Not actually grumpy

Hello there! I hope the new year is finding you well. It's finding me very well tbh. The general vibe, as far as I can tell from tumblr, is fuck last year this year rules? Which is something I can get behind. I'm glad I've documented the past few years on this blog, because I can see my own progression and remember that I've come a long way. I'm feeling very positive. I'm doing cheesy *positivity* things without shame, because they make me feel better. #Survival is so much more important than nonchalance and being cool. That is the theme this year. Shake off the shackles of irony and sarcasm. Stop pretending you don't care about yourself and what happens to you. Tell yourself you can do things. It makes you realise you weren't being realistic, you were actually holding yourself back.

Things I have done this year already:

1. Revisited my nano 2012 story and begun editing it.
2. Worked on the story of my nano 2013 story.
3. Started a story for a competition.
4. Almost sold out of Moss Piglet #1, and sold it at the zine fair yesterday.
5. Kind of successfully pushed work out of my mind while I'm not there (a work in progress)
6. Bought a new cymbal that I am in love with.
7. Hung out with nice people more. (being less socially anxious)(a work in progress)
8. Made some jewelry.
9. Played some gigs. (Bar Open + Boney)

So yeah. Going well.


How are you?

25

I turned twenty five a week ago. It was cool. These tights made my legs look really pale. These new shoes!!!

I've been thinking about writing something to do with age and how different it feels, but I'm not sure. The past three years I've been twenty two in my mind, and now suddenly I'm twenty five. It felt kind of scary leading up to it, but now it feels normal. Kind of good? Twenty one year olds seem very young. I guess they always were.

Whatever, life continues, regardless of your feelings. It's good. It means you won't be stuck doing the same old shit forever. I feel like I've been in a rut, and it's taken a long time to get out, but I'm finally making progress. I feel like I've also given up on the 'this is the year everything's going to change' attitude. That's some hollywood bullshit. And it gets in the way of real life. In which things change slowly, and never by themselves.

If you make cakes, your life will be filled with cakes. How good is that?! And I don't mean that as some cheesy metaphor for the cakes of life. I mean actual delicious cakes. The ones above were made by my friends, and they were coconut cakes. The best.

Get Away

I acquired this dress from a vintage dress sale on Lygon St just after Christmas. It's from Japan and maybe that makes me like it more, although I already liked it very much. It gives me vibes like this for some reason:

I saw Hunx and his Punx on Sunday night, which was awesome. I hadn't heard much of their stuff beforehand but it was very fun. I've been listening to this band a lot, and this song on repeat:

Very teenage. I made a birthday cake for my housemate Zoe last night, it was carrot and pineapple:

I haven't felt like blogging much, to be honest. It seems like every other day I'm at work, doing nothing when I could be doing something. My resolutions for this year have been to eat healthier, and to get a new job. Hospitality wears you down after a while, and even though I like the places I work and the people I work with, the nature of the industry is to make you feel like shit. Like a servant, and a cleaner. At some point I'd like to stop cleaning toilets and people's dishes. I'm not sure how or what I'm going to do, but it has to be something else. So the quest begins.

Speaking of quests... wasn't The Hobbit awesome? A few things let it down but I still thoroughly enjoyed it. I don't care if it's drawn out, to be honest I'm just happy to spend three hours in middle earth.

It's the end of the world as we know it

So this is prob the last post I do before the New Year. It's been a weird year, but I'm glad I've been doing this blog for such a length of time. It's nice, when you feel like you've done nothing, to be able to look back and realise that you did do things.

Hopefully next year makes more sense. Until then, hope everyone has a nice Christmas or whatever and resurfaces in 2013 with their brains and bodies intact.

That thing I don't want to think about anymore

The thing that's on my mind constantly right now, which I guess nobody really wants to have to dwell on but which we all have to at some point. I'm sick of talking about it, and I think everyone around me is sick of me talking about it, but when something is affecting you so much it's kind of inevitable.

I was recently employed into a job I hate. Literally everyone goes through this at some point in their lives; some people never get past the stage of hate-jobs and have them forever. This is a future I'm struggling to get away from, kicking and screaming while it pulls me under with its giant, sticky tentacles. A hospitality job which pays minimum wage, and requires maximum effort. A job where your boss stares over your shoulder the whole time, shouts at you if you make a mistake, and doesn't respect how many hours you've requested or which days. Or pay you for your trial.

I keep seeing this Einstein quote, which is just so relevant at all times: "Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid."

I just feel like a fish right now, ok? So many people are told they have to do these jobs, and they aren't good at them, but they are good at other things. I mean, I know my skills. They just aren't skills that are applicable in cafes. Or, to be honest, probably a lot of other meaningless jobs. Then again, I should be grateful for what I can get, right?

I'm turning twenty-four this year. It depresses me beyond measure that I am stuck doing this pointless shit, reading on blogs about people with glamorous lives and wondering desperately how they managed to get to that stage. People younger than me. How many people feel like this? When I read interviews where people talk about how they got their jobs, it inevitably ends with, "Oh, it just kind of happened." There is no guidebook for the socially inept or the people with less than exceptional looks. Not at all to discredit the hard work they've done, but there is an element of luck that I feel is disproportionate with everything else.

And then, after that stage, comes the disgust with my own constant complaining. So where is the end to this void? I feel like it's an abyss I've already slipped too far in to, and i need to escape but there's no clear way. Write a book? I am in the first stages, but books are not a way to make money. I can do it for the love of it, but I need to pay rent at the same time. And I can't go on in these jobs which suck my time and energy, and give back almost nothing in return.

On to less depressing things.

I went to the art gallery opening/gig for Celeste Potter and Ben Ely of Ouch My Face on Saturday. Ever since seeing them in a warehouse party a couple of years ago, I was an instant fan. Celeste has the most punk attitude I've ever seen, which is thankfully backed up by awesome music. Her paintings were of monsters and things made of slime, and she painted them in her own blood. Hardcore. Ben's paintings were a great mixture of humour and bright colours and weirdness, which I believe is the same attitude of his more famous band, Regurgitator. Supporting Ouch My Face were Bat Piss, who get better and better each time I see them, and Dead, who are always amazing. I fangirled out and bought a tshirt, badge and patch from them so I can look awesome all the time. Here is a picture of me wearing the tshirt, and also these amazing boots I just bought from the Salvos today. They were only twenty bucks and I am supremely happy with them. Fritz the cat decided he'd like to lounge casually in the photo.

Tights: American Apparel, Smiley face shoelaces: ebay

Fruity

I've been thinking a lot about my clothes recently and how my dressing has been affected by the internet. Or rather, how I take in information. When I was in high school, I never used to think of myself as someone who was interested in fashion, just someone who was interested in dressing. I didn't know the names of any designers, nor was I interested in learning about them. I was, however, obsessed with the look of certain materials, with costumes from period dramas, and with Japanese street fashion. I had no idea what Fruits was or where the pictures were coming from, but I saved up and bought the first book, even though it was expensive... because I just needed to look at the pictures all the time. I vowed to get a sewing machine, and to start making epic Final Fantasy costumes after discovering that people actually did it and that it was called cosplay.

When I think back to how old I was while this was happening, it seems really weird because I had no idea about blogs, or about anything. I never bought fashion magazines, and I never read anything to do with fashion. The clothes I wore to sixth form were either jeans, a tshirt and converse; something bizarre based on an anime I'd seen the night before; or a medieval fantasy costume. But I would never have said that it was 'fashion'. And now, I guess it's about ten years later, but there are literally thirteen-year-olds with blogs about feminism and white privilege. Like, at that age I would have scoffed at feminism and called something gay as an insult. I don't know. I feel like a very late developer in comparison. If I had read all these blogs and articles at that age, I'm sure I would have learnt a lot faster. Were they around them? Or did I just not read them?

Anyway, while I feel obviously a lot better educated now (you'd hope so, at twenty three) I also feel kind of lost when it comes to clothes. Back then, I had a much clearer idea of what I wanted to wear, because I didn't ingest even a fraction of the amount of images I do now. I feel like I've been looking at fashion blogs and tumblr  for so long that I don't even know if I like some clothes that I see or not. Everyone else likes them... and in a sense I can see why... but at the same time, I feel like I'm just being swept away in a wave of trends. And then there're trends that are not officially mainstream, but are like 'internet trends', and I see them so much that I can't understand whether everyone is wearing that shit or whether it's actually an underground thing. And then, why do I care so much whether something is mainstream or not? Because it's always affected how I dress, and I can't ignore it? Or is it just that I can't figure out if it's actually me or not?

UGH.

All of this resulted in me deciding last night that I hate those high waisted cut-off-to-the-crotch denim shorts everyone is wearing and everything associated with that look! Probably just because they look really bad on me. And also because I'm getting bored of seeing that look on a million different people. So in an effort today to get back to my dressing roots, I wore this:

Trusty poncho, which I don't wear enough, always makes me feel a bit Fruits. I was going to wear goth lipstick as well but I had to rush out and forgot about it. Even though those jeans are baggy and 80's as hell, I love them. I don't know why. I'm usually self conscious about wearing them because they aren't that flattering but fuck it, who cares about flattering? It's probably the worst concept to ever plague people's self esteem. It was nice to wear stuff that I love because it's comfortable and I feel like I'm not trying to be anything, I'm just being myself. More updates on that to come.

On Ruts and New Years Whatever

So it's coming up to that time of year when I start thinking about how new years resolutions are stupid, and how I never fulfill any of them, and how I'd like to be a COMPLETELY DIFFERENT PERSON next year, and then there's a montage in my head involving fairy floss, carnivals, and cutting paper into works of art that make people cry. And then inevitably I'm fantasising about living in an old two story townhouse in East Brunswick with wood floors and burgundy curtains.

So while I haven't cried, given up and decided to become a professional 'person who waits for Diablo 3 to come out,' I thought I'd have a think about what my realistic dreams are. As the well known anonymous Coburg job centre employee once said, "You just finished an arts degree, and you want to work in retail?"

1. Go on a journey

I was thinking about this last night. I'm going to go on a journey, or several, or they're going to be part of the same journey. It's going to be a journey that takes me through inspirational things, and leads me to ideas that I can become excited about. And goddamnit, I am actually going to do it this time! I feel like a lot of people feel the same way as me - that they're artistic, but unmotivated and lazy. That they could be doing things if they felt like it, but they just don't for whatever reason. And that they want to skip to the end of being a famous artist without doing all the hard stuff. Well you know what? That's just fucking lazy. Get over it.

2. Do more making shit

Also lazy am I for knowing that I am happiest making, and never making. Making begets more making I believe. So while I am being optimistic, I pledge to make heeappps of shit next year, in any and all spare time I have, and also in some of the more non-spare time. As a known lazy person, I will conquer my laziness by making whatever comes to mind with whatever is in the house. No excuses, and no getting addicted to like five tv shows at the same time. And no point, apart from the knowledge that it will do something for my sanity.

3. Less obsession with other people

Is this possible? Who knows. I had one of those tiny epiphanies today where I realised that dressing, and being concerned with clothing, is another way to embody other people when you're not as comfortable with yourself. Whenever I feel like I'd rather be someone else (which is often) I can just put the clothes on that a confident/interesting/whatever person would wear, and pretend that I am someone else. Which is pretty unhealthy and teenagerish. So maybe less thinking about other people and more accepting that I am one person and not everyone.

4. More bike riding

Duh.

5. You know what? I'm having a pretty hard time of thinking of anything concrete to aim for next year let alone ever, so I might leave it at that. I kind of think those top three are my ongoing life goals anyway, and have been forever. Well, let's make it happen this time instead of bumming around under the pretense of studying.

Actually,

6. Take more photos.

Because I seriously am not documenting any of the people around me enough. I know there's the whole, 'live in the moment rather than taking photos' thing but I have a reallly bad memory and I know I will be upset when it's all gone. And I don't take any so a few couldn't hurt my enjoyment of moments.

Oh yeah... and maybe one of these:

Photo courtesy of someone on fyeahsticknpoke.tumblr.com

I feel like something doesn't make sense

Now go on, make friends follow your dreams ignore the bullies, tell the teacher, don't be friends with her, she's trouble, do your homework play violin, don't talk during class never do that again, follow your dreams be happy. Well done you're good at reading, try harder at maths wear your uniform properly tie your shoelaces, don't draw on the walls don't draw on the pavement draw on paper during free time good well done that's a nice picture of an angel that's a nice picture of a house no don't draw yourself as a devil surfing on lava that's very bad. what is this don't shout at boys don't hit them with sticks don't play with those kids this is very bad your behaviour has not been good and needs to get better. Good grades well done keep doing your homework keep following your dreams haha what you want to be an astronaut have a more realistic dream you can't be that it's too hard you won't be able to. You can do and be whatever you want work as hard as you can follow all the rules and you'll be at the top of the class you'll get into the best university you need to study for these exams just follow the rules just learn everything just do what the teacher says follow your heart don't go out to the cinema i don't want to see you with that boy again follow your heart study harder if you don't get into university you won't have a good job choose your career now choose what you like choose something remember to study hard write essays follow your dreams do what you think is right. You know what's right and wrong follow your heart, don't go to that protest don't get arrested don't walk there don't sit there don't camp there, what are you going to do when you finish, get a job work for someone follow your dreams get a job, pay the bills and rent get a job so you can buy the things you want buy more things and support the economy, if you work hard you'll be a contributing member of society, don't go on centrelink it's demoralising, get a job follow your dreams. Stop complaining about what you don't understand, you know in your heart what's right and wrong, stop being biased and prejudiced understand it's all there to help you, one day you'll be rich too, one day you'll understand, don't be so naive, follow your dreams, trust us.