Adulting is exhausting. How have all of you been doing it for so long? I'm not even a year in this whole business and I'm tired. I want a gold star. All of you get gold stars.
In other news, I've also gotten my living situation for next year sorted and gotten myself and three other friends / future flat-mates of mine a really nice place. It has a garden! I'm... too excited about the garden; it's actually the first thing I tell anyone when I tell them about the place. I have my reasons, and they are primarily nostalgia, because I had a garden of mostly marigolds when I was six - it was a lovely little rectangle thing next to our house (we had a bungalow at the time, which is weird, because I can't imagine living in a bungalow now) and it was the best thing ever. I have no idea how I managed to grow those marigolds but now that I have another garden, I'll figure it out. Maybe not marigolds, though. I have no idea what works in the weather here.
Looking back, that's really strange. What sort of six-year-old grows marigolds? Maybe it's because we didn't have flowers on the ships? I don't even know.
Anyway, when I said "I've" way back at the start of that second paragraph there, I mean that, because this wasn't like, a collaborative experiment or anything. I looked for the places, arranged the viewings, and signed the most forms. I'm not a tyrant friend, either (just terrifyingly well-organised, which is similar) - my friends were 100% okay with this and very kindly treated me with cold sugary drinks after, because they're fantastic. So, anyway, it's a great place, with a lovely garden and a living room and, most importantly, double beds in all of the (lovely) bedrooms. I mean, there's nothing wrong with the bed in my dorm, right now, but if I try to sprawl on it, I fall off, so.
Moving on, I'm going to be pretty busy until 19th May, because that's when my last exam is. After that, I'm free for ... months. 'til September, actually, because that's how university holidays work, apparently. That is ridiculous. University life is ridiculous. I have plans for the summer, though - I mean, I'm going to Shanghai in June, and coming back to London in August, but I've got things I want to do, like learning sign language and figuring out how to preheat normal ovens rather than touch the terrifying metal monster machine / oven we have in my current dorm so I can bake all the things. Basically, language and cooking, and maybe reading up on gardening.
Speaking of language, NaPoWriMo is ... going. I'm behind, but I'll catch up eventually, probably after I finish my assignment, and probably through really short micropoems, but, hey. I'm not going to break my track record. I really do like some of the results so far, though - one of my favourite particular phrases is "people of a pharmacy", which really works, considering I have a huge bag of meds sitting in my dorm right now:
Speaking of poetry, and meds, thank you to everyone who responded to the poll I put up; your advice was really helpful. I was a bit all over the place with it, because it was a journal on disability and while I'm not strongly attached to the journal, the quality is usually consistently good, and I am strongly attached to the whole - disability in literature thing, you know what I mean. I ended up working it out with the editors, and they have a poem of mine that I'm happy with, so it's all good. But, seriously, thanks for all your help, I don't know what I'd have done without you.
Finally! (At last, I know, I know.) I was talking with a Polish friend the other day, and she brought up Zbigniew Herbert, and the title of this journal is from a poem of his, Report from a Besieged City, (translated by Alissa Valles), which has been a favourite of mine for years, so, you know. Read that. It's good.
That's it from me, I think; how about you, how are you? What are you listening to?