Not actually grumpy

Hello there! I hope the new year is finding you well. It's finding me very well tbh. The general vibe, as far as I can tell from tumblr, is fuck last year this year rules? Which is something I can get behind. I'm glad I've documented the past few years on this blog, because I can see my own progression and remember that I've come a long way. I'm feeling very positive. I'm doing cheesy *positivity* things without shame, because they make me feel better. #Survival is so much more important than nonchalance and being cool. That is the theme this year. Shake off the shackles of irony and sarcasm. Stop pretending you don't care about yourself and what happens to you. Tell yourself you can do things. It makes you realise you weren't being realistic, you were actually holding yourself back.

Things I have done this year already:

1. Revisited my nano 2012 story and begun editing it.
2. Worked on the story of my nano 2013 story.
3. Started a story for a competition.
4. Almost sold out of Moss Piglet #1, and sold it at the zine fair yesterday.
5. Kind of successfully pushed work out of my mind while I'm not there (a work in progress)
6. Bought a new cymbal that I am in love with.
7. Hung out with nice people more. (being less socially anxious)(a work in progress)
8. Made some jewelry.
9. Played some gigs. (Bar Open + Boney)

So yeah. Going well.


How are you?

25

I turned twenty five a week ago. It was cool. These tights made my legs look really pale. These new shoes!!!

I've been thinking about writing something to do with age and how different it feels, but I'm not sure. The past three years I've been twenty two in my mind, and now suddenly I'm twenty five. It felt kind of scary leading up to it, but now it feels normal. Kind of good? Twenty one year olds seem very young. I guess they always were.

Whatever, life continues, regardless of your feelings. It's good. It means you won't be stuck doing the same old shit forever. I feel like I've been in a rut, and it's taken a long time to get out, but I'm finally making progress. I feel like I've also given up on the 'this is the year everything's going to change' attitude. That's some hollywood bullshit. And it gets in the way of real life. In which things change slowly, and never by themselves.

If you make cakes, your life will be filled with cakes. How good is that?! And I don't mean that as some cheesy metaphor for the cakes of life. I mean actual delicious cakes. The ones above were made by my friends, and they were coconut cakes. The best.

Space Butts

Can't believe holographic material and space are actually a trend right now... but I am NOT complaining. Who knows when this much shiny shit will be in stores again? I'm wearing something very similar to this to our gig tonight at The Tote... playing front bar! Amazing! COME AND WITNESS.

Galentines Day

It may or may not have been a coincidence, but I dyed my eyebrows pink on valentines day! Romantic, right? My boyfriend Oscar didn't even buy me any bears. Devvoed.

Instead I went out for dumplings and dessert story with my beautiful friend Ashlee, who runs a makeup blog as well as a personal one. Way better than bears.

Makeuppppp

So I guess over the Christmas sale period I've gone a little crazy with the makeup. I've never been the type of person who uses anything more than concealer and a kohl pencil, up until about a year ago, but you know. People change. Makeup blogs are a big part of that, if not the main part. I always thought of makeup as something boring, to highlight a person's "best features" and conceal their flaws etc. I'm still not interested in that part of it, although I do find it interesting how a technique like contouring can make someone look completely different. I'm interested in the more theatrical part of it, like how can a person make themselves as colourful as possible? and other THRILLING QUESTIONS. Anyway. Here's what I bought.

Illamasqua Fundamental Palette, Pure Pigment in Zeitgeist, and Illuminator in Glimmer. EcoTools eyeshadow and angled eyeliner brush. Revlon nailpolishes in Popular and Zealous. And Revlon Lip Butter in Gumdrop.

And this is what I did with it:

Yeah, I'm a complete amateur. But I'm having fun. The eyeshadow is really nice, I love the colours, but I think I'm going to need an eyeshadow primer. They're not bright enough because my skin is a bit darker. Also it's oily so they slide off after a while. I'm used to this happening with pretty much all eyeshadows though, so it's time to invest in a primer. As usual I bought a weird pastel lip colour, which goes against every rule for my skin tone, but whatever! idk.

I feel profesh now that I have brushes! Yay.

November

Well, it's the end of November, and I finished my novel a day early. Or I should say, I finished 50k words. It's nowhere near finished. It has a start and an ending, but I mean... the middle is pretty weird, to say the least. There's more than a few loose ends. It's more like a tangled ball of string than a knitted sweater. If you know what I mean.

My progress graph.. got a little sketchy in the middle.

I've found Nanowrimo to be a very positive experience. If there's anyone out there who's dreamed of writing a novel, I'd urge them to sign up next year, even if it sounds impossible. It's totally possible, I just did it. I also did it with literally no planning. On October 31st, I was only just finished moving house. I had no time at all to think about it, and on November 1st I literally just opened a word document and wrote the first thing that came into my head. Somehow that turned into a story. And now I have 50k words of story.

Which is immense! For me, anyway. I've never, in any way written that many words before. Usually my stories peter out after about a paragraph. Let alone 90 pages.

Over the month I've really come to appreciate what the Nano website peeps do for us as well. They do it for no profit, it's free to sign up, and the only reason they do it is because they want heaps of people to write novels. They get famous and not-famous-but-inspiring writers to give pep talks throughout the month, which really keeps you going. They know how you're feeling, and they help all they can. I owe them, hardcore.

So I've written my first novel. It feels both better and not as exciting as I thought it would feel. There's a sense of awe that I always had for people who wrote novels, like it was this impossible thing that I would never achieve even though I longed to. It's kind of obvious now, but the first thing you notice is that it's actually very easy. You just keep writing. The hard part is writing anything good. That's where the not-so-exciting bit comes in. Most of it was pretty bad, and the plot is intensely holey.

But, you know. I had fun. My housemate got me a 1st novel cake. I wrote a novel. :)

Oh, almost forgot. Did our first gig at a venue, The Lounge. Was Rad.

And lastly, here's me looking cute for work.

When they talk about bad blood, they don't mean us

Ughhhhh the Jickkkssss. As soon as I saw Malkmus' little face it was like a familiar happiness. The Jicks are one of those bands I still get chills listening to, for reals. Goosebumps and shit. I was smiling the whole time. Except when I was angrily frowning at the dickheads in the audience. Seriously, Corner Hotel? Shouting out requests the second song in? Shouting out Pavement songs?! So fucking disrespectful. Dickheads and technical difficulties aside, they played amazingly. It was a little sad to be Janet-less, but their new drummer is awesome, and has the bonus of looking like Ron Swanson.

Sadly, (in my opinion,) they played Summer Babe as their last track. It felt like giving in to the assholes in the audience, and I was embarrassed to be unwillingly lumped in as part of that group. While I love Pavement, I went to see the Jicks, and they have SO many great songs. I would have rather heard any Jicks song than that. They didn't play a single song from Real Emotional Trash, and I speculated that maybe it was because of the lack of Janet, or maybe they had planned to and ended up cutting them like 1% (which I was sure they were going to play, but didn't because everyone was shouting it.)

But, you know. It was still amazing. In the end, watching them play together is all I need, even if Malkmus was drunk and silly. Maybe even because.

Descent 2nd Edition Review-ish

In highschool, my friends used to come round on Friday nights and play Descent. Not much has changed, except I'm twenty four instead of sixteen, and now we're drinking tea instead of beer. Sad times.

Except not sad at all! Second Edition Descent arrived in the post the other day (thanks Dad) and it is really, REALLY fun.

Me, or Leoric of the Book

The updates to this game have made it super fun. I mean, Descent was always super fun, but it used to take sooooo long to finish one dungeon. In four hours, we finished the first three maps. There are also outdoor scenarios as well as indoor ones, to make it more interesting, and there is a massive campaign joining all the maps together! Yay! Of course we started that. So now you can take your XP and gold into towns and upgrade your weapons and stuff.

They've made the Overlord character (pretty much a DM) more fun too, as there are relics to find for them and the hero characters.

The best thing so far has been how evenly matched each scenario was. Like, up until the very last turn it could have gone either way.

For anyone who hasn't played Descent before, one of my friends described it as a mixture between Warhammer and traditional RPGs, with very simplified rules. The simplicity is what makes it for me - it's a very streamlined game, not a lot of sitting around and figuring things out. And now that the individual games can be finished in around an hour, you can play it without much preparation.

Awesome.

Bad photos of cool bands

After watching a few youtube clips of Zoobombs yesterday afternoon I decided it would probably be a good idea to go and see them at their last gig in Melbourne. Turns out they were the BEST BAND EVER. High energy, funk, rock and roll from Japan. I think a video or two is in order here, because it's hard to describe how cool they are without hearing them.

I am just SO GLAD I saw them. I had no idea who they were before yesterday and I know they're going to be one of my favourite bands now. Their show was crazy, they had soo many build ups and at one point the singer acted out giving his bass player a blow job. It was intense. But mostly, it was really really fun. 

A couple of their support bands were really good too; we came in on Sick Sad World shouting something like, 'Sexist scum!', which of course I give the seal of approval. Mangelwurzel were seriously good. Their singer sounds like Conan Mockasin crossed with Iggy Pop. They were feral punks who could actually sing and write good music. And they're apparently friends with one of my friends, so... more of that to come, hopefully. Here're some blurry pix because I've still been to lazy to learn how to use my camera properly inside:

Sick Sad World:

Mangelwurzel:

Zoobombs:

This is what I wore today, which is similar to what I wore to the gig last night:

That's right, slime hair. It's neon. I am very happy with it, and I hope it doesn't wash out instantly. Also, I've been meaning to do a mini review on Lush's Emotional Brilliance stuff as I get it... but I have no money so all I have so far is this one lipstick, called Strong. I LOVE it though. I've been looking for an orange lipstick for a while, and this one is BRIGHT orange. It takes a bit of getting used to, as if you put too much on at once it gets very smudgy and feathery. It only requires a little bit of product and it goes a long way. However if you want to get a really bright colour you need to wait until the first layer is dry and then apply another one. Not too much effort, really. And once it's dry... It seriously feels like you're wearing nothing, and it doesn't come off at all, even through eating and kissing. Although it's completely dry, it doesn't dry your lips out! My only complaint would be that it's hard to get a solid line going around the edge of your lips, it tends to look a little 'soft', kind of like a really pigmented lip stain. But I haven't tried using a lip brush yet, so maybe that would help.

That's it for me today. :)

Birthday Beehive

Dress - Topshop, Cardigan - MNG, Tights - Forever 21, Shoes - Asos

Officially 24. We tried to play a game of Talisman, but it quickly dissolved into laughing and drinking, so we switched to just that. I got a beautiful rabbit ring from my friend Liv, who's recently been to India. I also got these magic book earrings, handmade by my boyfriend (!!!) No words. One has an all seeing eye on it, and the other has a mouth.

It's pretty weird turning twenty four. I think it's the first birthday I've really not wanted to have. Twenty three was a good number - old enough to be taken seriously, young enough to not have much responsibility. Twenty four brings questions from relatives like, 'When are you going to decide which real job you're going to do?' and 'Are you still living in a share house?'


The hassling gets tiring, but I'm confident that although I'm completely lost, I think that's ok. I know what I don't want to do, and I think it'll take a while to know what I do want to do. I don't think I need to know at twenty four. We'll see what I think at twenty five. I just quit my job at the bakery, and that's like a light at the end of a dark, stinky tunnel filled with snakes. Once my last two weeks are over, I'll hopefully have a job somewhere else I can stand, and also have better hours so I can have more time off. Then I can look for a new house, and try to get into position in my life I'm happy with.


Until then... twenty four.