Something Vague
"You get six months to adapt, and then two more two leave town..."
Song lyrics I heard today...funny. Just a warning...this is long, boring and I refuse to revise it. I have a really really bad case of writer's block right now. People that are acquainted with the way I work know that it is a real oscillation between frenzy and nothing. I have never actually learned how to be a university student. You know, like doing research, preparing and writing a paper, studying for exams, taking notes, etc... In three years of law school I have one small notebook of notes...mostly doodling, writing down quotes I remembered, etc... Most of the time in law school I sat in the back row with one of Nietzsche's books under my desk reading. I would do my readings for school on the weekends and memorize the court cases. So if I got called on I could usually step write into the discussion based on what I remembered from my readings. Here at the LSE I never get involved in the discussion. I sit there and draw pictures in my notebook or read photocopied essays. For my time at the LSE I have 3 pages of notes, and nobody, including myself, can read my notes. So paper-writing, yeah I don't know how its done. I have an impulse to write and when it comes it is very natural to me. I can sit and write for 20 straight hours if that is needed for a big paper. If it is coming then it usually comes out in one draft as the form I will submit, I always get As on my papers so what I am doing works...I know I have yet to write anything good though, my standards for excellence and the university's are at odds. The problem is that when I am not "just writing" as comes natural to me then I am sitting like an idiot in front of a computer screen waiting to catch fire and go. I have been staring at this stuff for three days..."Come on mind, I am pretty sure you are still up there...what are you waiting for!? Be brilliant!" :) My humility is known around the world...so I will sit here all night until my hands start going and then essays will be done. I am so preoccupied though that I am afraid this writer's block will drag over firm deadlines. I have made it pretty clear here that I have no intention of sticking to deadlines for ungraded essays...but I just need to get these dumb things out of the way so I can get on to the matter at hand.
Ok...above section of unstructured time-wasting exercise is complete...not part two...what is on my mind. First of course is money...I hate money and its going to be a tight summer. A tight summer won't be bad, but I am trying to get everything budgeted...how will I afford the language class, flights back and forth, etc...until the autumn when I suspect fortune will begin to fall into my lap either via the disgusting profession known as the law or high interest intellectual welfare. The bigger issue, and the one that brings the money one up, is that I am very very unsettled and I am conjuring a leap at some point. I know what I am circling, the question is whether or not I will just say it out loud and launch my offensive. I am not 100% about Sweden. I am 100% that I love it there...its a very very good city. It is precisely the kind of society I want to be in. The monkey on my back is that I do not see myself anywhere other than San Diego. I was telling my friend last night that I had one big goal in life when I was about 17...get to California. Everything was organized around that and motivated by it. I still have the journal entry that I wrote my freshman year in university...I marked out exactly how long I would take to graduate from undergrad, when I would take what courses, what I expected my GPA to be at certain points. I would then go to law school at USD...in my life I have only applied to three universities and I have taken for granted that I will get into all of them...I did. So law school, early graduation, honors, etc...these were all really just lovely pretexts to get me to California. So I got there and it was never-ending felicity...right! At the beginning it was miserable, I was broke, I was in the midst of a mental breakdown I think. I still cannot stand the summer time there, I don't like tourists, I honestly get sick of the weather always being so nice, I hate southern Californian "do nothing" ethos, I must confess that San Diego is one of the most spiritually vapid cities I have ever been in. If you want to draw inspiration from the culture you are in then do not go to SD. I have a very balanced life there. I was working and I loved my job, I was doing extremely well in law school despite myself, creatively I was at a maximum in side reading and writing, I am not sure I have ever been more fit physically, I had a few good friends, and I could surf. I had cafes and bookstores I liked going to, I could go kick the soccer ball or throw the baseball/football at LJHS, I had great places to run, my best friend had just moved out there and we would meet up a couple times a week and run. I could also see and talk to my family frequently. Hmmm...I have some major decisions to make. Fortunately my hatred of San Diego summers gives me time to really push the Sweden thing to its logical conclusion, or lack thereof. I think next Christmas will be decision point...unless everything falls through and I have to come back in September. I always joke that San Diego has always been a great "plan B" while I am over here...the funny, perhaps sad, truth is that plan B is the only plan still! Just like it was when I was 17...everything else simply is by virtue of not being San Diego.
What will he do!
"You get six months to adapt, and then two more two leave town..."
Song lyrics I heard today...funny. Just a warning...this is long, boring and I refuse to revise it. I have a really really bad case of writer's block right now. People that are acquainted with the way I work know that it is a real oscillation between frenzy and nothing. I have never actually learned how to be a university student. You know, like doing research, preparing and writing a paper, studying for exams, taking notes, etc... In three years of law school I have one small notebook of notes...mostly doodling, writing down quotes I remembered, etc... Most of the time in law school I sat in the back row with one of Nietzsche's books under my desk reading. I would do my readings for school on the weekends and memorize the court cases. So if I got called on I could usually step write into the discussion based on what I remembered from my readings. Here at the LSE I never get involved in the discussion. I sit there and draw pictures in my notebook or read photocopied essays. For my time at the LSE I have 3 pages of notes, and nobody, including myself, can read my notes. So paper-writing, yeah I don't know how its done. I have an impulse to write and when it comes it is very natural to me. I can sit and write for 20 straight hours if that is needed for a big paper. If it is coming then it usually comes out in one draft as the form I will submit, I always get As on my papers so what I am doing works...I know I have yet to write anything good though, my standards for excellence and the university's are at odds. The problem is that when I am not "just writing" as comes natural to me then I am sitting like an idiot in front of a computer screen waiting to catch fire and go. I have been staring at this stuff for three days..."Come on mind, I am pretty sure you are still up there...what are you waiting for!? Be brilliant!" :) My humility is known around the world...so I will sit here all night until my hands start going and then essays will be done. I am so preoccupied though that I am afraid this writer's block will drag over firm deadlines. I have made it pretty clear here that I have no intention of sticking to deadlines for ungraded essays...but I just need to get these dumb things out of the way so I can get on to the matter at hand.
Ok...above section of unstructured time-wasting exercise is complete...not part two...what is on my mind. First of course is money...I hate money and its going to be a tight summer. A tight summer won't be bad, but I am trying to get everything budgeted...how will I afford the language class, flights back and forth, etc...until the autumn when I suspect fortune will begin to fall into my lap either via the disgusting profession known as the law or high interest intellectual welfare. The bigger issue, and the one that brings the money one up, is that I am very very unsettled and I am conjuring a leap at some point. I know what I am circling, the question is whether or not I will just say it out loud and launch my offensive. I am not 100% about Sweden. I am 100% that I love it there...its a very very good city. It is precisely the kind of society I want to be in. The monkey on my back is that I do not see myself anywhere other than San Diego. I was telling my friend last night that I had one big goal in life when I was about 17...get to California. Everything was organized around that and motivated by it. I still have the journal entry that I wrote my freshman year in university...I marked out exactly how long I would take to graduate from undergrad, when I would take what courses, what I expected my GPA to be at certain points. I would then go to law school at USD...in my life I have only applied to three universities and I have taken for granted that I will get into all of them...I did. So law school, early graduation, honors, etc...these were all really just lovely pretexts to get me to California. So I got there and it was never-ending felicity...right! At the beginning it was miserable, I was broke, I was in the midst of a mental breakdown I think. I still cannot stand the summer time there, I don't like tourists, I honestly get sick of the weather always being so nice, I hate southern Californian "do nothing" ethos, I must confess that San Diego is one of the most spiritually vapid cities I have ever been in. If you want to draw inspiration from the culture you are in then do not go to SD. I have a very balanced life there. I was working and I loved my job, I was doing extremely well in law school despite myself, creatively I was at a maximum in side reading and writing, I am not sure I have ever been more fit physically, I had a few good friends, and I could surf. I had cafes and bookstores I liked going to, I could go kick the soccer ball or throw the baseball/football at LJHS, I had great places to run, my best friend had just moved out there and we would meet up a couple times a week and run. I could also see and talk to my family frequently. Hmmm...I have some major decisions to make. Fortunately my hatred of San Diego summers gives me time to really push the Sweden thing to its logical conclusion, or lack thereof. I think next Christmas will be decision point...unless everything falls through and I have to come back in September. I always joke that San Diego has always been a great "plan B" while I am over here...the funny, perhaps sad, truth is that plan B is the only plan still! Just like it was when I was 17...everything else simply is by virtue of not being San Diego.
What will he do!
posted by Lenin | 3:25 em
4 Comments:
Den här kommentaren har tagits bort av bloggadministratören.
It seems our time wasting schemes are complimentary. You write to waste while I read your wasted writing to waste.
Works woderfully.
Does it ever seem like we use cities to deifine ourselves? It's hard to give up a deifing feature of our self-schema, but I think it is worth considering why we choose to attach ourselves to cities, social groups, sports teams, schools, music, political parties etc... Each one adds to the "self", but not having one does not necessarily make less a "self"...
For the first time in my life, I can't say SD is my home. I could cry over that- which sickens me as well.
I find it really difficult to post on here. 1. I usually don't understand most of the things you are talking about, 2. I usualy don't understand most of the things everyone else is posting. But I understand what you are talking about in this post. I remember you when we were little, that was the first Tim. I did not get to see you much when you were at A&M, so I will skip that, but I do remember San Diego Tim from visiting you and you coming home, thats the 2nd Tim. From what I have read and talked with you about while you are in London, I know you well enough to call this the third Tim. Every time you were still Tim, my brother, but always different. But you know what to do, you always seem to be in the right place at the right time, so I don't expect you to find yourself miserable for the rest of your life. I do know that I have hair down to my shoulders now, and all I can think about is moving to California to work. I think it was inspired by how happy you were as Tim #2. I think thats how I want to be.
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