Bloggers

Today while on the bus with my friend we got on to the subject of hipsters. Both of us have received occasional, and usually derisive, comments from friends saying that things we do or wear are 'hip'. I'll admit to having an alternative style and an odd obsession with trying not to look like everyone else but I'm not douchey about it! I don't do things just because other people aren't, it just so happens that the things I like aren't the things that most people are into (like parkour or over the knee socks) . My friend brought up that he'd recently been sent a link by a boy from his school called 'shit hipsters say'. It included all the usual gems like 'you've probably never heard of it' and 'I liked their first three albums' but one which was repeated several times was 'i wrote about it on my blog'. Its true that there is a definite association with hipsters and bloggers. People assume that if you have a blog you're probably douchey and prententious. Youtubers seem to be ok in the general subconscious, even facebook addicts have become socially acceptable but we bloggers remain the ultimate internet posers. Frustrating to say the least. I cant help but find it irritating that no matter what way you do something people will see it how they've always seen it and regardless of how they see you they cant help but be influenced by how they see the things you do. Its like that nice guy you know who's been your friend for years but once you find out he's slept with half the girls you know and not called half of them -you cant help but see them a little differently. Such is the plight of the student blogger in this new internet world. Sigh what can one do but rant about it in ones blog? :P

If that is your real name...

I recently started going by an abbreviated version of my name and some of my older friends have been struggling with the transition. My parents christened me Katy which has been a total nightmare most of my life. It is rare for me to be in a large social group or activity and be the only Katy. I think i spent a substantial part of secondary school responding to people looking for one of the many other Kates or Katies in my year. They also spelled it with a 'y' meaning that despite having a very ordinary name I still have to spell it for everyone. Kat is a much easier option and is also handy given that I'm a language student and 'Katy' is difficult to pronounce for a surprising number of nationalities.
Unfortunately my best mate can't handle the idea of me being Kat and every time I introduce myself as Kat he sighs or says its not really my name.
This transition really got me thinking about all my friends who don'g go by their birth names. My uncle goes by his middle name of 'Peter' rather than his birth name 'James' because this is the same as his father's name and caused confusion. I have 3 close friends who's real birth names I didn't know until we went on holiday together and they had to use their passport names to book! A boy in my Russian class goes by his middle name simply because when he was younger he decided he preferred it!
The most challenging was my parkour friends, at gatherings the majority of us go by nicknames and when we started hanging out in the non-pk world it was really difficult to call people 'Brendan' or 'Luke' or Kate' when you were used to hanging out with Twagger, Tenshi and Sprite.
I cant help but be curious if, at the end of the day, it really matters what you call people? Once you don't call them cruel names what does it matter what you call them? When you're friends you have nicknames, when you're a couple you have pet names so why does it matter what your birth name is? Sure 90% of us are named on a whim and it doesn't have any special meaning to it. I'm named after my aunties cat and my youngest brother was named Charlie so his name matched the rest of my siblings!
I don't wanna get too philosophical and prententious but does our name really mean anything? Its just a term to encompass all the traits assosciated with who we are to the people who know us. A label for the memories we feature in, an expression for the experiences we've shared. I like my name. Kat. One syllable, three letters; simple and easy to remember. That said, I wouldn't mind a cool name, something really random and unique like Domino or Spidergirl or something totally out there. A name with a story. With Kat the most common response is 'miaow'! Sure it could be worse. My mum nearly called me Millicent then things would really have been shit!

Strangerous

Today while in conversation with friends outside college we were approached by a middle aged man with an African sounding accent. He began to tell us about a friend of his with a broken leg and a medicine man who offered them a special cure. My leg is broken so we couldn't help listening, surprised as we were at the stranger approaching and joining our chat. He said that the medicine man told him a surefire cure for a broken leg was to lie down and let a friend jump on the affected limb. We were stunned into silence for a brief moment, until one of the boys said 'Right Kat, lie down then!'! When I told the man I had only a week left in the cast he said perhaps it would be best to just wait it out. He then wandered merrily off into the rain leaving us feeling...surreal, and slightly giddy with the shock! We half expected him to disappear mysteriously into the evening...
This is the first time a strange person has come up and joined in conversation with me...if i were to pick the strangest it would have to be the windswept, bespectacled man who joined our conversation about corsets. I was in a play where my role was that of a Russian dominatrix and i was explaining how difficult it was to cossack dance wearing a tight under-bust corset (yes really). The man, who'd been smoking near our bench, joined in without us having noticed him appear. He recounted for us the first time he saw the 'Rocky Horror Picture Show' and went on to tell us all about what a fanatic of it he was and several tales of him wandering around Dublin city in heels and a corset...now that was truly surreal. What was more worrying that i actually really enjoyed the encounter and the conversation...I think he may now be my friend...
Now not all random encounters are funny or interesting...some of them are deeply uncomfortable and slightly scary...I once got in an elevator in a dark and creepy carpark where an Indian man with the most bulbous eyes I have ever seen called me Jill (the name on my Arabic necklace) and continued to tell me how i was a 'stunning Irish flower'...he didn't get out on his floor and stayed with me the whole way up. When i got out he told me how much he hoped we could 'do this again sometime' .....*shudder*.
The scariest encounter I've ever had with a stranger coming to chat to me was in Dalkey. The infamous 'crazy ted', the town drunk, was  at the dart station shouting, wildly gesticulating and generally making the otherwise schoolgirl/old biddy dominated population  feel nervous. My pal Róisín decided to engage him in a very loud conversation about how we need to 'stick to the man' and 'fuck the haters'. He even sat with us...he sat on my coat effectively preventing me from any possible escape from triple threat of his stench, his gesticulating limbs and the fine spittle he projected with every curse word.
Luckily I have had largely positive experiences with strangers and the beauty of being Irish is that there are plenty of randomers willing to engage in conversation! Every day is an opportunity for an adventure into the surreal world of strangers and I have a feeling that one day I will be that odd person who talks to young'uns so I might as well get my inspiration somewhere!

kindness

Today I experienced one of those everyday random acts of kindness that restores your faith in humanity. I woke up late and had to crutch for the bus at light speed, this meant I fell on the ice on my way to the bus stop...twice. I then had to wait for half an hour on the bus. Turns out I was blessed with the single most obnoxious bus driver in the whole of Ireland; as soon as I was on board he took off at a speed that nearly threw me to the floor. My ipod hit the ground and slid halfway down the bus, one of my crutches slipped from under me and i only just kept my balance on my good leg. While I was fumbling in my pocket while holding onto the rail for dear life I could feel the tears brimming up. Thoroughly flustered I threw my change in the slot and scrabbled to stuff everything back in my pocket. Meanwhile the driver snidely inquired how much I'd given him and i answered incorrectly twice while he sneered at me. I was ready to break down when a brown haired woman in her thirties handed me my ipod and my crutch and helped me to her own seat. She spent the rest of the 20 minute journey into Dublin city standing. That one moment completely changed my attitude to the world and my day.
The power of the smallest kindness is a particular point of fascination for me. Most people dont realise the effect a kind word, a smile or even just holding a door for someone can have. Especially since I broke my leg I have had so much appreciation for the patience of my friends and the simple sonsideration of strangers. If you're someone who smiles at someone who looks like they're having a bad day, holds the elevator for the running girl with the heavy bag or picks up the keys the suited man dropped thank-you. You're a force of change in the world and you have a power you can't imagine.

love stories

'Every great story has a flawed hero and of course a love interest..'

Well my story definitely has a flawed hero, I guess its the lack of love interest that makes my story lack direction As I said to a friend of mine the other day, its ridiculous that despite having great friends, interesting and varied hobbies and being at college doing a degree I love that my thoughts revolve constantly around boys. My best friend and I have realised that we're beginning to sound like the dreaded  Carrie Bradshaw compulsively analysing the relationships or lack of them in our lives. I'm not long out of a serious two-year relationship and looking back I've not really been single since I started dating at fifteen. On top of being single for the first time in my life I've also just gone through a pretty big life change, leaving school and starting college, new friends, new routine, new love interests-its all feeling a bit surreal. Its like an out of body experience looking at my life and all the people in it and just analysing it all.
I would definitely say that despite being a 'flawed' individual, like the hero of any story I've had some beautiful and lovely moments in the world of love. True a lot of the guys I've gone out with were great when I was with them, its just afterwards that they suddenly became someone else. I guess that's the beauty of the 'story'; it can just cut off still in that magical honeymoon period and there's never that awkward moment where you run into them afterward, or you hear a rumour they spread about you or you're harassed by them. Generally though I can't say I've been unlucky in love, I'm even friends with many of my exs, one of my flaws is that I'm quick to forgive and tend to hate confrontation so no matter how broken my heart is I still want that person in my life, partly because I can't forget all the great things about them that are why they were in my life in the first place.
One of the things that rarely comes up in the story is the sheer mountain of self criticism we enter into when we start to fall for someone. We convince ourselves that because we notice all the little things about them, that they do the same around us. The other day I managed to convince myself that a friend I thought was cute was only interested in me when I was wearing lipstick simply because we'd hung out more on the days I'd been wearing it.
The problem is that despite having reached my 'I'm a strong independent woman who don't need no man' stage, love is all anyone seems to care about. 'Anything new with you?' is always, always code for 'Any boys?'. I've become very difficult to converse with simply because I'm single and not really on the pull. My same best friend has decided that I have no love interests not because I haven't been out but because my broken leg is putting them off (an added paranoia to my already troubling lipstick predicament). 
I'm glad that my love life is boring, its gives me a chance to advise in the dramatic love lives of my friends. I guess that maybe the love interest in the story doesn't have to belong to the hero in order for it to have an influence on the hero's life. I guess at this point in the story, my role as the hero is not to pursue some obscure love interest (who I have yet to meet!) but to just be comfortable in my own skin and use this break to commit my heart and my time to my friends who ask for my advise. That said I wouldn't mind a little spark, might make this bleak winter a little more magical.