On Blogging…

One of my fave writers, Sandi Tighello, recently penned this article about blogging and I found myself nodding along to pretty much everything she said, like one of those bobble head toys.

I started my blog because it was another outlet for my writing. It was to be a place to share my opinions and thoughts on matters that interest me. Or irritate me. But recently its I’ve been very self critical of what I’ve been writing and favor posts of lists or photographs, which I do love and is cool and all, but I don’t want the bulk of my blog to be about that.

Sometimes I think I should be a little more careful with the way I string words together, just in case a potential employer may read it. But I don’t want to live my life by a bunch of “what ifs?” I don’t want it to become a chore, some piece of writing that I need to double check and agonise over until it is perfect. Because that’s not why I started this.

The way I write on my blog is not the way I write for other mediums. I don’t edit my blog posts. I don’t check spelling or grammer simply because I don’t want to. It reads the way I talk; colloquial and with short sentences that sometimes go off on a tangent. It’s like a stream of consciousness for me and I like it like that.

I’m going to be absent from blogging the next two weeks. I’ll be road tripping up to the Gold Coast with my boyfriend and having a little holiday before I return home without him. He’s moving up there for a year to do a master’s degree. And when I get back, I’m going to get back into the writing routine that I once followed. And rethink the blog thing.

Maybe I’ll do a big overhaul and change the layouts and take a new header photo. And make a facebook page or add an RRS feed. Or is it RSS? And learn what the hell that is. And write some huge disclaimer like: “I don’t write because I blog. I blog because I write.”

See you in two weeks!

xxx

Things I Love Thursday

• Cat predicts when patients are about to die. I’m a huge advocate of the mental health benefits that animals can provide, so I adored this article. Must buy Oscar’s book!
• Currently obsessed with the blog 52 Suburbs where the blogger will visit a different Sydney suburb every week. And document it gorgeously.
• God I love Mary Kate Olsen. And this is too funny. Very Mary Kate: The Unofficial Biography of Mary Kate Olsen
• Sex explained graphically using pens. Hehehe.
• This is too good for words: Unhappy Hipsters
• Misspelled tattoos. Why are people such idiots? Seriously!
• 10 of the worlds smallest animals. Tiny fluffies! (And some slimies!) Soooo cute!
• Leopard Optical Illusion. Ok, this took me sooo long to work out! It’s awesome thou. Can you see it?
• Animal sculptures by Beth Cavener Stichter. These are simply AMAZING. wow. 
• OPI’s Alice In Wonderland Collection ‘Mad As A Hatter.’ (Not my nails btw)  I need this NOW.
• One of my favourite fashion editorials of all time. Recognise a theme?
• I’m dying to make these and put them in a bowl as a table centerpiece. If only my cat didn’t eat anything he could fit in his mouth…
• Embarrassingly, me and my boyfriend are obsessed with watching the American Idol auditions. At least I know we’re not alone. This article is awesome, explaining what the audition process is really like.
• The Satoralist for cats- The Catorialist. Not Kidding.
• Stop Making That Duckface. Ahhh this makes me laugh so much. Why do so many girls do this?
• Top 10 very unfortunate x-rays. Ouch.
• I love these canvas replicas of the original 1950’s “All stops to…” train, bus and tram routes. I’ve wanted this Bondi one for ages.  Spare $500 anyone?
• Lou Doillon for Vanessa Bruno. This video is so beautiful.

xxx

Just A Minute In… January

Listening… Ella Fitzgerald, Notorious BIG, Vampire Weekend, Muse
Reading… Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer, Her Unfearful Symmetry by Audrey Niffenegger
Watching… Where The Wild Things Are, Avatar, American Idol auditions and a stack of bad movies on foxtel about serial killers and the FBI
Buying… Jewellery from markets
Wanting…To know why strappy flats make my feet look so elongated and creepy. It’s not like I have huge clown feet, I’m in between a 37 and 38 for christsakes!
Trying…to find a job… and not get disheartened!
Loving… this quote from the film The Wackness, air conditioning, Ryan O’Reily from the TV Series OZ, deep conditioning hair treatments, dancing with friends, turning the bass up, the insane doings of my cat Sid Vicious
Planning… The separation of me and my boyfriend’s combined DVD collection. It’s going to be traumatic
Making… Denim cut offs from old jeans and studding them
Writing… Cover letters… blah!
Cooking… Not much… Been using my xmas present Hello Kitty sandwich maker to make an inordinate amount of cheese jaffles
Inspired by… Chanel’s latest haute couture collection, heart shaped lockets, white washed photography, the colour of autumn leaves, clouds and thunderstorms

xxx

Decorating With Books

Is anyone else a fan of interior decorating? Or at least looking at how other people have decorated their living spaces? I love it.

With the boyfriend moving out in the next few weeks, my main focus has been on how I am going to overhaul my apartment. (This is also a nice little self defense mechanism so I won’t start getting upset that he is leaving. Clever. ) Most of the changes will be just moving furniture around and changing some of the artworks on my walls but it’s still exciting to me.

The most exciting thing is the amount of space I’ll have once he has gone. In Darlinghurst, space is a luxury. In my apartment, space is the one thing that I don’t have a lot of. So every little bit counts.

One of my favourite things in the world is books. One of my favourite ways to decorate is using books. This is the one thing that’s been missing in the past few years of my life; I have had no where to store my gigantic collection. Currently, they are all housed in my mother’s garage. Not so visually pleasing at all.

Living at home, I once had a study all to myself. And I put shelves up, running across the walls and every single book I owned was on display and at my fingertips when I wanted to re-read anything. So now, finally, I am going to have my books again.

Except I cannot move my entire collection into my current apartment, I simply don’t have the space. But I can get my favourites back. Which, as nerdy as it sounds, is one of the most exciting things that 2010 holds for me.

So now I am left with the daunting task of choosing what books to leave behind in mum’s garage and which books will grace me with their presence. This is even harder since I won’t physically be at my mother’s house to choose them for a month or so still and being as impatient as I am, I’m going to give her a list of books to bring up to me in the next two weeks.

I’m a little stuck. And forgetful. God, what books do I actually own? How the hell am I going to choose what to have with me?! I have a list of my top 5 or so but that’s about it so far.

So, dear readers, tell me: What are you’re favourite, all time books. What books have shaped you? What would you hate to be without? Hit me up!

xxx

photo credit: kara haupt

I Come From The Land Down Under

It’s Australia Day today. Which I think marks the day that Captain Cook arrived on our shores. Isn’t it? Oops.  I don’t know much about Australian history and sadly I know that I’m not the only one.

I’ve been accused of being ‘un-Australian’ before. Because I don’t like sport. Or meat. Or gambling. Or sunbaking. Or heavy Australian accents. Or Australian slang. Actually, I was blissfully unaware of real Aussie slang up until a couple of years ago. No idea what a ‘sanger’ was. Or a ‘billy.’ Or ‘goon.’ I know, I know, shocking. Yes, I grew up in the nice little bubble that is the Eastern suburbs with European grandparents whose first language wasn’t English. Deal with it.

Australia Day means barbeques and beer and the beach and those stupid plastic little flags that people attach to their cars. And for the month of January it also means that places like Supre sell an insane amount of Aussie garments with logos and colours and what not. No idea who buys this stuff. Or those t-shirts/stickers with the friendly slogan ‘Australia… if you don’t like it, get out.”

But there’s more to today than just stuffing meat pies down your throat, singing along to Barnsy and getting insanely drunk. We also love to argue today. And bash our countries politics and policies and rant on about how the world sees us as unsophisticated bogans who are racist. But racism and the notion of White Australia is a fairly ironic one, considering our country is only 200 odd years old and we all came from somewhere originally. Somewhere I read the statistic that 45% of us are either born overseas or have at least one parent who is.

Which means it’s all kind of pointless. And makes me wonder: on the 4^th of July, do Americans get involved in heated debates about how their country started? What about the French on Bastille day? My 4^th of July experience included fireworks, bbq’s and a ton of red, white and blue striped shit. And the main topic of conversation was something along the lines of ‘The USA is so great, yay for us.’

So how come ‘Strayla Day goes hand in hand with self-hating Aussies who write articles winging and complaining about the English and mis treating the Aborigines’ and trying to distance ourselves from the handful of redneck bogans who get violently drunk? I’m the first to admit that I can be anti-Australian but Australia is actually a pretty cool place.

I used to roll my eyes at the fact my parents moved back to Sydney from New York after finding out they were pregnant because they wanted to raise their child here. And then my step mum and dad did the exact same thing and moved back here from Los Angeles when they were pregnant. And I look at my little brother and think ‘thank god’ that they did because when it comes to having a childhood, there is seriously no better place than here.

Like the Aussie author John Birmingham blogs,  “if Australia Day is about anything other than pinching a whole continent off the black fellas, it has to be about making up for that original dispossession by creating a place where people are free to do as they damn well please, even if that means not buying into a bunch of increasingly commercial nationalistic bullshit.”

Go Australia!

xxx

I Heart Music Festivals

I have always loved summer music festivals and I probably always will, but I think this year may have been my last. I’m simply too old for the kind of shenanigans involved in them.

I love the atmosphere, the space, the live music and the energy of the crowds. I love hopping around dancing to good music and singing my little heart out. I love spending the entire day with a group of good friends, running into a host of other people I know and meeting new, random people who suddenly become like a best friend. Adore it.

Back in the day, I’d hit up all the major music festivals that Sydney has to offer. Parklife, Harbourlife, Good Vibrations, Field Day, Laneway, Big Day Out… Every event has given me amazing memories from co-ordinated leopard print to having my fake tan dripping off my body thanks to the pouring rain.

But now I look at the girls and think ‘your mother lets you go out of the house wearing THAT?’. I see the drunken antics of the young boys, with their shirtless torsos exposing clichéd southern cross tattoos and cringe. On Friday I was at the Big Day Out and the heat affected me so much; I had to go sit in the shade for over an hour drinking litres of water with my head in between my knees in an effort to ward off fainting and heat stroke. Dear god, what has age done to me?!!

Australia’s music festivals have always paled in comparisons to the major festivals overseas- Glastonbury and Coachella anyone? Not that I can really complain, I know all about the costs and dramas involved in bringing out major acts to our shores. I’m pretty sure if I was able to attend one of them, I’d jump at the chance and not give two thoughts about the heat or my warped feelings about how old 25 is. Maybe it would make a difference, being overseas or something, who knows.

Truth is, I’m getting tired of being the oldest one out of all my friends. It’s not jealousy as such but there is definitely a sad nostalgic feeling involved. I used to want to push up to the front of the stage and be squished in between thousands of sweaty people. I used to want to run around to different areas and take millions of photos and flirt with random boys and get excited about what I was going to wear to festivals. I used to want to go out after the event, you know, party on or whatever. It never used to bother me, but now? Something about knowing people my age are getting married and putting down mortgages and popping out babies puts a little damper on things sometimes.

This post turned out to be something entirely different than what I expected. Oops. Don’t get me wrong, I had an awesome day. AWESOME. But maybe it’s time to file summer music festivals away, along with clubbing 3 nights a week and spending all my pay on clothes, into the ‘things I used to do when I was younger.’ Then again, maybe someone like David Bowie will headline Big Day Out next year and I can just eat my words.

xxx

Faux Beauty

I’m sure by now you’ve heard the news  (and seen the photos) of Heidi Montag’s plastic surgery addiction.

While an obvious case of a sad, misguided young woman, it got me thinking, ‘how much of us is real anyways?’ Heidi went to the extreme but there are tons of things that we do to enhance our appearance. Fake tans, lashes, hair, nails, teeth, lips….

I am generally not a plastic surgery supporter but I do believe that if it improves your self esteem do it. Your body. I decided to compile a list of fake attributes that I’ve indulged in over the years under the guise of ‘I want to be prettier’:

- fake tan
- false lashes
- hair extensions
- acrylic nails
- coloured hair
- hair removal
- eyelash tinting

Interesting. Add to the list that I want to get my teeth whitened and Id be willing to try eyelash extensions and a small dose of restyln, my list is pretty chunky. And I know a lot of girls would be the same. Currently, the only fake thing about me is my hair colour. Granted, it could be my original hair colour, since I have no real idea what exact shade of brunette I am, but you get the point.

And then you think about the celebrities and models we see in magazines. They have flattering lighting, hair & makeup artists and a talented digital re toucher. How much of that final image is real? Next to nothing.

I know that they don’t wake up looking like they do in print. You know that. Hopefully young girls are educated & media savvy enough to know this too. But you know who I really worry about? Boys.

If you’re an average 12 year old boy, you look at a lot of porn. And porn stars. And the girly girls who appear in Ralph or FHM or Zoo. Who epitomize the whole ‘fake’ thing to the max. Do they think that women look like that in real life? Perfectly tanned with boobs that don’t follow the laws of gravity? Jeez, it’s no wonder we’re all so self conscious about the way our body looks without clothes on!

I remember my first boyfriend pointing to the stretch marks on my hips and asking what happened. I told him that I was attacked by cats and got a lot of sympathy cuddles and kisses until I finally explained what they were. Adorably clueless.

I think about my little brother. At 16 months, he’s a little too young to be aware of this kinda stuff but he’s not going to be a toddler forever. What happens with his first girlfriend, will he be disappointed in the way her body looks? Will he be an asshole and actually tell her that her boobs are too small or ask her why her thighs touch?

Do you feel intimidated by the girls in FHM? How many ‘faux’ things have you done to your body in the name of beauty? Do you ever wonder how it all affects boys growing up or is it something that my brain chews on when there’s nothing else to stress about?

xxx

Flickr: Yyellowbird

http://www.yyellowbird.blogspot.com/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/yyellowbird/

A Life Less Ordinary

Apologies for my absence the past week, both online and for those who know me in the living, breathing world. My mood suddenly plummeted one morning and hung around like a storm cloud and I simply had no energy to do anything. My history with depression meant that for the past 8 or so days every ounce of my strength has been channeled into doing the very basic things, mainly being to get out of bed.

My boyfriend broke his foot last week so to top it all off, I have been taking care of him as he hobbles and hops along, as he is far too immobile to take care of me. And sometimes, we need taking care of. And there is nothing wrong with that.

My zombie like state just continued thanks to the heat. The heat! Ohmigod, I cannot stand it. Wake up, look out and the window and it just sounds hot. The piercing silence of no breeze ruffling through the trees, only the incessant sound of crickets chirping away. The kind of heat where you don’t even need to move to create sweat; it just trickles off your body and covers your skin in a filmy layer of clamminess.

Some people’s moods are affected by the weather. Usually when it’s grey, cold and wet. Maybe sunshine triggers something in my chemical makeup? If that is the case, then what the fuck am I doing living in Australia?

Today is a better day. Whether it is because I have legitimate chores and things to do or because the temperature finally dropped enough degrees so that I can breathe outdoors I’ll never know. The fact that I feel like talking to people instead of hiding under the covers is a welcome return to some sort of normality.

It’s weird; I’ve never minded about being unemployed before. Most of my jobs haven’t been that great and it was always a relief to no longer have to drag myself into work. But I really enjoyed my time at Primped. Being unemployed now feels like I am missing out on something. The job hunt is even more excruciating now that my qualifications are more relevant. My brain is torn between being angry at the fact that I am 3 years behind every one else in my age bracket in the career field due to mental illness and hospitalizations. And then I laugh at myself and think of how much I learnt during that time, how much it shaped who I am today and how ahead I am of everyone else in my age bracket in other aspects of life.

In three weeks my boyfriend is moving out to do a year of study in the Gold Coast. I still haven’t even processed all the changes that will inevitably happen when I find myself on my own again. I’ve been focusing on all the positives- transforming my apartment into the bachelorette pad it once was, the extra time I’ll have to work on my book and catch up with old friends. But I need to start preparing myself for the downsides too. All those emotions like loneliness and jealousy and simply missing him. I cannot push them all away because they will come back and hit me, most likely all at once and when I least expect it.

For me, depression is a battle. I knew from the start that it would haunt me again, at random moments in my life. But I am fortunate enough to know my moods and my symptoms. I know what I need to do in order to keep it from seeping so far deep inside me that I can’t get out. I’ve won this round.

xxx

Things I Love Thursday

• Vogue’s Best Dressed Of The Decade.  Voting closes on the 25^th of January…
• 2009’s most ridiculous use of Photoshop.  I doubt I’ll ever get tired of seeing this type of stuff.
• 30 fashion illustrators you cant miss.  I’m loving Akari Inoguchi from Japan and Nadia Flower from New Zealand. Stunning work.
• Worldometers is shockingly amazing.
• Well, I guess I’m a serial killer then.
• You’ve probably seen this already but I still love this photo shoot for V magazine by Terry Richardson called ‘One Size Fits All’.
• This photoshoot blows my mind.
• 10 Urban Legends that caused a moral panic. I used to believe in Number 4, it was one of my biggest fears.
• Contrariwise: Literary Tattoos is freakin awesome. Needs more updating! Hate the Harry Potter tattoos. And the Twilight ones! Bleruch. Love this one from The Little Prince. And this is just cool bc I love love this Bukowski poem.
• Tattoo etiquette. Its all so true.
• Stereotyping people by their favourite author.
• Hemmingway once wrote a short story with just six words and Wired magazine asked other writers to give it a try. I love Frank Miller’s, Kevin Smith’s and this one by Orson Scott Card “The baby’s blood type? Mostly human.”  My own six word story? Through the window, I saw loneliness.

What have you found on the interwebs lately that you’ve loved?

xxx