Ramble

     So when I started school it was ok, I didn't mind having a lot of homework and being a little lost in most subjects because then you at least have a challenge but now, a month in, I just don't give a shit anymore. I was doing well at the start of the year, still am really, haven't gotten into any trouble really, only in the comments book once or twice but I just can't be bothered anymore. I just want to get out of that shithole with stupid  rules which are completely irrelevant to learning. I love learning about things, I love knowing about history, I like getting a hard maths question and being able to solve it, I really do. I don't like school though, not being able to learn in the way I want to, having to obey stupid rules, wearing an uncomfortable uniform, tests. I kind of want to drop out of school altogether but I can't, not really. I mean technically I can but in reality my parents wouldn't let me, ever. All I do these days is write, read, draw and listen to or play music, I'm not even online all that much anymore, like obviously I'm on a fair bit but way less than I used to. It's really depressing, I just don't feel like doing anything at all. I haven't been eating properly either, I've had  one meal a day for about a week, I don't think that's helping at all. I just feel like shit most of the time, especially for the last few days, I'm getting really sick of it. I'm going to try to feel better again but it's kinda tricky. One thing that does make me really happy is that my friend from my Finland, Lilja, is definitely coming to visit in less than a month, I really can't wait to see her, I miss her loads. Just thinking about that makes me happier. It was Weronika's birthday on Wednesday and nothing much was done but we're getting a birthday tomorrow and I made her a card (which she doesn't know about yet so I hope she doesn't see this). I dunno I'm in a weird mood at the moment, sorry if this shit but deal with it.

Neglection, Music and Excitement

     I've been neglecting the blog mainly because of laziness, I've had plenty of time that I could've spent doing something vaguely productive completely wasted on Tumblr. I don't mind that much, it just kinda pisses me off that there isn't more time so I could do both but I guess I do have to spend some time eating and sleeping so I can't spend all my time on the laptop. I also have an iPhone now and I just had to get the latest update and mess with it for hours on end, so yeah, that's my extremely depressing and boring life. I got food poisoning the other day, that wasn't nice. I've also gotten obsessed with loads of new bands, I used like properly stalk about two bands but now I've gained about four more to take up my time, they're all really good. Some of them aren't really that new, just new to me. Jake Bugg is amazing you should go check him out, actually I'll add my favourite song here. Other than that, nothing much else has happened recently. That's a lie, loads of shit happened my super awesome friend from Finland is coming here to visit for a week in October, which is really exciting cos, y'know, she's my friend and she lives in Finland so I don't see her enough... It's also Weronika's birthday today (the 25th) which is cool I guess, now the age gap between us seems smaller, for like a month I've been 16 and she's been 14 and it seems like a huge difference even though I know it's not really. I should probably have gotten her a present but fuck it, I'll just like say Happy Birthday, she'll deal. I applied for a few jobs today, really want to get one, very probably won't because I'm pretty under-qualified to do anything really, but working in a record shop might be alright. It'd be really awesome if I do get a job because then I can have some money for myself which would be very nice.
Yeah anyway, that's me and my rather confusing thoughts at 2.30am.
Ruska

School (I think, I can't remember what I wrote)

     I've been back to school long enough to remember how much I hate it. I've never really liked school but but these days I seem to hate it with a passion, I mean sure, I have a few really awesome friends, and there are at least two or three subjects that I really love (well enjoy going to, I wouldn't actually say I love higher level maths). I just don't see the point in it anymore, legally I can leave, the only reason I would need good grades would be to get into college yet everyone seems to be really insistent the importance of school and I don kind of get the point I just really don't care anymore, I mean what am I going to do with five hundred odd points. If I wanted to go to college that would be different but I don't so why bother? Why bother get stressed about what grades you'll get if they really don't matter. I'm just sick of it, I'm feeling really discouraged about school if getting sick and missing two days work puts you so far behind that you need about a week to catch up. I don't care so I just won't catch up, I'll eventually get it, right? No, that's not right, I just get more and more lost until I have to drop down a level and I don't want to do that. Why? I can't afford to buy new books, I don't want to buy new books. I hate our school system here, it's so horrible and mechanical, what's the point of making us into machines, why won't you teach us to think and to make ourselves satisfied with our own lives, not to get into jobs that we hate that we have to throw ourselves into for the next fifty years so our children can afford to get a 'good' education. Why, at the ages of fifteen and sixteen are we expected to know what we want to do in college and ultimately for the rest of our lives. Why are we forced to do what the school wants us to so that it has a good record, why would ruin someones joy for a chart position. Sure it looks good but you're going to have so many people hating you that will talk shit about the school and word of mouth, especially in Ireland, is often more highly regarded than some official number, maybe not by everyone but by a fair few people. I hate my school. I hate the uniform, the rules, the principal and the teachers.
a very sick and tired state.

I wrote this in a very sick and tired state and am a bit afraid of reading this so I dunno what it's like.
      Ruska

Junior Cert complaint

I got my Junior Cert!!! I passed everything with honours!!! I even got an A!!! So, I'm pretty happy, I did better than I thought I would, my parents a very happy and as celebration I ate a shitload of junk food and had a nice dinner. Unlike what most of the girls in my year did. Most of them covered themselves in so much fake tan they were ridiculously orange and darkest skinned than most Asians in my school. On addition to this they wore these brightly coloured talons on the end of their fingers, some of them were almost two inches long, dangerous weapons more than anything else. I presume they wore something that looked more like underwear than clothes and then they went to various Disco's and got drunk as teenagers do when they're happy or sad or whatever. Which would be fine (if you don't talk about what they look like) if it wasn't the night before we had these all day aptitude tests at school. So today I was sat in a hall with a fair few extremely hungover people doing loads and loads of tests, so that was a fun day. I'm very much tempted to pig out even more today but I won't. So there's your daily complaint from a sick Ruska, though not about being sick this time (which I still am) 

     Ruska

My Change (this one's a long one)

     Weronika did one of these some time go, and I really liked it, not only her post of it, which was great but also just the idea of documenting how you've changed over time (wow that makes me sound boring), a few of the YouTubers I watch also did stuff like that but in video form, obviously. This includes Nerimon who did this big regenerations thing, which was great and I was going to copy him until I realised that I'm too young to have very many regenerations I've had maybe one which has been ridiculously gradual and is still kind of happening, I think, so that wouldn't work. A regeneration is, for anyone who doesn't know (you should), the Doctor's (you know from Doctor Who) reincarnation into another body I guess, awful description there, google it. So I'm going for the boring approach, I'm telling you how I've changed from the age of twelve with no fun way of doing it. It is only a few years but I have changed loads. Before the age of twelve I was only a child so I'm not including that, well I was still a child at twelve but a slowly maturing one. My birthday is just before the start of the school year (late August) so I'm just going to go school year by school year.
     When I was twelve I was still in Primary school, in sixth class, I felt very mature being amongst the oldest in the school, especially towards the end when we began talking more about leaving than anything else. I  still had a fairly underdeveloped personality, though I was apparently quite mature for my age, always have been, so basically that means I was boring, I did feel the need to have strong political views because my parents both did but mine were fairly dodgy. Another reason I felt the need to have strong political opinions was that there was a guy in my class who, again through his parents, had strong political views but right-wing ones, so he, like me, would make broad political statements but right-wing ones and at that age no-one really knew enough to argue or agree so they just passively let them in but I kinda realised that, no this is bullshit and felt the need to argue against him, I never really did get to, except for on the Lisbon Treaty (remember that anyone?) That, I think was the first time that I ever legitimately argued a political point, it was near the end of Sixth class, as far as I remember. But anyway that's twelve year old me, I was honestly still a kid at that point.
     The next year was the start of Secondary school for me, a new First Year, used to being at the top of the school now right at the bottom, it didn't change a whole lot though, I was still a nobody only now I was a much smaller nobody, in comparison to most people in the school. I only really had one friend in First Year and I was a bit desperate to fit in. It was at the peak of that desperation that my parents split up, it was a really hard time for me. So feeling fairly unwanted, as everyone does when their parents split up for some reason, I turned my efforts into making myself more popular, I was fairly depressed at this point so I didn't actually put much effort into, I went for the easiest option, or so I thought. I convinced myself I liked their 'music'. I became a Bieber fan, this is what I consider my most embarassing stage. I went to a Bieber concert and it hit me how much I hated what I had become, so I got out of that fairly quick. I will never live it down, ever. Fairly impressive though had my annoyingly shallow stage and got out of it in four months, not bad. After that I really didn't know what to do with my life (I know, a mid-life crisis at thirteen, whatever), I got really depressed and suicidal and horrible to be around although I did eventually manage to make some friends. I kind of got out of it about seven months later when I was caught mitching school. For three weeks. Right before a huge set of exams. On a nine week course. This is when it all changed, I got in trouble, I was forced to study and I had my phone and laptop taken away. So with a week left before these big exams I knew I had to pass most of them, so I got my hands on some music, I got Green Day's 'American Idiot' album and discovered how much loud and angry music helps me relax when I need to. I did ok on the exam's failed three out of ten or eleven, one only because the teacher couldn't read my handwriting ( :/ ) the other two because, well I failed.
     So I got massively obsessed with loud and angry punk-rock (still am, somewhat). I was sent to psychiatrist because my parents figured out how depressed I was but she was no use, it was the fact that I had picked up friends along the way who stuck by me while I was depressed and I'm ridiculously thankful for them. Now I'm over-all much happier, with a few bad days but nothing major, I've got the most amazing friends, I've got strong opinions and semi-decent music taste which is all really I want from life, to be happy. I don't expect it to be easy but I'd like to be happy. Wow that is ridiculously cheesy, might take that out...
     I wrote this a few months ago now and to be honest I've changed since, humans are constantly developing mentally because we're constantly taking in more information and learning more, now I'm much more interested in school (just a few topics really interest me). I am generally a happier person as well as a slightly less annoying one and hopefully a slightly more interesting one. I'm really grateful for everything I have, I've realised how lucky I am to have great friends and family almost always there for me, even if I do piss them a fair bit. I dunno, I think I'm a better person now than I used to be, but anyway I think I'm done here.
     Ruska

I'm still sick

     I don't like being sick, it's really not a very pleasant thing to be. I mean it's just something that happens and you usually get over it in about a week but you whine about it loads while you still have even the slightest symptoms. I'm actually sick now, as in so sick that my mum let me take 2 days off school even after I took Friday off (for different reasons). A positive of me being sick (other than getting off school) is that I can listen to the Strypes new album repeatedly and be on Tumblr all day. Now, I know this blog recently has made it seem like I'm massively obsessed with the Strypes but the reality of it is that I'm massively obsessed with the Strypes. I think the only reason for that is because it's the only band I've liked in about three years who's around now and is just getting big now so I have the ultimate hipster claim to fame of knowing them when they played in little cafes with about 10 people in them most of whom are family of theirs. And just to show off, I'm going to include a picture at the end. Big day tomorrow, I get my Junior Cert results (they're like big state exams that we spend about three years preparing for) which are going to be talked about non-stop for about a week and then forgotten forever. That means I have to go into school tomorrow to get them (but only for a few hours, they let us off when we're given the results because no-one can concentrate after that). It's probably a good thing that I'm going back to school, I've gotten to the point where I've added lyrics to all the songs in my iTunes library, bar about 100 (out of about 1000), I started yesterday evening so I've found almost 900 sets of lyrics in less than 24 hours. That's probably not the most interesting thing I could've done but I really don't have the brain capacity to do anything  more taxing right now. Again, this probably isn't easy to follow but I'm sick so fuck off.
     Cya,
     Ruska

Sickness

     I'm sick, sure it's just a cold and I will get over it but my mum got it a week ago and still isn't very well. My friend is getting it from me too and said 'ruska i feel like i swallowed a fucking chainsaw and i blame u' to me at 1.36 am.That basically sums up how I feel bar the sore elbow but that's because I burnt it with my lime, honey and clove concoction (we didn't have lemons and my mum was feeling creative, lime's much better than lemon actually try it when you're next sick). While I probably should've gone to bed early like a normal sick person last night I didn't, I stayed up until about 5.30 and then went to sleep for about 6 hours. Right this is shit, I'm blaming the obvious thing of me being sick on that but whatever, I'll talk to you later probably.
     Ruska

Disappointment

     I don't think I've been quite as disappointed as I am now for a long time. I went to see the Strypes in HMV and discovered that there was a competition you had to get tickets from on a radio channel I don't listen to. This wasn't said anywhere really, it was advertised as a free gig on loads of websites and the competition was never mentioned. So I couldn't get in, I'm really upset about this but I guess I'll get over it. There's a signing after the show which is open to the public so I'm going to that but it doesn't make me feel much better right now. I'm just gonna pig out on junk food and watch stupid stuff online now.
     Cya,
     Ruska

Freedom (I think, shut up its almost 4am)

     I've got this sense of freedom these days, like I'm being treated more like a mature adult (which I certainly amn't) who can be trusted to be independent. With my parents I think it's the whole 16 thing of me no longer being a child, like I've been fairly independent of the parents for a few years now but not fully, now I get to make all my own decisions for my self. The other night, for example, was Rosh Hashanah (Jewish new year) and since my family on my dads side is Jewish they were having a big celebration for it, originally I was going to go with my dad but he had loads of deadlines due so he just stayed at work late and skipped it. Beforehand that would have automatically ruled me out of the dinner but it was left up to me whether I go or not this time. I know it seems like a little thing but for me it just kinda makes me realise that I'm growing up and I can't always depend on my parents to do everything for me anymore. The other thing is my school, in Junior Cycle we were always told "do this or you'll get in trouble, do that or you'll get detention" etc. etc. Now it's different, the teachers don't really check our homework that much and we're just told that if we don't put in the work we won't do well but it's up to us to make ourselves do the work. This, in my opinion is really great because it makes us feel more responsible for how we do in the Leaving Cert and then it's our fault if we don't do well, not the teacher's. This is still pretty new to me but so far it seems to be working, as in I'm doing almost all my homework these days as opposed to the bare minimum I could get away with, which was quite a small quantity due to my excellent deceptive skills, not only do I do my homework now but I also feel this sense of prose whenever I finish a particularly hard sum or whatever. I have no idea how much sense this makes, I started writing at 03:21am and it's now 27 minutes later but whether this is shit or great thanks for reading this far. 

     Ruska

P.S. Just finished reading John Green's 'Looking for Alaska,' it's amazing. GO READ IT!!! NOW!

The Strypes (and other stuff about my life right now)

     I know I talk about them a fair bit now but I'm ridiculously excited about the Strypes album that's combing out this Friday. It's called Snapshot and is being released earlier in Ireland than, I think, anywhere else, for obvious reasons (they're from Cavan). They're playing at midday at the reopening of HMV on Henry Street and I've received permission to bunk off school (I call it mitching but I dunno if anyone else does). It's times like these that I really appreciate how great my mum is, I can't tell my dad though because he would be fairly pissed about it. 

     I dunno if anyone actually reads this blog, I've stopped checking the stats because I'd become slightly obsessive over them, the whole not posting much all summer probably didn't do it much good... Weronika has basically stopped writing for the blog for a few reasons so its basically just me now, she's started writing a book apparently so that's taking up a load of her time, that and her mad exercise regime coupled with the start of school just leave her without a whole lot of time. I don't have all that much time either with me being in 5th year (second last year of school) and getting loads of homework but I've got the weird 3-4 hours of sleep a night thing going on so I've got most of the night to write and read and shit like that. 

     Anyway, back to the Strypes, if anyone who lives in Dublin and isn't busy in the middle day and has a vague interest in that kind of music reads this blog I recommend you come along, it's a music shop so I presume it's free to get in and it's really good music (and it's HMV!!) So yeah, that's about me 'cept for the fact that I got an iPhone and am typing this on it nothing much is new.

     Cya,

     Ruska