Another Christmas is approaching, and I find it is time not to celebrate, not just yet. It is time to lay back, relax, and ask yourself: what am I doing, still up at 3 AM with an exam at 7 AM? Right now, all I need is a dressing down from Major Hardass, telling me to get on my lonesome way or have me hung upside down and beaten with heavy iron bats. But as it is, I lay back and relax. It’s good – no popping blood vessels, no dying a thousand deaths, no spilt milk or burnt textbooks. Only one long sigh – a warning, perhaps, of more leisurely times to come.

I know a lot of blogs do one thing very well: moan and whine and complain, on and on and on. I know I’m guilty of that too. But there has always been something poetic about misery. Poetry and beauty in literature have always been driven by some emotion so powerful, that it leaves its auteur gasping for breath. These unceasing pains – these that lead to suicide, hospital time and months and months of gloomy depression – are seen as the spark for uncomparable creative output. Give me a broken heart, a death in the family and a dismissal from work, and I’ll give you the best story you’ve ever read. You’ll cry when you read my lovesick poetry. My words will flow with the desperation of the ages, echoed in infinite conformations as it has through all the bards in time past. Of course, when one is less inspired, things go a little more like this…