royal wedding

The Royal Wedding is kind of a big deal in England---as you'd expect and as you'd hope for, really.

In the spirit of it, today, I thought I'd share a Disney inspired bridal gown---just for fun, more than anything. I love a new dress as much as the next girl---okay, okay, maybe a tiny bit more---but I can never, ever see myself in such a big, flouncy number. Just as I can never, ever see myself having a big wedding---but not because I don't believe in it. (I cannot think of a lovelier or more worthwhile commitment---apart from parenthood. But I like to think the latter shouldn't exist without the other---I am an old-fashioned girl at heart).

Snow White inspired, and it can be found here.

I can't lie: I am a teeny, teeny little bit excited about Kate's dress tomorrow---and, of course, the cake...

But do you know what I love more about this whole day? The patriotism and the community it has inspired back in people---it's truly a beautiful thing. I am hoping to get myself down to the seaside today to partake in a little bit of pier-partying (weather dependant, of course---and that lovely weather is pretty much evading us at the moment). I like the idea of all the traditional get-togethers; the young and the old celebrating side by side. I think having more of it around would be a very lovely thing indeed.

Whatever you are doing together---in celebration or not---I hope you have a beautiful day.

letterpress

I found this video too beautiful not to share.

Letterpress from Naomie Ross on Vimeo.

Did I mention that I really, really want one?

writing tips from a faithful source

Zadie Smith is a woman I will turn to again and again in the literary world---and here are her top tips for writers out there.

"1 When still a child, make sure you read a lot of books. Spend more time doing this than anything else.

2 When an adult, try to read your own work as a stranger would read it, or even better, as an enemy would.

3 Don't romanticise your "vocation". You can either write good sentences or you can't. There is no "writer's lifestyle". All that matters is what you leave on the page.

4 Avoid your weaknesses. But do this without telling yourself that the things you can't do aren't worth doing. Don't mask self-doubt with contempt.

5 Leave a decent space of time between writing something and editing it.

6 Avoid cliques, gangs, groups. The presence of a crowd won't make your writing any better than it is.

7 Work on a computer that is disconnected from the ­internet.

8 Protect the time and space in which you write. Keep everybody away from it, even the people who are most important to you.

9 Don't confuse honours with achievement.

10 Tell the truth through whichever veil comes to hand – but tell it. Resign yourself to the lifelong sadness that comes from never ­being satisfied."

And whilst I am never sure how useful these things are, that last sentence gets me every time---too true, I always think, too true.

I keep telling myself that when my exams are done and my work is handed in, I will get back to this thing called writing. I hope, more than anything, that I stay true to my (self-uttered, self-heard) word.

(Source, The Guardian).

i'd like to, please

Hope #11.

Have a beach day.

I had one last year---with my love and with friends and a whole lot of sand. But all this warm weather is getting to me, making me crave another all over again.

A few things need to happen, first, though.

The sea needs to warm up a little more. I need to get back into swimming---so I can swim further and harder against the waves. And something else I'd really, really like? Some vintage (or vintage inspired) swimwear. I just love those flattering, fitted silhouettes and lovely, lovely patterns.

(My I'd Like To, Please posts are inspired by this blog. And the above picture, of vintage ladies in their vintage beachwear, can be found here).

sailor chic

I am a little bit smitten over this dress by Kate Spade.

The colour, the distance, the shape? All beautiful---with a lovely little hint of the fifties.

(Image courtesy of Kate Spade).

on fearing unexpectedly

Most of the time, the things I am the most scared of are the things I really, really want to do.

And for no real, tangible reason: I am really feeling that today.

the fish who gave the bird a wing

I came across this print the other day.

And it reminded me of a book we have, somewhere on a shelf, somewhere in a room in this, my family home.

My sister wrote it when she was about six---a present for me, her newborn sister---about a little fish and a little bird who swap fins and wings and live the life of the other.

Even back then, my sister was talented. And I am oh-so-very glad that the memory of this illustrated book is back.

What a lovely print this is---and the many more that Etsy artist, Geninne does. Visit her shop here.

easter

My Easter weekend this year was full of friends and family---games in the park, a European market and the best barbecue I have had in a very long time*.

Oh, and glorious, glorious sunshine. The kind that makes you want to laze and laze and laze, basking in it just before it hides away---because you know it will, and soon. This little England can't sustain it for so long---can't free us from the April showers we simply haven't had. But there is beauty in both, I say, beauty in both.

How was your Easter?

*It's best not to mention the baking I did. One new recipe completely failed and another, another mud-pie of a cake that didn't cope quite so well in this heat. But I'll try---then try again.

i'd like to please

I am clearly full of hope today...

Hope #10.

Make a wedding cake.

Of course, I have to get so (very) much better at them first.

(I'd Like To, Please posts are inspired by Someday Hopes and the picture above---of a cake that I love---is courtesy of Eat Cake Be Merry).

Oh, and Happy Easter! x

the gathering

"Gatwick airport is not the best place to be gripped by a fear of flying. But it seems that this is what is happening to me now; because you are up so high, in those things, and there is such a long way to fall. Then again, I have been falling for months. I have been falling into my own life, for months. And I am about to hit it now." Anne Enright, The Gathering

i'd like to, please

Hope #9.

To have an attic-room.

I have longed for a little secluded space at the top of a house for a very long time---longed to nestle into the crook of the roof and to hear the scarred creak of weathered floorboards.

And one day---in the house of my own---I will have one.

(My I'd Like To, Please posts are inspired by this blog and the picture you can find here).

miniature baker

I am so absolutely smitten with these baking-related necklaces.

They're so tiny, so proportioned and oh-so-very appealing.

(The spoons/pan can be found here, whilst the measuring cup can be found here).

I will be baking again soon---first with something a little healthier and then, with the Easter weekend, a little more indulgence. And I couldn't be more excited. Simple things, eh?

repetition---and so it goes

I've said it before (and I say it a little too often)---but this over-spill from uni is really getting to me. Countless hours a day are spent not doing what I should be---instead dreaming about all the things I will do---all the things I will make and create and write about, all the places I will go and the things I will, hopefully, see. But dreaming about them means dreaming about the exams and the coursework and the preparation left to do. And then dreaming about that means dreaming about the former---a distraction of whimsy and of inspiration and of love. So it's a cycle, a cycle I am stuck in in the endless, summery days. A cycle that broke, last week, when I finally cleaned. (And wow, I spent hours re-living my childhood---pooling over the so-many trinkets I had stuffed away in drawers). But it's back again, drawing me in---worsened by a few nights' nightmares (and I mean of the running kind, you know, the ones when you try, so desperately, to make it away but find yourself stuck time and time again?) and a kind of ache.

But right now---right now as I apply for jobs and then look for more---I am going to try and get back into the mindset. The mindset that got me here, this far.

itchy feet

Do we change our likes and our dislikes (that feed into our contentment) simply as a method of reassurance? A strategy our mind implements, a way to help us come to terms with the need to move or change job or sever familiar ties. Or, in fact, do these changes---these changes that so often come when we least expect it, that so often hurtle into our vision without a glimpse in our peripheries---act as realisations? Little nudges that we aren't, in fact, happy---and that change, that change, will be fresh, curing itchy feet and a fallen disappointment.

Just a thought.

i'd like to, please

Hope #8.

Learn to paint.

Mostly because of this, one picture.

Isn't it amazing? It's just so delicate.

(Posts are inspired by this blog and the picture---which was sadly sold a few years ago---is from this Etsy shop).

the weekend

This weekend was proof that falling in love with your best friend really is the most wonderful thing.

Running through fields, being wrestled to the ground (to evade an imaginary crisis), tickling, sitting in the sun, spying on Nessie, watching kids' films, being silly when we're tired, going out to lunch (when we really can't afford to), trying on hats and taking photographs.

Yes, falling in love with your best friend is a really wonderful thing.

*I also went to the library. It took me a lot of courage (and getting over my pride) to announce to the assistant that I actually might have maybe sort of lost my library card. That's right, the one I have had since I was about six---the one that I was so young to have that my mum, in fact, signed it. But it's okay---because if I do find it, she said I could keep it for sentimentality---and probably posterity. And then she handed me a brand new one---a blue one---and didn't charge. I think she could tell that this was quite a big deal. I take my libraries---and my books, in case you didn't already know, very seriously.

have i told you lately what's been on my shelf?

Last semester, I took a module in Contemporary Writing and it quickly became my favourite class by far. It was nice to read writing that wasn't so heavily scrutinised or led in some way---writing that you didn't read around or know so much about before you delved beneath its cover. And d'you know what? Some of it was really very good.

"The murdered couple, in the weeks ahead, in the newspapers, even at the funeral, would have to shoulder some of the blame themselves. Their bodies were too compliant, unprotesting, over-dramatised. Their deaths---though ugly and gratuitous---seemed even to the policemen gathered in the dunes, partly deserved."

"But surely it is the gist that matters; I am, after all, telling you a history, and in a history, as I expect you---an American---will agree, it is the thrust of one's narrative that counts, not the accuracy of one's details."

"There are so few people given us to love. I want to tell my daughters this, each time you fall in love it is important, even at nineteen. Especially at nineteen. And if you can, at nineteen, count the people you love on one hand, you will not, at forty, have run out of fingers on the other. There are so few people given us to love and they all stick."

"The fantasy never got beyond that---I didn't let it---and though the tears rolled down my face, I wasn't sobbing or out of control. I just waited a bit, then turned back to the car, to drive off to wherever it was I was supposed to be."

"The taste of it is always on her fingers, always lurking at the back of her throat. Or maybe the taste of money, or love, is just the same as the taste of catarrh."

And some of them, well, I liked some a lot more than I liked others. The Gathering and Being Dead were written with a sensitivity---a beautiful roll of thoughtful sentences; sound and emotion placed just so---that I couldn't always put my finger on quite how it was done (but it made them my favourites by quite a long way). And The Reluctant Fundamentalist certainly, most certainly, induced a lot of thought.

I just thought it would be fun to give a snippet into my bookshelf, as of late.

What have you been reading? (And if you have, indeed, read any of these---do tell? I am always, always up for literary (and not so) discussion!)

[Just in case the covers aren't clear---which I hope they are!---here's a roundup: Being Dead (Jim Crace), The Reluctant Fundamentalist (Mohsin Hamid), The Gathering (Anne Enright), Never Let Me Go (Kazuo Ishiguro), Hotel World (Ali Smith)]

i'd like to, please

Hope #7.

Go to a masquerade ball.

Even though masks are really not my thing (and believe me, they are not).

I want to dress up, heels and all (and believe me, these are so often not my thing, either) and I want to dance and talk and sway behind a veil of porcelain and glitter.

I think it would be fun.

(Inspired by Someday Hopes and the picture can be found here).

inspiration

How beautiful is this photograph?

It was taken over a period of six months using a pin-hole camera and is something I definitely want to try for myself someday soon.

I will try and scan in some of my own (old) Diana's/Sidney's this weekend---sadly, I haven't been out and about very much with them lately.

(Source).

*Have I introduced you to Sidney? Arnold gave him to me back at Christmas---he's a fisheye. (And thus named after one of my former pets).

inarticulate...

With no university and no day job to attend to, this week has felt a little alienating. I can't lie---for a lot of it, I've enjoyed the freedom: the baking, the sleeping in, the mental rest. But I suppose what I have loved the most is the absolute opposite: the feeling of being at a loose-end; of not quite knowing what to do with myself. Because if nothing directly productive has come from this week, it's been the affirmation that I am doing the right thing---despite me doubting it so often. I haven't opened a book in seven days and I am missing it---missing it isn't even the right word, it's more of a craving, really. Because as much as I don't like the deadlines and the rush and the over-whelming sense of being behind, of only just catching up, I can't live without it. Studying---academic or not---has become a second nature, a reflex, a switched-on mentality.

So tomorrow, tomorrow I will pick up a book and I will get back to studying---even if it's a snatched moment on the train. And next week, next week I will get back to preparing for exams. And after that, after that I will start reading again but---and this is perhaps the greatest revelation of all---it will be for me.

Does that make sense?

been there, seen that

I've been here---I've glimpsed this (and I say glimpsed because whilst I did step inside, I was a little too nervous, too overwhelmed, too out of place to really look).

It's Le Bibliotheque Nationale on Le Rue De Richelieu, Paris.

And today I am longing to return---to catch a glimpse of the leathered spines and rich, mahogany reading desks. To eat croissants in the park and hang out, basking in the sun near Le Louvre. To walk, aimlessly, but to find beauty everywhere.

And I might, just might, be looking at hotels---you know, just in case.

And I might, just might, start revising French---you know, just in case.

perspective (finding it from little things)

Every so often I find something that puts things into perspective---that makes me re-evaluate, then appreciate, my standpoint today. Sometimes, that 'something' is because I have seen the world in a more beautiful way---sometimes it is from a phrase that perfects an emotion more readily than I ever could.

But today it was this.

Teddy Roosevelt's diary entry, on February 14th, 1884. The day his wife, Alice Hathaway (Lee Roosevelt) passed away from Bright's Disease.

I cannot think of a more heartbreaking thing to pen in a diary.

(Source).

cat-cakes

For his birthday this year, I made Arnold cat-related treats.

Here are a few pictures of the cat-cakes.

I like making treats. Even if they weren't as neat or as tidy as I would have liked.

Happy Birthday (again), my love!

i'd like to, please

Hope. #6.

To own a Kitchen Aid mixer.

I hope one day to own my own Kitchen Aid. At the moment, my mum is kind enough to lend me hers for my baking days---but I do look forward to the day that I have my own. It will sit, so proudly, in my kitchen. And it will be used for baking more than twice a week (this, hopefully, is a proposed understatement).

A girl can dream, can't she?

I'd probably be as excited as Elsie was---seriously, very jealous.

The one above---my favourite---is in Candy Apple Red. But I'd happily take Yellow Pepper and Blue Storm, too. Or any. So many choices.

(This post was inspired by Someday Hopes and the picture is courtesy of Kitchen Aid).

apathy?

There are a lot of things coming up that I need to do. Exams I need so desperately to prepare for; a living space I need to organise and tidy; jobs I need to search then apply for---and projects, projects I am just itching to start. (There is a lot on my list I want to accomplish over the summer---that list becomes more and more important every day).

I guess you could say I am feeling a little overwhelmed by it all. And that sense of being overwhelmed makes me a little lazy---mostly because I am a little too scared to start.

At the same time, I am doing things. I spent all of yesterday baking a few birthday treats for Arnold.

But it isn't enough. I need to work on those other things.

Maybe a cup of tea will help.

Maybe.

crayoned walls

I cannot get over how cool this wallpaper is!

I think it would work well in a restaurant or a shop---anywhere that guests can leave their (good-intentional) marks.

(Source).

i'd like to, please

Hope #5.

Ride a bike.

You know, I haven't ridden a bike in a very long time. Over ten years, in fact. Probably a little more than that. And the thing is, well, I'm a little worried I've forgotten how. (It was a change in bike that did it---stopped me riding, I mean. I was a little too small for the very big bike my parents bought me, new, from the shop in the village---and to this day I feel bad about it).

This year I want to do it again---I want to make sure I can do it, still. And if I can't? Well, I want to learn.

(Post inspired by this blog and the picture---the very beautiful picture---is from here).

something i want to live by

The other day I posted a new mantra and it was all about self-belief---something I want to start living with.

Well, today I found these words---things I want to start doing.

"Before you act, listen.
Before you react, think.
Before you spend, earn.

Before you criticize, wait.

Before you pray, forgive.

Before you quit, try."

Thank-you, Hemingway.

You sure know how to use verbs to really invoke action.

new cities

Today Arnold and I went for a child-like stroll through a new city.

And we learned that Ely---apart from it's cathedral, which really is colossal, and architecturally, quite a beauty---doesn't have that much to show for itself.

And maybe I ate a little badly---alright, alright, quite a lot badly---and squinted too much in the sun.

But it was such a wonderful day. It was the company that mattered---and from that, I really felt myself again.

Blue skies all over again, too. I am already falling in love with April.

libraries (why we need them)

I want to share something with you---but, well, it's a little long. But it's also incredibly worth it.

It is written by Zadie Smith and it is about libraries. (And I happen to think it incredibly insightful and smart and honest).

...

"I GREW up in a London council flat decorated with books, almost all of them procured by my mother.

I never stopped to wonder where these books came from, given the tightness of money generally – I just read them.

A decade later we moved to a maisonette where she filled the extra space with more books, arranged in a certain pattern. Second-hand Penguin paperbacks, then the Women’s Press books, then Virago. Then several shelves of Open ­University textbooks on social work, psychotherapy and feminist theory.

Busy with my own studies, and oblivious the way children are, I hadn’t noticed that the three younger Smiths were not the only students in that flat. We were reading because our parents and teachers told us to. My mother was reading for her life.

About two-thirds of those books had a printed stamp on the inside cover, explaining their provenance: ­PROPERTY OF WILLESDEN GREEN LIBRARY. I hope I am not incriminating my family by saying that during the mid-80s it seemed as if the Smiths were trying to covertly move the entire contents of that library into their living room.

It was a happy day when my mother spotted a sign pinned to a tree in the high road: WILLESDEN GREEN LIBRARY, BOOK AMNESTY. The next day we filled two black bin bags with books and returned them.

Just in time: I was about to start my GCSEs. I’ve spent a lot of times in libraries since then, but I remember the spring of 1990 as the most intense study period of my life, probably because it was the first.

To choose to study, with no adult looking over your shoulder and only other students for support – this was a new experience for me.

I think it was a new experience for a lot of the kids in there. Until that now-or-never spring, we had come to the library primarily for the cafe or the cinema, or to meet various love prospects of whom our immigrant parents would not approve, under the cover of that all-purpose, immigrant-parent-silencing sentence: “I’M GOING TO THE LIBRARY.”

When the exams came, we stopped goofing off. There’s no point in goofing off in a library: you are acutely aware that the only person’s time you’re wasting is your own. We sat next to each other at the long tables and used the library computers and did not speak. Now we were reading for our lives. Still it’s important not to overly romanticise these things. Willesden Green Library was not to be confused with the British Library. Sometimes whole shelves of books would be missing, lost, defaced or torn. Sometimes people would come in just to have a conversation while I bit my pens to pieces in frustration.

Later I learnt what a monumental and sacred thing a library can be. I have spent my adult life in the sort of libraries that make Willesden Green’s look very small indeed; to some people, clearly, quite small enough to be rid of without much regret. But I never would have seen a university library if I had not grown up living 100 yards from the library in Willesden Green. Local libraries are gateways – not only to other libraries but to other lives. Of course I can see that if you went to Eton or Harrow – like so many of the present Cabinet – you might not understand the point of such lowly gateways, or be able to conceive why anyone would crawl on their hands and knees for the privilege of entering one.

It has always been, and always will be, very difficult to explain to people with money what it means not to have money. If education matters to you, they ask, and if libraries matter to you, well, why wouldn’t you be willing to pay for them if you value them?

They are the kind of people who believe value can only be measured in money, at the extreme end of which logic lies the idea that people who fail to generate a lot of money for their families cannot possibly value their families as people with money do.

My own family put a very high value on education. Like many people without money, we relied on our public services. Not as a frippery, not as a pointless addition, not as an excuse for personal stagnation, but as a necessary gateway to better ­opportunities. We paid our taxes in the hope that they would be used to establish shared institutions from which all might benefit equally.

We understood very well that there are people who have no need of these services, who make their own private arrangements, in healthcare and education and property and travel and lifestyle, and who have a private library in their own private houses.

Nowadays I also have a private library in my own private house, and a library in the university in which I teach. But once you’ve benefited from the use of shared institutions you know that to abandon them when they are no longer a necessity is like Wile E. Coyote putting a rope bridge between two precipices only to blow it up once he’s reached the other side – so that no one might follow.

Community exists in Britain. It is a partnership between government and the people and it is depressing to hear the language of community – the Big Society – being used to disguise the low motives of one side of that partnership as it attempts to renege on the deal. What could be better than handing people back the power so they might build their own schools, their own libraries? Better to leave people to the onerous tasks of building their lives and paying their taxes. Leave the building of infrastructure to government, and the protection of public services to government, that being government’s mandate, and the only ­justification for its power.

That the grotesque losses of the private sector are to be nationalised, cut from our schools and our libraries, our social services and our health service – in short, from our national heritage – represents a policy so shameful I doubt this Government will ever live it down. Perhaps it’s because they know what the history books will make of them that our politicians are so cavalier with our libraries: from their point of view, the fewer places you can find a history book these days, the better."

(Actual source).

...

What are your thoughts?

a lot of sky on a friday

Here are a few pictures from today---no people, just place.

I cannot get over just how blue that sky is. Especially this time of year---only April.

spring

It was good, today.

I walked to the seaside in a spring coat and warm-weather brogues.

I listened to the birds sing---oh, how they sung!---and saw the floating movement of their velveteen wings.

I watched the tide ebb with like-minded friends, knowing that this year is over---apart from a few scribbled exam papers and an essay or two.

It was good---it was relaxing. But most of all? Most of all it was needed---so absolutely needed.

outside

I just stumbled across this outdoor dining space and I really cannot think of a better setting for a tea-party. Fingers crossed I can throw one later on in the year...

(Source).

little letters/something new

I get inspired by other blogs a lot. They make me want to do things and write things and be. And today, well, I want to write a few letters like this lady---I am all up for trying something new. (And yes, they might be trivial).

Dear second-year,

I am pretty sure we're through. You have taught me a lot about deadlines and about libraries that I didn't quite think there was to know. You have been draining and you have been terrifying, forcing me to realise how little there is left of this stalling thing called student-life. But, but you've also been inspiring and, in spite of my complaints and my mopes and my sighs, I really, really need to thank you for that.

Dear stomach (and calves and back),

I am sorry I am so insistent that I do my stretches---the ones Arnold always tells me will be good for me---so late at night, in the shower. I sometimes forget that I've only just eaten and that you don't like to be pulled in that way.

Dear Dad,

I am sorry I don't call you Dad enough---I guess it is because, for sixteen years, I have called you by your first name---the name I was introduced to you with. But this doesn't mean I think of you as any less of a dad---you have taken on that role, that role that wasn't originally meant for you, with dedication and love and generosity. And frankly, there isn't a luckier girl in the world.

Dear worries and fears and anxieties,
I think I have to let you go---for good. And I know it won't be easy, but I will try and try again.

Dear Flaubert,

You know, you really do write wonderfully and I have to say those five painstaking years it took to deliberate over every line of Madame Bovary was absolutely worth it. I am sorry I couldn't quite do you the justice you deserved in my assignment this week---but I sure did feel every beautiful word.

Dear free-time,

I hope I will be seeing much more of you---we have a lot of plans to make up for.

Dear Mad Men,

Thankyou for gracing my screen for the last few months. You are the epitome of style and I really, really, really would like to raid your wardrobes.

...

Do you have any letters---trivial or not---that you would like to write?

mantra

I am trying hard to make this my new mantra.

(You can find the print here).

And in related news (in the sense that I wish I'd realised the above, sooner)---tomorrow is my last seminar of the year!

april bakes

I* spent a few hours of Saturday afternoon in the kitchen, baking.

Pistachio and Lime Cupcakes w/ Cream Cheese Frosting. (And a little bit of a spring green tint).

I am right on track with the baking part of my list and I am falling more and more in love with it every day.

*Arnold helped, too! Those pistachios were hard to grind down!

i'd like to, please

Hope. #4.

I'd like to fill a journal---actually, I'd like to fill many, collecting up my life and straying it across its paper leaves. I'd stick things in and annotate and document---I'd photograph and doodle and adorn.

(Posts are inspired by this wonderful blog. And the picture comes from this equally wonderful blog: Her Library Adventures is by a woman after my own heart).

friday finds (and a little opening up)

This week was the penultimate teaching week of my second year---and I have really, really felt it. I will spend the next two days with another essay---on art and romance in Madame Bovary---and then I am pretty much done. (There are essays over the spring break and exams to prepare for, but teaching ultimately ceases). And I probably should be savouring it all---all the really bright academics I rub shoulders with, all the time I can devote to books and to words and to composition. But I guess I am a little bit tired---a little bit tired of jumping through the hoops I didn't expect there to be and the moments of uncertainty---of not really knowing what to do and not seeing the passion---real and heart-felt---in others.* And I don't mean to sound pessimistic or ungrateful (for this chance, this really, really wonderful chance of education), but I have just been feeling down this week as the questions of future and of next year have loomed.

As a result, I haven't spent that much time scouring the internet for very many things, but here are a few links that I have lately favourite-d.

Really, really beautiful things people do with books (other than write them)...

...and I cannot get over just how astonishing these tapestry book-covers are!

Sesame Street does Mad Men---I got quite a giggle out of "Don".

Ten possible meanings to Mary Shelley's Frankenstein.

I love some of this art.

I hope you have a wonderful weekend---I will probably be posting a little more regularly next week. (In the hope that I have things to say).

*And maybe this little bit of a rant comes off as passionless in itself---because feeling this way, this apathy and fatigue of university, sometimes makes me wonder whether or not I'm in the right place; whether or not I am one of those very students I frustrate over. But then I open up a book or I start writing about the things that excite me---or write in a way that I am proud of---and it comes back, that feeling of being where I need to be. And then it's a little bit of a vicious circle---a revolution of questioning the self and simply not having the answers.