Black Jacques Cousteau

I handed in my dissertation on Friday and I still feel very down. That can't be right, can it? I know that the anticlimax of finishing something big is pretty powerful, but I thought I'd be over it by now.

After my first year undergraduate exams, I felt really bad, and slept for the whole day. But after that I felt better.

When am I going to feel some sense of satisfaction? I wonder if it will come. I feel like this MA has been this long marathon race, that has taken up all my time and seemed so important, but just before the finish line I started my job, which feels like a whole other race; the end of which is not insight.

So, just as I headed down the final straight, the spectators and commentators (which must represent some element of my psyche or something) transferred their attention to my new race, so that I crossed the MA finish line with no fanfare, no celebration, and just kept on running.

I have also got plans for the coming weeks. I'm going to my sister's gig in London, and then am going to a Radio Masterclass in Bournemouth (and by most accounts, I'm not quite a master yet). These will weigh on my mind. I have this psychological problem with having planned events. I always have. Any meeting or class or appointment looms on the horizon like an ugly simile, and I can't enjoy myself until it's over.

Even if the appointment is for something good, I dread it. I don't like being obliged to be anywhere, even if it's something really enjoyable like Tuvan throat singing, or bowling with the Pope. It's as though my laziness has pervaded my brain so much, that I can't even stomach the knowledge that there will be some future time in which I will not be allowed to be lazy.

I don't mind doing stuff, I just hate being compelled to do it at a particular time.

***

I swam in the sea yesterday, which is pretty good for September. It wasn't too cold, either.

I can't really think of anywhere interesting to go with that fact.

I wasn't naked. I wasn't attacked by a shark. I didn't hi-five Poseidon. I did spend a few hours living inside a whale, but he had quite a dull digestive tract, so I just read Heat until the coast guard arrived.

***

I mentioned The IT Crowd a couple of weeks ago, and after a good first episode, and a disappointing second episode, they redeemed themselves with the third, which included the following anti-piracy video. This tickled me a great deal:




***

I hope am slightly more upbeat soon, so I might avoid wallowing in depression through this tedious online treatise-to-nobody. I just need inspiration. Or drugs.

Man, I could use some drugs.