Gigs, shifts, and lost productivity.

I haven’t updated my blog for such a long time – I’ve been hella busy with my new job.  It’s going really well, and I love working there, though I’m still struggling to get up early every morning – I used to lie in until at least 9am, now I have to get up at 6am.  My body hates me right now.

As expected, working full-time has meant that I’ve had to devote far less time to my hobbies and other commitments.  Before I worked, I could quite easily take on lots of tasks, arrange to go on various trips, etc – the only limitation was financial. Now I have far more financial freedom, but not enough time!  I couldn’t attend Reclaim the Night Cardiff last week due to a late shift, and haven’t been able to see the SFN girls as much as I usually do.

This weekend I tried to squeeze in lots of stuff, and just about got away with it, though I’m not sure if I could manage it again.  On Friday I performed at the Swansea Feminist Network Music Fundraiser!  The gig was good; I wasn’t very happy with my performance, as I got quite nervous on the night and my nerves resulted in a number of mistakes on the piano. I got lots of positive feedback, so perhaps I thought it sounded far worse than it actually did.  The gig was also my first social outing with my new hair, and most people agreed that I actually look better with brown hair. What do you think?

Ali Morris wrote a great review of the night at Swansea University blog The Siren.

The following morning (6 hours after I got home the night before), I travelled up to Nottingham to visit my friend Rose and attend the Nottingham University Prizes and Awards ceremony (I won an award for the work I did for the Women’s Network zine “Artemis”!).  I had such a lovely weekend, and the 5-hour train journey was totally worth it.  On Saturday we watched some live female comedy at Ladyfest Nottingham, which was lots of fun.  I particularly liked Naomi Hefter, musical duo Lindsey & Catherine, and interactive comedy group The Gramophones, so do check those acts out if you’re interested in fun female comedy!

The weekend was awesome, but I’m not sure I can sustain this level of activity.  I’ve already had to turn down Reclaim the Night London this weekend, as I’m so tired from a week of work that a day in London would just make me ill.  (I bet those of you who work full-time will scoff at my weakness – I’m not used to timetables and getting up early to do things, I’ve spent the past 3 years either studying at uni, or on JSA!)  While I’m sad that I won’t be able to donate as much time to my side projects, I feel good that I have a job, and have some money coming in.

But I have managed to get a few things done:

• My first column for The Girls Are went up last week!  Take a look and comment: http://www.thegirlsare.com/2011/11/11/girl-with-a-guitar-1/
• I was featured on womens literature blog For Books’ Sake on Friday. I’m really happy with how this one turned out! http://forbookssake.net/2011/11/18/five-minute-friday-catherine-elms/
• Spill the Zines – November zine reviews: http://bit.ly/uTV7wr

Hopefully my productivity will get back to normal once my body has adjusted to my work schedule.  We shall see.

 

Halloween, & finally getting a job!

This Halloween was awesome!  On the weekend I went to a fancy dress party at a friend’s house, got a bit drunk, and had a lovely evening.  I spent the previous week on holiday, so had to prepare a costume at the very last minute with whatever I had lying around the house.  I ended up going as Leela from Futurama – I didn’t bother taking any full-body photos of my costume because it was so monumentally shit.  At least everyone recognised who I was!

Then on Monday, I was offered a job!  I’m now working as a receptionist; the hours are ideal, and the people there are lovely.  I was very nervous and shy on my first day today, but other than that it went really well.  So I’m over the moon right now!  However, I have had to dye my hair, mostly in order to appear more professional and less young (everyone always tells me that I look like a rebellious teenager with my purple hair and piercings; it doesn’t help that I have a young-looking face anyway), but also because I’m more than a little bored of the hair by now.  I could muster up the enthusiasm by dying it magenta or something, but I think the time has come to go back to a normal colour.  It’ll be nice to have a break I suppose, and if I ever become a full-time musician, I’ll dye it again.

Farewell, purple hair. We had some good times.

So yes, I’m now employed, and no longer have to sign on!  Being an unemployed graduate was a miserable experience, and I have so much sympathy for those unfortunate enough to still be looking for work.  My self-esteem has been slipping over the past few months as I put so much effort into each job application, each one ending in a rejection… but I’ll write about that subject in depth in Here. In My Head. #11.

Both the party and the job offer came at an ideal time – winter always brings out my sociable side.  Now that the clocks have turned back and the weather has taken a turn for the worse, the nights are longer and darker, and I really crave company to fill those long nights – parties, sleepovers, cwtching up with a hot chocolate and a film, etc.  I tend to get SAD during the winter months – I think the end of the year reminds me of dying, the way the environment decays and falls away, the fact that every year builds up towards December, only to begin the same monotonous cycle all over again in January…  That sounds very melodramatic when written down.  This is coming out all wrong.  All I know is that when winter comes around, I start thinking about my death, and what will happen to my soul, and the fear of the unknown takes over me.  Thankfully, in the past twelve months or so my mental health has improved greatly, and this year I want to avoid SAD completely if I can.  The more time I spend with good company, the less I dwell on the morbid thoughts that float through my head at this time of year.  I’ve managed to fit lots of things into  the next two months to keep myself busy and happy, including visiting my good friend Rose in Nottingham, performing at the Swansea Feminist Network fundraiser, Reclaim the Night London, Reclaim the Night Cardiff, and the new SFN radical feminist reading group.  I’m also going to try and do a few tasks from “365 Ways to Change the World“.  I’m looking forward to keeping myself busy and having lots of fun despite the miserable season.  Plus, Christmas is on its way, and nothing cheers me up more than an excuse to stuff my face and buy presents for people.

Music News: I’ve become a columnist for feminist music blog The Girls Are! I’m writing a fortnightly column about being a female musician breaking into the local music scene.  My first column is going live sometime in the next week.  Keep your eyes open for it!

Zine News: Spill the Zines is still ticking away nicely, though I’m having trouble getting people interested in writing for us.  I can handle the workload of editing the blog now, but I’m worried that it’ll slip by the wayside now that I’m working.
Also, Pandora Press #2 is on its way to the printers!  Here’s the cover I designed for the zine.  I’m not 100% happy with it, but it’s okay.

Pandora Press #2

Other News: I’ve uploaded my graphic design portfolio to Facebook.  I find myself designing posters and zine stuff for the Swansea Feminist Network a lot recently, so I thought it’d be nice to gather them all in one place, and possibly offer my services to others for a small price.  Take a look.

The Pros and Cons of Colourful Hair

As you all know, I have colourful hair.  My natural colour is a sort of strawberry blonde, something like this:

My face looks weird here because I was suppressing a laugh, I think!

But I got bored of it after years of the same colour.  I wasn’t brave enough to change up the style, so I went through dying phases.  First, dark brown in 2005:

Then, deep pinks and purples in 2007:

2007, in The Jolly Tar. I love my hair here.

This was a Stargazer dye, so it all washed out within a week.

Then red in 2008:

October 2008

Then in December 2008, 2 months into my degree, I decided to take the plunge and bleach it.  I wanted to shake up my image a bit, do something radically different, and stand out from the crowd.  I was struggling with making friends, and naively thought that colourful hair would draw people to me (though, it must be said, it did work to a certain extent – it was certainly a good conversation starter, and many of those conversations led to decent friendships!)  So I did this:

For the past three years, almost, I’ve loved having colourful hair.  The pros of having colourful hair are, in my opinion:

-          Colourful hair is its own accessory. You can wear jeans and a t shirt and still look good.

-          You become instantly memorable (“who’s she?” “the one with purple hair”).

-          It’s a conversation starter. People have started talking to me on buses, in shops, in toilets, and on the street about my hair.

-          It tends to attract other “alternative”-ish people. (one of my old uni friends told me that the reason she decided to start talking to me was because she thought my hair was cool)

-          Kids getting excited when they see your hair in public – “look mummy, look at her hair! Can I have blue hair?” I love that. <3

-          Obviously it looks cool as fuck.

I’ve dyed it many colours since then; here’s a quick selection:

February 2009

Blue – March 2009. I miss this colour so much, but it was hard to maintain!

Deep pink – summer 2009

Blue and black – December 2009

Red and black – autumn 2010.

March 2011 – cut it short and bleached out the black to go back to purple

However, three years later, I’ve finally decided to dye it back to a normal colour – probably dark brown again.  Having coloured hair has lost its shine (literally and figuratively), and I’m sick of all the downsides:

-          It’s an absolute bastard to maintain.  I used to dye my hair dark brown, and as long as I dyed it every 6 weeks or so, when my roots came through and the colour started losing vibrancy, the colour always looked fantastic.  Now, with purple hair, I need to dye it every two weeks, and bleach the roots every month, if I want to keep it looking good.  I can’t afford to do it that often, which means that I usually spend half my time having grey-tinted hair and brown roots.

-          Dirty looks from sanctimonious strangers.

-          Creepy come-ons from strange men who think it’s acceptable to stroke your hair when it’s an unusual colour. No dude, it’s still my hair, FUCK OFF.

-          Dirty men who ask you if the carpet matches the curtains (true story).  Have these men considered the logistics of dying your pubic hair?!

-          Dirty men who ask if it’s true that alternative girls prefer anal (also a true story).

-          Nagging relatives asking you when you’re going to grow up and dye over it.

-          You’re less employable. I pretty much lost my retail job in 2008 because I dyed my hair purple.  Fuck BHS. (purple hair is “unnatural”, whereas white blonde with black streaks is totally fine…)

-          Stained bath towels, pillows, and collars (I learned the hard way that dark blue towels are the way forward).

-         Sometimes it’s nice not to stand out.  You can’t blend in with purple hair.

So I return to being normal and unmemorable – but with hair that’s easier to maintain.  I am mostly doing this to try and find a job – I know how stiff the competition is, and I don’t want anything to put an employer off hiring me.  *sigh*  I’m also getting sick of standing out all the time, especially now that I’ve left the student bubble of Nottingham and am in the “real world”.  Sitting in a doctor’s waiting room, or in the Job Centre, feeling people’s eyes on me when I wish I was invisible… it’s not a nice feeling.  I’m almost looking forward to being a normal colour again, actually.

 

February Crafty Endeavours

Helloooo!  Things are good at the moment.  I’ve just had my results back for last semester, and I’m delighted with how well I’ve done, considering I was a complete mess for the first 2 weeks of January with stress!  I’ve just started my new modules, all of which are going well so far, and I’m writing my dissertation.  Very scary, but I’m feeling better about my abilities than ever before.  I’m trying to keep on top of everything, and get things done early so I don’t get too stressed out at a later date, which might mean less time for crafty things and blog updates… it’s regrettable, but it’ll be worth it in the end.

I’m now considering doing a Gender Studies MA instead of a PGCE, as lots of people have told me that teaching is a pretty tough route to go down unless you’re 100% committed and passionate about it… for the first time ever, I’m feeling relatively confident in my academic capabilities (not first-class confident, but 68% confident, which is also good), so maybe I could become an academic…?

Anyway, enough rambling.  I’ve got lots of crafty bits and pieces coming along nicely, most of which will hopefully come to light in the next month or so!  Keep your eyes peeled.

The new issue of Artemis is now available to view online at http://issuu.com/artemiszine, or pick up at upcoming Women’s Network events.  We’re trying to get a stand in the Portland building where we can let people pick up free copies, but there’s a lot of red tape to battle through.  Pffft.

 

Crafty endeavours this month include:

1. Here. In My Head. #7 / Your Pretty Face is Going Straight to Hell! #14
Yes, my next zine will be a split with Tukru!  SO excited about this; it’ll be out before the end of February!

2. Twt #3: Things I Dislike
Another free mini-zine.  Always fun to make (plus there’s something quite cathartic about voicing your frustrations/dislikes in a funny silly way, don’t you think?).

3. Writing new songs
I’ve got a bad habit of leaving songs unfinished before moving on to writing the next one.  This has happened again over the past few months, so one afternoon I went through my songbook, and planned out all the unfinished songs and fragments I had.  Turns out I have sixteen songs on half – and four finished – that are shaping up to be really great songs.  So technically, I could have finished writing my second album by the summer, which is so exciting.  I’ve had writers’ block for such a long time – I think I only wrote three proper songs in my first and second years of university.  When I hit my third year, I finally got my act together and started finishing songs, working on lyric and music drafts that had been floating around for years, and writing entirely new pieces.  It feels really good, to get back into it all.  Of course, I won’t be able to record my second album for at least another year, which sucks, but there ya go.

4. Secret project with Hannah (Not Lonely zine)
All will be revealed soon.

5. 101 Things in 1001 Days
Watched lots of awesome films in January (including Black Swan – soooo good!), and completed one or two other challenges too.

 

In other news, I’ve cut my hair a lot shorter and dyed the light bits red.  I don’t know if I like it.

I’m tempted to bleach the lot and go back to blue/turquoise.  I miss having hair this colour:

But that won’t be a wise decision if I’m planning to attend job interviews this year!  I hate being an adult.