February check-in

It's funny really, isn't it, how something which seems small and insignificant can balloon into something much bigger.

I'm trying to think back to what I would do with my free time roughly a year ago. I think that the answer is not much. Probably play a few computer games, watch some TV, go for walks, that sort of thing.

Less than a year ago, I was re-introduced to Green Day. Not that I didn't like them before, but the only song I really remembered was Basket Case. I guess I must have liked them way back then though, because I remember very vividly that I was sitting in the spare room of my parents house on the computer listening to it, spinning around on the office chair, with my dad telling me to turn the volume down.

I've been back and listened to their recent stuff (I'm pretty addicted now). It made me realise there's a heap of music that I'd not even considered. So, point one, more music. This in turn led to more gigs. Rob and I over the last year must have gone to at least 20 gigs or concerts, a huge amount more than in previous years. We've tried some favourites, we've also been to ones that were hosted by the Electroqueer blog that I found early last year. They mainly host new artists, so this is interesting and the gigs have been incredible so far.

We went to the Green Day Art Of Rock project which was on at the same time as the gigs at the O2. I loved the art so much, I went and looked up the artists. I discovered that I really really like stencil art. So I'm going and taking a bunch of my friends to the Eelus show in London at the end of Feb. and I've also decided to try some simple stencilling for myself. Thanks to Ed Roth of Stencil 1, there are books which help me to have a go.




On top of that, I've also started up my stitching again. The penguins are complete. The Iris is a quarter done. I've joined a photography group so that I can try some modelling. The results from the first shoot were promising, but gave me ideas of things I need to work on. The experience was incredible fun.

I wonder what I used to do with my free time - compared to how things are now, it seems like I used to do nothing but waste it.