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So here I am in the witw meeting, discussing what went wrong, and what we're doing next. And I'm deliberately not volunteering for anything outside my core responsibilities, because I'm already continuously at something like 90% of cognitive load at present, and while the witw project is a lot of fun, I'm becoming aware that I have hard limits, and I'm starting to bounce off them occasionally.
So why am I so busy? Let's see now. Here's my workload for the next month.
So, all of that to do. And I have to prep for my viva (which is going to be in the last week of february, we think). And my entire lab (five rooms, including computers, furniture, heavy machinery, workshop and testbeds) is moving down the road to Brighton University.
Which brings me to the one positive thing in my life at the moment. The atmosphere in Brighton uni is so very different. Where Sussex is beaten, crushed, resigned to whatever upper management do to us, Brighton is vibrant and energised, people moving and talking and laughing. When we went to lunch in the restaurant, we had to walk down brightly-painted corridors, past menus that change daily and posters and windows and large atriums (atria?). And when we entered the restaurant, every table was chatting, smiling, giggling and sharing ideas. And the food was good.
Once the paper is out, and the viva presentation is over, and the AMS course has toggled over to being written by the guy responsible for the latter half of the course, this will be quite livable, and I think I'm going to be happy at Brighton. Until then...
Well.
If I give up and fold into a tiny ball and hide under the stairs now (like I'd quite like to), I won't get there. So, in the words of a friend, "Bollocks to that". Bring it on.
Another year, the last few grains in its hourglass spiralling away into the pinch, and out into ... the future? I can't say I'm sorry to see it go. 2010 has been a bitch of a year, what with one thing and another, and 2011 really has to be better, if I'm to maintain my faith in myself and humanity.
This was the year of The Thesis, the year of Winter in the Willows, the beginning of new projects and the end of many things. This was the year at the end of the decade in which I became myself, in which I Went to University, and in which an awful lot of things went right, wrong, both and neither. It's been difficult and awesome in equal measure, and while I wouldn't change it for the world, there are places along the way at which I'm looking back wistfully, wondering what the world would be like if I'd decided to walk the other path then instead.
Highs
Lows
2011 will be better. It has to be. 2010 is going away, and it's time for change.
So.
I'm still here, as you've probably surmised from the fact that I'm talking, and it's been a busy few months. Doesn't look like it's going to get any better any time soon either, so while this is an update, it's not a return to the old frequency of posting, at least not yet. Sorry about that, if it bothers you.
Hell, some of you may be enjoying the break.
Anyway, yes. I'm currently writing my thesis, and it's draining pretty much any reserves I have of cope, happy and other useful things, so I'm ... well, not so much fun to be around at the moment. For that I'm sorry. I hope people will put up with me leeching sanity from them for a little while.
In my Copious Free Time, I am still gaming. Maelstrom event 1 was a few weeks back, and was a fair bit of fun - the wind and rain and mud weren't great, but the rest of the event made up for it, and next event promises to be better for a variety of reasons. Here's hoping.
Also, a group of friends (Firecat Masquerade) have started running a fest-larp system based loosely on Kenneth Graham's Wind in the Willows. Because I am mad, but also because they needed the help and it's a great way to burn off stress, I've volunteered to crew it. Event 1 was an astounding success by all accounts, and hopefully event 2 will be at least as good. Since E2 is set a little over a month after my thesis handin deadline, I may be slightly crazed at that point. But it'll be fiiiiiine.
Fencing ... is not going so well. Despite being on the committee, due to noone else standing for armourer and the club needing one, I've not made it to the great majority of training sessions this year. Feel quite crap about this, as they do rely on me to some extent, but there are people there who can repair most things, and two full evenings a week is simply more than I can spare at the moment. I managed to get along tonight, and they were only slightly pissed off, which is comforting. So it goes. Will persevere there, and might even fence again at some point.
To sum up, life is hard, real damn hard right now, but I'm still cracking on with it. I'm doing some slightly crazy stuff in an effort to stay sane, and trying not to neglect my obligations, tricky though that is in turn. I aim to write some more here soon, so stay tuned. Distinct risk of pseudophilosophical bullshit, but I guess we'll see what happens.
It's got to be better than total radio silence, right?
A friend of mine is putting together a LARP based on what is essentially a post-apocalyptic Wind in the Willows. It is quite cool, and merits your interest. There was a playtest in Oxford on Saturday (where we get together and run through things to exercise the rules a bit and find the bits that need oiling, or duct-taping, or similar.)
It was fun, and I have successfully added to the number of strangely-dressed photos of me on the Internet. Yay.
I may have broken a finger by getting it trapped in a car door (grabbed the B-pillar just as someone was closing the relevant door, I've no-one to blame but myself). I'm going to catch hell from the organisers for not reporting it at the time - there were first aiders present, and had I told them about it, they would probably have come to much the same conclusion as I did. A break right at the tip, while inconvenient and a little painful, isn't really critical or something that can be improved by treatment short of microsurgery - all the joints work, and I've a full range of motion and strength. I'm going to see the medics tomorrow morning (first realistic chance I get), and I'll see what they have to say. I'll be amazed if they say anything other than "take painkillers and don't overstress it", though.
Such is life. More than anything, I'm worried about the telling off I'll get from the organisers, and irritated that I've finally broken a bone. Since it seems to be the common childhood injury, and I've avoided it till 26, I was kinda hoping to continue doing so. Oh well. Perhaps now I'll grow up.
Yeah, right... :)
Well, there goes NaBloPoMo... Pity really. Oh well, thirteen days of continuous updates isn't so bad, I suppose. A couple of months' radio silence followed by a couple of weeks of daily spam, although at least I managed to avoid memes and other fluff. Now, I suppose I have to try to find the happy medium.
This weekend has been ... less than productive. I managed not to fail at the archery club on saturday, which was a pleasant surprise: four years since I've last drawn a bow, and I can still put three arrows inside the nine-ring at twenty yards. Granted, that only happened twice in two hours, but it sounds better if I say it like that. I slept half the weekend without really trying, and only just managed to get some more coding done on the Winter in the Willows project this evening: the skill framework is nearly finished, but it's proving a bit of a pain in the ass to find all the edges of what should be a comparatively simple design. Guess I'll bang my head on it some more tomorrow.
Hope you had a good weekend. By way of apology for a somewhat downbeat entry, have an entertaining link: http://itmademyday.com/.