I don't understand why some people feel the need to comment on other people's weight. It gives the idea that weight is extremely important even though it really isn't. Not unless it starts interfering with the most important thing which would be health, and even then it's none of anyone's business unless that person makes it their business.
The reason I'm writing about this is that this year I lost a bit of weight and some people have commented. Well, actually two people have commented that I remember although it could very well be more, and those people were my mum, and the lady in charge of my pilates class. When my mum mentioned that now I looked really slim at first I felt happy. But that shortly gave way to the questions 'What was wrong with my body shape before?' and 'Did I look bad before I lost weight?'. It's such a backhanded comment to give, since it implies that something was wrong before the weight was lost. That the lady in charge of my pilates class noticed that I lost a bit of weight was not so surprising since it is her job to look at everyone's body and check if it's positioned correctly. It is kind of surprising that she commented on it but I guess I have been going to the class for a while so there was a sense of familiarity. She just asked 'Have you lost weight?' which is probably one of the better ways of mentioning weight since she didn't ask it in a way that suggested judgement. The thing that I did notice was that she got an almost envious expression on her face, like she envied that I lost weight and made me think that she was unhappy with her own weight which is absolutely ridiculous because she's one of those extremely fit people and I seriously doubt that she's overweight. My reaction to this was disbelief. How can she be envious of my weight loss? She has no idea how it came about. It wasn't on purpose, it was a medicine side effect that made me lose all desire to eat food, even when I was extremely hungry. I was stuck between not wanting to eat because of no appetite, and needing to eat because otherwise I'd get a migraine. A complete lose-lose situation. I suppose she wasn't to know, but still... The thing that annoys me the most about all this is that it's had an effect on how I make decisions. I was extremely torn when I had to stop taking this medicine that was doing nothing good for me and quite a few bad things because I knew that there was no point in continuing it and that it would be better for me to stop it, but I didn't want to put the weight back on and even wanted to lose a bit more so part of me wanted to stay on it. Now I'm on a medicine that has a side effect of increased appetite and weight gain so I worry all the time about gaining weight. Before all these comments I didn't think much about my weight. It was a healthy weight and I did plan on trying to eat healthier so I could lose some naturally, but I never felt any pressure to. Now I feel quite pressured to keep my current weight, not because I want to for myself, but because I feel as though I need to to live up to people's expectations of what 'looks nice'. It's like I didn't have enough to worry about...
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When I was younger, I often read well into the night if I got really involved in a book, just so I could find out what happens as soon as possible. I remember the enjoyment in these times, and that even though I was tired the next day I was extremely satisfied that I finished the book.
Today I did exactly the same as I used to do. I started reading a book today, and kept reading well into the night. And the thing is, that was not quite as enjoyable as I remembered it being. It just gradually became less and less enjoyable until I was reading only because of persistence and stubbornness and not the need to know. It's 2am when I write this and I've gotten used to the altered state that my body got itself into. I was going to go to sleep but then I got the idea for this post. I started wondering if I'd ever be able to read into the night with just a bit of tiredness the next day as a side effect, or even fully enjoy being awake while everyone else is sleeping. I wonder if I'm only remembering the good bits of staying up late in the past. I wonder if what I'm experiencing is completely normal and so everyone else feels the same and they know it's normal so no-one talks about it. I don't think I know what normal is. This is my normal and I barely remember things being any other way. Sometimes I wonder if I'm just making the idea of something being better up. What is normal? Maybe normal is a completely relative thing. Maybe I shouldn't question it. But just because I shouldn't do something doesn't mean I don't feel the need to. Today I went to my city's show, which is kind of like a carnival and nothing whatsoever to do with television. I had a lot of fun, but it wasn't the completely carefree type of fun since I had to keep paying attention to all sorts of things, like putting a hat on if it was too sunny or noticing and doing something about when the music is too loud. It was nice to be out with friends, but having to think twice about doing everything was a little bit stressful.
I'd say the best bit of the day was the food. There were so many nice things on offer, with some food booths even handing out free samples! I had a lovely ice-cream after lunch, which had the most awesome smooth texture to go with the taste. I only went on one ride, a roller coaster, mostly because that's the thing that the majority of my friends wanted to go on. Through that ride I've confirmed what I only suspected before: I don't like going on rides anymore. Rides are made to give you weird sensations, like dizziness when you're spinning or that falling feeling for the rides that go up and down. I just find that my brain simulates enough of those without any external aid so rides are hardly going to give me much joy. I think today was fun mostly because I was able to meet up with friends that I haven't seen for ages. The thing is, I can do that anywhere so although it's something different that I don't regret doing, I don't think I'll be going to the show again. I don't know what I'd do if I didn't live near the beach. Every time walk on it, or even just see it as I go by on the bus, it seems to fill me with an inner peace that I haven't felt for years. I think it may just be my happy place.
The beach is full of warm memories. Memories of laughter, mucking around with friends, family, my subconscious may even remember the time when I was a toddler and my parents let me run around on the beach, stopping every now and then to explore that part of the world. The beach speaks to me of happy times, fun times, and all that is good. It just represents happiness and the act of forgetting the world for a while. All that exists is that moment... I've been thinking recently whether to take up music a bit more seriously. As in, doing a Diploma of Music type of seriously. Pros of doing the Diploma: it would be awesome. Cons of doing the Diploma: it would take my already long 5 year degree and turn it into a 6 year one. That's essentially how long I spent in high school.
I'm really quite torn. Is it worth spending an extra year at uni to do something that I probably won't ever use? I'll regret it if I don't, but if 6 years is too long and I get bored of doing everything I'd regret doing the Diploma more. I suppose it isn't that important a dilemma but I really want to take full advantage of all the opportunities I have during uni. Speaking of opportunities during uni, I'm also considering a semester abroad but if I do that I probably won't be able to do the Music Diploma. Decisions, decisions... In my opinion, when someone is doing a particularly hard physics (or other) problem, they go through 5 stages.
First is Denial. They will reread the question again and again in the hope that it will magically become easier. However, this is unlikely to happen so they move onto the next stage... ...Annoyance. Common thoughts and exclamations include 'You've got to be kidding me!' and 'Why professor/textbook/teacher, why?'. The third stage is Procrastination. This stage is usually bypassed if the question is due next period. Otherwise it may continue for weeks on end until the person is forced past it by the threat of a deadline. The fourth stage is Intimidation and Discouragement. The person is considering doing the question and is scared or discouraged at the momentousness and difficulty of the task. And last but not least is Acceptance. This is where the person starts doing the problem for real. They've accepted that it's hard but will try anyway, even if they end up failing. In the case of REALLY hard questions, this stage will not be reached until the last possible moment, unless the person has an unusually good work ethic (I don't). Finally I can access the weebly editor again. My internet slowed down over a week ago so I’ve only been able to load the mobile version of facebook and the text versions of everything else, but every time I tried to access weebly the browser just froze. It's not freezing anymore, but it's still dodgy and not up to speed. I really hate my internet provider.
On the up side, I found the Gutenberg Project, a website of free ebooks that are not copywrited anymore. I found it when looking for an ebook version of Les Miserables and it turned out to have quite a few classics that I’ve been wanting to read out of curiosity. So I’ve been spending the last two days downloading as many familiar-sounding books I could find and playing minesweeper on the computer while waiting for the epub files to slowly download. Downloading large quantities of ebooks without worrying about how much internet I’m using up is really the only thing good about the slowdown. I’ve been needing to register for things for uni (post about all that later) and working out how to do all these things is stressful enough without super slow internet to increase the time you’re in suspense about whether something’s worked or not. There have been so many time when the page has just froze and refused to load further and working out how to work the library session booking system yesterday made me finally lose patience. I wanted to deregister from a session and it wasn’t letting me. After many times logging off and then back on again I thought to actually read through all the things on the page before logging off. Turns out the computer had been asking me if I was sure and I’d been closing down the browser instead of clicking yes. It’s so much more frustrating when it’s your fault and not the computer’s. So, yeah, I started a post just before the internet slowed down about uni and I should finish and post that soon. I haven’t posted for well over a month! I hope everyone celebrating Christmas is having a lovely time. If you're not already in the Christmas spirit, here's something to help you along! (although if you don't celebrate Christmas, it's still very much worth watching) I've been stuck in writing my first prompt for more than two weeks now. I think it might be because I favour writing in first person and for the first prompt I want to write in third. Or it could be because I'm trying to make it too perfect the first time around, ignoring the fact that I can edit it later to my heart's content if that's what I really want. Yeah, probably that.
It's been holidays for me for a while now, and I've pretty much been sitting around and doing nothing. Well, except for going to the movies and the beach once. My sleep habits are now horrible, which is quite bad, especially because as Christmas approaches I have more and more stuff to do. I spent the whole of today out, talking to uni advisers about course choices and helping mum with the Christmas preparations. Tomorrow my family is invited to a family friend's place which means that I only have Saturday to find presents for a Kris Kringle that one group of my friends hastily put together not too long ago. Our last chance to exchange presents is on Sunday, at least if we want it done by Christmas. After Christmas I'm going away for a week on Polish Camp so I won't be able to continue writing until January. So much for my Summer Writing Challenge. On the bright side, the break might help with the part I'm stuck on. I think I'll continue to try and finish all 30 prompts by the end of February; it's not like I've anything to lose. I found out about it somewhere in the middle of the exam period and couldn't resist adding the badge the next day. Heart of Paradise nominated me for the Versatile Blogger Award! Thank-you so much Heart of Paradise!
The rules now state that I need to select 15 blogs that I've recently discovered or follow regularly. Now, this is the tricky bit for me because I am relatively new to the blogging world and with exams and all that have not had much time to start following many blogs. So I nominate (and maybe I'll add some as I go along!): - Heart of Paradise - UponAtlas - closetowhaticantcontrol - The Ambiguous Case - KissMyLipstick And finally I have to say 7 things about myself. I've never really liked these sorts of questions, because what in the world am I supposed to pick, but I think I'll try to stick to 7 random things. 1) I am the biggest science nerd. As in I absolutely love science, especially physics which seems to be the science most people love to hate. This started in Prep when I somehow got a hold of a science encyclopaedia and started reading through it. Since then I've always had some sort of science-related obsession. For a couple of years now it's been quantum theory which I think will keep me entertained for a long while yet. 2) I used to make short home movies for fun. I got my own digital camera for my 11th birthday and really got into filming stuff which a friend, her younger sister and my younger sister. We even had our own company name made from our initials and wrote copyright 200- at the end of all the credits. After a year of that we made our own awards ceremony where we all nominated and voted for one of us four for a range of categories. Coincidentally that was after we learnt how votes were counted by the electoral commission in school... 3) I think I had an awesome childhood. Had friends that lived in my area so every weekend we'd go to the local playground and play our own versions of the games everyone else were playing. Like, Cops and Robbers became Cops and Murderers and later Cops and Thieves and Murderers where the murder had to try to "stab" the police-people in the back and the thief had to try and steal something that the cops hid in the playground. Fun times. 4) My favourite game of all time has to be "The Thing". I got the idea from the movie of the same name where there's some alien parasite that takes over people's bodies and makes them act in weird and evil ways. The game involved an unknown person (by a raffle version of drawing straws) being 'infected' by the parasite and having to 'kill' all the other people to win. The remaining people win if they find the infected person and 'kill' them. The interesting bit is when someone accidentally 'kills' someone that isn't infected which is actually a disadvantage for the uninfected people. Our highest number of people playing was six, but I always dreamed of playing a mass game of it with over twenty people and the parasite spreading like a plague. 5) Together with my sister, I created an imaginary world full of characters and places. The characters were completely ours, but some of the places we borrowed from books (like Hogwarts, although we renamed it something else). We shared a room until I was 12, so at night we'd create stories based on the characters until we got too tired to continue. I've always meant to write a novel based on these characters, even if no one else saw it, just to immortalise those characters. 6) Recently my family got this new TV and, call me weird, but I find myself in awe of the elegance and efficiency of the design. It's quite thin, the screen is only surrounded by a thin frame which also acts as the speakers. That's right, the frame is a speaker! I could stare at the TV for quite a while marvelling at the elegance. I also get the same reaction for a particularly elegant and efficient piece of maths. (It's even better if I'm the one that wrote down that piece of maths.) 7) I consider learning different languages learning a different way of thinking and expressing ideas. Using that definition, I consider music and maths just as much as a language as any other in the world. If they technically were languages that would be quite cool, because then I could claim to be quinlingual :D So that's seven quite detailed things about myself. Couldn't resist adding the details :) |