GODDAMN

I AM GRUMPY.
I HAVE HAD A BAD DAY.

GRARR.

ahhh. Feelings vented.

Bits and Pieces

Blogs are easier if your life is interesting....or if you are emo.

Not much has happened in the last few months, although I did have yet another birthday and my baby girl replaced my broken iPod. Hurrah!

These two points aside, it's been pretty quiet on the Brodie front. So instead of having a retrospective blog entry, I will look to the future. We will look toward tomorrow for inspiration!

In a few short weeks, I will return to University full-time and return to Slingshot part-time. My reasons for this are numerous but can be summed up as thus:

• To get any further then where I currently am at Slingshot (which is where I have been for over a year) I need to pledge my allegiance for at least another year. I was tempted, but:
• I have decided that work is a vicious circle. If you work hard for little reward, in order to gain a reward further down the track, your employer simply decides you should've be working that hard in the first place. You don't get a pay rise. If you revert to taking it easy, you're not working hard enough and you will not be getting a pay rise. It is a lose/lose situation. This is ok if your job is fun and your co-workers nice people. When your job is about as interesting as watching grass-coloured paint dry and your colleagues are the kind of people your parents advised you to avoid, the status-quo is tolerable only for so long.
• As such, University seems more tempting. Because sure, I can find a new job, but then the cycle begins again, just with different names and a cleaner desk.
• Theoretically, at least, University means the next time I get a job it may be in a field that is somewhat interesting.
  
• Thus, the above cycle begins again, but you're ok with it. Yay!

Welcome to real life, kids. When did we get so old?

Anyway, I'm trying to convince myself uni will be great fun. I'm not having much luck. I see students every day and every day I feel older, grumpier and more detached. I'm no longer the kind of person who will go to University to hang out with my mates at Shadows or to smoke in the Quad with my equally bum-like friends. I'll go because I want to finish my degree. I'll be there to learn. The social urge has been subjected to the horror of the real world and withered away.

Most of you are boring, annoying, disturbed, weird, crazy or otherwise unpleasant. I don't want to know about your boyfriend or your girlfriend. I don't really care what movie you saw on the weekend. I saw Oceans Thirteen and like everything else in life, it was - at best - 'pretty good'. And in a world where the bar is set just below mediocrity and the driving force of youthful naivety is gone, it is hard for me to make new friends. It was hard enough to pretend to care for the sake of your feelings when I was 18, good luck getting me to smile and nod when I'm 22.

But here's the thing...

I think I know the reason why my smiles have become half-heated. The reason why my lemonade is slightly too sour, rather than slightly too sweet.

I'm not at University.

I'm at Slingshot.

If I'm honest with myself, I just didn't get as much out of my last few years as I thought I had. Professionally AND personally. If nothing else, this decision can't make anything worse.

And in this day in age, that alone is enough to make me pretty damn happy. :)