A Torrent of Torrents

OK, so I've recently - within the last few days - worked out how to use a bit torrent client. More or less. Still have issues with the programme not downloading, but they're get-roundable (is that a word?).

Omg, MediaGet, where have you been all my life??

Currently downloading Dr Who season 5, already have several albums including some that I lost when my computer and then iPod crashed...if only it were a bit more reliable, it would probably become a strong contender for Best Thing in the World, Ever.

In other news, tomorrow is my last day in Moscow. Can you believe that? I can't. Well, I kind of can, I've definitely got my head around the fact that I won't be here on Thursday. But not being in Moscow is one thing, actually being in England is another! Proper excited though.

Spring, here I come!

Sleepless

Goodness me. I woke up at around 2:30am, after 4 hours' sleep or so, and haven't been able to get back to sleep since. I was feeling atrocious, largely because of having not eaten enough yesterday which I was aware of at the time but my stomach was refusing to accept food for most of the day (I'd just feel really full almost to the point of nausea if I tried to eat anything). This is so typical for when I'm not eating enough; my stomach seems to get out of the habit of digesting stuff, but the rest of my body still makes its usual demands!

I got up, had a cup of tea and a plain piece of toast to settle my stomach, which was reasonably successful. Went back to bed, tried to sleep, listened to like 3 podcasts including a relaxation one, none of which worked. Had some more toast, this time with stuff on, went back to bed. Nothing. At like 5:30 I ended up skyping Michelle who happened to be online, having tried and failed to arrange a time lol.

I think I had some more toast after that (well, I definitely did, but not sure exactly when), and tried to go back to sleep because I had to get up at 9:30 latest for a 10am lesson at my flat. I vaguely drifted off some time between 8 and 9, but didn't really sleep, and let me tell you it was a task getting myself out of bed when the alarm went off! Like a gift from the heavens, my student phoned at 9:45 saying she couldn't come and apologising; she'd already paid for the lesson but said it would be more awkward trying to arrange a time to come and get the money back off me, and given that she was only calling 15 minutes before the lesson, probably wouldn't have been cricket to come and demand a refund anyway.

Thought I would go back to sleep, but I haven't. Finished watching an episode of Sherlock from season 1 dubbed remarkably well into Russian (Russian dubbing is frequently crap, lol), and had some pasta. Weird breakfast, I know, but I'm trying to be careful, and given that my stomach is both feeling hungry AND accepting food, I'm trying to make the most of it to avoid a repeat tonight!

God I love being underweight.

ps Does anyone know how to add multiple tags? Every time I try to put a comma or a semicolon in, Blogger assumes I want to put in all the previous tags I've used and just inserts them because it thinks it's being helpful. Driving me slightly up the wall.

Anybody there?

Been reading other people's blogs, and keep realising that I've been neglecting my own for quite a long time! Well, I never have posted very regularly. I suppose since I have so few readers I never feel like it's worth it - I have a journal for writing for myself, if the blog is for other people and there aren't any other people then...what's the point, you know? But at the same time, nobody's going to start reading a blog that's never updated...so idk, we'll see where this goes. Maybe I'll start posting more often, maybe I'll still mainly to YT updates, maybe I'll find a nice balance of the two.

I guess the reason I feel I should be blogging is because, even if nobody reads it, the fact is that someone *might*, and that makes me in some way accountable. Like, if I put it out there that I'm using behaviours, for example, the mere fact that it's on the interwebz means I'm not stuck in my own shell not answering to anyone and not having to be honest with anyone else about what's going on. I suppose it would help if I knew for certain that it would get read, but even if it doesn't, it's still there in clear writing, and that means I can't ignore it.

Some accountability would probably be helpful right now. I tried joining MentorCONNECT but was distinctly underwhelmed, I might make a YT video on it because I'm interested to see if any of my viewers have had a similar experience, or a more positive one, and just generally what you guys think. I actually brought the book Beating Ana, written by the founder of MentorCONNECT and the reason I went on the site at all, with me after Christmas. But I haven't even looked at it. I have read some of another recovery book I downloaded onto my Kindle app, but not as much as I should.

Thing is, I'm not exactly relapsing...but I'm certainly not recovering. Not by miles. I suppose I'm trying to, but really, that's only my vague attitude - I'm not putting it into practice. And I need to DO something about it. And I don't think I could do that alone.

So, if you're there, let me know. Let's talk. Let's do this blogging shit!

Celebrating "Might Have Been's"

I know it sounds a bit controversial, because isn't the normal line to forget all the coulda shoulda woulda, to let go of what might have been and embrace what is?

I fully agree with the principle - but actually, I think sometimes, it's a Good Thing to remember what could have, but hasn't, happened. Because the idea of forgetting the might have been's is about letting go of opportunities we didn't seize, and good experiences we missed. But let's remember that we also manage to make decisions which purposely *avoid* certain circumstances - and yet when we do successfully avoid them, we don't celebrate it as a success. Bad situation avoided, everything's fine, move on. And yet it's not equal, is it?

When something terrible happens, we quite rightly lament how we (whoever that means) failed to prevent it: we could have done this, we should have thought of that. But when we actually do what we "could have done", when we think of what we "should have thought of" - when we do all those things which, if we hadn't done, we'd be kicking ourselves about afterwards - we don't congratulate ourselves. Intensity of regret is always correlated to the gravity of the tragedy you failed to prevent, whereas celebration of tragedy aversion never is.

My main example here is going to be about suicide attempts, which is an extreme but because condensed version of my general point. When somebody embarks upon a suicide attempt, but stops in the process, all anybody says afterwards is "you shouldn't have done that", "you've behaved unacceptably", etc - not in those words, maybe, but that's often the gist. Yet there are two actions involved there: starting, and stopping. If you stop and turn back during a suicide attempt, you've probably just saved a life, because if you hadn't stopped, you probably would have killed yourself. OK, if you hadn't stopped at that precise moment maybe you would still have survived somehow, but you can't ever be sure. So why don't people throw a freakin party in honour of the fact that this person did not complete suicide?

This is the kind of "might have been's" that I encourage everyone to celebrate. A lot of the time when battling with demons, we find ourselves in situations of real danger and often it's down to us to stay safe. But we don't congratulate ourselves when we manage to get out of a sticky spot, or do the right thing. To make up an example from ED recovery: in the past, you've fainted from not eating breakfast or lunch. Today, you have eaten breakfast and lunch, and you haven't fainted. No, it's not a definite that if you hadn't had those meals, you would have fainted - but the fact is that you did eat them, and you haven't fainted. If for some reason today you had restricted, and collapsed, afterwards you would have been berating yourself for not having those meals - if I'd only had them, everything would be fine. Well hello, you did have them! And that's why everything is fine! You avoided a crisis!

That's why every single achievement is worth celebrating in recovery, because you never know what awful things you're avoiding each time you make the right decision. Don't just accept that you did what you were supposed to and carry on - celebrate everything that goes right, because it could so easily have gone wrong.

Evening all

I have been trying, and failing, to do some freewriting every day as a sanity protector - what normally stops me is that I don't have time. Or that I do have time but am so busy thinking about other things that I forget. It has been useful, when I have done it, but at the same time it means this blog has been somewhat neglected. It's been 2 months to the day since I last wrote.

A lot has been happening. I will try not to make this rambling, but I always do and it never works! Oh dear...

I've been under a lot of stress because of work and money. Ever since my original, amazing, perfect job fell through in the summer, I've felt under pressure to make the money situation come together. That is even more true now that I have decided to go to drama school.

Yes, I've decided to go to drama school. It's going to cost buckets of money, which I don't have and won't manage to raise in time so it'll have to be loans loans and more loans - but you know what? I don't give a fuck. I'm doing it. Because I want to. Because it's about time I took control back over my life and started doing what I *want* and what I *enjoy*, because I'm the only person who can make that happen.

That said, I am now very pressed for time because I need to amass as much money as possible before I leave Russia. It may even be profitable to go home earlier than planned and get a part-time job, because even on minimum wage in the UK, at least I can predict work. Here, you can't. There are no contracts, just a phone-call and a handshake. Usually not even a handshake. Which means if people decide to screw you over - which has happened to me many, many times over the last 6 months - there's nothing you can do about it. So I am at once desperate for work and money, and being messed around by the people who provide it. A double whammy of stress. It's not ok.

But I'm starting to surface from it. I have a lovely month or so up ahead of me, even though it will do nothing to ease the financial situation. Home for Christmas tomorrow, back in Moscow for New Year with friends, about a week of day-trips around the Moscow region with said friends, and before you know it I'll be off for New Zealand on January 15th! Can't believe it's happening already! Can't really believe it's happening at all...! I need to stare at my plane booking to make the message sink in xD

Fortunately, something is going right at the moment, and that's acting. I'm in the middle of The Dumb Waiter, in hands down the most challenging role I've ever played and, frankly, am ever likely to play [paranoid schizophrenic psychopathic hitman, anyone?] - but it's correspondingly rewarding. We gave a little preview/open rehearsal/"reading without scripts" on Sunday, which was disastrous in that we totally messed up the play, but very successful in that the audience enjoyed it! I mean none of them knew the script, they had no idea we fucked up - ah, the beauty of playing Harold Pinter to a Russian audience! ;) It was attended by another English director who had approached me about potentially working with him, but had never seen me act; afterwards he was talking like he'd already cast me. What's more, a professional Russian actor who was also in the audience expressed an interest in working with me - so the three of us (me, him and the director) are going to start Insignificance by Terry Johnson soon. How fucking awesome is that? Another lead role I haven't had to audition for, acting opposite a professional who's even offered to coach me with character building. I am being spoilt rotten!

I'm also sort of tutoring a Russian girl (with very good English) who is applying to drama schools in America and the UK and preparing audition monologues; mostly I'm just making suggestions and including the odd tip here and there, I wouldn't call it teaching. But it is making me realise just how valuable my life experience is with acting. I mean, I already knew that having been through what I have,  I can understand and emulate some very extreme emotions and psychological states that most people would find daunting. It's part of what attaches me to acting so strongly; I feel like I'm able to put all that shit to good use, and I know that it helps me to meet a demand which others might struggle to meet. Of course there are styles and genres that I find hard which "normal" people would find easy, but I don't mind. I'm aware of what my strengths and weaknesses are, and it's ok. But trying to teach someone how to do something really makes you realise how much of it you're doing automatically, and I had no idea. I had no idea that I have such a rich selection of life experience to go at, even though I'm 6 years younger than this girl I'm tutoring. And I really, really appreciate that. Makes teaching almost impossible, because I can't teach her how to have lived my life, but I've come to value how wide an emotional range I have without even trying.

Acting makes me feel whole. I fills in the gaps that trauma has left, and helps me bond with even the worst of memories rather than trying to push them away and pretend they're not there. All I know is: when I'm acting, I'm happy. Not despite the hard times - but *together with* and even *because of* them. And I appreciate happiness just as much as anyone appreciates anything that's been rare for them.

Yes, I've been to hell and back. Yes, I've been right to edge of sanity and stood on the edge peering over into the abyss. Yes, I have huge chunks of memory missing, some of them months long, and I can only imagine now what must have been happening. But I've also had the chance to see some of that in context, and piece together some kind of perspective. And fucking hell, I'm only 22! Sounds like a hell of a life - and it has been, still is, but acting helps me understand. A life like mine, and acting, just seem to go together. Like a 2-piece puzzle. It works. They just slot into each other, they blossom out of one another. And I love it. I just love it.

Perspective

Perspective. I feel I'm in need of some at the moment. I'm getting really stressed out over a class I teach on Saturdays - have one this afternoon - a drama class with the students aged 11-13. I didn't want to do it, but was kind of forced into it because there was nobody else and the guy who runs the school was all like "please can you help us" "everything's going wrong, why is life so difficult sometimes" etc etc. Laying it on thick, in other words. So what was I supposed to do? And anyway, he somehow convinced me that 11-year-olds aren't really children any more, so it would be fine (he knew I didn't want to teach any children's classes, as I had tried one when I first arrived and had to put my foot down straight away not to do any more. What was I thinking? Of course 11-year-olds are children.

Guys, I absolutely hate it. Seriously I hate it. These kids have practically no English whatsoever, which severely limits what I can do with them because most activities you could do with kids that age, they just don't understand. I can't really get them to do speaking activities, because they aren't ready for it linguistically, added to which they are, for the most part, painfully shy and never want to do anything. Just getting them to do an activity is a feat of persuasion. Getting them to understand and do it right is even harder. Just, omg. I hate it. I. Hate. It.

Every week I dread it, I can sort of feel it approaching and I don't want to think about it. I have an adult class beforehand which is overshadowed by the prospect of this kids' class. In a way I feel like I want to just take all the years' classes at once, to get them over with and not have to face them any more. Kind of like exams, you know? You reach a point where you just want to get in there and get it over with.

There's nobody else I can fob it off on, there's no getting out of it. The whole reason I'm doing it is precisely because there is nobody else. So I can't pull out. I don't understand how I'm supposed to maintain this for the entire year. :'(

And yet, really, I *need* to try and keep it in perspective. So there's 1 hour a week of my job that I absolutely despise. If I compare myself to the rest of the population, as a general rule, I'm getting off pretty lightly right? I mean how many people are there doing 9-5 jobs every single day that they hate every hour of? I don't understand how they do it, I really don't.

I suppose what's getting to me isn't just that I don't enjoy it, it's that it makes me feel inadequate. I don't know what to do with these kids, I don't know how to teach them. I have no idea what I'm doing. I don't know what level I want them to achieve, or what they should be able to do at that age. I just feel shit. Bit of a sore spot, as I'm sure you're all aware. It's upsetting, and it's triggering. It really *really* makes me want to turn back to my eating disorder, because that was always a fairly sure-fire way of distracting myself from feeling shit at other things. Knowing that I was losing weight was somehow a cushion that made other things a little more bearable, and took the focus off them.

So no matter how much perspective I try to gain, it still doesn't seem to change the fact that this 1 bloody hour a week is sticking its finger into some very old wounds that haven't healed yet. And I don't know how to deal with that. How do people handle jobs they hate? I do not understand. Maybe it's because the conclusion they draw from having to do it is not that they must be rubbish. Which is my conclusion. And I can't see how I could draw any other conclusion; I just don't know how to work with children. And they are children, no matter what the boss might say.

The further complication is that he is directing the play I'm in at the moment, and he gave me my role. I don't want to piss him off because I don't want to make rehearsals awkward. I just want him to like me, you know? Silly really. Even though I'm actually annoyed at him for pushing me into teaching this class that I don't want to do. And I'm still annoyed at him for lying to me about how much the drama school pays, which is petty but it's the fact he lied that gets to me. Like he was trying to lure me in or something. Like, dude, there's no need for deceit here. Seriously. It's just going to make me cross with you. And god knows I've been messed around by enough people already over the last few months. >:(

Not entirely sure what the point of this post is. Suppose I just feel the need to explain myself.

OMG, FY

еThis post will hopefully go some way towards balancing out the last post and all its misery.

I met Martin (director/drama school guy) today to have a look at a play; someone else I know, one of my students, said he was going too, so it was going to be an audition of sorts. Audition usually freak the shit out of me but I know Martin and I knew it wasn't going to be me doing a monologue in front of a panel or anything! So, went along.

When I got there, Martin basically told me that he wasn't bothering to audition me, because he'd already cast me in the lead.

Yes, you did read that correctly.

Martin basically told me that he wasn't bothering to audition me, because he'd already cast me in the lead.

=O

As a result: I'M IN A PLAY I'M IN A PLAY I'M IN A PLAY!!!

It's a fucking awesome character as well. I AM SO STOKED I DON'T KNOW IF I WILL SLEEP TONIGHT.

We're doing Harold Pinter's The Dumb Waiter, but with a few twists. There are only 2 characters in the script, two assassins, one of whom has to kill the other at the end. The one who gets killed is going to be played by several different people, who will switch every time there is a 'silence' in the script. The idea is that the other guy, who kills him, is seeing the last 11 people he's murdered, in a kind of going insane way. That's who I'm playing. A crazy, hallucinating assassin. I mean come on, does it get much more fun than that? I always like playing characters who are a bit mad anyway, so this is like, perfect. :)

The most hilarious thing is the reason why I got the lead role with no audition. When I first got to Moscow, I had agreed that I would do a monologue at the English Club partly run by Martin - but had no time to prepare and had to read off the paper, which is always shit. Last week, I was asked to do another one, and this time was able to learn it, rehearse it a bit, etc. Even so, when the performance came, the odds of success were stacked against me. I was performing it in a sports bar with a football match on in the background because they wouldn't turn the TVs or their loudspeakers off, which is off-putting enough as it is, added to which I didn't have the theatre luxury of the audience being invisible in the dark. I could see every single face staring up at me, concentrating on me, watching me. Given I have horrific stage fright, this was not cool. It was an extremely emotional monologue, basically a suicide note, but with so many distractions I just didn't feel I made the connection with the character at all, and was kinda embarrassed that Martin had even seen it.

Turns out, it was that monologue that got me this part. That's why he didn't audition me. I keep learning over and over again that you can never judge how well your own performance went, but always forget it - so here I am, learning it again! Seriously, I genuinely thought it was one of the worst performances I'd ever done. It would seem not everyone thought it was as bad as I did!

Huzzah!