Friday 15 September 2017

Six Things I’ll Do In Six Weeks When My Thesis Is Submitted



If we wait until we’re ready, we’ll be waiting for the rest of our lives. 

-Lemony Snicket 

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

With the final FINAL deadline for my Masters thesis now six weeks away, to the day, I’m obviously feeling the crunch (hello and goodbye, September break – you are spoken for!) but also really starting to miss some of the leisure activities that have been shelved as the year has progressed. Below is a non-comprehensive list of the things I plan to do when the thesis is done.



Read books 

Oh god, YES, BOOKS!!! Having no time hasn’t stopped me from accumulating and desiring books, and my bookshelf is currently home to exactly 83 unread books (yes, I did just hop up and count them) along with many, many more read ones that I’d LOVE to have time to reread. I actively avoid libraries and bookstores because they just add more to my to-be-read list and it feels like a painfully long time since I could just stumble across a new book and sit and indulge in it right then and there. 


Watch movies 

So, I heard Wonder Woman is coming out – oh, missed another one. There’s still a Blockbuster Video hire store proximal to me and my membership card is going to get a workout these Christmas holidays as I binge my way into the modern cinematic era.  


See my friends 

Supposing any of them even remember me, I am really looking forward to having the time to actually see my friends. Not just liking their posts on FB; not just giving them an apologetic wave on my way past their classroom to do my photocopying; not just indefinitely rescheduling lunch with them. I miss having the time to go for our weekly walks and play in the park with my nephewling and wander around Southbank browsing the markets chatting even though it’s always the same stuff for sale. I miss having the time somewhere in my foreseeable future in which I could fly to Rockhampton or Gladstone for a weekend to spend time with my more distant friends. Studying and teaching full-time has been impossible to balance with sustaining non-daily relationships and I am so grateful to have the amazing (and understanding) friends I’ve got. I’m excited to see more of all of you. 


See my family 

As above. While I’m quite sure my parents haven’t forgotten they have a daughter, it would be prudent to remind them more frequently to ensure this never happens. Also I miss them. I would like to find more time to visit with my cousins and grandma, who are relatively local, and to get to New Zealand more to see my family over there. Everyone is very supportive of me and my study, of course, and I’m grateful for that encouragement and belief in me, but it sucks how much time it’s sapping from me at this crunch-time point. 


Watch TV 

People are always like, “Are you up to date with Supernatural?” “Have you watched Battlestar Galactica?” “Did you ever end up finishing Hannibal?” I have SO MUCH television to catch up on, and also have other great shows coming out later this year that I’m invested in: Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency, for one, and Stranger Things, which are both releasing their second season right after my thesis is submitted. How fateful is that??! 


WRITE!! 

The one you’re all waiting to hear. Yes! The weekly ritual of devoting two hours on a Wednesday night to creative writing has been cute, but is hardly a replacement for good, wholesome writing time. I’m looking forward to whole weekends where I get lost in a scene and have to be reminded to eat. When half my brain is stuck in a guilt cycle of “You should really be working on something else right now, shouldn’t you…?” it’s been impossible to make any real progress on my actual books this year. I’m eager to shrug something off and replace it with book writing.


Now all I need to do is maintain the illusion that finishing the thesis will clear out my schedule completely, and to forget that the thesis deadline falls at the start of reporting season at school, and to forget that report cards are followed by Year 2 swimming week, and to forget that swimming week is followed by classroom clean-up… I need a holiday from my life.

Thursday 14 September 2017

Book Review: Devil's Advocate, by Jonathan Maberry

Devil's Advocate (The X-Files: Origins, #2)Devil's Advocate by Jonathan Maberry
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I loved so much about this book. I didn't know what to expect as I hadn't read the author before, but that left only room to be impressed. Set around what those of us in the know can recognise immediately as an X-File (of the paranormal experiment conspiracy type), teenage Dana Scully explores an early interest in the occult and paranormal before this faith is burnt, revealing the inner sceptic we know and love from the series later in her life. The depiction of little Scully is very satisfying - she's the classic good-girl, of course, smart and sensible, but she sticks up for herself and the voice Maberry delivers her in is entirely believable as a young version of the Scully we meet in the pilot. As the story follows a fifteen-year-old Dana, we get an insight into her childhood and family life that before we could only infer, and it too is gratifying, in particular the relationship between Dana and Melissa. Scully's sister is only a relatively small recurring role, for a short time, in the series, but is expanded here to depict a truly loving and close sisterhood between the girls, with Dana as the little sister always looking up to the elder but simultaneously growing into her own person. The dynamic is warm and fun, and I took great pleasure from the many passages of prose where the girls shared a scene. The other highlight for me were the words themselves. I wish I could remember every playful or meaningful line, but there were too many; the characterisation surprisingly consistent for an adult male writing a teen girl (extra kudos) and so there are many great and quotable Scully-esque lines from her inner monologue. There were many places where I stopped to reread a line or paragraph because I love a beautiful arrangement of words, but I suppose nothing compares with little Dana admitting she has visions, or naively uttering the famous lines 'The truth is out there' and 'I want to believe' years before she would ever meet Mulder. Really, really happy with this book, and only wish I'd had the time to read it more solidly, because X-Files is made for bingeing. Recommended for Scully fans.

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