A screwdriver of one's own

So remember how I promised Deep Personal Feminist Reflection today? Well, my promises mean nothing and you should never believe anything I say. In all seriousness, I feel like a Deep Reflection post, unlike most of what I write, requires an actual correct mindset, and I am not in it today. This is partly because Hugo Schwyzer's uncomfortable public meltdown (look it up if you must, but if you don't know who he is honestly I'd just keep it that way) has has a pretty big impact on my feminist feels, and although it won't change my identity in the end, it doesn't feel right to try to be trying to affirm what that identity is right now. The other reason is because I spent all of today buying shelves, then putting up shelves, then putting things on shelves, and now I have a fully unpacked, tidy living space which is both completely magnificent and completely awesome. In-keeping with some of the greatest writing advice I ever had, from a fellow SOFA*-er, I have been leaving most blogs later and later because "if you only have an hour to write it in, it only takes an hour" (seriously, all aspiring writers take note, that is the kind of thinking that will get you ahead in this life); the flipside of this is that sometimes the day just gets too mentally exhausting for serious blogging at the end of them. This is one of those days.

As anybody who has ever done intensive long-term writing will know, writing constantly takes very little time to turn even the most pleasant, outgoing person into an aggressive, selfish, single-minded hermit. In theory, this amount of writing only takes up a couple of hours each day, but as I'm never quite sure which couple of hours and I like to keep them all potentially free in case the mood strikes me, I have become increasingly hostile to any sort of organised distraction that I don't feel fully in control of. My family have unfortunately had to deal with the brunt of me aggressively not wanting to do much, or spending an arbitrarily small amount of time doing something else and then having a meltdown about how those were the exact ninety minutes I needed for feminist writing, or getting very worked up about how every minute spent blogging is a minute less that I can spend writing elaborate lists of action for the Job Centre. Rest assured, Huntingdon Job Centre, I am doing my bit. You would be amazed at what job seeking activities double up as fun procrastination when you're trying to write this much.

The one exception to this, as blog posts have occasionally referenced, has been the slow but relentless overhaul of my room from "weird disorganised collections of nonsense" to an actual space that an actual grown adult/collector of nonsense might want to inhabit. Given that a lot of this has been things I can't do alone, like flatpack furniture, shelves, lifting heavy things up flights of stairs, and screwing things into walls, allowing this to be my one distraction (OK there was some Sypro the Dragon playing too, and the ice cream continues to be a thing, but shush) has rather exacerbated the aggressive selfishness, by making it so that my only desired socialisation with parents involves them assisting me in endless room improvement tasks which I do in a state of great agitation about where my blogging time will come from. Not from ice cream time, that's for sure!

 Anyway, now the trials are over and ALMOST ALL of the nonsense collection is distributed in appropriate locations. This collection includes:

• An exquisitely painted oar (still not mounted, making it one of the few continuing out of place things, but hey. It's an exquisitely painted oar! These things are hard to find place for)
• An overgrown cactus
• A giant scroll which says "horse" in Chinese
• The Triwizard cup (which currently houses a Mudkip and three tampons, because... feminism?)
• The TARDIS
• Several Sonic Screwdrivers
• A small mug with somebody else's star sign on it
• A keyring intended for somebody called "Harrison"
• A shell shaped a bit like a vagina
• A marble tortoise that makes me sad every time I look at it because it reminds me of being abused into buying it in a shop in Vietnam (but which I can't throw away because I bought the damn thing and now I am going to damn well own it)
• A cyberman head intended for growing cress in, and cress seeds.
• A silver tankard full of plastic Daleks (a lot of this nonsense collection is Doctor Who related... fancy that)
• Scarves. Oh god, scarves.
• An original Game Boy and a special edition Pokemon Game Boy colour (with Kirby's Dream Land and Pokemon Blue in, respectively)
• Some individually wrapped Hubei speciality fish packets
• Zero accordions :(

One electric piano though. Also that scroll says horse in Chinese. AND IS ALSO A PICTURE OF A HORSE. It is a very crazy and conceptually difficult thing to understand.

Other side of the room, feat. oar that is pretty much only out of place object in the entire room. DAMN YOU, BLADES. Also everybody who has ever been to my room before will notice that it is no longer luminous turquoise and pink. This was a magical surprise that my parents pulled on me at the end of 2012! I approved of the magical surprise: those were terrible colours for a bedroom, shame on me for ever picking them.

Some things I don't have because they have mysteriously gone Somewhere ‒ probably to the attic ‒ include my DVDs of Mulan and Mulan 2 (and all my other DVDs), and my  Kylie Minogue-in-Doctor Who action figure. I have all the other companions though, currently lined up on a shelf and not in any sexual positions at all. This will not last.

I like most of my nonsensical stuff collection. Lots of it has memories either of people giving it to me (like the Triwizard cup and the zodiac mug), or of using it (the Gameboys) or is Doctor Who related and/or generally makes me feel awesome (SONIC SCREWDRIVERS AAAA). I also own a lot of redundant Real Person things, like an actual screwdriver whose existence deeply confuses my dad, who assumes that all tools in the house fall under his domain and tried to remove it from my room to go live in the garage with the fifty screwdrivers he already owns. Like everyone who moves out and then back in again, it's hard to reconcile some of the material symbols of my independence with being back at home again, and even harder to figure out exactly where on my lovely new shelves this screwdriver I will never actually need should go. In the end, as homage to the "father attempts to steal screwdriver, feminist victory won as I defend my womanly right to own my own useful tool" story (totally how it went down) I went for "pride of place", but who knows how long that will last.

Anyway, there is no real point to this entry except gushing, so... I'll gush a little more then stop. I don't know how much longer I will be staying under this roof, but it's so nice to finally have a space which represents the important material bits of the last six years as well as the most important things before that. Given that my future is so completely uncertain for the first time in my quarter-century existence, it's nice to have good reminders of my present and my past all around. Now... if only it had an accordion.

*Staircase of Feminine Awesomeness. It has an acronym now, and hey those initials conveniently spell out a word! Who knew?