a time for singing...

When is it not a time for singing? Apparently singing for 30 minutes a day will (help) keep you healthy... And I have to admit, I probably keep myself quite happy in that respect...
But whether you are a concert soprano with perfect or whether people call the RSPCA to "rescue those poor cats!" when you start singing, I honestly don't think it matters. The important thing isn't to be able to sing well, it's just to express yourself through the music. OK, I admit I'm not suggesting that everyone can sing just as well as another, but I really do believe that anyone who really (and I mean really) wants to learn to sing well can do it - just so long as they keep a good perspective with regards to their own voice; almost all of us are unfortunately unable to sing as well as [insert your favourite singer here] (and no, rap does not equal singing - it's a form of expression but it's not a display of vocal talents...)
I guess music isn't for everyone - but that what makes people interesting. Some like music, some like books, computer games, poetry, visual art, anime, sports of all descriptions... and the list goes on. We don't all like everything, but everyone likes something; everyone has something that helps them relax or that they enjoy getting out and doing.

I think my original point, which may have been somewhat buried by the extended reasoning, was that singing can be a great way to express yourself. You can pick songs that are happy, sad, angry... And by extention, I guess you can pick different songs to listen to depending on your mood - although for me, the song doesn't have to match my mood by any stretch of the imagination.

It's also great if you can start to express yourself in a way you enjoy. I mean, there are loads of people around who do things like write short stories or poems, make their own movies, start their own bands and so on. I guess I've moved slightly away from what helps you relax to what makes you tick. I always find it really sad when people have somehow lost that connection with the things that they enjoy most... who can honestly say they've never felt they were just "too busy" to do something thing they really wanted to do?

So my encouragement to everyone out there is to remember the things you really enjoy, to make time for them every once in a while, and to share them with others too! It's a great way to feel good about your friendship with them, and you can get some encouragement from it, too.


An afterthought: ...it's amazing what happens when you sit down with a keyboard in front of you and no idea what you want to write...

a time for blogging...

As you can see I've had such an #eventful# day that I have no decent title for this post...
(please note... #=sarcasm, just like *=action)

1. Driving
   I did have a driving lesson this morning... I learned how to reverse park efficiently and also lots of useful tricks to help me pass my test. I also exceeded the speed limit once. Oops. But I shall not be doing that again, I think. I now have lots of stuff to practice, and I was also later to Latin... For about the 5th time in about 5 lessons!
2. Punctuality (or lack thereof!)
   I don't know how I keep being so late for everything, and it's getting really annoying. I always run right on time right up until about 5 minutes before I have to be anywhere, then all of a sudden I'm running late. It's stupid, but it's what happens.
3. Food
   is pretty good stuff... Shorty says: "Eat in Responsibly" or maybe that should be "Eat in Moderation" =P I made chocolate brownies yesterday and it was weird cos they turned out really different to usual even though I used the normal recipe... but they were really yummy so that was ok. Well at least everyone seemed to like them so I was happy...
4. Movies
   can be "totally awesome dude" or terrible or just plain confusing. I had great fun sitting around quoting "10 Things I Hate About You" today at lunch (I love that movie...). Then there are the weird movies like Napoleon Dynamite - it's such a "Cult Movie" and it's got it's funny bits but I can't say I exactly loved it. Then there are weird movies I get conned into watching that I enjoy for the sake of enjoying them but I'd never choose to see them (including Jarhead, Shaun of the Dead - two I can think of). Then there are random quotes you remember from various movies... eg. various Dory quotes from "Finding Nemo" (btw nemo=nobody in Latin!) like the "Swimming" song and "42 Wallaby Way Sydney," the description of "prairie dogging" from Rat Race (if you haven't seen it don't worry), and although it's not directly a quote, who could forget all the phallic imagery picked out by their English teacher during various film studies...?
   

I have to do Latin, Maths, Physics...
ah the joys of the final year of school - who could shrink from high workloads with little or no feedback and multiple counts of concentration drain?

a time for emotion...

There is a time for just about everything, I think... I'm just not very good at showing the emotions, really.
That is, I guess, part of my reason for having a blog... I'm teaching myself to express myself. I'm perfectly happen not to express myself (I am a self-confessed introvert) but I think it's probably good to be able to do it. Also, it's practice in writing, and goodness knows I need that this year... stupid hsc...

but I don't think I'd ever be emo. I have nothing against "emos" (for want of a better word), I just find it difficult to be anything other than happy for an extended period of time. As maddy was saying a da or two ago, the idea of me getting angry is about as absurd as the idea of her being angry for a whole day. Which is probably a bit of an exaggeration, but I do manage to avoid being angry pretty much at any cost. I just get irritated.
Actually I can't even manage to stay annoyed enough to write a whole post without having given up on it... hence the "mood swing" in yesterday's post...

Well we did write a pretty amusing emo song on camp last week - I just have to get the lyrics from my friend... my favourite line would have to be this one though:
You wove a web around my heart
and tore my wounded soul apart
Ah the hilarity! well it was highly amusing to write... it was our "imaginative journey" we were undergoing after lights out =P

ok and time to go do more maths... actually it was good today I was able to do my revision questions =D
and i had a german test which has left me slightly worried about one thing but apart from that ok I guess...

a time for frustration...

Oh life is so peculiar, you get so wet in the rain,
You get so warm in the sunshine, it doesn't pay to complain,
When I get up each morning, there's nothing to breathe but air,
When I look in the mirror, there's nothing to comb but hair,
When I sit down to breakfast, nothing to eat but food,
Life is so peculiar but you can't stay home and brood.

I've decided life really is super frustrating sometimes... Especially when it comes to things like school. I know it's not really that much of a problem - like seriously, the worst thing I have to complain about is my school assesments?! But it still sucks to have 2 assessments that were on the same day both moved to the next day instead. You were supposed to leave them on different days, duh!!! And so now they are both on Friday, which is much worse than Thursday because a) I have no preps on Friday and b) it's the last day of the week... it also means I probably can't go watch my friend's band perform on Thursday night even though I've been wanting to see them for ages, and I don't know what I'm going to do about food for my Latin class on Friday arvo either. It's not that high a priority, but it is my turn to do it.

But it's ok, really, because there are lots of good things in life too =D Well I have quite a few things I'm happy about at the moment...

1. New Music
On the weekend I bought two new CDs which I am quite pleased with so that's good... They are All That Remains by Fozzy and The Truth by Bleeding Through. The only downside here is the slightly disturbing album art in with lyrics for the second one... But the music is good =D

2. New Library
It's perhaps a slightly sad thing to get excited about but my school has a new library which is pretty darn cool as far as I'm concerned. It has a whole lot of nice comfy chair/sofa things and lots of computers and laptops and stuff... Plus loads of books, but I haven't learned where to find any of them yet - I'll get there!

3. "Alternative"
I was really pleased by something someone said to me yesterday. We were just sitting around talking about various random stuff and I was telling her about how if I was doing art I'd so be producing a line of rubbish/recycling-inspired jewellery and possibly clothing. And I'm not kidding - the jewellery I was wearing at the time included some normal-type stuff (bangle, beads, earrings) but also a bangle that is really the seal from the golden syrup jar (it's a yellow plastic ring that's kind of scalloped along once side) and a piece of blue ribbon that I twisted around my wrist a few times and tied on last Friday... it's still there, and it goes with both my watches quite well, I think.
Anyway, I was telling my plans to my friend and she commented that she thought it was great that I'm "alternative" - not the "I want to be fashionable so I'm alternative" type of thing, but genuinely different cos I want to be... yay, I'm glad of it. I like to do what I want purely cos it seems like it would be cool, and I'm glad that at least one person thinks me the better for it.

Well I haven't got much else to relate apart from that, so I guess I'd better go waste my time some other way and let my Dad have the computer.
I also need to study for that maths assessment...

a time for love...

It seems to me that everyone is obsessed with love... it's just a human thing. I don't just mean the cloying "Valentine's Day Card" type of love, or even just "boy and girl"-type love, but any sort of love. Friendships of all sorts, closer relationships, families... Well not everyone would say that they love their family, but I find that a pity. The less you love your family, the more dependant you are on other sources of love. Because everyone needs to feel loved, don't they?
If you talk to people who are sad they're always telling you how nobody loves them. Yes, there are other reasons people can be sad, but that's a pretty major one. And the really sad thing is that usually there are lots of people around who would be happy to be there for them if only they knew they were needed. I was thinking about this yesterday, cos I was at a friends party and one of his friends (whom I didn't actually know, I'd never met her) was really upset because she said everyone hated her and she had no friends... then later we were sitting around (she wasn't there) and someone mentioned how they'd love to spend time with her cos they thought she was a great girl and I was thinking how messed up things are when someone can be so upset with people all around them eager to be friends with them.
the world is stuffed.
unanswered questions: why do people decide they're unloved? why do they then pull away from the people that love them? why don't families work? why don't friendships work out? why are people so mean and vindictive and unfriendly to each other? why is there malice?
why?

where is the love?

a time for amusement...

Well I'm sitting around reading blogs and generally wasting time when really I should be off in the common room and either desperately reading up on physics (please) or translating more latin.
But instead I'm thinking about the greater things in life... or something...

My sister's just flown off for a week... well I won't see her for a bit longer than that cos I'm going a way before she gets back, but still... she's in her first year of high-school and off she goes to sing with her choir, "cool as a cucumber" as it were. I hate cucumbers.
There are definitely some advantages to mordern technology. I mean, I guess aeroplanes aren't really that modern a technology anymore, but people certainly get to use them a lot more. The first time I went on a plane I think I was about 3 years old. My Dad was about 21. I was flying on probably a boeing 767 or maybe 747; my Dad was in a biplane with a friend. Actually we were both flying in the same direction, but that's not really relevant. There's quite a difference, we've become a lot more dependant on this sort of travel... I mean, when my Dad was young, his father would go off on business trips for months at a time... or at least weeks. My Dad can easily go for one day, two, a week, just because of the changes in technology (and also because there are so many more people flying).
Then there's technology like mobile phones. Come on, we all know about them. About 10 years ago the only person I knew with one was my grandmother, and it was from her work (and it was a brick). A year or two later my Dad got one, and from there it's spread rapidly. In my age group it's amazing if a person doesn't have a phone - 5 or 6 years ago it was probably more surprising if they did.

And so I sit around and ask myself whether this is a good thing or whether it's bad. I think just about everyone will agree it's very convenient, but is that the point? Are we somehow losing something in our adoption of these "wonderful" new technologies?
I see points both ways, and I can't actually decide for myself... Personally I don't think there's much chance of a reversal, so why fight the inexorable process that is our modern society. Come 50 years no-one will think it's modern, so what's the big deal? I'll think I was incredibly naive, and so will my children. I'll deal.

a time to be asleep and a time to be merry

no, this time I'm serious - I'm sooo tired. For some reason I seem to be absolutely dead and I have no idea why.
I got a reasonable amount of sleep, I've been taking the stupid iron tablets... what more does my body want?

(far out I seem to have lost all ability to type "the" without actually typing "teh" and it's never been intentional ...grrr)

Something that really gets on my nerves:
I think it's really important to make your own decisions about things like that... and if you make a decision then either stick to it or change your mind only when you have a good reason! It's the same with everything... I'm so sick of my friends having one opinion which they've obviously thought about carefully then all of a sudden they change their minds to the complete opposite for no apparent reason... and if asked they are like "I just changed my mind" or "I got sick of that idea" or something like that. Ok, so maybe they do have a better reason for it. But if they do, they should try to give some impression of having a decent, well thought-out reason behind the change, even if they don't want to share it.


Ok so there is also the fact that I have had a bad weekend and I am now in a really bad mood. Somehow everything seems to have gone wrong and then my mum got annoyed at me as if I wanted it to be like that. Far out!!! So I'm trying to do some constructive "Stress abbauen" instead of going and yelling at someone... but maybe I should just go and sleep, since I'm so tired...
Or maybe I should go and learn some formulae...
sin 2A = 2sinAcosA
cos 2A = cos² A - sin² A
= 1 - 2sin² A
= 2cos² A - 1
tan 2A = ..... I forget.
So you see I still need to practise!
and that's only three of the 30ish things I wrote out to learn - which is about one term's worth of formulae... ahhhh shoot me now!

and I'm off to bed.