Several attempts later...

A young, Melbourne-based writer. This is the place where I'm going to keep my morning pages.

[rueur]

Morning Pages No. 64

Thursday 28th August - 10:09am

Yeah, I know I missed the #64 on the 27th that I was so excited for on Wednesday, but I was lenient with myself because of work and Dinel’s extra essay lesson last night. Yesterday was just a busy day and Sarah even said that Day 10 should be a rest day. Even so, Day 10 wasn’t even yesterday, but I feel like I was right to give myself a break anyway. That, and I had the hiccups three freaking times yesterday: once on a walk, once during my class with Dinel of all times, and then once after dinner. We had pizza for dinner last night, courtesy of my card. I just felt like ordering a pizza so we got Greenbrook and some of their chips too. Mate. The chips were nice. The bulk of it is still in the fridge so I’m looking forward to eating that later. I have to work on the website. That’s definitely my ‘I have to’ sentence for the week. I don’t know why I keep putting it off? The work I’ve done on it so far was let’s say about 2 hours worth, so that’s $100. And I’m seeing Julie next Wednesday, which will be the 2nd of September, so I’ll be able to get my invoice to her when I go see her too. I should get that invoice done before the meeting, I reckon. I might put some time aside to finalise the invoice on Tuesday. I don’t know why I’m expecting a lot from myself when it comes to the invoice too. I mean, why is it important whether or not I know how to make the invoice look pretty? It’s just an invoice, it’s totally back-end and functional, and it doesn’t need to reflect on my professionalism whatsoever. Julie’s probably never even seen a freelance communications consultant’s invoice before, so I can just do whatever I want. I’m going to use the agency’s template invoice of course, but how do you measure hours? Maybe I should look at my work invoice too, or even at Evan’s work invoice. Maybe one from when he was still working. 

I feel a bit badly for Lonzo right now, because we both just woke up and now we’re both doing our own thing. I’m a bit annoyed at Evan too because he’s just obsessed with all the fitness/training/Kelley Starrett stuff that he’s been doing, but it’s like HYPER mode over the past few days. And I’ve barely been able to hang out with him, and I hate it. Even now, I want to just chill and play Breath of the Wild for a bit and he’s in the other room glued to his laptop. And he’s stoned all the time. It’s irritating. 

So I just had a good cry in front of him and now he’s staring into space out the living room window. It’s interesting, a few days ago I remember saying we hadn’t had one of these fights where there are huge bouts of silence for a while, and here we are. I guess I jinxed it. I’m waiting for him to say something, but also I need to go about my day so I’m still typing as I wait. It’s probably a good idea to record this exact moment as it’s happening, right? Honestly probably not. I want to follow the ethos that life comes before art. If ever there is an opportunity to live over writing, that opportunity to live takes precedence. Fighting is living. This is a visceral portion of all relationships, and I should be present for it. But in my defence, so should he. And he’s not. He’s just staring out the window. I can stare at his face for a second or two at a time and I see the process of thoughts coming in and out of his mind, but that’s it. He’s made no effort to comfort me, which means that his stance is different to mine. He most likely thinks I’m being unreasonable. I hate that way he says ‘sorry’ like it’s an arbitrary sorry because he thinks that I want to hear that, but his tone is absolutely anything but. I don’t want to hear that ‘sorry’ right now. I hope I’m not waiting exclusively for that ‘sorry’, and zero closure.

Okay, so we did have closure. Evan spoke and the first thing he said was that I wasn’t in the wrong last night when I asked him to spend time with me and drop what he was doing. He acknowledged that I had a right to ask for some quality time knowing my schedule, and that he didn’t realise that last night was just one of those nights where I ‘needed it’. It’s normal, I have to keep reminding myself that it’s a normal thing for people to just need some quality time with their partner every now and then, because sometimes Evan can get SOOOO into whatever it is that he’s doing, and totally forget that I’m a secondary person to him, that I’m not just a part of him? I think it’s a [REDACTED] boys thing. Like his dad is just like this too, and from what Sarah’s told me, Mundell was just the same: always carving out their own space to ‘work’, to ‘develop’, and constantly prioritising that space over so many other facets of their life. I lucked out with Evan though. I’d say that of his father and brother and himself, Evan would have to be the most emotionally mature and open to change. I think it has something to do with the fact that he has witnessed the negative impacts of both his father and brother’s self-interested behaviour. 

I was just about to talk about Barney and Mundell’s habits, but then I checked my phone and noticed a missed call from my dad, so I called him back. We chatted about the house for a while and now he’s got me on hold because he’s received another call. So I’m taking this opportunity to type, and I’ve decided that I’m going to keep this entry to two pages. I feel like two pages is just so much more sustainable as a practice? And I have too much work to do today and my conversation with Evan has already shown that I’m a bit stressed. I mean two pages will take twenty minutes, and I think twenty minutes of mindfulness is still better than falling short of thirty minutes and then feeling bad about myself for not achieving my goal. And thirty minutes set aside each day for this practice is a bit of a tall ask for an adult with multiple other jobs and commitments. I’m too busy for this, and I don’t mind it. If I’m in need of more mindful time, I can meditate or do some yoga or something.

I found a video on Facebook that was essentially a handstand training guide through yoga poses. Basically, you work on one pose for a week each and the third pose is a soft handstand. I’m going to give it a go. I feel like I could handle a handstand pose if I just apply myself. I’m also keen to go for a bike ride, but I have a feeling it may be way too cold. And my main gripe with scheduling bike rides is knowing that I can’t take Lonzo too. Especially now. He’s just too boisterous, and I’d feel like I was always looking out for him. 

Thathi just answered the phone again, and he said we should schedule a trip to the mortgage broker’s. He sounded tired. I’m worried I spoke too much about myself, but I’m not sure what to speak to him about. I don’t know. I feel like a bad daughter. We didn’t even talk at all about my license. Ah. I don’t know what to do about feeling guilty about parents. The older you get, the more independent you become, and the less time you have to chat to your parents. I feel like we should do a family dinner thing, like Evan’s family. I’ve just sent a message to the brother and sister about maybe organising weekly family dinners after lockdown. I just feel so deprived of my family, I don’t like it. I haven’t seen my mum in so so so long. I know I have issues with ammi, but that doesn’t mean I don’t love her and want to talk to her. But I’m worried that so much time has eclipsed now that it’ll be impossible for us to chat without her getting emotional? I don’t know. I can’t really deal with other people’s emotions, I get uncomfortable. I think that’s my Asian upbringing having a bit of an influence on my adult self. I got that Asian level of oppression, yo. That cultural ish. 

Man, I’m already well into the third page, I think I’m just going to finish it off. Well, not well into it. I’d say about a quarter of the way there. I’m currently at 1520 words. Ah, I want to stop listing my word count midway through the doc all the time, but I am writing this out on Google Docs! It’s interesting, I just realised that whilst I do have Microsoft Word and I paid a pretty fucking penny for it, I still use Google Docs so much more? I suppose it’s just so much more convenient. Word is only really useful if the internet gives out, but now I’ve invested so much money in our internet, it’s not likely that our internet will ever give out for a long period of time anymore anyway. That being said, I’ve been finding the loading speeds to be abysmal on my phone. I feel like I should turn the modem and the nbn box off at the wall for a minute and let the whole system restart, that usually works.

Okay, I know I said that I was going to finish these pages off...I am, no I am. I can do this. I’m so close anyway, what’s another paragraph or two. I just know that I’m going to be doing a lot of work today and I feel like I’m not going to start on the website right after finishing this entry off because I’m going to follow a natural urge to give myself a break. But I’m not hungry, and I want to tell Evan about the contaminated water thing so that he doesn’t accidentally drink a full glass of water straight from the sink. He’s been drinking a lot of water lately. Good on him, right? Ugh, he’s going to get so much healthier than me if I don’t catch up soon. 

Both Nicky and Lonzo are asleep on the green couch next to me. Evan said he’d be keen to move the green couch into the TV room and I think I am too. It’d be nice to have the futon in a space where it actually fucking fits, and I think the green couch would look so nice with the Persian rug in that room now. It’d also be nice to have the futon set up in bed mode right under the big window we have in the living room, so that I can just lay there and read by the wide source of daylight. Ooh, this feels like such a great idea now. My only concern is that that futon is going to be really chilly for people who stay over now. At least in the other room it was in a confined space, but out here it’s going to be so drafty. It’s fine, I don’t see us having people over anytime soon anyway. I keep thinking about that time Steve and Mundell came over and Malith was here. They had a lot of fun with him, but I mean he’s a very accessible character. Fuck, I need to finish ‘Fleabag’. I’ll do that at work tomorrow? After Dominicana. It should be an easy read. But Ben is managing tomorrow and he’ll want to talk to me. He’s been wanting to talk to me more since his divorce, and I’ve been amenable to that. I just know he’s enjoying the social aspects of our working relationship. We’re both conversationalists, and he’s a joker like Sam. Just not as immersed in puns as Shepherd is.

[rueur]

Morning Pages No. 63

Wednesday 26th August - 11:57am

There’s three minutes left of the morning, and I consider that to be a victory! Also, just have to add that I’m weirdly excited that tomorrow is going to be my 23rd and a half birthday AND #64 in the morning pages, which is the square root of 8, and the answer to the equation 16 x 4 =. I’m not a maths-oriented person, so I forgot what a square root number is. It’s like the opposite of a prime number, but it’s mathematically gorgeous. Evan found us an exercise bike on Marketplace for $250! And it looks insanely nice. It’s in a superb condition, it’s exactly what we were looking for, and it’s WELL within our price range. What a freaking steal, and I also just have to add: what immensely good karma. I feel like we’re deserving of this, and it also definitely feels like such a positive sign that this was a great idea on our part. I’m feeling infinitely more keen to get rid of the futon and streamline the room we’re both currently in into being a lot more health-conscious and thus, a far better room suited to entertainment. The futon is also keeping me from doing Ringfit on a regular basis, so we’ll see once we get the bike how much easier it’ll be for me to work out at home and get myself to a more tolerable level of fit. 

I’m keen to play Breath of the Wild again today because it’s been a couple of days since we last played and Evan ordered another copy from [REDACTED] this morning, so we’ll just be waiting for that to arrive today. I also want to do a bit more work on the site, because my meeting with Julie will be a week from today and I need to get it to a level that I’ll be happy to present it at, even though I know Julie will want to make some adjustments. I feel like her main gripes will be with the colour scheme, which is perfectly fine with me. That should be more than easy to adjust. And the fonts...the fonts are doing my head in. I’m still not sure how to add extra font packs. And to also connect this Squarespace website up with cPanel and VentraIP, but again, that’s not a high priority issue. We’ll need to get the website to a place where we both feel it’s good enough to publish before we even think about moving it over to VentraIP. 

I’m always thinking about work. And because it’s lockdown, I’ve been thinking about when orders we’ve placed will be arriving. We’ve been ordering a fair amount of stuff, and I’m not sure if it’s out of boredom or necessity. Perhaps both? We want to break up the monotony of the day, but doing that with retail therapy seems a little reckless. We have the internet, gas, and electricity bills due and water is also most definitely on its way. And RENT, because it’s the end of the month. September 1st is going to be a Tuesday, so we’ll need to pay before my next payday, which is a touch depressing. But also I suppose it’ll be nice to know that I can retain 100% of the pay that I’ll be receiving next week! That is unless I make an online purchase. 

It’s 12:06pm. I like the idea that it takes me about ten minutes to write out a page of stream of consciousness, so three pages should take around a half an hour. That’s ideal, but usually what happens is I get distracted from this process by Evan or by the animals or just generally by things that I need to do (base biological urges), OR I forgot a word, like what just happened when I was typing out ‘base biological urges’ as a gentle code for having to take a dump. So graceless, always. That’s my style, eh?

Sarah wants to have another phone call at some point today, and I think it’s mostly to chat about the way the group has been heading. People have been leaving and apparently she received her first bit of negative feedback. I’d be curious to hear what it is. I’m curious to know why Nichole left. I know she wasn’t really keeping up with the days so I suppose it makes sense? But Amy’s also not overtly keeping up with the days, which is genuinely surprising to me. I feel like Amy would be all over some well-intentioned mindfulness challenges. Sam just sent me a message that contained a painful pun. We were joking about the ethereal science that is the healing properties of cats. So cat purrs can actually heal human beings because the vibration or the frequency of the vibration has been known to promote feelings of peace in human beings. It relaxes our minds and bodies and heals our cells. 

EDDIE DROPPED OFF OUR GAME! IT WAS SO GOOD TO SEE HIM and it was also just a real treat, man. He was sick last week so up until this lovely afternoon, I hadn’t seen him for like two weeks. So now Evan is playing the game AGAIN finally! Oh my fucking lord I have waited so long for him to pick up this game, he’s an idiot. And I am speaking all this out loud as I type because he’s in the room and he can hear me and I love terrorising him. AND HE DOESN’T GIVE A FLYING FUCK BECAUSE HE ON HIS PHONE THA DUMB. What a stupid smug grin. What a cute face. Aww.

He’s distracting me from this chore. No, this is all a part of my morning pages for today. You can’t say this isn’t properly a part of it, it’s STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS, fool. Do you know what stream of consciousness entails? It’s literally typing/writing as you think. So anything that I’m thinking, belongs in these pages. Get out of the room. I have to finish this first and you are distracting myself from my own mind, you dumb bass. Yes, I meant to type out ‘dumb bass’, because I want to imply that you are a mute fish. I am so distracted from this task, it is infuriating. Also, please be at least a little bit impressed by my touch-typing abilities. Aww. He just said he’s always impressed by everything I do. How sweet. Man, this is going to be so chaotic to read a year or so from now! All I need to remember, future self, is that Evan was in the same room as I in 847 flying high (but he was sober this morn), playing Breath of the Wild for the second time, standing up and leaning against the wall because Kelley Starrett says that we should consider sitting to be a cancer. And that for each hour of sitting you need to do however many minutes of physical activity. 

Fuck, I just remembered that I told the boy that I would make pancakes for breakfast this morning, and I haven’t done that yet. And also it isn’t the morning anymore. Whoops. I am so happy that I got to see Eddie today though. I’m also just glad that he’s okay, I was worried that he had the ‘rona. Can you put the switch on the TV? I want to see you play. That’s the whole point of getting both games. Give me a second. Okay, he grabbed the remote. This isn’t actually promoting mindfulness too much, because of all the activity around me. But look. I’ve maintained this practice pretty damn well for the past week. I’ve written around 2000 words each day for ten or so days straight now. That’s pretty neat. I’m happy with this. I also kind of hope that I can make time to take Lonzo out again today, hopefully well before 5:30pm, so I can talk to Sarah without feeling too fatigued.

I’m fighting the urge to end this third page here. I just want to go on with my day! And I don’t know how many epiphanies I’ll be having in these pages today. I mean, I wrote my last three pages so dang recently, this entry just feels quite arbitrary. But I suppose that’s my own fault. I shouldn’t have done yesterday’s pages at 10pm last night, that’s just basic. Morning pages 101: do them in the morning. Otherwise they’re not as fresh, and your next entries are going to be incredibly close together. I honestly just feel like Saturday has thrown me off so much. I can’t believe it’s Wednesday and I’m still trying to play catch-up because being at work on Saturday and typing out that day’s entry over hours and hours was just...bleh. I have no words other than ‘bleh’. I’m tapped out. 

The soundtrack for this game is actually so soothing. I don’t mind how minimalistic it is. In fact, the minimalistic soundscape kind of just enhances the game’s natural atmosphere and built environment! Evan just found a boomerang! Those are quite rare. Not a lizal boomerang, like an actual boomerang. I feel like I shouldn’t be watching him play or even listening or even in the same room as I finish these pages off. It seems like a major distraction. You found the Duelling Peaks stable! He’s trying to climb a shrine. Lord help me. Oooh. That must’ve been painful. Sorry, Link. Ma man a dumb bass. 

Ooh these pages have just completely gone to shit. But I’m still going to finish them. I’m at around 1600 words, well just over. That means that I have about 400 to go. I’m about or over 75% of the way through! Huzzah! Ew. I don’t even like saying that sarcastically. But it makes me think of ‘Dungeons and Dragons’, and I think I’d like to play that at least once. Maybe some time after lockdown ends I can go to a game with Malith. Gale does them, so that may be a great opportunity to hang out with that gang again. I also want to do pub trivia again! I can’t believe how many innocuous events and happenings this lockdown has had me missing. It’s absurd that there was ever a time where I had the opportunity to do all these activities whenever I liked, and I just never took them, or at the very least seldom took them. But if I’m going to be completely honest with myself, I still see myself being somewhat of a recluse even after lockdown ends. I will indulge in all the newfound freedom once we do find it again, as all Melbournians will, but I won’t be going crazy. I won’t be going out every weekend. If the world opens up again, then that will mean the responsibilities of the world will be opening up again too, which is a contributing factor to my wanting to stay home and be on my own. That, and there’s always Lonzo. I don’t want to leave HIM on his own, because he never wants that, and he never gets to have a say.

This shrine looks difficult. I want to be attentive, but it looks as though I have about 100 words left, which is nothing. I’ll need to start my website for uni soon, I haven’t even thought about that at all. I’d like to pen an online essay, that’s a new experience. And Wordpress should be easy enough to master. I mean, I’ve done it before, for one. Squarespace is just so clean, though! Definitely will be using this to start up BROKEN media. I’m looking forward to that. 

I’m on the fourth page now, but only at 1970 words. I feel like I’m cheating if I don’t at least get to 2000. I used a lot of paragraphs for this entry, because I mean I had a lot of distractions. 2003 words. I’m going to sign off here then. 2012. 2013. 2014. I need to stop. 2020!

[rueur]

Morning Pages No. 62

Tuesday 25th August - 10:26pm

Yeah, I know these are just becoming later and later, and I know I’m going to have to do this whole thing again in around ten to twelve hours, but I honestly just needed to take a whole day today. I feel like that’s genuinely something I needed to do. And a lot has happened today! I don’t know if I want to talk about all of it, but I suppose I do feel full and happy enough to talk about...some. I spoke to Malith? I called him when I was on my walk with Lonzo after realising that I was feeling a bit lonely. And Malith was #1 on my list of 50 people who’ve helped shape me into the person that I am today. Out of all the people I could’ve thought of first, I thought of him. And that was in my head all day today, so around 4pm I decided to finally call him. And I expressed that the reason I hadn’t been able to call him before that was because I was getting too in my own head about allocating time to call Malith. I mean we usually speak on the phone for hours at a time, with three or so hour phone calls being a totally normal and regular occurrence when we were younger, and by younger I mean like two or so years ago? It’s perfectly natural for us to waste away hours on the phone, and for our phone calls to include multiple toilet trips. Phone in hand. I felt like if I was always multitasking, then I’d have no time for a phone call. But on my walk today, I realised that I’d rather speak to him for twenty minutes a day rather than not speak to him at all for months just because I never had four spare hours at a time. Which reminds me, I also told the boy that I’d actually read ‘Fleabag’, so I have to do that right after finishing these pages. Yowza. I kind of fucked myself over here, didn’t I? The amount of crap I need to do is seemingly large almost always usually because I allow myself to have days like this, where I get absolutely nothing done. Well, actually it’s not entirely my fault. I had uni this morning, and so that meant a 9am start AT THE LATEST. I actually woke up at around 7am, closer to 7:30am but not close enough that it was an alarm that had woken me up. The sun woke me up, because it comes out earlier now. And I love that. Summer’s on its way in, but I still have a gross winter body and it’s still weirdly raining a lot, so I want to rectify the gross winter body, but it’s a little difficult in this abhorrent torrential August rain. 

I’ve just realised I haven’t had a single paragraph break for this whole page, so I’ve decided to put one right here. We learnt about ‘chunking’ in Writing & Editing for Digital Media this week, and the inverted pyramid model that’s used for writing content meant for digital platforms. I felt pretty confident in my ability to ‘chunk’ effectively, that is to construct my content in defined and digestible chunks so that it’s not just one wall of text, and our audience is more likely to both find the information they came for, and also better engage with our content in general. I’m really enjoying this class, and I’m also really enjoying ONLY TAKING ONE CLASS! After this class, I’ll only have one more left, and then the internship. Which is exciting. If I’ll ever be able to actually do an internship. COVID-19 has screwed up my hopes of finding full-time employment by February 2021, and calling my 24th year on this earth the first official year of my professional career. It seems as though there’ll still be some time before I properly enter my industry. But I am enjoying doing whatever I can with whatever is available to me right now. I mean maybe I could go on to get my PhD at unimelb. Maybe not at unimelb? But honestly where else would I go? I have no other connections to any other institutes, but one could also say that I have no connections at unimelb either. I just owe them a lot of money. And also $282, or I believe that is the amount. I don’t want to think about that bullshit right now though.

Evan just coughed in the other room. I’m not sure what he’s doing, but I love him. I don’t know why, I just wanted to write that. 

Sarah posted in the 21 Days group that today’s challenge was to call up one person from our list of 50 people and just touch base with them. Funnily enough, when I read the challenge I was already on the phone to Malith. I called him after realising that if he was the first person on my list, that would mean that I’ve been thinking about him quite a bit, and took that as a sign that I should definitely call him. It felt pretty nice to have preemptively completed the challenge, without even knowing that I was PREEMPTIVELY completing the challenge?! ‘Preemptive’ is such a weird word. I misspelt it when I was typing it out in caps. The ‘p’ being between the ‘m’ and the ‘t’ threw me off completely. It just felt wrong to type those letters in that order. 

Anyway, Sarah also spoke about her friend Joshua in the post, and I didn’t know how to express my condolences. I just sent her a message. I feel my mind straying from these pages. I don’t think I want to deal with anything too complicated right now, which is why I’m skirting the issue. Sometimes, I worry that if I don’t speak about my friends and what’s going on in their lives, I’ll just repeat the same basic stuff that I seem to concern myself with for the majority of my time, or over the bulk of my day. I don’t know. I need to read ‘Fleabag’, and I’m worrying that I’m not making sense. I doubt that these pages will provide me with any insight today. I honestly just feel like I’m ticking boxes at this point, and I’m a little bit annoyed about that feeling, but I’m also accepting it as part of the pages. Oh what zen. I am a revolutionary mindful practitioner, a beautiful and empty-headed queen of calm. I don’t fucking know. It’s 10:56pm, it seems ludicrous to still refer to this as a morning pages entry. LOOK. I consider it to be a colossal win that I’m writing anything at all today.

I texted Julie and organised to visit her again next Wednesday so we can spend a bit more time looking at all the stuff I’ve done on Squarespace so far. It’s not bad, what I’ve done so far. Like it’s really not bad. I’m proud of where the site’s at, with perhaps a small exception to the colour scheme and the fonts. I have to sort that out. I’m not entirely sure how to add our own font packs to Squarespace’s site builder. I hope they allow for that? Because the font pack that they do have is INCREDIBLY limited. I’ve stopped using italics in these pages because I’ve realised that when I copy/paste the text from this morning pages doc into tumblr, tumblr gets rid of all my italicised text and just turns them into normal letters again. Lonzo just had a dream where he was running and his legs were moving, but he’s lying behind me under the blanket and so his little scratchy paws were moving up and down on my butt and it felt like the largest, weirdest, most inefficient spider bite I was ever receiving.

There are now TWO spiders on the window sill above the kitchen sink now, and the newer one is smaller but still BIG for a house spider, and it’s suspended in the centre of a web that’s been prominently constructed right above the kitchen sink and in the centre of the bottom section of the window. So basically this spider is like eye-level with me when I go to do the dishes. But the problem is, is that this smaller spider looks eerily like a crab, its legs are at weird angles, and I legitimately think it’s dead? AH. I hate this so much. I’m trying not to think about it, but goddamn it’s on my mind and now I’ve described it in great detail. That horrid spider will be in these morning pages for the rest of eternity, and someday future Rue is going to read this description and hate past Rue for it...present Rue? Rue that is Rue right now, sitting here typing against her will but also for her own good.

I’m weirdly enjoying it that whenever I answer the phone at work and an older man is the one who’s calling, they say ‘like a French street’ when I tell them my name. Haha! Sometimes I’ve responded with ‘or like searing regret’ or something along those lines. And if they appreciate wit, they tend to laugh. This one time, I told a middle-aged couple about my idea for a useless superhero (‘Superfluous’), and the dad (because he was a dad and she was a mum and they were in the shop buying a phone for their daughter, if I remember correctly) CACKLED. I have a love-hate relationship with brackets. I think they’re lazy and I would never use them in anything I write and put my name to, but I’ve always used them avidly in journal entries and personal stuff like these pages. I figure nobody’s going to judge me for having horrid grammar and some shoddy structure in something that they shouldn’t be reading anyway. 

I do enjoy writing though. Always have. No surprises there. But sometimes it is hard. It feels like a part of me that I feel I need to disconnect from myself in order to survive, and yet at the same time, it is my life. I don’t want to do anything else but this, I say that a lot. But then sometimes I am SO fearful that I’ve forgotten or I’m on the way to forgetting how to do this. It’s been literal years since I last wrote long-form fiction, and I feel like all the stuff I’ve written recently isn’t even that good. But was my stuff as a teenager any good too? Mr. D.B. Kuruppu said that it was. And I owe it to him to try harder. But I owe it to myself too. I have good ideas, or at least teenage Rue had good ideas, and those ideas deserve to be fleshed out and done justice. 

Nicky’s just crawled into my lap. He almost crawled all over my keyboard but I stopped him. He almost did it again. Now he’s licking his back leg but actually I can hear and feel his scratchy tongue trying to lick up my yellow ‘KINDNESS ONLY’ hoodie. I love this hoodie. I never thought I’d ever spend so much money on a HOODIE, but I am glad that I did. Wearing this makes me feel happy, and I know that it makes other people feel happy too, which is everything that matters. Positivity. The colour ‘yellow’ is one of the most beautiful colours in the world, but the best thing about it by far is the fact that it reminds me of my mum. That’s a beautiful sentence. I miss my family. I want to see Sandy at LEAST. Maybe I should call her tomorrow and see if she’d be keen to take the dogs out. I also have to do a bit more work on the website tomorrow, but for now I suppose I should just read ‘Fleabag’ and maybe a bit of ‘Dominicana’ if I can stomach it. And by ‘stomach it’, I mean if I can physically deal with lying on my stomach after my very modest dinner of hummus and crackers.

[rueur]

Morning Pages No. 61

Monday 24th August - 1:04pm

I know that it’s a bit late in the day to start this entry, but I needed another bit of a morning off. Evan and I had an early night last night but we had sex first. We were both so tired afterwards due to consistent daily workouts, that we ended up falling asleep naked and staying asleep till about 8am. To be clear, we went to bed around 10:30pm, so it was a long night of sleep for both of us. I’m grateful for it though, because even though my calves still hurt like crazy, I do feel refreshed and like the healing process is underway. What did we do this morning? The son of a bitch restarted Breath of the Wild and we’ve both been playing on his new save file. I have to buy another copy of that game because I really want to replay it now. Even so, I have a lot of work to do and I’m yet to make proper headway on Julie’s new site. It’s coming along relatively fine in Squarespace but I’ve only worked on it for about an hour and I’ve yet to add the privacy policy and finetune a lot of the product links. I feel like we’ll absolutely need to add some copy for the products, and definitely put a disclaimer about the use of fabric softener either at the top of the description or below...or both? It’s pretty important.

I’ve been chatting to Sarah on Whatsapp. I feel like Sarah is a bit of a better influence on me than Wren, but I hate that I’m comparing them both in my head. I just feel a bit disheartened in my relationship with Wren, because of all the horrid experiences I’ve had with them over the course of this year. It’s been quite confronting to see how Wren acts when they’ve decided they’re in a more dire situation than me...like I’m not even sure if that’s what’s happened, but that’s what it’s felt like to me. I can’t understand how they’ve just been able to decide that just because they’re living alone, this time is harder on them? I don’t know. And even if it is harder, which I can admit that it most likely is, that doesn’t mean that I should have to incorporate addressing their pain into my life on a daily basis. I was willing to chat every day. But I also don’t want to feel like my life has to be placed on hold for them, whenever they may want me. I’ve felt like that enough in this friendship as it is. I’ve given them whatever I’m capable of giving, and I’ve given them a hell of a lot more than I’ve given any other friend I have ever had. Except, maybe, for Malith. But Malith has certainly given me more than I’ve given him. Goddamn. I’m fighting the urge to delete this whole paragraph, but I deserve to express myself. This year has been fucking hard for me. I’ve not been suicidal, because that part of my life is over. Even if Evan and I break up, that part of my life will always always be over. It’s no longer an option in my head, to go down that route. It’s a time-waster. There are better things to do than yearn without end, than wish for better than you’ve got. I’ve been dealt both a bad and good hand, and it’s only bad because I see it as so. It’s only good because I see it as so. Wren needs to learn that everyone has fucked up mums, figuratively speaking. Everyone has SOMETHING that they wish they had lived without. Everyone has SOMETHING that they wished was just a smidge better than it was. I don’t want any part of explaining all the fucked up shit that has happened to me over the course of my childhood. I don’t want to have a dick-measuring contest when it comes to depression and trauma. Fuck that. I’d much rather live in the present and be happy with the life I’ve built for myself. Even Wren needs to feel their privilege to a certain degree. It would be ludicrous if they didn’t. Two apartments, a job that they love that compensates them really fucking well, and an abundance of resources that provides them with independence and agency. I have so little of all that they have, and I’m working my ass off for next to nothing in return, just building up a resume that may not even receive a stolen glance at the end of all of this mindful building. Who knows? My fate rests in the hands of people who I feel quite sincerely don’t want me to succeed. I have a name and face and degree that is just...unhireable. But I don’t let that beat me the fuck down, because I know that I work harder and fucking smarter than anyone else on that pile of resumes. So I keep going, knowing that my work will become of a benefit to whichever organisation I end up representing.

My whole being right now is just revolving around entering the industry, like properly becoming a content writer and being able to actually use my degree to begin to pay off that motherfucking HECS debt. I know I’m swearing a fucking lot, but I feel like it’s actually helping me so I’m not going to stop. I don’t care who reads this and who judges me for it because at the end of the day, you’re the ones reading these sensitive pages on a blog that I’ve told nobody about. How did you get here?

I’m feeling paranoid, fired up. I can feel it in my fingers. My hands are freezing cold, and Evan’s in the one room that has the heater and he’s sitting there on his ass with the door shut. And I’m starting to feel like maybe I always find myself on the outside because I allow myself to get there. I have to start standing up for my damn self, but also...I know how to choose my battles, I suppose. Is it knowing how to choose your battles if you partake in a MINIMAL number of battles? Like a fractional amount of battles to the battles that you could have potentially fought in? Fuck. Nicky’s sleeping on my white vest. I may need to patch that up, but the inner fabric is so sheer, I’m not entirely sure how it’ll respond to a needle and thread. I may need excess fabric...we’ll see.

My cross-stitch order is on the way, and I’m excited to begin this new activity. I bought a hot air balloon pattern for Wren, I’m not sure if I’ve already said that. I’m looking forward to learning how to do this, because apparently it’s quite similar to knitting? Or at least the basics of knitting. I’ve heard that cross-stitch is a good introduction to knitting. After this, it may be good to see if I can give crochet a go too, but it’s also a little bit intimidating. I mean crochet is all about three-dimensional creations, whereas cross-stitch and knitting are generally more...patterned art, scarves, and blankets. Still functional, but more veering on the side of two-dimensionality. I’m a touch surprised that ‘dimensionality’ is a word. It feels like the kind of word that a primary school-aged student would assert is ‘ACTUALLY A WORD’, even though you know it’s not. OH, listen to this fresh hell! That ‘SNACCIDENT’ Typo lunch mug thingo we have says that the word ‘SNACCIDENT’ is a VERB, which is plain RIDICULOUS. If the word ‘accident’ is a noun and they’re claiming that ‘SNACCIDENT’ is a verb, then a sample sentence using that word would read as follows: ‘Henry snaccidented’. VERBS ARE FUCKING DOING WORDS. In no CONCEIVABLE UNIVERSE would ‘SNACCIDENT’ be considered a VERB. My fucking lord. These pages are just RAGE-FILLED, aren’t they? Which is actually pretty interesting, because I don’t feel mad? I feel fine. I feel a little bit annoyed that it’s almost 1:30pm and I’ve not done a lick of work either today or yesterday. I’m thinking I should send Julie a text today asking if she’d be free to meet up again sometime early next week, maybe Tuesday or Wednesday? I feel like I could make great progress on the website during that time. We shall see what happens. We shall see what I eventually get around to doing. I need money, gosh darn...

I feel like I’ve been writing a lot about money during these pages, and I understand why. Money has become a bit of an issue for me since moving out, which I know...doesn’t necessarily need to be said. But you must understand that I’m studying AND working AND working AND working AND working. And I’m still not making that much. It’s frustrating. I’m trying not to think about it right now because of lockdown and the fact that the bulk of my situation is currently out of my own control, but this is all really because of the house. Just knowing that Evan and I are ready for that step is enough for me to just want it now. The issue is - as is usually the case - MONEY. If we had enough for at least a 10% deposit, that would be insane. But a 10% deposit on a house valued at $500,000 is $50,000, and combined we only have HALF of that. If we could potentially get some rich parents or guardians to match what we have, then we could actually do it. But who even has rich parents or guardians? And I don’t think my dad would sign off on this until maybe after we’re married? I’m fighting the urge to go check if the house is still even listed online. I’m hopeful that it’ll be up until we have the money. Or maybe until we can get to a combined $30,000, to give us a bit of a buffer once we’ve given the rest of our money to whichever gross corporation decides to grant us a loan. Ahhhhhh. Why does this world try its hardest to strip you of all your agency? Why is it that so many people struggle to even find a place to be? A place to call their own? It’s cruel. I can only hope this archaic order is on its way out. I was hoping the realities of climate change, or police brutality, or perhaps even COVID-19 would pave the way for the people’s revolution, but I now feel it may be something more innocuous, more unexpected. Something that the bigwigs won’t see coming, as the people themselves won’t see it coming. Even so, everybody knows that it’s on its way. The ultimate fight between the oppressors and the oppressed, and the one brawl that may reveal the future of western society. Democracy is indeed dead. We’ll see how quickly the next system comes into place, and exactly whose side that system will be on. And as for the universal base income, I find myself rooting more and more for it, but I also know that it may be provided to us as a band-aid, built to keep the people’s revolution at bay. But as long as there are billionaires, there’s no way that the revolution won’t be coming. Exponential growth cannot occur unless it’s built on the backs of millions, billions. This current system is just not economically viable, which is ironic considering that ‘economic strength’ is usually the reason capitalists vouch for capitalism. I believe capitalists are just people who haven’t shirked their ‘American Dream’ yet, who basically still believe in Santa Claus. I’m not even sure what to call myself. A social capitalist? I believe people should feel compelled to build their businesses and to innovate their industries, but I don’t believe in penalising those who have ‘valueless skills’. I also refuse to believe there is such a thing as a ‘valueless skill’. Perhaps being able to write stream of consciousness entries is a valueless skill. That may be the only thing.

[rueur]

Morning Pages No. 60

Sunday 23rd August - 5:30pm

I left yesterday’s entry at almost three or four lines away from the end of the third page, because work just got crazy busy and before I knew it, it was 5pm and I got to head home. Evan and I skipped the family zoom call last night too, I mean the Sarah’s People zoom call. It was Nichole’s time to host and I felt a bit bad about it, especially when Amy messaged about an hour after us saying that she wasn’t going to make it last night either. The way I saw it though, was I was working like crazy and I didn’t want to be too tired for Sarah’s meditation session that was scheduled for this morning. We ended up attending Sarah’s meditation, and Nichole, Courtney, and Amy all weren’t in attendance. I feel as though maybe they would’ve attended the 4:30pm yin yoga class that was scheduled by Shannon, Sarah’s yoga teacher mate, so they still got to experience a bit of positivity and zen today. I do genuinely feel bad about missing the zoom session last night, but part of me also feels like Nichole doesn’t really care either way whether we’re there or not. More specifically, I suppose whether I’m there or not. I get the sense that I’m not her favourite person and it’s difficult for me to say that, even to myself. I feel as though I have a bit of a complex with her after Dan lived with us. We were always around each other for a good chunk of last year, and I just never felt like we clicked in all that time. She gets on really well with Amy and I’m really glad for that, though. I’m glad she has a friend in our group, even if it isn’t me, and I do mean that.

Honestly though, I’ve just been enjoying how much Sarah is in my life right now. She’s only ever been a great source of friendship and inspiration for me, and this rings true through this 21 Day challenge. I felt a bit off during the meditation session she hosted this morning, I mean I couldn’t be as sociable as I wanted to be on camera, which was a bit regretful for me. I couldn’t really talk to Braden and I SO WANTED TO. I miss Braden. I think he’s a really cool person, and I am looking forward to hanging out with him in future. AND ALF. I miss Alf so much. I feel like Alf just got me. Oh my lord, I want to do MD with all these people again. If our house was in any way both comfy and accessible, I’d have people over here as soon as humanly possible. I’m cherishing what we have left of lockdown, because I can recognise this time as a valuable resource for young people like me, who are trying to get a certain aspect of their lives up and running, i.e. career stuff or setting up good habits for the sake of good health and longevity. But I can still appreciate this time AND wish that it will come to a swift end before the summer. I don’t want to spend the holidays like this. I believe it’ll crush me. I’ve been singing Christmas carols kind of incessantly, but Evan’s found it endearing, thank the heavenly lord almighty. I’m starting to feel, though, that my singing Christmas carols is getting a bit foreboding, like maybe I’m celebrating Christmas in my head all year round because there’s not going to be an actual Christmas this year. I need to get Wren a birthday present. I’m waiting on my cross-stitch order to come in. I’m really excited to get that started. But I also want to keep the hoops, so I think I might frame the finished hot air balloon cross-stitch. It shouldn’t be too difficult to find a good frame somewhere right now.

I also want to talk to Malith. I’ve been wanting to call him for the past week, but the time just keeps getting away from me. Maybe I should give him a ring tonight after my class with Bindee. We’ll most likely be finishing Romeo & Juliet tonight, and the class will most likely be going overtime again, but I’m okay with that. I just hope Malith will be. We’ll see if we can fit a conversation in at some point today. I should charge my phone...it’s losing battery quite quickly now. It's been approaching two years since I bought this phone, so I believe an upgrade may be in order soon. Definitely outright. I don’t want to be paying for a plan or anything, I mean this broadband plan is more than enough as it is. I’m paying $90 a month for unlimited internet on the nbn, and it’s been doing my head in, especially through lockdown. Not only has Telstra given other customers on the 500GB limit plan unlimited data during the lockdown because everyone’s home now, but they’ve also given absolutely no extras to the people who are ALREADY PAYING FOR UNLIMITED DATA. And the internet is still pretty shitty, like I have to use my mobile data on a near-daily basis. I had all this Belong data banked up and it’s just been dwindling away, to the point where I know I’ll inevitably have to be bumped back up to the 10GB a month plan and not the 1GB plan I’ve been on for the bulk of the year. I don’t want to pay an extra $15 a month though, screw that noise. I’m a tight arse, eh?

I just got a text from Sam, Wren’s partner. I sold them an Asus R17 gaming laptop and a Logitech G502 Hero mouse yesterday via the phone sales app, so they’ve been pretty grateful for that. They just sent me a photo of the stuff on their bed. This part of my job is by far the only part that keeps me going. I get to help people, I get to save them money, and people feel genuinely grateful towards me and my position. Sales can be weird and selfish and TERRITORIAL at the worst of times, but at the best of times I do get to feel like the empath I am. I do get to feel like I’m in a place where I can actually do good and feel good. 

It’s surprising how much faster I’m getting through these pages than I was through yesterday’s. I’m at home, and I’m just sitting here in the dark at my place at the head of the dining table, in front of the fireplace and in front of my whiteboard. The window is to my right, and the trees across the road are waving slightly to and fro in the breeze. Michael the mannequin is staring off into the distance and having a good old time, and Nicky is to my left on the green couch that’s followed Evan across the plains of time and space, sleeping on his electric blue and pink-padded Nike jacket. It’s clearly an incredibly warm jumper, and that’s why this cat is constantly on top of it or sandwiched inside it. We mentioned Nicky quite a bit in a family zoom call Evan and I have just finished up with, and this time with the actual family too. Christina, Barney, Mundell, Evan, and I were chatting from about 4pm till a bit before 5:30pm, and when that finished up, I decided it was about time that I do my pages for the day. I put it off this morning because I was still feeling tired, and I figured it might be best if I write directly after meditation. But that never happened and we ended up watching the rest of Season 5 of New Girl instead. Now we’re up to Season 6 and I’ve rapidly come to realise that the last season is only 6 or 7 episodes...or 8...long, so Season 6 is BASICALLY the last season and I am pumped. Of course, I already know it ends with Nick and Jess getting together, but I want to see it unfold in front of me and I want to see it now, so I don’t have to watch TV all the time anymore, even though I know that I will still always be watching TV when I’m not doing work or walking Lonzo, because it’s a surefire way of getting my dumb ass overactive brain to shut the fuck down. I’m worried about how much I’ve been working lately, and usually for such a little reward. And I thought I would be doing more work on the website today, but I don’t think that’s going to happen now anyway. I need to give myself a bit of a break, even though I have Bindee in about an hour. It’ll most likely be less than an hour once I finish these pages up. Or perhaps not, I’m actually making some pretty good progress right now.

I don’t know what to say right now, I don’t know what I’m thinking. I’m thinking maybe about Penny, my Abundance Accountability Buddy. She said her mum had to go to the hospital and that’s why she couldn’t reply to me over the weekend. I also found out a little bit more about her through the introduction that Sarah posted in the 21 Days discussion page. Apparently she’s an occupational therapist! And she did martial arts with Sarah too. Sarah wrote that she has ‘super powers’ in her prelude to Penny’s personally penned introduction. I love the alliteration I did there, that was epic. I am enjoying flexing my writerly muscles here and there. Teaching has been fun as of late. I’m set to make about $110 from teaching this week, because I had Dinel & Seni, Dinel, and Bindee. $50 + $30 + $30. All the littlies. Dinel had an extra class organised on Friday to help out with some debate prep. He’s joined the school’s debate team and his first topic is ‘bottled water should be banned’. Thankfully he’s on the affirmative team, so the arguments were quite easy to put together, and I feel like he’s gotten the hang of debating rather quickly. The issue is that the school isn’t using the RIGHT debate structure, like the first speaker isn’t considered the ‘leader’, and the third speaker has to do all the rebuttals AND the concluding statement, which just isn’t right. The first speaker should both open and close, so the brunt of the work doesn’t fall to the poor third speaker. I’m not too fussed about this, though. I mean, Dinel’s first debate tournament will be over zoom anyway, which sounds like it’ll be an...experience. I’m not sure. I want another cat. But I also do not. I want a house.

Christina and Barney spoke about us potentially buying a house briefly today. They seem glad that it’s a goal we’ve clearly set for ourselves at this young point in our lives. I’m hopeful that with another few years of hard work and saving like crazy, we’ll be able to realise this dream. Newfound dream for Evan, but a bit of a lifelong one for me. It’s been 5:59pm for ages now. I’m just watching the clock on the bottom of my screen and waiting...it went to 6pm finally. I swear that when I started this paragraph, it had been 5:59 for a whole three minutes. It was an age. I’ve been typing for about a half hour now, which means I can do around ten minutes per page. That’s not half bad, but I don’t want to start every day off with a half hour of writing. I just question the sustainability of this practice. Maybe I should bring it down to two...FUCK. I told myself I wouldn’t do this until at least after the 21 Days. It’s day 7. I’ve made it this far. I can wait another two weeks before I reassess. That being said, I’m ending this here. I’m going to start getting ready for Bindee. Just reached page 4 anyhow.

[rueur]

Morning Pages No. 59

Saturday 22nd August - 10:14am

I am doing this at my desk at work, which is weird, and it's making me feel like I can't be as honest as I'd like to be. I feel like Saturdays in particular are going to be quite difficult. I've turned the brightness of my phone screen all the way down so it'll at least be pretty difficult to see what I'm typing. But at the same time, it'll be difficult for me to gauge when I'm at three complete pages, because there are no page breaks in the Android version of Google Docs, or at least the Android version that I have. This experience is kind of fun though, because it's reminding me of uni. It's been a while since I've used this keyboard, in fact I don't believe I've used this keyboard at all with the XZ Premium. It took ages to pair it up with my phone, partly because I'm at work and I'm surrounded by Bluetooth devices. It was a bit of a nightmare. I ended up having to go to the kitchen in order to pair this up. Now I feel pretty good, though. I can't seem to be able to get rid of the phone keyboard at the bottom of the screen, so what I can see of this digital page is quite limited. It feels like I'm typing into a typewriter and I can only just make out the words on the page over the hardware that's required for the words to exist. I think I'd love to have a typewriter, but it's not essential right now. There's a woman who writes poetry on the street in the city with a typewriter. She asks people if they'd like a poem and she'll type one out for a price. I've always been a little in awe of her, because she always dresses in these lovely, flowy dresses and sits on her little stool or milk crate, her arms out like she's sitting at a desk, type-type-typing away on the street, all the business pricks passing by and getting a little glimpse into her very colourful life. I hope she's doing okay right now. 

I'm actually feeling pretty confident about this Bluetooth keyboard morning pages set-up right now. Even if I'm not able to publish this immediately after typing, I'll at least still be glad that I got this out of the way. I mean it's not just about getting it out of the way, I have to maintain this practice, but I don't want it to feel stifling. I have to figure out a game plan for days where I'll just have an early start, and I won't be able to do the pages first thing in the morning. Part of me just feels like I should wake up earlier and stop being a baby. The main issue I have with waking up earlier just to complete the pages is that if I'm on a time limit, I'll feel far too anxious to be able to finish them efficiently, and I'm going to end up scrambling the rest of the morning. But…it may also be something I just need to learn how to do. I should learn how to stop myself from becoming overly-anxious in the morning, and start training myself to use that 'getting ready' time more efficiently than I do. This is not a bad idea. 

Evan's been complaining about his back for the past 24 hours or so. We almost went on a family walk yesterday, but he just started stretching at the last minute and 2:30 turned to 3pm very quickly, and I had a call with Sam scheduled at 3:30pm, so I couldn't go anymore. I really wanted to, though. It pissed me up the wall. I was going to have an insanely busy afternoon/evening tomorrow, and the sun was out and the weather was good. I wanted to have a bit of a stroll before the intensely busy night I had, and then the fact that I had work all day today as well. And then AFTER work today, we have our weekly family zoom call with Sarah and Co. I absolutely love that despite all the big personalities in that group, it's still primarily Sarah's group of people. She is quite honestly the glue that holds us all together. Part of me wanted to ask 'then what am I?' right now, but I honestly don't care too much. I'm Rue. 

There's no way I'll be able to gauge how many pages I'm at, but I'm thinking now that it might be a good idea to just go off of how many words I've written. Currently, I'm at 759 or so, so I'll cap myself at maybe 2050? I feel like that sounds like a reasonable number. I'm using a few paragraph breaks here and there so it makes sense to stop midway between 2000 and 2100, which is my average word count range between the past few entries. I'm thinking way too much about the semantics of finishing this SPECIFIC entry. How the fuck am I supposed to handle Saturday morning pages once work properly opens up again? We won't have desks, and it's not like I can bring this keyboard or set it up when there are customers to serve in-store. And I feel like it's going to be intensely busy here once lockdown is over. Harrison is pacing around the store between calls, which is something he hasn't done before. I think it's because we've been able to set up more desks in other locations, and Manny and I are sitting in I.T. whilst Harrison and Nat are in games. I just had to take a phone call on behalf of Toby, who was on the shop phone. And I've just been talking to Toby right now too, so it's 10:42am. I have to stop talking about what's happening around me, I reckon. This is supposed to be stream of consciousness. 

I feel like every entry I'm saying 'THIS IS SUPPOSED TO BE STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS', and I should probably just let it be, because I'm wasting mental space by panicking when I feel like I'm not doing this properly. There's no way to do this properly, or improperly. I love the word 'improperly' it sounds so disciplinary. I had this random memory of being in Grade 3 and bringing the movie 'Snow Dogs' into school on my birthday along with my birthday cake, so that we could have a viewing party during lunch. I suppose I looked for any excuse to stay inside during recess and lunch. We didn't call recess 'recess', it was like morning tea. Or playtime? I miss Lonzo. I always miss Lonzo at work. 

It's hard to write in stream of consciousness when you're at work. You can't really get mindful enough, even when you're just sitting at a desk waiting for the phone to ring. There's just too much activity all around. This is perhaps my third Saturday working during the Stage 4 restrictions, so I've had more than enough of answering phones, although I believe this arrangement will be continuing well into September too. We'll see what happens. Lauren's yelling something to Madz. The ambience of this place is startlingly sparse, punctuated with periscopic, staccato interjections: impersonal, abrasive, coming from all sides at any time, and void of genuine feelings. I can't wait till I get to see thathi. He's bringing me kiribath for lunch, and I'm going to meet him in the front car park to pick it up. It'll be nice to chat to him for a little bit. I haven't seen him in a while. I miss my family. I don't know how to feel about malli, though. This is the first time that akki and malli have been in a fight and I've hands down been more on akki's side than mal's. He can't keep rocking up to work so late and just overall acting like he doesn't actually give a shit about the clinic. What is going on with his work ethic? It's doing my head in, just the mere fact that he can be so blase about rocking up to work on time, and being an asset to the clinic that he was so grateful to land a job for almost immediately after coming out of high school. He doesn't know how easy he really has it. His life's trajectory thus far in comparison to akki and mine, has been egregiously easy and totally not demanding. Even ammi and thathi have entirely given up with parenting him, and he's only 20?! How could they possibly be done with their parenting, especially if he's waking up at 2:50pm for a 3pm shift?

I've been missing typing with this keyboard SO DAMN MUCH. It genuinely makes me feel unstoppable, like nothing is keeping me from being a creative. I could be anywhere and doing anything and when inspiration strikes, BAM! Out comes the felt Bluetooth keyboard. I remember this only costing like $60, or potentially even less too. What a freaking steal. I'm glad I'm still using this after all these years too. 'Keys-To-Go'! Love it.

I'm excited to get back on Squarespace and gain some more experience with building a website. But whether or not we can move that Squarespace website on to cPanel and host it with VentraIP is a whole other battle, which I believe I'll need Steve's help with. I wonder how easy it'll be to set up my own domain with Squarespace, specifically for Broken Media to begin. I've been waiting for a call for 17 minutes. When do you reckon I'll receive a call? Do I have time to go to the bathroom right now? Look, I'm just going to go. It feels like it's going to be a quick one. Ha.

Alright...it's 1:07pm. Alright, it's 1:53pm. This is not going well, but even so I'm determined to finish these pages before the day's end. I've taken two poops today. And now Nat and I are watching The Office. Thathi dropped me off some kiribath and I'm feeling pretty nourished right now, but I'm kind of done with being here for today. I don't feel good in my body, which is interesting. Evan's also been recording some negative physical feelings since we started the 21 Days. I think it may just be part of the process of incorporating mindful practices into your life. It's what happened to Zuko in Atla or Lin in LOK. Or perhaps it's less nuanced than that. It's what happens when you do a juice cleanse. Today is just not a good day, morning pages-wise.

[rueur]

Morning Pages No. 58

Friday 21st August - 9:01am Man, I was so hoping that I could say the time was exactly 9am when I started typing, but alas I had to erase yesterday’s text and set up the start of the page. I actually still haven’t even changed the No. of the page to today’s number, so I have to do that before I continue any further. Okay done! 

I just opened the front door to let Lonzo and Nicky out for a little bit this lovely, sunny morning, and am sitting where I usually sit at the dining table, in front of my whiteboard, typing with my back straight and enjoying the calm and quiet of this morning, before my jam-packed afternoon starts. I have a chat scheduled with Sam McDonald at 3pm, and then a class with Dinel at 4:30-5:30, then a chat with Dan scheduled from 6 till whatever time that ends, hopefully that doesn’t go on for too long, but we’ll see what happens. I was planning on using some of the morning to maybe play around with SquareSpace, or however you capitalise it, and see what I can do on Julie’s new site design. It’s going to be pretty fun, I know, but just getting started is a little bit daunting. I haven’t even sent her my invoice for last month! I know I have to do that too. It’s just $60 for the whole month of July, because honestly all I did was handle the domain transfer and set up the new hosting account, and her emails. I’ll charge her another $60 for that time I went to her house, and put a clock on the work that I do on the new site design today, that is if I start today. It’s good to have some mental space set aside to work this stuff out. Freelancing is hard! It demands that you know your own worth, and most of the time creative freelancers have faced many many rejections when applying for ACTUAL jobs, so we typically tend to undervalue ourselves anyway. But I suppose I shouldn’t look at this as a cruel piece of irony, more than it is an opportunity to learn how to value myself at what is honestly still the start of my career. I’ve thought about the possibility of working enough freelance jobs and using Sam (boss man) as a resource until I get familiarised enough with the digital marketing and web development industries and can open up my own agency, maybe with Mundell as my head of web development, and me as the head of content and communications. It’s a pipedream for now, because I don’t know if that’s a dream Mundell might want too. But one thing I am certain of is that it’d allow us to work for our own damn selves, and I feel like life would be busy, but very very good. We’ll see what the future holds in store, I suppose.

Lonzo’s looking out the window right now, and now he’s just decided to go back out the open front door. It is genuinely a beautiful day. I’m fighting the urge to go for a walk, but also fuck it I should be able to go for a walk if I want to go for a walk! The grass is still quite long in the front yard, but I’m still loving it. The sunlight is shining right through the longer strands and it looks like the floor is glowing. I feel like I’m in a video game on a very sunny day. It’s sad that I used video games to describe the majesty of the natural world, when video games are merely an ambitious reflection of reality. I just googled ‘Slytherin traits’ to try and remember the world ‘ambitious’ just then, lord almighty. I’ve been spending far too much time inside, and I know it and I hate it. But okay, yeah, so I will in fact go for a walk today. Maybe with Evan, if he’s keen. If I allow him to go stoned, he’ll probably be keen.

I have to do some yoga at some point today because Day 4 of Sarah’s 21 Days is ten minutes of mindful stretching. I was going to do it last night, I almost did about ten minutes worth at work, but I wasn’t happy with a half-hearted attempt, so after these pages I’m going to actually set aside some time with some nice soothing music and just really get into some downward facing dog, some warrior poses, and maybe find some other things along the way in a really nice flow. I remember a lot of the yoga poses from Shining Light’s classes, but I don’t know their names. I’m hoping that sometime soon, I can get together with Wren and do some small exercises. As I type this, I honestly don’t know if that is indeed something I want to do. Maybe not sometime soon. Am I a bad friend? Or am I just my own crazy level of fatigued? It’s hard to keep myself a priority when I am always just concerned about my place in the lives of others. To be fair, I am doing this less and less, but it’s not really a positive change if you’re using work as a distraction from this issue, which is also what I feel I’m doing. I work too much, and sometimes it makes me feel like it means I’m not a failure, but in actuality, I’m skimming multiple fields, and not settling on any specific one. It feels like a patch, sometimes. I mean, it feels like my current working habits allow me to stay stagnant and not even realise it, because there’s a sense of busy-ness, and a sense of things moving. But where am I going? Really? I know I shouldn’t be this analytical, this critical, especially right now because I’m still studying! And there’s a freaking pandemic on. It’s not like I can help this. So why do I keep expecting myself to be doing better than I am? I’m jumping the gun. But that’s just how I am. I’m impatient with myself, and patient with everyone else. 

I just took a photo of that last paragraph and wanted to send it to Sarah, but instead I sent it to Wren. Is that meaningful at all? I’m not sure, I feel like maybe I can be totally honest about myself with Wren and Wren won’t judge me for it. I’m genuinely considering putting that last paragraph in the Sarah’s People group chat too, if I’m going to be completely honest. I feel like it may help start up a dialogue that some people may need. If that’s the case, it would kind of be my responsibility to start up this dialogue. 

It’s 9:33am, I took a big pause in this writing to feed the boys breakfast, because Nicky had just come running back in through the front door. And now guess what he’s doing? He’s done eating (for now) and has decided to jump up on the dining table and walk all over the place. He almost sat down, and now he’s jumped off again. What a wild turn of events. I legitimately thought he was going to walk toward me, bop my head and attempt to walk all over the keyboard, which is apparently only what he does when he wants to be fed. Goodness, the way he wakes me up in the morning does my absolute fucking head in. I reckon I might actually post that little paragraph in the Sarah’s People chat. Or at the very least, the other chat with Sarah, Amy, Nichole, and I. I don’t know. I think it’s important to reach out to people right now, and I feel like I need to make more of an effort with the girls. I’m hopeful that once lockdown is over, I’ll be more involved, more present. It helps that Sarah and Amy won’t be going to ACSA anymore. Maybe we’ll be able to find a BJJ place that’s closer to our side of town, or at the very least in a central area.

Evan’s just gotten back from the supermarket, I saw the car pulling into the driveway from the service road. I’m a little bit annoyed that I still haven’t finished these pages, but I’m also grateful for the insight this activity has provided me with today. I can hear Evan talking to the dog, and now he’s opened and has walked through the front door. We’re just talking about the shopping trip he’s just done! What domestic bliss.

Ugh, god. I thought these pages would be a breeze to get through because I woke up feeling pretty energetic this morning, but now it’s slightly depressing to me that it’s 9:43am and I’m still going. This shouldn’t take an hour, this is absurd. I mean, I haven’t been writing the whole time, so I shouldn’t feel too annoyed about this. I mean imagine when we’re older and I have to maintain this practice alongside having kids. It’s going to take me a hell of a lot longer some days, and that should be okay. I shouldn’t be too down on myself about that, because it just means that I’m responsible. I feel like I’m just going to have to start getting into the habit of being more emotionally lenient with myself, before I pile more responsibilities onto my life. I want to be a good mother. I feel that increasingly with every year. But in order to be a good mother (or teacher), you need to have life experience and you need to know what the world is like. My mother didn’t really engage too much with how this world really is, until we were all older. And that’s not her fault, that’s something she had to do for herself, and frankly for us too. She didn’t work so she could raise us, and she moved across the world for our benefit. She moved to a place she knew nothing about and was terrified of engaging with because thathi had to work nights and she was alone A LOT. I cannot even begin to imagine what that must’ve been like. All I know is what life is like for me, and I too have had my fair share of challenges, but I feel as though I’ve adopted a strong enough mindset that when things have happened to me, I’m able to roll with them to an extent, and I’m able to take them on board and use them in my own ongoing personal development. I want to impart that value, the value of endurance and persistence, onto my own children. And I can’t do that if I’m too hard on myself. I want to stretch soon, I’m looking forward to it. But I also want snacks! Snacks after stretches, yeeee!

I’m not sure what to do for the last third or so of this last page. There was a weird moment at work when Manny, Joe, and I were talking about how Evan and I almost did LSD this week (we didn’t, I know I forgot to mention that), and I made a statement on how that desire came out of nowhere from him, and Manny said ‘maybe he just wanted really freaky sex’, and I waved him off...and then revealed that ‘yeah, he actually did mention that’, and the boys howled with laughter and I ran the fuck away to the counter where I chatted with Soph for a bit. And Rob was managing today, and we were able to have a pretty nice conversation for the last half hour or so of the day. I miss him, if I’m being completely honest. I like talking to him more than I like talking to a lot of my coworkers, because I feel like we have a lot in common. But I don’t know what’s going on in his head, and it’s a touch terrifying. I mostly just feel bad. Not guilty or anything, just bad that something as DUMB as sexual tension is keeping us from being friends. I mean...I don’t even know if there even is sexual tension at this point. Fuck.

[rueur]

Morning Pages No. 57

Thursday 20th August - 9:27am

I’ve done everything I need to do for the morning, except eaten but I’m not too fussed about that. I used mouthwash, and I’m feeling pretty clean. Popped a pimple. I have work at 2:30pm, and I’m looking forward to it because I get to leave the house, and I know it’s going to be an easy shift. I kinda still want to watch Indiana Jones, but I also want to play a little Pokemon, and maybe I also want to be productive, because I’ve spent the last few days being really, really productive and it feels weird to actually have ‘free time’ now, but I also deserve some free time. I’ve been working too hard.

I had a phone call with Sarah last night. That went for about an hour. I took it outside with my headphones on, like just sitting on the side of the house by the carport with Lonzo’s red saddle jumper draped across my knees, as I stitch up that velcro patch that’s been coming off. I managed to do one entire side of the patch, so there’s just the other long side and then the short top that’s left. I’m keen to do that today. Or I can bring it to work and do it at work, but I feel like that may be a slap in the face for my managers, I don’t know. It’s true that we just don’t have a lot to do at work right now, so it would make sense to just bring things in, but at the same time, I have so much time at home. I shouldn’t be bringing chores into work. They don’t know that I actually don’t have that much time at home.

Sarah’s been having a weird couple of months with Rishi, so we chatted about everything and she was asking me what she should do in order to get their relationship to a place where talking about sensitive issues comes with more stable terrain, or more familiar territory. I spoke to her about the past three years with Evan, and the necessity to lay a groundwork on how you handle arguments. Sometimes it can feel like when you’re fighting, you fight in different ways and need different things from each other in order to attain closure. But when you need different things at the same time that neither of you are able to give, it can feel in that moment like you’re just totally incompatible. Evan and I have had our fair share of those fights, where he doesn’t want to say anything either because he doesn’t entirely know what to say in order to accurately express how he feels, or he simply doesn’t want to say anything out of concern that it’ll make things worse or just upset me further. But then because I’m full of nervous energy most of the time, and because I need to hear communication from him, him being stoic and speechless usually ends up just making me upset anyway. And it’s curious, but it was only during my conversation with Sarah that I realised that Evan and I haven’t had an argument like that in a long time now, like an argument that’s filled with awkward, tense, silent pauses because neither of us wants to speak. It’s actually a lot easier for us to hash things out now because Evan expresses himself more efficiently now. And I think it’s just because we’ve been together long enough at this point to understand how to speak to one another, and how to attain closure by working together to address our grievances. It only took like three years and one minor break-up to get to this point, but now I mean...we’re strong. We don’t have any doubts about one another, and about our equal commitment to this relationship. It’s nice, actually, to be in a space where for the first time, my partner is equally committed to me as I am to them. It’s really nice. And Sarah deserves that too.

I think a major contributing factor is that Rishi’s our age, he’s younger. Like Ashwin, but Ashwin also has a job and has somewhat of a direction he knows he may like to follow, with being the practice manager. But Rishi’s unemployed, he has no streams of personal income aside from his parents, and a business that’s just not moving fast enough yet for him to be profiting off of it. And Sarah also said he may be spending on overheads prematurely, like a warehouse space and an EMPLOYEE. The boy is living boldly. I mean I understand that though, it can be tricky being an entrepreneur and not having any real groundwork to follow when it comes to plotting out your career trajectory. ‘Entrepreneurship’ is just stabs in the dark until you find something remotely similar to what you’re looking for, and then just making it work from there. One of the articles I had to write for this month was on why you don’t need a lot of capital to start your own business. One of the major points made by other entrepreneurs is that if your idea can’t make money unless you have $10,000 or something, then your idea probably isn’t as strong as it could be. Some people say they need money for marketing, like in order to get their product out there...but then at the same time, you have a lot of online businesses that get their start from just playing the social media game really, really well. You don’t necessarily need to pay Facebook or Instagram for a promoted platform or anything like that, not if your product is good enough and fills enough of the gap in the market that you’ve sussed out.

Whenever I think of the phrase ‘gap in the market’, I think of people patching up water pipes and shit with duct tape, like just the most haphazard pipe in the world that’s filled with duct tape patches of all shapes and sizes. That’s what ‘the market’ looks like to me. People like to pretend that civilisation is orderly, completely organised to the point where the world exists off of squares and grids, linear systems. I know that’s not the case now, especially since lockdown, but I knew it during my undergrad too. You can just see the cracks more readily now, and you can see the desperation of the bodies that govern us - be they governmental or corporate - as they try to ‘keep the economy afloat’ like it’s the only thing that matters. I know it’s also easy for me to talk because I still have a job, but for the past few years I’ve had the bare minimum of a job. Twelve contracted hours a week, it’s usually lucky for me to make $400. And now that there’s no commissions it’s lower than that. The way that I see my job is that it only really covers rent, and if I want to support the rest of my life, I’ll absolutely need to take on students and have as many SEO jobs as I can hold.

Anyway, Sarah and I chatted about a lot of things, but mostly it was about Rishi and what she should do. She also told me she’d been asking Amy for advice and Amy’s response to Sarah’s qualms have been a little bit more defensive or protective, I should say. It’s because of everything that had happened with Sonny. Also it doesn’t help that apparently both Rishi and Sonny are scorpios, and Amy’s doubly wary for that reason too! Evan and I were talking about how much we enjoy being pisceans, and the more I think about it right now, the more I realise that I actually do love being around other pisceans. I feel like I just get their energy, their nature, and I know what to expect from them because it’s all me too. Amy’s also a piscean, which is just the most fitting thing ever. Our emotional intuition is off the charts, and I’m yet to meet a person who’s as in tune with themselves as Amy is. 

It’s 9:50am, and I feel like I’m making good time with these pages this time around. I struggled through yesterday’s, and I think it’s because I knew I just had a mound of work waiting for me once I’d typed out these pages. But I know that all I need to do for the rest of today is just chill out and wait for it to be 2pm, when we’ll leave so I can make it to work! It’s going to be an easy day. If anything, all I should task myself with today is organising both the zoom chat with Steve and the zoom chat with Dan. That sounds like a perfectly fine workload. I’m just not sure when I’ll be able to organise either of those chats. I feel like I should prioritise Steve, just because I haven’t dedicated much time to Julie’s project because of the agency this week, but I did tell Julie ahead of time, so I’m not feeling badly right now. Also, Dan’s still getting stuff together, so it’s going to be a pretty preliminary conversation. Even so, I should get in touch with both of them today.

I feel like I need to go to the bathroom again. Second poop! Oh second poop, how long must you plague me for? How do I absorb you into my first poop? Or am I just always doomed to feel the nagging pains of second poop on every commute for years and years to come? I kind of regret writing this out...but hey, it’s my stream of consciousness. Penny!

Yesterday’s 21 Days challenge was to interact with our Abundance Accountability Buddy (AAB), and mine is a woman named Penny. Nichole and Amy were paired together, and Evan has both Braden AND Anthony, so initially I felt a little iffy about being paired with a complete stranger, but at this point I just trust Sarah and I believe she paired Penny and I together for a reason that I’ll come to know through interacting with this person. I’m hopeful that our chats turn familiar and we share some pretty nifty insights with one another. And that maybe I’ll make a friend? I’m not entirely sure how old Penny is. I had a look through her profile pictures out of curiosity, and there are two women in a lot of them: one older, one younger. At this point, Penny might either be the mother or the daughter, I don’t know! I mean, I know it doesn’t matter too much, but I just don’t know how to handle the text speech. I feel like I text differently when it comes to people from different age brackets or different personal backgrounds, I don’t know! But I trust Sarah! She paired us together consciously, for a genuine reason. And I will talk to Penny and only through talking to Penny, will we both come to realise what that reason is. I mean at the same time, it may have also been completely random. 

It’s a beautiful day, as I can see it out of my big front window. I’m honestly digging the long grass in the front yard, even though I know it cannot be encouraged. Maybe I’ll ask Evan to mow it at some point today. Or we can do it together tomorrow. There are some dog poops that I could pick up, and I could work on clearing the garden beds at the very least. I’m still keen to plant some lavender and rosemary along the house. It’ll complement the house’s muted colour scheme really nicely. Interesting...with a greater number of paragraphs, my word count for these pages has gone from an average of around 2100, to now 1993. I should write more paragraphs. 2000.

[rueur]

Morning Pages No. 56

Wednesday 19th August - 9:22am

I set my alarm to wake up at 6:30am and it didn’t take, because I was dumb enough to fall asleep at around 1. I was talking to Sam from the agency though, and we hadn’t spoken properly in a long while. His last message to me approached 500 words, and he made a comment on it basically being an outreach piece and said our response system was getting out of hand! But man, we had a lot to catch up on. He’s been telling me a little about his lockdown experience, and it seems pretty grim in comparison to mine, I mean aside from the fact that he’s still got a full-time job and multiple other noble commitments, whereas I made around $300 last week with my two shifts. I’m not enjoying making this little from my main source of income, especially after thinking about buying the house in Epping. I went on LinkedIn this morning and had a squiz at the jobs posted on there, but as usual, nothing seems entirely perfect. There was a job posted for a broadband company that isn’t Telstra, and that sounds pretty interesting. I feel like with my degree and my telco retail experience, I’d probably have a good chance of landing that? Maybe I should apply. I’m honestly not in too much of a rush to find something until after graduation. But considering how long this degree is taking me and how fed up I am with unimelb and this bogus fee they’re trying to charge me over my semester one class cancellation, I’m reconsidering just how much I need this degree anyway. My parents say that I’m this close, I might as well see it through. And I know they’re right. I just don’t like that they’re right! Usually I’m right!

It’s worth mentioning that I’m also struggling with getting through these pages today, and I say that only six minutes in, and half a page in. I don’t know, I just feel a bit fatigued today. It’s most likely the sleep. I’m not sure how to fix this aside from going to bed at a reasonable hour tonight. I’ll have to do that anyway in order to feel ready enough for work tomorrow. I should do some laundry...my jeans are in the wash. I mean, I have other jeans and I probably shouldn’t wear the jeans anyway, considering I’m just going to be sitting at a desk for four and a half hours now, and I don’t really need pockets for that. But I don’t know what else to wear, and jeans are a really easy decision to make. Maybe my black-and-white pinstripe pants. 

I want to be a little active today, I wasn’t that active yesterday...but I still have articles to write. I didn’t finish any of the three insider pieces I have to do, because I was only given access to the spreadsheet yesterday after asking Sam and asking Sam for access turned into a full-on all-day conversation with Sam. I was also on the phone to Sandy for 2 hours and 40 minutes yesterday. I just feel like I’ve been so goddamn busy all week. Sunday blurred into Monday and now Tuesday went by with little restraint, and now it’s Wednesday. And what have I made to show for all this work? $300. $80 from tuition. $60 that I still need to invoice Julie for. $270 for the entire MONTH from the agency. Let’s say that’s $70 a week. That means every week I’m supposed to make a combined income of approximately $460 without commission. That’s honestly not enough for the amount of time and effort I feel like I’m putting into things right now. What is taking up all my time? I honestly don’t know, but we’re in lockdown and I shouldn’t be feeling this tired. I just want to be appreciated and compensated for what I’m worth. Goodness. I feel like this is just a recurring theme in my life. I feel like I’ve outgrown school now, to be completely honest. I don’t want to wait until I’ve finished my degree to put myself out there. I’m ready now. Finishing my degree is just a formality at this point. The worst thing about waiting until after I finish the degree is honestly just the fact that I don’t know when the degree is going to end because I can’t fulfill the internship component nor even PLAN the internship component because we’re in a STAGE 4 LOCKDOWN. I feel like my future is being held for ransom, it’s hideous. It’s ACTUALLY being held for ransom because of unimelb’s dumbass fee. I am clearly not feeling good this morning. I hope the 21 Days has something planned that’ll turn this shit around, or I could at the very least do it myself. It’s wet outside, but I’ve been gearing to go for a bike ride. But riding in the rain has been a small source of anxiety since my accident where I lost my two front teeth. That was in April, 2017, a few months into my relationship with Evan. Evan was there. We spoke about it for the first time in a long time quite recently, I think during the first lockdown. I asked him if he thought in that instance when I was sitting with a bloody mouth on the side of the road, that he DEFINITELY couldn’t break up with me anytime soon because he’s fucked up my mouth. He laughed and said ‘yeah, actually’, which was honestly pretty cool. The fact that after all this time, I could ask a question that had a brutally honest answer and we could just laugh about it. We’re solid, I’ve always felt like we are. Even when we broke up for that one afternoon last year, when Dan was living with us.

I find myself writing most of this so that I have at least some recollection of it further down the line. I’ve realised that these pages have been valuable for me to read over, so I want to put stuff in them that ‘future me’ will find valuable. Like I think that I’m going to use all the stuff I wrote about Aaron and that weird coke night in Thornbury to finetune the short story based on that incident. It’s great to have the actual feelings of that night down in my own words. It feels like I can just go back to that night and have it be very real, and thus infinitely easier to write about.

Nicky just came back through the open front door a few minutes ago, so I’m just going to go check that he’s still in the house. It’s 9:43am, and I’m impatient to finish these pages off. I just have very real work to do and this feels like a bit of a distraction. I’m only two pages in ah!

Okay, I don’t think he’s still here, but Lonzo’s tucked right underneath the full doona next to me, so I’m feeling comforted by him and not too concerned that Nicky won’t return or that he’ll get hurt...or anything like that. Nicky’s had a few incidents over the past few years, but this system of letting him out first thing in the morning before he’s had breakfast does work! He runs out for a bit, spends a good twenty to thirty minutes exploring the outside world, and then he returns home promptly because he wants to be fed. Not only does he get to enjoy being outside at least once every day, but he gets to do so without wandering too far, and he also doesn’t feel inclined to go scrummaging for food through anybody’s bins because he knows there’s some actual food waiting for him at home. I feel pretty confident and settled in my cat ownership abilities, my abilities to be a cat owner. 

Finally I’m on the last page. This isn’t going too well today, I don’t know. My fingers are almost to a point where it gets difficult to type because of the cold. My circulation isn’t too great, my extremities get cold quite easily. It’s apparently supposed to be a female-body thing, a biological setting that helps protect our centres, our wombs. 2000 or so words a day is intense. Does this become a detrimental practice if the prose is too long? I’ve just been doing this the way I’ve always done it, and I kind of don’t want to change the practice three days into it. I might review the three page construct after the 21 Days are complete. It shouldn’t be too much of an issue, so long as we’re still in lockdown, and we’re most likely going to stay in lockdown until mid September, apparently. I have no issue with that either. I just heard Nicky, he’s still here. Evan just came out of the other room. I hope he feeds him right now. I think he’s going to. I’m just hearing out. He sighed. Nicky’s meowing. There’s a crinkling of plastic and a cupboard just closed. I don’t think he fed him. Nicky’s food is in a jar on top of the microwave. Should I call out ‘can you feed the cat and close the front door?’? I feel like I shouldn’t have to. Evan’s making himself breakfast. Oh god, if it rains some more today, my jeans just won’t be washed in time for me to wear them to work tomorrow. Or more aptly, they won’t be dry in time. 

I don’t know why, but my brain just naturally took me to this one time that a homeless man on Collins St outside Evan’s shop followed me until I gave him cash. I had to actually TAKE CASH OUT at a servo before he left me alone. That was an upsetting day. But it was raining and I was wearing a very big, thick coat from UNIQLO that ammi had given to me. It probably made me look wealthy, I guess. I mean aside from the fact that I’m a tiny, little, scruffy, brown person. I don’t understand how anybody could look at me and think that I have money. And in the grand scheme of things, I really don’t have money. But I have more than Evan, despite having a lot more debt too, thanks to tertiary study. Look, I can see I’m thinking about money a lot, despite making very little, but I think that’s the whole point. Money is security, and I deserve security. I’m working so hard to try and attain this sense of place and security. I reckon I’m ready to be a homeowner, all I need to do in order to reach this goal is to find a job that can provide for me. And even if I leave the store and find a professional gig, but then the professional gig goes belly-up because the economy is in the toilet, I still think I’ll be okay because the store will take me back. Maybe not as a salesperson again, I don’t know. But I’m convinced that I have family at that company, and so long as I have people there, I should be okay. It’s not like my last few jobs, where I quit and I knew I couldn’t go back. I have some pretty well-established connections now. It might be worth asking Sam if there’s anything for me to do at the agency...but I don’t want him to think I’m just talking to him to get a job. I actually love him. He’s a fantastic human being and we have a lot in common, and I want to meet him. I’ve always wanted to meet him, so much more than I want to talk to him over messenger or email. I have faith that that day will come, the day where we’ll finally be able to meet. I just thought it would be a lot sooner, that’s all. I thought a lot would be happening in 2020. I had high expectations. I think everyone did. I believe that fact has made this reality a lot harder for the western world. But then again, the western world has just got to suck it the fuck up. This isn’t hard.

[rueur]

Morning Pages No. 55

Tuesday 18th August - 8:40 am

So I’m scrambling to get this finished before 9am because I have an online uni tute I need to attend. It’s going to be an hour and a half long and then right after that I’ll need to finish an article on investing in real estate in Melbourne, which has immediately coincided with Evan and I finding a house that we might like in Epping...shit’s crazy. We had a genuine conversation about buying a home together yesterday because we realised that what we’re paying in rent could quite easily go towards a home without us breaking a sweat, or having to work that much more. If we find something for around $500k, we’d actually be able to buy a house like quite soon? It’s weird! I’ve always been talking about this like it’s a bit of a pipedream and I mean, we’re 23. We have plenty of time to save up some more, but this house that we’ve found is actually quite perfect. I mean it’s very us, it’s in a superb area, and I can see myself being happy living there for decades. Epping is suiting me well, and I wasn’t expecting this, but I’m grateful for it. I’m grateful for Lonzo, and for our big sunny yard, and I’m grateful for the amount of parks and ovals that are available to us. I’m grateful for the dog park and the community that surrounds that space. We’re just so lucky to have found a rental property here. If we can find a genuine home, that would just be unspeakably perfect. What’s better is that I’ve told Sandy about it and she’s totally supportive of it! She doesn’t think we’re jumping the gun, which I was kind of worried about, because she’s been thinking of buying a house for ages now. I feel like I do a lot of things before her in life, and I’ve always been a little bit proud of that. But Sandy’s establishing herself so sensibly as she always has been. She’s only really impulsive when it comes to buying material stuff, not making big ass life decisions. I don’t know. I feel like the older I get, the more I realise how similar we are, but in our own ways. It’s nice having an older sister who’s so different to you in essence, but shares your same values. You get to share sides of the world with each other that the other wouldn’t be privy to, but is still able to appreciate. 

Speaking of, I’m frantic because it’s 8:48am, I’ve got to be on zoom at 9am, and then stay there till 10:30am. Once that’s over, I need to finish my article and THEN once that’s over...Ev and I are taking LSD. I mean...yeah. At home, of course. We just haven’t done it in a while and we haven’t really structured this one at all, it’s just supposed to be a kind of ‘we’re in lockdown’ thing and I don’t have too much work to do this week, aside from organising the meeting with Steve, talking to Dan, talking to Sam, and then the fact that I have three more articles due on Friday, but I don’t have access to the Excel spreadsheet just now and it’s Tuesday, so I’ll most definitely have time to do them I guess when we’re sober on Wednesday or even at work on Thursday. OR Friday morning. It should be fine. I honestly deserve a bit of a break. Not a day goes by that I don’t have at least some kind of work to do. I mean yesterday I spent all morning writing articles, then we got distracted by the house and went for a walk to go and look at the house. It’s not very far away, but the court it’s in is so cute and lovely that it feels like you’re in the country. I’m getting distracted by this beautiful house again! We took Lonzo to the oval after that and had a bit of a ball throw and run around. I did a small lap of the second oval, the one that was all done up. I think I’m going to use that oval to measure my laps from now on, because it’s just so much easier running on concrete. Evan says otherwise because it’s bad for your knees or something and yes, I understand that. But the ground is level so it’s just a lot easier to get into zen mode and just run mindfully. Sarah’s Day 2 challenge is to do one activity mindfully. I think mine should be running mindfully to see if I can get slightly meditative about the practice. If not, I can go for a bike ride. I’ve been meaning to do that too and it’ll only take me a half hour or so. I should just bite the bullet and do it, eh? 

It’s 8:54am and I think I might need to stop these pages halfway through in order to get to my class on time, but I don’t want to! I really don't. I want to just finish this, write the three pages all the way through without disruption, and then have a linear schedule for the rest of the day. I’m worried I’ve been operating on fumes and it’s not good for me. I need to take a break! Hence the acid. I’m not entirely convinced it’s a good idea, but I’ve never really been convinced before every trip. So at this point, I’m really just looking forward to it. It’ll be broad daylight when we drop, which should be quite nice, and the weather’s getting so much nicer now. It’d be a shame to stay inside and work all day, so we might as well have a little trip. Actually, now I’m thinking it might also be worth putting a mask and some sunnies on and taking a little walk with our faces hidden so nobody can tell we’re flying high. Maybe not right away. Maybe we’ll wait until we’re feeling where we’re at, because the stuff we have in the freezer is quite strong, like around the same strength of the tabs we had at Eso. 

It’s 8:57, and I’m just looking back at what I was able to write in the span of three minutes. I don’t like writing these under a strict time limit because it just means that the whole entry turns into anxiety about the time, so I reckon I’m just going to stop here and get ready for my class that starts in two minutes now. It’ll be easier than just trying to rush about 1000 more words in two minutes. And I owe myself more than that. For the record, I couldn’t get up early enough to do this because my classes (that I teach) finished at 7:30-ish last night, then we made and had dinner, and then I needed to watch my lecture and do my readings and I was just so done from the amount of work that I had to do yesterday that it took me ages to be able to motivate myself to do my uni work, and I ended up going to bed at around 1am. 

It’s 10:34am now and my class just finished. I don’t know what to think about it, but I’m feeling quite hot and weird in my own skin right now. All I really want to do right now is just have a shower, and I think I will do that and just get really really into it. That can be my Day 2 done: a really mindful shower where I just wash every inch of my body and use my little scrubby thing and just get the soap into a nice, thick lather. I might have a bit of weed too just to kickstart the acid, we’ll see.

It’s a beautiful day outside, it really really is. Melbourne being in lockdown during winter is no big deal, but being in lockdown now as spring is finally starting to arrive, is getting me quite down. I can’t believe the world isn’t open to us right now, and that there’s a one hour time limit on outdoor activities. It’s crazy how limited I feel right now, and even though I can fully register that my mind is working infinitely harder than my body, I can’t really do anything about it. And yet, I feel like that is just an excuse as well. I push myself hard, I always have. Because I want to be somebody who’s accomplished for my age, always. I like feeling like I’ve done so much for a 23 year-old. Maybe that’s another reason why I’m allowing myself to get so attached to this house we’ve found on the internet. We actually found it a few weeks back, and there was an online auction scheduled for two Saturdays back, I think. But the house didn’t sell then, which kind of feels like fate. Honestly, it’s also pretty interesting that this is all happening during COVID-19, when the Melbourne real estate market is experiencing a bit of a decline. This is kind of the perfect time to buy. Maybe I should talk to thathi about this. If akki thinks this is a good idea, I should honestly genuinely consider buying this place with Evan. But that’s the one iffy thing about it. I’m worried that thathi’s going to think that Evan and I aren’t established enough in our relationship to be able to think about buying a house together. But we spoke about this yesterday too: we’re not going to break up. The longer we’ve been together, the less we feel like we’re ever going to break up. We’re just comfortable with each other. Life is easy and good. And I honestly think life will just continue to be easy and good for us, and I don’t believe I’m naive for thinking that. I was talking to Evan last night about reading through the first few morning pages I published on this site, more specifically all the summaries of all the depressing phone calls I had with Ikaros nearing the end of our relationship. I can’t believe I ever allowed myself to feel guilty or personally responsible about how that relationship ended. I gave him every opportunity to be a better partner and he just wasn’t willing. I was patient, I was communicative, and I gave him so damn much of myself. Surely he can’t blame me for moving on. Surely he can’t still be harbouring ill feelings towards me. But then why hasn’t he spoken to me in three years? Why am I still blocked on his socials? Because he can’t confront the full reality of the situation, he can’t allow himself nor myself to attain closure because that would mean admitting that he’s largely responsible for the crumbling of our relationship. I feel like I’m just pointing the finger now, but honestly I also feel like I need to. That’s why I brought it up with Evan last night. I’ve been trying over the last three years to just let this go without closure and feel content with whatever sense of closure I can just provide to myself, and honestly reviewing the morning pages did kind of help with that. I just believe that I’m in the process of putting all of this to bed, and seeing how ridiculous past me was when it came to my leniency with him...it helps. I feel like I’m finally starting to get on my own side.

I do worry about him too, more than I want to. It’s kind of like Wren. Wren and I did chat a fair bit yesterday, though. Just on messenger. I was glad for that, because I at least know they’re doing okay enough to be able to hear about me and respond to me conversationally. I told them to listen to Jacob Collier’s new album, saying that I’d listened to it twice and each time I thought to myself ‘Wren would really love this’. Wren likes it when people think of them, I know that. One time I asked Wren if they could pick up soap on the way to our house because we didn’t have any soap and they felt really included in our lives, like it was an intimate thing to ask a friend. I want to do as much of that for Wren as possible. I want to provide them with a sense of family and community here. But I also need to take care of myself, and that’s something that Wren has been struggling with accepting this year. I understand why though, and I’m not mad. I acknowledge I’m in a far better personal situation during this lockdown than they are in every way except financially.

[rueur]

Morning Pages No. 54

Monday 17th August - 8:00 AM

I was up at around 7:25, but I didn’t start this right away. And I’m okay with that, I mean I realise I need to be a bit more lenient with myself when it comes to building this practice back up again. Fear of failure is something that I really need to address if I want to attain any level of meaningful success, I know that. It’s been two and a half or so years since my last morning pages, and from what I can tell after briefly reading over and then half-heartedly publishing my last entry, in the last few months of 2017 and that one month in 2018, I seem to only write up these pages if I felt emotionally volatile, like I needed to express myself. If I associated negative feelings with this practice, it’s definitely clear why it didn’t stick like I wanted it to. This isn’t supposed to be a form of therapy or an outlet where I get to vent, even if I do get to vent. This is just supposed to be an opportunity for me to be honest with myself, which is something that I’ve been struggling to do for the last three years, if I’m going to be completely honest! 

It’s also worth saying that I didn’t start this up again of my own volition. Sarah’s put together a group on Facebook called ‘21 Days of Abundance’, where she’ll be setting 21 days of challenges which are supposed to aid us in our personal growth and support our ability to be mindful. Day 1 was setting yourself a personal goal or intention that we should aim to do on every single one of the 21 days. It has to be a measurable goal, so we’re more likely to achieve it. People chose things like ‘no screen time for an hour after waking’, or ‘meditate for ten minutes or so a day’, and those are both pretty honourable goals that I honestly might try and do alongside writing my morning pages. I mean I’ve definitely already failed with the screen thing today because the first thing that I did upon waking up was go to the bathroom with my phone and I absent-mindedly watched this Smosh skit called ‘Tinder for Hotdogs’ which was apparently a big vision of Shayne Topp’s. It was just an interesting narrative to follow rather than being a skit, actually it was kind of like a meta skit. Like the ‘Moby Dick’ narration he tried in that one ‘Try Not To Laugh’ video with Gus Johnson. 

Evan just came and put a blanket on me because Lonzo just climbed out of bed very awkwardly - as he is wont to do - when Evan asked him to get out of bed to come and eat his breakfast. LONZO IS MY DOG. I realise in my last few entries, I was constantly talking about how I want a dog but I’m living in an apartment that was quite genuinely way too small for any kind of dog, but now I have a dog! And I don’t live in an apartment anymore! We’re in a house in Epping, and it’s beautiful out here. We have a whippet called Lonzo who was born on the 29th of May, 2018. We’ve had him since July, 2018. So yeah, of course these morning pages were written whenever I was feeling depressed and that’s exactly why I suppose I haven’t written them out in three years now. I’ve been quite happy, building myself up and finding or making opportunities for myself. Lonzo’s just returned back to me. He eats breakfast very quickly because we give him a mixture of meatballs and dry food, and he’ll eat all the microwaved meatballs and leave the dry food in his bowl and eat it throughout the day. I’d be okay with this if it wasn’t for Nicky, who’s always lurking around the food bowl and trying his best to eat Lonzo’s dog food as silently as possible so as not to raise the alarm, not just from Evan and me, but also from Lonzo too, who has quite astute hearing despite being a sighthound. Haha. Sorry. 

I’m thinking of Wren now. If I make a bad joke, I think of Wren. If I look through my photo album on my phone, I think of Wren. And I don’t like it. Wren’s not having a very good time in lockdown, and despite everything that’s going on in my life for myself, I feel like Wren not having a good time is kind of defining my own existence right now. They made the decision to live alone and to see multiple people at a time, and they’ve consistently made the decision to choose intoxicants over healthy, wholesome foods and practices. I’ve tried to talk to them about steps they can take to improve their emotional health and wellbeing right now, and they’ve rarely listened to me, instead asking that I give them all my time so that they can fill their void with jokes and absent conversation. Over a week or so ago now, they asked if we could video chat every day, and we did for two days, until a Thursday night when the chat didn’t happen because Wren had fallen asleep and I was waiting for them to initiate because I had just gotten home from work, and I was happy to chat, but I was also more than happy taking a back seat to it all and just kinda letting it happen to me, you know? But Wren fell asleep and it wasn’t a big deal. Cut to Friday evening around six-ish as I’m finishing up at work, and Wren messages me ‘What time is our video call tonight?’, not ‘Can we...’ or ‘Are we...’, just ‘What time...?’, and that honestly didn’t sit right with me. This is Melbourne’s second lockdown, and quite honestly, our first lockdown wasn’t too great for Wren and me, in regards to our friendship. Our friendship was in essence, largely under duress. I find it easier to talk about these shitty things like I’m a narrator in a Victorian novel. Somewhat. I don’t know. Now I feel like I’ve found a natural stall in my inner narrative voice. Stream of consciousness...am I even doing this right? Is the point to conjure stories out of nothing? Is the point to journal absent-mindedly? This isn’t really supposed to be therapy, as I said. And I don’t want to do this wrong again. I believe addressing my anxiety that’s linked to ‘doing this wrong again’ is just a part of addressing my fear of failure. Full honesty here, I went back to edit that sentence. I actually edit this as I write it because I’m a tiny bit of a perfectionist when it comes to my writing, and even though it’s stream of consciousness, I still want it to be grammatically correct and coherent. I’m thinking now that I want to swap the words so it’s ‘coherent and grammatically correct’, but I’m not going to edit that just to give you (me) an example of how much I do edit myself. I’m very proud of my work, even if this is work that only I will ever be able to see. I feel like I still need to talk about Wren though, even if this isn’t supposed to be a form of therapy. 

Wren took Sookie back, so we only have Nicholas and Lonzo. I want another cat. Everyone has cats right now! Lockdown cats! Sarah has Clancy, Nichole has Bishop, and Amy has her two cats Evie and oh my gosh I’ve forgotten the name of the other one...the two black cats that live with her and her three housemates in Heidelberg West, in their ‘witches coven’. I’m kind of glad that my mind has taken me away from Wren and towards cats, but also...I’m right back to Wren now too, to mention that Wren adopted a cat named Fern quite recently and I drove up to Woodend with them on the day of the adoption. I need to go to the bathroom, but I want to wait until I at least finish this page. I can be lenient with myself, but there has to be a limit, right? I feel like if I go to the bathroom right now, I’m not going to be coming back anytime soon because of my damn phone. I don’t entirely know where my phone is right now and I don’t mind that, but honestly I have been tempted every now and then during this writing exercise to use my phone to look something up, or at least check my socials and messenger to find the name of Amy’s second cat. Goddamn, yeah I need to go to the toilet. If I don’t go, then this is going to be all I write about for the rest of this page and that’s just no good. Yeah, I’m going to go. This isn’t even a question of self-discipline anymore, it’s just a question of not being dumb enough to ignore basic biological urges and fucking up your insides slowly over a number of decades until you’re an old person with incontinence. What the fuck. I need to go to the bathroom.

It’s 8:35am, so I didn’t lose much time, thankfully. It’s interesting though, when I was sitting on the toilet, I was really missing writing to the point where I honestly couldn’t wait to start my SEO stuff. I do some freelance content writing right now, too. It was a gig I got through Christian, which I’ve been thankful for for a couple of years now. I’ve been lucky enough to write for the most insane clients, but I feel like I shouldn’t mention anything here just as a bit of a precaution. I find it tricky to distance my work life from my social life, I suppose because I work a lot. I have four jobs. SEO stuff, tutoring, tech retail sales, and more freelance communications stuff. And uni, I’m still doing uni too, but only one subject this semester. I’m really not passionate about this master’s course that I’m doing. Does ‘master’s’ need an apostrophe? I added the quotation marks to ‘master’s’ to get that ruddy red line - or blue line, I forget - to disappear from my document. I guess if I keep digressing it must mean that I am in fact, doing stream of consciousness writing properly. I hate that last sentence. I’m losing the plot in all this concern for grammar, but the way I see it...it’s a skill that I have to offer my friends and loved ones. I’m happy to read anything over at any time and use my skills to help people get the things that they want. Dan wants to give me a few responsibilities with Zuri. I’m eager to help out, but I also don’t know how much time I’ll be able to dedicate to the project, what with all the other things I’m doing right now. Steve said he’ll help me out with some web design stuff, which I’m actually really looking forward to. I’m still not thinking about Wren. Except I am. I hate that I am. But I also feel guilty that I’m trying not to. Wren’s suicidal, because the world is in lockdown and they live alone. They can’t come here because of the 5km radius rule, and they sent me a message yesterday morning asking if they could come over and pretend to be my girlfriend, because exceptions are made for if you’re visiting an intimate partner. We’ve pretended to be an item before, that I have no issue with. But lying and also putting Evan at risk, because Evan is genuinely concerned about breaking any laws right now, due to the high penalties...I can’t do that. I can’t ask him of that. I’m concerned for my friend, but it’s also worth saying that they haven’t been a very good friend to me lately. They demand consideration, but they rarely give it in return. I don’t want to talk about this right now, because I’m at the end of my three pages. Even though...I suppose I do want to talk about this.

[rueur]

Morning Pages No. 52 & 53

Wednesday 27th December - 6:29 p.m.

I know it’s not the morning, and I know it’s been over a month. But I just had to do something right now. I’ve been reading all of my old stuff, and I transferred all my files from my uni email over to my regular one, in preparation for my account being taken down by the university. The world is moving on without me and I feel a little loss. To be fair, I’ve been feeling like that more or less all of this year, or at least I’ve been preparing to feel like that. I feel like I should have it together now, and it’s no solace knowing that all arts students are likely to experience what they’re calling ‘graduation anxiety’ at some point in their early careers. I have no idea what I’m doing. I’m working in a hotdog shop that seems to be going under itself, and I have no valuable skills, or skills that are valuable to society. This is bullshit. I have so much to offer, I know that I do. I just need other people to see that and I need to do that in a way that’ll pay my rent. For fuck’s sake. 

I applied for a job and got an interview, and that was over a week ago now and they still haven’t gotten back to me and I am absolutely terrified. I’m terrified that I didn’t get it, because everyone I’ve spoken to the job about has reaffirmed what I’ve been suspecting: this job would’ve been a fantastic opportunity for me to have gotten my foot in the door as a professional and established writer. It would have supported me financially while I work on my novels and poetry in my spare time. I would’ve been able to write all day and every day instead of having to sacrifice my body to the hospitality industry or all the other soul-destroying roles that I seem doomed to take.

I downloaded this app today that’ll help me track my mood in relation to whatever activities I undertake on that day. So far today I’ve cleaned, watched TV, eaten, exercised, read, and had a shower. Now I’m writing (technically) and listening to music. I feel like I’m allowing myself to compartmentalise my day, to look at my day as an even excel spreadsheet. It’s making me feel ridiculous. 

Christmas celebrations have come and gone. I was a tad depressed on Christmas Day this year. It was definitely a step-up from Christmas Day last year, but still...not pleasant. The morning was alright, I’ll give it that much. Wren came over and Evan, Wren and I did presents. I mean, Evan was feeling depressed last night so we did our presents a little before midnight, which was nice. Evan made the compelling point that it was our first Christmas together and it would be nice to have a small present-opening for ourselves before Wren would be here early in the morning. Wren came at around ten to seven. It was supposed to be half past, but Evan and I slept in a tiny bit. I woke up in a panic on Christmas Day, and went straight to my phone to see that I had only one missed call from Wren, bless. 

Anyway, both Christmas Day and Boxing Day saw me eating a LOT of shit, and I feel a bit gross now, hence the run. It was over thirty degrees today, so the run didn’t help my feeling generally gross. Although it made me feel a little better about my body, it still took so much out of me. I ended up turning on the ceiling fan and collapsing into bed when I got home. I really don’t know what I’m going to do, I don’t know. I want to stop talking and typing so absently. I want to meditate. I want to do yoga. I want to go on more runs. I want a dog. I want a house with Evan. But I don’t want to do anything.

Fuck. I just got so distracted. I was starting a three-minute video on Facebook just avoiding having to even write THESE PAGES. I wrote a poem on Christmas, okay. And I’m tempted to just write it out here, partly to share it and also partly so I don’t have to finish the rest of the page and a half I have left.

Tuesday 27th March - 6:54 p.m. 

It’s perhaps a little telling that these entries that are three months apart, were also written on the same day of the month: rent day, and my birthday. But predominantly rent day now. I’m writing again once more, just because I feel like I need to, like I did on my rent day in December, it seems. But I do remember saying that Christmas was a bit of a tumultuous time for me. That much has not changed, I mean...yes, Christmas is a consistently tumultuous day without fail within every year of my life, but I also meant to say that the entirety of these past three months has not seen a fading away of Christmas’ tumultuousness. I have to explain that I’m high right now. I’m quite high, and also quite alone. Evan’s at work. He won’t be back for two hours or so. He’s just replied to my saying that I’m high and writing right now, because naturally I didn’t tell him that I was doing that as I do that, but more that I immediately just thought of doing it, and sending the information that I am doing the activity will in fact, motivate me to do the activity. I think I may be depressed, or I suppose more using depression as an excuse for my laziness? Or maybe that’s just me trying to justify ignoring what I believe to be ‘depression’, so that I don’t have to deal with it. I’m really high. I feel myself getting very heavy, very unfocused, heavily unfocused. Both the cats are sitting on the balcony, and I’ll just mention that we have two cats. SOOKIE’S OURS. Wren gave her away. And on the 7th of February, we adopted NICHOLAS, who is currently sitting on the table in front of me watching me type, as well as nuzzling the side of my laptop and keeping me from typing by being such a big (affectionate) baby.

[rueur]

Morning Pages #51 (11.11.2017)

Saturday 11th November - 9:40 a.m.

So I didn’t realise it had been an entire week since my last entry. The time kind of just slipped away from me, and a lot has happened once again. Well, things have happened. Not a lot. I’m transitioning from full-time study back into working literally 20 hours out of the week at a hot dog shop, the majority of those hours being on the weekend. I’m not really enjoying being at the shop anymore. I’ve been looking for other work during this otherwise empty week. Sarah and I went to Bayswater to look at this kelpie puppy named Roo, but it turns out that it may not be at all possible for me to adopt any kind of kelpie while we’re still living at Mitchell Street. Which is okay, I mean, I had a feeling that kelpies wouldn’t be totally happy in this space. And it’s motivated me to find another place. I’ve found a few promising ones already, but Evan says he’s not making enough money yet to justify finding a bigger place. I know he’s being honest because he really wants a bigger place too, not that he wants a dog. I’m still not sure if he wants a dog. I just know that he wants somewhere to put a keyboard and maybe a drum kit. And he wants a study.

Anyway, I have to leave for work in about an hour and I’m not really looking forward to it. Not because I don’t think I’ll have a good time, I most likely will. I just can’t stand being in hospitality anymore. I’m going to have my degree soon! I don’t want to be faffing around in hospitality anymore. That and the shop is showing very strong signs of nepotism. LC just started and she’s getting more shifts than me, because she’s Bella’s sister and Bella’s kitchen manager. That, and Bella’s only kitchen manager because she knows the bosses, I suppose. I don’t think she’s cut out for the job. David or Naoki even, would do a much better job. But both David and Naoki have their own jobs outside of the shop now, because it’s just so painfully obvious that there’s very little else for them to do at our shop. Our shop is very much a dead-end for everybody except Holly, Bella and LC. But the thing is, I don’t doubt it’s not a dead-end for them as well. I believe that Holly and Bella feel like they have an obligation to stay there just because they’re part of the ‘family’ of the place. At least I’m free to leave. That, and Andrea keeps saying she’ll be coming back at any time. And I have suspicions that when she comes back I’ll have far less shifts than I do now. Only four a week, I mean...at least it’s a steady four a week. Actually, this week I only worked three shifts. Or so far, one. By the end of this week I’ll have worked three. Because Tuesday was Cup Day so the shop was closed.

But I have to tell you what happened on Saturday night. So Naoki and I closed up at like 1:30 in the morning and I started the long walk down High Street. I texted Evan asking if he could possibly come and get me, but he said he’d been drinking with Peachy that day so he wasn’t good to drive. Honestly, that kind of pissed me off. He knew I’d be finishing late. He either should’ve gotten on a tram or not gotten drunk. But he was ready to do nothing. So anyway, on the way home I ran into a dude. He was heading into the bar by Psarakos Market as I was walking past and he said he hoped I was having a good Saturday night. I said mate nah I ain’t, I’ve been working 14 hours today and he said well you deserve a drink. He invited me in and said he’d get me a drink and after walking away for a bit, I finally just gave in and let him buy me a drink. Dude bought me a straight whisky and said his name was Aaron. We talked for a bit, mostly about our jobs and about me finishing my degree. He said he’s in the media industry and that he’d have to introduce me to the CEO or something at SBS. I was fairly uncomfortable throughout this encounter, but the guy had just told me about his daughter who had been diagnosed with cancer so I also felt like I had to stick around for a bit. Wren just messaged me. That’s Lauren. They are called Wren now.

I had to tell them they can’t come over because I have things to do before work. I do though, I need to hang out the laundry. It’s mostly my stuff. We have so much washing right now! Because of my assessments, I suppose. We didn’t do a single load during my final week of assessments and the house got super messy as well. BUT! We cleaned it all up! On Tuesday and Wednesday, Evan and my days off. We also went to IKEA and finally bought a bookcase for all of my books. So I can go and get the rest of them from Mill Park, finally! And also, you know, read all the books I’ve been putting off reading because of stupid uni. Time to begin my self-education!

So anyway, returning to Aaron. Basically what ended up happening was I took cocaine with him in the bathroom of this bar. Yes. I snorted a line of coke off his phone screen with this weird metal-tube thing that you have to hold to your nose. So, yeah, I did that. And told Josh about it on Sunday and Naoki about it on Monday, but fuck me. Saturday was actually insane. Aaron kept insisting after that I get more drinks and that he’d take me home or something. He also wanted to do cocaine off my nipples?? But I gave a definite ‘no’ to that, multiple times. What ended up happening was Evan called me twice. I didn’t feel the first call vibrate but I felt the second one, checked the time and it turned out to be past 2:30, so I said fuck this I have to go home. Aaron kept hugging me and feeling me up and the tram was coming past so I broke free and just started running after the tram that had already passed me and gone onto the next tram stop. The driver DEFINITELY saw me, she just didn’t want to stop, that bitch. Sorry, I’m actually still fuming a tad over that driver. I made eye contact with her. It was nearly 3 a.m. and I was a young woman standing by an older man and his Mercedes, like honestly.

So I just started running home down Mitchell Street. I was talking to Wren about this yesterday too, because I hung out with Wren yesterday. They pointed out that I ended up running from Psarakos to Croxton Park/Thornbury Lentils, which is a fair distance. But I was on cocaine and as a result, didn’t even realise the distance and also...I didn’t even get tired! I only realised how far I ran that night yesterday. Wren and I have been running a lot the past few days. It’s been really refreshing, getting back into fitness again. Yesterday was a really good day for me in terms of getting back up to speed with my body and my physical abilities.

Anyway, back to this night because more shit happened. On my way home, this other weird old guy in his car kept pulling up alongside me down High Street and asking me questions, like where I was going and if I needed a lift and what area this was. He also kept complimenting me like in a very creepy manner. I did my best to ignore him though. But he drove up to me twice and the second time he did it was nearing Separation Street and I realised I was nearly home. All this while after I’d run away I’d been texting Evan and he said he’d put on clothes and he was coming to get me. Anyway, this guy asked me the second time he came round, if I wanted to come with him to Crown Casino. He said that he’d pay me hundreds of dollars to go with him or something, fucking ridiculous like. I said no, and tried my HARDEST to be as dismissive as possible but it was incredibly difficult. I still couldn’t find it in me to be RUDE. I was both terrified and exhausted, but also simultaneously wholeheartedly believing that I could beat this guy up if it came to that.

Anyway he drove off again and literally two minutes later, I saw Evan coming down High Street. On the way down Mitchell Street I told him what had happened. But I prefaced it with ‘so I did cocaine’ which was probably not the greatest start. But it was so weirdly emotional telling him everything that had happened. He actually got quite mad at me too, and even the next morning his feelings had been hurt. We stayed in bed till 1 p.m. on that Sunday, because I swapped shifts with LC so I wouldn’t have to start at 11:30 in the morning after working a double on Saturday. Yeah, Evan said he felt like he’d been cheated on again because I hung out (and snorted cocaine) with a strange, older man. Aaron looked like he was in his late forties, maybe. He wasn’t ugly, but he wasn’t handsome. And he WAS creepy and gropey, so it was frustrating to hear Evan talk about this like I enjoyed it. Then he asked if maybe I allowed myself to fall into that situation because I’ve been feeling like he hasn’t been giving me much companionship. Which is true. He works all the time, and it’s hard. It’s why I’m so adamant on getting a dog too, I suppose. I really do want a dog more than anything right now. More than a real job too, if I’m being 100% honest. I want to have that animal company, and be able to take the dog with me out on adventures, to Sandringham and around Yarra when I need to take photos for YR.

I’m nearly at the end of this last page, which is good because I have to have a shower before work. I want to wrap this up now, to be quite honest, because I don’t just want to talk about how much I want a dog. OR WORK. PAID CREATIVE WORK. Goodness, why is it so hard to come by? Why is everything in the corporate creative writing sector either in content writing or data transfer? It’s like just because this person has ‘typing experience’ doesn’t mean they’ll technically enjoy being given a dull opportunity to type dull, technical shit. I’m sorry, I feel like my writing these pages isn’t even honing my creative skills, it’s just like meditation...or self-assisted therapy. I just vent through this space, really. Which isn’t a bad thing, but I suppose I could be doing a lot more too, can’t I?

I wrote two beginnings of short stories at Wren’s place, because of prompts they gave me. They also gave me a book, a writing notebook with monkeys on the cover. In the inside cover I wrote ‘No Monkey Business’ because Wren said that. I have an idea to write a bunch of short stories using prompts Wren has given me and then publishing all those stories in a collection titled ‘No Monkey Business’ and then dedicating that to Wren. I feel like that might be a really good way for me to practice being dedicated to a project, basing it off of somebody else and my responsibility to not let that other person down. I’ll definitely have to dedicate it to them. If I finish it. Wish me luck!

[rueur]

Morning Pages #50 (04.11.2017)

Saturday 4th November - 7:52 a.m.

So a lot has happened. A lot has changed. I think it’s fitting that I’m starting this up again the day after I submitted the last assignment of my degree. That, and I’m right back where I started the very first day I started these morning pages: back at Emily’s apartment in Northcote. Except it’s my apartment now! Mine and Evan’s. We moved in together on the 12th of August, because Emily is going to be living in Sydney for most of her time now. She’ll still be travelling interstate for a bit, but she’ll be spending a lot more time with Bruno and Romy and Quinn, her partner. We’re still receiving a lot of her mail, which I haven’t had the time to forward to her because of uni and work and everything, but I’ll have the time now, I suppose.

Anyway, I should let you know that I am indeed on track to graduate, on the 15th of December with a weighted average mark of over seventy, which is fucking incredible. I actually cannot believe I’ve been able to do this, uninterrupted for three years despite all the shit that’s come my way through it all. I am actually an incredibly strong person, and I forget that so often because of all my momentary bouts of fear, of all my apprehensions and timidities. I have to acknowledge that it takes so much strength to just be who I am. I’ve communicated that to Evan and he understands what I’m talking about, for the most part. I’ve told him a lot about my grandparents, and my parents, my sister, Ikaros, and all my pets. We’re thinking of getting a dog, Evan and I. It’s just that we don’t really have the space for one here so we’ll have to move first, which is a shame because I’m really enjoying living in this apartment with him. This place is basically the setting of our first few months together. On our first date he dropped me off here, we kissed goodnight on the steps outside. The first time we had sex was in this room. I’m fairly certain I wrote about that so I won’t write about it again now. Far too much has happened to be looking that far back.

Anyway, yeah, we’re thinking of getting a dog. I’ve been going to adoption days a lot, mostly by myself because Evan’s been working so much. But we went to one together on the 29th of October because it was a Sunday and it was just up the road at the Northcote pet warehouse. There was a dog there named Raven who just came up to me right away and gave me a massive hug, the little thing. My heart is breaking all over again just thinking about her. I really want to find her again and rescue her. Oh man I haven’t done this in ages and my fingers and my arms are hurting from writing this fast. I used to be able to get these pages done in like fifteen to twenty minutes and it’s been ten minutes already now and I’m not even finished with the first page. I’m getting there though. I suppose you have to maintain the habit for this to feel as easy as it had felt in March or in April. I want to keep writing about all the stuff that’s happened since June but I know that technically these entries aren’t supposed to be like a diary at all. I just choose to write about my day and my life and Evan and all of that because it’s what’s on my mind most of the time, and it’s nice to have a record of that stuff, I suppose. I haven’t been able to record me and Evan moving in together which is a shame because I had recorded a good bulk of the beginning of our relationship. Ooh! Second page now! My arms are hurting a lot I think I may have to change the way I’m sitting right now. I’m lying down facing the window and listening to Childish Gambino’s ‘The Night Me And Your Mama Met’ on repeat. This song is just so soothing, it’s been really nice to write essays to. Okay, I’m changing the way I’m sitting right now though. I was only sitting this way because my laptop needed to charge a bit but now it’s on 66% and that should be enough to finish off these last two pages.

Evan and I had sex last night, it was the first time since Sunday, I think. We’ve been having a bit of a periodic sex life because of all the clutter we’ve had to deal with: Evan’s prolonged work hours, my crazy uni/work schedule, and the fact that I only get evening/weekend shifts at my restaurant. Yes, I’m working at a place on High Street in Thornbury, a place I handed out my resume to with Wren and it turns out they liked me and they hired me, back at the end of July. It’s a pretty okay gig. $20 an hour, and the evening shifts are about 5 hours long so 2 evening shifts a week and 2 weekend shifts, I end up making about $400 a week: basically more or less the same as Evan for less than half the hours Evan works. But I am hating the fact that working at the shop takes away my entire weekends, most of the time, and Evan’s entire week is taken over by his work. So we don’t really have too much time together. I’m looking for full-time work right now, something I can do with my degree. Kill Your Darlings is hiring and I think it might be good to look into that? There’s a good chance they may hire me just because I used to be a subscriber! Actually I think I might still be a subscriber, but I haven’t been reading anything at all. I should probably do my research.

Anyway I’m working today. 11:30 a.m. till 12 a.m. which may or may not be 1 a.m. because I might have to close the shop. I hope not, though. I just got my period, last night. During sex. Evan was cleaning up afterwards and the condom was just all covered in blood. His fingers were all covered in blood. It was strange, but thankfully he didn’t seem to mind it. But goodness, this morning I woke up and felt like I was either going to explode, or that I was so empty that my body would collapse in on itself and I would turn into a black hole. I took a dump and I’m yet to eat, but I’m feeling a lot better now. I miss Evan though, I miss him so much. He left at like half past seven and I won’t see him again till LATE tonight because of my dumb restaurant job. They’ve also been hiring other people which means I’m not getting as much shifts or as much choice of shifts and it’s really fucking irritating. The place is so mismanaged. And although the work is pleasant and the people are lovely (with one exception: Josh), being there is just not good for me, I think. That and I’m keen to finally find something in my field. I’ve been working three years, getting my qualification so that I can contribute to Melbourne’s creative industry. I mean I’ve been doing that with The Yarra Reporter, but I want to do MORE. That, and it would be nice to be paid, you know?

Actually, I’m also thinking of volunteering at an animal shelter. To get my dog fix until we can actually adopt a pet ourselves. We really can’t have one at Mitchell Street, as much as I would like and as much as I’ve been trying to persuade both myself and Evan that we can...it’s just not a viable option. This is no place for a dog. A tiny, second floor apartment with one human who’s barely ever home and then me, who’s looking for full-time work as well. I really don’t know what I’m going to be doing with myself though. Sam said she’d write me a letter of recommendation to work at Robinsons, but I’ve been thinking about that and I don’t know if I’d want to work at Robinsons. So I’ve been asking myself what I DO want to do, and I don’t know if anything’s at all appealing right now. All the creative writing jobs on Seek are ‘content writer’ or ‘social media manager’ or something like that, which could be fun but it also could be totally capitalist and soul-destroying. But the main thing that’s put me off Robinsons is the fact that it’s retail and I’ll have to make ‘sales’ and be equally capitalistic. Fucking hell though, it can’t really be avoided, can it? I applied for The University of Melbourne’s Master of Secondary Teaching, specialising in English and SOSE. There’s a very real chance I’ll be accepted into that, but I don’t want to be a teacher either. Not right away, that is. In all honesty, I see myself doing that eventually...but definitely not right out of uni. It’s a personal belief of mine that teachers should have a fair amount of life experience under their belts before they return to high school on the other side of it all as teachers. The best teachers I had were teachers who’d lived, and who’d taken their field by storm, seen all there was to see and then used all their passion and experiences in their classrooms. I want to be a teacher like that, and in order to do that I’ll need to be really really brave and step right into the creative industry. That means time to write more slam poems, time to write short stories and novellas and novels and enter them into competitions, time to write articles and send them to Djed and Peril and KYD and Going Down Swinging, everybody. Time to do a lot more at The Yarra Reporter, time to make myself fucking prolific. I have to be everywhere, doing everything. Rue Tunga on the scene with my camera and notepad in hand, taking in all that Melbourne has to offer and spewing it all out in the form of CULTURE. I’m actually terrified right now, but writing this has gotten my head together a bit, it seems. I mean I needed this. It’s 8:22 a.m. now. It’s been a half hour of writing and I’m nearing the end of this third page. I’m not as slow as I was when I started this, that’s good to know. But to be fair, I’ve been writing non-stop all week. I had four assessment tasks due within a week of each other. And I had to finish them all one after the other. I think the worst one by far was my gothic fictions essay. I got my last one back and it turns out I didn’t do too well on it: H3. Part of me thinks it was justified and part of me doesn’t. But I swear to god I deserve way better on this last essay I did on Dracula and Frankenstein. I compared the two monsters alongside the era they were written in.

Oh, so I’m running out of space now, so I’ll just say one more thing before I’m done for the day. Evan and I got a lift to my restaurant (from Wren and their cousin Tahni who’s visiting from Queensland) to hand in my employee papers (it’s been cash in hand since I started, like everybody’s been cash in hand up until now) and then we were walking back home when we decided to get some stir fry things to eat with the rice I had in the rice cooker at home. We bought food stuffs and were walking down Mitchell Street when Evan slipped and fell on our bag of prawn crackers. He got so mad he swore REALLY loud and then flung the bag into the street. He said he almost threw our food too. Then he walked home really briskly and left me behind a bit. We got home and the rice hadn’t cooked because I hadn’t turned the rice cooker onto ‘COOK’ it was just on ‘WARM’ for three hours. So Evan, in a continued state of agitation, ordered three packs of steamed rice from Loving Hut on UberEats. Fucking hell. I flipped the rice cooker on, and our rice was done before the Uber rice came. He said he almost punched a hole through the door, and he almost threw our whole bag of food. Because he slipped and fell. It was a bit of a stressful scene. But it was followed by some nice food and Dexter, and a really honest and loving night, and some great - if not slightly bloody - sex.

[rueur]

Morning Pages #49 (10.06.2017-18.06.2017)

Saturday 10th June - 3:45 p.m.

 I don’t know how much time I’ll have to write these pages, because I’m waiting for Malith to come over from Mill Park. I haven’t seen him since my move, actually. We’ve spoken on the phone for a couple of hours over the past few weeks, but we haven’t physically caught up since my move to Thornbury. I’ve been too busy, and he’s been too lazy. I can say that about him because I love him, so he’s absolutely been too lazy. I just finished my last assignment for the semester and am feeling really good about school, but not so great about everything else. Isn’t that the way it always goes though? School is really easy, and it’s not at all fulfilling as a result of that. I mean, it is to a degree. But until I get my degree (haha, see what I did there? Fucking hell.) I have no other time for anything else, or at least that’s the way it looks to employers, so nobody’s hiring me. And I’m quickly running out of money. I mean I’m not. I’m quickly running out of spendable money. In about a month, I’ll need to tap into my savings, and I just don’t want to do that. I really don’t want to. That money’s for Evan and me when we move out. Which will be soon hopefully. We’ve been looking into it.

We were both on Centrelink yesterday, and now we’ve both sent in claims for Youth Allowance. I kind of also wrote myself down as a youth in crisis, kind of. Kind of. I mean, it’s somewhat applicable to my situation. I can’t really move back home. I mean I can, but at the expense of my mental health and potentially my physical health. I don’t know how I’m supposed to get my parents to fill out a government form supporting the fact that they can’t provide an adequate home for me (because apparently Centrelink requires that), but what the fuck else am I supposed to do here, eh? I’m sorry. I’ve been feeling a little bitter, and very scared lately. I just don’t know what I’m good for right now. And I know that it’s been this way for a while now. For about two or three weeks, I’ve been in this state of half-assing everything. I’m half-assing school, and life, and being a friend to everybody, being the bright-eyed and positive and beautiful presence that Evan deserves. Fuck, I dunno. I’ve got so many balls up in the air right now, it’s just exhausting. It’s messy too. I just want to be able to do one thing and be paid to do that one thing and be really really good at that one thing that I do. And I want to be happy. I want that one thing to make me feel fulfilled, but to also give me plenty of time to spend with the people I love. I want to live with Evan, just him and me in our own little space. I want to cook with him and decorate with him. I want to watch TV shows on Sundays and go out on little adventures: to the beach, to the mountains, to little parks across Melbourne.

I haven’t even gotten to the main reason why I decided to write these pages right now. First of all, I just finished my final assignment and I’m feeling very free, perhaps too free but also I’m glad that I can now focus all my attention on getting a job. Secondly, I had a lucid dream! Early Friday morning, in the apartment and in my own bed with Evan sleeping next to me. And I need to write it all down right now so that I don’t forget it and so that it’s fresh in my mind for tomorrow when Evan and I are going to Mundell and Sarah’s place for a bit of a catch-up.

OKAY! So. It started with me on a train on my own. I think I’d just said goodbye to Evan or something because I was feeling fairly alone, and I wasn’t at all engaging with the outside world. I wasn’t looking out the window, which is what I usually do on trains. I had my headphones on and I was just listening to music, and I closed my eyes. It may have been for a fraction of a second, but it also may have been for a couple of hours. It’s a dream, it’s hard to say. But when I woke up, or opened my eyes or whatever it was, I felt like the train was falling. And it was really really dark. It looked like the train was falling down into an underground tunnel. Sunday 18th June - 1:02 p.m.

Okay, I have to apologise. Because it’s now Sunday the 18th of June and it’s 1:02 p.m., but I still remember this dream so I’m going to pick up where I left off with it and then just start a new set of pages for today because I have time today to write and I can write without feeling like it’ll be a waste of time.

So the train was falling down into an underground tunnel, but it was also a little like the side of a cliff: there were pine tree silhouettes in the darkness, and there were rocks and there also seemed to be a moon or stars or some source of light from somewhere far away. Anyway, the train was travelling down into the tunnel for a while, and then it just started moving right back up again and we found ourselves in this depot-looking space with a whole bunch of what I can assume were PTV workers sitting around in high-visibility vests, drinking tea or something. So the train was going up and down, in and out of this tunnel for some time, until it just went all the way in. And I looked around the carriage to see that the interior had changed entirely. It now looked very long and narrow and it was like the train was one big carriage rather than broken into six segments like regular PTV trains. Within this one big carriage was what looked like a travelling office. There were desks, chairs and people in dress shirts sitting around at computers that were flying all over the place because the train was being so so bumpy. I looked out the window again to see that we were indeed travelling along the side of a cliff or a mountain, and we were way up high and looking over this valley in the darkness. There were houses with little lights on in the windows, and it looked like a whole underground city that could only be reached by this train. Then the houses all stopped and we were travelling past what looked like a massive outdoor swimming pool, one of the ones with lights lining the walls underwater so that the water looked like it was glowing blue. It was a truly huge pool though, like big enough that at first I thought it was a magical lake.

It was whilst we were travelling past this pool, that I realised that the train wasn’t making the noise that trains do: the noise of wheels on the tracks; that rumbling, tumbling, clicking sound. And that’s when I realised that I was in a dream, really. From that point onwards, I was actually lucid. I looked back around and found myself in a car with my family, still travelling in the darkness on the side of a cliff. This was where I decided to take control of the dream, and the first thing that I thought to do was fly, because that’s the first thing that Evan did and I wanted to do it too. So the car lifted up off the road and we were airborne! But it was dark, like pitch black now because all the houses had stopped and somehow there were no stars nor moonlight, and I couldn’t see a thing. So I changed the location. I moved my entire family (my dad was driving, but I guess I literally teleported us all) from the cliff to the ocean, and we were immediately driving over the ocean, with the sounds of the waves underneath us. But it was still pitch black. I could see the silhouettes of my family members sitting around me, and hear the sound of the waves, but that was all. So I tried to make it daylight. But this proved far too big a leap and the whole dream world just collapsed and I woke up out of the dream. It was a pretty intense experience though. That night had brought three or so other dreams, some merging into others, and I had let Evan know that I’d dreamed very heavily that night. He said that those are always the nights that bring lucidity, the nights where there are more opportunities to be lucid. That makes sense, I guess.

I have about a page left of these morning pages from last week. These pages from ten days ago. I don’t know if I’ll write any pages for today, to be honest. I think I should be more creative today rather than journalistic. Malith let me know that he’s been writing the pages for the past ten days, which was surprising to hear. He let me know yesterday, during Lauren and my IKEA trip.

Evan and I went to the Afro Hub last night for the first ever poetry and jazz night, which was a wicked hoot, let me say that right now. But the end of the night saw me feeling a little isolated from the artistic community, and funnily enough saw Evan feeling more connected to them than ever. He left that night feeling intensely inspired, and ended up writing and finishing a slam poem this morning about what it means to be a man, and then ended up being more about what it means to be a human being. It was very well-written, I think. I want to introduce him to the power of metaphors though. He has it down in his raps, but slam has a very different feel to it, and the metaphors need to be approached in a slightly different way. I think he knows this too, or he’s at least half-aware of it, which is why he didn’t attempt to write any metaphors into this slam poem. It was more a straightforward message. I can’t wait to see what he can do, and what I can do with him too. I always felt like he wasn’t totally down with Slamalama, and after tonight I know for sure that I wasn’t either. The whole competition/exhibition aspect of it always rubbed me the wrong way, and thankfully I was able to express that to him last night and he was in agreement. So I’m really glad that this event turned out to be so important for him. I love him so much, and the poem he wrote today is essentially about how difficult it can be for men to express themselves, and I just want him to keep being his sensitive and intuitive and amazing self. I want to see what he can do.

I was feeling a little down though, nearing the end of the night. I think, admittedly, a little left out because Evan seemed so impressed by Tenda, like in a way that I don’t think he’s experienced when he’s listened to my poetry. I guess it’s different because I’m not a performer like other slam poets. I can’t do that. Not yet, though. Anyway, I called Malith last night because I was feeling a little down and I wanted to talk to somebody who would hear me and know. And that ended in a bit of a weird night for Evan and I. And I don’t really want to talk about that. Mostly because I don’t think it would help anymore than us talking has already helped. Right now, I’m just very aware of the fact that Evan can have a bit of a temper and he can be just as prone to communication issues as I can be. Last night he drove like a bit of a maniac, and I was afraid at one point that he’d break the blinds in the apartment, and he spent so long with his head in his hands, or facing away from me in bed. It broke my heart, and at times it terrified me too. And it made me angry, it made me a little angry. But I didn’t act on that anger. I never do. I’m scared that one day I will though. I don’t like being misunderstood, and I don’t like having to make people feel okay with decisions I’ve made, or with the way that I decide to live my life. I had to do that same shit with my parents, and with fucking Ikaros too. And Malith too, on some occasions. I don’t want to have to do that with Evan. But fuck, I love him too much. I’d do anything for him. I’d do anything that I have to do. But he’d do the same for me, and I know that. So I know that all I need to do is talk to him, and he won’t take advantage of me like my parents do, or like Ikaros did. It’ll be different this time round.

[rueur]

Morning Pages #48 (26.05.2017)

Friday 26th May - 10:37 p.m.

It’s been a tough couple of days. I moved out, for starters. I’m living in Thornbury now, with Lauren in this one-bedroom place that’s not too far at all from Evan’s house. Despite this, however, I’ve barely seen Evan this past week. I moved on Wednesday (the 24th), and the weekend before that I’d been packing mostly. And Malith and Gen broke up so I’d been talking Malith through that. It’s been an odd period of time for him, because he always had a hunch that he wasn’t cut out for romance and now - at the age of twenty-one - his first legitimate relationship has fizzled before it had even begun because neither of them would let it begin. Gen never made time for him and Malith was always talking to other people about his qualms with Gen rather than talking to Gen. I’m only rehashing this for myself now through these pages because I saw the disconnect form between Malith and Gen and I was equally aware of the negative behaviours they had both been exhibiting before the break-up, as well as the fact that their communication issues were somewhat linked to the fact that they spent very little time together, really. They texted and called each other a lot, but they were lucky to actually physically be with each other once a week or so.

And now Evan’s finally secured his apprenticeship and he’s on his way to becoming a qualified barber, and I’m looking for work and contemplating what I’m going to do about my final assessments for this semester, as well as the rest of this year. I booked a meeting with a student adviser last week to see if I could get my double major and it turns out that I don’t have enough subjects left in my degree to be able to do that. So I’m stuck with the creative writing major and the environmental studies minor, and I also just found out that the minor doesn’t even appear on your physical Bachelor’s Degree. It’s just in your student transcript, which nobody looks through anyway, I mean nobody bothers. I’m eating a lot of lollies right now, like more lollies than I should be eating, because I’m a tad depressed. I just miss Evan, a lot. But tomorrow’s a big day for him and I’m so so proud of him too. I just want him here. Since I showed him this blog I’m kind of curious whether he’s read anything on his own. I wonder if he’s read any of the more recent pages, because they’re all to do with him. I just don’t want him to go too far back because of all the stuff with Ikaros. I just don’t want him to know the extent of that, I mean the pain and how little I thought of myself for that entire period. Thankfully though, I only really recorded the end of that relationship.

It’s 11:26 p.m., and I was talking to Lauren. She came home at around ten to eleven. It’s been pretty lovely living with her so far, as I thought it would be. My eating habits are yet to settle in, I think, but aside from that it’s been fairly smooth sailing. Evan stayed over last night for the first time. We were supposed to go to the Slama Grand Slam, and we did for about a half hour, and sat in some seats by the front for like five minutes, before we started talking about how little we’ve been able to see each other and about how this will more than likely get worse before it gets better because we’re both on the verge of being really really busy, me with assessments AND making rent, and Evan with his apprenticeship. So, after talking in the audience for a few minutes, we decided to pack up our things and just leave. Just go home and spend the night in. And it was a fantastic decision, although I’m trying not to think about what I’m going to do my feature piece on now for my Writing Journalism final assessment. It’ll come to me. I think I’ll just ask Charlotte if I can interview her again, because we weren’t able to properly meet up last time anyway. I briefly saw her before the grand slam, before I bailed. I’m going to have to explain to her that I didn’t even see her perform, which might be a little difficult considering I didn’t care enough about her poetry to stick around, but I do care about it enough to use it for a good grade. Eugh. I’m really not enjoying Writing Journalism. Journalists seem more and more like weasels the more I have to become one. I have little to no desire to become a weasel. My iPod is on shuffle and it’s been playing the grooviest stuff, and without my having to prompt it. Right now it’s ‘Do You Love Me’ by The Contours. ‘I’m Still Waiting’ by Diana Ross was playing when Lauren got home. And Chance was playing earlier. Oooh! Now it’s ‘The Gambler’ by fun. This song has grown on me. It reminds me of Evan, a little, just the first bit of the first verse, and the last verse. It just feels like a life I want to live with him.

I met his grandfather today, George. Evan calls him ‘Gung-gung’. He took us out to lunch at this cafe right by his house. We were with him for about an hour, and he mostly spoke about his work as an accountant. He had a pretty eventful career, saw a lot of old Melbourne city and of the Victorian countryside in the 60s, 70s, 80s. It was pretty fascinating listening to him talking about it all; it was an honour to have met him too. He had a table in his living room with family photos, photos of Evan and his cousins when they were younger, and of Gung-gung’s own children - Evan’s mum and her siblings. I’d seen the photos of little Evan before, and one of Christina looking groovy. But seeing it all out on that table had a whole different effect on me. I was immediately reminded of all the photos that my grandparents had in their old house in Thomastown, and of the photos that are still hanging in my grandfather’s room in Mill Park, of his family. Of Baba Singho and his children and stepchildren, of my grandmother before she died, and of my great-grandmother who may or may not have been me in a past life. I just don’t know what to think about the future right now, I mean with the present being so problematic. After my student advisor meeting, I feel so unenthusiastic about finishing my degree. I just don’t see the point if all my passion and work in the geography subjects won’t even go credited because of the limitations of my major. I didn’t even know I would enjoy geography this much, like how was I supposed to know at the age of seventeen what I wanted to get a bachelor’s degree in?!

But that’s not even what I’m most concerned about right now. I’m most concerned about growing old and being happy, of being able to say I did what I loved for my whole life. I honestly don’t know what to do with my writing anymore. I don’t like screenwriting for the most part, because it just seems like a totally passionless and simplistic form of writing, and it makes me a tad sad that this medium is most likely going to be the most financially promising for me in the industry, in terms of being a professional writer. I just don’t know what to do about all my prose, like if anybody even wants to read it at all. Nobody wants to hear my slam poetry, nobody wants to read my poetry, nobody wants to read my prose. I don’t even want to read my prose. I don’t even want to write my prose anymore. I don’t know what I want. I feel so incredibly lost. Evan told me a while ago that he was feeling lost before he got his trial shift at Kings Domain, but he didn’t tell me at the time that he was falling into a dark place. Now I feel like I’m in his position. I’m starting to feel hopeless about school. I don’t know what I want to do with myself after school. I don’t know what I can do either. I want to work in community development, I think. I want to contribute to community spaces. I don’t even know what that means entirely. I just know that I want to feel like my art is making a difference, and I want to be somewhat collaborative because creative people coming together to solve problems creatively just feels like my cup of tea. Is there a way that my degree will allow me to do that? Is there a way that my major can somehow make me qualified to do this? My hopes are low, but my hopes are usually low, and I shouldn’t be sending that kind of energy out into the world. I should be more like Evan, and just know. Just have faith. That things will work out for the best and in the best possible ways. When you are ready rather than when you want it.

I had a trial shift this morning at a cafe in Collingwood: Mavis the Grocer. It was a dream to work there for the hour that I was in, it honestly was. The atmosphere was so kind and accommodating, and the people moreso. The kitchen was warm and cosy, and so unlike any other kitchen I’d been in. Thailander was somewhat familiar after a while, but it was always still so mechanical, psychotically efficient and oftentimes void of passion. Mavis, on the other hand, was like your aunt’s parlour on a Sunday afternoon. The earthy smell of hot coffee was in the air. Big pots were simmering on the wide stove. I was busily wrapping falafel into lebanese bread and then securing these gorgeous rolls with baking paper, and I felt like this is a place I would love to be every morning. I would absolutely just love to be here, making everyone breakfast and giving them just a fantastic start to their day, as a thank you for giving me a fantastic start to mine too. Oh fuck. I’ve had so much fucking sugar in the past hour or so, this cannot be good for me. I feel like I should do some push ups or something before bed, because I feel kind of sick and also I haven’t properly exercised in a bit, that is unless you count all the heavy lifting and running around I’ve been doing during this move and also during my job hunt. I mean I’ve more or less gotten a job, at a pizza place in Rosanna. But it’s dodgy as all hell and it’s another cash-in-hand place, it seems, even though in my actual job interview (a week or so ago now) they asked me what I wanted to be paid and they said they were happy with my asking for over seventeen dollars an hour. Lord have mercy on me, what do I actually need to do to get a job that I feel is worthy of me? What do I need to do to find myself in a place like Mavis?

The guy who may or may not hire me, Josh, is actually one of the nicest people I’ve ever met in my life. I just don’t want to have let him down, honestly. And Hajime, the Japanese-born chef who essentially single-handedly runs the kitchen, is so genuine and warm and I could TOTALLY work with him every morning. I could totally go to work happy every fucking morning, I just want this job! I’ll find out if I’ve gotten it tomorrow morning. It’s midnight now. I feel like I should sleep. I know Evan’s probably asleep right now. He’s got a busy day tomorrow. Lauren doesn’t start work till three, so I think she and I will be cooking in the morning tomorrow, which I’m looking forward to. I could do with some quality roommate time. It’s been three or so days of living here now and we’ve both been super busy, too busy to actually speak that much, so I’m looking forward to tomorrow morning. I’m not looking forward to sleeping alone though. It’s cold here.

[rueur]

Morning Pages #47 (16.04.2017) (26.04.2017)

Sunday 16th April - 10:57 a.m.

It’s quiet and my love is fast asleep. He had a hard night last night, found himself in an expectedly troubled state of mind, triggered by reminders of a turbulent past. I saw that it was tough on him, and worried about him in his red-eyed silence, but thankfully the night was salvaged by good music and quite a bit of alcohol. Perhaps a burger and some chips also played a role here, though it was not as meaty a role as was held by the drinks.

I wasn’t entirely myself last night either, because our company consisted of people that he had history with, and that I had only ever heard of in passing. Meeting them was a big deal for me, even though it wasn’t a night of much significance for him.

Wednesday 26th April - 3:03 p.m.

Ten days exactly has passed and I’m right back here at Evan’s, well most of me is. We had a cycling accident on the 21st, last Friday. I was the only one who got hurt, thankfully, because it was really mostly my fault. There was a roadworks sign in the bike lane somewhere in Reservoir, and Evan saw it and started to slow down. He was in front of me. I saw it too, checked behind myself to see if there were cars coming, saw there was one, and tried slowing down too, but not fast enough. It was raining a lot as well, and so when I inevitably hit the back of him, I fell and skidded on my face. I busted my lip and chin, chipped my two front teeth, and grazed my knee quite badly. Living has been a bit of a struggle since, but hopefully it’ll all be clearing up soon. My teeth are incredibly sensitive right now, and eating is a bit of a struggle. I just had pancakes for breakfast with Evan and it took twice as long for me to get through them than it otherwise would’ve. And my face is still badly scabbed, on my upper lip and on my chin. It’s getting less painful by the day but it’s still rather torturous. I had a nasty fever on Sunday morning, after getting all my dental work done on Saturday. I was nauseous for three or so hours, from 7 a.m. till about 10 a.m., and Evan stayed with me the entire time. He watched me puke. He made sure that I kept eating, because I was half-starving myself since the accident happened. It’s been an ordeal, and I’ve been fighting back a depression, I think. It seems easier when he’s around. He stayed with me from Friday till Monday afternoon. I was then alone from Monday night till Tuesday night, and most of Tuesday was difficult. I barely slept on Monday night.

I am mourning my perfect teeth, because I did have perfect teeth. And I never took them for granted either. I brushed vigorously twice a day or so, and I regarded anything happening to my teeth as one of my worst fears. And now it’s happened. Mundell asked if maybe that was a good thing, that I experienced one of my worst fears. I can understand how facing one of my worst fears can make me a better person, a stronger person through the experience. I also feel like maybe I bring this all upon myself. I ask the world to deal me a hard hand so that I can see what it’s all like: so that I can experience everything and say that I’ve lived a life well-lived, well-full of it all.

Last night, Evan was talking to me about the future, but in very bleak terms. He was talking about the ends of our lives, in relation to the ends of our past lives. He’s convinced that we might’ve died four days apart, because we were born four days apart in this one. But he also said that he believed we were able to fall in love so quickly because we were simply continuing from where we had left off, when our souls were connected to other bodies. We found each other again and said to ourselves that it was time to get right back to it, time to get right back to being with one another. I thought that was an interesting idea, the fact that the energy between us could be strong enough to transcend the physical form, but it definitely explains how we were so in sync from the get-go.

I know it’s been a while since I’ve written here, and I feel a little iffy about writing again today knowing that I probably won’t be maintaining this as a daily thing. Uni’s just been so demanding, and I’m too tired, especially now. I just felt like this would be a little therapeutic too, and lord knows I need that right now. Thankfully, I haven’t lost the entire ‘stream of consciousness’ side of this, because I have been typing rather quickly, I’ve noticed. It’s 3:17 p.m., and I’m already maybe halfway through my second page. Granted, I did have a little entry from ten days ago that I haven’t the heart to delete, because I still remember that moment. It was so quiet and still, and dark. I was behind Evan’s couch, just kneeling on the floor, typing and being very aware of the sound of my typing. I didn’t want to wake him. I love him quite a lot, it seems.

I let him read my entries from the 14th and the 22nd of January, after the night we met and our first date respectively. I couldn’t believe I’d let him do that. He also knows the URL of this blog, which I feel may or may not influence the way I write from here on out, but he promised me that he wouldn’t abuse that knowledge and that he wouldn’t read any entries I didn’t want him reading. I believe that he won’t. I really do. So I don’t think I’ll change the  URL. But there are things that I haven’t told him about Ikaros, and these are things that I don’t think he has any interest in knowing anyway. I just feel like if he were to read them, he may feel hurt I didn’t tell him, even though they are of no relevance. Ikaros is entirely in the past. He messaged me yesterday, mostly because I’d made a post on Facebook about my cycling accident, but he also said something unnecessarily cryptic that pissed me off. He wants me to be thinking about him, I think. He said that a while back, I asked him a question which he happily answered, but he’d recently been thinking about that question again and feels like the question I asked had a second hidden question whose answer was given through the answer he had given me for the first question: an implied answer, in the subtext of that conversation. He said it was the kind of thing we’d need to talk about in person, but I don’t really care about it enough to be curious. I’m just a little mad that he even attempted to make me curious about it. I’m mad that he wants me to be wasting my time thinking about dead scenarios, ghosts of conversations that we’ve had, like I have the mental energy to waste on that.

I’m going to take a break, return to this when I feel the time is right, which will be very soon I think. And if not, then I’ll just wrap it up here. I want to be writing creatively, but my mind is too full and I’m too plagued with all the bullshit that’s been happening lately. I’m worrying about too much and I know I shouldn’t be, but I am. And as soon as I can write away all those inhibitions, I’m not going to attempt any more poignant, elegant works. I just want to be raw and unrefined for a while, because I feel like I’ve earned that right with all this focus on propriety that school inspires within me. It’s exhausting.

I’m back. Evan is cutting Daniel’s hair right now, and we were just playing Uncharted 2 before he turned up. I’m very self-conscious about my face right now, because I know it’s still looking rather hideous, because of the injuries. My scabs in particular are giving me a lot of grief, not just because it’s gotten insanely difficult washing my face, alongside the rest of my body too because of this bloody knee. My graze was healing up pretty well until I had a shower last night and now it’s gone back to feeling pretty stiff. It’s very hard, and I’m hesitant to wash it again because of what happened last time. Thankfully, because of the ANZAC Day Holiday on Tuesday, I haven’t had to go to school this week either. I feel like I’ll have to go in tomorrow though, for my journalism class only hopefully. I could easily skip it though, and back it up with a medical certificate, but I just don’t want to waste my last sick day for that subject in Week 8 knowing that I’ll have to make that 9 a.m. start four times over until the end of the semester. Goodness, a month left of this semester and then exams. And I’ll have one more semester till my graduation, if I don’t go for my honours. Should I go for my honours? I’ve been on the fence about it since January, really. I don’t know if I should bother with that last year of my a bachelor’s degree with honours, when I can just get my bachelor’s degree and have it over with. I still don’t know if my bachelor’s degree is going to be worth anything anyway, I mean it’s currently worth -$30,000 or so, just because of my bloody student fees. Lord knows if I’ll ever break even on that in my field. But honestly, I couldn’t see myself studying anything else, even though I’ve gotten so into my geography/environmental studies subjects. I wouldn’t ever see myself as a landscape management major in the environments degree, but I could potentially see myself double-majoring in creative writing and geography. I don’t know if I have the credit points to apply for a double major now, in the final year of my degree. I have done a surprising amount of geography subjects, so maybe? The School of Geography have been sending me a whole bunch of emails but I feel like they’ve all been automatically sent to students who achieved high marks in subjects regardless of their course structure. I feel like I can definitely do a few more geography subjects around my creative writing subjects. My creative writing subjects don’t even feel vital enough to form a major, if I can be candid. It all feels like such a bludge. Add the disappointment and limitations of Writing Journalism to all of that, and I feel like all my interests have been failed to be taught at this university. Nobody learns how to write creatively. You just do it. I’ve attempted to learn how to write creatively and it’s resulted in me feeling alienated from even my own writing. It’s been an intense process, having to consider my passion as a discipline. Sometimes I feel like this may not even be worthwhile by the end of it. Sometimes I feel like I’ll have more luck and more job satisfaction if I were to pursue the opportunities presented to me by my geography subjects. Who knows at this point. But I think I’ll regret it if I don’t at least see if I can apply for a double major. I just don’t know how I’d go about it.

These pages have already worked their magic on me, it seems, even after I’ve failed to do them for so long. Here I am, writing about something that’s unknowingly been plaguing me for quite some time. I have to get this sorted. I just don’t know how. But that shouldn’t stop me, I know it shouldn’t. I have to get this sorted.