Get Away

I acquired this dress from a vintage dress sale on Lygon St just after Christmas. It's from Japan and maybe that makes me like it more, although I already liked it very much. It gives me vibes like this for some reason:

I saw Hunx and his Punx on Sunday night, which was awesome. I hadn't heard much of their stuff beforehand but it was very fun. I've been listening to this band a lot, and this song on repeat:

Very teenage. I made a birthday cake for my housemate Zoe last night, it was carrot and pineapple:

I haven't felt like blogging much, to be honest. It seems like every other day I'm at work, doing nothing when I could be doing something. My resolutions for this year have been to eat healthier, and to get a new job. Hospitality wears you down after a while, and even though I like the places I work and the people I work with, the nature of the industry is to make you feel like shit. Like a servant, and a cleaner. At some point I'd like to stop cleaning toilets and people's dishes. I'm not sure how or what I'm going to do, but it has to be something else. So the quest begins.

Speaking of quests... wasn't The Hobbit awesome? A few things let it down but I still thoroughly enjoyed it. I don't care if it's drawn out, to be honest I'm just happy to spend three hours in middle earth.

Charles Burns

I've been reading a lot of comics lately. There's something about good comics that I still find mysterious; it's how I used to think about a lot of things as a child, but as an adult most things become apparent and opaque from jadedness. Maybe it's the fact that I'll never be able to make them myself (I'm terrible at drawing) that give them that impossible kind of feel. I can only dream about collaborating on one.

I discovered Charles Burns not long ago, when I was in Minotaur looking for Chris Ward. I'd read he was inspired by Charles Burns in that Rookie interview, and as soon as I saw the cover of X'ed Out I knew it was going to be the best thing ever.

It's just so weird. Weirder than anything else you're going to read. His style of drawing reminds you of pop art, which makes the whole thing even weirder because the storyline is anything but pop. It's familiar and completely new at the same time. It's the kind of thing that makes you wish you'd made it, or could make anything like it.

Anyway, I got my housemate Black Hole for Christmas, and I'm going to read it really soon. I'm excited.

Then grease me up, woman!

Happy New Years! I took these a week or so ago but it's been too crazy to do any blogging. The gig last night was awesome and the party was even better. I'm ashamed to say (not really) we brought the cray. And tomorrow night we've another gig at the public bar in north melbourne. Woo!

I'm showing off my new necklace made by my housemate Zoe, isn't it excellent? Also my new simpsons pins. Which are also excellent. Excellency all round. I got a bunch of Lush for Christmas too. Excellent!

It's the end of the world as we know it

So this is prob the last post I do before the New Year. It's been a weird year, but I'm glad I've been doing this blog for such a length of time. It's nice, when you feel like you've done nothing, to be able to look back and realise that you did do things.

Hopefully next year makes more sense. Until then, hope everyone has a nice Christmas or whatever and resurfaces in 2013 with their brains and bodies intact.

Day Off

It's nice to have a day off. I haven't been wearing anything worth photographing recently because I've been working most days, and when I haven't I've just sat around, wallowing in relaxation. I really appreciated Meagan of Latterstyle doing a photo series on work clothes. Even though both my works are pretty relaxed about clothing rules, when you're working in hospitality there's no way you can wear anything nice. I dress for practicality and choose the things which I don't mind getting covered in beer. And of course, I never wear heels. Which is why it was nice to break them out today, even if the boyf thinks they're ugly. I'm pretty sure I was prompted to buy them because of the ones Mary Kate's wearing in this picture.

Which are probably like Celine or something but whatevs.

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.

So

My long, explainable absence from blogging and the internet in general has been interesting. Everyone who knows me already knows what was going on, but to recap - moved house and writing a novel. November is NaNoWriMo, or National Novel Writing Month, in which some crazy peeps try and write a whole novel in one month. Since the house-moving coincided exactly with the start of the month, let's just say it's been pretty insane so far. I doubt I'll be blogging again until the end of the month anyway, because it's pretty hardcore and I'm not the fastest writer. I've also never written this much on one piece in my life. That in itself feels pretty good. I'm just over halfway through it now, and this is definitely the hardest point. There are feelings of failure and resignation as the realisation sets in that the plot needs to be going somewhere now. But anyway, I'm still going to do it and hopefully finish on time, and I can rest and edit later.

Here are some pix from random stuff in the past couple of weeks:

See you in December. xx