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jensinewall

~ writer, designer, creative thinker

jensinewall

Monthly Archives: April 2016

Weekly Photo Challenge: Admiration

29 Friday Apr 2016

Posted by jensine in blogs, family, photography

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

Admiration, family, friends, godmother, optimist, people, photography, photos, Weekly Photo Challenge, Weekly Photo Challenge: Admiration

At first I was a little bit stumped about this weeks photo challenge – admiration – who or what do I admire?

I have some very talented friends who I greatly admire for their passion in what they do.

Everyone who decided to have kids and give up so much of themselves I admire greatly, and especially those who reared them on their own.

Those who chose to step away from convention and stand up for what they believe in or do as they please I admire for their bravery.

But their is one person I have always admired for their optimistic attitude towards life and that is my godmother. And while I know she is not easy and we definitely do not always agree on politics and many another topic she always tends to look at the bright side of life, even when times are hard. Her fashion sense may be more conservative than mine but she is very accepting of my dress sense oddities and otherness.

So with that in mind I think my admiration goes to all those eternal optimists out there, thanks for all the smiles!

the blue bench I always associate my godmother with

my godmothers blue bench

between the Liberties and Ballybough

29 Friday Apr 2016

Posted by jensine in Dublin, Ireland

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

Ballybough, Bus, Dublin, Dublin bus, Dublinese, Ireland, photo, rhyming slang, The Liberties, travel

Since it’s been so cold and miserable, with hail and sleet raining down from grey skies, I have been taking the bus into work. I’ve tried a few different routes and have now settled on the 123 from Merino to Walkinstown. The bus takes me all the way from Ballybough Rd to the Liberties and back.

The Liberties are one of the oldest parts of Dublin and is now a growing media and tech hub. The old markets and historic buildings sit next to dynamic e-commerce centers. And whether they like it or now, gentrification is happening all around – yes there are hipsters and coffee shops sprouting like weeds between the dirty cracks of the streets.

Ballybough on the other hand is one of the more disadvantaged areas in Dublin. The name is accually derived from the term Bailebough, which in Irish comes from ‘baile’ (town) and ‘bocht’ (poor). Originally though Ballybough was known as Mud Island because of its proximity to the mud flats on which Fairview and North Strand are build.

While commuting between these two areas it becomes quickly apparent that the most colourful of Dublin residence live there. You’ll hear the ‘real’ Dublin accent and delight in their unique ability to turn a phrase or create their very own rhyming slang. And if Peter Wright, the author of “Cockney Dialect and Slang” is to be believed the Irish actually invented it to confuse the non-Irish workers.

So, if you hear someone is ‘headed to the rock-and-roll’ they’re off to collect the dole, if someone tells you ‘you’ll be brown bread’, it means you’ll be dead and if you’re a tea-leaf they think you’re a thief. One of my favorites is ‘cream-crackered’ for tired, and I love the Daniel Day when talking about the Luas (Dublin tram system).

This Dublenese is really wonderfully creative, after all who else but Dublin criminals would call someone who is unpredictable and hard to put down a Apache, or an undercover garda (Irish Police) as a ghost? And if you are ever referred to as a Micky Dazzler, they really think you’re a bot full of yourself and wear much too flashy clothes.

So if you ever are visiting Dublin or just want to enrich your vocabulary,  hop on to the 123 and take a trip with a few real Dubliners.

busstop

 

 

short story static

28 Thursday Apr 2016

Posted by jensine in ACD &Masters, blogs, writing

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

masters, psychology, short story, static, static thought, writing

On Friday I’ll be handing in my end of year short story final – 6.000 words (minimum) and at least two different stories. Since my short story attempts tend to be more minimalist than expansive, I’ll need to hand in three pieces of fiction.

While all of that isn’t really so much of an issue, and I do have two good, solid pieces (one I am particularly proud of), the third is creating a bit of a headache. Somehow I have entered a static phase, my thoughts are static and my writing is just not moving forward. And with time running out that is  not the most pleasant of feelings.

In psychology Static Thought is the term used to describe a child’s belief that the world is unchanging, that the world will always stay the same as it is in the present, and that the world has always been like that. And this is exactly how I currently feel about my story …

Somehow I can’t see where the story is going, and I am struggling to figure out where it came from. But my hope is that in a few short hours my story will have matured enough to allow for logical reasoning and complex thought structure and I can move forward. If so, the static will lift and the world will change and I will type like never before  – after all I do have a deadline looming.

hoping that the Muse will inspire me

hoping that the Muse will inspire me

 

hiccuping my way through the day

27 Wednesday Apr 2016

Posted by jensine in health

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

health, hiccups, mammals, quotes, remedies, thoughts, trapped air

Yesterday, I had a hiccup attack. I don’t get them very often but they can be somewhat persistent. The involuntary contractions of my diaphragm muscle seemed to be settling in for a while so I tried all the usual tricks:I held my breath, drank some water really quickly and from the wrong side of the glass, a spoon full of sugar (yuck) and one of peanut butter (yum) and I even tried pulling my tongue (not as easy as it sounds). I couldn’t quite surprise or scare myself but I did make an attempt.

But my myoclonic jerk just wouldn’t stop. Now I know that it isn’t really clear why we hiccup but what I didn’t know is that only milk-drinking mammals hiccup. And the latest theory (Howes 2012) is that hiccups have evolved to allow mammals to coordinate suckling milk while breathing. Somehow hiccups are there to allow for trapped air burbles to escape from the stomach while babies drink, making it possible for more milk to be ingested.What confuses me is, that I wasn’t drinking milk – or anything for that matter – and I’m definitely not a baby. But since hiccups do seem to be also linked to stress, excessive laughter, too much food and drink, eating and drinking too quickly, swallowing air, taking opiates and chewing gum, I am sure one of those reasons was possibly to blame.

Since we call our small daily mishaps hiccups I began to wonder if maybe those involuntary jerks of life may have reasons as simple and surprising as their namesake. But maybe it is all just trapped air.

The universe hiccups and we poor fools try to figure out why.

Writer Mathew Quick

red pens and grading

26 Tuesday Apr 2016

Posted by jensine in ACD &Masters, blogs, writing

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

grading, photography, photos, red pens, students, teaching, writing

As a lecturer I go through quite a few red pens, and this year is no different. Over the years I have discovered that my preference are gel pens, they seem to just slide over the page and allow for quicker marking, but when stuck (or when I run out of ink) I switch over to my trusty red Stabilo.

But this year, while I sit grading my students work and slash red all over their pages I can’t help but wonder how much red will be on my own pages this year. After all I am currently in the unique position to be both a student and lecturer, the grader and the gradee.

Knowing that your work will be scrutinized and compared to a grading scale is somewhat disconcerting, and not very inspiring. And while I understand the need for unification of grades I am discovering I am not really too found of being on the receiving end.

Maybe that is why I am  being a little more generous this year when it comes to giving a grade, when stuck between two I tend to go up, when working out percentages I round up. I just hope that my lecturers will do the same – after all  don’t they say, what goes around comes around?

red pens and grading scale

red pens and grading scale

 

one down, two to go

25 Monday Apr 2016

Posted by jensine in ACD &Masters, work and play, writing

≈ 16 Comments

Tags

editing, masters, novel, publishing, short stories, to much to do, words, work, writing

After two long weeks of typing, deleting and editing I handed in my novel writing final, 12.500 words of my novel plus 3.00 words of reflection, in all nearly 50 pages of words. Hard won and energy sapping words.

But once I handed the printed out pages in for my professor to collect, a burden was lifted from my shoulders and I decided to take a day. So on Saturday I spent time reading and in the afternoon my neighbour sat in the warm(ish) spring sun enjoying a chat and a cup of tea.

Sadly one day was all I could allow for as I now still have my short stories final and  publishing final to hand in. So with one down, and two still left to go my time is still filled with words.And of course there are still all of my corrections and grading left to do, and I still have to cycle in to do my contract work.

With that in mind I think it is safe to say that I won’t be bored or wondering what to do in quite a while. However as the temperature rises and the sun seems to be spending a little more time in the sky everything does come a little easier.

The biggest issue I am left with however is whether I should on my novel or on my short stories for my thesis. After all I’ll be spend  most f my summer with it and I wonder which one will be the better option.

So as I contemplate my options and try and concentrate on the job(s) at hand I think it’s time for another cup of tea and maybe a cookie, after all a cookie makes nearly everything better.

 

Weekly Photo Challenge: Abstract

24 Sunday Apr 2016

Posted by jensine in photography

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Abstract, Ireland, photography, photos, travel, Weekly Photo Challenge, Weekly Photo Challenge: Abstract

Shapes, colour, textures – if you look close enough you’ll find that this is what are world is made up of. Abstract art is the attempt to deduce everything down, rejecting external reality in the hope that what we see will effect us in unpredictable ways. The abstract is like a valve that hopes to inspire and release what the unconscious cannot grasp, it plays with perception, allowing our imagination to run wild.

stripes - a row of stables somewhere on the north

stripes – a row of stables somewhere on the north

blue, green and beige

blue, green and beige

springs - left out

springs – left out

rusty nails

rusty nails

Weekly Photo Challenge: Dinnertime

16 Saturday Apr 2016

Posted by jensine in blogs, tastes

≈ 5 Comments

Tags

community garden, cooking, Dinnertime, food, mudisland, onions, Weekly Photo Challenge, Weekly Photo Challenge: Dinnertime

I have a thing for onions – and I do believe that most dishes are better with them in it. The best onions I have eaten in recent years are the ones we harvested in the community garden Mudisland. They were  a little bit sweet and just full of flavour. Sadly it’s still a long way off until we can harvest this years onions – but at least it’s something I can look forward to!onions2

looking for ideas

14 Thursday Apr 2016

Posted by jensine in blogs, writing

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

brain, creative, creative thoughts, dopamine, ideas, thoughts, writing

Writing has been hard lately so as I sit and stare at both the screen and the keyboard I can’t help but wonder where do ideas come from, what makes them and where can I get them?

There seems to be a misconception that there are creative and non-creative people in the world. The one group have this unexplained power to see the world from a slightly different angle and create things that weren’t there before, the others only standing by in awe.  But that is not true, everyone can be creative – if they let themselves.

Although scientists have been trying to figure out how ideas are made inside our brain they haven’t really been able to figure out too much. They know that dopamine is a main contributor to the process and that certain areas of the brain tend to be more active than others, but they also know that being intelligent and being creative are not necessarily linked, so no excuses if you were bad in school.

The chemical dopamine is vital for people to actually get up and do things. Without this neurotransmitter we would all feel hungry, but not do anything about it and possibly starve to death.  But dopamine has been proven to also play a vital role when it comes to learning and remembering things, moving our body and naughty thoughts. This is possibly the reason why opiates (high levels of dopamine) are so highly addictive, not only do they make us feel fantastic but we seem to be able to do things better, faster and have wonderfully creative ideas.

A healthier way to help the flow of dopamine in your brain is listening to music. Not only does our favourite song make us emotional, kick start our memories or inspire us to jump around the living room as if we were a possessed prima ballerina but it also increases the levels of dopamine produced, encouraging our bodies and minds to do and feel things.

Of course there are foods that can help us along too. Sunflower seeds, whole grain and foods high in antioxidants like berries, tomatoes, broccoli and garlic (maybe not all at the same time) are perfect but ripe bananas seem to be the best. And while caffeine can give you a quick push, it doesn’t last long. And again (and I hate having to type this as lazy as I am) exercise seems to help too.

When all of that fails, and you still have no ideas, there is the simple trick of bringing your seven-year-old-self out to play. All children are incredibly creative and like anything else creativity needs practice. What we did so instinctively as kids we forget as adults. We stop picking up sticks and turning them into wands and swords, we don’t linger and watch as a spider spins her web or stand in awe as a butterfly opens up her wings and flies away. As adults a box is a box, not a time-machine or a typewriter or a hat, for a child a box is something of endless possibilities. And don’t be afraid to try something and fail, if it doesn’t work try again, maybe a little different and who knows what you will discover. After all children constantly fail at things but they change the rules and discover new possibilities, never lost for ideas and full of surprises.

So now I have to put on a CD,  eat a banana, do a few jumping jacks and turn my cereal box into shoes so that I can come up with ideas of how to fill my writing quota for the day.

my little mobile office

looking for words

Weekly Photo Challenge: Future

11 Monday Apr 2016

Posted by jensine in photography

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

future, photography, photos, sandcastles, time, Weekly Photo Challenge, Weekly Photo Challenge: Future

The Future – hard to predict and impossible to know. Yet we all make plans and try and pave the way to something we long for, work towards or just plain want. And like its sibling, the Past, the further away from our Present the Future moves the harder to grasp it gets. We modify our Past with our memory, even change it at times without realising it, and we build our future in the hope it will come true. But like the sandcastles I found on the beach one day, our Future is fragile – can be washed away by the sea – but like the sand the castles are built of  our futures are plentiful and we can recreate new ones, as many as we can dream up

found sandcastles

found sandcastles

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Me and my thoughts

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And by the way, everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise. The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt. ~Sylvia Plath

Past but not forgotten

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  • Weekly Photo Challenge: It’s easy being green

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