Just found a quote that really sums up how I want my life to go:

"In no time, she was standing over Gabe, wavering.  Her drink—the same pink as her nails and lips—clinked, listing in her grasp.  “You an art student, sweetheart?”

“No.”  Gabe stretched himself up, rubbing his eyes, then his legs.   Off-white latex paint flecked his holey jeans.  “Housepainter.”

“Painting actual houses?  In November?”

“We’re indoors now.   Touching up actual apartments in the suburbs.”

“A real, live working boy!”

“As well as a scholar.”  He held up Madame Bovary. “Comparative Literature.” "

Beautiful. Also party went well and I'm nineteen now. Brilliant.

x

The Times always restores my faith in humanity.

"I was quite clever as a kid. Perfectly clever enough to pass exams and get into good schools and universities. But there it stopped. The very cleverest boys (single sex education, sorry, can’t extrapolate to the ladies), the ones who knew their 37x tables, read books that weren’t on the syllabus, nailed the top scholarship positions and had all sorts of nervous rashes, eating disorders and orthopaedic spectacles, are the ones who have killed themselves, flunked out of top-level physics at 19 and live on the street, or ended up as barristers."

Oh Giles Coran. Thank you for taking away my guilt for not having done a single line of any essay, attended any lectures or done even on iota of reading. Thank you.

He goes on to add - "My parents imposed this because they wanted me to be clever. And it worked very well. I began reading, took an interest in maths, did my piano practice, started coming top in everything and sailed through exams at the top of the year from 15 through to 21.

But when I left university I couldn’t get a job. I was too clever. And too damn weird. So I turned the box on, got hip to Neighbours and Home and Away and Fifteen to One, stopped reading books altogether, started eating with my elbows on the table and moving my lips when reading road signs, and pretty soon I was a reasonably successful journalist, author and TV presenter."

But I'm not sure if that's really the advice I would give myself... hey ho. Feel a hell of a lot better about my lack of productivity today.

x

So what's the point in doing a degree in something high and mighty like Philosophy when you could do a degree in Communications, Advertising and Public Relations or Journalism or Computer Arts or Creative Writing or Screen Writing. I understand I'm doing this degree to get an 'Education' but it's difficult to find any practical application for any of what I'm doing.

What, do you just turn up at an interview for say The Independant and say "Well I've got a Philosophy degree so I can write and reason"? Are they supposed to teach you how to actually be a journalist?

Wouldn't it be better to just do a Journalism course and get accredited if that's what you want to be?

I know I'm here cause I'm trying to find myself or whatever but isn't that a bit self indulgent? No-one I meet here really knows what they want to do, whereas back home at least people have plans. Amr wants to be a visual artist, Lauren wants to be a fantasy author. So he does Computer arts and she does English Literature with electives in creative writing.

I need an idea for a job. The world has changed and we are not learning how to move in it here. When I graduate I'll know a lot of theories and have read a lot of books and be able to have really, really good conversations with other educated people but I won't be able to make serious money. I won't have any buisness sense and I won't have any specific qualifications. All I'll have to defend myself with will be vague arguments like "Oh well I learned a lot about life..." Actually, no, I won't have. I'll have learned how to be middle class... or is that the point? Are you supposed to drift into a nice job, earn a comfortable amount, get married, raise a family and then send them to university so they can learn to be middle class too?

I don't want cheese knives - I want practical, applicable skills to enable me to progress in the creative industries and the media. I want to know how to design an advert, review a film, paint water. I'd like to be able to be an asset to a big corportation and have an opinion in fashion, art, politics that's well regarded. Most of all I'd like a nice flat in Manhatten or Central London.

Is art school even the best idea? Might even make more sense to drop out and go to Napier.

x

So my loan came through today. First time I've been out of overdraft since probably about march. It's rather depressing knowing that I'll be dipping back into overdraft soon because I've got to buy my books, but books are important and I do need them for my degree.

What I was wondering was, since I'm buying my academic books - can I justify spending a tenner or so getting some books just for fun. I'd rather like to own some neil gaiman and some more tim burton dvds.

I don't want to go wild - after all financially I plan to take life drawing classes, go to new york, see tegan and sarah and get an industrial piercing. Which is about £500 right there. Ultimately I'm not 100% happy about starting the year so far into my overdraft anyway.

God, for one thing I think I'll be cutting down on my drinking. Head hurts so much and I don't feel like I got as much out of last night as I could have. Am I going to join the gym? Probably not, but I don't know.

Oh my god, I can go to tesco. BRILLIANT!!!

xxx

"They say, here's the truth, and I say, is that all there is? And they say, kind of. Pretty much. As far as we know."

Neil Gaiman's Goliath.

I am in love with that man.

Downloaded Dorian Gray in an audio podcast onto my iPod. Looking forward to listening to it on the way to work. Waitressing temp work.... I need to leave and get the bus but all I really want to do is read page after page of dark escapist fantasy. It makes everything so much more bareable?

I don't think he's cliche. Mainly because the popularity of an idea in one social group doesn't nessesarily translate into being popular in the wider subculture. Some of my friends back home have never heard of him. And anyway popularity just means that something has a wide appeal - isn't that a good thing?

My life is too short to deliberatly seek out music, books just because they are obscure. Why should I? I think to do things in context, have some sort of internal narrative going on and alienating myself from my peers or contempories or subculture isn't really high up on my agenda. Just wish my spelling was better - tripping up on technicalities. Fight through to express imagination?

Better go to work.

x

Is the problem that I'm not giving myself enough exposure to visual art? Would it help to read comics, play video games, watch more t.v. and cartoons? I'm surrounded by photography, could I learn it? Then I could go into visual journalism and be employed by the Times or Vogue while doing cultural things at the same time and being arty. ????

I had a really good night out last night. Went to Ascension with Matthew and Shelley which was awesome and terrifying and brilliant and easy all at once. Man, I love the goth scene. I get the feeling if I just move through it as much as I can I'll expose myself to the right sort of writing and of art. Like the learning experiences will present themselves. Maybe it might be a good idea to get into GEAS and the like. The only thing holding me back, after all, is an outdated opinion that it's for geeks. But I am a geek - that's what it means to enjoy learning. And the geeks get the best jobs after all and in the goth scene i'll still get to party with beautiful people.

Maybe I'm not arguing this very well.

I just feel - like I often do - that I'm wasting time when I could be doing what amr is doing and actively going after the job he wants and the industry he wants. I am doing university but he is doing computer arts. I feel there is a difference.

I'm tired and I'm feeling depressed about my lack of technical fine art ability. I need to take my thumb out of my arse and buy photoshop, get some good equiptment and actually read up on the practical skills that writing and visual art involve.

Maybe I don't have time for the writing....

*explodes*

xxx

I just found this and it made me very happy so I thought I'd put it here where nearly all my thought, views, poems, essays and pictures seem to be ending up. This is from The Times and is by a collumist called Carol Midgley. She isn't one of my favourites but I just thought this was a brilliant description of being twenty - something that I fine very interesting as I'm eighteen and I've done the teenager thing to bloody death.

"This week came a survey that I believe to be 100 per cent genuine. It was conducted by John Lewis and concludes that the majority of women aged 35-45 say this is the age at which they have never been more content.

Well, of course they do. Because being 35-45 means that they are no longer twentysomething. And who would go back to that — the most overrated decade in the human lifespan? You couldn’t pay me to go through all that palaver again. Most of my friends — males included — say that they’d rather griddle their own kidneys than relive the constant anxiety, the gnawing insecurity, the simmering competitiveness with friends/siblings/ colleagues, the flatshares with people who don’t rinse out the bath, the mandatory partying, the “cool” people with whom you feel you must socialise but eventually realise wouldn’t urinate on you if you were on fire, your ludicrous sense of entitlement, the bad sex, the good sex that ends in humiliating rejection, the broken hearts, the melodramatic belief that if you stay in alone for one Friday night your life has ended."

Tee hee. Also - I now have information for two of my three courses (or at least as much as I need to know for the first semester) and I got a waitressing gig for tomorrow secured in the city centre which is pretty damn good. I'll be getting up at some point to shower and have some soup and right now I feel very happy and not a little bit content. Good fucking stuff.

There is a chance I might be able to do a joint degree in English and Scottish Literature. This would be a brilliant and largely unexpected turn of events as I was starting to lose all hope of ever doing anything that I love. I'll obviously still take Philsophy 2 as my outside and take Portfolio building classes at ECA in my spare time but I'd get to read loads and loads and improve my writing and hopefully have a better chance of working for the Student and just generally a better chance to do well. Because we all know I'm not Philsopher and any way I can change over to a more creatively free subject then so much the better.

It's been a good day and I'm happy. Watched Wuthering Heights with my mum and stayed in bed most of the morning drinking coffee (decaf urgh) and talking to Daniel about Cambridge and Physics and Music and Tesco. I'm a tiny bit less worried about him today.

I better go to bed. I have work in the morning - at 9.30am :S.

x

I know this sounds a bit far fetched but bear with me. So I'm feeding all this information into this thing which all these other people are also feeding information into.

When will the internet become consious? Cause it will, won't it? Sooner or later. You can teach computer's maths right? And then logic. So surely it'll start to learn... I don't know - taste? Cross refernece all our ideas and form opinion? Or is there absolutely no way that a computer would get that spark or whatever that is life.

I was just wondering cause I feel attached to the words that i leave on the screen. The thoughts that are left in/on the internet when i turn off the computer and go to bed. My diary in real life i feel has a personality of sorts that is like a pale imitation of mine and most novels do. So what about the internet? And if it could communicate back... they've tried it right? I mean like computer tech guys and the computers are missing something. Don't remember exactly but they can't form novel ideas? Or they can't convay meaning. All I'm getting is the idea of a water bird for a swan - i think that was the example used in an article i read on this issue a while ago. Yeah, a child can point at a swan and call it a water bird but a computer won't make connections in the same way. Maybe.

Maybe we should split the internet up into lots of little bits cause isn't it a bit stupid having an ultimate database of everything anyway.

Oh well, better go to bed.

Night LJ. x

You know that feeling where you wake up and remember everything you said to people last night and just want to hide from the world for like a week or two.

I feel a bit like that this morning.

Sorry fiona, sorry mum, sorry lauren, sorry daniel, sorry sammy, sorry, sorry, sorry caitlin.

I've got a pounding headache, like an emotional hangover. I think I'll hide today and tidy my room - there's a whole pile of boxes which a friend from church just gave me back.

Oh I'd forgotten about this. Photo's are up from the flatwarming.

xx

Reading amr's blog got me thinking. In it he reposts an argument between himself and a girl at his university about a phenomenon called 'trapping'. Trapping is basically as far as I can gather when you show a person (often a straight man) a picture of a person (usually a trans person) and ask them whether they find the person attractive. Once they admit that they do you reveal the true (?) gender of the person and then make fun of the victim (ie, accusing a straight man of being gay, usually to provoke some sort of homophobic (?) reaction).

This stikes me personally as wrong. [yes i know a few posts ago i said i didn't believe in the importance of morality but bear with me here].

Is it fair to gender fuck with people? It's one thing to drag/transition or whatever because that's how you feel most comfortable in yourself, but it's quite another issue to do it for shock value or to upset people's prejudices. Yes, maybe it's a good thing overall to enlighten others or educate them but I'm not convinced it's right. Don't you think it implies that nearly everyone else is stupid? It seems to show remarkable distain for what are essentially just normal people - who actually haven't hurt us.

Or do people deserve to be fucked with?

I'd be interested to here your thoughts on the matter.

x

I'm watching Twilight, it''s pretty good. Looks like I'll be in Dundee for nearly the whole summer so I think later tonight I'm going to try to put up my posters again in my old room. Maybe that will make me feel more at home.

Starting to settle in some sort of resemblance of my old routine (minus the smoking to a large extent). Saw Lucy today and spent a good couple of hours talking about trans theory and things. I haven't been to Out since I've got back actually but the bright lights would probably get me down anyway.

Bought 'Beautful Garbage' by Garbage yesterday from Grouchos (the second hand record shop here) and that's made me pretty happy. My music collection is improving in directions I'm pleased about. Been finally getting into Manson so everything hasn't been a total failure.

I've got my driving test at the start of september so i've got to revise and practice for that. Turn in round, emergency stop, left reverse, packing bay, parallel park - I just need to remember it all when I'm actually in a car. Hopefully mum'll let me fool around in the industrial park again this week.

Miss edinburgh every morning when i wake up but I guess it's good to be here and save money. I've forgotten how much I liked saving.

xxx

                Basically, I want to be opinionated and respected for my opinions. Journalism, I’d really like to. But doesn’t everyone want to be a journalist- it’s the one you say after teacher when you don’t know what to be. *frown* It’s not like my opinion is worth anything and they won’t even bloody let me change to an English fucking degree. Maybe I should just cry and plead with them some more when term starts again.

                Urgh, this career stuff is so stupid and difficult. I wish I knew what to do, just fast forward a couple years and see what I’m doing because, god, I’d really like to know.

                “This is how it how it works, you love until you don’t.” (Regina Spektor, On the Radio – name dropping or referencing? Are you supposed to write that kind of thing at the bottom and be like here is the information but I’m not trying to show off I just like it/have it stuck in my head/wanted to mention it as it helps my point)

                *collapses in a heap*

                I played the Sims 3 today and my Sim was stressed by around 2pm on her first day of work. I’d kept her up all night painting and writing. She didn’t even get the promotion. She’s still a paper girl.

Oh mary's ambition she want to be a politician she's been dreaming about it since she was a girl.

I have nothing to do. i could read a book or have some soup (or both at the same time). I'm loath to leave my house incase I'm needed, but I don't want to stay in all day and then not be needed.

So after apologies I'm going to chocolate soup with kyle and then later to wills with adi and hopefully caitlin :). I like my friends, they make me chuffed and warm inside.

Me and adrianne went to siglo's yesterday and had a right good laugh and sang bon jovi at the karioke, it's my life. We are obviously the coolest. And we went to the beach and I watched the sunset and text caitlin, portobello is definately not my favourite bit of edinburgh. Maybe it was a seperate town.

Alright, that's enough. I'm going to get dressed now and have something to eat.

xxx

I just found a passage my woody allan, that man understands my soul. How upsetting...

I'm revising for my exams at the moment and watching Snowcake on YouTube. Talking to Kyle on the phone with Adrianne lying on my bed reading her notes after a day with caitlin and chocolate and sunset song and garlic chicken. It was really pleasant.

Yasmin got into art college - I hope I have, but I don't want to get my hopes up too much.

Anyway, better get back to it.

xx

AisthetikosBlaed

How fucking kool is that. It's greek - aesthetics and then gaelic blue.

I'm blasting music through my flat - I've got a suspicion Catherine's on the phone, but I can't possibly turn it up any louder (sadly). I'm doing my Philosophy essay rather half heartedly, but still, it's getting written. Think tonight I might do some of the reading and then write the essay proper tomorrow.

It's tuesday - i've just spent £33 on tickets to see Reel Big Fish (playing the Picturehouse on the 18th, supported by Suburban Legend and Random Hand) so that's my money for this week. I really want to make it through this week without spending money on unnessesary crap - like food or alcohol or whatever :P. Seriously though, got to a get a budget going, until I can sort out some sort of enjoyable employment. Apparently I've become a bit fussy, lol.

Listening to Regina Spektor and eating cadbury's fingers. Apologies Caitlin - I'll reinburse you with bacon or something sometime :P :D xx I don't think i've technically been to any classes today, but I handed in an essay and started another one so i'm counting this as a productive day.

What else?

No-one's taken any rubbish out in days. I might take it out myself in a sec. But i've probably left washing up in the kitchen and if i go in there then i should do that instead of trying to make some sort of hint to my flatmates.

Oh and we got free condoms and cake today - the guy with the bucket of contraception recognised me, which is a bit worrying. But free cake!

Hugs,

Ana
x

I'm so tired, but I thought I'd post. I'm sitting on my bed, it's 12.30pm. Looking at my beautiful room full of books and paintings and maps and clothes and thinking; "God, how I hate going home".

Yeah, it was good to see my friends.

Yeah, it was good to see my family.

Yeah, it was good to show my friends the city I grew up in.

But.

But I left for a reason. And that reason still stands  - I couldn't live in that place. Edinburgh is home now, with her winding streets and her proper shops and her history and culture. I'm going to wander down the grassmarket tomorrow if the weather is good and look in on that waitressing job.

Right, better tackle Dunbar.

x

Also - good but confusing things have been happening. Apparently when it comes to pretty girls my self control is virtually none existant.