I have quite a few friends. People I know I can rely on when I need something, or want to share something. People that I would gladly go out of my way for.
But then there is a smaller group. The people I talk to at least every few days. The ones that get excited over the same things as me. The ones that will send me 20 emails in a day just to talk about cleaning their room, or eating cake.
You guys make me so happy.
You make being an adult fun.
I never need your approval to do anything, because you’ll support me even if my ideas are emotional and irrational.
Your money is a grand thing. It helps people like me, who don’t have formal qualifications but quite like sitting in front of a computer all day and are good at it, do the things they like. Buy the things they like. Travel to places far far away from you.
In your offices overhearing 30 minute conversations about why the printer is taking so long can be quite entertaining. Finding words like synergies and inter-dependencies in documents give sane people like me a bit of a laugh. (Hearing them said out loud however makes it hard to choose between laughing in your face and punching you in the face for being a pretentious dickwad.) And the free fruit helps to battle how gross I feel sitting in air conditioning 5 days a week.
Seeing how much money you waste though pisses me off. Giving temps, like me, work to fill only half their days is a huge waste of money. Money that me, my friends, and my family pay to the government in taxes.
And seeing how much power you give to Middle Managers that have no fucking clue pisses me off. Don’t you know it’s the little people that do all the work? They’re the ones that will leave and find another job quite easily when you won’t listen to a word they say. Sure, Middle Manager, you’re the one that will take the flak if shit hits the fan. But the little people you manage aren’t that concerned about that flak when you treat them like shit.
But do you know what’s great about coming back in to the office after a year away?
It’s reminded me why I left. Why temping is definitely the right choice for me. Why this is a money earner, not a career. And most of all, why focusing on my own business is important.
I want to try harder. I’ve been very slack the last 8 months. I forgot why I was running my business and how amazing that opportunity is.
Now I just have to wait for this assignment to be over so I can try again.
Using my finely tuned powers of figuring stuff out I realised that this style of blogging wasn’t working for me any more. With only a handful of posts published in 2010 it’s a far cry from the days of 2009 when I’d stay up till 4 in the morning getting orders packed and making sure I had written something for the blog.
These days all my time is spent eating food and, yeah, eating food. Oh and hanging out with that guy I like. So with an abundance of time and still nothing productive going on I realised it was time to stop being such a lazy bitch and fix it. I signed up to a couple of temping agencies and got a job for the month of August (yay me) in order to pay back some of the money I borrowed from my savings. I finally got around to getting my awesome flatmate to help me with a new logo/blog header/business cards. I started cooking real food instead of eating from a packet. And I finally arranged to see Mum after 8 months of not seeing her.
None of that fixed the lack of writing going on though. And my exceptionally boring temping job seems to be leaving me with more down time than up time. Fellow blogger/friend/super organised woman that seems to have actual discipline over herself and manages to actually work for and achieve her goals Kelly, suggested we meet to discuss bloggy plans and I’m quite happy for any excuse to meet in a cafe so we met this afternoon. I needed something that would be easy, that would allow me to write about whatever I wanted but having something quirky and structured about it. Ideally a barrage of wit and sarcasm would flow out of me like bloggers I’ve already mentioned numerous times on Cupcakes and Mace, but I’m just not great at writing like that. And then I realised the simple solution is to write here the way I write in my head. In letter form.
When I’m frustrated with someone I write them a letter telling them why they’re a dick and then I hide it. When I’m in love with something I tweet. Now whenever I have an opinion on anything I’ll be sending you a letter to tell you all about it.
I thought I’d share some sweet videos I’ve favourited on Youtube.
Neil Patrick Harris is the SHOE FAIRY. Fuck yeah.
Just like all the other movies from your youth you figured that if you watched Little Shop of Horrors again you’d ruin it because it wouldn’t be as good as your remembered right? If this one song is anything to go by I think that hypothesis is wrong!
500 Days of Summer wasn’t too awful, I guess. I mean Joseph Gordon-Levitt starred in it and I’ve loved him since I first saw 3rd Rock from the Sun. But this trailer looks like it’d make a much better movie!
Excerpts from Christina Hendricks: A Letter to Men, published in Esquire May 2010
“We love your body. If we’re in love with you, we love your body. Your potbelly, everything. Even if you’re insecure about something, we love your body. You feel like you’re not this or that? We love your body. We embrace everything. Because it’s you.
Speaking of your body, you don’t understand the power of your own smell. Any woman who is currently with a man is with him partly because she loves the way he smells. And if we haven’t smelled you for a day or two and then we suddenly are within inches of you, we swoon. We get light-headed. It’s intoxicating. It’s heady.
We remember forever what you say about the bodies of other women. When you mention in passing that a certain woman is attractive — could be someone in the office, a woman on the street, a celebrity, any woman in the world, really — your comment goes into a steel box and it stays there forever. We will file the comment under “Women He Finds Attractive.” It’s not about whether or not we approve of the comment. It’s about learning what you think is sexy and how we might be able to convey it. It’s about keeping our man by knowing what he likes.
We also remember everything you say about our bodies, be it good or bad. Doesn’t matter if it’s a compliment. Could be just a comment. Those things you say are stored away in the steel box, and we remember these things verbatim. We remember what you were wearing and the street corner you were standing on when you said it.”
“Remember what we like. When I first started dating my husband, I had this weird fascination with the circus and clowns and old carnival things and sideshow freaks and all that. About a month after we started dating, he bought me this amazing black-and-white photo book on the circus in the 1930s, and I started sobbing. Which freaked him out. I thought, Oh, my God, I mentioned this three or four weeks ago and talked about it briefly, but he was really listening to me. And he actually went out and researched and found this thing for me. It was amazing.”
“About ogling: The men who look, they really look. It doesn’t insult us. It doesn’t faze us, really. It’s just — well, it’s a little infantile. Which is ironic, isn’t it? The men who constantly stare at our breasts are never the men we’re attracted to.
There are better words than beautiful. Radiant, for instance. It’s an underused word. It’s a very special word. “You are radiant.” Also, enchanting, smoldering, intoxicating, charming, fetching.
Marriage changes very little. The only things that will get a married man laid that won’t get a single man laid are adultery and whores. Intelligence and humor (and your smell) are what get you laid. That’s what got you laid when you were single. That’s what gets you laid when you’re married. Everything still works in marriage: especially intelligence and humor. Because the sexiest thing is to know you.”
Plans that could finally kick me in the ass and stop me from living such an idle life.
It’s not that I don’t love my idle life. Being able to make enough money to live while working only a handful of hours a week is amazing. I have had the best year! I get to sleep as much as I want, I’m always available for parties, lunches, and movies. I get to read. A lot. And I pretty much don’t have to do anything I don’t love.
Society tells me I’m wasting my life if I continue to just laze around doing only the things I like to do.
But I disagree.
I’m wasting my life if I don’t do the things that set my heart on fire. Things I’m so excited about I find it hard to sleep from the ideas running in my head. Just over a year ago it was the prospect of quitting my lucrative office job to run my own jewellery business and live off less than minimum wage.
Now it’s the prospect of travelling the world and seeing amazing things. Wanderlust has finally got me. The thought of actually relocating so very far away from the safety of my friends and family is still one that fills me with anxiety, but who knows how I will feel in a few months. Or next year when I’ve actually visited other parts of the world.
It’s 6 o’clock in the morning and B (manfriend/flatmate) is heating up breakfast when he barges into my room frantically asking if I’m still awake and telling me to turn on the light. His distress is freaking me out but the only thing that comes to mind is that a huge rat decided to come out of its home in the roof and lunged at him in the kitchen.
Not so.
He’s standing in the kitchen when there’s a knocking at the window, he looks up to find a woman standing at the window, in the rain and wind, not really doing anything. He’s trying to ask her wtf she’s doing and decides to open the door a fraction. She asks the time and says she’s staying at the hotel a few doors down. Not knowing what’s going on B says he’s shutting the door now and that’s when he runs to my room.
Understandably he’s little freaked out that she’s going to attack him when he leaves for work.
Not so.
Instead he finds her standing in the middle of the road like a zombie.
“What is it about this house that attracts all the freaks?”
Alternative title: If you are a family member stop reading now
I was an average to early starter when it comes to sex. I had a steady boyfriend at 15 and I was allowed to go on the pill even though I wasn’t having sex yet. And it was probably a good thing too. When it came time to have sex neither me or my boyfriend knew how to use a condom. We had been told the importance of condoms, but seeing how we were both virgins figured it wasn’t big deal that we couldn’t get the thing to work and had sex anyway.
Same story with the next guy I was with, another virgin. Another guy who hadn’t learnt there’s a right way and wrong way to put on a condom on. Another time we gave up trying to use one after three attempts.
It seems pretty stupid to look back now. Who can’t figure out how to roll on a stupid piece of latex? But at the time it seemed extremely complicated, even for this apparently smart student.
What’s even stupider though is that not one PE teacher thought it was appropriate to tell us how to use a condom correctly.
Now that Lost is over forever it’s being talked about by everyone. Everyone seems to have an opinion, whether it’s that the show was great but confusing and the last episode was beautiful but unrevealing (me); or that Lost made no sense and was worthy of being discarded during season one (almost everyone else I talk to).
Chatting on Facebook the other night I realised that how and when you stopped watching Lost can be compared to how your relationships with real people play out. Me? I stick around till the bitter end and still get disappointed when things I hoped for still don’t happen after 6 years.
Here’s what some others had to say:
I got confused, gave up and moved countries. lol.
Hah… I got annoyed and confused in the first episode and I’m still wondering why there was a polar bear on the island… (@sarah_puppy)
I gave up after season 3 and got back togeher with it for the last season. (@casper_99)
I quit after s01 when I realised I liked the teasers more than the show itself. I will break things off if not working quickly? Although when bored I did occasionally watch an episode. Oh man. This does sound like me. (@ehjc)
I watched for a while, stopped, and then went back. Again and again. Huh.
I gave up during season 2, but ask my friends for updates and what’s happening, then get upset as I’m missing out. I also think wistfully about watching the rest of it in the future, but remember that it probably won’t work out.
I only started watching at the start of season 2, got bored (not confused) even tho I liked some characters and quit watching. I’m willing to get sucked in totally if things are interesting, but if I get bored, I detach.
Watched Lost til the very end, getting angrier & more & more frustrated as it developed.
I watched till the Polar Bear. C watched for long long after. Despite being a pro lost & an anti lost we are still very together!
Stopped after maybe series 2 or 3, when I realised it was going to take ages to find out wtf was going on.
I followed it on the internet obsessively even after it made it clear it didn’t want my attention. OH SHIIIIIT!
I stopped watching when I moved away and lost my TV
