Over the last two days I’ve been tidying up parts of my room, mostly in anticipation for having to pack away and move out which admitedly isn’t until next month but for once in my life I thought I’d get a head start. So far I’ve only tidied some draws and part of a corner of my room which is nothing really, yet I’ve somehow managed to fill three bin bags and have now run out actually. I’m totally surprised by how much clutter I have, I constantly forget that I’m a hoarder or at least an invisible one it seems I don’t like throwing away bits of paper, old project assignments, old bills I just sort of hang onto them. Paper and cardboard boxes which I have a pile of ontop of my wardrobe attributed to the fact that there’s never anywhere to put them, they’re my next battle I’m going to squash them flat and force them into our overflowing bin somehow.

There’s something very therapeutic about getting rid of a whole bunch of things you’ve ‘kept’ for no real reason its on a different level to tidying up, tidying up is just moving things about that you own and cleaning up a bit this on the other hand is looking through things and going ‘why the hell did I keep this’ along with ‘do I really need this’ then having to convince yourself that you no longer need a bill from two years ago. My clothes are going to be the last thing to sort out, there are a whole piles of them that I don’t wear and won’t ever wear again but its so difficult to get myself to throw them out but it is one of those things that I have to do, I have to cast off old possessions once in a while I feel it helps me grow to get rid of things from the past - especially clothes from 4 seasons ago. I just wish I had money to buy a bunch more, but that would just be defeating the point of de-cluttering. I however have to keep myself on track.

De-cluttering Tips:

• All paper must go, if its a scrap, if its an old magazine, if its an old bill or if you have no idea why you kept it or what it is for get it in the recycle bin.
• Don’t think about it, learn to cut off your brain. Become a robot with your sorting.
• Don’t talk yourself into keeping something, because you will find yourself going ‘oh but i might wear this moth eaten pair of gloves I bought two years ago again.’ Trust me, you’ll never wear them again and neither will anyone else.
• If you find it impossible to cut off and find your brain questioning what you’ve just filled a bin bag with ask yourself, do you love it, when did you last see/use it, do you even need it? Chances are you probably don’t.
• Just do one room at a time, or you’ll end up exhausted.
• Find places for the things you want to keep, or if like my room there are barely any places for clutter start a pile of the things you want to keep and when all the clutter is gone find places for things in your keep pile, it can be quite rewarding to give your room a new look.
• When you’ve cleared out enough junk, move furniture around it’ll make the room seem even more new.
• Open up your cluttered drawers or a box you’ve been shoving junk into and just dump it out onto the bed, this is what I do. This way you have to force yourself to sort through it otherwise you’ll have to find somewhere else to sleep.
• Put loud and happy music on while you’re de-cluttering, sing along if you have to it will make it seem like less of a chore
• Most of all make sure to keep it that way, or at least convince yourself you will even if you know that in a few weeks time you’ll be back to where you started.

Life lately seems to have been incredibly monochromatic, lacking in colour and quite frankly rather dull. I like my life to be colourful and interesting with lots to see and do. Instead these past few weeks since finishing college have mostly just been day after day of intense boredom with nothing at all to do not helped by the fact that not a day goes by where I don’t think of how much I want to be back in Tokyo, and everything seems to remind me of when I was there.

I think I’m in need of a night out to be honest. I haven’t been out in months mostly due to lack of money, as well as having far to much college work that was due but obviously all done and dusted now but the lack of going out is really starting to have an effect on me, and the lack of money hasn’t improved. In a perfect world I would be being paid right not to shoot photographs and I’d be busy every day, but as I’ve mentioned before it’s about who you know and not what you know a lot of the time and I’m not meeting many people sitting in the house because I can’t afford to go anywhere. So it’s a bit of a never ending circle really, and the job hunt continues. 

And just like life things seem to happen at the worst of times, when I have little money at all my macbook charger has broken so I’m forced to use my old ibook. I mean really though, what are the lifes of these things, It’s almost like apple make them deliberately to give up the ghost after a year along with their batteries. I would like to know however how i have managed to go through three batteries and four chargers over two computers in the space of three years. It’s almost like they design their chargers for the wires to fry when you have the least amount of money so you have to sit and wiggle them frustratingly until they say charging then sit holding it in that spot for an hour until you’ve got enough charge to use the machine it’s a very silly ordeal. You can always see it coming through, when your charger is about to go I knew it was going to happen but it still seems to just jump out at you like a smack in the mouth, POW you’ve got to pull out £40 you don’t have to get a new one. I’m not sure how they can justify charging so much for a charger. All of this aside I still adore macs and if I could land myself a photography job that paid me well enough I wold love to upgrade to a powerbook, but right now I can’t even afford a ‘Richard and Judy’ summer read let alone a laptop computer.

I had been waiting on the edge of my seat all of this week for the final episode in the current season of Dr Who and now it’s all over for another series, and I am left without anything at all to watch on a saturday night. I almost wish I myself could go back in time to a point where I hadn’t seen them all and have them all on again because as we all know saturday is the most boring televisual night of the week, if you don’t count wednesdays.

 The finale however was an amazing piece of television everything came together gloriously, and in the end quite tragically. David Tennant didn’t regenerate which I think was the most obvious thing that was going to happen yet had the most speculation around it and yes, I ended up quite upset by the end of the program and actually had to hold back tears, I’m a wuss though but I really don’t think it’s an easy watch viewing someone (ie: Donna, played by Catherine Tate) who has always felt they were worthless as a person save the world (for the 3rd time) and then have to have all of the memories that actually make her feel like she is worthwhile erased, that plus there is very little scope now for her character to return which is a shame because she actually ended up being my second favorite companion even after initial doubts, and if I’m honest she even almost caught up with Rose in terms of likeability for me.

Speaking of Rose, she got quite a happy ending which was nice though I also feel was a very clever way of Russell T Davies to allow for David Tennant’s return even if the current doctor were to regenerate, though Tennant’s return is something I myself wouldn’t grumble about. I guess that is it now until the christmas special, which see’s the return of ‘The Cybermen’ something that seems exciting but actually I can’t say I’m that pleased about, the repetition of baddies is getting a little old but I’ll let it pass because after all it will be a welcomed return of the program.

However I’m confined to having nothing at all to watch on a weekend now, and nothing at all to speculate about during the week. The weather has been terribly dim these past few days and I’ve had no money at all to go out and do anything which makes the rest of summer seem like it is going to be horribly boring, but hopefully I will be wrong, I have been before.

This is Emma, shot a while ago as part of the series of ‘bedroom’ portraits. I hadn’t met her before the shoot, she was the flat mate of a girl called Amy that took the same course as me. However she was quite a fun person to shoot, she reminded me of a pixie because of her features or perhaps Peter Pan because of her fun child like personality but she was unsure of getting her photograph taken and tried to hide behind a mask she had in her room. Needless to say I eventually got the photograph I wanted with a shadow that bares a striking resemblance to that of Peter Pan.

My stay at home wasn’t as bad as I thought it would have been, I kept myself occupied by eating and watching trashy tv on my macbook. I’ve been back at the flat for a few days now, by myself I might add as my flat mates are both visiting parents and what not, so I’ve been pretty bored with little to do with my days. I’m supposed to be going to London on friday for a ‘blythe doll meet’ that is happening in Hyde Park on sunday but I’m not sure if I’m able to make it mostly because  I have a job interview tomorrow with a well known men’s fashion store, it’s only for eight hours a week but it is a start I guess. If I get it I’ll probably be getting asked to work the weekend which will mean me having to miss the doll meet which I’m a bit glum about because I’ve never been to one and was really looking forward to it, but I need a job more and thats how life goes I guess.

I’m so worried about the interview I probably won’t sleep tonight, I’ve been going over and over in my head what to say to the questions I assume they will ask. I think I’m more worried about this than my interview at LCF, I’m not sure why though. I guess at least at LCF I had something to show them and could judge their reactions right away, there weren’t any right or wrong answers either I suppose. The ball was very much in my court in that situation and surrounding, I’m fully used to interviews about art and photograph, not so used to one’s about retail though. I guess I can just hope that my nerves don’t get the best of me and that the place isn’t busy I have been known to crumble when I’m on my own in busy places and having a panic attack in the middle of showing people how I use a till probably wouldn’t reflect well.

I’m supposed to be going home for a few days tomorrow and though I haven’t been back in at least two months it’s not like I’m overly excited about it. Don’t get me wrong I love my parents completely, but home seems different now since moving out whenever I go back it doesn’t feel like the same place.

There’s always something little about the place that has changed and my bedroom has transformed from a space that was mine, into a place for my parents to keep their junk. It’s a battle to get to my bed now and the place no longer feels like it’s mine. It’s a very strange feeling, I still feel at home but its just incredibly strange to see the place that I lived in since I was born as a place that isn’t mine anymore.

When I was young I always thought the place would always be mine, that i’d be there forever that that bedroom would always be decorated exactly how I wanted, containing all of the objects that make up my personality but now all of the objects are somewhere else, and I hate to say it and I’d probably never say it to my parents because it would break their hearts but I could never move back home because it really doesn’t feel like my home anymore.

One thing that really terrifies me, more than most things is going back there now I can suddenly see that they’ve aged. I used to not notice it at all, and them both being quite young looking for their age it never concerned me but now I don’t see them often, when I go back I can see it and I just have this terrible fear at the back of my mind that one day I’m going to go back home and they’re going to look old. Old person old, with grey hair and wrinkles. I know in the back of my brain this will happen eventually, I can’t keep them young looking forever but the older I myself get the more I have to realise that they won’t be here forever and that thought is both upsetting and scary.

Speaking of home life I watched four episodes of ‘Living Lohan’ last night, mostly to feed my Lindsay Lohan curiosity. She isn’t in it though, of course - plenty of name drops of her from her mother and sister though but other than that it is almost like she doesn’t exist to them. All in all the program passed the time, but god Ali Lohan is annoying she annoying and bratty I mean I’ll cut her some slack seems as she’s only fourteen but she wears so much make up I swear she must have to throw her head back to open her eyes.

The program itself would be a lot better if it didn’t all feel so set up, there was an episode where Ali was having trouble at school from some ‘Mean Girls’ at least thats how they kept referring to them, and dropping ‘Mean Girls’ references in through out the entire show, it was like ‘just drop it already, we know what movies your other daughter starred in. It’s not like she wrote it, stop using the term like its your own’ and don’t even get me started on the blatantly fake voice overs of girls bullying Ali in the street.
They just seem like the most fake family in the world, but then again I wasn’t respecting much reality from a ‘reality’ program made by E!

You’d think also, if they were all so close to Lindsay they’d be able to get her to actually show up in an episode I mean surely she visits or talks to her parents, either way the show would be better with her in it, drugged up to the eyeballs or not it would make much better television.
Though I still say there is direct correlation between her hair and her colour demise, you see if she only dyed her hair back to ginger then her career would once again sky rocket. But let’s just hope for good things from her in ‘Ugly Betty’ and even better things from her with her new album.