A Little Failure

Starting Sixth Form College was a new experience. Hardly anyone in my classes had known me before, my classes were half an hour longer (Now lectures have reverted to 50 minutes, for which I am thankful!) and I could barely recognize many of my old classmates because they were wearing completely different headscarves.

Classes were going well. In Further Maths, we tackled C1 (Or, what I call, Enhanced GCSE), the splendidocious C2, and the devillish D1. In Physics, we looked at things you can't really see with the naked eye, or even eyes with glasses on. English Language was, of course, very language-y and we were building up to the coursework element of the course. And then there was Critical Thinking, where we had to think.

This being Sixth Form, from the first minute on we were being prepared for exams. Going through work on the syllabus, doing mock exams, and so forth. The Mocks passed and, boringly, I got As and a Physical B.

The solution to this was simple: work on Physics a bit more, and all else could happily take the hit. The January season of exams rode into play, and it was all exam rooms and revision and the after-exam questions of "What did you get for Question 4?" (The answer to this question is is "Either a correct or incorrect answer,"). I walked out of D1 thinking that I had royally screwed up the final question, the most significant question on that paper. I walked out of Physics unsure. My other papers I walked out on feeling fairly confident. 

Cue six weeks time for results day, giving the examiners time to read the scrawls of plenty of silly students. I could hardly wait to log in to the student network and find my results.

I wanted to hide in my room until the end of Time (and it hadn't even started yet). Or until I became a zombie and so didn't care any more.

I forced myself out of my room and down the stairs. Moth was there, wanting to know how I did. I said I got As. I couldn't force the rest of the words out that the last exam had gone really really very quite badly.

The words loosened a little bit as I took the twenty minute walk to college. I kept on telling myself that I had to face up to it. I still had solitude when I arrived at English, my first class of the day. However, it soon became a babble of excited students going "What did you get?" "How did you do?" and feeling proud of their Bs and Cs. I held back tears as I bluntly told the others about the 4 As and the other one.

Reactions generally went along the lines of "WTF happened there?!" Gradually over the day the upset cleared and my normal state of emotional indifference returned.

Walking to Critical Thinking that day was tough. I was very reluctant to go, but I told myself I had to. At the beginning of the class everyone was talking about their results. Even the teacher was perplexed at my result.

Normal life soon pervaded. The deadline for paying for resits was about a week afterwards. I went up to the Finance desk while the area was not very full. The lady on the desk recognised me as my mother's daughter - Moth being a member of staff there at the time. And because of that, I ended up going to speak to another lady at a different desk and having to wait in the now growing queue for the finance office. So I could get a £1.10 discount which promptly went towards a bottle of Sprite in the shop.

I accepted it all, got obsessed with the xkcd Time (which had started not long afterwards), and prepared for the resit and the other Critical Thinking exam with vigilance, going to extra sessions and so on. I made sure to ensure I was prepared for the other exam or I'd have to resit that in a year's time due to the abolishing of the January exams. I tackled those papers with determination.

The resit relented a C. The other paper - which was on arguing - didn't argue and handed away an A.

Stormy Night

Some nights, a girl just can't sleep. The weather is hot, the fan is noisy, and there's still cars on the roads and some of them have sirens. Reading does little to prepare one for the dark worlds of quirky oddness the world of dreams hardly ever seems to offer. A streetlamp outside casts an orange glow on the messy den.

You're still going to try to sleep anyway because it's nighttime and therefore sleep time. It was only the hallway light suddenly being turned on which tells you that you're too distracted by everything to have the zeds coming out of your face (which is apparently what happens when you sleep. Note that if crying, sobbing, screaming, or anything else like that should occur and you never remember having bad dreams at all, you should get your sisters to stick their earphones into your ears when you're asleep and play music. If you share a room with them, they probably already do).

So at two in the morning, with another book under your belt, you decide that maybe you're settled just about now. So you turn the light off and close your eyes ready for it.

FLASH.

Either your Pokemon is misbehaving and using moves when it shouldn't (and it's not in its Pokeball either, tut tut), or a massive flash of light just came from outside. But it was followed only by an eerie silence (Not an Eevee silence. Eevees make noises too. #talkingaboutpokemon). No rain. No nothing. And having badly abused a double negative here, I apologise to all of the Grammar Nazis I share my part of the internet with. I also advise said Grammar Nazis that caring too much about other people's grammar, especially on the internet where use of much more informal text happens (and why shouldn't it?), can show that your priorities are somewhat skewed if you point it out.

This initial flash of light aroused my curiosity and fascination. I looked about my room, but nothing appeared to be able to cause it.

Another flash, and then another. This reminded me that I had no idea what was happening, and if anything was powerful enough to flash so brightly, it was powerful enough to do some real damage. Fascination underwent evolution into abject terror in a few seconds. And terror generally means curling up and hiding under the duvet.

Except it didn't. Fear had the same effect as curiosity: to see what the fuck was going on. Maybe it was just some problem with the streetlamp. Mundane, practical, boring explanation, but sensible and realistic. Maybe.

The source was indeterminable.

It wasn't the streetlamp.

Now it was time to hide behind a pillow. Bury my face in it to check whether the flashes came from my own eyes, forgetting that they definitely came from outside no matter which way I looked. The results of this experiment were inconclusive - I didn't bury my face well enough. Logic completely left me for a long holiday.

Some of this logic eventually returned. Turning my light back on was a far better move than just hugging a pillow to death. I thought about picking up another book. I looked about the books in my room, thinking about which one to read. A flash of light proceeded, and with it, came a very quiet noise. Was it thunder? Very softly-spoken thunder, if so. But that boosted me back to the window. Maybe this stuff was actually lightning, and, if so, maybe there'd be a bit of rain soon. All I saw was swirling dust as the hand out of my window stayed as dry as it ever was with all that blood passing through it.

I waited, I moved, I looked out of the open window. On the side of my face, a little cool droplet appeared. Cue thunder. Cue rain.

Fear changed to sheer delight. Nothing to care about anymore. The storm was a storm and so it should be.

Now I was tired.

Minim

Hi. I'm Minim.

I wear glasses and have a long plait, neither of which you can tell by my doodles:

I'm young for some of you and ancient for others - but if you think I am ancient I question your parents' judgement for allowing you to read this blog in the first place - at least, not without checking it out first by themselves (although I guess the doodles look kid-friendly for the most part, and for the most part, they are, and if you think I'm ancient, you're not likely to be the most advanced reader anyway. Unless you're like me and auto-didactic in that area (and holy carp I managed to spell auto-didactic correctly first time round - I didn't even do that with 'correctly' when I was writing this just now!) in which case, when someone tries to irk you off with an 'I didn't know you could read' you can tell them that you were - or you could just carry on reading like I did, and then live with that regret). That's a lot of bracket.

My biological sex is female. I'm an agender aromantic asexual agnostic atheist. That's a lot of A-words. (And yes, I'm an agnostic atheist, I don't believe there's a God, but I can't be certain that there is one) I'm also atypical as opposed to the norm (I'm most likely a touch autistic as a few people familiar to autism have concluded), apathetic about a few topics (aren't we all? Okay, I'm apathetic about clothing - unless I'm actively looking to make an impression, which, most of the time, I'm not. I'm also apathetic about other stuff), and, in my unverified opinion, awesome. (Well, it's better then beating myself up over my flaws all of the time, and I don't forget that I have flaws, either)

I have two sisters, one brother, and they're all older than me (I call them Quaver, Semibreve, and Crotchet on this blog respectively - keep up the musical notes theme). I have parents, they're separated, and it feels just very much normal, as is the experience of living. (And if you don't believe that, then you're more of a pain than the situation is, because I simply don't care - and possibly because I had my own computer at my dad's place from an age that was, in retrospect, a bit too early, but I never minded)

I don't know why I'm making this particular post, but then, I never do about any post. I'm just doing to play some hotdogs on my carefully organised sand now. Or something.

(Not the best end to the post, I note. But then, good endings aren't always possible or plausible)

"Do You Want A Boyfriend?"

"Do you want a boyfriend?"

No.

"Don't you want to get married?"

No.

"But don't you want kids?"

Not really, no.

"But when you're old, won't you be lonely?"

No.

The world is made up of people, and a vast majority of those people are into sex and relationships and who's hot and who's sexy and damn would I tap that ass. (whatever people mean by that, I have no idea!)

I know I've joked about my misunderstanding of 'hot' (as in good-looking, attractive sort of thing rather than uncomfortably warm, as I used to always presume) but the actual scene itself wasn't just about that misunderstanding, but also about another part of my life.

I was 11-12, and a couple of my mates were on a computer in a classroom, looking at this gallery of 'hot guys.' They were all fairly famous people. They asked me about a few of them, and after the expected literal sense, (and going through the same literalness with the word 'fit' too), I only thought 'meh.' There was nothing really interesting to fawn over like these girls so obviously were, it was all just skin and eyes and hair and you can see that sort of thing easily at your local park or museum or library or your next door neighbour's house. All such venues also have something else to bring you there to as well, from taking a walk to catching up with a friend. Nothing special about their looks.

These mates would go on to have crushes and such while I would be there, just thinking "I could not give a shit." Romance was far from my mind as I talked to people in general. I've never cared about romance, particularly, it was all dull and weird and why anyone would want it when it creates a whole lot of faff for little reason, nope, not a clue. Most people are fulfilled by it, I know now, but I am not one of those people. Lots of people are fulfilled by sex also, but I know I won't be. My life isn't worse off for the lack of these things. True, I may never fall into romantic love with that random person I connect to for some strange reason, but I will also never be dumped by that person either, I won't have to waste endless energy trying to impress people in that way, and I can concentrate on other stuff I actually enjoy, instead, (like writing this blog now!) no taking partners into consideration.

Unfortunately, the world is biased against people who just couldn't care less. I must have had a million conversations in High School like the one above, where classmates - usually girls - don't seem able to comprehend any path that isn't along the lines of get married, have children. They seemed to be under the impression that you can't be happy without going on this path, well, some of us will be happier going a different way. The world wants babies, but we have enough of those already. Too many people think that you have to be attracted to someone somewhere, that everyone wants a relationship like that. They're wrong.

This is your asexual, aromantic blogger, signing off.

(Anyone interested in further information may like to check out AVEN - the Asexual Visibility and Education Network)

Notebook

It is not uncommon for me to have a notebook with me. It's a space I can write, doodle, list things freely, without commenting.

I have my current notebook with me at the moment, so I'm obviously going to explore it.

I bought it about a year ago. It has a translucent, stripey cover to it, and through it you can clearly read what I wrote on the pages on the outside (which were the only unlined pages and probably were supposed to remain blank, but never mind). My name and ID number are clearly visible on the front page, as is my blog address and my doodles. Also, the words "Don't Panic!" and underneath, in brackets, 'large, friendly letters.'

On the other side of the blank page is a false copyright (is that bad?) and a warning.

Because it's not 'actually' copyrighted, if you dare attempt to steal my ideas, you pulchritudinous pig, then the spiders will get you. (Unless you've got a cat. Then the cat will be reprogrammed and then the spiders will get you)

Underneath this, two spiders. That'll stop them, I'm sure.

And then, the first page has stolen words on it.

Up next, story planning. Thoughts about characters I'd made up, the children of characters well-established in another series of books. Or grandchildren, or those who know these children and grandchildren. And then, three word definitions. Then, a small excerpt of an alternate universe to a book series. A doodle. And then a lot of crossed-out arithmetic. And then, a load of website recommendations, with this blog at the top. In fact, this notebook gets a lot of mentions of my blog. Like it's "Minim's Pad, Part 2" or something.

And here at the end of a list of things to Google, it says 'and anything else you want to google.' Well, that's something to do.

Names list comes next (oh, look, what a surprise...), and doodles and randomness again fill the day. Including doodles like this:

Another quote: "For shameless self promotion I will write minimspad.blogspot.co.uk again and again and again."

Next, some notes I have on a game I don't have any more, some green writing that is slightly morbid, then some writing in various random colours. Then a 'page for penning' which does not have all that much 'penning' on it. Then a page on xkcd (Because when it's not self-promotion it's promotion of xkcd *sigh*) and then more names because a minim notebook without names lists is a minim notebook without names lists. One was started on 2013-06-10. I know because it tells me what yesterday's date was. The next page boldly starts "Project Proposal" but it's only a note as to who to send it to. And at that point I had little idea what problems said 'project' might hold and I was all for it.

The next several pages contain comics. One of a coach journey has various people talking, and one of them is saying "Help. This chair was drawn incorrectly." Little follow up:

After the comics, this little bit of weirdness:

if newYear = 1:

    print("Happy New Year!")

elif newYear > 1:

    print("What the hell?!")

else:

    print("You can't restart your life today.")

More randomness follows, with a boast of "I have a left-handed ruler." Guess what I had just received? Then, more comics.

Later, a book list that started off well but never got past one book. And then, in response to the advert that came out after the National Lottery decided to raise the price of a ticket to £2 rather than the £1 it was at:

We're justifying

The rise in pricing

To those who're buying

on Saturday.

This is just under a doodle of house roofs. Not long after, there is a rant. I was trying to sum up why I want to Maths at university:

-logical and systematic and beautiful.

-Other than that I have no fucking idea. I just like it?

Later on, I also mention that I have "very good procrastination skills." I was trying to do points for my personal statement, but at the time I was so frustrated with it because I had little idea about myself, and you need a good idea of yourself to write a personal statement.

A story in fragmented lines. And then some joking around with questions from lessons.

Explain why the electric field strengths at two points, A and B, the same distance from a positive point charge, are not identical.

My answer? No.

Also, thou shall not post the flashy .gif without warning people first. I will not post the flashiness, this commandment is from one of my many ramblings about the xkcd comic Time and its dedicated thread.

Just remember, folks:

In a world of DARKNESS...

...there is a light.

...

...

Damn it, where's the switch?

Don't Even Try

I have a warning out there to all human beings who wish to change my religious ideology:

Don't try to make me religious.

No, seriously, don't.

(For those who are interested, I am an agnostic/don't really care/a Timewaiter/an experimentalist atheist. I don't give a banana fudge souffle on what religion you follow, whether it be Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Buddhism, Hinduism, Sikh, or Pastafarianism - although I might enjoy your company a little more if you're of the last one)

I used to be solid atheist, mostly because of the people trying to make me otherwise. There were only a couple who actively tried to make me religious, but a few more brought it up and didn't seem to be able to leave it alone, and plenty more were shocked or surprised about it. I never particularly cared that people were shocked, in fact, I reveled in it after a while because it was just so predictable, so I knew what to expect. The pests who didn't like to leave it alone, well, they may have been patronizing in their tone, but they were only doing it to be entertained, so I didn't really care.

It was Mr I'm-going-to-make-you-religious that frustrated the pants off of me.

Mr I'm-going-to-make-you-religious (Or Mr I for short) was one of those people who used his religion as an excuse for bigotry. Mr I was a fan of women being forced to wear coverings on their head. Mr I also seemed to be a fan of stoning people to death if they don't conform.

All of this was revealed to me at a time when my thoughts and speech centres were even more disconnected then they are now. I had problems wording right (and often still do) which made conveying what I meant difficult.

('Wording right' is my phrase for 'not adequately being able to express my thoughts in a clear, grammatically correct, normal way, even though the thoughts themselves are about perfectly simple things such as wearing a head veil to be my choice.' It may seem grammatically incorrect, but when I've got my words all muddled in a case of not wording right, 'I can't word right' or similar is the only way I can tell anyone that this is the case)

Mr I also thought that I'd go to hell if I didn't believe in a God. I (now) understand the sentient behind this, but it's an attack that is not very effective when you're facing someone who doesn't believe in hell. But then, my attack of 'It should be my choice whether I should be religious or not' wasn't very effective either. It was like an ongoing Pokemon battle that was never going to go anywhere (as if you were trying to battle a particular old man...).

And it never did get anywhere. We both seem to have given up on the whole thing. Or at least, I didn't see him around for a year and since then we haven't talked much, so I doubt I'll need to start getting het up again.

And that's good, cause now I don't need to care. You can't change how I feel about religion, except in a way in which you don't want.

So don't even try.

A Run

I used to be a bit of a talker.

I could spend forever talking about anything, from books I'd read to a possible answer that appeared a couple of times in a Maths Challenge paper (Yes, I literally, actually spent a whole lunchtime talking about the possible answer "More Information Needed" and making jokes about it - for some reason I found it really amusing!).

My pals, who I'll call Alice and Jenny, didn't seem to be fond of this, as evidenced by what happened next.

It was a normal day, and I was gabbling away as usual, yada yada yada, when:

Alice: You should take a lap of the field.

Me: Why?

Jenny: Well, Alice has done one, and I've done one, it's only fair that you do one.

I hadn't seen either of them do one, but I had nothing to say against one, and I didn't have any suspicions that all was not as it seemed.

It was a simple route.

I started running.

It wasn't exactly an easy run, but then, I wasn't exactly a runner. It didn't take too long to take the run, and it filled some time. I got back to my starting point...

...to see that nobody was there.

This puzzled me slightly, but I put that aside. I had to find out where Alice and Jenny were, and rejoin them.

I staggered around the grounds, searching for them, hoping that they would be findable. It was still ages until lunch would end.

I didn't find either of them.

Lunch ended and still I hadn't found either of them. But as Alice was a form mate and it was tutor next I saw her then. She made a passing comment about the incident, and we left it at that.

It took me a couple of years to connect my chattering to what had actually transpired next. I just believed that they'd got bored or something and moved off.

Ahhh, naivety.

(Psst! Next post appears to be Number 100! :D Anyone else feel like celebrating? Anyone got any suggestions on what we could do? If you do, post them below in the comments)

Worlds

War was on.

A girl traveled the empty streets of her homeworld, evading the military of another world, who had recently invaded the land. Their crafts hovered above, trying to trace her down, and she hoped she could get to the safe house. She was vital in overpowering the invading forces, having heaps of knowledge on them, gained before they found out she was a spy.

Through a park full of uncaring children, and along a busy street, she arrived, having successfully evaded the crafts. She went up the stairs to her computer.

The imaginary worlds I created as I walked from place to place weren't always like that, but often were. Exciting and dangerous, or full of mystery and plain weirdness. At a younger age, I was a superhero, able to fit through very thin gaps and escape the school playground. At other times, the school playground turned into a chocolate factory. I might be a prisoner, or a police officer in wild car chases. I would teach my toys things, like numbers and other things. This was the fun side.

Then there was the more mundane side, venting/talking to someone about bullies and siblings and how things were confusing and stuff like that. I ended up in arguments a lot during lessons, and it was really frustrating and confusing. People were confusing.

Imaginary worlds weren't. They were straightforward. You're the police, now catch that bad guy. This is a chocolate factory, it makes chocolate. You're a spy, now go to the safe house which is also your dad's house. Completely predictable, unlike the real world.

Chirp reality. The world of imagination is far more awesome. They even have their own number, i (the square root of -1), as well as all the other complex numbers.

Why You Don't Listen to Impulses

I grew up in a house which had a public path right next to it. Our garden led to this path, and many joyous hours were spent just cycling up and down the path. I loved that path a lot (although maybe not the dog poo that was there with a bag over it - that always caused a distraction to this tiny mind).

One evening, I was walking about the house, as you do. I saw that the front door was open.

I felt like having a run down that pathway and back. Be free to do it as I liked, without anyone else being there, dictating what we did, choosing me to be there. And then I'd be back as though nothing had ever happened, and life would go on as normal, unburnished and everything forgotten.

This projected image in my head, time to put action to words.

I ignored the fact that my parents outside looked all serious and possibly were arguing with each other, and that anything had been said in my direction. After all, I would be coming back, I'd be back in a couple of minutes, so I wasn't running away. I focused just on my run, rather than those silly words.

The run itself was liberating, exhilarating. It was the best run I'd ever had, and I loved each second of it. It released a fair amount of pent-up energy, which was good as back in those days, I was totally completely made up of energy.

It was when I'd got back to the house when everything went wrong. The door was shut, and I didn't have a key for it. How would I get in now?

Apparently I didn't have the mental capacity to knock on the fucking door. I looked at it for a few seconds, the destroyer of all hope and glory, and then, instead of doing the logical thing and hanging around the front of the house, I saw this as a sign of "You're not getting past me, hahahahaha," and turned around to go in the other direction.

I ambled around the neighbourhood, lost and confused. It was getting dark and cold now, and even with this lovely sweater I was wearing, I still felt the freezing-ness of the weather.

What do I do now? I thought, meandering around miserably. Where do I go? What about school?

Because of my lost-ness, I eventually ended up back at a place I recognised, by the corner shop (which had a pretty alarming thief alarm). I knew the way back home.

I decided to give it another shot, and started to walk down the road back.

At the head of the road, my father caught up with me in his car. He stopped right by me, and I got in, wondering if I'd be going back to his place.

No, we went a couple of metres down the road, and went in to home home. Moth took me to the back room and gave a fair argument for why not to run away, even saying that they'd nearly called the police and then I would have been in trouble.

And all for one impulsive run down a path.

Facelessness

Most of the world use faces as their means of identifying a person. Obviously if you can't see, you don't, but apart from that, the 'normal' person doesn't spend years confused because of one minor difference:

Horrendously bad drawings, but hopefully you get the picture.

You don't tend to wear a headscarf in PE (whether or not you do anywhere else) and plenty of girls at my old school did. it was years before voice recognition was effective in this situation and girls that I'd previously thought of as two different girls turned out to be the same bloody person. It was confusing to see people in PE you never saw anywhere else, particularly as they claimed to be in your form! And looking for somebody specific who wore a headscarf, when they had PE?

Mission Impossible.

And that's not even the worst bit.

That second one has definitely happened. I only realised it after she'd gone by (I'm calling her Quaver from now on) and left my line of sight. And not once, either. Twice.

I have come to the conclusion that maybe I'm a little face blind, and the harder to pronounce way of saying this to the same effect (added maybe with a little confusion), is prosopagnosia. It's easier to rely on headscarf, hair, general body shape, glasses, etcetera, than rely on anything else. Except cake, of course, but still.

So remember, don't change your hairstyle and still expect me to work out who you are in 2 seconds flat. Because you look so different since you've grown your hair out.