#This makes me a little upset because yesterday I reached my goal of 500 followers

[k-martins]

apparently Elon Musk is going to close twt in my country, which means I'll have to migrate all my itafushi thoughts here and freak out about the chapters here too lol

[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.