Wound Up

It's been so hectic all day that I can't even be exhausted. I'm all wound up and I can't really get myself to relax. I don't really understand how I managed to time everything so badly and stress myself up about things, but at this point I guess I shouldn't be getting surprised anymore. Luckily, in the middle of all this stress, there's a couple of good news. For one, I found some missing files that I thought I'd lost, meaning I can hand in files for the project deadline that I thought wouldn't get assessed. That's good. Secondly, I handed in the keys for my old apartment today, and that's really a big weight that's off my shoulders. Even though somewhere inside I worry that they'll call me up and complain about insufficient cleaning, it's still good to know that I'll never have to live in the old place anymore. Even living here now, in the middle of a freaking war zone of cardboard boxes, it's still better than being split up in two different places or kind of leasing someone else's space for a while. As with all my apartments this one calls for a name and I knew directly it would be called The Lagoon. 


Moving on.


We're officially done with the game project but also we're thrown directly into the next course which, too, is pretty exhausting. We don't do much else but watch movies and attend lectures all day, but that's just the problem, there's just no time to do the actual assignments. But we'll figure it out somehow, I just wish there was more individual work involved. No offense, but... after the project you kind of don't want to be dependent on your groupmates, for once.


That's all for now since I'm in a stressed period of complete writer's block. I'm hoping to pick up an editing project quite soon to take my mind off things and that just might get me back on track again. I sure hope it will for the sake of Ella, who is currently just lying around in the drawer not being written and being quite bored.


THAT'S ALL, FOLKS
POET IN THE JAR

Glorious Stress and Other Things

Things are stressed like hell, the final presentation of our game is on Friday, and I have to pack my entire apartment during the weekend and miss school on Monday in order to move to the new place, while Monday is the day when our new courses start and we have to have the game and all the other reports and stuff sent in by Wednesday at the latest. It's hard to focus on anything really, when my mind is flying like this, I just can't concentrate on the slightest thing... also I am worried sick, not only for the friends of the family that I got news about yesterday, but worried sick because I seem to have lost my touch with writing. There's just nothing there, nothing at all, no ideas, no stories, no poems, there's nothing, everything I write sounds completely off... perhaps the first real case of writer's block that I've ever really experienced. It's not so much the time that's passed as that I have to force it, and when I do I'm not happy with how it sounds. I wonder to myself, when did I become so critical of my own things? I keep returning to the thought that rewriting one of my old novels for publishing purposes would be the best way to go about it. The poetry is fine, or theoretically at least. I can always force at least a couple of lines of that... but I miss prose, and I miss being so into it that everything else ceases to exist. Is this what happens when your focus is relocated to the visual media? Why in that case, has it never affected me this way before? The way it used to be, I used to find novelling a necessary escape, and a relief, even, from the real world, but now it just feels like it's another burden, and not even writing stories seems to be fun anymore.


My bet is that once the stress is lowered, around some time next week, and I get installed into my new place, the juices will start flowing and I really hope that is what's going to happen. We'll see. I don't really have the time to think very much about it (which probably is a sign of stress itself).


Either way, even writing these ranting entries at least keeps the language working, so you might be looking at a lot of these posts for a while, but it doesn't really matter since I'm not really writing them for your sake (you'll have to excuse me) and therefore you don't have to bother reading them. Just keep an eye out for some real material once that gets up here again.


Too much things on my mind...


Something cool though is that two of the promotional assignments I made for the game got chosen to represent it. Surprising but happily surprising. 


I really should be writing the log book or the report rather than this.
POET IN THE JAR

Clashes & Crashes

You were intimidated when your thoughts strayed

And decided to come and go as they wish

You tried to clear your mind,

but everything clashed, in violence

Everything crashed

And you couldn't control the images flashing by

Or choose what they'd remind you of

The faint nuances in that old song
That could only be read by you
They could only be read by you

They said it would take a while,
to clear your thoughts
That it would take a couple of battles
To win the war
You don't think they've ever been in your mind
Or known what it's like

Isn't it glorious to be misunderstood
And alone in your pain
Isn't it more grand and epic that way
Isn't it?
The way you've shielded yourself
And consciously torn away from everything

Everything that crashed

Time Flies

Tomorrow is Monday again, and there's loads of stuff coming up. It feels like time really flies by right now. On Wednesday there's the graphics session after school followed by friends performing at the pub. Thursday is the deadline for our individual assignments and Friday the unofficial deadline for the game. Saturday I'll be driving home to attend a dinner with old friends and Sunday I might visit my niece. By the end of this week it'll already be March 13th which is fucking halfway to April. May will be here sooner than I'll know, and I'll be arranging to move out, and it'll already be halfway to summer. Finally...


I managed to trade myself a working weekend in two weeks and that'll hopefully earn me a little extra money. I'll need it if I'm going to have money for the summer and to be able to do some of those things that I'd really wanna do. A bit of bad timing, perhaps, cause it's the last weekend before our final presentation, but hopefully it won't affect school. We'll see about that.


It's been a good weekend otherwise, had a nice time partying and whatnot, being around friends and people from our year. It's different here, much better and more fun than last time I studied when I didn't have time or took the effort to hang out with anyone really. I'm sure my years here will turn out awesome. And hopefully this happy sort of mood will follow me into the rest of the week, cause I know what I'm like and that my mood usually changes more often than I breathe, but hey, let's hope for it, anyhow.


I have a few ideas for that writing competition by now and think I can make something of it, but still haven't decided. The deadline isn't until May so I've still got time to crack that one.


Oh and I hope the Dark Tower will be kept standing.
POET IN THE happee JAR

Artificial Light

I'm listening to Shinedown and thinking about things, just got off the phone with Mum. She always manages to make me feel better about things. I had a rather weird headache attack earlier that freaked me out a little bit, but it's all settled down by now. I guess it was a stress thing. Stressing out about things that I don't even need to stress out about, really. I guess I just need to get it through my thick head what my priorities are actually about, and, maybe even more importantly, what they're not about.


Even the man in the moon disappeared, somewhere in the stratosphere...

I try pretty hard telling myself that I'm not affected by the long winter here, but it's getting pretty unbearable. I'm so tired of the cold, of the snow and ice, of the darkness. The sun isn't even out in the day, it's just cloudy and gray, gray, gray. I was thinking maybe to go to a solarium this week or the next, just to get some artificial light and trick my body into thinking it's summer, or something. I've heard spring this year is supposed to begin on March the fifth. I can live with that (if the weather people should happen to be right, for once). And again it is confirmed that I'd rather not spend the winters here in the future, whenever that future might be.


Since it turns out I could get that funding I applied for, I found myself buying the next novel in the Dark Tower series. I'm currently reading Song of Susannah. It's nice to have a novel to read again, and something to fall back on that isn't writing, or games.


Speaking of writing I found a local writing contest I really want to enter, but I'm not sure with what. I'd prefer to enter with some new material, maybe a short story or something. But I think you can submit more than one piece, so I might submit some poetry as well. But I can't really focus on that just yet, as long as we're still doing the game project.


I really gotta kick that up again soon though.
POET IN THE JAR