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.

nostalgic distractions

Dissertation is due three weeks from yesterday. It will be Done. On earth, as it is in heaven. Yeah, whatever. It's in my blood now.

I haven't worked this continuously since my A Levels. They were four years - FOUR YEARS - ago. I heard that Lost Prophets song 'Last Summer' on the radio this morning and was sad, for a moment, quiet and sad. So much loss.

I am nostalgic before the fact, often. Cold snap April air as I walk to the gym brings regret that these weeks will be the last time I make the early morning journey. Funny, to miss the little things, the nuts and bolts of life. Missing people is a given, but they are always there, somewhere. I can call those friends, they move on with you, but I will never recapture exactly how this city, this life makes me feel.

To work.

what I did on my holiday

A list. Because I am tired.

1. Got rained on.
2. Did not get a tan.
3. Woke up one morning with a transfer tattoo on my left breast. Remembered vaguely, through the hangover, weird barman putting it there.
4. Did not remember - still a touch unsure - how we got back to the boat the same night of the transfer tattoo debacle.
(Sister assures me it had something to do with a bloke named Bill.)
5. Reacquainted myself with the unattractive lumpy rash I get on my hands and joints every time I go sailing.
6. Got several mosquito bites, despite it being cold.
7. Listened to Black and Gold by Sam Sparro many many many times.
8. Did not do the dissertation work I took with me.
9. Only dropped the warp when throwing it once. Still embarrassing.
10. Read This Book Will Save Your Life, by AM Homes. And it was the best novel I have read in years.

More, maybe, at some point. Maybe even with proper sentence structures.

getting the message

Dear ex-boyfriend who found me on Facebook,

Given that I did not reply to your Myspace message, did you really think I'd react favourably to a Facebook friend request? If I wanted you in my life, I'd have kept you in it. Leave me alone.

Sincerely,
me.

PS: Facebook need to make their blocking process simpler. Your name, ex-boyfriend, is so common that it took me ten minutes of clicking through search results to find your photo and remove your electronic presence. Ugh.

...

In better and unrelated news, I am going away tomorrow; ten days of sailing in the BVIs. I am taking my notebook. All I have been able to think about for the past month is Leaving. I will be writing. Hopefully I'll blog about travel when I get back. It was the primary purpose of this, I know.

Until then.

not fair

My knee still hurts and I want to cry.

The fall could have been so much worse but I just want to scream in frustration.

Ugh.

challenges, #1

When I was at school we used to be made to run the 1500m every year or so. I cannot remember why. I do remember that it used to take me in excess of twelve minutes. I am spectacularly unathletic by nature. I was also very overweight.

The year I turned sixteen something snapped, and I lost over three stone very fast, chiefly by eating very little and exercising obsessively. There are few photographs of me at my biggest, but at 5'3" and around thirteen stone I was rather round.

I am fitter now than I was then, though I still have half a stone to shift to match my lowest school weight. I believe I am fitter because I have learned to love running. I run for three miles in the mornings when the cold university gym seems a dull prospect. The route is full of hills. I like hills. I run for twenty minutes on my gym mornings.

I now run the 1500, albeit on a treadmill at a very slight incline, in just less than ten minutes, barely breaking a sweat. My next goal is a nine minute mile.

This may be hindered by a knee injury (that fall, again) that seems to have reappeared this week. I'm hoping it improves fast.

I don't believe fat fifteen year old me would ever have entertained the idea of running for pleasure. I'm not great with change, but this one I like.

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.