Well hello there person reading this, I never know what to write for the first line of these. But that seems sufficient. How long has it been? A month? Ahhhhhhh today is/was (it's 1:29am so it's basically the 2nd but shhhh) the 1st of May. THE FIRST OF MAY. How?????? This has been the quickest school year of my life. It's so terrifying. I feel like this month/exam season just kind of collapsed onto me all of a sudden since I didn't think time would go so quickly. My exams start on the 22nd of May (this month D: help D:) and end on June 19th (the day my chill will be restored.) But I just need to study hard until then so I can enjoy my summer. But that requires motivation, which I have but find hard to actually put it to action enough-so to get a substantial amount of work/revision done. Although being the nerd I am I do enjoy studying as long as I have enough time (which I do if I organise it correctly so hopefully it will all be okay.)
The topic of this post I think is going to be decisions. Ooooo how even the word alone makes me feel anxiety. There are so many types of decisions, obviously, and most of which are uninteresting, but they're not the ones I want to talk about. The fact that such big decisions like universities and choosing courses etc are ahead of me makes me absolutely terrified. I am such an indecisive person, even with everyday things, how am I supposed to be decisive for such a massive thing that's going to impact the entire course of my life?! I'm seventeen so as expected most of my decisions are either 1. just bad and careless 2. stupid and time-wasting or 3. unimportant since I am only seventeen so really it should be the age to get bad decisions out of your system and learn from them. But it's not, instead we have to go off of so little life experience and knowledge and decide 1. where we live on our own for the next 4 years, 2. what we want to study for at least 3/4 years and 3. what career we want to end up with for the REST OF OUR LIVES. What. The. HELL.
If you know me IRL you probably already know this but due to my weird mix of A levels (bio, chem, english lit & geog,) if I get good grades (ha ha ha ha ha wishful thinking) I have SO many course options which I could apply for (I know everyone does, but most don't want to apply for english lit and medicine. So of COURSE I'm one of the ones who do.) I really appreciate advice grown-ups can give us on these things but I also really dislike people thinking they know me better than I know myself. I had a conversation with my auntie nuala last weekend when I was showing her my creative writing coursework based on 2 Arthur Miller plays, and this was a part of the conversation:
Her: "You love English, don't you?"
Me: "Yes, it's my favourite subject."
Her: "So do that."
Me: "But I also love science and part of me thinks I would really love to be a doctor and spend my life helping individual people."
Her: "So do that."
- Can you see my dilemma? Even my absolute angel of an auntie can't give me advice. There is NO HOPE. The fact of the matter is I'm going to do either and probably always kind of wish I did the other. Actually that's a lie - the fact of the matter is that I'm going to fail all of my A levels, or at least do not-well-enough, and these things won't be an option and then I'll really be a mess. But that's another vent for another time, right?
So if you're in the same position as me and are confused about catalytic decisions like these, and no advice really helps, and that whole epiphany-moment that would happen at the perfect moment if our lives were movies where we realise what we truly want just doesn't happen; we can do this. I can sense it. My life has been so weird lately and I've went through weird periods of time (e.g like a week-long period) where I just don't feel like myself and everything I do/say feels wrong and fake. But I've also had a few periods of clarity that have given me this underlying instinct that all of this will work out. And hey, if it doesn't, it might make for some good writing.
~
I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack of other lovers with queer names and offbeat professions, and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn't quite make out. I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn't make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet.
- Sylvia Plath
“...In books there's always somebody standing by ready to say hey, the world's in danger, evil's on the rise, but if you're really quick and take this ring and put it in that volcano over there everything will be fine.
"But in real life that guy never turns up. He's never there. He's busy handing out advice in the next universe over. In our world no one ever knows what to do, and everyone's just as clueless and full of crap as everyone else, and you have to figure it all out by yourself. And even after you've figured it out and done it, you'll never know whether you were right or wrong. You'll never know if you put the ring in the right volcano, or if things might have gone better if you hadn't. There's no answers in the back of the book.”
"But in real life that guy never turns up. He's never there. He's busy handing out advice in the next universe over. In our world no one ever knows what to do, and everyone's just as clueless and full of crap as everyone else, and you have to figure it all out by yourself. And even after you've figured it out and done it, you'll never know whether you were right or wrong. You'll never know if you put the ring in the right volcano, or if things might have gone better if you hadn't. There's no answers in the back of the book.”
- Lev Grossman
I love people. Everybody. I love them, I think, as a stamp collector loves his collection. Every story, every incident, every bit of conversation is raw material for me. My love's not impersonal yet not wholly subjective either. I would like to be everyone, a cripple, a dying man, a whore, and then come back to write about my thoughts, my emotions, as that person. But I am not omniscient. I have to live my life, and it is the only one I'll ever have. And you cannot regard your own life with objective curiosity all the time.
- Sylvia Plath (another quote - i love her.)
Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening
- Robert Frost
Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village, though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.
His house is in the village, though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.
My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.
He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound's the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.
The woods are lovely, dark, and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
~
