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It’s 1990 and I am running
from the library to the English department, out of the doors, past the
duck-pond, through the Faculty of Arts corridors (dodging the resident peacocks) to the
English department essay drop-box where I slide into home, the essay posted through the slot and
stamped at 4.58pm. The deadline for submission? 5.00pm.
It’s 1994 and 3am in the
morning. I am printing out my Honours dissertation, all 70 pages of it, on a
dot matrix printer that requires me to feed in each separate page. Each page
takes about 5 minutes to print. And did
I mention that I need to have two copies of the dissertation? But tomorrow is
the last possible day that I can take it to the binders. It has to be submitted
on Friday. It gets done. Just.
Yesterday evening: I’m
typing, typing, typing, bashing out words that don't even seem to make sense any more. I’ve got 3 hours until my deadline
and I’m on a three-week extension as it is. Times have changed – I upload my
essay to Dropbox on the university’s online learning page. I’ve never even set
foot on campus – everything has been done by distance. I hit ‘send’. The final
essay in my M.Ed. is gone - disappeared
into the internets. It’s over.
Now what?
I’m the type of person who
prefers to be busy. Rather than the sensation of a burden lifted, the end of a
project leaves me with a huge feeling of emptiness. It’s always the same –
1990, 1994, 2013. My mind immediately goes to a ‘what next?’ state. What is
going to rush in to fill this vacuum?
Three cheers for blogging!
It will do until the next project comes along. And there will be a project –
there is always another project.
Happiness lies in imagining all the new
possibilities.
(NB. 'Freedom, horrible horrible freedom!" - the reference is not mine...)
