Theme days

So, it's the first day of not-NaBloWriMo. And I want to keep blogging! If the month of blogging did nothing else, it made me realise that blogging is fun. I've always liked reading other people's blogs, but never thought I would have anything worthwhile to say. But thanks to you guys who followed and commented in October.

I have come up with an idea that will keep me blogging regularly. It's something a lot of bloggers already do, but I'm going to borrow ideas as well as start my own. And it will give me (and you lovely readers) some structure to stick to so I can write about the many things I'm passionate about, yet not worry I'm leaving anything out. It will also be a pirate rule (more of a guideline) just so I don't stress. The main idea is to get rid of rambling posts (like this one).

At the moment I don't have one for every day, but here's a list of my ideas thus far:

Wordless Wednesdays: Post pictures :D I got this idea from The Giraffability of Digressions and I'm Not Hannah

The Body Positive Thursdays: A bit wordy, but I wanted a day where I could write about the importance of positive body image.

Fiction Fridays: This was inspired by the idea in my last post, but I realised that with work and current WiPs, I wouldn't have the energy to post to another blog regularly. Hence, a once a week treat for you guys.

Swimming Saturdays: Where I can talk about what I learnt about swimming and the teaching of swimming that week.

Salsa Sundays: This one I won't start for a few weeks, as I've taken a hiatus from salsa dancing until uni finishes this year :( but keep a lookout.

And that's what I have so far. This is going to be fun.

This is Halloween!

And it's also the last day of NaBloWriMo. How did those of you participating fare? I know I've been pretty lax, but at least I posted a couple of posts a week. I'm going to give myself a pat on the back for that.
Now, don't worry, just because I've got to the end of this challenging meme, doesn't mean I'm going to slack off for a few months. The opposite in fact. If NaBloWriMo has shown me one thing, it's that a post doesn't have to be deep and meaningful every single time. Sometimes people appreciate the fluff too :)

 I went to a Halloween party last night - you might recall my previous posts with parts of my costume. I won't be posting pictures today - uni work, cleaning, friends etc getting in the way - but if I can get my act together I will post pictures in a couple of days.

 A thought: I might start another blog where I can post little bits of fiction and poetry, that is separate to this one. This won't come to fruition for another month or so, after my assessments and exams are over for the year. What do you think?


Happy Halloween!

No Tener Pelos en la Lengua

I've been a bad NaBloWriMo blogger again *ducks head sheepishly*. Moving on.

For two years now I've been studying Spanish as an elective to my degree. We've only just reached the point where we have covered all the conjugations and sentence structures. A few days ago we learnt a few sayings and this one made us all laugh, but I think it has great relevance to writing, and it will be a little mantra of mine from now on. 

No tener pelos en la lengua is translated by the text book as meaning 'to be outspoken, to be frank'. Literally it means 'to not have hairs in one's language'*. Hairy language, eh?

While we were chuckling about this, I thought it was a good way to think about one's prose or poetry, and in choosing the best words, paring back the language. This is something that John Steinbeck first taught me when I discovered Of Mice and Men in year 11. He's still one of my favourite authors. Then this year I took a poetry class and learnt it again. Then last week, Sarah at The Unwrapping reminded me of it again (go read her blog, it's beautiful). Aqui es una escritora si no tiene pelos en la lengua. (Sorry if the grammar is incorrect).

And of course, I submitted the first draft of my CP for assessment (I got 100%). One of the things my supervisor told me to do when editing is to 'tighten the language'. Get rid of all the hairs. So that is my mission over the next two days. Take my draft and turn it into something concise and sin pelos. 

On another matter, I was reading another Sarah's blog. Her latest post is on something I posted about in the first week of NaBloWriMo, body image. The post touched me, and I was so glad to see someone else speaking about the many intricacies of coming to love one's own body.
Once again, this is a website, and organisation, that is doing wonders for so many people in regards to self-love:

www.thebodypositive.org 



*Something I've yet to master, however.

9 Days

'Till Halloween! (I might count down every day until I can wear my costume, or I might not)

This is what I got up to today, among other things:

Before

and:

After

The pictures aren't great, sorry about that. But ripped stockings? This is the only time of year I'd be caught in ripped stockings. Normally I throw out a pair with the first visible rip. So when my costume called for ripped stockings, I went out and grabbed the cheapest pair I could find. It was great fun jabbing a sharp pencil through and making the holes. 

I started another part of my costume too, but you'll just have to wait until that bit is finished :)

Tomorrow I'm off to Sydney for the weekend, so you'll have to wait 'till Monday for my next post (sorry about not sticking to NaBloWriMo, these things happen, hey?).

10 Days

'Till Halloween! And until NaBloWriMo is over. But Halloween!

I bought the second piece for my costume yesterday. I didn't even mean to, but I saw this mask:

And it is perfect for the image I have in my head. The whole outfit came into my head because I wanted to create something around this top, which I love and have only worn once:

From Bardot

I'm not going to tell you exactly what I have planned, but as I get each piece (and progressively destroy each piece for effect), I'll post pictures here. And at the end you'll get to see the whole shebang.

Here is the first piece I got: 

From Tree of Life

How glamorously creepy, hey? I just realised, posting the picture now, that it's not actually a spider cause it only has six legs. It'll still have the right effect though.

My Special Place -

My special writing place that is (I took the tip from yesterday's NaBloWriMo).

Well, I don't really have one. At the moment I have a cluttered desk in the office I share with my housemate. That's where I wrote most of the first draft of my CP.
 Right now, I'm actually writing from my bed :) and I feel lazy admitting that but hey, each to their own, right?
 And recently, I've been working at the kitchen table a lot. This past week, my housemate has come home to me Twittering/Blogging/home-working (like how homework was last there?) with a bowl of soup next to my laptop. That's also where I edited the first draft of my CP.

 So what you can probably gather, is that I write wherever my whim takes me. When I'm journalling, I literally write everywhere: bus, kitchen, living room, outside, at work (when I'm not in the water), friend's house, dinner (yup, I'm a great person to invite out...*), everywhere. Except the bathroom. I have never written anything in the bathroom. I bet there's someone out there who writes in the bathroom.

Okay, so this post has taken a turn for the slightly weird. I'm okay with that, but I'm not sure where to go from here. Other than this:

Remember, tomorrow is Blog Action Day 2010! And I'll be talking about the importance of being safe around water, and the importance of water as a commodity.


*I'm actually not that bad. Besides, half my friends have accepted this about me, and the other half are writers themselves.

Also, sorry for the jumpy post today.

What to say, what to say.

Hi guys.

I was almost not going to post today because I can't settle on any one topic, none of them seem interesting enough to blog about. They are things like food, feeling helpless about the state of the world, and why I love my job. All are things that are valid, but I haven't been able to give any of them enough thought to come up with a cohesive and worthy post.

But. I will talk about the weather.

It is Spring here in Canberra, and for a few glorious weeks, I was able to sit and enjoy it. It was that perfect amount of warmth that only ever comes in Spring or Autumn, and there were blossoms everywhere, along with the new little green leaves of the imported trees. 

Well, the blossoms are still around, but the sun is gone. Because the thing about Spring is that she is fickle. It has been raining all day. The rain itself is lovely. When I'm inside. Going outside is not so nice, especially walking from the bus stop in the dark through squelchy grassland. 

The thing about being Australian (and I will cover more of this on Blog Action Day*), is that sometimes it feels like an unspoken rule that one does not complain about the rain. It is such a valuable source. Especially since the local dams have collectively been hovering around the 50% mark for the past year or so. Only in the last month have they crept over. Today they reached 80%.

My point is, while the rain is great for our general well-being, it would be nice to have some sun back. I was just getting to enjoy it. 

*Due to my technological failings, I've been unable to load the widget :( So for now I will just make links :)

Yes, I have a new layout, it's purrty. Poem 2

This poem is an interpretation of my lecturer's dislike of the use of exclamation marks and angels in poetry. I get his point, there are times and places for these things, and never because the poet or writer is lacking the suitable word or metaphor. So, enjoy my little parody of what a poem shouldn't be:

Poem Two

Angels! Glistening
like turgid jelly
on the moss. Overpowering
with their poetic
grace. Look!
I say
they are angels!


In other news Astrid may actually be homeless in a couple of weeks... More on this later if the events I'm hinting at actually take place.

More other news: I've joined Blog Action Day 2010. This year's focus is Water.
Taking a gander at my profile, you'll see that I'm a swim teacher. More to the point, I'm an Instructor of Swimming and Water Safety, but just say I'm a swim teacher.
I also live in Australia, a country where there is almost always water restrictions in some part of the country at any given time.
My point to all this, is that Water is a simple concept that many people take for granted in terms of safety and as a commodity. So on October 15, I'm going to do a post about my passion for these two aspects of Water.
I encourage anyone reading this who has a blog, to join in. If you're doing NaBloWriMo, it will be a great thing to post about.

That's it from me until tomorrow, where I will return to the serious (but not too serious) with my poems :D

Love it.

So, not off to a good start with the NaBloWriMo thing. But here is my first post and I will do my best to post for the rest of the month (fingers crossed). Here's my reason for not posting for the first three days of the month:

I'm up in Sydney visiting my dear family. The weather here is cool but the humidity is creeping in again already. Unlike Canberra where as soon as the sun goes away, it's cold again.

On to other things, like what I really want to post about today.

Positive body image. It's one thing that I've always been fairly good at maintaining. Mostly thanks to my Mum, who never allowed me to diet, and always encouraged me to maintain healthy habits for just that - my health.

Of course, I always have those bad days - everyone does. This morning for example, and yesterday. For some reason, just looking in the mirror, wearing outfits that normally make me feel good about myself, I felt... (now, I really hate the connotations of this word) fat.

The sad thing is, I know I'm not fat. I know I'm curvy, in a good way, a way that I usually like and am definitely not large. But for some reason, I was feeling bleugh.

Now, writing this at the end of the day, I feel better about myself. I just kept thinking to myself - you are a healthy, active individual, and skinny does not equal healthy all the time, curves are gorgeous. Out and about this afternoon I caught a glimpse of myself in a shop window and felt happy with what I saw.

My point to all this... I have friends who have terrible self esteem about their body, or admit that they know they are hot, yet are constantly striving for 'perfection'. This is an issue that applies to many women and men. The statistics are more concentrated on young women, but it affects people of any gender and demographic.

I also want to emphasise that just because I am saying that big is beautiful, I am not saying that thin is ugly. All sizes are beautiful. I think people many people would lead happier and much healthier lifestyles if they accepted who they are, and grew to love what they saw in the mirror.

The Body Positive is an American organisation run by a good friend of mine. The aim of it is to reach people and educate them on how to love and care for your body without striving for the One idea of what people should look like that is seen so often in the media.

As a last note, I feel I need to explain my feelings towards the word 'fat'. The word, especially in Western societies, brings to mind ugliness. Some people are bigger than others. This is okay, but the words I think should be used are big or curvy. They do not imply the same thing as 'fat'.

Part of my problem is watching my friends use the word as if firing a bullet charged with hate towards themselves, their mouths twisted. Big and curvy are words that conjure beauty in my mind.

Finally, if anything I have said in this post offends anyone, I apologise. I do not apologise for my opinions, but only if they become misconstrued.

Mishmash

Hi hi,

I'm in a flat mood today, so I feel this blog will not be as full of exclamation marks as usual. Possibly that's a good thing though, as F Scott Fitzgerald did say that using exclamation marks was like laughing at your own jokes. Oh dear, that might be what I've been doing in all my other posts. Cringe.

Anywhos, I have a few announcements:

1. I'm joining NaBloWriMo, because I thought it might be a good idea to actually force myself to use this blog more than once a month.

2. I now have a twitter account! And I will add a follow tag on the side of my page for those intersted :)

3. I don't talk about my swim-teaching much here, although it is one of the joys of my life - I love teaching this valuable skill to kids, and seeing them improve each term, because of ME is amazing. Sorry, I'm getting clucky, ignore me if you like.

So, I'm doing a Towards Competitive Strokes course this weekend, and I'm looking forward to it. It'll help me instruct kids on how to do butterfly, breastroke, and the other strokes with more finesse. I'm doing it mainly because I've never been sure of butterfly, and now I will feel more confident in my teaching ability.

4. Last post, I promised to let you know how my CP was going - it's going okay. I'm still on the first draft, and I'm at 10450/15000 words. I can't wait to finish the first draft and edit it down.

I should mention that I'm having lots of FUN with it. I can write freely for the first time in my degree. It feels good to have free-reign over my characters for longer than 15oo words.

So that's me for the month, until I start NaBloWriMo, in which you'll be hearing from me every day. Are you quaking in your boots yet?