Juggling

No, not literal juggling, more like a metaphysical juggling of the soul alongside university work and real life problems.

The amount of things on my mind recently is ridiculous, and how much they change in the space of twenty four hours is even more ridiculous. I remember when I was 17, a whole year ago now. Life seemed so simple. So easy. I didn't think becoming 18 would be so difficult. I was a student then, after all. A college student, I even had an ID card. I thought I was ready.

I was wrong.

Never mind the whole responsibilities of paying rent, just the whole work load of university took me off-guard. Now I've been TKOed at least three times, and I'm on my last legs. But they don't call me the Comeback King for nothing. They don't call me the Comeback King at all, actually. But I'm sure that things will turn out just fine. I mean, I say it's stressful (it is) and I say it's a lot of work (yes) and that it's very difficult (definitely). But that doesn't mean I'm not enjoying it.

I look back at college, at how easy Creative Writing was then, and I laugh. Not literally, just metaphorically. I laugh at how far I've come as a writer. No doubt I learned a lot from college, really a lot, but the assessments are so much more now. In college, it was one assessment for the whole year. Here, at university, it's over six -- For the pure creative writing units, that is. It's made me up my game a lot more.

It's not fair, really, having such a major ramp in difficulty. But I think I'm managing. Doing work every day, doing the dishes, taking the bins out. Things like that. And then, can you guess what happens?

My laptop. The laptop I do all of my university work on, and my college work before that. It decides that it's had enough, and shuffles on to the next world. As if I didn't have enough problems. It was then I knew that life was out to get me.

I'm typing this on an old laptop on loan to me from my parents. My dependency on them isn't gone completely.

Too Polite

The University of Portsmouth is a grand institution. There are many buildings of many sizes, and a wide staff of wonderful and great people. One such lecturer, who I’m sure has legends based around him, is Steven O’Brien. A grand person, waistcoat and all, who couldn’t know more about writing if you stuffed a dictionary into his head.

I was just leaving King Henry Building. The building doesn’t matter, what matters is the door. As I opened the door to leave, I turned around. At the other end of the room, heading towards the door, was Steven O’Brien. The distance was far enough for me to debate whether or not to leave, and let the door swing closed in his face. But I couldn’t do that, especially not after we’d made eye contact.

He took a step towards the door. I smiled. He took another step. He smiled. Another step. We were both smiling. Another step. My arm was aching, just a little bit. Another step. He was almost there. He took one final step.

And then, at the very last moment, he turned left, and went through a completely different door.
He must have thought I was just a fan wanting an autograph (which I kind of am), frozen in place by his greatness. It’s times like this when I wonder, is there such a thing as being too polite?