If Only Everything Were Simple,

It almost physically irritates me reading my last blog, and thinking, oh you had time to write, did you? Whilst that was the case then, I feel like, at the moment, I only have the time to attempt to plan to get through the ever expanding to do list that has become my life, and unfortunately it seems like writing and editing and formatting and cover designing and all that lovely stuff that I actually enjoy in some sort of a vague way gets shoved even further down the list because "life" is happening first. 

Now, of course, you could naively ask me what I mean by that, and let's assume you have, because then I can pretty much give you the list :

Whilst attempting to do those amazing things which independence brings of washing, ironing, cleaning, tidying, folding stuff to avoid reironing it (hanging it in such a way that you don't really have to iron it, cooking, etc and all those fun things that you have to do to stay alive, like sleeping, eating and drinking copious amount of tea, there is also this other miscellaneous crap that comes under the definition of 'life' too, such as going to work, attending lectures, doing shopping (that was nearly an amazing typo...) looking for a new job (deciding what you fancy doing as said new job) attending interviews, filling in application forms and the most amazing one of them all FINISHING UNIVERSITY....

Now really, let's face it, that should be pretty simple, because I've had an extra year at practicing how to do all the things I need to do for university, but unfortunately that also involves stressing out at every major obstacle thrown in my direction and, believe me, there have been a considerable number already. 

I have roughly two and a half months left where I am legitimately still a university student, and in that time I have two more coursework essays, three end of year essays, an exam to sit and a dissertation to hand in. Now, it all doesn't seem like too much considering the fact that I can pretty much run my life as I want to in April, BUT there have been several hurdles, including but by no means limited to, having halted work on my dissertation at the end of January in order to wait for feedback which has still not arrived, not actually being able to find the information for essay topics on the online system, not having even the vaguest clue as to what on Earth this beast of an exam may entail...

I don't know if it's just feeling like a lot at the moment with the addition of a whole load of other crap, or if I'm genuinely coping with the most official form of growing up since I moved out at eighteen reasonably well, instead of flapping like a duck with something stuck to it's tail feathers, but I don't even really have time to sit down and assess that as a situation, because I have too much else to do!, but pretty soon, (arguably it is both too soon and not soon enough within the same breath) it will all be over and done with, and life will march on in a direction (though what direction is not immediately clear). I may even come to miss this...

So, I'm still writing periodically - mainly in brief fits and starts when I have a few moments on public transport or before I fall asleep - and avoiding editing like the plague, and hoping for that one magical day in the future where I will actually have the time AND the inclination to be able to work towards the career that I have tentatively set my heart on since and inappropriately young age, but maybe that really is me being too much of a dreamer.

Everything In It's Place, Even If That Does Mean The Floor,

Generally, if someone asks me where something in my room is, the answer is preceded by a lengthy erm, and normally sounds something like, I last saw it on the floor near the... Currently that is not the case, and no, it's not because I have started believing in all that tidy room tidy mind ----stuff (really trying not to swear at the moment and it's really difficult!!) that other people spout. No, it's because I am moving out of my current abode into somewhere new, in another different part of London.

As much as it's really exciting, but also really stressful because of the actual physical transportation from House A to Flat B, what I find more frustrating is that because the majority of my stuff has already been boxed by a slightly over-enthusiastic Ben and myself yesterday, I keep thinking oh, I could do... oh, no I can't, it's in a box, or I could wear, ... no, also in a box. It's only those times where you can't get to them, such as when you're moving or on holiday that you think of those really obscure pieces of clothing that live at the back of your wardrobe on any normal occasion and you think, yeah, that's what would make me the happiest person I can be right now. I think my brain actually like me being like, well, that sucks. 

Another fantastic example of this is thinking about novel notebooks that I haven't touched for so long that they required dusting before packing - and yes, there is a point to that, and it's so you don't transport the old dust to your new place der, I am not the weird one here -.- - and they're now in the bottom of a big box, which is at the bottom of a big pile and behind a stack of other, let's call it what it is, crap (and no, that is NOT a swear word, just FYI) so of course my brain now goes, here are all the wonderfully magical things we could do with this... And I end up being like, Dear Brain, Hold your horses, Chill your bean and Keep you ----socks together for just a week and then we will make all of these magical dreams come novelliciously true, but I already know that is not going to happen, because using the words Calm down to my imagination is like telling me Don't stress, and if you want to know how pointless that is, speak to my boyfriend, because he really knows. Yeah, if my brain and I had a contract, I would be seriously trying to renegotiate it's concept of when it's acceptable to be thinking about novels, because this flexitime nonsense that it has going on at the moment is just not really working for me. I genuinely worry that I will be in work at some point, someone will tell me about some vicious ailment they have and I'm going to spout some glittery garbage about how I'm dispatching the unicorns to fix it. As much as it would probably be amusing for a few minutes, I'm pretty sure that I would end up some combination between sectioned and fired, and none of those look too pretty from where I am sitting.

So, I have a to do list longer than any piece of string, and it seems to casually keep getting bigger, I have two Orchids to attempt to move without inducing plant-y panic attacks, and my very antique typewriter is currently in quite a lot of bits across my coffee table, which if you follow me on Twitter, you will have seen. As much as the many parts are now a severe amount cleaner than they were when he was all together, he's not quite as easy to put back together as I thought/hoped, though I'm pretty sure that I have it in theory now, it's just the actual practical getting all the screws back in the right place, but I've felt that way about driving for a while - as in, I'm well aware how to do it, it's just actually getting my brain to stop going ARGGGGGGH, I DON'T LIKE THIS!!! WE'RE BEHAVING LIKE TOO MUCH OF AN ADULT!! MAKE IT STOP!!! and to actually engage with the task at hand, aka not crashing, is a "little bit" more difficult than I have ever hoped for.

Basically, the upshot of all of that is that the novel that was meant to be edited by the end of last year might end up getting put off until the end of this year... I don't know. It'll happen when it happens, and I'm far too comfortable with that fact quite frankly. It also means that I'm probably not going to be posting blogs as often as I would like, and I am attempting quite loosely to aim at once a week this year, and if I could set aside an hour, of one day every week then I would be like 'here's the day I will attempt to publish it on' but considering how chaotic just everything is, I don't really think there is much point. But, the good thing is that the a forenamed 'computer which potentially works' ought to now be known as 'Zeus' because he's fast as lightening, has a funny symbol on the front that looks like Zeus' headdress and also because he is basically the God of all my writing machinery, so might as well be named such, so when he and I move into our new place, we have no worries of major technically hiccups getting in the way of dissertationing, blogging or general wordsmithy, so that is a major plus.

So, essentially, follow the yellow brick twitter page....

Panic Stations,

Have you ever noticed that everything seems to always happen at once?

At the moment, I feel like my head is falling off a little bit, because I know that I need to get more revision done for my three exams this week, I need to clean the house before a viewing tomorrow and there is an engineer here to FINALLY attempt to fix our internet. I'm also heading back to Manchester for the weekend on Saturday morning, and on the 8th of June, I'm flying out to Greece for two weeks. 

Now, that doesn't seem like overly much, but up until Saturday, I thought that everything with the house - well, not the internet - was sorted, however after two of my new housemates-to-be dropped out, I'm back on the search for someone to live with. Oh yay. 

I think that I get stressed when I look at a list of things to do and they're all pretty close together, or I feel like they are all pretty immediate, and there are a lot of things that I would rather do instead, and in all honesty, that happens all to often. Right now, all I want to do is carry on writing something I've been working on for a few weeks, but like I said, I have three exams this week, so I can't really. 

Right now, I just can't wait for this week to be over!