So today was all about tidying and cleaning my flat before my mom gets here. I woke up kind of late because I couldn’t get to sleep before 5:00. What happened is that I went to sleep straight after I wrote my post and then woke up two hours later. It sucks to have my body clock screwed up again. I’m hoping that having my mom here will make me wake up early. You see my flat is quite small and she makes a lot of noise.
So Anyway, I woke up and worked all day. I got my living room tidied. All the books papers and general brick-a-brack was put in its place. I found a nice card that Z gave me when we first came here. It’s a lovely thing to find stuff like that. I’m starting to have history in this country and this place. It’s becoming home, slowly but surely. I still would rather live in London then anywhere else, but still.
As I said the living room looks good now. My bedroom’s been tidied as well. I still have the kitchen and the bathroom. I will work on them tonight. That way I only have to vacuum in the morning and voila my flat will be ready to have people over. I have to work on the rest of the flat tonight because I’m going down to London tomorrow afternoon, so I only have the morning to clean. So I can’t leave too much for tomorrow.
I had a nice evening as well. Z, A, and I went to dinner. I haven’t seen A in about a month I think. So it was nice seeing him again. We went to the Vic first. It’s a lovely Victorian pub with good food. It was completely full and looked like it was only going to get fuller. There were bands that were going to play in the courtyard they have, so we couldn’t sit there. Both because it was full and because we came to talk not to listen to music. The inside was full as well and it was very stuffy and hot. So we decided to go somewhere else.
We ended up in another restaurant and we had a very good time. We topped up the evening with some ice cream, clotted cream and chocolate. And here I am. Writing my day’s evening blog post before going back to tidying my flat.
During the evening we talked about a few different things. One of which was the November thing where you have to write a book in a month. The point of this thing is that it forces you to write at least 1200 words a day in the hope of getting a first draft of a book by the end of the month. I thought that if I have another chapter finished by then I might do that. I have a few ideas that have been swimming in my grey matter for a while now, and it would be nice to see if I can make anything out of them.
I know it might sound silly and stupid, and it might as well be (we don’t know yet). But I have been feeling like I’m not doing anything worthwhile or productive outside the PhD. I used to do a lot of very creative and active things, both when I was in school and when I was in university. I feel like I have all this wasted energy and I should tap into it and see what it can produce. I have decided to pick up my guitar again and play at least half an hour a day. I will probably join the theatre troupe next year. I will hopefully do that November writing thing. I will try out 5 minutes of stand up at some point in one of the open mic nights. If that last one gets a good reaction I might do more.
I need to do stuff outside the PhD in order to enjoy my thesis again. I feel like I have been so close to it, and only to it, that I’ve come to be bored with it. Now if I’m doing other things that are productive, I might actually enjoy it again, or at least not dislike it. I know it sounds silly but hobbies are important and for a couple of years now I haven’t had any. I will try not to shock my system into having too many all at once. So I will start playing guitar more often this summer and take it from there. I always get happy when I have a very heavy session of spring cleaning. That’s why I like to let my space get a bit cluttered, because it always feels like I’m starting a new life when I tidy everything up and put all my stuff in its right place.
Arab Rhizome 