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some answers
Well, these got longer than I imagined they might.
01. My sexual orientation.
At the moment I have no neat definition for this, but I'm going to go with 'somewhere between bisexual and gay' with the addendum of 'sometimes asexual-ish' because between my own hormones being unpredictable and my being on an OCP that likes to crush my sex drive like a tiny bug… sexuality seems to be entirely in the realms of the hypothetical a lot of the time.
The short answer is: I like mostly girls! And mostly girly girls, which 90% of the time means 'straight girls', and 100% of the time means 'girls I assume are straight' because my female gaydar is a puny, ineffective thing.
As you may imagine, this does not bode well for my dating life.
25. One of my internal conflicts.
The conflict I keep coming back to is that between the career path I'm on -- a privileged one, an interesting and satisfying one, one guaranteeing employment and financial security -- and the fact that I want to be a better writer, a productive writer. And one day, a published writer.
These past weeks as a pre-intern have scared me a bit. The work is quite tiring physically, sometimes tiring emotionally, and definitely tiring mentally. I've been looking forward for the past seven years to the time when I can come home from a day of work and not have any study to do; I'll be able to get so much writing done! I thought. But instead I'm in the middle of the worst dry spell, creatively, that I've had in ages.
What if this continues? What if all can do for the next two years is come home and watch TV and then sleep? After those two years I'll be in a specialty training program and that will mean going right back to studying, lots of studying, most-of-one's-leisure-time studying.
I want to write. I want to be a writer. I don't want to keep telling myself 'wait until you're done with X, and then you can write properly', but there's no way I'm booting myself off a career path that I genuinely like, and that comes with all the security mentioned above, just because another profession exists that I would prefer. Especially because very, very few people can make it a profession; even with talent, even with a fair amount of luck. I thought I'd be able to have both, but so far the evidence is not in my favour.
So, yeah. I spend a fair amount of time stressing myself out about that, which obviously in no way improves the whole dry spell thing.
31. What I love most about myself.
This is very general and possibly pompous as all hell, but: my brain. It's flexible!
TERRIBLE BRAGGING AHEAD: while at school I won prizes for coming first in maths, general science, English, religious studies, French, geography, chemistry and physics. I like that I have no problems with analytical topics like maths, I can talk sensibly and critically about texts and theatrical productions, I do well on all kinds of standardised testing, my memory for facts is good, and I seem to have some space left over for creativity as well. I like being reasonably confident that if I'm confronted with a new topic or intellectual arena, I'll be good at it.
46. What I dislike most about myself.
Whatever the hell is going on with my ability to engage with other people romantically. Or lack thereof. I've dated three people over the past four years -- all guys -- and I haven't talked about any of them on LJ because it's never gone past the third date before I've broken things off. I have a predictable pattern with these things. And I don't know why my interested-feelings disappear, like clockwork, as soon as I seem to be getting anywhere with anyone. I only like guys very occasionally, and the feelings are never very strong: they're interest. And I don't have any problems with people not being interested back, in general; I just have the problem that as soon as they are, I don't want to see them any more. The idea of more dates makes me desperately uncomfortable, and the more I try to push through it the more I want to bail.
Part of it could be the sexuality thing; I might talk myself into liking guys more than I actually do, because I do feel shitty about the fact that I Can't Do relationships, and I feel as though whenever the chance comes along I should at least give it a go. And every chance so far has been male. The last guy I dated was great for me, rationally speaking. We had a lot in common. We got on really well. But the part of me that wants to be in a relationship was at serious war with the part of me that didn’t enjoy making out with him and really didn't want to progress to sleeping with him, and the latter part won by a mile.
I've never felt what I'd describe as chemistry. With anyone. Ever. I haven't dated any girls because of the aforementioned problems with gaydar (and let's face it, I don't come across as queer either), so I don't know if the problem is me-dating-guys when I'm wired for girls, or me-dating-anyone when I'm wired to freak out and lose interest.
I dislike this partly because it frustrates me, it makes me feel somehow deeply flawed as a person, but largely because it's not fair to the people I keep experimenting with to see if this time, maybe it will work. They feel chemistry. They are always surprised, and usually hurt, when I break things off; out of the blue, as they see it. I feel mean every time. And every time I feel less and less like taking the chance on the next person I feel vaguely interested in, because of what the pattern suggests I will end up doing to them.
But if I stop trying altogether, I'll lose any chance I have at this whole romantic love thing, and I want to know what it's like. I want to feel excited about seeing someone, and go silly over them, and want to hold their hand, and take them to restaurants, and lie on couches with their head in my lap watching ridiculous superhero movies, and I want it to feel fun and comfortable and warm and not like the most stressful thing in the world.
07. My favorite book.
You all know that there's no way this will be just one book, so let's get on with the list! Regeneration and its sequels, by Pat Barker. To Say Nothing of the Dog by Connie Willis. Night Watch by Terry Pratchett. Howl's Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones. The Hours by Michael Cunningham. Moon Tiger by Penelope Lively. The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje.
No doubt if given an hour I would reshuffle and include others, but those are the ones that spring to mind immediately, so they're probably a good pick.
17. What I find attractive
Ooh, good, another list!
Red hair. Well-cut suits. Dry humour. Neat lipstick. Animation when discussing subjects of interest. Necks and collarbones. Elegant tattoos. Easy smiles. Intelligence. Cheekbones. Scars. Wrists and bracelets and shirt cuffs. Willingness to listen. Legs in high heels. Deliberate distance.
22. All of the places I've lived.
Let's do the long version! I was born in Melbourne, but I only lived there until I was 2. Then my family moved to the UK for a couple of years; we lived in Birmingham with my aunt & uncle & cousins, although for couple of months we lived in Graz, Austria.
On my 4th birthday we moved back to Australia, to Canberra. We only stayed in the house in that particular suburb for a year and a half, then halfway through my kindergarten year we moved to the current family home. Where I lived unti the end of high school!
The summer after I graduated high school, I moved out into a nice house with one of my friends (her grandmother owned the house from afar), where we lived awesomely and threw excellent weekly parties for all of my first undergrad year.
After that, a different friend and I rented an apartment together for all of second year.
And after that, I moved back into the family home for all of third year, where my mental health improved and my brother had access to 'my' car.
Aaand then I got into USyd for medical school, so I moved to Women's College on campus for the next three years. During that time I moved rooms once, which involved all of the annoying packing-and-unpacking aspects of moving house even though I was only moving sideways.
At the end of third year I moved to Orange, where I lived for two months before gadding off overseas and staying in London for a month for my elective. Then back to Canberra for another month. Then back to Orange for nine months.
And right now I'm in Sydney for two months, living with![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
_leareth.
And in a couple of weeks I'll be back in Canberra for the next two years, although I'll have brief stints in Goulburn or Bega, and I plan to move out of the family home again after the first year. And after those two years, I plan to move back to Sydney.
I am very good at packing and unpacking. That said, the day I move into a place with the intention of never moving again in the foreseeable future, I think I will cry tears of joy.
27. My life's aspirations.
Quite a modest list, actually!
- Publish a novel.
- Live in London.
Apart from that...there are things I'd like to do (maybe get married, maybe have a kid) but they're not so much aspirations as things I'd be very happy to have in my life if the opportunity ever arose.
01. My sexual orientation.
At the moment I have no neat definition for this, but I'm going to go with 'somewhere between bisexual and gay' with the addendum of 'sometimes asexual-ish' because between my own hormones being unpredictable and my being on an OCP that likes to crush my sex drive like a tiny bug… sexuality seems to be entirely in the realms of the hypothetical a lot of the time.
The short answer is: I like mostly girls! And mostly girly girls, which 90% of the time means 'straight girls', and 100% of the time means 'girls I assume are straight' because my female gaydar is a puny, ineffective thing.
As you may imagine, this does not bode well for my dating life.
25. One of my internal conflicts.
The conflict I keep coming back to is that between the career path I'm on -- a privileged one, an interesting and satisfying one, one guaranteeing employment and financial security -- and the fact that I want to be a better writer, a productive writer. And one day, a published writer.
These past weeks as a pre-intern have scared me a bit. The work is quite tiring physically, sometimes tiring emotionally, and definitely tiring mentally. I've been looking forward for the past seven years to the time when I can come home from a day of work and not have any study to do; I'll be able to get so much writing done! I thought. But instead I'm in the middle of the worst dry spell, creatively, that I've had in ages.
What if this continues? What if all can do for the next two years is come home and watch TV and then sleep? After those two years I'll be in a specialty training program and that will mean going right back to studying, lots of studying, most-of-one's-leisure-time studying.
I want to write. I want to be a writer. I don't want to keep telling myself 'wait until you're done with X, and then you can write properly', but there's no way I'm booting myself off a career path that I genuinely like, and that comes with all the security mentioned above, just because another profession exists that I would prefer. Especially because very, very few people can make it a profession; even with talent, even with a fair amount of luck. I thought I'd be able to have both, but so far the evidence is not in my favour.
So, yeah. I spend a fair amount of time stressing myself out about that, which obviously in no way improves the whole dry spell thing.
31. What I love most about myself.
This is very general and possibly pompous as all hell, but: my brain. It's flexible!
TERRIBLE BRAGGING AHEAD: while at school I won prizes for coming first in maths, general science, English, religious studies, French, geography, chemistry and physics. I like that I have no problems with analytical topics like maths, I can talk sensibly and critically about texts and theatrical productions, I do well on all kinds of standardised testing, my memory for facts is good, and I seem to have some space left over for creativity as well. I like being reasonably confident that if I'm confronted with a new topic or intellectual arena, I'll be good at it.
46. What I dislike most about myself.
Whatever the hell is going on with my ability to engage with other people romantically. Or lack thereof. I've dated three people over the past four years -- all guys -- and I haven't talked about any of them on LJ because it's never gone past the third date before I've broken things off. I have a predictable pattern with these things. And I don't know why my interested-feelings disappear, like clockwork, as soon as I seem to be getting anywhere with anyone. I only like guys very occasionally, and the feelings are never very strong: they're interest. And I don't have any problems with people not being interested back, in general; I just have the problem that as soon as they are, I don't want to see them any more. The idea of more dates makes me desperately uncomfortable, and the more I try to push through it the more I want to bail.
Part of it could be the sexuality thing; I might talk myself into liking guys more than I actually do, because I do feel shitty about the fact that I Can't Do relationships, and I feel as though whenever the chance comes along I should at least give it a go. And every chance so far has been male. The last guy I dated was great for me, rationally speaking. We had a lot in common. We got on really well. But the part of me that wants to be in a relationship was at serious war with the part of me that didn’t enjoy making out with him and really didn't want to progress to sleeping with him, and the latter part won by a mile.
I've never felt what I'd describe as chemistry. With anyone. Ever. I haven't dated any girls because of the aforementioned problems with gaydar (and let's face it, I don't come across as queer either), so I don't know if the problem is me-dating-guys when I'm wired for girls, or me-dating-anyone when I'm wired to freak out and lose interest.
I dislike this partly because it frustrates me, it makes me feel somehow deeply flawed as a person, but largely because it's not fair to the people I keep experimenting with to see if this time, maybe it will work. They feel chemistry. They are always surprised, and usually hurt, when I break things off; out of the blue, as they see it. I feel mean every time. And every time I feel less and less like taking the chance on the next person I feel vaguely interested in, because of what the pattern suggests I will end up doing to them.
But if I stop trying altogether, I'll lose any chance I have at this whole romantic love thing, and I want to know what it's like. I want to feel excited about seeing someone, and go silly over them, and want to hold their hand, and take them to restaurants, and lie on couches with their head in my lap watching ridiculous superhero movies, and I want it to feel fun and comfortable and warm and not like the most stressful thing in the world.
07. My favorite book.
You all know that there's no way this will be just one book, so let's get on with the list! Regeneration and its sequels, by Pat Barker. To Say Nothing of the Dog by Connie Willis. Night Watch by Terry Pratchett. Howl's Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones. The Hours by Michael Cunningham. Moon Tiger by Penelope Lively. The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje.
No doubt if given an hour I would reshuffle and include others, but those are the ones that spring to mind immediately, so they're probably a good pick.
17. What I find attractive
Ooh, good, another list!
Red hair. Well-cut suits. Dry humour. Neat lipstick. Animation when discussing subjects of interest. Necks and collarbones. Elegant tattoos. Easy smiles. Intelligence. Cheekbones. Scars. Wrists and bracelets and shirt cuffs. Willingness to listen. Legs in high heels. Deliberate distance.
22. All of the places I've lived.
Let's do the long version! I was born in Melbourne, but I only lived there until I was 2. Then my family moved to the UK for a couple of years; we lived in Birmingham with my aunt & uncle & cousins, although for couple of months we lived in Graz, Austria.
On my 4th birthday we moved back to Australia, to Canberra. We only stayed in the house in that particular suburb for a year and a half, then halfway through my kindergarten year we moved to the current family home. Where I lived unti the end of high school!
The summer after I graduated high school, I moved out into a nice house with one of my friends (her grandmother owned the house from afar), where we lived awesomely and threw excellent weekly parties for all of my first undergrad year.
After that, a different friend and I rented an apartment together for all of second year.
And after that, I moved back into the family home for all of third year, where my mental health improved and my brother had access to 'my' car.
Aaand then I got into USyd for medical school, so I moved to Women's College on campus for the next three years. During that time I moved rooms once, which involved all of the annoying packing-and-unpacking aspects of moving house even though I was only moving sideways.
At the end of third year I moved to Orange, where I lived for two months before gadding off overseas and staying in London for a month for my elective. Then back to Canberra for another month. Then back to Orange for nine months.
And right now I'm in Sydney for two months, living with
_leareth.And in a couple of weeks I'll be back in Canberra for the next two years, although I'll have brief stints in Goulburn or Bega, and I plan to move out of the family home again after the first year. And after those two years, I plan to move back to Sydney.
I am very good at packing and unpacking. That said, the day I move into a place with the intention of never moving again in the foreseeable future, I think I will cry tears of joy.
27. My life's aspirations.
Quite a modest list, actually!
- Publish a novel.
- Live in London.
Apart from that...there are things I'd like to do (maybe get married, maybe have a kid) but they're not so much aspirations as things I'd be very happy to have in my life if the opportunity ever arose.
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I think a lot of people in fandom feel this tremendous pressure to provide output and to write, whether for themselves or for fans or who knows why. And I finally realized, somewhere around my junior year of college, that I was driving myself nuts with the expectation that I needed to write all the time. We all have limited amounts of energy and sanity, and you and I are both in really high expectation, really involved fields that require an awful lot of us even after we get home at night. I think you're feeling drained and probably sort of burned out, and I think maybe the best thing to do for your writers' block is to give yourself a few months to do normal human things without feeling guilty about it. Come home and watch TV at night or read a book you enjoy or chat with people you care about. I think the writing will come back a lot faster if you don't force it and if you feel well rested and relaxed. We spend so much of our academic lives jumping from one concrete goal to the next ("pass this exam," "write this paper," "graduate with X degree") that I think sometimes doing non-goal-oriented leisure activities feels like a waste of time and like we're slacking. But it's recharging your own batteries. :) You can go back to writing whenever, and taking some time off is not going to drastically increase or decrease your skills.
And as an addendum to that, if you'd ever like to do some comment fic sort of stuff or whatnot, I would be happy to. I think we still have White Collar in common, or we could do original character stuff. Maybe as a fun writing exercise? :) Dunno. Just poke me, I'm easy.
And, re: later things, I know I have said this before (although I do hope you will tell me to knock it the hell off if I ever make you uncomfortable, it's not my intention) but I really like you. You are talented and witty and beautiful, and I would date you in under two seconds flat if we were on the same continent. (Although I will freely admit that you'd probably hate it because I'd promptly steal all your fabulous jackets.) And I like make up and shoes and fashion. (She said, currently wearing jeans and a college sweatshirt.) So, y'know, people of your general preferred group do exist. I have confidence that it'll work out eventually. :)
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Cowriting something would be good! I have to finish an epic I am currently cowriting, and get the heady mess of Yuletide behind me, but next year we should definitely revisit this idea :)
Heh. Jeans and sweatshirt are valid home choices! I do a fair amount of lounging around in those sorts of clothes. Though I changed my entire outfit yesterday to go to the ice rink because I needed to be wearing stockings to put my Doc Marten chunky heels on.
Mum: Don't you have sneakers?
Me: Sneakers are for RUNNING or INSIDE THE HOUSE. Docs are for wearing in public!
Mum: ....
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You are a fantastic writer and that skill hasn't abandoned you. Your amazing brain is probably just a little tired at the moment and needs to recharge. I have no doubts one day I will see you published. x
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I won't lie, the 'published author' aspect of it appeals too: the recognition, the feeling that I'm able to share my ideas with such a wide audience. I've gained so much pleasure from reading over the years that I really love the idea of providing that pleasure for others.
And oh, man, there are SO MANY stories that I want to get across. I have at least four novel-ideas that I think I could work into something decent, a lot of short stories tucked away in folders to be worked on, and I keep stumbling across more and more little grains of ideas in my everyday life.
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*has nothing constructive to add*
We should hang out.
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You can be the next female Michael Crichton. :)
And with the dating thing, do your friends know what you like? I can imagine with your radar it's pretty hard to meet people, or to meet people you would consider are eligible for the dating pool. Are you amenable to any of your friends setting you up?
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I am certainly amenable to it, and I think the friends who are close enough to me to know that I'm queer would be happy to do it. Maybe I should advertise more! I guess I've just been so busy for so long that actively searching relationships out has seemed like just another task, and one with zero priority in the face of study :)
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girl you gotta find your local femme community.
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Step 2. follow femme-oriented tumblrs such as fuckyeahfemmes (they also have a great links page), queerfatfemme (most of my exposure to the tumblr femme community is adjacently via the tumblr fatshion community which has a ton of rad femmes in it. there actually seem to be several australians in it; start with giselaramirez), and other queer tumblrs
Step 3. see who the tumblrs you like reblog a lot, see who is talking about what, try to find conversations that interest you and follow those people
Step 4. if all else fails, check the tags for any given word like "femme" or "lesbian" or "canberra" and often communities spring up around those tags.
Step 5. if all else else fails, follow your friends and just have a normal tumblr :D you are guaranteed to find some new cool people you like.
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Also there's regular "like minded women"'s movie nights in Canberra. I never managed to get my shit together to go to one, but they exist!
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