I am in the middle of cleaning my room, or at the very least tidying up my bookshelves.

I am like my parents, in that I like to read, and have a big collection of books. And thanks to Borders and TradeMe that collection is only getting bigger. It only bugs me when the books I want are not available in New Zealand yet, or even worse, books that are out in hardback but are not in the massmarket paperback (which are a) cheaper and b) matching the rest of the series).

As I have mentioned before, I am working on completing a goal of reading 29 books in 2009 and I have added a section to my sidebar that reflects what I am currently reading. My shelves are only going to get more full as time goes on.

I am so proud having bookshelf #1 all tidy and organised for once I wanted to share it with all of you!

Click image to learn more about what’s on these shelves.

 
So now I need to get into bookcase #2 and make room for even more books that I know will be put on these shelves.

Originally published at Disdainful-Soul.net. You can comment here or there.

About a week ago, after a bit of troubles that were fixable, my iPod finally called it quits on me. Oh, it turned on and everything, but it refused to play music and videos. I tried ye olde restore, and that seemed to work.

Oh, wait. No it didn’t. All it did was clear the thing of music after telling me that my iPod was corrupted.

This was, in one way, neither better nor worse than what it was beforehand. Either way, I was left with a $400 piece of equipment that played a generic group of iPod quizzes. Yeah.

Took it back to the place my parents got it from (it was my 21st birthday present) and after a few false starts (I brought it back in because it would not work, you’re gonna have to do more than just recharge the thing) it’s finally being checked over properly.

Let’s hope my baby gets fixed, or I get a replacement, because it’s a lonely life without it. My comp is crap so running iTunes while using any other program causes it to go super slow (Yoda forbid you try and run iTunes and Firefox and OpenOffice at once), and most of my music is just mp3 files, so grabbing my old CD player leaves my music collection rather limited.

I want my baby back.

Originally published at Disdainful-Soul.net. You can comment here or there.

A guy I know had just proposed to his girlfriend.

This came as no surprise to me, as he and I were talking that stuff over, as he was trying to decide whether to push the date of proposal forward by a good half-year because of outside circumstances (basically, it was a case of when, not if).

This had only remind me that, in the dating-sense, I am a very slow developer. Actually, I have not developed at all. Here my friend is, not much younger than I am, and engaged. One of the guys I lived in the hall of residence with is married and babied (and has been for a few years now).

I, meanwhile, have never been on a date.

I’ll be 21 and a half in about a fortnight…

Oh well. At least I am not like certain LJ mommies.

Originally published at Disdainful-Soul.net. You can comment here or there.

It’s always a delight to get mail that’s not from the uni, the bank or something else to do with me not having any money, so there was a big smile when my package from my friend Kirsti finally arrived.

As you can see, the present was a lovely made-by-Kirsti scarf and since it is too warm here for me to use it right now, it is instead being modelled by the lovely Cheer Bear. It also came with a note, part of which read:

Anyway, I thought I’d send you this as a Scarfie at a new uni, I figured you’d need a new scarf! I hope you like the colours - but then again, you did help me pick them out!

I do love the scarf, Kirsti, and I love the colours - although at the time I wasn’t picking them for me! Thank you! It’ll help me colour up my winter wardrobe.

In other news, I am all finished registering with the university, and I start on Monday. I’m already registered with Disability Support Services, too. The anti-depressants have started set in and my concentration has started to come back, and I am sleeping better than I have in years. There is, however, a new diagnosis of PTSD, which is a bummer. But better I know, I guess.

So a whole new adventure starts on Monday. The final years of my degree, hopefully!

Wish me luck!

Originally published at Disdainful-Soul.net. You can comment here or there.

To quote my friend Steph, who I told this dream to, “Yay PTSD”.

There’s a construction crew, laying down cement to make, I don’t know, not like a tunnel but a hollow trail in the ground. Like a pipe, but not. I’m watching them from the side, but not really paying attention.

Until one of them starts shouting. There’s fingers sticking out of the earth.

The earth that they were about to cement over immediately vanishes, and I see one, two, a dozen, two dozen, hundreds of bodies piled one on top of each other, like bricks in a wall.

I feel sick.

I feel sicker when I notice one body’s eyes are fluttering.

I start screaming for everyone to help, to get down there and help me lift the bodies off this one guy, pull the slabs above them off so we can drag him out.

But he’s not they only one still alive. More eyes begin fluttering, mouths gasp for air, fingers reach for nothing. They’re all still alive.

Except the ones I’ve just watched be cemented up. I can’t see them, I’ve never seen them, but I know they’re dead. And I know they died while I was standing over them.

The scene cuts to me running down circular stairs. On each floor there is one door and one door only, but none lead to the exit. Only two doors matter: the one at the top, where I came in, and the one at the bottom, where the serial killer does his best work.

But he’s not there right now; I watched him leave. No one believes my story about it - about the killer who never kills his mass of victims, and instead lets other people (such as the construction crew) finish the job - so I have to do it myself.

In his lair I find the evidence I need to prove his guilt; he finds me.

I struggle, but he manages to subdue me. I finally figure out how he managed to keep all those people from struggling - I’m paralysed.

He tosses me into a pit and tells me I’m special. I’m the first one he’s ever killed directly…

Originally published at Disdainful-Soul.net. You can comment here or there.

This morning someone mentioned to me that they knew a person who wore only blue - until her depressive mood shifted, and she began wearing more colours.

That comment got me thinking about my own wardrobe and the rather obvious lack of colour options. In fact, it’s not just my wardrobe - my default colour for everything is blue, be it clothes, towels or stationary. If it not blue, the majority it black or grey.

So when I was instructed to go buy a notebook with a bright fancy colour to record my positive emotions (my “Happy Book”, as I now refer to it) my hand automatically went to pick the blue one up, before straying to the plain black visual diary. Recalling the story about the woman who only wore blue, I made a conscious effort to choose the pink.

Reading up on colour therapy and my wardrobe, I do feel that I need a change, something to help lift my mood. I don’t need to go out and re-design my wardrobe (I don’t have the money, for starters!) but even just the conscious idea of seeking colour for my life is uplifting. I want a pair of brightly-coloured striped socks to change from the mundane white socks I always wear. Looking in my draw now, I don’t see any t-shirts that are not black, grey, dark blue or white. It’s depressing, to say the least.

I need colour in my life.

Originally published at Disdainful-Soul.net. You can comment here or there.

According to the doctor I saw this morning, this is a diagnosis that has come at least six years too late. Knowing what I know, I have probably been suffering from it for almost (maybe more) half my life.

Scary.

The diagnosis of clinical depression is not a surprising one as such - I have been through periods where I could not even bring myself to get out of bed in the morning. It was a good day if I actually managed to get to class in clothes that I did not wear the day before, and had slept in. It was a great day if I wore clean clothes. An excellent day if I wore clean clothes and had had a shower. Pity the psychiatrist did not agree with everyone else - she refused to even say whether or not I had depression (leaving me in a state of limbo, essentially), saying that I would let a diagnosis take over my personality.

So it was a bit of a surprise when I was finally diagnosed, as apart from recent episodes I’d been rather fine. A bit dozy, a little bit weepy (especially over the news regarding Heath) but I was functional. Well, semi-functional. My brain sort of stopped working beyond a certain point. It’s taken me half an hour of knuckling down to get to this point and even now I am nodding off at my desk. Not quite at the point where face + keyboard = OTP, but soon. Soon.

It’s only 3.30pm.

Although it is a relief that I finally have a solid answer (which I always have needed before I fix anything) and there is finally a solution in sight, I have to admit that I am more than a little worried.

It’s now 3.50pm and all I wrote in the past 20 minutes was that paragraph. Oh, wait. That’s a sentence. That’s basically my level of functioning. Sometimes I have good moments where I can read a chapter of a book. Other times I can barely finish one page of a three-page short story. In the past few weeks I have suffered from mental blocks - I will be in the middle of a sentence, and when I reach for a word… nothing. Just a big white wall in my brain, preventing me from even finding a somewhat similar word no matter how wrong it may be. My tongue stops working, too, so I just sit there waving my hands why mentally ramming myself against the White Wall of Doom^TM.

Tomorrow is when I can start my round of pills, although the sleeping pills start tonight. Until then I am merely one of many people who have suffered from, or are suffering from, depression.

And as everyone tells me, I am not alone. Not alone.

Originally published at Disdainful-Soul.net. You can comment here or there.

Before I delve into shallowness, a moment’s silence for Sir Edmund Hillary, who passed away earlier today at the grand age of 88.

*silence*

When I was at lunch with my friend Chastity one of the things we discussed is that fact that, at 21, there is nowhere to go but downhill. In nine years we will be thirty for crying out loud. But I don’t feel 21.

In fact, I feel more like a fifteen year old than someone who is an adult. I feel really… slow at times, as my sister has done things that I really should have done first.

I have never had sex.

I have never had a boyfriend. Or girlfriend. Or alienfriend.

I’ve never been kissed.

I’ve never been on a date.

I’ve never danced with a guy.

I have been asked to dance with a guy once. I was 12. He was my friend. I said no.

I’ve only been asked out once. And this was by a random guy who approached me in the Cologne train station. He asked me out because I spoke English. And he didn’t.

To quote (or paraphrase, depending on how accurate I make this) what Chastity said to me was, “By the time we are thirty, we are supposed to be educated, have a job, be wed and have bred.”

I think a little bit of it has to do with the fact that I look around 16, so I don’t have to deal with the physical aspects of being my age, but…

I feel like a little kid playing pretend at times. Or am I Peter Pan, never wanting to grow up?

Second star to the right, and straight on ’til morning I go.

Originally published at Disdainful-Soul.net. You can comment here or there.

Just three exciting new things!

1. A new layout! Thanks to Celestial Star, D-S.net has a lovely, light and summery layout. Now if only the weather knew it was summer here…
2. We can has fraudband broadband! No more dialup for me, no more having to get off when sister says so!
3. I is going back to university. I woke up Friday morning, having decided I am going back to uni. Fun fun.

Originally published at Disdainful-Soul.net. You can comment here or there.

Here are some things that I have learnt over the last few days:

• Constantly refreshing the screen will not result in your Internet order suddenly being shipped. Dark Passion Play may be shipped within 48 hours… when it’s not a weekend. The rest are due in a few weeks.
• Do not try and reason with those who think that disagreeing with them means that you have just proved their point. Especially when their “point” is that tiny text is better and that because you can read their “argument” it proves that tiny text is easier to read
• You are still allergic to cats. In fact, without Bronson being around all the time, you have lost the resistance that his constant presence provided.
• Some people actually think High School Musical is cool. Try to stop questioning their sanity.
• You no longer have to deal with the 9 o’clock pr0n runs on Sunday mornings.
• Although no job = no money. No job also = no having to look at pr0n title such as House of the Shemales and Salad-Eating Sluts
• You and your sister still do not get along.
• Chocolates thrown in the direction of head hurt.
• After discussing the reasoning behind a roleplaying character’s fears about being infertile and what that does to her, and having to deal with her being upset to the point where it invades your dreams, it is never a good idea to watch an episode of House MD in which a mother kills her baby!
• Everybody lies. Also, “Hugh Laurie is hot” needs to replace “Alan Rickman is hot” as the standard response to someone stating the obvious.

On another note, I have just discovered the side of last.fm that does more than record your music. How cool is that? Here’s mine.

Originally published at Disdainful-Soul.net. You can comment here or there.