If life's a game of chess, I'm the ace of spades

What am I DOING?

In a fit of cheat codes, whereupon I am able to go behind the workings of that MMO game we call life, the universe has spat a selection of errata at me. All of which match up with truly unsettling synchronicity.

Under the pressure of my own awesome intellect (i.e. picking my course modules at random), I had to write in earnest. Tuesday being the deadline for an ENTIRE YEAR of work, my house-hold compatriots had to contend with a total word count of about 8,000. I, on the other hand, had to labour under the trickling terror of thirteen thousand. In fact, I think I'm one of two or three people on the whole course with this acculmulation.

The result? I'm done. Sort of. And everyone I meet is drafting, dying or yet to commence writing. Naturally, this is not normal and I don't trust anything I've written, despite having spent the last three weeks working like a maniac and gradually forgetting what sunlight looked like (except that time I got drunk enough to stumble around town during the day. It was an educational experience, the lesson being that getting slaughtered before 2PM is a bad idea and one should avoid going out if one is). So I go to see the tutors, press-ganging them into helping me much like they press-ganged me into their modules: this is an unfortunately necessary obligation they must fulfill for all those juicy little perks university provides. Like an office, and an audience, and a title and probably even free food.

And they both look askance at some scrawlings and question with the methodical and slightly disbelieving tone of a GP, taking the health of my head-spawn. And my ideas are sound, though the presentation is dodgy. For one of them, it is too late or impossible to salvage beyond what I've done. For the other, I'm padding out revolutionary but solid reinterpretations of how we perceive cinema.

And Norse is...well, Norse is Norse. My essay need not do anything but reconfirm that.

So I'm done, understand? This bit was preamble. Now onto the meat of the matter. Or the matter of meat.

Anime Society offered a trip to London for Saturday, to go to an expo. Gosh, I thought, all expenses paid? Pity it is so close to the deadline. And so I forgot about it, until I noticed three or four of the all time innovators in the realm of the graphic novel were attending. Gee, I thought, I REALLY wish I could go now. And get all steampunk, as the situation would no doubt demand.

Then, upon getting back from meeting the tutors and assuring myself that it was all over, bar the crying, I notice that I've got an e-mail over some competition or other I scribbled my handle onto a few months back. Some kind of event, £22.50 a ticket. And I've won two. In La Scala. Swing, hip-hop, chainsaws, nostalgia, Dr. Livingstone, H.G. Wells etc. And...well...the work is done. Attending would be pricy normally, and impossible if one were to factor in a train ticket (now ranking on a par with my weekly budget). But if only there was an all expenses paid way to get there?

The combination slammed home as I was watching yet another news report on MPs second homes. Where was I to stay for free? Why, one of those self-same controversy boxes. And to get reimbursed by the university for representing a society I slip in and out of like a no-longer-mute Banquo. To a party that seems to have been crafted and fashioned from sections of my very soul (i.e. wardrobe)? As a VIP?

Sum total? Zero pounds, zero pence, zero words. Plus, if I am to submit to the future, submit to the doom of my degree mark and submit the horrid, HORRID hatefulness of my essays, then I may as well go out on someone else's song. Now, if only I could find some way to sing for my supper, I'd not even have to pay to eat this weekend...

For weeks at a time, I forget that this is actually pretty much what my life is like. Probably better that way, because it is always such a pleasant surprise when I remember.

But, yet again, still no answer to the question: What am I DOING?

Why, winning. Of course.