A view of a room

Yeah, nudging the world's going to have to wait. The whole universe has shrunk to the size of my study. I've got to figure out a way of passing exams without locking myself indoors for a month and going mad and fat and reading for 16 hours at a time. Seeing as I'll be having exams until about age 30 at the very least, god help me. It might involve...hmmmmmm...not procrastinating until the very last minute? Duh! I say this every semester.

Things keeping me sane:

.....I got nothin'. Actually, the piano and geetar. Today I realised I am grateful to my folks for all those years of lessons. It's a great thing to be able to sit down at a piano and play something randomly for yourself.

I had an idea once for a short story set in the future when instead of getting a jail term, criminals get sentenced with a neurological condition. Like bank robbery: Parkinson's, 3 years. Paedophilia: life with ALS, aka what Stephen Hawking has, with a sadistic robot carer. I did a science assignment on that in Year 10, and I don't know how people can stand it. You gradually lose the ability to move, while retaining your senses and intelligence. You can live like that for decades. The cruelty of it. If there is a deity: what the frig?!! Our teacher made us look into how neuro conditions affect people, and I came across a blog by an ALS patient (though I didn't know to call it a blog then). He'd begin every post with "things I can't do" and "things I can still do". One list kept getting longer, the other shorter. Tried to find it again and couldn't, but there are plenty like it, just google. It's almost unfathomable. Going from being an everyday person with a mortgage and job and kids and hoping you have a quiet, decent life, to your existence revolving around things like...how to swallow food. How to shift yourself in bed. Whether your wife who cares for you 24/7 is about to crack. Or you are that wife and this wasn't what you dreamed of being when you grew up. These could be people two doors down from you going through this hell. The heroism and bizarreness and tragedy and sheer unimagineable variety of normal human lives...bloody baffling, innit?

Baaaaack to the grindstone.

*PC disclaimer (I believe it too) - I know disability isn't all helplessness and despair. Diving Bell and the Butterfly much.