back into it maybe?

 Sunrise from our hotel room

Family dinner in the back yard

The girls

It's the first day of summer and when I last posted I vowed to get back into writing on here when the air got warmer and I no longer had time/life related constraints.. Since August I've finished high school assessment forever then went on to graduate. I survived schoolies. Applied for university. Died my hair back blonde again. Read another 20 books. Became obsessed with the game Miscrits and rediscovered Worms. Got over Miscrits and Worms. Made new friends. Watched some old ones drift away. Yet I don't feel sad to be finished high school maybe because I'm a little heartless or most likely due to my never-ending itch to be doing something or changing, meeting new people and having new experiences. Our Kombi is so close to finishing I can literally touch it's smooth, polished exterior but still it needs a few final touches before the road trips may begin. I want to drive down to Byron and enjoy the beach, head inland to the mountains and enjoy star gazing and mountain mist, drive with no destinations and find towns so small you can't breathe before you're out of it again. I decided once all these trips begin I can really get back into photography again because at home I don't feel inspired to take photos around the same streets and scenery. Woodford is in a few weeks now so I'm sure there will be plentiful moments to capture then. I'm not sure if I'll keep writing on here like I used to but I thought I should keep my word and at least try. Time will tell..

winter dusk and goodbye for now

This afternoon I walked down the end of my street and took some photos as night time settled in and sun went to sleep. Ignore the little hair line fracture at the corner of some photographs.. not sure what it is but you can be sure I am frightened/pissed off at his appearance as well.

Lately I've been busy with school work and working at the video store, so busy in fact that I can no longer remember what it's like to feel bored. I don't think that's a good thing either. I'm pretty unhealthy at the moment as well. I have a flu that doesn't seem to improve and a jaw that is clicking whenever I eat. This especially worries me as google tells me a clicky jaw could be a symptom of Temporomandibular joint disorder which is basically a long way to say that my jaw is fucking up. I think that means I need to go see the dentist, who I firmly believe is the devil reincarnated into an occupation. Stereotypically of course, I'm yet to meet someone who enjoys visiting the dentist. I bet dentists hate going to other dentist's.

I don't know how much longer I can keep up this blog. It was meant to be somewhere to share inspiration and rambles but right now I have nothing inspiring to share and interesting to ramble about. I don't want to delete it because that would feel like deleting a huge part of me. This blog represents my growth from a gawky adolescent who believed in naive lies such as love and truth, into an adult who still bears the rawness of the young but the matured hardness created from a loss of innocence. I don't think I'm growing much right now. I've hit a plateau in my evolution. I know soon things will start to move again and I'll change more and grow again, but right now I'm not living enough life for this to occur. Once I graduate I plan to live a lot of life, grow, evolve, change and then maybe I can start sharing again. Time will tell.

If anyone still occasionally checks this blog, thank you if you do.. check back in a couple of months. Well 99 days to be exact. For now, consider distraction blog to be in hibernation. Like an exhausted bear after a long summer of hunting and prowling the woods. I'm taking a rest for the rest of winter, then when the temperature drops, the sun beats down harder and I'm handed my certificate of freedom; I'll return.

xx Annie

I LOVE COLLAGING

Lately I've been whipping out unrelated collages for art. They're concept weak and fun galore so I think I'll just continue to collage until my hearts content and my teacher screams at me for only creating collages 6 weeks into our body of work. Here they are! (click for bigger images)

I think you know you're about to have a depressing night when by 7:30 you're chowing down a jar of chocolates and reading out loud 25 most romantic movie quotes.

"When Harry Met Sally" (1989)

Columbia Pictures

“I love that you get cold when it’s 71 degrees out. I love that it takes you an hour and a half to order a sandwich. I love that you get a little crinkle in your nose when you’re looking at me like I’m nuts. I love that after I spend day with you, I can still smell your perfume on my clothes. And I love that you are the last person I want to talk to before I go to sleep at night. And it’s not because I’m lonely, and it’s not because it’s New Year’s Eve. I came here tonight because when you realize you want to spend the rest of your life with somebody, you want the rest of your life to start as soon as possible.”

—Harry (Billy Crystal) to Sally (Meg Ryan)

"The Apartment" (1960)

United Artists

“Miss Kubelik, one doesn’t get to be a second administrative assistant around here unless he’s a pretty good judge of character, and as far as I’m concerned you’re tops. I mean, decency-wise and otherwise-wise.” — C.C. Baxter (Jack Lemmon)

"Some Kind of Wonderful" (1987)

Paramount Pictures

Watts (Mary Stuart Masterson): [putting on Keith’s diamond earrings] “What do you think?”

Keith (Eric Stoltz): “You look good wearing my future.”=

post shenanigans and drunkness

I hate topic sentences and since all my blog posts never cross one solid topic I think it's extremely stupid to use one. Firstly my most exciting news to share is I GOT A NEW LENS! It's a Sigma 10-20mm wide angle zoom which is gnarly because the teenage girl that sold it to me at Ted's photo store didn't even tell me it was a wide angle even after I pointed out quite obviously that the lens looked pretty wide. I fully intend to jump back into photography now and I'll try to upload any photos that I think are worth sharing. Since I last posted holidays ended, school began and inbetween all that I have a: moped about assignment loads, b: procrastinated over starting said assignment loads and c: shot a post in the middle of no where at 3 in the morning. Since talking about school sucks I'll touch on the party. Posts are the weirdest because they don't start till midnight which means right when my body clock is ready for sleep, you gotta push past that urge and instead drive to random acerage in random suburbs and take photos of mostly random drunk people. It never ceases to amuse me how many more slutty hook ups there are at posts. It's like people think- what a better opportuinity than to hook up with a girl all dolled up looking pretty in the middle of muddy long grass, while it's raining, at around 10 degrees.  Hey, why not- whatever floats your boat as they say. That's really all I feel like typing right now because I really want to go back to sleep due to fucked up sleeping patterns this weekend. Hope you're all not suffering too harshly from going back to school.

titles are for suckers

Being addicted to books is really causing me some trouble. I can't feel happy with my life when I'm reading about faeries, adventures, the future, places I want to go and places I want to be. Their memories start to feel like my own sometimes and I try say that in the least crazy way manageable. Mainly I wish I lived in the past because everything interesting and fascinating in life seemed to happen in a time before I was a born. I guess if I believe in reincarnation though then I most likely lived then anyway! Right now I want to join a circus like in Water for Elephants or light fire crackers in the forest next to a boarding school in America like Looking for Alaska. Going to school in which there is no rule breaking, nothing fascinating, surprising or amusing happening is starting to really feel like a waste of life. I'm swaying further and further from the whole going to university in Brisbane idea and instead saving to go some place where I'd have the opportunity to be surprised. I love the quote from Looking for Alaska;

"Imagining the future is a kind of nostalgia. (...) You spend your whole life stuck in the labyrinth, thinking about how you'll escape it one day, and how awesome it will be, and imagining that future keeps you going, but you never do it. You just use the future to escape the present."  

There's nothing in this stupid world I love more than being surprised so I search for the Great Perhaps in one surprise at a time.

don't know

I'm starting to think that I don't know anyone. I thought my Mum didn't know the lyrics to any song and would forever be half humming half singing along to the radio. Turns out Mum knows the lyrics to nearly every Cat Stevens song. I thought my old boss would never, ever quit her job because she's part crazy but I just found out she is closing down her store. I thought that I was happy but turns out I'm really grumpy and self destructive. I  don't think I'll ever really know anyone but that's okay because I love surprises.

the go-getter

Been meaning to watch this movie for a long time. In fact the post-it note saying 'WATCH THE GO-GETTER' has become dusty and not sticky enough to stay on my wall. So it's a good thing I finally watched it. I'd recommend the movie if you like those strange ambiguous movies where you kinda interpret it however you wish to. It's quirky and funny and has lovely scenery all throughout.

into the wild

A nice boy I know recommended a whole heap of movies for me to watch so today I parked on the couch for a solid 5 hours and after catching up on Downtown Abbey (really it's a shit tv show I don't even know why I watch it) I watched movie 1: Into the Wild. I really can't believe I hadn't already seen this movie because it checks all the boxes for me; pretty scenery- check, good soundtrack- check, life rambling- check, tragedy- check, broaches the topic of self-actualisation- check. Anyway I sure am glad I finally watched it because it really is a superb film which made me smile the whole way through. Other than when he died of starvation but that was minor in comparison to all the smile-provoking scenes! In fact I found his death not very sad at all because he managed to live so much in the time before he died that it almost seemed natural for death to come after so much living. There was a bazillion great quotes from that movie which makes me want to squeal with glee as I'm a huge quote junkie. I think my favourite quote was; "Happiness is only real when shared". There's a beautiful simplicity in that phrase and when Chris wrote that quote down in the movie that was my favourite moment because that is when he realised that no matter how happy and self-evolved he feels out in Alaska, in isolation, it doesn't mean anything until you can share those feelings and moments with another person.. Anyway, that's one movie down and I still have a huge pile of movies to get through before holidays finish and reality sets back in.