I know you like the bad girls, honey, don't you?

DoaMS: Under a Cajun Moon

Right now, I will admit, I am having a time management problem.

This is because, instead of doing the required ten hours of reading per week for one course, followed by the require five hours a week reading for another course, I am attempting to 'subject specialise' - i.e. reread the reading that I'm actually going to be writing my essay on - instead of keeping current.

This is bad, I know.

I used to have, for want of a better word, a 'process'. Between the last go on the degree merry-go-round and now, I studied with a distance-learning organisation that may have previously been mentioned in glowing terms. To begin with, however, this meant studying at the same time as working full-time, and for each assignment I was given a day's study leave, which I bolstered with a day of annual leave, which meant I gave myself two days to write postgraduate level essays.

Surprisingly, this worked out fairly well, because, as I said, I had a process. In the week running up to the deadline, I would try to do the research, isolate the quotations, etc, and generally get an idea of what need to be done. On Essay Day One, I would drink fireside tea (a version of rooibos tea with some cloves and other herbs mixed in that I have since run out of), which needed to be specially brewed (or, at least, the way I did it it did need the brewing). Then I would sit down and write the first draft, and try to make it okay.

On essay day two, I would then take that first draft, and gradually rip it to pieces, then reassemble it like the Bionic Man of essay writing. And by the deadline, it would be ready, and submissible, and it would, it turned out, pass (except for one exception, although that came later).

Right now, I have four essays to write over the next three weeks, and my brain refuses to engage. I wish I could put this down to the lack of loose-leaf fireside tea, but it feels like something completely different; last year, for instance, I actively enjoyed essay season. This year, something's changed. Annoyingly, I can't put my finger on it.

Perhaps, frankly, I'm just getting older.

See, this is something I get teased about, because I deploy the "ah, well, I am old, and my bones are weak and my mind is feeble" around the Young People Of Today too much, because, frankly, I find it funny.

At the same time, recently - very recently, in fact - I'm starting to feel like an Adult. Not a Responsible Adult, by any means - that will come a lot later - but, at least, an Adult.

You may be saying, Well, you're over thirty, you're supposed to be an adult, not just feel like one. And that's true; you can make all sorts of socioanthropological arguments about the current delaying of adolescence in western cultures, which is going to hit the generation below me worse than my generation - and that's saying something. You could make all manner of arguments and hypotheses about how I have passively chosen not to participate in the market and mortgage-driven consumer culture, that by remaining free and single I am avoiding taking part in the patriarchal hegemony that still, sadly, rules our day-to-day interactions. You could say many things.

But, in truth, you would probably be wrong.

Here's the thing; at this point, I have to quote Margaret Atwood, who puts it better than I would.

"Another belief of mine: that everyone else my age is an adult, whereas I am merely in disguise."

Here's something that anyone, anywhere in society would find extremely difficult to admit, but I will: I don't know exactly what I'm doing.

I have this envy, a deep, abiding envy, of people who knew what university and what degree they were going to do at 18 because they wanted job (x) at 21, and who have their lives planned out. Not because it's a good thing - such a regimented structure wouldn't work with me, nor many people I know - but just because they make me feel exactly like I'm making it up as I go along.

The first time on the degree merry-go-round was, for me, taking a degree because it was the best thing to do at the time. It didn't improve my employability prospects overly much, and the first three years, well, I didn't even enjoy them that much, but then I Grew The Fuck Up, stopped Fucking Around, and sorted things out, then I graduated, and things, well... Things became a matter of doing the right thing at the right time, and if you missed that time, well. Hey. At Least You Tried. Case in point; I took the first proper job I could get because it paid off my student overdraft in a little over a year, which was pretty sharp at the time; but then instead of trying for promotion, or secondment, or moving onwards and upwards, I just kind of stopped worrying.

Take the paycheck, build up the DVD collection, and don't worry about relationships, or mortgages, or children. That sort of thing.

Then when the job dried up like a well in the desert, instead of getting another job, I made a roundabout decision, and here I am.

Conventional - and, occasionally, unconventional - wisdom portrays humans as seeds in the soil of time; our parents nurture us as saplings until we are strong enough to stand tall on our own, then it's up to us to figure out what comes next. At the same time, school and university are further caregivers to the human trees, protecting them from the world until they're ready.

I'd like to dispute this; I think, in some ways, that humans - as things stand - can be seen as Unspecialised Machine Apparatus when we start out, and education is just a way of turning us into Specialised Machine Apparatus. Once you're done with being educated, this wisdom states, you're primed, pumped and prepared to do something - some specific thing - and do it well.

This is even true for me; I was primed and prepared to be a 'writer', except that I didn't know what to write about. Still don't, as anyone who's read my short fiction will tell you. So now I'm adding even more parts to my soul machine, with the same amount of conviction that I know what I'm doing.

But some conviction, as they say, is probably better than none.

And now the pressure's on, the heat is rising - the time has come to stop apologising

DoaMS: It's that time of year again (whether you like it or not)

Before you ask, this is, yes, me avoiding work.

I've also been avoiding Blogger as a whole recently thanks to a set of circumstances whereby my practical tutor ended up viewing my youtube channel, which - being named the same as this blog - means that in any sane world I've now managed to 'expose' this blog to said tutor and, by extension, the faculty at large.

Hi!

I had managed to maintain a veneer of anonymity by never mentioning my University of Choice, or referring to specific people, staff or courses by name, but I kind of suspect that's all over now.

(Then again, considering nobody reads this blog anyway, it's maybe churlish to complain about an uptick in reading figures. But anyway.)

I'm guilty, I will admit, of using this blog as an outlet for frustrations and problems that being a mature student has brought out and that I don't really have any other avenue for expression. Nothing in this world is perfect, as you already know, and while the last two-years-and-change have been amazing and instructive in equal measure, well, there have been times when it's been difficult to tamp down a rising feeling of sheer frustration.

Case one: Film Studies is a young course.

Not strictly speaking, of course, but compared with other academic disciplines, and especially compared with other academic disciplines in England, film studies is the hyperactive younger brother to English and, perhaps, History.

While teaching Film Theory may not have changed overly much over the past, say, twenty years - as evidenced by the majority of our textbooks being across a 1970s / 2000s split in authorship decade - practical filmmaking courses now change every six months.

I wish I were joking, but I'm not, alas. Put it this way; my academic year is unique, because no other year after us will have to take the same course choices as we do, and the courses themselves changed as soon as we had finished them. Some examples;

- The practical skills course we took in year one was gone by year two, replaced by a production course, and by this year the requirement to take this course was replaced with a revamped version of the practical skills course

- Which, fact fans, is now the first assignment of practical skills in filmmaking II brought forward to year one - i.e. my year, in taking practical skills in filmmaking II, is now unique as the course has already changed and the first assignment from PSII is now the entirety of PSI.

This means that if you're in my year - or, arguably, the year above me that graduated in june - you're a test subject. Oh yes, the students in the years below you will get the benefit of the tutors observing your interactions and how the courses work, but let's be selfish for a moment here; how fair is that on us?

I have a lot of sympathy for the PSI/PSII tutors, because they're just trying to make the best course possible for the students who are soon going to be in the £9,000 + tuition fees bracket, and soon value for money will be the key credo. It must be difficult to constantly have to rewrite the rules and values of the practical courses.

But as difficult as it is for them, how difficult do you think it is to be part of a student body now constantly in transition?

... Although, now I come to think of it, it's almost exactly the same as being back at work, where if there wasn't a transition every six months, we felt neglected.

Here's the thing: there's no point complaining. Which, yes, means you've just spent a few minutes reading pointless complaining. Sorry about that. At the end of the day, this is an amazing course filled with creative people, and with which I will hopefully be able to do fantastic things. It'd just be nice not to feel like an Aperture Science Approved Test Subject once in a while.

Come the morning and the headlights fade away

DoaMS Week Six: That ticklish throat

That suggests that, for what's probably the sixth or seventh time in my life, being in classes full of people from around the country and around the world pretty much guarantees that at least one person on campus has a cold, and, pretty soon, everyone else will.

But let's not talk about courses, or money, or problems, or the fact that I'm not really talking at all, being as I have what might be called a reader deficiency, and most likely will keep that until the faculty work out that I blog and it's not, well, always complementary about everything, ever, to do with studying.

No, let's talk about Spooks. (Or, if you're American, MI-5.)

Here's the thing. Ten seasons in, ten years on, and Spooks still carries with it the single fundamental message that's perhaps not what the creators intended. Ideally, it should be The good person is the one who will sacrifice everything for their country, but, in reality, the message that comes across is People are arseholes, and that's only worse if you're a spy.

Don't get me wrong, this world is not a wonderful candyland filled with sparkles, optimism, and nice people, but in the world of Spooks, by the time the job finishes with you, you're either (a) dead, (b) a traitor, or (c), an arsehole, and let's be fair now, you can pick a combination of all three options if you're so inclined. In a way, I worry for Peter Firth, who is probably already considering either a dignified retirement or a post-Harry Pearce career, but if I were to voice a concern it would be that Harry Pearce, as a character, occasionally confuses having A Dark And Secret Past with being completely inured to the deaths of every single person who comes into sustained or prolonged contact with him, occasionally at his hands.

I find Spooks frustrating now in ways I didn't back when it started because in every episode of season 9 and now in season 10 there are moments of brilliance - nice, character-based touches that stand out. But the show is a strange chimera of BBC-budget action movie, British drama and a deep, deep dark spy story, the last of which colours every episode without adding anything in particular to the plot, because, as mentioned above, everyone's a bastard.

I cannot confirm or deny if this is a strict interpretation of the reality of the world of espionage, although I suspect the day-to-day life of someone trained from the very beginning in the ancient martial art of Truss Tno Won is, basically, hell. But to begin with, Spooks always felt like a high-calibre recruiting video for the security services and a televisual panacea to trouble times, combining two simple tenets;

(I) Look at the spies doing their job with the latest technology and the highest grade of training, with quick, smart professionalism and ruthless cool; wouldn't you like that to be your career?

(II) If your answer to (I) is no, thank you, then look at the spies doing their job; they're protecting you, all the way up to laying their lives on the line for your security and peace of mind, even the poor lass who ended up deep-fat-fryed, prompting all those complaints back in the day.

But recently, the spies are no longer perfect, the lives are no longer perfect, and everyone seems to use iPhones, although the information security of Apple products is in no way endorsed by the British Government, obviously.

I have followed Spooks, series by series, for ten years, now.

I find the last sentence curiously difficult to assimilate into my worldview.

And maybe it's just that I'm a different viewer now to how I was when it started, but the character moments seem to matter that much more, somehow. In the last series, one of the best-played moments was the Home Secretary simply noting that Harry had not removed his gloves. In this week's episode, it all hinges around emptying a bottle of milk with quiet acceptance.

This is, I feel, a very British thing.

So is, of course, mixing action and drama with tragedy. Which is why so, so many characters in Spooks - functionally everyone except Harry and Ruth, who could form the centre of the most dysfunctional love around - are, well, dead, or gone.

Or an arsehole.

Look at it this way; in the world of this week's Spooks episode, a small part of the British secret service is able to comprehensively penetrate and control every security system in the American Embassy like it's, well, nothing. It's a world where Ruth, having just stolen an invaluable piece of equipment from said embassy, and having been a spy for a long time now, doesn't check the back seat of her car before getting in. A world where the CIA don't track (a) their directors movements, (b) have a dedicated car service which requires identification, or (c) their remaindered laptops). A world where a warehouse filled with sensitive material is guarded by two people who, when walking away, don't hear an incredibly loud door slamming behind them as someone goes in. A world where a van packed with explosives manages not to kill a man sat in a car around six feet away (although the car, being as it was for a cabinet member, was most likely armoured, so your mileage may vary). A world where a dedicated, decorated spy chief doesn't have his car checked for any kind of listening or tracking devices after meeting someone from an opposing security service (although the two were related, so, again, make of it what you will).

This is because, fact fans, how you tell the story is more important than the story itself.

*

Here's the funny thing. For all the changes, for everything that's altered over the decade the show's been running - sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse - I still want to see the finale, because finales always bring out the best in writers, directors and actors. It's the same principle as credits - whatever your film is, the first and last thing people see are the credits, so impress with them and you can get people on your side. But the finale of ten years of skullduggery, occasional explosions, and people sustaining both physical and psychological damage and getting back up and fighting until they can't anymore; well, that should be worth watching.

Bigger, slicker, quicker, more black more upper London is a Taxi

DoaMS: You can't spell Inertia without Inert

So I look back at the entries of the past, oh, say, six months, and I wonder; when did everything become about the people, and not about, say, the course, or the films?

Sometimes this feels like a strange and livid soap opera.

Let's talk about something else, for a while.

Firstly, the soundtrack to Portal 2 is now fully availably and fully free to download at (http://www.thinkwithportals.com/music.php). This is probably not news to, well, anyone, but I liked it.

The important thing about Portal 2, to me, was the tightness of the scripting. Put it like this; you're a mute protagonist exploring a giant ruined facility on your own. This is not a setup designed for heart-wrenching drama or amazingly well-done comedy. But because of the voices that travel with you - in the guise of AI cores, mostly - there's an amazing, tragic story of scientific hubris, psychological trauma, and body horror all mixed up in there. If you haven't alreay played it, well, hey, you're probably not likely to.

But you should. You Monster.

Um... Other than that... I've been watching episodes of seasons two of Warehouse 13 and Justified, both of which I rate, the latter perhaps higher than the former. I'm a big fan of shows which establish a specific 'feel' and manage to stick to it without the inevitable decay onto other styles or tropes. Not that switching up is a bad thing in any way shape or form, though - but I've been watching a lot of Bones over the summer, and there's an odd shift from pathology to out-and-out comedy over the first five seasons.

Film wise, I heartily recomment Tucker and Dale vs. Evil, and I really, really enjoyed Thor. Book-wise, I've ended up with the most recent Deadpool Classic volumes, i.e. 4 and 5, because they conclude the storyline that I remember reading and greatly enjoying as a teenager. I would like to author an article about how Deadpool ended up as a superhero role model (viz. the talking, not the boom-bang-a-bang) along with Jamie Madrox, but hey, that would only lead to psychology. Add the Punisher in the mix - because, frankly, Garth Ennis' Max series are some of the best stories in comic format I've ever read - and it's probably time for some therapy.

Other than that, outside of the aforementioned soap opera - and despite my best intentions, that's truly what it's turning into - life is more or less good.

So isn't that something to celebrate?

Common sense is ringing out loud

DoaMS: See them long hard times to come

Here's an interesting thing. For once, the subtitle is entirely accurate.

I have a problem at the moment. The problem with the problem is that it's a fairly petty issue; I'm deeply aggravated with someone who thought it was appropriate to rip off my work and not make any pretense that they were doing otherwise. It's affecting my days; I can't bring myself to talk to the person (a remnant of being taught that if you don't have anything civil to say, don't say anything at all) and I feel extremely uncomfortable around them.

But when it comes to the Filmmakers Of The Future, as nobody in particular refers to our class of practical students, feeling uncomfortable is not unknown.

As I think I mentioned in the last thrilling installment, there is one person who I like, I think of as a friend (mostly), and whose technical ability I rate extremely highly and who I do not even remotely trust.

This was not strictly accurate. There are several people like that who I have to work with over the next eight or so months on the understanding that if something better comes along, I can most assuredly go fuck myself.

This is not unusual in life, obviously. I'm not saying anything or telling anyone anything that they didn't already know to be a truism.

It's just...

I didn't expect it to be so prevalent and so entrenched. Silly me, I thought eighteen to twenty-one year olds were relatively unformed clay, at least in personality terms. I certainly was, at that age, different in many ways from how I think of myself now. And I wouldn't even presume to want to mould the personality clay of the now quickly-escaping metaphor. I'm keenly aware that I have no right other than to perhaps provide some advice, now and then.

So when it feels like I'm constantly telling people how and what and when to do whatever, that makes me worry. For I Am Not A Leader Of Men, Nor A Maker Of Pompous Statements.

At my core, I'm just someone who wants to get things done.

And that's the issue; in order to get things done on this course, other people mostly have to be involved, and involving other people means involves this constancy of dialogue of sorts, this bizarre give-and-take where everyone is always trying to get out more than they put in, except for a few good people.

When I'm driving, I sometimes feel - if the road conditions are right, i.e. a slight downhill on an open, 60 or 70mph road - like I'm picking up speed, or more accurately inertia, without having to add any more acceleration. Unchecked, that kind of momentum leads easily to a crash, so you have to put in a little brake, check your speed and direction, and adjust what you're doing.

Right at this stage in the course, I feel a lot like things are picking up inertia without me having to do anything, and that feels really, really dangerous, like suddenly everything will pile up suddenly and uncontrollably. And - if you want to continue with the Speed metaphor - half the passengers on the bus are trying to work out how to slow it down, but the other half are just trying to work out a way to get the best outcome for themselves.

My personal favourite theory at the moment relates to four people I know on the course, who, at the moment, are not working together but instead trying to use each other and at the same time not realising that the others are trying to use them. I stare on in wonderment at this, quite frankly, because it's an example of meritocracy gone wrong in action; each one of the four seems to be thinking that they'll win some nebulous prize at the end of it and not have to worry about the others. I'm also guilty of this mentality, to some extent, but I actively worry about it to the degree that I try to give more than I get, which is nice, but dumb, in all kinds of ways.

Let's give this a nice summation, shall we? People are strange. But more than that, people are stranger to themselves sometimes than they are to each other. In the weird little fishbowl of student life, sometimes being an older fish can make you see things that are just that much stranger...

Nicotine for breakfast just to put me right

DOAMS - And now, the taster sessions are done with

Two years on, it's probably time to talk about Edward.

By the end of my association with Edward, he was difficult to deal with in the extreme, massively self-centred and only slightly less so in egotistical terms, utterly stubborn and - and I don't say this word lightly - a user.

A user in the sense that I was his enabler, in various ways. I enabled him by giving him someone, at first, to count on, then to rely on, then to depend upon, then, apparently, to be unable to live without. At the same time, I received someone I could go to for advice, and someone who could give the appearance of caring.

The final straw - two years ago, as stated - was when I came to the realisation that I was handling the entirety of the legwork and the travelling time and costs. Edward, you see, had moved to the south coast to be with someone he deeply loved, and I thought that was a good sign.

Then the demands started. When Edward lived in London, it was no big shakes to travel to him - an hour and a half, conservatively, by train and underground. the south coast, by contrast, was a four hundred mile round trip by expensive train or tiring car journey, all so that, when I got there, we could do what he wanted. Finally, I decided that since I was the one doing the travelling, I should have some say in the matter, and decided not to go.

This did not go down well.

Up until that point, I had not had the opportunity to watch a friendship disintegrate via the medium of increasingly passive-aggressive facebook updates, so this was a nice education.

Let's rewind back through time to approximately nine years ago. I met Edward at university, where through the student newspaper we became friends. Back then, I was living in London, so it was no big shakes to go and see him for a weekend's drinking, dancing, etc. Back then, Edward was handily a lot of things I wasn't - a large drinker, a drug taker, a jack-the-lad with a cool car, whatnot, whereas I was a fairly antisocial, isolated individual working on my final year during the first time on the university merry-go-round.

There was chemistry - I won't deny it - and in the curiously male way, we were close friends with the kind of friendship that revolves around a constancy of low-level insults and veiled homophobia on his part that allows for Men - more accurately, Men! - to have a close friendship without expressing anything like 'love' or 'feelings' or all these concepts that just don't apply during periods of heightened masculinity.

After I left university, it was still nice to have an extremely close friend, whom I could go to for advice, but the travel was almost always from my here to his there. There was a rationale behind this, in that where I am now has nothing really resembling a spare room, and not many drinking opportunities nearby. And the travelling was an adventure, a chance to get away from the job and the fairly humdrum but nice life. But still, it was always here to there, and on the occasions he would drive out here it would only be for me to go back there to do the clubbing and drinking thing.

Because it was always clubbing and drinking, or at the very least watching a film and drinking. There was always the drinking. Which, for a man in his mid-twenties, isn't a bad thing.

So Edward got on with his life, and got married - a wedding at which I was invited to be part of the wedding party, which was nice, although I later came to think it was because I was one of the only ones gullible enough to volunteer for the travel (oh yes, the travel), the suit hire, and all the unpaid labour that goes with it. And the marriage lasted just under two years, the latter six months of which I ended up providing marriage counselling of various kinds despite not being, as they say, a relationship kind of person.

When the marriage - as these things will do, for whatever reason - broke apart, Edward quickly found another lady with whom to make a life, which was - and still, as far as I know is, wonderful. They genuinely complemented each other, and I was happy for them, but the suspicion was growing in my mind that this was less of a friendship than Edward utilising me as a witness so that he could drink, maybe take the occasional drug, and have someone to act as a combination shepherd / minder / etcetera. This was not necessarily parasitic, because it basically seemed that Edward could only be the brash, cocky, confident public person he wanted to be while I was around to... not.

I am not brash, or arrogant, or cocky - at least, I try extremely hard not to be, because I cringe when I look back on the first jaunt on the merry-go-round and was... well... brash, arrogant, cocky, self-centred, annoying, the descriptives go on, and on. Until one day the fickle fist of destiny - personified by someone now very close to me - ran up one day, and hit me on the shoulder, and made me think about how I acted affected other people, and to be aware of my place in the world and in relation to the people who mattered to me.

Edward, I fear, did not have such luck as to receive such a thwack on the shoulder.

I do have a distinct personal fault, however, in that I pathologically give people the benefit of the doubt, and equally pathologically like to help people where, sometimes, they would be better off figuring out how to help themselves. Unless I'm careful, I generate brilliant and beautiful but reliant people. It's the administrator's curse, apparently - the better you do your job so that people can do their job, the more people rely on you. As curses go, it's not that bad.

But when I asked Edward to help out with a project local to me, at first he would only come up on the condition that we went drinking the night before. At first I acquiesced to this, but then I realised that showing up to something important with a hangover was - get this, I know - a bad idea, so I asked if this time, it could, you know, not happen?

Repeated rebuffings, followed by tantrums, arguments, a constancy of complaints and a litany of bullshit. In the end, I held my ground...

... At which point Edward decided to help, but drove up on the day, did his part (and, credit where credit is due, did it well) and drove back down to where he was living at the time. All seemingly because he couldn't get what he wanted.

Hmm, I thought.

And then I began to think about the 400+ mile round trips I was expected to make in order to attend to his need to go out and drink. The train was annoying - hour upon hour and change after change, especially at weekends - but the drive was worse, especially coming back.

So one day, when I was expected to make the journey that weekend - in the middle of the second week of study at my current academic pied-a-alma - I decided not to go. I had no reason other than I desperately didn't want to, because it was expensive on a student budget not only in travel but also in alcohol costs, and it just seemed... pointless. A 400+ mile trip to spend two nights drinking, two days with a hangover, then drive back?

Why?, to be honest, was my main thought.

In retrospect, I could have been more tactful, and worked on a proper reason or at least a generous lie. But I had become frankly sick of the attitute towards my willingness to bear the burden of being the traveller.

(And I know that this - divorced of feeling by two years and coming across as it is - probably sounds like a candidate for white whine  - "Oh, I had to travel so long and so far just to see my friend and go out drinking!" - but, frankly, try being treated like a mixture of friend and social slave for seven years and see how you feel frankly.)

In some ways, this was an embodiment of another thing I do which I could do with not doing - testing things and people. I wanted to see what the reaction would be - although I was hoping for oh well, too bad I guess, maybe another time.

But no. A lot of shit followed, along with the aforementioned passive-aggressive facebook status updates, which - to my shame - I actually found kind of funny at the time. A few more calls followed, but I instituted a new practice I'd decided might work, which meant waiting a week and thinking about what I was feeling and doing before emailing him a comprehensive list of why I had decided not to be the one to travel anymore and that, having been used as an excuse for drinking and bad behaviour for so long, I was not, as they say, up for it anymore.

A reply from Edward established that I was apparently in the wrong, and always would be, and if I'd just put up with it that little bit longer - the little bit that is always jam tomorrow - then things would have been ah-may-zing, etcetera.

I decided at that point that cutting ties was for the best, because otherwise, I knew, I would be in Edward's thrall for, quite likely, the rest of my life.

A few more calls followed, then there was a gap, then, in January, there was a phone call where I had to provide counselling because, with a major event imminent in his life, Edward was concerned about apocalyptic theories. I wish I was joking on this point, but with something amazing about to happen for him, Edward was concentrating on the world ending, not his new life beginning. I shouldn't have even engaged with him on the topic, but see above re: pathological helping of people when I should know better.

After the amazing, life-changing event, there were a couple of emails from him and his partner (seperately), and I replied in general terms, wishing them well.

After that, things went blessedly quiet.

A few months ago, I had a call from Edward, saying that he was in the town where I attend university, and did I want to meet, and catch up.

I said no, and hung up the phone. A ratty text message followed, and since then, I have tried not to let the people I think of as important to me turn into people who need my help. Instead, I try to make sure that these people will be able to help themselves, and not worry about needing anybody else. I do this with little acts of kindness rather than being there for everything, and, more or less - there have been one or two failures - it seems to work.

I still help people who would do better to help themselves, and I still solve problems that don't need solving, and organise people who don't need organising, but as long as I don't let it get out of hand, I hope I won't end up with another Edward on my hands. Ironically, I almost created one - almost in the manner of a golem - which has led to a situation wherein a person I like, work with, and get on with, I cannot trust even slightly.

But it beats the alternative.

I wish nothing but the best for Edward and his family, and to say that there are no happy memories from our friendship would be wrong. At the same time, it was unhealthy that he formed the closest thing that I've had to a personal relationship with someone since the firebombing of the house of love that was my previous relationship - the one that seems to have totally removed any impulse to meet, greet, and date from my worldview - and it only got more unhealthy as time went on, until I felt I had to do as I did.

It's been several months since I heard from him, and two years since I made the move to cut all ties with him, and this is the first time I've felt comfortable in talking about Edward, because the things that matter to you aren't always the things that are best for you.

Stick that on a greeting card, if you like.

Like the flower and the scent of summer

DoMS: It's The Most Wonderful Time Of The Year

For all the complaining, and the venting, and the moaning and quite frankly whinging of the past five months of 'enforced summer sabbatical', when it actually comes down to it, it's almost time to go back.

For some reason, however, this feels less like a final year and more like the final eight months to go before this bizarre and mostly enjoyable interlude ends. In some ways, it feels like speed ramping for real life - where the real world has continued on at 100% speed while my life works at something like 50%, and suddenly the rubber band is about to snap, and real life's real speed is about to resume, whether I'm even remotely ready or not.

Time enough to get ready to be ready then, I guess.

Eight months. Not a bad preparation time, but given that I'm now officially multi-disciplinary, and I'm only going to get more so in eight months time, the question is, get ready for what?

In fact, it'd be nice to feel ready for the here and now. Because even with all the preparation work undertaken over the summer, I've put myself in for what seems like physically the hardest workload possible over the next two semesters - and yes, outsideworlders, mock the concept of a hard student workload if you will, go on, get it all out of your system - where, in fact, I probably didn't need to.

But, for all the hard work and worry that I have at the moment, my study program feels curiously right. That's an odd feeling - to feel like a plan for the future is actually not a bad one - for me, because frankly everyone who knows me has probably figured out that I've been playing life by ear ever since leaving the real world of employment all those two years ago.

There's also the curious feeling of what might be called, if one were of a bawdy sense of humour, 'climax anxiety', which, strangely, I never felt during the previous run on the merry-go-round. The first time was simply

-> I feel like I should be studying a degree
-> I am studying a degree
-> I want to finish this f*$%*ing degree
-> I have finished this degree
-> I'm taking the first job that comes along.

This time around, to take the first job that comes along feels awkward and gawky, somehow. And the process has been different, i.e.

-> I passionately want to study this discipline
-> Having abrogated my dignity, the implicit respect of my friends and family, and any notion of financial independence, I am studying the discipline I am passionate about
-> I want to finish this degree in style
-> I will be finishing this degree in eight months
-> I would like to find a job that ties in with my multi-disciplinary approach to academia.

So more intense and more wordy, if not necessarily sensible.

This year is going to be difficult, filled, I suspect, with tantrums but not tiaras, and by the end of it I would like to have the following things:

- A dissertation that I'm proud of
- A short film that I'm proud of
- An answer to what to do next.

I hope these things aren't too much to ask. Especially of myself.

And the stars look very different today

DoaMS: For the love of study

So here's a thing that, although it's difficult to admit, is actually fairly obvious from previous blog postings; for various reasons, most of which have been complained about or repeatedly mentioned, up until very recently I wasn't actually particularly looking forward to my last year as a mature student before returning, further educated, to the Real World (tm).

Some of these reasons - leaving last year utterly burnt out, having my work plagiarised, fun stuff like that - were valid. Some of the others - general malaise, resenting the mechanics of the course, feeling lost in the interpersonal department politics - were less valid, mostly because they wouldn't even be relevant if I weren't in the position I'm now in, which is, shockingly, a good one.

Here's the thing; because I put in a lot of enthusiasm and hard work into the first two years - which, in part, lead to the aforementioned burnout, but let's leave that by the wayside - as I walk in the valley of the shadow of the final year, it actually looks pretty good. I have a GPA - to go all American and whatnot for a moment - that makes a solid foundation for my final year's work, to the point where I will hopefully actually be able to discard some of my crappier grades when it comes down to the final scoreline.

The one thing that was bugging me more than it really should have was the Advanced Filmmaking course, necessitating as it does having an actual film to make, from idea all the way to DVD, and now I have something which makes me realise that a key part of my working practice is to be Stubborn And Argumentative.

Let's elucidate; I have a film I want to make which I get the feeling nobody else will like, or which might get labelled as pretentious, or 'arty', or... whatever. If it were to have a label, it would be labelled 'Cheap Science Fiction', i.e. big concepts, no budget. But out of all of the scripts I've been working on over the summer, it's the only one that feels right somehow.

I have no idea how I'm going to sell it to the course tutor.

And there are so many problems that need sorting with the script and how to actually realise it as a film.

And that's how, it turns out, I like it.

So I've gone from not looking forward to actively interested in terms of next year's work. Hell, I've even renewed my NUS card early - although, to be honest, with a picture of Peter Gunn rather than myself, for no other reason than I can - whereas last year that was left to the last minute. Then again, last year I used a photo of myself from last century's student living, which was... weird. So maybe this is a step forward.

In every Practical Film book - and every self-made director's biography - there's a telling phrase or sentence which always (always) involves one iteration or another of the belief that you don't need to go to film school to be a filmmaker. And that's very true - Sam Raimi, Robert Rodriguez et al were out making films on whatever camera presented itself when they were very, very young.

And good for them.

But film school - weird as it has been in places - has been a pretty positive experience for me. Sure, there's been summers filled with big nothing - which I'm sure have earned me the enmity of my sponsors, for good or ill, but when you get knocked back for minimum wage jobs consistently, it gets harder and harder to actually want to apply for the local supermarket or outlet store or pub. Because, frankly, this summer followed exactly the same model as last year - apply for minimum-or-low wage job for the summer, get turned down, repeat ad nauseam. It's a little bizarre. But not doing this is perceived as doing nothing, and doing nothing is just not done.

So instead, this summer has been devoted to various grounding exercises - to use the language of the magic books I read oh-so-long-ago - to try to find the right mental space to approach next year. And they seem to be working, because, hey, I'm not complaining, and that's a step up from the last ten or so posts.

So let's end this on a positive note - it's around, I think, six weeks until term starts again. And right now that's starting to feel like a good thing.

I can't slow down oh you know, I wish I could

D-o-a-M-S: Writing to reach you (continued); Eleven years ago

On a bridge, over a busy motorway, towards the end of a summer;

Younger: You again, huh?

Older: It's something to do. Remember last time we spoke?

Younger: More or less.

Older: Been a long, strange year since then, huh?

Younger: You know what? Screw you. All this "I can tell you but you won't remember" crap - this year's been awkward and unsettling and stressful. Like you couldn't give me any hints?

Older: Causality, remem--

Younger: Oh, I forgot the convenient excuse. You can't give me any information because it might w-r-e-c-k the u-n-i-v-e-r-s-e. Oh no. Meanwhile, I'm confused, and angry, and you can't even help?

Older: I can tell you it gets worse.

Younger: No, I think you misheard me. I said 'help'.

Older: It gets a lot worse, then it gets better. [Sigh] Look, you know how you've had a pretty good year, but you've done some incredibly stupid shit?

Younger: You could say that.

Older: I am saying that, because it happened. There are some things I liked about this year, but there's a hell of a lot I didn't. And it really does get worse - you/I/we end up graduating from stupid to just plain weird. But there's something that, if you could remember, I would need you to remember.

Younger: What's that?

Older: That none of the dumb-ass things you get up to in the next two years are permanent. Oh, sure, you lose friends and alienate people and even in my now there's probably one or two people who remember how much of an ass you were. But even though you offend some people mortally, you make it up to them - at least to the ones that really matter.

Younger: What about the rest?

Older: Oh, they drift away - some of them make your life hell for a little while in various ways and through various means, and there's a really dark time coming up, but... It's all just time you have to encounter. A series of dark moments, and then, suddenly, wham, things start to trend upward again.

Younger: It's not been such a bad year. I mean, there was XXXXXX... and XXXXX, and XXXX.

Older: Okay, well, sorry to disillusion you, but you don't see XXXXXX for another two and a half years, and when you do, it's kind of awkward. You were an asshat to XXXXX - I mean, seriously, you're lucky you didn't get stabbed in the chest for that one - and you only ever see her once again and even then she doesn't acknowledge you. Which is probably for the best.

Younger: But what about XXXX?

Older: I'm not telling you anything even if you're not going to remember. It's all great with her now, and that goes on for a little while, and that's all I'm going to say.

Younger: So why do you keep coming back if you can't change anything and I can't remember anything?

Older: Perhaps I just like talking to myself. Look, I'm serious when I say things get better, but then they plateau - first in three years for about three years, then  seven years from now things start out amazingly then just become everyday. It's just the way things go. So I figured I'd come back and visit you now, before all the boredom. Besides, it's so much easier to remember the bad stuff from this year. There was a hell of a lot of good stuff too.

Younger: Yeah? Maybe only from your perspective. Look, you remember how I ended up in hospital in March? And then moved out of the family home? And then lost my summer job?

Older: It's a nadir, all right. It's a shitty end to a mixed-up year. The summer you have ahead of you is okay - you'll travel around a bit, catch up with people, that sort of thing. And next year at Uni starts out okay. It just gets a bit dark midway through. Look, I meant it when I said that none of the badness is permanent - nothing scars you so much that--

Younger: Wait, I remember something now. You're studying another degree and mooching off your parents, right?

Older: Yes.

Younger: So how can you say that none of this is 'permanent'? Sounds to me like you gave up trying to be ambitious and successful and just went for whatever sounded best.

Older: It's nice that you can be an asshat and not be wrong all at the same time. Besides, your definition of 'ambitious and successful' right now would be to be able to write like Hunter S. Thompson and maybe, just maybe, own a car and be able to drive it. Let's not get ahead of ourselves.

Younger: So what's your definition of 'successful' now?

Older: ... That's kind of difficult to explain.

Younger: Try.

Older: Well, there's the academic success. You get your degree from here - eventually - but by the time you get it your grade average is irrevocably damaged, so you have to settle for mid-table respectability. That chips away at you for a bit. So I took more courses, and always had the motivation to do better than I did back then, or now. But I can't do this without romanticising things a bit - you want to be a writer, a journalist, something like that?

Younger: That would be kind of cool. I like writing for the student newspaper...

Older: Well, you don't stop doing that. It peaks in a couple of years, then it starts to wind down. But you get kind of obsessed with both just passing this degree and working somewhere you'll find out about soon. And here's the thing. You don't let failures beat you down - you're too stubborn. And that's a good thing, but it means that your victories come at a price. By the time you're me, you're the kind of the personal Pyrrhic victory.

Younger: What does that mean?

Older: Well, you'll have trouble with your studies soon enough - in fact, it's already started. But - eventually - you fight back, and you pass enough units. But if you'd taken a sidestep and looked at what else you could do, you might have been better off. Maybe, maybe not. It's one of the problems of being bullheaded - you achieve the objective, no matter what the cost. But it tires you out, until by the time you finish here you have to take whatever job presents itself just to pay off the student overdraft, and then it's easier to just stay in that job than move on anywhere else, and you end up like me - chunky and wondering why you're doing what you do.

Younger: But you can't change any of this, right?

Older: Right.

Younger: So what's the point? Isn't this just fatalism?

Older: Maybe. Here's the thing. There's so much I would change about you, here, now. Preferably even five or six months ago, I'd like to ask you to consider doing things differently. But the life I have now - even if it is a quiet, singular sort of a life, without the wife, the house, the children - even in it's own tranquil way, it's kind of amazing. And that's the trade-off - you go through all this, this shit for the next two years, you start to wonder what the point of everything is, and then... You realise.

Younger: Realise what?

Older: That life isn't about knowing what you should be doing. One thing you'll always be jealous of is the people with the uncurved arrows - they grew up knowing what they wanted to do, with a straight, sure path. People with conviction, people who seem to know exactly why they're here. But here's something to consider; they're kind of boring.

Younger: How does that work?

Older: Well, you'll skip around a lot of courses in the next thirty-six months, but you'll experience a lot of different things, and you'll actually find a 'passion' that endures. It means that instead of spending your life concentrating on one thing and one thing only, you'll find things that interest you, work on them until they don't, then discard them, whether you should have or not. Meanwhile, the uncurved arrows will be doing the same thing, day in, day out, until they stop, for whatever reason.

Younger: But at least they find work doing what they love, right?

Older: For the most part, yes. But--

Younger: So if I only had a proper vocation now, things would be a lot easier?

Older: I didn't say that. And even if I did, it wouldn't matter, because--

Younger: Right, right. Causality.

Older: Okay, look. This is just the way things are. I'm talking to you because I'm trying to understand how I got to be the way I am now. There's not much else to it. But... Not to sound stupid, but batten down the hatches, kid. There's a storm coming for you.

Younger: Thanks for that...

*

And most of the taxis and the whores are only taking calls for cash

Diary of a mature student: The Quiet Time

About twelve years ago, when all the classes were done and all that was left was to wait to do the exams, my English teachers invited their class to have a quasi-celebration at one of their homes. Memory is playing tricks on me, because I remember it as one of those idealised summer days in a garden where everyone seems happy - which doesn't seem likely considering it was a party filled with late-teenagers - but, if I let it, I could look on it as one of those quasi-defining moments that you remember for a while. And yes, that's two uses of 'quasi' in a single paragraph. Three, now. Perhaps this validates the whole "English" student thing.

There is a point to this, though. Once the party was done, basically all that was going to happen was that people would drift away like dandelion seeds - oh, sure, there were three or four exams to go, yet, and there'd be the odd social occasion - but, basically, that was it as far as 'high school' went.

As covered before, I like the idea of parallel universes and alternate realities. If, therefore, it's a given that all realities exist somewhere, there's a world where there's a means of communicating with your younger self without completely fucking causality. Perhaps it involves artificial forgetfulness, i.e. you can talk to yourself but not remember it, although that sounds like a tearjerker plot - the older can tell the younger everything, and have it not change anything. Maybe, maybe not.

But I like to think that in Reality #216,449 - i.e. where cross-temporal communication takes place - my life wouldn't be that different, except that after the 'party' finished, and I headed home, I might have bumped into someone who looked a little like me, just older and far away larger. And I like to think that it wouldnt' have been much of a surprise.

Older: Hey.

Younger: Hello. Who are you?

Older: Well, I'm you. Sorry if it's not what you expected.

Younger: What was I supposed to expect?

Older: I seem to remember wanting a future with hand-made suits and such.

Younger: Oh, well, maybe. It was just a thought. What's up?

Older: Well, they've just invented this whole cross-temporal communication thing, so I thought'd I'd drop in and, well, catch up. I'm calling you from something like twelve years in the future. Thought that might intrigue you.

Younger: Kind of, except that all the science fiction I've read tells me this is a bad idea.

Older: Look on the bright side - you won't remember this. Causality is still important.

Younger: So you've gone to all this effort just to have a conversation that I won't remember?

Older: Yes.

Younger: So it's just the me now that won't remember it?

Older: What do you mean?

Younger: Well, if you're having this conversation now for you, and I won't remember it now, surely you'll remember it in your now? If you don't remember it, why would you do it?

Older: I'm with you. I'm not sure how it works exactly, but it's a selective memory block - when we're done, I'll remember here and now but not there and then. Does that make sense?

Younger: As much as any of this does. So what can I do for you?

Older: Well, to be honest, I just fancied a chat.

Younger: You risked violating causality for a chat?

Older: Kind of. It's just... You won't understand this until you're my age, but right now you have a lot of possibilities--

Younger: Oh no, please. Not the "world is at your feet" speech.

Older: Not at all. Besides, even if I did, you wouldn't remember it. But you have an interesting and occasionally difficult time ahead of you. So for you this is just an unremembered interlude. For me, I guess, it's kind of therapy.

Younger: What do you mean?

Older: Well, things won't turn out exactly as you might have liked. You'll do okay in your exam results - not great, not as well as you could, but you'll squeak by and get a place at a decent university - just.

Younger: Why only 'just'?

Older: You remember that place you applied to twice?

Younger: Yeah.

Older: Well, your main results won't be quite good enough to get in, but the thing you did on the side will swing it in the second case. You'll end up being one of only six people on a kind of hybrid course.

Younger: That sounds good.

Older: Yes and no. You'll 'get' half of the course, and not the other half. Then in the second year you'll transfer to another hybrid course, but again you'll only 'get' half of the course. Meanwhile, all sorts of shit will be going on in your personal life. You'll be juggling money problems, academic problems, personal problems, relationship problems, and you'll still be addicted to video games.

Younger: ... Huh.

Older: There are good moments, too, but they end up overshadowed by the issues that you won't know how to solve. That's how you learn how to solve them - the whole 'learning through your mistakes' part is pretty important. And that's just the first two or so years.

Younger: Do things get better after that?

Older: Yes and no. Your money issues don't go away until you get a decent job. You sort out the academic problems yourself - I'm proud of you for that. You get a handle on the personal problems, but as for the relationship problems... They go away, but kind of leave you soured on the whole thing. But that's something you can work on when you get to be me. I hope.

Younger: And the video games?

Older: Well, Diablo II sucks up a lot of your time. That and Crazy Taxi, Final Fantasy X, and even Burnout II. You'll get into them in a big way, then slowly stop worrying about them. Enjoy it while it lasts. Oh, and you won't get to play Portal until something like three years after it's released, but look forward to that one. But anyway... It takes you having a 'voluntary sabbatical year' to get your academic and money issues on track. In that year, some appalling, disturbing worldwide events take place. I'd like to say things calm down, but they kind of.. haven't, yet.

Younger: What sort of events?

Older: You probably wouldn't believe me if I told you. You go back after your year out, and finish your degree. The result isn't what you'd hoped for, but it's the best you could get with the issues you experienced. Then you move back home, pay off your student overdrafts in good time - and then...

Younger: Then?

Older: It's kind of boring. You get a job to pay off the overdrafts, and then you stay on because it keeps you in DVDs and such. Your ambition kind of drifts away, but your love of film - which you'll pick up a little before you leave uni - starts to grow. You make a couple of attempts at filmmaking, but nothing comes of them. Then you get made redundant, and...

Younger: And?

Older: Look, it's complicated. On one hand, you're still living at home, and mooching off your parents. On the other hand, you go back to university with a proper, actual passion for what you're doing, instead of going because you thought you should go. So you get to do something you love, and all it costs is... A little dignity, I guess. Your parents believe that you're passionate about what you do, and you are, for the first two years or so. And that's where I am now.

Younger: What happened after the first two years?

Older: I don't know. It feels like a kind of burnout. You'll still love film - and, finally, you'll get around to watching The Sopranos and Alias - but the work will leave you with good results and no motivation. So I wanted to come back and have a chat with you now, before life unfolds, just to see what I was like back then.

Younger: But surely you remember?

Older: Memory isn't that reliable. As part of the package of issues you go through in a couple of years, you end up taking anti-depressants, which have a listed side-effect of 'memory loss', and you'll want to blame them. But the truth is that your short-term memory is amazingly shit. I can remember things now from when I was you, but the last couple of years are still assimilating themselves. It's just the way things go - you'll learn about neuroplasticity, believe it or not.

Younger: So let me get this straight. I have three years of difficulty ahead of me, then one year of amazing, followed by six years of boring and two years of amazing again before I... 'burn out'?

Older: Something like that. I wish I could give you specifics - but it wouldn't help. There are amazing things - you remember the sushi you had in America over this summer? Seriously, that's everywhere by now. And you'll travel more - America again a few times, a bad time in Eastern Europe, and some amazing times In Bruges and in Greece. Seriously? Filled vine leaves. 'Dolmades'. Amazing. You have some fun ahead of you, and some difficulties.

Younger: So what's going on with you, other than risking the nature of causality to have a casual chat with your younger self in the hope of feeling less crappy?

Older: Well, film school is amazing, even as a mature student. Oh, sure, sometimes I want to tell people your age how life should work, but I try to hold myself back, because I kind of remember what it was like being you, then... now... then... whatever. I've made a few little projects, and I love my classes, although unfortunately I don't have--

Younger: A crazy teacher who wears dark glasses?

Older: I'm so glad dad kept playing that song. Look, here's the thing. Everybody can give you advice, but nobody can tell you how to live. So - preachy moment here - it's up to you to work it out for yourself. And you kind of don't, because I'm proof of that. But you kind of do, too - you find something you love, and you stick at it, even when it feels difficult. And the boring job isn't that bad. If only I could tell you now to pay off your student loan, though. But you wouldn't, because I didn't.

Younger: So what's your advice, then? I mean, I know I won't remember it, but...

Older: Don't worry so much. You have people who love you and who you can ask for help, even though you won't because you think it's a sign of weakness. Nothing's so bad it can't be fixed, and it does get fixed. Don't bother with minidisc players or early mp3 players. Exercise more, or at all. And --

Younger: You're about to say something about friends, aren't you?

Older: Annoyingly, I do remember being this precocious. But... You'll have a few relationships with women, and some of them will be difficult, and some of them you'll miss. Such is life. As for friends - I can count on one hand the genuine, lovely people I would sacrifice anything for. The others come and go. You have to learn how to feel the ebb and flow, because you'll end up cutting a couple of them out of your life when you could probably have just waited for them to fizzle out. Again, such is life.

Younger: Okay...

Older: Got any advice for me?

Younger: You're kidding, right?

Older: Not really. I'm serious about the burnout. I'm a little lost at the moment.

Younger: Well... First, find something to distract yourself for a while. Then go back to doing something you love. But you're me, you're supposed to know how to look after yourself and sort yourself out by now. You're supposed to be a responsible adult!

Older: Doesn't quite work like that, kid.

Younger: Oh.

Older: Anyway, thanks for the chat. Just... take care of yourself, okay? And enjoy all the trade paperbacks while you can afford them...

Younger: Wait! So I won't remember any of this?

Older: Well... Maybe if I get bored and decide to continue this exercise in self-conversation. Maybe you'll only remember the previous conversations if and when the next one starts, otherwise having to bring you up to date would get really annoying.

Younger: Um... Great?
*

It's all just bits of paper flying away from you

Diary of a mature student: Look out!

There are many positive things to the summer period. Oh sure, the only jobs that want you for sixteen weeks tend to be fairly soul-destroying, and signing on for unemployment benefit means selling what little dignity you have left, but...

...

Give me a minute here, I'm sure I had something.

Time is a pleasure (because it's oh so rare), I guess. Last summer I spent most of my time scanning every photo I could find and digitising my CD collection to iTunes then getting rid of the pesky physicality. Same with books - I adopted a 'keep only the ones you need' mantra and the rest went to charity shops or sold on Amazon.

Around ten years ago, you see, there was The Move. Oh, sure, while I was on the merry-go-round the first time I moved eight times in three years, between different sets of accommodation, but while doing so I rarely accumulated more than a rooms' worth of belongings, and then suddenly, in the final year, everything sort of... ballooned into box after box of stuff that I obviously thought I needed at 22.

But, as usual, I'm getting ahead of myself. The Move meant that everything from my previous twenty or so years was packed up - and I was a packrat as a child and even more so as a teenager, so, damn - and boxed up and stuck in a huge pile in The Garage, which is basically where I've spent the last two summers.

It's strange, because the closest way I can put it is kind of a personal archaeology - like digging through the strata of my own history. But there's an element of psychology to it, too, because a lot of the material stuff had become a kind of psychic weight, in that knowing I had a garage full of crap was weighing on me.

Not so much, anymore. Oh, there are about twenty boxes of books etc., but you can actually get into the garage now rather than fighting over the detritrus of a life spent absorbing pop-culture in a pre-digital age.

It's an interesting equation - at least, to me - to consider the changes. For me, it was fairly simple;

music = audio cassettes and cds
film = videos, and later dvds
literature = books.

For the generation I currently interact with, everything listed above is now available - more or less - as data. And it's mostly entirely up to your personal ethics whether you pay for it or not, because with a modicum of knowledge and an internet connection, everything is potentially available.

For me, converting to digital was a relatively simple process - albeit time-consuming. My CD conversion project has yielded an iTunes library spanning 70gb of music, etc., meaning that if I listened to everything there I wouldn't surface until June 27th. And that's more than enough for me, because God only knows I'll never listen to all of them - it was just part of the process to digitise everything.

Videos were a little less simple, because although the basic expedient of not having a video player anymore made them less valuable, certain ones still had to be kept because they might not be available otherwise. And the equation for books was simple; need / don't need.

So that's a lot of weight, just, gone.

In case you can't tell, yes, I've been pretty bored.

I do have something to do in about a little over a week's time, but... We'll see about that. I'm naturally skeptical, but I'll say no more than that.

The world - or at least my world - feels like a quiet and solitary place, for the next three months. And then, well...

Oh, well, the devil makes us sin:

Diary of a Mature Student: Week +6

I.e. six weeks after the end of the last crushing, needlessly stressful, poorly run semester. The incoherent blog entries of the last few weeks of that semester - quite why I felt the need to prosleytise the Open University to such an extent remains a mystery, as does the reason behind complaining about course choices so much - is lost in the pink, fuzzy mists of work-induced anxiety and the aforementioned stress.

It was not a challenging semester - in that I was only doing things I had done before, a few times, just to a greater extent - nor was it particularly bad, in the binary sense that some courses were good and some were bad. Because that distinction never really functions outside of simple arguments - the course that has nearly put me off filmmaking in toto had a few redeeming moments, washed away in the tide of annyannce and...

You know what? Complaining accomplishes nothing. Literally - I had a conversation with a friend who now works for the Independent Adjudicator for Higher Education last week, who confirmed that even official complaints about badly-run courses are more or less pointless.

But in an odd way, I can find no method by which to replace the actual, factual joy I found in filmmaking prior to the most recent filmmaking course.

And maybe that's the point - because when this is done, in theory there's a transition to an actual filmmaking job, which is not going to be sparkles and roses, sunshine and, indeed, lollipops, because it's a job.

I wish I could set my hand down and put my finger on the actual reason I'm currently having to try to find a new method to replenish my joy reserve when it comes to film. Even if the course wasn't great, it was only eight weeks - with four weeks of 'self guided tuition', which if that isn't an oxymoron, should be - then it was eight weeks, it's done now, the marks are back, let's all go drink champagne, hey?

If I was 20, that would be a decent rationale. But over a decade and a half later, time wasted feels an awful lot more like a crime.

Here's the fun thing; I like to place faith - sometimes unwarranted faith, but we'll come to that later - in people. I like to believe that people are basically good - at least, the people I'm going to come into contact with where and when I am at the moment - until proven otherwise. This theory is proving difficult to work with, at the moment, because nobody's perfect - least of all, myself. I complain - a lot, but you already know that, and now you know that I have unrealistic standards for people, which leads, paradoxically, to a disappointment not in the world at large but in myself for the continued unfounded belief that the world is essentially on track.

So when the people I place faith in are unreliable, or constantly questioning or undermining what I do, or incapable of doing what they're paid to do in some cases, I add a few more layers to my shell, the shell that it took a long time to get rid of fifteen years ago and that I can now feel calcifying back into place. I can now count the people I very truly trust in my current situation on the fingers of one hand, and the people I would turn to in an emergency on maybe two hands, but other than that, my faith in the essentially beneficent nature of humanity as a whole on one hand and the group of people I've ended up cliquing with over the last six months on the other hand has just... gone.

Right now I would have trouble actually setting foot on campus.

I don't know exactly why this is, but my going theory is because my addiction - and it is an addiction, just one that doesn't have any particularly harmful or noticeable side effects - has, however temporarily, soured.

See, I got like this last summer. The prospect of five months without anything film-related to do was just... difficult. But this summer I'm trapped between the necessity of taking a break from something that became increasingly difficult to stomach last semester and the fact that I don't have anything to go to. I feel like a TV policeman who is their job, and nothing outside of it, except that the job is still there - just not accessible.

So you're probably sat there, thinking, well, get a life, man - get a hobby, get a significant other, get something, just do something that's not film.

And you'd probably be right.

Now I'm everywhere that your iPod goes

Diary of a Mature Student: Tomorrow, I left Yesterday

I know, that's strangely Zen for a film student's blog.

In the event, I had kind of an odd experience today. The only way I can really explain it is that it was the psychic - or maybe psychological - equivalent of a static shock.

But even with the psychological component, there was a real, physical, mini-jolt of adrenaline, the kind of jolt I haven't experienced for a l-o-n-g time.  

The cause of all this? Seeing someone I used to work with in a supermarket.

Now, it's coming up to two years since I left my previous life, two years of enthusiasm, disappointment, summertime spent claiming benefits, you know, the usual fun. But this person was like my antimatter duplicate back in the (working) day; everything I was, she was the opposite, like a skewed mirror creating the image of two polar opposites.

So, at the same age, she was married, with children, and living in a house the family owned, and did all the normal social things like going out, drinking, etc.

By contrast, I'm still nowhere near the property ladder - although I've come to view this as a good thing, tangentially - with no partner (because even a marketing genius couldn't sell this package, to be honest) and, naturally no children. Instead of doing the social thing, I've basically been studying, on and off, since Space 1999. Even after the first ride on the merry-go-round, I did some night school, and then some postgraduate work sponsored by various entities, and now I'm suddenly two years down on a three year undergraduate course, and I'm wondering; should I just have got a proper job back in 2003?

Don't get me wrong, the work I had was a 'proper' job, but it was unlikely to lead anywhere. And it did pay for some fun courses - I can now give training on how to lift heavy objects, which sounds more like a superpower than it nominally should. But in terms of real, tangible benefits? Well, I got an iPod using my severance package, and a kick-ass DVD collection, and probably various clothes, books etc, but anything other than the cultural plankton net that my life is? Bricks and mortar? Stocks and shares? ISAs and Savings accounts?

Not so much.

And the shock of seeing her after two years was so visceral, and strange, that I couldn't even contemplate wandering over and saying Hi. It would have just been too, too strange, somehow. Because it was a shock - not a pleasant 'oh hey, there goes (X) who I used to work with - rather than a recognition.

I wouldn't give up what I've done over the last two years for anything, especially the people I've met, but my past life seems too long ago and too far away, now, except for the random skill set I've been trained into using.

And now, as the lone and level sands of the summer stretch off into the distance, I'm wondering, as I sometimes do, about the nature of temporality and, equally, how pretentious typing the phrase 'the nature of temporality' sounds. But still, times, things and people change - although the latter is debatable - and I don't know if my twenty-year old self would recognise me now. I like to think he wouldn't, because then I could creep up and smack the bastard upside the head for being such a strange little island of a person.

I have mixed feelings about my past and the things I've done. On one hand, some things I loathe, because the mixture of youth and inexperience bred a misplaced total self-confidence.

On the other hand, I think I need it, because without the past to push against, I wouldn't be how I am now.

And there's a thought to leave y'all on. Learn from your mistakes, because if you don't, you'll keep making them. If you do, you can learn, grow and evolve, so that you can start making all new mistakes.

And isn't that exciting?

Do you feel like a puzzle, you can't find your missing piece

Diary of a Mature Student: In the summertime

There are two sentences that pretty much sum up the end of term for me at the moment.

The first I don't have a source for, although I must have read it in fiction a few hundred times;

"Although the smile didn't reach his eyes"

Or variations thereof. Here's the thing; if there's one thing being older than the average student has taught me, it's the simple application of the adage that if you can fake sincerity, you've got it made.

I'm getting sick of faking sincerity.

I have met some amazing, committed people on this course, who I feel lucky to have worked with, and hope to do so again.

Equally, I have met some people on this course who I could quite cheerfully contemplate violence against.

How difficult is it to keep the following command lines in mind:

[if] (I / My parents / My LEA) are paying (X) in Tuition Fees, and
[if] My future depends, in some way, upon how hard I work now
[then] It is in my interest to work hard.

It's not difficult, surely?

I have an email friend who refers to something that might be relevant here, in that in a discussion about aging, he stated that you begin to develop '4-D' senses, in that you begin to see the future, or at least some ideas of possible outcomes, instead of just focussing on the day-to-day.

I get that now in a way I didn't before, because I'm surrounded by people to whom the future is an abstract concept and interpersonal relationships are not in any way important, because you can burn through people now on the understanding that you might never meet them again.

And why would you?

Once the three years are done with, the educated twenty-somethings scatter like dandelion seeds on the wind, with no indication who will land on fertile ground or not.

I should know, because, hey, I've already been a dandelion seed myself. It didn't work out so well, because, shit, here I am again.

...

And yes, this is probably just the end of term burnout talking, but then it's been a longer semester than it had any right to be.

Look at it this way. The average course runs to sixteen weeks - that's fourteen weeks with a two-week break in the middle for Easter, which, as previously discussed, seems all kinds of pointless.

Break down those fourteen weeks.

Week one is induction / introduction. You learn nothing other than how the course is going to work, and it's usually not even a full lecture.

Now, normally weeks 2 - 13 are tuition weeks, followed by a tutorial week for the final essay deadline week.

Not so this semester.

On one course, there was week one, induction. This was followed by weeks two and three, tuition. Week four was a tutorial week for assignment one, i.e. no tuition. Week five was the editing week for assignment one, again, no tuition. Week six was reading week; no tuition. Assignment one gets handed in. Then, thanks to an amazing administration, there was one instance of direct tuition between weeks seven and twelve, as the course finished a fortnight early. This is not to say there wasn't guided study, or individual tutorials, but, crucially, no tuition.

And there is little doubt people will be marked down for not knowing things that hadn't been taught, which is, naturally, a fun paradox.

This was followed on, last Wednesday, with a strange little quasi-lecture following the end-of-term party - and, yes, I'm still a little angry four days on, but it leads us on to the second sentence that sums up what's going on at the moment (although, hey, it's a lyric, rather than a sentence), which runs thus;

"Well, I feel like they're talking in a language I don't speak"

Ten years shouldn't render communication impossible, right? Well, no. It doesn't. But it does affect the assumption of communication.

Case in point; at this party, there were a whole lot of burnt out second years - [raises hand] - a few first years who had been involved as runners - and quite a few third years, all celebratory and whatnot, who were just happy, it seemed, at having survived. One of these third years, now on the cusp of their graduation, decided it would be the best thing ever to give me some advice on our work.

Now, this isn't the bad thing - advice is always appreciated. Nor was their tone condescending, or patronising, or anything like that. No, it's more that their advice consisted of things that anyone in my position already knew, delivered with such an amazing assumption that we wouldn't, that it was all I could do to keep a straight face. Maybe this is just the age talking, so maybe it's that it's difficult to receive what's masquerading as authoritative criticism from a twenty-one year old, but it was just... bizarre.

And the sad thing is that all the points were valid and valuable, just delivered with the assumption that myself and my group couldn't possible have considered them during our production.

It kind of set my teeth on edge, because I remember feeling like I was an authority on various things when I was that age, and my god how annoying that might have been for the people around me.

*

Let's take something positive away from this semester. There are actually a few valuable lessons to consider, believe it or not.

Firstly, the value of humility; no matter how much work you put into something, there's always a chance it won't be enough. If you did everything you could, then that's all you could do.

Secondly, the value of focus; make sure you're always maintaining focus on the right project areas - i.e. the ones you're marked for - because while area (c) may be as pretty as anything, it may also be irrelevant.

Finally, the value of self-interest; don't do anything for anyone who you know can't or - more likely - won't do anything for you in return, whether out of laziness, or spite. This lesson comes from the fact that I spent the last fourteen weeks functionally horse-trading; that is, out of the ten actors involved in our production, only two were involved without any incentive at all. The other 80% only joined in because they got something in return.

I began this semester believing in the value of interpersonal interaction and building working relationships, and ended it as a mixture between administrator, stockbroker, and pimp.

And even now, nearly a week after the final lecture and 'celebratory party', I can't switch off for the summer.