Afternoon Nap

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Halloween Preparation

I keep expecting to fall into a routine these days, but so far it just hasn’t really happened – with the result that my supposed-to-be-Saturday weekly flash fiction will be a few days late again this week. But I figured that although I don’t have the time or energy to write the piece I have in mind, I would write a quick life update.

Halloween – or Samhain, or Oíche Shamhna, or whatever way you know it best – is my birthday, and this year I will be turning 24. It seems to me like a strange age to turn for some reason. It’s a bit in-between – still not quite mid-way through the twenties, but suddenly an awful lot more grown-up sounding than 23. It’s the age that my parents got married, and although it’s not an age that people get married at in my culture any more, there still is some coming-of-age feel to it that I wouldn’t have expected.

I also feel like I have changed so much over the past two years that it really does herald a new time in my life. I feel as though my mind works in a different way now than it did. I have come into my own academically and creatively, and I feel ready to really start embracing my talents and figuring out which ones I will be focussing on for the forseeable future, and which ones I will be gently letting go.

On a lighter note, I’m quite excited about Halloween coming up because it’s my favourite holiday of the year – and not just because it’s my birthday. I don’t have very exciting plans for this year, and I haven’t put much thought into my costume yet, which is unusual. But I know I’m going to really enjoy it all the same.

Anyway, I think I’ll hit an upswing during the week, and once November comes I’ll have so much writing to do that I’ll be forced into some sort of routine! I’ve also started applying for volunteer positions. So hopefully November will be a productive and more structured month for me than October.

 

Reflection

I didn’t get any fiction up this weekend due to being sick – but I’ll hopefully get something up during the week! In the meantime, here are a few more pictures I took by the canal last week.

Lazy Weekend

I’ve been having a wonderful, mostly lazy weekend. It started out not so great, as some of my plans on Friday fell through and I found myself finishing dinner with some friends and on a bus home at 10:30. I had just been turned down for another job and was feeling a bit miserable, so I rang my boyfriend who was at the Hard Working Class Heroes festival in town. And so my night turned around – I met him and a few of his friends in the Workman’s club for the last three bands, one of which was particularly wonderful – an electronic trio called Chips. I drank tequila with abandon and we danced up near the stage, and life felt better.

Saturday and today consistent entirely of lazing around in my flat and in my boyfriend’s, faffing around on WordPress and doing a bit of writing. My boyfriend follows football (soccer) so yesterday evening mainly consisted of watching Match of the Day, and we went to a pub for him to watch a match this afternoon while I edited some photos. For lunch we got pancakes, bacon and maple syrup in a café near my flat – an inspired combination, and something we don’t eat enough here in Ireland.

Sometimes I feel like my life is a little insular these days, and I’m not making enough effort to spend lots of time with my friends. And I wonder what my life would look like if me and my boyfriend hadn’t got back together – would I be spending more time with other people, or would I be lonely and adrift? But I’m happy, content. I reckon I’ll let myself settle into this new life and see where the chips fall.

Canal

Elephant

This guy is another of the elephants I have scattered around my rooms, which I sadly forgot about in this post. Technically, he is part of a string of five, but for some reason he’s my favourite. A friend of mine brought me back this string of elephants – each of them a different colour – but I don’t remember from where. I think maybe China?

Anyway, this is just a stray photograph from the first few photos I took with my new camera. I liked it, so I thought I’d share. Expect more tomorrow or the next day!

At Night

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Fleeting summer

Our wonderful weather came and went, as it tends to do in this country. We’ve had nearly two weeks of dull, rainy weather now, and although I was unhappy about it at first, today I’m relishing it. The last two days, the rain has been coming down properly, rather than depressing us all with a constant, pathetic drizzle, and today a gale has struck up, buffeting the attic in my parents’ house where I’ve come to visit. I went out for a walk earlier, when the rain had died down, and fell in love with the wind all over again.

It’s a happy kind of time for me now, though I am occasionally paralysed by moments of doubt and despair. I am the kind of person who fears, most of all maybe, repeating my own mistakes. If I cannot learn from past unhappiness, it is rendered pointless. And as a person who feels emotions very keenly, I sometimes feel I do not have the strength to face some of what I have in the past.

But these dark patches are few, and even the dullness and boredom of this mandatory research project I don’t care about cannot bring me down. Maybe I will finally learn to stop over-analysing, and to simply step into and live in the moment. I am full of hope.

Still, some nicer weather would be good, if only to encourage me to take photographs again!

Summer is coming

Well, I woke up this morning feeling decidedly better, so I guess a good night’s sleep was partly what I needed after all. To be honest, it usually is – I continue to completely underestimate how much tiredness affects my mood.

It feels like the rain is finally stopping this morning, and the sun is sort of pushing through the clouds – summer is finally arriving, I think. It’s been raining a lot since the beginning of May, and that has totally confused me, as I usually get right into the spirit of a season as soon as it changes. So this change of weather is good news for me too. I’m going to walk into town in a bit to have lunch with a friend, and I can’t wait to have that summery feeling of being able to wander anywhere I want in the sunshine.

And then maybe I’ll sit in the sun and read, or some such decadent activity. The capstone project can wait a few days.