All that we let in
Dec. 12th, 2006 01:49 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ravenI found all my comment notifications! They were not in the icebox or under the bed or locked in a cupboard in Jowett, but were instead piled up neatly in my spam mail. I was an idiot for not having looking there first, but I can't honestly think of any reason why they should suddenly start disappearing as spam when they've arrived in my inbox without a hitch for three years. Anyway, they are back, and I am slightly less convinced that everyone secretly hates me. Also, I discovered this, and am very touched. Thank you, lovely people who commented, and thank you lovely person who posted me up there in the first place. Thank you. And the single person's name I posted got lots and lots of comments, which only emphasises how fab she is and what good taste I have. Naturally.
Okay, so where was I? Not writing much, I think. I am feeling truly bizarre. I don't know what to say about it. I mean, I am functioning. I think. I don't know. I am getting out of bed in the morning and going to work and serving customers and taking my wages out of the till at the end of the day and going home again. And I am keeping my mum sane - at least, I'm trying; I'm cooking her dinners and listening to her worries, which are pretty much my only possible contributions - and I'm being Productive About My Future. (More on that in a minute.) But I'm also utterly discombobulated; I don't seem to know what to do with my brain. It feels stretched. It hurts. I don't like sitting still and I don't like walking around. And I feel weirdly, irrationally angry - almost like sleep-deprivation - whenever someone asks me to do something for them. I don't want to help people. The effort of being social is too much for me. And I tried - I tried! - to sit my driving test at the end of this week. (Er, my verbs do not agree. Bear with me.) I tried. But I took a driving lesson, and got rattled, and didn't care and got more rattled, and cried a lot, and it all went wrong. My (former) driving instructor's considered opinion is that I should not take my driving test this week, should not take it ever, in fact, should not get in a car any more because I am useless. I may be paraphrasing slightly. So there's the last two years wasted, then. Never mind.
Yes. That's it. My brain keeps telling me I'm useless. I am seemingly incapable of doing anything now. I'm also trying to sort out something to do with my life at Easter and over the summer. Like, I don't know, internships or work placements or something. So I have applied to the BBC, and to the Guardian, and to about half a dozen city law firms, and to the Liberal Democrat MP for Oxford West and Abingdon. And all of these have involved writing long, detailed, personal-statement-esque accounts of What I Have Done and Why I Am Great. And I have been staring at my laptop screen and thinking that I am not great at all. I am rubbish. And I wish everyone would leave me alone, but then empty rooms frighten me and I wish they'd come back. So I've taken to sleeping a lot. It hasn't seemed to help.
Oh, whatever. I am clearly a mass of seething neuroses, which I am taking out on everyone unlucky enough to have to be around me, so: enough. Let the record state that I tried getting help, and they wouldn't help and it did not help. Enough.
I've been spending a lot of time watching The West Wing over the last few days. I got the DVDs my last week in Oxford and didn't get to watch them until just now. And, er, they are great. I ended up watching four episodes of it today, because I really, really wanted to know what happened, and eee, it's so good. I love all the characters, I love intertwining plote threads, and Sorkin's scripts not only make me die of dialogue-glee but do my bleeding liberal heart good. I absolutely love the sort of humour that characterises the show - the smart-people-make-smart-comments thing, but it's all firmly in the context of the characters and narrative - and all the deliciously relevant moral conflicts. And a president obsessed with trivia and Latin and trivia in Latin! Eee!
Surprisingly, though, I'm not actually fannish about the show. I've written at length elsewhere about the difference between liking something and being fannish, and while I do love fannish glee - who doesn't, after all? it's so shiny and sparkly and there's something so lovely simple about how happy it makes you - I rather like the idea of not being fannish. That means, of course, that I won't ever stop being fannish about it; I'll just like it, and keep on liking it for years. Which is joy, especially as I'm planning to drop hints about my birthday in six weeks and er, season two. That said, Pedar apparently likes the show as much as I do. He's been watching it on telly while I was away, and about three weeks ago he rang me just to talk to me about it, which amused me a lot at the time. I wish he would come home; all I really want to do now is to sit and watch the DVDs with him as squee-company and provider of popcorn.
The only episode I haven't liked so far is 1.11, "Lord John Marbury", for a very simple reason. As of not long ago, I have dual nationality, and in the course of one episode the show manages to perpetuate ridiculous stereotypes of both types of citizen. But that's a minor thing. It's marvellous. And despite what I said above about not being fannish, I need icons, oh dear me yes. Where can such things be found? Do people even make West Wing icons? And does anyone make particularly good ones? Enquiring minds wish to know.
So that's it. That's my life. Ridiculous, mostly. I've been being distinctly anti-social, apart from going to work (and a brief visit by![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
clareyperson and her girlfriend; it was lovely to see them). Work is its usual self, with the usual ongoing comedy of errors. (Case in point - the upstairs flat's getting done. Consequently, every conversation is usually broken short by the sound of enthusiastic drilling and customers yelling, "Terry PRATCHETT!" into the dead silence as it stops.) I also met a man who wanted to talk to me at great length about feminist theology, and someone came in today who professed to recognise me from when I was twelve. She'd been my sixth-form mentor-type-person when I was in first year at Merchants'. I was very impressed she'd remembered, and wondering if I haven't changed since I was twelve.
Ah, yes - I got all my hair cut off. It now doesn't touch my shoulders and bounces enthusiastically when I walk. I quite like it; the mane was getting to me a bit. In a depressing reaffirmation of gender stereotypes, I went to work three days and no-one noticed, and on the fourth day I shared a shift with another woman, who said immediately, "Hey, I like your hair!"
That's it. Thankfully Pedar is coming home tomorrow, so I won't be in application hell, and Claire keeps texting me in the middle of the night to make sure I'm okay, which is terribly sweet. I miss her; in fact, I miss the whole flat, and I miss Oxford a lot. I don't belong here. My parents aren't here, and they're the only reason I came back. It's a bit rubbish. I don't know.
Bedtime. Work tomorrow at the crack of dawn, sigh. And writing my![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
yuletide fic, which is killing me; it's a nightmarish canon to get the hang of, because it's, er, weird. No, not weird. Warped. Strange. Bizarre. Ah, basically it makes you want to run around going "Argh argh argh!" a lot. And it really kills me that I can't actually explain to you all the problem with it! I shall have to persevere, because in a twisted way I am sort of enjoying it. I mean, I'd never have written fic for this fandom otherwise, and it requires a very different style from my own, and it's sort of fun. Maybe I am just a masochist.
Oh, also, the meme du jour. I am a sheep.
Okay, so where was I? Not writing much, I think. I am feeling truly bizarre. I don't know what to say about it. I mean, I am functioning. I think. I don't know. I am getting out of bed in the morning and going to work and serving customers and taking my wages out of the till at the end of the day and going home again. And I am keeping my mum sane - at least, I'm trying; I'm cooking her dinners and listening to her worries, which are pretty much my only possible contributions - and I'm being Productive About My Future. (More on that in a minute.) But I'm also utterly discombobulated; I don't seem to know what to do with my brain. It feels stretched. It hurts. I don't like sitting still and I don't like walking around. And I feel weirdly, irrationally angry - almost like sleep-deprivation - whenever someone asks me to do something for them. I don't want to help people. The effort of being social is too much for me. And I tried - I tried! - to sit my driving test at the end of this week. (Er, my verbs do not agree. Bear with me.) I tried. But I took a driving lesson, and got rattled, and didn't care and got more rattled, and cried a lot, and it all went wrong. My (former) driving instructor's considered opinion is that I should not take my driving test this week, should not take it ever, in fact, should not get in a car any more because I am useless. I may be paraphrasing slightly. So there's the last two years wasted, then. Never mind.
Yes. That's it. My brain keeps telling me I'm useless. I am seemingly incapable of doing anything now. I'm also trying to sort out something to do with my life at Easter and over the summer. Like, I don't know, internships or work placements or something. So I have applied to the BBC, and to the Guardian, and to about half a dozen city law firms, and to the Liberal Democrat MP for Oxford West and Abingdon. And all of these have involved writing long, detailed, personal-statement-esque accounts of What I Have Done and Why I Am Great. And I have been staring at my laptop screen and thinking that I am not great at all. I am rubbish. And I wish everyone would leave me alone, but then empty rooms frighten me and I wish they'd come back. So I've taken to sleeping a lot. It hasn't seemed to help.
Oh, whatever. I am clearly a mass of seething neuroses, which I am taking out on everyone unlucky enough to have to be around me, so: enough. Let the record state that I tried getting help, and they wouldn't help and it did not help. Enough.
I've been spending a lot of time watching The West Wing over the last few days. I got the DVDs my last week in Oxford and didn't get to watch them until just now. And, er, they are great. I ended up watching four episodes of it today, because I really, really wanted to know what happened, and eee, it's so good. I love all the characters, I love intertwining plote threads, and Sorkin's scripts not only make me die of dialogue-glee but do my bleeding liberal heart good. I absolutely love the sort of humour that characterises the show - the smart-people-make-smart-comments thing, but it's all firmly in the context of the characters and narrative - and all the deliciously relevant moral conflicts. And a president obsessed with trivia and Latin and trivia in Latin! Eee!
Surprisingly, though, I'm not actually fannish about the show. I've written at length elsewhere about the difference between liking something and being fannish, and while I do love fannish glee - who doesn't, after all? it's so shiny and sparkly and there's something so lovely simple about how happy it makes you - I rather like the idea of not being fannish. That means, of course, that I won't ever stop being fannish about it; I'll just like it, and keep on liking it for years. Which is joy, especially as I'm planning to drop hints about my birthday in six weeks and er, season two. That said, Pedar apparently likes the show as much as I do. He's been watching it on telly while I was away, and about three weeks ago he rang me just to talk to me about it, which amused me a lot at the time. I wish he would come home; all I really want to do now is to sit and watch the DVDs with him as squee-company and provider of popcorn.
The only episode I haven't liked so far is 1.11, "Lord John Marbury", for a very simple reason. As of not long ago, I have dual nationality, and in the course of one episode the show manages to perpetuate ridiculous stereotypes of both types of citizen. But that's a minor thing. It's marvellous. And despite what I said above about not being fannish, I need icons, oh dear me yes. Where can such things be found? Do people even make West Wing icons? And does anyone make particularly good ones? Enquiring minds wish to know.
So that's it. That's my life. Ridiculous, mostly. I've been being distinctly anti-social, apart from going to work (and a brief visit by
clareyperson and her girlfriend; it was lovely to see them). Work is its usual self, with the usual ongoing comedy of errors. (Case in point - the upstairs flat's getting done. Consequently, every conversation is usually broken short by the sound of enthusiastic drilling and customers yelling, "Terry PRATCHETT!" into the dead silence as it stops.) I also met a man who wanted to talk to me at great length about feminist theology, and someone came in today who professed to recognise me from when I was twelve. She'd been my sixth-form mentor-type-person when I was in first year at Merchants'. I was very impressed she'd remembered, and wondering if I haven't changed since I was twelve.Ah, yes - I got all my hair cut off. It now doesn't touch my shoulders and bounces enthusiastically when I walk. I quite like it; the mane was getting to me a bit. In a depressing reaffirmation of gender stereotypes, I went to work three days and no-one noticed, and on the fourth day I shared a shift with another woman, who said immediately, "Hey, I like your hair!"
That's it. Thankfully Pedar is coming home tomorrow, so I won't be in application hell, and Claire keeps texting me in the middle of the night to make sure I'm okay, which is terribly sweet. I miss her; in fact, I miss the whole flat, and I miss Oxford a lot. I don't belong here. My parents aren't here, and they're the only reason I came back. It's a bit rubbish. I don't know.
Bedtime. Work tomorrow at the crack of dawn, sigh. And writing my
yuletide fic, which is killing me; it's a nightmarish canon to get the hang of, because it's, er, weird. No, not weird. Warped. Strange. Bizarre. Ah, basically it makes you want to run around going "Argh argh argh!" a lot. And it really kills me that I can't actually explain to you all the problem with it! I shall have to persevere, because in a twisted way I am sort of enjoying it. I mean, I'd never have written fic for this fandom otherwise, and it requires a very different style from my own, and it's sort of fun. Maybe I am just a masochist.Oh, also, the meme du jour. I am a sheep.
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![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
on 2006-12-12 02:51 am (UTC)no subject
on 2006-12-12 06:04 am (UTC)There used to be quite a lot of good WW icons! Now there are not as many, but you can always check
no subject
on 2006-12-14 04:25 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2006-12-12 04:36 am (UTC)Um, icons.
no subject
on 2006-12-14 04:27 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2006-12-12 04:42 am (UTC)no subject
on 2006-12-14 04:32 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2006-12-14 08:31 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2006-12-12 10:14 am (UTC)no subject
on 2006-12-14 04:32 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2006-12-12 10:31 am (UTC)The West Wing - I need to catch up with season three, having had the DVDs for ages, and having been reminded by
no subject
on 2006-12-14 04:35 pm (UTC)Er... you might have someone else here looking to borrow those DVDs.... *g*
no subject
on 2006-12-13 07:13 am (UTC)Feel better soon, you, and good luck with the applications.
no subject
on 2006-12-14 04:35 pm (UTC)