Limbo

Life, I've discovered, is made up of all those engagements, appointments and important adult-related things that occur in between sparsely posted blog entries. After a quick look back, the last time I came here I was in the midst of packing up an old dwelling and reminiscing about a long gone childhood. In the time that's passed since then, I've moved from one house to another, organised the ensuing clutter, attempted to find work, spent sweltering nights wishing I could sleep in a cooler environment, got a stye on my eye, got rid of a stye on my eye, attempted to find work, thrown an academic cap in the air, added another annual notch to my future gravestone and attempted to find work. A lot of this I've done without regular access to the internet in the middle of a housing tranfer, so I've not really been able to document it at all here, really. Sorry.

There's an overwhelming sense of self-worthlessness that comes with existence. Days get spent in a zombified state on the couch, staring vacantly at moving images supposed to entertain you. There's an underlying context to any piece of TV or film which essentially just screams out "What is your meaning/purpose/existence worth when this is the most you're doing?" The fact that you've attempted to hunt down collaborative things to do with your time/means of monetary support, yet yeilding no response doesn't help matters. Eventually, you realise your proudest achievement of the last few weeks is that you've managed to reach a 79% completion rate on the first Crash Bandicoot game, which is brilliant considering it's a challenging piece of interactive entertainment and you never got past the first couple of levels when you were younger anyway.

At the moment, I'm somewhere in that horribly grey intersection of a Venn diagram, stuck inbetween the segments of "no longer studying" and "technically still a student". As the kind fellow at my local JobCentre Plus pointed out to me, I'm currently unable to claim Jobseeker's Allowance as the institution I've attended for the last three years is still clinging onto me until the end of August, despite the fact that it just kicked me away with a "Good luck and all that" two days ago. I even have a photo taken to prove it. In the picture, I'm dressed like a cross between a Hogwarts student and Dickensian headmaster whilst smiling vaguely and holding a piece of plastic drainpipe, thus officially certifying me "clever". My current stint in limbo, therefore, means I have to seek jobs and not get paid for it by the country, which is fair enough, I suppose. I've pretty much been brought on making a living out of actually doing something other than watching the same two episodes of Scrubs three times a day.

It is said that struggling through hardship makes us stronger. A butterfly cannot fly without battling its way through the cocoon and so on. And when the day comes when I lie in bed, dilapidated and ravaged by Father Time and I reminisce on a life gone by, I cannot help but feel this period will be regarded as one of great complexity; as a period of academic success and no money; as one of sunshine and friendship and no money; as one of new beginnings and no money. And maybe, just maybe, that reminiscing will be better than sorting through dusty videos of rapping mathematicians.