#4

I did all of my Christmas shopping today. I don't really do the whole present-giving thing, but one of my friends always gets really excited about buying me presents on any occasion, and I feel bad for not getting anything for her... so I'm building her a box very basic stuff. I bought the box and a bow to put on top, and some Christmas tea and candy. I'm also going to try and make her a beanie I've been supposed to knit for over a year now... not very specific or effort-requiring presents but I know it's the thought that counts. Also, her book is taking up a lot of effort so I feel like that's going to compensate a bit.

I've been looking for pictures for her book! It's very difficult to find good pictures of Ewan McGregor... he's been acting so long that a lot of the older, weirder photos tend to pop up in searches. I have about 110 pictures looked up right now, but they're very Hiddles-biased and so I'm going to need to find a lot more. We'll see if I can put them into a SkyDrive album or something, sending them ~4 at a time to my email would be horrible.

We were looking around in various shops, including the bookstore. My mom tends to buy our family books for presents - or rather, we all read a lot and buy books as gifts to one another - and she didn't know what I would want so I got to pick something from the store. I chose the lovely, big comprehensive edition of H.P. Lovecrafts "weirdest stories" - Necronomicon. I don't get to have it until actual Christmas, but still. I've never read Lovecraft even though the lore is somewhat familiar to me, because the legend of Chtulthu is used to widely as an intertextual mythological reference.

I don't know if I wrote about this last time, but I got a partner for our test in spoken Swedish. I had sort of hoped I could just go and join a pair of my classmates as a third participant, but apparently that didn't work... regardless, I have a partner now so everything is all right. I'll have to take care and try to adjust to her level of Swedish before the test.

I got into a very strange mood yesterday. Usually I only want to see overly romantic/sweet movies when I'm on my period (or with a group of friends wanting to laugh at cliché plot devices) but now they've already gone way past and I'm questioning my hormones. At any rate, I watched Pride & Prejudice! It was as good as I remembered, only I hadn't realized the sheer amount of great and currently popular actors were in it! Keira Knightley I remembered, obviously, but I hadn't even made the connection between Matthew MacFadyen and the dweeb from Death At A Funeral? I suppose the dashing Mr. Darcy was such a different character I never thought about it. Also Jena Malone was one of the Bennett sisters, and Mr. Bennett was played by Donald Sutherland. I don't think I've ever found a stranger connection in two casts - President Snow was marrying off Johanna Mason at 15, HA. It was very dramatic, too! Now I'm a bit disappointed about the fact that I don't own any more Austen-based movies on DVD. It would be rather tragic to see, say, Sense & Sensibility in choppy, pixelated online stream quality.

Since my mother paid a visit to Stockmann Delicacy we now have two types of great blue cheese and crackers, which I'll get to eat tonight if we watch something together, and I also got some sour cream & onion chips. Life is good.

#3

The Retro camp would be this weekend. I kind of wanted to go but then again, I didn't? I don't even know why, really, I just feel like everyone who I knew would be going is irritating me lately except for my best friend... I can see her some other time.

We were at Talo on Wednesday and arrived when mass was nearing the end (or so we assumed). When we were removing our shoes and outerwear, people were already leaving the church "space" in the building, so obviously we didn't really see the point in being extra-quiet (like we are supposed to be when the mass is in progress). 

Then a minute later one of the worker comes up and basically says "You don't need to be coming here anymore if you can't be quiet, there was an unbelievable amount of noise and ruckus during communion"... we weren't even in the building during communion, you utter twat. Getting yelled at effectively ruined any contentedness any of us had to be there. But luckily it was only open for a little over an hour after we arrived, so we just left. It's pretty sad because I kind of don't even want to go back tomorrow? 

Oh well. 

We're holding a mass tomorrow on campus. My group was supposed to handle basically advertising the thing everywhere and creating a Powerpoint presentation with the song lyrics and such... basically I did all of it. I don't really mind, it was an easy task and we (as a group) didn't want to / couldn't spare a lot of time to do it properly so at least it got done up to my standards. I even got the pictures I was supposed to, after we rehearsed it and the girl who had the pictures was AWOL due to a doctor's appointment. I'm pretty sure I'll be the one running the presentation tomorrow as well, since I'm pretty much the only one who knows what the heck is going on.

My Hiddlesmania has reached disturbing proportions. I literally breathe out a "hallelujah" whenever I see a new picture? I swear, this is the most ridiculous bout of fangirling / "celebrity crush" I have ever had. I'm not exactly complaining - he's a gorgeous gentleman with the most precious soul, I swear - but I do feel quite shallow and pathetic. Well, being a fan doesn't have to be shameful! At least I have several friends who share my enthusiasm, ha. I watched The Deep Blue Sea earlier this week and adored it - I only need to buy it on DVD or something in order to get the visuals up to par. It was such a mess of pixels I felt like I was listening to a radio drama or something. Also, I finally managed to watch the rest of War Horse. I don't know if the movie intended to be as hilarious as it ended up being (at least from my perspective) or if it maybe was some kind of horseriding-teenager-oriented movie? The relationships between human(s) and horse(s) were so overly romanticized it seemed a bit silly. Especially when most people seemed to form soul-crushingly strong bonds with the horses in a matter of days... And the anticlimatic way they shot the deaths of 300 cavarly (including Captain Nicholson aka Tom) was also a strong hint to that effect.

I think I should probably finish as much of A's book next weekend as possible. I'll be at home, so I can seriously get to the printing portion of the thing. I should also at least draw Ewan - hopefully get started on either Hoechlin or Hiddles after that. All these unfinished projects are a big reason as to why I'm skipping out on the Retro camp. 

There's a string of thoughts I think I need to vent about onto I'll sleep when I'm dead.

It's a bit sad that I need to use it again, but that's what it's for. Hopefully this won't be a very long episode.

Until next time, here's a War Horse!Hiddles with Bonus!Cumberbatch!

#2

First actual post is finally happening! WOOP.

It's been a little difficult to adjust to being at school regularly again. Because of our trainee periods, we've had relatively little time at the actual campus on lectures since March. I really do enjoy being at school and just being able to receive information, as a student. I love my class, and traineeships are taxing in the way you have to pick up a working person's position in the community. It's challenging but also rewarding, and tends to take a lot of energy. 

I had applied for a summer job in my church, and didn't get the position... I was a little bummed when they called to inform me about it last Saturday, but to be completely honest, it was a thing I pretty much expected. The interview didn't go too well, and I felt like at least in that setting, I couldn't muster up the maturity a job in the church's youth work would require, and the interviewers most likely felt that too. 

Even though losing that particular job opportunity wasn't really a very big setback, I feel like it mentally made me feel a bit insecure. I try to veer away from blaming anxiety or bad self-esteem for these kinds of disappointments, because even though it affects my life and a big part of why I got so depressed in my abiturient year, I really don't think it's an issue I have to regularly struggle with. Realistically, my biggest issue is the lack of drive in all aspects of my life. Call it lack of ambition if you will, mostly I think I don't really feel the urge to accomplish anything, and so I don't put out a lot of effort and tend to lose opportunities because of that. It's an element of my character that I continuously struggle with.

Enough of this moaning and whining though - I don't want this blog to turn into such a morose affair as I'll sleep when I'm dead.

Tomorrow I'm going to Punanaamio and the Reuse Center with Samuli to get started on our costumes for the premiere of The Hobbit - The Desolation Of Smaug. It's one of my ongoing project at the moment, that I will try and document the progress of on this blog. (Another one is the manflesh book I'm building for A's graduation.)

So far, I have the knit hood base that needs to be sewn together and the tassels need to be attached. I also have the required materials for the ponchette I'm making to coordinate with the hood. Maybe buying latex elf-ear tips and the tunic/cape materials will inspire me to work on that more as well! 

I also have a complete plan on what's going where for Annette's book, but I need to get to the printing-and-gluing portion soon - I only have a week and a half left to finish it! Most of it will be rather quick work, but I'm planning to include some "full-page" pencil/colored pencil drawings that I'll need time to work on. I knew I wouldn't be working on it night and day, so I tried to be rather unambitious with the planning - only some chibi comics to go with specific portions of the book, and three drawings of actors that I'm going to decorate with silk string roses for flower crows. Because we share a lot of preferences, I'm going to get to draw Tom Hiddleston and Tyler Hoechlin! I'm also including her all-time favourite Ewan McGregor, who I don't have much of a personal attachment to but it's not like it'll be a hardship to procure. 

We just started a new study module at school (Christianity studies again!) and got handed a lot of assignments this Monday. We're, as a group, preparing and hosting a mass on campus this Friday, doing Bible study groups throughout the next 4 weeks and doing a major group assignment as well. I got a great group for the big assignment, as well as an interesting subject, so it shoud be great so long as I put forth a lot of effort to do well on it.

This concludes my first actual post on (undecided). Tomorrow, I'm going to show for the costume materials and go return and borrow some study-related books from the Diak campus library in Helsinki.

I'll probably try to post again later this week, to have a look on the progress I'll hopefully be making on my various projects!

#1

This post has the same title as the first post in my venting blog, which I've had for several years now.
It's very reassuring to see I haven't felt like that since March.

The fact that my bouts of "depression" have become less regular is part of the reason why I created this blog. (I use the quotation marks because in no way am I implying that I have diagnosed depression or that occasionally feeling down - even hellishly so - equates to an actual mental disorder.)

I have always had at least a partial interest in keeping journals and diaries, and this is legitimately the least messy and prone-to-be-found way of doing it. Writing on a screen is a lost more comfortable for me than paper.

And while I've maintained that what I like to call my "angst-blog" is reserved for only when I'm at my lowest, I decided to start another blog, more of a general thing where I could put down my thoughts. This way I don't have to see my worst parts whenever I scroll into the wrong post between general ideas, but I can go back and look how far I've come since several of the posts on I'll sleep when I'm dead.

I'm thinking I might include various projects I'm working on as well as my studies and the things I do in my daily life. If I keep up with this - even irregularly - I already know from experience it will be lovely to read my thoughts later.

Like the previous blog, I'm making this one visible only to me, and unreachable via search engines.
(At least for now.)