Summer chaos

It’s summer and it’s holiday. I can’t wait for both of them to be over.

Don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing bad about summer (apart from the heat, of course). I love the greenery only just starting to shine; I love the misty mornings, fresh waters and sweet winds. It’s also great that I can spend more time in the countryside. It just seems that summer is about to become a proper chaos. Well, I knew that. I’m very, very pessimistic, and yet the past couple of days exceeded all my expectations. Lovely.

Hopefully I’ll make some progress with my master’s thesis, that’s my one comfort right now. Dear Tolkien, thank you for existing.

Ha! I didn’t panic for nothing! I knew it!

And yet I was kind of hoping for a miracle (the kind of miracle that occurs when everything goes as planned, life is nice and smooth and I don’t constantly find myself messing things up and both causing and experiencing misunderstandings). So, let’s go back to my well-earned, honorable position as both the king and the jester of the mighty and vast realm of chaos, disarray and follies.

(I’d give an explanation for the preceding paragraph if I wasn’t this confused. But it is [mostly] studying-related.)

Anyway, the weekend was nice (for honesty’s sake I probably shouldn’t use the word ‘nice’ since I attended my grandmother’s funeral but that’s not the point here). To be more precise, the night between Saturday and Sunday was nice – or great, in fact. I couldn’t sleep so I went outside (due to the funeral I was on the countryside over the weekend) and enjoyed the magical-looking sky. It was rather cold and the fields were all covered in fog. Earlier I had borrowed an SLR-camera from my uncle and now tried to take pictures of the sky (fair warning: I’m not really a good photographer and I haven’t been using SLRs much before). At least some of the pictures were rather nice.

Such a fair autumn, both days and nights.

Cassiopeia; Andromeda (constellation + galaxy); Pegasus

The Pleiades (a crappy picture but still)

Delphinus

Panic!

Autumn is officially here – and so is the panic. Studying is great, studying is fun and approximately 95 % of the meaningfulness of my life is based on it but it doesn’t mean it´s completely trouble-free. I’m always either thrilled and overly-excited or right about to pack my bags and flee. Quite often I’m both which is rather confusing. At the moment I’m dead sure nothing is going to work this semester and I’ll mess up pretty much everything that possibly can be messed up. Looking forward to that.

Panic.

The word of the week. Or this part of year. Or just my life generally.

Break thy pen, thou fool!

Right.

I took an exam today. Nothing special about that, it just felt strange. Or crap, actually.

I’ve been studying political philosophy this summer, just one course but I didn’t have time to do more since I can study properly only on weekends (otherwise I’m working 8.30–16.30; in Finland we have ridiculously long summer breaks during which I usually work). Today I took the exam and it was horrible, for heaven’s sake! No, wait… I got that reversed, the exam was fine but I was horrible. I sucked and the grade I’ll have will just determine how much. The things I forgot were so obvious, so self-evident. My head is like a sieve, everything I put there goes through. For instance, I forgot to define freedom when writing about Alexis de Tocqueville’s liberalism and theories concerning democracy. Freedom. A word that most likely is in the top three when listing important concepts and ideas the book presents. Summer well spent, I’d say. I hate Fridays right now.

Another thing came to my mind. Being in the classroom felt very odd, the entire campus area did. I haven’t been there during the summer break, perhaps that’s the reason. Be that as it may, I’m scared. I’m actually scared. I love our university but somehow I feel I don’t actually belong there anymore. It’s frightening since school and learning environments in general have always been the only places I feel home at – apart from nature and Scotland of course. I’ve never truly felt deep connection, most of the time I feel sort of disconnected. Studying has always been my anchor and pride, what if I’ll lose it? What if I don’t deserve to study at the university anymore?

Yep. I hate Fridays. Begone, thou foul day!

Fear to fail

The text you’re about to read is neither more nor less than a pointless lamentation about things that don’t really matter. That is to say, I recommend you to find some other activity than reading my ramblings to spend this fabulous Sunday afternoon.

I have a bad habit of clinging to all kinds of things that tend to be essentially impossible or the very least improbable to ever happen in this beautiful universe of ours. Frankly there are not too many things I want; moneywise I have enough to get by and I’m happy with that, I don’t need more. When it comes to other things such as my inevitable future as a lonely wolf or a mad cat lady – well, that image grew roots in my nervous system so long ago that I accepted it and even learned to like it in some curious way. I don’t really care to bother my brain with such things. There are other things far more puzzling – and frustrating.

My greatest – and probably silliest – fear is that I’ll never get things done. I tend to be slightly ambitious whether it is about studying or other things I wish to be good at. I hate to do things sloppily and superficially, whatever it is I’m doing I want to do it properly. The frustration arises when I realise that my mere will to do things well is not enough to actually make things happen. Perhaps the fear is first and foremost about not being good enough, something I really can’t stand. It’s not just about studying and learning; it’s also about certain silly dreams (or actually one particular dream) I’ve had since I was little and can’t let go despite being totally incapable of making them real. The very point is that the things I want are the kind of things that don’t depend on luck, circumstances or other variables. Therefore this rambling comes down to one conclusion I’m about to face once again:

I suck. Majorly. Again.

Did I make any sense? Guess I didn’t.

A few words about something much more fascinating than the self-pity-oriented whining above: last week I took a late night walk and enjoyed a wonderful, foggy midnight moment. The air was really fresh and clear and to my great pleasure I saw several bats flying back and forth, probably trying to find dinner (or perhaps it was breakfast for them). I find bats really cool and cute with their beautifully shaped wings and furry bodies, such fascinating creatures of the night they are.

I know the picture is crappy but believe me, it is a bat.