The frustration of Newton's First Law

Hey folks. Today I'm going to tell you about a state I often find myself in, and why I absolutely hate it.

Newton's laws, at a glance, can be summarised as this:

1. Things generally like to stay in whatever state they are in. (Still objects stay still, moving objects stay moving)

2. The harder you kick it, the faster it goes.

3. Every action has an equal and opposite reaction (which people use out of context to justify lashing back on things)

And something I often find myself doing is being stuck in the in-between state. It's kind of Newton's first law.

Imagine for a moment that you are floating in space. Sounds cool, eh?

Source: http://scottbee2.deviantart.com/art/Space-Core-meets-the-Death-Star-350730043

But you're floating in space, and there's nothing to act a force on you. This is all hypothetical, so imagine space with no gravity (like, none. No far-off planet to drift to, no sun to orbit around). You can't grab anything or touch anything, because there's nothing to push off from. Your space suit is totally contained, so the theory of being able to fart yourself across the void is also nullified. You're just stuck there, waiting for something to happen, unable to actually change any of your circumstances.

"This is less exciting than I was hoping for."

This is what I call the 'In Between', and I hate it. It makes me want to bang my head on things and shout and kick stuff but I can't because there's nothing to touch in the In Between, and nothing to change that circumstance.

I find myself in the In Between on days when I have nothing for the majority of the day and then one thing in the evening. I sit around and wait for that thing to happen, and nothing gets done because why would you bother? There's no time to get the thing done. You don't have enough time to invest in the thing before the other thing you have planned happens, so you don't use the In Between time constructively. You just sit there, pottering around, waiting for something to happen.

Last year, I did that for literally a week in the September holidays. I got back from Animania, and did nothing in the week between it and my 21st, because I had to leave Newie and travel home halfway through the week. It takes a lot of time and a lot of energy for me to hang out with people, so I usually need at least a day to mentally prepare for it, and if there isn't enough time like that to be prepared, then nothing happens.

And even an afternoon stuck in the In Between is enough to make me mad. I get to the end of the day, and look back, and realise that I did nothing with my day because I spent all my time waiting for something to happen. Imagine what it's like to be stuck in that void in space for weeks.

I end up in that space sometimes without noticing. I'll suddenly turn around, and there's nothing. Or it'll happen because I've finished one giant project and want to veg for a bit, and then I just stop. And can't start again.

Or, like right now, I won't be able to define my circumstances clearly. I won't know who I am, or what I'm doing, or where anyone else is or what they're up to, so I'll just float in my In Between space, perpetually confused but unable to get out of it because there's nothing to push off from.

So if you see me, and I'm looking confused and frustrated, but I can't tell you why, please define something to me. Something simple, or stupid. Something that can be made solid in the realm of space that I can either hang onto or push off from. Because otherwise I'm just sitting there, getting bored and feeling like I should be doing stuff when I can't.

And I'm of no use to anyone like that.

...

Sorry for the rant. It needed to be put out, and there it is, sitting out like Grumpy Cat on a bad morning with no coffee. I've got a long way to go to catch up with the novel and a dozen other things going on besides. I also finished Uni on Friday. Like, finished, finished. The end of the degree, finished. And as long as I didn't bung up anything this semester, they should be giving me the funny hat next year. I hope.

Gonna have to make something to wear to graduation.

Sneaky cosplay, here we come.

Me and the Hollow (Living Alone pt 2)

Hey folks. If you're a regular to the blog, you may have read the post I made about three weeks ago about the challenges I have involved with living by yourself. If you haven't read it, I might suggest hitting it up by clicking here. It'll help with understanding where I'm writing this from.

Also, I'm doing yet another post to do with hollows. Some days feel like maybe I should have renamed the blog to 'Gone Hollow' or something and just made it about Shirosaki. But leave my psychotic anime crush out of this; we're talking tonight over a tall shotglass of mead, about how I've learned to deal with things in my life that suck.

Sass. And psychotic. Brilliant combo.

It can kind of start with high school, the beginning of everyone's self confidence issues. Let's ignore the majority of it for now and I'll just put out that I was one of the nerdy ones. There were no nerdy girls in my classes. If you wanted the absolute nerdiest, there was Andrew and Christian and me. Andrew and Christian were best buds, and I eventually learned that people are difficult. So I copped slack for that. I also copped slack, or rather, didn't cop anything, because I was the plain one. It took a while for me to be noticed as a female by the lads, and very little went on there, so we'll skim over that too. In fact, in lieu of telling everyone how flipping awkward high school was for me, how about we just go with the obvious.

Brooke is short.

My Pop is tall. He has to duck under doorways, and I'm fairly sure I still stand below his shoulder. My Nan, and Grandma and Grandpa, are all short. In spite of 'tall' being a dominant genetic trait, I got the short end of the stick, so to speak. I stand at 5' 3"; the shortest in my nuclear family. It meant a few things.

It meant that I do enjoy climbing things more than other people.

It meant that I got used to looking up when talking to people.

It meant that when I started wearing my clompers (leather working shoes), which have like an inch heel on them, and then change back to flat shoes, I have to try and figure out why everyone is much taller.

It means that when I cook, I also get a workout, since getting stuff off the top cupboards usually means finding a chair or climbing onto the counter.

And it meant that sometime in recent years, I had to go "You know what? I'm short. Can't do much about it, so there's no point in getting hung up over it." It was like I had this mentality that one day went "Okay, deal with it."

And I did. Or had to. Or still am. Thankfully, people grow out of being jerks after high school, and teasing is rare and in jest. I've since learned that having a lower centre of gravity makes me more agile and it's easier for me to hit soft organs if I have to.

But that's not really the point of this post. No, the point of this post is me versus the voice that sits inside my head and heckles everything I do when it messes up, or when I take risks. Or when I do anything.

At the moment I'm cranky at it because I've got one particular hang up, and it's not dislodging nearly as quickly as I need it to. I've got everything due for uni in like two weeks. I don't have time for this.

But I digress. There's that heckler, and I hate her, and I know what she is.

She's me.

See, I think that's one of the hardest things when it comes to confronting your demons; recognising that they're a part of you. It's so much easier to blame their existence on your circumstances, or your upbringing, or your neighbour's cat, but that doesn't change the fact that they're inside your head, reading your thoughts like a newspaper left in the 'john.

And once you realise that that thing is a part of you, you have like, two or three options.

You can accept that it is part of you and be reconciled to it, moving on

You can accept that it is part of you and not be reconciled, leaving it behind

You can keep blaming it on the weather and wonder why it hasn't left yet.

And I've got things that have probably fit into all three categories.

The height thing I guess belongs to the first category. I try to chuck as many things into that avenue as possible, because the second option is a harder path to take.

The second path kind of only makes sense if you understand the human condition as a Christian does. We, as Christians, understand that we have a nature that will be told not to do a thing and immediately will go "I'M GOING TO DO THE THING!"
We call it the sinful nature and it's just that; that humans by nature follow the law of entropy and over time have really only gotten stacks better at being horrible to each other. We're corrupt.
There is hope for someone who talks to Jesus about it though; and I'm not talking about some kind of religious institution or works-based setup.

Religion is like...like spraying deodorant on a corpse. Or spraying deodorant all over your body when in fact you need a shower. It might cover up the stench for a little, but it doesn't fix the problem.

The assurance I have with accepting and not being reconciled to one of my demons comes from knowing that Jesus lets me leave that part of my nature behind. I don't have to keep doing evil. I have the option of doing good now, and even when I mess that bit up (because fallibility is something I excel in), I'm covered by the same grace that cleaned up my rank smell. So to speak.

The third type of dealing with problems in the mind, complete rejection, is something I've done before, and will do again, and something I see in a lot of people around me. It is blaming the problem on an external source.

And sometimes that blame is justified.

But it doesn't do away with the problem, to blame it on something else and then walk away as if everything is solved by that. Took me like a year and a half after my first breakup to learn that one. If the thing has had such an influence on you that it's now taken up residency inside your head, you need to sort that thing out. And I'm not sure how you can do that; the method of the sorting is different for everyone. But realising that at least part of the onus is on you to do something about it, kind of makes you own the problem and want to do something about it.

And sometimes you can't do anything about that problem. Sometimes it's a small problem that can't be fixed - like my height - or it's a big problem that can't be fixed. But you have to get to that point of realising that the problem can't be fixed, so you have to change your perspective on it.

"Okay, I'm short. I'll just learn to deal with it."

Doing battle with yourself is not as simple as just fighting, but that doesn't mean you can just run away.

And sometimes it hurts to look retrospectively at the monster that lives inside. It means coming to terms with your ugly side.

Not going to lie, I hate having to do it. I hate getting to the end of difficult nights, exhausted and burnt out over something small or stupid, being unable to let it go because of my stupid pride or selfishness, or because I haven't felt that feeling in so long that I absolutely do not want to let it go, despite the cold hard fact that it's actually the best thing for me to do at that point in time.

But facing off against that issue, and realising that it is part of me, is crucial. It takes the claws out of the argument, and for a split second the heckler has been bathed in a spotlight, completely identifiable, because that's how you make a heckler shut up.

And once I can name the demon, I can tell it where to shove its brilliant idea.

Now, I'll get back to novelling.

Yes, friends, National Novel Writing Month is upon us. I'm behind, but writing a story about islands in the sky, and a man who can see the suffering of others. He doesn't have a lot of fun, but I'm enjoying it.
It's called Skybound. Eventually coming to a theatre near you.

Brooke out.

The upsides and downsides to living by yourself

Okay.

I'd originally given this one a different title, but things worked out differently. Same as how I was all set to blog through the residency and then that kind of went to pot amid the fifteen other things I was so certain I could get done while I was there.

But let's try and chuck up another blog post. It's late, but I've only just taken off my shoes. The scent of my socks should keep me up for a bit.

For context, I moved out of my family house in 2010/2011 to head to Newie for uni. Because I am king of figuring accommodation, I moved down with a friend from home and we took up residence in a tiny granny flat owned by a family friend of mine. Bec and I shared this space for two and a half years, and we juggled all the things that come from living with people who are not your family, things like remembering to clean up, or explain why you do something the way you do.

The space we had was a little tight for two, but we managed. It was nice, if only from my end because I'm messy and Bec was forgiving.

And then in June Bec moved out into another sharehouse closer to the uni and everyone from unichurch - this place is out in southwest Newcastle and it takes half an hour to get most places. I carry odd things in my car because there's rarely a chance to go home and come back if I've forgotten something silly like a coat or sunscreen.

In a way, it was kind of handy, because I'd already gone nocturnal for assessments, and my mess was everywhere, so I didn't feel the pressure of having to tidy up.

And then I had a breakup and a car accident, and things started to get quiet.

I think I may have stabilised in the months since; at least I'd like to think that. I mean, there's upsides and there's downsides to living by yourself.

Of course, the landlord and his son still live upstairs (it's an odd arrangement), so pants are still important on days I'm home. (Pants will always be important, for the record.)

But I can do things like listen to whatever music I want and not have to check and see if the housemate is okay with four hours of Anberlin.

I can eat fish. For a cat lover, Bec was never very keen on the seafood business.

There's no one to complain about the mess, or who has to daily navigate it. That's probably a problem of mine that has surfaced from having a large family with plenty of eccentricities. I'm just used to being messy. I don't like it, but I'm used to it, and that's how ants happen.

If I stuff up the laundrey, it's my fault.

In fact, if I stuff up anything, it's kind of my fault.

Except for yesterday evening, when I arrived home and the landlord informed me that the washing machine didn't have the overflow pipe put into the drainpipe properly (he's replacing something in our shared laundrey) and as a result the laundrey flooded. So did my kitchen. I store things on the floor.

I sighed, and checked how much water was everywhere. Floor needed washing, I guess.

But I digress.

Living by yourself can seem like a lot of fun, but it also equates to a lot of frozen food, because cooking for one is one of the sadder and useless things that happens in life. Much cheaper to cook fifteen meals at once and alternate between green and yellow curry for three weeks. Although, there's other things that stem out of that too.

I guess the only and biggest disadvantage to living by myself has been...being left with the inside of my head.

Insert picture from Photomedia portrait exercises.
Credit to Ben Van Gessel

It's a weird place to be, and in the passing months, it's really only gotten weirder. It's kind of what happens when you don't have anyone to tell you that that kind of thinking is a bit weird and maybe you need to go outside for a bit. There's talking to self, and cackling, and don't get me started on the arguments.

But that's kind of a problem too.

As the eldest, my problem is that I measure success by comparison. If I'm doing better than average, I'm okay. (Weird logic, again). There's a bucket more of things that that thought is attached to, but it kind of equates to a voice in my head that is me, and calls me things like 'uselessface' because I don't have a job or career or spouse and everyone surely must have it together because they have those things. I bet they can get everything on their 'To do' lists done too.

And don't tell me that that's not how it works, because this is how my head works.

It's not a great place to be.

It's being mad at yourself for being so poorly disciplined, and being late for everything because of that lax in discipline, but at the same time being unable to do anything to make that better.

It's trying desperately to not get depressed over having social plans flop because it was your one shot at social interaction that week and everyone else must have just had better things to do.

It's not being able to write a blog post without chucking in self depreciating stuff and then trying to write it off as a joke.

heh.

It's over-analysing everything other people do and say because you've gotten used to not interacting with anybody and can't remember how people work.

"Is that guy trying to have a crack at me? I don't know. Don't be silly Brooke-akfjheprighptisuhprkh?"

It's going home to an empty house when you grew up in a home with five other people who were all noisier and less weird than you.

Except that it's not really an empty house. It's a house with very little to distract from that voice that reminds me of how hard I fail at life.

I guess living by yourself would probably be not as problematic if you were not me. Or didn't have to live inside my head.

Hmm.

On a brighter note, semester has started up again. I'm hoping it'll be too busy for me to go crazy. Crazier. After that, Brooke Gets A Job and Will Move Into A Sharehouse and Hopefully Will Be Able To Readjust To Normal People and Possibly Society As Well.

Either that or I'll go bush and turn into a feral wild girl with flat feet and hair that gets snagged on everything. Sounds grand.

Insert witty title here

So.

I'm working on a few different posts at the moment. Some are being written, some are still thoughts bouncing around the inside of my head. They're all kind of heavy topics though, so they're taking time. Time spent going 'do I write this or not? How do I convey what I want to talk about the clearest without sounding like a back-country redneck from whom nonsense is spouting?'

(The topics in the works are about rape culture, abortion and responsibility and my self-hate bouts. Nobody wants to talk about those with a muddled head)

So while trying to keep the blog up to date, without suddenly dumping three months of deep thinking on it, I thought that it's probably okay to talk about something light. Or interesting. Or mildly amusing.

Animania was last weekend.

Not the 21st; the 14th. I only went for the Saturday, and am due for a blog post about it. Owing to the briefness of the convention, the post will be similarly brief. But that's on hold too.

What else has been going down of late?

I've got a residency starting up on the 2nd of October. Opening night is the 3rd. Residencies are opportunities for the general public to get to interact with the artist, since the point of them is to have the artist set up their workspace in the gallery and then work on their stuff in the gallery. I think this will be good for my work, since the next best way to appreciate a cosplay aside from going to a convention and being familiar with the character is seeing the stuff being made. I'm also trying to get as many cosplayers that I already know to come on opening night dressed up. I'll be coming as Tex, if that makes it any more appealing.

Wait. Does it?

I promise I'm not going to beat anyone up.

So there's that. It's a bit of a challenge, because although I love it when people get to see my stuff, I always end up a bit bashful when it comes to standing next to it and going "HEY EVERYBODY LOOK AT MY STUFF!!!"

I'm not great at self-promoting. I leave my signature on the back of the artwork, or in an inconspicuous spot. I guess that's why characters are fun. People get to see my work, but it's Rukia or Tex that they're talking to. I get to disappear.

But yeah. If you want to come to the event, it's at Watt Space Art Gallery in Newcastle Australia. If you're one of my overseas readers or you're not going to be able to visit, I'll try and keep the blog updated on shenanigans. The blog is supposed to be part of it, so there is that.

What else is going down?

I turn 22 on the weekend. It's weird, because I'm not ready to have another birthday. I've been too busy to organise a get-together, and I'm probably going to be in the middle of nowhere with my folks in any case. It kind of feels like....

...I dunno? I haven't had time or energy to get excited over it. Is this what being grown-up is like?

Or maybe that's just me. Could be just me getting mad at myself and not wanting to think about it - Mum got married at 22. It feels like I should be getting my life underway and I keep putting it off, or I haven't been able to yet and I'm trying hard but can only do one thing at a time and everyone else is getting married and has a job and is going on overseas trips and I'm...

THAT'S MATERIAL AND PROBLEMS THAT BELONG IN ANOTHER POST, BROOKE. LEAVE IT AND MOVE ON.

*sighs*

So yeah. There is that. I'm turning 22 and the state government reckons that means I'm financially independent and at the moment, all I really want to do is move into the house in My Neighbour Totoro and fly kites. And not have to do things like worry about the state of my teeth.

gah.

Wow. Are you enjoying this post? It must be fun, eh?

I'm sorry.


Have a cute animal picture.

What else is kind of worth blogging?

Talbot?

Okay. Talbot.

Because this is my last semester at uni, I'm trying to get good use out of the facilities there. Gonna be perfectly honest there - I love film photography, but there's only a couple months left when I'd be able to access a darkroom to do my own stuff.

So I made a pinhole camera to put the 8x10 film I have in.

It's a substantially large pinhole camera, so I named it Talbot.

I've since covered it/him with black bookbinders linen, so he looks mega classy.

Back when photography was getting onto its new and wibbly-wobbly legs, and getting slightly easier to cart around, there were two photographers who were prolific in the spread of 'street photography' - Henri Cartier-Bresson and Henry Fox Talbot. I named the camera after the guy that invented the calotype (a precursor to film negatives and one of the first processes that didn't involve mercury vapours to make a photo). (Fun fact for the day.)

I may end up doing a dedicated post on Talbot too (the camera) as I get the hang of working with it. In the meantime; have a look what what I've taken with it first.

Pinhole cameras are essentially a box with a tiny hole in it. They're as basic as cameras can get, but they're still kind of cool. They also have a massive depth-of-field, because the hole (aperture) is so small. (Case in point: a kit lens for an SLR might be able to go up to f22 - Talbot goes up to f423)

But yeah. More on Talbot later. I need to find a dentist. Talk to you soon.

Nobody wins a poo-throwing fight

This is a phrase that I thought up at the start of the year, and now it's three days out from the Federal Election in Australia.

I thought now might be the best time to talk about it.

But, I kind of want to preface this blog post with something that my international readers probably need to know:

1. Australians don't often talk about politics
2. Australians are pretty good at slagging off at each other (badmouthing, talking down, slandering etc)
3. Did I mention that we don't talk about politics? At least, not in a coherent or polite way to people of the opposition. <sarcasm> No friendly discussions here! </sarcasm>

I have a few problems with politics in general, which is at least in part because one half of my family is staunch supporters for one political party, and the other half supports the other major party.

A couple years back, we had everyone at out house for Christmas lunch. The talk swung to politics for about 30 seconds before Dad vetoed it. Nice Christmas lunch doesn't need people arguing or getting sour about stuff.

I guess one of my problems is basically to do with Australian culture. We're pretty good at mouthing off to people, and we don't have a lot of respect for authority. I'm not necessarily talking about toeing the line there. I'm talking about actually respecting the political members responsible for looking after the country.

Yes, let's keep up to date on the election by playing a smartphone app that allows us to hit our politicians. Smooth.

Case in point.

And that kind of has its own type of reasoning: Australians live in a place that famously spends a lot of time trying to kill its visitors, or makes little sense. We don't trust a lot of promises made by the higher-ups because they frequently fall through.

But that's not the point of my argument. That's just giving us some context to work off, and therefore makes sense why the parodied Australia in Terry Pratchett's Diskworld series elects their Prime Minister and then immediately throws him in gaol.

My problem stemmed from heated discussion between the Prime Minister and Opposition Leader a while back, but it can very easily apply to a lot of things.

This is, that nobody wins a poo-throwing fight.

You can throw as much poo as you like, but the fact of the matter is that in order to throw it, you've still got to touch it.

So, dear political parties, when you want to pitch your spiel to me, don't start by telling me how much the other guy sucks.

In a group environment, anyone can suggest an idea. And then everyone else can contribute to that idea. Any third-rate can say that every idea sucks. If you want to move forward with the idea though, you have to have feedback. Constructive stuff is better.

The opposing sides of Parliament are designed to keep the other in check, but they could make each other better. At the moment everyone's looking like complete noobs.

And see? There's me, one of the mudders, with no interest in respecting anybody in power.

But I digress.

If you have an idea, or a political party has an idea, it should be able to stand on its own two feet without having to slag off the opposition. Otherwise it's like kicking in everyone else's sandcastle so yours looks the best. In that case, there is no longer a 'best sandcastle'. There is just a lot of kicked-in ones and a kicker-of-sandcastles.

Or a thrower-of-poo.

Slander on others does in fact reflect back on the type of person that the giver-of-slander is. And with all of the campaigns at the moment dissing everyone else, it's making me feel like I'm going to have to pick the least worst to vote for, as opposed to the best.

And I really wish I didn't have to do that.

But anyway. Please keep it in mind. Group projects, planning for the weekend with friends, having a fight, whatever. The moment someone sinks to slander, they might have successfully scored a hit on the opposition, but they've also sunk down to do that.

Rise above, my friends.

Rise above, my political leaders.

Because at the end of the poo-fight, someone has to clean up.

And it's not going to be me.

The last lesson my car taught me

Um, this is kind of weird to start writing about, but it's also important, and yeah. I'll start where I can and stop where I will.

This is one of the posts about my first car, and it was the last lesson that the Suzuki taught me.

I say 'last' because back in June, I broke it. Badly broke it. Like, it's not coming back, broke it.

And it was my fault.

I guess this means different levels of thing to different people. But we'd had that car since Hannam Vale (So, at least 2001), and Dad had looked after it. She went alright, and even when Dad bought a different car, he didn't sell the Suzy. It was lent to a couple of different people, and each driver added their own level of attachment to the vehicle. It was unregistered for a while, and Dad had people asking more than once, if he was planning to sell it, seeing as it had sat in our front yard, untouched, for a couple years. But he never did.

I first started regularly driving the Suzuki at the end of 2010, when I got a job that meant I needed to be driving a car that wasn't Mum's while she was at work. She was a tetchy thing to get used to driving, but we got on alright. The Suzuki was a 1989 Swift GTi model; built as a sports car. Highly strung; usually pretty difficult to drive if you weren't used to it. It'd be difficult to start in cold mornings, or on any morning, really.

Back at the start of uni, I took the Suzy to Newcastle. This was back when my housemate still lived in the house, and before she was able to drive, so I did driving for both of us frequently. Nothing bonds people and a car like losing it and thinking it was stolen in a car park.

And from there I gradually just got more and more attached to the car. She was difficult sometimes, because she was an old car, but Dad loved it and I loved it, and it was something of a family heirloom.

And then I did something stupid.

This was like a squire riding their father's warhorse out for the day and breaking its leg. It was like if Batman, still in his early days of being batman, through some fool maneuver, got Alfred killed.

I still have no idea whether or not I checked at the give way sign, but I was on a minor road of a T-intersection on a rainy day in Newcastle back in June, and I hit someone else.

Y'all can calm down a little; I didn't hurt anyone, and I emerged shell-shocked, but unscathed.

Shock erased anything I could remember of the event to prove that I had looked before entering the give way section, and the fallout of that was that I was in the wrong of the accident.

I had broken the car that was Dad's pretty, and my pretty, and Sam's pretty (Sam was one of the lads who'd driven the car in the interim years). I'd been told to look after it, and

and evidently I haven't gotten over all of this yet. Guilt takes time. The fault is still mine though, and I have a bit of a hangup over it.

So.

There was a lesson learned. Let me tell you it.

Grace.

Or rather, I began to appreciate grace a whole lot more.

See, I've known of and understood grace for a while. To a degree.

My Mum and Dad are both Christians, and they raised me and my siblings to understand the wonder that comes with having a personal relationship with the creator of the universe. But even from a young age, they taught me the value of grace. They're both like sixth-generation Salvation Army kids (Okay so Dad's only three generations, not sure about Mum). Well, they came from Salvation Army stock.

And I'm not up for debating a whole bunch of things right now, but when we left the Salvation Army, Mum made sure that I understood grace properly. That I understood that it's not the things we do that make us right; that following the laws wouldn't be enough to repair a broken relationship with God. We needed Jesus, and we needed to understand that he offered a way to get into a right relationship with God, without doing stuff.

That it was a gift.

That it was a grace.

And I'd known this for a long time. Been taught it for a long time.

But it wasn't until I was dealing with a written-off car, and being in the wrong, and trying to figure out whether my demerit points will carry over when I get my full license, that I realised the value of grace.

I think you can appreciate the value of something in one of two different ways.

You can understand how important it is when you come from not having it and then having it,
and you can understand how important it is when you have it and then it is taken away, or you have to deal with something without its aid.

That's not to say that I didn't want the law to be nullified - certainly not. If the law was nullified, then there'd be no justice. A world with no justice is a scary thought for me. We need justice. Without justice, things that go wrong get unpunished, victims are left to their broken lives and society, without stability, caves in.

Justice is important.

So I understood with incredible clarity why it was I was in the wrong over my accident. And why it was that someone had to be at fault. It's pretty rare that cars go and crash themselves.

It's just that I didn't want to be the one at fault. I wanted grace. I didn't want the law to be broken for my sake, but I also didn't want to be the one to have to deal with being in the wrong.

It was actually an incredible paradox, and at the same time a perfectly clear truth. Perfectly clear lesson. Painfully illustrated in screeching brakes and deformed metal, laid to rest clad in TARDIS blue.

...

It was painful to learn, and beautiful at the same time. And I hope that I never take the lesson of grace so for granted again that I have to learn this one over.

Grace abounded more when Dad found my new car; a Festiva. It's a gelding compared to the stallion that was the Swift, but I'm incredibly thankful for it. Not having wheels is something you can get around if you live in the middle of Newcastle, or if you have housemates with cars, but when you have neither of these things, even getting the groceries is a challenge.

Meet the incredibly tidy Daiko Bubbles. I'll be sure to post about it in the future. And about the Swift too.

But I think that's about as much talking as I can manage about the cars for now. I'll go back to aimlessly surfing the web in the art gallery, and listening to Explosions in the Sky.

Seriously. Go look them up if you like post-rock, or like forty minutes of absolutely radical instrumental music.

Updates: Final Semester, Glutton for Punishment, Future Cosplays and Life Lessons

So.

Somehow it's now the last day of July. And I've had my first day off for this week.

Uni started back on Monday, and with it came the challenge of waking up on time, and remembering to do things in the correct order to maintain sanity and other general things.

I've started my last semester - I finish studies in November, and hopefully the University will give me the funny hat early next year. With this then, is a slight bittersweet feeling. I mean, I've really loved uni, but at the same time, there's a bunch of things that I'll be glad to have done and dusted when I leave the realms of tertiary education.

And hopefully, I'll be able to get a job at the end of it. And move into a house that's a little warmer in the winter.

I've got a couple of blog posts in the works; these are kind of things that I've been mulling over the last month or so. There's two that are about my first car, and one that's about communication. I'm still trying to figure out how to say everything that I want to say in those, which is why they're not up yet.

Also, NaNo is coming up again in November. Which is still a little bit away, but I'm beginning to plan story stuff now, because then you can just write during the allocated time. I'm ML-ing for Newcastle along with another mate again this year, so it should be fun. If I can figure out how to navigate time properly, I'll also try and finish last year's novel before we get to November. I got to fifty thousand on it, but it's probably closer to an eighty or hundred-thousand word novel. I haven't even written the scene with the granting of the superpowers yet.

*sigh*

Anyway, most of the plot of this year's novel is already planned. The characters don't have names yet. The story is about apathy, I guess. The main character is really apathetic because -*statement redacted*

More on it soon. The story doesn't have a name yet. But it's about fate and apathy and the future and a bunch of other things. Redemption?

And a gypsy curse, unless I can think of a better way to phrase that bit. Carnies with superpowers or something.

So, what else is going down?

Today, I woke up late, courtesy of playing Princess Uno with friends last night until I'd punched into the 'confused zombie' phase of overtired.

Yesterday, I started on my sister's 18th birthday present. It's her birthday tomorrow. Not sure if it'll be done in time. :/

I also attended my first Alchemy class for the semester, and made a big piece of chalk art at the church hub/office.

Yeah, that's right. Alchemy.

It's funny, because when Bec the Housemate and I were looking at the Fine Art Program Handbook back in first year, we both saw Alchemy listed and laughed our heads off because 'what? Like the lead-into-gold business? I knew Fine Arts was going to be a bit out there, but they seriously teach Alchemy?'

Yeah, they do. Sorry to ruin it, but it's a photography subject. You learn to print photographs with technology that was used back in the 1840's. One of the first exercises that we're going to do is make a pseudo-daguerreotype. I'm going to henceforth refer to that word as 'D-type' because I can't spell it without aid of a spell-checker. D-type photographs were the first type of photograph made, and the process happened when you coated a silver plate with a bunch of chemicals, exposed it to light, and then exposed it to a bunch more chemicals. Including mercury gases. I think we might be skipping the mercury bit of the process.

First.

But D-types were insanely cool on a number of different levels. Firstly, they produced only a single positive from the process - unlike film photography, which creates a negative that can be printed from - so the end product was a complete one-off. Second, these photos were incredibly detailed, due to the nature of the light-sensitised metal; the surface was slow-reacting to the light, and could be compared with modern tech as having an ISO of less than ten.

(For my friends who aren't waist-deep in photography madness, ISO is light sensitivity. The higher the number, the more light sensitive. The trade off with having high ISO images is the grainy effect you usually see on cheap cameras)

So yeah. Alchemy looks like it'll be fun.

And I've got a substitute for Fibres this semester, but I've had her teach me before, and I actually get along with her better than my standard tutor, so this semester I'll actually want to do really well with Fibres. Which is good.

My theory course looks like a mix of philosophy and art, which should be interesting.

And I've got another photography elective on Friday.

So that's uni so far. I'm planning to make lace at some stage this semester, and I don't even know what else.

Wait.

Let me tell you about today's finding.

Animania is one of the conventions that I frequent. Case in point.
The big one is coming up in September, and I was of two minds about going, until I got an update about the event this morning.

The special guest is the Japanese voice actress for Kuchiki Rukia, of Bleach.

And you're all like 'blimey, not Bleach again'

At that point, something in me sighed, and something in me went nuts. Because I then should totally go, and get a signature or something, and dress as Rukia, but not her standard attire, because that's too simple and there'll be fifty million of them at the convention.

Truth be told, I already had a Rukia cosplay planned for some time in the future. I was actually planning to do it at a point in time where I wouldn't have long hair though, because wigs are getting more and more difficult for me. Something about having hair down to my butt.

Anyway. We'll work that out when we get there.

A week later...

Crap.

Okay, that's it. I've got gallery duty and I'm going to be here for the next five hours; posting will be done.

Also, I realised that all that post got incredibly detailed in a short amount of time. I apologise. If not careful, it's pretty easy to get stuck on the small details. A flaw of mine.

What was this week then?

I got very sick on Monday night. No idea why. Guts just decided to hit the 'purge' button and things got less and less fun after that. It's only today that my appetite has actually returned somewhat. Isotonic drinks in the meantime are the best.

I've also started patternmaking the outfit for Animania; I was supposed to get the fabric today, but for my amazing organisational skills. (Woo!)
Tomorrow.

I think there's a couple things I'm on edge about with the cosplay, and a couple of things I'm really, really happy about.

I dunno if I ever blogged about it before, but battle damaged characters are boss to cosplay.

I probably said something a while back about this too.

Why?

No hems. You can have something that's flowing and majestic and tattered as buckleys, and you don't have to sew hems on it. In fact, it actually looks better if you irregularly hack into the fabric with a pair of scissors. Authentic battle damage; stuff like that. Hems on giant flowing things are pretty nasty, so no hems make life better.

The outfit also looks really simple. I finished patternmaking it last night; the seams and stuff are all nice and neat.

Except for the collar.

Look at that thing.

LOOK AT IT.

It's like whoever designed this thing didn't even understand how clothes work. It was just 'oh, hey. This would look cool. Let's chuck this on here, and that on there, and whatever.'

*Throws chair*

It'll be done. Fortunately, Dark Rukia has been cosplayed before; so I can look at what other people have done in the past and figure out what I'm working on from there, but in the meantime it's a bit tricky.

Now, to away from this clunky update, and try and write something a little more coherent. I've got five hours left at the gallery. Plenty of time.