completely derail things within the next two years, and it's not so vague that when it comes to implementing the Grand Finale I'll be left without options.

I know what I want to do with my life, I have an idea about how to do it, and I'll be damned if I'm going to let myself get away with not even trying. I have a theory, and it needs to be proven.

And, just to make it specific about what I'm going to do now: I need to compile the plans for every book on writing I'll be writing and publishing over the next 18-24 months. I'll be typing them up, colour-coding them as Craft, Business or Lifestyle books, and placing them in a folder in the planned order of publication. On Monday, I'll begin the process of writing the next book.

***

It's worth mentioning, at the moment I'm offering friends a helping hand with their writing as a sort of free coaching service. (Sort of a coaching service, not sort of free.) Feel free to contact me with any sort of writing-related questions you might have. If I feel like it could benefit more from a direct conversation rather than an email reply, I'll put out the offer to you. This is all time-and-energy based, so if I don't reply right away, or I can't arrange a conversation (through Skype or Google+), don't be offended.

Planning Before Living

As my teaching placement in January came to a finish, it began to feel extremely real that I was leaving college. It was a nervous and exciting time, but it raised a question: what do I do now? I knew there was one thing I definitely wanted to do: I wanted to get a Masters degree.

Two problems then arose:
- What do I want to study in? (And where?)
- How can I afford it?

The second problem was much more easy to address: I can't. Working weekends only, it is literally impossible for me to save up the average full sum required to sit a Masters course in Ireland. For the whole summer, that's all I was able to manage in work - not because I wasn't willing to work, but because the hours weren't there.

Now, I'm in a position to receive a few more hours per week. My boss is currently out of commission, and so we can't mention anything further to him, but my colleagues and I have been talking, and it makes sense to us that I work four days per week - not just a few hours on a Saturday, and a full-day on Sunday. Even if I managed to work just four days in the week, I've worked it out that I can still save up for a course to begin in September 2014.

That's without giving up on comic books, the cinema, magazines or other various expenses that pop up, too, which effectively means that I'm in a position, all things going according to plan (and a plan that makes sense to six people, myself included), to begin a Masters this time next year.

But that still leaves the other problem: what course would I actually do?

Part of me is considering Chaplaincy. Another part of me is considering Creative Writing. There's even a part of me that would love to go on to study Counselling. Each have their own pros and cons to consider, and I'm sure when I seriously start looking into courses things will only get more complicated. Now that I actually feel like I'm in a position to actually afford it, I can actually consider things beyond just what I'd like to do in some hypothetical universe.

Here was me thinking that I was done with college. Ha!

Life requires a lot of planning like this, though, I've come to realise. I know that while taking an extra year of study, I may have to face reduced working hours. It's also a massive chunk of money I can't put aside for saving, or use to travel (like I've wanted to for years, now!). I'm still planning to go away next year for a few days, but I do have to seriously consider the costs of everything before I go ahead with it. That's not just about the travelling; I mean everything that isn't already on my list of expenses.

As well as planning my expenses and income, I've also been looking at a few different things, from video schedules to writing plans, and considering the best course of action to take on a number of different projects. From one that currently looks like an interactive fantasy story, to a web series on YouTube, to a content-filled blog, I've got a lot of work ahead of me for so many different projects. I don't think I'll run out of work to do over the next few months, at least!

It seems like a lot to plan, but it also seems strangely necessary. Not because I might go against my plans, but because I'm not sure I could keep myself focused on one specific exciting thing for long enough to get truly involved in it. I know that once I get it into my system to write a particular thing, or record videos every x days, like I did with my daily-blogging and daily poetry exercises, it'll just be part of my life.

And isn't that the point? To read, to write, to create, to earn, to study. Isn't that the point of all this planning, that it just becomes life?

Now and Then

About a year ago, I began my final year in college. Now, I have friends doing the same thing. While their first day provided them with opportunities to catch up, to cheer, to drink tea in each other's company and to plan a year's worth of events in the Clubs and Socs calendar, I slept in.

What a weird parallel.

It's truly sunk in, now, that college is over for me. Rather than getting to see my friends five days of the week, I have to get one of them to let me into the building the next time I'm in the area. I can't just wander on in myself at any time of the day.

Work, while sometimes-exhausting, is finally providing me with the opportunity to work more hours, though, which is nice. So, rather than spend my days at home pretending I have the motivation to write all day every day, I get to earn money selling books and magazines and newspapers and stationary to people during the day, and moonlight novelling when I get home. What a life it is.

That sentiment was almost entirely true, too. In reality, I haven't been writing too much lately. Tonight's the first time in a while that I wrote some fiction. Okay 'some' is an understatement. I set out to write 2500 words, and I did. I have a target for myself, to write and edit a novel (of 75,000 words) in a month. It's not impossible, but it will be difficult.

Let's break down my week: I usually work at least two days. Sometimes up to four. These days, if they're early starts, leave me with an evening to write. An evening allows me about two to three hours to write.

When I'm not working, I have one day that's almost completely written off for family stuff. (I'm going to try test that theory this week, but that's probably going to be the case.) That leaves two days to do something. What I'd like to do is actually get out of the house at least once per week that isn't just for the cinema, so we'll see how that plays out. That leaves one day to write.

If I worked all day, I could - in theory - crank out five thousand words in a day without feeling like I've lost a whole day. I'd still have time to eat and to watch some television.

The latter is the problem: it's too easy to watch something just for the sake of it. What's worse is that I've been doing it instead of reading, when reading is exactly what I set out to do. I think in those cases I need to use my iPod instead, since it's the background noise I want from the television.

Going by this half-assed template for a week, I still have enough time to write the book. The editing is the more difficult part to include in the plan, because it could take a long time. I have a deadline, damn it!

As well as this Book-in-a-Month business, I'm also hoping to read a book a week. That's not too difficult in theory, so long as I stay away from repeats on television. I'll still watch new shows - like the season finale of Supernatural, and Agents of SHIELD when it begins - but I'll probably stay away from something I've already seen if it can be helped. Plus, I've got breaks in work to read during. A full day in work gives me an hour lunch and a half-hour break to read (and drink tea), and that's how I've been getting through a couple of books lately, but I need to give reading some more time during the day.

Let's put all of this into context with last year. I was writing my Research Paper last year. When I finished that, I immediately set about writing a short, quick and hopefully humorous play for Drama Soc. I had a couple of days to crank out a twenty minute script.

Funnily enough, I kind of plan on doing the same thing once I've done the book in a month. I've got it in my head again to write a play, and to actually send it in to theatre companies for production. Wouldn't that be wonderful, to have a play on stage? Anyway, it's an idea. It's an idea without an idea for a play, but it's there, and it'll grow and by the time the book is finished I might have an idea of what to write about.

Following that, it's just a case of trying to get my creative juices going. If I do a repeat of what I did today, it'll mean beginning to write the play after only five minutes of planning. Seriously - that's all the planning that's going into this novel. I've been mulling it over in my head for a long time, after an idea from a few years go became this one. I'll probably have to plan it a little more formally soon, to get some idea of where it's going, but for now I've got this book that's planned on a single A4 sheet of paper, in barely-legible hand-writing, as a mind-map. Sometimes I write out a thorough plan - especially for something that's to be written in such a short period of time - but for this I want to see what happens when I just let go.

That, I think, has been a problem. Trying to control too much, and then not doing anything. So, I'm letting go. I'm writing with a half-plan, I'm reading a variety of different books, and I'm going to allow myself to relax about life a little bit, while I'm still allowed. I couldn't do it last year, but things are different now. I'm different.

A Brief Note on Saying Goodbye

Tonight I said goodbye to three of my best friends. Over the next couple of weeks, they're leaving the country, each for least one year. I've had friends leave before, but not three at once.

I could say it's easier having given them going-away presents and getting to see them one last time before graduation. I could say it, but I don't know if I believe it. It's certainly more real, now, since we've given them our gifts, but I don't think anything could make it easier.

Over the past four years, a bunch of us from various parts of the country have grown close. We've faced essays, exams, Friday morning lectures, Teaching Placement, weird masses, explicit films and bad hangovers together. We've celebrated birthdays and Christmases and completing exams. Now, though we face departure and new currencies and strange cultures and different timezones, we can still celebrate new beginnings. New jobs at home and abroad, new challenges academic, social and professional, new lives to be explored and survived and celebrated.

Life won't be the same with them gone, but even goodbye and good luck doesn't mean The End. We might not see each other often, any of us, but I don't believe this can ever keep us apart.

We're friends despite national borders and county lines, no matter how long it takes to get us all in the same room again.

Options

You might recall my trouble sleeping the other night. I had some things on my mind. Part of it was to do with work (and my still only working weekends on minimum wage after six years in the place), and part of it was to do with September and its great big Nothingness. There's also a change in the house around then, and that's just one more thing to consider.

So, I re-wrote out my 'solutions' list, neatly, and put it away safely. I've addressed something new and exciting that came up today. And to further address the worries that September brings, I brainstormed my options.

Setting an online timer, I had three minutes to write down as many different things I could do that would affect both my work and September problems at the same time. While there's no direct need to leave the bookshop for most of the options, because most of them aren't instant-return, and don't require complete availability on my part, I did include that.

Don't get me wrong: I don't want to leave the bookshop. I just want to be able to do something more than weekends at such a low wage, and not feel like I need them more than they need me. In six years, the management haven't exactly made me feel as if I'm an essential and valued part of the team, which really sucks. It could just be me, now, at this point in my life, blowing it all out of proportion, but I don't think so. I don't even have keys to the shop, despite it being mentioned two or three times over the past couple of years that I should probably be given a set (which would make arranging hours easier, since I could open and close the shop if need be.)

So, with those niggling doubts over my value to the shop, I have my list. I need to type it up and make it official, but my options are now there in front of me.

I'll break it down for you. A lot of it involves writing in one way or another. One option is crafty. A couple are business-y. One's even a learning thing, just so I'm doing something in September (I was thinking one of those free online courses...in something.)

The value in this exercise is that, while life seems to be at an impasse, I can still make choices to change things. One thing's for certain though: I'll have to start setting an alarm and working every day at regular hours. My motivation has gone way down without structure to the day. Now I have lots of different options I can choose from. I know I'll probably get started on a couple of them sooner rather than later, too, because I can. They don't require me to do much aside from getting myself out of this chair. (Though, inevitably I'll have to return to the chair for the computer parts of these things.)

What I'm saying is, while the post-college blues might be setting in, I have a way out. I have many ways out, in fact, and I think it's about time I followed through on them.

Day 25: Reunion

I didn't do much writing today. Okay, I did nothing. I hadn't really arranged any time in the day for it to fit in, and didn't use the time I had arranged for other things exactly as planned. There was only one thing I really, really wanted to get done: a reunion.

This involved meeting in the city - at the Spire (where else?) - and going for lunch. Nando's was in order. It was my first time to experience the deliciousness of the ever-growing chain. A few years back, when my family went to Portugal, we acquired a taste for Peri Peri chicken. I haven't had a decent dish since. (My mum tried it once...it didn't work out.) Today, I was entirely satisfied with my food, enough so that I would return.

So that's good.

After dinner, the three of us went shopping. Well, they did most of the shopping. After a few minutes in a gift shop none of us had ever seen before, we ended up in clothing store after clothing store. I didn't really mind, until we ended up in the lingerie section of Penneys.

Let's just be clear: neither myself or my friend buying something for herself were comfortable being there. I was just glad I didn't need to have an opinion on any of it. It kind of helped that we joked about the episode of Father Ted in which the priests found themselves lost in the lingerie section with no way out.

Of course, I dragged them to the comic book shop. It would be rude not to. I was in and out in a matter of minutes - the perks of shopping with someone who knows exactly what he wants and where to get it - and we were off to wander about some more.

We found a couple of overtly religious preachers on our journey through the city, today. One rather large group of young men and women proclaimed their life-changing discovery of God. Somehow, even after four years in God College, none of us were able to listen to much of that. I think we've become slightly alienated from religion at the thought of academia. I'm sure it'll wear off if we don't run into too many preachers in the next few weeks.

What was more troubling was the man claiming the word of God on Henry Street, and turning all psycho-Islamaphobic-bigot on us. Wherever Muslims go they start wars, yadda yadda yadda... as if the US military hasn't been unnecessarily involved in some recent conflicts. As if Hitler wasn't a Christian. As if the British Empire in its quote-unquote glory days weren't devout Christians. When people ignore certain fundamental facts of history to further their hatred, and do so in the name of Christ...well, that makes being a Christian difficult.

Don't get me wrong. I know what it means to be a Christian. It's the people who hear this guy and somehow come to believe that it's about hating on others that I'm worried about. So, here are a couple of truths for you:

- Wars are started by people, sometimes over religion, sometimes over politics, sometimes over wealth, but no one group of people is solely responsible.
- The core message at the heart of Christianity is love, and I'm willing to accept that a lot of people who call themselves Christians can come to forget that, or are intentionally unwilling to see the love of others.

Of course, I didn't bring these things up while wandering about the city. It was much to warm out for that. Instead we walked away muttering to ourselves that he was a nutjob, until more exciting topics for conversation arose.

By the time I arrived home, I had intended on submitting some more work to various journals. That didn't happen. I ended up having dinner and watching more Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Tomorrow, I'm baking. But I'll definitely have to make time to do some writing, do some submitting, and start making plans with friends. Having a social life is fun!

The Results Are In!

Well, it happened. I received my exam results, and I'm finally free from the stress of those dreaded exams, coming out with an honours degree (and that's about as much about that as I'll say online).

There's something incredibly relieving about holding the final transcript of exam results that I don't think I can effectively capture in a few words. Four years of lectures, essays, teaching placements and exams, all down to one piece of paper - and this one's not even the degree! But the little piece of paper I received today doesn't say much about my time in college.

Yes, it reveals how well I did in my final year modules. Yes, it says how well I did in my research paper (incidentally, it was the best result on the page). And yes, it says how well I did in my teaching placement. But it says nothing about the amazing friends I've made in the four years that led to this day. It says nothing about the conversations over tea and spirits, sitting together at a dinner table or dancing like everybody's watching and we're the sexiest people to ever walk in the doors of whatever pub or club we've found ourselves in when the occasion struck.

It says nothing about the final curtain of my first performance in Drama Soc, or the lights going up on my own play. It says nothing about trips across the city for competitions, or fundraising for an important charity. It says nothing about bake sales and lunch time masses and inflatable slides suitable for a child's party, parked outside the canteen.

It says nothing about the scandals or the romances, the fights and the make-ups, meeting new people and saying goodbye to wonderful friends.

The results are in, and they say so little about what four years in college actually means. This was an opportunity for me, provided willingly by my parents. They didn't doubt my decision to go to this small college they'd never heard of. They supported me when I told them I was going for Drama Soc auditions in first year, and they sat in the audience when The Rest is Silence sold out in third year. They allowed us to have friends down at the house, hosting a post-21st-birthday-party party.

When they arrived home from work today, the first thing I did was hug them. I can never say thank you enough to them for everything they've done for me over the past four years, including all the worrying and the anxiety they went through, hoping that things worked out okay. From making lunches to ironing shirts when I was on Teaching Placement, or picking me up from the college when rehearsals in Drama went on too long; from allowing me to be upset that one of my best friends would be leaving the college, to supporting my choices in what I'd like to study in a Masters course in the future; there are too many things for me to be grateful for, too many to name and too many to think of, and I don't see myself ever being able to express it to them how much they mean to me, and how much these past four years have meant to me.

A little piece of paper told me about my academic results. Nothing can accurately summarise the results of the past four years on my life, on who I am and how I feel and think. There just aren't enough words, and I think I'm okay with that.

It'll Be Okay

Tomorrow, my college's website is going to crash. How do I know this? Because, historically speaking, it crashes every time exam results are released.

Yes, that's right, tomorrow is the day we find out if we passed or failed the Dreaded Exams. Some are calling it D-Day. Nobody is looking forward to it. Me? I'm trying to remain in denial about it for a while, which I think is perfectly acceptable for the time being. As it is, the results are in a state of being akin to Schroedinger's Cat; they are, for the time being, both a pass and a fail.

Fun, right? Damn scientists...

Anyway, in my move to Not Think About It, I'm going to get comic books. As I do every Wednesday. Yes, I'm treating it like any other day, even if it isn't. I'm even contemplating going to the college to collect my transcript, to avoid having to wait until Friday to receive it in the post (because I don't think the Irish postal system is going to deliver them by the next day.) It would be a relief, wouldn't it?

I'm not going to panic, though. I don't think anything good could come from panicking over this. Instead, I'll enjoy superheroes beating the crap out of each other. I'll read The Hobbit. I'll watch YouTube videos.

Basically, I'm going to have a ridiculously relaxing day, tomorrow, and I'm going to tell myself I deserve it. Simples.

It's all going to be okay. I've already done the hard work. I've already put myself in the position of worrying over exams. I literally cannot do anything now about the results, and so I'm not even going to pretend and try. Wish me luck if you want to, but as a friend of mine pointed out a couple of years back, luck can do very little at this stage.

To my fellow classmates, those in other years, I'm not going to wish you good luck in your results. Instead, I'd like to wish you a nice day, and encourage you to do something nice for yourself to help you relax. We've done our best, and our best is all we can do.

Peace, Love and Potter,
Paul.

Chapter One: Is This Real Life?

College is officially over. No more exams (I hope.) No more assignments (I hope.) No more waking up at 7am to attend a lecture on Grace (I really, really hope.) Which puts me in a position of starting over again in a new kind of life. The Education Years are complete. Someday, I'll retrospectively figure out what to call this time of my life, but for now, I'll just focus on the fact that as of today, this is the life I have to live. This is:

Chapter One: Is This Real Life?

I got to wake up after half ten this morning. This was, admittedly, after a long day and a long night, but even still: half ten. And I was in no pressure to go anywhere. It almost felt good, but I'm still getting over the exam experience, thinking "I should be studying instead of watching Rooster Teeth videos on YouTube." Except no. I don't have to study for an exam anymore. I'm allowed to take some time to watch videos of grown men becoming emotionally attached to video game sheep as the very ground they walk on catches fire and the sheep plummet to their virtual deaths. That's a thing.

The day was also spent baking. Or, some of it was. A batch of brownies are, as of writing this, cooling before I can cut them. I haven't had the chance to bake in a long time because of assignments and exams in college. Now, I get to bake to prepare for a day out in the city that won't involve getting materials for exams or teaching. I get to walk around with friends all day and be a bum.

This comes at a point in time at which I get to start rolling out some grand plans I've been working on for a while, now. All things going smoothly, the first of these endeavours will find itself unveiled this Saturday, June 1st. Recent developments have made it so I can't go to Derry for the 2D Festival, so I'm home-bound. I'm using this as an opportunity to do some work that I've had to put off against my will for a while. For reasons.

At it happens, the weekend off allows me to devote three days to writing non-stop. Aside from the typical bank holiday hours I work, next week will then have me making use of my timetable, to put some structure in my days. Combined with a list of things I want to get done in the first month of Real Life, I can see myself accomplishing a lot in a short period of time. I suppose this is necessary, to keep my spirits high. I'm intending on putting my work in such an order that I should finish projects regularly, rather than all at once. Minor successes that come often are much more valuable to me than a lot of them at once.

It doesn't feel as if this is actually real, at the moment, though. Five years in a row I've completed massive exams - Leaving Cert, and college exams for a four year degree. Every time so far, I've had somewhere to go in September. Four years ago, I was in a position of not really knowing where I would go, but knowing I would end up somewhere. It took until August to really drill that in. I have a feeling that it'll be August when it finally hits me: this is my life, until I do something to radically change it.

It does raise the question though: do I want to change it?

I had a conversation similar to this sort of thinking a couple of days ago with a friend over Facebook. Assuming I've passed my exams, I'm technically a qualified teacher, now. He asked if I would go into teaching, and I answered honestly: while it's a passion of mine, I don't want to go into teaching until I've given the writing a shot. I'm playing it smart, planning on evaluating things regularly to see if I'm actually progressing with the writing. If not, then I'll pursue teaching more seriously in a year.

It's not a case of not wanting to teach, mind you. I've mentioned before: it's an emotional maturity consideration, and a consideration of my age and life experience. I'm not planning a boozing holiday to go wild, of course, but that doesn't mean I don't want to travel. I want to experience something of the world. I want to test the waters with writing, see how my bank account fairs as a result of publishing, establish long-term projects that aren't necessarily something to abandon if I enter teaching, and take a chance to find myself as a person.

It begins with the day out tomorrow, the weekend of writing, and the launch of my first big project. By the end of September, then we'll have to consider how much has changed.

The first chapter of my new life has started. Let's get this one right, shall we?

Timetabling

From June onwards, I'll be on my own timetable for weekdays. This will last for the foreseeable future, and for the first time ever. I won't have college in September (I hope), and I don't currently have a full-time job in place. Those sort of things just aren't that common.

The implications of this are both positive and negative.

For a start, my travel expenses per week are driven down significantly. Rather than spend about €25 on travel to and from college per week (a massive chunk of my wages), I can work from the comfort of my own home. I also won't have to worry about paying for lunch when I run out of time to make one in the morning...because I'll be eating in all the time. That's up to €20 saved per week.

However, despite saving money, I'm not exactly in a position to do much else with my life; I'm still only working weekends, so I can't afford to travel, or to move out. I also don't get to see people as often as I'd like (and I like people, especially my friends). And I have to set my own work.

This is where my timetable comes in. Knowing there are only so many days I can work on one project before it becomes tiresome, I've devised a way to write about several different things throughout the week. A mix of poetry, script writing, novelling, flash fiction, articles, blog writing, video making and general adminstration work sees me working full-time on writing.

It also sees me putting off the insanity of being without a structure in my life.

However, it does also call for me to have to use my time as if I were working a regular job. Specifically:

- I need to earn money from writing
- I need to have holidays from writing
- I need to work with people in some way

I'm already working on the last one, and I'm technically earning something from writing (though not enough to be currently in a position of paying myself an hourly wage for the amount of work that actually went into the books I have published, thus far), but actually having holidays is difficult. I'd need to plan projects towards similar deadlines. I'd need some sort of money to actually go somewhere (and somewhere affordable... the student lifestyle continues even after the degree has been earned!).

It's not impossible, I know, but it will take some work.

I've set myself deadlines and tasks per month (books to have completed, projects to launch that currently only exist anonymously, submissions) so I'm not going completely without direction. I have a whole folder full of tasks that need to be done, books to be written, and a step-by-step guide to getting them done.

I don't want my time to go to waste. I know how easy it is to sit by and do nothing. But I also know how possible it is to accomplish a lot in a short period of time. Two years ago, I found myself in the position of needing to write about 25,000 words in five days in July (Camp NaNoWriMo anybody); finishing that early, I applied for, and was hired, for a writing position on The Phantom Zone (a site that unfortunately not been written on in over a year, when I stopped writing when it appeared no one else was regularly posting); at the same time, I began putting my website together.

It had been a busy five days, but it made the time feel worthwhile. That's what I want to get out of life. Sure, I could sit around all day and watch RoosterTeeth videos or tweet about the varying quantities of tea in my cup, but I wouldn't feel like I was actually accomplishing anything. (Don't get me wrong: when summer hits, I imagine I'll be spending a fair amount of time listening to the RoosterTeeth podcasts while doing things like cover design, or taking a break from work, but I don't want that to be the only thing I accomplish in a day.) Similarly, I won't be repeating what I did last summer: watching videos with the aim of achieving something from what they taught, only to never put it into practice.

I need to fill my day with activities, and I need to be flexible (but professional) about how I do it. Essentially, I'll be working a seven-day week, though I'll be setting my own hours for five of those. And I need to. Not just to actually get the books written that I've been wanting to write for years and months, now, but to actually feel like I'm doing something with my time.

If history has taught me anything, I grow restless during time off when I feel like I should be doing something. Here's the reality of the situation: I won't have a research paper to write, or teaching practice to prepare for, or a deadline to finish the really serious, time-consuming work of longer books and projects, all of which are usually dictated by the coming of September. September will just be the month after August, not the month I'm working to another timetable again.

Until such time that I find full-time work, I have to make it for myself.

Incidentally, while I have many, many projects to do for the next few months, I'd like to blog every day in June (and possibly July...and August...and September... getting the picture? Every day. Forever.), but I'm wondering: what would you like to read? I'm open to suggestions (though I'm hoping not to repeat the Sexy Sea Anemones post that resulted from an extremely open call for blog post ideas a few years ago!). Leave a comment below (or on whatever social media site you found this post through - if I posted the link).

As Good As Done

Today, I had my last ever theology exam. You know, all things working out for the best. With only one exam left - Poetry, after a four day break - I can say with some confidence that these exams are as good as done.

Thanks be to God.

With that wee "adventure" past, it's looking like the rest of my life is getting ready to pull itself together. I have arrangements in place for a couple of days out with friends, and I've scheduled the writing of several books over the next few weeks. I don't plan on taking it easy just because it's summer. Let's face it, I haven't actually had a prolonged period of time to write for a long time, now.

And I mean, just write. Like, forget about Teaching Placement. Forget about writing in the evenings. I could, potentially, write all day long if I really, really wanted to. Guess what? I want to. I really, really want to.

I know I have to be smart about this. I can't just start writing and never stop, and be damned with people who might want to do something as ordinary as talking. That's just not me. I didn't go through four years in college making friends and getting to know people just to ignore them the moment we finish up. They mean too much to me. Sure, talking to friends won't write books, but that doesn't mean it's not worthwhile.

Hear that? That's me approaching this maturely.

Since I'm not currently resigning myself to write in front of a camera all the time, I actually have a lot of freedom in my life right now. I also only have a weekend job, so it's time to start looking into writing a wee bit more more. Or, you know, publishing more for money.

Let's me fair: I don't think I've ever written something in my spare time that wasn't because I wanted to do it. Every book, every short story, every poem, both plays, and that article I had published: all of it was written because I wanted to do it.

That's not going to change. It just so happens that I love writing, and I love writing different types of things. I consider it a journey, a wonderful little journey of discovery and of freedom and I wouldn't give it up even if I never made a living from it.

Now that the exams are pretty much over, I can start putting together those grand schemes of mine that have kept me in a creative mood throughout exams. Money allowing, I'll have the first project launched mid-June. That'll be a fun one. I'll be ridiculously busy by then, of course, but it'll be worth it.

I get to read, too. Can you believe it? I get to read, and I get to not feel guilty about it, because I know how to prepare for a poetry exam.

Life is picking up. Life feels good right now. Time to go make something of it, eh?

A Good Idea?

Back during my Teaching Practice in January, I wrote a book. This time around, my idea to write an awful lot seems to be happening during exams.

Creatively speaking, it's where my mind is finding itself. I've written four pieces of over a thousand words each over the past week. It's for a future project, specifically that website/blog thing I've mentioned recently. Again, no name reveal yet, on account of the fact that I need to own the domain name first. I need some degree of security.

Is it a good idea to take on such large projects during my exams? Probably not. I mean, with Teaching Practice I could easily finish my work for the evening before moving on to my own writing. With exams, I have to focus a lot on the content that's due to come up on the paper in some way shape or form. Not only is there a lot more work involved, it's a lot more necessary to actually remember it all as I go to sleep (or at least when I sit down to answer the question.)

On the other hand, exams seem to be a great time to channel creative energy into projects that I don't necessarily have to do all the work on now.

I'm planning a day out with some friends, planning a project with a friend, planning my website/blog, and trying to sort out my life. Nothing too big, obviously.

This time of the year is ideal for making decisions about what to do in the immediate future, in most cases. In previous years, I've know how the summer would turn out. Usually, I would be alone for long periods of time, what with friends' work schedules and re-locations back into the countryside of Ireland, or beyond into the world. This year, things are less certain for me, but not in a scary way.

If I find full-time employment, I'll still have weekends to do work and hang out with friends. And evenings. I won't lose them.

And if I remain on my part-time hours in the bookshop, I'll have a lot more time to explore massive projects that will consume much of my time between getting out into the world to socialise and see new places (on some imaginary extra money...)

Basically, I don't see the summer as being a hollowed out block of time this year, which is usually how it ends up by September each year. I suppose the big difference this year is that September won't necessarily end whatever break I find myself with by the end of exams. It won't do to settle into a routine of doing nothing, because it'll be difficult to get out of.

I suppose that's why I've been planning so many different projects. I want to make sure I'm not idle. While it's probably not a good idea to write a few thousand words per week during exams, I can still do some planning. Planning has never hurt me. Right now, my plans are obviously subject to change (even the date I have in mind for my day out as mentioned above is subject to change), but it's not a bad thing.

Life is moving on, and I've been taking the steps I need to that'll make it less terrifying no matter what state of employment I find myself in after exams (as in full-time or part-time). Plus, knowing I can churn out a thousand words per night is something of a comfort, even when the pressure is on with college. Yes, I should be putting my time to good use for my studies, but the simple fact of the matter is this: studying is boring when it's with exams in mind. (Learning for the sake of learning is genuinely more fun. Stay in school kids.)

Good idea or not, I'm going to keep going as I have been. And I definitely won't give up writing something every day.

Insomnia

I don't normally go through much exam stress. I panic right before going into an exam. I have to calm myself down. This year... I think I've developed insomnia because of the exams.

It's been a combination of not getting to sleep easily, to waking up ridiculously early. This morning saw me awake before half five, and unable to get back to sleep. It was made worse by a head cold causing my head to pound and my joints to hurt. But that's aside the point.

The past week or so, sleep has been difficult. I do my best to get to sleep, but eventually it comes down to trying to empty my head of ideas. I've been taking down notes in a wee little notebook I seem to be carrying with me everywhere I go now, a cheap little A5 pad with 500 pages. It's ideal.

Essentially, it's boiled down to two huge projects, and one small one. One of the larger projects is a website, the other a book. The small one...also a book. Just shorter. Surprise surprise.

Both will require a lot of work. The website more so than the book. I won't reveal much about it here, except to say that it's a writing website. I have to purchase the domain name that I like before making much more reference to it. It'll be fun, though. If all goes according to plan, I'll be launching it in June.

The book, on the other hand, will take longer to get anywhere. It's a collection of short stories and essays. I have a cover image in mind already, too. This is how much I thought about it in the early hours of the morning - a life-time ago, now. It's intended to be fun, both for me and readers. I've no idea when I'll even be able to start working on it, though I imagine it'll be a work in progress for a few months, on-and-off.

The shorter book is non-fiction. I imagine it'll be complete before the longer book. Most likely, it'll be out sometime late in the summer, or in autumn. I have other projects in mind, ones I've been hoping to get started for way too long, now. They have to take precedence. An insomnia idea can be put on the long fingers until my current plans have been followed through on.

I don't know if it's madness, half-dreams or genius that's causing me to get these ideas. However, right now, I could really do with the sleep, instead.

Studying today was made difficult on account of the fact that my concentration levels were way down. This was from a combination of tiredness and illness. Let me tell you, Bioethics: not fun when you're literally sick and tired. Scouring through notes on the principles of bioethics, abortion, euthanasia and reproductive technologies is a challenging enough task with concentration levels on high.

Still, I made it through a fair chunk of the material in my cramming for exams. Long-term study doesn't suit me too well. It doesn't suit a lot of people too well. Especially not people who are losing sleep.

I could be wrong, though, about why I'm suffering from insomnia. It could just be the sickness. I was definitely uncomfortable in bed last night. All I know is, it has to pass. For that to happen, I need to take better care of myself. This should mean more exercise and healthier food. Instead, it'll mean more comfort food. Dopamine: it happens anyway.

I'm joking, by the way. I eat healthy enough at home. (I used not to, but then I gave up everything for Lent and my compulsion to stuff my face with crap from the press isn't quite as in-my-face as it has been in the past.) I should exercise more, but that would require the willpower to actually do something. (Maybe I'll take up swimming again in the summer, he says hiding the parenthesis. At the very least walking some more...)

Anyway, I'm rambling. Insomnia is here. It's causing me to think up projects big and small and convincing myself I have the time to go through with them. It's also making study difficult, which might lead to more insomnia when I begin to really panic. This blog and a weekly visit to the comic book store are probably the only things keeping me sane at the moment. Thank God for small blessings and all that jazz.

Future Mind-Set

In the grand scheme of procrastination, I've begun focusing a lot more on life after the Dreaded Exams.This has meant that I think a lot about how to live my life, how to make money, when to do things, etc. This has largely taken form in two things:

1. A Timetable

Admitting to myself that the odds of full-time employment are not necessarily high in the foreseeable future, I've drawn up a timetable for myself. It's divided quite simply into: morning, mid-morning, noon, afternoon, late afternoon, evening and night, with the acceptance that in setting particular times to do particular things I was leaving out a meal per day, and all the household tasks that are necessary for living.

To this timetable, which includes my standard weekend hours at the bookshop, my cinema trip each week, New Comic Book Day's requisite to get into the City Centre every week, blogging on a daily basis (which I have found to be a worthy uptake) and responding to particular emails and duties as they come along, I have added generic tasks. These, being more relevant with particular projects than to the foreseeable future as a whole, are put down as: Non-Fiction, Fiction, Flash Fiction, Poetry and Script. It's not equal, but the timetable doesn't include anything like cover design, keeping up with social media, reading, or the making of book trailers.

I couldn't just remove an hour of work in a particular area for the sake of another task that would occur on an irregular basis and take an unforeseen amount of time, so I've opted to merely designate chunks of the day to the different media of writing.

This is then matched with the second object of focusing on the future:

2. A Daily Review

This requires that I ask myself certain questions (Is the timetable working? Did I do X, Y and Z?) that focus on achieving long-term goals. These long term goals are specified on the same sheet, so I can't just ignore them. They also help in the setting of the next day's tasks.

Setting tasks for the next day will then provide the actual list of things I need to write during the day. This could mean writing a particular novel, working on a task sheet from the New Year, writing haiku on a particular topic, or writing a flash story about a particular myth (because that's my thing.)

Why?

Because life is scary and uncertain and I've been living on a timetable for most of my life. Because I need some sort of structure, and I need to continually remind myself to do something worthwhile every day, or I'll fall into the habit of arsing around the house until it gets to the point where my parents would feel guilty about wanting to kick me out, but really needing me to stop living at home for my own good. Let's face it, if I'm not working (at all), I'm not doing anything to change that.

At least by writing (and publishing), I can work towards actually earning something. Not much, but something. A pittance is better than nothing, anyway.

Plus, I need to remind myself to write across a number of different projects, and not just focus on one. I can easily set it up that I don't exhaust myself with writing every day. My tasks will be written the night before, so I'll know how much time I have to do something. I'm not going to say "Write 5000 words of this novel...3000 words of that Non-Fiction book and... yeah, let's add twenty pages of a script." No. That's insane. That's asking for trouble.

While I have written what I believe is the equivalent of that before, in a single day, I don't think it's worth attempting too often. It's exhausting, and I plan on this being suitable for a long-term arrangement, if need be. That means making sure I don't pass out from tiredness after a week of doing it, and keeping my work varied and interesting. Otherwise, I won't actually enjoy it.

I've set it up so that I should enjoy it, though. I should also find some degree of success (i.e. to the degree I've set with my goals) from it, if I keep it up. I don't see it as a bad thing to have a back-up in place in case I really am virtually unemployed. It's not just a fail-safe, but an option to live according to certain standards.

Plus, given the amount of time I'll need to spend at home to do all of this work, I'm less likely to spend money on lunches out (alone...), just because I happen to be out. I'm less likely to spend money I don't really have, because I won't be able to, easily. That is a fail-safe.

I think I can manage this lifestyle. I think having an idea of what to do if there's "nothing to be done" is going to help when the exams finish. It'll be an emotional enough time without having to add despair to the list of emotions I'm experiencing.

So... this is it. Coming to the end of those student days. Coming to the end of when they're fun, too. I have one more week off before exams, and a lot of it will be spent studying. Fun, right? At least it shouldn't be so bad afterwards. In fact, I think things will actually work out well. I'm not dreading June and what it stands for anymore. Funny, that.