The ball of yarn with ten threads
02 Jan 2011 Leave a Comment
in Personal Tags: frustrations, ponderings, sleep deprivation, suspense
Note from after completing this post: Don’t take this post too seriously. At the moment, I’m happy, content, excited. I have my ups and downs, and always have. Unfortunately, the post seems more grave in its disjointedness, and that is simply because of the physical tiredness of not getting much sleep in two nights in a row, and some trouble with a constant sleeping rhythm before that. I apologise in advance for the impossibility of this post. :3
I’m quite sure that my absence from blogging can be understood and forgiven this time, especially since in the past week, I’ve started to write four different blog posts at four different times, and never gotten past the opening paragraph. Holidays have always been difficult for me, mostly because I haven’t had much activity and when I don’t have much activity, when I have to come up with things to do by myself, I always descend into lethargy and melancholia, which often drains my energy to the point where doing mentally challenging things like writing or reading (I’m reading Jack Kerouac’s On The Road at the moment, and boy is it difficult to keep track of, especially when tired), and the notion of leaving the house becomes nigh impossible. This summer was going to be better than others, mostly because I have grown tremendously as a person in this past year (more on that later), and I have become stronger and more able — but with my father’s illness, I had foreseen that this will be one of the most difficult summers of my life, instead.
Of course, I hope that this won’t be the case — I’ve got some things scheduled for next week, mostly going to the city to spend the money I’m earning from the job I now got back, since the cinema I worked at six months ago finished renovating. That’s another way I can tell I’ve matured: my work was distasteful to me before, because it was hard for me to take complaints or misplaced aggression from customers — mostly because I’m essentially very eager to please, and take criticism and other than sorts of comments very personally. My parents have always said that I’m three times as hard on myself as anyone else is, and this at least has been correct — but now, like I was saying, it is not nearly as bad. I have matured in understanding that someone else’s stress or anger or misplaced hatred toward pricing (amusingly common — why would they whinge about ticket prices at me, the person selling them to them? Do people really not understand that my position is very much casual, I’m just a cashier, and the prices are waaaay beyond my control?) is not my problem at all — and why feel upset over something I can’t influence? Anyway, like I was saying, I’ve got some things planned for next week, and on friday, my significant other and I, alongside my little sister and my parents (yes, even my father, to our delight) will be hopping on an airplane toward northern Australia.
Let’s just hope that it’ll have stopped raining by then — though I’m not very hopeful about that either.
As you might notice from the way I’m writing, though, I’ve still not quite recovered from the state of… distraction that the recent unfortunate events have caused. I’m not sure if my tiredness and lethargy and the way in which I find myself losing the thread of logic in a conversation, or failing to interpret someone’s intentions in a conversation (something that I’m usually very good at) are caused by my customary summer condition, or by my father’s illness and the psychological strain it has placed upon me and my family. It always seems like my problems come in flocks, and it is hard to separate cause and effect into a neat thread — instead, I’m left with this bundle of problems and no real way to solve it, except to cast it all aside (or solve it by using my scissors) and plough ahead.
But as always, it’s more than just a bundle of problems. I’m known to be controlled by the depth and unreliability (in the manner of moodswings) of my emotions; positive as well as negative. I’ve always viewed myself as in need of a definite balance — because I feel so deeply about everything, I don’t think it will ever be fully possible for me to just be mellow or content and peaceful with what I have. Instead, I strive for balance: great happiness and great sadness go hand in hand. I don’t fear sadness, nor have I ever shied from it; I cry willingly, and it’s an inexplicably good feeling whenever I do, very similar to the overwhelming joy of being, well, overwhelmingly joyful, to feel like your heart is bursting from the sheer enjoyment of life. I don’t feel bad for feeling sad, though sometimes even the smallest setbacks will feel like the end of the world to me, though they aren’t, and still are, at that moment (and how grateful I am for my significant other to understand all of this, and to be able to comfort me accordingly). The feeling I most fear and hate is exactly that lethargy, which takes away my energy to feel much, except for the consuming tiredness.
So I suppose that in this disjointed way, I’m trying to prove to myself that the fact that I cry on maybe five nights out of seven is not a bad thing at all; it might purge some of my lethargy from me, giving me hope to somehow sort out my head from the knots of feelings and thoughts and the directionlessness that always camps on the borders of my subconscious and conscious.
I repeat that I realise that it might be impossible to follow the train of thought in this post, and it’s mostly because I started writing it around four in the morning last night, or morning, when I was feeling thoughtful, and continued it now, in the following afternoon, when that blueness has disappeared and been replaced with an excited contentment. But more than that, this rambling is very much representative of the manner in which my thoughts and feelings and intuition and physical feelings, too, are in chaos — interconnected and confusing. I feel so much, and there are so many reasons I could feel that way for — the sheer amount of things that are happening and that I am feeling makes it very hard to make any order in my head at the moment, never mind my life. Maybe the solution to this would be to stop thinking about it so hard, and dispose of the symptoms before I can take care of the causes — because right now, the symptoms are preventing me of functioning as fully and smoothly as possible. I should stop thinking so rationally, stop trying to trace back all of these feelings and pains, and instead just allow myself to feel them; and then to deal with each of them as they come along.
Sure, the easiest way to solve a problem is to go way back to its cause, but at the moment, that is impossible. I’m a human ball of yarn, but instead of just having two ends, I have something around 20. It’s so hard, being young and clueless. And at the same time, I hope this uncertainty and discovery never ends… I’d just want a more physical, active discovery, instead of this self-centered mulling that I do. It’ll be all better when forces beyond mine begin to control my life once more.
That’s something I’ve always been good at… Incentive is not really my thing (though I can most definitely take the reigns to my own hands if needed, or if I feel like I can do a better job than whomever it is holding them at that moment), I’d much rather someone told me exactly what to do, so that I can then focus completely on doing it to the best of my ability.
Peace and thoughtfulness and the soft comforting beauty of sleep for everyone; let’s hope that next time I come back, I’ll be a bit more coherent and have happier things to talk about.
The time has (almost) come! [insert dramatic music here]
24 Oct 2010 Leave a Comment
in Personal Tags: enthusiastic rambling, optimism, suspense
Well, it’s been a while since I even thought about my blog, hasn’t it… So long, in fact, that I can’t really even remember how to do this blogging business! No, just kidding, I’ve always known how to do “random verbal diarrhea,” and practice has obviously perfected this talent above all others, of course. The challenge is to make that verbal diarrhea about something meaningful (or at least funny) so that you’ll not get bored with me, and that it’ll still remain somehow structured, so that you can follow the thread of my thought as it … uh, overflows on this metaphorical paper here.
It’s so hard to blog when you’ve got so much to talk about! It’s kind of ironic, thinking that just a few posts ago — though those posts were obviously posted a loooonger time ago — I was complaining about how blogging is hard when nothing really happens in my life. Well, past me, apparently it’s also hard when you’ve got a lot of fun stuff going on or going to be going on (going going going — it kinda sounds like a gong or something, if you keep on repeating it often enough), mainly because you don’t even know where to start, so instead you write this whole paragraph whinging aimlessly when you try to get your thoughts in some sort of an order.
Ahhhhem.
Really, the point of this blogpost is to inform you that I’ve been a very good girl and been studying for my finals pretty diligently, and as such, I’m feeling pretty good about them — which is a bloody good thing too, considering that my first exam is somewhere around 13:45 tomorrow. Granted, it’s only a 15-minute oral exam in a foreign language (French, sadly, and not Finnish, which would’ve been MUCH a less of a big deal) but anyone who has ever at least attempted to seriously study a foreign language will know exactly how daunting that concept sounds. Now all I have to do is hope that I won’t get a native speaker as an examiner — they have this annoying habit of swallowing their vowels, making their language pretty incomprehensible to me. Not that my French is that comprehensible either, but at least I make an EFFORT, k?
I kinda jumped the trigger there — I was going to do this whole buildup about how we’ve been studying and doing practice exams in school and then how the last day of high school just flew by with its water guns and huge yellow slides and jumping castles (actually, those latter two should be in singular, but that would totally break the flow of that sentence — I’d much rather form over fact, how about you?) and shaving cream and some tears (not mine, though — my expression was pretty much frozen into this huge grin for the entire day, as anyone who has friended me on facebook would, no doubt, know by now) and moving speeches and all that crap that comes with the concept of moving on from one stage of your life to the great unknown.
Is it bad that I just heard my English teacher’s voice in my head, nagging about how that previous statement sounded completely dismissive and wasn’t… I’m not sure what word she used here. Believable? Persuasive? Regardless, dismissive sarcasm isn’t good, children, so let’s not go down that alley.
Double negatives make a positive, right? (haa, pseudo-intellectual humor — or then I’m just a bit tired and verging on stupid)
Ahem. Look, I don’t MEAN to sound so dismissive, and in a way, I’m every bit as sad and as scared of the change as everyone who was tearing up on that last day, and at the valedictory dinner and everything. I’m just not really dealing with that now — it’s not hit me yet. I have this tendency of suspending feeling until the change has already happened; it’ll probably hit me somewhere during the next months, when I’ll be bored over the lack of nothing to do (I know I’ve been excited about not having anything to worry about, but I know me too well — it’s going to happen; either I run out of money or I get really bored at some stage), or at latest during Week O at university, when I’m… going to… [insert joke about being scared and lost here]
Wasn’t that funny? That was really funny, wasn’t it. I thank your imagination for that.
Ok, as you can see I’m kind of nervous and tired and excited at the same time. I’m freaking out a bit inside about tomorrow’s exam, but I don’t think it’s as much tomorrow’s exam as it is the fact that AFTER tomorrow’s exam, it’ll only be six more to go, and then freedom to do all of that stuff my bloody significant other keeps on getting me so excited about. Seriously, you wouldn’t BELIEVE how hard it is to stay in the now and remain calm and work hard toward the best result I can possibly get when all I can think about is videogames and my NOVEL that I haven’t touched for so long and then another novel that I’ve been dying to write and a third one and the feeling of liberty when I won’t have to strive to actively remember all of this stuff that’s now floating around my head and won’t have to worry about forgetting them or getting out of practice or concentrating on one thing too much–
Summary: I’m not worried about the exams, per se (except maybe the English one, just because I know how huge the expectations are on that one, seeing how terrificly I did on the practice exam), I’m just so anxious to have them over and done with so I can go on with my life.
Besides, after tomorrow, I won’t have to speak French ever again, if I so choose.
Booyah.
Now, the next time I write, I’ll most likely be very bored or very anxious or want to pour my heart out at the internet about how some of my exams went — or then it’ll be after the exams, because that’ll feel good: writing a post about how I feel I’ll do, and then writing a post when everything is going to be finished. You’ll remind me to do that, won’t you, darling? Yeah, I’m totally speaking to my significant other over the internet and you’re watching me do it. Don’t you feel special?
Peace, love, and carpe diem, because I need to get my mind off all the awesome stuff that is going to happen and concentrate on the stuff that is happening right now.
Rationalising about irrationality
05 Sep 2010 Leave a Comment
in Uncategorized Tags: late at night, ponderings, seasons, slight angst, suspense, videogames
UPD 13-Sep-2010: While trying to sort out all the prompts for the next post, I realised that this one pretty much fills the one for
Day 21: Something illogical you think or do.
I actually had a pretty good day today, for once. Good on the scale that it’s raining now, and probably rather cold outside, but I don’t even care — yeah, me, the sun-loving, cold-hating little kitty-cat doesn’t care that it’s wet and cold outside (and why should I, I’m inside; but a lot of the time I do, so take that). Or, well, at least I had a good end of the day — it kind of began pretty shittily, with a headache and nausea that caused me to want to eat only frozen raspberries for breakfast and got my mother to nag about how I’m feeling sick just because I haven’t eaten properly, but I, personally, attribute it rather to my incredibly stupid hormonal cycle (though I wouldn’t tell that to her, since you can’t argue with The Ex-Nurse), which causes, along headaches and nausea and various cramps, this incredibly annoying irritability, hyper-sensitivity (because I’m always sensitive) and irrationality.
I’m a very rational human being — I like science, and I like logic. I’ve always been thanked in English for being able to construct a coherent, logical argument. I do like creative writing, too — but even in that, I like my thoughts to be organised, my intentions to be clear, and each and every thing that happens in a short story or in a novel to be rational, and to clearly and logically follow some other action. This applies even to human beings in my stories — except on a more emotional level. My stories are usually character-driven, and before I create anything else, I will create a character; and how I envision that character to feel and to think, that is where the logic of the story is. Everything has a place and a reason — even seemingly random and useless occurrences are usually there because I felt they would suit that spot there, and because later, they will develop into a character trait or a plot twist or something less significant than that.
I know you’re probably confused about where I’m going with all this, but be patient with me — this blog is one of those things that isn’t exactly very organised, logical and coherent, and there’s multiple reasons for that, too; ones that should be clear in the way I write and what I write about. Anyway. If you go into as superficial definitions as stereotypes, you could say that I’m pretty male in a lot of ways; in how I value rational logic (oh, except that I don’t fit those stereotypes at all, because as logical as I like to think that I am, I’m also pretty driven by emotion; but I think that even emotions are logical in some sort of a manner, and all you need to do is understand the origin of the emotion for it to be clear and rational as day — I don’t like the misconception that logic and emotions can’t go hand in hand) and how I’m incredibly unable to multitask. This is completely unrelated, but this should be mentioned, mostly for shits and giggles — especially since my significant other is always so eager to remind me that I can’t do basic things such as drinking and walking at the same time. The explanation for this is a lot more physical than the one for my usual inability to multitask — simple concentration on one thing at a time, I do something with 110% efficiency or not at all.
But I’m obviously not male, and I’ve got a stupidly retarded hormonal cycle to remind me of that. Even forgetting the physical unpleasantries, I would still hate it with a passion, because of what it does to my mind. Once every bleeding month, I become incredibly depressed over nothing in particular, and the smallest, usually perceived shortcomings of myself or the people around me will make me burst into tears. If there is no such outlet, I will be gloomy and depressed and lethargic for a few days. Then, I become irritable and impatient for the next, often going back to being the sarcastic, almost mean-spirited, too-good-for-you human being I was a few years ago. After this, the hormones usually decide to leave me alone and let me be considerably happy for the next few weeks — until it comes back.
The most annoying thing about this stupid cycle (you can probably tell how much I hate it from counting how many times I’ve referred to it as “stupid” — I was never very good with insults, *smiles sheepishly*) is that the extravagant, ridiculous extremes that my emotions fly to are so very real to me. I get incredibly depressed over someone dropping a cookie on the floor (an actual reference I use when I’m bawling over nothing in particular to note the world around me of how no-one died and that I’m actually rather alright), and at that moment, it is the end of the world, for me. Where it gets infuriating and bizarre is the notion that even when I’m feeling so depressed over the death of this cookie, I will still acknowledge how ridiculous I’m being. I could almost bet that 75% of the aforementioned irritability is my internal fury for not being able to contain my stupid, chemical-ridden brain. Those weeks are probably the only ones in which I will feel strongly about nothing in particular, and be just as irrational as women are, according to the stereotype, supposed to be, most of the time. It annoys me SO; and even more so, because there is actually nothing I can do about it. Just bitch and whine like the teenage girl I am, ugh.
So, that’s passing over another time, again — no-one’s dead yet, so I suppose that’s a good sign — and I’ve been having a fairly alright day. In this day, I witnessed once more how it is impossible for me to stay within word limits (writing a report for Chemistry on the industrial production of ethene — there are seven or so points we need to cover, and I’m in the middle of covering point 2, already having used half of the word limit), dabbled with The Sims 3 a bit again (just a bit, though, because I didn’t really have time to REALLY get into it) and talked on the phone with my significant other, the drummer deity, for some 45 minutes or so. God, that was one of the best conversations on phone that I’ve had for ages. Still, I wish he was home already. I wish next week wouldn’t be so busy. I wish it were holidays already. I wish it to be next weekend, when I’m supposed to get my copy of Kingdom Hearts: Birth By Sleep! Most importantly, I wish it were tomorrow, because I’m supposed to get French toast tomorrow, heeee.
Carpe diem, they say, and I endorse that idea — but sometimes it’s just so HARD. It’s hard to not wait for all of this awesome stuff; it’s hard to make yourself concentrate on probability (that I still don’t get; damn you, Markov chains) and on all this school stuff going on, because SPRING IS COMING and summer is almost here and IT’S ALMOST OVER.
Peace and French toast to everybody.
A tired play that takes place in my brain
24 Aug 2010 Leave a Comment
in Uncategorized Tags: 35 days, authors and books, brain activity, reading, suspense, writing
At this point in time, I’m seriously beginning to think if I’ve somehow “calibrated” my sleeping times in a pattern that comes, not only after 10 pm (seriously, precisely quarter to ten, my body begins going “oh, it’s almost ten, we can start relaxing now — unless I’ve been to the gym, that is), but immediately after school, too. This was SO not the first — not even the FIFTH time in which I’d come home from school, eaten lunch (because I even had a short day!) and then thought that I’d relax a bit in bed by reading Cracked (ok, I understand that it’s beginning to get pretty much pimping right now, but I really, really, really love Cracked) before heading to do some hardcore math and chemistry homework, for my plan to be foiled by my drooping eyelids, difficulty to focus on what I’m reading and the eventuality of falling asleep.
To understand my bewilderment, you have to consider what I revealed in my previous post: even the Goddamned lunar cycle makes me sleep worse, which means that I’m an incredibly light sleeper with a super-efficient bodyclock that has the incredibly annoying tendency of waking me up some ten minutes before my alarm goes off. Also, I wake up to the softest sounds and never have to be shaken awake, if I know I have to be somewhere the next day. And I don’t sleep in cars or planes or anything that moves, unless there’s some sort of a horizontal plane that I can use and if it’s quiet and dark. This aforementioned piece of information about not sleeping in moving vehicles became especially bitchy to me during the, what, 30 hour (including the times we spent waiting on assorted airports) flight from Helsinki, Finland to Melbourne. I think I slept like 4 hours during that entire span of time, and that was only with a pillow on those tray things that you lower from the backrest in front of you, me bent over it all weirdly and in pain after it.
So, I’m quite at a loss as to why I’ve suddenly began to crave sleep as drastically as I have. At this moment (with my eyes still pointing in separate directions and my brain feeling like the slow mass of grey goo that it is [very good time for updating my blog, isn't it?]), I felt as if it could’ve been my subconscious complaining about the dreariness that is the routine that I’ve been subjecting it to for the past countless weeks. Like this:
Me: [Goes through weeks with only doing anything apart from schoolwork and occasional chats with her Significant Other on one day of the weekend; otherwise procrastinates by reading Cracked.com, an assortment of other websites, and does her homework like the good little fuck she is.]
Brain: BRAIN NO LIKE MONOTONE. BRAIN DEMAND ACTIVITY. [Awaits for some change maliciously]
Me: [Is rather oblivious to the demands of Brain, and hence continues with the dreary, exhaustingly boring routine]
Brain: BRAIN GAVE YOU WARNING AS PER USER AGREEMENT. BRAIN TAKE ACTION NOW. [Angrily and abruptly ceases all activity]
Me: Blblblblgrbl? [Falls asleep]
But then again, considering the amount of learning and activity that I am actually forcing my brain to do, actively, every day — with all of my subjects, really — the absorbing of new information and feverishly trying to remember at least the main idea of old lessons and still trying to keep thinking about the plot of Inception and witty comebacks to pseudo-assholes at school, it would be perfectly reasonable if the scenario went more like this:
Me: [Constantly learns a lot of new things and goes back to revise old things, and while she seems to be resting at certain points by, for example, reading Cracked.com, she is really reading fascinating notions about pop culture and, well, culture in general, which make her generate her own opinions about it and consider the different aspects of those; etc.]
Brain: [Wheezing] Brain… can’t — do it! Brain not very good multi-tasker; Brain need time to sort it all out. Brain fascinated, but getting a little scared! [Rushes off to put out a sudden fire in one of the overflowing archives, looking distressed]
Me: [Is somewhat aware of Brain's pickle, and feels sorry for it; but keeps on reassuring herself and Brain that there's only so much of it left and after that, they'll embark on a lovely intellectual adventure where stimulus will be specific and hand-picked]
Brain: BUT BRAIN CAN’T DO NO MOOOORE! [Throws a tantrum, begins sobbing and takes an axe to the bleeping dashboard thingy]
Me: Bbhhhh– [Falls asleep]
Either way, it’s some four hours ’till my sleepy-time, and I still haven’t begun doing any of my math and Chemistry homework. It’s relatively alright, because the chem homework due date was shifted forward to Friday — and yet, I’m feeling rather skeptical for my physical & mental status on thursday afternoon, since I’m already falling asleep on bloody tuesday afternoon. Oh GOD but I am in need of a holiday. On the summer holiday, in which there won’t be any homework, this’ll be my brain activity:
Me: [Engages in pleasantly stimulating leisure activities whenever the fuck she wants, changing activities when the older one becomes unnecessarily boring]
Brain: [Excited] Ooh ooh ooh Brain want read now! Brain want beach now! Brain can’t decide — can read on beach now?
Me: [Smiling slightly, obliges to Brain's wishes]
[EVERYONE lives happily ever after]
*sighs* I can’t WAIT. But before that — I am so sorry, Brain — there’ll be a hell of a lot more studying and revision and practice and doing questions after questions after questions, and oh God that report SAC on Ethene production that is due in in less than two weeks’ time that I have no clue how long it will take…!
Day 14: Your favourite book
I like this question. As you may have realised by now, I have a sort of a passion with writing and reading. Sadly, I haven’t been able to do much at all of the latter, and very little of the prior that has nothing to do with schoolwork or this blog (but at least the blog keeps my creative demons from howling and rattling their cages too much), this year — that’s for perfectly understandable reasons. Also, I try not to agitate my brain further by giving it “useless” information to digest, along with the things it NEEDS to know for the exams around November. It was a sort of similar situation last year, and hence my bookcases — there’s three of them — have been collecting all these books that I haven’t yet had a chance to read. Below, you can see a picture of my bookcases (there’s actually three individual ones of them), a TV that is not connected to anything and random crap that I have stored there (the picture in the lowest right shelf is the “evolution of me”, as visualised by a friend of mine), and my books (yes that is the Twilight series — I USED to like it [but never thought it a literary wonder, mind you], got sick of the hype and now refer to it when intellectually discussing the Twilight series and its merits and faults): 133 to date. Some of them are missing, as they’re scattered around my room, and at least one is in my sister’s room. MOVING ON.
For as long as I’ve had at least 75% of the brain power I harness today (well, not so much to say about that, after explaining why the hell I’m developing some sort of a mild case of narcolepsy), I’ve refused to name my favourite book. There are so many different books out there that speak of so many different things, in so many different styles that explain things in so many different ways that offer so many different opinions and revelations — it just seems sort of blasphemy to pick one out of all of them and parade that around and say “this is what is most important to me, because it’s most awesome of them all.” I may be exaggerating what the whole concept of a favourite book entails, but that’s how it comes across for me. In fact, in relation to the context essay thing that I posted yesterday, I might add that the reading experience of each book becomes significantly enriched by the books you’ve read before that. Prior knowledge and understanding of language and ideas and how storytelling works, for example, give you a heightened insight to how some clever author is attempting to bring his/her ideas across.
And that is why you don’t give university-level novels/other works of writing to high school-level students, bloody VCAA. No matter how intelligent we are, we won’t have the necessary skills/experience to actually pick all of that apart.
But I do freely admit that I have favourite authors. As with music, my favourite authors are simply authors from whom I can read any books or other bodies of writing and enjoy them all almost equally. It doesn’t necessarily mean that I like their books more than I like the stray book from another author that I have liked a lot and placed in my bookshelves, but it means that whenever these selected authors publish new books, I am thrilled and excited and hardly ever disappointed. These authors, who have gained a special shelf in my bookcases, are Robert A. Heinlein, Neil Gaiman and Mika Waltari (a great Finnish author — and, incidentally, the only Finnish author that I like, to date). Check out any of them — I personally think they’re rather awesome.
Day 15: A movie that made you cry
Day 16: Something you’ve procrastinated about
Yep, that’s the sound of me heaving a huge sigh and helplessly glancing toward my math books, so peacefully lying on my bed. How darling they look when they’re closed like that! And what horrors those seemingly innocent, blue covers hold within them! Wish me luck; I hope I’ll still be alive when the schedule for sleeping rolls in, eh?
Peace and mushrooms (have I wished that already? I think I may have); take care of yourselves, and don’t get hit by a lighting. That’d just suck. Or be awesome. Regardless. Don’t do it.
Are there even any creative ways to express sleep deprivation?
19 Aug 2010 Leave a Comment
in Personal, Sort of a review Tags: 35 days, seasons, shiny, sleep deprivation, slight angst, suspense
And yet another day of neglecting to update my blog. Sigh! I can say that it’s because I haven’t been sleeping a lot lately — which is kind of fine, seeing that I’m not actually feeling too bad at all and can function normally (except for the whole, you know, deteriorating coordination thing that makes me hit myself and walk into things a lot), but it also means that I don’t have enough energy for extra stress (which is a good thing) or any additional effort, like writing a blog — which is a bad thing, I suppose. I’ve never really been good with this sleeping thing, though, not even as a tiny little kid. Mother always tells me how I was an exhausting child, since I never slept any during the day.
It also showed in school, when I burst into tears in French, since my mind completely blacked out and my teacher is very good with making things stressful, especially when we’re supposed to have a conversation with her, completely in French. Speaking was never my forte, not even in English — so I hate that I’m expected to express myself orally in the end-of-year exam. It’s not that I don’t understand or know the language, I just can’t speak it, just as I can’t speak anything else!
Ok, so my oral skills (ha) have improved consistently since I actually started talking, unlike your average Finnish person, but hey, if I want to cling on to my perception of my personal problems when there are really none, I will! … Because that totally makes a lot of sense.
So, my excuses for not writing a blog post is that precious little has actually happened (since precious little ever happens at school — also, you’re probably sick of me mentioning my significant other every two lines or so, so maybe I shouldn’t talk about how we went and had lunch/coffee [iced chocolate -- Gloria Jean's, I love you so] and it was very, very nice), I am tired to the point where it has turned from beneficial in reducing stress to stressful, and I am addicted to my iPhone.
Well, it was kind of expected, wasn’t it? I mean, it’s shiny, it’s got cute and addictive games on it (like ROBOT UNICORN ATTACK), and heeeaps of useless apps that are just shiny enough to pique my curiosity and have me spending loooots of money on them. Sigh. Welcome, bankruptcy, I wish I still had my job…
Anyway, since my few days have been rather uneventful (on the sort of let’s-tell-the-world-about-it scale), I’ll go ahead and answer the prompt I missed, along with today’s prompt:
Day 08: Your favourite fruit
I know that it isn’t (or may not — ever since grade 3, it seems to have been some sort of a competition between everyone on how to classify fruits, vegetables and berries and so on and so forth, you know, to the tune of pineapple being a bunch of berries) necessarily a fruit, but I love strawberries. A hell of a lot. I mean, they’re reeeed and juicyyy and kind of sweet without being too sweet, retaining that sort of a tangy flavor sensation. I’m not too good with sweet things, so anything that’s sour goes, pretty much. Hence I also like pineapple, green apples (that bright green, sour kind), etc.
Day 09: Something that you’re really waiting for
SUMMER. You’ve heard all about this, but I want it to stop being cold (it’s not been too bad the past few days, actually — I’ve almost felt my toes for the first time in a few months, even though yesterday one of my fingers swelled up with warmth once we got home, that’s how cold it got outside), dark, grey and rainy. I’m perfectly ready to be complaining about the hot temperatures and the piercing sunshine again.
And holidays, of course, with the passion of one who hasn’t slept well for a week and will have to get up tomorrow to go to school, and on sunday morning to go to a bloody French thing where they dissect the exam so that your studying is made easier for you. I mean, it’s incredibly useful, I suppose, in terms of exam strategies (like my English teacher likes to say) and knowing what the hell I’m doing for once, but AT 9:30 ON A BLOODY SUNDAY MORNING, IN THE CITY, TO WHERE A TRAIN RIDE TAKES AT LEAST 30 MINUTES? I’m already sacrificing my whole bloody week for this insanity, and most of my sleep and my life and my.. sanity, AND NOW THEY ASK FOR MY SUNDAYS?
… I need a holiday.
Day 10: Something you want from your life
Day 11: A book you’re going to read during the next month
You kiddies try to sleep a lot more than I do, ok? Accidentally banging your head against everything that remains immobile (because the mobile things know how to dodge me already, lifeless or no) is really not fun.
p.s. I might not update tomorrow because of a severe case of tired (or of shiny), but when I do, I’ll try to give you some picshars of/taken on my shiny gadget thing. Just for shits and giggles, you know?
Oh, the season of strawberries, cream and skin cancer, how I yearn for thee
10 Aug 2010 Leave a Comment
in Uncategorized Tags: holidays, seasons, suspense
Ah, schadenfreude.
I suppose it’s terrible of me to feel gleeful about the fact that all of my Finnish friends will be returning to school shortly, but I’ve got to honestly say that a few more posts about how warm it is and how carefree all Finns are on their stupidly long holidays, and I will break down and weep like… well, I don’t know, few things weep like I do in this world (except for puppies, maybe; or baby animals in general), so I’ll just say that I’ll possibly weep like me.
It really doesn’t sound impressive or persuasive at all, when you put it that way, but hey, all I’m doing is being honest! Now’s when I realise what I wrote and pause and act melancholy for a moment, because I’ve learnt some things about regulating honesty, and self-control (which is also a part of regulating honesty, because self-control usually relates to emotions, and your emotions are [however biased] always honest), during the course of my life. But I suppose that I don’t have to rant about that right now, because I’m moderately happy, even though I’m still annoyed.
Ah, yes, summer. The time in which you don’t have any homework to worry about, or any upcoming exams to study for, or any curfews (self-inflicted or not), or deadlines, or times to get up and times to go to sleep. I know I’m a really organised person, but I honestly hate schedules on a general basis. I’m alright with allocating dates for tasks, but actual times… no dice. Sometimes you have to pace yourself during the day according to how you feel, and not how you’ve scheduled it. My mother still fails to realise this, and if something needs to be done, in her opinion, it always needs to be done RIGHT NOW. I suppose that my dislike for schedules comes from there — both mother and father have always been very fond of scheduling. Ugh. Of course, in the summer, the ideal would be that there be no need for real scheduling, except for maybe going out to the city or the beach or wherever it is that people go in the summer, teehee. Maybe going out for ice cream?
Another thing about scheduling is sleep. We were talking about this earlier with my significant other, and it’s pretty clear that both of us are the sorts of people who will be most awake at six pm, making it more comfortable for us to shift our sleeping rhythms, well, forward. ‘sides, there’s probably nothing in this world I love more than staying up very late with someone you love and just talking about things that pop into your mind, as little as they usually make sense. And even if you’re alone, staying up in the middle of the night, when everything else is quiet and there’s the sort of “it’s too late to do anything, so I’ll just stop stressing” sort of vibe going through my head, and when the night closes in on you and all your world entails is this dim room around you… Yeah, I can’t really imagine anything else. What I plan to do in the summer break is shift my sleeping rhythm some five hours forward — stay awake ’till one-three in the morning, and wake up around midday. :3
The third thing, of course, is weather. I really do understand that Melbourne needs its rain because of the drought it has been having for ages now — but as a Finn, where rain is little more than miserable and a constant annoyance, I’m finding myself very sick of that, too. It’s been better recently — the sun’s actually come out a few times in the past week or so, and the temperature almost went up to twenty (celsius, that is) yesterday (which was a pity, since I didn’t actually need to leave the house once yesterday), and the sun doesn’t set as early as it did just a month or so ago. It’s almost getting me hopeful about the fact that the warmth and the nice breeze and the sunshine and happiness will be soon coming… or did, at least, ’till I had to make my way home from school today in the sort of pouring rain that had my toes completely soaked after half a minute in it. Well, at least I got to use my wonderfully gay umbrella (it’s got a few stories related to it — basically it’s just a rainbow-coloured umbrella), right? Anyhoo, I’m the cold sort of human being that will still feel like the intestines of a refridgerator in a 30 degree heat (this is actually a tested fact), and hence I’m very easily and very thoroughly cold. Hence, logically, warmth = very nice. And summer clothes are cool, too — always so colourful, and so light and yay.
I might even go swimming a bit this summer, since I avoided it for the entirety of the last! That, though, means beaches and that means sand and sunscreen, because apparently feeling like a refridgerator goes together with having fair and sensitive skin that doesn’t like getting any darker, but instead enjoys being painful and red a whole lot. Anybody knows that sand and sunscreen really don’t mix together.
BUT I must really wait ’till the summer so that I can really start complaining about it. I always do this: when it’s winter, I hate it, and when it’s summer, I hate it a little less, but I hate it yet. And I don’t REALLY hate it — just that those birds singing outside my window at this very moment, with the soft rays of sunlight and the narrow stripes of bright, blue skies in the midst of dissolving rain clouds make me long for the summer. A lot.
Hurry up, Earth! Can’t you travel through space a little faster?
