There are lots of things I’m looking forward to in the next few months. I managed to bite the bullet and sign up for the Advanced Creative Writing course at the Open University, despite not being eligible for financial support (so I opened another OUSBA account so I can pay in installments – cue another few months of being hard up), and I’m looking forward to it – it counts toward a Diploma in Literature and Creative Writing. Its a complete about-turn from my degree in Sociology. When I was at school, I think everyone assumed I would do my degree in English Literature because I was (and still am) a book worm and would spent most of my spare moments reading. I used to write lyrics and poetry up until I was about 16 or 17.
Then at 18 I went off to do my degree at York in Sociology, so I guess actual creative writing took a back seat whilst I focused on that. I don’t regret it because I learnt things I wouldn’t know otherwise, and my way of thinking changed for the better. Instead of blindly accepting things, I question things – I am able to debunk so called ‘truths’ that are fed to us in the media, government and society. If that makes me opinionated, then I’m opinionated, but I like to know what other people think about things too – I’m always learning. In fact, I think Sociology is one of those disciplines that helps you to open your mind to other possibilities and ideas and to figure out what it is that you think.
This weekend Dan and I spent most of the time watching season 5 of the X-Files – and what a cliffhanger! In the 90s, I watched episodes late at night on TV without anyone else there and probably had nightmares as a result. The fear I still feel when I watch some of these episodes is either because somewhere I’m still a kid watching them on my own in the dead of night, or its because I still have a genuine fear of the unknown and unexplained. I’m sure that there are a lot of things out there that we can’t actually explain – presences, spontaneous combustion, strange misshapen bodies, telekinesis and other supernatural phenomena.
I’m not that interested in the alien government conspiracy so much as the standalone episodes, although the conspiracy theories were some of the more memorable television events of the 90s. The X-Files is pretty much geek heaven (and I love it, seeing as I’m a self confessed geek). I also did a module for my Sociology degree in The Sociology of Anomalous Human Experiences – all about psychic phenomena and how humans justify it, how it works and so on. It focused on the human side and parapsychology rather than the phenomena itself, but it was interesting.
So – that was a huge tangent I wandered off into there. This month I’m also hopefully going to be learning BSL Stage 2 with my sister. Its long overdue – I did my Stage 1 exam before they changed the exam format. I’m looking forward to it but I’m also a bit apprehensive since I’m so out of practice with sign language. It really is something you have to do constantly to remember it all, since its a sign based language and you’re using your expressions and body.
This past month I’ve signed up to be a reviewer at Remotegoat (interesting name, I know), which was recommended to me as a good place to write reviews. Its not book reviewing but mostly theatre, gigs and films. You do get the chance to have free press tickets, but the films are usually something you review with your own money. You have to write a sample review for the editors before they accept you as a reviewer, so I wrote a review of Inception (which was great but at the same time it seemed to lack something, not sure what). Then once it was up I realised I had made a mistake in a sentence and left out a connection word, doh. That teaches me not to be rushed!
Sarah and I have also sorted out our jewellery business and have stuff up now on Etsy. The blog is Stars and Rainbows Jewellery – it has a link to our Etsy shop and we also post updates from time to time. The blog needs a bit of developing but we are both excited about the new jewellery we’ve been creating in the past few days and hope you’ll enjoy having a look and maybe buying something. We usually ship same day if orders are made before the post office closes, and we presently take PayPal payments. If you go on to the Etsy website you’ll discover that you can usually change the currency to GBP by a pop up that notices where you’re coming from (UK or Europe etc) – click OK and all prices should be displayed in GBP. Its a nifty new tool set up by Etsy – for the longest time you could only view prices in US Dollars!
I hope you’ve all had a good Bank Holiday weekend if you’re here in the UK – it mostly rained here but today its a lovely day – the last day of August decided to be a good one.
Cats and Chocolate 