Writing like an old lady

Yay, tumblr. rocks! But I'm going to be back here too.

Hi there! Remember my very first post?

5. This is not my first blog. Hopefully I’ll stick with this one though.

So yeah, I didn’t stick with it. It’s been eight months since I’ve written a blog post here and honestly? My pursuit has mostly changed in just a nice name for my new tumblr. account. I mean, the internet’s great and all, but if you want a real Colourful Life, you’re going to have to do more than what I describe there as ‘surfing the web and capturing its colours’. Nevertheless: I love tumblr. and I actually have some followers! 56 at the moment to be precise. If you want to check it out, here it is: www.pursuingacolourfullife.tumblr.com

You may be wondering: why did she come back after eight months? Well, this involves tumblr. again. There I saw a link to a website that analyses the text of other websites to give a description of who the writer probably is. And then I remembered this blog and decided to try it. Urlai’s conclusion: ‘[Pursuingacolourfullife] writes like an old lady. Her style is personal and happy.’ Why, thank you very much. Or not. An old lady? Seriously? This was the complete analysis and from that I myself like to conclude something else than that I write like an old lady.

Urlai makes a pie chart with six different age categories. The thing is, though, that the categories don’t include the same amount of years. There’s one from sixty-six to hundred, which includes more than thirty years. And then there’s one for thirteen to seventeen: four years. And for me the categories thirteen to thirty-five (still less than sixty-six to hundred) make up half of the pie chart, so there it is: I do not write like I am old. (Looking very stern and scary now, don’t object to this conclusion if you value your life.)

Hehe, just joking. I really think it’s a great site and I’m glad it says I’m a happy and personal writer. (I don’t mind academic writing, but let’s save academic writing by me for my future career, right?) I think the website’s quite good, really. It also got my gender right and the age analysis – I think – mostly went wrong because of the mistake in the actual making of the statistics. And also: it brought me back here! That’s a definitive bonus. Go Urlai. ‘Cause yes, I’ve decided to start posting stuff on here again. Momentarily my Day Zero Project isn’t going very strong and in less than 200 days it’ll be over, so I’ll have to start going a bit faster now. Also, like I said: I sort of stopped my pursuit, which is very, very, very bad!

So hey, here we go again, blog you later.

For Rika

 

Piet Paaltjens

 

This is something I came across a while ago, it’s a Dutch poem (which I’ve very crudely translated) from 1867 by Piet Paaltjens (which is a pseudonym for Francois HaverSchmidt). With his poems he mocked the ‘Weltschmerz’ (‘the feeling of dissatisfaction with one’s own time, the suffering of existence’, as my book calls it).

Anyway, you’re probably asking yourself why I’m writing this, am I right? Not because I like this poem that much. (Don’t get me wrong, I like poetry, but this one is… I guess it’s exactly what I’d expect from a parody: it’s ridiculous.) Well, you’ll see why.. Here it comes, first in Dutch, then English:

Aan Rika
Slechts éénmaal heb ik u gezien. Gij waart
Gezeten in een sneltrein, die den trein,
Waar ik mee reed, passeerde in volle vaart.
De kennismaking kon niet korter zijn.
En toch, zij duurde lang genoeg, om mij
Het eindloos levenspad met fletsen lach
Te doen vervolgen. Ach! geen enkel blij
Glimlachje liet ik meer, sinds ik u zag.
Waarom ook hebt gij van dat blonde haar,
Daar de engelen aan te kennen zijn? En dan,
Waarom blauwe ogen, wonderdiep en klaar?
Gij wist toch, dat ik daar niet tegen kan?
En waarom mij dan zo voorbijgesneld,
En niet als de weerlicht ‘t rijtuig opgerukt,
En om mijn hals uw armen vastgekneld,
En op mijn mond uw lippen vastgedrukt?
Gij vreesdet mooglijk voor een spoorwegramp?
Maar, Rika, wat kon zaalger voor mij zijn,
Dan, onder hels geratel en gestamp,
Met u verplet te worden door één trein?

The English version (yeah, I know, it isn’t a great translation, but at least you know what it’s about, right?).

For Rika
Only once have I seen you. You were
Sitting in a train, that the train
Which I was in, passed at full speed.
The acquaintance could not have been shorter.
And yet, it lasted long enough, for me,
To continue the endless path of life
With a pale smile. Ah! Not one happy
Smile did I have, since I saw you.
Why do you have that blonde hair,
For which Angels are known? And then,
Why blue eyes, wonderfully deep and clear?
Didn’t you know, that I can’t resist that?
And why pass me hastily,
And if the carriage hadn’t advanced like lightning,
And your arms bent around my neck,
And on your lips pressed onto my mouth?
Were you possibly afraid of a railway disaster?
But, Rika, what could’ve been more blissful for me,
Than, with infernal rattling and stamping,
To be crushed with you by a train?

 

James Blunt

 

And, read something familiar? Passing a stranger whilst going in opposite directions, catching one short glance of her and falling head over heals in love, yes, even the comparing her to an angel thing. This is the ‘You’re Beautiful‘ of the nineteenth century!

Weird, isn’t it?

Farewell, Mr Cooper

Something Cooper I do like!

 

Wow, it’s been ages since I’ve been able to write something here. The thing is, I’ve just been so busy that I haven’t come round to loads of things.

What I’m going to write about today, is a goal from my Day Zero Project that I’ve finally finished: training for the Cooper- or Shuttleruntest!

Like I said before, we’ve got to do both each and every year at school, except in year six. The Coopertest is the one where you’ve got to run for 12 minutes, without pausing. It completely sucks, ’cause I can’t ever keep going that long and I have to stop running in between and start walking. But not this time! I’ve been running three times a week for some time now and yesterday it was time to put my preparations to the test. The result? I could keep on running for 12 minutes, I ran 1925 meters (which amounts to a speed of 9.625 km/h) and I wasn’t completely exhausted at the end. In fact, after a minute or so, I felt like I could’ve started again to do a few extra rounds.

I decided to add this goal to my list when I started, because I’ve always been bad at these two tests and I hated that.. I guess it the result was exactly what I hoped it would be. I’m not sure whether I’ll keep on running. It isn’t my favourite thing to do, but on the other hand, I like it a lot when I’m able to go on longer than I expected.

Well, I’ll see..

P.S. Oh, and yes, I’m very happy I’ll never ever have to do this again!

Day what?

Seriously, I don't know why Zemantha decided this would go well with this post, but hey, I like his smile.

Day what? That’s what you’re probably thinking about when I said: ‘I’m doing the Day Zero Project.’ The thing is, this project is quite important in this  pursuit of mine, so I’ll tell you a bit about it.

The Day Zero Project is a project where you list 101 goals in 1001 days. That seems like a lot and you’re right. It is. No way you’ll come up with them all at once. The good news is that you can list any goal you want and take as long as you want to list them. You could start when you’ve finished your list or start when you still need to think of some. There are no rules. And if you wanted you even could only list 50 goals, or take 500 days, etcetera.

Somehow, a lot of things I’ll post on here will have to do with one of my goals. For instance the running thing, I started doing this because of my goal ‘train for the Cooper- or Shuttleruntest at least once’. (At school, we’ve got to do both, every year.) And the fencing, my goal: ‘try a new hobby’.

I haven’t fully translated my list of goals yet, but by the time I do I’ll write a blog post about it.

See you later!

Tags: Day Zero Project

Fencing fun

Wow. Maybe I'll look like that some day?

A while ago I signed up for a fencing introduction course and this morning I had my first lesson! We only touched the weapons in a game to warm up, which definitively didn’t have anything to do with fencing, (but I’d expected that) and all of the other participants are way younger than I am (the one who I think is the oldest, Ida, told me that she’s in second grade, so she’s at least three years younger than I am, the others are mostly under ten years old, I think. That’s something I didn’t expect), but it was fun anyway. Like I said, we didn’t do anything to do with actual fencing.. Instead we mostly practiced the steps, so now my calves and are killing me (or they will be tomorrow).

That’s not only because of the fencing though. Somehow I’ve become real active with all kinds of sports. I started running three times a week in August, Wednesday I had my first tennis lesson in five years, as I said in my last blog post, and today I started fencing. Then there’s Physical Education at school, two hours every week and I cycle to school every day. So now I’ve got muscle ache.

Blog you later!

P.S. Did you see the rainbow? It’s a good rainbow. With a rhino. Don’t ask me why the rhino’s there, I don’t know either.

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Tags: Fencing, Running, Sport, Tennis

Rainbows and random ramblings

Pooh!

Hi everyone,

I thought that, as this is my first blog post, I’d introduce myself and this blog. Might be a good start. I’m Tessa, I’m sixteen (soon to be seventeen), I’m Dutch and here are ten random bits of information about me:

1. I’m a perfectionist, I’m chaotic and I’m forgetful.
2. I love Winnie the Pooh (and Miffy, she’s cute too) and the colour yellow.
3. I like all bright, happy colours, really. I can’t ever choose if someone asks about my favourite.
4. I like crafting, but 90% of my ideas never gets done because I like thinking of crafting even better.
5. This is not my first blog. Hopefully I’ll stick with this one though.
6. I’ve got a thing for rainbows. I’ll need to add one somewhere on this page.
7. I’m doing the Day Zero Project (I’ve made a page about it on this blog).
8. Yesterday, I had my first tennis lesson in five years. It went quite well.
9. I can get totally absorbed by school and homework.
10. I’m pursuing a colourful life.

Which brings me to introducing this blog. This blog is about me, pursuing a colourful life. With that, I mean a life that’s not only filled by responsibility and seriousness, but with fun things too. A life in which I’ll hopefully do and learn lots of new things and make time to do things I want to do.

That’s where this blog comes in: if I don’t have at least one good thing to write about each day, I’m doing something wrong. (By the way, that doesn’t mean I’ll actually write something everyday. I don’t have the time and nobody would read this blog that often anyway.) I’ll try to keep this blog interesting, not just some internet-journal about a hopefully-not-that-boring life. Can’t promise anything though. Well, we’ll see.

That’s it for now,

Tessa

Tags: About me, About the blog, Introductions