A lot has happened since april…
Wow I can hardly believe it. It’s been like 5 months since I last blogged. Crazy init? Not much has really happened to tell the truth, I kinda just posted that in the title to make myself feel better. Looking back over my last post, I find it quite funny as I have just spent the last week or so since my 20th birthday in bed sick with what I hope is the flu. Although I was at the races last wednesday so realistically it could be the Equine flu or perhaps a case of overindulgence. Which is more likely. As I was saying to MM yesterday, it feel like our birthday lasted weeks. Now I have to pick up again with uni and…god, there must be better things to do!
On a lighter note…only two weekends left as a book slave! The 31st is officially the last day I will be abused as a I work in a bookshop! While this is exciting and all, I now have on steady income and have to rely on scholarship money to get by. Which would be easy, if I wasn’t a compulsive shopper living with two almost full time workers and students. They make me feel increasingly lazy. It was their idea to quit my job and now I am feeling just a tad sheepish as they both got new jobs and I will be unemployed. I keep telling myself it will be great, I will finally be able to do all those things that working 20 hours a week has prevented me from doing – like you know, uni readings, writing, getting fit and healthy, but honestly, who am I kidding? As if that will last!
Although I will admit I have been rather motivated recently to make sure that this time next year I am in a stellar place looking fab. But I mean, a certain snotty nose and chest infection has since prevented me from doing anything. Hopefully once I get well again (which I hope is soon, because I am a tad sick of this yucky ring of dried skin around my nose from tissue burn), I will be able to throw myself into it. If not, guess I will just get fatter and lazier than usual. Hooray!
Tick Tocking
It’s late and I have just spent the last five hours procrastinating.
Is that not the most frustrating thing on the earth?
More to come tomorrow. Or the next day. I’ll probably procrastinate uploading a post too.
Under the weather
feeling slightly under the weather today.
I have managed to pick up the dreaded week six cold, which in uni terms means that I will be sick on and off for the rest of the term. There are both perks and consequences to this. Finally I have an excuse to slack off and not do anything. And then consequently I now have an excuse to slack off and fall behind. Yay. I love life.
God I haven’t written properly in weeks and am feeling very stifled. So far my plan to have Amazing Things finished by 2009 doesn’t look good at all. I thought doing a creative writing degree would inspire me. I keep telling myself that I have to settle in, but I’m not sure. I’m a hopeless case really.
I have however been writing a lot of poetry at them moment, thanks to one of my introduction subjects. I my hand at sonnets for a while, but was sure that somewhere Shakespeare would have been turning in his grave. I gave up promptly. It was something about my juvenile rhyming that got me in the end. It is exactly the reason I gave up song writing. The day that I wrote a song about someone going to jail was the day it was time to give up. I think my ode to a fictional soldier in World War 1 might be end of closed form poetry for me.
I did however manage to get in touch free verse last week, which was quite liberating. Channeling some sort of unconscious stream of thought I managed to pen this:
It is icy cold in the depths of consciousness
Where dreams are but the folly of a young girl swept away
By the tide of a righteous dream and a self sacrificing illusion.
I feel myself drowning again and again in the
Pain of the past and the torment of its loss.
Was it worth it all in the end?
The impenetrable drive?
The emotional dive?
All the bitterness and rage of life unfulfilled?
To my voice I answer yes, and it caries on the wind
Licking the landscape around me and echoing to the depths of the future blunt night sky.
I walk to the river to watch my last breath and then I crawl along the sand, a bodyless soul.
If I could have a second skin I’m not sure I would want it.
Do we ever have enough evidence that a second change card would really be any different?
That I would fit into your steel covered cage if I were your mirror?
Life is different without the broken perspective of body borders
And internal conflictions of organs, feelings and scars.
I am wrecked but I feel whole.
And I like it better this way.
I will be the first to admit that it is nothing groundbreaking, but god it felt good to get it on paper. I have a critique meeting tomorrow so we will see how that goes. I don’t like letting others read my poetry. It seems to personal to me – an a mindset I really need to get out of. You think as an advertising student I would be used to people critiquing my ideas but this is so much different.
Anyway, I am finally off to the Andy Warhol exhibit tomorrow (leaving it to the very last minute as it closes on the weekend). I planned to set the beginning of Amazing Things there and finally decided that I really should suck it up and go. Plus I have to go and get my Cervical Vaccine as well so it will be fun day all round.
Needles, critiques and Warhol! Oh My!
Gutting it all
I feel like I am looking at life from the bottom of a gutter today. I can’t explain it anymore than perhaps a fleeting mood of melencholy but its been one of those bad days that you never admit to people you have. You know the ones. Wake up wishing you could sleep forever. Get out of bed and wish you never did. Grumble through the day fighting back tears.
I called mum today and cried to her on the phone. I was trying to justify pulling out of the latest career changing scheme I had signed up for. Some days it just helps to be able to justify the crap you tell yourself with someone else’s opinion. And I think she knew that, cos she just told me what I wanted to hear and then sent me on my way. Like picking me up after a fall, putting a band aid on my knee and sending me out again.
The main thing that got to me today, was that I was over all this. After a weekend of getting abused at work, I just decided, Fuck it all. I’m so reactive to my life. I used to proactive. I used to be such a motivated little so and so. It used to drive me. Now it just hurts me. I get sort of fits of motivation. Get really excited about something and really raring. And then it fades, I freak out, lose confidence and then just kinda end up crying about it and my life. I don’t think there is anything wrong with me, but I feel so burnt out. Like I’ve already peaked and the rest of my life is just a total slippery slope into a dead end job and 20 million cats in a one bedroom apartment.
And it really makes me wonder you know, what the hell I have done with the past two years of my life? I’ve completed two years at uni, changed my degree three times, started two haphazard books, bought a load of crap, maxed out a credit card and fallen in love with someone I could never have. It just seems so unfulfilled. And it’s got me thinking.
Maybe life really is like the John Mayer Song “No Such Thing”. Maybe there is no such thing as the real world. You life means something when you’re at high school but when you’re out of that adolescent age where mistakes are okay, there is just this giant great big black hole where only those rich and beautiful survive. I mean I know my arguement is flawed, no one’s life is ever perfect, but why is it so uneven? We never become who we want to, because by the time we reach that mark we were striving for, our goals have changed and our wants are different. We want a new direction. A better direction. A bigger position. We never actually make ourselves happy.
Why?
And why not?
Why can’t there just be a universal quick fix? Like a patch Dr Who style that changes it. BAM! I feel better about myself. BAM! I’m happy where I am. BAM! No more terrible blog posts about trivial little things (like this one – NB: I do actually realize how pathetic I am being).
And when we realize that things need to change, how do we change them? Read a book? Find all the answers in others? Or do we just cover it up, pretend we didn’t really feel that way?
I myself know that I talk myself in and out of things. Last night I was excited to start a ‘new life’ today. A ‘new life’. To me a ‘new life’ meant, and still does mean, that I will start taking better care of myself. Get active, eat better, remove toxic things and toxic people from my system. Take multivitamins. ACTUALLY do my university readings. Actually get a good GPA this semester. Find myself. And then life can go on. And that’s what I want. But guess what happened this morning?
My alarm went in and I allowed myself to sleep in. I got up, looked in the mirror and hated that I hadn’t changed. I didn’t become a better person over night and that though got me going. I decided that I wouldn’t go through with my commitments. That I would email my way out of them. Then I called my mum, cried and justified it all. So in reality, even though I got excited about a ‘new life’, my fresh start turned out to be exactly like the old life. And I don’t know what I am more angry about – the fact that I failed or the fact that I thought that I would actually have the power to make myself change.
Just something to think about.
Wicked!
Am so totally excited right now. MM and I are planning a trip to Victoria in July to see the fantastic Broadway Musical Wicked! and to see Geelong Vs. Hawthorn at Skilled Stadium! I am so very happy and can’t wait. More to come as the trip gets closer…(basically because if I think about it too much then I will procrastinate forever).
Lost already
Okay so it’s week 2 and despite all my eager green enthusiasm and ideas… I am already behind at university.
Yup. That’s it. Week 2. Wednesday of week 2 and I am dying under a load of extremely boring readings about how and why people are creative. Seriously. It is torture. READING about being creative. ewwwww.
Also, bad news this week that my trip to NZ is on the discard pile. LM and I couldn’t work out what the hell we wanted to do and we both got lazy, planned a $28,000 trip and realised that no way in hell could we afford that in 10 years let alone the 10 weeks we have to scrap together a deposit. I hope it happens but. Somewhere there has to be a NZ ski trip god. I wish he would look favorably upon us.
That’s it for today. I wanted to make a long post but my head hurts….must be all that creativity seeping away….
Friday Night Questions
I have a few questions on my mind today: –
– Can you actually sleep your life away?
– Can a broke heart actually kill you? (Broken in the sense of unrequited love…)
– Why do things NEVER go the way we planned?
– And extending from that…why do relationships get so freaking messy?
– AND FINALLY, the question plaguing my life so much these past few days (more like years…)… why does the one we love never really love us?
Right well I’m off not to try and write some of my book. Gotta put this pathetic melancholy to good use. Ciao.
Survival of the most lucid
As I write TH is already in a coma from our first early morning start at uni for 2008. I can’t imagine what everyone in the lab is thinking…head down on the desk, headphones on, document of study left abandoned. Sounds more like study week before exam block rather than the second day of semester 1 classes.
So far I have managed to survive. But it is only day two and week one can be extremely misleading. Yesterday I had my first video conference lecture, something that CI are now excited to be doing. It wasn’t too exciting but to think that QUT is stepping up the technology is great. Especially since last year we spent the majority of Journalism lectures waiting for the staff to work out how to operate the software or not being able to do anything on computers because the system crashes at the most inopportune times (usually exams which made the whole assessment process a complete nightmare). Welcome to the School of Creative Writing and Culture studies (although in my opinion those things are two very different areas and you can definately hold the culture studies from my program thanks!).
The most daunting thing about my course change is trying to keep up with all the creative kids. I’m no slouch by any stretch, I pen a couple thousand, if not more, words a week on my book or on little writing snippets. And I’m a creative advertising kid as well. I would even say that I prefer to use my imagination most days over my intelligence. However, now I have classes with insainly talents people. In my lecture yesterday there were actors, photographers, dancers, graphic designers and artists. And little lonely journo drop out me. I feel I was too creative to be a Journo but now not creative enough for a smooth transition into the new world that I find myself in. Oh well, I suppose that’s how things go.
First day back at uni kicked off well with a big drinking weekend for me and my housemates. AS came down friday for some shopping and socialising and we headed out to the Normanby after several rounds of ‘I’ve Never’ with my great housemates and a bunch of mates. AS was so impressed by the Normanby we’ve got her birthday celebrations books there for next weekend. In my usual style, I was well and truly drunk before we left the house at 10pm. All thanks to MM’s incredibly alcoholic ice cocktails of course. After a quick drink at the Normanby, and a couple of fights with MG on the walk there, MG and LP headed off home and the rest of us caught a bus into the city. Our first and only stop was the casino where AS, MM and I had a frozen dacquri while RN blew $120 on the blackjack tables. After a quick game of Deal or No Deal in the second bar, we headed for HJ’s to end the night.
Now the Queen St Mall Hungry Jacks always seems like a great idea. Until you walk in. And until you eat the food. Ewww. Thankfully there wasn’t anyone creepy about this time, and MM was there to protect us anyway, and then we caught a cab home. We grabbed a quick nightcap before all heading off to bed at 2am.
Managed to work though an 8 hour shift on saturday with only 3 hours sleep and then gave AS some terrible directions to get back to the Sunny Coast. The rest of the weekend was filled with work, sleep and increasing anxiety about this week.
However all those things have subsided this week. Sleep is at a happy medium again with my waking hours and uni is back to occupy my mind. Let’s see how much I am enjoying my five days a week at uni by friday huh?
Just a little scared…
Oh God, the mind-numbing fear of starting uni is beginning to set it. It really shouldn’t be, as this is my THIRD year but now that I’ve officially emancipated myself from my journalism dreams and jumped on the writer train, I’m starting to freak out. The best solution at this point in time is to hide myself away from my flatmates and confine my freak out to my own room. Otherwise, I am a little nervous that they will think I’m strange. And I mean, so far the past four weeks have been good and they haven’t picked up on it. I would hate to shatter the household now.
I’m not really sure what’s freaking me out to be honest. I think it has something to do with the fact that now I have no machine to rage against and its just me and the good old folks in the Creative Writing and Advertising schools. For the past two years I have always thought, oh well, at least I don’t really care about wanting to be a journo so it doesn’t really matter if I do well or terrible. Okay, that was a flat out lie to myself. I only really thought that once during my Journalism studies. And that was when I was standing in front of a camera on Ann St while the Cameraman lectured on what the fuck I was doing – because I had no idea myself. And it was at that moment when I realised that I probably looked like I weighed a hundred and 190Kgs in front of camera and was no where near as attractive as the pretty little blondes that were flitting around back in the newsroom, that my career as a writer did not lie within the Journalism category.
I have been saying for ages, in-fact probably comforting myself with the thought, that I would write a book. A novel even. And it wouldn’t been literary noteworthy but it would be my heart and soul on paper and maybe if I got my editing skills into top gear that I could actually get it published. But not that I am looking down the barrel of a creative writing degree I am freaking out. I have to do it now. And those two great plots that I dreamed up in my head seem less significant, less emotional and really rather trivial and crap. And now I realise that wholly fuck, I am actually going to do this. No more talking about it, cry about Journalism and how I’m cut out for much more creative things. I now have to actually be a writer. And that seriously scares the shit out of me.
Sometimes I wish I had just sucked it up and gone, “You know what, being creative is such a waste of a lifetime. Do something useful like engineering, curing medicine or warming orphans.” But then I remember how it feels to sit down and churn out a 9,000 word chapter in a couple of days and look back and go, omg, this actually means something. And it makes me wonder, if I took away the writing and my imagination, I don’t think I would be me. And even though I am extremely neurotic and have a terrible temper, there is one thing in my life that I am proud I can do. And that is put words on paper. And I love it.
(It is also the ability to overuse the word And in a blog. A skill my high school english teacher would kill me for if she ever read.)I’m still sacred and significantly more neurotic, but now that its down on paper, it seems like an entirely natural flaw.
Bad Summer TV finally over
Let me express my relief – finally this week summer programming ceases and we finally get some decent TV! Although I am sad that we have lost Bones (apparently Channel 7 is bonkers and doesn’t recognize the worth of this show, just like when Channel 10 banished Torchwood to a late night TV spot after 4 weeks in primetime!) we’ve managed to gain back the zany antics of Good News Week and picked up a great show in the Women’s Murder Club. I’ll be the first to admit, I was extremely surprised with how good Women’s Murder Club was last night, considering I’m not a very big fan anything written by James Patterson. Tuesday nite’s on 10 are great now with Women’s Murder Club and the fantastically original Burn Notice.
Apart for avid TV watching over the past few days, I have been reading and really taking a break. I need to desperately get back to university before I go insane. I have been on holidays since November and let me tell you there is only so much free time you can fill before you start to go stir crazy.
Poisoned Ink 