Do you still think that way about me now?

...I've had a reminder tonight of exactly why I left academia. Writers' group was supposed to be holding a poetry writing workshop. It turned into part-lecture, part-tutorial about poetic theory, the nature of meaning and the audience-as-author, with a little bit of biographical/historicist material for good measure. Roland Barthes got mentioned >.< I was so angry; we did only two practical writing exercises, neither of which were particularly inspiring or interesting (one was that old "write one line and pass it on" chestnut) and ugh the woman just talked and talked and talked *rolls eyes*

At least it made me appreciate what my writers' group is usually like. Everybody is down-to-earth, talks like regular human beings, and is focused on the practicality of actually writing rather than this airy-fairy literary theory guff. So glad that I'm part of the Tuesday night group; the guy who brought up Barthes goes to the Monday night group and the others who go on Mondays also strike me as being prone to "academic" pretensions.

I'm angry because my Annual Progress Report arrived this morning - ONE DAY AFTER THE DEADLINE FOR ITS SUBMISSION! If you don't return the form by the deadline, you won't be permitted to enrol for next year, says the accompanying letter. Oh, and this is the peachy bit, from what I can deduce from the envelope, it had originally been put into collection - something I DID NOT KNOW because I DID NOT GET ANY NOTICE of post awaiting collection - and I fail to see why it was put in collection in the first place, since when it arrived this morning, it obviously FITTED PERFECTLY WELL through the letterbox!!!

**%!?!#@#&$£#?!***@!

I filled it up, included a very angry note, involving many captial letters, to explain the situation, told the secretary whom I gave it to in the School office what had happened, and sent Leon a message doing the same. But I am just raging that this has happened. Plus, the post office only keeps things in collection for two weeks before returning to sender, so either my letter was sent out late to begin with, or the assholes who sent it out forgot the hell all about it when it got sent back.

All this rage is driving out the goodness of yesterday, when I succeeded in swimming full lengths of the pool without drowning myself (I did get a cramp but I was in the shallow end so that was ok), and when I got myself shoes and a handbag, and when I got over my fear and bought comic books for the first time.