Following my own advice

I have this philosophy about life that if you really want to change something about your life, the best (and only) way to go about it is by changing your habits. Move your house, stop smoking, start drinking more, or less, start drinking hot chocolate, walk instead of drive, install a new browser. Anything, really, related or unrelated to what you want to change. Apart from having proved the theory to myself over and over, I believe it works because changing one’s habits causes one’s daily neuron firings to change, which causes thoughts to changes, and which causes life to change. Not always exactly in the way expected, but any change is good, because it’s often the absence of change that is the problem.

The ‘problem’ wit my life was that things have been feeling, well, bleh. Partly because of the winter, but it’s been there all year, although it’s worse now. I think it has a lot to do with my MSc project not getting of the ground, and also doing too much sitting around doing theoretical work. The awesome thing is that I didn’t even sit down and think about a habit that I should change, it just happened.

I was here, at my flat, last night, trying to mail my supervisors to get this damn Brettanomyces wine show on the road, whilst listening to Jamie Lidell. And It happened. I started dancing. And I danced and danced and danced. See, the thing is, I love dancing. More than lots of things. But, for some reason, I’ve not really done that in a while. Perhaps because I’ve been too unfit to enjoy it, perhaps because my friend who I always used to dance with hasn’t been feeling like it, perhaps because the DJ at the club we always go to has been sucking, and perhaps because the living situation hasn’t been as conducive to listening to weird music and doing a random boogie. But wow. It felt so so so good. i know, it was a little exercise-endorphin trip, but it was also more than that. And I thought, damn! I need to do this more. So i’ve resolved to do it more or less every day.

By the way, it’s working already…

Almost Grownup

One of my friends (who I would thank profusely in this post if they actually spent any time on the internet) gave me the Almost Famous extended cut DVD (called Untitled) for my birthday. I haven’t seen this movie in years, but I remember loving it, so I started watching it earlier this evening. The movie is better than I remember, because the way the music works with the movie is absolutely awesome, and it reminded me of how I used to feel about music when I was a teenager. I love music more now, I think, but I loved it in a different and novel way then. And i found the weirdest thing happening. In fact, it is something I thought would never ever happen. Not in a million years. I missed being a teenager. Let me repeat that. I missed being a teenager. In spite of all the awkwardness, the stupidness, the angst, the acne, and all that. The thing is, the movie made me remember something of what I used to be. It captures that one awesome thing about being a teenager so well; the possibility of being ale to become whatever and whoever you want. Because you can. Which is awesome. When you’re that age, you start to get to know what you like and who you’d like to be, but you’re still wildly idealistic, which makes it awesome. Being 23 is suddenly different. I almost feel I’m a grownup, because the people around me are starting to act like grownups, and I suppose so am I. I’ve sortof decided what career I’m going to follow for the rest of my life (sortof because things always change…) and I may even have already met the person I’m supposed to spend the rest of my life with. (It always creeps me out when I think about the fact that my parents were already married at 23.)

The awesome thing about being this age, though, is the fact that I am still young enough to dream and dream and dream, but the tools to make those dreams happen are there now. I’m not an idiot just out of high school anymore! Regardless of how big my dreams were; I was just an idiot with big dreams… And another cool thing is the fact that some of my small , almost stupid dreams of how my life would be are already true. These are things like being able to cook and bake for other people without having to ask for permission first. Not feeling guilty about anything I do. Having a bakery right next to my house that makes awesome croissants. And being a small part of a pretty damn awesome branch of science. Life is good.

P. S.  A final thought on the movie… It has Zooey Deschanel in it, who happens to be one of my favourite actresses now…

My daily dose

It’s such a normal thing. It’s late Monday morning. I decide to quickly walk to the shop that is theoretically about 100m away from my flat, but is practically about a block away, in order to search for punch ingredients for Friday night’s party. It’s a warm, sunny day in winter, so I’m wearing a pink pinafore dress – that comes to just above my knees – a black t-shirt and some furry flat boots. I do look cute, but not sexy, Just nice and comfy.

As I’m approaching the front gate of my complex, I see the garbage collection truck arriving. Mondays are trash collection days. As I get closer, I see that one of the workers is looking at me. I make eye contant accidentally, but then look away immediately and drop my head. As I pass the man – trapped because passing him is the only way to get out of my complex; he starts shouting at me in the line of;

Hey sexy lady, look at me…

My name is…

I try to block out his words, because hearing them upsets me, but hearing the detail upsets me more. But I’m still angry. I’m angry that he, random stranger, has the power to degrade me like this sue to the mere fact that he is a man and I am a woman! I used to walk to class more often last year and it happened to me quite regularly. Eating away at the health of my soul.

There are two extremely sad things about this. The first is that I have no power to fight back, nobody to lodge some sort of ‘complaint’ about because out of hundreds of trash collection workers I have no case. And the lack of punishment and even acknowledgment of negative behavior will make this man think it’s okay, and will definitely make him think it’s okay to do it again and possibly okay to sexually harass other women in more severe ways, like potentially raping them. And perhaps this is the root of this country’s severe rape problem. The other sad thing, is that the actions of this man reinforced the traces of classicism, racism and sexism that I have inside of me.  And this will cause me to fear and hate a little bit all men like him, although they are probably not all like him.

It’s time (and it’s always been time) that the message gets out there that

IT’S DEFINITELY NOT OKAY!

All these things

Just a moment ago, I was busy listening to my favourite singing identical twin lesbians’ (relatively new) album. (Tegan & Sara, for those of you who don’t know.) I was also busy trying to work on a slideshow for a presentation I have next week, but was very much distracted by the multitude of vegetative matter that had sprouted in my garden due to the winter drizzle. The thing is, I’m struggling lots with this presentation, for the simple reason that;

I HAVE TOO MANY SUPERVISORS!

Seriously. I was talking to my beloved about them a couple of weeks ago, and he raised the question of how many supervisors I actually have. So I counted them;

1 x sensory science supervisor at Food Science

1 x winemaking supervisor

1 x wine chemistry supervisor

1 x analytical chemistry supervisor

1 x winemaking supervisor that used to be part of my previous project but now is just in the background as some sort of consulting presence

1 x multivariate statistical supervisor sitting in Norway in the town of As, sortof keeping a watchful eye…

That makes six in total… Way too many I’d say. See, the main problem I’m having with them is the fact that they all have their own ideas about what I should be doing, and some of them have too concrete ideas about what I should be doing whilst other don’t really care enough… This seems particularly to be a problem with the first four, because they seem to be the only four that actually sit in meeting with me and disagree about what I should be doing. It almost feels like I need another team, almost like a supervisor mediation team. Because I seem to have figured at least one of them out, but I’m only now starting to figure the rest of them out. Which makes this whole thing difficult, almost like an academic psychological minefield.

Hopefully, though, we will all soon agree, and I will soon have an actual project. Which would be awesome!