[r a n d o m h u m a n]

Maybe I will repeat the exam and continue my course after all. I was never really led to believe that I’m capable of doing anything I put my mind to, and so, I’m not.

Sure it’s only a life right? It doesn’t matter if I never find myself, or if I’m never happy. Nobody really is anyway. My parents aren’t. They’re trying to convince me that materialism and a high-paying job are the way to go, and it doesn’t even satisfy them. Despite all the luxuries they shower on themselves, they’re still empty. They’re still just killing time until time kills them.

But maybe that’s all I can really hope for.

What was I doing anyway? Oh, that’s right, I was studying for a degree. I was going to be a Computer Scientist. That is, until an act of subconcious sabotage threw everything off kilter. I don’t think I want to be a Computer Scientist anymore. That is to say, I wouldn’t mind it, but becoming one wouldn’t make me complete, and working towards becoming one isn’t making me happy.

So I guess I’ll go home and listen to my parents rant on and on about how stupid I am, demanding to know what I plan to do with my life, on and on about money and qualifications and wasted time. Some good points I must admit, some ridiculously stupid ones, lots of unnecessary abuse and pressure, and a total lack of consideration for the most important thing: what I want.

Since I moved in I cursed this place. Despite the atrocious mess on my desk, the piles of books, cds and rubbish, the clothes heaped on the floor, this room did not feel even remotely like home. It’s still sterile, with the blank off-white walls and hideous flourescent lights. Cold and awkward.

But last night, something happened. I smoked a bowl and started to freak out that I didn’t belong in the place, that I had no connection with anything around me. So I decided to watch a dvd to distract myself. I piled all my quilt into one corner of my bed as a makeshift armchair, turned on the heater, turned off the light, and curled up watching red dwarf. By the time I was done, the place felt like home.

It occurs to me now that you can make anywhere feel like home, it just takes a bit of effort to arrange things the way you like them. There’s loads of things I could have done, like buying a longer ethernet cable and an extension cord so I could use my laptop in bed for more than a couple of hours (or with the screen on full brightness), or I could have make-shifted myself some extra shelves for all the crap I tend to accumulate. I definitely could have bought more posters, because looking at 150 odd square feet of white wall does my head in. I should have got a small lamp for beside my bed too, so I wouldn’t have to rely on the flourescents. It would have been great!

But the years nearly over now. Only a couple of weeks to go and I’ll be back in Galway, and then next year I’ll be in some new place. Hopefully it’ll be somewhere closer to my taste, but if not, at least I’ll know I can do something about it.

I is now back in Cork, having done precisely squat in Galway. Ah well. I only got up at 2 and I’ve already had a productive day. You’ll see in a minute.

Bob posted an interesting reply to a comment I made on his site, to which I must reply… But not yet. Arguing takes a lot of time with me.

Well this is going nowhere…

I’ve been back in Galway since Friday last. I went to a party on Saturday, was hung over Sunday, watched movies Sunday and Monday (let’s see… ‘Man on the moon’, ‘Jackie Brown’, ‘The man who fell to earth’ and ‘Amelie’. I think there were more…) and read my book (Sophie’s World, by Jostien Gaarder. Brilliant) and did some drawing and scanning on Tuesday. Today I did some study, more reading and drawing, and I plan to watch a movie. So my time off college is going pretty much as I predicted, bar the drinking. Plenty of time for that next week, eh?

I got all five of the assignments I was lumped with at the last minute done and submitted today, after working from 10am to 1am yesterday. One of them I fucked up royally, but it probably doesn’t matter because I did every other assignment for that subject, two of them I did enough of to do pretty well on, and two of them were fucking excellent, in my opinion. We’ll see if my lecturers agree.

In my programming course, only four of 18 assignments (selected at random) are going to be corrected. That pisses me off, because I did every assignment but 2 perfectly, and if he picks either of those 2 I’m going to be down marks, undeservedly. It’s a stupid system. It shouldn’t be that difficult a matter to run each assignment to see if it works and then scan over the logic of the code to see if it’s any good, or came close.

In any case, I now have a month to procrastinate before I start getting really stressed about exams, especially economics and maths. Galway will the venue for this procrastination, where the comfort of my own bed will keep me snoozy until past one every day, and the temptations of television and drinking (but unfortunately not fast internet) will occupy the rest of my time.

Of course, I have the usual rose-tinted notion of getting up early, spending 4 or 5 hours studying by my open window with the sun and warm spring breeze pouring in, then relaxing with family and friends in the evening. But as we all know well, sun and warm spring breezes don’t exist in this country, and relaxing with family and friends involves hangovers the next morning, which implies getting up late, lethargy and laziness, which implies more relaxing to recover…

Fucking Ireland.