Annoyed Part 6

So I was looking forward to tomorrow a lot.

Now I'm just annoyed. Everyone in my family just seems to be totally against the idea of simple. They have a tendency to make simple things very difficult.

It's just a BBQ. In essence, it consists of very little.

1. Shop for stuff to BBQ.
2. Prepare the stuff for BBQ.
3. BBQ the stuff.
4. Serve and eat. Arguably could be split into two steps.

There. Four, possibly five if you want to be pedantic about it, simple, self-explanatory, easy-to-follow steps.

Not so, according to my family.

"How will you cook the stuff? Who's going to look after the dog? Women's finals is on tomorrow night!"

I've cooked BBQs before.

The dog can look after itself.

Ok, so the women's final was a slight oversight, but not really my fault. It was either make it a school night, which I got told not to, or tomorrow, or like a month after my birthday. See the conundrum? Who watches women's tennis anyway?

Also, they don't seem to find it one bit awkward, them being there at the table with my friends. It's not like I mind them being there. I love my family. It's just with that many of my friends there, I don't know what they'd do with themselves. My friends and my family. It's like, what we do is different to what they do.

They were supposed to clear the house. But now, after they've used those above arguments, it doesn't look like happening. I should've just made it a dinner in the city or something. Much simpler, less time consuming, less frustration-inducing, almost makes more sense economically, don't have to take care of the dog, get table service, can actually do stuff afterwards. Problem was, I expected a lot more people to turn up. Who knew that half my friends would be overseas?

In summary, this is way more trouble than I bargained for. I just hope it somehow works itself out. If not, I guess my friends will just have to talk to my parents. What should've been a rollicking event has just now pretty much turned into 'meh' at this stage. I hope events tomorrow conspire to change this. Please.

Also, I hope that my friends like sitting outside eating, mucking around with a guitar, drinking, talking and/or listening to music. Because that's pretty much what's going to be going on, seeing as the TV will be taken by women's tennis lovers.

I guess it was a bit jinxed from the beginning. I don't know. I just had this feeling. Sometimes I get this feeling. I think it's called anxiety.

A while ago, I was in a happy state. And I also said that things could change in an instant and screw you over. This seems to be that time. Things just start accumulating and before you know it, nothing seems to be going right. I'll just hang around until the next upswing. I'm good at doing that. Most of the time. Or I could go back to my old habit of punching a wall. There may still be that hole from when I punched it last. Guess I'll just have to find another wall.

Word of the Day: BBQed

Another thought

A thought just occurred to me. This seems to be happening a lot. Spontaneity for the win.

Unless I'm mistaken, this concerns all of us. We, as humans, are preoccupied with the reason behind something. Always. Someone's late. Someone's broken a promise. A coconut falls from a palm tree and hits someone on the foot.

Knowing the reasons behind these things doesn't change the fact that they did happen.

However, something else just occurred to me. I mean, literally just now. We want to know these things because we want accountability. We want to be able to be angry, or at least rectify the problem. We want to make things better, or, at the polar opposite, cut it off completely.

What a stupid thought.

Banh's Australia Day shindig was quite awesome yesterday. The food was very nice, and the company, as always, was excellent. Well, most of the company consisted of my friends, so that's understandable really.

Anyway, the food was quite creative more than anything. Seared lamb gyoza, salmon rice paper rolls, puff pastry with hoisin sauce, and black forest trifle for dessert. I have a feeling that I've left something out, but that'll do for now. Sounds delicious enough as it is.

I also watched most of the Nadal loss there. Most saddening.

These things are awesome. The shindig, I mean. Not the Nadal losing. Takes my mind off things. Not that it's on a lot of things. Just a few things which I get overly stressed by.

Word of the Day: Australia Day

Negative parabola?

Ok, so some of my friends have either forgotten that I exist, are ignoring me, or just don't rank me high enough in the grand scheme of things to give me even a courtesy call.

But that's ok.

I've tried. Many times in some cases. Sometimes I find it hard to come to terms with the fact that effort doesn't always yield results. Actually, this occurs quite often. I have a bad habit, or a good habit in some circumstances, of believing that you can almost fix anything if you put enough effort/time/money into it.

But over time, I've sort of become more and more accepting of effort not equating to results. I've come to accept that you can't really do much more than try your hardest. In the case with relationships and friends, trying hard without seeming too pushy/annoying. Once you get to that annoying stage, where the other person has nothing but contempt for you, you should've stopped trying earlier, because that's the point where you've tried your hardest. It's like a negative parabola.

In other news, I worked for my dad again today. Man, his work has a lot of variety. The other day, it was putting cement sheeting on walls. Lots of the time it's tiling walls or floors. Today, we were jackhammering mud and concrete, and I was shoveling it out of there. I really empathise with the guys in that book I read in Year 8, Holes. It's about these guys who have to dig a five foot by five foot hole in the desert every day at this illegal camp called Camp Green Lake, ostensibly as punishment for their crimes. It's a great, great book, but I just felt first hand how tough it would be to dig a hole that big every day. In the desert. I mean, I was digging for like, 40 minutes, with mini-breaks, in Melbourne weather, and my fingers and knees were killing me by the end.

I also drove there and back. I'm starting to regain some of my skills in driving. Some. My close control has gotten a lot better already. Or maybe it's just my confidence.

Saturday night was a good one. Best work people reunion dinner ever. Basically it turned out being the people that I hang around with at uni, and happen to be some of my closest friends. Oh, and Kira. Looking forward to Banh's Australia Day shindig tomorrow. Should be a 'stoking' good one. Sorry, in-joke.

Word of the Day: Ditched

Rationalise this!

Rationalising things hurts my head. Often there is no rational explanation for why people do the things they do. You try and rationalise, and often, you just end up going in circles.

So from now on, I'm keeping the rationalisation to a minimum. I'm just going to go with the flow. Stop trying to read other people's minds. Hopefully.

It kind of comes second-nature to me though. I just realised the other day that I have a very deep interest in analysing things, trying to see beyond the obvious or the exterior. Trying to see through all the hocus-pocus and lies. It's like a game I play. It's just fun, deconstructing things mentally.

But deconstructing people is a whole different ball game. Language and situations are alright. People are very, very difficult. Especially girls. If you try and deconstruct the way people act, you'll drive yourself nuts, like me. So no more. Hopefully.

Word of the Day: Deconstruct

Spur of the moment

I'm feeling an acute sense of rejection right now.

Maybe that's just how the rejector normally behaves. I have no idea anymore.

Now that I've gotten that out there, I can (try) to get back to doing something constructive, instead of having this weigh on my mind.

Word of the Day: Reject

*Half an hour later update*

Defying my promise to do something constructive, I found an awesome song on YouTube. Legend by name, legend by nature.



I think I heard this song once before, but I found it again on a whim. I have no idea why. It just seemed like the right thing to do in accordance with my mood.

Fishy business

So here I am, back home from a 3 night, 4 day journey to Metung.

Well, what can I say. A lot happened. I'll try and pick some highlights.

I failed to catch any fish. Over 3 days, I failed to catch one fish. At all. The reasons, I believe, are varied, and all of them are quite plausible.

1. I suck at fishing. We'll start with the least plausible explanation. I can fish, being the hunter-gatherer that I am. However, the other times may have just been sheer, dumb luck, so we can't rule this explanation out.

2. My inner peace was unsettled, and this was picked up on by the fish. The most plausible reason out of all of them, I believe. What happened was, my friend, Orrin, tells me on Monday night that he had received no transfer offers from anywhere. None. From anywhere. After having applied in a range of courses as broad as my shoulders, from Arts/Commerce to hairdressing in Bundoora. And he had a D average. After consoling him for a quarter of an hour, and scratching my head as to why he didn't at least get a transfer into Gardening at Peninsula, he calls me 15 minutes later to tell me that he had actually gotten a transfer to Arts/Commerce at Clayton, which was his first preference. And he had the nerve to complain that I didn't congratulate him, even though I did. But he didn't even deserve it. Apparently he only checked the paper, and not the website.

Can you congratulate me or something, man?

Yeah, congratulations on the monumental stuff-up Orrin.

So for the next couple of nights, no fish.

Just to illustrate the validity of this reasoning, everyone else but me caught at least one fish. And, just to top it off, after Linda texted me last night, I almost caught something. Good luck charm right there.

3. All the fish have moved to Sydney.

Hmm. That's about all there is to mention really. Pictures on Facebook soon hopefully. Oh, and I didn't get to buy any souvenirs, owing to the fact that there are hardly any shops that sell souvenir-y things. Forgive me, friends.

Word of the Day: Metung

There are many things that I, would like to say to you, but I don't know how

I normally don't really give a damn about what people think of me.

But this case is different. It's consuming. It's actually a full-blown anxiety. I should probably ask the person in question sometime in the near future what they think of me. But then, that would require courage, something which I lack when it comes to things like this. There's just too much room for awkwardness.

In a very, very twisted way, I think that her getting mad at me is sort of a good sign. Like, she notices me enough to be properly mad at me, if that makes any sense. Very, very twisted.

Lakes Entrance tomorrow for my near-annual retreat with my family. As always, should be good. Except for the forecasted lack of sun. I was hoping to tan up a bit too. Stupid cloud cover.

Word of the Day: Consumed