I DID THAT!

Everybody has, at some point, experienced the ‘I Did That’ feeling. It’s the desire to phone your mother and expect her to be as excited as when you won that Art Attack competition at school; it’s the way the woman who cut my hair yesterday must have felt because I looked great; it’s the act of opening and drinking an entire bottle of celebratory wine on your own because you have yet to figure out that’s a terrible life decision.

The ‘I Did That’ feeling: One of the best feelings a human can feel.

This week was far from perfect, but I had a couple of I Did That moments, some great, some small, and I would like to share some of them with you.

First: I built a lamp post.

Look at it, in all its glory.

I built this at work and you can see my very messy desk behind it.

It doesn’t sound like much – the lamp post was just something that came in a box and had to be put together. But I wired it! I had to connect all the wiring for the lights and had to wire a three pin plug!! And it worked!!!

I did an actual real life air-punch when the lights came on and the guy I work with looked at me like I was a crazy person, but it was worth it!

I made a resolution to get better at my job this year and this really felt like a huge thing because that lamp post is going to be used in a production of Avenue Q and that feels pretty cool.

Second: Romeo and Juliet

I auditioned for a touring production of Romeo and Juliet.

A really cool Exeter-based theatre company wants to take the production to several schools in Exeter and Devon, and they liked my audition!

I am going to get to work with this amazing company, I’m going to be using puppets and story telling, and I am really excited because the people running it seem like they’re going to be a lot of fun to work with! It’s also the first audition I’ve done in just under a year, so it feels really good to get a positive outcome.

Third: My hair.

It seems a bit unfair to take credit for this. But I’m going to anyway.

I went to a new hairdresser. I had, previously, been going to the same hair dresser for the four years I have lived in Exeter, but he emigrated, which I am 97% sure had nothing to do with me.

I’ve been putting off getting my haircut because change it scary and I pretty much always hate meeting new people, but I did it! Because I am an adult in control of her destiny, damn it.

Have a lovely week everyone.

A.

Writing Wrongs*

A Sense of Self

He spends his life falling through cracks, trying to imitate others.
He often stops to wonder if he is anything new, a strange wonder the world had yet to face.
Or is he just the product – an amalgamation – of all that he has seen; all that he has heard; all that has come before him?

It is not a new thought but it has started keeping him awake.
He concludes that he is as meaningless as it is possible to be.
He would pull his duvet up, over his head, press it tightly into his mouth and scream if he didn’t feel that other people had done this already, and he is sick of doing what others have already made their own.

If only he could see. By falling short of the Greats; by occupying this space in between, he is finding his own way in the world, just off the tracks beaten by those who have been and gone.
If only he could see that, maybe he would think those tracks mattered.

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There. Have some more experimental writing. You lucky, luck things.
I don’t like the ending but I don’t have time to do anything about it.

I have, for quite a while now, been trying to do a little bit of writing each day – often free writing, sometimes just experimenting with common ideas and themes, trying to find ways of expressing them in the limited yet all-too-variable form of words.
I have also been trying to blog every single day.

Now, working night shifts, keeping irregular hours, trying to apply for jobs, and trying to have enough of a life on top of all of that so I don’t just want to spend every day in floods of tears has been difficult and, quite often, either the time I want to spend writing elapses before I get anywhere, or else I write really boring entries on this blog and then I end up wondering why I’m keeping up with it at all if I have nothing to say.

So, for the time being, I have decided to combine the time I want to spend writing and the time I want to spend blogging. Maybe not every single day as a lot of what I write is totally illegible/sometimes not fit to be read but – at least until I get a day job – I’m afraid that this blog may start filling with meandering thoughts and abstract short pieces of prose.
So, sorry about that.

Then again, it’s probably a bit of a relief not to hear me moaning on about how difficult it is to be a graduate with a nice flat and loving parents and a job which pays the bills and enough money in her purse to buy too much red lipstick…

Final thought: I tried to take about eight different selfies today and this is the only one I like… I wonder if that says something about me…

Alice.

*I think I may have stolen this title from something else. I can’t figure out what. If it was you I am sorry, but there is also a chance it is self-plagiarism and I just don’t remember…