Kirifarrell's Blog

Things I wish I was better at

kirifarrell — Thu, 29 Sep 2011 09:58:35 +0000

1. Writing
2. Thinking interesting thoughts
3. Editing
4. Playing stringed instruments
5. Cooking
6. Being disciplined
7. Sleeping
8. Being crafty/making things
9. Remembering things
10. Concentrating
11. Small talk
12. Having interesting hobbies

to be continued…

My head goes blah.

kirifarrell — Tue, 30 Aug 2011 06:58:02 +0000

Today has possibly been one of my least productivity of all days. I haven’t been able to concentrate for longer than 3 minutes on anything which has made doing tasks seem overwhelming.
The problem is I know why this is. I have a cold. My head is fuzzy and I haven’t slept well so it has added tiredness on it. My solution would usually be to take the day off work and sleep, however I have had responsibilities at the start and end of today which has meant that I’ve had to endure through and stay awake. I’m also having to do the same tomorrow.
I wonder how people coped 100 years ago when they got a cold? We always assume that for people back then when they did get sick they were so incapacitated that they would be close to death, but what I’m feeling isn’t death, it’s just annoying and has caused me to be unproductive.
We should be thankful that in our modern day world we have symptom relievers and the facilities and resources to be able to get over colds without much dilemma.
I do sometimes want to just crawl up into bed and tell the world to go away though. Actually most of the time when I’m sick this is what I want to do. I’m blessed that I am able to do this sometimes. That is a definite win in life.

Taking on Frustration and Angst

kirifarrell — Sun, 28 Aug 2011 21:53:35 +0000

Over the last few months I have been finding little frustrations in almost everything.

I’m reactive. I feel something and go with it; I think something and mull on it only to fester the thought; and I have verbal outbursts of nonsensical noise when things are bugging me.

All these things that I do bug me. See the catch-22 there? What I do when I’m frustrated, frustrates myself even more. It’s just a cycle of irrational frustration that tends to end with me throwing my hands up in the air, saying something that doesn’t make sense and going for a brief walk, usually around my office building until I calm myself down or to make a cup of tea.

This cycle must stop. It will stop. Now.

My new way of dealing with frustration is to close my eyes. Count to 10. Breathe deep. And say to myself (over and over usually) “Today is going to be a good day, this will not affect it”.

It’s worked so far, but we’ll see…I may end up getting frustrated at my own little chants.

What do you do to calm down when things frustrate you?

Cynicism and Romance – The love/hate relationship I have with Romance

kirifarrell — Fri, 26 Aug 2011 03:26:01 +0000

I’ve been having conversations with a lot of my friends recently about relationships. The conversation tends to go like this:

Friend: ” I saw guy and girl out the other night, they looked so great together.”
Me: “What? Are they dating now? Why does no one tell me anything anymore? How long has it been?”
Friend: “Um it’s been like 3 months…”
My mind then tends to run between being incredibly happy for them, and analysing whether or not I think it will work out between them, and then to my cynicism of any romantic relationship, and the result of all that is usually a comment which is mixed of both joy and bitterness.

I’ve slowly realised that my love/hate relationship with Romance stems not from my mistrust of men but rather the mistrust I have of myself when it comes to romance.
Having once ”fallen in love”, I now don’t know how to distinguish between reality and the emotional and mental fantasy of my own mind. My “love” didn’t last, it was slightly delusional, and ended with me hurting a man whom I cared for. I didn’t do it in an awful way, it was just that it was a hard break up. We had been best friends and ending that after almost 2 years was hard. Heartbreaking hard.

So I lost my faith in the emotion of “love”.

I became distrusting of the feeling. I questioned the reality of the situation, and became bitter against it all. However, in all of this my love for romance held it’s place.

I love romantic comedies, and dramas, for they offer a beautiful picture of two people who end up caring deeply for one another, conquering the bad in life, and triumphing in love.

Disney taught me to hope. It taught me to hope that in all the misfortune there may be a prince who would rescue me. It taught me to carry on, not to let a bad situation get me down, but to rise to the challenge. It taught me to be a strong woman who could handle herself with class, but also be a domestic goddess. All of these are good things.

Disney did, however, also teach me that a beast of a man could be softened and changed; that bad witches got what they had coming; and that one day my prince would come. All things that may not be true.

My life isn’t full of misfortune, there is no evil witch who wants to put a curse on me or banish me. I do have that hope that my prince one day will come though. So I am left as a single woman, oscillating between wanting my independence for the rest of my earthly existence so I can have the freedom to do what I want, and the loneliness of coming home to an empty house and not having someone I can call on for tenderness and support.

And so I sit and watch romantic comedies, hoping for my faith in love to be restored, knowing all the time that it does not and cannot fulfill.

It doesn’t always offer that instantaneous comfort that a warm embrace does, but God’s love for me also doesn’t come with the anxiety of not knowing whether or not I was truly loved by the person embracing me. God’s embrace is what truly comforts, and endures to comfort me when I am lonely. The remembrance of the blessings he has given me in a wonderful family and terrific friends makes up for the moments of loneliness.

Still, it would be nice to meet my prince one day though. I’ll keep my eye out for him, but he can come find me, I’ll be keeping busy in the meantime trying my best to rise to the challenge of life, and be classy and a domestic goddess (although that one is the challenge I struggle with most I think!).

Twitter and Facebook – my backwards world

kirifarrell — Fri, 12 Aug 2011 23:44:29 +0000

The way I think about Twitter and Facebook is very different. I get creeped out when people I don’t know add me as a “friend” on Facebook but have no problem with random “followers” on Twitter. And yet my Twitter updates are much more personal updates. It seems that I have a higher inclination to share the truth with strangers and not with those who know me, even as an acquaintance.

However, even in saying this, most of the people who would read my tweets are my friends anyway, so I don’t know why there is this difference in my mind.

The real thoughts that I have remain for my closest friends, however there is an element of thinking that my thoughts in Tweets will get lost in the tweetosphere but they are free from the prison of my mind. Most of my tweets are a tamed version of the real frustrations and annoyances in my little world. I do think Social Media, whether Twitter, Facebook, Blogs, Vlogs, or Forums, etc, are a helpful outlets of self-expression. The fact that most people have one or the other nowadays reveals our need to express, I just wonder what I would have been like if I had lived 50 years ago. How did our predecessors, those who weren’t professional expressionists (that being artists, writers, etc) express themselves?

Characters vs Action

kirifarrell — Thu, 02 Jun 2011 12:57:01 +0000

Whilst discussing the new X-Men film, and the fact that although I wasn’t thrilled with the first film so didn’t really watch the others, I would like to see this prequel. I articulated that the reason why I prefer prequels to the other stories is because of the character development that takes place, rather than the action of the narrative itself. It is the same reason I love Nick Hornby novels. The characters and the way they think and feel and express themselves is far more intriguing than the actual events that happen.

John Cusack in High Fidelity (taken from http://cicconeyouthh.tumblr.com/post/1148695922)

I definitely think there is a place for action, I mean without it I would not have gotten through Jane Austen’s Pride & Prejudice (seriously, even though Miss Austen does character development somewhat obscurely but brilliantly, I find her tremendously labourious to read.) and many of the novels that I had to read for English at Uni. My favourite stories are not those of action, but rather those of a character discovering who they are and why they are who they are. However, this doesn’t mean I love stories which redeem the characters, I feel that this can be somewhat contrived and forced, whereas, in real life, the character would continue to be the same selfish, greedy, self-absorbed character that they were to begin with (another reason why I prefer Hornby over Austen any day).

What fascinates me about the characters is their view of the world. I love asking the questions of “what has made them that way?”, “why do they think that is right/wrong/what they should do?”, “what were you thinking when…” and many more. I think everyone has a narrative to tell, but what I really want to know is how has that narrative shaped you to be who you are now? The complexity of humans, their thoughts, feelings, wills, and relationships are fascinating. The way they interact in the world is fascinating too, but I’d rather hear someone’s recounting of a narrative and how they felt than actually be there sometimes. I don’t know what that says about me, but there you go.

Tell me a story but don’t leave out what you felt and why.

Films for children

kirifarrell — Thu, 07 Apr 2011 22:42:35 +0000

I recently saw the film ‘Rango’ which was made by Disney. There were a few moments within the animation film that made we question whether it was made for a young audience or not. The morbid humour and the violence displayed was done in such a way that you could laugh at it, however I felt that if I had children and brought them along to Rango I would’ve had to have counseled them afterwards because of the distress it would have caused.
Of course Disney has been making scary and violent films since it’s beginning. Sleeping Beauty and Snow White & the Seven Dwarves still scare me in part. However, the violence in Rango was not fantastical which is why I think it is questionable. Should children’s films be made with a degree of sensitivity or should we educate our children through film?
I thoroughly enjoyed Rango. I would definitely see it again. It made me laugh audibly in a cinema and the rest of the cinema audience enjoyed it as much as I, which in my experience isn’t necessarily always the case. My only hesitation is whether it should be aimed at children or adults.

What do you think?

Battle of Publisher

kirifarrell — Mon, 04 Apr 2011 12:55:20 +0000

Last week was my first week of putting together the Monthly Bulletin that we have at church. This was an involved process of gathering information, advertisements, and miscellaneous items and composing and editing them in MS Publisher to create an 8 page bulletin/magazine.

All was going fine, I was learning how to use the program and everything was coming together (after chasing some last minute pieces and getting them all together). I finally was ready to print. However the middle page of our bulletin is a world map with different missionaries on it, and if you print it straight from the A4 layout it breaks the printing in the middle, splitting the world map in two. So this meant switching from an A4 to A3 document and meant moving all the pages. However, I ended up doing this in the most convoluted way. Simply because lack of knowledge of the program I started to create a new document and copy and paste the pages into it. This would’ve worked fine, except for some reason the fonts went all weird and became a larger size and so wouldn’t fit in the same size texts boxes, and everything needed resizing in the end. It was bizarre and ended up taking twice the time it should’ve to transfer from A4 to A3, but I finally got it printed. The next hiccup was the fact that when it printed (even though I had resized everything, or I thought I had) things still got cut off in their text boxes. It was a very frustrating process and next time I’m definitely quadruple checking it before I print 500 copies.

I don’t know why I’m finding technology so difficult. Maybe it’s because I’m a serial Mac user, and work has Microsoft. Or maybe it’s simply because new jobs always take a little bit of getting used to. Whatever it is, I will be glad when I get more practice and actually get an eye for this kind of stuff.

Peace,
Kiri xx

The consequence of spending time with people and being an introvert

kirifarrell — Mon, 04 Apr 2011 08:01:11 +0000

I have realised the consequences of my actions when it comes to spending time with friends. I have to decide to make good and healthy choices when it comes to choosing who and for how long I see friends. This is not something I do well as the last 2 weeks will testify. Only 2 nights at home and 1 weekend day is not conducive to doing real life activities, the bare necessities, like grocery shopping and clothes washing.
I think my problem is that for all the introvert in me, I like people too much. They fascinate me and are just so much fun to be around (or at least my friends are). This, however, is a problem because it drags me away from things that I have an obligation to do, like caring for my housemates and being generally healthy. With the wealth of time I have I spend it sometimes poorly on things that are luxuries or that are unnecessary. I say this full of the knowledge that the relationships that I have are possibly the most important thing in my life, but can you spend too much time caring for others and not for yourself?

People are interesting

kirifarrell — Sat, 19 Feb 2011 04:44:04 +0000

Yesterday morning I saw a school boy on the train who was so tired he kept falling asleep standing up (it was the cutest and funniest and saddest thing I’ve seen). Then I saw a man this afternoon walking down the road, talking to himself and gesticulating as well. These two moments got me thinking about how different people are and yet how similar they are. These two guys were both doing things I found strange but both of which I know I’ve done before. It’s fascinating to see the similarities within people and yet the vast differences when up close.

I also had an interesting (but very funny) discussion with a couple of my girlfriends today about having crushes on enigmas, that is, men we see and admire from a distance but realize that if we ever did meet and converse with them then we would probably run in the other direction. Basically like having a celebrity crush on someone who is in your sphere of community. And now it may just be us, but the bond of familiar experience and emotion just felt wonderful, and I’m sure many women (and men) could relate. It’s the feeling of being united to one another and a bond that goes to the core of our culture and experience.

I think this bond to other humans is wonderful. It’s an experience of unity, community, commonality, normality, and of being generally alike to all humans that is so fantastic and energizing. It means we are all in this together, we share experience and life, and we can relate to each other on more than just a superficial level of small talk but rather we can bond through the uniqueness of our being humans.