Life in motion.

This blog post is very heavily inspired by Rosianna’s video about her need for movement, not just physically but in her life; having things changing and developing and moving forward and not remaining still and static. You should watch the video…you should possibly watch is more than once (as I have; it makes more and more sense to me every time). This blog post is kind of just me trying to articulate some of my thoughts and personal responses to this idea of…motion vs stillness in life.

I’ve barely blogged in the past almost-a-year, and in that time far more has happened and far more has changed than I can even begin to express. I’ve been in a state of perpetual motion and development; and since around March it’s all been incredibly positive and directional and just…really, really great in ways I would have never anticipated before going to uni. And it’s defiantly been very…movement-y. Very fast.

And then after my final exams…for the first time in a long time, I stopped. And it was really, really nice for a while. I was left with this after glow of achievements and failures and development and movement and just everything that had happened…I was really, really happy. And I spent a lot of time just sitting in pubs and playing cards with friends and having a break; I hadn’t stopped working since around March, and I hadn’t had any real, emotional respite since arriving at uni.

And although this was still, there was movement; although it was a sad kind of movement. I spent most of my final few weeks of my first year of university with the same general group of friends…but an ever decreasing group of friends as more and more left to go home. Some will be back next year, some won’t; but with all of them it was sad and this kind of movement felt…slow and sad but also poignant.

I stayed quiet late, but finally, I also went home.

The packing process (which somehow managed to take two days…), was good; throwing away stuff was good, and although carrying my bags home was a nightmare, leaving halls was good. Partly because I didn’t like my halls aaalll that much, but partly because leaving a fixed location is good. I’ve increasingly come to dislike being in one fixed location/residence.

But then I got home, and everything stopped.

Even towards the end of the university year, the rather static nature of my existence, although I was having a lovely time, was starting to make me increasingly anxious and restless. And getting home only made that a hundred times worse. Although I have a lot of amazing things lined up for the future, the fact that they weren’t then and happening made them feel…incredibly unreal to me. This was coupled with the conclusive nature of the moment; the first year of university being over and the “end”-ness of it. That, and a lack of forward motion made it feel like…and obviously, consciously, I knew this wasn’t true…this was the conclusion; the finale of whatever this thing is I’m doing called life. And if this was the end; it would be a really crappy end. And that made me really dissatisfied and really…miss a lot of things that I felt might make this a better end. Except this isn’t the end. At all. This is a part of a process and as soon as I see it like that it’s all colourful and exciting and it just…makes sense.

And since then I’ve tried to work on…injecting that sense of movement into my life.

This has partly been making the present a step towards what’s looking to be a really good near future; I’m going to New Mexico, but I actually bought the plane tickets, I’ve applied for a few jobs; things like that.

But it’s also been about turning a lot of the ways I fill my time into something moving, rather than something static. Like, right now I’m blogging; which can just be an isolated activity in which I write some words and publish them and maybe people can read them. But it can also be part of a process; an exercise in documentation, but also, something I’m trying to…grow through; and be better at. I want to get back into personal blogging, and I, in general, want to get better at writing and producing more writing. I want my more political based writing to become something I’m…somewhat skilled at; that may be worth something (I don’t mean monetarily I mean…like…worth…yeah; you know what I mean).

Other things, too, like reading; reading doesn’t have to be a still thing…it informs so much who you are and become a vehicle through which you develop.

There are also more concrete, practical ways I’ve generated this sense of movement; I’ve started using goodreads to track what I’m reading and watching the books pass from to read to reading to read gives the whole thing a sense of motion.

That’s just one way I’m trying (succeeding? Yeah…I think I’m succeeding) to create movement in the things I do.

And the other thing that’s really helped, surprisingly, has been my school friends and meeting up with them and hanging out…which I haven’t done properly since Christmas in most cases. And that’s funny because, largely, I’ve seen my school friends as this static thing; this safe point of stillness while everything else around me is rapidly moving. But coming back to that base after everything that’s happened has helped give me a more solid sense of self with which to move forward. Cause my friends aren’t still, either. We’re all moving forward together.

The internet said this quote was said by Einstein, so it may or may not have been said by Einstein, but it feels relevent to this... "Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance, you must keep moving.”

London to Leeds and back again...

Until I went to university, I’d lived in London all my life. I was a Londoner through and through. I walked fast and didn’t make eye contact with people on the tube. It’s not that Londoners don’t care about each other. It’s just that they don’t care about each other’s business. Londoners in a crisis band together and look after each other. But god forbid we would smile at each other on the street! And there are upsides to this; it also allows for the anonymity of London. You can walk through the streets dressed as Captain Jack Sparrow and no one will bat an eye lid. That mentality; the “we’re all in a rush so let’s not bother each other” mentality…that made sense to me; it was how I functioned.

And then I went to university in Leeds. It’s a stereotype that Northerners are more friendly than Londoners. But it’s a stereotype that is, largely true. People smile at you in the street. Cab drivers talk to you. When I first got to Leeds, this freaked me out. Which sounds ridiculous, but when a cab driver started talking to me, I really didn’t know how to respond. When people on the street gave me a smile, my instinct was to look away. My first few trips back to London felt…safe. No one I didn’t know was going to try and interact with me and that was what I was used to.

And then there’s the pace of Leeds. A friend of mine once commented that, “Leeds has the economy of a city, but the pace of life of a town”. For a Londoner, I’m a pretty slow walker. In Leeds, I’m practically The Flash. Which is something I’m conscious of when just walking through the street, but there it doesn’t matter. But in a queue, it does. I’m honestly not sure what I find more annoying; the slow moving of the queue, or the fact that the people around me don’t seem to mind. I’ve stood in many a shop queue wanting to yell, “Does no one here have other places that they need to be?!”.

For a long time, partly because I came home very often during my early university career, I very much felt like a Londoner in Leeds. But more recently, I’ve noticed a shift in me. The slow pace of Leeds is still annoying to me…but London can seem…too fast. Getting into Kings Cross station, I was thinking “why are there so many people, why are we all moving so quickly, I can’t deal with this!”. And I’ve realised I’ve started smiling at people in the street. I didn’t even realise I was doing it when in Leeds…but in London I realised because people who I smiled at looked at me like I was crazy.

No where is quite like London, and I do love this endlessly fascinating city. But coming home, for the first time…I didn’t want to. Leeds feels so…homely to me now. And there’s something you can get from cities like Leeds that you can’t really get from London. The feeling of…potential. Something growing. There are always new and exciting things happening in London, but it’s not the same. London has, in so many ways, hit saturation point. It can do different things. But it can’t do better things than what it’s already doing. It’s so amazing there’s very little room for it to become any more amazing. But with cities like Leeds, there still growing. And that’s really exciting to watch.

I’m still a Londoner. Pushing my way through a very crowded Waterloo station the other day showed I can still get into the “head down, keep walking” London mentality. But I’m a slightly more…Northern-tinted Londoner. A “more willing to smile at people in the street” Londoner.

All dressed up and no where to go!

So today my uni halls were meant to be doing a pub crawl. The theme was my big fat gypsy wedding, but I decided since I’ve never watched that show in my life to do a gypsy inspired outfit…don’t know how far it’s particularly gypsy-ish but I do like it…mostly clothes I haven’t warn before; dress and bracelet bought from this gorgeous shop in Leeds called Ark, when it was having a 20 percent off sale (with music and champagne!), and this necklace I got in San Francisco which I’d never warn. Did two little plats at the front of my hair and pulled them back…really like my hair like this! 

But then…it rained. And pub crawls aren’t fun in the rain. So then it got called off.

I don’t actually mind; I went to dinner and met some highly amusing guys, and staying in is probably a good idea, as I’m going back to London tomorrow (yaaay! I’ve missed London so much!) and have to get up way, way too early.

So now I’m gonna go spend my evening with a beer, a sandwich, a book and my flatmates…rather than drinking my 17 drinks at the 17 pubs we would have been going to.

By lamp light...

I’m sitting in a room in my house where the light doesn’t work. We had a leak and since then…it just doesn’t turn on. So when my dad turned off all the lights in the other rooms before he went to bed, I was left with just a lamp, and my laptop light. Of course I could turn the kitchen light on if I wanted more light, but I don’t want to. I’m liking the dark. I’m liking the way that the lamplight makes things look prettier.

So I’m sitting in the lit darkness, looking through this blog post by Kayley and feeling inspired, and then I look at my write and see the deathly hallows symbol, and start thinking about how none of the hallows are really, good things; even the invisibility cloak…that’s really about hiding and although that maybe sensible, it’s not a good value to take into your life.

So then I started thinking about what good things the deathly hallows could represent, and wrote those on my arm under the symbol. And then I filmed a video about it. Now I’m downloading music for a video about the outfit I wore to Nottinghill Carnival, and writing this blog post.

I’ve been feeling tired all day…but now it almost feels nice. The sleepyness feels restful and dream like, while my eyes itching feels very…human.

I’ve done a lot of planning today. Planning for a few days ahead; some things I will do and many things I hope to write and make before I go to university and life gets very busy and I can’t write and make things for a while. And planning more long term; I chose my university classes (I, in a very Hermione Granger esque way, put down far more classes than I need to take)…though I’m sure I will change my mind and redo things later.
The future seems exciting to me right now.

I’m also working on my “Performance Theory Work Book” for a drama qualification that I’m taking. I’m starting to remember that this isn’t just a dreary task; it’s actually something that can be creative and interesting. It’s about time. It’s about dealing with the lack of time and making the most of the time we have.
I’m liking the darkness and the half light. It’s pretty. The light and shadows on my hands look pretty as I’m typing this.

Now I’m going to post this and then go back to editing the video, and then hopefully post that and then sleep. And then I’ll wake up and it will be light again and I’ll start another day.

Documentation obsession.

"We’re in a generation where, if you don’t document it, it didn’t occur." - Jesse Eisenberg

I’m obsessed with documentation. This mainly comes out in the form of photos. I know I can get annoying with the amount I’ll pull my camera out, but I love having that image that will evoke that memory that will just…be there afterwards (I also like the aesthetics of photographs, though I’m not good at taking good ones…but when a wonderful one occasionally appears through my camera lens it makes me wonderfully happy).

I also write blog posts and take dailybooth pictures and I’ve started making videos. And there’s facebook statuses. There’s a facebook app that, at the end of the year, you can go back and see all your old statuses and put them in images which you will then…well, have. I write facebook statuses with this in mind; thinking that at the end of the year, I’ll have that record.

Sometimes I take photographs or write statuses that completely share (or, as far as any experience can be shared) with those who see it. But sometimes I write or photograph things that mean something to me, but me alone (or me and people I shared the experience with); a quote, maybe, but a quote that has significance for what I’m doing or feeling at the time, or a photo of a landscape or object, but that evokes so much more with me.  

I also collect objects that remind me of things; this I’ve done all my life, literally as long as I can remember, but I have recently been doing it with a new kind of fanaticism and (some) attention to order. I love going through the things and thinking about things I’ve done and things I’ve seen and things I’ve experienced.

There are three key reasons why I’m so obsessed with doing this. First, I have this massive paranoia about…not doing anything with my life. I don’t mean, like, not really accomplishing anything (though I have that too somewhat…), but just about, being lazy and not ever really experiencing enough or creating enough or just having enough fun…I think because I am pretty naturally lazy and apathetic, and this is something I’m constantly working against. And my various forms of documentation are proof, to myself, that I have done things and am doing things.

I also just love looking at things and remembering. If things were good…or even if they weren’t good, but were powerful or important or significant…it’s nice to be able to somewhat relive those emotions from that time or experience. Clearly, there’s such a thing as spending too much dwelling on the past. But a little is just…it’s nice.

And finally…it helps me make some sort of sense of my life. With photos and fragmented pieces of prose and random quotes and video clips and leaflets and old tickets and old programmes and old newspaper clippings and many, many other bits and pieces I’ve collected…by sorting them out and having them to look at, it feels like I can make some sense of and have some grasp of what has past. You don’t know what’s coming, but you know what happened, and you can string it together to make some sort of flow. I’m a natural storyteller (I don’t mean I’m good at telling or writing stories, I just mean that my brain naturally works with and forms narratives) and understanding the narrative of my life makes me feel so much more…secure. Content. Real. Working out what’s happening in my life, backwards.

"Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards." - Soren Kierkegaard