To the onlines I went, and I discovered that several sources agreed on stress being a factor in developing sores. None of the other possible causes seemed to fit my situation, so I guess it’s a bad-news-good-news sort of thing: Yay, I don’t have some kind of mutating super-herpes. Boo, this past half a year (and particularly the last few months) has been really, really stressful.

I already knew I was stressed out and overworked, but this gives extra evidence of such a state.
Oh well, two more weeks and I’m done… I hope.

ALSO, Mike Rooth ( @uncouthrooth on Twitter ) has offered to do a commision for me! I won’t tell you what it is just yet, but I’ll let you know it’s going to be made of awesome. Just look at this dude’s portfolio! He’s amazing! I can’t wait to see the finished product.

Right. Time to get back to work.

I’ve decided that once I finish university, I will focus on acting for a while. Even in my first year, when my friend Kerry told me he never understood why I didn’t go into performance of some sort instead of production, the seed of doubt was sown in my choice of direction. It made me realise that the only things that have ever actually made me happy during my life have been performance related. The years since that day have been kind of spent waiting for this education malarky to finish so I could go do what I wanted to do all along.

That’s not to say my education has been a failure or a waste. In life, there is no such thing as a waste. If you look at it the right way, everything we do has value in some sense. Admittedly, it’s hard to find the real value in having seen every episode of Poirot ever made or in playing Fallout 3 for hours on end, but it’s there. You just need to find out what you learned from it and how you can use that going forward.

I didn’t intend to make this post a cheesy motivational speech about “Achieving your inner potential”, so I’ll move on.

During the last few weeks, in the midst of all this craziness, I’ve auditioned for Fringe shows, had headshots taken (as you can see) and applied for a student equity membership. Equity is basically the trade union for actors on film and stage and all sorts of people in stage production. Without it, it’s hard to get work. I’ve also started tentatively looking for an agent.

I don’t harbour any illusions that I will “make it big” or anything like that. Fame would be nice and all, but mainly because it assures economic security for a while. Mainly, I just want to do something with my life that makes me happy. I take great pleasure in a job well done, be it editing, photography or sound design, but the process doesn’t always appeal to me. In fact, sometimes it plunges me into bouts of depression that rival everything else I’ve ever encountered. Lately, I’ve learned to get out of it without needing massive amounts of outside help, but it’s not pleasurable in any way. Acting is very straight-forward. You do your thing, and if it doesn’t quite work, you modify what you’re doing. And you know immediately if it’s not right, because you’ll either feel it or people will tell you.

Maybe it’s a pipe dream. Maybe I can never make a living off acting. I’ll find out, won’t I? I have an audition for The Edinburgh Dungeons in a little over a week, which means a paid, possibly permanent position acting. It’s minimum wage, but the operative word here is wage. And experience. I really hope I get it.

That’s how much. The site says “You’re confusingly hetero. Your friends know. Your family know. You’re probably the only one who isn’t sure on where you stand.”

I would say that this analysisation is fairly inaccurate, as I did get married to a girl and have had very little sexual contact with male persons over the years. Apparently, this thing analyses your twitter feed to see how hetero you are. Quite funny.

Slog #6

Weight today: 76.7 (or 77.7)

Slog #4

Slog #2

I’ve been struggling with the online service Chirbit for my slogs, but it’s having huge teething trouble for recording through the browser. I wanted to do browser uploading because I wanted to make it as easy as possible to do to Slogs (Otherwise, I can just WRITE) but I guess not. Chirbit is a good idea, but it needs a lot of work before I can use it. I’ll try just doing them on Garageband and uploading to here from now on and see how that works out.

Today’s Slog

My Flickr

Let me know what you think of this as an idea, also let me know what you think of the audio quality. I had to use the internal mic on my iMac, because the site messed up the quality of the sound when I used my Samson USB mic. So yeah, chime in.

I went to Tae Kwon Do today, looking forward to sweating it up and kicking the shit out of those cushions. Sadly, the instructor couldn’t come and it was cancelled. Oh well. I did manage to get some cardboard boxes and paint for the track/dolly project, though.

Also, while waiting for Andy, who was to get me the cardboard stuff, I chanced upon a Swedish exchange student at the cafe. We ended up having a fairly long conversation about all kinds of things, and I hope to meet him again. Great guy. Also, I could actually speak Norwegian to him, which is rare. Usually, I have to speak in English to Swedes as they don’t understand us. We understand them just fine, so I don’t quite get why so many of them can’t return that sign of respect. We’re not just neighbouring countries, our languages are virtually the same, except for a few words here and there. So anyway, Henrik DID understand me, so that was fine.

Made pizza today. T’was good. Instead of tomato puree with greens (and meat) on layer by layer, I made a full-on pizza topping with everything mixed in that I let simmer while the dough rose. I made the topping basically like I would a tomato sauce for pasta: Oil in kettle. Heat it up. Garlic. Simmer quickly. Onion, mushroom, ++ veg. Crushed tomato from a can. seasoning. Simmer for a long time. I seasoned it a bit differently than I would a pasta sauce, but the gist is the same.

Marit made a roly poly cake (probably not the right name, but you get the idea) and it was DELICIOUS. Mmmmmm.

I played World of Warcraft (not on my netbook) and exercised. I was going to read one of my books on screenwriting, but kind of never got to it. I also forgot to go to my counselling session, which annoys the fuck out of me.

For a while, I’ve wanted a Macbook Pro. Since I bought my netbook, however, I don’t feel that same need. I would actually rather have a new iMac when the time comes to upgrade. That means I’ll get generally higher specifications on the hardware, I won’t have to buy an external screen for video editing (And the iMac’s screen is huge at 27″), and I’ll pay less even if I get the best of all the iMacs. Bonus: By the time I can afford to buy one (best case scenario: 8-9 months) they might come with USB 3.0 (You know the USB you have? 3.0 is coming, and it’s going to be hella faster.) and Blu-Ray (I hate backing up to DVDs. Can hardly fit anything on one DVD) and possibly even 8 gigs of RAM as standard. Who knows? I certainly don’t. But I can dream!

Me and some friends from the Whitechapel community are considering the prospects of real-sex pornography sites. Don’t know if we’ll be seriously discussing creating a site ourselves or what, but it’s certainly an interesting prospect. Pornography is usually such a taudry affair, particularly if you take into account how abusive and unfeeling the porn industry is. Something like Beautiful Agony, only with professional photographers and full-on, real sex between real couples could help to give that industry a boot up its arse and to make people realise that there doesn’t have to be a dirty feeling attached to pornography. For a good write-up on it (with a NOT-Safe-For-Work picture) click here.