It’s no secret that I’m a boring person. I wear glasses. I study and work hard. I love sleep, books and cups of tea. At 24 - the prime of my life - I’d rather be fumbling around in my PJs making cupcakes than out in heels getting toasted in a noisy bar.Mmm cupcakes.
With the very generous help of my sister and my great friend H, instead of using the Brisbane Exhibition Show Holiday to, you know, go to the show and vomit up corndogs on a rollercoaster… I hosted a tea party.
the menu:
baby scones with raspberry jam/marmalade and chantilly cream
basil pesto and parmesan swirled mini muffins
itty bitty chocolate cupcakes
miniature strawberry friands
vanilla cupcakes with lemon drizzle
H’s divine citrus tarts with berries
salmon and cream cheese tea sandwiches
chicken tea sandwiches
apricot danishes
fizzy water with lime and strawberries
earl grey, traditional afternoon, irish breakfast, and herbal teas
We had a lot of food for 7 people.
It was dainty and excellent.
It’s not that I don’t have anything to write about. I just don’t know where to start.
I have waxed vitriolic about my job a couple of times before in this space, but each time has left me feeling inarticulate and just as frustrated as before. I suppose that it wouldn’t matter if I wrote 10 words or 10 000, I couldn’t adequately or accurately express what goes on at work or how I feel about it. Perhaps this is simply what happens when a small group of people spend a lot of time together and boundaries are overstepped.
But these are the things I do know:
1. I have skills beyond what my job description and managers recognise and allow me to do. My goal in life was never to be a personal assistant, receptionist, or administration officer.
2. I feel under-appreciated for the other tasks outside my job description that I perform on a regular basis.
3. I could receive more than $10K per year additional remuneration (plus salary packaging and flex-time) in another job, even at an entry level.
4. I have irreconcilable personality differences with one manager - and both, sometimes - that make me miserable every single day I am at work. I spend approximately 80% of my waking hours barely managing to suppress my rage and unhappiness before collapsing into bed, exhausted, at the end of the day.
I need a new resume. And enough guts to quit. Soon.
I really, really need a new job.
The one who was smitten with his car.
The one who smoked heavily and wouldn’t kiss me because I liked to chew musk lifesavers and he couldn’t stand the taste.
The one who changed.
The one who invited me back to his flat while his girlfriend was in Europe.
The one who sent me purple and yellow flowers for Valentine’s Day, which I later threw in the bin.
The one who controlled through withholding and silence. I have had to learn not to care.
The one who made sure I was always losing.
The one who told me he feared he’d never find another girl like me. And then got married 9 months later.
The only one that matters.
1. Purple pansies
2. Afternoon storms with slanted, gusty rain
3. Eating crackers in the dark and listening to the Whitlams
4. A stack of unread books on the bedside table
5. Fresh bedsheets with a crease still down the middle from folding
6. Butter
7. Bonds singlets
8. Milky Earl Grey tea
9. Happy goldfish
10. Unstoppable belly laughter
I have started to write this entry about 7 times now. Nothing seems to fit right. But I have some words in my head.
My boss emailed me a few weeks ago when I was too ill to make it into work. It’s hard to believe right at this moment that I was so despondent at the time I could barely eat. For all of April I subsisted mainly on cups of tea and sleeping tablets.
My boss wrote:
Life can certainly throw many things all at once. It has been my experience, however, that when this happens there is usually something amazing, more and better than you could have ever possibly imagined just around the corner.
Sometimes the depth that you may fall is far exceeded by the heights you reach when you start the climb back up.”
And I thought, when I read it at the time, what a load of tree hugging hippie crap.
… But you know what? I’m sitting here at work in my tricky dead-end-ish sort of job, and my size 8 clothes are hanging loose on my frame again. My face has broken out and I am desperately tired. But I believe those words.
I can’t wait to climb this hill.
“…but suddenly there it is
right in front of you
bright and vivid
quietly waiting
just as you imagined it would be.”
And what about the second greatest thing you will ever learn?
How to love and not be loved in return.
Every day my heart cracks a little more. Your nonchalance. The indifference. I didn’t mean to fall.