Started the day reading Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell, picking up where I left off three months ago. Memories of characters I've met come flooding back with every line. Occasionally you wonder who so-and-so is, and a reference to an incident happening chapters before brings everything back, like a sticky note reminder, like a reference point, blood vessel that, once cut, blood, sticky and thick and very familiar, comes out quick, ceaseless and all at once.

Updates today because it is so difficult to shrug off this frighteningly light mood I have had -- since yesterday. This dancing mood, as if one's mind was up in the air and pirouetting without a care in the world. Leftover ecstasy from the end of exams yesterday, I would imagine. Well, brain, you had better consume it fast because leaving all this overwhelming, conscious sense of happiness clouding the filter is quite alarming. I've never felt this happy, this light-of-foot and carefree before - and I have hesitation to do so. Clarity swapped for complacency and hind/blind-sight comes before a fall, or some small blunder. It is much better to be sober. Soberly happy, feet on the floor like a librarian. Sobriety is at least the constant I have come to expect, and whose rewards, though less per time frame, are loyal.

1.49 PM

Never turn away from something until you have finished it, or until you are where you would like to be. Never leave it alone unattended when it isn't up to your standards. You hop, jump, skip and the thought process breaks like a thread. You lose everything. Never keep twenty tabs open and alternate between them. Look at one thing and don't look away. Look at one thing only. Read one thing at a time. Take one breath at a time.

Write your thoughts down.

"When you’re serious, you could be unstable; that’s the problem with seriousness. But when you’re humorous, you’re stable. But you can’t fight the war smiling." - Haruki Murakami in The Art of Fiction No. 182.