#post-university

[askundeadbluelesbians]

Vicky's getting married, Oz is having a baby, what about Brian and Amira?!

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Written by @venusrrvelez Art by @hey-haven

[pecanbar]

Post-uni is definitely an interesting time.

I am currently substitute teaching, as I have only been getting temporary contracts in my area so far. On top of that, the teachers in my province are striking as of next week, so that will leave me workless for a while.

I’m finding myself in that loving mid-twenties spot of do I keep moving forward on this path? Do I accept that in order to get an Interim or Probationary contract I might have to accept an hour or more commute? Do I complete a Masters to add to my current education? Do I pivot completely?

I guess this goes out to any other mid-twenties folk are also going through it!

[britbrainspill]

I love community theatre, wdym tonight's rehearsal is cancelled bc everyone is 'busy' - I knew bitches in uni who'd skip their vivas if it meant going to show practices

[starrystudiesworld]

I’ve been thinking a lot about who I want to be and the life I want to live on the smaller scale. I feel like I’ve always been a big dreams, focused on the future type of person and neglect the present. Like what can I do now that will make me who I want to be? What are short-term goals that can make me happy now? I think exercise has been a big one. Like when I started exercising, my goals were all to get a mile run under a certain time, for example, and it’s demotivating when the progress was sooo slow. But, maybe the goal should be just to get through my workout and enjoy that I’m physically able to do it and have the time and resources to do so, because I know I’ll feel great afterwards and if I keep just being active everyday and enjoying it in the moment, I know overall I’ll feel better in the weeks to come.

Can I just let myself enjoy the moment? Can I take the time to enjoy painting my nails and it’s worth it because tomorrow when I’m working, I’ll love the fact that my nails don’t look so bitten up? Maybe it’s okay that my goals right now aren’t to win whatever recognition or get whichever promotion or secure a specific salary because I have my degree and I have what was my dream job. Maybe it’s okay that I want to like how I look and feel good about myself and enjoy my day-to-day.

But then I can’t fight the feeling that I’m going soft, loosing the drive that I defined myself with for so long. Am I settling, giving up on dreams? I don’t know. There are days where I hate this, and other times I feel at peace with it. It’s a constant cycle. In the mean time though, I’m seeing where everything takes me.

[goodeveningmistermouse]

I am hating not seeing my love because of his work for so long. But I am loving this new thing I am experiencing. I am painting and creating art again, which is what I was born to do. And I bought notebooks today, my first serious step towards my book, something much more specific than just writing the first thought that comes to mind. Self-love is such an important thing and I am so glad that I am experiencing it in a time that is so much more present than I ever imagined it would be.

[theanglosaxondiet]

I Didn't Listen To Myself

"Back home I would've been the chief of surgery. Or a cowboy..." – Michael Scott

Nobody listened to Cassandra, the fabled prophetess of the fall of Troy. In the annals of mythology, the guys who refused to listen to her and, instead, insulted and ostracised her, go down as assholes. But of course they're not really assholes, because Cassandra had been cursed to never be believed, so they had no self-determined option but to not believe her. The real asshole of the story is Apollo, who cursed her with her lack of credibility because she refused to have sex with him. As with many of the Greek myths, there are some serious consent issues...

Six months ago (or maybe it's seven months, the time is slipping away) I sat at my laptop somewhere (I think it was after I'd left Oxford, so presumably at home) and prophesied regret, nostalgia and all the complex emotions that impractical people carry around as baggage for their life. I reflected on three years of monotony by suggesting that they would be the best years of my life.

Of course, I didn't really believe myself. I talk a lot of shit, so it would be imprudent to do so. I wrote of that feeling of premature regret because I supposed it to be my sensation, not because it really was. And so, on this occasion, I played the role of both Cassandra and the laughing assholes.

Post-university life, thus far, has been a steady destabilisation of my feelings about the world. At 21, I am too old and too experienced to be reborn as some new person. I will forever carry my habits, good and bad, with me, and what change there will be will be slow, incremental and usually trivial. I may, one day, like the taste of fish pie. I may, one day, enjoy waking up before 8 AM. I may, one day, be able to read more than 35 pages of a book in one sitting. But, largely, I am cast in bronze, like a Rodin statue which is urging, begging to reform and reposition.

I am unemployed and, next week, I will be 22. 22 is halfway to 44 and a quarter of the way to 88, by which time, according to most statistics, I will be dead. Why am I unemployed? I am unemployed because: A) I do not know what I want to do or what I am doing, B) Those few things that I do want to do are solitary and unprofitable (not intended to be dirty), and C) No one even wants to give me a fucking interview.

Which isn't to say I've done nothing. I've indulged myself, here and there, with some writing and filming gigs. And if there's a Genius Grant somewhere for worrying about not doing things, I think I'd probably stand a fair shot at it. But I am, undoubtedly, in a rut where my days are played out like Alan Bennett monologues but without the intrigue or the talking. I wake, I bath, I read, I drink coffee, I watch The Big Bang Theory, I see my girlfriend, I cook, I eat, I sleep. And I live that day on repeat, filling the interludes with adhesive worries that stick my days together and tear me apart.

Right now I'm sitting at my computer, having spent the day watching football, reading and having a bath. I haven't put on trousers. I can see my junk. I am thinking about when Waitrose will close, I need to get food in. And I am dreaming absently of everything changing, regressing or progressing on a single deus ex machina moment.

My blog was always intended to be a diary for myself. But, like most committed bloggers, I am incapable of bothering to write if I don't think there will ever be an audience. Some people can scratch and doodle away in endless Moleskines, just to satisfy their own need to confess to themselves or some unspoken deity. I am not one of those people. I write my boring blog because I hope that people will read my boring blog. And I do realise it's boring, but I have a flicker of hope that people don't 'hate-read' it in the way that I read other people's boring blogs. We're all boring; it is part of the human condition to be boring.

I started writing this to compensate for my lack of success, to stake a flag into some small corner of the internet. I don't know where or when I'll write again, but, perhaps, in the continued absence of the success that I find myself inexplicably craving, I will re-colonise my old internet inglenook.

[tuckedintoacorner]

Seeking Knowledge

So, you guys, I have a bit of a conundrum.

You see, I took my exams in June and in July I was told I’d finished my degree. All stuffs completed, all requirements met, eligible to graduate… So right now I’m looking for a job. I interviewed last week and proved that I can be awesome, though I didn’t get the job.

And this leads to the conundrum. I miss learning things. I feel kind of adrift, not…

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