Sighh...

es·say /n. ˈɛseɪ for 1, 2; ˈɛseɪ, ɛˈseɪ for 3–5; v. ɛˈseɪ/ Pronunciation Key - Show Spelled Pronunciation[n. es-ey for 1, 2; es-ey, e-sey for 3–5; v. e-sey] Pronunciation Key - Show IPA Pronunciation –noun

1.	a short literary composition on a particular theme or subject, usually in prose and generally analytic, speculative, or interpretative.

2.	anything resembling such a composition: a picture essay.

3.	an effort to perform or accomplish something; attempt.

4.	Philately. a design for a proposed stamp differing in any way from the design of the stamp as issued.

5.	Obsolete. a tentative effort; trial; assay

I want to achieve well at uni, I really do. I see myself, ten years from now, in a new situation with new perspectives and possibly more facial hair, looking back at my time at university and thinking about what a great idea it was to work hard and how much I've benefited from those three years of effort.

The fact is, right now I have an essay to complete about Global Media which in no way excites me, interests me or stirs up even the slightest sympathy with a single media expert anywhere around the globe within me. I am trying to concentrate, but all I can think about is the other project I have which is worth more credits and which I am currently failing spectacularly. I keep thinking of interesting new lyrics instead of researching quotes and references (inevitably because I am having to sit through another one of my brothers' band rehearsals, which makes me both jealous and annoyed at contemporary music). What's more, I'm just so inexplicably irritated all the time at the moment that I can't socialise, I can't relax, I can't compose; I'm turning into this miserable tosser with no prospects and acute deafness in one ear.

What's the point in this bit? I know I went to university to work, to push myself further, but it seems to be affecting me as a person more than my academic mind - Essays and research files are things which will never apply to my lifestyle ever at all ever never ever again never. I enjoy writing, but not when the topic is a mind melting series of dull questions designed specifically to drain all the happiness from the air around you.

You just wait - I'll get into the swing of the question at about 8pm, write furiously but then find that I have a billion things to pack because I'm leaving for Portsmouth tomorrow. So, I'll be miserable, then realise I've not started my other project either and take it out on those around me. I really hate it, knowing that this is the next inevitable stage, but here I am, sure of it and I can't do a bloody thing.

Any ideas?

'tonm. xx

Book of the Moment: "The Stars Tennis Balls" by Stephen Fry

Song of the Moment: "Stepping Back" by Ben Mi Duck

I feel like my fingers are tightly bound.

Don't worry - This isn't some obscure metaphor for the pressure of work or anything, though, if it were a stranger day, I'm sure I would stretch so far as to accept something akin to that as perfectly passable.

No, I genuinely get a sensation, fairly regularly in fact, which feels as though my fingers and toes are being either squished together and constricted or pulled apart from every direction, tonight's being the former. I twitch and fidget to try and rid myself of these tensions, but at the end of the day, the only real cure is to submit that the day has gone on far too long and my body is disagreeing with my wonderful idea of staying up until 3am and consuming lots of caffeine and sugar in the process.

(Not combined, mind you - It is a complete aberration to combine either tea of coffee with any form of sweetener, as far as the Citizens of the Palate are concerned.)

Yes, stress is tearing my body apart. Or at least it's certainly convinced my nerve endings that it's trying. I can't particularly put a finger on when it started. It's happened for years, and hasn't notably been worsened by recent, gutting events - I think maybe one day all of my neurones got together, decided they'd had quite enough of all this late-to-bed madness I seemed to enjoy and conspired to end it by tensing me up through every synapse they could find each time my eyelids flickered.

As it happens, it's not quite worked for them - If anything, I now stay up later than I ever used to and embrace my strange sensations as unique characteristics of my person. I think i may even be re-developing a twitch in the eye. The thing is, I don't directly relate this to stress. Lack of sleep, maybe, but that shouldn't always entail a stress issue, should it? Or is that the biological name? Here, I though stress was a psychological term when it was used with humans.

Maybe I'm reading too much into it. I don't sleep enough, this is true. I also drink too much coffee/tea and eat too much sugar. Conversely, I do listen to a lot of chillout/jazz and don't have any major health problems to speak of. Surely stress would be more obvious to me? I mean, I know that I can get really depressed sometimes, but I can get equally as joyful and hyperactive too!

I don't know. Maybe I'm just scared of the notion of stress affecting me. I get stressed, but i don't suffer from it.
There.



Whoever said you couldn't analyse your own state of health obviously didn't consider the key factors of ignorance and misinformation.


'tonm. x

Book of the Moment: "Making History" - Stephen Fry. p308

Song of the Moment: "Letter from God to Man" - Dan le Sac vs. Scroobius Pip