Skip to main content

Graduate Life: A Story of Sleep

Since completing my undergraduate degree, my brain has suffered what I can only describe as a creative slump. I haven't really been able to focus on reading, or writing, or anything other than sleeping. (Honestly, I have slept so much, and still feel like I need to sleep for another year.)

To do lists have been made, jobs have been applied for, forms have been filled out (I'm officially going to be a student at the University of Kent in September, studying The Contemporary!) (yay!), and partying has happened.

I'm now 21 years old, I work at Betty's, and I cannot seem to get through a book anywhere near as fast as I used to. I don't often suffer reading slumps, but when I do, they are The Worst. Don't get me wrong, I've bought plenty of books, but I haven't felt any spark of desire to read them. Which is so unlike me. It could really be to do with the fact that I am currently working 27 hours a week, and proofreading 200-300 page novels every week. Maybe... just maybe.

Regardless, I'm feeling pretty good about life. I'm swimming regularly, which is something I couldn't do at all prior to my surgery. I am saving my money like a maniac to be able to afford things in Kent. I'm seeing friends and watching endless episodes of The Good Wife (which I recommend 1,000,000%).

I remember seeing my friends graduate over the past couple of years all feel the same. You spend the majority of your life in education, you work your bum off particularly in the last couple of years. And then you stop, and then you feel like you need to sleep forever. I'm in the mode of eat-sleep-work-repeat at the moment. And I know this is going to be how it is for the next year of my life as I go through my Masters and work, in a completely new place.

And maybe, maybe this is what adult life is like? Perpetual tiredness. It would explain why we sell so much coffee at Betty's...

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

"Teens don't read"

Earlier today Maureen Johnson pointed out that the view of "teens don't read" in the UK is deeply entrenched (which is a word that I now love  and had never heard before). As a teenager in the UK, the stigma around reading seems to be - to me - it's "uncool", it's "geeky", there "aren't any good books out there". I think the fact that a lot of teenagers in British schools are exposed to older literature or, perhaps, not that popular literature in lessons and forced into over-analysing and spending countless hours on 'what the author meant'. A point that was raised in this twitter discussion was that people didn't want to be seen reading, or didn't want to be seen reading certain books. It's made me realise that I never   ever ever  see people reading in the older years in my school ( ever ). Perhaps the odd year 7 (12 year old) or year 8 (13 year old) will read, but - from experience - they will probably be ...
4 comments
Read more

To A Baby

Dear Baby in a cafe, You are growing up in an incredible age. The age of the unknown. We are balancing on a thin line that could topple either way and the future, Baby, is unknown. For the moments that our eyes meet I see a world in your mind. The cogs whirring and your mind constantly processing everything. You see so much and understand so little; but that is changing. It is funny to think of all the new things you're currently learning about. Learning to eat, to drink, to speak, to listen and learn. The world which you observe, Baby, is wonderful. I cannot convey to you how incredibly grand it is because it simply is impossible to put it into words. It is wonderful - completely - but it is also full of terrible destruction. It's like a coin; there are two sides to it. I tend to pick the glass-half-full attitude, because I believe it will ultimately be okay. There are horrible things that happen in this world, Baby, and this world is heading down an unknown path. However...
2 comments
Read more

The concept of 'okayness'

Something I've noticed through both personal experience and observing other individuals is how human beings deal with the concept of being 'okay'. Generally we all have good things and bad things going on in their lives, take me for example: bad - back pain, medicine; good - family, friends, home, life, food, money... good stuff happening and change (change is an 'okay' right now rather than a 'not okay'). I happen to think that my life is  okay at the moment because, for me, the good stuff out ways the bad stuff by a milestone. Throughout a day I may become not okay but on the whole I am - on the whole I'm happy. I have noticed though, through reflection and looking at others, that we almost have this desire... this tendency to want to point at the 'not okay' bits of out lives and make them of a higher importance than our 'okay' bits. If I'm having an average day it can much more easily become a bad day than a good because I reme...
2 comments
Read more