I have been at work now for twelve hours exactly. It’ll probably be a little longer before I pull the plug and waltz on outta here. I’ve had tens cups of coffees, lots of water, a king-sized Halal burger and it feels strange to breathe without nicotine.
I need the cash, that’s true, but that’s not the full truth. I am here at this particular job because I like it here. It’s nice coming here. The food is good (since they re-opened the cantina again). I could work here 100%, and have done so in the past.
Then there’s University.
I’m not an educated man. I am not a man who believe in education as a system. I believe in education as a process, and it starts with you, whether you’re handing in assignments or not. There is no need for any system to be what it is, except for those that make a living from that system. I have never been comfortable with that.
Anyway, I am officially and paper-wise 100% a student. I should be reading now. And writing an essay for Wednesday.
I had a great idea for a short-story yesterday. I wrote a couple of pages just so that I would remember it. Now what? I remember back in the days I was doing my duty for the King of this nation. Everything was paid for. I received cash every fourteenth day, never saw a bill from telephone companies or the landlord, and I wrote a story every day. I also had the money to get drunk twice a week. Today I’m supposed to earn enough to study, but instead I earn for paying student loans.
Today I’m probably twice as "rich" and twice as miserable.
I don’t write that story, I don’t get a peace of mind, I don’t get the simple life a simple man cherish.
Now, I love philosophy, or more correctly; I am a philosopher. Philosophy is ‘love and pursuit of wisdom’.
What I don’t love is the way I treat my love under the given conditions. If truth had been a woman, I’d be guilty of neglecting her. And it hurts. It’s a nagging knowledge deep in you, every spare moment you receive, that you’re wasting your time because you should be doing what you’re really here for.
Saturday this kid asked me: Tell me something. You are a full time student. And you work at that research foundation. And you write books. How do you do it?
It wasn’t meant as a rhetorical question, but I squarely answered: I don’t.
I do whatever kicks in at the moment. Except when duty calls. My mother saw to it that none of her children would fail on duty. It’s rather strange how a good intention like that can grow into a fist of diabolical proportions on the dark sky of writer’s frustration. But it’s me growing that fist, to hit myself in the head. And I do it. Time and time again. If I don’t begin to learn from my life soon, I’ll have knocked out my senses ‘fore I’m thirty.
Ah. Just a late-night ramble.
But the gloom is still there though. Feels like I’m working for the end of days.