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...

*