Day 2:

Morale is high, but it ever is while the supplies last. Everyone is still well groomed and civil, but already the cracks are beginning to show.

The chittering from our headsets grows more insistent and angry, like hornets trapped in a jar. Every howl from the People of the Broken Printers reveals the depth of our painted-on smiles, the shaking hands holding our coffee cups betray the whispering fears beneath the surface. When will it stop? Will we hold or break?

We look to each other for solace, hoping the endless stream of corrupted profiles and servers shrieking their agony will cease before we run screaming into the dark. We know it won't, but for now there is fragile, precious hope.

Privately, we all wonder who will be first to acquiesce to that dark temptation, to be torn to pieces by the chanting masses, those unspeakable horrors known only as the End Users. Perhaps the first will be speared by the weapons of his fellows, envious of their new-found freedom from sanity.

As I huddle deeper into my blanket of apathy, part of me hopes I will be the one to run first.

Farewell the Tranquil Mind.

Hello Blog,

Yes, I know. I'm shit at updating this thing. Still, school time again soon so I need the practice. I passed my first year by the way. 50 something percent, which is just enough that I don't have to describe it as squeaking a pass. I took the internet hivemind's advice and just handed in what I had when deadline time was up and accepted that I didn't have time for it to be perfect. This meant I had to hand in a couple of almost empty essays, which torpedoed my average. A pass is a pass though, and I'm pretty proud of myself anyway. I'm not an easy guy to motivate but between you guys, last FM's blues tag radio and my ever supportive cat, we got it done.

I was originally planning on putting the degree on hold after this year, but then our country's fair and noble leadership decided that fuck students. So my degree costs would have drastically risen, but if I keep studying I get to pay pre-governmental sodomy prices. So yay, full time work and study for many years to come. This is my comeuppance for many years of laziness, we all knew it would come. Friggin' Karma Monkey has had it in for me ever since I torched that orphanage.

My next course actually counts towards my degree fo' realz, so I have to work hard, as I actually want to get a good degree result (more on why next time). Fortunately, the title of the module is “Reading and Studying English Literature” and that right there is one of my faaaavourite things. It hasn't even started yet and I'm already balls-deep in Othello, if you'll pardon the unnecessarily graphic metaphor. I realise what a tool it makes me, but I'm really enjoying it. The introduction is twice as long as the play and studded with little footnote numbers. It'll get tiresome I'm sure, but it's really nice to be reading something challenging after a few months of relatively light reading.

Speaking of the literary arts, I WRITED A POME. I didn't really intend it to be poetry, but a few of the people who read it described it that way and who am I to deny my adoring audience? I guess I'll retroactively claim it's free verse and look like a clever artsy-man. I had the idea of a busy service desk as a siege and it kinda stuck with me so I wrote it down as a Facebook status. People seemed to like it, so I thought I'd do one or two more entries. I'm only going to post them here though, as Facebook is basically the mask you wear in public while on the internet, and it's wise to be careful what you say. It'd be easy to misconstrue it as publicly bitching about my job and I've seen more than one person get into trouble for that. I'll repost the first entry here as my next update and get to work on Day 3.

I'll try and keep up with this more, but I've said that before. I wouldn't want to hurt you again, Blog.

NR

Wouldn't You Believe It? It's Just My Luck.

Hello Blog,

Well, it's been a while. Life has been somewhat hectic for the past few months, and also I'm a very lazy man. I've had a fair amount of changes of late, but documenting them all here would turn this into a huge wall of text and no-one likes that. I'm hoping to actually start updating this thing more frequently, so at least it'll give me some material.

First up, University. It's been a weird experience, as someone who never really got along with education. I was extremely nervous at first, worried that it was all going to be beyond me and I'd get my profound stupidity conclusively proven. That didn't really happen, I found a lot of the material pretty easy to grasp. The introductory course is always going to be relatively simple, and many of the sections were on subjects that I find interesting.

Where I've hit a brick wall is studying things I don't care about. It's been a curious revelation that studying things that aren't really interesting is really freaking hard. A section of my first essay was on the French impressionist painter, Cézanne. I don't know how well you know me, mysterious blog-reading person, but those are not a few of my favourite things. The first part was about Cleopatra, which chimes with my keen interest in videogames and movies classical history. Ancient Rome is a fascinating era and I flew through that section, but writing about picture planes, composition and brushwork made me want to die. I found myself staring at a blank word document for half an hour, swearing and then going to play Minecraft. Minecraft is not part of my course. There is no extra credit for building a sweet mountaintop skull fortress.

I finally got the essay done (after many extensions) and got a pretty good mark for it, but I sweated blood over an essay that I could have totally half arsed. This is the crux of my dilemma, Blog. I'm facing the same situation with an essay at the moment (half Faraday/half poetry). I'm not the biggest fan of poetry in the world, but at least it's relevant to a literature degree. Faraday is an important historical chap and Faraday cages are awesome, but I just don't care about history of science. So my options are:

1. Half-arse the thing. The course is entry level and pass/fail. My tutor tells me that it's not too hard to pass really, and there are very easy guidelines to meet which leaves not much room for tutor input. There are some essays you can pass even if you are totally wrong in your answer, as long as you use the right terms, etc. This option doesn't really sit right with me though, if I'm honest with myself.

2. Work really hard on every essay and study my balls off. Yeeeaaah. This isn't going to happen, I have a full time job I have to be vaguely alert for, a full time girlfriend that I have to be watchful and cunning for, and a social life that I have to be drunk for. If I study enough to do really well on every assignment, one of those things will slip. I guess you could say I should let the social life slip a bit, but fuck you, Internet Person, what do you know? Incongruous outbursts aside, you need to let off steam somewhere. Also my friends are awesome and religiously read and give feedback on my blog, so why wouldn't I want to spend time with them?

3. ABORT! Or put it on hold at least. I can come back to it later, and either study something more in tune with my interests or give myself some time to adjust to my new job (foreshadowing!) I probably won't though, I'll probably just sack it off and wallow in delicious, salty regret.

I'm currently leaning towards half-arsing it just for the sake of passing. This course is a requirement for doing more or less any arts qualification, so I have to do it sooner or later, but honestly the workload is kicking my ass. What say you, Blog?