Tired, tired, tired.

So many ideas, but they're all slipping away from me. I can't seem to get anything down on paper. Everything is a stream of tiredness, there's no energy it's...

I'm still at work on my dissertation. I'm still puzziling out the relationship betwee the modernist movement in the arts, in this case specifically in literature, and the form of the modern city. The idea I took from Raymond Williams that originally set me off on this topic is still the most cogent I can find...that the city 'created' modernism, that all the communications technology, the institutions of the late nineteenth/early twentieth century city were the conditions that 'created' the artisitc forms of the (then) avant-garde.

But it's putting it all together that's a grind. Where at every turn you feel a desire to be rhapsodic, to 'write' the city, you have to box it in with footnotes and bibliography and jargon and deadlines and all the rest of it. The idea in my head and reality on the page are frustratingly different things.

Found myself in the pub this lunchtime, and on the jukebox too. Nursing a 'quiet pint' which turned out to be very quiet indeed, I was thinking about music. What I like, what I don't like. What I'm indifferent about.

My tastes aren't too unusual really. Reasonably conventional with a bit of the vaguely estoteric thrown in. And promply thrown out.

Boys, men, lads love lists, don't they? Supposedly so. I do too, I guess. But not that much. A musical list?

Up real early to pray this morning with a mate. It was a brilliant time, not holding back and being honest about stuff etc.

Then back to work on my dissertation. I feel like I've neglected it these past few weeks, but coming back to it was encouraging in that I already have more material than I thought. I've started writing up a very, very, very rough draft.

Jogging again at one. Went better. I didn't collapse or black-out.
Yeah, okay, I didn't quite last time either. But I couldn't complete the run we went on last week, so this week was better.

Reading after all that. Martin Amis: 'Money'. Hard going.

Also finished 'New Grub Street'. Partly for my dissertation. Can't really say what I thought of that one. In places it's incredibly moving, pathos etc. It's incredible, at times. A lot of unexpected insights and painful stuff generally.

Work all day today; university, drama, George Bernard Shaw until one, then a five minute lunchbreak and a bus up to Deansgate to sell tea, coffee and dishwasher safe ceramics all afternoon.

It's been hectic.

The last few days have, actually. Up essaying for the past few nights, I finally got both of them in on Tuesday and Thursday. Did it feel good? Yes and no. The second one particualarly not.

I've not really felt I've had a lot of time recently to attend to loads of important stuff. I will finish being on the leadership committee at the Christian Union within a couple of weeks. Not sure how I feel about that; I'm ready to pass on my role to someone else, and I need more time to work on my dissertation etc. I just haven't really thought about it yet. And it's gonna happen soon.

Am reading Martin Amis' 'Money' at the moment. Not sure what I think about that, either, but it's for a course on the history of contemporary cultural studies, Literary Theory/cultural political/social etc.

Tonight, as Tesco's microwave taglietele settles in my stomach and the effect of succesive cups of tea (tea, tea, tea, do you want some tea with your tea? monologue all day) wears off, I write an essay.

It is on Homi Bhabha and the concept of colonial revisionism and cultural critique and postcoloniality and modernity and difference and alterity within the self and Freud and Lacan and Derrida and Foucault, though not really Foucault, no, he doesn't really rate Foucault, I've noticed. Doesn't rate him at all, the big number 10, with his power and his genealogies. Doesn't rate him at all.

I'm tired.

Too tired, some would say.

It continues apace. Why are words suddenly so hard to come by? I reach for them, but they're not there. Not the ones I want anyway.

What's wrong with Jane Austen? Shakespeare? Why, why WHY Homi K. Bhabha?

Why?

I ask. No-one answers.

(silence) END
Curtain closes.

Writing eh? It's a funny business. Well not always.

At the moment I'm still stuck with the mental-block imposed on me by two essays which are to be submitted next Tuesday and Wednesday respectively. Both are interesting topics, both are quite abstract and challenging, and both require a lot more work before they're going to be properly finished.

I have a somewhat eccentric method of writing essays; I tend to favour leaving it to the last possible minute (well almost, I guess in this case that would be at 3:29 on Tuesday and Thursday afternoon), making it as difficult for myself as I can by not doing adequete research until the said last minute, and then fretting and worrying over the whole thing until my hands are too tired to write. I then tend to write the first nonsense that comes into my head and hope for the 'best'.

When will I learn? Both in relation to essay writing, and more generally!

I'm under pressure this week from a relatively heavy (course)work-load, which isn't helped by the ongoing situation at my part time job; one of the shop assistants has left leaving me in a difficult position, being asked to do overtime etc. I find it very difficult to say 'no' if I feel I'll be letting someone down, even when I know it's in my best interests to spend as much time as I possibly can on my University work this year, so I can see that might present me with some problems over the next few weeks until someone else is hired.
Today I was at work from 12-4, which meant leaving the house at 11:30. I had planned to at least spend some time in the library before I started work, but I slept in and woke up feeling quite unwell, headachey etc. I managed to get myself out of bed and out on time for, but only just, and without taking any lunch with me which meant I didn't get to eat until 4pm. I didn't make it to the library until after work, and as I found when I checked over my library account, I've already taken out the maximum number of books (10) and have to take some back before I can take any more out. This is quite inconvenient for essays and such, as a number of the books that I've taken out are long term loans for my dissertation which I don't want to return only to find that they're not there anymore when I've finished my essays.

That isn't the worst of it. At the moment I'm becoming increasingly worried that I'm underperforming in my degree's final year, and that my lack of focus in the last term or so is beginning to cost me as I try to write these essays. The response to my last piece of work, done in November was quite mixed, and although I don't know the mark yet, I don't think it's likely to be as high as I'd hoped for. The two essays I'm working on at the moment have been quite a struggle so far. Part of the problem is that I haven't had access to the library over Christmas, and I was tardy in getting my research done before the end of term. Not putting the time in then is costing me now, but there's nothing I can do about that now.
I suppose it's more a general sense that I'm not performing as well as I think I can, and that I need to work harder over this term and into the summer to ensure I do as well as possible. If last term wasn't my best, I have to try to get past that this year, and not take a defeatist attitude. That's something I've always done, really; if I feel I can't do something perfectly, or as near to it as possible, I have a tendency not to even bother to make the most rudimentary effort. I really can't afford to do that now, and I have to put those kind of thoughts aside.