Jordan almost loses his shit. Still might.

If there was ever going to be a day I would break, it would be today. I haven’t yet and don’t intend to, but in terms of shitty days, this is the Dogma shit demon of days. And it’s all my fault.

I’ll rewind ten days.

I found an e-mail from my Masters tutor, my tutor being the sort of top-class champion that he often sends opportunities and updates for his previous students. Long story short(ish) I am applying for a PhD in Creative Writing with a cushy benefits package including a 6hr per week teaching position.

                And the deadline is today. Because of course it is.

Now I haven’t really wrote anything since I finished my masters, so I’m rustier than a spoon on the Titanic, and I have in fact been working the majority of the time, which leaves me tired constantly. Which brings me to today, Monday, 7am. Last night I worked my 3^rd night in a row, and at the end of the shift, at 6am, I sent my latest draft from work to home (as they don’t let you use USBs because fuck you, that’s why) via e-mail. There was 700 words discrepancy in the drafts, and it seemed I had mailed an old copy. Well fuck. I’m off work tonight too. So I decide the only thing I can do is to make the 25 minute drive to work at 7:20am.

Fun fact, 25 minute drive applies to 9:30pm, i.e. not rush hour traffic.

An hour later I arrive at work.

I check my e-mails, half dead, and find I have in fact sent the latest draft; I just missed seeing it at home because I was tired. There was no reason at all to drive for an hour to work.

Now, at this point, I wanted a Boeing-747 to plough into my chair, Donnie Darko style but I was not given such release. I had to sit and wait for rush hour to be over, get my shit together and leave at 9:20. I am home now at 10:08 and I still need to sleep.

In 6 hours when I plan to wake up I need to:

• Write another 800 words of my research proposal
• Write an academic CV
• Write a cover letter
• Fill in the 15 annoyingly similar questions on the job application.

Simples, I mean I have 8 hours until the deadline if I wake up at four. That’s… yeah, fuck that.

I could have just said “fuck it, I’ll apply next time”, but I think I’ll always regret not applying. I don’t want to lie down and admit defeat and possibly miss the chance to actually get my life back on track, even if leaving it this late means I'm handing in a half-rate application.

I will not go quietly into that good night.

Actually, I need to sleep. Good night.

Blogsong (because this came on the radio mid-traffic and I just sat and thought "yeah, fair enough")

Nobody loved you when you were 23

Here I am again, I never went anywhere I just closed my eyes for a little while. I'm 24 now, and have been for a day. Since I was 17 I always wanted to be 24, and I don't know why. But it's kind of nice. I had the best birthday I've had in a long time and even worked during it.

Last week I did something, actually did something, I said I was going to do. Through fire and ice and high voltage I ran, over 8ft walls and through 3ft mud and 60cm wide tunnels. I ran a 12.5km assault course. It wasn't as hard as I was expecting but at some parts I was nearly being sick/passing out so it still wasn't easy though it was incredibly fun. It felt amazing running across that finish line. A couple of days later I ran 5 miles, so I'm not stopping, not when I have another 19lbs to lose.

I painted something, too. It's not finished but it's 75% there and I love it. One of the things I've always wanted to do is make something that isn't perfect and still be happy with it and that's what I've done. I already have a new army of paints, an empty Lloyd Grossman Chilli jar for water and a canvass ready for when I start my next project.

Another thing I managed last week was to go back to writing. I've been reading a book series pretty much every day for 2 months, and I am 14 out of 15 books into it. If you haven't read the Dresden Files, I highly recommend it. The writing is smooth, fast and dynamic. So, inspired by the devil-may-care narration, I thought sod it, you need to write your book. Who cares if it's not as good as you want it to be first time? and proceeded to write a page. Tonight I'll try and write another page. Baby steps.

So things are looking up.

Blog Song:

KAPOW! All night tidying!

That's a misleading title. I gamed for most of the night and spend maybe 2 hours tops tidying. But I digress. My room has been a source of my ever-deepening sadness since moving back home. The walls are cracked, the carpet is basically dusty blue tissue paper and it's full of crap. There's nothing I can do about the holey carpet and cracked walls, but goddamn if I haven't been trying to clear it all out.

This week we booked a viewing for a house and it all became real that I will actually have to do some hard work/manual labour at some point, so I thought I should get started. My parents are eventually selling the house and I can't harbour huge boxes of nostalgia because I'll have nowhere to put them.

People say it's a cathartic experience going through your old stuff. Those people are full of shit. I thew away pretty much everything I found apart from some stuff I think can ebay. One thing I did find was my brother's old porn collection. I'm fairly sure I kept it purely because the DVD names amused me. They're in the bin now, but I found this, and it's the most gloriously bad porn title I've ever seen.

That's right. Cloak and Shag Her. I mean, there were the classics of bad porn titles - Boobs of Hazard, Texas Asshole Massacre, Porn Wars - but wow.

So far I've filled 4 binbags and there's loads more to do. The worst thing is what must be thousands of sheets of paper. I want to scan a lot of it but the longer I think about it the more I think I'll end up recycling. Seriously, I read some of the stories I wrote. Some things need to be left to die.


Blog Song:

There's A Bad Moon On The Rise

The fourth of April really snuck up on me. I did originally set a deadline for the 1st April to have ten comic panels ready. You've probably been waiting, barely able to sleep, for the news on my progress (maybe you have a shrine with my face in the middle, I won't judge you - I'll leave that to the courts) so here it is. Whilst I did not reach my goal and still have no clue whatsoever about Adobe Illustrator I do however have a solid 8 panels ready to scan and colour/ink. I don't think I really expected to do all ten anyway. Anyway, there'll be some scans uploaded when I get finished.

Had a good week, met some people and rolled some dice. Now I have 7 nights in a row to look forwards to working. Hooray. And at some point I need to plan the move. It's too easy for me to say my room saps all my energy but it totally fucking does. I look at the cracked plaster and holey carpet and all the shit I never got around to getting rid of and it's like the last four years at uni didn't happen. I'm back at home and back to the beginning. The new house seems like such a pimpin' idea. I can have a drawing desk or writing desk or pizza desk (let's face it, it's going to be a pizza desk) and maybe somehow change my lifestyle.

But until the move (and we haven't even decided on a place yet) then all I can do is try and get busy. There's so much I want to do and I have so little motivation to do anything at the moment. But I have my eight slides! It's a pretty nice feeling leafing through my drawing book and seeing filled pages, though I think I regret not taking art at GCSE as it probably would have been more useful than Business Studies.

Fuck Business Studies.

Song of the Blog (and title):
 

Well At Least It's Forwards

It's been a relatively unproductive few days. With working nights it can be hard finding the motivation to do anything. However, I did download Sony Vegas and Photoshop (and then Illustrator, because apparently that's what I should have actually been downloading). I've yet to install them as there is some pirate hokum to be done - it's like a magical spell involving frog spawn and turning off your internet so you can be a terrible person - so I'm going to leave that for a less sleepy day.

With me, there's always been the issue of trying to maintain a tidy workspace. At the moment my laptop and gaming computer are a clusterfuck of TV shows, memes and unused programs, and I think I really need to clean them out and keep them clean. It's all psychological: at the moment I check my laptop and the screen is all dim and the desktop background is dimmer and I just think "fuck that, I don't want to be productive". It's a flimsy excuse, vague at best, but I truly believe a tidy workspace is a tidy mind.

Came up with a few panels of comic, need to look into how to go about producing them. In terms of the webcomics, I think it'd probably be better if I build up a few weeks worth of releases so I'm not immediately piling pressure on myself. The date by which I want to have ten releases ready has been set to the first of April, so I have a month to try. If I only get one done then I'll be happy.

In other news I bought a compensator for my airsoft pistol. Compensator is the right word, it adds 4 inches onto the end of the barrel. It's like walking around as Judge Dredd. A poorly endowed Judge Dredd.

BlogSong:

So it's been a while...

Things are a bit strange at the moment. I think a year back I was much happier, but there's no point dwelling on the past.

I still have my aspirations, if anything they've grown into an octopus of "I will do [X]" but it's an octopus I plan to get into. Phrasing.

At some point I want to get really proactive, and by using the term "at some point" I think it's quite clear that day isn't today, or even this month. For now I'm just working through some things, trying to get back on my feet. I don't think I'll ever do half as much as I plan to, but when you make so many plans, you still get a lot done.

It's really hard to find the motivation to do anything, but then I look at myself and think you're nearly 24 and you haven't done anything since you hit 23. I think Nathan has a t-shirt that says "Fuck time before time fucks you". Pretty much sums it up.

So... plans. I want to make a gauntlet (don't ask) just to see if I can, and if I've learned anything since I got a job, it's that frivolous spending fits me like a glove... an armoured glove. Next month I'm moving in with a couple of friends. I'd always planned to move around this time, just in a slightly different way, and there's just something completely soul sucking about moving back into the room you grew up in. It's sort of like you never left. Home's great but I need my independence.

At some point - here come the big plans - I want to make a huge push into creative endeavors (try and find a more pompous term... you just can't do it) as at the moment I'm doing a part time job which pays relatively well (though not well enough to live on comfortably) and I get a lot of free time. Free time in which I don't do a whole lot.

Anyway, those "Creative... Endeavors". Might as well pull out the bullet points.

• Webcomic: one per week
• Youtube gaming vid: one per week
• Music cover: one, just fucking one
• WRITE A NOVEL... OR TWO... THIS YEAR.

There it is. In twenty-one words I have just set out a shitload of work. Like a lot. I learned from an old housemate that it's a lot easier to make pretty plans and more plans and have no substance to back them up, and it's not something I want to emulate.  So I'm taking baby steps, preparing myself for a complete lifestyle overhaul.

My plan for this week is to download Sony Vegas and Photoshop and start fiddling with them. Phrasing. That and clear my floordrobe. I'm worried it's becoming sentient.

Jordan

P.S. I love this song, it's beautiful.