~Holiday and Diary Babble
2002-07-02 - 11:32 a.m.

I was considering going out this morning to get out of the house and away from Mum and Dad. They've been snitchy-bickering all week (mostly because they've got a lot of pressure trying to organise all the things for their England holiday, I imagine) and I'm getting sick of it. I never appreciate my time at home as much when Dad is home, too, anyway. I'm always waiting for him to leave for work so I can watch telly or, really, just relax (as in, not put my dishes away the second I'm finished with them and read in the loungeroom without the telly blearing or just not have parents walking into the room every two minutes and making me close my diary window so they can't read what I'm saying). I also felt a bit migrainey by the end of yesterday afternoon, so I felt like having some fresh air anyway. However, because I was feeling a bit funny, I didn't really have the energy. Once I got off the computer, I read the Tarot books and my Indigo book a bit more and, once Dad had left, caught up on the last three weeks of Buffy. Because Buffy and Angel are on at 10:30pm, and that's when I like to get ready for bed (and I find Buffy and Angel wake me up too much), I usually tape them both unless I'm not going anywhere the following day and don't feel tired. As a result, I've had three weeks of Buffy and two weeks of Angel episodes piling up on the videos - it was fun to watch them! I've missed Buffy, and Buffy is good to watch all in one hit. We've got all of season 3 on video (which was the best season) and periodically Dianne and I will spend about four days watching them all from start to finish.

Anyway, I did have a point (Mum gets frustrated listening to my monologues because I go off on all these tangents and take forever to get to my point, but I won't let her talk until I've got to my point (because otherwise I forget it)). I got up a little later than I anticipated today, at around 10:30am, not feeling like going out (at least, not yet) and I found Mum and Dad have both gone out! Yaaayyy! I still might go down to the library or to HP or somewhere, but I'll do it later, when Mum and Dad are both home again!

Dianne should be sleeping now, after visiting the Scottish Highlands during our night, including Loch Ness. Mum kept saying "She might be the only person to actually see Nessie!" but somehow I think that's a little unlikely...I mean, if nobody else has seen it in the thousands of tourists they must get, why would it suddenly be Dianne who sees it? But I suppose it made Mum happy to imagine that. I just can't help thinking of the Goodies episode when they were at Loch Ness. That really scared me when I was little, especially those great, big daddy-long-legs bagpipes! I need to find a Goodies web site! The last time I saw it, though, I wasn't scared - I was always too easily scared in the Goodies episodes (and, thinking about it, a lot of scaryish things happened - like the giant Doogle from The Magic Roundabout comics that chased the Goodies around the mazes, or the giant kitten that Graeme fed too much of his experimental pet food to, or the time when Tim was being a Nanny for this evil girl in a haunted house... but there were funny ones that weren't scary, too, like the boy scouts one, or the one where the Rolf Harrises kept multiplying til they had a plague).

I phoned Leonie last night and we've arranged to meet up on Sunday in the city just to catch up (and also so I can give her a birthday present), unless her parents decide to do something which involves Leonie too. In a way I'm envious of what Leonie does with her life. She spends about three nights a week on different types of partner-dancing (latin, rock'n'roll etc.), attends her uni choir, is a member of various club committees at uni, works and organises host families for German students visiting Australia. It's not that I want to do all of those things specifically, but I do want to be part of a choir again and I wish I had the mental (and sometimes physical) energy, as well as the self-organisation with study, to do more of the the things I used to do outside of school - singing, piano, acting and taking other classes like art or writing. But I know I don't. I wasn't doing anything except two hours of piano teaching last semester and I bearly had enough time to get everything done. I'm desperately hoping that next semester isn't so bad (because there's no awful 18th Century Music History) but I seriously doubt it. Emma is having guitar lessons, Irish dancing lessons, ballet lessons and teaching Irish dancing at her ballet school this semester, and I simply don't know how she manages. I know that if I'd struggle to get all my work done if I had that much to do...but I think Emma has the advantage of me in that she, like many others (including Dianne), is willing to stay up late to do work. Any later than 10pm and my brain's just too tired to function properly. I usually try to have any work done no later than 8pm because then my brain is still working and I have two hours before bed to unwind so I can maybe sleep. Perhaps if there was a weekend choir nearby I would join it, but as there isn't, that I know of, I suppose I'll stick at what I'm doing now and not worry about it.

One thing that has really surprised me over the past few weeks is how easily I'm getting to sleep. Many nights I've been turning my light off by 11pm because my eyes are sleepy, but I can still feel that I've got enough awakeness inside that I'm afraid I'll stay awake for ages unable to sleep. But I've usually dropped off after twenty minutes (which, for me, is extremely fast)! I'm quite impressed with myself and am amazed every morning when I wake up and realise at what time I went to sleep! Maybe if I go to the library at the beginning of next week I'll find some instructional video for Tai Chi or some ofther interesting thing to do and I can spend some recreational time doing that while everyone is away.

The other thing I do want to do somewhat this holidays is get out of the house and do a few things with my friends. What I'd really like is to be able to just ring someone up the night before or morning of the day on which I want to do something and have them come out with me. That way if I don't feel like doing something I'm not tied down by a pre-arranged meeting, but if I get the urge to do something then it can be satisfied. However, pretty much all of my friends are both too busy and live too far away for that to be very useful. Even Emma is now living with her Nana instead of close by with her parents, so if we decided to do something I'd have to drive over to her, she'd have to drive over to me, or we'd both have to travel separately to wherever we want to meet. The other problem is that, even though I want to do things in these holidays, I also don't want to spend so much time (even if it's every second day) doing something so that I never feel I'm really relaxing.

It's funny thinking about diaries. What is anyone's reason for keeping a diary? I have found that, even if nobody read this, I like being able to get all my thoughts and feelings out. However, I wouldn't be surprised if the effectiveness of this had worn off if it wasn't for the fact that some people are reading this. It means that what I'm saying is actually heard (read), if not understood, by somebody. I will also admit to having a mild envy of those writers who are really entertaining and have more than just a few friends reading their diaries. I've been gratified whenever anyone who isn't personally known to me has left me a note because I think it's nice to know that some other people can be interested in and care about what is happening with me. But then I sometimes wonder just what it is in my writing that could be interesting to anyone. I tend to either just babble on about my muddled thoughts (filled with brackets and constant tangents) or relate rather stalely any significant events. If I really want to have as many readers as Laura or Amber, or even Marn* and Loobylu*, I feel like I need to be more clear in my writing, explain things a bit more and to relate things in a more sparkling and funny way.

But I can't do that and it's not what I want. If I attract readers for writing about what fills my head, then fine, but if I attract readers for writing witty anecdotes and observations, then when it comes to something that is a bit more personal and internalised I won't feel comfortable doing it. Basically, it's too much of an effort to write about myself in such an unnatural way. I get the most gratification out of my diary when all the things that are jumbling about uppermost in my mind are cleansed or clarified by writing them here. Sometimes they stay strongly in my thoughts, but often I think about them a lot less because I've shared them with someone so I don't have to keep remembering them. So, basically, I feel that the price I'd have to pay to satiate the mild envy I occasionally feel of other journalists is too high and, really, I'm quite happy just writing the way I do. If people find it boring then that's disappointing, but I'm not going to change how I write. If I can't tell you all my thought processes and trivial stories in here then I'll start boring Mum or Emma, or anyone really, with them and that's not only boring for them, it's detrimental to myself because they'll never want to be around me!

*Edit: I put stars next to Marn & Loobylu, but forgot to follow that up! I find Marn and Loobylu very entertaining writers but, perhaps unfairly to them, I find that I don't like reading them too often because everybody reads them. It's a bit like jumping on the bandwagon and, frankly, who needs one more devotee when one has that many already? I suppose I also don't like the idea that the writer might not notice me out of the crowd, which is obviously a bit of vain pride, but hey...I've got five regular friends' journals and one or two others which I checked out every week, I don't need to spend more time gathering diaries to honour with my readership! ;)