Hungry hungry gamers

I dinged 100 today. That basically meant that I sunk my weekend into medicine hazed gameplay of Warlords of Draenor. I did, however, force the Owl to take me to the newest Hunger Games movie.

He's read all the books so I have forced the spoilers out of him (it's a bad habit of mine, I want to know what happens because I don't trust myself to pay enough attention). The biggest take away from the whole thing?

THIS - WHOADAMN

Ok, before the "ermmanermynerms", I want the hair. I am in a situation where merely cutting my hair is frowned upon by friends and family. I dont blame them, I said myself (probably a month before I shaved it for the god-knows-what'th-time) that I wasn't going to cut my hair until I had children. 

But after seeing this whole Natalie Dormer/Cressida thingymabob I... WANT... IT.

It's probably the attraction of the head tattoo. Idk. That just seriously weirdly appeals to me. 

Again, I doubt I'll get the emotionally-supportive go ahead for a new tattoo, a crazy haircut or just... anything. 

Sigh. Time to keep growing this mass of god-knows-what on my head.

Welcome to WoD

As I pull myself through the newest expansion, I find myself ecnhated by so much but now it's time to take a look back at the launch day.

Of course, first the Owl and I have a little pre-launch party so we went to Dalalag and partied it up after he helped me top up the Travellers Mammoth fund.

party parttyyy

The I had to say goodbye and retire the poor old farm in Pandaland. I was roaming around reddit and saw that someone had retired their farm with a whole bunch of  trees and figured that was something I wanted to do too.

I dont miss you, miss you farm. I have a garrison now.

And then... I sat around Org, and the quest popped 15 minutes early and thus began the mad rush to stand on the quest giver. Buttholes, all of you.

WHY YOU GUYS DO DIS :<

So now Im steadly making my way through alternative timeline Draenor and Im sitting at a comfortable 98, although the Owl is well already 100 and doing all the dungeons. I have, however, spent way too much time fishing, cooking and first aid (the last of the 3 I've managed to max out yesterday.) 

What does it mean to have a child?

Today I read something disturbing. Pre-term baby statistics. You can find it here because I dont want to retell anything. Its too damn depressing. The worst part? No consideration for the carrier of the lost life. The women are lost.

I have never had a child. I have never been pregnant. In fact, as a teenager I had a very strong fear of sex because I knew... "the implications". That said, I was also a child of divorce so I never really wanted that to be a thing that the kids I ever had to go through. Just generally.

I do, however, have friends with kids. I also have many acquaintances with them. While I acknowledge that children are amazing, it is incredibly important, in my opinion, to be able to afford them.

To afford the time, resources and attentions. Children are one thing but we must remember that they grow into human beings. Fully functioning, we hope, humans that make a positive difference in society. 

I was brought up in a mixed family. When I was about 7, I remember my stepmother working with UNFPA and having me a kind of after school class at home about puberty and stuff. I got stuff to read, I had folder of sheets of paper with little questions and stuff. At the time I figured it was all stuff being shoved down my throat but today I guess Im glad that happened. I figure it started early because she and my dad where about to have my little brother and so I needed "to know where he was coming from".

In other words, I was terrified by the whole damn thing. 

When puberty actually hit me, I was an angry, angry young woman. I used to get violently sick and I hated everything including the crappy baby bag and its associated parts that would put me in pain and make me throw up everywhere. Where? In a school bin during winter school in Primary. In many, many bushes. At several office bathrooms. In all the different female toilets in both high schools I went to. I think I threw up in front of a bakery in Lami in a bin at one point. 

Why tell you about this? Because in my head, if period nausea was bad, how bad was pregnancy nausea going to be? If my depression during my mid cycle was bad, what about post-baby blues? 

And with all these thoughts, I am the minority. I think about my own body, my own life, in the face of the possibility of a child. I am afraid that many women and young women might not have that opportunity. I should not be the minority.

Societal expectations may force a newlywed couple to procreate. Shotgun weddings are frequent. A woman is barely consulted on the whole family planning front and she will get shamed (Still!) if she seeks out contraceptives. Education systems still dont teach the whole notion of a cycle and when to track your own fertility - a last resort if medical centres and otherwise are far away or just uncomfortable. It still seems like we barely allow women choice over their own bodies. 

Shame on you, society. Our mothers, sisters and women in general deserve so much better than this. 

There are things I cannot explain.

Hello! Why are you here? Who knows! But you are now, so stay a while.

The other day I was watching a metric buttload of QI, one of the world's greatest shows, and there was a whole bit about hysteria.

Apparently hysteria used to be understood as a wandering womb. Now, I dont necessarily have a womb that wanders. I have a double reinforced one or something with the probable adenomyosis but today i talk about... THE FEELS.

gaddamnnnn son.

As a female, there is a time where my body expels awful awful things and makes me feel awful. It's just a lot of awful. That said, it is always a time for "Im not pregnant yay!" things but again we're talking feels.

So with the feels; about 2 weeks before the expulsion (hehehe), I start to get all the feelings. I cry over everything. So far it has been pictures of puppies, the Fine Brother's Teens React to Malala, a Yogscast update video and getting a positive outcome on a WoD garrison mission that had a 70% success chance.

I have little under a fortnight for more cries. Let's see how it goes.

Update: I literally just cried over my brain-pronunciation of "momentous". I blame this. 

I wish I had normal dreams

Now today, I dont want to share about what goes on in my head when I sleep. That stuff is a bundle of boring and only ever rotates between video-game induced fever dreams (where I do my dailies even with my eyes closed and computer off) and other wacky things. Today I share something from the deep dark of “when I was growing up”.

I was constantly asked what I wanted to do when I grew up. Why? I dont know, early career counseling or something... because the subjects you take in primary school affect the rest of your life apparently. But I never really knew.

I first wanted to be a race car driver. Or so I have been told. I dont blame 4 year old me, cars are pretty damn cool. I love driving but unfortunately I dont have real access to a vehicle so I just chastise bad drivers in my head, usually when Im in the back seat of one. Then, too lazy to do homework, I threw that dream away and decided on chicken farmer.

That dream didnt last long. Neither did the plan to be a lawyer, pharmacist, vet, doctor, vet again, teacher and then artist.

In my second last year of high school, I got to actually study the arts. Well, ART. A doodler my whole life, I never thought I would get to go to a class where I was allowed to draw and imagine worlds and everything else. I had drawn a few comic series in my time because there was always something happening in my head. But to be given the space to study it... I was so happy.

I had almost gotten permission to apply to art schools but I stopped all overseas application processes when I found out my mother was having breast cancer tests. I stayed here at home to help out and got a degree in two things I figured I would never really use: politics and journalism.

That said, I now find myself in a newsroom desk at a magazine, occasionally getting send out to do stories for the online news website. And everything considered, I dont know why I didnt opt for studying writing sooner.

Yeahm, sure I love drawing, making comics and books and such with my hands but the planning process, the development of the world, everything and anything. I even wrote a book. A friend in high school, the only person who got me to actually go to the city library, would read all my crazy scribblings.

Thank you, dear friend. Thanks for the encouragement and everything else. Now take a break from Canada so we can catch up again :)

Long Term

So I recently left a 7 year job (and yes, I do count volunteering a job when it consumes your every waking hour and moderately influences almost all aspects of your life and outlook) to become a writer.

I say write because while there is the occasional new bit to bite down on (at least on this week alone), the majority of what I like do is playing with words.

I have always has a tricky relationship with the notion of "being a journalist". I have Journalism major in the handle of my degree but I went into and through those odd 3 years knowing I didn't necessarily wanted to stay in a newsroom.

I also this week went through a day long training to "maken der screenplay" because a film idea I had submitted was selected along with 19 others.

We 20 budding screenwriters have 3 months to throw together a piece of work that let people have some idea of what it is our heads when we tell the stories we submitted.

So this past week I have been overwhelmed with identity crises.

"Am I really a writer?" "What do I even want to write?" "WHAT IS JOB?"

I dropped radio program and video blog scripts for online news articles and magazine pieces.

"Is this what I want to do?"

All the questions and so few answered apart from "yes, for now."

How long now is I hope isn't just a few months, but I want to keep on keeping on in the mainstream media. My dreams of transforming the landscape need this experience.

And so far, I've heard relatively good things about my writing.

For someone who tells stories for fun and who used to have it as my bread and butter (and almost literally just bread and butter alongside cigarettes), having fulltime work to do that is exciting.

But why leave activism, my long time love? Aside from the Owl, trying to do the best I can were things that kept my heart pumping all the funny gooey feelings of "you're doing something right!"

I dont expect too much to change with the new job. I imagine it will just be a change to where things so and heres hoping those words I pull reluctantly out of my brain and shove them onto paper will go as far as they can.

When you feel all pink inside

It's finally a new month. I say finally, but it feel like October just flew by. Between leaving FemLINK to try my hand at professional-style-y writing, looking after the Owl's thrown-out back and bodily ups and downs, there never seems to be enough time for anything.

That said, I made time to go with my grandmother to the final Pinktober event of the year (or so it was claimed). Held on the evening of the 31^st at the Tanoa Plaza Hotel, Westpac's fundraiser saw me way out of my comfort zone not just being in a room of strangers without my mother but also having to be the final act after the Minister for Women, Children and Poverty Alleviation and a survivor of cervical and breast cancer.

we did make the Sunday paper's front page though

How are those two an easy act to follow? One a speech of severity and sincerity and the other a raw set of truths. I had written out and printed what I wanted to say. I didn't want to rant or rattle on, I was told I had up to 10 minutes but I didn't want to bore people and I was incredibly nervous.

Breast cancer is serious business. It's not only a branch of the big C, but also something so incredibly personal to me and the rest of my family. I wanted to do it justice. My grandmother nudged me before my turn to speak. She had gone through my sheet of A4 and asked, “are you going to tell them about your mum and I for those who don't know?” I hadn't 100% thought about it.

I was so focused on separating myself from the issue because I was not a survivor of breast cancer myself. I didn't want to infringe on the experiences of others because, hey, that isn't how I am. But I did as my grandmother asked me because you just do what the matriarch says sometimes.

I spoke about how everything started in 2010 after my end of high school exams, how my mother had to raise funds to find our way overseas because radiation therapy isn't available here and how this works against the push for early detection (because without the treatment readily available, what's the point?). I also then spoke about my grandmother's relatively short journey. And then I read, adding a few things here and there to keep the tone a little light.

Today I speak on behalf of my mother and grandmother, survivors of breast cancer. I also speak for myself as someone who has seen, twice in my life, the journey a woman takes when she chooses life in the face of cancer.

There are many things a person experiences before, during and after breast cancer diagnosis. Theres the fear when you find a lump, the worry during the tests, the terror in the face of treatment, the exhaustion after medications and trips to hospitals, and then there is the relief once you are all done and through with the strenuous part of the journey. Then there is the frustration of adjustment after losing a breast when it comes to getting clothes to fit right or trying to find ones strength again.

I know pinktober is amazing. It forces people to think about something to integral to life. Something seemingly so obvious. Breasts. After a quick not so scientific estimation I have come to the conclusion that there is at least one breast per person in the world. Maybe more. Seven billion breasts so often hidden and considered shameful. Women are told to hide their cleavage, shove them is uncomfortable bras and sometimes are shamed if their breasts are too big or too small. But on the other hand we cannot ignore their importance. They feed children, theyre basically natural chest pillows for small people especially handy for hugs.

And as amazing as pinktober is, the investment of funds raised need to go where theyre needed most. To easing the frustration of adjustment, calming that fear or worry, easing the exhaustion – theres so much unsaid 11 other months of the year. So while I know tonight is about CWMs oncology ward, a place that needs all it can get, id at least like to leave one thing in everyones mind. Comfort. Its so so important.

It may be about feeling or seeming normal thus having access to bras with inserts, helping someone sleep after surgery with just the right kind of pillow, finding food that still tastes good or keeping mouth sores to a minimum. If its about all things that come before, like easy to understand pamphlets about what to expect and where to go for treatment, its something that could give that person peace of mind, a sense of comfort and certainty – it makes things infinitely better.

If theres one thing that we should be changing through awareness, its the perception choosing treatment. And when I say choose it is not the choice of the family or the husband or otherwise. At the end of the day, it is on the individual who finds that lump to get treatment. When treatment is feared, the lump will be left unchecked and left threatening her life. When treatment is misunderstood, it will not be sought out.

So lets do the 7 billion boobs out there a favour and not let anything that may have been done or shared this pinktober be forgotten. Thank you.

Im pretty sure there are still typos somewhere but hey, I was reading so I also saw half of it in the midst of all the stress. So that was pretty much my Friday. Speeching, being touched and thanked and so on (because apparently people need to touch your shoulder and shake your hand). Well, apart from then going out for Halloween for a few hours before going home exhausted after a day without a proper nap.

pictured: pokemon-persona hybrids

And highlight of everything? Surprising myself at how I didn't react violently when a very tipsy woman came up to me at the cocktail, ran her hands over Owl Abraham Lincoln and my new banyan tree and said “I love your tats!”. Thank you random woman. You have shown me that I can keep my cool in the face of sheer terror.