Thinking it over (too much)
12 Feb 2011 Leave a Comment
in Personal Tags: flow of consciousness, frustrations, pessimism, self
I swear to God, I’ve tried writing this same bloody post two times now, with very, very little success. I can’t get past three paragraphs of slightly insane raving and trying to come up with excuses about why I haven’t blogged and then half-assedly trying to get into why exactly it is that raving about shit and not blogposting are somehow connected to how I’m insecure and don’t do well in social situations.
Right now, at this precise moment, my brain is a mess, and this is going to be such an angsty post, mostly because I have absolutely nothing to say, even though so much has happened. Maybe it’s the fact that I deal with change very poorly, and this whole university thing hasn’t been very kind on me, especially since it has been happening at the same time as the treatment of my dad’s cancer. About that, by the way — he was at his second surgery two days ago, and he’s recovering alright. Now all we have left is chemo and he should be cured completely, after that — and we hope that he will be. All in all, it’s looking very fine.
Anyway. University. This whole huge intimidating change in my life, where they apparently throw you into the deep end and see if you sink or swim. I may be exaggerating it a little bit, but I’ve had many, many, many irritating — no, that word is way too mild, but I can’t remember a suitable synonym right now — weeks of waiting for more information about this entire system to come my way. It seems like we receive dates and places we’re supposed to be at, we go to them gatherings or information sessions or orientations or whatever, and all we get is a tidbit of information and the next date and location for the next meeting where we might receive another bit of information. No practical knowledge is actually shared in these sessions, simply the “you’re studying science now, you know, and this is going to be the construction of your course” — nothing about paying and nothing about allocating my timetable and nothing about what I’m supposed to do with lectures and books and where’s a second-hand bookstore and–
It’s just all so foreign, and I’m so very scared at the moment. It’s like I have no idea what I’m doing, or what I’m supposed to be doing at all. I’m overreacting to all of this, but it’s like… What’s probably been holding my life together for this long has really been school. I’ve always known how to handle school, and I’ve been particularly good at knowing how to answer questions, and knowing exactly what my teachers want me to do when they ask for some specific thing. Now, that structure is taken from me, and since I don’t have a very strong social circle — no, I don’t have a social circle at all, I only really have my significant other, the poor bastard, trying to hold me together (not an easy task at the easiest days) — nor do I have any defining hobbies, I’m… lost. I suppose it’s the recurring cliché of my life, that whole “when you’re a teenager/young adult, you define yourself as a person.” What they don’t tell you is that even after you think you’ve defined yourself, as your circumstances change, you just have to keep re-defining yourself, over and over and over and over again.
Or maybe that’s just me. It’s like I should have some sort of session every week in which I write down my full name, my greatest likes and dislikes and personality quirks, desired hobbies and future plans and that sort of thing. It might help keep me on track for a bit.
I hate summer holiday for exactly this reason: there’s nothing to… you know… keep me a whole human being. Instead, it’s like I’m just driven by singular desires that usually keep me hooked to the television for hours straight, because it’s not like I have anything better to do. Ok, it might not be so bad anymore, because recently I’ve started desiring to read things like The Lord of the Rings, ever since seeing the movies (I talked about this earlier — I’m so much in love) and re-playing video games and generally just re-asserting my beloved geekiness. I’ve also been working a bit on writing and the like — things that I’ve loved before and that I’ve recently been re-enamored with. That’s a good sign.
It doesn’t change the fact that I’m still simply floating. I honestly hope that with university, come those interests and hobbies and the like that I’ve been lacking ever since I quit skating in 2007(? I can’t even remember). It’s been a hell of a long time, and I’m sick of riding on “I know who I am and I don’t need anything but that knowledge.” It gets really taxing, trying to be yourself when you honestly have nothing but your emotions and thoughts and opinions to define you. You also tend to get over-emotional and overreact grossly to certain situations.
I think that was all the angst that I had in me, for now. Sorry about that. Hopefully next time I come by, it won’t be too far down the track and I’ll have something happier to talk about.
Peace and some tea to calm yourselves, everyone.
It’s like they’re all on strike and my feet are on fire for no reason
10 Dec 2010 2 Comments
in Personal Tags: brain activity, enthusiastic rambling, flow of consciousness, holidays
I’ve been feeling a great deal more insane than usual.
Kind of like this, except without the whole "crazy achievement" bit, and with more of the "my feet are on fire for no apparent reason, and I may just fall down on my face"
And with insane, I mean (that I’m stealing pictures shamelessly off the internet) the sort of hazy, pseudo-braindead state where you do everything impulsively and do not stop to or are unable to consider the consequences and/or implications of your actions. Also, it seems like it’s incredibly difficult for me to make myself concentrate on one thing for extended periods of time (including, for example, reading — or, well, I can read things for a relative amount of time, but I don’t feel like I’m actually absorbing or ingesting the information, but instead, I’m just… you know, kinda mechanically scanning through the words, which is not a feeling I’m used to), which is highly unusual for me, because I’m exactly the sort of person who will sit down with one task, and then, three hours later, stand up again and move on to something else.
I mean, my concentration and effort is usually, um, concentrated on one thing like a 110%… efficiency? Look, see, this is just a prime example of how I feel — I was only now writing this sentence, and it’s not nine lines long, and I forgot where it was going and what I was going to do with it. I mean, the fact that I’m ABLE to write somewhat coherent (just ask anyone who reads my writing on a semi-regular– oh, right, this is my blog and you’re my readers, so you’re used to my running sentences by now [I hope, and I apologise for my crazy style]) sentences that span that long a.. distance, with the conjunctions and punctuation necessary to make it so, means that I must be able to have adequate amounts of concentration on the thing I’m doing at the moment, right?
But for the past couple of days, it feels like I’m not absorbing anything at ALL. It’s like my brain has gone “ahhhhhhh” after not having to be stressed out by social interaction and trying to remain funny and interesting and lovable to all (because I actually worry about this every time I have social interaction with someone, because I’m like that; actually, that was a lie — I only worry about it if I’m solely with people I know, because for some reason, being great at small-talk doesn’t mean that you’re awesome with sustaining interesting conversation with people you’ve already met before plenty of times [is that even grammatically correct?]), and, of course, not having to worry about academic achievement and whatnot.
Speaking of academic achievement, only three days until results. Holee. It feels so surreal! And all I can think about is how crappily math exam 2 went and how worried I am about the result for math and if that’s going to ruin my chances with everything else and how amazing it would be if I got a 50 in English, though that seems kind of unlikely, because, I mean, I’m good, but I’m not THAT good, am I? Anyway. I’m terrified about math and interested and curious and other synonyms about everything else.
What was I saying…? Right. Increased amounts of insane and brain going “ahhhh” and turning off. I don’t think I even properly finished the sentence in the paragraph before last that took up almost the entire paragraph (see? see? see?) before going off on a tangent about VCE results — our ATAR (Australian Tertiary Admissions Rank? I’m just guessing, and waaaay too lazy to google). Or, well, my ATAR, because I wasn’t thinking about anybody else’s. Now I am. Freaking boyfriend isn’t interested in his, but I WANT TO KNOW HOW HE DID AS WELL D; And most of my friends, really. I don’t know why. Morbid curiosity? Why are people so curious about other people’s business? Because comparing themselves to other people is the only way to tell them that they’re doing it right and they’re not insane?
But there’s a flaw in the system, if you think about it like that… That’s the sort of thing that just encourages stupidity and completely useless and ridiculous rules of society, and thwarts all advancement. If a human being is curious about other people through his desire to remain normal and social, then… I lost my train of thought. Probably something about that idea juxtaposed with the one that curiosity feeds inspiration, or something.
Regardless, what I think the point of this post is that I feel weird, my thoughts aren’t gathering and organising like they should be, and I almost feel like I’m in the middle of some great intellectual meltdown. How could that be? But I’ve been treating my mind so very well… Providing it with different stimulus and doing different things and trying to keep thinking about things and everything, regardless of it being holidays; and with that, I mean that I’ve not allowed myself to fall into the lethargic routine of “get up, watch dvds, eat, shower, go to sleep” that sometimes happens during the holidays… Maybe that’s the problem? Maybe I should give myself a rest?
AARRGgghhh, keeping one’s brain in working condition is so haaaard! Or is it just me? Is my brain just uncooperative? Maybe my subconscious has gone on vacation — or maybe my conscious has gone on vacation, and now I’m living entirely on my subconscious… It would explain why nothing is making — wait, but my subconscious always makes sense. What? Ooh, maybe the little people who do the organising inside my subconscious (because I’ve totally started visualising it as this huuuge hall of filing cabinets, because I’m like that)
Something like that... Except that the people working there definitely don't look so boring, and it's all colour-coded instead of black and white. And the hall is a lot huger.
have gone on a strike or something, except that I DON’T KNOW WHAT THEY WANT FROM MEEEEEEEEEE.
Just to clarify, I’m not usually this insane. Just read any of my blog entries. Ok, except for the previous three ones. In all honesty, I think that when my brain starts functioning properly again, I’m going to fix the description of this blog and clarify the about page and stuff like that — because this is fairly ridiculous.
Hey, there was a moment there when I was actually thinking clearly, woo! I’m kind of on the edge of thinking clearly and feeling completely out of it, and I still have no idea why. Underneath all of that, and all of my excitement and everything, I feel a bit tired… Maybe. It’s hard to tell.
Maybe next time I post, I’ll be more of a sound, sane state of mind.
Maybe.
Don’t get your hopes up, though.
Some sorts of tranquilizers and peace, everyone.
p.s. Har har har c wat I did thar?
Check it out, I can talk about twenty things at the same time!
05 Oct 2010 2 Comments
in Personal Tags: enthusiastic rambling, flow of consciousness, holidays, more awesome than you can handle, optimism, seasons, study
Erm. I don’t know if I widely advertised the fact that I just had a two-week break from school, but if I did and if I boasted something about the fact that I would have had a lot of time to, you know, update my blog and do fun stuff and the such, I obviously meant social stuff that has nothing to do with the internet and me prattling on to a very limited readership (not that I mind my limited readership, mind you, it’s not like I have time to pimp my blog anywhere anyway). Why couldn’t you figure that out by the time I said it, eh, eh? A girl (or, you know, any human being) needs her time off, duh!
If I never did, then hi, I think I’m at least a little back again. I know that the previous sentence made next to no grammatical sense, but that’s ok, because my mind is full of math at the moment, anyway. Honestly speaking, I’m not really in the mood to blog now, either, like I really haven’t been in the past two weeks or so. It’s funny that at the very moment stuff starts actually happening in my life, I fly out of the internet and don’t even miss it, until I’m bored again. Take that, teenaged me — real life wins, after all!
Ok, I’m rambling, I know, and I’m sorry. I’ve just had so much fun and so little blogging in these two weeks that I don’t even know where to start. I could always start talking about my financial state and how having lots of free time makes me want to do things and, of course, want things to do (ha, c wat I did thar) — which oftentimes means “no moar money for you, missy.” I need my job back! I can’t afford seeing three movies in two weeks — not with my addiction to popcorn and the overpriceyness of foodstuffs in cinemas. And, you know, tickets. But the movies were SOO GOOD. And then there was that dvd that I absolutely needed — no, wait, a set of dvds and then a blu-ray disk and lots of clothes, because the weather has become nicer (YES YES YES SUMMER IS COMING I CAN SMELL IT IT’S GREAT until my nose starts running because hay fever) and my wardrobe has become empty at some point in time I wasn’t paying much attention to–
and I have become SO addicted to Avatar: the Last Airbender that it’s not even funny, and then I just finished watching the last episode last night and was heartbroken so now I’m watching it again, because I’m a masochist like that (hey, little kiddies who don’t know what a masochist is — don’t google it — I SAID DON’T). And then, of course, there’s the exams that are coming at me like a freight train (this is a funny reference to a text we’re studying for English, which is one of the first exams, because alongside with being a masochist, I’m also a huge nerd), and I’m simultaneously exhilarated and terrified and stressed and all those other wonderful feelings that come with something that will determine if or not you get into where you want to study next year — ooooh, and then I’m really excited about the place I want to study at next year, because I was reading up on it and it’s absolutely AMAZING and I can’t wait
and I kinda need a hobby… And I wanna start writing again. That’s probably the most annoying thing about having had a very short holiday just now, a majority of which you had to sacrifice for thinking about or actually doing study for the sake of exams. It was kinda like they dangled a treat above our noses and let us lick at it — the treat here being the SWEET, SWEET FREEDOM that will come after exams — and then cruelly snatched it away, saying “you’ll get the rest of it in a month and a bit!” A month and twelve days from today, to be precise — that’s the day of my last exam.
I should probably stop rambling enthusiastically right now, and go back to that cursed math. And then French, I suppose, since I’ve been avoiding it for the past two weeks or so. Sigh!
Here, have pictures of how I motivate myself to study:
That’s right, I totally employ the power of ORANGE CANDY. <3 If anyone ever loves me so much that they will go through lots of places and buy me this sack full of orange lollipops (such as in the illustration on the left), I will totally… love them forever. That sounds kind of like a lame promise in exchange for candy, doesn’t it? Then again, it also implies that my love can be bought with orange candy — which it totally can, so I’m fine with that. ;3
Regardless, I’ll stop babbling right now and go ahead and continue studying math. I might be back later with something more coherent to say, but don’t count on it until after exams! And even then, I might be too awestruck by my freedom or, alternatively, too free to actually write anything here. But I promise, eventually I’ll settle back into blogging a lot more often — I love writing and talking to random people on the internet WAY too much to stop.
Peace and rambly thought-processes to everyone!
It’s like a fruit salad, except sans fruit
14 Sep 2010 Leave a Comment
in Personal Tags: 35 days, flow of consciousness, more awesome than you can handle, shiny, sleep deprivation, writing
Before I begin, I would like to share something AWESOME with you (and this here is a pause in which I accidentally go and take interest in other things on the net before I realise that I was making a blogpost, oops):
After seeing and laughing at this video last night some three times before I went to sleep has caused the peculiar effect that every time I think or say “awesome,” it’s now sung by that guy. I also know that I endorse consumerism on a grand scale by saying this (hey, what’s wrong with a little indulgence every now and then, anyway), but I really want this shirt. And, well, since I got the ball rolling, I also want this (Bite Me! is an awesome vampire comic, by the way, I definitely recommend checking it out — otherwise I wouldn’t be contemplating buying it, right?), this (and the season after that, too) and an assortment of other stuff, too. And I’m not entirely sure why I’m complaining about it instead of actually getting all this stuff — might be because I’m rather conscious of the fact that I don’t have a job at the moment and that I would probably have to use some of my money on schoolies and on other, unrelated summer activities.
Which will probably mean that, come summer, I will actually have to go back to work again. I was planning on turning down the job re-offer when the new place opens (I mean, we’ve been pretty much guaranteed a spot at the cinema I work at that closed around June for renovations, but I guess that you can’t always be too sure), but I might have to accept it instead. I’m pretty certain I’m going to get a new job next year anyway, but before I find one, I’ll have to stick with making popcorn, then selling it (while enduring complaints from people that it’s entirely too salty/expensive/something else) and then cleaning it off floors when people are unable to aim at their stupid mouths.
Ah, retail, how much I hate you.
Um. I had a whole lot more to squeal about, like, how much I loved that it was all sunshiney today and it smelled like spring again and EVERYTHING was flowering in trees and in grass and it was warm and pleasant and then there was the little girl on the bus who sat next to me and brightly talked about her Tinkerbell all the way from the stop at the mall to my stop — she was incredibly cute, even though I only understood a half or so of what she was saying. Oh God summer is so close and I can’t be bothered beginning to study for exams and I sure can’t wait ’till exams are over an I wish they were over now because SO MUCH EFFORT and ahhhh, at least summer is here soon, and I can wear t-shirts (woah, I totally re-read this bit just now and accidentally read “wet t-shirts” and I’m like NOW THERE’S A DIRTY GIRL) and other colourful stuff. And short shorts. Mwahaha. And flowy skirts. And no shoes.
I love summer. I can’t wait for summer. I want the exams to be over already so I don’t have to get stressed about them. D: I’ve been relatively un-stressed for these two days that have made this week, and since I’m not going to school tomorrow to be pestered by my literature and English teachers, tomorrow, I think, will be a stressless day, too — I’m really finding that I like this stresslessness, was what I was trying to say with that.
I’m kind of getting tired. Does it show?
Day 25: Your favourite part of yourself
My ability to speak languages, I suppose. I thought this would be a difficult one to answer, because there are lots of parts of me that I like, and lots of parts of me that I don’t — and sometimes the two different categories overlap for different reasons. I think I’ve expressed my distaste for questions like these before, the sort of picking out simple things about yourself and then evaluating them. I still don’t think that it’s necessarily possible to pick apart a human being and say what is most important about them, what makes them who they are (because, whatever I may say, I think I do like who I am). However, I think I can also safely say that what I think one of the cornerstones of myself is my ability to comprehend and learn different languages.
This is because I love writing, and like I’ve probably expressed plenty times before, I think that it’s essential for a good writer to know their chosen language forward, backward and then upside-down. My writing process always begins with a feeling or a meaning or a gist of something I want to express, wordless in my brain — most of my thoughts are wordless, really, and only sentiments, and hence can be expressed in all of my three languages — which will then be expressed by picking the right words to correspond the nuances of that idea or feeling or whatever it is that I’m writing down at that moment. I love being able to do that, and I love knowing all these words with their precise, subtle connotations that mean exactly what I want them to; I love understanding how to do all of that. I love writing clever little sentences and I love thinking about people reading them through again — never mind the language I’m writing in.
Now I just wish that I could do that verbally, too, but I suppose that no-one can do everything, right?
Day 26: A picture/description of one of your scars
Day 27: The most stupid picture you’ve ever seen
Riighty-o. I’m sorry that this post seems rambly and doesn’t appear to have a lot of substance at all — ironically enough, since I felt like today I would’ve actually had stuff to talk about. Well, one can’t really do anything about one’s tiredness, can one? I’ll just say “one” one more time to annoy you. Ha. One.
Peace and spring flowers, dearies~
In the dark she pleads
04 Sep 2010 Leave a Comment
in Uncategorized Tags: flow of consciousness, human beans, late at night, ponderings, pseudo-philosophising, religion
I’ll begin by apologising about how little I’ve been posting this week. This week, like the others preceding this one, has been a pretty hard one for me again — and I can see that next week, with its three SACs and one practice exam (which is, incidentally, worth half of the SAC marks for unit 4 for English), will be even worse. But since it’s almost one at my corner of the world, maybe I shouldn’t be worrying about that right now.
What should I be worrying about, then? I’m not entirely certain. I had to take my cute, fluffy dog out for a walk today, and I found it, as I always do, when I can actually move from the horizontal position I automatically take after a day of school these days, rather pleasant. It wasn’t entirely too cold out there — I think the thermometer said something around 15 degrees celsius by the time it was completely dark, so that’s not bad at all. It still smells and feels like spring, with all the birds singing; it might be a universal feeling, but at least in me, the arrival of spring always creates this wild hope, as a sort of light at the end of the tunnel, but at the same time, it makes me dreamy and impatient, which could be very bad for the intense revision that I need to start doing relatively soon. … Ugh, I just said that I wouldn’t worry about it, but school seriously occupies at least 98% of my brain at all times, and that’s one of the tragedies of this school year. It’s been an incredible year, no doubt of that — one of the best years of my life, I’m sure — but I’m getting pretty sick of this academic bullshit hijacking my brain constantly.
And then again, I’m afraid I’ll be completely devoid of thought when I don’t have any school things to think about. It might take surprisingly long for me to adjust to holidays, once they finally arrive… But, again, I’m worrying, even with listening to these stupid “relax” sounds from a relaxation app I downloaded in view of helping me get sleep more easily. But as expected, it hasn’t helped, as of yet — I find that music, even if it’s soft, or ambient sounds like running water, they don’t necessarily make me relax, but instead provide a singular point of concentration and keep me awake. So now I’m trying to get it to help me concentrate, but as you can see with me going off on tangents to every possible direction, it’s either not doing its job very well, or it’s doing it too well with trying to open my subconscious and make all this flowy stuff that makes no sense at all fall out for you to read as one form of verbal diarrhea. Um.
What I was going to say to begin with was that I enjoyed that walk with my dog, listening to semi-melancholy, simplistic songs that I have in my music library — in fact, I enjoyed it so much that when I arrived home, when it was still relatively light but the sun had already begun to set, I just dumped the dog inside and then fled outside again. I didn’t go on a walk or anything, because I didn’t really think of anywhere to go, and it would’ve felt a bit silly for me to go around where I had already been — so instead, I simply sat on one of those pillar-like things in front of my house (it sounds a bit silly, but unfortunately that’s the best description I can give; anyone who has seen my house will know what I’m talking about), cross-legged, and simply watched a decidedly urban sunset.
I don’t know how long I sat there, nor what I thought during that time — I just know that there I sat, watching the world get darker around me, and some cars drive by (I remember feeling amused about them speeding by so fast, no-one noticing the strange girl perched there in front of her house). It sounds kind of forced, now; a sort of deliberately eccentric or artsy type of thing people could do to show off with how beautifully different they are from “normal” people, but to me, it was no different to just sitting out on your porch and enjoying the world around you. It was the same feeling I get with public transport — you’re isolated, left alone, but simultaneously you’re this part of a whole, a part of the life around you. It makes me feel really good, and it always reminds me of my God, because to me, God is unity — God is in peace, and God is in wholes and understanding and all that hippie bullshit that doesn’t mean anything to you, if you haven’t experienced it, at least on some smaller scale.
I do remember thinking about God, and thinking about atheists and going back to the half-formed argument I laid in my previous post. This is mainly because yesterday, there was a huge “discussion” on my significant other’s wall about — well, a score of things, as the opposing side had trouble keeping their arguments straight and comprehensible. It began about how “unnatural” it is for a man to have given birth — you know, that guy who used to be a girl and who then became pregnant, as he left his reproductive organs unmodified in any way, and who appeared on Oprah (I believe) some time ago… If you don’t know the case, don’t make any assumptions, but research it first, please. I wouldn’t like anyone making judgement on anything like that before knowing good, solid facts about it, and even then I would ask you to consider how much it is not our problem that this man, who was born female, has given birth.
Anyway, this conversation can be summed up as a great debate against intolerance on my part and a great intolerance on his (yes, the debate was between me and this unknown person who had posted a link to a group against this “male pregnancy” on my significant other’s wall, and since I never know when to shut up…). It is so remarkable to me why it is so difficult to accept for people that different people have different points of view, and everyone is essentially just as correct as everyone else. I seriously don’t understand such blindness — nor do I understand the apparently human need to butt into everybody else’s business because of “free speech” (I oppose the hounding of celebrities, by the way, as a general indication of how I feel about this) or whatever right people seem to have to force their own values as norms on everyone else.
Why is it so frightening to accept that another person may think that they are right? It’s not like you have to modify your entire world view — all you’re saying is: “Oh, that person is silly, but I suppose that they think that they are right, so I shouldn’t press the matter further, because they’ll not think that I’m right, either.” I was thinking this, because I was thinking about God, and I was thinking about how atheists are so adamant about arguing that there is no God and that the Bible is just a book of stories. I agree with the latter part of it, partially, since some aspects of the Bible are historically accurate, but what I think of the first part isn’t really even relevant. Even if God doesn’t exist, even if God created nothing in the world and if God has no influence over human beings in anything (not even their creation), if there is no afterlife, no nothing — why is it so bad to let someone believe in a presumably fictional being, if it makes them feel good about themselves, their life, and the people around them?
Why do we, as a race, oppose each others’ happiness so very hard, just to prove a silly, stupid point of ours? It breaks my heart.
Do unto others as you would have others do unto you. Love, and be loved; live and let live.
