My life has this weird habit of going from nothing happening, nothing happening, nothing happening, to oh dear god what the hell have I done how the hell am I ever going to get all this done by Tuesday morning and when will I get a chance to sit in my pants eat scrambled egg and watch obscure social realist dramas by ground-breaking classic French director François Truffaut? I’m currently going through a phase that, well, let’s just say that I’m currently experiencing withdrawal symptoms from not watching The 400 Blows for three entire days.
Starting spring semester this year, I had nothing happening. I was hiding away in my room in Greater London; showing up to lectures when I felt like it, but not paying too much attention because deadlines were all months away and I really couldn’t care less at this point; watching Boardwalk Empire, Modern Family and revisiting Breaking Bad like they were the only three shows ever made, and squeezing in some French kitchen-sink dramas here and there; and hanging out with friends at three in the afternoon in the student union bar or in a choice of two Wetherspoons’ debating great philosophical theories like we were the most important people in the world. But now we’re coming towards the end of Easter break and, crap, things are getting serious. I’m busier, more stressed, and more concerned about the immediate future than Mario Balotelli’s agent.
Not only are we at the business end of the semester with a terrific amount of deadlines – song lyrics, TV scripts and pitches, a “writer’s database,” a group media project, two 1,000-word articles on anything I want, to name a few – I also have unpaid work to do in order to build up a portfolio to help me apply for jobs, and the small matter of actually finding myself a proper, adult, salaried job, because the end of this semester means graduation and heading back into the real world once more. I’ve been writing a few music reviews, another one of which I need to write, and I’ve been offered the chance to write other unpaid TV and new-release film reviews.
Thing is, it’s not the sheer amount of work that is causing me to announce my woes to the world in this here blog post, it’s the fact that I’m losing precious time in which I can kick back in a comfy chair, eat pizza and play Black Ops (hey, I don’t want to give up my half dozen Prestiges just yet). That kind of time is important, and I like a lot of it.
Yes, you old, jaded fucker, I know I shouldn’t complain; I have it great. If 3am comes around and I feel like sitting naked in my bath and eating a plate of lasagne and ice cream there’s nothing to stop me; I don’t have to be up for work at 8.30, I don’t have a lecture at 10am and even if I did, no one’s going to question my “value to the workforce” for not showing up. I could wake up at noon, have a cheeky wank without getting out of bed, then grab another couple hours sleep dreaming of that hot girl who works at Lidl on Friday evenings. But what the middle-aged miserable farts don’t appreciate is how difficult it is making the transition. Soon enough I’ll be a regular 9-5er, working in an office, and while that idea now has its appeal — I plan to write about that soon enough — for now I need to spend afternoons alone crying my eyes out at some vintage black-and-white Truffaut masterpieces.
Don’t judge me. And don’t judge any other students in the same boat. You were like us once.
In Before the Cynicism 