I stayed up all night last Friday to watch the All Whites play Paraguay. I did my bit. Yeah, I’m a patriot. I didn’t even go to sleep beforehand; I was awake RIGHT THROUGH. This prompted colleagues to remark “I didn’t realise you were a fan!” Despite my concerted efforts to explain that I was still awake well past midnight, and succumbed to peer pressure on Twitter (“We’re making history here!”), I’m still down as a true supporter.
And seriously, Twitter was going OFF. It was busy as it is at peak times. It was incredibly exciting (more so than the game itself, perhaps). John Campbell was up. Colleagues were up. The Twitterati were up. Hashtags were going mad (and #NZL still failed to make the trending topics!) I kept one eye on the TV and the other on my laptop screen, constantly hitting F5 – thanks Tweetdeck, for failing me so badly that I had to resort to the web. It was indeed a little bit of history in the making, and I was there, kind of. My was heart skipping every time the ball approached either goal, and swooning a little every time I saw Ryan Nelsen (yum).
I even took part in the whiteout. In fact, I liked my black and white avatar pic so much that I still have it up.
But does it really make a difference? Other tweeters know you’ve whited out your display pic. But how can the players? I loved the spirit that we’re showing, but ultimately, if the people we’re supporting don’t realise just how many of us are doing it, what’s the point?
I actually cannot remember if I took part in the breast cancer awareness meme earlier this year (where people were posting their bra colour on Facebook), but here’s a reasoned and thoughtful piece on how it in fact excluded many cancer survivors.
In summary…it’s great when things go viral. But what does it really mean?
This year I turn 22. Which puts me firmly in the ‘twentysomething’ camp.
WTF? When did this happen?
Can I still wear short shorts? Am I too old to eat popcorn for dinner? Will I ever be able to park properly, enabling me to drive on my own? Why do I not own an iron? Or know how to deal with any cuts of chicken, barring the trusty chicken breast?
You know what brought this on? The fact that I was trying on a dress – and yes, I did end up buying it – and thought that it was TOO SHORT. (It wasn’t, by the way. And I’m not the kind to wear belt-sized skirts that don’t cover my ass.) The temporary insanity has mostly passed, but I can’t quite shake that feeling of time marching on.
Among the list of bloggers I love is Chelsea. Read any one of her entries and you’ll understand why. Is it any surprise that she was voted most distinctive voice on 20SB?
But I digress. Her latest entry nearly made me cry. We were right there with her, on the edge of our seats, we could nearly taste Japan and Ireland and hear that heinous ‘ra ra ooh la la’ refrain as she was literally thisclose to booking a gig with Lady Gaga.
I am so in awe of her talent, of her drive and of her determination. I wish that I was a tenth as motivated. I wish I knew what I was going after, and was going after it with all of my heart.
I need to work out what the hell I want, and I need to go get it. I need to live life, REALLY live it to the fullest, because I feel like I’m drifting with the current, waiting for something to happen, waiting for life to kick me in the butt, for something big to start. And I just can’t do that, because I don’t want to wake up and find ten years gone by and nothing changed.
I know a girl from the States, an international student over here, with a bunch of different student loans (most of them private). She was featured in an article in our student mag saying that her repayments on all of them, once she graduates, could be around $500 PER WEEK! That’s a full-time wage right there!
Stories like that make me so grateful to have been given a scholarship. My school was one of many with links to AUT, with two specific scholarships designated just for us. I earned one of them…and can’t actually remember who got the other one. Shame on me!
I’ve actually been meaning to write a thankyou note to the scholarships office; I finally did that a couple of months ago. I’m not sure if anyone would have even read it, but it was something I felt I should do because I’m going to graduate debt free, which is something not many can say.
Granted, my savings are pretty dismal. All up I have less than $4k – I’m owed close to a grand by ex-heinous-flatmate which I’ll never see, and a few hundred by T. But I’m going to be putting 4% into Kiwisaver, and I’m aiming to save 20% of my income. If T was working full time, this would be a lot higher, but c’est la vie.
Just by the by, (tentatively), he’s set his sights on an apprenticeship in automotive fabrication. Next step: creating a knockout CV and approaching potential employers. Any tips on how best to approach a busy workshop – phone, in person, etc, chime in! I’m thinking it would be best to call up, find out who makes the hiring decisions, and try to speak to them on the phone, followed by sending in a CV or a face to face meeting.
Frugal Dreamer had a GREAT idea for a post last week, which I am totally borrowing.
T and I both did it, and it was interesting to compare the two.
To be honest, I found it incredibly hard… I don’t know if it’s a lack of imagination, or the fact that I’m feeling a bit ambiguous about my career path and life in general… I’m not really sure what I want and so struggled to articulate where I might want to be.
We decided to pick a Thursday, approximately five years from now. We’ll both be 26, and although he’d like to have kids by then, I’m not so sure. Doing this visualisation without babies in the picture made our future life look pretty empty, actually – something I never thought I’d say!
T
1. What time do you wake up, and how are you feeling as you greet the day? 6am, as usual. Feeling pretty all right. 2. Where are you? If you’re at home, what does it look like? At home, in a 2bedroom open plan house, with a nice kitchen, bathtub and garage. 3. Who is with you? E (that’s me!) 4. What kind of work are you doing? (if you have no idea what kind of work you’ll be doing or want to be doing, list the qualities you want to find in the work you do and the kind of work environment you want.) Environment: a clean, quiet workshop with a steady workflow, where I have my own workstation 5. As you head out to face the day, how do you look? What are you wearing? What I’m wearing now (singlet and shorts). And shoes 6. How do you get to work? On a mountain bike 7. When you’re done with work, how will you spend you spare time and with whom? What activities do you enjoy? With E, watching old horror or zombie movies on my large screen TV. Fabricating in my garage, working on my toy (project) car. 8. What is your evening like? In front of the fire with a glass of whiskey or cup of tea 9. When you go to bed that night, how are you feeling after spending the day doing exactly what you love? Fulfilled 10. What are you most grateful for and what are you looking forward to as you go to sleep? Spending the next day with E.
E
1. What time do you wake up, and how are you feeling as you greet the day? I’m up at 7, feeling energised 2. Where are you? If you’re at home, what does it look like? In my own house (maybe a Lockwood) with big kitchen, walkin pantry, garage, ensuite bathroom and decent sized closet 3. Who is with you? T. Maybe a pet (preferably a cat, but more likely a puppy if T has his way) 4. What kind of work are you doing? (if you have no idea what kind of work you’ll be doing or want to be doing, list the qualities you want to find in the work you do and the kind of work environment you want.) I’m in the prime of my career, as a subeditor or a web editor, in an airy, sunny open plan office. I work in a friendly, supportive team and regularly have lunch with coworkers 5. As you head out to face the day, how do you look? What are you wearing? I look polished and effortless (ha!) I am wearing nice jeans with a shirt and flats, because the office environment is fairly casual. 6. How do you get to work? Walk 7. When you’re done with work, how will you spend you spare time and with whom? What activities do you enjoy? With T. I’ll bake, catch up on blogs, watch some TV or a movie. I enjoy photography, playing guitar, travel. 8. What is your evening like? I might catch up with friends at one of our houses for a few hours – lots of laughs, maybe a silly retro boardgame, good food. 9. When you go to bed that night, how are you feeling after spending the day doing exactly what you love? Contented and fulfilled. Glad that it’s nearly the weekend. 10. What are you most grateful for and what are you looking forward to as you go to sleep? T, a warm house, great job and good food.
Basically, I want to be one of those people that has their shit together. I definitely don’t think it’s possible to be supremely successful simultaneously in all aspects of life, but some areas of my life are severely neglected right now.
I want to eat better. This means meal planning and taking more care grocery shopping, and it’s going to mean increasing the grocery budget. This kind of clashes with…
I want to travel. Around NZ, and overseas later on. It’s going to mean a lot of saving – starting up a travel fund once I start working – and getting a handle on the budget. Still, money is limited, and I’ll have to prioritise between travel, groceries, eating out, general saving, clothing. Unless T randomly strikes out job-wise, things aren’t going to change drastically once I graduate. We’ll be a little bit better off, with a bit of breathing room, but there definitely won’t be room for luxuries.
I want to be greener. I’d like to start up a compost heap again, but it’s way too easy just to dump scraps down the in-sinkerator! Still, it’s better down there than in the rubbish bin.
I need to get fit. I’m not a gym kind of person, but I think I should aim to go running once a week. I’ll start off slow.
I want to be better organised. I think I’m going to go back to a physical diary and try that out for a while. Right now everything goes into my phone calendar, but I think my system could be better. And seeing as I’ll be spending all my working hours in front of a computer, I might start using my Gmail calendar too.
I want to catch up with friends more often. At least once every other week! Will schedule this and try to make arrangements ahead of time, rather than seeing if anyone is free on the spur of the moment.
This isn’t a post I particularly want to write, but it’s one I need to write.
I’m not really even sure how to phrase it, but here goes.
I’m having doubts. I’m just feeling really disillusioned.
I love writing. I like writing so much, I don’t even need to see my name in print – I don’t care if I get a byline.
But it’s so not a good way to make a living. Like Penelope Trunk’s said, if you can find another way to get by than by writing, you should take it.
So many of us went into journalism full of hopes and idealism. But once you learn more about the machine, it’s pretty near impossible to retain that.
News is so mundane. Things get blown out of proportion. There are PR/comm types who stonewall you and irate, often irrational readers who abuse you. There are actually people who talk media-speak – who speak in soundbites and try to make every sentence quotable.
I know there’s bureaucracy in any job. I know there are commercial concerns and I know there will always be people who you can never fully satisfy. People whose perceptions are so out there, people who are determined to infer things that aren’t there. I don’t just mean nitpicking, I mean straight up crazies. I know accountability is part of having any job, and as much as I fear screwing up and getting the facts wrong or misquoting, I would rather do that than be crunching numbers and potentially making errors which could spell catastrophe for a company’s bottom line. (Did I mention I went through a bunch of my old crap and found my old Stats workbook and exercises? I looked through them and actually recoiled. Then I threw it out. Not that stats has anything to do with, say, accounting, but maths is maths to me…)
People may look down on those who work in community news. But you know what, I enjoyed doing human interest stories. I enjoyed working with real people, with genuine, honest, humble and down to earth Kiwis.
I don’t really know where this is going… I just needed to get some stuff off my chest. And just lastly, if anyone out there is struggling with shorthand….freaking A, you’re not alone! It’s bloody impossible to keep up. I’m so not at the stage where I can do it without thinking – it requires concentration, which slows me down and makes it faster to use abbreviated longhand. Bring on second semester!
I recently discovered SleepyJane and her refreshingly honest take on relationships. It’s not often people blog so candidly, and it got me thinking more closely about my relationship with T (I may start referring to him by initial; I’m kind of sick of typing BF out so often!)
We’re both the same age (I’m four months older to be exact) and have been together since Dec 05. Three and a half years. It’s a long time. We’ve lived together for basically two and a half of those. But of course, it’s not all smooth sailing. The last six months have by far been the hardest for us – if not in my entire life – and they’ve really tested us.
And of course, there’s the day-to-day stuff that all couples deal with…but maybe don’t like to talk about. Some are mundane, some not so much. Nobody I know is at the stage in life that we are at (living together, combined money, totally independent and away from home) so I don’t really get to discuss this kind of stuff with anyone! Luckily, I have my trusty blog 😛
The small stuff
T is a freak. He needs hardly any sleep at all, and is usually awake at 6 or 7 without fail. He always berates me for sleeping too much – he’s a fan of the “more you sleep, the more you NEED to sleep” theory. Poor boy, he usually has to wait a couple of hours on the weekend mornings for me to wake up. He knows if he tries to disturb me it won’t be pretty…
He doesn’t brush his teeth often – yet NEVER gets bad breath – I’m trying to get him to brush more regularly so he doesn’t lose all his teeth before middle age.
He hates doing the dishes and doesn’t hang up his wet towels. If I ask him to do ONE thing for me, odds are 50/50 whether he will or not. If I ask him to do two, three or more things, I’ll be lucky if he does more than one. I swear, he NEVER gets things done, and it’s incredibly frustrating. This mainly relates to housework, so it’s not exactly fun stuff, but I do expect him to pull his weight.
We can both get incredibly annoyed, incredibly fast, over often incredibly stupid things. Although he generally handles me quite well, I find it hard to deal with him in those irrational kinds of moods (and you know, I feel like by this stage I should be able to).
He’s a big guy. He’s rarely ever cold. I swear he runs at 20 degrees higher than me; we need some supersmart duvet which cools him while heating my poor thin body. Often it’s hard to be in bed together, because while I’m shivering, he’s literally sweating. And nothing is more irritating than him settling in under the covers, while the fan’s on – because according to him, it’s too cold out of the blanket but too hot under it…
And the bigger stuff..
I don’t have a particularly high libido, which is pretty much the opposite of him. Hence: friction, from time to time (especially in the mornings).
Although he is smart, and talented, I would not describe him as particularly driven. Some people know what they want to do, where they want to be, and have it all figured out. I, at least, sort of always knew the path I’d follow…vaguely. He got started in engineering, and was great at it. He had ambitions: to get qualified, maybe even do a degree through night school, work hard, earn lots, travel with me, etc. Then that fell apart. Now he’s a bit lost. It’s almost like, if someone told him that he HAD to be in a particular industry, and do a particular thing, he would. He’d make the most of it and he’d succeed in that. I truly believe he can succeed in anything he wants to do. He’s just unfocused as to what that is. And it scares me a little; now I’m close to graduating, I’m truly in my “twenties” and I’m starting to feel that time’s marching on. Education and career wise, he’s now almost three years behind me.
Ah, the PF angle. Our relationship has not been good for my individual finances. I don’t imagine for a second anyone would ever have recommended we merge finances. But if we hadn’t, I hate to think how dire his situation might be had he had full rein of his account, say, until we got married, or something like that. I look after our money and I do it because we’re committed to each other. In the long term, this will be better for us and I want us to get a solid footing, and to be on the same page.
I know I have PLENTY of my own faults. Although I’d prefer to refer to them as quirks… eg, I got really upset at him for not eating the pack of salami we bought specially for him this week, which by now will be well past its use-by. What a waste! Seriously, I would have wolfed it down if he didn’t want it (I looooooove salami of all kinds). But you know, it was only $3. I should have let it go.
People don’t change, fundamentally, and there’s no point expecting them to. I guess it’s a matter of deciding what you can and can’t put up with, and what your dealbreakers are.
Sometimes you just have to stand back for a moment in time and marvel at how much has gone by and how much has changed.
Four years ago I was heartbroken from my first real relationship coming to an end.
I had just moved out on my own and at times I felt like nobody else had ever felt so alone.
I had another year left of high school and I wished I had been able to go to uni a year early (thankfully, I made the most of seventh form and don’t regret a moment. It was a fantastic year).
I had about $10 wiggle room in my budget and I lived on about $30-40 a week for food. I made toothpaste, shampoo, conditioner, skincare and toilet paper last as long as it possibly could.
So much has changed since then.
Today I look back and think, it’s amazing how much can happen in just a few years. I have a job related to my field of study, I’m about to graduate, I finally learned to drive, I know how to clean an oven and how to slice an onion. I met BF, someone who had gone to school pretty much alongside me but who I barely ever spoke to. He’s been in the army, worked a few jobs and is about to go back for more schooling. His nieces are 7 and 8, and they now have a baby sister and another on the way. They have a cousin, a baby boy. BF’s brothers have left school and started working, and are nearly old enough to start high school, respectively.
And yet I still think his nieces are about 4 and 5, and his youngest brother about 8. I still think of my brother as about 12, for goodness sake, and he’s almost 15. I guess it’ll always take me a few years to catch up – I’ll always be lagging behind. Isn’t that the beauty of being older? You’re expected to not know these things; to ask “what year are you in now?” and to squeal “but you were only THIS tall last time I saw you!”
This is life, and today I’m going to take a snapshot of it for posterity.
I wanted to be 18 so I could go to clubs and bars and pubs. I got over that pretty fast!
I’d like to be 21, I guess, because 21 sounds older. You’re really IN your twenties, and the older and more responsible you sound, well the better for finding places to live. (Yes, this is important to me. In four years I have lived more places than I did in my first 16 and I can’t tell you how much I hate moving and the process of looking for a new place!)
It’s nearly June and that will mean 2009 is halfway over! That’s really scary! What have I accomplished?
I’ve done nothing but work, fight my way through uni, and stress. But it’s my final year, and I really need to make grades my job. Doing well in these papers is way more important than ever before.
I’ve been waiting for some time or another for so long, financially speaking. End of summer – student loan. February – bed payment. May – BF’s fines. Always looking ahead, to something that can’t come soon enough.
Yet in real life, everything is whizzing past at the speed of light. What’s really telling is how quickly rubbish day comes along. Every Thursday I start in surprise that a week has passed and we need to wheel out the bins. My final portfolio is due next month. My mum’s birthday is next month, and I haven’t even begun to think about a present. BF will start his course in July. I graduate in December. AHHHHH!
I need to try to find a place in the here and now, and actually sit down to be in it. Even if I only savour the odd moment, like sitting in the Horse and Trap on Tuesday with my friends, fighting our way to the bottom of the pub quiz ranks.
We’re both the same age (I’m four months older to be exact) and have been together since Dec 05. Three and a half years. It’s a long time. We’ve lived together for basically two and a half of those. But of course, it’s not all smooth sailing. The last six months have by far been the hardest for us – if not in my entire life – and they’ve really tested us.
Recent Comments