Moving into the real world

I had a dream the other night. I dreamt that I was in a huge, warehouse-like furniture store. I was with my sister and we were looking at those bedroom sets which are on display and give you the impression that for a moment you actually live there. We sauntered along from one “room” to another, admiring the various furnishings and carvings in the wood. Taking a wrong turn, I found myself in an area different to the previous one I had been standing in; this time there were chests of drawers and lampshades. Poking out of one of the draws was a pair of blue boxer shorts that had an odd triangle design sewn into them. My intuition told me that I had to seek out a sales assistant to cut along the perimeter of the triangle. So I went in search of a person who bore the furniture stores’ logo, and I requested that she help me to complete the task that was required of me. That’s when realised that I was the only customer in the store, for as I turned around to look at my surroundings, there were sales assistants and store workers everywhere, going about their jobs and being useful, while I stood there like a lump, every passer-by failing to notice me. That’s when I woke up.

The images conjured in our minds during the course of our sleep are said to resemble how we feel in our waking life, or that they have some kind of connection to it somehow. Being the incredibly analytical person that I am, more often than not I find myself coming out of my dream state with an extreme curiosity at what I just saw. What I think my furniture store dream represents is my underlying desire to work. Sometimes I feel as though I am cruising through my teenage years, going shopping and looking at art deco and what not, while others my age are slaving away in shops all over the place, earning money to pay for their future car and so they can independently purchase goods with their own savings, rather than relying on their parents like me. The sales assistants that were all around me in my dream represented these people, moving into the adult world, as I stood where I was, not even attempting to break out of the comforts of parental assistance when it comes to money.

Why does it seem like I am the only fifteen year old out there without a job? Whenever I’m in a public place that has shops about, I am forever noticing customers being served by someone who goes to high school, or worse, looks even younger than me – one of those fresh-faced fifteen year olds' in year nine who has their birthday before everyone else.  Most of my friends work, using their own bank cards to pay for clothes and food on those outings we go on together. On one occasion a friend of mine even gasped when I produced a $50 note from my cash-filled purse to pay for some sushi. “Wow, how much money do you earn Simone?” was her response. Awkwardly enough, I had to inform her that the money was given to me by my parents to pay for today, where she gave me a look of disapproval, obviously objecting the spoilt-little-girl thing I appeared to have going on with my parents. Not that I am spoilt. I mean, in our household we use our own money to pay for things. Like, whenever I receive Christmas or birthday money, my parents record it under my name, and whenever me or my sister buy new perfume or clothes, that amount is deducted from the original amount. Though when you compare me to the friend who has her own savings account, where she can deposit her hard-earned wages into, my situation with money looks pretty pathetic, really.

Don’t get me wrong, I’d love to work and make money, in fact, I’m looking into applying for a job, to add another extracurricular activity to keep my schedule full. The thought that keeps crossing my mind though, is what if I’ve left it too late? What happens if all of the places I apply to have no jobs on offer and reject me? What if I am forever unemployed for the rest of my life because I failed to kick-start my career when I was fifteen? I know, I’m overreacting. But seriously. Let’s put this into perspective here. People are forever quitting casual and part time jobs, so a vacant position is bound to come up sooner or later. If I do get rejected, then I’ll try someplace else, no big deal.

Neither of my parents had jobs when they were my age. Both entered the workforce as adults, studying part time in their early twenties – and look at them now. My mum managed to afford a unit after saving for years, right? Hopefully I’ve inherited her money-managing ways. And realistically speaking, there are others out there, who are even older than me in year eleven and twelve, who don’t have jobs. That doesn’t make them any less of a person. Maybe they don’t have time and already have their plates full? There is no written rule that you have to work when you are fifteen. Anyway, if I don’t finish this post soon, all of the job vacancies out there really will disappear. Reality, here I come...

These things don't just happen

Sometimes things happen to us which make us wonder “Since when was my life a movie?”  I’m talking about those moments that have only existed as of now in your head, fantasies which you can dream about and have complete control over how wonderfully perfect they play out.  An occurrence like the above moments happened to me today, but definitely not the way I saw it in my own mind.  It was ridiculously scary how it came to be. So it’s an ordinary school lunchtime, I’m casually pacing the school with close friends, bump into other friends and decide to sit with them instead – it’s a common practise. Nonchalantly striking up conversation about classes we’re taking and outings we’ve been on when our conversation is directed down the way of my undying love for a certain person. Seems like the whole class knows by now, the way I get hysterical if he even makes eye contact with me. I’m so childish. Must learn to master the art of confidence and learn to have a friendly presence among those I meet. Like him I suppose, with his gentle nature and golden hair, the way he wears his shorts and tie...moving on with my recount.
We’re laughing about how awkwardly psyched I can get when he is around, when a familiar glint of gold appears in the corner of my eyes. OH MY GOSH! He is in the vicinity, keep breathing, act normal, don’t make it obvious you’re ogling his athletic physique, but wait – are those words coming out of his mouth being directed our way? Regaining control of my brain, my ears are telling me yes. He repeats himself.“Hey, girls, can you please get our ball over there?” Huh? Oh right, the ball he was using to oh-so-athletically play down ball with on the courts which I was briskly looking over to before. One of my friends gets to her feet, abruptly stopping herself to kindly point out that I should be the one who returns his ball. Managing to uncoordinatedly stand, I realise my left leg has fallen asleep and a rush of prickly blood flows down my left side, paining me. Attempting to motion over to where he patiently leans on the fence, I’m unable to make eye contact, hobbling like a crippled person at a snail’s pace. I’ve made it to the garden bed, yet are failing to notice any ball contained within the leafy undergrowth. “Where is it? Oh, I see it...is that it?” I squeak. My voice is caught in my throat and barely audible to my own ears. The inability to meet his blue eyes is still upon me and I collect the ball from the plants, standing up on the stone wall that encloses the flower bed. I extend my arm to throw the ball, probably higher than necessary and incredibly close to the fence, and it just makes it over. Damn short genes.
 Overcome by shock at how close I have come to this handsome boy, I immediately jump back onto the path and scurry back to where my friends are sitting, or more like hunched over, heaving for breath between red-faced bursts of laughter. I make out the sound of his voice behind me “Thanks, girls!” (He has such manners) followed by the patter of his feet back to his own mates. As I began to comprehend what took place in the last few minutes that lunchtime, my head fell into my hands with utter embarrassment and awkward shame. I can only assume how shocked I would have appeared before my crush, as my friends failed to watch on, simply too choked by the unrealistic hilarity of it all. How did I not even look at him? Where did my conversational small talk voice go? Why hadn’t I at least smiled at the irresistible one? Regret filled me as I overanalysed that scene over and over in my mind for the rest of the afternoon. Even sitting here, writing this, I think of what an impression I could have made. If only in those split seconds I behaved normally. Or perhaps it is in my personality to transform into the ultimate derp whenever a gorgeous guy is around. Who knows? Looks as though I have a lot of practice to do until fate decides we shall meet again. Whenever that is.

Learning the hard way

So they say if you make a mistake you learn from it, but what happens when it isn’t your fault or out of your control? Is it the balance of the universe, that in order for good things to happen to you, you have to experience the bad things too?  Yesterday, a terrible accident occurred. It saw me howling with grief in a messy pile on the floor, at the loss of my past two weeks of photos taken on my camera. Long story, short: sister and I took artistic photos, I let sister look at camera, sister presses some buttons, camera deletes all photos, including precious pictures taken with relatives who we only see once a year, days spent with friends and photography I had taken. Has there ever been a moment when you’ve lost hours worth of work on a computer, and a sudden wave of frustration combined with anger coupled with sadness mixed with utter disappointment surges through you, and at a loss for words, you cry your eyes out. Maybe I was just overreacting when I wailed over my lost photos, but the knowledge that all that time setting up scenes for pictures had gone to waste, that I would never again have a frozen memory of that day with friends and I kept on thinking “How could she have been so stupid as to press the delete button?! You have to go through like, three different stages to do that!” After finally getting a grip back on reality, I reminded myself that I am powerless to do anything about it, and the pictures are irretrievable. All I could do was move on. A hint of guilt snuck its way into my conscience and told me that there are billions of starving people out there who are struggling to feed themselves, never having even seen a camera, and I was a disgrace to society for whining about some deleted images that could always be taken again, another time. What was the lesson in this? Don’t ever let somebody else use your camera? Always set protection on your favourite photos so they cannot be deleted? Upload photos regularly so they can’t be lost? Life’s a bitch? I'm guessing all four.
Why do things work out the way they do? I could blame karma for what happened, that squashing that bug to its death has finally caught up with me and what goes around comes around. I could blame my sister’s short attention span or inability to work a camera. I could blame the “Camera software recovery program” for not being able to retrieve my lost images. Yet, perhaps it was no ones fault, and I am not being punished for my wrongdoings. Maybe we don’t need to understand why bad things happen in this world, maybe they just befall us and we have to accept them, deal with them and move on. It could be a test of character. What still baffles me though, is that no matter how much preparation or effort goes into something, there will always be a chance that it won’t work out, and failure is always a possibility. I had been planning the photo shoot for weeks in advance and my sister is the technology whizz of the family, yet still, what happened, happened and the photo shoot did not go ahead. Disturbances will interrupt how things turn out, obstacles block our way and when you think you know everything about a person, they will always turn around and do the complete opposite of what you expected.
For some reason, whenever I really, really want something to happen, thinking and wishing and hoping for it - it avoids me. When I've given up hope on it, stopped believing in it, what do you know? The one time it isn’t on my mind,  it happens. You thought that if you work hard you will be rewarded? You will. But not when you think you will, as nothing is for certain. You know what I think? The only thing that is for certain, is change.

Holidays are here

We are in the midst of the best time of the year. In case you didn’t know, I am referring to that period of six weeks that precedes the four tedious school terms each year, the time of year for endless days of sleeping in, chowing down on summer fruit and leftover Christmas food, giving your bedroom a much-needed makeover, watching repeats of Degrassi and Friends that you didn’t get to see during the year and getting away with days spent doing nothing. Yes, the summer holidays are indeed the most enjoyable, more so than the two week breaks between school terms. They last long enough for you to rest rejuvenate, but they simply don’t allow you to get all those things that need doing, done. What frustrates me about the two week break is that, lasting only a fortnight, you have enough time to relax and complete all of the holiday homework you were given in preparation for the coming term, but by the time you have recuperated, the holidays are over and you miss the chance to fix your broken earring and knit that stuffed animal you planned on making to liven up your bookshelf. The benefits of the summer holidays is that you get what I refer to as “The four stages” – to veg out, clean out, fly out and accomplish inner peace.

The first stage describes the first two weeks that mark the beginning of the best time of the year, where you get to sit in your pyjamas on the couch all day reading, sleep all afternoon, post blogs complaining about lack of motivation, or waste time watching daytime shows like The Doctors at lunchtime, munching on chocolates with high sugar content that weren’t consumed during the Christmas festivities. In the second stage, or the weeks following expansive episodes of inactivity, your body feels the need to move, and your motivation returns. You actually manage to use a sweltering night unable to sleep to sort through your school papers that have occupied a corner of your room since exams, coated in a nice layer of dust and resembling a “before” shot of a bedroom makeover. Naturally being quite an organised person, I have a tendency to enter a frenzy of sorting, where I lose all sense of time, preoccupied with the nature of my untidy room, the grotty garage shelf, the cupboard that won’t close.
By the time all of the cleaning has been completed, with outings among friends and days of shopping in between those of tidying, the time has come for the much anticipated family holiday overseas. What can I say? Two weeks in New Zealand takes oneself away from the troubling realities of home life in Australia (what I mean is the knowledge that the days of freedom are limited from here on in), and the sights, sounds and tastes of a foreign country make for a memorable adventure. Upon return from the land of the kiwis, your to-do list has halved in size, with the burden of returning to headache-inducing homework and hot afternoons of long car trips looming like an image that won’t leave you, it hits home that only a week remains to finish the bedroom art you started and to label all of your school books for the year.
At this current point in time, I am in the final days of stage two, preparing for the trip of the year, having completed the majority of cleanouts that need to be done, but suffering from holiday burnout, which is ironic since breaks are supposed to relieve you of the stress a full-on schedule brings. Even so, it is the kind of self-satisfaction-sense-of-accomplishment burnout that makes me feel okay about slaving away late at night, designing the layout of art for my bedroom, because hey, this opportunity only comes around once a year.

All I want for christmas

Now I'm not the kind of person who views christmas as the time of year to get your friends to buy you what you want, but that doesn't mean that I can't make a wishlist of items to dream about in the nights leading up to santa's arrival...

1) Nikon L120 camera in wine red
2) Proper hockey shoes and a graphite stick
3) Some cute room decor or wall art from Typo
4) New bedspread that doesn't look like it belongs in a cottage
5) Glossy magazines
6) Kimono Jacket made from delicate fabric
7) Hair curler
8) New alarm clock that doubles as an iPod dock
9) Retro bathers
10) New school bag - the kind with thin straps and floral patterent fabric
11) New glasses frames that don't make me look nerdy
12) Franc Essentials exfoliant to update my skincare regime
13) Blue or green kohl pencil for a differernt make-up look
14) Some new summer dresses in bold patterns

I'd rather be sleeping

You would be correct to assume that upon the conclusion of school for the year, a sense of celebration and the excitement for the fun-filled weeks of freedom to come would make anybody jump with joy. So why am I so restless that I have difficulty sitting still? It is that the summer holidays, which I have been anticipating for months before, looking forward to having the free time to do what I wish, no pressure of deadlines for assignments or exam revision, just pure me time, have finally happened and I have am clueless of what to do with myself? I feel tense and easily irritated with everyone who reminds me that in my spare time I should get to work, when they have no idea that I have worked myself into the ground, right to the point of burn out this year and the only thing I feel like doing is snoozing for a hundred years a là Sleeping beauty. It is as if no matter how much rest I get, I will never be able to feel motivated again.

There was a point after exams where my body had pushed itself to the end degree for two more bludge weeks of school, charging into holiday mode. Now I am free though, the limited days of relaxation presenting themselves before me as the only opportunities I have to get anything done before school starts for 2012, the pressure to get my family and friends Christmas presents before the twenty-fifth of December rolls around is gnawing at my every thought, but I simply cannot be bothered. I've just pushed myself so far that I am letting everything go - my nails have been picked down to the quick and are chipped, my hair is in desperate need of a trim and let spare you the details of the state of my desk.

Strangely, when you are counting the days until you are free from the school routine, longing for a change in the monotonous routine and it finally arrives, why is it that you then long for the comfort and certainty of the repetitive school routine again? Am I a sad individual for missing the routine? Or is it not the routine I am missing, but the feeling of progression and achievement that one feels during school time?

Why is life so unfair? And why can't I stop complaining about everything there is to complain about?

Time passing

I can always tell when a great deal of time has passed, when the billboard at the petrol station I pass on my way to school changes. This gives me an indication that since the cherry ripe billboard was replaced by an advertisement for a milky beverage, I have had a picnic at a friend’s house, finished a science presentation on the nautilus, and attended a pool party. It measures progress, and what has happened in a time period. Everyone has their own personal way of measuring how much time has passed, whether it be counting the weeks since you had a major experience or noting how tall the grass in your backyard has gotten.  
Every civilisation has some device of method for recording time – modern civilisations use clock’s whose ticking hands that portray seconds, minutes and hours, while native tribesmen might use sun solaces or structures which resemble stone henge. Time is inevitable. It is one of those guaranteed things – like death, which is the only promised destiny for every living thing – that no matter what happens to the Earth of the people on it, time will keep passing, moving forward into the next days and weeks to come and leaving the past behind it. This leaves us two options, to either dwell on the past and whinge about “what could have been”, or to move on and look at the bigger picture. Dwelling is a waste of time as once you have dedicated those free moments to worrying, which could have been spent on something more worthwhile, you can never have that time again.
Time is precious because you can forget how little of it you actually have. Think of time as a highway, with all of us racing along it like cars, all moving towards the darkest destination of all and not bothering to slow down, because we can’t, as life has reached full speed and there are no moments to stop and rest. Have you ever had a sick day spent at home, sniffling and spluttering on the couch, armed with a stack of movies and a box of tissues? Then you reach that stage where the only thing you want is to return to normal health, lying on the couch in anticipation of recovery. It is times like those when you realise how many hours there are in a day, really, it is just up to you as to how you want to spend them.

Like the weather, time is really something as it is one of the few things that no matter whom you are, or how much wealth or power you have, you cannot alter it. It is funny how time works, that when you are in a hurry to be somewhere, time works against you and moves quicker, just to make you more stressed and arrive later. Or otherwise, time moves slower when you are lying awake at night, in anticipation for the excitement that tomorrow will bring. It appears that time can change people, ageing them physically, or maturing them emotionally, yet time seems to have brought about changes in the blink of an eye, but it only seems this way when we take a moment to reflect back at how life once was, and that is when we notice the changes, which in reality took years that took much time.