Autumnal Equinox/American Business Women's Day/Ice Cream Cone Day/Independence Day (Mali)/Raisin Festival (California)/Sugar Cane Festival (Louisiana)/Autumnal Equinox (Japan)
2004-09-22 @ 11:41 p.m.

Blogging daily is a bad habit which I endeavour to cure myself of by the time I reach 21, provided I don't kill off my blog before then. I'm sitting here trying to kickstart another godforsaken essay, wondering where all the hours in between leaving school and now went. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy really, because I predicted to Kay Hwee on the MRT that I'd start writing at 11 pm tonight, and I did! Nevertheless, things are starting to fall into place. Having some ideas which lend themselves well to the conclusion I want to make. The prospect of doing this again tomorrow night for the comparative essay just fills me with such joyful anticipation. Maybe I should actually do my work more regularly? People with the ability to work conscientiously amaze me, because I'm woefully incapable of doing that. Comes from being an enlightened perfectionist, because when you know you can never be perfect, you start to think, Why try?

Speaking of thoughts, the talk on Silas Marner today has alerted me to the fact that my approach to English is fundamentally grounded in what the lecturer calls "new criticism", which is assessing a text based on its literary merit. It's arguably taking the easy way out, but at least you don't tie yourself up in knots trying to justify psychoanalytical and post-modernist readings of a text. Why pursue meaning, when ultimately it won't matter? Your reading of a text has no bearing on the absolute merit of a text per se, precisely because absolute merit cannot be measured. I can see people shaking their heads already, but more on this another time.