True Blue Bru

It's one week until Australia Day, and I'm going to make an even bigger thing of it than I usually would (ok so I don't usually make a very big thing about it but I'm very excited this year). British people don't have the equivalent (obviously) and so I plan to go all out with flag tattoos and face paint, perhaps without the face paint. But definitely need to have some of the triple j hottest 100 and there may even be a BBQ (British people don't know what rissoles are). I'll miss the inflatable pool and the sweltering heat, and of course ALL THE AUSTRALIANS (British people are not Australian), but maybe it will snow and then it will be awesome.

Out West

A village called Chipping Sodbury, frost not snow, a chapel near where Tyndale went to church, Bristol - a suspension bridge with a lovely view, and a genuine steam train ride. Good times.

Standing on the tip of the rabbit's fur, while doing not very much

Is anybody really that shocked to realise I've failed miserably at my one and only New Year's Resolution? Hey, it's alright. I only make goals with a short term benefit in mind so when my momentum fizzles out it usually means I've done enough.

I don't have a job yet. I'm going mad with boredom (but hanging around middle class British people makes me feel like I'm mad already by comparison). I guess I don't want to start anything else or commit to anything until I've got an income and a bit more of a routine (at the moment it's: eat, sleep, doddle around, repeat), but it would probably help to fill some time if I have another month or so. But by then...

I'm enrolled in the University of New England to study a Bachelor of Education (Primary) off-campus starting February 24th. All I need is to sort out my textbooks and I'm set to go! It's very exciting.

In the last few days I've picked up Housito's bass guitar and taught m'self some riiiiffffs. That's been fun. I listen to a lot of music all day which is nice. My week is full of Saturdays, and so I look forward to the weekend not because it's a time to relax, but because it's a time to get out and see people and do stuff. Having said that, I often leave my washing till Real Saturday anyway. Oh well.
I do make myself somewhat useful during the week. The post office folk must think I run a shop on eBay for how often I'm in there. I'm an unofficial PA, and I love it because it makes me feel helpful.

Where am I at with life thoughts? I wish I knew. I get myself into knots over my questions and I've been trying to figure it all out thinking that if I did that I'd be able to have faith again, but I guess that makes me God, doesn't it. I'm a principled and proud person, so I could never push all my issues aside and "be Christian" again just to be at peace. It wouldn't be true peace, and it would be for the wrong reasons. At the moment I don't love God because I find it hard to believe that he is good, and I couldn't pretend to love him until I got stuff sorted. I don't know if that makes sense in words.
But as I go along and put together my minipiphanies (mini epiphanies), things become better. I realise that that's giving myself credit for understanding the world - oh clever me - so maybe it's God revealing stuff to me and allowing me to learn things. An example would be, for instance, that if God isn't real then love and evil are arbitrary and what does it matter if I'm doing something with selfish or false motivation. So I may as well hope that God is real, and is good. And the other day I thought to myself "if God isn't loving, where does love come from?" Our pastor talked about being a slave last Sunday, and I wondered what my master is at the moment. Broadly speaking it's my sinful nature, but more specifically, is one of them philosophy? Yes, that sounds pretentious, but perhaps the devil has me wrapped up in obsessing over how to make sense of God and the world so as to blind me from the simple message of the gospel (well maybe not simple, but sufficient). Even as I write this I feel detached from it all. For ages I blamed it on the meds (not long till I'm finished! hanging out for a normal metabolism again..!), but it's people like my dad who bring me down to the earth again and basically say - in kinder words - "you don't want to accept that you need God." I guess that's why I'm trying to understand everything on my own. How many times have I contradicted myself? My entire life is a contradiction I guess. One could say "at least you're honest" - but it has been too long. Is it God holding out on me, or is it me hesitating because of my pride? Does it matter? I don't want to live like this forever.

That's all I'm going to write for now.

Review

What do you get when you start writing a blog about your life and then people compliment you on it and say they admire your honesty?

Carried away. You get carried away and then you get worried friends.

Let me rein it in a little, and in future I will bring down another filter for the personal journal content. I don't want this to be too much of an outlet so much so that I stop talking to real people and only allow myself to be real on the internet. Hello, that is a paradox. No one is real on the internet. Also, no one wants to read pages of moaning. I'm in London! Why not write about something interesting.

Let's view this as a little mid-blog-crisis where I had to figure out its identity and purpose and now we'll be adjusting the direction ever so slightly again, hopefully not having to revisit that for a while and so I can stop talking about it. And now I can get back to my life, where I do things like delete stuff on my too-full hard drive and eat Christmas chocolate and have tea breaks with Housita (who is working from home at the moment).

I really am thankful for where I am right now. I'm much happier than I have been in a long time. It's just that particularly human trait of wanting more - wanting all there is. Wanting everything to be good, but scared of boredom or meaninglessness. Yep there it is. Just can't let it go, can you Jess.

For eyes that like shiny things

A few Christmas photos to lighten the mood a little. I really did have a lovely time. The Christmas tree came down yesterday. Oh I have never seen so many pine needles. By the end it was so dry that you just had to sneeze and the floor would be coated with green prickles. I think I definitely had a proper English Christmas.

Sweet & Quirky is not this week's flavour

I don't feel like writing. But I will. I will write badly and not try to be creative or clever.

Today marks two months of being a lazy slob. That is, unemployed. Not even studying. Just eating and sleeping and endeavouring to make people laugh and maybe even like me. And some other stuff in between I guess. I am bored out of my brain. So bored.

I am not content in life. I should be, because I live with two fantastic people and feel so at home (totally claimed a chair - it's my chair), and I'm safe and healthy and have good friends and a loving family. But I'm so weighed down by the big questions in life, and so miserable about not having what I wish would fulfill me. Perhaps that doesn't make sense. And yes, it's melodramatic and artsy-fartsy-let's-contemplate-the-world-in-our-togas but for some reason these things matter to me and are on my heart and I won't be at peace until I have answers.
And also, because I've got myself a reputation of being very honest and open about life, there's no point leaving this out: I feel like almost all of my Armidale friends are married or almost married or thinking about getting married and, oh, gee, here's me. I talk to myself and don't brush my hair very regularly and I keep people at a distance or push them away when I'm depressed and can't figure out what to live for and I have a nasty, sarcastic manner and oh, maybe some self confidence issues coming out there? Haha. Now I'm just being a teenager. (Sorry teenagers. You know I love you.) But seriously. I'm going to Argentina some day. I want to get this teaching degree done! It's nice being free but it would be so wonderful to have a lifelong best friend. I know I'm just voicing what everyone has thought at some stage in their life, so I'm not embarrassed. I just wish I could be content. Not to be confused with "happy"; happy is an emotion like hunger is a feeling.

(My mum used to write emails that went something like "I love your blog darling. But what did you mean when you said..." She doesn't write that anymore. Either I'm starting to make sense or she's just given up..)

Hmm, it really depends on the mood I'm in as to what you're going to get. If I had have sat down after my run this morning it would be a very different bunch of musings. As it is, you have me after a day of metaphorically throwing concepts at a wall and getting bruises as they bounce back and hit me again, and pestering my friends to explain the world and God to me in a way I would like. And yet someone telling me how to be human is not going to make me feel free, is it? I don't know. Maybe if that someone knew what it was like to be truly human...

Oh how does he DO that? And why can't I CHANGE?!?!!

My Plan

Now I didn't write yesterday because I went to bed. It was a lovely day with a bunch of lovely people in central London - St Paul's and the Tate Modern. I will document it properly soon.

But right now, it's that strange Sunday interim between morning and afternoon service and instead of blobbing around I am going to delve into the murky fears and frustrations of my soul and figure out what it is I need to get straight with God and stuff. Believe me, I am scared to bits. I was thinking about this last night, that whenever I try and pray or read my bible or think over my questions I end up getting upset and only feel worse - like I'll never come to back to God because he's not what I want him to be and he's actually who I see him as right now: an indifferent, uncaring, possibly not even divine idea that seems to do good for some people but is heaven actually real and was Jesus' death enough and why do babies die and...........

So I've got me some brown paper, some floor space, a pen, and hopefully the headspace to be able to do it. Pray for me? Lord, help my unbelief? I don't want to do this, but I have to. I don't know if I can do it on my own. Oh stop procrastinating you drama queen!

And a shout out to my brave friend - you know who you are (though I don't know if you'll read this) - who has also decided to stop running from stuff in her life and actually deal with it. You inspire me. Thanks. If I can do it, you can too.

Busted

Whoops! I let an official day slip by without writing. But I haven't slept yet so it's ok. Today went from boring to brilliant. Now I can't sleep. Signing off.

When trivial goes deep

Well, would you like to hear about my day so far?
I woke up, I "talked" (on facebook & snapchat) to a good friend about girly problems, I got up, I went to the toilet, I had breakfast, all the while still talking to this lovely friend of mine, I pumped some tunes, finished unpacking from the other day, had a shower, friend of mine went to bed (she's in Aus) but there are always people to talk to i.e. English friend, finished this job application which was EXTREMELY FRUSTRATING and STRESSFUL due to technical failures of the website which meant I had to keep doing it over and over again and so there was a little too much yelling and swearing and deep breathing which upgraded to praying and that was when the submission went through. Hurray! I then had lunch (pasta) and washed up while still enjoying the tunes, then Housito came home and that was the first human I had encountered in person all day, we exchanged greetings and now I am in my room again listening to music and on my computer. Oh I did some washing at some point in there too, after the shower. I've been hoping to hear back from UNE about my course but no luck yet. After 9pm tonight I will call the Optus people in Australia to end my contract which I have been meaning to do for months. It would be nice if I didn't have to pay the last bill... I have no dollars left. I just checked my English bank account, and though I'm fine, there's a lot less than there was before the wedding visit and so I'm really wanting a job soon. But mostly I want a job so that I won't be so bored and hermitish. Later I might watch some Miranda.

I had this thought earlier today: that it would be awful to know your own future, because if you did you would probably be unhappy about what would happen so you'd do something else, but if you did that you still wouldn't be satisfied so you'd never be glad about what takes place. Either that or you'd just see what was going to happen and you'd have no choice and just have to watch yourself mess up and make bad decisions or have to let stuff into your life that you knew was going to be bad later on. Most of the time I like not knowing what's "around the river bend," because I'm not in control anyway so why bother planning too much?

My New Years Resolution

I loathe the title, because it is so typical; but I actually have one that I might even keep this year. Remember how I said I'd write every day? Yeah well that didn't happen.

But that was 2013!

Oh yes, I will find a new sense of discipline and productivity, and find more and more fresh and exciting ways to open up about life as I live it, and release my introspection in waves of gleaming librettos...
...with lots of help from my good friend Thesaurus.

Happy new year everybody. But if your year ahead isn't going to be a particularly joyous one, that doesn't matter. I hope it will be GOOD. Life can be good without being happy all the time. We learn and grow from the hard times. I've been thinking about my depression lately, as I'm coming off medication at the moment, and I've always held that the disease will always be with me and could strike again at any time. Of course I don't want it to come back, but if I was becoming too selfish, proud and complacent then maybe another round would do me good (in a hard way). I know that seems twisted, but I know who I was three years ago; and I can't imagine myself without the black dog having been in my life.

On that note, go and punch your way through that wall of fear that's trying to keep you from getting hurt. Better things come from reaching out, than sitting and waiting. I'm preaching to myself here: it's so easy to not bother applying for jobs because I'm doubtful I'll get them. But (and here's my teacher voice) I'm not going to get one if I don't try. Come on, Jess!

Wow, who knew I could be so patronisingly inspirational?