10 Things I Assume You Know About Me
So. I have been meaning to do this for aaages, but keep totally forgetting. But here, finally, in no particular order, are:
1. I am left-handed, and therefore constantly oppressed and persecuted. We live in a right-handed world, and it’s bloody annoying. (Seriously: knives? Don’t tend to cut properly in the wrong hand, because the serrations are on the wrong side. And there are plenty of other examples. Generally if you have a good quality right handed thing you’re probably ok; but once I had to use a plastic knife that was hollow on the right-hand side. And it feels so wrong spreading butter with my right hand.)
2. I am a Christian. I’ve waffled about this at length elsewhere, so I won’t go into it properly now, but yes; I believe in God, I go to church most Sundays, it is a pretty big part of my life.
3. I am kind of musical. I play several instruments - among them piano, trombone, and recorder - and I sing quite a bit; currently I’m in the uni choral society and also church choirs at home and in Durham. I love music, and a lot of people assumed that I’d study it after sixth-form, but I’m not much good at performing in front of people and ultimately, I haven’t got the commitment.
4. I am unashamedly geeky. I quite fail at discussing things without using scientific terms - hey, they’re well-defined and concise, why not use them? - I think entirely too much about the world around me, how and why it works, and occasionally I confuse myself thoroughly by attempting to think about philosophy. I love learning: I love maths and the logical reasoning that links it to philosophy; I love languages, picking them apart and learning their grammar and idiosyncracies; I love books and university and all such things.
5. I also love Doctor Who - this probably links in with the above, a bit - and many other fannish type things. Doctor Who has been a favourite since my childhood; ok, it’s old and clunky and not all the stories are great, but I love it anyway, I love it even when it’s awful and wrong and the science is so fake it hurts. I can’t really explain why. It’s just great.
6. I love socks. No, seriously; I think they’re great, I am possibly the only person you know who will be overjoyed to receive socks for Christmas. (Decent socks, of course. Nice ones. Not just any old socks.)
7. I am not always ok. To date, I have been diagnosed with depression twice; partly as a result of this and possibly partly just because of my own personality, I am a bit … quirky? I get tense about all sorts of stupid things; if I’m the least bit stressed, I absolutely can’t deal with last-minute anything. Oddly, a good measure of how I’m doing is probably how I react to people fiddling with balloons or opening wine bottles. In general, I’m quite uncomfortable with loud and partly unexpected noises; on a bad day, I may in fact run screaming from the room. (Ok, maybe not screaming but the running has been known to happen.) It’s stupid, but there’s something about knowing that there’s going to be a loud noise any second now and yet not knowing exactly when it’s going to happen that I really can’t deal with.
8. When I am tired, I lose the ability to speak properly. The more tired I am, the more I mangle my words, swapping vowels or consonants at random or just failing to pronounce things. Um. Quite embarrassing.
9. Also, in general I quite fail at talking about things. Not in the physical way now, just the mental, ‘ohgoodness I have no words’ kind of way.
10. And finally, my name. Hmm. It’s not the most usual of names, so I’m not going to mention it here. Suffice it to say that, due to aforementioned unusualness, I have had years of people mispronouncing, misspelling and generally mangling my name. This has given me a bit of a thing about getting other people’s names right, and about calling people by what they’d like to be called (e.g. Jo rather than Josephine. Because some people would hate Jo, and some hate Josephine, and generally I’d rather call everyone by what they want. There are shortened forms and spellings of my name that I hate, and I don’t like to think I’m annoying other people in ways that really annoy me.)
...I don’t think most of number ten makes sense. *sigh* I am tired, and thus should really go to bed.
(My naarmamo art for today is here, btw. I won’t be linking to them every day, because I’m sure you’d get bored, but if you do happen to want to check up on them, they’ll all be in this gallery.)
1. I am left-handed, and therefore constantly oppressed and persecuted. We live in a right-handed world, and it’s bloody annoying. (Seriously: knives? Don’t tend to cut properly in the wrong hand, because the serrations are on the wrong side. And there are plenty of other examples. Generally if you have a good quality right handed thing you’re probably ok; but once I had to use a plastic knife that was hollow on the right-hand side. And it feels so wrong spreading butter with my right hand.)
2. I am a Christian. I’ve waffled about this at length elsewhere, so I won’t go into it properly now, but yes; I believe in God, I go to church most Sundays, it is a pretty big part of my life.
3. I am kind of musical. I play several instruments - among them piano, trombone, and recorder - and I sing quite a bit; currently I’m in the uni choral society and also church choirs at home and in Durham. I love music, and a lot of people assumed that I’d study it after sixth-form, but I’m not much good at performing in front of people and ultimately, I haven’t got the commitment.
4. I am unashamedly geeky. I quite fail at discussing things without using scientific terms - hey, they’re well-defined and concise, why not use them? - I think entirely too much about the world around me, how and why it works, and occasionally I confuse myself thoroughly by attempting to think about philosophy. I love learning: I love maths and the logical reasoning that links it to philosophy; I love languages, picking them apart and learning their grammar and idiosyncracies; I love books and university and all such things.
5. I also love Doctor Who - this probably links in with the above, a bit - and many other fannish type things. Doctor Who has been a favourite since my childhood; ok, it’s old and clunky and not all the stories are great, but I love it anyway, I love it even when it’s awful and wrong and the science is so fake it hurts. I can’t really explain why. It’s just great.
6. I love socks. No, seriously; I think they’re great, I am possibly the only person you know who will be overjoyed to receive socks for Christmas. (Decent socks, of course. Nice ones. Not just any old socks.)
7. I am not always ok. To date, I have been diagnosed with depression twice; partly as a result of this and possibly partly just because of my own personality, I am a bit … quirky? I get tense about all sorts of stupid things; if I’m the least bit stressed, I absolutely can’t deal with last-minute anything. Oddly, a good measure of how I’m doing is probably how I react to people fiddling with balloons or opening wine bottles. In general, I’m quite uncomfortable with loud and partly unexpected noises; on a bad day, I may in fact run screaming from the room. (Ok, maybe not screaming but the running has been known to happen.) It’s stupid, but there’s something about knowing that there’s going to be a loud noise any second now and yet not knowing exactly when it’s going to happen that I really can’t deal with.
8. When I am tired, I lose the ability to speak properly. The more tired I am, the more I mangle my words, swapping vowels or consonants at random or just failing to pronounce things. Um. Quite embarrassing.
9. Also, in general I quite fail at talking about things. Not in the physical way now, just the mental, ‘ohgoodness I have no words’ kind of way.
10. And finally, my name. Hmm. It’s not the most usual of names, so I’m not going to mention it here. Suffice it to say that, due to aforementioned unusualness, I have had years of people mispronouncing, misspelling and generally mangling my name. This has given me a bit of a thing about getting other people’s names right, and about calling people by what they’d like to be called (e.g. Jo rather than Josephine. Because some people would hate Jo, and some hate Josephine, and generally I’d rather call everyone by what they want. There are shortened forms and spellings of my name that I hate, and I don’t like to think I’m annoying other people in ways that really annoy me.)
...I don’t think most of number ten makes sense. *sigh* I am tired, and thus should really go to bed.
(My naarmamo art for today is here, btw. I won’t be linking to them every day, because I’m sure you’d get bored, but if you do happen to want to check up on them, they’ll all be in this gallery.)