Fire in the Year of Metal

So I'm twenty-four, at least as of three days ago; it says something about the kind of schedule I've been subjecting myself to that I intended to post this a few days ago, and only now have time to--and even this time is punctuated by the blinking yellow-and-blue of an MSN conversation window. Not that being twenty-four is particularly amazing; most of the people around me have been twenty-four for at least a year, and as for me I woke up on the day before my birthday thinking I was going to turn twenty-five and was planning all sorts of puns revolving around being a quarter of a century old.

I suppose this means I should rewrite my Introduction to Myself post; certainly I think I would like to fill it with links to tropes that I think are present in my life, and I think I've changed plenty since its last edit; I might as well also trash the Characters page, because people seem to come and go in my life the way the little drifting things go past your field of vision when you're looking at a plain surface; and I'm far too lazy to keep updating the thing whenever I meet new people. And of course, it's depressing to read over it and realise just how many people I've lost touch with... a fact that was recently highlighted by the birthday wishes on Facebook, of which there were about 80 or so, and of which at least 40 to 50 came from people I haven't seen or heard from since Loch Yuck or TARC. People come, people go, and unfortunately I'm people too.

I think I like the Complaints Choir so much because they do something I'd like to do more often, which is to complain long, loud, and in public, and have people stop and agree and complain right alongside instead of going "grow up!". After all, I complain more to this blog than to any human, possibly for that reason. Not that it's a good place to complain; the way the Internet is going, all my prospective employers will just slog through my entire 7-year history and come away with the impression that I am thoroughly unemployable. Or something; I'm an optimistic pessimist, which is to say I assume everything turns out horribly so that I'll be happily surprised if it doesn't. But then yesterday's career fair seems to have proven that my course isn't the most employable one, so... nothing much to lose, eh?

So. Hm. An awkward silence--literally, because my tapping produces noise, and therefore the cessation of one produces the lack of the other--while I try to remember what I started this post for... ah, yes. Schedule. I've been insanely tired these past few days; I'm not sure why, but I have been. Well, I actually know, sort of. Lack of sleep, irregular eating, lots of travelling and human contact... it all adds up. I don't think I've had very much solitude since... oh, since last Wednesday? Yes, since last Wednesday. Or even before that; my Google Calendar has been extremely colourful since the 13th of February, and if I remember correctly I was busy on the 10th and 11th as well. It's always a worry to me when the calendar starts filling up; it usually means I wake up in the morning and go "Good Lord, it's morning"... I don't like mornings. But my schedule has been colourful, which means it's been crazy--flitting here and there between groups of people and places, each of which might be enjoyable in itself, but cumulatively the stress adds up and right now I don't want to go anywhere at all, just sit here in front of the computer vegetating all by myself... well, not all by myself. But physically alone, just me and the computer and my books...

I need to begin planning my finances for the rest of the semester; I don't think I've more than a couple thousand to tide me over 'til graduation, and if I'm going to buy the tickets to Japan then I'm going to want to live on a thousand 'til then--over the next four months... that's a little more than a couple hundred a month, which seems like a lot until one remembers the hostel fees (about half that amount), tithing (a tenth), travelling (maybe forty to fifty)... which doesn't really leave a lot to eat. I shall have to work out the details this evening; it looks like I shall have free time to run up tables and calculations and graphs. I definitely have emails to send, too, which I'm procrastinating on but really shouldn't be, because it's a very short email... which I shall send in the afternoon, after classes, because classes begin in half an hour, travelling time is about ten minutes, and I also want to shower before heading out because I still have bed head.

So. I'm twenty-four, about to graduate, and my employment opportunities look dim; the trip to Japan... well, my father says the decision's up to me but the family can only spare SGD1k--I'll have to borrow the rest and pay it back eventually--and even after that I'll need to live on savings from somewhere until my first paycheck, whenever that will be. Still, what's the worst that could happen? I suppose if the worst comes to the worst, I'll go to Patience and find some kind of simple job that does nothing more than pay the bills and enables me to put up some kind of savings to repay the graduation trip debt... at least there I'll have a house, and I can commute by bicycle, and I'll more or less live at Starbucks for their free wifi; I'll be mostly alone and lonely, of course, since nobody I know well lives there, and the Pig is likely to get assigned somewhere outside Patience. But then it's the worst-case scenario, it's not going to be enjoyable. (Of course, the worst worst-case scenario is prolonged unemployment and bankruptcy while sponging off of everybody I can latch onto and thus evoking the scorn and pity of everybody around me. But that's too depressing to contemplate right now.)