This week I have come to be amazed by how much I am being affected by my brain, predominantly, by things I want, but know I can't have; and no, this has nothing to do with shopping. However, first, I know it's been a long time, so perhaps it's time to have a round up:
The State of Play:
- I am still living in Aberdeen. I am still at university. When it comes down to it, I am enjoying my courses, and I continue to be amazed when I know stuff, because I am apparently a scholar now; and amazingly, I'm not half bad with my knowledge on some stuff.
- In the past week I've had two essays due in, one Thursday, one Friday.
- The one for Friday has to be in by 4pm today, the first time I have ever handed a piece of work in late.
- Word count for it is currently sat at around 4300/5000
- I continue to work, in a supermarket bakery. However, I now work all weekend; 8 hours a day Saturday and Sunday. I had a small change of scenery that lasted about 3 weeks at most, before I was sent back down to Hell.
- Hell is actually kind of nice at the moment.
- I have somewhere to live. It was a last ditch desperate attempt, but I have a room in a flat.
- The people I live with are nice enough, one moved in just before me, the other is the daughter of the owners and has been there some time.
- However, there are some problems:
- They tend to start drinking/having people over from Friday afternoon through to Sunday night. They will say they will try to keep the noise down. However, I don't want to have to go through and ask them to turn it down, I don't like having lots of random people in the flat, it makes me uncomfortable, some noise you just can't escape, drunk people shout, even if they are then told to shut up, they sing, they stomp around the flat, they ring the buzzer at 3am... also they broke the lock on the bathroom door.
- It is not my flat, it in no way feels like my flat. I am comfortable to a degree, in my room, which is the size of a box; however I do not like to go elsewhere in the flat, this includes the kitchen, so I tend not to cook.
- The doors are always being left unlocked, the security door downstairs does not close by itself. The front door only gets locked when people go to bed.
- Electricity and gas are on a pay as you go type metre, they are often left to run into the emergency credit, or run out entirely.
However, as things currently stand, there is also one other big problem in the flat. Pretty much since I came back after Christmas, the boiler hasn't been working properly. What was happening was the shower was only coming out with luke warm water. (My first day back I ended up having an ice cold shower, but that was purely because the gas had run out of credit). Since a week last Friday, people were called to fix it, since that point it has only got worse, about mid way through last week, we lost the shower completely, then on Thursday, after the guy had turned up to replace parts, it was revelead he didn't know what was wrong, and we lost all water coming out of any hot taps; only the cold taps run, and they run very, very cold. I was also told not to use the washing machine. I've found it very cold in the flat too, normally the heating was set to come on for an hour each morning and evening, now it can be put on manually, but I think they've just taken to putting on the fire in the living room. So we have to boil water in the kettle if we want any hot water.
On Friday morning I had a bit of a break down, I knew it was coming, but was holding out on getting the second essay finished. It ended up not happening. Lack of sleep, generally feeling miserable over other things that had happened, and just too much research/writing coupled with a great desire to have a shower just broke me. However I did end up getting a shower, and spending a great afternoon and evening just actually relaxed and happy, not bothering with the essay at all. As you can probably guess, I wasn't in my flat.
As of last night, the current situation in the flat is as follows; apparently they will come and fix the boiler "when they get the part." It could be a week, two weeks, a day. The washing machine is okay to use (except, as always there's someone's washing still in it). The fuses keep tripping out, it is possibly the kettle that is doing it.*
As of right now, I'm spending most of my time in bed, the room is so small that normally I would sit on the bed, or with a blanket on me, now, it's just completely in bed. I know I have very little left to do on my essay, but I just can't bring myself to do it. Part of this is as well that it won't even feel that relieving when it's done. Because then I have to go print it and hand it in and return here. Where my room is a tip, there's washing to be done, it's cold, and I still feel incredibly horrible, and just want a shower. Once this is in, I'm done till February, but not even the thought that once I get it in , I can go celebrate and distract myself makes me want to finish it any sooner.
Currently all I want in the world is to have a shower, wash my hair, make a start on the washing (so that I can wear my favourite clothes again, and also to get it out of the overflowing washing basket), and to have a nice, clean freshly made bed to crawl into tonight. I don't think I'm going to get these things; and because I know I'm not going to, frankly it's all I can think of, when I try to write, all I can think of is these things, when I think about going down to uni to hand stuff in all I can think of is these things, and that it will all be the same when I get back.
*Yes the kettle, the only source of hot water we currently have.
