Two Weeks of Summer

Since getting off college from exams, I've managed a few things. Obviously, I got drunk after exams. It would be rude not to. I kind of needed it at that stage. But that's aside the point. I did other things.

I'm happy to report, I did some writing. I'm in the middle of a fun project that got interrupted by my desire to read. I'll have more about that project at some stage soon. I did sign someone up to read it, though. It just isn't finished yet.

See, I haven't had a chance to read for a while. College exams and the dreadful workloads that attack us throughout the year sort of make things like that impossible. Too much else to read and to write. I'm surprised I managed to do other things, like Drama and the previous Sooper Sekrit Project. But I did. I just didn't have time to read.

I made up for it over the past week, though. I started off with something light: I Suck At Girls. It was a funny book, an autobiographical piece by Justin Halpern. Less of his dad and the shit he says, but still enjoyable. Following that, Storm Front. I've had it for a long time. I got it in a bargain basket at work. They only happen around Christmas time, and I promise I didn't get last Christmas. Yeah... that long ago. I loved it, I'll review it, etc. You know the drill. After that, I read The Enchantress by Michael Scott. Again, loved it. Even emailed the author to tell him pre-review why I loved it.

I thought, that's it. That's my reading done. Back to writing. Then I picked up a book today about Screenwriting. Well, I read it. All of it. I loved it.

It's something I've been interested in for a long time. I've only ever written one screenplay before now, a twenty minute zombie apocalypse film called Dead Dreams. It was a fun piece, but nothing ever happened with it. Not to worry.

Recently, I've been getting ideas for stories. I say stories, because I see them as both films and novels. I suppose I'll write both. It can't hurt, anyway. Maybe, someday, I'll even get involved in the business. It interests me and terrifies me in equal measure.

Aside from all of this and continuing to work in the bookshop, I've only really done one other thing of note, and that was tea/coffee with my best friend earlier this week. Fun as it was, it's not exactly the most exciting summer so far.

It's relaxing, though, and I suppose I can get by with that. One or two blips along the way, thanks to my college and its requirements for teaching placement, but other than that I can just lay about and read and write all day. Heck, I think I deserve a break! Two weeks of summer has seemed like a long time, though. I need to get busy again, soon, or I'll crack up. Even the couple of hours between finishing the book today and going to vote were driving me insane.

God help me for the rest of the summer...

Freedom and Conquest

The great gift of literature is its examination of the world we never knew. Preserved in time from the moment the words reach the public, we are given a looking glass through which we can see the worlds of freedom and conquest in the history of humankind, from the white woman who 'knows her place' to the black nation that succumbs to an idea by a great Caucasian empire.

I generally love the idea of getting to discover the trials and tribulations of our race through literature. In preparation for my exams, I found myself studying The Awakening and Heart of Darkness, two radically different stories. One tells us of freedom, the other of colonialism, and neither paints a very good picture. What should have been a life of joy and creativity turns to a life of extremism, loneliness and desperation.

It doesn't paint a great picture of an artist, does it? Free from a repressive relationship, genuinely successful enough to live on her own, and still unhappy.

Or how about the Brit that got away? Takes a nation by the horns and ends up dead.

Neither freedom not conquest end well, not in these cases. It poses a question for life: are we better to conquer or to escape? It comes down to the context of our lives, and how we plan on getting by.

Edna flees a life she was never happy with it. She does it boldly and bravely, but with a knowledge that she had a gift she could earn from. Even with company, even with this gift, however, Edna must come to a realisation: in running away from everything she once knew, she has no way of surviving when her last safe-guard falls apart.

Kurtz, on the other hand, rules with an iron fist. And where did that get him? Right... not very far. Just like Edna, he finds himself an early grave in a heat of madness, taken too far from the life he once knew.

Is there a middle ground between freedom and conquest? I imagine there is, but it seems difficult to tell how one might tackle the world without going insane. Alone, separated from the world we know, what chance do we really stand?

While we might take baby-steps online into the great unknown, there are some that take bigger steps and leave altogether. They escape to America, or Canada, or Australia, and they live a new life, working in a new industry or trying to make it alone. Others simply run with no end in sight, trying to be free. The unfortunate nature of freedom, however, is that it has particularly isolating qualities. In the loneliness of the great unknown, be it freedom or conquest, the odds are against us.

Can we simply hide in the books and learn from life that way?

Something tells me that there's more to us than that, to some of us at least, and the great dangers of the ever unknown and the horrors that await can only be found in the action of leaving. But leaving alone? It remains to be seen whether, as a people, we can survive. The social animal in us doesn't know how to breathe loneliness.

The suffocating madness doesn't seem worth it, and I suppose that's why I keep my friends close when I write. While I may be at home, while I may be safe, there's still that loneliness that likes to creep up. The simple thought that there are people somehow involved in the process before it begins somehow makes it less terrifying to embark on a journey into the unknown. That's just my way of reconciling my dream with the reality, before I face the horror (the horror).

Exam Conclusion

It's the weekend before the last exams. I've got four to go, which seems like way too many to be true. Alas, with an exam in each of the areas I study (Theology, English, Education and Philosophy) in my course, I'm going to be busy. For each of the exams, I need to cover quite a bit of material, none of it linking up.

However, I'm trying to look on the bright side. In preparation for Monday's exam, I can reuse a lot of the material I covered while teaching in January. We've got World Religions, allowing me to study Judaism and Islam as part of it. There are others I could do, but I think I'll stick with them. As well as that, I can reuse the material I studied for another exam on Inter-religious Dialogue for this one. The only thing that's being looked at for the first time since we studied it is the Phenomenon of Religion. So, that's fine.

Tuesday, I've got Nineteenth Century Fiction. I'm normally okay with English exams, though I don't know if I'm familiar enough with the texts yet. I suppose we'll see, when I attempt to answer on The Awakening and Oliver Twist.

Wednesday, I have no exams. It's likely I'll head to the comic book shop before studying for my last exams. You know, because Wednesday is New Comic Book Day and I'm fairly sure there's a new issue of Avengers Vs X-Men out. It would be rude not to read it.

Thursday, I face the "fun" that is The Language and Logic of Religious Education. Or something like that. I'm wary of that one. Education exams have never been my strong point. I make up for it with teaching in the classroom, but when it comes to answering on things like this... I don't know, I choke? No, more likely I just don't write the way they want me to.

Then, on Friday, I've got Sociology of Religion. Okay, I think the module has a different name, but that's the exam, essentially. It should be okay. It's in the afternoon. It was an interesting subject to study. It'll be grand.

Also, I plan on getting a little bit drunk. But that's after the exams.

After that, it's the summer and I have to get down to work. I've got some big plans for the three months I've got off. Some really big plans. I don't think it'll be easy to get it all done, but I'll have to see what happens. Whether or not it's easy, I know I'll enjoy it. I'll be mixing study for my research paper with lots of creative writing. And I mean lots.

There'll be more on that in the future. Probably lots more.

Mostly, I'm just looking forward to getting these exams out of the way so I can focus on something that isn't college!

The Affliction of Study

There comes a time in every student's life when they must sit exams. At least, I hope so! I'm three exams into a series of ten, and I can't say it's the best thing ever. Far from it.

I've posted about exams before, mainly about how I avoid study. One of my favourites was being part of a syndicate of people on Omegle.com. We were mostly innocent, except in our abuse of strangers who were using their time to use the site as pornography. Know how many girls we saw there? Maybe four. And one of them was with us. The others were fully clothed. So I have no idea what the guys were doing "downstairs", only that they were extremely disappointed when the "girl" they saw in a bra on our end turned out to be a guy.

Yes, we're evil, but that's the point.

Exams are so horrendous, that it is necessary for us to get away from the experiences, and to purge ourselves of the evil that has infected our system.

I may be exaggerating, but the point still applies that studying is much less than fun and I wouldn't encourage it in anyone. While it may be of some benefit regarding results, that very system is cruel and unusual. So unusual, everyone's doing it. The whole world of academia is just that weird.

Then again, maybe it's just me.

With an exam tomorrow morning - that's how lucky I am - and a bit of sickness to get me through the day, I've been studying. The topic for today was sexual ethics, and the oh-so-fun topics of homosexuality and contraception. I think at some point I died of boredom, and only for the people on Google+ and the blog post I saw with a cat trained to fetch did I come back. Not in a 3-days-later-like-Jesus kind of way, but more, you know, Irish.

Yes, I made tea and got on with it.

The study bug has bitten. And I think it was carrying traces of the common cold. Only it's been a bit nastier than just the sniffles, and I really don't like it. Not when it's coupled with having to look over study notes and suffer through the material all over again, but without the guidance of a qualified professional. And distracted by the Internet. You know, because it's shiny.

I've been dying to write this post. In the Irish way, whereby all my organs still function properly. Or, at least as properly as usual. It took what willpower I had left after the beating I received from reading notes about sex but not getting any all day, just to stop myself writing it when I shouldn't have been. Do you know how hard that is? Writing's an addiction (I'm sure they could test me for that...) and I didn't get my fix all day.

But I did get tea, and that helped, since I'm probably also addicted to that. Possibly alcohol, but I've been good about that. (And just in case you can't tell, that was a joke. I think. I hope. I don't even drink that often.)

After tomorrow, I'm done to six exams. But with Milton out of the way, I'm no long sure where hell lies. It would be rude to say with the Muslims (World Religions exam), but I think that'll be the next big challenge to prepare for. Sorry everything religion that isn't Christianity, I think for the next couple of weeks I might hate you. It's not you, it's me. Actually, it's not even me, it's the Dreaded Exam.

I told you they were evil.

Get Out of Bed!

For the past three weeks, at the very least, I've been struggling to get out of bed in the morning. This comes as a result of the combination of late-night and early-morning, though most of the time I can't help either of those. Rarely have I stayed up late intentionally, and even more rarely have I wanted or needed to wake up especially early. It just happens.

While I wouldn't mind so much except that I have an inability to fall back asleep once I wake up in the morning, I tend not to do anything. Even when I've had a good sleep - not a common occurrence - I have this difficulty to get out of bed because I'll be comfortable, even if I know I have to do work. Or worse: go somewhere. I think I've only ever gotten out of bed for something that wasn't work or exams over the past three weeks for one person, and that was because I would be late for a much-needed catching-up session I had been hassling about. Other than that, I've been getting out of bed, wasting the morning still exhausted and entirely useless, when I could have been doing something with the day.

And that's the big thing: doing something. I've found that while getting out of bed for exams is difficult and annoying, it comes with the purpose I need to get ready for the day. So I need to just find something to do every day. Right?

This is, of course, much harder with exam season attacking me from every direction. I find that while I want to do something creative, the exams hinder my ability to do so. I feel a sense of guilt for not doing college work, and when I aim to begin I find myself inundated with a sense of procrastination. The time I need to study is wasted, and I don't accomplish anything.

Bummer, right?

This summer, I aim to change all that. If it means setting myself a task for the day, like four thousand words of a novel or a scene of a play or researching something to do with writing (I've been getting my books ready for that one!) then I will. I'll get out of bed to do something like that, because it's something I want to do.

I suppose I can't wait for the last week of exams just to have a week of getting up with intent. Sure, it will be exhausting, it will be annoying, but at least something will be done. Then I'll be busy writing away for three months.

I have a project I'll be undertaking, the details of which will come as soon as I'm ready to make them public. It'll be fun. It'll last a while. And it'll get me out of bed.

I guess I just don't want to waste my summer when I could be doing a trial-run for what could be the rest of my life. That would be weird, wouldn't it?

I Am in Misery

I will begin by stating this one fact: this is not a miserable lamentation for the things that are "wrong" in my first world life. This isn't me moaning about something not going my way.

No, what I'm to moan about I (essentially) signed up for: a horrible series of exams. Beginning this Thursday and lasting three weeks, I have my third year exams in college. Normally we're eased into them, and I suppose we are in terms of exams-per-week (two this week, two the week after, and the week after that, then four...), but we've got a nasty one to begin with.

The module was given the title Mystery of God, but given its ability to make the entire year dread entering the room, and given the history this module has, it received the tentative nickname Misery of God.

And boy is it miserable.

The lectures lasted three hours every week, and while the lecturer tried to make it interesting, the content was just dull. Well, mostly dull. There were some interesting things to look at it, albeit briefly, and a lot of the information went over our heads as a side-effect of the mundaneness of the subject matter. Attention spans waved significantly during those lectures, and I can't help but feel that it's the three hour thing that did it.

And probably the content. That probably had something to do with it.

While I did enjoy certain aspects of the class (such as attempting to answer to the best of our ability some of the questions that were the focus of the module), there was a lot I would have preferred not to suffer through for three hours in a row.

And now we have an exam in it. On Thursday. At ten in the morning.

It gets worse, though. The extent of our the pre-exam tips reached was to remind us what we studied each week - which we can't remember - and to tell us the basic structure of the exam. Not how the questions might be asked, not what we should focus upon. Nothing specifically useful. And this is the lecturer's first year with the module, so last year's exam papers are useless. Useless. Completely and utterly useless.

Hence: misery.

You may find me in a better mood come the weekend, when I'm struggling to get the last of my first chapter done for my research paper. The joys of continuous workloads, eh?

Writing Like There's No Tomorrow

I have this habit of procrastinating when it comes to exams by writing a lot more. In this instance, with exams only a week away (it's time to panic, yes), I've been writing a lot of articles and reviews. Okay, maybe a lot is an exaggeration. It's been like eight or something like that. But for me it feels like a lot. I have this habit of not doing much when I get off college for an extended period of time.

But sure, it's all changing now. While I should be studying more - I can sort that out easily - I am doing work for my thesis. So that's fine.

When it comes to the articles, I suppose I'm trying to establish a routine for myself of actually doing something with my time. I enjoy reviewing books and comics and films, so it makes sense that I would do it as much as possible. It won't make me much money - or any, depending on how few people actually click on the advertisements in the posts - but it's good practice, I think, to produce something on a daily basis.

It's all preparation for the summer, and then the rest of my life when I get out of college.

The basic plan for this summer, with a two week teaching period in late August, is to do as the title says: write like there's no tomorrow. I don't have holiday plans (need money to have holiday plans), so I'm going to write books and articles and read and edit and basically spend my summer with words. I will probably make more of an effort to go outside when the weather is nice. If the weather is nice. Wasn't summer, like, four weeks ago at this stage?

The basic format for my published writing goes like this:

• Reviews of recent comics and Sci-Fi/Fantasy/Horror films and books go to The Phantom Zone. It's a hired position, and I'd like to keep it.
• Reviews of older comics, films and books go to Stories Once Told, my review site, alongside reaction posts to new episodes of my favourite shows. Those shows tend to chance from time to time, with the number of them going up and down as time goes by. Currently they are:
  - Touch
  - Game of Thrones
  - (And, if I like the Pilot tonight) Alphas
  - And possibly Glee. If I can be bothered.
• Articles will be posts on my main site, though those are about writing, generally.
• New issues of World War X will go up monthly on that section of my website. (Is it weird that that still feels weird to put into writing - my website?!)

As well as that, I've got the multitude of ideas for books, plays and screenplays to deal with. I only have three months, but if I write quick enough I can knock out quite a few first drafts. Those are the fun starts, and I can work with them when I can't write new material so much (you know, when I'm stuck teaching or writing essays for college).

I also plan on trying to get myself into the freelancing business. While I know most freelancers don't make a living from it, I also won't make a living working weekends in a bookshop. And I just don't feel ready to go into a teaching position. As if there are many of those. Sure, we'll see what happens with that. Still over a year before I'm qualified, which is a lot of time to develop my skills in the writing trade.

Trade? Sure, we'll go with that.

I do also plan on releasing more ebooks in the future. Again, not a massive money-making field, but for me it's about getting the stories out there. The money would just be the added bonus that lets me live.

This is almost a plan for life as it is a plan for the summer, isn't it? Well, I suppose that's just the way I'm feeling right now. I want to live a life like this, writing for a living and not giving a damn who knows that that's my dream. Because it is, you know? I don't want to work in an office or a classroom all my life. I'd like to see the world, to live a weird life and write the stories that have been going around in my head for the past seven or eight years.

And as far as I'm concerned, there's nothing wrong with that.