This site has now been retired. I've moved to my new site Silverknife, where you'll find new blog posts and all my latest projects and photos. These pages will remain for at least a while, as I know some of you are still looking through the archives, but I'm reposting my travel journals and many other articles on the new site. Come and check it out.
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Mark's Daily Weight Update: 90Kg.
Today's news is kind of mixed.
Thursday and Friday were pretty hard for me, as I was trying to get my head round this logbook project which was my last assignment for uni before exams. My stress levels have been rising again, drinking's been back up and my diet has been degenerating as I tried to gather the motivation and focus needed to do this bloody thing.
It's not that it's a particularly difficult assignment - in fact, the difficult part has been, in a way, the fact that it wasn't a challenge. I knew I could waltz through it. The problem is that it's such an utterly worthless fluff exercise. I quickly got the impression, and my tutors have confirmed, that it was set purely because the external examining board wanted one assignment that wasn't an essay or an exam. There's no particular reason for it, and pretty much everyone agrees that an essay would be a better test of our knowledge and abilities than cutting out newspaper stories and analysing them.
Back in March I talked about my problems getting motivated to finish the course given the changes in myself and my situation and intentions. I've felt for a long time that this course is no longer the right place for me - it's in conflict with what I would call the Flow of events that I see myself a part of. I joined this course to learn and to expand myself, and I've achieved my aims. I've expanded my base of knowledge, learned a lot of things which will be of use to me on my path, and most of all I've gained confidence and regained my belief in my intelligence and ability to learn, which had been crushed by years of joe jobs.
These three years have given me space and time to recover from the harm I suffered as a ticket inspector, and learn to love myself and others again. Without this time and the people I've encountered, I wouldn't be the person I am now, the person who's capable of taking the next step into SAEL. Essentially I've gained everything I hoped for and more. It only remains to finish the course and grab that piece of paper.
Which is where the problem occurs. I don't care about that piece of paper any more. I don't respect the people giving it, or the people who would want to see it. If I ever end up in the position of needing that piece of paper (ie, having to justify my abilities to someone who doesn't know me in order to get a job), I will have failed in the path I'm now choosing for my life.
All that said...it's smart to have a fallback, right? And it would make a bunch of people I love, who believe in this process, very happy. So it seemed like a small thing to just finish the course. But more and more this feeling of pressure has been building up. My desire to achieve the degree has been decreasing steadily, while my resentment and frustration at the process has been increasing. Friday night I got to the point where I basically had to make substantial progress on the logbook (it has to be in on Tuesday) and I just couldn't do it. I sat and stared at my list of articles, and I couldn't do sod-all.
So I got more and more drunk, hoping that at some point I'd stop caring enough to just do the thing without thinking, but it didn't work. All that happened was that I got loose enough and unafraid enough to face the fact that I wasn't going to be able to finish this course. So I decided to drop it.
I'm aware that this looks like, on the surface, a pretty strange...no, let's just say it...a dumb idea. Dropping a 3 year course with just 3 weeks and 3 assignments left to do. All I can say is...I know this is the right thing. In my heart I know it's right. There's still a big part of me that is panicking and beating me up about this decision, but more and more that part is receding and I'm just filling up with excitement about all the things I can do with that free time - really prepare and do SAEL justice. Hopefully I'll be able to work a bit as well, have more of a safety cushion.
The results of this decision will play out over the next few days I'm sure, as I come to terms with the change and consequences. But in the meantime I've got a bunch of things piled up to blog about, not least a serious discussion of the joys of sushi, starting tomorrow (it'll probably be a two-parter, I want to do it justice). I think this news counts as adequate Extraordinariness for this week, and I'm renewing last week's pledge - if I don't do something Extraordinary this week I'll survive 24 hours away from the flat on only what I can forage, salvage or steal. Keeping the pressure on...
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