numerate

The benefit of suffering another day of accounting tuition is the knowledge there is one less to go. Air conditioned horrors of white painted classrooms, hands stained with biro.

The colleague to the right offers a finished answer, eyebrow raised. No point, no point; I cannot translate.

Misery of mathematical memory. My self worth takes a battering.

update of sorts

I'm still here, lurking (not sure you can lurk on your own blog, though).

I'm sick after a month of dodging the flu going around the office, sick on my day off, sick for the weekend I was meant to be in Edinburgh. Of course I am.

I am terrible at taking time to rest, so, today, I have forced myself to do it. Sofa, blanket, TV, laptop. My job is quite demanding in terms of hours and brain power, though nothing as mad the time and energy my lawyer friends put in at their offices. I'm looking forward to the Christmas break.

I have enjoyed it though, for the most part. There are days that are beyond miserable, but that's true of any job, any life. I am not a corporate girl in the long run, that much is clear, but I guess I knew that, anyway.

So much else has happened that I can't talk about yet. But the thing that has emerged more than anything in the last three months is that I need to take more time for myself; I need to write more, if I am ever going to be anything I'm proud to be. And, I need to take more time to be with my friends.

Merry Christmas. It's unlikely I'll check in before then, as we know.

here we go

The first two days of work have been full of new faces and new rules to learn. It's Big School all over again.

I haven't been very well.

worry

I am one of life's worriers. EA once told me there is a worry gene; she was celebrating the fact that she doesn't appear to have it.

I am worried I will not get the job I have an interview for this week. I am worried about what I will do if I do not. I want it, badly. I should stop telling people I have interviews, as the way I feel when I fail and have to pass the bad news on is becoming too much.

I am worried about the fact that I still don't feel right, even though the "bad" couple of months are now ostensibly in the past. I know this is chiefly down to my unemployment, but when all I need is a hug and it's out of reach I can't help but fret over how shit this is, sometimes.

Going home today. My sister is graduating tomorrow. I can't believe it's two years since I did.

where I am

I feel soulless. Not in the indulgent way I occasionally ignore any moral compass I may possess, but spineless, weightless. A grey uneasy rest.

I do not love the law. I will never love the law. I cannot do this for the rest of my life.
I do not think I can do this at all.

A phone call; I say what has been building in my throat for days I despise that I let myself do this.

I cannot bear the drudgery. Discussion of statute is not debate, application of rules and attempting to sidestep difficult tax issues is not intellectual or exciting or anything but work any person willing to push solidly through these pages of bullet points could do.

Fuck, let's hope I'm as fickle as usual and change my mind by morning.

back in the game

I take all that shit back about not being stressed. I am definitely stressed. I know this because this morning I ran an eight minute mile. I have been hovering at nine (ish) for ages. I took my frustration out on the treadmill. It helped. I might pay for it later, but my knee seems to have improved a lot recently.

Unfortunately, I ended up going later than usual, and the Stupid Bitches were out in force. Ladies, if you can hold a full-on conversation while you're exercising, you're not working hard enough. Plus, if you're walking on that massive incline but holding the bar, you're not burning shit. Shut the fuck up and do it properly. And take your fucking make-up off. You look ridiculous.

Very, very tense. Be nice.

tired

Slept badly. Lay in bed fretting about work, friends, the summer. Looked at the orange sky.

My friend E loves the light polluted night sky, and in my few years in the city I've grown attached to it in an odd sort of way. I leave my curtain slightly open.

Sluggish and hoping that translates into easily, silently, swiftly plodding through the last thousand words or so that I need to write before I can begin to edit my dissertation.

unposted

I keep writing entries that I subsequently don't post. This is because I worry that they may be taken the wrong way, which I realise is totally narcissistic as it assumes a readership that would actually care. In that spirit, have some me me me.

I'm in the library. Sorry, the fucking library. I can see two people I know without moving my head. I feel like I know the rest of them because apparently everyone is as anal as I am about sitting in the same place every day. There is a guy who nearly always sits in my line of sight and he tends to stare. He's not staring at me but it reminds me, when my eyes flicker up, that typing is so monotonously absorbing that you forget people are able to see you. I've always enjoyed repetition. I find folding napkins at the end of a shift soothing.

I'm listening to Bon Iver's 'Skinny Love' on repeat but I can still hear the girl behind me chatting to a tall boy, awkward scruffy hair and a stupid t-shirt. She's eating something fake strawberry flavoured, perhaps my favourite flavour for sweets and icecream ever. Everything, the music, the smell, is nauseatingly sweet (and a guilty pleasure). I chew gum constantly when I'm writing so I expect the smell of Extra is just as imposing.

Bon Iver is being bitter in my ears. The music sounds like his lovechild with Kimya Dawson, except it isn't really tangible, it's just this rancid fondness that exists between two people who once meant everything to each other. It's also something that everyone on this earth thinks is personal to them but really, who doesn't wreck something precious at least once in their life? Sometimes it's necessary. If things ended well, they wouldn't end at all.

I know I'm pretentious most of the time anyway, but I get worse when I'm working hard. Introvert by nature, 12000 words wraps the world tighter. Time to finish this thing.

diet coke days

My sister came home at Christmas looking like a Fresher. As in, looking like all of us do when we first go to university and spend every night Not Sleeping and instead drinking things with curious names. As an officially boring finalist, I can't cope with the colourful cocktails and late nights anymore. However, I never learn and so am today nursing a mild hangover, aided by the cure for all known diseases, Diet Coke.

I suppose it was a celebration of sorts, because Good Things have happened this week. Here. Have a list. Lucky you.
1. I wrote a bit of my dissertation. 12000 words is still a lot but at least I have a few of them in an order that vaguely makes sense.
2. I got into Law School. That should maybe be first. Whatever.
3. I booked flights to Buenos Aires for July. I say "I", I actually had very little to do with it and merely nodded when appropriate. Friends are brilliant.

Millions of other little happy things have occurred recently as well.
Oh my! Life is good. Even with a hangover.

addict

I think I am addicted to cornflakes.

I think this is because I do not do enough with my time, and so end up in the kitchen, idly eating breakfast cereal out of the packet. At least it is low fat.

Also, when the alternative is translating a site report, cornflakes are your friends.
(Average translation time: two pages of French an hour.)

Most people do drugs. Me? Cornflakes.

I think I need a drink.

wherein I have news

...sort of. (Powerful words, sort of. As in... "You're going to live. Sort of." Have unashamedly stolen this joke from Dmitri Martin. Kind of takes the funny off, yes?)

Anyway. News! I have made what the magical They call a Decision. After a lifetime's stubborn resistance, I shall be taking a Law conversion course next year.

This is where the "sort of" kicks in, because I haven't actually applied yet. The deadline is the end of the month, so I've got ten days. This is a late decision, because I am me. Also, because They were right, and I wanted to sulk, and that degree I've nearly finished? Was just a procrastination effort. That half-baked idea about a PhD? A curious attempt to rebel, by, er, studying more. Whatever.

Decision leads to indecision, as I cannot plan my life until I know where I am going next. If I get a place, I don't yet know which city I'll be in. If I don't get a place, I shall get a job, some Lawyer-type work experience, and try again next year. I'm no stranger to impromptu time out.

It almost feels like 2004 all over again. Minus the crap waitressing job. And the boyfriend. And the death trap car. etc.

wherein I am frustrated

I have a presentation due on Thursday, about a Roman villa no one cares about unless you are daft enough to read Archaeology at university. I am tired and fed up of writing notes on the excavation reports, scanning 20 colour plates and trying to collate it all into a coherent 10 minute piece that not even my supposedly academically inclined classmates will care about. It isn't even assessed, doesn't count for a point of credit, and yet it has enveloped my life these past few weeks.

University work at the moment, it makes me want to cry, like I used to over my Maths homework, balled into frustrated sobs. I am tired. I hardly see my friends. My best girlfriend lives two minutes from my door, and yet I have not seen her in a week. I wasted two hours today in a talk that was meant to give me some direction in my future career; all it did was convince me that most journalists only like to talk about themselves and that the inflated sense of ego they bear is totally undeserved given their presentation skills. If I wanted to listen to the supposed achievements of an overbearing overweight twit I could watch our illustrious PM splutter his socialism on the 10 o'clock news.

Undergrads are notorious for thinking they Know It All and of course I am right there, cooing away in my neat little pigeonhole, but I truly find it depressing that four successful professionals can damn their life's work by all coming across as rambling and incoherent, having previously stressed that the entire point of journalism is to produce news that is relevant and succinct.

Just, frustrated.