Well had I had the time, internet connectivity and foresight to post in the few days before Christmas, you might have had some insight into my tone and writing style when I'm genuinely happy.
Reasons I was happy;
- Application to rent the most beautiful little one bedroom apartment on the Brunswick/Coburg border was approved!
- Bit the bullet and decided to go to Europe and the US for a lovely little jaunt beginning in April and ending in June. Visited a travel agent who quoted me $4800 for flights, used my mad online flight searching skills (I used Skyscanner) and got all my flights for just under $2300.
- I'd had a crappy stay in hospital for maintenance TMS but in the last two days two nurses on two separate occasions tried to give me the wrong medication. Definitely a bad thing but I felt suddenly empowered because there was something concrete I could legitimately make a formal complaint about and perhaps get some of my other concerns heard.
- The money from my four years of tax returns finally all came through. And money can buy you happiness. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise,
So what happened?
- Well, the money kind of all disappeared on flights, bond, rent, furnishings for the apartment and Christmas. All gone.
- Moving into my beautiful dream home turned out to have a few little nightmarish qualities. Please learn from my mistakes and never, ever move just before Christmas. I spent days without power, the internet has only just been connected and when you realise that your real estate agent has given you the wrong key he is not around for you to talk to. Also a number of the lights didn't work once the power was turned on and they had expensive, difficult to replace globes. And then finally, I don't know whether this stuff happens to other people but they just never talk about it, but the lock on my front door fell off. On New Years Day. When even the 24 hour 7 day a week 365 days of the year locksmith wasn't answering his phone. Seriously, how am I the only person who has things like locks falling off doors and driveways catching on fire happen? And I wouldn't have been so concerned about the lock falling off since the building itself is pretty secure but my new neighbours turn out to be sketchy as fuck! I couldn't work out who actually lived there for the first week or two because so many people were coming and going at all times of day or night. I've finally worked out it's two guys living there (probably not a couple or the counterstereotype of what a gay couple is) and they like to listen to the races all day long while competing to see how many f-bombs they can drop in a single sentence.
- I drank a lot of champagne on Christmas day which perhaps wasn't advisable since I was kind of tired and overwrought from the stress and lack of sleep from moving so rather than sensibly going home after drinking champagne for six hours straight I went to a party and drank even more and then ended up having some rather unpleasant social encounters. I won't go into it but it kind of put me off parties, drinking, myself and people, particularly those of the opposite sex.
- So then I spent New Years Eve on a couch with a cat watching a documentary about happiness that SBS had obviously programmed so that people in my situation wouldn't top themselves.
- The complaint I made about the nurses attempting to administer the wrong medication has had zero response which now just has me feeling insecure about ever going back into hospital.
- And I could have endured it all because I kept thinking to myself 'I'm going to Vienna! I'm going to New York! I'm going to see my dear friends!' but then my bastard government introduced some snaky new legislation which came into effect January 1st saying that recipients of certain government payments could not leave the country for more than four weeks in a twelve month period without having their payments cut off. And because I'd been an online travel scouting genius I had booked almost exclusively non-exchangeable, non-refundable flights. So I have a couple of options; 1) Go. Fuck the government. Hope they don't notice and be prepared to have my payments cut off which would definitely put me in further financial jeopardy. 2) Don't go. Forget all the money I've spent on non-refundable flights. Stay in Melbourne, be miserable. Other people keep putting forth another idea, 'Change the flights you can and just buy new ones', which is a lovely idea if the first dot point wasn't in place. I have no further money. It's gone.
So now I've kind of just given up on pretty much everything. I'm house sitting in the suburbs for my parents which means I'm trapped far from everything with dial up speed internet and too much readily available junk food. I've been wearing the same pyjamas day and night for the last three days. I'm kind of half-watching Doctor Zhivago in the same way I kind of half-watched The Crimson Pirate before this and I'm sure I'll continue to half-watch some crap on the telly until it's nothing but infomercials. I also have a UTI which I'm kind of using as a justification for the pyjamas, couch and tell lifestyle.
It's weird though, in giving up I think I've avoided going down the other path I usually go down which is caring too much and falling into a depressive pit. I'm intellectually aware that the things that have happened haven't happened to me. They're not the ammunition of the universe vs. Katie war. These things have just happened. Unfortunately all around the same time. But I kind of like holding onto the idea that something really is trying to break me. It means when a mug breaks or my Android tablet I got second-hand for Christmas breaks (both happened today - whatevs) I have a moment of ire and then I decide I don't care. It's like I'm flipping the universe the bird and telling it it can't break me because I don't care.
Of course I'm going to have to start caring again at some point. I don't think my pink babushka doll pyjamas or stringy bed hair would go down well at work. And I suppose I will eventually want to eat something other than mince pies and corn chips. Eventually.
And then who knows what happens next.
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