(I am still here, I am still alive, I am back in Durham where the internet has yet to grace our house with its presence. Nice to start with, but increasingly annoying when everything in the university relies on it. In the words of Christopher Robin, BISY BACKSON.)
Archive for the 'Internet' Category
So the photoshoot has happened and the results are currently being edited; later, hopefully, I will put up the rather overdue series of posts showing the output of the last, erm, year’s creativity. It really doesn’t seem that much now that I’ve boiled it all down, but personally I reckon that it isn’t bad going given that
a) I sew slowly. I’m still a beginner!
b) I lack concentration in a big way and rarely manage to sit at something for hours on end.
c) I have to make a muslin for everything that I make because I have yet to find a pattern which fits me straight out of the envelope without any alterations.
d) University! And not having a sewing machine at such! And being away! Sewing clothes really isn’t that portable a hobby, unfortunately, and while I dream of popping into John Lewis in Newcastle and coming out with my own, brand-new, shiny and technological machine, I fear that isn’t going to happen any time soon. What with saved up money I could probably afford it – that isn’t the problem. It’s that every time I half think about it, my Mum resists fiercely, saying that it wouldn’t be appropriate to have at university, and that I would spend too much time sewing compared to not enough time working. My argument is that if I used my free time more productively at university, I’d feel better about doing said work and get less bogged down in myself. Unfortunately, though, I don’t think that fourth year is the year to perform such an experiment. One year ’til I leave.
I have, however, been learning a lot over the past year, even if I have been simultaneously lamenting my lack of practical doing. I am a member of a wonderful, wonderful site called Pattern Review, where people post pictures of garments that they’ve made and (as one might expect) review the patterns that the said garments were made from. Among these reviews, and among the blogs that some of them link to is a wealth of information and experience that I have found both fascinating and thoroughly informative to read. Granted there’s nothing like doing it yourself to really make you learn, but the internet has been acting as an excellent gap-stop while doing it meself just hasn’t been possible. I also find it fun and inspiring to see what other people have made – after all, one the key satisfactions of making things is sharing the results with other people!
Primarily aimed at Fi (after her recent comment on one of my Drivel Space posts), but perhaps of interest to some of you others, here are some of the sewing blogs that I follow: [If you are the owner of one of these blogs and have followed the link back here, erm, hi! I'm Lucy, and I'm one of your lurkers! But I do like following what you've been sewing and I hope you take that as a complement :-)]
- Two On Two Off
- Subversive Sewer
- Sew A Beginner
- Amanda’s Adventures in Sewing
- Fehr Trade
- Assorted Notions
- Miss Celie’s Pants
Recently, I’ve also found yellow warbler knits, needled, and potentially Knitting the Blues as well (- thank you, Fi, for those last two).
Anyway, I should get back to the photos. Sorry, Flix – more freaky faces coming up!
Facebook quizzes have already been commented on by Callan as to their sheer pointlessness. Well, yes. They can be quite entertaining, though, albeit briefly. I am #513: Friends (according to ‘Which XKCD comic are you?’), I should really be at Oxbridge (‘What university SHOULD you really go to?’ – oh, the irony), and I may or may not be a potato. All well, all harmless!
It came up on my news feed earlier that a friend had taken the ‘What Psychiatric Disorder do you have?’ quiz, and had come out with Generalised Anxiety Disorder. Her comment was, “Everyone seems to be getting this. Bit of a cop-out.” Well, presumably that’s because most people taking the quiz don’t have a Psychiatric Disorder, and most people experience some degree of restlessness or stress at some point. Hence the need for the word ‘generalised’.
I think possibly I’m just rather unreceptive to that sort of thing at the minute – since coming back to Durham a couple of weeks ago my moods have been up and down and down and up and a bit all over the place, with no cause more than the obvious. And yes, it’s a stupid Facebook quiz, and yes, it’s just meant to be a bit of fun, and really no, I hope that people will have enough common sense not to use that sort of thing for self-diagnosis. I just find it a bit tasteless, that’s all. What next, ‘What cancer do you have?’ ? Ooo, ovarian, my favourite.
I am having a Facebook-friends cull. I could list my reasons, but instead I will quote a friend of mine who did a similar thing, because she puts it much more clearly and inoffensively than I ever could in this mood at this time of night -
“I have had a clear out of my friend list. First off, if you’re still on it, found this on your news feed and opened it out of curiosity: congratulations. I actually care enough about you as a friend that I am interested in knowing what you are up to. [*felt honoured at this point*]
To anyone who was deleted and is reading this to find out why: I don’t care. I can’t remember the last time we spoke, met up or anything in a similar vein. We don’t talk anymore, we have nothing in common and frankly I don’t care what you’re up to. Except for in one or two rare cases (you can probably deduce who you are, feel free to message if you’re that desperate to know) I don’t dislike you. I just don’t see the point in pretending we are ‘friends’. For me this is a tool to keep in touch with people easily. If we still don’t talk and I don’t care enough about your life to want the occasional update in my news feed – bye bye.
I am still happy to talk to you and hey if you end up having some sort of place in my life again I may well add you again. But for now – meh. Can’t be arsed having you clog up my friend list.”
And the nice thing is that I’m quite encouraged at the proportion of people on there that I do still care about and do still appreciate news of in my life.
I went to a mixed school. I am at university with a lot of hardline Christians. I am twenty-one, which is not an unreasonable age for this sort of thing, and hell, I’d've been past my sell-by-date years ago in some parts of the world.
So I can cope with people getting engaged, even though it scares the hell out of me that people of my age are getting ready to spend the rest of their lives together. I can cope with the fact that a friend of my age has a two year-old (just about). I can even cope with friends a year older than myself getting married because, y’know, they’re big and old and into the scary real world. What I am finding difficult to cope with is today’s discovery that one of my Facebook friends from the year below me at school, has got married and is now about seven months pregnant, while in what I think might still be her first year of university.
It’s not that I disapprove particularly. It’s just, like, big. And scary. And I’m not that old and I’m not that responsible and I want my Mummy, not to be someone else’s Mummy! Not that I’m going to be for the immediate future, but y’know… When people put ‘Married’ on their Facebook relationship status, they don’t actually mean it, right?
“_____ _____ got married on Friday. No, really.” :-S!
This week has been designated the university’s ‘Mental Health Awareness Week’. Both the union and the colleges have been running campaigns highlighting such exciting issues as Stress, Addiction, Insomnia, Self Injury, Psychosis, Depression and Eating Disorders.
I’m not entirely sure what to think about the whole thing, to be honest. My instinctive reactions to these weeks is that while they are undoubtedly well-meaning, they allow Issues (with a capital I) to be pigeon-holed to that week alone and then forgotten about. That’s provided, of course, that you have noticed – it is always the week for something (as Tom Lehrer so rightly points out in the introduction* to his wonderful ‘National Brotherhood Week’), and one can’t help feeling that we take notice of the weeks that directly affect us anyway. I, for instance, am taking reasonable notice of Mental Health Awareness Week, but last week’s Disability Awareness Week completely passed me by. Not that I don’t support disability awareness or anything, but other things took over and mild back problem notwithstanding, it just isn’t a huge thing in my life.
There is also the danger, of course, that the more ‘factoids’ and statistics that you are fed on this sort of thing, the more arbitrary and theoretical it is in danger of becoming. Anorexia’s about not eating enough because sufferers perceive themselves as fat and have low self-esteem. Sure. But it’s one thing knowing that and another entirely knowing what to do about it if you know someone who’s got it. Self-harm is not (necessarily) about suicide. Well, no shit? Maybe I just take my knowledge on these matters for granted.
I speak from experience – a lot of people who I have talked to about depression have a vague idea that it’s to do with having low moods and that 1 in 6 people will encounter it, which is fair enough. But they don’t always realise the practicalities or the day-to-day implications of being depressed. The fact that a lot of people have been surprised when I’ve told them that I’m on anti-depressants at all speaks volumes to me about the levels of practical, applied knowledge out there. Statistically it shouldn’t be that big a deal, right, especially if you know me?
All of that said, though, I have thus far been very impressed with the way that the campaign’s been run. Advice leaflets on each of the issues above do seem to be well-written and practical. I picked up the ones for depression and insomnia. The former told me nothing new, although I can imagine it could be useful for someone less well-informed than I – the latter was less personally relevant but as it points out, depression-triggered sleep issues are likely to ease as a result of tackling the root problem.
You know what my favourite feature of the whole campaign’s been? It’s a stroke of genius, it really is. I’m guessing that most of you are familiar with PostSecret, a blog to which people from all over America (and occasionally the world) send anonymous postcards with their secrets on? A lot of them are striking, brutally distressing, and incredibly heartwarming. I have directed people to individual cards before, because they express in a few words what I’m feeling a lot better than I could in an entire conversation.
Anyway, the DSU, and indeed my college, are running their own Durham University PostSecret. I have yet to make my own card, but I intend to do so. When I called into college today I was scanning some of the cards already submitted. What I love about them is that it humanises those factoids, those statistics. Those messages were written from the heart, potentially from someone I know, and are probably as honest as they will ever feel able to be in my presence, so to speak. And for those who read them, they will be a more effective form of mental health awareness than any individual welfare officer could offer. All credit.
x
*which, sadly, I could not find in its entirety on YouTube without the accompaniment of irritating graphics. But what the hell, Tom Lehrer’s awesome anyway!
You’ve got to hand it to algorithm-generated content, sometimes, that it does make you laugh…!
“Once you write something, it’s not your own anymore and it bears different meanings to everyone who reads it”
I read this today on one of the blogs that I read. It felt terribly appropriate, somehow.
Day 27 was good, and it finally felt like the Fluoxetine was doing something positive. Day 28 was catastrophic. Day 29 was OK, but not great. Day 30 was, if anything, worse than Day 28.
Today is Day 31. Pills come in packs of thirty, so I opened up the new bag from the pharmacist this morning. Being a generic drug, I’ve been given capsules manufactured by a different company. The old ones were green and pale yellow. These new ones are pale blue and white, and have a different code number on. It shouldn’t matter, but it does…
x
Bopping about the internet, as one does, I seem to have come across an increasing number of blogs which relate to depression, and people’s struggles with thereof. Some people, like me, integrate it into their normal blogs, which itself chronicles how much it’s taking over their life at any one time. Some people have separate ‘depression blogs’ – it’s a place where they can talk about it without their friends seeing, maybe, or a way of letting it all out without it dominating what else they might want to write. These ones tend to explore the issues behind the immediate crazyness/ pill-taking, so I would imagine are relatively more therapeutic.
There are a few which I read regularly, and have been doing so for some months now. I won’t link to them, or not yet anyway. But while it’s not exactly a cheerful choice of reading matter, it’s quite comforting to know that other people are out there, and more comforting still to recognise the differences. Depressives have as many personality variations and as many ways of dealing with stuff as any other section of the population, and that is something that I think is very easy for other people to forget.
Words fail me, sometimes.
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