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11 Days In England (And Counting) + Instagram Pics

posted on May 8, 2014

Day 1: April 28, Monday. No sleep since I got up late on Sunday. Packing. Shower both after waking up and later at night to be fresh for my train ride and flight. Around 5 AM I lie down with my cat and fall asleep a little. Get back up at 6. Mom and sister come with me to the train station. Train leaves at 6:45 AM. Arrive at Atocha at 7:40 AM. Straight to the tube, fighting my suitcases already. Get to the airport, have to drink my bottle of freshly squeezed orange juice before going to my gate. Good thing I couldn’t fit the water bottle in my bag, I guess. Make it through and use my allotted 15 minutes of wifi (so stingy), wait till flight starts boarding. Well in time. Sweating like a pig already. Spend flight doing nothing and then put my head between my knees and just stay there for a while. Buy a bottle of water for £3. Plane lands at 12 PM. I nearly slip off one of the steps and nearly fall on my ass. Pick up my luggage and try to find wifi, uselessly. Wait for Annemari at baggage claim anyway, and this proves successful. Yay! I am no longer alone. I also no longer have to carry both my suitcases. Thank god.

Stansted Express to Liverpool Street, walk to Moorgate, Northern line to Chalk Farm, walk to our hotel. Desperately shower and change. Walk to Chalk Farm and take the Northern Line to Tottenham Court Rd. Dying, so have a chicken royale at the Burger King just round the corner. Then Annemari and I head off to find Ashley’s flat in Marylebone, which proves either incredibly hard or that we’re both tired and sleep-deprived. Eventually find it though. Good stuff. I’m exhausted and mostly lie on her bed. Make Annemari take a picture of me when we leave. Then back to the hotel and can barely stay awake on my laptop. Sleep.

Barajas / Annemari and I on the tube / sleepy times

Day 2: April 29, Tuesday. We meet up with Ashley… somewhere. Primark on Tottenham Court Rd, I think. She’s got time between classes. Annemari buys a One Direction t-shirt, because duh. We somehow end up on Southwark Bridge. Many, many pictures are taken. Ashley eventually has to go into the Globe and leave us. Many pictures are taken of her hugging Annemari goodbye. Annemari and I head off to — frankly I’m not sure, but we do take a nice walk around the area. Make it to St Paul’s Cathedral and everything. Annemari takes pictures and I have feelings about Connie Willis’s books. The usual. Then we take a bus to Trafalgar Square because I remember a Costa Coffee inside a Waterstone’s there and I want to walk down Charing Cross Road to see how the bookshops are looking. We do that and then take the tube up to Belsize Park. Chalk Farm is closed and the walk from the hotel to Belsize Park Station is way nicer anyway. In fact, the walk back is basically a photo walk. Nice shit. Then I lose my glasses. Normal. At least I have backups – thanks, SpecsPost!

me working / Annemari making tea / new glasses

Day 3: April 30, Wednesday. Supposed to meet Ashley at 9 AM at St Paul’s for a tour of Fleet Street. Tube worker says St Paul’s station is working and it turns out it’s not so we get off at Bank. Keep missing her. Am starving and go into M&S and get a bagel. Baby’s first bagel! It was good. We find wifi near St Paul’s, continue to miss Ashley. Give up and Annemari leaves it up to me to pick where we go next. Me being me, I choose the Tate Britain. We head into a Waterstones for wifi and to plan our route. A joyous though grueling walk down the side of the river ensues, from Blackfriars Bridge to Vauxhall. It is brilliant. I feel exhilarated. Also, I look good. I’m also starving, but you know, whatever. The Lady of Shallott is there. Then we head down Vauxhall Bridge to the tube, and take that back to our hotel. We eat, I shower, and Annemari goes through her pics on my laptop.

At some point between Day 2 and Day 3, Annemari and I head to a flat viewing in Tooting. It doesn’t go too poorly for a first flat viewing, but I’m totally freaking afterwards.

Waterhouse / Waterstones / tube pic

Day 4: May 1, Thursday. Wake up earlyish, ready to work all morning. Ashley comes meet us for a stroll through Primrose Hill Park, and Annemari picks her up at the bus stop. I’m like, hm, maybe head out without me, and they do, and I totally fall asleep. For hours. Annemari has to get someone to open the room door for her because I don’t hear her knocking or the phone ringing. I am amazing, in short. After this frankly lovely nap, I feel less stressed. I do need to eat so we head to the Starbucks around the corner from our hotel and she gets a hot chocolate and I get a coffee frap and a baguette. I do more work on my laptop – push a table next to my armchair. So nice to have a desk, even just for an hour. Early night again. I have three pictures from this day and they’re all of Ashley and Annemari sitting by the hotel room window. Still probably one of my favorite days. So quiet and lovely.

Ashy and Annemari / empty hotel room / Starbucks table

Day 5: May 2, Friday. Annemari wakes up at like, 4 AM to go meet Nick Grimshaw. I meant to go with her but at this point I’m so exhausted that I think getting up at 4 AM will probably break me. She does fine on her own, though! I’m on my laptop for a bit and then I leave to meet them at Topshop so we can do the photo booth thing. We eat at the Costa in Trafalgar Square again after stopping by various unappealing Costas and Starbuckses and even going to Piccadilly and the Waterstones there, and then Annemari and I head to a couple of flat viewings. On the DLR even. It’s pretty terrible. The first one is hard to find and the dude there gives me the creeps, and the second one is plain old impossible to find. Cuddles are applied generously. We head back to the hotel or possibly to Ashley’s and then the hotel. It’s nighttime by the time we get there. Pictures of the moon!

Ashy at Costa / Topshop booth pics / Annemari at our hotel

Day 6: May 3, Saturday. Plans! With Ashley! That we are late for largely because of me and my terribleness, but we manage. We head to Ashley’s first thing to do my laundry and I do some stuff on my laptop of the flathunting variety before we set off for the British Library. Mostly just walk around, and Ashley goes to the comics exhibit. We head to King’s Cross to get a picture at Platform 9 3/4, and I stand in line for about two seconds before I’m like ‘fuck this’ and just wait beside the thing until it’s Ashley’s turn. Ashley takes like three seconds and the pictures we get of her aren’t super awesome, but whatever, it’s the love that counts. We eat at a Costa nearby and then head to a flat viewing in Wood Green. The person in charge is not there, and the woman who is there keeps telling me to call (I don’t have a phone) or wait (she won’t tell me when the person in charge will be back). I’m not totally disheartened, but it’s close! I make pouting faces for the camera. We head back to Ashley’s and have an impromptu iPhone photo shoot where Annemari picks us both up a bunch of times in different ways. It’s awesome. There are pics to prove it.

at the British Library / sad eyes / Ashy and Annemari on Ashy’s couch

Day 7: May 4, Sunday. Annemari’s last day, nooooooooo. We do a last-minute flat viewing near Finchley Road which is… interesting. I should make a post about all these flat viewings. Then we go to Ashley’s again and then Annemari and I go to an early flat viewing near Ladbroke Grove. I totally accidentally leave my Oyster card in my leather jacket at Ashley’s and have no cash on me and my card won’t work. Bus drivers are however incredibly understanding and I manage the viewing — and it’s finally a decent one! Friendly lady, friendly cats (and a dog!), an actual desk and good lighting, decent location. It’s a short-term let at £160 a week and becomes available on the 10th, and I’m 90% sure I’m going to head there at some point this month. Just trying to work out my finances first. Then we go back to Ashley’s for many, many, many cuddles, and then we walk around Regent’s Park until my Raynaud’s kicks in and I’m like, yeah, we have got to go.

Annemari leaves at like 3 AM to catch her flight but she spoons me while I fall asleep and wakes me up before she leaves. Sadness all around, though too sleepy for intense emotions.

Starbucks treat / Annemari and Ashy on Ashy’s floor / empty nest

Day 8: May 5, Monday. I oversleep but manage to check out of the hotel in time. I head over to Ashley’s with my luggage and spend a while on my laptop in her living room. I then take an unplanned multiple-hour nap on her couch. I find myself a hotel room at £40 for the night just down the road from Ashley’s and head there. Only head out when I realize I need to eat, and it is at this point that I also realize I took the wrong leather jacket. It’s a Michael Kors, and I later find out it’s one of Ashley’s roommates’s. Everything’s closed because it’s a bank holiday, so I give up and walk into a tesco and get a sandwich, which I eat while I talk to my mom on google hangouts for the first time all week. (We’ve been trying, and IM-ing, but the microphone didn’t work.) Go to sleep relatively early.

notebooks & planners / Marylebone from Ashy’s window / Ashy from her couch / minifridge at hotel / folding laundry / hotel room

Day 9: May 6, Tuesday. Wake up early enough to leave my luggage back at Ashley’s before she leaves for finals at 9, but there is so much traffic noise all night long. I hole up in Ashley’s room, repack, look at hotels and look at coach tickets to Leicester, where someone who reads this blog and generously offered me her spare room if I needed it lives. The site starts messing up, which is awesome. Eventually I give up and head to Victoria with all my luggage. It’s a pain in the ass and also in everything in me, and I don’t take any lorazepam as to avoid falling asleep and totally feel it while waiting for my bus. At least I get the ticket without any trouble despite the entire computer system being down. I break down in tears several times at Victoria Coach Station, I miss my cat, I miss Annemari, the pigeons remind me of my cat, there’s a bus to Wolverhampton leaving from the same gate as mine to Leicester and it reminds me of Liam Payne and I miss Annemari more, I’m scared as hell, I’m hungry (I cry into my Burger King fries — no, I don’t, but it’s close. I definitely cry while holding the still-too-hot cup of cappuccino afterwards) and I can’t get wifi. I contemplate the idea of going into the toilets, holing up in a cubicle and crying, but I can’t use them because there’s a flight of stairs in the one at the main building and the other one charges 30p for use — which would be fine but I’m still not carrying any cash with me. So I basically just cry in public. You’re welcome, Victoria coach station users.

The ride to Leicester is okay. I take some pics. I start playing Pet Rescue from the beginning. I still can’t get any damn wifi. But I make it to Leicester, and I don’t have to freak out for long before Ashton and her husband pick me up, and we drive to a massive Tesco to pick up food so I won’t starve, and then we head to their house in Coalville and I have my own room and I can shower and there are kitties. And I talk to my mom and it’s all right. I have things to catch up on — that’s what I’m doing now.

Day 10: May 7, Wednesday. I shower and put on the clothes I brought specifically for lounging at home, i.e. my Threadless long sleeve and the fleece jacket from F21 that’s covered in Oxford’s fur. Super overwhelmed with all I have to do. I talk to my mom and she figures out the camera and I can see my kitty. In terrible quality, but still. Kitty! I take a lorazepam and, predictably, fall asleep for like three hours. I keep trying to catch up. Go to sleep early again.

Day 11: Before I shower, Ruby (one of the cats) comes to my bed for a long weird petting session. Bless this fluffball. After I shower, I freak out about all the things I have to do again, and take half a lorazepam, and I’m still awake so I’m counting it as a win. I start writing this post and I talk to my mom and see Oxford and then I come back to this post.

so much to do / coffee / Kiki

And that brings us up to speed.

Diaries Intersectionality Mental Health

Anxiety Diaries: Cursing, Feminism and Embracing My Anger

posted on April 25, 2014

I curse a lot.

It’s not even particularly creative. I don’t do it to be cool, or shocking, or edgy. I don’t do it because it contradicts what I assume to be the first impression people get of me — that I’m quiet and shy and not very special. That’s okay, too: I am quiet, and shy, and pretty ordinary. I’m not incredibly smart or incredibly beautiful or incredibly talented. I value joy over skill and put respect and consent above just about everything else.

I enjoy learning things, and I enjoy the results of doing what I love. I love a lot of things. I try to keep my emotions in check because they can veer into anxiety fast, or this weird overwhelming feeling where I just have to scream and jump and dance because I love my cat so much.

On the not so loving end of the spectrum — though, actually, there’s often love powering it — I also get angry easily, and furious not all that unusually, either.

A lot of that intensity goes out of me through cursing. I think swearing is a super effective resource if you use it well and I’ve never understood why you shouldn’t curse around kids or why swearing makes clean spaces dirty. The words are there for a reason. It’s only because I put respect or consent above everything else that I won’t curse if a space or a person finds it unpleasant. In that space. To that person.

But it’s bullshit. Chalk it up to my being a borderline Aspie if you want. I think it’s crap and I think it’s really fucked up that it’s normal to call people out on their cursing but you can’t call them out on being offensive in the ways that count — you know, when they imply that someone is less than human or anything because of their religion, race, sexual orientation, level of able-bodiedness, gender identity.

It makes me angry that people think being called racist is worse than racism. That they can’t be misogynistic if they’re a woman, or that calling themselves a feminist means they’re aligning with feminists who want to force certain choices on women. To me, feminism is about giving women the freedom to make their own choices. To me, feminism is knowing that there’s a lot of work left to do, that intersectionality is not optional, that the voices of the oppressed must be amplified, and that society reinforces isms in a lot of ways and those ways can be eradicated.

To me, feminism is putting respect and consent over one’s own ego. It’s never, ever, ever claiming that it’s more important for you to be able to say a word or a turn of phrase than for other people to not be hurt. It’s listening more than you speak, and shutting up when you fuck up.

My feminism is based on the principle that a person should never have to put up with abuse of any sort from other people. Any implication to the contrary makes me angry.

So I’m angry a lot. People call it a choice, and it reminds me of when people call depression a choice, or tell other people that they’re looking for ways to be offended. That’s when I start yelling that words mean things, and that’s important.

Like, y’all. I believe in respect and consent, so I make a point not to curse when people ask me to even though I think it’s fucking bullshit, and I doubt I’ll ever change my mind on it. (This is my space.) Why can’t you do the same with things that actually matter? Why do some people consider their words to be exempt of being held to the same standard? Yesterday someone called me hostile for being angry — hurt — at their suggestion (explicit, not implied) that I should “suck it up.”

There’s a lot of that going on around here. Never quite so clear, though. There’s this idea that you should accept life as it is because it’s never going to be different. Maybe not. But it’s definitely not going to be different if you sit back and let shit happen. I get that some people reach that stage of not caring out of self-preservation, which I can’t fault them for. But you can’t turn around and tell people to care about the same things you do to the same degree that you do. The fact that you call it “coping with” and “dealing with” says: these are bad things happening.

But the truth is, most of the time, bad things don’t happen. People do them. And no one is telling those people to not do those things. They’re saying “boys will be boys” (“trolls will troll,” “people will treat you like you’re less than human,” “people will blame you for your mental illness,” “people will call you lazy if you’re unemployed no matter how much energy you put into searching for work”) instead. And, well, they will if you don’t do anything about it. If you learn to roll with the punches and tell other people to do the same thing.

I don’t want to be punched. I don’t deserve to be punched. I want people to know that. I want people to know that I get angry, and I want people to know why. I want my feelings out there. I’m a glass half empty person a lot of the time, and do you know what I’ll always consider a stroke of luck? That I can do this. That I’m comfortable voicing my feelings and politics and that the way I work at the moment allows me to do this. Occasionally someone will tell me it’s unprofessional, and don’t I want to be treated like a professional?

Well, honestly, I want to be treated like a human being. A whole one that thinks and feels, and tries to do the best she can. Sometimes I’ll fuck up, and I’ll acknowledge it. I’ll apologize and listen and do better. I’m starting from scratch, so hiding things is a choice I’d make, and one I don’t feel comfortable making at the moment. The return on investment doesn’t look certain at all. I’d rather people who don’t like me step away from me.

That may not always be viable. So for now, I’m embracing my anger. And if you think I’m “too sensitive,” or “overreacting,” or that I need to suck it up and shut up, you can fuck right off with your fucking bullshit. I’ll block your ass and your comments and the IP address you rode in on.

—

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Diaries Expat Wannabe Graphic Design London Mental Health Modeling Oxford Photography Poetry Pop Culture Things I'm Thinking Travel

10 Things You Didn’t Know About Me

posted on March 31, 2014

Or maybe you did! The original title for this post was “10 Things You May Have Missed About Me,” but that sounded unnecessarily snarky. Plus, “10 Things You Didn’t Know About Me” is probably better for SEO. Yes, I think about those things. I also had a brief internal debate about using a video cap for this post rather than a proper quality picture from my Canon. This feels fitting, is more recent than the “good” pictures I had, and I asked Twitter and Twitter said “go with it,” so there we go. That’s thing zero.

1. I have been to London before (twice) and I loved it, but Oxford truly stole my heart. If I could pick a place to live for the rest of my life, to be based in, it would be Oxford. It’s gorgeous, it appeals to my love of culture, and it’s easy enough to get around in. It’s also just an inexpensive bus ride away from London.

I thought about this a lot last year when I was first seriously considering moving to the UK. I spent a lot of time on job ad websites looking for work all over the UK, and the truth is, Oxford didn’t have much at all going for it in that department, and it was nearly as expensive as London. I considered Glasgow for a long time as well, because I know someone there and my friend Annemari, who I want to move in with, liked it, but I’ve never been to Scotland, so London felt a lot less scary.

That said, writing this post is making me seriously consider expanding my flat search to Oxford. It’s just… heaven for me. It’s beautiful. I only wrote it off because I thought I’d be looking for a full-time job, and now what I really want to do is take my freelance work for a spin.

I hated the room I was put up in (another scholarship), the airline lost my luggage, I spent the first weekend there waiting for it, I was switched to a student house my last week, and at the end I missed my flight, my train and the bus back home from Madrid and I had to get a hostel room there. It was still a blissful trip.

2. [TW for creepiness] One day when I was in London the first time, in September of 2007, when I was seventeen, I was journaling on a bench in Green Park and some dude approached me and started talking to me. I kept trying to get rid of him; he kept going on about how age was just a number and I had kissable lips and other similarly disgusting things. He pretty much spoke in clichés, and he was Italian, and he was not even remotely attractive to me. I told him I wasn’t interested but he wouldn’t leave. So eventually I said I had to leave and I hid in the tube station until it was time to go to the showing of Wicked I had tickets for.

I went back home at 11 PM after that show. I was staying in North London and Wicked was (is?) on at the Apollo Victoria, so quite a tube ride away. I was wary of walking around London at night, especially the walk from the Bounds Green tube station to the residential neighborhood house my ESL school (a scholarship requirement) had put me up in, but Victoria was a busy area and the show was worth it.

3. Most of the modeling I’ve done since I started calling myself a model has been self-portraiture, or close to it; I model for my mom, but my mom is not a photographer — she simply follows my instructions. Oftentimes I set up the shot entirely, make sure the shutter speed is really high, and move around as she keeps the shooting button pressed. It’s incredibly fun. I don’t consider myself “model pretty,” whatever that is, and I don’t have amazing hair, and I’m not tall enough for the catwalk. I don’t have beauty instincts. But I love the hell out of it.

4. Despite #3, it is not true that I have never modeled for someone else who was comfortable with a camera. It was just for fun, but I got some gorgeous shots out of it (shots I call mine because a- I haven’t spoken to him in ages, b- modeling is an art, c- it was my camera, and d- I did all the post-processing, but they were very much collaborative work), and the realization that it was an absolute blast to play-act for the camera. This was a friend who eventually “broke up” with me friendship-wise because he thought I only used him for pictures. He… may have been right?

I’ve got makeup on in most of those many, many shots because I went out of the house and I used to always put on makeup when I went out of the house. I’ve even got a shoot inspired by a The Birds still I saw in Vanity Fair — shame about the setting (my building foyer at night, flash and no tripod), but I can sure work the horror vibe.

5. I asked to be seen by a psychologist once. He wrote in all caps, chalked up my social anxiety mess of a dorm experience to separation anxiety, wanted me to admire my abusive father, and brought my mom in with me. His tentative diagnosis was anxiety disorder, paranoia, psychosis, and Asperger’s syndrome. My psychosis is entirely passive, which wasn’t specified, but otherwise I think the diagnosis, unlike the methodology, session and his “day hospital” (going to and staying in the hospital for various therapy things, mostly group, every day from 8 to 5) prescription, was on the mark.

In other words, I’ve got paranoia coming out of my ears and I tend to avoid people. I don’t need to be warned; my brain is a scaredy cat all by itself.

6. I don’t have any formal creative education. For a long time I was a writer first and foremost, and I’ve got very strong opinions about writing that most creative writing courses would have clashed with hard. I did want to take a photography course for a long time, but I wasn’t sure how they worked and I was scared they’d be too technical; I wasn’t ready for technical photography learning back then. It may sound like an oxymoron, but I didn’t feel I knew enough to learn more! (I do now.)

For the most part, I just didn’t have money for classes (I would have hired a guitar teacher earlier if so, or gone for ballet, or for gymnastics as of 2012), and I couldn’t find any that appealed to me. Now I’ve got tons thanks to Skillshare and the like, but I still can’t afford them! And I’m not sure I can make the time for them right now, so I learn bit by bit with free tutorials, videos and experimenting.

7. Back to writing, though, I used to write mainly fanfic and poetry — fanfic on a regular basis, poetry whenever I was really depressed. I’ve got a self-published poetry e-book out (it’s available on Kobo and Smashwords, and translated to Spanish as well if you’re curious!), and I always meant to publish a second tome with my more recent work, which I’m prouder of than the stuff in the e-book, but then I opened that photography shop on Etsy and my Internet life (and career goals) did a 180.

8. I’ve done NaNoWriMo something like four times? I won the first year with 50,000 words of drivel barely 20% into my novel, and failed every year since. This project was my last. I wrote a little bit of it.

9. I got started on graphic design when I was fourteen and got Paint Shop Pro. I upgraded to Photoshop Elements a couple of years after, and got used to it quickly. I didn’t do much with it, though — mostly coloring screencaps for fandom and tumblr posts! Guess what, bloggers who aren’t in fandom: I know how to make gifs. It was a pain in the ass on my old laptop, though, and I haven’t had a reason to try on the new one yet. It’s not really satisfying creative work. More like frustrating and annoying, especially when you have to keep the filesize small enough for tumblr standards — which used to be even stricter than they are now.

10. Sometimes I post silly things on youtube for the benefit of my best friend. And before Instagram (and sometimes even now), I posted a lot of silly Photo Booth pics of me and my cat to Twitter as well. Have a browse and enjoy.

(I got that from Summer on The O.C..)

Budgeting Expat Wannabe London Mental Health Things I'm Thinking Travel

10 Things: Ups and Downs Edition

posted on March 20, 2014

1. I booked my flight to London. I get in at Stansted on April 28, 12:05. My friend Annemari gets in at 12:45. I’ll be alone for roughly forty minutes, which suits me beautifully. I haven’t got a set return date yet, but the earliest I’ll get is May 6, even though Annemari’s going back home on May 5, because the flights from London to Madrid on May 6 are far more expensive than the days following it. I’m very excited and not at all scared, except for the accommodation we’ve yet to secure and the campaign I’m launching tomorrow. At least I picked a crowdfunding platform, finally — thank you, GoFundMe, for actually sticking to your 5-minute reply policy and giving real answers instead of linking to FAQ pages I’ve already read. Customer support doesn’t have to be a fucking mess like it is on Indiegogo. Even Trevolta answered my questions when I tweeted at one of their founders.

Yes, I will step on Indiegogo every chance I get. They can go fuck themselves. Kindly.

2. Today I slept in until 7 PM. Please note that somewhere deep inside, I’m incredibly excited about a whole lot of things, including but not limited to the work I owe people — sewing and design work, work I positively enjoy doing. And yet there I was this morning, thinking, I’m not even tired, I should get up, and crawling back under the sheets. My cat joined me. We slept a long-ass time, together, him curled into a ball between my butt and my thigh, and me curled into a pretzel under my sheets. Good sleep. Bad brain. Excellent kitty.

Proof that I have sewing work to do and that I’m working on it.

3. Said furball also took a detour today to sit on top of my sister’s homework and facilitate my recovery of the tablet from under her claws. (I gave it to her hours before. At first she came into my room with the intention of just taking it, so I hid it under my sleeping form and told her not to do that again. If she wants to use the tablet, she needs to ask for it at a reasonable distance from wherever the tablet is, and I will hand it over. She did it straight away, like a bull, and then later on, properly, which is when I handed it to her.)

(Mom interference aside, I think it’s working to get her to treat me like a human being, even if she doesn’t understand why I’m bothered by the things I am. Whatever. Just do what I say is good for my mental health. It’s a perfectly good life choice, doing what someone says is good for their mental health just because they say so. It’s called “human decency.” That may sound like a very laughable Captain America concept if your lifelong MO has been along the lines of “fuck everyone,” but trust me, it’s a good one. It’s worth internalizing. Nearly everything that sounds laughably Captain America is. I’ll give you a pass on physically fighting back against bullies, though. You use your own judgment on that. Self-care is very important.)

Proof of furballiness.

4. I’m working on writing out my campaign reward system and pricing each reward. I’ll be offering pictures, prints, and shoots, mainly. If you’ve got any rewards in mind that you or someone you know would contribute to my campaign to get, give me a shout and I’ll add them for you. This is a collaborative experience, starting with the whole bit where I was set on talking to customer support before I launched a campaign at all. I may host a giveaway as well to promote the campaign, something like a mini blogger portrait session? I’ll also be offering a couple of group sessions as rewards, packages several bloggers can pitch in to get. I really hope you guys can help out in some way, even if just by promoting it! I’m getting a little… wait, next bullet point.

5. Expenses build up so quickly and terribly. You start thinking it’s just the flight and stay and eating, and then you remember the trains (which have gone up since the last time I went to Madrid on an Avant shuttle, the cheap non-bus option, by about 10€), the metro to get to the airport, the airport “supplement,” the ridiculously high prices for the tube even if you get an oyster card and a travelcard, which is what I’m planning on doing; the cabin suitcase I’ll have to buy, the fees for the campaign platform, and so on. Traveling with only a carryon is something I’m pretty set on doing, but it means I can’t take my tripod with me and, if I prolong my stay longer than a week, I’m going to be in a pickle as far as clothes to wear.

I was actually wondering if any brands might be interested in letting me borrow clothes and then either taking them back or shipping them to me in Spain so I don’t have to carry them back. I suppose if it’s worth it and the campaign goes well, I could buy a bigger suitcase and have it checked on my return. But I’m not particularly into that idea. There are reasons I want to travel light and the main one is I’m a weakling who hates dragging bulky things around. What this does mean is that I want to hit the PR angle pretty hard on my campaign pitch. Also, ask to borrow a tripod.

6. Also, my sister’s ophthalmologist recommended she get contacts instead of glasses because her nearsightedness is so high. Affordable contacts, anyone? 75€ per eye for six months does not count as affordable.

7. I really need to get my mom out of the flat. My father’s reaching new lows (or new highs, depending on how you look at it; let’s just say my mom’s been a shell on the verge of tears for the past week and a half, since he got his unemployment benefits that he wouldn’t have been accepted for if my mom hadn’t had to put up with all sorts of crap in order to convince him to apply) and I’m starting to think that regardless of where, I have to move out. Soon. Very soon. After London, maybe — just rent a flat here, which is much more affordable than there, and take my mom and sister and cat with me.

The main problem is I think going to a women’s center would help us immensely in locating an inexpensive flat to rent, but my mom absolutely refused when I ran that idea by her. She can go to a food bank, she can sleep on the couch every night, but she can’t ask for help — she can’t go up to someone and say, “My husband is abusive.”

It’s so impossibly disheartening.

8. I found the most gorgeous silk for the proto/modified version of the prom dress I have to sew that I’m making for myself and for practice. It’s teal and it’s rough (I always thought silk would feel more satiny, more like rayon, which I hate, but it’s not like that at all) and it’s not silk expensive, and I had them save three meters of it for me to go get it when I transferred some money to my mom’s bank account. Which got in today, which is why I booked my flight. And tomorrow she’s on getting the silk duty, because I’ve already lost two days going out. It kind of throws my days, or maybe my brain throws my days. Who knows. It kills my routine, is the thing, and I need a routine.

Is it gorg or what?

9. I haven’t tackled that visualization exercise yet, though. The one I did tackle yesterday was coming up with an ideal blogging calendar for 3-4 weeks. The takeaway is: I should put aside a day each month to shoot three or four outfits so I can maintain a semblance of fashion blogging without actually having to wear stuff other than jeans and t-shirts and hoodies at home; I should outsource any activism articles I write for my own wellbeing (and on that note, does anyone know any publications or sites that might be interested in running an article about poverty catch-22s?); and, to keep everything balanced both in terms of workload and in terms of content and to come off as the PR-friendly, for-profit blog this whole enterprise is, I should alternate tutorials and wordier posts with wishlists and pictures and product reviews with more personal posts that I can write easily, like 10 Things and Weekly Wishes and Cat Latelys.

Anyone got thoughts?

10. It’s 2:30 AM. It may be time to get something done.

Mental Health

Anxiety Diaries, Sleep Schedule Changes & Weekly Wishes #24

posted on February 10, 2014

I’m tired today. I spent too much time and energy arguing with people on the Internet yesterday, and then I had this weird nightmares where I was secretly fucking Joel McHale except maybe I’d made it up inside my head and I was still living the hermit life, which is all very weird particularly because I don’t like that guy, and I am also not attracted to him. But the more I thought about it in the dream, the more it seemed plausible that I was living a delusion, and basically I had a whole mental breakdown in my dreams. Before 8 AM, even, which is also weird in that I’m used to having nightmares when I oversleep through the morning, not during my normal sleep cycle.

But my sleep schedule has changed and the nightmare troops are catching up, I guess.

Recapping

After close to seven years of having extreme difficulty getting up early, I randomly decided to just go to sleep early one day — not a little earlier, not even at a decent hour, but like, early as fucking balls: I was tired and I went to bed at 8 PM as opposed to my usual 3 AM timeframe. And the next day I was ready to get out of bed around sunrise, and tired, again, at a ridiculously early hour… at which point I went to bed again.

I have two things to thank for this change, and they are:

1) Having my room to myself again, which allows me to go to bed whenever I want without my sister waking me up with noise and bright lights when she goes to bed

2) Making money from my design business, which relieves me of a lot of stress and provides me with motivation to get up

In regards to #2, I am actually contemplating rewarding myself with a tablet if when I manage to fill all outstanding orders (and assuming my business either grows or repeats January’s results). There is a lot of sewing to be done, which is why I revamped and decluttered my workspace. I’m hoping to post about that tomorrow — there were no big changes but I really think I’ve greatly eased my access to the sewing machine and my materials by adding a swivel chair and a narrow table to my room, and decluttering is just freeing on so many levels, the main one being that I know where shit is, and I can see it when I look for it.

Want a peek?

So hey, I think I did pretty well! Things were accomplished and progress was made. I got my tripod, and photographs were taken. There’s still much more to do, but I seem to be getting a grasp on it.

Weekly Wishes [Link-up]

Again, I’m having a hard time distilling everything into a catchy inspirational phrase (I’m not that into inspirational phrases) or a short list of things to accomplish (the list is very long). Also, I have a track record of saying I want to sew and not sewing a single stitch, so I don’t want to put that down as my goal.

What I’d really like to do is take more breaks. Not big breaks, but afternoon breaks, half-day breaks. Be in work mode for x hours in the morning and then let myself be free to do whatever I want, which lately has been all about sewing. If you’ve got any advice relating to this — especially in the realm of how to brain better — I’d love a link or two.

What have you got planned for the week? Do you struggle with taking breaks as well?

Diaries Mental Health

I Don’t Want to Pay the Electricity Bill And Other Emotional Scars

posted on February 7, 2014

I’ve been kicking this post around in my head for the past two weeks, longer if you consider I wanted to write a post about what hasn’t changed about my living situation in the past year for the year-in-review rush, which I ended up missing entirely. January ended really abruptly this year. But that’s not what I want to write about.

There’s something going on today that’s called #TimetoTalk and revolves basically around speaking up about mental health. That’s not what I want to write about today either, but it’s closely linked to it, and I wanted to give it a shoutout even though I’m not overly aware of what it’s all about. I just think any excuse to speak up about mental health is a good one. I wrote about my history of and with anxiety here last week.

I’m putting it all under a Read More, with a trigger warning for child abuse.

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Mental Health

Anxiety Diaries: The Montage

posted on January 30, 2014

This was originally posted here as “This is all starting in my head,” as part of a series called Your Voice. The blog is now either down or undergoing changes, so I thought I’d post the full text here. (2014/09/01)

The post is a quick (for me; when I first wrote it, it was twice as long as it is now) recap of my mental health journey with a focus on how much medication has helped me and how there is no one true method for overcoming mental illness because it’s different for everyone.

One of these days I’ll talk about mental health and agency — been on my head a lot recently — and my anger management issues and violence ideation, and the many ways my experience with abuse and my experience with mental illness have fed off each other to shape me and my moral compass, but for now, you’ve got the prologue to all this.

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Mental Health

The Evolution of My Eyebrows: Trichotillomania As Told By Selfies

posted on December 15, 2013

I’m surprised I haven’t talked about this before, but one of my mental health issues is trichotillomania. Trichotillomania is defined as the compulsive urge to pull out one’s own hair. Not the hyperbolic, “oh my god, this is so frustrating it’s making me want to tear my hair out” type, but like, literally. You pull it out with your bare hands.

My trichotillomania started fully in 2008, but the first hints of it were in 2007, around November. That’s the first time I remember tugging at my eyebrows with my fingers in a compulsive, pointless, emotion-ridden way, and coming out of it with a tuft of discarded eyebrow hairs on my Moleskine journal.

It wasn’t particularly noticeable that I was doing it because I didn’t go that far and my eyebrows hadn’t been particularly nice before then. That’s what drove me to pull them out specifically and not the hair on my head or anything else. I’d always had issues with my eyebrows. For a long time, I resented my mom and blamed her for my trich; whenever I told her I hated my eyebrows as a teenager, she said, “They’re fine,” and didn’t do anything to help me like them, or help me make them into eyebrows I’d like.

You see, I don’t have useful instincts when it comes to beauty. There are all these rules and they make no sense and I need someone to guide me. I needed someone to say, “Your eyebrows are fine, but here’s a pair of tweezers and this is how you use them.” I didn’t start shaping my own eyebrows with tweezers (and care and purpose) until a good two years after my trichotillomania solidified into a proper disorder.

(I’d like to take a moment here to be relieved that my similar ignorance and lack of instinct about hair care and split ends didn’t lead to a trichotillomania outbreak on the hair on my head. I guess people online complimented my hair frequently enough to keep that from happening. Thanks, people online.)

Over the past year I’ve come to realize that the reason I don’t have any useful instincts when it comes to beauty is that nothing about beauty is instinctive. It’s all society-based, and it’s society forcing unnatural conventions on people. It’s my borderline Asperger’s getting in my way again — or rather getting in the way of me adhering to society’s rules without question.

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Expat Wannabe Mental Health

Anxiety Diaries: It’s Been A Bad Week

posted on December 8, 2013

A new installment in my Anxiety Diaries series, this one in video form. Sorry if you hate those. It was the most I felt capable of doing today.

This blog shall return to its normal semblance of a schedule tomorrow… I think.

Let me know if the sound isn’t working or there are any issues with it. I can’t hear anything at all but Annemari says the audio’s fine, so I left it up.

Diaries Mental Health

Anxiety Diaries: Meds, Meds, Meds

posted on November 17, 2013

So I’m on medication for my anxiety. This isn’t news to anyone who’s known me longer than two months, because I mention it quite often. I’m not ashamed of it and I fully believe it was — is — the right choice for me. I want to talk about it a bit more in depth, so I’m writing this post.

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