Notes from Under the desk.

When you can't sleep, what better to do than Blog?!  I could be writing an essay, but that would get the cogs turning, and to be honest I'd rather get to bed before too long.  This is an exercise in unwinding.  I hope it works, otherwise it's down to one mug and four chamomile teabags.

With a little over a month to go before my university year is officially over, there is still so much work to be done.  At least I'm writing about subjects I'm interested in, or at the very least, I've curved an glance on them I can take interest in.  Getting my ideas down on paper, can sometimes feel like a chore, but I don't think that's quite the right word.  I'd like to think I'm meticulous over my work, but that isn't true either.  So what is it that makes it so hard for me to let the sentences flow?

I fear it is perhaps, my indecision in essay writing - the inability to take an idea and just bloody run with it.  As soon as I gather enough confidence to do so however, I'm away.  Until then though, it's an awful lot of procrastination.  I liked it when I minored in film as well.  Procrastination involved watch silent movies from the twenties, which would later become useful.  Still, Chaplin's City Lights has me in stitches every time!

Despite this difficulty in writing though, I have recently decided to write a novel.  Admittedly, it's not my own story, or at least, at the moment it isn't.  It's something my father was writing before he passed away just over 6 years ago, something he'd worked on for years, but never saw the light of day.  Sadly, the majority of his work and research has since disappeared, and I only remember snippets of the story he told me, from the screenplay he was writing.  Writing for screen isn't something I'm familiar with, but I don't want to give up on this narrative, and it's something I'd really love to do.  The modules I've studied over the past year have shown me how diverse and original a tale it was, and something that would speak to many people.  It's tale of emigration, and maps, but that's all I'm going to give away for now.

This may just be a really crummy idea, but I'd like to try it out, see where it gets me.  Besides, I'll have a whole year (at least) without any deadlines or essays to write, so why not take the opportunity to be creative with my research?  If my dreams of having a thesis published about Archipelagic literature, with Dr Thomas Harris on the front, don't come true, then maybe I can publish something for the Fiction department in Mr B's Emporium of Reading Delights.  Lovely.

Tuesday

Having spent my (long) weekend working in a coffee shop, I get to wait until today before my lectures and seminars begin.  What better way to begin the week than looking at maps of 16th century London?  Reading early, and often conflicting, histories of the city and its development, and juxtaposing these with the views of cartographers and artists alike, has allowed me to gain an insight into both the potential seen in the city, as well as the sense of nostalgia for the older city, rather than the newly developing one, that's prominent John Stow's work.  Seeing (in the maps) the city spill outside of its walls, and grow into the hub that we have today is actually pretty astounding.  To be honest, looking at it clinically, it's pretty obvious to say that the capitol's expanse was anything but slow.  

However, the point I'm making here has little to do with London.  I myself have little to do with the city, other than an undying love for Chelsea football club and the Underground.  What it got me thinking about was change.  Despite revolutions, great fires, and world wars, the core of the city is still there, with many a landmark making it visible, but so much has changed around it, grown around it, that the centre itself must have changed too?  My initial question is whether or not London has maintained its identity despite everything it must have endured.  I suppose to say it's 'endured', is giving the answer, but I can hardly speak from experience; I would say there aren't too many who can.

The real point here though, is how do we change, adapt, or hold fast against that which changes around us?  Now speaking from experience, I would say I'm not the same person I was a few years ago when finishing school, or even a year later when starting university; and for this I am thankful.  But with images of England's capitol in mind, am I still at heart the same person I was, perhaps with just the outer layers changing?  Or even, is the real me lost beneath a skin of ever changing layers?

To me it's obvious that these thoughts are not coincidental.  I have, for years now, been lost as to who I am, and more confusingly, who I want to be.  Hitting the grand old age of 22 in a couple of weeks, I wonder (constantly) what I should be doing and where I should be going.  What's more, I wonder whether or not I should be thinking about 'should' or 'want' or 'could'.  

At the moment I'm still very much living within my own present time, and using these words in a passive sense or past tense is something that's still in my future, or with a little luck, isn't.  What I'd like to know is how other people define themselves, whether or not they use their choices as a means of finding meaning, or if their choices reflect who they really are.  I'm starting to ramble now, and my own frustration is shining through.  Maybe I should stick to making coffee.