It's not procrastination; it's a higher form of planning.

So, the last week has been pretty standard, in fact, nothing much has happened except that I visited my old first school, for their final assembly (the school is closing at the end of this term to be re-opened with my old middle school as a combined school) to give out an award to a little boy who has made some amazing academic progress! Bless, his mum looked so happy when he won his award, as did all of the children, who didn't really realise the significance of the assembly, but did very much like the look of the prizes!

Time moves much too quickly, just 10 years ago that would have been me, sitting cross-legged on the floor, eager-eyed and staring up at the teachers at the front of the hall! It feels as much like yesterday as it does a whole lifetime ago. The building was still so familiar, although much of the decoration itself has been changed, improved, updated, and I even got to speak again to some staff who had known me when I was 4!

To disorientate myself further, with my work I was showing some foreign students around the city where my Firm university choice is. It was a good day out (I love the city, obviously, otherwise I would not have made the university there my firm choice!) but also, by association, it was a little angsty, I just want my results now so that I know whether I'll ever get to live there or not! Strange, knowing that I might well live there for 3 years, but I might well not visit again for another 10 years, if I don't get in, because I can't bear to see it again if I'm rejected, it'll be too raw.

There you have it. I feel completely in limbo :/ within 48 hours I revisited memories of my first school days, and then walked around the city that, by October, may well be my new university home. However, at the moment I am unfortunately stuck somewhere between archaic memories and distant hopes for the future, which can only be solidified by my results on the 16th of August. Until then, I fear, I am completely lost at sea.

2 Years Later...

My most recent Polyvore design

2 Years ago today I started this blog, beginning with images (coincidentally, images that I started using when I first opened my Polyvore account, at around the same time) from my GCSE Art and Design course. It started as a blog about art, concerning the creation of different types of artwork that I'd learnt about, but now my blog is much more about myself, somehow, and how this increasingly is shown through my art.

So basically, where as the the art did all the talking previously, now I do the talking, and the art is simply a more visual explanation for my thoughts.

I'd like to think that I've learnt a lot, since that 16 year old, bored after GCSEs (although admittedly I am very bored after leaving school, and genuinely cannot wait to get my results, go to university and start learning again, but that's just me I think) who had little direction in life other than some mediocre artwork and a random blog. Not that the art has really improved dramatically, although it has evolved somewhat (I primarily use Polyvore rather than GIMP to make images, and rather than photo manipulation I tend to use internet images and "arrange" them into bigger pieces rather than create the components themselves from scratch if you know what I mean).

This post is a pretty big milestone then, certainly, I know there are much older blogs around, but as far as Blogspot is concerned, the average lifespan of a blog seems to be under 2 years, so I think it's an achievement that I have continued to update this, if only for its consistency rather than for any extraordinary content, after all I'm not trying to change the world, I just want some way to record the things that I do and that I find interesting, I'm not fussed about having 100s of followers, although of course I like the idea that at least someone is reading what I write.

At this point I'd like to thank my actual followers (currently at around 15 I think?) for putting up with this nonsense, in the hope that they find something (if only occasionally) worth reading on here. As a side note, I have had over 3,900 views on this blog, which is far more than if I had decided to never publish it!

So here we are, I'm not world famous, I'm not a celebrated blogger or by any means a talented artist, I'm not a budding author or even an exceptional writer, but I am I believe, much closer than I was 2 years ago to finding myself, though if there's one thing I can be accused of, it's forgetting the past in favour of obsessing over the future, as opposed to say, living in the moment. (Ironic for a potential History student, right?)

For example, I tend to forget or overlook the things I've already achieved, the work I've done, however small, and instead I worry about what the future holds, where will my life go next etc. (to be fair, until I get my A2 results I don't even know where I'm going to be living in 2 months!) This however, is no way to live, there needs to be more of a balance I think, between positive reflection and active (but not anxious) anticipation of the future. That can be my target for the next year, until this blog's next milestone ;)

Maroon 5's song Payphone actually sums up the above scenario pretty well;

"You turned your back on tomorrow
Cause you forgot yesterday..."

The only way to the future is to remind ourselves of the best parts of the past -

"Who controls the past, controls the future: who controls the present controls the past"

- George Orwell, 1984

Who would have thought Maroon 5 and George Orwell would ever have belonged in the same sentence? Only on this blog!

A tree, a real life representation of Carl Jung's tree of self actualization....just kidding -

(A photograph I took on a shady walkway in Calpe, Alicante, if this picture is rotated it makes a really nice desktop background!)

Alicante, Spain 2012

Alicante, Spain 2012

Just got back from my week's holiday, looking through all of the photos and working out what I'm going to do with the rest of the summer! To summarise the past week;

• Fiestas, with live music and fireworks on the beach (the Bonfires of St. John)
• Party in the town where we were staying due to Spain's success in the Euros
• Private pool at the villa we rented!
• Shopping at the sea front, sun bathing, actually being able to go swimming in the sea without dying of pneumonia or something similar...
• Eating out, late, and every night, with cocktails and bars overlooking the sea shore
• Living on about 4 hours sleep a night, but not caring, and simply getting up the next day at noon to do it all again...(starting to sound like a lyric from Katy Perry's Last Friday Night)
• Sounds stupid, but I really loved this one night that we just stayed in, and cooked a massive BBQ (there were 11 of us!) and then played music all night, whilst taking photos, and some people jumped into the pool fully clothed

I miss the sun already (welcome back to England, where "summer" usually consists of a month of rain, wind or if you're lucky, tolerable overcast days) but not the heat actually, most days it was above 35 degrees and we're just not used to it, and so we had to keep finding places with air-con, and apply ridiculous amounts of sun tan lotion, which turns oily and attracts insects :s

Honestly, it was a great week, well worthy the mass organisation and months of preparation, just what was needed after exams. I'm not joking, some parts of the trips practically required head counts, and the precision of a military operation, but I'm so glad we did it - and now we have loads of great photos to remember the holiday - the polyvore image above is made of pictures which are a representation of parts of the holiday, not my actual photos (though I have nearly a hundred of those). Regardless, I think the mood of the collage comes across fairly accurately :)

EDIT: found some of my best photos to upload!

I'm back :D

I'm back!!!

Just finished my exams! In 3 days I'm going on holiday abroad for a week with my friends, so excited! Can't believe it's all over. Considering how important these exams are, I don't think I've done quite well enough :s However, I can just pray that I scrap by...

ANYWAY, I can't think about results now, I'm free, and I need to enjoy myself for a couple of weeks, to make up for all of the stress! I've revised for hundreds of hours over the past 4 months, let alone the work I did the rest of the year, so I think I deserve a break - and now I have until September to do what I want (well, and work, because I need SOME sort of money :p).

Can't tell you how good it is to not be thinking about what I should revise next, or how long until my next break etc. AMAZING.  The collage above is a collection of images that I chose because for me they sum up all of the good parts of a holiday abroad, the relaxation, the excitement, the beautiful surroundings and of course the beach! (This is particularly significant because where I live in England I am really far from the coast, which is ironic, considering it's an island!)

I survived A-levels, and now my life awaits. Until the next stage (counting from Result's Day) I have 6 weeks, in which I can catch up with all of the things that I love, and generally just enjoy life again :')

Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever. (Gandhi)

It's been another long week (hence the late-night blog update!) in which I have been to the theatre twice to see Les Miserables and Trojan women. I know, cheerful stuff, right? Anyway, not much else has happened aside from the usual, except for some reason I seem to have spent a lot of time thinking about the brevity of life (ironic, surely thinking about this sort of thing defeats the purpose of living life to the full?) which may or may not have something to do with the fact that I only just learnt that YOLO is not actually some kind of African greeting, it means "You Only Live Once", which I'm guessing most people already know.

The only thing that annoys me about that saying is that recently people my age have been doing stupid things and then justifying it by tagging YOLO after (publicly advertising) whatever (usually reckless) thing that they're doing. Why can't YOLO be used in the context of "I'm helping a friend", YOLO or "I'm doing what I'm supposed to be doing", YOLO. I guess the problem with humans is that we are attracted to things that don't conform.

The casual collage above however, has many objects in it that are completely normal, and seem very ordinary. That's the point, the things in my collage are what they seem to be, and the style is determined to be "mainstream" which is paradoxically the opposite these days, that is to say, it's a rarity, it feels like everyone is trying too hard to be "different" or "edgy", and due to this they loose sight of themselves. Speaking of which, I wish I owned half of the objects in the image, especially the vintage suitcase, badges and butterfly pictures, but that's just me.

In the true spirit of YOLO (although I prefer the above quote, captioned on this post) I'll be temporarily abandoning this blog to revise for my final exams, which mean a lot to me. My first exam is in 2 weeks, and I really don't want to keep staying up so late to fit everything in, so I'm cutting a lot of stuff out of my life for the next month and a half or so. I'll be back around the end of June, before I go on holiday (can't wait!:D) but life goes on in the meantime, and I think it'll be over quicker than I realise - especially with the last day of school approaching so soon :o

Don't forget me and I won't forget you! Have a nice few weeks - I'll be back ASAP- wish me luck! ;)

Life is pleasant. Death is peaceful.Times are hard for dreamers.

Life is pleasant. Death is peaceful.

This week has been randomly hard for some reason, I don't know why, everything has just felt like it's taking more and more effort to do the things that I would normally do anyway. Strange. Anyway, it's the end of the week now so I'm going to start completely fresh tomorrow, "a new leaf" as it were, and that goes for revision too :s

However, in a strange kind of way, time is on my side. 46 days until my exams end, so that's a month and 2 weeks, just long enough to really focus on revision, but the end is definitely in sight, if you see what I mean, school doesn't feel endless anymore, and I know that soon my life will be completely different. That's motivation enough I guess, only 46 more days of waking up and feeling guility every minute that I'm not studying, and to be honest, I started revising in March, so around 68 days ago, so I've officially done more revision than I have left to do (if that makes sense!)...

So this collage, it has all the usual in it (well, usual for me) icons of Paris, pink, cupcakes, tea cups, flowers, blossom, pink, books, some slightly vintage looking things and...the pocket watch in the top left hand corner. I think the watch is important, it shows that things don't go on indefinitely (revision :( ) and serves as a reminder that "come what may, time and hour run through the roughest day".

There you are, that's a very appropriate quote from Macbeth, and therefore I have successfully found a way to intergrate revision and blogging :D

28.04.12

  by nikigirl on polyvore.com

Well, the April showers have continued, and here we are a week later...I wish I had something more interesting to report, but aside from preparing for exams, schoolwork, and hearing people complain about the weather, this week has not been that eventful. Not that that's a bad thing, necessarily, but there you have it. I created this image ages ago, and for some reason having gotten around to publishing it before now, I think I've just had it saved somewhere and forgot about it. I hope that how my memory works, you know, during an exam when you can't remember something but then it appears really randomly, as if it's been "saved" somewhere, just waiting for the right thought to trigger it.

I think one of my favourite quotes that I have come across this week is by Mary Waldrop, she says;

"It's important that people know what you stand for. It's equally important that they know what you won't stand for."

I think for me this is a definite target, I have a horrible habit of saying yes to things, usually work, or something someone else wants, just for the sake of keeping peace. Although helping people constantly is a good thing, and let's people know that you stand for kindness and helpfulness, I think that there is definitely a time and a place to say no, otherwise you end up with nothing left for yourself!

Another quote I found (Einstein's extension of Parkinson's Law) is one that I'm writing up simply because it describes my life so well at the moment; "A work project expands to fill the space avaliable", it's the same with my revision for the next 6 weeks, it's not about getting a certain amount of revision done, it's about filling all the avaliable space I can with revision, and subsequently re-remembering and learning things constantly, rather than sitting down and saying "I have to do 5 hours a day" or something.

Wish me luck.

April Showers!

April Showers!

Decided to update this today, unusual for a friday night but it means that I have less to do on the weekend! I thought that the title seems appropriate considering the weather in England at the moment, as soon as they declare an official drought it always rains non-stop for days afterwards!

Anyway, the run-up to exams is really speeding up, in fact in 2 months time/ 8 weeks today I will (hopefully!) leave school forever, after my last A2 exam! :o Insane isn't it? Scary times.

Thought I'd share a really great quote that I saw a couple of days ago and really made me think;

Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power".
- Abraham Lincoln

It's true, or it seems accurate to me. Well, the saying is true enough for women too, of course...

So this collage has a vintage/ Parisian/ floral look, which suits the current season, Spring, and also reminds me of 2 years ago when I went to Paris for the Easter holidays, and had a really great time! We stayed in an apartment and everything...have to say, since looking at this, I can't help wish that I was back there, away from the rain, and back in time, away from the stress of looming A2 exams.....

Every cloud has a silver lining!

Music is a moral law.

Music is a moral law.

Music has also been described as "the art of thinking with sounds", which I'd argue is accurate for some songs, but much less for others!

So, I've had another good week off school, spending way too much money, restaurants, clubs, clothes, that sort of thing, going out with friends and doing everything except revise properly, which I WILL start in earnest later today. Or maybe tomorrow ;)...NO, definitely today. I promise.

Anyway, it seems my last half-term at school has almost arrived 0.0, I know, when did that happen? It's something I'm strangely apathetic about, actually. It's as if, I should be sad or worried, but actually, although I will be upset on the "last day" of school and everything, at the moment I just want this term over with, so I can do my exams and start summer. Which is an entirely irrational thought, considering how much revision I still have to do, but there it is, my mind is as illogical as ever.

100 years since the Titanic hit that fateful iceberg tonight. I'm sure I'll be watching some of the memorial on television, but the problem I find with things that happened around 100 years ago is that they don't seem real yet. I say "yet", because things that happened say 300 years ago, like the French Revolution, that seems real, and things that happened around 10 years ago, like September the 11th, I remember that, but for some reason a century is just the wrong amount of time for me to imagine, it's like it's just out of living memory and hasn't quite made it's way into history yet. Maybe that's just me. Anyway. I'll be thinking about that this evening, although I can't promise that the whole sentimenality of the event won't be slightly overshadowed by my sadness that Leonardo di Caprio dies in the film, which is historically inaccurate anyway...

Happy Easter 2012!

Cherry Blossom

Thought that I'd do something different this time and attached a photo I took myself of the trees outside the front of my house, which look great at the moment, but will only last for a couple of days...

The photo captures a moment, the same blossoms in this picture have probably fallen off the tree and died by now. Not to be pessimistic,but just to point out that nothing lasts forever, and that nothing seems as good as it was, or as it is remembered.

Equally though, the best things in life are not things, or at least, not in the material sense. I'm not even sure the best things in life are moments, to be honest. Feelings are a more accurate description, I think the best moments in life are defined by the feelings we attach to them, rather than the events themselves, therefore buying an ice cream or getting a new job or getting the exam result we wanted can all be linked due to the feeling we get from it.

Although, just for the record, I prefer the "I-just-got-the-exams-results-I-wanted" to the "I-just-brought-an-ice cream" feeling, but I do love ice cream :p

I think this rant is my mind subconsciously telling me to get back to revision, and re-focus on the long-term benefit that this will have...when I actually do something...

"The amateur practises until he gets it right; the professional until he never gets it wrong".