The Vicious Cycle

I couldn't find a photo of my university
building so have one of my routes I have to walk.

University is up there with one of the best decisions I have made in my nineteen years on Earth. And also the worst.

Don't get me wrong. I've learnt and honed skills; lost friends, gained friends and then lost some again;  I've learnt so much about writing in theory and craft; and I've also found out just how frustrated I get, when I'm not reading or blogging.

You see, sometimes blogging can be a vicious, frustrating cycle. And no matter what happens I will always come fighting my way back. And it always comes in stages.

The best way I could describe it is by going through the academic structure that I've been following for close to two years.

It's mid-September; I've packed my clothes, kitchen supplies and have chose the books I'm going to struggle to get on the train. I get there and then have an entire week of social enduced anxiety and so I catch up on reviews from my summer reading binge and finish reading even more books.

By November I've run out of prewritten posts. The most I've read is may 200 pages of an epic fantasy and the most I can report on is books sent to me in a haul. Reading week round the corner means that I have a week off, and instead of reading, I have four different deadlines of four different stories to

Taken from my Insta-story, I really do
pick David Tennant over most other
things.

contend with. A few weeks pass and I've just been blobbing away. It's now got to a point in the year where it's just so much easier to click onto Netflix and Amazon Prime and watch an episode of Doctor Who or Lucifer, rather than sit down for ten minutes and read.

And then the three weeks off for Christmas kicks off and I realize I have twelve books I want to read before the end of the year to reach my Goodreads goal and I binge and binge and binge, not leaving any time to write reviews as I go along. Before long I'm back to where I am prior to the winter holidays: writing for assignments, post-less, a TBR longer than an A4 and usually dying for a McDonalds.

Grades come back, they're what they need to be. But, then I get competitive with myself. It repeats for the second semester, with myself pushing even harder to get an even a higher percentage. I read less and less and then BAM! Nothing. For it's the summer, there's not much to do- so I get bored.

By this point, I haven't posted anything in perhaps over a month, maybe stretching on three. I don't know where to begin, do I write a wrap up of the numerous short stories I've read? Or what books have been piling up on my desk? Or do I try coming back with a book tag?

Earlier this year I said on Twitter that I wanted to get back to blogging regularly. To me, ACityofBooks, is an online reading diary. I want to document the things I am reading. I planned out some ideas, and then had ten pages of a sitcom with a five page bible to write and edit (that I got a First on?!) and then two-thousand words on my novel opening. University life laughed at me, as nothing got done.

I will get there eventually, maybe a once a week structure will have to be put back into place.