Stuff and nonsense

I've been drawing little scribbles here and there in the past couple of days and I thought I'd share with you the kinds of things that are inspiring my pictures lately. Drawing pretty pictures with a box of sharpened pencils can do wonders to lift your mood.

The  beautiful microscopic slide is from wired. It would be quite interesting to draw, and it's probably my first encounter with anything science-y in the last couple of months. Oh, it's just making my fingers itch to draw again!

Flowers and kisses,

Eliza

Out into the rain

In an ideal world my bedside table would look like Erin Fetheron's.
Who doesn't need a healing crystal?

I like to clean. However unlike some people what I do is save up all the loose papers, old clothes, apple cores and empty tea cups that come my way so that eventually my room looks like a small, charmingly coloured rubbish tip (my room is duck-egg blue, and it is lucky for the walls that I haven't yet found a way to completely trash them.) Then, when it is only possible to get from my bed to my desk to my door by ploughing a path each time the need arises, and only then do I decide to clean my room. I suppose I properly clean my room about two times a year. But when I decide I want to do something, it generally gets to extremes. I had a violent urge to clean about two weeks ago, and was up until two in the morning matching up socks into pairs. But extreme cleaning has its pitfalls. Today, while filling in my university enrolment application it asked me for my Tax File Number. "Oh that's fine.." I thought to myself. "I always leave that in my- SHIT!" I had, in my sporadic fit of cleaning, thrown out all the old sheets and papers from 2011, as a symbolic gesture of my newfound adulthood or something like that, I can't quite remember. I spent half an hour sifting through the recycling, only to find that I had shifted my TFN some months earlier into a filing cabinet.

Does anyone else do this? Assume that they know themselves well enough that they would've thrown out important documents unintentionally, only to find they can actually be quite sensible? Havng your head stuck in a recycling bin isn't all bad though. While I was down there I found two of my old hardbacked diaries, one from when I was a shy fourteen year old who blushed a lot, the other authored by my fifteen year old self, a girl who decided the best course of action for happiness was to meticulously note everything she ate and everytime she exercised. I sat down to read what fifteen year old me thought about the world and a lot of sentences made me laugh. How I compared life to gossip girl, for example (substituting the names of people I knew with the characters. I was and always will be cool.) and wrote lovestruck words about an acne-stricken, skinny boy.
Then I read about the terrible time I had with two very bitchy girls, who shall be referred to as Blair and Serena. It's hard to read about, even now. But I think it's also good to read about how girls like that can make you feel, so that you can make sure you never treat anyone else in the same way. What struck me was how much this experience changed the way I wrote. Here are something I picked out that I still believe to this day:


"That shivery feeling that races through my body when I listen to beautiful music is what I want my whole life to be like; one that is filled with the otherwordly passion of art. I must never let go of this feeling."

Thank you Blair and Serena,
it's because of you girls that I realised this.

For a very long time I hid my actual interests to be friends with people I didn't particularly like, but it is only now that I am beginning to love who I actually am- I am drawing, writing and singing again! I'm sitting out in the rain just to feel it soak my skin and I know that no matter what I do or what happens to me I will always have the blue sky to look up at. That big, blue bowl.

Be this girl! Sorry, can't remember where I got this...

Hell, even be this one!

A not-very comprehensive list of people who inspire me:

• Beatrix Potter: Not only was she a gentle and creative soul but she was very practical too, and put a lot of effort into protecting the natural beauty of the English countryside.
• David Bowie: He's a brilliant musician who (aside from being just plain fucking awesome) broke boundaries in glam platform heels.
• Emma Morely from One Day: What? A woman who is intelligent and incredibly funny and pretty? In a relatively popular movie? Surely not!
• Marianne Faithfull: Because she told off an interviewer who brought up her "promiscuity" in controversial tones. She critcised the very obvious double standards he implied, and any woman who does that is my hero.
• Anne Shirley: I know I know, she's not real either. But oh boy, I wish she was!
• Florence Welch: She writes gorgeous songs and looks like a possessed english novelist. In other words, I love her.

Have a beautiful day and make sure to daydream!
Eliza

Your life is your life

Good morning blog. I haven't kept a blog in a while, I always start blogs as a kind of throw-away new year's resolution, it's one that leaves you with little to no guilty conscience after you drop it, because pretty soon after the new year starts so does a hectic schedule, and you really you have no time to post about the obscure little interests you have that only you yourself could possess. In my case, this is an ever-evolving list, however I've noticed I fixate on long-forgotten rock stars.

I will post at least THREE TIMES a week, I have told myself in the past. Oh those were ignorant days. That was a time when I actually believed I had the willpower, organisation, even concentration you need to become a blogger.
I get a kick out of setting goals for myself. Highly unrealistic, unachievable ones are the best.

So let me shoot straight with you blog. Chances are, although I have only just brought you into existence, you will be quite neglected during your time here on the Internet. I'm not going to devote a lot of time to you, so just grin and bear it. You are here solely for me to rant on and obsessively post pictures of David Bowie on, okay? Don't expect too much, little blog, and you may (occasionally) be pleasantly surprised.

It's year of the dragon now, and also my first year at University. I am not really looking forward to law. It might be interesting but it's my bachelor of media that really seems exciting (I'm doing a double degree. As in I will have no spare time for the next five years.) I don't want to be a lawyer. To me, while lawyers are brilliantly analytical, there is no room for imagination. If only there was a career where I was allowed to be fanciful. I dabble in the arts. I was in a few musicals at high school, have cackhandedly taught myself how to play guitar and write songs that only their creator could love, and on occasion write poetry that doesn't rhyme. I have parents who very much doubt you can make art your career without having sheer amounts of talent and drive, and for that reason have encouraged me to make a go of law. But I think if I had more confidence in my own abilities I would never have been swayed by them as easily. A lot of the time when we blame our parents we are failing to recognise a fault of our own. So blog, I am going to continue writing in you and develop my skills, and I will never cease to dream.

In a way I decided to start up my final attempt at a blog because I feel if nobody reads it that doesn't matter. But if this blog is a tool to motivate myself and write pages and pages of gratuitous nonsense about developing self-confidence and just believing in my self, then I need to use it. The potential that other people might read about my goals and that in a sense, by failing them I am failing myself, is probably just the thing I need to keep me going.

2012 is going to be an interesting year. It won't be a good year, or a bad year, because I don't think you can put a whole 365 days into one of two categories.

Be bold and mighty forces will come to your aid.

Love,
Eliza