All growed up

The end of semester always inspires a sense of freedom in me - the sense that I've now got all this spare time, in which to do, well, whatever I want.

Anything at all. I could read one of the hundreds of books on my bookshelf that I've always wanted to read. I could clean up my desk, or even tackle one of the massively overdue tasks on my to-do list (tax returns spring to mind*).

I could do anything. I could, say, take up another instrument, or even start another degree.

I'm in the danger zone. It's a bit like being on drugs (I suppose). A sense of possibility, of indestructability. And of course, this time it would be different. I wouldn't be up at 2am one morning in about 4 months time cursing my own stupidity and lamenting the death of my interest in what could possibly have been a fascinating subject.

When I was in Bathurst last week, my aunt mentioned to me a book she was reading, about adolescence. Unfortunately, I can remember neither title nor author. In any case, the view of adolescence taken in this book is rather more far-reaching than I've encountered before. For males, adolescence, as defined in the book, extends until about 27, and for females, about 24. One of the last things to develop during the adolescent years is the ability to plan appropriately, and to measure risk. That's a bit close to the bone, in my case, including the upper age limit for males.

So, given my newly recent adulthood, it's time I started planning a bit better, and taking into consideration some of the risks involved, before taking on a new activity. I'm old enough now to consider having to stay up until 2am in the morning - note the modal "have to" in there; it's fine when it's voluntary - to be a risk.

There is another risk in that I don't give any of the activities that I do their due attention. This semester I studied a very interesting pure maths subject. It's exactly the sort of subject that I returned to maths to study. It's a complete abstraction of the number system that we know, and I was very, very interested in it. I got 59.

Now, if I can't put in the required effort to get a credit, as a bare, bare minimum, in a subject by which I'm completely fascinated, something is pretty wrong. It's enough to make me reconsider the whole degree.

So I need to organise things a bit better (there's the planning for you), and to recognise the consequencesof doing too much (there's the risk assessment for you).

Wow. Being grown up is really boring. *sigh*

* One massively overdue task on my to-do list, though, has been recently despatched. Yes, shire heraldry has now been submitted. I might just crow about that for a while. Rah. Although, it did take a bit of poking from Blayney to make me do it, so I can't take all the credit. Still, it's not on my to-do list anymore.