Don't Think, Just Do!

I’ve been thinking.

I know thinking can be dangerous in the wrong hands, but thinking needed to be done. I’ve been putting it off for too long. I’ve been keeping myself busy to avoid the thinking that was required.

On Monday, I was forced to face something while sitting on the train on my way home from Uni. I sat there looking out of the window, watching the Inner West pass me by in a blur when a thought popped into my head.

‘What the hell are you doing?’

To what am I referring to I hear you ask. I know I did. My internal monologue kicked in and found myself going over all the things that I have experienced since this time last year.

It’s been less than idyllic year, I have to say. I know in the grand scheme of things like floods, bush fires and thousands out of work, my issues don’t even register a blip on the global radar, but to me they have been pretty monumental and life changing.

I reasoned with myself that I needed to get my life back on track with my goals in life.
- I need to sort out my revolting financial situation after over six months of unemployment.
- I need to start having some sort of social life, now that I may actually be able to afford to get out of the house on occasion.
- I would like to read some of the books I haven’t read after a couple of years of reading things that Uni has told me I have to read.
- I would like a relationship that involves a little passion and romance.
- I want to be able to spend time developing my skills as a photographer
- I want to get my motorbike licence

The list goes on…

Then I think about how working full time and studying for yet another Masters degree fits in with these desires. They don’t.

So today, I filed for a leave of Absence for my Uni course.

I figure I can start it in one year if I still want to do it. I think I applied to do a Master of Education because I didn’t have anything else to do at the time. Now I do. A leave of Absence means I don’t need to reapply (which is frankly, a pain). Hopefully they say I can, if the Uni denies my request, I’ll just withdraw completely.

Making this decision lifted a weight from my shoulders, and I feel like things are moving ahead for the first time in a very long time.

What an Odd Day?

So I’ve had an odd day at work, what with the Bullying, Discrimination and Harassment workshop, how to prevent it rather than do it. Somehow the teacher thought it would be a good idea to reveal that a group of people had been caught having group sex at eight am in one of the offices. I was traumatised! Not by the thought of group sex in the office, but they were going at it at eight am…what kind of a sick pup does that?

Then I had lunch with my boss, a lovely man whom I some very odd conversations with. Don’t get me wrong, it’s just that I'm fairly sure he shouldn’t be discussing some of the sensitive information he does discuss with me. But, I know how to keep my mouth shut, so all’s good.

After lunch I got a phone call from the Ikea delivery guy saying he had tried to deliver my furniture, where was I? I explained I had booked it for Friday. Turns out that message didn’t get through, so should I ‘work from home’ tomorrow morning or not? Maybe I should call them first thing to find out?

Uni started at six, so off I trundled to class. I get asked about an email I sent out to a friend of mine from class. So I have to sit there and explain a couple of things about my current personal circumstances to the sounds of sympathetic ohhs and ahhs. Class then got a little weirder when the lecturer turned up with a bottle of Blue Sapphire gin saying, ‘it’s water really, I just didn’t want to throw the bottle away.’ I’m guessing that she was telling the truth because after two tumblers she still hadn’t fallen over.

During class I got a text message from a mate telling he had taken a new job and was celebrating. I sent back I was in class til nine and I would catch him after maybe. He then said he was going to go to a movie and it would be Die Hard 4.0, being a bit of a Die Hard fan I asked what time it would start and soon found out it started fifteen minutes before my class ended. But I made it, only thing was I had no idea were he was sitting in a packed theatre. So I guessed. I ended up sitting alone one row in front and about six seats to the left. So I went to a movie, with a mate but sat alone.

That just about sums up my day, want do you think?

PS. You have to see Die Hard 4.0 on the big screen as it’s full of the usual Die Hard blowing sh*t up and moohosive car chases. It ROCKS!

Semester Commencement

I started back at Uni last night with my Writing Seminar class. There are fifteen people in the group with a fifty/fifty mix of girls to boys. I have worked with five of them before in previous classes including the Mad Folk Singer from Theory last semester.

It’s a mixed group of weirdos and people who consider themselves intellectual. There’s the lady in her fifties with two kids and about eight degrees who has dispensed with her surname and simply goes by her Christian name (ala Prince, Madonna and Jesus), the American who looks like he’s been hit with a frying pan who is really hard to understand ‘cause his accent is so thick, the older lady who has had many natural history books published but can’t make up her mind about anything and the girl in her mid twenties who is clearly the smartest in the room and is living on a shoe string.
Should be a fun semester!

Masters...So Far

I got my results for this semester today. In a weeks time I will be starting the second to last semester of my Masters in Writing and here’s how I’m doing so far. For someone who only did any good at art in school, I’m quite proud of myself.

Advanced Narrative Writing – Distinction
Book Publishing and Marketing – Credit
Non-Fiction Writing – Credit
Writing Poetry – Distinction
Professional Editing – Distinction (got a higher distinction for my last paper)
Theory and Writing – Distinction

Only Writing Seminar (were we write and workshop) and the Professional Writing Project to go. So by this time 2008 I will (all being well) finished my edumacation! ;-)

Further Readings (optional)

Ok, I should be finalising my final assignment but I have to write about my last class for the semester. The class was Theory and Writing and we broke into groups to workshop some final pieces. In our group we had Songstar, Merman, Lady Grimm, K, Detective, Beetle and Flea. Of course I was in there too and we worked through the writing of Kafka, Flea and Detective after she joined us from the other group. We had a laugh and gave good feedback about how the Flea should put in the line ‘Kafka leaves’ into her story but we couldn’t figure out were ‘I need sausage’ would fit in.

The Detective left feeling a little happier, I think. We enjoyed her story about 80s kidnappings and the resulting investigation. There were no funny phases she wanted us to work in.

K’s story was written in the style of Kafka, funnily enough and the only suggestion we could come up with was maybe less Kafka style long slow passages. Other wise we all enjoyed it, especially the off the wall references to Santa’s reindeer.

After class was over, most of us adjourned to the pub for the traditional end of semester goodbye drink. We were joined by our lecturer The Poet. It’s funny, in general, how different people are in class compared to outside. The Poet is pretty much the same and he even admitted that he would have been happy to go drinking with us after every class but as a lecturer he ‘has to retain a distance’. After most of the group had drifted off (‘to complete my assignment’) it was just the Poet, Flea and I left and the subject turned back to theory’s.

So I revealed a theory that I have spoken about to Edna, Sally and Hubby at different times usually in relation to the attractiveness of those around us. I tried to say that I believe we react to theory in relation to what we are exposed to as children. For example on the attractiveness aspect, I grew up with white northern Europeans and Jamaicans, but very few Asian, Middle Eastern or Southern Europeans. In general I don’t find these groups attractive. Is this because I’m racist, it's genetic or just ‘cause I didn’t grow up around them?

I grew up exposed to the art of Constable and Van Gogh, but rebelled against Constable because I found his work nicely executed, but lacking imagination. Van Gogh saw things around him in a bent way and with amazing colour so I grew to love the one lobed Vincent and other abstract art such as Picasso, Matisse, Warhol and Pollock. Is this because I was able to form an opinion about art at an early age or because I liked colour or because Constable isn't really that good?

Book wise I was never really exposed too much except the Encyclopaedia Britannica and Reader Digest. I grew to love reading anything to the point where I can quite safely say I’m a book slut, I’ll read anything. I may or may not like it, but I’ll give it a go. Except Heidi, never read it ‘cause Mrs. Buckley told me when I was 8 it was beyond my reading age and I wouldn’t be able to read it and my Mum shouldn’t order it from book club. My Mum ordered it anyway, but I never read it ‘cause I wasn’t very good at proving old Bucks wrong. (Poet, sorry, but I still don’t like Mrs Dalloway either;-).

Music in my childhood was Jeff Wayne’s War of the Worlds, Cat Stevens, the Moody Blues and Roger Miller. I like them all to this day and can honestly say I love Cat Stevens. I listen to loads of other stuff and even to Nova, but I still go back the ole’ faithfuls when I need comfort. Is this because this music brings me feeling of family and good times? Is is because it's 'classic', Maybe, maybe not?

So my theory is this, we either except (and embrace) what we are presented with as a child or reject it. These acts of rebellion can make us stronger and who we turn out to be. They make us the inquisitive souls that go out and create for ourselves. They make us the people who go to modern art galleries and look at the pallet painted green on the wall and say ‘yes I like that, but why?’ These small or large youthful exposures from our parents decide who or what we are going to be.

And you still only need a licence to have a dog.