I had a massive ‘revelation’ today whilst I was in the library. ‘Revelation’ is in inverted commas because that’s not exactly what it was, and I’m not sure if there’s a single word to describe it (epiphany isn’t right either). It was like I suddenly realised that Chaucer, Virginia Woolf, cognitive poetics and quantum physics had all merged together into this great big mass of inextricably linked understanding and meaning. And I’m being serious here. It wasn’t like they all suddenly started to make sense, or seemed linked together. It was like they’d always been that way, and had all been part of the same thing, yet I’d only just realised it. A flash of realisation perhaps, making sense only in my head, and failing to be explained or defined by language alone. It made me quite hyper actually, though I’m not sure why. I’ve been analysing things even more so than usual recently, mainly down to my lectures on Virginia Woolf and the way the lecturer phrases things.

For me, personally at the moment, I have a great interest in permanency and impermanency. If I were to make a film of my life, what bits would I pick? What could I get away with without people sueing me? How many things that I would want to put in now will I remember in ten years’ time? How many things from now will I change my mind about?

How much of me would I actually want to put in? I want to be able to put everything, even the most personal things into it, but would I end up being able to do so?

The concept of the influences of other people, time and space also fascinates me on a social level. If I stepped out of my door two minutes later, I’d walk past completely different people in the street. ‘If I put an hour’s work in now, I may end up at a completely different university.’ ‘If I argue with my friend, I may never speak to him again.’ How far are we aware of our actions and how they will influence ours and other’s lives? Obviously not very much, or we wouldn’t regret things nearly as much. 

This is particularly emphatic in my head when things happen that seem like they might be significant: such as missing a train, having the next one cancelled and then ending up on the next one talking to some fantastic people, as happened to me a few weeks ago. The sheer randomness of it (or is it randomness? was I always destined to get that particular train and talk to those particular people?) is breathtaking. Just a few of those happenings and decisions can change your whole life. 

And everyone on the planet is making millions of those decisions all the time, changing your life for you. The lack of control fascinates me, and yet people are often labelled ‘control freak’. It seems so inadequate in the sense of the bigger picture.

A question that came up recently asked, what is the self? Is it how you define yourself or how others define you? Not only is it others defining you, it’s the way in which others (not necessarily the same others) are making their decisions which alter your life and thus alter your perceptions and your sense of self. And your self. Confusing? Maybe a little.

My own notion of self-perception has always been very skewed. When I was a lot younger, I was notoriously unaware of myself as a person. I took little interest in what I looked like and how others saw me. Then during high school, I began to find out who I was, and for a while I didn’t like the person I saw. Neither, it seemed, did many other people (though I didn’t like them either, to be fair). At this point I had two sides – the person I was and the person I wanted to be. Then, during sixth form college, I began to become this new person. It was a fresh start. I began to like myself more and be more satisfied with who I was, and I did a lot of changing. However, one side of me was still looking back, unsure and convinced that she was hated. Now I’m in university, my self-esteem is still pretty low, especially in terms of how I think I look to others. This is partly due to a certain university ‘friend’s mindgames over the past year, but it also makes me wonder if I’ll ever get out of this mindset. And if I will be truely happy with who I am.

Unlikely, since I don’t really know who I am, and who I think I am is a very different thing from who you think I am. And what the people around me think of me and who I am, and so on and so forth.

I seem to have written most of my unsettledness out for now, and I’m going out for dinner tonight and should probably start getting ready soon so I’ll leave it at that..  

- Cleaning the kitchen floor

- Do the washing up

- Cleaning the bathroom

- Watering the plants

- Food shopping

- Several loads of laundry

- Food preparation

- Typing up notes

- Organising puss in boots costume

- Halloween party

- Burger and chips (baaaad)

- Tabi and Richard’s house

- Backing up lots of old files and clearing about 700 mb off my C drive. Sadly, I still only have 9% disk space free on this drive, but I’m currently defragging anyway

- Organising uni files and folders

- Facebook and various celebrity gossip sites

- The Crystal Maze and Supermarket Sweep and Jeremy Kyle

- Reading Virginia Woolf’s diary (currently about halfway through volume 2).

I am so tired that when I’m not asleep, I’m thinking about sleep, wanting sleep, or in the process of falling asleep. I worked 9-5:30 Wednesday and 9-5:15ish on Friday. The rest of the week was spent seeing friends, having friends over, going to lectures/seminars, doing work/reading for lectures and seminars and going to the gym. I really wanted to go to the gym today as I was only a bit tired this morning, but the weather was so bad I didn’t really fancy walking for around an hour and a half total in it. So of course that led to the fatal afternoon nap whilst I was reading, and since then I’ve been exhausted. What really kicks in is the fact that on Thursday nights, when I’m at society stuff, I don’t tend to go to bed until around 4 or 5 am, which is really stupid because the next day completely kills me and then I fail to catch up on sleep the rest of the week.

And suddenly it’s almost Monday and for the third week in a row I haven’t yet done the reading for my 9 am lecture and seminar at 12.

Then the week after this one is reading week, and I have a takeaway exam and all kinds of other fun stuff…where is the time going?! And how come I suddenly don’t have time to sleep any more?!

Everything was simple. Or if not simple, at least straight forward.

Now I’m just highly confused. I’m in a weird place right now.

One of my friends was severely triggering my depression so I just had to let go. It’s bad because he was one of my best friends and at one point I owed him my life, but…he was just making me feel too bad about myself. Last year I would’ve carried on trying to (unsuccessfully) deal with it, or at my stronger times just completely laughed it off. It scares me now that I’m so easily able to push someone out of my life like that, and I’m still not sure I’ve made the right decision. But I doubt there’s any going back – he’s deleted and blocked me on facebook.

In other aspects of my life, there has been a lot of drama and issues. My cousin got mugged in Belgium and is apparently probably coming to England to stay with my parents and sister for a bit (he lives in Australia). My mum is kind of upset because one of our relatives screwed us (more her really) over completely with regards to hospitality/money/etc.

And as usual I’m acting as advice person for my friends, with their relationships. Also, I have a lot of new stuff going on as I’ve become active in a uni society full of great people, and at the moment I’m actually going out quite a few nights a week. Jenni has a life (ish) – oh my God. Kicked me in the ass this weekend though as I ended up drinking hot chocolate with a couple of them (after we’d been to a bar, a pub, a takeaway and someone’s house) until 4 am – I got about 5 hours’ sleep. Then last night I ended up staying up quite late trying to read a novel for 9 am today (I managed to read 20 chapters of The Voyage Out in about 4 hours, which is not bad going). Tonight I was at Richard and Tabi’s with the girls (and one guy, and then Rich’s ex-housemates ended up coming over) and so I’m lying in bed typing this completely exhausted. I have to get up early tomorrow to do some reading for my 2 hour (!) cognitive poetics seminar as well, grr. Then Wednesday I’m at work in the morning, possibly all day though I will try to fit the gym in. Don’t know if it will happen though because I’m always exhausted when I leave work, and I have reading to do for Thursday. Then Thursday night I’m out doing society stuff…sigh. I napped today but it didn’t really help. I’m just going to have to organise my time really really well. Especially as I generally haven’t had time to cook/buy proper meals, so I’ve been living off fruit and unhealthy snacks. It’s bad because bad eating and not enough sleep = very depressed Jenni. So I should really pay more attention to eating properly.

I can’t face starshine right now. I really can’t. I feel so bad breaking my promise of updating but it’s just difficult for me in a number of ways right now. Also, you may have noticed I haven’t returned comments on the past few entries. I’m just so busy and or tired, and it’s not my favourite job in the world so it’s easy to put to the bottom of the queue. I’m sorry for being so crap.