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Pay Now, Pole Later

Updated: Jul 2, 2020

This is the first blog I’ve written for a while because I’ve been busy with my maths degree. It’s hard to stay motivated because I’m not really sure what I want to do after uni that involves maths; I used to use the mantra “pay now, play later”, although now I’m starting to think it should be “pay now, and also pay later with a life of misery and loneliness in the finance sector”.


Every day just seems dull and predictable for me now: my life’s like a more boring version of Emmerdale – the same things just happen over and over again. My day normally starts off with me getting up late because my bed is really comfortable and I like to view sleep as respite from existence. Once I’ve woken up, I’ll go to my lectures and then meet my friend Chris for lunch. We always go to the same café, and I always order a jacket potato; I don’t even really like it there, it’s just I’m scared of change so I want to be disappointed in the same way every single day. I’m not very good at having organic, impromptu conversations with people, so we both tend to sit there in silence while I try to work out a way of transitioning into conversations I’d prepared earlier.

Sometimes he’ll start the conversation by asking me how my day’s been, but then I’ll panic about being off script and respond by giving him my views on Trident.


After the excitement of the café, I’ll get through the afternoon by fantasising about a treat I’m going to have when I get home. However, when I get home I usually open the cupboard and discover that I haven’t been shopping for a while, so I end up chancing it on a bagel that’s two weeks out of date because nothing really matters anyway.


After this, I’ll go to my room and look at the mess in disgust. There’s shit everywhere and mould on the wall and I really need to clean but I can’t bring myself to clean anything for some reason – I’ve had the same heap of crushed Polos by the side of my bed for 2 months now. Partly, I think I’m reluctant to do anything about it because I want to see what happens when mould meets Polo.


I need to make more time for fun stuff, it’s difficult though and I waste a lot of time thinking about what it would be like to be less of a prick. For a while now I’ve been wanting to do something to reinvent myself, so last week I agreed to go to a pole dancing lesson with my friend. As soon as I agreed I thought it was a bad shout though; an awful shout in fact, I couldn’t take the shout back though, it was too loud – a lot of people heard it. I managed to convince myself to go through with it though because I think I’ll improve by doing things that make me feel uncomfortable – which is most things, right now my comfort zone is located in the toilet cubicles of the maths department, where I go to calm myself down between lectures by listening to Will Young songs in solitude.


The pole dancing lesson was actually pretty good though. I was really scared, but the people there were really friendly and after getting through it I felt invincible. It was like nothing could go wrong after that, like I could go home and chance it on a bagel that’s two weeks out of date and I’d still be fine. I’m quite a negative person though, so I’m expecting things to go wrong again soon. It seems like when something good happens, something significantly awful has to follow it, like how the Paris attacks proceeded the death of Jihadi John. The Paris attacks were hard to take, but when I first heard about them, I was midway through a Mars bar, so the delicious blend of caramel and chocolate absorbed most of the shock for me.


I’m just praying there’ll be another Mars bar around when things start to go badly for me again.


I also did a gig with the Warwick Comedy Society on Thursday. There were loads of people doing stand up for the first time and everyone was really good. I don’t have much else to say about it, but it was a really nice gig so I thought I’d mention it.

Anyway, I’m going to end it there because I’ve been eating a lot of out of date bagels recently and I’m starting to feel a bit sick.


Cya x

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