One of those posts where dan is happy

Some of you will have noticed that I have massive, brief highs - for a couple of hours my head is running at full speed, the world makes sense, everything connects to everything else [1]. The real world mixes with the archetypes and they all jiggle around until they make a plausible sense.

It's not _really_ true, but that makes no odds. It's about apophenia - that fantastic word for a state where you 'reconcile the seemingly disparate' [2], madness blending into genius. It's about pumping myself with a shot of drama that lifts me past the practicalities. And that's something I'm taking far too long to learn: the need for drama. As a teenager I was convinced that the solution to life was to avoid drama. I was right - then - I had far more of it than I needed, and any escape into the mundane was a blessing. But I did what I've done with every one of my problems: I solved it, and then I overcompensated. Now I need to hold the balance, learn to pump up the drama, then let it down while practical-Dan makes something out of what it produces.

You've probably guessed I'm on one of those highs right now. No point talking about the content: in a sense, there is no content, or the content is so divorced from the real world that I'll never be able to put it into words. But it's only fair to thank the lj-friends who've put me here, wittingly or not: i_am_toast, mazzarc, ioerror, kiad, verlaine, the_alchemist.

The problem now is to convert the feeling into doing, and find a way to extend it through the months ahead when I'll be drawn back by practicalities, and fear, and knowledge of how silly it looks when put into a balance-sheet. I know (always) that the high me is the real me, and everything else is a warped, inferior copy. But I need to learn how to make inferior-me blindly follow the orders of real-me, without giving up and sacrificing myself to the easy life of spodding, drinking, and never leaving Cambridge.

So: let's put some things down in writing. In two months time, at the end of July, I'll be leaving Cambridge. naranek, that means I'll be leaving my room. raggedyman, that means I'll be leaving my job. Everybody else: this is what I want to do. It's me jumping off the cliff, lashing myself to the mast, throwing my cap over the wall. And I'm weak-willed enough that I need your help if I'm going to follow through on it. Please don't try to talk me out of it, and if I try to back away then bribe and bully me into getting out of here. If I'm still here in August, I want you all to refuse to talk to me. Seriously.

I don't know what I'll be doing. The fallback plan is to spend some time in Russia. I can't get a job there, but I have enough money to take some language classes, and survive for a month or two. After that I can pick a city, get a mcjob, and survive - but survive in a new environment. Dublin, Edinburgh, Bristol, London.

As I said, that's a fallback plan. If any of you see an interesting job elsewhere in Britain, or any job in another country that would take me, please point me at it and force me to apply.

Now I'm going to post this quickly, because I can already feel the doubts creeping in, and if I give it another read-through I will have convinced myself that it's a bad idea, I'm too crap to find a job elsewhere, and I'm doomed to spending the rest of my life in Cambridge.

[1] I'd be fascinated to know what's going on in my head, neurologically, at times like that.

[2] If you've not read the Bagthorpe books, go do it. Not because they're good (they are), but because how much they explain my head (especially when my mind's in an interesting state)

back to tonight

In less life-changing (but still enjoyable) news:

I have tonight off work. This means I'll be at the Castle tonight until they kick us out, and I'll be at strawberry fair tomorrow.

Anybody wanting to meet up at either: call me, text me, email me, leave a comment. I'm revelling in the idea of having a friday night in cambridge without work, for the first time in, well, pretty much since I started at Jagex.

If you don't go to strawberry fair, you're missing out on a lot. Yes, thebiomechanoid, this includes people who don't yet know what they're missing out on. Imagine Lupie's vision of it, only better. And, to be frank, completely different from her vision.

Now: do I have any clean black clothes? *rummages*

pinch me, it isn't true

Not that is tempting. A full academic year in St. Petersburg, studying natural sciences, and learning Russian as you go. Starts in September, goes on to May (presumably). Costs $2500 for the year (i.e. 9 months), including accommodation. Starting in September.

I could pull that one off. Financially - I already have more than £1500 in the bank, even once I've paid naranek his rent backlog, and by September I'll have enough over that to manage 9 months' living costs. I've been wanting to learn some science for aages - see the abortive attempts at taking Open University courses, the time I spent living with fiona_kitty and writing essays on biology every day, and my general grumblings about being too much of an arts student. And even if the course is crap, I'd still be in a university environment where I'd be all-but guaranteed to meet people and learn Russian. Plus, St. Petersburg is (from what I've seen) a fantastic place, and from there I can travel both into Russia and into Europe. At the end of it I'd know a lot of Russian, a bit of chemistry and physics, and a goodly number of people in St. Petersburg. What's not to like?

I'm going to spend some time looking for the secret flaw. It'll probably be the Russian bureaucracy. I *think* I'm OK to start applying now: all the admin details are in Russian, and I've not been through them - but one page said the process took 2 months, and in any case I'm sure they're desperate for my $2500 and willing to fudge things to get it.

It shouldn't be this easy. Something is going to be wrong with this. I can't sort out my life in a single afternoon - it just doesn't work like that.