treasure: hat collection/addiction part 1

preface: i can't be bothered to look through all my hats tonight, so i thought i'd post about one hat at a time.

this hat is my current favorite. it's a white toque. i love it, all warm and fuzzy.

to expand:

i work in a thrift store. i am lucky enough to get first call on many of the items that come through. and naturally, in a cold wintery sort of place like this, i have ended up with quite the hat collection. people laugh at me, but i'm pretty sure they're just jealous not to own 30 plus hats.

i had a boyfriend back in the day that told me hats didn't suit me.

being young and in love, this no doubt throw-away comment (as he was prone to making) made quite the impression. i was scared to wear hats up until quite recently, under the impression that everytime i put something on my head, i looked like a damned fool.

now, there is rarely a day i do not wear a hat of some sort. i have turned a corner and embraced hats, in all their glory.

i lied, because i probably won't get around to ever posting more pictures of me in other hats, but i still choose to entitle this post "part 1", Just In Case i am very bored one afternoon.

let's be honest with each other here though, (or at least, i shall be honest with you), i haven't even enough spare time to keep up with my emails. my poor dad probably thinks i'm dead, as i haven't written to him in months.

but that's really another story for another time.

secret: quietly, quietly

so i know i've been quiet. it's been more than a week since my last confession/post.

there's a little too much shit going down for my liking, all i really want is powder, perfection, maybe a little peace... or piece of (ummm) pie.

i've been busy doing busy work, which is to say, not as much work as normal people in the real world do, but more work than i am used to doing these days in my little bubble.

soon i will be leaving the bubble for a bit (by the way, how do you leave a bubble without popping it? now THAT my friends is a riddle, is it not?) to venture back to australia. to see what i can see see see.

i am going to see my lovelies, and to love them all over the place, right smack bang in their lovely little faces.

i need this. boy do i ever.

soz for the blue post... the next one shall be a witty story of my hat collection. i promise.

treasure: love.

i love:

• fresh snow


• cheerios


• the feeling when your ear has been blocked all day and then it unblocks


• hot showers


• coming home to housemates on the couch


• text messages saying nice things, for no other reason than 'just because'


• sweaters with birds on them

all these things happened to me today and thusly, my valentines day has been just grand... and with a live band to watch and dance to tonight, i expect things will only get better.

also...

i. love. YOU.

secret: on reading and writing and addiction

i've always lived in the presence of a lot of books. i used to read so much that at my little primary school, total student body 36, the librarian would check in with me when she bought new books because i'd read everything in our little school library.

once that happened, mum would take me into armidale, 50kms away, and let me run around the big city library borrowing books to my heart's content.

yeah, i was a nerd from the word 'go'. and you know what, i still am.

one of my all time favorite things to do with my ex was go used book shopping. it was like some sort of treasure hunt, finding a copy of something you'd always thought you should read (by this time, with his encouragement, i was not only a nerd, but a snobbish nerd at that) for $2.

in a crazy twist, i now work in a thrift store. so. i own a fuckload (it's a real amount; look it up) of books, most of which i have rescued from the recycling, where they were thrown by ignoramuses who have no idea that a bent cover does not make a classic novel trash!!! *cue hyperventilation*

i seem to have been picking books lately about addiction. maybe this is my subconscious telling me i have a problem. i read "in my skin" by kate holden, a melbourne girl who got addicted to heroin and worked in a brothel. the most surreal thing about the book was all the places she named- i lived in melbourne too, and know a lot of the spots kate mentioned in her book.

i just finished "dear diary" by leslie arfin, also an addict. she goes back through diary entries from throughout her life and tracks down lost loves, best friends she fell out with... she follows herself into her addictive spiral... it was originally a regular column in VICE magazine.

what i loved about both these books was their self-reflexivity as autobiographies. i'm curious about the way these particular recovering addicts describe their addictions: not apologetic, not evangelical, just sort of blunt and honest. the second book in particular was witty and charming. both girls had always planned to be writers too, derailed by what started off small and got out of control.

my question is, do you need to be an addict to be a good writer? what sort of life experience should a person have to be able to make fiction believable? there have been some crazy things happen to me in my life (uh, hello, schizophrenic christian boyfriend anyone?) but i was still tending towards feeling like i haven't got enough 'life experience' under my belt to feel confident as a writer... with those couple of books, i have to say, i guess i will draw the line at heroin.

seems wise.

treasure: identity crisis

i've always been interested in constructing identity; in making sense of myself, in asking constant questions, in checking boxes... and in my teenage years, determined to be a unique and special individual, i aimed to avoid fitting into boxes, and to be some new blend of all those things that i generally found to be cool or interesting.

at uni i studied a lot of postmodernist theory and came across the idea of a schizophrenic identity... don't ask me to tell you where i heard it because that, my friends, is information that has disappeared into the sands of time.

the general idea, from what i can piece together from the memory i have left (the parts of my brain that have NOT fallen away like wet cake), is that in a post-modern society, we as individuals have such disjointed realities that identity can be one thing and then another, and that, i guess, the discontinuity of our identities is perfectly normal and sort of to be expected.

not sure what y'all think of that, but i've been thinking about it a lot lately, in trying to figure out where i might be interested in going next in my life. i feel like when i start thinking of the possibilities, they start expanding out to the point where i get anxious, and decide it might just be easier to stay where i am. this then makes me depressed about my inability to commit to anything or anyone. and the rainy weather really does not help one bit.

i think that everyone in whistler is pretty much in the same position. everyone my age that is... although, interestingly i seem to have found myself hanging out with some younger ones this season.

but really, i have lost count of the amount of conversations which circle around our plans, all of us here... people in whistler talk a lot of shit. i am one of those people, don't get me wrong. i have so many different lines i like to spin about what my plans are for this year.

what does this have to do with my identity? in a nutshell, if i figure my current self out a little, then i will have some idea what i want to be when i decide to "Be" something, thusly giving me the answer to the eternal "where the fuck am i going next?" question.

a friend posted on facebook recently "home sick for a place i haven't found yet". right now i feel as though this completely nails the position i'm in. what i worry about occasionally is that i will feel like this the rest of my life.

maybe i can put it to a vote, and the people of the interweb, which is you all, shall decide my fate:

• reapply for my visa and stay in whistler another season



• reapply for my visa and move to another ski resort at the end of summer for another season



• reapply for my visa and move east to montreal



• finish working end of june when visa expires, hang about unemployed for a bit then do a few months in the states on the way back to australia

and if i move back to aus, what then?! uni, save and travel to the uk, work? where? melbourne, brisbane, newcastle?

see why it's easier to just party every night and avoid making decisions?

secret: at the whim of the weather

the 2010/2011 season was supposed to be all time... the weather was meant to spoil us with snow and snow and snow.

haven't had a powder day, like a proper one, since the one i blogged about previously.

instead it rains, it freezes, i axe myself walking to work...
funny winter moments include wednesday night, when we went to earls for dinner and it was raining when we walked in, then in the hour or more we were in there, the freezing level dropped and the entire village stroll was a skating rink. i don't think i've ever laughed so hard as i did watching tommy wait at the top of the little bridge and push helpless girls back down the slight slope. it was that icy they could do nothing but shriek helplessly and slide back down the hill...

less funny winter moments include sliding on some black ice at the bottom of the bayshores hill, then having to drag my sorry ass to the bus stop when all i wanted to do was be a little crumpled ball of defeat by the side of the road. that one really hurt, i gots the bruises to prooove it.

when the weather is like this, i must confess, i don't want to be here. rest assured as soon as it snows again i'll be entirely stoked on the whole situation again, but right now, bleah, get me out of here!!!

ironically while i've been typing this, the sun has come out and there's blue sky. i can work with that. today i gave myself the day off everything, even going up the mountain, and woke up without the help of an alarm, made myself pancakes, watched crappy TV... i hardly ever do this during the winter, i wake up every day to an alarm whether it be for work or play. it's sort of the deal with winter, and i think overall it's a better way to live, but sometimes you just need organic sleep.

crappy weather and ice makes me really angry. i think i have anger issues actually. silly to be pissed at the weather though, because there is nothing to be done about it. so i shall work on my zen. and my guitar.

i wrote a song. it has potential. just a litte bit though, because it only has 3 chords.