The jobsearch is drier than the middle of Australia and all I really want to do at the moment is eat chocolate and watch a Miyazaki film and it's too early in the day to do either. So, in the aim of being productive, let me elucidate to you what it was like for an antisocial introvert to work on a kids section at WAVE.
For the readers who aren't my Novocastrian friends, WAVE is a summer kids club that my church runs in January. I signed up to be part of the thing about halfway through last year.
I remember that because it was a couple weeks before my car accident, when me and the other Swift driver at church jokingly made a pact that whoever's car died first would serve as an organ donor to the other car.
Don't make jokes like that. Also, give way at intersections when you have to cross them.
I'm good at segues.
I already knew was WAVE was. It's like, the biggest event on Hunter Bible Church's calendar. We go absolutely mental with telling the gospel to Newcastle for a week. I don't think I'd been asked to do it before, but that's mostly because when someone at church walks up to me and says 'Kids ministry?' I have a habit of throwing smoke bombs and batmanning off.
Kids are weird. They weird me out, with their ability to run for ages and ages and their noses which run for about the same amount of time, and they're sticky, and I don't understand them. I don't understand most people. And yet if you put me in a situation when I have to look after kids, I go all Nee-san on the situation, because that's what I am - the oldest of four, used to picking up after my siblings and looking after them and trying to get them to help me clean the house before Mum comes home.
But I'd been asked on three separate occasions, by three different people if I wanted to do WAVE, so after some prayer I was like 'maybe this is God giving me a nudge to give it a go'. So I said yes, aware that seven months out of D-day, I would be out of my comfort zone.
Fast-forward those seven months, through the soul-grinding harlem shake that was June, past my apathy when realising that I was investing my time in something that was temporal and wouldn't have any impact past my lifetime (pretty much anything to do with this world), the existentialism and the small successes I had with cosplay, through December and holidays and two weddings, and then WAVE was there in all of its being.
I don't actually have a lot of photos. Combination of busy and child-protection.
The group of kids I worked with, and the team I was part of worked with, were the Skittles. Four and five years old.
Prior, we'd divvied up different responsibilities in the team, so there'd be folks working on craft, and folks giving a talk about Jesus, and I got the job of being our MC or character, since that was probably actually the easiest thing for me to do.
Y'all know I make costumes. Y'all know about the cosplay, and how it's easier for me to become someone else in order to deal with problems.
We had a tent to work in with the kids, and thusly we became the Skittle Circus. I donned my tophat and waistcoat, and performed magic tricks to grab attention of the kids. Despite the fact that all but one of them were planned the day before, they seemed to go well.
Day one's trick involved hair.
But that was only part of WAVE. The whole thing was far more than merely babysitting for two and a half hours. During that time there was play and entertainment, yes, but there was also the sharing of scripture - of learning about the God-man Jesus, and specifically, about the people he interacted with and made new.
Because that was our theme for the week - that Jesus makes people new and specifically, that He can make us new.
Interacting with four and five year olds is interesting. You can impart really important knowledge to them, but at the same time, not be completely certain whether or not they understood or remembered it. But come Friday, there were kids who could remember back to the beginning of the week, kids who were asking more, and being challenged with comprehending how a relationship with the Creator of the universe works.
Which is kind of cool.
At the same time, we got to hear about how things were going with the other age groups over lunch with the rest of the folks involved in WAVE. All through different age groups, there were kids hearing the gospel, asking questions - actively wrestling with the ideas we were talking about. Which is hugely encouraging. There were kids committing their lives to Christ, and that's probably the coolest thing that happened.
So even though there wasn't earth-shattering revivals going on in our sauna of a tent, we were part of, sharing in, what was going on in other places. They shared their triumphs with us, and we shared the story of our fearless leader getting urinated on.
But like I said, that wasn't the only part of WAVE. While we were looking after five bajillion yelling kids, their mothers and fathers were hanging around in the coffee tent, being served with free barista-made coffee and equal portions of the same gospel we were sharing with the kids.
And then in the afternoon, after we'd been run flat by the kids, eaten and had enough time to nap, we reassembled and went out again, in twos and threes, knocking on the doors of Newcastle, asking if there were folks that wanted to have a breather and bring their delightful children to the kids club, and also asking people what they thought about Jesus.
This was an interesting experience. Day one was the hardest - as Nick and I walked from house to house, I remember him talking about how doorknocking is simultaneously the most encouraging and discouraging thing to do. Because you can knock on six doors and only get answers from three of them. One of those three immediately shuts the door again, one tells you that they either already go to church or you find out they have a serious bone to pick with their idea of Christianity, and once in a while, the last door opens up and you have a conversation with someone who will entertain you standing on their doorstep and talking about this Jesus man for a little.
Sometimes those conversations are really hard, because they've got something that is difficult to talk about with a complete stranger. Sometimes those conversations are frustrating, because of previous ideas and how those are supposed to fit together when you talk to a guy about Jesus and he immediately wants to know about the Exodus. And sometimes they're searching. Sometimes they're genuinely interested in this Christianity business.
And when you have a conversation with one of them, suddenly the fifteen doors you knocked on earlier which were not having a bar of it don't weigh so heavily. It's worth it. It's so worth it, to be sitting at lunch with everyone else and recapping how things went in our different sections and someone stands up and tells you about how there were kids in their section, or adults in the coffee tent, because someone knocked on their door. It's worth it to walk away from a door and realise that they've had the gospel spoken to them, perhaps for the first time.
Because I believe the gospel is worth that. That Jesus is worth that.
Now.
Let me explain you another thing.
In case you've not read anything else on my blog before, in case you've never met me or known me very well, it will help you to know what kind of person I am.
I am not an extrovert, is the best way to begin. Although I love to go to conventions full of people, and enjoy sitting in a room full of people, I am not an extrovert, in a society that reckons you need to be an extrovert to get places.
Why do you think I enjoy pretending to people who can handle the situation I'm faced with?
A good night for me would look like sitting on a couch with a bunch of close friends and us geeking out over something inconsequential but fun; getting lost in worlds of fiction; playing a pen-and-paper RPG until two in the morning.
So to say that WAVE put me out of my comfort zone is an understatement. I was so far out of my comfort zone that I could no longer see that zone. The closest I got to that zone was being a ringmaster for the five minutes a day it took to gather the kids into the tent, sit them down, and then pull scarves out of nowhere. Dressing up and pretending to be someone else.
Knocking on a complete stranger's door and greeting them with "Hi, I'm Brooke and this is Nick, and we're from Hunter Bible Church and..."
That's out of my comfort zone.
But you know what?
That week - that week of madness, of getting to bed and midnight and leaving my house at 7:20AM, of herding kids and knocking on doors - that week was totally worth it.
It was worth the stomach-churning anxiety that happened when I knocked on doors in Lambton.
It was worth the complete exhaustion that took a week to recover from.
Because in that week, I saw the gospel go out to Newcastle, and I saw seeds sown in people's lives and people come to have faith in Christ Jesus. I saw people made new. I saw my own faith grow, as I watched the change and saw confirmed in hearts and flesh that Jesus stuff was going on, and it was good.
So, even though I would be a total ball of anxiety over it, even though I would be drawn to the point of exhaustion faster than that time I thought I could make a suit of space armour in ten weeks, I would do WAVE again.
What follows is a true and probably partly embellished account of the time me and a bunch of mates from Church Took The Hobbits To Isengard.
Hopefully that video works. But honestly, if you haven't already seen it, I don't know what even. It was one of the viral videos that predate Youtube, I think. I mean, it's on Youtube now, but the first place I saw it was on a website that wasn't the monster video-playing website.
Anyway.
See what I mean with the partly embellished? Okay, it was a cheap joke. Let's move on.
The idea started back in perhaps August. I can't actually remember how far back, but it was a long time. And I committed to it back then. It was planned for early December - I would have finished Uni and NaNo by then, and wanted to do something to celebrate having finished my degree.
Even back then, I wasn't quite sure what I was getting in to. I'd never done a proper hike - I'd done a lot of bushwalking and a lot of camping before, but I'd never combined the two. My optimism went 'how hard can it be?' and plans were thusly made.
Things began slowly, and then built up momentum as we neared the date. Camping passes were purchased. Boots were procured. Bog roll was packed.
And the day before, I still hadn't got hiking socks or a bag. I visited Kathmandu that afternoon, conversing with the store attendant about going on a three day hike. She asked when it was, as I paid for my goods. Tomorrow, you say?
I am yet to experience a look of more condescending surprise from a shop attendant than the one I got from that lady. Fair go, it's a late stage in the game to be picking up essentials, but I wasn't even the greenest one in our group, so let's leave my noobish behaviour to that, okay?
Something also worth listing right here and now, as it was something that didn't occur to me as important much later, was that the bag I bought was for day hikes. And I was all like, 'yeah, how bad can it be? This one will do, it's the cheapest I can get. We're hiking during the day.'
If your bag cannot fit your sleeping bag, folks, you will have problems.
Just saying.
Okay, where to actually begin?
The hike was a section of the Coastal Track, a hiking trail covering most types of Australian terrain, and was about 26kms long. Early Tuesday morning, we saddled up and headed down to South Sydney, catching the ferry from Cronulla to Bundina, a tiny township consisting of holiday flats, an IGA, and a disproportionately large liquor store.
It was at this point in time, as we sat on the back of the ferry in the hot December sun, that I realised I'd probably made another two errors, aside from the lack of sleeping bag. My hat, which was the closest hat I could find when I was picked up, refused to stay on my head for the most part, and instead its wide brim would alternate between falling over my eyes, completely obscuring my vision, and trying to blow off or fly away. The other was pointed out by my fellow hikers, who all wondered why it was I'd chosen to wear long pants in summer.
They are my khaki pants, obtained for the guerrilla theme we had during our last week of high school, and matched my army-surplus shirt nicely.
But between the two I was covered from wrists to ankles. In December. In Australia. It was a little warm.
Despite this, I still rolled in sunscreen. Y'all do not understand just how sun-sensitive I am.
But for the most part, that kind of worked. Everyone else got burned at some stage during the hike.
GUESS WHO DIDN'T?
The albino. Yeah, that's right.
Anyway.
I'm realising that if I give a play-by-play, this post will take forever to write. And will never get written. Lemme tell you about some of the highlights and lowlights.
DAY 1:
Day one was about thirteen kilometres. It stretched, like the rest of the walk, along the coastline, but most of the hike actually went over the tops of the cliffs that skirt the southern end of Sydney. Highlights included me loosing my tube of sunscreen halfway through the day, everyone's scroggin bags splitting, and running into about half a million boy scouts.
Scroggin is home-made trail mix, for those unfamiliar with the word. Trail mix is a bunch of high-energy dry snacks; usually rendered as M&M's with obstacles. But. Don't diss the walnuts, okay?
The boy scouts must have been up on a different hike of sorts. We'd pass a [collective noun] of about twenty of them at a time, going back the other way, and since they had the larger party, we'd pull over and squash ourselves into the dry brush lining the gravel trail.
They kept asking if we were doing our Duke of Edinburgh, to which we'd reply 'nah. Doing it for fun', they'd give us a weird look, we'd get 200 metres up the trail, and have to bond with the shrubbery for the next group to pass us.
The fourth group or whatever was all like
"Gee there's a lot of you"
Our party was eight.
I responded
"I could say the same about you"
And then we continued, across hill and dale, until we got to the first beach.
It had nudists on it.
So I'll write about other stuff.
Late afternoon, we pulled up stumps at what I'm going to refer to as 'Rivendell'. It was a spot that our equivalent of Gandalf knew about and was far enough off the track that we could set up camp. Further along the path again, there was a tiny waterhole, complete with crystal clear water, wide, flat rocks for sitting on, and waterfall. Dinner was set up, eels nibbling on unsuspecting toes, and Psalms read in the half-light of citronella candles, the quiet of the tiny hollow interspersed with the waterfall and the roar of 747s as they occasionally flew overhead, reminding us that even though it felt like we were in the middle of nowhere, we were still in South Sydney and in fact under the flight path marked out by the airport.
I seem to remember jokes about Tomorrow When the War began made at some stage that evening as well (I can't remember if I was Robyn or Ellie), but am happy to allow the rest of that evening to lapse into the stillness and the quiet enjoyed by eight people who'd walked to the point of fatigue and beyond. We turned in for the night, me hoping that my sleeping bag liner would be enough if I used my tarp as a blanket to stay warm.
It wasn't. Sleep that night was memorable, partly because I froze, partly because my knees seized up in the middle of the night, but mostly because I found a leech in my clothes.
MOVING ON.
The next day we set off at a leisurely pace, only having to cover a couple of clicks before we reached the beach and the man they call Jed.
The guys who knew Jed spoke well of him as we headed off on day one, and I think I tried to ask what he was like.
"He's like the Kennedy administration without the Marilyn scandal"
"He's everything good about the 60's, but with modern sensibilities"
"He's tops"
By this time my head was like the scene in Bleach when Chad, Ishida and Inoue are trying to figure out what their cat guide's best friend looks like.
(And if I had that clip, I'd show you. *shakes fists at Youtube*)
And then we arrived at this beach which had flushing toilets and shade and no running water and Jed was there with fresh cold water and bananas and muesli bars and Jed is a Champion of Men, that's what he is.
For an hour, or longer, we stayed at the beach, still exhausted from the day before along with the tiny walk it had been to get to where we were.
Jed is actually a mad surfer, so we got along great. It was kind of like talking to any of the lads back home, since my home area is a major surfing spot on the NSW coast. So we yabbered about breaks and boards, and that was when everyone else found out that I used to do comp surfing.
I wasn't very good, but it's always a good story to bring up.
After a while we realised that if we didn't leave soon, we'd be setting up for night two in the dark, so we headed off again, Jed coming with us for a little while.
I think at about this point we had Carl leave the group, since his ankle had gone beyond the point of mere pain and we were close enough to civilisation that he'd be able to get back to Sutherland okay.
But on we continued, and with gritted teeth, when the discovery that the shorter path for the track had been closed due to falling rocks. Thusly, our next challenge would be to go over the cliffs again instead of around the bottom, skirting the coastline alongside the sea.
Wait.
Was Eagle Rock on Day 2? I think it might have been.
I had Eagle Rock explained to me on Day one, by Josh, who'd lived on campus at the uni prior.
Apparently it's a college thing, that when Eagle Rock plays at a party, everyone drops their pants. Pants go back on afterwards, but for the duration of that piece of music, everyone at the party goes pantsless.
It was actually enough of a thing that the Red Frogs crew, an organisation of folks who bring food and the gospel to partied-out teens, had to figure out a course of action specifically for it. Because being in a room full of pantsless minors isn't a good thing.
Thusly, everyone in Red Frogs leaves the house for the duration of Eagle Rock, should it begin playing while they're at the party. I had explained to me.
The more you know.
This is relevant, as one of the rock formations we passed on the second day of the hike was called, funnily enough, Eagle Rock.
This is also where we got our group photo, and if photos ever surface, I may consider putting one up. I'm still not sure if the guy who explained Eagle Rock to us made the photo better or worse by opting to photo-bomb it.
Day two's afternoon progressed in a swirl of piggybacking flies, and the singing of old hymns. Until we got to the Stairs and then I kept singing out of stubbornness. Everyone else stopped because those were steeeeeeep stairs. My legs are hurting even thinking of those stairs.
Consider yourself, as an untrained couch potato, carrying a sixteen-kilo pack, in shoes you've barely broken in, climbing stairs higher than your knees, up a slope that continues at an incline close to vertical, for about 2-300 metres.
And yet in the middle of this incredible pain in hiking and the steady fight to keep my heart rate at something below 300, I found something excellent.
There was quiet in the middle of all of this.
I've probably talked about this zone before; this elusive zone I've stumbled across at 3 in the morning, when the noises in the mind dwindle, blinking out one by one. You feel a sense of magnificent purpose steal over your soul as the tiny cares that your mind is preoccupied with shut down. At that point, I was unable to care about whether I'd be back in time for the opening night of my art show. I was unable to worry about the state of things at home, or the way I was choosing to relate to everyone on this trip, or back in Newcastle. I was beyond the point of caring that I smelled like a horse, or was wheezing like an asthmatic.
There was only the path before me, and the effort required to take a step, shift the weight of my body and backpack onto one screaming leg, and then climb the stair. And then do it again. And again.
On we climbed, the sense of anything but the moment gone. The flies didn't matter. The wind didn't matter. There was silence in my mind, and it was glorious.
Eventually we crested the hill, and received a lesson in reading the surf from Wizard Jed, and then he turned and we parted ways; he heading back towards his car and we onwards to the site for our second night. As the trail flattened out and it became a little easier to breathe, I pulled out my ocarina and began, not for the first time, to play Concerning Hobbits. And then more Lord of the Rings music, and then Zelda themes, because that's really all I know how to play.
And somewhere along the line. Actually it was probably earlier, that Jim piped up, requesting that I play the Song of Storms. I said no, because even though you can put it down to superstition, we were out on a hike, and I was not going to play the freaking Song of Storms. So I continued on with whatever I was playing at the time, and inwardly frowned when he continued to whistle the requested piece of music.
This becomes important in a minute.
Finally, with the yellow light of afternoon giving way to the grey light of dusk, we descended from another hill and came upon our camping spot for the evening. Sitting was lovely, and dinner, which this evening was my job, was excellent also.
Portable Protein, it was called, since I had no name for boiled rice with curry, coconut, rehydrated shiitake mushrooms, chopped boiled egg and peanuts.
No name, but it was delicious, and it also managed to remove about two kilos from my pack. We washed the dinner things in seawater and spent part of the evening watching the stars, praying and singing again.
Dude, singing at night with a bunch of people is great. Singing Rock of Ages at night with a bunch of people is better, the sound of the ocean punctuated only by the regular beat given by slapping hands to knees, keeping time as we sung.
We turned in for the evening, thankful that the grass here was soft and would hopefully be more comfey than the night before. I remember taking a cursory glance outside the tent before zipping it up, absentmindedly wondering if Josh would want to bring his hiking boots inside his tent, since he'd left them out. I can understand why - we all smelled pretty ripe at this stage. Still, this was Australia, and there were usually bugs. I shrugged and closed the tent. Josh is grown man. If he wanted to leave his boots out, he could.
This is also important to note. Because that night
There was wind. That's what woke me and Cait first. Mostly because the poles in the dome tent kept being blown down and then fwapping back up, blustering about as a howling wind came screaming off the ocean. I was voted to go out and do something, and my half-asleep brain complied and pulled the tent poles down. They lay on top of everything in the tent, including us, but that would be okay because they weren't really that heavy and then the tent wouldn't break.
I went back to sleep.
And then the rain started.
The first thing that I noticed of it was the water dripping onto my leg. I tried to ignore it, rolling up in the tarp in the half sleep and hoping that it'd go away. And it got worse. I reached up for my phone to check what forsaken hour it was for the rain to be here, only to have my hand plop straight into a puddle.
Next to me, Cait rolled over, having discovered that her sleeping bag was likewise soaked through.
And out I went again, frantic brain and fingers trying to reassemble the tent so the poles could keep the water off, the wind whipping my hair and my half-whimpered mutterings reduced to discernible noise around the torch I had clamped in my teeth.
Which idiot was all on Storm's Song business? Yeah. Not me.
Finally, soaked, shivering, and cursing the boardshorts I'd chosen to sleep in, Morpheus visited and I slept, too tired to care about anything else. The tent had nearly blown down. We'd half-flooded. I was done.
The next morning was cold, but mercifully dry. Drier. The other tents had fared a little better in some ways, and a little worse in others. Liv and Bri's tent had the addition of a waterbed come morning light, but I think the guys had gotten on alright. Until Josh stumped over to our kitchen setup and looked mournfully at his boots before tipping out a solid inch-and-a-half of water.
The morning progressed faster than the previous one - we had eight or nine clicks to cover, and I wanted to be back in Sydney in the early arvo. Before leaving, as there was nowhere to dump rubbish, we did a quick pickup of our mess along with other stuff that previous campers had just left there. For a while, things looked as though they'd start sprinkling, and it was at that point, when we'd donned raincoats (or binliner coats, depending on your budget) that Sam the Wizard taught us some gnarly dance moves.
The rain ceased, and we headed off down the beach, which gave way to a seashack hamlet, which lead to overland hiking, and then some kind of weird rainforest, and then there were more stairs. I remember those stairs with more pain than the other set, since at this stage I had hit the don't stop phase of hiking.
I was simply at this point where I could no longer stop and enjoy the scenery properly. I was in a hurry, and i needed the others to be in a hurry too, and the longer I walked with this mindset, the more I realised that this was how I did a lot of things, or was heavily encouraged to do a lot of things.
Back in the land of home and reality, I'd just completed my Bachelor of Fine Arts. I was still waiting on results, but was fairly confident that things would be okay. And once I'd told my folks, they were immediately asking what would happen next.
"Can't I just enjoy having this thing done for a little?"
Regardless, that was how I hiked for the first half of the day. We made good time, in part because I was refusing to stop and look back to see what we'd already covered, in favour of looking and seeing how much more still needed to be done.
And then the rainforest began to give way to Australian scrub, and the most heart-bursting set of stairs you'll ever see, and I kept at them with roughly the same speed, because if I stopped, I would be unable to start again.
I didn't throw up when we got to the top, but it was close. Slowly, painfully, my heart rate slowed down, and the two guys who'd been keeping pace with me at the front of the group turned to head back and help the others.
Well, one made it.
Cait had caught up, and we were talking a little, until we heard a snap and an almighty yell of pain.
There are different yells, different shouts, that people are capable of. The one concerning pain is never heard often, but to hear it is never a good thing. I went to investigate.
And there was Jim, kankle in the stream - because that's what it was even at this stage - looking at me like 'this kind of hurts'
And I was looking at him like 'I am not surprised'.
"I was running to catch up and my ankle went snap-crackle-pop on the slope"
"Yeah. I can see that."
I can't remember the finer details of that conversation, but for some context, Jim is a RAAFie. I've written about him on the blog before, because we dated for a while. He was the one in the group who decided to take eight-ten litres of water instead of four, the one with a pack that was bigger than me, and the heaviest guy in the group. With a kankle that might have been broken.
I think there was a raised eyebrow and a sigh on my part somewhere, before heading back up to where the stuff was, to find the first aid kit, painkillers, and some food to help with the shock.
By the time this was taken care of, the rest of the crew had caught up. We stayed a bit longer, Jim had his ankle strapped up, and the rest of us divvied up the pack he now had zero chance of being able to carry. It was at this point that Sam gained his fourth or fifth nickname, due to the rubbish we were carrying.
Binjuice.
Binjuice is the worst. It is the scent of death and decay, its cloying smell enough to make even a hardened veteran gag. And it had spilled from the rubbish bag Sam had strapped to his pack, onto his pack, shirt, and the tent that had been strapped on there as well. It was not pleasant.
So down the hill we went, Jim's bung ankle setting the pace, my mind accepting that there were more important things to focus on than being at the art show as we made our way slowly through the leaf-littered floor of the forest.
I found myself carrying the binjuice-soaked tent with Liv, and we talked at length about the Realm of Eventide and the story I'd written for NaNo that took place in it - Skybound. We yabbered about the plot, and I got to share the history that had been written for the place, trying to figure out how to phrase things so that they made sense to other people and not just me.
We sung again, the highlight of which was Sam the Wizard bringing up the Songs of Angry Men or something. It's from Les Miserables, a movie which everyone raves about and I have not had time to see yet. But it was memorable, this rendition, given as Sam leapt atop a nearby boulder and sung with gusto, beating his chest in time with the words, to the laughter and invigoration of everyone.
And somehow, after much stumbling and half-steps, we clambered out of the brush, down some stairs and into a car park.
There was a sign and everything, noting the beginning of the Coastal Walk from the Otford end.
We'd made it.
We rested a while, and then began the trek back to civilisation, looking first for the train station we'd need to get back to where the cars were.
I think I got called a Sargent when we got to Otford by two young yahoos, which was confusing until I remembered that my kahki shirt had triple-chevron badges on the arms. And then, somehow, we managed to get to Sutherland.
Dude, you want something surreal?
Try going on a big hike, being all dirty and smelly and tired, and then somehow get yourself to a busy train station, full of workers, mums and school kids. On the one hand, my brain comprehended that we looked kind of homeless. On the other hand, my chocolate stash had melted and reformed around my lolly snakes, and although the result looked kind of gross, it tasted amazing.
Eventually, we got back to Cronulla, reshuffling our car crew for the leg home so that Jim wouldn't have to drive with a bung leg or something.
Successfully, Bri, Cait and myself, three ladies who'd never done much Sydney navigation, managed to get out in one piece, before driving back to Newie and getting Raj's. It was a pretty satisfying curry, if you ask me.
And then there was a shower, and then there was an inner spring mattress with pillows and a doona, and there was sleep.
And it was very good.
That kind of covers the hike. There was more, and there was less that happened. But I need to get back to Job Searching, so that's all you'll get for now.
Perhaps an update if/when photos happen. (Hey, Bri and Cait?)
It's been two months since I last burdened everyone else with understanding how mussed the inside of my head is.
In the meantime, I managed to finish the novel from November (It's like 60k long or something now.), went on a three-day hike that I did not take enough photos for, went home, went to Queensland for Christmas, volunteered for a week-long kids club for my church and am now back in Newie, looking madly for a job before the meagre savings buffer I'd built up last year disintegrates.
In that time, I've been to two weddings, travelled 1000k in cars over 24 hours, done doorknocking, and had some wonderful late-night conversations with friends.
But the future's here, and it's sitting on my floor like my lunchbox that I know has a chinese container with off curry in it, and I'm terrified to open it, because I don't know what to do with it anyway. It's sitting here and looking at me and the longer it looks at me the more terrified I get, because I feel like this was supposed to be easier, but I'm in the In Between space again and am scrabbling about worse than a rabbit on tiles.
And the similes are easier to write, and I constructed a monologue describing my skills in my Oddspeak, but that doesn't change where I am.
Oddspeak is the word I've coined just now. I once wrote a blog post in Oddspeak, last year, I think. It's here if you want to read it.
I can't think of another word for it now. If you read the previous post, you'll notice that it's super lyrical and super involved. It's laborious to speak, because of the double statements and constant comparisons, but the way it weaves back and forth is designed to conjure an image in the mind, layered and built on with every line, every syllable, until the image appears alive and strong, and very, very real and now...
...and I'm doing it now, aren't I?
I think the first instances of me using this kind of language was when I got mad in school. The use of big words weights your statements, and the time it takes for the other person to get what you're yabbering on about usually buys enough time to solidify the argument in your own head.
But that's not the purpose of me trying to write now, to get the thoughts out of my head because I'm stuck in my house at the moment, too freaked out to go look for more jobs.
Last night was Skype night - Wednesday always is. And I got to catch up with my folks, and gave them the lowdown on how I'd thrown my resume at eight different places yesterday, and I was actually really pleased with it, considering that I'd been nearly paralyzed with anxiety for most of it.
Dude, I do not like this job hunting business.
And the response to 'I gave out eight resumes at local places looking for work' was 'are you looking in career-oriented places'?
I'm not at the moment. I'm stuck in this boggery right now, because I just need a brainless job, and I don't want to leave Newcastle this year, but the kind of job I need to go get to be doing what I want to do will pretty much without fail require me to move.
Dad suggested one he'd found right away, and the title and description made it sound exactly where I wanted to be.
But it's in Melbourne.
Why is everything in my industry in Melbourne I don't even want to go there it's too cold and I've only just established my life here and it's too far away and moving and stress and friends....
*Flips table*
There's other jobs out there like this. I'm reading through things now and they're exciting to look at, but so far away. The stress of even considering these is making my palms sweat.
I was kind of hoping that I could just stay in Newcastle for a little longer. Find out if there's anything here I should be staying for - there's stacks going on with my church in either case - and then perhaps entertain the idea of leaving if it didn't mean leaving so many people behind.
I feel like I'm waiting around for other things, too, or waiting to see how those things unfold, but I'm running out of time, and I've picked an industry you need like five years experience to be in entry level anyway, and I have my cosplay, but it's still not amazing compared to the professionals I see at cons, and...
...and I'm sorry I'm babbling. And not sorry.
Look, the next blog post I'm writing is going to be on the hike I did in December. Much less intrusive, more about my stupid hat.
There's a lot going on but I'm a long way from having the momentum to get at any of it. And I feel like I should have gotten onto this earlier.
So, pretty much exactly how things were just after I finished High School.
At least I didn't bom out with uni.
On the bright side, I found an incredibly complex recipe for Turkish Delight on Tuesday. Some of you will know this, and some won't, but I've picked up a habit of baking to decrease stress levels. And I don't have an oven.
But that's okay here, because I don't need an oven for Turkish Delight. I just need a buttload of sugar and four days to work on it.
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.
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 yetanotherposttodowithhollows. 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.
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.
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.
