May 2015

May's been very much a month of two halves - or more a case of it started ok, hit a bump in the middle, but got back up again towards the end.

On the negative side of things - the fruitless search for a job goes on, same old story there, and being made to attend a pointless session by a certain nameless place really hasn't helped, I've realised for a long time now that such things are only designed to help them, definitely not me or anyone in my position, and I'm sure there will be more where that came from. I'm just fed up of being under that thumb, being treated like a statistic instead of a person - but at the end of the day, I need the money, so I have no choice.
I've mentioned before about my anxiety, especially in social situations - it flared up quite badly during this month, because of my livestreams that I do weekly - I enjoy them, but only if I feel like it's fun and not a chore, and if there's hardly anyone there, or they're there but not saying much, or if there's trolls gatecrashing to ruin everything, then I don't enjoy them, and lately I haven't been enjoying doing my livestreams, they've just been making me stressed, so for the forseeable future I've decided to take a break from doing them, because I get the impression that no-one's really interested anymore - which may not be true, because I know some of my friends have been busy, and everyone has their own lives to be getting on with, so I apologise if that is the case, it's just that my nature always has me assuming the worst.
Then of course, there's the whole immigration process - still no word on that, though the lawyer did tell me and Nicole that it could take two months before we hear anything, so if nothing has been heard by the end of June, some serious poking will need to be done.

On the positive side, I've been having a bit of a nostalgia trip - a recent picture I made for JWthaMajestic's "Jurassic Times" art jam on DA reignited my interest in a film I went crazy about as a kid - "Jurassic Park", of course. Me and my brother were hooked on it, we kept watching it over and over, played the SNES game and had the toys, too. What's also set this off is of course the new film in the series, "Jurassic World", coming out at the cinemas in a couple of weeks, I'm very, very tempted to go and see it.
It hasn't just been Jurassic Park, though - there's been travel too. This month me and my brother decided to revisit an old place from our childhood, the small countryside hamlet of Hill End, up in Weardale. It was a place where our grandparents would bring us and our sisters during school holidays in the spring and summer, and we would spend hours sitting by the River Wear having a picnic, splashing around in the river under and over the bridge there, climbing up the hillside and exploring the small wood there.
It honestly hasn't changed at all, me and my brother were taken right back to those days. We were still able to climb that hill and get a great view of the area, we took plenty of photos, had a race up a hill, and heard the pins drop and our voices echo in my favourite place in the area, an old quarry. We even had a 99 each from the ice cream van, for old time's sake.
One of our reasons for going there were because of watching the latest series of "Inspector George Gently", a BBC crime drama set in north east England in the 1960s, one of the scenes in an episode was shot in Hill End, and me and my brother made a point of checking out that same spot. It's a really good drama, not just because of its setting (how many programmes on telly are set in County Durham? Exactly.), but also because of the great acting too, definitely worth watching. The other reason we went there? Because it had been too long since either of us were there last, and I'm glad we did go.
The travelling's not done there, either - something me and my brother have had planned for a while is now happening in July, we will be travelling down to another place from out childhood, the seaside town of Scarborough in North Yorkshire. You'll hear all about it in my July blog, of course.

Last but not least, here's my art jam entry that I mentioned above, and also the video from me and my brother's Hill End trip. Here's hoping it'll be a flaming June, and only in the weather sense.