A Hole In The Bucket

Blogging has been hard lately. Mainly because it has been so easy to ignore. Mainly because I have been both busy and bored, which equates to stifled.
I’m forcing myself to write at the slightest inclination; because the times I most feel like writing, and the things I most feel like writing about (getting off my chest more like) are not good times nor worthwhile stories.
I shall take this time to reiterate that the previously discussed but unpublished post was crap. It was total crap. It was just me going on and around in circles, and with great regret and turmoil about uni and moving and choices and fights. It wasn’t worth the bytes it was imbedded in.
On my great list of interests: Of course I won’t stand there reading it out for ten minutes straight at the drop of a hat. My god! Can you even imagine it? Of course it would make me look incredibly, irrevocably, unforgivably self absorbed. But you looked at it, I know from your viewing history on Stat Counter, after I spoke about it, even though I didn’t even say I’d updated my Blogger profile; you visited it to see what I was all about. Really it’s there to remind me, to look at it occasionally, maybe look at in the loo at parties to remember great but forgotten bands and movies to get the conversation started again. How stupid would you have to be to drag it out in public? I don’t think anything could drive a person away faster. And if you really you to get into it, I think any friend of mine, and I hate to get paternalistic; but any potential friend of mine, would have to know that about me, and understand, otherwise they wouldn’t know what they were getting themselves into, nor would I want a friend who had a problem with it. I am a big part of me. And if you want to look at the whole exercise from a psychoanalytic standpoint (and I’m surprised you didn’t) then this whole list making was a way of affirming or reaffirming who I am in this time of change. Discovering what I’m about. Remembering things I experienced whilst here. The story about the party was an aside, because I was embarrassed that I couldn’t remember bands, that I didn’t know me – that even as self obsessed as I am, I am completely out of practice in talking about my interests to new people, and that people never ask.
I did look for you on Facebook, you and 15 000 others with the same first name… I don’t like Facebook much; people, pets and even buildings all validating their real life friendships to one another online… it would be cute if it weren’t also a just a little weird.

I have been working and packing and planning.
I am moving to Melbourne on Friday. Which means a few days back I was not shielded by suburbia from the fires in Victoria; but I was far enough away. And thank you for your concern.
I am starting university on the second of March, and I have a lot of nothing to express on this topic.
I couldn’t think of a more succinct description than that.
I am aware that my life is revolving around university at the moment, but it’s more of slow, elliptical, half-arsed sort of orbit, like Pluto. Which I might add is not a real planet, and apt reflection on my life.

I have been working with grim acceptance and masochistic relish; for something to do, for somewhere to go, and to pay off the debt I owe to my stupidity. And after weeks of work, and weeks more of pestering for work, I am still three lousy dollars in the red. The difference of three newspapers that I bought to win a stupid Monopoly competition, or a drink and snack, or even the change in my purse that I never counted to begin with.
It’s the story of my life at the moment. I see the motifs and analogies of this before I even understand the cause. I made a coffee at work; I finally had a sachet of nice tasting coffee in my bag, along with just enough raw sugar, and there was milk in the fridge. And so I put in the coffee and the sugar, and then the hot water out of the urn which plops water into your cup, but I didn’t scald myself badly, then the milk, which was fresh. And I drank it. And it was heaven. And you think the worst is over; you contended with lack of ingredients, burning yourself, or the possibility the milk was chunky. You set that half drunk coffee aside to eat something or read a magazine; and just when you look back from contemplating how lucky you are for the simple things in life, like this. You see that tiny little holes, like pores all around the bottom half of your Styrofoam cup, have leaked your precious coffee onto the tearoom table.


I have been packing almost everything I own and need; which is now boxed up and sitting in the other room. But my room doesn’t feel empty. It doesn’t even look empty. Most of those things were in drawers to begin with, my bed and desk will stay here, and my mattress and computer will stay till the last minute. Sure, there’s a little extra space in the compartments of my desk, and I’ve yet to fold up all of my clothes… but it looks and feels exactly the same.

I just can’t believe how apathetically unreal it all is, especially considering all the things it was meant to be. Vibrant, life changing, new, fun, exciting, mind boggling… So far it’s none of those things.
I expected it to be a big deal.
I admit I had those expectations, poisonous as the nature of the expectation is.
People keep telling me that it is a big deal.
So I was expected to expect it, and to a degree to make a big deal of it.
So now I feel bad that didn’t.
And I feel worse that I care to feel bad that didn’t.
So would I have reacted in the same way had there not been those expectations from myself and other people? If everybody else was as indifferent as I am, would I have been jumping for joy just to be contrary? Am I even being contrary now, considering that I have almost no true insight into what I am supposedly rebelling against (i.e. other people my age)?

So amid this climate of forced apprehension, I have been led to the conclusion that the only reason I must feel so dispassionate about this obviously life-changing experience is because it’s not real to me yet.
People keep telling me that it will soon feel real.
My mother says my numbness is my normal reaction to change.
My teacher says the numbness is normal.
The little evidence I have, from my inexperienced, insubstantial and lately belittled existence, points in two of the same directions.
Despite what everyone has to say; I know that it will never become ‘real’.
I have the evidence to prove it.
What I cannot deduce is whether that is due to the fact that I am either in shock, numb, depressed; or some other out of the ordinary mindset; or because my previous conception of ‘real’ was based on childish awe and bewilderment.
I remember everything about walking into high school for the first time. The teacher who was our guide, the blue and while walls, the strange texture the ceilings had, the boy that stared at me from out of his science class… the walls seemed so amazingly low, and the floor creaked, it seemed to stretch on forever. But mostly I remember the smell. The wet concrete, gum leaves and pine chip mulch; new all weather carpet and high-gloss paint; and something indescribable about the halls, children, pencils, lino, toner cartridge and perfume. It was all so new. I was enthralled.
Walking into La Trobe was completely different. It was sort of like walking into a chain store, where all the stores are vaguely the same. You might be on the other side of the world, but it’s still K Mart. And it’s just K Mart, not comfortingly familiar K Mart in a big scary new world. I didn’t know my way around but I didn’t care, I just calmly plodded along like I was already bored with it.
I lacked awe. I lack awe.
Is lacking awe part of growing up? I vowed never to lose it. Losing that is like dying. When I imagined fame way back when, I swore that I would relish every moment and never take any of it for granted; to always look at it with a child’s eyes and take the time to smell the flowers. Is this the sole and last remaining trace of my childhood?
And furthering that depressing proposition, perhaps all this is because I have no hopes for this latest venture. A very sad state of affairs, but I’ve never been too good on the hope, and even less on the faith. But people tend not to believe me on this point; as I gabber on with wry amusement and swift eloquence about my own misfortune – How could someone so expressive be depressed? How could someone so disillusioned have so much to say?
Hhhh… But of course I’ll still be lying there on the first of March going ‘Oh my god I’ve got uni tomorrow!’ Or will I? I begin to question that in light of the application and university offer results. I wasn’t particularly enthused. In fact, it never ‘became real’ to me. Maybe after results and the phone and the agonising wait, it’s really knocked it out of me, and it has.

I know I seem disappointed that I’m still the same old person; I didn’t expect to change, but, I thought there might be something change-inspiring. What’s that saying about moving to avoid your troubles and only carrying the same bucket of shit with you? Well, it’s kind of like that.


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