It is difficult to be alive

I saw this phrase on a hoodie design a while ago and admired it suddenly. There are more articulate and poetic aphorisms, but this really is a simple summation that struck me. It's not that life is nasty or uncomfortable (for fortunate people like me, and most people, I imagine), but it's not usually very easy, even when it seems like it should be. All in all it's difficult, as well as wonderful or frustrating. But this is kind of reassuring; it's difficult for most people, so we can be magnanimous. I would like this hoodie also because the zippered hoodie is probably the best type of clothing ever made; body temperature can be controlled with ease...
The design is from the creator of this great comic of surreal melancholy; pictures for sad children.

 This is my very poor attempt at graphically interpreting the phrase. But I also wanted to show another thing; this program that I used for the writing is pretty cool.





In other news I attempt an explanation of some of my actual difficulties, for the entertainment of future me and the most dedicated of my friends and lovers. Under there...

It's 3 am and I'm attempting catharsis. I have been sleeping too much recently. I might actually function better with some sleeplessness. I need to actually do some things...
Why didn't I keep to saturday summaries? It was a great idea really. I know this blog is always going to be niche reading material, but I am the main audience, and I know I will want to read it, plus I will be really interested in what some of the outer world might think.
I should have more summaries. They will be called Saturday summaries in honor of the original, although they won't always come on that day. I have always been remarkably poor at keeping routines.

So the difficulties I want to express now are many, shallow and profound. 

My knee is injured. I need exercise or else I like myself less. My knee has been injured for about two months now, and I thought it was recovering, but after playing football and squash over the last two weeks, it has gotten quite painful when I bend it. Strangely it occured by kneeling in the bath; one of the little knobbles that are supposed to stop you slipping went up between my kneecap and the top of my tibia, which on my right side protrudes a bit abnormally. This action so leaving almost all my weight resting on my pattelar tendon. I don't think it's extremely buggered, but I'm going to the doctor tommorow to get advice on how to stop it hurting me more.
Exercise really is an amazingly great thing to do for the mind. An elephantine body of research supports it's postive effects on psychological health, as well as the obvious physical stuff. In my own experience, it has given me feelings of immense relief when I've been very low, and kept me more level of head generally, and so it is major balls that I can't do it. I suppose I should really go to the gym to exercise my arms, but that's not gonna be as much fun as sport.


In the foreseeable future it will be a theme of my life that I must accept some failure. I am trying to think of this not too negatively. I'm sure someone's said this before, but if not, I'm coining it now; 'If you haven't tasted failure, you've been lacking in ambition'. I love aphorisms and I think this is a decent one. Anyway, personally, I haven't been very ambitious, so this is not a very good excuse.
My ambitions for this year were to not be pathetically wasteful with uni marks due to lateness, and to make the amnesty society at uni (of which I am nominally president) successful. Both have been failures. To be fair, there are others to be implicated in the amnesty deflation, but really I could've done more at times. I was the only candidate to take on the position, and I felt I could do well, but really I am not a natural born leader; I don't have the motivational skills and have been lacking in initiative. If I'm frank with myself, I have lost most of my conviction in amnesty's work too. Campaigning is hard. The result of your individual efforts are very hard to see. Is it really the most effective way to change things, posting letters to presidents for 36p a go? That money adds up to a lot. What about other causes? There's obviously a lot of good that needs to be done.


Also I need to revise. I need to start. This is an obvious consequence of two conspiring facts; that the exams start in 22 days, and that I have missed about 50% of the lectures this year. My depressing poor coursework marks also add an element of foreboding to the end of year pressure. If I can do 4 hours a day of study, which is theoretically within my capacity, I should be ok, and hopefully get mid-60s marks I reckon. But if I do as I think I will, I'll get high 50s.
Thankfully (for now) the major burden is on next year's marks; they count for 75% of the final marks. 
Handily I've made this super nerd mark estimating spreadsheet so I can keep track of what I'm doing. I hope I can exceed these exam estimates; but basically the gist is, I need to get 62 at least next year. That should be doable really, I'm still confident that a 2:1 is within reach.
Green is marks I've actually recieved, grey is work I've handed in.

Yes I am a super geek. If only I made better use of it. I should do some really sciencey things... put my revision on here. 'Twould be good.