I love how, on Hubski, one can simply insert a comment or a post into their reply.

Had a big test today — not in the amount of time or effort it required but in the importance of it. I've been fairly absent from the classes for a long while, and my not being up to the topics played a part in the difficulty. If the test is good (or not terrible, at least), it may sway the teacher into a more favorable position. I have belated tests and essays. The exam is on Friday.

With all the stress of the academic life I managed to forego two things: doing and living. My worry led me to put forbid internally the things that gave me joy. I haven't written a word, of code or fiction, for months, the NaNoWriMo failed entry that turned into Rosa aside. I also haven't read a book and seen only one film and three episodes in a long while — let alone bigger things: travelling, considering owning a car, changing something radically.

What I came with while thinking about it is that I feel trapped, and I suffocate in such strict confines. I feel restrained by the prospect of having to spend another year and a half in the university — something enjoyable but ultimately exhausting to me. I came here on purpose, to study and to gain marketable skills that would allow me to keep afloat the creative forces that drive me passionately. Yet, at this stage, the studies feel tangential, irrelevant — so much so that I've become comfortable with the lowest passing grade, so long as it affords me the way further down the academic chain, closer to the graduation and the diploma.

Such pragmatically apathetic attitude wasn't the initial one, but it's what I feel at the moment. I want to graduate peacefully and with good grades. I recognize that it would take effort. I also concede that I may not be up to the task.

In light of this — and the fact that I'd rather push through than pass a year, given that I'm more than halfway through already — I'm going to look for whatever source of energy and excitement I can procur without damaging my academic progress. If this is the way of things for the next long while, I might as well buckle up and make it a worthy ride.

============================

Started cleaning up my collections: music, videos to watch later on YouTube, books that keep piling up unread... They say minimalism is economy of attention: the fewer things you have, the fewer things you have to worry about. Fewer things to worry about is what I want to have.

Had a dream today, about being in the US despite having the same big test the same day. "Oh!", I thought, "If I hurry, I might be able to—" As I looked at the clock, I realized that not only had the test already started, I was also in an earlier timezone — though only by one hour — thus being late anyway. Therefore, I shrugged, and, a serene soul, strode outside, enjoying the low early sunlight around the vividly new streets, having just managed to pay for my daily stay in someplace with rubles (426 RUB, to be precise).

As I was walking the narrow and cozy dreamland streets, a passing roadworker vehicle splashed me and my iPhone in something akin to tar, and as I scrambled to clean the phone off (I was getting increasinly clean seemingly by the passing of time alone), I noticed that its battery had swollen up. Worried — I had no money for a new smartphone — I decided to act riskily and push the battery in. It took effort, and the screen bulged out instead, but I've managed it — and, after an act of bending the phone that would've most certainly broken it in reality, I've managed to fix the screen, as well, averting the first-world crisis.

It was then that Morpheus silently instructed me to wake up. I wanted to share the dream with you because it felt significant to me, in many ways.

People have been surprisingly curious about Rosa despite having very little actual material to appreciate so far. I enjoy the attention my latest major work receives, however, and wouldn't want to disappoint anybody with any amount of faith in it. So I'm going to supply Rosa news with every Pubski, as has been the tradition so far, sharing what I could with whomever's interested.

So far, I've realized that the world has been damaged by whatever happened to the Titans [I keep using it as a placeholder name, but it seems to have stuck]. It was no apocalypse, but the damage's been done, and there are still people alive to have witnessed it first-hand. People — and states — are still gathering themselves, alert to the danger the ruins of the mighty gone may still keep. People like Rosa are those willing to take the risk and delve further into the Titans' impossible, seemingly magical conduct with reality.