chess | (no subject)

I am currently kind of miserable, only managing not to be miserable when adequately distracted.

On Friday night there was an IC party. It was vaguely cool, although I got very stressed beforehand because we were late and because I hadn't thought about eating beforehand and because I realised halfway there that I'd left Calico back in Churchill. (Calico is my stuffed toy rabbit which is an important part of the Silka costume: I had to replace him with one of Pufferfish's house's Killer Bunny Rabbits, which made for some amusing 'plot' anyway).

There was LARP weapons practice on Sunday, which we stumbled across while retrieving my bag from Churchill (where I'd accidentally left it after the IC party) after church. It was good, because I got to use a big polearm sword and learnt how to shoot a LARP bow (I was even managing to get the arrows in vaguely the right direction by the end of the practice). I am now very achy and have a big bruise where Nicholas discovered that he really couldn't pull his blows using the polearm-sword as a sword.

Most of the weekend was spent playing computer games. I finally managed to finish Diablo (normal difficulty), with an Assassin (who still had fifteen skill points left). I also played Battle Isle 1 for a bit, but the third mission was too hard for me :(.

I am currently feeling quite lost and adrift in general; I think it's been less than a year since I've had anything meaningful happen to / around me, but I've gone from 'My life is obviously over, having done everything I was put here for, and I'd like to die now please, I'm sorry about the people I'm leaving behind but I'm sure they'll cope' to feeling like I've gone off the end of the map - you know, like in those Sonic games where there was a big pillar at the end of the map but you could sometimes jump/fly over it, and then you were just falling and falling down the edge of the world until you suddenly discovered that you'd hit the bottom of the map and rotted away into nothingness. That's how I feel at the moment - like I can't tell how long I've been falling and whether I'm dead yet or not, but know that nothing good can come of my current situation, and that I'm just withering away until there's nothing left of me.

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How many Sonic games had a big pillar at the end? Even in the original StH I could swear there was that bizarre spinning pole that signified you had succeeded even if you attempted to fly miles above it. And, in games (Sonic PC) where you had to perform an action to finish the level, the game was very good at not letting you go past the point of victory with it's invisible walls.

As for falling... I think, if you ever intend to live a decent length of time, you have to settle into something resembling a daily routine, simply because it's hard to think of a new thing to do every day. I think you'll find that major, life changing events will occur less often without your input, mainly because you've figured out a system where nearly everything works. I don't think you're going to wither away.

It's called summertime ennui. I think it's hitting everyone around now. Don't worry about it, it passes.

I had massive ennui of the kind you describe in my final year at university and in the couple of years after graduating, causing Mrs Lyle to mutter about "quarter-life crises" and suchlike. I'm only just beginning to escape from those daily feelings of futility and anger, and I'm still not entirely sure +why+ things are getting better for me, but they are, so maybe they will for you too if you can sit it out and keep a sense of humour about it. Then again, it may be that I only feel better because I've finally found meds that suit me, so I don't wanna sound like I've got all the answers!

When I reached my third year (this was over 3 years ago now) and the approaching end of my course I felt as if I had run out of life too. Everything until then had been planned and I just followed the clear path but there was an awful sense of dislocation and loss when this came to an end (especially a year later when I found that I couldn't get PhD funding and therefore my track of Planned Life had come to an abruptly premature end). I felt like a cartoon character who runs off the side of the screen into the blank paper, and even frantic attempts to emulate the famous scene in Wallace and Gromit and lay down track immediately ahead of the train I was riding were spectacularly useless. I had always been conditioned to make the most of every moment, list my new achievements on my cv each year, assess my forward progress towards a goal, etc - so no goal and no progress and no signposted direction against which to even measure progress has been a bit of a shock. Getting married at least seems a bit like a Life Goal (this year we are making lots of effort to change the letters before the name rather than the ones after, etc).
Also, at least if your life plan involved getting married as the big thing and then immediately breeding and raising the children you could just have extra children whenever the ones you have start growing up too much and threatening to make you do stuff like evaluate your future purpose, it isn't quite so easy otherwise.

Hello. I know exactly what you mean. I have to focus on one thing, so I feel like I am achieving something, otherwise it feels like I'm just wasting away, sat at my desk, staring at code that doesn't work day in day out. It goes away eventually.

The person coding your life sucks, and there is an interminable wait-state before they manage to load the scenery in for the next part. Don't worry about it.

you have my sympathy - I hope it gets better for you. Even if it is 'just' summer ennui, it's funny how frequently this gives way to autumnal numbness and later to wintery despair, so please take care of yourself. If you need any practical info on appropriate resources in Cambridgeshire or the systems in place at the university then let me know. If things are likely to interrupt your studies then timing can be important and the university are unlikely to tell you anything useful until it's way too late to do anything about it.

anyway... i'll butt out now. probably of more use is distraction: http://www.fat-pie.com , a website on which i have wasted many hours; wierd and melancholy but in a strangely uplifting way. And if that freaks you out there's always http://www.lordsoftherhymes.com to take the sting out of it (yes, it's years old and it STILL makes me tap my furry oversized feet!). good luck :)

That paragraph reminds me of the “what next?” conversation in Fight Club. Though I wouldn't recommend the conclusion they came to.

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Yes, Me Too

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feeling quite lost and adrift