It's Monsoon Season! Jinkx Monsoon's Summer Bucket List 2017
It's summer! I've got my hat on backwards and it's time to ... be productive????
No, but really -- as someone who normally wastes away her summers, I really wanted to jump on this opportunity to try and motivate me to do something with this long, long, loooong summer I have ahead of me. There's still two months, if not more - I need to make sure I remember this summer.
Unfortunately, my main holiday - Disneyland Paris - falls just outside of the boundaries listed in the competition, as we're going just before university begins in September - but I hope the rest of my list is as interesting as it can be!
RED - not started
AMBER - in progress
GREEN - completed
~ * ~
001. Host a full Harry Potter movie marathon. Friends are optional, hot chocolate is not. [COMPLETE 31/8] [Ranking the films from 8 to 1 -- 8 / 7 / 6 / 5 / 4 / 3 / 2 / 1 ]
002. Read as many books as I can.
Spoiler
003. Spend a day people-watching. Write/draw the people I'm interested in. [COMPLETE 13/7]
004. Walk to the beach and spend the day on the seashore. I'm going to miss the sea when I move for uni - I need to make the most of it. [COMPLETE 26/8]
005. Go to one train station I've never been to before, on a train route I've never travelled on before. Maybe this isn't as exciting to other people as it is to me... I just really like travelling on trains and going to new places. [COMPLETE 9/7]
006. Write at least 10,000 words. They don't have to be 10,000 words of the same story - but as long as the stories are completed and at least 100 words each, then they count to fill this slot. [update 2/8] [COMPLETE 31/08]
007. Go to London for the day, at least once. I love London so much - and I'll be living very close to it come September! I want to get to know the city a little more. [COMPLETE 27/7]
008. Win a competition. Luck of the draw, yes! There's no guarantee that this could actually happen, but I'll certainly be making attempts to win something. [update 18/7] [update 28/8]
009. Start filing/organising/binning my old schoolwork, ready for university. The problem is that I've kept everything, and very little of it will be useful for the future. [COMPLETE 10/7]
010. Get some work experience. I've gained a summer job at my local vineyard, but I want more, definitely. Whether it's working multiple jobs or hopefully getting the work experience I applied for at Penguin Random House (fingers crossed, that's an absolute dream job) I want to have some money saved up for uni. [COMPLETE 19/7]
011. Spend a day watching Disney films. In preparation, of course! It's all homework. For my ... 10th.. trip to Disneyland Paris. pls. [COMPLETE 19/7]
012. Catch up on The Handmaid's Tale. It's proving to be an absolute banger of a series, but I'm several weeks behind because of exams, etc. I want to finish the series before the summer ends. [update 10/7] [COMPLETE 17/7]
013. Watch 10 good new documentaries. I just.. I really like documentaries, especially crime documentaries. I'll even rate them for you all. [update 11/7] [COMPLETE 10/08]
014. Make a memories scrapbook/album. I think I'll really want it when I move away -- remembering those who have been good to me. [COMPLETE 16/8]
015. Go to the opticians. No, this isn't very exciting... but I think I might need glasses. I've probably needed them for the last ten years or so, but my mum has refused to take me to the opticians until now. [COMPLETE 27/8]
016. Binge-watch RuPaul's Drag Race. My viewing order was a little odd... 6, 5, 7, 9, skipping 8 only because I ran out of time before Season 9 aired. I want to go back and catch up on everything I haven't yet seen! [SEASON 8 COMPLETE 28/7] [SEASON 4 COMPLETE 29/8]
017. Finish playing Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories. We bought the PS4 Final Mix in preparation for KH3, and then were humbled in remembering that we only really played the core games of the series. I'm working my way slowly though CoM, but the card-based battle techniques are.... unusual, certainly! [COMPLETE 23/8]
018. Start buying utensils and decorations for my uni halls. I want to be prepared, and I want everything to be as nice and cute as it can be -- cute things motivate me, and I need the motivation! [COMPLETE 20/8]
019. Organise what books/films/cuddly toys etc. I want to take with me for first year. My room is ridiculously full of sheer stuff, and I know I won't have the same amount of space in my uni halls, but I can't bear to leave all of it behind... [COMPLETE 30/08]
020. Sort out accounts, emails/passwords, etc. separate from my parents' accounts, just in case. PayPal, Amazon, going through Facebook and unfriending anyone I don't really want on there... It's another fairly dull one, but something that probably does need doing! [COMPLETE 7/8]
021. Sleep under the stars. This wasn't originally on my list, but after looking at all the other lists, I was just... really tempted. Hot chocolate and blankets on a summery night sound perfect! [COMPLETE 5/8]
022. Earn at least £300. I desperately need to get at least one job this summer, and I've been applying to everyone and their aunt in the hopes of getting even a few hours. [update 16/7] [update 31/7] [COMPLETE 12/8]
I'm sure this list will grow as I think of more things to do, but until then, here we are.
EDIT 1: look at that, 4 new things already. Watch this space.
EDIT 2: Moved the Reading List up to the top, and started adding links to the posts for each bucket list update!
EDIT 3: I changed task 2 to be "read as many books as I can", as I really ran out of time on the full list, and I feel like this would be a much kinder solution that I could actually finish.
(edited 6 years ago)
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Thank you, and of course not! Mine are inspired by the others in turn, so I'd love to see what you do with them!!!
Hell yeah RuPaul's Drag Race!
09/07/2017 // TASK 005 COMPLETE!
We're starting the bucket list off by completing... arguably the most niche addition to the list - go somewhere new by train, essentially. As someone who genuinely really enjoys train travel (it's fast, you can sit there and do whatever you like, and it's normally cleaner and less bumpy than a bus) this is something I've wanted to do for a while, though I didn't complete it exactly as I thought I would.
Yesterday, we moved my brother into the house he's letting during his university industry placement. He.. essentially packed so much into the car that there wouldn't have been room for me, so my family elected to send me up to Byfleet & New Haw by train. Hey, I don't have to deal with grumpy morning family crammed in a sardine can, and I get to go to a new train station and knock it off the bucket list -- win/win, tbh!
The trip - not including the ferry - was fairly simple; Portsmouth Harbour to Woking, then Woking to Byfleet & New Haw, about an hour and a half all-in-all. I'd meant to read The Great Gatsby on the way up... and got distracted in playing Disney Crossy Road instead. Sorry, task 002.
Changing at Woking did throw me for a loop, if only because I haven't been there before -- and platform 3, rather than being its own platform, was a bizarre addition onto the end of platforms 2 and 4. Bit stressful for a 3-minute change, but hey!
B&NH was in a beautiful area, and a beautiful station on the outside... less so inside, but I can deal with that. It was a lovely day, so once we'd unpacked my brother and gotten him settled in, we walked a lot outside the station. We also drove into Woking to explore the town centre there (there's so much War of the Worlds pride in Woking and I adore it so much) and generally had a great day. Yay for good days out to kickstart the bucket list!!!
Pictures attached ---
001. Getting to Byfleet & New Haw station.
002. Woking station - walking up the middle of the platform to reach the elusive Platform 3.
003. Byfleet & New Haw from the outside, where it's prettiest.
09/07/2017 // TASK 002, IN PROGRESS
My aerial assault on my super-long Reading List has begun, and I have finished the first book on the list!!! Book review, go!
The Song Of Achilles, by Madeline Miller. This was a masterfully written book, balancing the line between dreamy description and actually being able to advance the plot -- too much of the former and it's unreadable, too much of the latter and it's dull. As someone who adores the classics with every fibre of my being - I finished Classical Civilisations A2 this year, having read Homer, Virgil, Herodotus, and Aeschylus over the last two years - this book had been on my radar for a long while, and I'm so glad that it wasn't disappointing. This book offered a beautifully-written and heartfelt exploration of the love between Achilles and Patroclus, and the love that eventually dooms them - Patroclus to his death, and Achilles to a life of infamy and dishonoured reputation (and also his death).
I give this book a 9/10.
~ * ~
Next on my list is The Girls, by Emma Cline. I'm about halfway through and I'm enamoured with the writing style - it reminds me a lot of The Song of Achilles, but also I'll Give You The Sun by Jandy Nelson, which is one of my favourite books of all time for its vivid and visceral language use. I'll keep you posted! After The Girls, I think I'll delve into a classic, as I neglected Gatsby in favour of Crossy Road yesterday. What kind of English Lit student am I???
Original post by Lola3339
oh my gosh I just finished season 5 I cried when jinkx got the title my baby :'D
Original post by EstelOfTheEyrie
Hell yeah RuPaul's Drag Race!
YESSSS OH MY GOD. Jinkx is still my favourite queen (clock the username LMAO), though I got lucky in Season 9 with who I supported! (no spoilers, just in case.) Valentina served the most incredible looks (her Big Hair Everywhere look haunts my dreams to this day because I genuinely loved it so much) but [redacted] just won my heart and I am beyond pleased that she won.
How about you guys? :0 Have you seen S9 yet?
Ahhh, I made them in Photoshop! They're pretty basic when it gets down to it -- just a colour filter over a photo of the beach where I live, a rounded rectangle, and precariously placed text. But I think they look kinda neat!
10/07/2017 // TASK 009 COMPLETE
Technically, this was another one completed on the 9th... but since I procrastinated in making the update post, it's nearly 1am now. Therefore: it counts as one of today's achievements instead!
... Anyone who knows me knows that I am not a particularly organised person. It's all in there, it's all understandable to me on some bizarre, fourth-fold, Twilight Zone-esque level. I just can't keep it all together on a physical level; I write hundreds of thousands of words in notes, and they all end up shoved in a book, never revisited for revision purposes. This is why Task 009 - organise, file, and declutter old school notes - took me an entire evening, and though I'm marking it as a completed green I have no doubt I'll discover whole hoards of notes still to go through at a later date.
... So. All of my notes from GCSE, except for the ones I triumphantly binned at the time, like Physics, in a celebration of never having to do GCSE Physics again. (it was completely understandable. I would do the same again today.) Plus all of my AS notes, and now all of my finished A2 notes. It was quite the task, and I had to stop myself from getting distracted looking at ancient sketchbooks from middle school and beyond.
But --- I did it. I pulled everything I could find out, emptied every box and drawer, and tried to be as brutal as my sentimental little heart could be. I found some excellent stuff for Task 014, making a scrapbook -- once I have a book to start putting things in and some cute papers/labels I'll get right on that, I think! The pictures below will illustrate my (deeply untidy, but the thought is what counts) room before and after, and the volume of bizarre items I found in my filing search.
This was a much-needed task, and I actually quite enjoyed it, despite it being a bit boring in theory and name. Hopefully I'll get onto the exciting parts of my list soon! I don't want to bore you guys. ; o ;
~ * ~
Pictures attached ---
001. Snapshots of 'before', having pulled everything out.
002. A labelled picture of 'afterwards', with everything non-academic I've yet to sort so far.
003. A labelled picture of my rubbish bin and the other containers of rubbish I needed to use!
Of course you can!!! Go ahead, I can't wait to see yours. 
10/07/2017 // TASK 012, IN PROGRESS
I was a little pressed for motivation and energy today, so I tried to treat myself with a little foot bath in the washing up bowl (we bought foamy-banana-scented bubble bath and it's AMAZING) and I caught up on two of the episodes I'd missed out on thus far -- episode 3, "Late", and 4, "Nolite Te *******es Carborundorum".
I've loved The Handmaid's Tale since I was around twelve or thirteen, reading it for the first time in high school; when I heard they were making a TV series I was ecstatic, and since it's aired in the UK it's met every single expectation I could have wished for. Visually, as well, it's extremely strong -- something I'm taking a new interest in as of late after having looked into visual screenplay much more. And hoooooooooly shipotle were these some vvvvv powerful episodes. I'm loving the focus on characters other than Offred, as well as the exploration of the world of Gilead and how exactly everything got to this point --- and I can't wait to see what's in store, after hearing that they've already been renewed for a second series. AAAAAHHH.
I still have about 4 episodes to catch up on, and another one will air on Sunday -- so I'm marking this as incomplete for now! I just wanted to update with what I've done with my day!
(edited 6 years ago)
11/07/2017 // TASK 013, IN PROGRESS
I had planned to do my beach walk today, but it rained all day. So today was a documentary day instead! I watched five different documentaries, bringing me halfway through my goal of 10 ... only a few days into my bucket list. Maybe I'm a little hasty, but I just really love documentaries. I would slow down, but I'm just ... extremely competitive! ( @ my fellow competitors! I'm watching you!!! LMAO)
I have a deep-rooted interest in crime, especially generally Really Messed Up Stuff(TM), so most of these documentaries will be similarly themed. Short summaries/reviews of the documentaries are below!
~ * ~
MURDERED BY MY DAUGHTER (Channel 5). // This documentary was an exploration - albeit a bit surface-level and with a narrative I disagreed with - into the motives of Kim Edwards and boyfriend Lucas Markham, who worked together to kill Edwards' mother and sister when they were only 14. I'd heard of the case in passing, but hadn't looked into it in much detail -- but I really didn't like the 'child psychologist' who seemed to entirely disregard any psychological notion of attachment issues after Edwards was abused by her mother to such an extent that she entered the care system for a time as a child - and her comments about other children facing issues who didn't end up doing this was absurd. It seemed made to fit a particular narrative and feed on the fear of children from hell, especially children from the care system -- an unfortunate misconception that prevents a lot of problem children from being adopted.
THE TRIAL: MURDER IN THE FAMILY (Channel 4). // This was half a documentary and half a drama -- a five-episode docu-drama, it's advertised as. Essentially, this was an exploration of the trial system and the work of the jury in understanding and shaping a criminal trial, by being presented in real time with a semi-fictional trial. The defendant and the non-professional witnesses were actors, whilst the professional witnesses, the defence and the prosecution were all real, highly talented barristers -- and, of course, the jury were real. It was extremely interesting to see the process of the trial and to make my own decisions - and this was incredibly well made!!! Though it frustrated me to see how few of the jurors understood the difference between being found not guilty and being innocent.
FRITZL: WHAT HAPPENED NEXT (Channel 5) and THE SECRETS OF THE AUSTRIAN CELLAR (?) // Both of these documentaries cover the case of Josef and Elizabeth Fritzl -- an Austrian case where Josef imprisoned his daughter Elizabeth in a purpose-built cellar below their house and kept her there for 25 years, fathering 7 children by her. This case caught me in a sense of morbid fascination after finishing the book 'Room', by Emma Donoghue; Room was inspired by the Fritzl case, as was the BBC miniseries Thirteen, which I quickly devoured after finishing Room. Both documentaries were very well-made -- The Secrets of the Austrian Cellar was clearly made quite early on after the case made headlines, and for that it provides different details to What Happened Next -- though both are certainly worth watching, and provide a vivid insight into Josef Fritzl's mind and motives.
LOUIS THEROUX: SAVILE (BBC) // This isn't on BBC iPlayer anymore, which frustrates me; I think it should be required watching for anyone with a strong enough stomach. I adore Louis Theroux and his documentaries; this is possibly one of the most powerful documentaries I have ever watched. Honestly. From the accounts given to the continued insistence on his innocence from those who worked with him -- Savile is a terrifying, uncomfortable, and necessary documentary, and Louis Theroux was the only person who could have done this documentary justice. I don't think I have the words to say how strongly I recommend this documentary for anyone trying to understand the Jimmy Savile case, or people in general -- the bad hiding within the good, or the good things terrible people do.
~ * ~
If anyone has any recommendations of documentaries for me to watch, please let me know! I love documentaries. I love, love, love documentaries. ; v ;
Original post by Jinkx Monsoon
X
Oooh I loved watching The Trial! I was a bit disappointed with the outcome, but it happens in law so I need to get over it. I was so hoping that the result wasn't what it was. (I'm trying not to say spoilers in case anyone hasn't seen the end episode yet)
Original post by EstelOfTheEyrie
Oooh I loved watching The Trial! I was a bit disappointed with the outcome, but it happens in law so I need to get over it. I was so hoping that the result wasn't what it was. (I'm trying not to say spoilers in case anyone hasn't seen the end episode yet)
I'm becoming increasingly convinced we might actually be the same person, omfg-- I honestly thought it was such an interesting thing to watch, but I felt the same about the result! I was really hopeful when they started playing the bit with the groceries that it might have been different to how it actually was, but no cigar. </3
A little upset today. I didn't do anything off of my bucket list, and I'm 99% certain I didn't get the work experience placement I applied for.
It happens. I'll have a bit of a cry later and then carry on another day.
It happens. I'll have a bit of a cry later and then carry on another day.
Original post by Jinkx Monsoon
A little upset today. I didn't do anything off of my bucket list, and I'm 99% certain I didn't get the work experience placement I applied for.
It happens. I'll have a bit of a cry later and then carry on another day.
It happens. I'll have a bit of a cry later and then carry on another day.
Nooooooo!
I'm so sorry about that - but it probably means you're destined for something more. Don't look at it as a negative
And you're not the only who hasn't done anything today! I overslept and then just gave up on doing anything on the list today.
love your list so far! 
will be following with interest Are you including Fantastic Beasts in your HP movie marathon? 
will be following with interest Are you including Fantastic Beasts in your HP movie marathon? 13/07/2017 // TASK 003 COMPLETE!
Hey, guys. I'm not dead --- I took the rest of the 12th off to mope, spent the 13th aggressively exploring and trying to get some tasks done, and today dealing with the quintessential issue that is Relatives. So here's my very overdue update on task 003, people-watching!
Ever since I was a little tween-something with a clunky desktop and a dream of being a writer, following advice from countless online numerical lists... I've always wanted to go people-watching. It seems so simple on paper -- just watch people, write about what you overhear. A little like being a spy, in a way. Unfortunately, I haven't actually done it before -- and so this attempt was a little less fruitful than I'd planned.
First off, it was a weekday before (presumably before?) the end of term, so not many young folk were around; secondly, I'd gotten into town bright and early at around 7:50 in the morning, and settled down into Costa without considering how the 8am coffee rush is rarely the most social of occasions. So I killed some time by finishing another book (which will be reviewed next!) and by wandering around and buying scrapbooking equipment, ready for task 014. By the time I'd finished walking to-and-fro it was around 11, and so I settled down to try and find some people to understand.
Below is my first attempt at people-watching -- one passerby from outside the window, and two studies. I've given this a tentative amber for now -- I'd like to try it again, but I'm also content with the fact that I've tried it even once, so I might bump it up to a green if no other opportunities present themselves.
FUTURE ME EDITS: I never did get a chance to go people-watching again, so in light of this I've bumped it up to a green! I'd really like to try it again sometime, though, so who knows? Maybe one day I'll get arrested for it.
(edited 6 years ago)
Original post by bizzy_penguin
love your list so far! will be following with interest Are you including Fantastic Beasts in your HP movie marathon?
will be following with interest Are you including Fantastic Beasts in your HP movie marathon? I would, but I'm worried that'll officially push it over the 24-hour mark! I really want to rewatch it ASAP, though. I've only seen it once and that's about 30 times too few.
Original post by Jinkx Monsoon
I would, but I'm worried that'll officially push it over the 24-hour mark! I really want to rewatch it ASAP, though. I've only seen it once and that's about 30 times too few.
ikr, considering there are even more FB films to come out yet,
And don't forget you could probably skip the credits at the end to save time as well
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