TeacupTaxi.org {{ the girl who cried v.w.

Architectural Saturation

I clearly must be more dedicated to my website than I thought. Normally when I get busy I forget about it, finding entertainment in watching episode after episode of tragically awful television programmes. However apart from Game of Thrones, my free time is consisted of absolutely no free time at all. My first exam is on Saturday and I have spent the last few days cramming severely. I haven’t even watched the latest episode of Game of Thrones yet – though I have it ready. I would just like to blog first. It is unusual that my blogging has become my third priority during this strenuous period (when it’s normally way down the list). First priority, clearly, is revision. Though technically it could be called “study”, as I’m “studying” it for the first time. Maybe it will become revision on Friday night.. My second priority is to eat. And my third, as I mentioned, is to blog.
I believe my blog has become an escape for me. Before it was just a thing – a material object that I would add to every now and then. But now it’s as though I plan to blog whenever I have a spare minute or two, and I treat it with more care. I put far more effort into my blogs now. Every day I find myself craving to write more and more. Short stories and poems are pulsing through my brain and yet I simply haven’t got the time to let them out. I have been studying too much to have the freedom to do so.

I have reached architectural saturation. My first exam is art and architecture – it’s all I’ve been studying the last few days. I know I don’t really have a passion for my course (as discussed in great depth in my last blog), but I have thought about it quite a lot. If I have a degree under my belt, I have a fighting chance. There is a post-graduate course I am very interested in pursuing in Salford University in the UK. They work with various groups of people, including BBC Natural History. I would love to work for BBC Wildlife Magazine, and maybe even set up something like that for Ireland (though I’ll probably have left by then – I don’t intend on staying here). The fact the course is run in conjunction with them would be an important factor for me. It is ultimately a wildlife media course, and students are taught how to film and write scripts for nature documentaries, etc – pretty much anything wildlife media related. Because I am studying history, I have a “related course”, as one of the optional modules is a history documentary module. I got extremely excited about the wildlife part – I doubt I would take the history module as it is optional. However the fact I am studying history now means I basically have my foot in the door. I just need to keep it there for the next three years of my life.

I finally got around to watching Doctor Who while I was home last week! I have to say I think Moffat is doing a great job. I have theories myself – don’t we all? Particularly about the end of the second episode – those who have seen will know what I mean. It was just fantastic – there were so many turns. Every time I guessed, my theories changed course. And yes I claim to have theories now, but I somehow believe it won’t be that easy. We all know Moffat is a fan of the multiple-bluff. I would hazard a guess and say it’s more likely none of us will be right at all. In fact it’s probably nothing to do with anything… unless it is everything to do with nothing knowing Moffat. I can’t wait for the next one. Unfortunately I’ll be doing exams so it will have to wait until after. However if I put in the effort now I won’t have to do any exams again in September and I’ll have the summer to do as much or as little as I like.

Actually, that reminds me. I have set myself goals to complete. Some don’t have a cut-off point, whereas others I hope to achieve by a certain time. What are your long-term/short-term goals?

My short term goals are generally for the next two years or so. For example this summer I aim to start driving again, so that by next summer I’ll have my full licence. By Summer 2013 I hope to have saved enough money to buy a vintage mini and be able to drive to Glastonbury Music Festival. This summer, I also intend on exercising a lot as I desperately need to. Swimming, cycling and running are the ones I plan on kicking off. By next year I aim to be able to take part in a triathlon – not necessarily take part in one, but be able to if I wanted. I am terribly unfit so this would be wonderful. I’d love to be able to just get up and run somewhere like my friends. However I can barely get up and walk quickly somewhere.
My long-term goals consist mainly of the clichéd items like graduate, find love, have family etc… my major goal though is to work with animals in one way or another. I would love to work in a zoo but it is a hard profession to get into, so I think after careful consideration I would rather be a wildlife journalist. That way I would get to be involved in two things I love: the natural world and writing. Another long-term goal of mine is to publish a novel. I don’t care if I don’t finish the book until I’m old and decrepit. It would just be a nice achievement for me.

I think that’s all I wanted to talk about.. I promise to reply to your comments tomorrow evening after I’ve worked through more of my study notes. Thank you for the comments, it was good to hear varying opinions.

But now I must sleep, because tomorrow is another day.

Life reflections and a new layout.

Before I bore you with what I am about to discuss, I have completely renovated the website’s theme. It took me hours and I hope it’s not too hard on the eyes. I think it is easier to navigate this way. The banner is a bit plain – for me. However I’m happy with it. For now at least.

To say I am twenty and completely dissatisfied with my life would be a phenomenal understatement. Since I was a child I dreamt of working with animals, and I said I would always remain true to this. Dad always wanted me to be a dentist, but I refused, determined to fulfil my dreams. I suppose that is the naivety of youth – you somehow believe that you will end up exactly how you always intended. As a child I was convinced I would be in a committed relationship by the time I was eighteen – of course being in a committed relationship at eighteen is a preposterous idea but as a child it seemed almost normal to act this way. The greatest thing about the naivety of youth is that there are rarely consequences. At least not until you are an adult… I often feel I have failed myself: not a day goes by when I don’t think about my future. I think the ground fell from under me when I didn’t get my Zoology course in England. I’m still feeling the aftershocks. And yes, I may not have liked the mathematical side of things, but already my solid future seemed to be slipping through my fingertips.

Even worse was the deterioration of all of my hopes during my first attempt at a mediocre course that I had no passion for at all. So I started again, this time not searching for a course that would interest me, but a course that I could survive and get a degree out of. The short answer to all this: I chose this course because I knew that I would get it. I satisfied the requirements, and all that the course involved was reading and memorising – not maths or logic. Surely I would survive this, though I had no intention of making a career out of it – but no. Once again I am being thwarted by fate. I feel as though I should give up on my dreams of working with animals. It seems about as unlikely as me actually making it through a university course and being happy about it.

It never occurred to me just how mundane a task it would be to read these meaningless facts over and over until a migraine perused my skull. I thought it would be tolerable, that it would be easy to just memorise, to mass reproduce these hideous facts within lengthy essays. Writing is my one skill in this world. I was wrong about this course, naturally. I am aware nothing is easy, but surely interest in the topics makes it bearable. Every now and then I stumble upon a vaguely interesting topic, but the moment is brief and the topics usually have no relevance at all to examinable information. I constantly push away from what is in front of me. Even in school I was determined to uproot the tasks at hand. I do not like being told what to do, and somehow I think society won in that way and subconsciously pushed me into university. As another day passes I continue to ponder – maybe I was not built for university at all. Maybe things were never meant to be this way. As a child I believed most people went to university, and that those who didn’t had no aspirations, when in fact I have to come to learn it is quite the opposite. University is filled with students who do not know what to do with their lives, and are so passing the time by pursuing a degree in whatever area they are studying – rather like me, actually. Outside of university is different – people have yarn-length stories of how they hope to fulfil their dreams. I should have realised as a child my life would come to this. Even back then I gave up: I am a compulsive quitter.

I never followed anything through as a child – Gaelic football, soccer, basketball, tennis, and I have been to and left Taekwondo more times than I can count. I can’t really consider myself a martial artist – nor do I. Now, as an adult it seems I have swapped these disposable hobbies for university degrees. As much as I would like to be successful in obtaining a university degree, is it really that realistic? Look at me now – I’m writing. I am writing nonsense instead of studying, as writing is the one thing that has never left me. Not in the twenty years I have lived have I ever thought, “My god, writing is boring”. Not once. I even enjoy writing essays, though I despise the information I am being forced to put down. It was last year when I left my science degree that I came up with the idea of being a wildlife journalist. Surely if I want something this bad I would be able to put in the effort? I really do want this, but maybe I have fought so much to obtain the seemingly unobtainable that I am now exhausted. It seems so far away now that I want to just sit down, and give up. But then I am reminded at everything else I have given up; I am reminded of my failures. I am already a failure at this stage, and paradoxically believe I should succeed in my failure in order to succeed at something… anything. You can say that I am stupid for being so worried about my life at twenty, because “I’m young yet” according to several people I know. I suppose at the moment I just feel quite lost, and it scares me that I can’t find a course that actually suits me. I like writing but would hate to do a Journalism degree, and I even considered art once even though I have absolutely no artistic skills at all. It’s frightening how unnerved I am by all of this.

I want to pass these exams, I really do… but at the same time I couldn’t care less.

As for my Portfolio, it’s back up. I’m only going to put my writing on here as all my graphics are on my Tumblr account. I also added a new short story – Raindrops – to my prose section. Hope you enjoy.