Wisdom of the ages

A day of tutorials: one was cancelled, the other bluffed through as I hadn’t looked at the reading. Despite this I managed to sound as though I’d worked at least a little. Lindsey asked me if I wanted to go to a SWSO meeting on Ireland but I declined, knowing that to do so would be a gross deception on my part. I doubt I’d have made the slightest effort to go on my own. I met Stu in the library and came home.

Lee said his tutorial went well, and that his tutor declared the spray-paint plaster experiment “phenomenal” (!). Lee was very pleased, and in a boisterous mood all night. I must find another means of expression apart from this turgid litany, which is already three-and-two-thirds years old. Attaching the word ‘diary’ to this endless verbiage makes it seem insignificant, and it pricks me to hear Lee and Pete and Barry say “Oh, he’s writing in his diary,” as though I pass my time with “Today it rained,” “I had chips for dinner,” etc. I harbour greater aspirations, but ‘journal’ sounds too formal, although (regrettably!) it’s perfectly applicable to this thing in its present state. I am very self-conscious here.

I feel horrible sometimes, horrified at the thoughts of slinking through life, storm clouds of doubt, indecision, futile hopeless doubts forever in my head. A face at the window, forever staring out/in at things that are not to be, at other means and other schemes which seem to fit friends and people so much better than my haphazard, heartless struggling.

I don’t intend getting a job after Uni., nor all the badges Mum and Dad would have me earn, a decision that will bring a lot of upset. ‘Responsibility’, ‘Duty’, ‘Obligation’, ‘Maturity’: they’ll heap those words on me, and they’ll sting; my armour isn’t thick enough to prevent that yet, but I’ll recover no doubt. I keep intending to collect suitable aphoristic quotations to throw in their direction: ‘wisdom of the ages’, ‘history on my side,’ etc., etc.