Breaking point

I can't seem to get a handle on my emotions at all these past few weeks. I go from hyper and happy to barely wanting to get out of bed. I don't know what's going on. I'm not taking any real joy out of anything that i'm doing at the moment. I find all of it exhausting.

Anyway, I spent today looking at houses and it made me feel awful. I want to live somewhere, I'm tired of being a nomad who decorates with blu-tack. At the same time, since i didn't get this job, there's nothing keeping me in Brighton. I don't know what's going on or what i want to do. It would all be so much easier if someone just told me what to do.

Blah. Anyway, to cheer myself up I started looking at directing courses. I love film, but directing for the stage is so much fun, and I have more experience in it. These courses look so amazing. http://www.rada.ac.uk/courses-at-rada/short-courses/directing/course-overview
http://www.lamda.org.uk/drama/courses/1pg.htm
http://cssd.ac.uk/content/directing

The RADA and LAMDA ones especially. Hugely competitive though. Kind of terrifying.

But really, what am i worrying about. Everyone wants to hire a girl who graduated with a 2:1 in English Lit and Film, with no work experience and no place to live, right? I'm a fucking catch!

You only learn from mistakes if you make them first.

Happy Valentine's Day everyone.

My friend Alex occasionally writes poems. It seems like most of them are about me, mainly because I love his poems and ask him to write them. One of his favourite things to do when drunk and in a crowd is to embarrass me by reciting one he wrote within a week of meeting me. I posted it on here over 2 years ago, i'm sure you can find it if you search. Anyway, I keep asking him to write nicer, less sordid poems about me, and as a Valentine's gift he wrote me one. Apparently it's supposed to be more of a song than a poem, but Alex doesn't play any instruments. Anyway, here is it.

Valentines Pine

Lucy got lost when life gave her a hand,

And it gave her a kick when she was trying to stand,

Gives you a stitch when you run too fast,

Better slow down or it'll break your heart,

She thought I was a dick when I knew I was a charmer,

Rhyme about her tits, that's a winner to disarm her,

Did I really try to tickle her with prose on masturbation?

I tried to write her Lorca but I lost it in translation,

It's not about love, just a tipple of fun,

Try for five when you can't have one,

Rip if off quick, or it's gonna hurt worse,

Only learn from mistakes if you make them first,

All she saw was a fist when I gave her a hand,

Now she gets a kick out of making me stand,

Call her a bitch when I know I'm a tart,

Songs are sweeter when you break some hearts,

Take a gander at this girl that makes any man tingle,

What cynic would believe that this summertime's single,

To dare but to dream gives your heart a fatigue,

I'm betting even Nemo couldn't get to her league,

In the highest of stakes you don't get any nuts,

Anorexics tend to lack any guts,

I tried, I lost, and I looked a total tit-
But at least I had a go at it,

It's a day of love, that much is true,

Still, it's not that nice when love's evading you,

No-one reaches for the brightest stars,

They're all scared they'll get a broken heart.

That boy, he's a total sweetheart.

Anyway, my Valentine's plans include eating crepes, rehearsing and watching all three Toy Story films with my friends; and while a large part of me wishes my day were slightly more romantic, I have to say that as a plan it doesn't sound too shabby. I don't like how it has become cool to hate Valentine's day. I think any day that celebrates love and good feeling is a great thing, and that there should be more of them throughout the year.

If you're in love, I hope you have a wonderful day. If you're not, i hope you have an even better one.

Branding

I woke up yesterday morning, still feeling slightly wretched. I hate not having a plan, or something to work towards, it makes me feel purposeless. Not cool. I hate to mope for long, I think bad feeling breeds bad feeling. I was sitting in bed, hung-over, tired and miserable, trying to make some sort of sense of the coming year and coming up blank.

Soon though, i remembered that last week, after a particularly annoying day, I had phoned a local tattoo studio and booked an appointment for that morning. After a very brief conversation with mum (where she told me my situation could be worse, i could be Antigone, who "went through some shit", or Creon, who also had it pretty bad, and that if it comes right down to it then maybe the best solution might be to hang myself. I love that woman) I ran to Kemptown to go get my first tattoo.

I decided that i wanted Enthusiasm on my ankle almost 5 years ago. About 2 years ago I asked mum to design it. I wanted her handwriting, and in the post she sent me a piece of paper with Enthusiasm written on it about a hundred times. I picked my favourite and carried that piece of paper everywhere I went for 2 years. I kept putting off getting it done for various reasons, but i never changed my mind about the design or the placement.

"The Greek word enthusiasm (enþúsiasmos) comes from the words enðo(=in, within) and úsia(=essence, entity) therefore, generally the word indicates the impulsive behavior when somebody acts with enthusiasm. "

This past few months for me have been tough. With all the crap that happened during The Crucible, problems during Antigone rehearsals, getting marked down on an important essay by a tutor who didn't even teach the course, and then the loss of the election, it has at times felt like I'm running through water. Getting this done immediately lightened my mood, i left feeling like a new person, i couldn't stop smiling.

"The enthusiastic person is that that believes in her/his capacity to transform the things, believes in her/himself and in the other ones, believes in the force that has to transform the world and her/his own reality."

Isn't it beautiful? I love it so much.

I lost

I won't keep you in suspense, and i won't even try and describe how I'm feeling. I didn't win. I now don't have a job, plan or place to live for the coming year. I haven't stopped crying for 4 and a half hours and i don't see this ending any time soon.

It's getting really fucking hard to stay enthusiastic when i haven't had a win in months. I don't want to be comforted. I don't want to be told how other cool shit will come along. I just want to wallow in how utterly shitty this whole thing is.

This sucks.

Tick Tock

I find out the results of the vote in 3 hours. I'm too tired to be nervous, i just want to sleep. Polling is closed, so I'm sitting in the library, watching Doctor Who and blogging to keep my mind off the impending reality of my future.

Waiting is painful.

campaign trailing

The campaign is in full swing. Polling opened 12 hours ago, and I'm already dead.
Just in case you're curious, here's an outline of the day I've just had, and an outline for what tomorrow holds.

6:00am - Woken up by a txt from my friend in new york about how awful the title sequence for Mad Men is.
8:30am - Catch the bus to campus
9:00am - Give a campaign speech to a lecture hall full of students
9:05am - Eat a GIANT cooked breakfast with a couple of the other candidates
10:00am - 5:00pm every hour on the hour give a campaign speech in a lecture hall, in the minutes between, run around campus trying to convince people to vote.
5:10pm - Dinner and a pint with drama folk
5:30pm - 5:45pm - fall asleep at dinner table, surrounded by drama folk.
6:00pm - 8:00pm - Watch documentary in preparation for tomorrow's film seminar
8:30pm - Catch bus home
9:00pm - Midnight - make paper flowers to hand out along with flyers tomorrow. Watch the wire, eat, sleep.

Tomorrow, on top of everything I did today, i also have a 2 hour film seminar, an hour of rehearsal during the day, 4 hours of rehearsal in the evening, and a club night at an AWFUL club in town that i have to go to because all of the other candidates running for the position I'm running for are going.

The candidates debate and question time yesterday went better than i hoped, so that's a good thing, and the election is getting a lot of attention in the greater student body, so that's a plus. There are even videos of our speeches, and little vox-pop things so you can learn more about the candidates before you vote, to try and make it less of a popularity contest. In case you're curious, you can watch them here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HlccgqtqzLQ and here http://www.youtube.com/user/sussexstudentsunion#p/c/9/cEI7JMzYE9M

At the moment, though i desperately want the job, what i want even more is for this week to be over. Remembering to stay hydrated, occasionally eat, and smile through the pain is proving difficult.
Only 2 more days. Two more exhausting days.

Is it worth the struggle?

I was on campus for 14 hours today. I woke up at 6, was on campus by half 8 and didn't leave till half 10. I'm dead already and it's only day 1.

As I may have said before, I really want this job. I love Sussex, I love activities, it's a job i've been training for for the past 2 years and i know for a fact that i'd be good at it. If it were a job with a regular application process i'd be feeling quietly confident right now. Instead, because of this election, i'm exhausted, stressed out, and almost 100% certain i'm not going to win.

This may sound defeatist, and is definitely not the way i should be thinking, but right now i don't really see any way in which i come out first. The awful thing is that this certainty is tempting me to cut and run, focus my attentions on my degree and my play, and do something else with my life next year. On the one hand, I'd be heartbroken to leave Sussex, but on the other, there's a whole big world out there that i haven't seen yet.

Right now i'm not sure whether i should buck up or back out. Will it hurt more to try and fail, or to choose not to compete?

I think I'll sleep on it and tell you the answer in the morning.
Night.

Not again.

I'm in a pretty weird mood at the moment. My election campaign starts on Thursday, so for the next week I'm going to be selling myself and how great I am to anyone who will listen, which has to rank as one of my least favourite things to do in the whole world. My friends are helping me, but everyone is busy and i don't want to burden them. The whole thing is stressing me out. It's a job I've wanted for 2 years, and I've put off applying for any other jobs or planning my life after uni until after i find out if I've got it, so potentially come next Thursday I'll be without a job and without a plan for the next year of my life. It terrifies me.

As for the play, since starting to write this post one of my actors has dropped out. That's right. Again. As if i didn't have enough stressful bullshit to contend with this week, I now have to re-cast the romantic lead, 2 and a half weeks before the show. I swear to god I'm cursed. This never happens to any of the other directors in the society. It's pretty hard to retain my enthusiasm when every show i direct has to go through such shit just to make it to the stage.

Right now, honestly, i just want to give up, run away to somewhere warm and start a llama farm or something.