wordfalls and scatters

I've had some nice catchups over the last few days. One of the things I'm really appreciating at the moment is having a whole heap of people (mostly ladies, but one or two of the man-types as well) who are terrible clever and insightful, and who aren't afraid to ask me the Tough Questions or tell me the Tough Things.

I am so lucky to have people who I have a whole heap of respect for who aren't afraid to disagree with me, and whose questions and requests for further explanation come out of their love and care.

Plus, people who are willing to let me babble on at length about Issues without telling me to STFU.

I know lj (not to mention dreamwidth) is pretty dead these days, but if you happen to be one of these people and you happen to read this: thank you!

Sometimes, there are a Difficult Few Days.

Sometimes, there are days when I talk to some of my best friends on Skype. (I am so glad we're living in the future.)

Sometimes, I get emails from people that I love.

Sometimes, I meet new people and old friends who look after me and hang out with me and help me think about work and are willing to indulge my sudden urge for sesame toast. (The Indian version of sesame toast is awesome.)

Hi, family! Are you reading this? I hope you're reading this. You know, I make sure that I write here reasonably often while I'm travelling for you. Because even though my friends love me and care about me, they are not usually worried that I've been kidnapped if I'm quiet for a day or two.

Hi, friends! Thank you for being my friends. It matters to me! I am missing lots of you!

Hi, strangers who read this! I don't know why you're reading this, but I guess you find it interesting now and then? Maybe say hello sometime, or something.

And now I will get back to trying to catch up on work, which is a constant and futile pursuit.

( I was all sooky about work stuff yesterday! )

I wanted to go home after the workshop, but TBD. pointed out that there was a little artists' residence on the roof above the art gallery where the workshop was held. It was one of the most beautiful spaces I've ever been in - something about the way it all fit together tidily and the light and the way the rooms connected made me fall instantly in love with it. Then instantly asleep on my face.

And when I woke up TBD. gave me Delicious Milk Drink*, and I got a lovely long email from PinkHairClaire, and some guys turned up with drums, and A. (a Swedish lady staying here) pulled me up to dance for a bit, and then I played a bit of capoeira, and my new friend-who-is-a-lady, D., turned up and we all went and ate some delicious snacks, and then D. and I spent ages sitting up on the roof looking for songs that she knew how to sing and I knew how to play on my ukulele...

...and I felt much better about the world.

I am very lucky with the people that I meet.

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* I am not being vegan here. I am avoiding eggs, but it feels silly to say no to milk that is delivered by a guy whose cow lives just across the road from us and eats our food scraps.

Many lovely things are happening in my life, as well as many that are challenging. Some of these have helped me to remember: I need to Make Things to be happy.

I've set up my (KindOf) Grown-Up Website! I wrote some stuff on it, as a way of trying to start organising my thoughts.

On Friday I had band practice*. We recorded some new versions of songs! Liz was very patient and taught me some Difficult Strumming Things, to add to the other Difficult Strumming Things I've been trying to learn from G and J and the Internet.

Last night I went to see Amanda Palmer play. I've been feeling dull lately, and rather awkward, physically. I wanted to play dressups! I took some lovely material that I bought in Pakistan far-too-long ago, and about a billion safety pins, and I made myself a ridiculous skirt with a bustle. (And the AFP ninja gig was ridiculously awesome, but maybe I'll write about that later.)

Tonight I had a skype writing date with one of my distant ladyfriends, and actually wrote a few paragraphs on a couple of stories. Not good paragraphs, but still! They exist, and before they didn't!

All of these things made me feel better. I need to make things. I need to research, I need to write fiction and nonfiction and letters and postcards and stickers to leave for strangers to read. I need to make things with my hands. I need to cook! I need to leave traces of myself in the world, tiny sparks of interest or surprise or colour, to be happy.

I must make time for this to be happy, and so I will.

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* I still have to giggle a little about this.

Did you know that I went to Sydney? Probably! Because I talk about everything, all the time. So, here is some of my news about going to Sydney, and coming back, and yesterday:

* I went to Newcastle! I felt very intrepid, because I caught buses to the airport on Friday morning, and then a plane to Sydney, and then trains to Newcastle, where I got picked up by a friend. If there had been some bicycling in there as well I would have felt Most Adventurous Ever.
* Newcastle has a great urban renewal project going on, Renew Newcastle. I am a bit jealous that I'm missing the project's This Is Not Art festival, but I did get to at least get a tour of the little galleries and craft-spaces. I particularly like the upcycling space, where people had been putting together hand-sewn journals with more skill and pizzazz than my usual misshapen efforts. I also rather like the exhibition of "art concerning dinosaurs". I am jealous that I missed out on going to Totoro's Tea House.
* I went to a conference! Some of it was painful, with all the academic jargon and egos. But there was definitely enough exciting work that I felt all excited about research again, and about Learning New Things. I met one of my examiners, and managed not to spill a drink all over her, and I gave a talk to a tiny audience (I was in the last session of the last day), and I ate lots of snacks. I'm going to put up some links and stuff on my grownup blog.
* People! Sometimes, I meet people and think that they are lovely, but then sort of expect never to see them again. And then I see them again, and feel a little disoriented and also delighted by it. In this category, I caught up with a couple of friends in Newcastle, both of whom are lovely, and a conference-friend from last year. There was also a posse of Perth people, including one of my Think Tank ladies, and lots of strangers to talk to. I like talking to strangers!
* Yesterday was pretty exhausting. Everything has felt so rushed for so very long, and the conference most definitely did not give me a break from that, fun as it was. Luckily, I have mostly managed to maintain momentum - I'm sure that's all that got me through yesterday. I had a heap of teaching to do, plus marking, plus lesson preparation, plus had to go to the Real Food Forum and be all grownup for Bluestocking. I'm glad I went, because it was fascinating (in a scary kind of way). I'm going to try to blog about it over the next few days.

I am feeling a bit overwhelmed by all of this, but I feel like I've been getting lots done. Unfortunately, I suspect that's because I've been very busy with teaching...I love teaching, and it gives me short-term, achievable goals, and involved actually interacting with people. When I'm working on my thesis, on the other hand, I often feel a bit isolated, and feel like I'm not achieving much because everything moves so slowly and my goals are so unclear. Anyway! The conference helped me get excited about my thesis again, so I'm going to get back to it! Today has been thesis-day, and I still have a bit more thesis-time left before I play with ukuleles.

Oh, my! A wide variety of things are pretty awesome right now, mostly in a quiet kind of way.

* I have been feeding people a lot. On Saturday I cooked a big batch of vegan corn chowder to give to E, since he is alone with his two littles for the next two weeks until his partner gets back. (I felt a bit uncomfortable with this for a while, gender stereotypes and all, but then I decided that since I would do the exact same thing for his wife it would be silly to refrain.) I also spent Sunday morning experimenting with vegan spinach pie and vegan macadamia slice, both of which worked out okay. I gave the spinach pie and some bean salad to J to take for a lunch he was going to (since he is awfully nice to me sometimes), and Jessica Monster and I had some of the macadamia slice for crafternoon snacks. I took the rest of the slice into the department this morning to give to staff, and it made me feel like my role as the resident hippy is going well.
* On Sunday Jessica Monster came around for crafting, and it was awesome. It is nice to have people around that I can talk to about how to put a waistband in, or which jobs I should be applying for, or ... just stuff, generally. I love crafting and mending. I finished my crochet skirt, and hemmed a dress, and fixed my old tweed skirt, and sewed the buttons back onto my leg-warmers. It would have been good to do some darning, too, but I am running out of things to darn.
* I talked with J about my thesis chapter, and it helped me work out how to fit it all together. I feel much better about thesis-writing now!
* I have had some lovely people-time lately. Hangouts with Jessica Monster, and catchups with Kal-friend L, and tea with Lisa and Jarrad, and hangouts with J all weekend. Plus J and I did some baby-wrangling, and that is one of my favourite things to do with J.
* I am going to Newcastle on Thursday! Just for a week. I will stay with a friend and meet new people and talk about my thesis, and it will be awesome.

I have decided that I should be not-quite-so-hard on myself. I am always telling myself off for not spending enough time with my People, and for not doing my thesis fast enough, and for not spending all my time well. And then I have these debates with myself about whether or not it is okay. I think that, in fact, it is okay, and I should work harder at convincing myself of that. (I am reading a book about how silly the protestant work ethic is, and that's helping.) I am generally a pretty active person. I use my time well, and do interesting things. I care about the people around me. I try to to make the world better, in small ways.

It's going to be okay!

I am feeling rather the opposite of 'on top of things'.

* I did a section of last year's Greek exam last night in class. It was a comprehension exercise in which one had to fill in blanks in a letter with words from a list. I got 8 out of 13, which is good, but I couldn't really work out what the letter was about, which is bad. I am pretty sure, at this stage, that if I pass it will be a) only just, and b) a very baffling experience for me. My vocabulary is just too small. Still, I have two weeks until the test, so I guess I can still do a little more catching up.

* My thesis is going, but always more slowly than I would like. I am trying to write the last section of my first chapter at the moment, because I deleted the previous version of it (for good reasons). But then the rewrite I attempted over the last couple of days also had to be deleted. And... *sigh*

* Teaching is somewhat painful at the moment. The area I'm teaching is not my specialty, and I'm trying to restrict the time spent preparing to a sensible amount, which means I spend much of the class saying 'that's a good question, I don't know. Why don't you guys look it up?' I have no fundamental problem with this approach, but it gets a little discouraging for me at times.

* There are many people who I am not seeing nearly as often as I'd like. Right now, my weekday evenings are full from Monday to Thursday, I do greek homework every morning, and I have teaching prep and greek homework to do on the weekends. Trying to see everyone that I want to see is hard!

* Other bits and pieces: bluestocking has been somewhat neglected as I don't have internet at home right now. Kate put up a good entry on creating community cohesion on the blog, and Shae's also been doing a bit here and there, so I don't feel too bad. A couple of my articles have come up on ActNow, one on facebook stuff and one on online communities.

Overall, despite feeling a bit overwhelmed, I am not feeling too stressed. I am reminding myself that things sometimes take longer than you would like, and that not everything can be done brilliantly, and that's okay.

* I have an accordion! My father got it for me, with the help of my uncle and grandmother, and I love it very much. I want to take it everywhere with me, but although it is small, for an accordion, it is quite large for a bicycle. I practised with it on Sunday, and I sounded terrible, but I kept going anyway. Maybe I will mostly practise when others are not around.
* I got a job! It is a little job, and I will be waiting to get Official Forms before I rub my hands in glee, but it looks like it will cover my bills for the first half of next year, and will involve writing 'opinion pieces' (read as: rants) for 'the youth' on a website.
* Today I went to the gym. I am, as yet, undecided on whether this will be a long-term thing.
* I have been writing an awful lot on my thesis! And reading a book for this masterclass I am doing. And reading some other books that I feel I should read for my thesis. It feels like I am Getting Things Done.
* My last Greek class for the semester was on yesterday. We drank ouzo, and I was very, very tired from all the Getting Things Done. Next year I will probably prepare for my first certificate, which I guess will involve quite some work, since it's at the end of the year.
* I upgraded my XO's operating system, and it is all shiny, and I just want to play with it always, but I've had hardly any time to. I also upgraded Ubuntu on my grown-up laptop (after some help from Jamie): it promptly had a complete hissy fit, but luckily it was all stuff I managed to sort out in a few hours. I was a bit horrified that KVocTrain, my language-learning software, disappeared, but it turns out it's been replaced with Parley. I was initially a bit grumbly, but it turns out Parley is actually very good, and has some useful features that were missing from the KVocTrain.
* I have some lovely people in my life, who spoil me very much. I have been having nice chats to K (who always manages to perk me up when I'm down, although I cannot return the favour, unfortunately). My father and his partner got back from South Africa, and I enjoyed hanging around with them on Saturday. Also my grandparents came around, and I swelled up full of love all over again. I am excited about them coming to uni for lunch! I will show them the ducks, and my shelves full of books. I have been seeing a lot of N and J, and having fun times and restful times both. J cooked dinner last night, and picked me up after Greek, and it was lovely to eat good food and not do the dishes and just breathe out.
* My garden makes me happy. I potter in it ineffectual, and turn the compost, and wonder what to do to make my plants healthy and strong. There are many tomatoes growing (and I still do not quite believe that they are real, and one day I will snack on them), and little snow peas, and the corn and the sunflowers out the front are doing interesting and baffling things.