Besides, he suggested it’s usually better to take a break between BA and MA. But what to do in a break? I don’t want to work in a shop, I’m especially sure of that after the over-time I did in a co-op shop I’d never been in before. I want a job that either makes use of whatever writing ability I have, or one at least that I have to do some training for. Something semi- rather than un-skilled. I have no idea what, however. That’s why I’m going to see our uni’s careers adviser next Tuesday, a man I’d never considered seeing until he came to give us a brief seminar last week. He suggested that one shouldn’t do an MA just because one can’t think of anything else to do.

My world is expanding, no longer constrained within the narrow confines of university. If Higher Education is a fast-flowing river with definite banks either side, then the ocean is on the horizon, after the rapids and the rocks. It’s scary: I might drown in the ocean. I seem to feel younger as I get older. When I was seventeen I felt like “this is it,” I’m on the cusp of adulthood. When I was eighteen I went away to university in Norwich. Before I left my uncle told me that the first night is the worst. “You get there, your parents leave, you’re sat in your new room and you think ‘what have I done, what have I let myself in for?’” After that you adjust. In the summer before my second year I read James Joyce’s Ulysses and thought because of it, because so few people have read, and even fewer understood, that book, I was a well-read, well-educated… genius I suppose. I know a bit about Modernism and some people are impressed I read James Joyce and Marcel Proust, so I must be. But the more I learn about anything, the more I realise there is to learn, the more keenly I feel the gaps in my own knowledge.

I had a tutorial yesterday with my course leader about my dissertation. I was then a couple of days behind my self-imposed schedule, having only a vague plan for how I would structure the piece. I explained it and my ideas as best I could to my tutor, having been set back from better preparation, as I have been today, by irregular sleeping. It’s a mixed blessing that, along with a great many other things, my course leader happens to be somewhat of an expert on Modernist literary theory. He was contending my half-formed ideas even as they began to crystallise in my mind, leaving me more bamboozled than when I entered his office. As much as I have tried to read about my subject, ‘realism’ in Modernism, and as good as my previous Critical Studies marks have been, I feel underqualified to complete this dissertation adequately. I shan’t, of course, give up, I just need to start writing and get my ideas straight. I anticipate this first step being among the hardest in the entire process of completing this dissertation.

I don’t really feel pressure about deadlines, or examinations. I am generally confident and calm before them. When I went for one of my driving tests, though I can’t remember whether it was the one I failed or the one I passed, my instructor commented how unanxious I seemed before hand. I did get a bit stressed during a three point turn in my first one however, which is what caused me to fail it. But I have always been like that. I always used to feel this moment of intense serenity before going into the hall before my GCSEs or A-levels, this feeling like “I’ve done all I can, and it’s too late to do anything more now, so the pressure of preparation is now out of my hands and I don’t have to worry about it.” I get more agitated in social situations than in exams. I do worry about inadequacy though, about not being good enough, about finding my limits. Maybe it’s because I’ve never really failed at anything. It may sound arrogant, but throughout life, at least academically, I’ve been good at most things. I got pretty much straight As. The only subjects I was no good at were music and PE: I have no rhythm and I don’t believe in sport and dislike exercise. I’m generally well-liked, I think, or have been told, though it surprises me since I’m so anti-social. But I don’t think I’m one to dwell on past successes. Just because my course-leader or my tutors have once said I was a good writer, does not mean I am today, or will be tomorrow. I feel a need to continually reaffirm my competence, and to achieve something worthwhile.

Writing is a really big thing. There’s so much writing been done, by so many great writers, and so much more by writers undiscovered. How does one contribute meaningfully to this great mass? I hold a few writers above all others. When I first read Ulysses I was like “this is amazing, how can there ever be a more ‘complete’ and ‘better’ novel written than this?” It depressed me that I thought I might have already read the pinnacle of literary achievement. Then I discovered Marcel Proust and his A la recherche du temps perdu and that seemed even more complete; a whole life captured in three-and-a-half thousand pages. It’s depressing to think how rare such great books are, and also how incomparably great they are. James Joyce published A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man when he was two years older than I am now. It seems like a precursor to Ulysses, an extended introduction and a mere hint of what was to come, but it is still considered a classic of Modernist literature. I can scarcely imagine writing a novel half as original as that in the next twenty-four months. At best, I could write something derivative of it.

And yet, though I believe firmly in the greatness of these writers, I realise none of them are above reproach. Virginia Woolf criticised James Joyce. Graham Greene criticised them both. Ernest Hemingway and William Faulkner developed a literary feud. There’s more, but they’re just off the top of my head. No writer, and no work, has ever been perfect. Opinions and criteria change. What one person says is good, another will say is blase, or contrived, or over-wrought. And there’s many works no one except friends and family believe has any merit. Sometimes I hate writing. I’m not sure what exactly I hate, just the whole thing: just people trying, and putting one word after another, some of them being ‘good’ like they tapped into some magic code, some being ‘bad’ and misguided. At one level writing is just words. But words form sentences, and sentences form meaning, and meaning forms feeling. It’s an arcane art that very few ever stumble into a true mastery of. And it is always easier to see the shortcomings in work, both of others and of oneself, than to improve dramatically upon them. Sometimes I hate it.

So, no, I’m not in a good position to thrust myself headlong into the highly competitive environment of one of the country’s most prestigious writing MAs. But, pointless, frustrating and unrewarding as writing can often be, I do love it. It is one of my very few passions. It’s been said of writers that you either are one or you’re not. That doesn’t have much to do with whether you’re any good or not, it’s just a statement of fact. I feel a need to write like some people feel a need to draw, like some people feel a need to tan or to smoke. But I don’t think I’m ready for another year of postgraduate study right now. What shall I do?

Yesterday, after my dissertation tutorial, I went to get my haircut. I’m generally no good at small-talk, at ‘making conversation’. With some people I’ll just say what’s on my mind and talk constantly, with others I’m happy to let them do the talking. With people I don’t know or have just met, I’m not shy, I just don’t have anything to say. (Really though, people seem to like me). I’ve been to that hairdressers a few times now though, and there was no one else there, so I started chatting to the hairdresser. I’m pretty sure his name is Chris. I’m telling him about how I don’t know what I’m going to do next year, just that I don’t want to work in a shop, and I don’t want to move back home now that I’ve moved out. “Really, you don’t have any idea what you want to do? That’s scary.” He suggests that maybe I should try journalism, because I must have transferable writing skills. I say maybe, that I’ve thought about, but really only have experience writing fiction (and about myself, as here). He goes on to suggest maybe travelling. White people love travelling. He says he’s always wanted to go travelling, maybe right a book about it. I’m resistant to this idea. It’s cliche, and I hate travelling; I prefer being places, especially when that place is my own room and has videogames.

After I leave the hairdressers, I nearly walk off, but I remember I said I would meet Fred, who has been waiting for me on a bench opposite, smoking a cigarette and getting dirty looks from the bourgeoisie walking into John Lewis. We meet on the island between two roads and compare haircuts. He went somewhere else earlier to have his cut like Brett Anderson (the singer from 90s band Suede). It looks better than I expected. We go to the city library so I can look for a book I need for my dissertation. I can’t find it, but I find another one instead. As we’re leaving we pass, and briefly chat to a girl I’ve somehow developed a very minor crush on, though we never talk, I haven’t seen her at all for a long time and don’t really know her that well. I think I just like her work, and appreciate that she reads mine.

Fred and I then go on to our university library so I can return a book. Here our paths cross with Luke Francis. As the three of us chat, another girl who I vaguely know, but Luke and Fred know better comes across us. The four of us talk, and then Luke and Bex depart in the opposite direction. We later meet them in the Playhouse. For my tastes, the Playhouse is too arty and bohemian. It’s a cliche. I order a blackcurrant tea and complain. Luke and Bex then excuse themselves: they’re going to go watch some minor celebrities from a televised talent show (Diversity, the dance group, from Britain’s Got Talent, if you care) turn on the Norwich Christmas lights. I ask what the point is: “first they [the lights] are dark, then they’re light”. My cynicism is mistaken for a racial comment about the, presumably, ethnically diverse dance troupe, the misunderstanding is cleared up, the amusement is mild.

Fred becomes enthused for seeing the lights switched on at ‘five’ so he talks me into going and we push through the crowd at ten to five. I complain. I dislike people, it’s cold, and the sky is dark. Sometimes winter cities feel very ugly, but, worse, hopeless. I’ve toyed with the idea of one day moving to Norway, or some other Scandinavian country before, but I’m not sure I could deal with all the darkness in the winter. England is bad enough for that. When we discover that the lights aren’t being turned on for a while, we decide to leave. I need to urinate anyway, so we wander over to the Castle Mall. One of the toilets there has a circular three-hundred-and-sixty degree sink. I enjoy the novelty. I decide I want a burger from Burger King, a plan which Fred immediately attaches himself to. Unfortunately, the line is too long, so instead we go to Tesco. I buy pork scratchings, Fred buys a sandwich. The air is cold. On the walk back to Fred’s house he tries to convince me to come out to the Student Union Bar that evening. I say I’ll think about it.

I do think about it. When I leave Fred I think about how that meandering walk with him, bumping into people, was pretty much the only socialising I’ve done in weeks. I’ve been occupying myself with my dissertation and my writing and, partly, with working though. It’s important to me that I give it my all in my final year, because I won’t get a second chance. Ultimately apathy wins over my going out, helped along by the rain that fell as I got in and the biting coldness of the night. I stay in and play Jade Empire instead. I’ve mentioned this game before, but I just want to say another word on it: that game is fucking ridiculous. It is huge. There are twelve chapters in its story. I’ve played it for over twenty hours and have not yet finished chapter three. And that’s not even because it’s hard, because it isn’t. What is ridiculous though is the production quality. Every single line of dialogue in the game is spoken, and there is a lot of dialogue. In a single chapter, easily a hundred thousand words, and probably more. And a lot of it changes depending on how the game is played, meaning about twenty-percent of it never gets heard. So much work has gone into it that, completionist as I am, I cannot bring myself to skip a single line, or to leave any conversation possibility unexplored. I sort of resent it for being a massive time-sink, but it’s just so good.

I played it till about half one, then stayed up another half hour or so on the internet. Before I went to bed, I looked at a map of Europe. I’ve decided I don’t want to live in England all my life, but I don’t know where I’ll move to (I guess in the same way that I’ve decided I don’t want to work in a shop but don’t know what I’ll do). At this point in my life, I have few responsibilities, and few ties to any one place. No one depends on me. I could go anywhere. With all the travel options we have now, the world isn’t such a big place. I’ve already moved to Norwich knowing only one person here before I moved. I could live and work anywhere, wherever a job I want to do is. I feel free because my life is my own. That’s why I don’t want to move back in with my father and grandmother, because I want to be independent. Living on my own has also taught me at least one valuable thing: I don’t need a lot of money to survive. I’ve been living on about £3000 student loans and grants, with a small supplement from the job I’ve only recently had, and the occasional hand-out from my family. Maybe things get more expensive as you get older, but if I had a job where I earned £8000 a year, I’d feel rich, at least for a few years. This makes me feel free, makes the world feel alive with possibilities.

Maybe moving to another country wouldn’t be any better, wouldn’t make me any happier. When I was sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, I, and my friend Richard, used to basically believe that getting a girlfriend was the ultimate goal of existence and the answer to all problems. If you have an attractive girlfriend who doesn’t cheat on you, you are happy and never have to worry about anything. This view was also later shared by my housemate. It vaguely annoys me that for him the theory was apparently correct, but for myself, I no longer believe that. Frankly, right now, I believe that the only difference in net happiness between having a girlfriend and not is that with one state you have more sex than with the other. (I don’t believe my own happiness lies in promiscuity, though I don’t look upon that as being ‘wrong’). Maybe moving to the continent isn’t the answer to any problems. Europe is the new ‘girlfriend’.

When I went to bed, I couldn’t sleep. Sometime between two and three a.m. it came to me that maybe travelling was a good idea. Because I’ve always been resistant to it suggests to me all the more reason to do it. Perhaps it is just a dream, but what would seem perfect is if I bought a VW camper van, and my father helped me do it up, and I painted it all nice. Then my friend Chloe and I would just set off for Dover, get to France, and drive off with no plan for where we going. We would drift around, and sleep in the van and just see where we got to over the course of, say, two months. I don’t know much about the logistics of it mind. I didn’t know until earlier how expensive those ‘classic’ VWs are, but the later model, that is only slightly more ugly, is a lot more in our price range. Driving between countries in Europe is pretty easy, though I don’t know how much vehicle insurance would be for the two of us. At an estimate though, I figure we could do the whole thing, buying the car and all, for about £2000 each. I don’t know if this will ever be more than a “wouldn’t it be nice if…”, I don’t know if Chloe could save up that much straight after, or even during, her university degree (which she finishes a year later than me), but I figure that travelling, despite my aversion to it, wouldn’t be so bad if she was there. And we can both drive. I think it would do my good to strike out on something like that.

Excited by this prospect, I remained unable to sleep. And texted Chloe to suggest the idea. Then, realising that sleep wasn’t coming any time soon, I got out of bed at half-three and went downstairs to fry myself an egg and fried bread sandwich, which I consumed with a mixture of rum and fresh orange juice. I don’t know if that cocktail has a name, but it tasted pretty nice and I figured the alcohol would help me sleep. Until I was ready to sleep though, I played more Jade Empire, and in the end stayed up until five. That’s mostly why I’ve spent the last two hours writing this rather than doing much-needed work on my dissertation. Ah well, there’s always tomorrow and Sunday because what else am I going to do? Socialise? At least I have a semblance of an idea for what I might possibly want to do when I graduate, and even twelve hours later, it still seems like a fairly good idea. I suppose time, research and discussion will decide its true merits