Baby, I'm perfect for you

 PHOTO BY JACCOB MCKAY

I'm not even sorry about putting those two pics next to each other. I really like Perfect you guys. I've always considered myself a passionate but pretty casual fan of 1D but every now and again they release these emotional bangers that just kill meeeeee. Harry in the hotel room with the storm projections is the background on my computer and my phone, and I'm thinking about stapling a printout of it to my forehead just so everyone knows about my new **aesthetic**. 

I never seem to be able to prioritise writing here recently - I have lots of other writing that is demanding my attention but a couple of appointments got cancelled this week and I've found myself with an hour to spare. I've been suffering those wonderful obsessive episodes - you know when you find a new song, or band, or person, who you just die for immediately and cannot get enough information about? I've had that most recently with the Perfect video (lol) and then previous to that I found out about Ronda Rousey, who has been my inspirational wonder woman of late. I struggle a lot with body image and to see a woman who knows every inch of her own strength, and rides the fluctuations of body weight expertly and to her advantage, and understands that her body will not always look one way or another but can still admire it in all its forms is really special to me. She's also overcome an eating disorder and done a bunch of charity work. She is so strong, and confident, and pretty much everything I wish I was, because I am so afraid of weight gain and I feel very insecure about the way I look and whether or not I am beautiful enough to 'make it'. She is not super thin but she is super fit. I'm quite fit, and not thin at all, and although her body and mine are literal universes apart I feel ever so slightly better about myself when I see a woman like her getting up like that. I dunno. She's got me feeling some type of way. 

When I was at the gym the other day I was seriously motivated, more motivated than normal, and I found myself thinking about how committed and how great Ronda Rousey is and the whole session was extremely positive, productive, and enjoyable. That's pretty unusual for me, because I'm always the most excited about finishing a workout - that feeling when you're done is always the best for me. But I actually genuinely and thoroughly enjoyed what I was doing in the moment, and I think it was because, rather than my normal thought process of 'I must outrun and out lift every piece of food that's entered my mouth and if I don't I'll get REALLY UGLY', I was completely focused on being stronger and fitter than I was before. I felt proud of how far and how fast I can run, and proud of the way my calf muscles curve around my leg and my arm muscles wrap tightly underneath my skin. One day I hope to feel like that all the time. 

Freak magnet

I'm both dreading the end of this week (and of this current manic period) and intensely revelling in the fact that very soon I won't be teaching at all for a couple of weeks, and only focusing on my music PR job. At the start of next term I'm only going to be teaching one official night a week, plus a little on the side at home. I'm really happy about that, even if I am a little worried about money. For some reason I am constantly worried about money and I don't know why, because I have more of it now than I've ever had before. I have enough to live comfortably and buy the things that I need and want, plus I have a little savings piling up too. Money has always been a bit of a thing for me; I'm definitely not a tight person - and stingy-ness is one of my least favourite qualities a person can possess - but ever since I was a little girl I've felt guilty about spending money. I very vividly remember one time when my Dad bought me a hot chocolate or something and I tried to pay him back and he had to explain the concept of 'shouting' someone something to me. I don't know. 

I drafted another blog post not long ago but never published it because it was literally a repetition of all my complaints (too busy, kind of sad and happy at the same time) and I'm really paranoid about repeating myself too much - although I suppose since it's MY blog I can do whatever I like...so: I am much too busy and kind of sad and happy at the same time. Mostly happy, and I like feeling the spectrum anyway - when I had tablets, I kind of didn't get to feel so extreme either way, which is good in some ways and not so much in others. I think (actually, I'm pretty sure that I know) that my teaching jobs kind of get me a little down sometimes. I love teaching students who want to learn, it fills me with joy and satisfaction and I am lucky in that most of my students are enthusiastic and clever and sweet. But I do have a couple that don't want to be at the lesson, and even a couple who misbehave, and I know that this comes with the territory but it still makes me really depressed for some reason. It's like, you don't want to be here, kid, so I don't want to be here, and I'm going to nag and you're never going to practice and I'll get frustrated as you don't improve and you'll act up and we'll both just feel bitter towards one another. Parents; if your kids tell you, through words or actions, that they don't want to do something, please don't force them to do it. Music is not something that should ever be forced, and when it is it is depressing and useless and I don't want to be a part of it. 

I have a feeling in my gut that's telling me that something's going to happen soon. I'm not sure what it means, or exactly what it is, but if you have dreams about me within the next few weeks be sure to let me know because your intuition might be better than mine. 

Arty party

I thought I'd do a bit of a blog post while I'm waiting for the latest version of a video I'm editing to upload. I've been sitting at the computer for the whole afternoon and my eyes are starting to feel all weird so we'll see how we go...

Last night we were back at CS for Arty Party, and I had a really fun time tending to the bar with L and giving people stupidly generous servings of wine in big plastic cups. I held hands with F (who is actually another L from a couple posts ago but two Ls is way too confusing!) over the bar and basked in the reflected glory of knowing such a precious someone that is completely charming and irresistible to the world in general - does that make sense? Like everyone wants to be their friend and you are one of the lucky ones that can call themselves that? I feel like that about a lot of the people that I hang out with so I am particularly blessed.

Me and D laughed together like we do whenever we see each other, watching in awe as F proved herself once again as some alien character out of a dream, expertly aware of every minute detail of her body and how to navigate each one perfectly. I am not a dancer (as anyone with half working eyes could gather) and I don't really know any other dancers except for F and a couple others by acquaintance. I always wonder what it would feel like to have the same passion and commitment to dancing as I do to music - what it would feel like to be so in control of my body, to know exactly what I was doing with it at all times (I imagine/assume that professional dancers rarely feel awkward within their bodies...)

As with any VCA run performance event there were performances that aimed for 'controversial', 'shocking' etc. I knew my friends and I are getting older when we were sat around the breakfast table today, talking about why such 'shock tactics' within performances are not super conducive to thoughtful content. I thought back to myself at 18, freshly admitted into the VCA and captured by lectures on synaesthesia, half inflated ego at the thought of being allowed in, and half desperately insecure and seeking to prove myself as an artist. I can understand the thought processes of someone like that, a young person freshly admitted into art school, wanting to tackle huge topics like mental illness or religion. I think that you actually need to go through the process of questionable work (I wrote some truly questionable music in first year, even second year) to reach a point where you are more calm as a creative, more settled within yourself, content with your personality and assured that your views on the world are niche but valid. I guess what I'm trying to say is some version of 'be yourself' - being admitted into the VCA as a young artist is thrilling and a huge testament to existing talent. However, artists who check their privilege, and trust that their own personal views are interesting enough to the audience so that drawing upon huge and complex and sensitive topics is perhaps a little unhelpful in a fifteen minute performance piece, will, in my view, go a lot further than artists who fail to see this. 

Eeek. OK. I'm done with that. 

I love you (yes, you)

Urgh, you guys. It has been a WEEK. 

/BY GIULIA GIANNINI MCGAURAN/

To be honest I am very surprised and a bit proud that I made it through this week in one piece. So much has happened that I can barely remember as far back as Monday.

I have finally gotten to the point where I can truthfully admit that I've committed myself to too many projects at once. I always say that, but continue to book things in regardless of it, and always say to myself that I'd be crazy to turn things down even if it makes my schedule literally insane. I think these past few weeks have been a turning point, finally, FINALLY I think I understand the concept of just thinking before I agree to things. I said no to extra work earlier this week which I technically could've taken on, but listened to my gut which was saying "girl don't do it". I would rather be down $100 a week than experience the panic and stress of an obscenely packed schedule. I am trying very hard, all the time, in all aspects of my existence. Being SO stressed and panicked and busy makes me short-tempered, aggressive, and sad. Being stressed and busy to a very particular point makes me extremely happy and content, and being not busy enough makes me thoroughly depressed. I know the vague algorithm but I don't know the exact level of busy vs not busy that equals my ultimate happiness. I really hope that by realising how much it takes for me to go crazy, I'm getting closer to the answer. 

Thursday was particularly interesting and trying. I had a very rare heated conversation with my mum before I left the house at 8am, which distracted me and upset me like those things do when they are left relatively unresolved. I had to go because I was recording again for my solo EP with my two mentors and I think I pulled it together enough to put in some good work. During this session I got several emails, one markedly urgent to do with Frida artwork and the terrifying control freak very thinly veiled within me had to be stifled as I just needed to keep my head in the studio right then - and it was then that I realised you should NEVER check your emails while recording. Then I had to leave and go straight to work to teach 7 kids for 20 minutes each and I'd never taught this bunch before so I thank the universe every day that L works at this school's aftercare and knows all the kids by name and can help me locate them in the playground. After this I went back to WS to eat dinner with L and O and get an update on all things Frida and record labels and videos and developments that had occurred while I was otherwise occupied and to vent and have vents thrown about around me. I then got into an Uber to start M and my DJ set without him because he had a gig (don't worry you guys I made myself a spreadsheet of 'cool' 'chill' 'r and b' music to play in the early hours). 

M arrived at about 10pm in a drenched rubber-ducky yellow raincoat and newly sculpted handlebar moustache. His friends (who are also subject to my new friend-making addiction) had already arrived, milling quietly during the pre-drinks set and leaning over the booth to kiss my cheek hello. I love DJing with M because we are enthusiastic but kinda lazy DJs - once a song is on, and the next song is ready to go, you really have about three minutes to just have a lil talk about things (especially early in the night). M had some honest, helpful and external advice on the things that had gotten me really down earlier in the day and week, shared in the time it took for the outro to Prototype to kick in. 

So we talked and joked and M's phone lit up with a message and he left the booth to answer it and my gut told me what had already happened. M's friend had just passed away, which is an unspeakable sadness that he knew was coming due to a diagnosis earlier in the year. The last couple of weeks had not been good for him and this outcome was expected, but an expected shock such as this is still an awful, paralysing, ton-of-bricks shock all the same. 

I gave M our drink cards and hugged him twice and told him to leave and be with his friends. He left his things with me as I promised to deliver them home and my heart broke as he and his friends began to grieve. This is not the first time a friend of a friend has been cruelly and unfairly and tragically taken too soon, and I remembered the feeling of heavy sadness to see someone that I love suffering such grief. I didn't know this friend so my sadness is irrelevant in comparison to those that did. But it is silly to disregard the heaviness and I know that I feel it because I have such a fondness for these good people, huddled together under a big pub umbrella, metres away from the melancholy DJ spinning The Black Eyed Peas' My Humps. 

The universe is mean. 

M left and I still had a couple of hours of solo sombre party DJing to fulfil in his absence, and so distracted by the look on his white face I worked till 1am (this is not a pity party for me by the way, I am clearly in the preferable position of not having lost a friend, I just thought that the whole evening was so long and absurd that I needed to write about it from my perspective to gain some kind of lesson from the experience). I will take this opportunity to say that the staff at The Brunswick Hotel are absolutely amazing - they were really concerned about why the sunshine man who usually DJs with me was so sad and they put their arms around my shoulders and gave me drinks on top of the ones already provided and when I thanked them they said "Everyone has bad nights" and helped me set up and pack up and if all staff were more like them I think the gigging world would be a much better place. 

I arrived at WS looking like a exhausted mule with about fifteen bags hanging off my body. My Uber driver helped me gather everything and my L was already waiting at the open door. M had arrived a few minutes ago and his friend m was there too, sitting cross-legged on his bed, with all of their hands in a tangle on top of her pink pyjamas. The night was private but everyone stayed up pretty late talking and hugging as you should do in these situations. H made fried eggs at around 2am and the smell was as absurd and unsettling then as the entire day had felt to me. A perfect full stop. We surrendered to bed even though I hardly dared to even think that I'd be able to sleep and when morning came I quietly packed myself up and went to work in a thoughtful daze. 

I'm glad I wrote that all out. I've been feeling unsettled and I think it's because of what I mentioned firstly - that I simply just have too much going on - and also because a lot of what I have going on is based on indeterminate things or things that are out of my control, if that makes any sense at all. Music was what I chose and what I intend to pursue and I am glad that the universe allowed the time that night for M and I to have a brief discussion of such matters before everything happened. Music just so happens to be a profession based on indeterminate things - there is no telling what will be successful and what the future holds, you just make the best art you can and work really fucking hard and cross your fingers and hope for the best. I do believe that if you work hard enough you will get whatever you want. I now believe that this should actually be, if you work hard and smart enough you will get whatever you want. I still believe that, and I've been working hard...and working on the working smart bit. 

Working hard is one thing, however, but matters of the heart are another. Like anyone else I cannot stand seeing someone I love in pain and I know that time heals but in the moment it is devastating. I am focused on my goals but when things like this happen I am reminded to remember what's really important and to tell everyone I love that I love them absolutely. Have you ever used 'I love you' with reckless abandon? I have, and do all the time, and it feels great - friends, family, lovers, givers of free drinks and animals too - being liberal with 'I love you's is a very, very important practice to me. Now is as good a time as any to remind everyone in your vicinity that ya just love 'em. 

and M, if you are reading, and if you still won't have it, we will use it to have breakfast with you and me and Freg and L. Or get some good wine and play Balderdash again.

I don't wanna feel B L U E anymore

It's Saturday night, and I am curled up in bed at 7.30 - I haven't been home since Thursday and I feel like I live in my car sometimes (engine light flickered on this afternoon, universe telling me something or other). Or that I live in L's bed, or on a treadmill, or on the train or in an Uber...or in this outfit that I haven't changed since Thursday...urrrgh...

I loved this morning, I mean, it was 2.30am when I realised I think I might be addicted to making friends. (Scene:) we were all in the glorified scout hall, and everything was glittery and the vacuum cleaner broke and L was getting a drum lesson, with her lithe dancer limbs the most graceful thing I've ever seen a rookie drummer operate. For some reason there are four pianos in that place and we all took one and played while L kept a funny beat. I never really got the whole party 'jam' thing that people sometimes do - to be honest I find it annoying and egotistical - but, maybe because it was so short it didn't have time to drag, or maybe because only special friends were there (plus my original L), it just really felt nice, and silly, and like one of those things that happen at 2am that always turn out weird but good, you know? 

When we got back to WS we sat around the kitchen table, M dragging a thick pile of pizza slices out of a plastic bag and L letting me share a Nutella toastie with him because even after a few drinks I'm too afraid to have one to myself. We sat and I laughed until I couldn't breathe and I thought I could stay up all night but I couldn't, in the end. Me and L talked about how remarkable, and how very mundane, it is to remember that every single person in the room is experiencing the same evening in a different way.

I try to take notes on my phone whenever something happens in my life that really affects me in any way, that makes me laugh, that gets me excited or inspired or that I think could be a good lyric; the latest: 

what do you want - just go out and get it!!!!!!!!

in another life we could be friends

parting the dance floor H holds a $10 note above his head saying "daddy's credit card"

brushing my teeth M looking like a little kid

staying in the studio and it feels like night all the time

"i didn't touch anything.

we just spent the whole day wasting time"

To my friend - here's what I really wanted to say (but never got the time)

2/7/15

Firstly, I like that you know, and that some others know, honest things about me. I like that I know honest things about you. 

I have always assumed that there were some people in the world who are just made of sunshine and never experience anything but. I used to call them, manic, as I saw them, grabbing L by the elbow and stage whispering: 'A sunshine person!' It usually makes me cry, discovering a sunshine person. So many of them live in my dreams that finding one in real life is like something completely ethereal. There's nothing like them in the world - a person so sweet, so kind, so likeable and charming and interesting and hilarious and fun - that I feel like my own rotted insides are regenerating just from the energy they expel. They have nothing dark or sad in them, or even surrounding them. Completely whole, completely made of light.

I'm pretty sure I called you out on being made of sunshine one night, as you drunkenly danced barefoot on the frozen kitchen tiles. 'A sunshine person,' I said, mostly to myself, wide eyed and arms outstretched. 'I've found a sunshine person!'

But you know, I had to stop calling the sunshine people out, I had to stop telling other moon people about them. Because, in my experience, calling the sunshine people out also outs their un-sunshininess parts, right? Sooner or later after I would proclaim that I had discovered another sunshine person, I would learn some fact, some background information that I wasn't aware of before that refracted their light. 

This does not make them BAD, and it often makes me love them even more than I already did - because all of a sudden they're made of sun and moon, like the rest of us. Not being a whole sunshine person is not a bad thing. And anyway, absolute undiluted sunshine does not a complete person make. The best people, in my experience, are the ones with a whole bunch of sun, and just a little bit of moon thrown in for good measure. 

So you're not entirely made of sunshine, like I first thought under first impressions and a lot of goon and orange juice. This time I wasn't surprised, because the trend of the turning  sunshine people was beginning to show me that there is not one person in the world who is made of only sunshine. I kind of just sighed - the universe has been pretty nice to be recently, and this was just a small blow I suppose - and I smiled, because I immediately wanted to share and discuss and learn from you and about you. So I guess therein lies the benefit of sun and moon. 

I like telling regular people about the sunshine people. They are the people that we can always strive to be more like, even if they aren't entirely real. Some of us do have a higher percentage of sunshine inside of us, and for us regular, melancholy folk, a little more sunshine is bound to do us good. 

Fire walk with me

Trying to be Lana Del Rey

^^ It's the last week of semester and the above pictures are of my study area and of myself during this bewildering period of my life - I've never been the type to crave sitting and doing nothing but recently it's been the only thing I've wanted to do! 

I feel like I'm living a double life this year - I'm a student, but I'm working and sustaining myself through music and playing in bands and writing and being 22 and it's all very wonderful, if a little confusing. I sometimes wonder if deciding to do Honours was the right thing - I really, really think it was, certainly it was when it first came about, because I was so scared of the 'real world' etc...I'm not so scared now, because I have jobs that are music-related and ~*prospects*~ and I wish I hadn't sold myself so short by being to afraid last year...does that make sense? Honours has been great so far, don't get me wrong - I am literally recording my debut EP for Honours in two weeks with two of the most wonderful creatives I know - BUT, I know that I will be ready (as I'll ever be) to make my real-world debut come October...

That whole paragraph is a total blur to me!! My brain is so fried right now. As usual, lots of Frida things have coincided with end of semester symposiums, work, family events, birthdays etc. My Lewis is just as crazed as I am, and with tours looming we will be apart for a coupla weekends (and LITERALLY dying because we're watching Twin Peaks together and both of us have never seen it OK so no spoilers!!!). 

Some time to myself is welcome, but as I get older I have found that I rather the company of others to that of my own. Rather, I like to know that people are around, awake, doing this and that while I hang out too...is this why I like listening to podcasts all the time and watching obscure vloggers on YouTube? You guys don't know the half of my obsession with YouTube, by the way. There is something so therapeutic about watching someone talk about their lives to a camera...

OK I need to be done with this right now, getting into ramble territory. I'm gonna go watch some YouTube...

Drinking shampain

Photos by Lew

I'm like desperate to get my hands on one of those oversize silver jackets like the one Kurt is wearing in the Heart Shaped Box vid above - me and Lew saw Montage of Heck last week and I really enjoyed it but the main thing I got out of it was this overwhelming desire to recreate the silver jacket/jeans/striped top/poppies look from that vid...

The top photos are from a little birthday do that me and Cass shared on Sunday. I believe it was the last beautiful day before Melbourne winter properly kicks in and it was a nice way to finish an intense week of 'doing'. Cass and I have a shared appreciation for drinking champagne to celebrate not only birthdays and achievements and the like, but also 'cause  life itself is just worth celebrating too. I love the idea of drinking champagne because I'm celebrating literally living - it makes me feel all romantic and silly and young and warm. 

Last week was ~one of those weeks. Like, definitely not a bad week at all however, as I get older, I'm realising the value of proper rest more and more and yet I still deprive myself of it (and here I am unable to sleep and writing on my blog instead of persevering). I have already over-committed myself for 2015 because truly it is what I do best, but last week was the first time in a while that I actual felt the ramifications of that. I stayed at home on Friday night when I had viable going-out options, curled up in Lewis's bed, feeling waves of negative thoughts pushing against all my hard work to keep them out. It's amazing how the second, literally the second, I sit down after a period of high stress, I automatically default to being really hard on myself. At least now I can observe this from an external standpoint and anticipate it; at least I can prepare to counteract it when it happens. 

I wish I had dealt with my emotions better when I was a teenager, because I really think that if I had, I wouldn't still be crying over meals or over the way my body looks so often (or even at all!) I always just assumed that because I wasn't really unwell that I wasn't suffering enough to be able to ask for help. It wasn't until I was out of high school that I realised how unhealthily I was thinking and acting - and even though I got help then, and continue to get help to this day, I really, really regret not realising how my life was being effected and how my unhealthy thought processes were becoming cemented. 

I suppose the point is, it's never too late to ask for help - and if you feel like you need it (like, ever) don't ever try to convince yourself that you don't. 

Sorry for the kinda downer post, I'm actually feeling quite good at the moment! I just was talking about this today and was very proud of the fact that I can distance myself from the thoughts and habits and realise how harmful and how routine they have become. I am getting closer every day to becoming the grown woman I so dream of becoming...

I think I am finally clean

Lots of good things are happening. I've been feeling good, and the universe has been presenting options and opportunities to me that make me feel as though things are going to be good for a while. I've got some new jobs, I'm not working at the cafe anymore (which makes me SO happy - I can officially say I am making a living by being a musician! Also the amount of toilet scrubbing I am now required to complete has been reduced monmentally), and the music we've been creating with Frida and the music I've been making on my own and with other projects (shh for now) are really next level!

I've been thinking about how it looks like I won't be running away on a plane in 2015, which is something I have done for the last two years. Although that makes me feel restless and itchy I feel a rumbling of chances writhing underneath my feet, like all the good little things that are happening right now are only leading to something really cool that will be offered if I just continue to work hard and wait. I turn twenty-two on Saturday, which I kind of hate, but am trying not to be negative about! The day itself is going to be awesome - I actually really like birthdays and as each birthday passes I love and cherish thoughtful birthday cards more and more. Me and Lew have a now-longstanding tradition of making each other elaborate birthday and christmas cards and I keep 'em all to read when I feel sad. Birthdays are just a really nice reminder that you are loved and as I get further and further away from childhood I cherish those reminders more and more, 'cause you just don't hear them as often when you're a grown up! Is that depressing? 

As I get older I can feel little silly young parts of me maturing and developing which is a really, really good feeling. Ever so slowly I am finding it easier to cope with body image issues, stress, depression, anxiety, PERFORMING - and even little things like speaking up for myself and making phone calls and meeting new people and asking for (and telling!) people assertively what I WANT - every day I get closer and closer to being able to call myself a 'grown woman' and it feels goooooood. I recently hung out with some friends of friends in year 12 and I was reminded very vividly of how stressed, anxious, depressed and terrified I was during that entire year...I feel as though only now, at practically 22 years old, I am properly mentally equipped to tackle that whole VCE saga! With all this being said however, the last few weeks have been a bit tumultuous, especially as I embark on this honours ~journey~ alone in a stressful little self-directed ball. But dammit, I did super well on my latest assessment and I can do this whole thing on my own (with the extensive and generous help of my mentors...and my supervisor...and my friends and family...)!

^^ Speaking of which, this is my ethereal mentor Ainslie, who is incredibly generous, sweet, thoughtful and talented - the most underrated Australian artist around at the moment if ya ask me. I still get nervous around her 'cause she's just so cool and I am constantly saying and doing dorkoid things. 

I also wanted to upload 'Clean' by Taylor Swift but my girl has her copyright sorted. Greer and I just bought VIP tickets to her show in December and I've already cried about it.  

Also I'm on Twitter now. Follow me pls. 

What are your goals?

Above are some relevant pics - me literally ecstatic that my hair's now long enough to put up in Sailor Moon pigtails, sweet Hudson contemplating some Frida-related artistic decisions, some notes on how I would imagine Hounds of Love would sound if written and recorded in 2015, and a beautiful sleeping puppy in the PR office I am interning at. 

Not pictured is the adorably domestic breakfast that my love laid out for me in the middle of the night, anticipating my obsessively early rising to get to work on time. Not pictured is us laughing until we're really choking at 2am, our faces glowing in front of computer screens where baby 2D versions of ourselves walk around like aliens, drinking wine out of mugs in a new shell of a home. Wandering home wondering how long we get to be lucky enough to live this way. Wandering a shopping centre searching for nothing in particular and hearing my teacher's voice singing on the radio and feeling as though the universe didn't forget about me after all. Listening quietly to people I admire on the other side of their twenties and being comforted by the fact that they are extremely successful and together and actually  excited for me, about my mysterious next few years, where I'll go, what I'll achieve. 

(It feels good to have the support and belief of a great number of people that I admire - more than I even think about and just take for granted. I am taking on large endeavours this year and am very lucky to even have the year and the resources and the support to do so.)

These past few weeks I have been writing to-do lists, which are infinitely helpful and calming, and trying to sort through insecurities and worries with excellent time management. So far, so good, with only a couple of hiccups - I like to operate under high levels of stress because I am definitely the most creative and productive when I am super wired, but often I get the balance wrong and over-commit and feel like I might really truly be DYING. I have recently realised that just because you potentially could do something, doesn't mean you should. *Dead*lines can be pushed back if they are self-enforced and it won't stop the world's orbit (and, being my own boss for most of my financial and creative endeavours it is I who makes the stupid, usually unrealistic, deadlines in the first place), and even if they aren't self-enforced there is usually room to move with a kind tutor or friendly employer. Recently I said no to some work shifts simply because I have a list of priorities for 2015 and saving up by working at a job is one of them, but only like halfway down the list. I would rather have more time to work on the music I am making this year than work an extra shift at the cafe just because I technically could do it. I have my whole life to technically do that shit. 

My heart is a wheel

"Someone's gonna get hurt/got a heart like a wheel."

I'm back! I really am. I mean, I'll try to be back. I did need a break from blogging which I think was pretty obvious in how infrequent my entries were over the last few months. I was reading over my blog from 2011 and realising how important is was to me in terms of self-expression, at time when I was desperate to let everyone know just how many expressions I had to express, if that makes sense. So I'm back listening to Megan Washington and pouring my little heart back out into the internet for all future employers to peruse...heyyy

photo by my girl greer

I think this'll help me categorise my ~inspo~ for this year too - without boring any of you with the details I'm doing an Honours year to finish off my undergrad and I'll be doing a solo record (lol) and every part of my life has to be about observing and learning right now...I'm like DYING to get started and I feel very excited and ready, albeit a little nervy, but REDDY all the same.