When swelling of the brain is a positive.

I keep having these dreams where I have several overdue pieces of assessment that I know will never be completed and that prevent me from obtaining my degree. This is, as it happens, a fairly accurate representation of my over-drawn university career except that I’ve got the degree, framed, and sitting on my bookshelf. That particular hurdle, though long and stressful, what with the inability to hand in work, is well in the past. So why, I have to ask, the dreams? And why are they so real? I have woken and been momentarily tense with the worry of all the work I have to do. Then I remember. Nothing is due, all I have to do is make it to work on time and perform my monkey job with my customary over-caution. All things considered, I work a little too hard for my money – except when there’s nothing to do. I am, as a colleague says, half-annoyed, very thorough. It is, in all, a rubbish job, a job, one that can be left at the end of the day without a thought. One where the next day is, more or less, a fresh start. So why am I constantly feeling that something’s been forgotten? It’s not work – there is no ‘due’ and once I’ve left there’s nothing – no on-going projects, nothing for tomorrow, really nothing that needs me. And still this feeling. It could be the bills, of course; I wouldn’t put unnecessary worrying about bills past my psyche for playing tricks on me. However, I don’t think it’s anything so trivial. I’m starting to think that even my brain is worried about my stasis. Life, not merely movement. Nothing has happened; I’ve allowed nothing to happen in quite some time. I am in the same position, in almost every single way, that I was in this time last year. Not a thing has changed. There’s something really very unnatural about that. It’s not even a very good position. I’m in a silly, boring, routine job for which I am grossly over-educated, my personal life is the same in every way except, perhaps, that I now see even less of people than I used to. I look the same, feel the same, act the same, I probably think the same. I have taken ennui to previously un-experienced levels. I am bored and boring - and the déjà vu that I’m presently experiencing suggests that I’ve commented on this before. Oh the horrible horrible sameness. And what I feel is trapped and afraid. I don’t know, not even a little, what it is I want now. I want escape but I do not, I cannot. I certainly would not leave everything behind, not entirely. Would I? I’m always told that I have potential, that I’m wasting it. ‘Potential,’ they always say and then nothing, no explanation. It’s just a word that doesn’t really mean anything. It’s waiting to be told. Maybe it describes me aptly. I am not really anything; I am waiting to be told. Only, of course, if I was told I wouldn’t listen. We all have our measures of perversity. Oh how I moan. I am the hypocrite, aren’t I? I condemn others for whinging and turn about and do it myself. Stupidly, forgetfully, and entirely upon the subject of my vanity.
It’s time for the trivial, no?
I missed the bus today and so stood about the QVB sipping coffee and hiding from the rain. I was also indulging in eye-candy, being on the level to see the passing parade. I caught the eye of one, who’d been accosted by an umbrella and then giggled at by its owner, just as I was smirking at his predicament. The umbrella’s owner was giggling because he was a really quite lovely young man whose eye she’d nearly poked out and was quite embarrassed. I was merely amused at her embarrassment. I had another stop to ask me for directions. I’d been staring in a quite inappropriate manner at this young man as he’s walked past me. Shortly thereafter he stopped, turned and came and asked me for directions. I couldn’t even help him with the directions as I never note street names. He eventually wandered off with a map. I do have a knack for getting rid of men. Usually I just use my deadened gaze but with this one I just made the both of us feel foolish, quite unintentionally too. That déjà vu is back.
I must go attend to something now.