Get your act together, please

Well, it's a month exactly today. And not even a good, long month; February, the Tuesday of the year. Sort of eerie to think that, at almost exactly now in a month, I'll be twitching about, sleepless and anxious, chasing up the thousand loose ends that will doubtless appear the moment before I move to London. Damn, the closer it gets the more I'm sure something unexpected with eventuate and it'll all collapse and never happen. It seems like too big a thing to happen to me.

What's been going on in the interim?, I hear you shout. Well, stunningly little. Hate my job. If I didn't know I was quitting so soon I'd quit. (They don't know I'm leaving, by the way. Terrible me!) Honestly, the sight of anything in the bread bin at home makes me very uncomfortable. A bakery has to be the worst place for a person terrified of burns and disgusted by mornings to work.

With most of my Serious Travel Things (visa, flights, job, home) taken care of, I'm happy to procrastinate through the rest and spend my off-time watching TV. We don't even have Netflix in Australia, you know, so I'm at the mercy of whatever's on. Sometimes this is great (Bargin Hunt, QI, Poirot) and sometimes this is dreadful (My Kitchen Rules). All this QI, incidentally, hasn't been helping my Alan Davies stress dreams. (They're awful. I wake up in a panic because I don't have enough money to buy that wretched farm in Kent he pushed on me, or because I've forgotten to fill in that form he needed. It's bizarre. I must associate him with England or something.)

All this rambling, aside from beng demonstrative of my current state of mind, is my way of announcing that I'm back. I'm back, and I'm getting my act together (maybe).

A quiet moment

Dropping in (to my own blog, hm) to let you know that I'm going to take a moment off from blogging. I know that this is such a scummy thing to do -- not to mention atrocious timing seeing as my blog is, well, basically brand new -- but I just don't have the energy or content. I don't want to create rubbish for you; I want to write quality, and if I can't then I see no point in continuing. Recently, I've been working two jobs, trying to sort out my visa, university, the old, uh, move 20,000-odd kms away... It's taxing. I hope to be back by mid-Feb at the latest with more WitW (do you actually like that?), moving to London things, photographs of buildings and maybe even nnneeeewwww cccooonnttteeeennttt (substitute in your own wiggly fingers and ghost accent). In the meantime, here are pictures of great actresses with ravens from my Pinterest.

See you soon!

 

Resolve

Links to this and every other picture on my Pinterest

I've never been particularly dedicated to these things. I suppose I'm not alone. But I've always been a goal-setter; needless to say, the clash with my laissez faire attitude to execution has caused some problems. But I set them, and for once I think I'm actually going to take steps to make these happen.

I think I'm particularly motivated this year because my 2012 was not sensational. Had some excellent times (I mean, I visited London for the first time in my waking memory), but still not great. Most of the year was soaked up by constant stresses -- mostly assessment-related. Actually, on a side note, I'm thrilled to say that I got a score that was much higher than I honestly expected (no modesty, truly; just an English course structure that suited me to a t and an History of Revolutions exam that didn't ask awkward questions about the Russian Civil War) and ought to be getting some good news when university offers come out. I'll keep you posted.

What I'm trying to say is that 2012 changed me. Significantly. I'm a lot more mature than I was this time last year and I'm beginning to figure out the kind of person I want to be. I've been looking forward to 2013 for a good long time now and can honestly say that this is a year of change. And I look forward to it, although it scares unnameable things out of me.

Enough of this cheesiness. I'm going to write up my resolutions (a few days late, I admit) for all the world to see. This time next year I can look back on them and see which I kept, which I didn't and how I fared overall. Which actually brings me to my first goal...

Keep blogging over 2013. This is a big one. Writing is my passion, and it's what I want to do for a living. What's the point of having that dream if I can't keep a blog alive? (I guess we'll never know if I don't make it to a review of the year that was.) This is my way to breaking into the kind of community I want to be in; it's my portfolio and my scratchboard and my ego inflator. I get the feeling I wouldn't be thrilled with myself if I didn't continue. So, quite simply, I will.

Learn to use your lovely birthday camera. A nonsensically long time ago, a friend mentioned that I should try photography because I'd probably have a pretty decent eye. I've wanted to be a (hobbyist) photographer ever since. Writing is beautiful, and I love to take pictures with words -- I love the way you can twist them and double them back upon themselves. But my chief high school regret is not taking Photography. (It was a really popular class so I shunned it. Honestly, self of 2009.) So now that I'm in possession of what photography forums generously refer to as "a DSLR for the photographically retarded" (their words, not mine) it's time to get serious. I will know what those weird little switches do and I will figure out what bokeh actually is.

Read (and understand) the backs of packets. On a completely different tangent, I'm sick of ingesting things that bleach floors. This was brought on by a co-worker filling me charmingly in on what goes into delicious things like Hershey's Cookies and Cream bars. Not to mention the metal-infused oil of Reese's Pieces. O! to be introduced to wonders of US produce, only to have it cruelly snatched away! That said, I'm still going to treat myself; I'm hardly going to turn into one of those weird women with hair in unexpected places, burning effigies of Thickening Agent 749e. Now that shopping for myself looms on the horizon, I'm making a serious effort to avoid, you know, mercury.

Dress like your wardrobe implies you do. And now for the really scary one. Did you know, dear readers, that I own (amongst other things) an orange kimono, two 1940s skirt-suits and plum lipstick? Of course you don't, because these things are languishing in my closet. I buy them because they are lovely and then never wear them because it's hard to break a mould. And the hats! And the gloves! And the pearls! I read so many inspirational blogs and see so many fashionable ladies, but I can't bring myself to do it. No more! After a Harem of Peacocks/Bright Young Twins binge, I feel inspired. This is going to be the hardest, but I have little doubt that it will also be the most rewarding.

Enough of this emotional nonsense. Hello, 2013; may you be only good things!

 

Flashback harp and Vaseline on the lens

How meta is this?

It's been a month since I started this blog (and about ten days since I decided to write a review of how things have been going, took a picture, wrote 'How meta is this?' and subsequently forgot all about it). I assure you I won't be writing these every month I pass here, but I think now's as good a time as any to have a think about how things are going.

Reading over my things, I realise I've strayed from my original idea, and, in essence, the purpose of my blog. I'm writing about a (or an, I suppose) scenic world, not an near-unemployment or an questionable/attention-seeking grammar. And now that I'm sort of in the habit of blogging, I'm going to try to drag myself back into that vein. I was talking with my endlessly wonderful aunt about blogging, and something she said really struck true: no-one wants to read about the cupcakes I'm baking. (Unless I provide a recipe and/or beautiful photographs -- look, hey, I'm not a food blogger and anyway, this is just an analogy.) Whatever I do, I have to offer you all something they can't get anyplace else. Anyone can pull haphazard, wonky cupcakes together; that's not what I'm here to write about. I'm going to pull myself back to my intended route, kicking and screaming. I'm going to have less incidental posts; I'm going to actually do something, then write about it. In honesty, I've been kind of lazy.

At this point, I'd like to put it out there that any constructive criticism, feedback and tips on any element of my blogging is a thousand times welcome. I need all the help I can get!

That said, more than anything else I'm just proud I've survived a month actually blogging. And that I actually started! How can I describe how good it felt to reach out to some bloggers I really admire and to hear lovely things back; to read comments, however few; and -- this one really set my heart racing -- to finally finally see my Bloglovin' followers rise from one (me) to two. My readers may only number in the teens at this point, but I've started; I'm breaking into this beautiful blogging community at long last. And it feels so good.