everybody hates me

I've noticed something about these blogs: I only ever write them when I have nothing to do, and I spend most of the blog whining in a pathetic way about how crap stuff is or how good stuff is going to be or what I do when I'm at a loose end. I've realised this is because when I'm actually out there ENJOYING life I couldn't care less about blogging. So with that introduction I'm sure you know what's coming...

Noone wants to do anything ever! They're all big losers and I'm not a big loser because I want to do stuff but nobody wants to do stuff but I want to do stuff and when I ask them to do stuff they say no and then I get angry and then theyre losers! I know what you're thinking, gentle reader: 'what a sad-sap... clearly you just have no friends. People are out doing stuff, I can assure you... just not with you'. And to some degree that's probably true. But unfortunately that's no consolation when you're sitting at the computer on a Friday night just having finished your mocks flicking between the 'Balla' and 'Próifíl' pages on your Facebook as Gaeilge and listening to Lady Gaga.

I must have some kind of inability to shake the feeling that I could always be doing something more fun than I'm doing right now. Some day I'll just join some sort of cringy group therapy session and meet other people with the same paranoia and restlessness, and they can be my friends... But you what sitting at home on a Friday night REALLY makes you think about: that the Leaving Cert. sucks, because you never get to see people or go out anywhere (even though you do, loads, but it's never as much of a bender as it might ideally be). It just does you know? I just wish I could skip the next few months and glide into a summer of blissful drunkenness and that be the end of it.

The things people do

Woke up today with a horrible sore throat so I stayed home from school. 

Unable to believe that when you're sick you sometimes just have to let your illness run its course, and that there's nothing you can do except to stay in bed and drink buckets of water, I sat on the kitchen floor and opened up all the cupboards trying to find the antidote, dosing myself with whatever seemed like it could have vaguely medicinal qualities at the time. Mostly this amounted to a pile of vitamin tablets and jar of honey, which I went through determinedly with a teaspoon. Of course, with such things there always reaches a point when something brings you back down to earth and you realise what the hell you've been doing for the past 4 hours; for me it was in the early afternoon when a call I got a call from my Dad and I looked down and saw that I was sitting on the hard, cold kitchen floor wearing a t-shirt and boxers having systematically eaten an entire jar of honey. I've probably contracted something worse now... next time I'll eat two jars... 

Frustrated Artist

Every year for sports day my school holds an exhibition of all the students' art from that year. The fifth year art class are usually rounded up the day before to crop, mount and stick everything up all over the school, which means a lot of mitching for me. And that day was today. After pretending to be thoughtfully considering the placement of some truly abysmal and shite first year comic strips for half an hour, then eventually throwing most of them away and halfheartedly sticking up a few decent ones, I strolled around to look at the rest of work. 

It struck me that almost nothing of my own art was to be seen anywhere. Then, horribly, it struck me that I hadn't really done anything good this whole year. I felt nothing did me justice, anyway. That made me pretty sad. Art is something I love and I enjoy everything that it encompasses, from the little intricate pen doodles you do in class of teachers, to the beautiful feeling you get when you capture the humanity of a face you're sketching, to lashing red paint onto a big white sheet and letting it dribble all the way down. And it's something I think I'm pretty good at. Or could be pretty good at. And it sucks to feel like you're wasting your own potential, especially in something about which you care a lot.

My own lack of material was especially obvious beside the emerging ridiculous talent of some of the other guys in my class. One person in particular had done some absolutely awe-inspiring stuff that showed the skill and freedom of a professional artist - and this guy's in my class, in 5th year! He's so much more focused and his style is far more developed that mine, it's amazing. 

But I'm not trying to put this guy up on a pedestal or anything. In fact, I'm so glad that he did such great art because it's made me want to wake up and do myself as much justice as he's done to himself. His work has made me so jealous, it's sickening, and I'm pretty sure that feeling is shared by a lot of other guys in my class. It's the good side to competitiveness, where it urges you on to do better things for yourself and not just so you rub it in other peoples' faces.

All that said I still have to get up off my ass and do some art.......... Probably not going to start right now, so I'll set a goal for myself I think: by the end of Summer, I'm going to be back in the game.

P.S go read Kate's rant about competitiveness on her blog, it's hilarious and made me think of writing this blog (btw major thanks for Kate).