The Ten Scatterbrained Commandments

thou shalt know thyself (and all the place one tends to leave things)

thou shalt not steal (unless it’s your friends and you know you have one SOMEWHERE)

thou shalt never leave ones friends hanging (although if it’s a really long message then I miiiight need a few days to get the headspace to reply properly)

thou shalt throw away that dress that is never worn (I know it’s pretty, but it also never fit, and never will)

thou shalt do some exercise (dancing to rubbish pop music counts though)

thou shalt finish that creative project (or at least work on it a little every day)

thou shalt also finish thy cup of tea (admit it, it’s just not quite the same microwaved)

thou shalt stop stalking that one ex on social media (it’s not about whether they want you back, it’s about whether you want them back)

thou shalt tidy (and not just move mess from one surface to another)

thou shalt love the skin you’re in (even if it doesn’t always reciprocate)

I can't sleep

The second time in a week, it has come to this.  In the black, impossible night, writing in my head to while away the time as my mind still whirrs with the same activity as in daylight.  I lie here, feeling…wrong.  I’m too hot, too sweaty, my bed clothes are tickling, and I’m too full after a lovely dinner with friends.  As a result – my body appears to have forgotten the need to sleep.

I know that I need this sleep.  I’m awful when I’m tired, as I will be tomorrow – grumpy, slow and inattentive. But, as ever, what you want most you can’t have, and so I resign myself to pretending I’m sleep, with the hope that if I stay still and quiet enough then I’ll trick Somnus into thinking he’s already taken me and I’ll be dreaming.  If I still my muscles enough then maybe my body will stop weighing down with my rough skin pressing against every fold and crumple of the sheets and I’ll trickle into dream - as my mind disorganises, disassembles and dissipates, slipping into the gaps between my cells and between the atoms that form me and I stop being a student worrying about placement the next day and become another dreamer in the strange, free world of the fantastical that we at the same time share and call uniquely our own.

My eyes open in the dark.  I feel as though it should be summer noontime, with a whole day of activity ahead – such a contrast to the immense silence at this time of night. It’s a silence where the distant rumble of a train seems like thunder, a cough from the next room a gunshot.  I breathe in deep as my eyes adjust to this unseen world. There is a sweet scent in the air; I picture the ghostly white night blossom that it must have come from. I can make out shapes in the dark of my room, looming like icebergs made of dark matter.  Some nights this would translate into a waking nightmare, my instinctive terror of the black unknown in overdrive.  On a night like this however, I am too awake for such nonsense.  I play at creating pictures out of the shape as one might make shapes from clouds.  My room is only so big, however, and an alert mind is one that’s easily bored.  I think over the day to come.  Sadly, there’s not much to it, and I know to stay on the vague side of plans lest my wandering mind trips into anxiety, and I have one of THOSE nights. 

All this tires, however, so I just ruminate even more.  Some of my tendrils of inner dialogue start to resonate with the inner voice that I so often misplace.

So I turn off the light and pick up the pen.

Instead of this: the fourth and final installment

(sorry it took a while - you'll know why soon enough)


31)   ...be a personal shopper.
32)   ...be a professional historical reconstructor.
33)   ...be a medical illustrator.
34)   ...be a comic book artist.
35)   ...be a firebreather (is full time dragon an option?)
36)   ...be a professional fanlady (girl sounds too...high pitched)
37)   ...be a woodcarver.
38)   ...be a jewellery maker.
39)   ...be barista in an enormous commercial chain that I can moan about.
40)   ...be a list writer (Buzzfeed have any vacancies?)

As ever, if this inspired you in any way, shape or form - comments plz?

Instead of this... numero 3

21)   ...be a video game designer.
22)   ...be a station announcer.
23)   ...be a glasses designer.
24)   ...be a shoe designer.
25)   ...be a nail technician.
26)   ...be a milkmaid (is this still a thing people do?)
27)   ...be a purveyor of fine herbs (again, I’m probably not thinking what you’re thinking)
28)   ...be a socialite.
29)   ...be a sofa surfer.
30)   ...be a coffee taster (only part time though.  My caffeine tolerance is abysmal)

Instead of this - part 2

   11)  ...be a dancer.

   12)  ...be a singer.

   13)  ...be a writer.

   14)  ...be a racecar driver (note to self: learn to drive.)

   15)  ...be an actress (damn missing those Star Wars auditions!)

   16)  ...be an astronaut.

   17)  ...elope with that guy from the tea shop.

   18)  ...be a children’s entertainer.

   19)  ...be an adult entertainer.

Instead of this...

At the moment, my life seems full of minor existential crises.  What am I doing?  Why am I doing it?  Would I be happier if...?  My techniques of dealing with this are varied, weird and possibly unhealthy, but that’s not the topic of today’s brain splurge (mmm splurge).  Today, I thought I would just share with you a list of some of the varied occupations that I keep convincing myself would be a better idea than what I’m doing.  Like my list of reasons to procrastinate, I’ll post them in instalments of ten.  That way all of you, my wonderful readership of 2.3 people, will hopefully not be too bored by an enormous block of nonsense.

Anyway, enough gushing (ew) and on with the list. Enjoy.

1)    ...be a palaeontologist.

2)   ...be a human evolutionary anthropologist.

3)   ...be a librarian.

4)   ...be a trophy wife who is secretly Indiana Jones/Adèle Blanc-Sec.

5)   ...blog/vlog/art for a living (haha)

6)   ...be a make up artist.

7)   ...open a tea shop.

8)   ...open a bakery.

9)   ...open a wool shop.

10)  ...open a shop where I serve tea and cake as well as selling knitting and knitting supplies.

If you enjoyed any of these or feel you have something (really, please, anything) to say about them, don’t forget to leave a comment!

Whilst trying to be a productive human...

The coffee was a great idea, she said, twirling her baubles

Whilst on a wikipedia rampage

I don't want to disambiguate reality!

Procrastination - 3

21)      Plan all the things I’m going to do after my exams.

22)      Plan all the things I’m going to do over the summer.

23)      Plan what I’m going to wear to every event I could possibly go to.

24)      Plan my next five meals.  In great detail.  Then end up cooking something else because I wasted all my time planning and I don’t have time to do anything fancier.

25)      Think about how exactly I’m going to tidy my room.  And then not do it.

26)      Contemplate cleaning the kitchen.

27)      Unblock the sinks down in the kitchen.  Well, slightly.  I think.  I’m kinda terrified  that my attempts at unblocking will end up in a worse problem later on.  If they do : I’M SO SORRY GUYS.

28)      Play Mahjong/Solitaire/Spider Solitaire/Freecell. As in, the games that come free with the computer.

29)      Look up things on Wikipedia.  Then follow links.

30)   Reorganise my Bookmarks bar on Google Chrome.

Procrastination - 2

11)      Giggling over the things in the weird and wonderful world of Ann Summers.  Particularly the reviews of sex toys.  People say really the weirdest things.

12)      Searching things in an incognito window  that I knew that I didn’t want to search, that I knew would leave me feeling weird and losing faith in humanity, but thought that I might as well look up “in the interests of thoroughness”  And no, I won’t tell you what I  searched.  Believe me, it’s for your own good.

13)      Looking up symptoms that I have on medical websites.  I’ve found that since starting my medical course I tend to either come to the conclusion that it’ll sort itself on its own, or that I have a brain tumour/gallstones/some sort of heart conditions/most mental disorders.  Never underestimate your own ability to hype things up in your mind.

14)      Mourning what could have been.  What I could have been, what I could have become, what doors are now closed off to me. 

15)      Looking up things that I could do other than medicine.  Currently the plan is wait tables or an equivalent until I have the money to start a patisserie.  I will bake and cook and sell my knitting and other crafts and I will write in my spare time.  Either that or sexy librarian.  Or maybe switch to a palaeontology degree.  In all seriousness, I really like dinosaurs.

16)      Doing my make up/my nails.  This is made more ridiculous by the fact that I currently live in a house on my own since everyone else is at with their families.  THERE IS NO ONE TO SEE MY BEAUTY.

17)      Play viola.  Try to get better at the bass.  Sing.  Not really relevant at the moment because the house is too cold for my fingers to do what I want them to.

18)      Decide to go to the library in the afternoon.  Get ready for the library – this involves showering, packing your revision, putting on appropriate clothes, packing different revision because you don’t need to cover what you’d originally decided on, finding snacks to take with you and filling a water bottle, repacking your revision AGAIN.  And then oh look the library closes in an hour not that much point going after all.

19)      DRINK ALL THE WATER.  I have started drinking more water than can possibly be necessary.  I don’t understand why.

20)   Make coffee.  Drink coffee.  Remember why I try not to drink so much caffeine.  Try to sit still and fail.

Procrastination - 1

     Why do we procrastinate?  What is the point of it all?   There’s a part of me that thinks that maybe it’s part of my brain’s way of giving itself some time off, so that it can...I dunno...do some sort of background processing.  If I’m being honest though, I think it’s just my innate laziness.

     I really am one of the best people I know at procrastinating.  Maybe that’s just because I know me best, but I do genuinely believe that I spend more time procrastinating than a lot of my peers.  Heck, I’m so good at it that I find myself procrastinating during my procrastinating.  As in right now, I should be revising.  I have some pretty major exams in a couple of weeks.  As in “I need to pass these exams so that I can stay at Medical School and follow my dreams” sort of major.  However, here I am, writing this.  Not only that, but after allowing myself to start writing this (the idea’s been in my head a few days), since I’d fulfilled my initial (albeit low) expectations of what I’d complete today, I thought I’d do half an hour on this.  And yet, after letting myself start, I found myself looking at possible laptops I could buy a sentence or two ago.  Now, I should be looking at them at some point - my laptop currently rattles when I hold it the wrong way, is losing its keys and occasionally freaks out for really no reason.   Much though I’m rather attached to it, I think this might be the beginning of the end.  I don’t want to be left suddenly without my portal to that wonderful and disgusting place that is the internet. However I consciously told myself that I’d let myself get a laptop for my birthday.  My birthday is AFTER my exams, so I can fantasise about laptops AFTER my exams.  But do I?  No.  I decide the time to look at them is during the time that I’ve allowed myself in order to do something else that isn’t revising.  It’s like some sort of meta-procrastination.  It’s not the first time and it’s getting pretty annoying.

     Recently, I watched Jenna Marbles’ video on Junk FoodConfessions.  Now aside from the fact that she’s pretty damn awesome, I want to be her friend and I have really an awful lot of respect for her for doing what she does, I thought that I’d take a leaf out of her book and start writing down all the things that I do to procrastinate.  I’ll publish this after exams, and maybe it’ll help me to stop doing the things I shouldn’t be doing and start doing the things that I should be doing.  I’ll put it up in instalments, so that you can fully appreciate it all. 

So...here goes. 

1)       Checking  facebook, stalking anyone who I haven’t seen/talked to recently.  Facebook has since been deactivated, which is way harder to keep up than it should be.

2)      Going on funnyjunk/icanhazcheezburger and not only looking at top uploads, but looking at the newest uploads and then ending up comparing the two and looking at everything twice because I saw everything in top uploads when it was in the newest uploads.  Also getting really annoyed at a lot of internet peoples.  Let’s not go into why.

3)      Looking at pretty dresses.  Again, something I justify to myself on the basis that  I have a ball  coming up and want to get a new dress for, since I don’t think I  have anything quite formal enough.  However this ball is months off.  I have time.

4)      Obsessively finding new webcomics  and reading their entire archives.  I’ve done this for enough so far that  I’ve added 7 new comics to my list of things to regularly check.  That’s just the ones that I particularly liked.   And some of their archives went back over 5 years.   THAT’S A LOT OF STORYLINE NOW IN MY BRAIN

5)      Doing the above with blogs/tumblrs/fanfictions.  

6)      Reading over old skype/facebook/email/text conversations with my friends.

7)      Feeling bad about what I said in those conversations/realising that the friends were actually being kinda harsh.

8)      Trying to reconnect with old friends (this happens at random, if you feel we need to reconnect and I haven’t tried it with you, it’s nothing to do with you, more like to do with when you’re on facebook/skype and how long for)

9)      Skyping everyone I know.

10)   Watching youtube videos about things that are irrelevant to me  and that I don’t care about. SO MANY MAKE UP TUTORIALS DESIGNED FOR PEOPLE WHO LOOK COMPLETELY DIFFERENT TO ME IN THE FIRST PLACE.