Yesterday, Josh finally finished moving all his stuff into my our unit. Sadly, I was in a terrible mood all day, so there was very little savouring of the shift to living in sin my well and truly becoming ineligible for Centrelink if I ever was significant changes in life. I was moping because I am mopey; my self-esteem is always on a knife’s edge these days so it doesn’t take very much. While ferreting around in my parents’ shed yesterday (which produced a free rusty bike and a free giant aquarium!) I noticed my dad’s old filing cabinet had a few quotes about work stuck on it, including: “A man’s work is his dilemma: his job is his bondage, but it also gives him a fair share of his identity and keeps him from being a bystander in somebody else’s world.” – Melvin Maddock. I am feeling less and less like a real person and getting to feel quite lonely in my unemployed, purposeless little world. It’s not at all about the money (it’s sad seeing my savings going down, but I won’t starve anytime soon), it’s about achieving something day-to-day and being worth something.

Anyway. In honour of the completed move, here is a photo of me and Josh’s fridge.

Josh always has Chairman Kaga (scanned from a newspaper) on his fridge, but the printout was all old and ugly, so we got the original scan from his sister, and I photoshopped his face to make it not have newsprint on it, and then I printed it out and contacted it onto a magnet backing. It is now PREMIUM Chairman Kaga!

While bored, I also made magnetic poetry with some printable magnetic paper.

This is Josh’s favourite:

My exercise planner! TBH, I am getting a bit fed up with exercise, because I’ve been doing it daily, in fact religiously, and have eaten reasonably, yet have only gained weight :( But the planner helps get me moving despite this.

I have got 7 free 2010 calendars so far and I am keeping them all. The over-representation of the Liberal party by no means implies a political leaning in that direction, I just didn’t get any from any other parties :( The house a few numbers down from me sold for $3 million last month; I don’t think Labor actually bothers advertising in this suburb.

Finally, the anti-depression pony. It came in a water-colours set that Lisa gave me for my birthday, so I duly painted it one day after school last year. Quoth Josh, “This is going straight on the fridge!”. It’s held on by the “Depression: You’re not Alone” magnet because you read the magnet, then you look down and see the rainbow pony, and you know that this is true. There’s a pony.

My wardrobe before:

My wardrobe after:

It is colour coded and labelled, and separated into jumpers, tops, skirts, and dresses! I need school to go back.

I put together my new bed today. It took HOURS. My hand hurts a lot :( But I am not sleeping on the floor tonight!

I am working as typist/mail girl at my mum’s clinic three days this week and all of next. They’re only 5hr days and it’s not a real job, but it is better than hanging around.

My mum was saying things like “yeah it’s not exactly putting your brains to use” and I pointed out that jobs of that level are the kind I am currently applying for and failing to get, it’s not as though I’m going to do better if I ever to do get a real job, and she said something along the lines of “negative thought patterns blah blah!!” but… no?

I was talking about this yesterday with Tim. My mum honestly believes that I have wonderful qualifications that will eventually get me an awesome job, quite fairly because in her generation that would have been true. So it’s what I was always told, my whole life: “You’re smart! You have to go to uni so you can get a good job and be successful!” But it’s not the case now; you can be bright and qualified without it meaning much at all to an employer. And it’s difficult to see various people I know who never got a degree (or did a short degree, even) in satisfying careers and financially so much better off than I am, with my $21g HECS debt and the missed income of six years when I could have been earning a full-time wage, and coming out of it with prospects that are only minimally better than those I had going in (if indeed better at all, given the employment experience and opportunities for promotion those years would have provided). Missing out on success by choosing education was never presented to me as a possibility when I was a teenager. And to be honest, I feel betrayed by that. I feel like I was promised things that weren’t true, and I feel like I have fucked myself over by taking that on and not thinking about it harder and making a better plan when I could have.

- Playing NationStates2 (poorly)
- Getting fat from being at home too much :(
- Resisting the urge to bake for fear of compounding that problem
- Taking antibiotics AGAIN wah
- Waiting to hear back about jobs? At all?? But getting offered some possible highly reputable hourly work via my old mentor teacher which will be great if it happens, and hopefully some casual stuff at my mum’s clinic
- Hoping that my teacher’s registration goes through by Wednesday so I don’t have to do another Mandatory Notification course, laaame
- Cleaning up massively! All my stuff is SO ORGANISED.
- Upgrading to a queen-size bed… with bargains! 50% off on my quilt, two complete sheet sets for $30, 60% off on my quilt cover, 35% off my mattress and free delivery… and $99 bed frame from Ikea to be acquired on Saturday! So many bargains.
- Praising modern medicine. Antibiotics are wonderful!
- Knitting
- WISHING I HAD A JOB

Hum. So my intention is to move out of home fairly early next year, depending on my employment status/location. It turns out I have three separate human entities expressing interest in moving out with me! Yay options, but… I am going to HURT AT LEAST TWO FEELINGS! :(

This weekend I was not at home from 8am Friday until 11:15pm Sunday. I am tired and my homework is Not Done At All.

Also I am all weird and sick. So I was way stroppy at work today. My bosses were trying to give me work all afternoon and I was like NO!! Too busy!! Leave me alone!! and… they did? Then it got to 4:30pm and I was like… oh. I am quite comfortably almost done? And I was out by 5:01! I need to be a bitch more often! Or be nicer, and not get fired.

I hesitated to post this cos it is so random, but.

My air conditioner is famous on the internet ^o)

Despite being 24 years old, I still live with my parents. This is a medium to high source of angst for me but, currently, I’m the richest I’ve ever been and my finances are such that I could probably afford to pay rent or to buy food, but certainly not both at once. (Please don’t talk to me about utilities or, like, furniture, I do not want to hear!)

Incidentally, by the end of this year, I’ll have done six years of full-time study since 2002 and my debt will be about half of my prospective annual income. Hooray for tertiary education!

Anyway. The main reason I wish I didn’t live with my parents, apart from having my style cramped by being constantly babysat, and the lack of necessity for me to get much from Ikea, is that I wish I had control over more than one space in my home. Because, well. My ability to waste time is stellar and I’ve been thinking about ways to boost my productivity. Apart from monitor size (which I am addressing by moving from a 12″ to a 20″ as soon as I can!) and desk neatness (something which I am kind of doomed to never achieve for more than 20 minutes I think), I’ve been pondering ways to self-discipline. I’ve decided that, ideally, I would have two completely different computers in two different rooms; one for work and one for play. The “fun” computer would have email and Facebook and pop music and MSN; the “productive” computer would have… Microsoft Word, and maybe some Bach. And it would live in an uncluttered room (or, a corner, if spare rooms are scarce as they are likely to be) without a TV in range.

The problem with my bedroom is that I do everything in here: sleep, study, watch tv, surf, read, talk on the phone, get dressed, do my hair, write, and… eat, quite often. No wonder the energy in here is fragmented! It is too much for one little room to handle! I think an analogy can be drawn with insomnia guides that tell you to make sure you don’t do things like study or watch TV in bed, because you want to train your psyche to treat it only as a place for sleeping. My desk is too many things at once.

But, how lovely! Set yourself a realistic target, disappear to your “productivity room”, emerge when you have met it!

Then hop back onto Facebook for another round of Herd-a-Word.

I think this would be perfection.