I have got myself into the sort of mess that is a regular feature of my life: I am too interested in too many things and I haven't got enough time to allot to any one of them to make that study worthwhile. I think it comes from being mentally rather undirected. When I was doing my MA, I had a definite goal in mind and all my efforts, reading and thoughts were absorbed into the process, and if I am lucky enough to start on my doctorate, I shall once more have a particular motivation to organise my thoughts. As it is however, I am flailing around in a quicksand of information. There is my OU Latin course (which I originally envisaged as filling a mental gap this year) - I could spend a lot more time on it, but I am curiously unengaged. In an attempt to 'spice it up' I am attempting to translate something 'on the side'. Needless to say, my interest in that is unsustained. I have circuitously become re-interested in neo-Platonism and having read Boethius' Consolation of Philosophy have discovered Stoicism, hence the current reading of the Essays of Seneca and (and I can't be bothered to explain how), Montaigne, both of which I love.
I was reading a book on the development of European Language, but inexplicably lost interest half way through. I am listening to the radio as I type this and Salman Rushdie is holding forth on his latest book, which I have half-decided to order from the library, regardless of the fact that my newest fictional purchase is lying abandoned on the bedside table. What a complete flake I am. What a fraud! I think that I desire intellectual stimulation, and yet I shun it. I think that I have a lot to do, and yet I do nothing, restlessly starting and abandoning one project after another. Really, I need a break: do nothing and regroup my energy. As it is, I am merely sitting here reinforcing my apathy.
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