In which I'm going a little peculiar.

So, I'm supposed to be writing right now. Why else would I be awake at two am? But I can't, simply because I'm in an utterly foul mood. In an attempt to exorcise it, I'm going to talk about it. Sorry. I'll get interesting a few paragraphs down, I promise.

Okay. Things Wot Are Bad.

( cultural-related ranting, please do skip )

Talking of the agoraphobia, and other varied symptoms I seem to be manifesting, I went to see my GP and tried to explain to him that I am a wreck but using words of more than one syllable. He was vaguely nice, shared reminiscences of having once passed out under the pool table in Balliol's bar, and drew three large dark vials of my blood. He's testing for anaemia, diabetes and thyroid, and says he thinks it won't be any of those things. I hope so. I just feel tired, and scared, all the time, and this latest family development isn't helping any. She's going to be here until Sunday night, and I may have lost my mind by then. And the problem is of course is that she's perfectly nice, it isn't her fault that she does what she does to me, and I don't know.

But I did go to work today, and that was all right, so maybe I'm feeling better. Or maybe I only feel like I fit in when I've created the gap myself - my job is my job, where I applied and made friends with my workmates and got to enjoying myself, and similarly, I fit in in Oxford because there it doesn't matter about culture and rubbish. I identify myself. I am a PPEist and a geek and a writer before anything else.

I need to get out of here. I need to get out. Surprisingly, this may be happening ahead of plan. Michaelmas isn't until the first week of October, but to all intents and purposes, I will be out of here on September 1st. That's the day I fly out to the States, first to Indiana, which may hurt my head quite a lot, judging from this weekend, but I will bear it for the sake of September 4th, which is the Visit of OMG with gamesiplay and the_acrobat in Chicago. On the ninth, I'm going to Boston, which will not be a family reunion and thus much better, and when I get back, there's something else.

Well. Claire Curtis-Thomas called me last night. She wants me to work on her magazines crusade during the last two weeks of September. I have somewhere to live, in Hammersmith, sharing a flat with the son of a family friend, and I hope to be working in her Westminster office. If all goes to plan, I'll have a parliamentary pass and everything. I'd love that. It would feel like something real, rather than staying here and feeling like a ghost. I won't come back here again. I'll move from London to Oxford and get straight into the swing of Michaelmas and hopefully it will all be okay.

ARGH. I don't know. I am just feeling bad and weird. But I feel better for having written it down. I'm watching season four of The X-Files, and writing a quasi-five-things fic, which I will write more about later. (It has actual sex in it. I'm not entirely sure how on earth this has happened.) In fact, I will write lots about fandom later. I just want to feel better.

More of my being peculiar, really

I'm feeling better. Sort of like I've been crying a long time and just had a pause and a deep breath. It's an odd feeling. Um, it's not physical, because to my litany of weird and wacky symptoms I've added persistent dizziness and a distinct sensation that I was going to pass out in the shower - I didn't, but a shifting world and lukewarm water is a disconcerting combination - but in the absence of blood test results, I think it's probably psychosomatic.

( some resolution to yesterday's angst, do skip )

Anyway, after all that babble, I am feeling better and now I want to sleep or be fannish or do other things that are associated with feeling better. I am watching a lot of The X-Files, so hell, let's talk about that. I'm actually really enjoying it. I've seen a lot of episodes before, I think, from when I was twelve or so; I've seen the pilot and the first few episodes, I've seen the infamous liver-eating episode - ohgod, ohgod, I couldn't sleep for weeks after that one - and various randoms throughout the rest of the seasons, but not systematically. I'm pretty sure there are whole seasons I haven't seen any episodes of, and whole arcs I've missed. I've sen Requiem (the one where Mulder is abducted) and DeadAlive (the one where they bring him back) but none of the ones in between, which sort of lessens the effect.

But this time round, seven years later, I'm seeing more of them. The one that got me fannish last time was Sein Und Zeit, because it managed to be not so much scary or gory but ethereal and creepy and really rather haunting. (Case in point: I can remember it after seven years!) I remember that for some reason BBC2 decided to leave two weeks between it and the continuing episode, Closure, and I nearly died of anticipation in the meantime. And it was pretty heavy stuff - the suicide, the suggestion of child abuse - but it all happened offscreen and was all the more effective for it.

I haven't finished with season four yet - four more episodes to go, including Gethsemane, which I've carefully avoided spoilers for - but so far I've been pretty damn creeped out. Which is the sign of a good show. And I got slipped fifty Australian dollars today, which is enough for the next boxset.

In the meantime, I'm trying to write fic again. It's going slowly, but fairly well; the only catch is, it has actual sex in it. I've never written a sex scene in my life, and suddenly this story actually requires one for the plot and I keep trying to write it and failing miserably. Dear god. And why, why, why do I ship Mulder and Scully? I hate Sam/Jack. I hate Sheppard/Weir. I hate Hawkeye/Margaret and Ron/Hermione and Ten/Rose and just about every single other popular het couple. I have given up wondering why when I write het, it's always something silly like Remus/Hermione or Sam/Daniel or Four/Romana. But Mulder and Scully, they defined het shipping. They gave us the word "shipper". And yet, and yet. I like them. I really do.

I will think about it. Being mentally fannish will keep me sane through tomorrow. Next week, I am working five half-days, going to the gym a lot, writing fic, writing about feminism, watching more X-Files DVDs. I hope things will be better. I think they will be.

Also, my blood test results should be back on Monday. I highly doubt they'll find anything abnormal at all, but we shall see.