I moved out of my flat.

It was back in february, but I forgot to write about it.
Sadly, I had to leave my beautiful and sunny apartment. 

Goodbye pretty but impractical bathtub!

In spite of all it's humidity, coldness and mice infestation, I loved that house. It was big, had a lot of sunlight and incredibly cheap rent.

But I didn't love my flatmates, so I left.

I think, specially as I get older, good flatmates are harder to find. I'm now pretty sure the main reason people get married is so they don't have to go through the troubles of co-renting a space with a stranger.
Flatmates may even be nice and like that same things you do, but that doesn't mean you will necessarily have a good house-sharing relationship with them.

So I decided to write a questionary for the future event of having to choose a flatmate! Feel free to use it and report to me on the results:

Flatmate Inquiry:

It's 2 am and you really want to eat popcorn. How to solve this urge?
1. Maybe I will still be on time for a night session in the cinema and grab a bucket
2. I'll make them in a pan, in the kitchen

Read carefully and choose the appropriate phrase:
1."There's only one toilet paper roll in the bathroom"
2. "There's still one toilet paper roll in the bathroom"

The idea of other people having to touch the body hair you leave in the bathtub...
1.…repulses you.
2…never comes to your mind.

When is it the best time to take down a christmas tree?
1.January
2. May

"The number of people I'm allowed to invite to spend the night is proportional to the size of my bedroom"
1.True
2. False

The living room is…
1. free space to assemble my studio
2. everyone's
 
This inquiry has no wrong answers. You are both supposed to take the test and it's a matter of your choices combining with the other person's.
 Anyway, I won't need it so soon because right now I'm living with a friend, Mariana.

plus her cat and boyfriend.

The house is full of Mariana's stuff. And her stuff is very cool, and I'm currently developing a hobby of photographing myself posing with her things.

lady statue

super 8 camera

elf ears

I really spend a lot of time home alone and have to entertain myself somehow. Don't judge me.

In the meanwhile, my parents bought an apartment.
They meant to invest in real-estate for a while, but now that I was sort looking for a new place, they also started checking agencies websites and found out about an auction of houses seized by a bank. My dad went there and bought us a very cheap and tiny apartment in town.
It still needs some serious repair, (the windows are broken and there's no kitchen) but we've been checking IKEA catalogues, and making crazy plans! Now I'll have a house all for myself, and it's not a temporary thing, I can fill it with stuff I've always needed/wanted but had no space for:
Like an indoors slackline


and an inflatable pool
 

and a full body mirror

no more checking myself out in shop windows, when it's already too late to change what I'm wearing.

and a Totoro-shaped bed.
 
!!!!!!!!!

You would expect that when they decided to buy the house I was very happy.
After all, this means no more dealing with flatmates or landlords, and no more paying rent.

But I wasn't happy at first. Not at all.

You see, dear reader, my brain is very self-centered and dramatic. It's like having a mexican soap opera cirurgically implanted in my head.

 

I'm capable of finding problems even in the good stuff, and spent the first day hyperventilating and thinking  "This is it. Now I'm never going to leave this city. Having a house of my own, I'm going to be stuck in here forever"

This was a silly thing to worry about. But I can see why I freaked out:  
I like living in Porto, but sometimes I'm afraid that I'm getting too comfortable here. I'm afraid of getting too comfortable with being unemployed and living off my parents. And I'm mostly afraid that I might be giving up, or not doing enough.

I studied design but don't have a single actual design work in my portfolio. I don't think I know enough to work in a big studio, even in the very very slim chance they would want me. I'm constantly getting emails from people interested in hiring me for illustration work or comics that end up not writing back. And I never know what made them change their mind.
I keep myself busy doing my own projects and I think a lot of people see what I'm doing from the outside and feel like it's somewhat successful. But I'm not so sure it is.

I really miss some sort of structure, schedules and people to work with and learn from. I'm not sure if this is just a wobbly and temporary stage, and things will feel more on track eventually and I just have to hang on, and be patient and persistent. Or if I should make a change. 
In that case, I'll have to seriously start considering moving somewhere else. Outside Porto.

And then I'll have to look for flatmates again.

Thank god I made that list.

I used to hoop, but now I hop.

For a while, drawing and making comics was this thing I did on my spare time, for my own entertainment. But last year it gradually became the main activity. And as I started putting more and more expectations and worries on it, I felt the need to find a new hobby to take the space where comics used to be.
 
I felt a huge need to get immersed in an activity that is different from what I do everyday, and that I'm motivated to learn but don't feel pressured to be good at it. It also has to be something that I'm not sharing with that many people. I must do it just for myself. 
That's why last summer I started hula hooping. 

(If Robyn hula hoops then it must be cool)

There's a huge hooping community on the internet, full of people posting tutorials that look either super impressive or super ridiculous. And I like activities that mix both things.

But now my new house is not as spacious and I stopped my hula hobby (at least until I'm brave enough to go practise in a public garden) and I'm getting super invested on my lindy hop classes.

 
I've been taking them since December. When you enter, you have to sign up either as leader or a follower. Leaders are usually men, and women are usually followers. The trouble is that there's a waiting list for followers. Whereas leaders are always welcomed, so I signed up as one.

Although I did some dancing before, I only took up partner dances very briefly, and rarely as a leader. And it's super fun! And interesting. Right now I see the whole thing as a problem of communication that we are constantly trying to solve. Like a moving puzzle. There are a few steps that we learn and can use to make a choreography out of it, but the interesting part is learning how to convey those movements to the other person. How to make her jump, or slide or stop without telling her out loud that she has to jump, slide or stop.
How to move my body in a way that the follower understands what's going on and where to go?

 
You can guess that most of the dance is controlled by the leader. And it's cool to have that power. But with great power comes great responsibility, and if the couple is out of tune, or trips and falls, or makes some mistake, it's probably the leader's fault.
Leaders make most of the mistakes.
I'm pressing on that because, the funny thing I've noticed, is that guys are usually the worst at taking criticism on their dancing.

I know I'm generalizing, and there are some super nice and humble leaders that I've danced with. But really, from my experience so far, having danced with both men and women in a number of occasions from classes to parties both here and back when I was in Vilnius, I can tell you that it's very common that whenever I tell men they are doing something wrong they get defensive about it, or at least feel the need to thoroughly explain why they did that mistake and how that happened because of something that was out of their control.
Whereas girls are always saying they are sorry, even when the mistake wasn't theirs!

I think that says a lot about our society and stuff, and I'll leave that for to you to think about. Meanwhile, I'm deepening my gender research and going out with my dancing shoes, because tonight's a swing night!

I hate dates.
Not the fruit,

Those are fine.
I mean when there's someone who's a possible love interest so you meet to talk and figure out if you have enough stuff in common and can stand each other's company for more than a hour and a half.
This all sounds like a plausible grown-up thing to do. And I can see why most people I know get excited about going on dates.

But I have a problem. If I fancy someone, the LAST thing I want do is to be completely alone with them.
Even talking while in a group is hard.
I will want to be near. But not ready to interact yet.
Like a love sloth.


I think I need a sort of progressive exposure for my charm to work. The amount of time we spend together has to gradually increase over, say, a month.
I made charts to compare it:

In my approach, on the first day we only see each other for 5 minutes (so there's very little I can say to hurt their first impression of me). Then day 2 is 15 minutes (the stakes are a bit higher, I may have to talk about the weather) and so it goes up and up, to a solid 2 hours time or maybe even more.

So far, most people I like liked were kind of in my friendship group zone... So I didn't really have to set a time and place to get to know them better. I wasn't lazy either: I did make a huge effort to be with them and went through amazing loops to get them invited for things without having them know I was the one inviting.

But, still, less pressure and it was never said out loud that we were going on dates. We were just doing things, together. sometimes. not even romantic things, necessarily. Unless you count washing a dog in a bathtub, or going to the supermarket as a romantic activity.

If that wasn't enough, I'm also very nervous to be on the other side of the situation and getting asked out. For all the above reasons and more:
Generally when someone invites me to go for a drink I say yes. I like meeting new people, and I like drinks. Both are great. But then, occasionally, I find myself in a dim lit place and wondering "where the hell are his friends?" and realizing I was the only one invited and this looks like romance.

This happened a few times when I was new in Vilnius, and therefore had no friends and had to go around meeting a lot of people in bars and film sessions and parties and night things because apparently that's how you make friends when you are not in school anymore. And making new friends outside school is really hard, and I was constantly worried I would be sending them the wrong vibe.


Maybe it's not just a coincidence that most people I ended up being friends with, in Lithuania, already had boyfriends or girlfriends.

So, I'm putting this two dilemmas on your competent hands, dear readers. I don't think I can or should avoid dates, but I would definitely love to have a magic card trick that would turn them less hmm "daty". Any ideas?

And, also, how to be friends with someone who's also single, and meet them, and have them know I really enjoy their company, without making it sound like it's something else? 

Gaaah, this is hard. I should probably just give up and stay home.

This starts with me having a bad day.
I live right next to my old faculty and will occasionally go to work there, although I don't know anyone there anymore.

I was having this lame day, and eating a ham and cheese sandwich in the school cafeteria and started crying.
You see, I've cried in schools before. Nothing new about that. But this time was so much sadder because I don't EVEN STUDY THERE! I'm just this random older person sitting in a school I don't go to, and tearing up WHILE EATING A SANDWICH!

Anyway, I go home and decide to heat up a frozen pizza to cheer myself up. (I realize now a pattern of eating ham and cheese things when sad) I was very hungry and bit the pizza right out of the oven.
This was of course a terrible idea and it burnt the roof of my mouth.

(This image goes to show that I'm not the only idiot in the world to whom this things happen)

My palate was all swollen and red afterwards.

The thing is, I had only bought 2 things in the store earlier.
One was the pizza, and the other was a big bag of oranges.
That was all the food I had.

I don't know if you ever tried eating citric fruits with a burned mouth but it stings a lot.
For the rest of the night I felt like I was in some sort of some sadistic experience:
"Let's leave a hungry person with an inflamed mouth in a house full of oranges and see what she does."


I ate one. Because I'm that tough.

 

The traditionally late New Year's Post

In case you're wondering about how I spent New Year's Eve (I know you probably aren't) I must admit I didn't celebrate it at all and just sat at home in my pyjamas. This is not a sad thing. I was very glad to be by the fire, alone, with comfy shoes and watching the first film of 2015. I always choose it carefully and this year, instead of a full lenght film, I watched the first episodes of Over the Garden Wall.





In spite of this very uneventful night, 2014 was a really busy year and full of great stuff. Looking back on my last year resolutions, I sort of got all I aimed for last January, to some degree: I did meet someone I cared about dearly, and I did move to Porto, and I did get a job. On the down side, most of this things have had some sad repercussion at some point, so it's not like I'm feeling glorious about any of it.



Nonetheless, I can share with you 5 things that happened this year and were new to me:



1- Good Food
My friends were all possessed by some sort of perfect-housewife's spirit and hosted the best dinner parties ever. We ate winter roasts, grilled chicken in the balcony, chocolate cakes, pies, codfish with cream... I can't even name it all.

Their dinners are seriously reaching a pro-level.




Me, on the other side, am still forgetting to buy napkins for my birthday party. And the toilet paper rolls ruined all the perfectly nice photos.



2- Parents

After a year away in Lithuania, barely seeing my family, and then 9 months living in Penafiel (my hometown) and seeing nothing BUT my parents, this year I'm finally slowly reaching a healthier arrangement of coming home very week. This is improving my sanity considerably.



3- Internet Sociability

This title is so lame. What I meant is, by the end of this year I realized I have at the very least 10 accounts in various websites where people can put a like on things that I publish. This is three times more accounts than I had a year ago.

I'm not really sure if that's good or bad. It just seemed unavoidable. But I started thinking lot about it, and being way more aware of what I publish online. Again, I'm not sure if that's good or bad. I guess time will tell.

4- Dragon-snake
Penafiel has a new public statue. 

I'm not even kidding you. This is real.

Smoke comes out of it twice a day, but I still haven't had the chance to witness that amazing miracle.


5- Boobs
Speaking of amazing miracles, I started taking the birth control pill and my boobs grew.

It was like an unexpected second round of puberty, and it made me very happy.
No one noticed it but me, though. 
 
 
To conclude, since I didn't celebrate New Year's Eve I decided not to make any resolutions either. I mean, all the ones from last year backfired anyway so who cares? who caaaares? 2015 will be the year of no expectations, no plans and not giving a fuck. In a way that's sort of a resolution in itself, isn't it?