Thursday 3 March 2011

It's been a while.

It been so long, in fact, that it kind of got to the point where I was almost scared to come back. I was worried people wouldn't care, or would have forgotten, or just that I would have lost the writing mojo, but I love blogging, and I have ideas and stuff, so I'm not giving up!

A brief explanation.
As a mentioned in a few blog posts, I think, I've just started a new job. And by 'just', I mean about a month ago. My last blog post was, if I recall correctly, just before I started my job, and I have to admit that since then, I've been feeling pretty physically and emotionally defeated. The earliest I ever finish work is about 6, which often doesn't get me home until 6.30 or 7, and sometimes I can finish work as late as 7.30 or 8. This, combined with the dull, uninteresting and repetitive work that I do, has given my life an overarching feel of unpleasantness; I've got very little time, and when I do, usually my head hurts from looking at a computer all day, or a just want to chill and do nothing. I'm also learning a lot all at once, so I'm panicked about not remembering, and if I'm completely honest, it doesn't give me much opportunity to think of things to write. I've stopped experiencing things in my life, which is horrible. I don't see my friends, I don't do anything, because I'm too tired. My weekends quickly fill up, with church, basketball, and maybe catching up with a friend or two, and because of the nature of my job, I can't ever plan anything for after work, because I never know what time I'm going to finish. So, I don't really do anything, and me blogging about another day at work wouldn't hold your interest for very long at all. But I am going to try, because this is an excellent outlet and cultivator of my creativity, which I feel at the moment is being squashed out of me. No offence, Southern Cross Media.

If you're curious, for my job I basically schedule ads, promotions, and the tv shows that you watch on all Ten and 11 channels, and some 7 and 9 channels. It's not nearly as exciting as it sounds.
The work is simple (in a bad way), the pay is not good, but the people there are all really nice and I'm tolerating it.

This all kind of very slowly brings me around to my point. You know, the thing I actually want to blog about.

All these things I'm doing (working, complaining about work, looking forward to payday, having a desk) are all really grown up things, that I've always associated with people over 30 doing, which is weird because pretty much everyone in my team at work is under 30. I don't feel like I should be doing these grown up things, and I don't feel like my friends should be living overseas and going to uni, but I am and they are.
In short, while I'm doing grown up things, I don't feel like a grown up.

Which brings me to my blogly anecdote.

The other day (OK, you got me, it was about 2 weeks ago, WHATEVER), Mum and I were driving home from basketball, and as we got to half way through Fyshwick, we drove past these two teddy bears on the road. We stopped at the lights, and I begged Mum to turn around so that we could pick them up and save them from being destoyed, and while she said it was sad, she refused and kept on driving.
I was really upset.
She couldn't understand that these teddies had been abandoned. I mean really, can you imagine how they'd feel?
Mutinous thoughts were running through my mind, and I couldn't stop thinking about them lying there, on the road, all alone and being run over.
I got home and called Ben, and our conversation went pretty much like this:
B: Hello!
A: Hello we were just driving home and there were some bears on the road and I told mum to stop and turn around and get them but she said that the people might come back for them and wouldn't go back and get them and I don't want them to stay there getting run over so I was wondering if we could drive out there this afternoon and pick them up please because I don't want to leave them because they looked so nice and they're getting run over.
B: OK?

So a few hours later, these were in my possession.


Yes, they're squinty - God knows they're squinters! - and they're a bit beat up, but they're safe and they're mine.

But to get to the point (longest freakin' blog post ever), after this happened, and I was still really disappointed in Mum, I was thinking about why she reacted in the 'don't think about it and keep driving' way.
She acted like a grown up.
I'll concede, a grown up with a childlike sadness at the misfortune of the bears, but her actions reflected more of the grown up side than the childlike side.
For Mum, it was something that wasn't practical or logical, and a sad, yet trivial event.
For Ben, it was something that I know he enjoyed doing, but I think it was more because he thought it was cute that I cared so much.
For me, there was no question about getting and saving the bears; it was something I had to do, otherwise I know I wouldn't have stopped thinking about it.

And while I may be doing grown up things like working and planning holidays on my own and thinking about uni, I don't ever want to be so grown up that I don't stop and save some bears from lying, dying (melodramatic?) on the road as I think about how sad it is, but it's quite inconvenient to turn around, and we really do need to get home, so we'll just trust that someone else will pick them up.

I don't ever want to be that.

If I ever am, I give you full permission to slap me, and give me a teddy to cuddle until I snap the hell out of it.


P.S. Rita, thank you for helping me overcome my emotional hurdles and get back on the blogging horse. Your support makes me feel a hundred times better. :)