here I am

Well I've not used this for a while, probably cause I didn't have any work to avoid doing. I finished my dissertation. Well I handed it in, it was far from finished. A draft. An embarrassment.
I could try to come up with a massive list of reasons for why it ended that way, but they come down to not understanding what was asked of me, what I was expected to produce and hand-in, leaving it ridiculously late to even start reading for it, never mind write for it, and deep down just plain not caring. These are reasons, but they're not excuses. I'm an adult, I should e able to run my own life by now. The dissertation proves more than anything that I can't. It's something I can always live with, I'll always look back at my degree, everytime I fill in an application form and know that I'm better than a 2.1 or a 2.2 or whatever I get in the end. I should have been a first student but I blew it. And what for? Not for love, or emotions, or anything really. Just for a complete inability to get my act together, to care. Why didn't you do your dissertation tom? I was to busy actively looking to distract myself on the internet, and wanking. And when I did decide to work I made sure I had no idea why I was actually working, no thought of the end product such work was supposed to lead to, and would instead waste hours taking ridiculously detailed notes that I never had time to even look back over, much less find time to incorporate into my essay, and essay I was still writing on my second all-nighter.

Basically I was totally in denial about the whole thing.

But that was then and this is now.

What has happened since?

Well I danced at heroes the following night, my temporary insanity/euphoria allowing me to totally let go. I cut and straightened my hair into a mohican, shaved most of my body hair, covered myself in white body paint and danced in a pair of black pvc hotpants. The night was fantastic and it was so good to be complemented afterwards. Lesta was the star of the night really in her amazing homemade geisha outfit and it was great to dance together, and be told that we had made the night work. I even got what turned out to be a very weird night with a bloke out of it. Especially from what I gathered from Martin later, I think mike was more interested in the alcohol and a place to waste time until he went home at seven than anything about me.
If I am totally honest I am as proud about heroes as anything I ever did using my brain. It's great to be joked about as being the "pretty face" rather than the brains behind the outfit. I don't really believe I'm attractive, but I'm still attracting people with my image, and I'm still getting the attention I think deep down I totally crave. I cared far more about this than I did about my dissertation. Only time will tell when I see in the future which one matters and which one I regret.
Of course I can't tell my parents about heroes, that's from the side of my life they don't want to know about and though part of me wants to tell them, for them to be proud of all of me and not just the person I project to them, I'd find it embarrassing and they wouldn't understand.

Something somewhere within me is wrong, and I feel my almost deliberate failing of my dissertation, its completion in spite of myself, is trying to tell me something.

I mean if I'd wanted I could have got an extension, if I'd really cared enough. But I didn't because I knew deep down that one extra week would mean one extra week of time-wasting. The crunch came when I was totally freaking out the night before it was due in. after already 40 hours without sleep I went to the shops to buy more cigarettes and I bought some paracetemol. I figured I could get an extension if I took an overdose. But in the end I didn't care enough about my dissertation to get an extension that way, and I was unwilling to inflict the selfish consequences of that on my friends who'd have to find me and get me to hospital, or on my family, especially mum and dad who'd have to come back from Mexico having their holiday totally ruined. Rationality won out over perfectionism, and I managed to argue to myself that it was possible to hand something in to not get a fail, and I was to accept the consequences of that.

It's funny that I took this attitude at this late a point, cause it now seems insane that I was thinking even two days before that I could pull a 2.1 or even a 1st out of the bag!

Anyway I chose to write this cause I just spoke to mum after she came back from holiday. Her and dad had a great time I was pleased to hear. I gave her the brief honest summary of the disastertation. She was calm and rational, and when I explained that I'd fucked up my chance to get a first, she was detached. I know she must be disappointed, but she didn't make me feel bad about it. Which is great...I suppose. But the unspoken disappointment has left me stewing here in the mess of my own making. It would be nice if she just shouted at me or guilt-tripped me or just did something to show some level of emotional connection there. I went on to talk about how now I want to be a journalist, and neither of us talked about how good a 1st would have been to help me on this route.
I don't know, it's just leaves me feeling worthless. When I work my hardest and produce my best piece of work at uni last year with my long essay, I'm just told "don't rest on your laurels" there's no praise because after all I'm the clever one who gets all of his marks on a big silver dish straight from god and doesn't actually do any real work for them. And now when I don't do any work, when I leave it to the last minute and try and write a dissertation without having read for it, where is my big fucking silver dish! Where are my marks without any work? And when I explain how I fucked up there's no need to express the disappointment, because we both know this entirely my fault, and I have to face the consequences for the rest of my life.
It's just this is the first time I've ever REALLY failed. At something that really mattered. Of course I wasn't good at musical intruments, or that good at sport, so they didn't matter. But this is something that I am good at, that I just didn't do any work for. And for something that I will carry with me for the rest of my life. I guess I'm just not used to it.