Note to Self: Stop Navel Gazing.

I've had a funny few days. As I have been welcomed to the world of a second year Arts student I've found that instead of finding my free time liberating, I have simply found it boring.

I know I should be doing something productive and go apply for more part time jobs to heal the gaping wound in my bank balance that Tanzania inflicted but once you get stuck on the boredom and procrastination path,its hard to get off. Especially considering, not only will no-one employ, they won't acknowledge that I've even applied for a job. Of course, this is partly due to everyone looking for any kind of employment and our modern job market where you practically need a MA to wait tables.

In my relentless hours of sitting around doing nothing, I've had time to ponder my future and realise just how screwed I really am. I have no idea, really, about what I want to do with my life; I thought I did but now I'm not so sure and even if I ever do it is highly unlikely that I'll ever get it. I probably will not have the money or the luck. All I know so far is what I don't want and it is looking like all that I'm going to have to settle for. Which is frankly just depressing and almost encourages me to do something incredibly reckless and follow a stupid romantic fantasy of leaving uni to run away to Paris, get a job as a waitress and ride around the Left Bank on a moped with a hot Parisian artist.

Because things like that always happen.

 

 I also got to thinking about this whilst I was watching the new series of the Apprentice and although the kind of crap they came out with defied all previous examples of proverbial prattishness, you have got to admire their tenacity.

I highly doubt I'll ever have the courage to introduce myself as 'Caroline Mortimer- The Brand'; of course I'd never have the stupidity either but that's a moot point. Maybe they are the kind of people that get ahead in life (though I have no idea in that case why they want to work for Amstrad) and I should try taking a few more risks so that my future will look a little less bleak.

I really need to get a life.

Cavegirl reporting...

For the past week I have been living in the Dark Ages...metaphorically speaking of course. Despite being equipped with electricity, ridiculous amounts of free time and a functioning laptop I lack the vital necessity of the internet.

 Its weird how much we rely on the internet and utterly fundamental to our lives it has become. I am not even a particularily technology dependent person; I do not have internet on my phone (or I do but I have no idea how to turn it on), I could go a week at a time without using the internet in Tanzania without batting an eyelid and I didn't get Facebook till just before university. Yet despite this, I find my self going ten minutes up to uni several times a day because I can't do anything on my laptop except watch the O.C. ad nauseam.

I can't use Skype; so I can't call my parents (terrible I know), I can't use Spotify properly (I can only use the music that is already on my itunes- what is the point of that) and my automatic file backup won't back up without an internet connection. Whenever I used this things before, I didn't even know I was connected to the internet necessarily.

It wasn't till I was five that I even used a computer for the first time, I was about nine when I worked out how to use the old style dial-up internet, was around eleven before we got broadband and almost nineteen when I got my own laptop. Its amazing how in the past ten years our entire lives have begun to revolve around being connected to the outside world 24/7 and how cut off we feel without it. I have, on several occasions, watched old TV shows and films where characters are trying to find something or work something out and in a moment of huge stupidity, wondered why they can't just google it.

I'm not saying our dependence is a bad thing because it a sign of humankind's progress but I do wonder sometimes how I've got to this point where I cannot cope without being connected to the web constantly. I had a life before Facebook and was perfectly capable of managing my social life yet now I resent having to text people to meet up. I hate having to walk 5 minutes up the road to the library to check my emails and I've had to go cold turkey on my iplayer addiction.

There is much point to this post I suppose, its more a sense of reflection on how sad and pathetic I am to be so dependent on something that I probably could live without and did so up until a few years ago. Its amazing how something so much in the background and disrupt your life so irrevocably when its gone.