Diary of an up and coming sociopath

Well, I suppose that yesterday was three years in the making. My final exam, or At least, what I hope was my final exam. I’m still percolated by this nauseous feeling that, well, nothing is certain until I’ve got results. It’s possible, not especially likely, but nonetheless possible that I could still fail. It’d really help the formation of my stomach ulcers if I had the faintest idea of how my dissertation did. Tom, Ian and I had a nice undermining of confidence session where we all asessed the likelihood we had totally fucked everything up, until we decided to stop the conversation on the grounds it was going to make us all weep for our wasted years, only to fail on a technicality of not having passed. 12th of July. 12th of July. Then I can put the guesswork behind me.

The exam wasn’t anything special, a load of nonsense about software project management. The sole glory of the modular system is that you only get examined on the recent work, so you can forget it instantly once the exam is done don’t have to revise everything for the finals. It was a totally uneventful exam, which I felt was adequately done. I occasionally like to underestimate my performance, but in this instance it was pretty shakey. It doesn’t matter, though, I’m way past caring about exams. Next up: Getting a job, getting a mortgage, then death. I seem to remember being pretty enthusiastic about getting into this stuff a few months ago, but now it’s time to get going the phrase “paralysing fear” wouldn’t be erroneously employed at this juncture.

On the plus side, if all has gone well, I’ve finally got a degree. Again, it’s not final, but it’s so close I can taste the sweet sweet letters-after-my-name goodness. Not that anyone cares if they’ve got BSc after their name, but I’ll probably break it out on certain occasions when I was trying to be sarcastic or satirical. You know me (unless you don’t.)

I had a pretty bad start to the week, really, what with the ass falling out of the car, decidedly running out of money, nan going into hospital, and an exam looming. I don’t tend to let stress and anxiety affect me, but I admit I was having some experience of both emotions. It helps that Nikki’s been around most of this week, and during that period the problems have more or less been beaten down. The car is fixed, the exam is done (for better or worse) and, although I’m still a bit scarce on cash, it’s less terminal than before. So my mental state is vastly improved from, say, Sunday morning, where I was walking around constantly with the feeling one gets when they are expecting Jeremy Beadle to suddenly appear and reveal how he has engineered the destruction of your life for the amusement of many braindead ITV viewers.

Nan is still in hospital, but I can’t do anything about that except hope it’s not “time”. I haven’t actually had to deal with any close relatives dying yet, and I’m not sure I even have any as close as my Dad’s parents. I am, however, acutely aware that at some point it’s going to happen. Maybe not today, maybe not for ten years, but it’s something that looms ever-closer. I’ve accepted that. Death is a part of life, and soforth. It never feels so acutely close as when one of them ends up in hospital though. As ever, I hope for the best, prepare for the worst.

I have resolved to spend more of tomorrow on my website. There’s no excuse now. I have the design, the framework, and I just need content. It’ll take a day or two to write it all, but it’ll never get done if I don’t at least get started. I really want to try doing something a bit different for the images on the site, by which I mean, make them rather than nick them from existing sources, only, er, I don’t have any artistic skill. I may just head off into Oxford with a digital camera, and see if I can make things look half decent through repeated application of photoshop filters. There’s always the lens flare if I need that touch of class. Failing that, I’ve got 3 years of university-level doodling to provide inspiration, and maybe I’ll just redraw some of those in a more computer-friendly format. I haven’t decided really.

Ah well. Hopefully that didn’t all come across as depressive, I’m pretty upbeat at the moment. Like I said, most of my problems are gone, and uni is likely done with. Just felt like bit of catharsis might be beneficial. I may have a few more concerns than usual, but that hasn’t stopped me devoting a good 5 hours of today to playing through Mario and listening to the Pixies. Also, I am currently marvelling at what a good idea Relly’s friend Stu has had on his autoblography. He’s having a “summer festival” where his friends write blog entries on his. Entertaining stuff, and yet one more way to make every other blogger in the land feel hideously inadequate about their uninventive daily record of banality. Luckily I’m not like that at all.