Aaaand hello writer’s block.

I had my first exam today! Drama, the re-sit of the paper I did in January and I’m so pleased with the questions, they were so much better than last time and exactly what I’d hoped for. I’m not entirely sure how I did – I messed up timing with painkillers and ended up doing the last half an hour or so with a few concentration lapses because I was in pain, and time constraints are evil on that exam because there’s so much to do, but I’m hoping it’ll be enough to get me maybe a B, which is great because it brings me closer to getting into university. My hand is killing me from all the writing I’ve done, but I’ve got eighteen days to recover before my next exam (Psychology, which is also a mass of writing to do but I’m feeling prepared for that one), and then two days until Epic Exam #3, English. Then I’m done with exams and college!

The words were really flowing yesterday – I was finding it really easy to write, I knew where the story I’m writing was going and everything and yet today, when I tried, it just didn’t work – the characters are completely different to how they were yesterday for some reason, I just can’t write them in the same way. I guess maybe the sheer amount of writing I’ve done today has taken it out of me and I need to give it a break. I’m still hoping to post them up here soon so that rather than me just blabbering on about my writing like I have done for the past few months, I’m actually going to post some writing up, which is what this blog was originally intended for. When I’m better, I am going to work on sorting out videos of me singing to come up on here too, I promise 🙂 Things got a little sidetracked by my misbehaving kidneys, and they’re still refusing to toe the line but we’ll get there eventually.

So, I think it’s best to leave the writing for tonight and maybe tomorrow – or maybe to just have a whole weekend away from writing and needing to think too much, and just doing things I enjoy. Face painting this weekend, pwning some n00bz on Black Ops tomorrow and then a week off to recharge my batteries and do some more revision to make sure I’m as ready as possible for the exams. It’s kind of hit me today just how important these exams are, and I’m not going to take them lightly.

Oh, and for those of you awaiting a new “inspirational pictures” post (yeah, I see you all, getting to my blog by searching google for numerous variants on the phrase “inspirational pictures”, and I’m sorry I’ve not posted any more recently but I haven’t been feeling inspirational!), it will be along soon. Not sure when, but soon.

And now, in conclusion, the mushy section of this blog post. I’ve been with my boyfriend for seventeen months yesterday (the 31st) and he’s made me so happy in those seventeen months, I don’t know what I’d do without him, so if he reads this (and I hope he reads this, because I read his blog 😉 ) I love you and thank you for everything you do for me and, to quote the vernacular, this one’s for you 😉

A very interesting rehearsal…

So, today is THE day before the performance exam. The day before we have to perform not just in front of our families and friends, but also the examiner, who will give us the grade which counts for 60% of our A2 Level – basically, what could be the difference between an A and a B, a B or a D and a university place or clearing! Today was Epic Rehearsal Day – from 11am till 4pm, non-stop rehearsing.

So, as you can imagine, if I was to sum up my day you’d expect me to say there was lots of remembering lines and perfecting little bits, and making sure it all flowed nicely. And sure, that happened, for about two hours. Those two hours of hard graft were swiftly followed by the most memorable event of the day.

We were introduced to face paints.

I say “Introduced” like I’ve never used or even seen them before. I have used them, quite a bit, and I love using them, I’m hoping to do a fair bit of face painting this summer actually, but today we were pretty much allowed free reign, and we were ALLOWED TO PAINT OURSELVES. And I was allowed to paint someone else too, which is always fun. It does have to be clown face paint, so I couldn’t go making people into tigers (which was a shame because tigers are my strong point when it comes to face painting!), but I still enjoyed it – I gave myself a white face, red nose and a tear under my eye, and bright red lips with a big smile (culminating in me eating a bit of face paint which I hope isn’t toxic, it certainly tasted horrible!), and I got to paint a flower and a peace sign.

However, I didn’t quite realize just how hard the face paints are to get off. I mean, it’s snazaroo so it wasn’t incredibly difficult, but it wasn’t easy either, and I now have two very white eyebrows, a white hairline and bits of white in my just-washed hair, which was great. And an orange nose, thanks to the fact that the red stuff didn’t want to wash off either – I ended up looking like someone had punched me in the nose and it had exploded, which was both funny and rather embarrassing having to wait to be picked up like that.

So, today has been memorable not because I think we made amazing progress with the rehearsing (although it did go very well and I am very excited and nervous for tomorrow!), but because I got to play with face paints. Drama A Level at it’s best.

Please ignore the toilet in the background, people at college don't seem to understand the need for toilet doors.

On Making Very Little Writing Progress.

Once again, life gets in the way of writing. In some ways, I really don’t mind – as much as I love writing, I would much rather spend a weekend with my boyfriend, as I have just done, because he means a lot to me and I want him to know how much I love him 🙂 on the other hand, some things which are either not so good, or not things I really want to think about, are also getting in the way. 

In terms of the not so good, I’ve had a lovely weekend and managed to stop myself from thinking about it for much of the time, but problems with college keep cropping up, and the most recent one is definitely the biggest I’ve encountered so far (and hopefully the biggest I actually WILL encounter considering I’ve got about 7 weeks of actual lessons left, and I don’t want anything else to happen). I’m not going to go into details about it because I don’t particularly want to think about it in too much detail, but the stress of it is not only making me ill, it’s also disrupting the writing, which isn’t a good thing. 

As for the things I’d rather not think about, it’s actually quite exciting and I’m looking forwards to it, but I’m also really nervous! Well, more anxious than nervous… I want to get it over and done with, but I really want to enjoy it and do well. It’s my drama A Level performance exam on Wednesday, and while I’m really pleased with how we’re doing – the text piece is going really well and I think I’ve got my lines sorted, and the devised piece sounds great but I’m struggling with lines a bit – I’m also really nervous, because my parents and boyfriend are coming to see it, and I really hope they enjoy it! It is distracting me from my writing, but because I’m determined to get at least a B, if not an A if I can manage it, I really want to do well, so it’s worth it! Plus, it is really fun – we’ve been doing quite a lot of rehearsals and it’s been great and really helpful.