Summer 2012

I am going to move on from the implied 'I am a crap blogger' and go straight into the post...

So, if you were so minded, you could definitely draw a correlation between how often I blog and how much work I should be doing. I am five days away from my first exam, thirteen away from my second and last, and instead of practicing Middle English or learning stock epithets from The Iliad, I am blogging. Well done me.

My main method of procrastination (among many) has been daydreaming about the summer and I am so excited for it to start. There was a time, not long ago, when the summer seemed like it was going to be average at best, mainly consisting of me trying (and probably failing) to find work in London and slumming it with my mates in the (mediocre) sunshine. But now it looks like it's going to be amazing, and here's why in a handy, month-by-month, cut-out-and-keep guide to what I'll be doing this summer.

1. 29th June - 15th July = NEW YORK
So this is clearly the most exciting part of my summer plans: a family friend with a house in NY asked if I wanted to house-sit and I could not reply to the e-mail fast enough. Now me and Charlotte are going to get to spend two weeks swanning around New York; going to see open-air films, shopping in second hand book stores, frolicking in Central Park and occasionally feeding some cats. I am so desperate to be there: while I'm not sure I am hipster enough to live in Brooklyn, even for a fortnight, I am excited to try! And it'll be exactly twelve years since I was there as a child with my best friend, it'll be a nice little update on my second favourite city in the world. Can't wait.

2. 1st August - 31st August = CAMP NaNoWriMo
One of the main disappointments of this whole year was that I did not complete NaNoWriMo in November: the last three years have been this great creative challenge which I have become completely immersed in. But this year, having just started university, I tried hard but ultimately failed. These damn people I lived with wanted to like, talk to me and my tutors wanted me to like, read The Iliad and stuff. So I really want to do Camp NaNoWriMo instead, an opportunity to make up for how rubbish I was earlier in the year. No idea what I'll write yet as I've already started the thing I most want to work on but we'll see, maybe the Big Apple will inspire me.

3. 8th September - 15th September = ITALY
Because I don't come back to university until October, I also have the delights of September to enjoy without much pressure. This could have been a massive drag, as most people will go back throughout the month until it's just me and the Oxbridge ones left. I am so looking forward to swanning around Italy; hopefully I'll have a reading list by then and I can read my American/Arabic/Devolutionary British fiction in the sun - after applying the proper amount of suntan lotion! Having been in Verona last summer as well, I am super excited to spend my second summer in a row in Italy, where the ice cream is amazing and it is always acceptable to eat pizza.

4. All Summer =  Starting From Splash
As I said right at the start, my blogging and my workload tend to increase together. This time around, however, I've gone a step further and started a whole new blog! The basic premise of Starting From Splash is that I am a crap geek because I have never read any comic books, so I'm going to start! I haven't been fantastic at updating it so far, exams demotivating me as they originally motivated me, but I have loads of titles, nine in all now, already sitting on my shelf waiting to be read. And I intend too, preferably while sitting in Queens Park drinking Pimms.

There we go! A perfect combination of my favourite procrastination techniques: now if I could just enjoy blogging about Gawain as much, I might pass this stupid exam!