Some Things On My Mind At The Moment

1. Looming exams and lack of preparation for said
2. Increasing expansion of waistline and lack of activity to counteract said.
3. Exploding wardrobe
4. Disappearing bank balance due to exploding wardrobe
5. What to do during the summer holidays
6. Moving out - yay or nay?
7. The fact that the ability to predict the future would greatly resolve much of this anxiety
8. The fact that predicting the future is impossinle, thusly leaving me to my own devices --> increased change of fucking up and making Wrong Choices.

During high school I think I struggled with decisions less. Maybe I knew what I wanted more. Actually I think I was just less aware of my options. These days I see options spread around me in every aspect of my life, from what to wear in the morning to what cleanser to use to what to do on my holidays to what to do with my life. It might seem like a quantum leap from fashion to life-path but I think it's the same attitude both equally stressful. It's a lack of ability to distinguish combined with a plethora of choice. It's the inability to prioritise combined with the impatience of youth. It's the desire to experience combined with the desire to get it right the first time round.

I seem to labour under the delusion that I have limited time. I mean, I do. We all do. We are mortal. But what I mean is, my life, my choices, my chances, my options, my development physically, emotionally, intellectually, spiritually, professionally, sartorially - it doesn't stop at 23 or 25 or 30. But then I don't want to get to those ages and feel I've missed out on doing something important.

I think this choice anxiety is couple with the knowledge - or perhaps the misguided belief, who can say - that to make it as an actor - as a female actor - you have to get in there young. And I don't want to me that person who sits around for how many years talking about a dream without actually going out to do something about it.

I guess the scariest part is that it's usually not until you've made it that you can see that the choice was the wrong one. I think I am congenitally afraid of failure. But not doing something because you might fail is but a short step away from not doing anything at all. I believe the Chinese say we must not be afraid of growing slowly, only of standing still. I agree with that in sentiment but I think in practicality I probably often choose to stand still for fear of getting chopped down altogether. It's that old attitude that I used to have such disdain for - that trying nothing and therefore going nowhere feels less damaging than trying to move and moving slowly; because at least if you're not trying you can futilely cling to the belief that you could be going somewhere, you're just choosing not to - thereby allowing yourself to believe you're still in control.

This attitude really only holds up until everyone else around you gets their act together enough to start moving, leaving little old you feeling drastically and embarassingly left behind.

Speaking in tongues

Today's theme is codes. And speaking.
You know when people are talking to you, and they're talking about something, and you're talking about something back, but you know that what they're saying is really about something else and they know you know that, and they know that everything you're saying is not really about the first thing but about the second, hidden thing, and you're basically just having this entire conversation which is apparently about one thing but really you both know it's about this other thing, but because you can't acknowledge that, you'll never actually be able to talk about that second, probably much more important thing?
Yeah.
Story of my fucking life.

Fat

I feel fat today. Notice I said feel, not look, because I believe fatness is, or at least can be, an emotional state. I mean I don't think I look much fatter than usual - I just did an hour and a half's dance class so logically I should not look fatter than usual.
No, fat is definitely a state of mind. I have excess mental activity and deficient physical output. I am a thinker, for certain, but this detracts from my ability to be a doer. I am not by nature a doer. I don't do half the things I say I will, leaving me with a persistent sensation that I really could be the greatest thing in the world...if only I could be bothered.
What is it that prevents us from enacting all the amazing plans in our head? Why do nine out of ten of my friends rate "procrastination" as one of their primary talents? Why do we constantly sabotage ourselves from being better, doing better, feeling better?

My "to do list" runs from here to eternity, including items such as "Call IKEA" [see previous entry], "Change uni enrolments" and "Clean desk" right through to "Go for run!!" "Call Jenna!!!" [incredibly close friend who have not spoken to since New Year's] and "Book tickets for STC show!!!!!!" Why do I never do these things? Why are my days instead spent watching Friends reruns when there are things to be done, problems to be solved, lives to be lived?
What the fuck are we so afraid of?

The vagaries of IKEA

Anyone who knows me should probably know that one of my favourite places in the world is IKEA. I love the boxes. I love the way that everything goes cleverly with everything else. I love the fact that everything is labelled and indexed, leaving no room for confusion. I love the idea that with enough purchases, my life could stop being one endless search for keys/bobby pins/bank statements/meaning and instead be a luxurious and enjoyable wander through various stages of the day - cooking, studying, dressing, entertaining, travelling, etc.
Going to IKEA tends to make me feel pretty relaxed. I just like looking at all the pretty things. I find it soothing. And reassauring. I like telling myself that, one day, in the imaginary future, sometime around the time I become a respected actor and find myself in a loving and stable relationship and capable of paying bills on time, my house too will be a series of clean lines and well ordered magazines; extensive bookshelves and interesting art; comfortable couches and a wellstocked kitchen; clothes on hangers instead of my floor, and all the associated glory that comes with said.
However, after spending four hours in the place yesterday, surrounded by boxes of all shapes and colours, I think my passion has temporarily faded. For one thing, the whole reason I went to IKEA was to buy a desk. I knew which desk I wanted. (My next favourite thing to visiting IKEA is reading the catologue.) I went to the desk section. Damn desk is sold out. I mean, when does IKEA sell out of anything? Most discouraging. Then I bought a bedside table, and a lot of boxes, the uses of which are contingent on me building this bookshelf that I bought from IKEA sometime just after I came home - September probably. The bookshelf IN ITSELF is a WHOLE SEPERATE ISSUE (why did I get it in dark brown when everything else in my room is a pale beech colour???). And currently my room is just knee deep in boxes, packed and unpacked, of clothes that need to be altered, bookshelves that need to be created, photos that need to be stored and such a dazzling array of miscellaneous paperwork I hardly know what to do with myself.
The chasm (I think this is my new favourite word) between my dream home (compartmentalised) and the reality (shit spewing out of drawers and cupboards as though it were genetically mutated and trying to take over the world) is so depressing as to actually make me simply want to crawl into bed (IKEA sheets, naturally) surrounded by a pile of junk, and just...disappear.

Just hypothetically

What do you do when you think you know exactly how you want your life to go but you know that, essentially, it's not really up to you?
What if you can see all these amazing, perfect things in your hypothetical future?
What if none of them come true? What are you left with then? Were the dreams foolish? Or was it in fact you who was foolish for not chasing the damn dreams to begin with? For waiting for them to chase you?
This may seem like a solid contender to win the Statement of the Bleeding Obvious 2008 gold medal, but it is only really dawning on me - in a real, meaningful, fist in my gut sort of way - that I can't imagine my life into perfection. That creating conversations in my head does not lead to their eventuality. And that all I do by doing so is create an even greater and more dangerous chasm between reality and...whatever it is I think I'm headed towards.
It might not happen. It probably won't happen. But what will happen? And why does it scare me so much?

You know that feeling

When you sleep in, and there's no pressure to get up, and you can just lie in bed, undisturbed, and the sun is coming in through the windows, and there's a bit of a breeze as well, and you're just lying there, letting the day wash over you, letting the fact that you have nowhere to be just wash over you, this comforting thought that you are exactly where you want to be, just in this second, this moment in time, and you just feel this twinge of complete and utter happiness, and it's actually quite a scary, overpowering feeling, so whole and undiluted that for a second there you could actually cry you're so happy. Does anyone else ever get that? And you just want to laugh out loud because everything just seems so perfect and safe. And the only thing that could possibly, possibly make this moment better is someone to share it with.

2007 - A Year in Review

Things I Learnt in 07

1. That to love someone and leave them anyway is hard.
2. That to live your life for someone else's benefit is wrong.
3. That long haul economy flights are, simply put, slow painful torture that we pay a lot of money for.
4. That daylight as a source of happiness is not to be underestimated.
5. That living with strangers is a gamble which does not always pay off.
6. That the amount of money you spend on your child's education rises in direct proportion to how spoilt, ignorant, boorish, bigoted, poncy and unaware of the real issues in the world they will turn out in the end.
7. That I was blessed with quite extraordinary friends throughout high school, the likes of which do not always exist in large groups in the real world.
8. That London is a truly amazing city.
9. That the Oyster card is a truly amazing invention.
10. That red wine can give you a TRULY awful hangover.
11. That family are your greatest blessing and curse.
12. That who you were friends with in high school is irrelevant.
13. That a lot of the stuff you thought defined you in high school means nothing to complete strangers.
14. That children are the greatest source of humour and wisdom.
15. That if Italy were any more Italian, it would have to explode with the sheer post-modernity of itself.
16. That I speak with my hands for a reason.
17. That I am an Italian citizen.
18. That independence and loneliness are only a frozen pizza away from each other.
19. That I want more out of my life than mediocrity.
20. That I will not be deterred despite naysayers.
21. That I am actually quite proud of Australia, despite its many, many faults.
22. That MSN is a hugely inadequate medium for communicating emotion. Actually, you would have thought I had learnt that in 2006 but apparently not.
23. That you can only offer a drowning man a raft - he must grab hold for himself.
24. That Paris is NOT always fun, OK?
25. That I love Shakespeare and it's probably just as well he's dead or I would be one of those creepy literary stalker-crush girls.
26. That all-female workplaces are a health hazard.
27. That normally reasonable people turn into bizarre monsters when they have children.
28. That one must confront life, rather than shrink from it.
29. That a companion makes the most mundane things enjoyable.
30. That if you want something badly enough, you can ignore any manner of disastrous weather conditions.
31. That all Scandinavians are cool.
32. That trains are fabulous places for reading, thinking, talking and eating, but generally NOT for sleeping.
33. That if Europe were a giant playground, all the cool kids would be in the sandpit, building their own little world.
34. That you should pack nothing in a suitcase for an overseas trip, as you will merely want to buy doubles of everything you already own, simply because it is from overseas and therefore much cooler.
35. That I am an emotional spender.
36. That I am an emotional eater.
37. That most Australians who one meets in Europe in Summer are twats.
38. That even when you think you're over it, you're probably not.
39. That you should SLEEP WITH YOUR FUCKING VALUABLES UNDER YOUR FUCKING PILLOW. For God's sake, how stupid do I want to be?
40. That Amsterdam is the best place in the world to forget your troubles.
41. That you can be anyone you want to be.
42. That true friends will not be fazed by who you become.
43. That you can know a person five minutes and feel you've known them a lifetime.
44. That you can know a person for a lifetime and feel you don't know them at all.
45. That you should reach out to people with whom you have seemingly little in common, BUT
46. That if you have reached and reached and reached repeatedly over six months and still gotten nothing back...it's probably because you actually do have nothing in common.
47. That five girls in a room can be fun in a STRICTLY NON-PORNO way.
48. That six months is long enough for a place to become a home.
49. That six SECONDS in New York is long enough to decide you want to give up any previous intentions in life and decide to move to some brownstone in Greenwich Village.
50. That BANKS FUCKING SUCK.
51. That people in New York are all extras from Friends or Seinfeld or Sex in the City.
52. That you do not have to like your extended family.
53. That LA is sort of surreal.
54. That you can never come home.
55. That things do not freeze in time, and that people will move on with their lives without you.
56. That this hurts, even though you know it shouldn't.
57. That you can put the past behind you and move on.
58. That dull work and overactive imaginations do not mix.
59. That when opportunity arises, you must seize it.
60. That old friendships never die.
61. That simple pleasures are the best.
62. That I might possibly have a substance abuse problem...with clothing.
63. That I want the whole world to be spectacular.
64. That I believe in the possibility of better things.
65. That no one can take that away from me.
66. That you should take true friends' appraisals of your personal faults very seriously.
67. That Sydney is a beautiful city, with an appalling public transport system.
68. That it is too easy to fall out of contact with people.
69. That the term "catching up" is evil and is used as a substitute for having actual, continuous relationship with people you used to see every day.
70. That when you arrive people will leave.
71. That with privilege comes responsibility.
72. That all people are deserving of our respect and hospitality.
73. That I write too many lists.
74. That it can only get better from here.