My short-term aim is to get the hell out of this country after I get my degree, for various reasons. I don't care where I go, wherever'll take me, as long as it's a big city. I'm an urban gal - I love the way everything's happening in a city. I also adore the way you can be invisible in a city, how most people just don't care who you are and what you're doing. I cherish my privacy. Possibly to an extreme. That's a trait I got from my mother and which I share with my sister, both of whom, I realised as I grew up, I am very very similar to.

I'm very passionate about everything I do, it's probably the trait that defines me most. I often won't bother doing something at all if I'm not going to throw myself totally, 100%, in it. I blame my mother. She told me that if something is worth doing, it's worth doing well, or not at all. If I had a motto, that would probably be my motto in life. I would add, though, that if something is worth doing well, it's worth doing intensely. It's probably related that I'm also a person of extremes. I swing from one extreme to its opposite. This makes my life difficult, but I like to think it also makes me an interesting person. I think having a difficult life is not necessarily a bad thing. I'm marked by contradictions. For every quality you can ascribe to me, you can also claim the opposite. I'm both introverted and extroverted. Both shy and outgoing. Etcetera, ad infinitum, for about anything you can think of. 

I waste my time in many other ways. I go out with my friends, dance, get drunk. I love to draw and write, but you should know that. Music is one of my passions. I like absolutely every type of music. Or just about almost. My favourite types of songs are generally slow, sad, wistful, haunting. I like most art forms to be tragic, in fact. I consider tragedy to be the highest form of art .. if you can affect someone, if you can make them cry, or feel pain and sorrow, then you're an artist. I try to bring that out in my own work, in my art and writing. I do very little you might consider 'happy', soothing or 'pretty' work. I don't consider myself a pessimist, though. Nor an optimist, either, mind you - a realist, hopefully. I do try to be as realistic and logical as I can, always. Sometimes, that gets up people's backs. I used to be a pianist - take it seriously, I mean. I could throw myself into my playing, put my entire soul into the music. I played several hours a day, and it drained me. I quit six years ago for various reasons, which was the single most painful thing I have ever done in my life. It still hurts today, when I sit down at the piano and play, and reflect on what I've lost. I play more often, though, lately. Being able to do that heals an inner wound just as much as it tears me apart. 

I read a lot. I immerse myself in books, become totally absorbed. After reading an upsetting book, I become traumatised for days after, because I identify too much with the characters. I consider that a positive thing. To "glut thy sorrow" makes everything worthwhile. I think that you can't be a complete person unless you let yourself feel sadness every now and then. Similarly, I become absorbed with the characters and situations I create in my drawing and art. I bring out emotion by becoming the characters in question. I'm exhausted and a little disorientated after creating something worthwhile. I don't watch all that many movies. I find most don't engage me enough. I only watch films that have that something special. My favourites include 'La Vita è Bella', 'Memento' and 'Dancer in the Dark'. I cried at the ending of 'Dancer in the Dark'. I think that anyone who doesn't, isn't human. I still haven't been able to watch it again, though I will some day. I don't really have a favourite book, I read too much for that, and I love all the books I've read. I have a very soft spot for Sophie's World, though, for giving me a more solid grounding to the musings I'd had already, and just about anything else by Jostein Gaarder. I think too much, but I've learnt to try not to. Though, also, learning not to try not to think too much. I've no problem admitting that I'm complicated. 

Apart from an appreciation for tragedy and philosophizing, I do have a sense of humour. A somewhat caustic and sarcastic sense of humour, but a sense of humour nonetheless. I poke fun at everyone, but at myself most of all. I'm careful not to cause offense though, and I'll always stop if someone tells me to. Causing hurt to other people is the worst thing possible, for me, and I do my utmost to avoid it. Having said that, I think everyone should know how to laugh at themselves. I'm extremely honest, although sometimes in a kind of roundabout way - I'll almost never lie to a direct question, but I will sometimes tell the truth in a way that makes the person assume a lie, if I've something to hide. I still will generally answer truthfully, if that person fires a direct Yes/No, no-escape question, though. I'm slow to lose my temper, it's very rare that I get angry -- almost nobody I know has seen me do so. But when I do, I do .. it's not recommended to cross me in that state. The single best way to annoy me is someone insisting that he or she knows and understands me, my thoughts and beliefs better than I do. I hate ignorance, and people who use circular or faulty logic to 'prove' their point of view is right. Nevertheless, I try to believe that all people are basically good -- despite the niggling suspicion that I'm only fooling myself -- and still manage to like most people. Now whether most people reciprocate that, well, who knows ... 

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