College or some'm

I'm in college.

In fact, my first semester of first year is already over. Next week my exams start. (Yes, it all makes sense now why I'm back blogging again - procrastination!)

This semester has gone by so quickly and I don't feel as though I've done enough. I don't think I've socialised enough, studied enough, got involved enough, tried enough, talked enough, eaten enough, learned enough thought enough. There hasn't been the time for it all.

I've dreamed of going away to college all my life. As a child it was the only thing I wanted, my greatest aspiration - it epitomised growth, confidence and knowledge. As I got older I was terrified of the idea. I was certain I was going to fail. Fail at being an adult, at making new friends, at my course - everything! I still wanted it but now I was harrowed by doubt and anxiety.

And today here I am. How was my first semester? Quick. Frightening. Exciting. Freeing.
I'm trying to hang on to that last word. Freeing. I have more freedom than I have ever known these days and with that, responsibility. It's difficult coming to terms with it all in such a short time.

I don't know I've spoken about the three step rule to liking things before on this blog, chances are yes. Anyway the way it plays out,normally with people but apparently also with things, is that first I love-them-with-all-the-intensity-of a-thousand-suns, then I become dillilusioned once I realise they aren't perfect and then finally I accept and love them for who/what they are. Without exception this has happened to me with every close friend I've had. Now it's happening with college.

When I arrived here I was terrified but soon my fears were put to rest because everyone was in the same boat and everyone was kind and helpful and friendly. I began to get comfortable, I made excessive (for me) efforts to talk and connect with people. I joined societies and committees and everything was going well.
Then I started to encounter the not so fun sides. The fuckboys, the two-faced gossipers, I realised I still hadn't made any genuine friends despite having plenty of people who I talk to on a regular basis. It's study week and I'm still procratinating as ever. We don't seem to leaning anything in suffiecient detail, everything is just brief and vague.
So University isn't perfect. When I'm alone I'm worried I spend too much time by myself and when I'm socialising I'm worried I'm not spending enough time by myself. Life is tricky and complicated and I don't really know what I want out of it. But this is college. This is what I've spent years waiting for. At the very least, I'm glad to have moved away from home.

Friday

I'm sitting in the dark of my room listening to the rain fall against the skylight like continuous fingers pattering against the glass. It's 9:49 on a Friday night. I feel listless and anxious and cold. I came home from school today and watched Stuck In Love and without meaning to got caught up how problematic a film it is. Then to cheer myself up I watched 27 Dresses which happens to be a terrible movie but the message I got from it was a lot nicer than 'SIL'.

Summer is coming soon. That's a double edged sword. On the one hand I can't wait for school to end. On the other hand it means exams that dictate the rest of my life, and the beginning of the end of my future. If anyone has any suggestions for what I should do with my life please comment below.

I'm tired. Tired of a lot of things. I'm tired of not knowing myself and not knowing what I need. I'm tired of being so impatient that I give up on anything that doesn't produce immediate results. I'm just so tired.

I won't blog again for several weeks, maybe months. You didn't need me to say that, you already knew.

Hashtag Boyfriend

I wrote this last Sunday night and forgot to publish it. As per usual.

Boyfriend came to my house for the first time today. Which meant the first official meeting with my parents – obviously discounting the time he drunkenly asked my dad for his permission to go on a date with me. That’s a story for another time.

I was very nervous for this to happen. Largely because I feel like I've sort of forced him into it even though force is too strong a word. He wasn't exactly enthusiastic about the idea. I've been to his house and briefly met his parents so it not exactly out of place for me to expect him to also come to mine. We had arranged it at a previous date but then we had a sort of argument and he fell sick so couldn't make it.

Last week I brought it up again and he was very against the idea because he’s nervous and a little awkward and also I probably make my parents out to sound like psychopaths. I guess I pushed it a little, as in I didn’t simply accept that this wasn’t going to happen. Because it kind of has to at some point anyway? I by no means demanded it however. Anyway he wasn’t convinced. The following day I brought it up in conversation again. It was a very smooth, very casual entrance and by no means pushy at all.  He mentioned that his record player was fixed and so I could play the record he got me for Christmas at his house some time. I half-jokingly said you should come to my house first. To which he never replied. And the following day he never replied. So two days later he sends me a random text about the reasons for Hagrid getting expelled from Hogwarts. Boys, am I right?

The result was anyway that he brought up later in the conversation the possibility of visiting my house this weekend. Which thoroughly took me by surprise. But Sunday arrived and so did The Boyf. I was nervous because I thought my parents would barrage him with a flock of questions. He was nervous for similar reasons, I don’t doubt. My parents introduced themselves, my dad shook his hand (ugh) and then they left. Like actually left the house. They had some ‘errands’ to ‘attend to’ in ‘town’. Who knows what that was about and I surely don’t care. I was just glad they were leaving.

My brother also left not long after to go training (he’s an athlete lol what a weirdo) and my sister doesn’t leave the room when there are strangers about. So we spent the afternoon/evening in the sitting room watching Gone Girl and later The Royal Tenenbaums. When my family returned some hours later and it was time to eat I became increasingly anxious. I’ll try and explain. To a certain extent I felt responsible and slightly guilty for the fact that he was at my house at all. I know that’s not being fair on myself but it’s how I feel. Anything that happened would be as a result of my asking him to come. I really didn’t want to scare him off. I didn’t want my parents to make him uncomfortable or assault him with unnecessary conversation. I didn’t want his first experience of my family to be a bad one.

(It’s striking my just now how little I care about what my parents and siblings think of him. Honestly, that was never something that I even thought about except briefly. I feel like I should perhaps be worried that I care so little for their opinion.)

Anyway due to my not wanting to scare him away I tried to rush through the meal as quickly as possible. No easy task when my mother decides to cook for a rugby team. Two massive bowls full of chips and chicken goujons, a pizza, cupcakes, and some kind of cake covered in marzipan and chocolate. Jesus mother, how many boyfriends were you expecting?

Conversation was alright for the most part. Unfortunately my mother decided the best way to fill any kind of silence was with questions like “How’s school? Are you working hard this year? What do you want to do in college? What do you want to do after college?” Not even kidding, those were the exact questions she put to him. I finished up and we quickly migrated back to the sitting room where we continued watching The Royal Tenenbaums.

My other brother who is a teacher was in Dublin all weekend. I don’t even think he was aware of the fact that I have a boyfriend which makes the following story so much worse. We heard the car pull up outside and him enter through the front door as we hastily moved so that there was an inch of space between us on the couch. A moment later he opened the sitting room door and stood in the entrance for a moment before wavering backwards slightly, out of what I can only assume was shock. He stood there for a full two seconds before stuttering, “Oh…is…um…anyone around…or…” To which I directed him to the kitchen where my family had been forced to spend the evening. I can’t even begin to imagine what he was thinking. He comes home after being gone for a mere two days and his sister on a couch with a strange boy who he had no notion even existed. All he wanted was to return after a long journey to relax on the couch in front of the fire and suddenly it has been invaded by some random guy getting cosy with his sister. No wonder he nearly fell over with shock.

At around 8:15 pm my boyfriend’s dad arrived and they left together. That was it. He was gone and nobody had died. It almost seemed anticlimactic but in the best kind of way. I texted him later to make sure he didn’t die from a delayed shock reaction and he said it wasn’t as bad as he’d expected and he actually had fun. He even said he’d come again. Yeah. We came from not talking to me for nearly two days because I mentioned it, to willingly agreeing to do it again. Amazing.

Later while ironing my shirt for school the following morning my dad tried to talk to me. He does that every now and again and it’s rarely comfortable for either of us. I’m almost proud of him though. He genuinely seems to be really trying to be fine with this. He said Boyfriend was “A nice quiet little chap” which I suppose is a good thing. He comes up with the weirdest compliments, my dad does.

The whole event went much better than either of us had dared hope. It's a relief that it's over all the same. I'm definitely not going to be pushing for it to happen again.

A Challenging Ignorance

I never quite understood the mechanics of a romantic relationship. Why was it so different to a friendship? Why was it so difficult to have a clean breakup? Why, even with a clean breakup, is it difficult for the people involved to completely move on?

I put these unanswered questions, and more, down to my own ignorance and lack of experience. I have always feigned empathy in situations that required it because I had literally know comprehension of the complex affairs of the heart.

For the past two months, or there abouts, I have had a boyfriend. He's strange. Our relationship is strange. Sometimes I'm not even sure it's exactly healthy but I think everyone has moments like that. Provided the good vastly out weighs the bad, you're probably fine. The thing with us is that I'm never quite sure where I stand. That's a strong statement to make but please don't be alarmed. Here me out.

He's a seventeen year old boy and I'm a seventeen year old girl. I like to think I'm quite mature for my age and my mother likes to back me up on that, though I can never tell if it's just empty flattery on her behalf. In anyone's opinion I think he would be considered immature. That's not meant as an insult, just a fact. And though this is my personal blog I don't feel comfortable going into details about him here, for his own privacy.

I'm not the kind of person who has dreamed about falling in love or even having my first kiss or sex for the first time. Of course I went through a phase where I thought the one thing that would prove my worth would be to secure a boyfriend. After all, what girl has not been taught that the ultimate goal for her is to make a man want her? But excessive reading and becoming aware of feminism has long ago helped me come to the realisation that I don't need anyone else to tell me I'm important. I will only ever be as important as I believe I am.

I suppose you could say I've had a fairly negative opinion of relationships for several years now. When I say negative - that's really far too strong a word to use. What I mean is that I saw dating as something other people did, something I might/probably would want to do at some point in the future but right there and then, I did not. I didn't desire a boyfriend or a girlfriend or any kind of romantic or sexual partner (save for those occasional moments of loneliness or, let's face it, just pure lust).

I also had this impression that being in an exclusive relationship somehow meant missing out on the finer parts of life. What these 'finer parts' were I have no idea however I'm pretty sure I've been missing out on them long before I had a boyfriend.
Then of course comes my general aversion to monogamy. I'm learning however that polygamy and/or an open relationship and the likes, involves more than simply deciding "I'm cool with seeing other people while my boyfriend sees other people." I'd like to think I'm capable of trusting someone and feeling comfortable enough with myself to be in that kind of relationship but I can also acknowledge that it's not for everybody. Emotions and self-esteem get in the way. Things can get messy very quickly if everyone involved doesn't know exactly where they stand.

So back to my current relationship. I'm of the belief that for a relationship to work consistent communication is required between all partners. It's difficult to make someone talk when they don't want to. It's also difficult to uphold a relationship when your partner gets defensive any time you try to have a real conversation with them. I'm not completely guiltless, I'm well aware of that too. But when someone is so sensitive and insecure it becomes challenging to say anything without fear of offending him - well that's not a great situation. I know, I'm making it sound pretty bad. Sometimes it is quite bad. But is it bad that I don't actually care?

In the past couple of weeks our communication has reduced even more due to my own lack of motivation. I don't see why I should constantly have to be the one forcing him to open up. So I've stopped trying. I no longer care. I'm not sure if I don't care about the relationship or about him or simply about his lack of forwardness. This confusion has led me to consider whether it would simply be better to finish it now. If he doesn't seem to care enough to talk and neither do I, then what are we even doing?

On the other hand however, I think this is possibly the most low-maintenance relationship I'll ever be in. I always said I'd love a relationship where we didn't feel the need to talk every day. One that wasn't so intense that I distracted me from my other life goals. Now that I'm in a relationship that is almost exactly that, I'm just not sure I like it. At the same time, I'm not ready to give up on it yet. This was my idea of the perfect relationship. Maybe it's not quite how I expected it but I need to at least give it a chance. Relationships are weird. I've always known that. Now I've finally realised that I was in fact, not so ignorant after all.

2015. Bring it.

"You, me, four o' clock, behind the school shed!"

I normally feel incredibly optimistic at the beginning of a new year. Be it September when school starts back or the end of December at the prospect of a clean slate, I feel so prepared and confident that this year I will in fact be successful.

I don't know if I've finally matured enough to see that things too often don't change but this year has been different. In September I didn't have my typical study plan drawn up. I didn't even have plans to work harder. All I had was determination. Because I had survived fifth year. I had gotten through the most painstakingly difficult academic year of my life and now I was on the home stretch. All that was left was to survive another ten months and I was free. I will be free. Done with school, done with parents, done with childhood, finally.

I know that no one ever admits they felt like a child but sometime shortly after turning seventeen I truly believe I left that stage of my life behind. I can't say what changed except my mindset. The world felt different, like I had suddenly removed a glass screen from between us. I was more sure of what life meant to me and what really mattered.

I haven't quite decided if I'll make New Years Resolutions for 2015. Probably not. I mean what's the point? After January I completely ignore them. That's not to say I won't have any aims for the coming year but I think life as it is is enough of a challenge at the moment. I don't need to pressure myself to fulfill my dreams, at least for the first half of this year. Maybe when my exams have finished and all my hope has been taken away from me I'll start thinking about a plan B for when I don't get into college.

I don't know what I should do, to be honest. I hate studying so much. I can't concentrate during the holidays which is when I should be catching up on all the work I didn't have time for last term. I know I'm intelligent but that's simply not enough to pass the exams. It also requires consistent work and repetition and revision. I just don't want to. But this is the last year. After this I'm free to get a job in a shitty bar for crap money that I waste on alcohol. Every artist's dream, right? If I could just work for the next six months I'll be free to ruin my life rather than just waste it like I'm currently doing.
So. 2015. Bring it on.

New ME?

It's coming up towards that time of year again. No, Christmas is over, keep up please.

I don't stick with my New Years Resolutions. That is something I'm pretty resolute about. I don't expect it to change. Long term goals aren't my thing. That's why I blog. I start writing a post with zero plan of what it's going to be about, I edit it immediately after and I post it. Done.

Yet, I have nineteen drafts on my blogger account. Many of theses draft posts are finished but they're very personal and I'm not ready to post them yet. More of them need only a little editing to get them to the publishing front. Still, I haven't gotten around to it.
I'm not good at blogging. I don't mean the writing part, I'm fairly decent at that if you like painfully cheesy writing. And I've definitely got the blogger attitude on point with the whole game of starting every other post with an apology for WHY I HAVEN'T BLOGGED IN SOOO LONG.
The only thing I'm missing is actually blogging. Or having an actual schedule. And I can whine and moan as much as I like about the Leaving Cert and school taking up my time but come on. Grow up. There will always be something that takes from your time, if you let it. Even in the summer - even now, during the Christmas holidays - I could be daily blogging, I have the time. But I'm just not.

So 2015? I don't know what it's going to bring. I'd love to blog daily but who sees that happening? I'd love to blog weekly but that never seems to work out. More than anything I'd love to write posts that mean something. Posts that are important to me, rather than just this kind of filler. But come on. Grow up.

x

I don't even know what months are anymore

December 23. Where the fuck did the time go.

I haven't been blogging as much as I wish. To make up for that I'm going to blog daily for the rest of this week. It's Christmas after all, the time for giving.

I feel really guilty because I haven't been writing at all lately. I don't count the diary I've been keeping since July because it's literally just a stream of thoughts and I don't even remember writing half of it when I read back over. I've been neglecting everything in my life lately. My ambitions, my future, my school work, my relationships, even my favourite TV shows are being put aside. I can't say what I'm even doing instead. I'm spending too much time inside my own head and yet I don't feel like I'm spending enough time there.

As an introvert I need alone time. I need to think things over and evaluate situations and feelings and if I don't get to do that I start to unravel. Lately all I've had time for is school, homework, talking to my boyfriend and sleep. I haven't written in my diary in about two weeks. I haven't opened the blinds in my room in over a month. On top of that I haven't kept up this blog.

I've mentioned before how important A Hitcher's Goof Hunt is to my mental processing and overall peace of mind. I just never seem to make time for it. It's also an outlet for me to document my life, practice my writing and do something productive while simultaneously procrastinating. What more can you ask for?

The year is almost at an end and you know what that means. New year's resolutions that I will never keep! Yeaaayy!
I don't actually know why I bother anymore.

Oh yeah this thing

I wrote this after returning from a choir competition in November. So don't judge me, I had great intentions for this blog but as usual...yeah.

*Acts like she didn't leave for ages again*

Welcome back to my weekly blog where I post weekly. Every week.

I don't have a topic to talk about today. There are things that have been happening that I will write about soon. But at the moment I'm tired and I'm typing this on my phone.

Two days ago, Thursday I went to Sligo with the school choir to take part in the International Sligo Choral Festival. (I'm not sure why it's called international - there are only ever Irish choirs there.)

This is literally going to be a post telling the bones of what happened and nothing more. I'm too tired to be interesting.

We won the religious competition with Lift thine Eyes and Gaudete.

The second competition was the one we really cared about though. The Dancing Song is easily the most difficult song our choir has ever done and The Irish Blessing was pretty challenging too. Because TDS is unaccompanied there is the risk that we'll go out of tune.

We didn't go out of tune though. We sounded incredible, it was one of our best performances we've ever done with it. And the Irish Blessing was so beautiful.

We all know we deserved to win. Our songs were more difficult, more energetic and downright amazing. And yes I sound completely arrogant but I won't apologise for it. The winning choir were lovely and I understand that the judges wanted to award someone else. I probably would too if I were in their situation. We've won both competitions for the past two years. It was time someone else broke our monopoly.

I do feel somewhat cheated though. We should be judged on quality of the performance. One of the judges later told our teacher the Alto section sounded like 'liquid gold.' In the comments after both performances the judges said we sounded like a 'university choir' we had such maturity to our sound.

I'm really just documenting this for future reference. I no longer mind that we didn't win. We had so much fun learning and performing the pieces that the trophy seems irrelevant now. Of course our choral instructor will never believe that.

Is this Life?

Hi there. It's been a while since I've talked to you. How are you? That's great. I'm actually not in the best of moods right now. Allow me to elaborate.

My name is Kate. I'm seventeen years old and I live in Ireland. I'm still in formal Secondary school education but after this year I will finally be free. Here in Ireland we take a minimum of six subjects - most schools insist on seven - for the final two years of school before completing one exam on each of them, from which our overall grade from the six years we spent in school is calculated. As my Irish teacher is fond of telling us "Braitheann gach rud ar lá amaháin, i seachtain amháin i saol an dalta." Everything is hinged on one day, in one week in the life of a student. You might think this would lead to an immensely unhealthy amount of stress in people my age. You'd be abso-fucking-lutely right.

Another point on our schools: A lot of the teachers give students hand written notes or photocopied sheets for every topic studied which we keep in a folder or hard-back copy. Some of my classes don't use books at all - everything is in my teacher's own words. I'm not going to get into the pro and cons of this as a teaching method because personally I haven't too much of a problem with it. What I have a problem with is how we are told to study entirely from one set of notes. We are completely dependent on these notes for all of our study material and that makes me anxious. Spectacularly anxious.

That brings me to the reason I'm having a particularly bad two days. Because of the number of classes and the appalling amount of books and folders every student has each year has a communal locker in which we keep our folders which are too big to fit in our personal lockers. That is where I keep my biology notes folder in which every topic I've studied from the beginning of sixth year until now is hand written in the most concise notes any teacher has ever given me. (My biology teacher is incredible just fyi.) Last Wednesday I left my folder in the locker rather than bringing it home as I usually do. I did this 1. because I had so much other homework that I knew I wouldn't have time to study it that night and 2. I was exhausted and I just wanted to get an early night and do as little as possible. The next day was Thursday and first thing that morning I went to the folder locker to retrieve my biology notes. You can probably see where this is going. My folder was gone and no matter how many times I checked under and behind the other contents of the locker I couldn't find it.

I didn't immediately stress out. I'll admit I was a little worried but I thought maybe it's at home? I was only about 95% sure I'd left it in school the previous day. Still, I looked around the general locker area and found nothing. Thursday evening I went home and wasn't at all surprised to find that my folder was not in my room where I normally study. That night - last night - I wrote a Facebook post asking if anyone had seen it around the school. I think the comments let you know exactly how important these notes are to students. Here are some from people who are even my close friends offering help and sympathy.

I know you're probably thinking that we're just being melodramatic teenagers exaggerating every little hiccup that happens in our life. I was honestly close to tears today looking for the folder again in school. Yet another note on my school: we don't have a lost and found system. We've never had an effective one in all the years I've been in that institute but today I went to the caretaker to ask if there was any system of collecting lost items and he told me there was nothing. If you lose something you look for it and if it doesn't turn up, too bad. I walked all over the school three times today searching for it everywhere and I had friends helping and it's just not anywhere. I don't want to think that someone has taken it intentionally but there is literally no alternative at this point. I was hoping it would turn up but after two days I don't know what else to do.

I'd be the first to admit that I'm not the most organised person in the world. But i'm also not a careless person. I've never lost a book or even a copy in the six years I've spent in secondary school and now someone has taken the most valuable study notes I own. Life is fucking awesome.

I know my stress levels are increased because I'm exhausted and other stuff is happening and that's why I'm so upset over this. Wow I just wrote an entire post on my biology folder didn't I? Yeah sorry about that. Actually I'm not. I'm not even going to read back over this. #YOLO

Let's Never Break Up

I miss this blog. I miss pouring my heart out to my virtually non-existent reader base. I miss recording my mundane life story. I'm also going absolutely insane without you. Let's never break up.

So, What's new?

Alex Day is being a douchebag on the internet again. Hopefully I'll actually follow that sentence up with some context in a full blog post when I find the time. At the moment it's the middle of a school night and I still have a ton of homework to complete.

I'm in my final year of Secondary school and I hate everything and everyone. It therefore seems to make sense that I would return to the internet to vent my 3M0T!ONZ.

On the bright side: It's finally acting like autumn! October is upon us, officially my favourite month. We've got Halloween to look forward to, dark evenings, hot chocolate and marshmallows, winds howling half the night - what's not to love? I get that I might sound sarcastic but I truly love this time of year. I'd take a freezing bed over a sweaty summer afternoon any day.

I'm going to make you a promise right here and now. Please try to forget about the previous promises I made to you, I'm going to try really hard at this one. I'm going to blog once a week.

Are you still there? Don't freak out it's going to be okay I swear. I have a second blog which I'm sure I linked to in a previous post. Once a week I will post here or there and nowhere else. I'm going to make this work.

I feel like I'm not a person anymore, I'm just a skin-sack full of stress and procrastination and more stress. One of these days I'll go into detail about how you definitely should not do school. I've practically an expert.

Remember how a while ago I was going to stop procrastinating? You didn't really believe that would work, did you?

Other new, other news...Oh I'm entering a poetry reciting competition next week. Yep. Why you ask is a socially anxious glossophobe entering a competition that involves speaking in front of a large group of people? Because I can muddafucker. Because I persist in trying to prove to myself that I can and will not be held back by my emotional limitations. And because I get to miss a day of school to go to a boys' college. Bite me.

This was fun. I miss writing silly things on the internet that may potentially convince employers not to hire me. I live life to the fullest, I know.

So I guess I should now go do that homework that was due in today. Wow. I just love my freaking life.