Honestly, Beautifully : honey blade

2002-05-22 - 3:12 p.m.

I was talking to my dad on the phone last night. I told him I thought my brother wasn't paying attention when he hit Josephine, and my dad said he agreed with me. Apparently my sister was in the car at the time too, and she saw Josephine sitting in the road, and she told him to slow down.

I wonder if my dad's going to try and encourage my brother to sell his car and never drive again? It's not like he really needs a car, he just likes to be able to drive home from university on weekends so he doesn't have to do his own laundry. And he's dropped out of Queen's now anyway.

Apparently he was in a foul mood yesterday too, storming about the house and declaring that he hates the family and suchlike. The theory is that, basically, he's bored since he's not at Queen's anymore and doesn't start on his new course at the Ulster University till September or whenever. It seems he just sits around the house these days. My dad says he ought to be out looking for a job. I said he should maybe drop some heavy hints about charging rent and see where it gets him.

I really don't know how people can just do nothing all day. I know lots of people who don't have jobs, aren't being educated at any level, and aren't obliged to do anything, and I don't know what they do with themselves.

That's probably just a reflection of me, more than anything else. I can handle brief periods of not having to do anything - a couple of weeks at the most - but I couldn't live any substantial amount of time like that. The last time I had a whole summer where I didn't have to do anything was the summer before I started at APU. After I started APU I was studying and had a job, briefly. When I quit APU I was obliged to stay in my halls until the following September, so I got a full-time job for a couple of months before going back to Ireland. I was there for a month before starting at TVU, and since then I have been almost contantly working. Study through the first year, then summer college through July and August, then back to studying through the second year when there's shitloads more work, and I'm going to be at summer college this summer too. Plus I've been working between three and five nights a week since January 2001, and will be doing a daytime job as well as an evening one during the summer. Then it's off to third year, where I get to write a 10,000-15,000 word essay, amongst other things. And once graduation is out of the way, and assuming I'm not accepted by the Daiwa Foundation, I'll be looking for a job.

I'm so used to the constant push-push-push of my lifestyle that the idea of doing nothing, or not having to do anything, is completely alien to me. I'd get bored. I'd sit around twiddling my thumbs. I wouldn't know what to do with myself.

I remember reading this article on stress and one of the indicators of stress was a feeling of anxiety when you're not on-the-go or working on something productive. I have a feeling that even when I've gotten all my work out of the way, I'm going to feel like there's something really important I should be doing. I guess this makes me stressed.

Yay, early grave for me!

Yesterday we handed in our video production work for this semester, and I'm so fucking glad that's over. Our documentary is shit. It's not even a documentary, it's an advertisement for Krishna Consciousness.

Note to any students who may be doing any kind of similar project in the future - don't do a documentary on any religious group. They want to be portrayed in a favourable light and you'll end up in exactly the same situation as we are now. And if you want to be brave and try and have some kind of debate going - which is what a documentary should be, let's face it - make sure you are all clear on how you're going to do it, and think of some interesting questions.

Our problem was that it was basically two people who made all the decisions on the content without really discussing it with anyone else in the group, hence why we had fluffy questions, no real investigation into opposing viewpoints and a finished product which does not portray any kind of clear message.

I'm hoping our paperwork and evaluations grab us some marks to compensate for the ones we'll lose on the poor narrative of our film. And I never want anything to do with the Radha Krishna temple again, thank you very much.

So, just a 2,000 word essay and an exam to worry about now. Yay!

Have also discovered that I can only actually retake one of my modules during summer college, and that's Key Concepts in Communication. Which means that unless I can sweet-talk my Analysing Film and TV lecturer, I have to submit my first assignment that I couldn't hand in due to things beyond my control as a resit. Which means the best mark I can get is 40%.

I make growly noises at the git who wouldn't give me an extension.

Right, I have stuff to do. I write more later.

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