Shyness. Awkwardness and being my dumbarse scared chooken self.

I made a quiet promise to myself as my hips jerked and gyrated to good music at Sensation on New Years Eve. I swore that I wouldn’t walk past you any longer.

Now if only I knew what to talk to you about….

Highlights:

• Meeting new people (namely Twitter friends)
• surviving my first MTUB
• Meeting the ever elusive @gryphn_ and having a whale of a good time (and then he pissed off back to Adelaide and off Twitter – awwwww)
• Seeing Mr Ferry Corsten do his DJ thang at the Metro and learning that DJs with a hefty pair of manboobs are actually very very talented (bring on Trent McDermott at Sensation!!)
• Gaining a new boss at work
• Work’s major Christmas party (complete with karaoke!!)
• Guitar Hero 5 for the Xbox 360

Lowlights

• Losing my bestie
• Dealing with way too much drama and almost leaving the Internet permanently
• Feeling like I’m not going anywhere workwise at the moment
• Christmas

To all the people who have stopped by this website (that’s everyone, innit??), had a quick read and then ran away in horror, I would like to wish you all an awesome 2010. Here’s hoping the year ahead absolutely RAWKS.

I bumped into an old work friend of mine today. I hadn’t seen him in a very long time. We used to catch up for drinks most Fridays and he’d talk to me about the old days of being a DJ.

Another friend of mine would tell me stories about the good ol’ days of being an Economics student at uni. Pissups nearly all the time, somehow passing exams and being a dirty flirty crazy punk loving twenty something person who loved life.

My DJ friend now prefers a game of golf over spooning tunes and my punk friend speaks more like a CEO than a maddie high on life.

It got me feeling a little blue about myself. I’m thirty two years old, dress like a twenty three year old, act like a nineteen year old when I’m out with friends and probably come across as a dopey twenty one year old at work.

As flattering as it is to be mistaken for a twenty six year old by fellow colleagues and (very bloody rarely) prospective BlokesWhoDigMe, I’m finding that I want to be seen as my proper age by them.

I’m thirty two and I’m supposed to fit this stereotype of having the following things in my life – a partner, (quite possibly) children, a car, a successful career, a mortgage and hobbies that reflect being an adult.

I sadly do not have ANY of the above. I’m single (depressingly so), childless, don’t know how to drive, work in a job that “pays the bills only just” and my only hobby is Tweeting and blogging.

I feel like my life came to an almighty halt on the night of my Year Twelve Social back in 1995. The time from then to now is a blur of university, family tragedy, broken relationships, long nights spent talking bullshit on OzOrg IRC, working as a phonemonkey and right up until now, Twitter. Baste that handful of years in a mix of Peroni, Peter Stuyvesant cigarettes, Zoloft and yeah, that’s my not so adult life.

How can a person grow up if they don’t know how to? This whole “being a responsible adult” is one of the most difficult concepts I’ve ever had to wrap my head around.

My dreams of a career, mortgage and relationship have been replaced with living paycheck to paycheck, condensing my narcissistic bullshit to one hundred and forty characters and wondering whether this is as good as it gets.

I want to grow up but I don’t know how.

Instead the one hundred and forty characters get stretched to over one thousand. Every Web 2.0 entrepreneurial type, podcaster, former postman and social media coke snorter is waiting for a paragraph about how AWESOME Google Wave is.

Well, uhhh, sorry to disappoint you but I HAVEN’T GOT A BLOODY GOOGLE WAVE INVITE YET. So nyerr. (that doesn’t mean that I wouldn’t love one)

I spent time trying to make a mixtape last night. You remember mixtapes, right? TDK D90 audio cassette in a twenty year old double deck cassette recorder hooked up to an equally ancient amp fed into the Macbook.

Real girls use cassettes to make crazy mixtapes for blokes they reckon are “pretty bloody alright, yaknowhattumsayin’”.

Trying to figure out whether the bloke has a cassette player himself is a different kettle of barramundi altogether.

There’s something quite special about making mixtapes and then listening to the final product. I was brought up on wow and flutter, jumpy vinyl, half chewed cassettes recovered from a feral National Panasonic ghetto blaster from 1985.

Sadly mixtape making has been a bit of a cursed affair as well. I’ve had blokes throw my cassettes on the ground and step on them. Crushed the magnetic ribbon, crushed the creativity and crushed my heart to pieces. TDK didn’t get the chance to do amazing things to any of their systems.

Is this why all the cool kids now make mp3 mixtapes instead? Uncrushable just deletable.

So, fellas, tell me, if some chick made a mixtape for you as a way of saying “you’re an alright sort of guy, let’s hang out sometime”, would you dig that or find it to be childish?

Hit me up with a comment. I’m curious to know what you think.

These are some of the stupid things I wonder when I’m not playing the “Which bloke on the train looks rootable” game. I’m sure any of the blokes I’ve eyed would need to be extremely drunk to give this old chook a second glance.

Getting back to ruts and what they look like, I think mine must, at the very least, be a nice marle grey. A nice neutral looking rut. Emo to an extent but not your stereotypical “I listen to MCR and want to slash my wrists while wearing a pair of skinny jeans that bring new meaning to the world ‘cameltoe’” shade of emo.

I’m not afraid to admit that I’m lonely. Well, not afraid to admit it in my blog because let’s face it, there’s only two of you reading this and one’s a former postman.

There’s an easy way or two to send loneliness packing – go out and meet people or slash your wrists while listening to MCR in a pair of skinny jeans.

No dramas. Too easy. Get all your funky fresh bros and hoes from Twitter to come to the usual haunt (Transport/Yakbar/Softbelly) and get remarkably tiddly on overpriced Italian beer and talk rather loudly about some Bulgarian DJ nobody has heard of.

It’s a shame I hate crowds, I’m claustrophobic and too much Italian beer turns me into a very maudlin @melbournegirl.

…and this why I’m lonely?

Far from it.

The last proper good time out I had was way back when I met up with the then muse and we kept the gin companies in business.

Last I heard he pissed off from the Internet and back to Adelaide never to be seen again.

I found another “muse” since then but telling him would a) cause him to unfollow me from Twitter and b) freak him out.

Even though I’m suffering from a very colourful rut, he’s been keeping me afloat with his out of this world comments.

Perhaps it’s smarter to stay silent and suck up the loneliness instead of making an arse of one’s self.

Damn you, moral dilemma.

• a DJ (ever since my bestie passed away, I haven’t been able to find the strength to get behind the decks and make people dance
• a camgirl (it was at a time when everything/nothing sites were cool and I thought it’d be fun to say “Hey, vacuous Internet bitches, FUCK YOU!)
• a radio show host (those were the best seven years of my life. Being able to share my love of music and talk random babble about life gave me the biggest buzz. I miss those days so much)
• a photographer (there was a time when I photographed derilect buildings and street art. Now my camera gathers dust on a shelf. Lack of inspiration and passion to capture the colourful derilect world around me)
• happy (I have little to smile about in my life these days. You once couldn’t wipe the dopey grin off my face because I was with someone who loved me, I was in a job I adored and I actually felt like I fitted in)

now am

• single and lonely (when the Low Self Esteem Fairy dusted my plump self in Low Self Esteem fairy dust, it stuck. While what very few real life friends are busy with their boyfriends, I’m fighting off the black dog that’s mauled my face)
• inarticulate (words fail me on a daily basis. I’m finding that even the simplest of sentences come out of my fat gob all jumbled up. My job involves me talking to more than one hundred people a day and I’m finding it difficult to even strike up a conversation with them.)
• exhausted (when people ask me how I am, I tell them that I’m “surviving” and then try to find some way of getting out of a conversation about my life. I feel like I’m stuck in my own private version of the film “Groundhog Day”. The customers get crankier by the day, the routine drives me to hit the hay at crazy hours and my dreams are filled with people taking me away from all that’s going on. The truth is, there is no escape)
• a blogger and tweeter (I feel as if the only people who understand me are my Twitter friends. That and the two readers of this blog)
• hopeful (perhaps things will change one day but I’m not holding my breath. Sometimes the only thing that cures misery is a smidgeon of understanding.)

Yeah, perfect icebreaker. While BlokeILike was downing his Heineken, I’d saunter over and hit him with the icebreaker and we’d be doing the horizontal lemur dance a few hours later.

Buhm-bow! Survey says “EPIC FAIL”. Instead of a saunter, the walk became a weird wiggle, err, wobble, err, whoops. Right, that wasn’t so bad, it was just my shoelaces playing funny buggers with me.

I was now next to BlokeILike. SHOWTIME!

Take note that I had NOT downed any Peroni at all (it was Asahi) and I was as coherant as any respectable AFL player on Brownlow night. Actually, I only had had one beer on an empty stomach so I was fine.

What came out of my mouth was “Hey. Are those new shoes you’re wearing cos they’re reeeeeaaaalllyy cool”

WHAT THE FUCK?

I’m asking this guy about a grubby pair of Onitsukas he was wearing. Where did the coy sounding icebreaker go? Did someone spike my Asahi? Where the hell was my stunt double with the perfect teeth, big tits and 5 foot 9 frame when I needed her?

BlokeILike looked at me with his usual dazed expression (poor boy was baked) and smiled. I almost dropped my Asahi.

TAXI!! Clean up required in the Raspberry Room at Highlander Bar…PRONTO.

We had a nice conversation for a while until his best mate arrived and I promptly forgot about BlokeILike.

What still amuses me to this day is how I feel a hell of a lot more comfortable talking to BlokeIOnceLiked’s best mates than him.

Grubby looking Onitsukas, indeed.

Night after night was spent having mind blowing conversations and having him in my life drove my confidence for a good while. I was busy hosting a radio show on a (now defunct) radio station and felt good about myself.

I hadn’t felt that good about myself in a very long time. The creative spark had been ignited and was burning at its brightest point since 1996 when I was in the first year of my Bachelor of Arts degree.

I suppose what sank the boat was me not defending myself when he overanalysed everything that leapt out of my head. It all hurt but I pretended to grin and deal with it.

The number of times I nearly called this bloke a “cunt” but resisted were infinite. He was _always_ right after all, no?

This bloke disappeared out of my life back in 2004. Just like that. Snap. No reason. That made me realise that all the energy I had spent on him was a waste.

I went from having a tiny shard of confidence to becoming a fat and at times, sad, drunken blimp. I’d hoe my way through bags of crisps and bottles of beer to “feel good” and fill some sort of void.

The years went by and we got back in touch via Facebook and more recently, Twitter. He hadn’t changed and nearly every status update concerned a new bottle of vino. He was still in the same job he was in when I met him and there was all this babble about us catching up properly.

Well, he hit me with an Unfollow and my curves hit him with a Block. It was for the best.

I mightn’t be the smartest, prettiest or thinnest girl out there. Hell, I’m a narcissistic (from the sound of this blog, yeah?), loud, cupcake loving, beer guzzling woman who loves the people who’ve stuck by her.

I mightn’t be able to speak Olde German but I’m “me”. I’m still trying to figure out who exactly “me” is but I’d rather shove my head in a vat of monkey snot than go back to laughing off someone else’s nitpicking.

To the bloke whom I ran away from because you were chasing me. Your first name was that of an Italian city and you had this horrible knack of writing the word “bass” in uppercase letters when you talked about your prized BASS guitars. I wish I could talk to you again. We had the most amazing connection. I miss you.

To the bloke who had a chance but always played the “respect” card. Cheers for treating me like a freaking psychological experiment. I laugh at that fact that you apparently are a “player” these days. Five women on the go? Where do you find the time?

Finally, to you, the #twittercrush. I know that you wouldn’t be daft enough to read my kindergartenesque drivel but you’re a special kind of something in my mind. A really good cupcake and oh how I wish I could find a way to cure your blues. You’re beautiful and don’t let any other owner of a set of perky boobs tell you otherwise. You make me want to write, sing, dance and shyly yelp out “You’re pretty fucking awesome, squire”. Pity I’m too chickenshit to even DM you a hello. Oh well, viva la being a chicken that loves cupcakes. Bawk bawk bawk.

We could’ve had such a BEAUTIFUL life together. It’s such a shame you sold out, went whirlygig around the world, found some random, fell in lurve and then became just another suburban drone.

Well, bub, for 32 years of age, I’m still kickin’ it, sorting out tickets to Sensation NYE, going to be an absolute kinderwhore with the blonde piggytails and white Dunlop Volleys on the dancefloor.

So….uhhh….tell me, sunshine…..what have YOU done with yourself lately?