Boy Bewildered

Sunday nights are so grim. Daphney came around today, and we moved boxes and boxes into the loft to help ready the house for moving into. It was fun, in an exerting kind of way.

And then we fucked, which was fine. Well, a whole lot of things, but it's not that interesting.

And then she left, and I was left in the car with my mum, bickering and hearing that she 'doesn't feel appreciated' , and that she... Pff whatever. Yesterday I asked to borrow her credit card to get my brother's birthday present, and today they had sold out like I told her they would.

So I haven't got anything for him either, which is a shame because he's so cheery when he has new stuff. Tomorrow I guess I'll just run to town and buy something crap, instead of the perfect present I had on the computer screen.

But worse, Daphney's gone and I'm not seeing her until Saturday at earliest. Commitments are possibly one of humankind's worst inventions. Actually, put it alongside blogger spellchecker and you have a fearsome pair.

And on another depressing note, where in the ether is Leticia? I don't think she would go without telling anyone. In my dream-world she's with HIV-testing guy, in some semi-sinister quasi-erotic videogame, staring out of the screen and waving happily at passers-by. Hand in hand with her beau, naturally.

Anyway, I feel good (ish) now and want to slumber. Night.

Let's see what I can write in eight minutes.


Oh, and now I have some of his albums, I can't listen to the greatest hits compilation anymore. In fact, I'd say that this is the worst greatest hits. Ever. All it is is a platform to his other work, which is admittedly not a bad thing. But it's not him.

Every song ends in under 5 minutes (and 34 seconds). And for someone who can make a song last 15 minutes without boring you or apologising, this is a travesty. It's like having enough wealth for anything: where's the fun in that? You need his foreplay. Rapture is amazingly unenthralling if it's unremitting.

If I make it sound like there's a few good tracks split up by a muddle of improv, then I'm wrong. There's a few shorter pieces that rip everything up by being contrasted with the epic, twisted lessons in art. It's necessary to have the longer, more involved, trip songs. If I'm not brought to the right place, how can I enjoy the four-minute piece like I'm meant to?

His albums should be a journey, and I'd rather not be such a tourist.

Ohh... Tonight was the party I had mentioned. It was crap. My sole ex (called... Maria) ended up getting off with some boy who claimed to be an old mate of mine. The other people I knew kept with their lousy girlfriends. I don't understand it all really, but hey.
I mean I don't get why you would honestly keep a 'girl-counter' for the evening when your girlfriend is with you. Or why someone can't see that their girlfriend isn't that kind of girl, and that gratuitous affection isn't welcome.

So I stood on my own, dancing to my own beat in my own not-caring (ish) way. Or with whatever people didn't look apathetic. I had fun, especially looking at the suits of other people. Awards in my head went to the beautiful tie guy and beautiful hair guy.

In my head, parties are always beautiful and I have life-enhancing discussion with someone for hours. In reality the people who talk to me are either witty for a minute, or looking for a friend of mine. And the music's too loud and by the time I accept it, the party is over.

Unrelatedly, this morning I walked to school, and slowed up for someone behind me to catch up. When she did she walked straight past, not saying anything or looking or acknowledging. Which set a tone for the day.

Oh, on the party. The guy Maria's with is awkward, tall, and 'courteous'. Which is, when I say it, chauvinistic. Maybe I'm jealous? I thought so too, but... If she's happy with him something's wrong. He's awkward and too possessive and oh, it'll end in tears but it's up to her. He escorted her to the door, made me guard her until the lift arrived.

Anyway, tomorrow's Saturday and Sunday I will see Daphney, who brightens my life until she leaves me again (to go home...) And apologies for any crap writing, but I'm tired and hot.
Byeee

Sometimes stuff falls into place.

Tonight, I was scheduled to sit at my council's cabinet meeting. The time came, and my colleague hadn't yet turned up, so I sat and delivered a hesitating, stuttering talk with her notes. Halfway through she arrived, looking bedraggled and powerless. Not the entrance the control-queen would like to have made. Indeed as we had tried to contact her beforehand, I had imagined her smug grin at our futility, as the phone massaged her handbag. Maybe she'll respect me now, having seen me decline the (luminescently apparent) opportunity to verbally slaughter her. Or maybe I'll still be an underling to her.
Whatever.

I have a party Friday as well, and seeing as I never go to parties (or really get invited) it's almost a 'thing'. What was more of a thing was the fact that suits were required.
The boy goes to a school where the regulation is suit, and where I would need special permission to go on account of my (not short) hair.
A place where the head boy probably has £3000 worth of Armani in his cupboard, and underachievers are not allowed to take exams in case they bring the school down.
Anyway. So I was frantic, looking for something to pass off as a suit. I asked him, eventually. He took me up to his room and pushed a perfect outfit into my hand.

It's hard to remember sometimes that people are so decent. The grace with which he treated me made me feel so welcome. The way he acted me made me fall in love with kindness, all over again. A reminder of a beauty I could never really forget anyway.
Sure, he's rich and handsome. But manners aren't something you buy. Just enjoy love, however you feel it.

The hit-counter at the top of the page is ugly. I won't pretend it wasn't my poor command of html that means it's there, but it's staying. Besides, it's kind of ugly-pretty to me. Like the centimetre-wide scrollbars I have (I hate the skinny ones), it's my style.

So, what do I get from it? (the counter I mean)(apologies for brackets). Not accuracy, not quite a popularity-meter. It's like witchcraft to me.

A radiation counter really, measuring whatever the wind blows in. And the internet is sort of like a town I guess. It's more my town than where I live.
A shanty town with more derelict buildings than occupied ones, but oddly comforting because you're always visiting. There's always an exit. Bored kids peek through the the windows - voyeurs, imagining new life on the dusty furniture. Because it could be really lovely if everyone tried.
But that's not the nature of the internet. It's a panoply of unfinished, halfhearted tasks that are beautiful. A half-built pyramid, except in reverse. The peak's at the bottom, so it just gets bigger and huger. Left like that as a mystery story for the past (they're wondering what the aim is). Am I being ridiculous? (yes).

Oh yeah, I'm in a whimsical mood alright. But before it's over, the count-meter's also my mood-meter. It tells me that someone must be looking. If there are twenty hits, well... That's about one real person. And that makes me happy.

(p.s. don't just press F5 until you hit the next 100 though. That would just be playing with me...)

I hate my school sometimes.

They decided that re-doing the toilets was what needed doing (instead of paying for experienced teachers, naturally). So out go (comically) grafittied stalls and a school atmosphere, and in come contracted workers who fit pre-fab, service-stop toilets. This means blue for boys, expanses of mirror and a feeling of continual limbo, saying: get in and get out.

So what it means is a mirror above the sink, overlooking the urinals directly (thanks). It also means wherever you are in the room, you have a direct view of someone taking a piss. The only way out is in a stall, which have walls starting off the (blue-tiled) ground and don't reach the (blue-painted) ceiling. And to create 'space' they've made them so small you can barely fit in (yeah, then the room looks bigger).

Oh, and the urinals? They're so close together your (free) hand is practically in the guy next to you's pocket. Again, fun. Especially next to someone fat (it's not their fault the school fits three urinals in a metre though).

So yeah, this is a typical visit:
1. weigh up whether you really need to go to the toilet. If yes, proceed.
2. quick glance around room. Urinal with vacant spaces in both adjacent? If yes proceed to four.
3. ah fuck it: use stall. Oh, but you don't actually fit in it. Walk backwards and keep your eyes to the ground.
4. select urinal. Place legs slightly more than shoulder-width apart (this is to prevent people standing next to you).
5. unzip, look straight ahead. Relax (maybe with the aid of a mantra).
6. wash hands. Ignore full length-reflection (courtesy of new mirrors!). Exit.

A six step process? Isn't it easier to use a tree?

What really aggravates me is that the school already had a fairy-tale toilet. Beautiful Harry-Potter-esque wash-basins, ONE grubby face-mirror. A stone floor and plenty of space. It was a welcome break from lessons, as well as a time-step back into the sixties. And now it's blue and faceless and absolutely ruined...

Oh well... At least it's still an excuse for a two-minute wander...

My eyes don't want to be open, and neither does my heart now.

Daphney came round and it was superficially great. But as our sex gets better she's further away from me. I'm having fun when she's around, and when she's not I miss her. And she's away most of the time. Her parents want her not to see me weekdays, and she's busy and I'm busy. When she first told me (about draconian laws), she was like 'oh well, I'll have to see you Friday to Sunday' and she meant it.

But she's stubborn in silly ways, and now the only time she opens up is when she's too tired to sense. She's not happy with friends or family but I can't be her retreat if she doesn't let me know what's going on.

I don't feel that she loves me now. I feel like empty (because I didn't really sleep last night...) I'm not a low-maintenance kinda guy. I think she does, or that she'd say so. But why is it so important anyway? I'm angry at myself for needing this constant reassurance, and angry for feeling for her when it just breeds dependence. But I'm also angry at the culture that tells me that relationships should be about the thrill of snatched sexual encounters, not about trust or opening up. It's not wrong to me to want to be with someone a lot.

She jibes at me too, adding to my insecurity, trying to keep up a jokey parlance which I particularly affect. Except when I do it to her, she knows it's not real (and I tell her). And when she says the stuff to me it just hurts. There's always an edge that she doesn't realise. She thinks I know how she feels (oh Fran, but you don't know a thing I think for sure), but...

She has to let me know her radiance, and hug me and whisper to me. She has to let me into something other that her pants...

(P.S. It's probably the house I hate and the mood I hate and being tired, because in my mind now she's a leech or a wraith and ethereal. And she's not. She's lovely.)

I'm a gamer, by the way.
For a few years of my life I was obsessed. As much money as I had went on them, and I (naturally) suffer the occasional relapse.

So yeah, I own Halo 2. And because I'm sure you don't really want to hear a whine about it, I'll sum it up in a few words: sucky, and disappointing.

Some games are amazing though. The first time I ever played Halo, in a crowded club-hall Microsoft had rented out, was love. No tutorial, no instructions. Me sitting there on level two, with the whole world for me to experiment and play with and explore.

The feeling of jumping into the warthog with my friend beside me was neon. Both of us in this digital space, like children in a ball-pit. Seeing what physics did to everything, and then playing some more.
In Halo 2 it's gone.

In Halo I can remember the feeling of finally running that gauntlet on legendary difficulty. The euphoria of squeezing off a pixel-perfect head shot across 1000 metres. The rush of discovering yet another place we weren't 'meant' to be. One more shortcut. One more Easter-egg. Halo was a labour of love from them.

Halo 2's a duty.

There's a song lyric I found on Xfm (oooh! Modest Mouse live in session) that goes (oooh! I just clicked on the radio and they're playing a live version of one of their songs right now!).

Uh, where was I? Oh yeah. The song lyric is by 'The Used' who are emo, which would normally turn me off. But anyway as I systematically browsed Xfm's live sessions I just decided to listen to them. And on 'Taste of Ink' the lyric goes "it's four o' clock in the fucking morning', which is obviously nothing original or special or anything.
Yet I found myself in it. I can't quite describe the feeling, but every time I hear it there's something new there. When I look at certain things my mind says "it's four o' clock in the fucking morning" and then I can deal, really. Maybe that's just what emo's meant to do.

But yeah, it's strange... I'd love to explain it or talk about it, but I'd love also to have some sleep.

Bye!

England played an international football (soccer) 'friendly' against Spain yesterday night.

It was shit. I sat here aghast at the TV, the sound stoking anger I didn't even know existed outside of my own retribution fantasies (you know... what if someone killed your family?). In the second half, any time a black player touched the ball a wall of monkey-noises came up and invaded the pitch.

And what did the England players do? Keep playing. Yeah, sure, 'stiff upper lip' and everything. But does it really insult your pride that much to leave the pitch? Why is it so hard to take a stand?

I wanted them to be a team (even though they weren't capable of playing as one that night). I wanted them to huddle for a minute, then run straight to the exit. All heads held high. Then at least something would have to be done.

But no. Instead, they played a dire match, culminating in a 1 - 0 loss. And instead of making a point they shook hands with their opponents and left. No difference: just viewers sickened; and their own teammates subject to a world that shouldn't be there. No people were thrown out of the ground, so call it police-sanctioned racism. And of course, then it reflects on a whole people to a nation of Sun-readers.

I know it isn't Spain. It's a lot of fucking... ... despicable people who share a language and a stadium and an ignorance or hatred.

Every time I heard the noise I stared at the TV again, wondering if it was even humans capable of this. Louder than the ball being hit, louder than the cheers for the goal. The sport should be on the pitch, not in goading people like medieval miscreants come to watch a hanging.

Gut-clenching, brow-furrowing, disturbing, palpably sociopathic disgust fills me.

Fuck racists. And until it's fixed, fuck football.

This is really quite interesting. Think I'll have to buy the book, even if the actual reality of the situation is terrible. But I suppose you can either laugh or want to kill yourself, and I know I'm better at laughing.

Anyway, tomorrow I only have two lessons (because of cancellations) so I'll probably waste the day pretending to do homework... Anyway.

Is it only my warped sense of cool that makes it seem utmostly right for people to sew in classtime? Someone else told me they spend all weekend 'sitting on the floor, listening to music'. I watched her, mouth agape, for the next 8 metres. I mean, how absolutely fluorescently awesome is that? The fact that people can do that, can focus so completely is joy.

I sit here in front of my 'multi-media centre' that is the PC, reading multiple articles and listening to music, singing along partially and partially writing. I'm such a dilettante with some things, it's amazing. The only thing I take seriously is trying to enjoy life. Through every way I can. It must be possible to do that by sending your mind in multiple directions.

Or else, I'm fucked.

Clouds are ridiculously beautiful. The orange ones, the grey ones, the pink-tinted ones. Ones with menace and ones that look like marshmellows. Night clouds silver-lined with moonlight. Morning-clouds.

I know it's not an uncommon opinion, which is encouraging I guess. If people recognise raw, celestial beauty and relate to it... Well that's good right? I can even take the numbing millions of images of the sky, selling everything and anything.

Actually, the sky can be beautiful in pictures. This is shockingly gut-punching, especially in real life. I think he's used a hi-liter for the clouds, which, of course, means you can create achingly natural images with something man-made.
Which is also encouraging.

Actually, it's been an encouraging day :)

I'm slightly less tired now.

I want a diary. One with thin lines, and a colourful binding and a scent to it. So in maths I can relax and lie my head into it for a minute, and then be revitalised.

Oh it's hard to write in this house. My computer's in the hallway, and I have to stop every time my brother walks past. Like now. . .

But yeah, diary... 'I Capture the Castle' makes me want one. Either that or a laptop. Something secret where I can write when I want, without having to dodge eyes so prying I'm scared they can see through my clothes.

Are laptops unromantic? Someone told me that they didn't like digital cameras because they didn't want digital memories. And someone else scolded me for using a mechanical pencil. 'It's nice when they're blunt.' Maybe I'm just cold and practical. Or warm and modern I guess.

Anyway, anything I use for leisure has a huge effect on me... 'Marmalade Boy' makes me want to go to Japanese high. It sickens me though, how I can never live like they do. So innocently and trusting and OBSESSED with love. Love in a 'first kiss' sense... I can't believe in that. I don't think I have ever. I know it's not real life, but... The first time I saw 'Grease' I wanted to undo it (yeah how lame, but...) I don't want to believe that love comes so easy to people. Because if it's something like that, I'll wait around for it to happen to me. And what if it doesn't?

I can't believe in it like that, because I'll be terrified it will never happen.

Anyway it's taken me over 15 minutes to get this far, and I don't ever want my brother to see this blog so I have to stop. I'll indulge my feelings some other time. Promise.

Ever get the feeling you're not half as entertaining as you usually are?
Well, it's kind of interesting I guess. It makes me scared Daphney's gonna build up a wall of negative behind the exterior wall of amity. And it's going to peek over the top someday and I'll be like: 'woah... shit'. Because I'll have had no idea, and it'll be too late.

So I have to hang up quicker, and curb my speech and hope she'll stick around (which she will). Feels like I could possibly never be myself again, and then...

Anytime I get a glimpse of her true self it suns down happiness on me, and every stupid or irrelevant or nonsensical thing I say shuts that person up for someone else to find. Or even worse, for someone never to find.

I know I'm just a guy though, and that means.. Well it means a lot to me, and I'll have to talk about it some other time. The point is, I want a ladder into her (amazing) view of the world. Someone so fascinating needs my attention... Utmostly.

All I see in the screen is frustration. It's staring at me, urging me to fill up the box with words that mean nothing more than the vacuum I started with.

Marigold broke up with her boyfriend.

On the upside, hydrochloric acid evidently washes out :) My jumper is ok once again, for when someone falls in love with me (yeah, it's my 'being fell for' jumper... For no good reason).

So many images accompany me during the day. My hair framing the sky and the Sun raying my eyes, as I glare at the van drivers on their phones.

This computer's haunting me though. I'm addicted (I've said it now). It's consuming me with online chatting and 'homework' and reading. I spend hours now, every day. Stories from the Guardian, each one more banal than the last. Looking at un-updated blogs until I've got their templates on my retinas.

I've lost the urge to work because of it. Where's the incentive when I can just idle? So yeah. I'm going to wean myself off ( as if ).

It's eating my life.

I'm too blank to feel.
I should feel shit because my jumper that I loved earnestly perished when concentrated acid was added to it.
Should be flitting around in the after-light of Daphney coming round, and knowing that she loves me.
Should be grinning at how I woke up at 3am to put the blanket back around her, forgetting she had gone.
Should be something, but I'm not. Time for more homework.

I love the Daphney that asks if I have to do homework while sliding her arm around me and sitting on me. Love the one that asks 'why has no one ever done that before?' so indignantly, as I grin at her pleasure.

Love how she's come out of her shell, and starts talking like we'll be together, always. Love how she looks at me and says 'I love you when you're this sweet' and... Lots.

I'd love to write more but it's a waste of webspace, and my homework still isn't done.

Somehow working my way through pages of maths has helped change my mood. Fiddling about with signs that look so small and mean so much...
Sure, it pisses me off when I forget a minus , but it's so easily rectified. And then I can look back and see the order and lines of pure maths, staring back at me. Line after line after line.

The first three terms in the expansion of (A+x)^m in ascending powers of x are 64 + 192x + Bx^2. Find the values of m, A and B.

A^m = 64
mA^(m-1)x = 192x, => mA^(m-1)=192
192/64 = 3
3A^m = 192
3A^m = mA^(m-1)
m/3 = (A^m)/(A^[m-1])
m/3 = A^1
m= 3A
A^3A = 64
A^A = 4
A = 2
m = 3A = 6
B = (15)24 =240

^_^

It's three and all I've managed to do is copy and paste some german into my oral topic. I feel like I've completely lost it. I'm cracked.

I told my girlfriend I was half in love with her (oh surely one of the most romantic sentences). She doesn't believe in that love anyway, which is fine. And I walked around with my mind on a cloud under the sea, drowning and dispersing. Interestingly.

Now I'm talking to her friend, and hugs are being shared virtually and my fingers feel unusually light on the keyboard, as if they're about to faint.

I think if I don't feel better, she'll leave me. She says I need sleep. I do. I trust that she'll be in my life someway past the time she's done with me, too. She's nice like that. I love her.

When I wake up I feel her staring at me, through walls and miles. I mutter her name, wishing she was here. I start to wonder if I'm in love...

Oh, I didn't mention it was Leticia (see the sidebar too) who made me read I Capture the Castle. She talked about it months ago, and I remembered when someone returned it to me at the library desk.
On Leticia. Her blog is amazing... I've probably hit it at least 5 times a day since... Months and months. She writes.. Well first of all in the most natural style, and secondly in the most prodigious quantities ( I just clicked one month in the archives and counted 15000 words).
She's altered me incredibly. She's one of those people who you think "oh but they're so much more ultimate than I am..." So yeah, that and she's lovely too.
Her stuff was some kind of inachievable ideal for the woman of my dreams, until I realised in hot excitement that this was just woman. And that I had been lied to by everything. I think I've bred some mad admiration complex around it now, but... Yeah. I'm so glad I'm how I am: it means I get to marry a woman! A real one! I mean, how awesome is that? I feel sorry for my girl friends... They want to chase men, for ever. And even if they settle down, I feel they'll be disappointed by the finite interest pool in him. (Oh I know women can be bitchy, and men can be great... But still).
Anyway, why are you still reading this? Go and check it out. I'd recommend starting at the beginning too.

She linked me too. Daphney was so pleased for me. To me? Well, that's just the(mocha, inutterably delicious) icing on the beauty that is the end of the week. Maybe I can catch up on some sleep now.

I've been reading I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith. It's simply outrageously well-written, not to mention almost over for me. I have less than 100 pages to go, which means less than an hour. Anyway, There's so much in it which is so worthwhile talking about... The castle seems to creep into my vocabulary as well as my feelings.
I'm living in a strange house at the moment, because mine is being systematically enlarged and en-nicened. I'm getting a big room, which is nice because I have lived in a 7 1/2 by 8 foot box for 7 years. But anyway. The one I'm in now reminds me of the castle, with its high ceilings and coldness. It's brown and previously austere, but in my mind it's a cold blue ice palace.

When I was little, and I lived in America, we lived in a warm green mansion. (Well, it was mansion to me). In our open yard we had a tree with a yard-sale trapeze.
I would climb up into the fork of the tree with whatever book I was reading, and look into the sun-porch. Probably thinking of being a secret agent... And I would grab the trapeze and swing for hours, meaning I was thin and innocently muscled. Anyway, it's dreamily romantic in hindsight.

At school there though... I was moved up a couple grades (nothing special.. I had started earlier because I was English). And a couple things happened that changed me. For one I was bullied (unsurpisingly). Quite badly I guess, which I never understood or reported for months and months. I accepted it and took it out on my brother, ruining our relationship forever. It's just antagonism now, but I imagine we'll be ok sometime in the future.
And two, I told mum I was in love with a girl in my class, and not to tell anyone. For weeks I was teased by my family about 'Angela', in a disgusting sing-song that stopped me from talking to my mother for... Ever. I love her, but my trust was bruised iodine.

But in this house now, I'm alone now as I often am. My parents work almost the whole time, for our new house. I feel like every stage of my life they've drifted further away from me. Tonight it's the fireworks (Guy Fawke's night), and I'm going to sit inside away from them.
One of my only memories from my first home is sitting with my parents in Tesco car park, completely safe despite the ash falling around us. Totally absorbed in the smell. We won't go tonight. They've given up surprise outings.

What I really miss is my mum being home. I want the smell of cooking through the house. I want a hello when I come in. I know it's not fair, but she's already given 17 years of her life towards us. Why can't she just make it a few more?

I feel so blue all of a sudden. Why am I not here anymore? School shouldn't be a separate life.

When people say there's not enough hours in a day, what they mean is that there are too many. There should be so many less, so you'd spend one day sleeping and one working... I can't cope with a 24 hour day... 10 seems about right I guess.

Why do I feel so fucking stupid at school? Today I missed half of a chemistry lesson, 'cos I was too dumb to look at my timetable and thought I had a free. I didn't miss anything.

And then I got 90% in the test, which is the best (in the class) and the teacher still reduces me to feeling like a cretin by insulting my practical book. Why can't he nicely annotate it with what I have to add? I'm sorry, ok? I just don't KNOW what you don't TELL us. And I'm not neat. And I'm about 6 assignments behind overall. There's a boulder in the corridor behind me, and I'm just running blindly to escape it.

In physics I was so pleased with my graph, but it's still wrong (well... Not really but sort of and technically). And in German? Oh just... Go away.

And today I was going to walk the dog and treat her to a run, but I've been a prick and spent hours on the computer.

I want to go bake cookies or something.. I wish Daphney lived closer so I could run round to hers and get a hug to wake me up again.

Actually, thinking of her seems to de-blue me. Cool!

I'm all amped. Music's playing my nerves, turning the banana I just ate into fidget energy.

Woke up early today, and my sight had unspoilt-edenic lake purity. My mind had none of the fug of the morning or the late bedtimes. Means nothing of course, but it put me in a good mood.

Didn't worry as much as I thought I would. When I wake up, it should be over. The sick anticipation has gone. Nothing's taken it's place. I walked about in a daze. Everything smelt of nothing, like a hospital ward.

Wore a bright pink shirt to school. How perverse is it to enjoy all the looks? Especially the ones that say 'whatthefuck?'.

I like pink anyway. I felt like being called gay, I guess.

And during writing this, been talking on MSN and felt about 3 centimetres from crying. Guess the election hasn't left me alone, after all.

I sit hunched, shoulders crunched into a rictus of anguish.
My mind isn't even here.

Four maths lessons I sat there and let it all wash over my head. Today I couldn't care what F'(x) equals. Tomorrow it will be worse.

Binomial expansion passed me by. Chemistry was a maze of numbers and letters, each one trying to break my understanding.

German? At least no homework.

And I've left the other homework for tomorrow or the day after or never. Why is it so hard to find motivation? Why don't they understand how the work I do should end at four, not midnight?

*writes angstily*

It's being stuck under a rock, limbs waiting to mount the attack. Brain panicking and out of control, struggling.

Kerry, please win. Then I can slumber again.