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.