Essays and Meditation

Deciding to hop back into the world of academia wasn’t a very hard decision to make.
For the most part, studying as a ‘mature age’ student gets you all sort of cred from your lecturers and tutors.

I had two essays due last Friday and was under the impression that I would approach study now with a far more mature outlook.
Does that explain why I was up until 4am Friday morning finishing off said essays? Not really.

I had finished one by Wednesday night, thinking I had plenty of time to complete the second essay. The problem was that when I woke up Thursday morning, I decided to give the essay that ‘final look’, just to make sure everything was ok.

This led to me stressing out over the smallest of details and delaying the start of my second essay longer than I wanted to. Are my arguments strong enough? Is everything referenced correctly? How could I improve this? What happened to my nose?

The stupidity of this scenario that I let myself get into is highlighted by the fact that the essay I stressed out over was worth a measly 10%.

10%! That’s like getting stressed out over low-fat milk having more than 2% fat.
There’s a whole other 90% worth of marks out there and I go all OCD over 10%.

Getting to work at 7am after getting to bed at 4am was… Interesting. I was on some sort of adrenaline high, if you can imagine Nicolas Cage and Dennis Hopper having a baby – not the act of making a baby, unless you want that image in your head – but giving birth to a hyperactive baby with a penchant for overreacting and a maniacal grin on its face 24/7. That was me Friday at work.

Before finishing the second essay, however, I decided to go and check out a Kadampa meditation session. A friend had suggested earlier in the week that we go and check it out, so I decided that the worst-case scenario was that I absolutely hated it and spent a lot of time rambling on about how stupid meditation is in this entry.

This was not the case, however. I quite enjoyed it. This was not my first exposure to Buddhist practices, though. During my undergraduate degree, I read a large number of Buddhist, Zen and Taoist writings. None of it really stuck with me, it just made me feel good while I was reading it. Fast food for the soul.

I know I’m never going to live any sort of religious life, but I’ve always been curious about what drives people to have faith in, well, anything really. For a while there, I was debating the finer points of Christianity with La Trobe University’s Christian Union…

Me: “How can anyone walk on water?”
Holier-than-thou: “Faith.”
Me: “It’s physically impossible!”
Holier-than-thou: “Faith.”
Me: “I call bullshit!”
Holier-than-thou: “You would because you’re going to hell. Burn… intheeternalsoulkindofway.”

It was a bit of a pointless exercise in the end, but it was interesting to get some insight into the types of things some people actually believe in.

My aunty took me to church as a child and supposedly I was blown away by the height of the roof and stained glass windows.
I was so blown away, I hear, that I came back home screaming to my parents (in my unbelievably girly voice) that I had just been to China.

Yes, China. Not church… China. Sometimes I wonder how I actually made it to this age.

Anyhow, after the meditation, I felt very at ease with everything that was going on. If you can find 15 minutes a day to just block everything out and focus on nothing but your breathing, I would recommend doing so.

My house/apartment/unit hunt continues even though Melbourne’s affordability continues to reach ridiculous levels.

It’s made me realise something, though – real estate after a while just becomes house porn.
Two bedrooms and a courtyard? You cheeky minx. What? A walk-in robe?! Tease!

Seriously, the more you look at, the more you become enamored with the ‘possibilities’ (Yes, I thought the single quotes were important to sleaze up something that really doesn’t need to be and also take a stab at real estate agent marketing techniques).

Hanging out with a mate last night, we put ‘Hobo With a Shotgun’ on to check out.

For those of you who don’t know about ‘Hobo With a Shotgun’, it won a competition to be featured as part of the Grindhouse double feature.

Original Hobo With a Shotgun Trailer

Pretty cool, right? Anyhow, it ended up being picked up and developed into a feature film, ala ‘Machete’ (which is awesome, if you haven’t seen it).

Rutger Hauer signed on to play the lead character and the whole film got made in less than a year.

The problem I find with these sorts of projects is if they’re handled well, they’re generally pretty damn entertaining and you know you’re watching schlock for the sake of schlock, so you kind of expect shortcomings in terms of production values and story.

Unfortunately, ‘Hobo With a Shotgun’ was boring. It’s a shame, because I love watching intentionally bad films.

I have 10 seasons worth of Mystery Science Theatre 3000 to get stuck into. But have already watched a select number of those films including Puma Man and  Space Mutiny (Note: German trailer. And if you’ve read this far, watch the list of names the MST3K guys came up with for the lead character here – David Ryder Nicknames)

I also have watched a number of Minoru Kawasaki films, who developed (in no particular order) Neko Ramen Master, Calamari Wrestler, Executive Koala, Crab Goalkeeper… Anyway, you get the idea.

So, yes, I take the time to watch these particularly awful films, but I know exactly what I’m getting out of them – entertainment.