that's me in the spotlight

I think I thought I saw you smile. Losing my religion. This song coming on WMP isn't as funny as I thought it would be.

Blogging, then. You find that essence, the overriding feeling of where and who you are at the moment, you put it up on the screen and send it out and sometimes lovely people comment on it and that makes you happy.

Then, then, then.

I'd like to write essays. I'd like to put more into this, to plan and draft and edit and come up with something more polished. I want to be a writer, but only because I can't be a preacher anymore.

Friday, sitting on the quad in exquisite sunshine, Sam, Cat, Est, Joe, Paddy, David, Ro. Mmm. Cat gives me a French lesson, I want to get a tattoo, someone steals our magazines and I smoke til my head hurts and it's wonderful.

Accidental conversation with God the other night. A beautiful moment, reading Bakhtin on the steps outside, ideas and universality and global culture flowing off the pen, pretty smoke, people walking past, Yateley's finest Elle Milano playing on my phone.

I think, what am I here for now? The little voice says, there was a calling on your life, there still is. There was standing on street corners, shouting out loud, there was wanting to change and be changed, to make films and write books that make people think and making some dent on the mess that fallen people make.

There's still that. I tell the still, small voice that it'll have to speak louder than that now. I want a voice so loud that I know it's not just my own before I'll listen again. However, whoever, this voice is right about one thing. I still know what I'm here for. What I wanna be here for.

I like to think that somewhere in the darkness, something's smiling. Maybe it's God, maybe it's my reflection in a car window.

Job interview. Hill says: if you were an animal, which animal would you be?

I say a cat, because they're wise and feisty, they're independent, they're adventurous and they've got the kind of class that dogs can only dream about. Afterthought: also, they're pretty.

Hill grins and I see him write the word 'pretty' down.

Hill says: you have thirty seconds to talk about something you're passionate about, doesn't matter what, we just wanna see the passion.

I smile, say "I'm really into politics..."

Thirty seconds later I think I've said far too much. Probably still got five seconds to go but it's fine. Passion and all that, the timing's allowed to be loose.

In the meantime, there's this headache. Above my right eye. It's the headache you get when you ran out of medication on Thursday and you are coming down. And you can feel it.

And it's as simple as, you stop taking the pills and you get sick again. The doctors say I'm on them for six months or I have relapse.

I tell Paul I'd rather be happy on pills. Yeah, everyone wants to be organic, we'd love to just sniff flowers for medication but life doesn't work out that way sometimes. Maybe I'll be dead in the ground. Doesn't get more organic than that.

Chemicals, then. Too many, not enough. I say that smoking is the least of my worries. A girl has to feel better somehow and if I'm not smoking them I'm stubbing them out on my legs. I make the call. Smoking them is far more social.

You make yourself happy. Sometimes it feels like every way of feeling better is just another kind of self-harm. Maybe I'm doing this all the wrong way. I feel much better though.

Apart from the headache. I could do without the headache.

And the guilt. Fuck the guilt.