Failure to Write

In the wee small hours of the morning, when the whole wide world is fast asleep I'm lying awake wondering why it is I've got Carly Simon stuck in my head when I've been listening to Edith Piaf's rendition of L'accordéoniste on loop all day.

I'm frustratingly nocturnal at the moment. Frustrating because I have two LX plots to attend tomorrow and I'd like to be awake for them please. As well as tickets to see Don Giovanni. Again with the awakeness.

Since I wasn't sleeping anyway, I figured I might as well update my sorely neglected blog.

Let's see, last time I wrote I'd just planted a mini-herb garden for a show. Well, the season went really well. So well in fact that Kat & I don't own any plants (dead or alive) from the show. Since then I've moved onto another show and am in the process of looking for more work over the silly season. Mind you I think I could do with a couple of days off to sort out my body clock and get a little R&R but we'll see. Plenty of time for that when the theatres are dark again.

Other items of note in no particular order are:
- my shoulder (which I fell on about two weeks ago after a particularly sleepless night... futons should never be underestimated for danger, can anyone say trip hazard?) is feeling much better but is at the annoying stage where it feel good but as soon as I do anything more than hold a cup of coffee in my left arm it begins to complain. Not that I've been doing anything but resting it of course... ahem

- Mum's started her next course of chemo after a week's break last week. For some reason I kept thinking it was her last course last time... hopefully this is the one. She's getting great results from the treatment but I think she's looking forward to stopping the chemo.

- I've made it further on my NaNoWriMo novel this year than ever before, but I'm still many thousands of words behind where I should be. Perhaps I should attack that instead of this blog... I should probably also note that I'm only ahead of my previous attempts by about 1,000 words... oh well, only 48,000 more to go...

Anyhow, that's all that springs to mind at the moment. I think I'm approaching the "low" in my sleep/wake cycle, so I'm going to make another attempt to fall asleep. Wish me luck!

Improving

Things are looking up today. I've had 12 almost solid hours sleep. Woke about at the 6 hour mark in a panic because I thought I was late for work, turned out it was only 3:43am. Still sitting on just under 2,500 words of novel but I'm still pretty happy with that considering my workload and recent cold.

Happily the cold has subsided quite a bit after my good long sleep so I'm sipping on my raspberry & echinacea tea having just had my vitamin C, spirulina and garlic oil capsules and I'm feeling fine! :)

Gene & I are both very excited at Nick's impending arrival in Doha and look forward to welcoming him to the glories of desert life (tee hee). No, it'll be fine Nick! No really! You can trust us. :)

I've already bumped into one of the girls I went to uni with over here who's here to followspot. It's always nice to see a familiar face when you're abroad.

Totally stuck on my novel. Have contemplated re-starting but am trying to fight that urge. Next year I'm going to have a plot outline I swear.

iPod is still going well and I'm happily (or tearily) falling asleep to "The Happy Prince" and other stories by Oscar Wilde. I always cry when I hear that story. Not sure why I decided to listen to it before bed.

Okay, running away to be busy now. Can't wait to show you all pictures of Doha when I get back!

Argh. I repeat - Argh.

Keep meaning to post but have a feeling this won't be happening much in the next thirty or so days...

Monday's news:
- iPod finally arrived. YAY! Music all synchronised and have tried all the games. Podcasts are my bedtime stories.

Tuesday's news:
I never thought I'd be so excited about PPE (personal protective equipment for those with more normal jobs) - Gene Hedley

Our brand new Petzl hard hats arrived. Red so that they go faster?

Mail from Melbourne arrived as well. Mainly bills for me. *sigh*

Wednesday's news:
Started handwriting first 300 or so words of novel. Doubt it's going to get far but I think I'm doing better than last year already. Will remember to bring laptop home tonight instead of locking it up at work. Still loving my iPod. V. Busy.

Thursday's news:
ARGH.

Tick Tock

Dozing on the bus to work today I discovered the name of a character for my (probably not so good) attempt at a novel to commence in four day. I figured that my number of blog posts in February and March were pretty good so maybe I'll hit the quarter-way mark this year. We'll see. :)

I had a wonderful time reading six word short stories yesterday. It would seem that my online entertainment springs from reading the blogs listed on the right and perhaps the Age website for a bit of entertainment. Anything email is a bonus!

We seem to have made it through the bulk of the holiday season in Doha which is a relief. Everything can crawl back to normality now.

The intersection that I was excited to discover had opened a few weeks ago (meaning a 5-10 minute travel to and from work) has been closed again extending travel times to 15-25 minutes. It's important not to miss your turn off in Doha... you may have to travel a fair way until the next roundabout or place where a frustrated driver has managed to move the concrete blocks and barricades.

My dislike of fluorescent lights inspired a desk lamp purchasing trip to Carrefour the other day. I returned with two "duck lamps" (Dave's is called Edward, and Lisa's is Lucy) and one ummm.... curvy metal stick with a folded bit of material. It's prettier than it sounds (and nameless). Perhaps I should try and build this into my story...

Gene's managed to get in touch with his French family so they know we'll be over there soon. Hopefully we'll be able to give them a call soon. By "we" I mean Gene. I think it'll be a Monday thing because of the time difference and the shifts he's working.

The tracking information from Australia Post tells me daily that it was cleared for dispatch from Sydney on 18th October. I wish it would give me some new information. I suppose it's still in transit? Until now I thought I was a patient person. Perhaps I need to start knitting more... that always helped distract me!

Sad Panda

I'm trying to prepare for November's daily writing. Even got some plot ideas sketched out. Not sure which I'll go with but figure if I have at least a small idea it'll be a start.

Anyhoo...

Last night's trip to the doctor's was an adventure as predicted. My driver got lost on the way to the X-ray place which was fun. I had no idea where I was... I think I may have been in the industrial area. Anyhow, after an hour we found the place. I got my x-ray and then went back to the doctor. He wasn't in so I waited for the other doctor but through inattention missed my number which caused a commotion. Once that was sorted out he looked at my x-ray, poked and prodded and then wrote me a referral to the hospital's accident and emergency. To cut the long story a litle shorter, I ended up not going to the hospital and instead letting the nurses at work look at it. After the nurses looked at the x-ray this morning they advised that I should just rest the arm (no rotation & no lifting etc) and the pain will go away over the next few weeks. If I have fractured it (which is what the doctor seemed to think) then there's not much I can do. Nothing's splintered (which is good) so it's just a matter of rest and managing the symptoms, maybe a few stretches in the coming weeks. Yay!

Sadly Gene & I no longer have a day off together. So I'm really not sure what I'll do tomorrow. Most of the people I see are either working or have gone to Oman for the weekend. *sigh* Maybe I'll try and nut out a plot for next month... More likely I'll be curled up on the couch with The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

Sad panda because there's still no iPod in the mail for me. Stupid backlog of stuff at the airport.

Trundling Along

November is really not the best month for me in terms of NaNoWriMo. After last year's dismal attempt I figure I can't possibly do worse... Big words...

Anyhow, life is trundling along slowly. I'm eternally grateful that I'm right handed as my left arm is giving me grief from last weekend's blow to the shoulder blade. I've been on anti-inflammatories for the last four days and at night have something to try and relax the muscles but the ache is still there. If it's still there tomorrow I've been told to get Xrays. The doctor didn't look impressed when I mentioned that I kept swing dancing after the accident... Probably should have thought about that a bit really...

Aside from that nothing is new. Last night was the best sleep I've had since Saturday. I managed a whole 4 hours before waking up. I'm averaging three because that's about as long as I can sleep before I want to toss and turn.

Gene's working over at Khalifa now so I got to see him today while we were both awake! Very exciting. It was brief though. To be accurate I saw him twice but the second time we were being introduced and I was giving him his crew. Hehe we shook hands like it was the first time we'd met. :)

I have possibly mentioned this before but I'll say it again. A big thank you to those of you who write somewhat regularly in your blogs and anyone who emails. You're my only link to what's going on back home and I check all the blogs religiously in the mornings (Doha mornings that is...)

After finishing working on the Commonwealth Games with no pictures of my own I've made an effort to take pictures every day of what's happening on site. It's been really good because it gets me out of the office and reminds me of what we're moving towards. Naturally I can't post the pictures of the site but I do have some photos of some butterflies that Amy & I spotted in the shrubby plants onsite. I even got a picture of a little flower too. I love my macro photography setting on the camera.

It's almost dinner time... they had creme caramel for dessert. MMMMMMMM...

Life is like my novel...

Well considering the daily writing isn't going so well, I suppose you can only guess at how the novel writing's going!

Happily I think I've worked out the start (or several versions of it) and all that remains to be done is for me to commit it to paper. I'm not too stressed about my lack of word count as yet as I've always been a bit of a last minute worker so I'm quietly hopeful that I'll improve in due course.

My current procrastination task is making a going away present (scarf in feather and fan lace knitting) for Lisa who leaves next Thursday but is having drinks this Saturday. I've got about 15cm of scarf done so it's looking a little like my novel... only slightly ahead.

Work is slowly picking up and the hours are getting gradually longer. I'll be house sitting again in January which I'm slightly worried about because I'm fairly sure I'm going to be working ridiculous hours... Hopefully the dogs won't be too traumatised... *sigh*

Okay no more "recreational" writing... time to hit that novel!

Where'd November go?

Feeling rather guilty about the lack of novel writing that has taken place thus far... haven't really gotten much further on paper with my novel... thinking 10,000 is looking good for this weekend's goal...

Work is great. Nice and busy (hence very little novel writing). Gene had to sign a confidentiality form so that he can come to my Christmas party. How cute!

Tassie was great. We're referring to the trip as the Mini-Golf PGA weekend. Lots of mini golf...

Okay. Must make dinner now and get back to the holiday season gift making (which is the other reason for the lack of novel writing... figure I can always write the novel throughout the next year but have only 5 weeks? before I don't get a social life).

A start

Well considering the daily writing isn't going so well, I suppose you can only guess at how the novel writing's going!

Happily I think I've worked out the start (or several versions of it) and all that remains to be done is for me to commit it to paper. I'm not too stressed about my lack of word count as yet as I've always been a bit of a last minute worker so I'm quietly hopeful that I'll improve in due course.

My current procrastination task is making a going away present (scarf in feather and fan lace knitting) for Lisa who leaves next Thursday but is having drinks this Saturday. I've got about 15cm of scarf done so it's looking a little like my novel... only slightly ahead.

Work is slowly picking up and the hours are getting gradually longer. I'll be house sitting again in January which I'm slightly worried about because I'm fairly sure I'm going to be working ridiculous hours... Hopefully the dogs won't be too traumatised... *sigh*

Okay no more "recreational" writing... time to hit that novel!

A Nutshell

Wow did I fall off the writing band wagon or what?! This is definitely not boding well for NaNoWriMo... oh well, if you never try then you'll never know right? It's less than a month away now and still no inspiration for any story let alone a novel... I figure it'll probably be a terrible novel, but it will be MY terrible novel and that's what matters. Well, to me any how. It doesn't matter if it sits on my laptop as an invisible file that shall never be seen or heard of at the end of Novemeber. That it gets written is the aim of the exercise. Yes.

Fringe if finally over and a huge hurrah for Naomi who made it to three shows in one night. I'm glad you saw Waiting for Compo because I don't think enough people did. It was a great Fringe season for me this year. I got my own venue to call home for three weeks and it was gorgeous. The Meeting Room at the North Melbourne Town Hall is a great little venue that just transforms in a matter of days from an empty room to a 65 seat theatre. I was also fortunate to have some wonderful shows like Basic Training and Tickets to Ourselves along with Waiting for Compo in my room. All a pleasure to work with and my pet shows over the couple of weeks. I was also lucky enough to have an additional late show I Forgive Catriona Rowntree in my room after a sellout season in the Supper Room (also at the town hall). I'm sad that it's all over but certainly have come away with a whole new bunch of people to be nerdy with (one of the techs described the Hub crew as uber-nerds).

So now life's focussing more on the Comm Games (hereafter known as the CG because I'm lazy). I've only been there a week and a half and my head is already spinning at the scale of the event. It's really exciting to be working on it and even though I'm struggling with my sleep habits (having become nocturnal during Fringe) it's proving to be a fantastic experience.

Aside from that I'm crawling through Anansi Boys at the rate of a chapter per night. It's a great read and totally hilarious. It's strange that I don't hear my "book reading" inner voice when I read it but I hear Neil Gaiman reading it. I'm fairly sure it's because he read two chapters of it to us at Continuum. After that I'm hoping that the books I've ordered will have arrived (Dan Simmons' Olympos and Clive Barker's Days of Magic, Nights of War.

In a nutshell that's where I'm at really. I wish there was more to add but there's not! It's been a wonderfully busy few weeks and I look forward to it escallating to sheer madness in the months to come :)

Oh I'm also looking forward to a holiday in November with Gene but that's still being confirmed. :)

Also looking forward to seeing my friends again...

Add sleep to the list of things I'm looking forward to...

Speaking of which....

A bit of a rant surrounded by lighter notes

It's amazing how three days of solid reading can generate a migraine when you haven't been wearing your glasses... okay perhaps not that amazing, but consider my lesson learnt.

I feel like I've been folding clothes forever even though it's only been a day. Believe me when I say Gene and I have many clothes... mostly black so they all look relatively similar. So many shades of black. It's almost like that scene in Notting Hill where Spike and umm.... Hugh Grant's character are having that discussion about never having clean clothes... we really should do cleaning more regularly.

Discipline. Great word. Fantastic concept. We should try it some time!

I've had a flick through my uni stuff, or half of it anyway and it's exciting and scary all at once to discover that my exam falls on the last day of NaNoWriMo... at least it's at 2pm so I've still got the rest of the evening to finish my novel... ahem.

Yesterday I did an online survey because a) I like doing surveys b) there is a remote possibility that I might win something. It worried me, however, how biased the survey seemed to be. I appreciate how painful a long winded multiple choice survey with a zillion answers can be, but it's better than offering too few choices. In particular it's question asking about issues that are important to me. There were about 8 choices on terrorism issues and Australian relationships with other countries and that was fine. However it had one option to do with Muslims and the only other option to do with religion was "Lack of Religion". I find that really upsetting because it's so blatantly targeted at one religious group. Lack of religion?! I honestly feel that in today's media we have a rather biased religious view being presented. Now I don't claim to have answers to any of the larger political issues and honestly I haven't followed current news as carefully as I should, but I believe that everybody has the right to chose their own beliefs and I think we should respect that right.

As for the whole terrorism thing, I don't condone hurting innocent people to prove or present a point. At the same time, I do wonder (thanks to good ol' high school debating) if we would listen to them otherwise. Would we listen if they wrote us a letter or even a hundred letters? I don't know. I don't have the answers so sue me for it. I just don't think we should let ourselves and our society be paralysed by fear. The number of televisions sold has increased significantly over the years since the September 11 bombings and people are venturing out less and less. I really think it's sad that we're now so scared to get out of the house and see the world and enjoy the short years that we have on this planet because we're worried we'll be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Sure it's a survival instinct, but in some ways I guess I believe that the people who are doing these things will have won if we're all huddled in our houses watching the world go by on our televisions.

I was speaking to my Dad just after the London bombings and he was saying that even when he was in London, bombs were a daily threat. If you saw a pillar box you crossed the road. So when he watched the news reports about the subway bombings he felt that it was terrible, but that the people of London were probably slightly less shocked than everyone else was making them out to be.

Okay ranting done now.

On a lighter note, Mum called last night from Singapore and it was great to chat with her. It's funny how the futher away I am from my parents, the closer it seems to bring us. I think that when I was in Perth for a month I spoke to my parents more than when I was still living in Melbourne but not at home! Anyhow, it's great to see that she's discovered the world of internet shopping. It'll be great for her craft stuff. She's already bought knitting needles online and she's looking for some special ribbons for her jewelry work. Mum's coming home on Saturday morning in time to teach her bear-making class. She's feeling a bit bad at having missed one already. Usually I'd try to visit her the night she gets home but it's Kieren & Loz's 21st birthday in Geelong so Gene and I will be heading down there on Saturday evening. We've arranged to catch up with my folks on Sunday. Mum's got a tool holder for Gene and she's pretty excited about having found it.

I'm really glad that my parents get along so well with Gene. It's painful when your family and your boyfriend don't mix well.

Part of me is thinking that I may need to get rid of some of my wool... Sorry I'm back on the cleaning rant again. Another part of me is thinking another bookself would be a wise investment. The only question being where would it go... A topic to discuss with Gene I think. Either way we need to look at our storage options again. It's a little sad when at 22yrs I'm thinking of heading to the Home Show to see if they can offer some better storage options...

Just over six weeks to go until NaNoWriMo and I'm starting to think about my potential novel at night. I'm still try to work out what genre to attempt! While I've immersed myself in the realms of sci-fi and fantasy for as long as I can remember, I don't think I have anything new to offer to them. Or at least anything that wouldn't make me cringe and hate myself for a long LONG time. I just wish I had a little more than a couple of joking ideas involving giant squid and bad lift music. I've already started work on my magna carte. I've promised myself no crappy romance lines eg. Oh woe is me, he/she's so cute and wonderful in my dreams but he/she's betrayed me. How will I live? No I hate them. No really I do. Oh okay. They're a bit of all right. Woe is me I am tormented by my conflicted feelings. Eugh. It's my current pet hate in books.

Speaking of books I'm going to do a little more folding and them I'm going to crawl back into bed and continue reading "Ilium" (winner of the 2004 Locus award for best sci-fi novel) which I started reading last night. It's wonderful so far and has an opening sequence that you just want to read out loud. I love novels that make you want to read them out loud. Such wonderful language!

Jobless-ish

I'm unemployed at the moment and feel this is the best time to take advantage of the spare time to write! Besides, it's good training for National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) in October. I figure I start with mere few hundred words a day and build up to the 1600 words I'll need to be writing by then. Wish me luck!

It's a little depressing looking at my home page for MySpace at the moment. I only have one friend according to the site... I like too think that in the real world this is not the case - and that I have at least a couple more. For example our pet rat Herman who is currently chewing through his new hammock. I'm not sure why he does this as it will only result in him falling out of his warm little nest one day, but he seems keen on doing so and I don't want to hold him back.

Outside it's a sunny blue sky day and it's still an ice box in our house. I'm curled up in front of our little space heater and I'm strongly considering turning it up to full sun (which I believe is the highest setting). I've had a quick look at the jobs on Arts Hub, called about a stage management gig and have been advised that I'll get a call this evening. Aside from that I've received nothing in the mail, both electronic and regular, that is of note. Unless you include the electricity bill, but I'm hoping to ignore that until after I've done my tax return and actually have money again.

I'm not totallly unemployed. I'm volunteering at MIFF at the moment which has been great fun so far. This is their last week though and tonight's my last night but hopefully this stage management gig will go ahead. Failing that I'm looking at some lighting op jobs and hopefully my letter of offer for the venue officer job I got offered last week will arrive in the near future. I'm always a little unsure how often to follow up on paperwork for a job. After all I want to give the impression of enthusiasm and organisation while not appearing to be desperate or harrassing them. It's a fine line I think.

Aside from the lack of funds I'm actually enjoying the lack of work. I've finished more books in the last week than I have in the last six months - which is a big thing for me. I usually read at least one book a week even during busy weeks.

I'd like to note that production week on a show does not count as a busy week. In fact I don't actually include it as a week in my time as I disappear from the world as we know it and don't surface again for the duration of the "week".

At the moment I'm trying a different approach to job hunting. While it's a little idealistic, hopefully this will avoid me being sucked back into the call centre world (a.k.a my personal "Hotel California"). After 11 months of work in a call centre I feel like part of my soul has died. Perhaps that is exagerating. It's more like part of my soul/spirit has taken industrial action until I made the decision to fully commit my time to employment in the arts where I want to be. I think I've managed to negotiate with myself that I may need to go into some casual soul-sucking work again just to get past the whole rent problem but nothing permanent if I can help it.

I'm also going back to study through Open Learning and I'm looking forward to the intellectual challenge of that. It's been a couple of years since I've really studied and I'm actually a little nervous about starting again. I'm not sure why. Perhaps it's because I'll be using parts of my brain that have been dormant for a while.

Okay, enough procrastination for now. I'm off to read. Mmmm... good book and a nice warm bed.