There are some things so great, you just can’t feel guilt about enjoying them.

Being the kind of ranty person I am, I tend to attract ranty people into my life. The other day a friend and I were ranting abut our favourite subject to rant about: the wankery of Sydney. There’s plenty of fodder and we tend to agree on most of it. The ignorance to rubbish. The unnecessary horn blasting. The un-ironic use of the word “chill”.

But when she brought up acai bowls, I had to stop her.

I had to admit that I was in the acai army, and I was a willing recruit. I was not conscripted, and signed up for service time and time again. She was surprised, horrified and continued to bash on about the icy purple goop.

But I stuck to my guns, I loved the stuff and would not be ashamed of it.

For those of you who are unaware, an acai bowl is basically a puree of frozen berries that come from the Amazon or something. They’re supposed to be a superfood and do all kinds of good for your body. The bowls contain this slush and are topped with fruit, muesli and sometimes bee pollen or some shit.

I know I should be embarrassed by my enthusiasm for it. I mean, the stuff is astronomically over-priced. The hype around it is cringe-worthy. And the the amount of people who dedicate at least half an hour to carefully arranging fruit and various forms of gluten-free granola on them just for a perfect Instagram post ii vomit-inducing. But I fucking love acai bowls.

When you’ve just gone for a run on a hot day and you’re sweating like you’ve been manning a deep fryer there’s nothing better than a bowl full of nutritious aspiration and icy slush. I know the health benefits of these berries probably requires you to eat a wheelbarrow full of the stuff before they are noticeable, but I don’t care.

They’re delicious, cold and delude me into thinking I’m being healthy.

And I refuse to be ashamed of that.

As the great Sheryl Crowe (whose like three songs I know, I unashamedly love) says: if it makes you happy, it can’t be that bad. Unless what makes you happy falls under the definition of deprivation of liberty or torture, in which case it can’t really be worse. Don’t do that.

So here’s a non-exhaustive list of the other things I refuse to be embarrassed about loving:

Jason Derulo songs: Sure, most of these bad boys start with him singing his name, but it seems he’s grown out of that now. These songs are basic, yes. But that’s what’s so good about them. If you want to listen to an emotional song with powerful lyrics, listen to Nick Cave (geeez even San Cisco if we’re going to be honest, Derulo’s songs have the complexity of a blank piece of a paper). That’s not what Derulo’s about. He’s about excessive licks, generic love and catchy, catchy beatz. And that makes for great treadmill signing.

Having an excessive number of pillows: Recently I was subjected to a remark from some douchelicker about women who have a lot of pillows on their beds. First of all Jerry Seinfeld, get yourself an original joke. Pretty sure the women-who-have-decorative-pillows jokes has been going around for a good 15 years. Nice observational humour. Second of all, fuck you. Why do you give a shit about how many pillows are on my bed and the functionality of said pillows? Just because you don’t use all them to sleep on, doesn’t mean they don’t look fabulous. Maybe someone uses them for propping themselves up while reading in bed. Maybe someone uses them to make a pillow nest for general lounging purposes. Maybe the extra euro pillows are for smothering fuckwits who think they’re better than other people because they only have two pillows on their bed.

Wearing cotton briefs almost exclusively: Sure, there are less boring knickers out there. There are even sexy knickers out there with lace and polyester mesh and bows. Plain cotton briefs are considered attractive. And sure, calling them knickers isn’t overly sexy. But you know what also isn’t overly sexy? Thrush. You can call your extra weight “curves”, you can refer to your dirty hair as “tousled beachy waves”, you can even say sweat is “glistening”. But dress it up all you want, there’s nothing alluring about Clag glue slowly oozing out of your Cave of Wonders.

Washing my hair daily: You know what? I know it’s probably not good for my hair. I love women’s magazines, so of course I know that. But I hate the smell of damp, musty oil your hair gets when you wake up and I get greasy easy. And yes, this might just be because I over-wash my mane. But I don’t like looking greasy. I don’t like smelling like old skin and sweat. Clean is fabulous. And I prefer to be fabulous constantly, thank you.

Hating negronis: They taste like someone smoked an orange and then served in metho. I’ll keep my $18 and put it towards a kebab thanks.

Spending sinkfuls of dollars on scented candles: I agree, forty bucks is a lot to spend on a fucking candle. But they smell great, they look great and they make me forget my miserable existence by giving the illusion of opulence. Everything you do while a scented candle is lit is just so much more decadent and glamorous. I mean anything. Brushing your hair. Clipping your toenails. Picking at a blackhead. Even paying your bills becomes bearable.

Buying the frozen cubes of mango when the real thing is in season and reasonably priced: I’m a mango lover, don’t get me wrong. The way these frozen cubes melt into the perfect mixture of frozen and gooey is just something a fresh mango can’t achieve.

Mixing red wine with lemonade: Nah fuck off, it’s good. At least that’s how I remember it.

When life gives you lemons, you’re supposed to make lemonade.

But when life pushes your scoop of sorbet off you cone an on to the ground, what is the correct philosophical response?

This is something I pondered over the weekend. I was enjoying an ice cream cone and as I enthusiastically went to lick my icy treat, it fell to the ground. In Circular bloody Quay, where every tourist and their trendy dog go, so that ground is filthy. Even the one-second rule doesn’t apply here. Once anything touches the ground, it belongs to the ibises. I mean, obviously you chuck it in the bin so you’r not littering and not making it easy for one of those trash turkeys to mung out on your food, because you love this planet as much as you hate ibises. but eventually those scummy bastards will have your treat in their long, disgusting beaks. Whether fished out of the rubbish or slurped up days later when it has been reduced to bin juice, you can bet one of those filthy creatures will gobble up your treat.

I had carefully selected that lemon sorbet for its refreshing properties   as it was a warm day and I was feeling a little dusty. I almost went with my normal cup option, but decided to go with a cone when my friend did so before me. At first I congratulated myself on selecting a cone over the cup, for this was a treat that deserved the slow, savouring lick of an attentive tongue (yes, I did mean to write that as pornographically as possible). I usually shirk the cone as its very nature means your last bite will taste mostly of cone, but this time I thought I had made the right choice.

I was wrong.

It was the cone that denied me of my zesty treat. Because as I licked enthusiastically, my ball of sorbet fell to the ground. It was like something out of a horror movie. I was in shock. I mean, you hear of it happening to people all the time, but it always happens to other people. Not me. I just couldn’t believe it had happened to me.

You know who you see kids on cartoon burst into tears when the ice cream they’re licking falls to the ground? That’s not an overreaction. In fact, I think they’re slightly downplaying the whole thing. It is a traumatic experience. There are few things that sting as much as dropping food. I mean, rejection and needles come to mind, but they’re pretty much on par.

It wastes your money.

It robs you of a few minutes of sugary delight.

It confirms that the universe is conspiring against you.

While somehow managing to repress a crying fit akin to a two-year-old in any given shopping centre, I scooped the soiled sorbet back into the cone and, defeated, went to throw it into the bin.

But then something stopped me.

Yes, this was a terrible situation. But I was determined to make myself a cool, refreshing glass of lemonade.

So I went back to where I was sitting, and pushed the tarnished dessert back off the cone.

Why?

Because this was the perfect Instagram moment and I wasn’t just doing to throw that away. I was not going to let my emotions get in the way of ripper post.

And so I set up the shot, like a foodie taking a photo of their dinner, except in reverse (which doesn’t make it any better, in fact it’s worse because this was a completely staged shot). I recreated my own trauma like a mugging on Today Tonight.

I mean, I studied journalism and communication. I have two degrees. And my major was in public relations. I was equipped to take this crisis and turn it into a PR opportunity. I was like Kris Jenner, capitalising on an unpleasant situation and making the most of it. And just look what she was able to achieve. I mean, say what you want about them, but they are some well-known, wealthy women. This shitty situation could lead to a reality television series, a hugely successful business venture and even an auto-tuned song about jams (maybe mine could be about lemon curd).

I have learned to take a terrible situation and do something. I would not wallow in despair. I would not let it knock me down. I was determined to spin it on its axis and get something out of it.

So I did.

In a few hours it racked up 48 likes on the gram, and two likes on Twitter (which is great, because basically no one I know uses Twitter and no one who actually uses Twitter is pathetic enough to pay any attention to the shit I send into cyberspace).

So now we know what to do when life pushes your lemon sorbet to the ground, you don’t just cry. You whip out your camera and turn it into a semi-humorous photo opportunity.

Now I’m just waiting for the bidding war over the rights of Keeping up with the Maguires to start. Any day now.

The other night someone asked me what my “thing” is.

It sounds very vague, but in retrospect it’s actually quite a probing question.

It’s like asking someone what their deal is. Or “who do you think you are?”

It’s one of those questions that is difficult to answer without overthinking too much.

I know it was meant to mean, “What is your hobby?” But that’s not really a question you ask. I mean, people don’t really have hobbies anymore. No one paints model airplanes or collects stamps. Think about it, what are your hobbies? Like, what do you do when you’re not working, sleeping or trying to avoid eye contact on the bus?

After typing “define hobby” into Google, I learnt the widely-accepted definition of a hobby is an activity one does with their leisure time for the purposes of pleasure.

So technically you could call re-watching the Shark-ira video a hobby. You could also call compulsively smoothing my hair while loosing all sense of reality in the silky sensation a hobby. Even slowly walking past a construction site to sniff the scent of freshly-cut lumber could fall under the definition of a hobby.

Sure, they’re done in my leisure time and they bring my pleasure, but you can’t really list those things off when someone asks what your hobby is.

You see, a hobby is something that usually is done in pursuit of an interest. Now, there’s a difference between a hobby and in interest. A hobby is something you actively do, while an interest isn’t so tangible. It’s more of a feeling – like something you’re intrigued and excited by. It’s almost like a theme, in a way. Importantly, you can be interested in something without actually doing it. So even though you could say my hobby is eating chicken schnitzels and drinking beer, I can still be interested in having a ripped rig.

So what are my interests then? That’s a tough one. My interests would have to include myself and dessert items that won’t give me another chin. And my related hobby for pursing this interest currently is eating frozen mango cubes and scrolling back through my Instagram posts to remind myself just how bitchin I am.

I guess you could call this blog a hobby, but sometimes it derives me of pleasure as I can’t organise my time properly and find myself staying up into the early hours crafting it – poorly, might I add – when I desperately need to sleep.

The “what’s your thing” question continues to play on my mind, because there’s so many ways to read into it. And maybe I’ll unpack that later down the track when I’ve run out of ideas but for now I am focusing on the hobby angle.

When I answered, I told the asker that I drew trees. Which is true. When I get bored, I will doodle a tree on a scrap of paper. My old court reporting notebooks were full of trees. It doesn’t make me edgy or anything – it’s just the only thing I learned to draw in art at school.

I like doing it, but I rarely do. Even though I get home at like 3.45pm most days and have apartment to myself for at least two hours, I never break out the pencils and paper. I’m somehow always too busy.

And this has got me thinking about the way I spend my time. Like, I can say what my hobbies are: writing, drawing, reading etc. but how many of them do I actually do?

And if I’m not filling my leisure time with those activities, what am I filling it with? And then it all comes back to that over-arching question: what the fuck am I doing with my time?

It’s at this point where I’m considering keeping an activity log, in which I’ll record what I did and why I did it. And because my idea of a wild Friday night was going to bed early after reading Little Women, I feel like I will at least attempt this task. I’ll probably log logging my time under the “hobby” category, because lately my idea of pleasure has become a little beige. I mean, my idea of the mile high club is purchasing an egg and lettuce sandwich off the flight attendant snack cart.

I expect the results of this experiment to be confronting but boring and very, very depressing.

Today I had my column appear in my local newspaper.

I’ve been an official columnist for a few years now, but my creative prose/pure smut had been appearing in a free magazine delivered to houses a few towns over.

There was a happy buffer zone that meant a bit of distance, but it was close enough to ensure some vague sense of relevance and allowed my fans (mum, dad and my little sister we call Kevin) to access it easily enough. It was comfortable because I still had this air of anonymity.

But now my words will be appearing in print in a paper every bastard reads every damn word of (I know this, because we used get multiple people telling us about a typo in the most obscure of classified ads).

Being the sloppy person (of rig and of character) I didn’t plan ahead of time, and found myself sitting to write this piece on next to no sleep after a delayed flight well after my bed time.

And I have to say that I panicked.

I tried to watch some of The Mindy Project to take the edge off, but all it really did was make me feel inferior in everyway and realise that I’m more like Danny Castellano than I care to admit.

Because I don’t really have a persona. I don’t have a general topic. I don’t have a direction.

When people ask me about what my column, I’m not sure what to tell them. In resumes, I would try to impress recruitment officers by telling them it was an “extra creative outlet, with topics varying from social commentary to political observations to over sharing about my humorous experiences”.

Social commentary was a broad yet professional term I used to cover pieces I’ve done where I complained about the snotty bottleo’s in my neighbourhood being too fancy to stock the cheap nasty wine I like or the rise of inspirational quotes on athletic clothing.

Political observations included my name-dropping Barnaby Joyce.

Over sharing about my humorous experiences was a pretty spot on description, which meant I didn’t have to explicitly explain how many times I’d written about my own vomit.

I don’t really know if that’s a cohesive theme. The generally vibe of my thing is basically assuming everyone’s as obsessed with me as I am. I’m just writing things under the impression the entire world wants to know what I think about chicken nuggets.

But going into a new publication I felt like I had the chance to reinvent myself. To do some real branding and have an actual purpose instead of sprouting dribble. I thought that living in the big city could have been an angle.

If I spun it a certain way, I could have quite the glamorous life in the minds of my readers. I work in the city, I’m a writer, Richard Wilkins was at my office Christmas party and I use a lift to get to my apartment – an apartment! The epitome of urban glam! I am an Australian Carrie Bradshaw having crazy adventures in the big apple!

But the truth is I’m the bogan Carrie Bradshaw. I’m kind of similar, but also not at all.

I mean, I’m currently living in Inner East Sydney, so you could say I live on the Inner East Side (I also like to call it the Middlish East, although I only thought that up this afternoon).

Carrie bloody loves her shoes, while my obsession with footwear is limited to seeing if can get an extra week out of the sandals with no grip and decaying leather.

Carrie writes about steamy escapades and sharp observations about relationships, while I write about viral cat videos.

Carrie spends her evenings out at swanky clubs, while I like to go to the dirty bar which didn’t kick my friend and I out when we dipped our fingers in a puddle of spilled tequila for a cheap buzz.

It’s practically the same thing, right?

And I got to thinking that this could be a great vibe for my new column.

Maybe instead of glamorising an over-populated swampland, I could reveal the steaming mound of rubbish it actually is. Instead of appearing sophisticated and charmingly neurotic, I could portray myself as bogan and mentally unsound. Instead of being relevant to women everywhere, I could be relevant to just myself.

Which, come to think it, is exactly the tone of my column already. I guess I don’t have to reinvent myself after all. I’m already substandard but fabulous! Just like Dorothy with her slippers, I had my mediocre powers all along, I just needed to know how to wield it. And just like that, I had my opener: I’m the girl who makes people feel better about their lives by sharing the shame and disappointment that is my existence through weekly columns.

You can find my columns in The Clifton Courier from now until someone sensible steps in and puts a stop to all this nonsense.

I’ll be uploading my published columns a fortnight after going to print, but I recommend picking up a subscription so you can scrunch it up into a little ball or light it on fire after reading for ultimate satisfaction.

My father wants me to smuggle dead animal on to a plane in my carry-on luggage.

Macca, as some of you faithful few may know him, gave me a ring this afternoon and, after telling me about how bloody stinkin’ hot it’s been, the conversation quickly turned to meat. Obviously.

Meat is a big deal in my family. My father gets confused if someone suggests chicken for dinner twice in a row and my mother is practically a flesh eating velociraptor. She looks like a sweetie with her kind face and the care packages of baked goods she prepares for the nursing staff at the hospital she frequents, but make no mistake, she’s a cave woman. It’s not uncommon for her to literally gnaw on a leg of lamb. Sometimes she’ll salvage the comically large lamb bone instead of eating desert – which was always the standard but eternally sophisticated post-roast treat of Sara Lee apple pie. The local butcher gets concerned if Macca hasn’t gone in to pick up a few steaks in more than two days. My brother in law gifted my parents a carving set for Christmas and it was like they were 16-year-olds being given a Suzuki Swift with perosnalised plates in at their glitter-themed birthday parties.

And apparently that has rubbed off on me, because this it turns out I made a meat-themed birthday post I put on Facebook just today. This wasn’t to add clout to this importance of consuming dead animal to my family. This was purely by coincidence, and it’s actually pretty confronting that I would consider it appropriate for an acquaintance is haven’t seen in about four years: 

“Happy birthday NAME,” I said. 

“I hope you have sucked all of the marrow out of the bone of today.”

So yeah, meat is important.

Anyway, a few months ago Macca picked up a few lambs to keep the grass down in our spare paddock. It was his Fathers’ Day treat to himself. There would be one each to my sisters and their partners, and one for the main family unit (which included the single losers, as a fitting reminder than I’m not getting any meat). We were under strict orders to clear out the freezers in preparation for the greatest gift of all. Yep, Macca’s Christmas present to my two sisters this year was a whole lamb. An unholy amount of red meat. Kilo after kilo of Australia’s favourite thing to barbecue.

Well the day has come since Macca had one of the lambs slaughtered and carved up, and he’s in a sharing mood.

“I’ll give you some to take back,” he told me. “You can put it in your handbag.”

As someone whose carry on bag looks like it could fit several dismembered toddlers, I’m already pretty nervy about what I take on aeroplanes. I can’t say I’ve ever weighed my carry on, but it would rarely fall under the maximum weight limit thanks to my “better to be safe than sorry” approach to packing things I might need.

So when I walk up to the flight attendant to board the plane, I’m already a bit touchy. And with that cat-printed bag I generally look mentally unsound and would probably be picked as the most likely to flip out in the air and try to turn a weapon on someone. As such, clutching one of those Coles insulated esky bags full of dead lamb with a shifty look in my eye would not be a good option for me.

Particularly because of my family’s insistence on using old milk bottles for ice blocks, which would no doubt take me over the weight limit but could be classed as a weapon. I’m not saying I would select a two litre bottle of solid, milky water as my first choice in a line up of deadly implements, but it would do a heck of a lot more damage than a pair of nail scissors if I needed to defend myself. How do you explain away a bunch of dead sheep and a blunt ice club to airport security? I would end up on Border Patrol.

That being said, my retirement plan is currently hinged on the hope I will one day have my own reality TV series so perhaps this isn’t such a bad idea. This could be a creative way to bring it about. I mean, I know at least seven people who would watch at least the first series of a series about the the guy “just waiting for a mate”. Surely the meat smuggler girl could go just as viral? I’d be willing to discard my dignity if it could lead to me being paid $2000 to flog vitamin water on Instagram. I could even be a feature in the next Australia Day lamb adverts. I could even the new marketing tool for Australia, telling tourists I’ll, “throw another shank on the barbie,” for them. This could just set me up for life.

However, I think Macca would somehow wind up being the star of the show.

Today I am officially a quarter of a century old.

Somehow I have managed to avoid being the collateral damage of an alien invasion or a giant meteor hurling itself into the earth. Although, I am quite certain I would be one of those few remaining people who managed to outlive the majority of humanity’s weaklings in such an event. I have long enough hair to substitute as a rope I need be, I’m assuming the few episodes of Bush Tucker Man I saw as a child would come back to me at the necessary moments of outback hunger and I have the right amount of sass to make me a valid character for the imagined audience to relate to but also enjoy.

Yes, I am 25. I can now rent a car and pay less to my insurance company if I have a prang. If I were in the royal family I could announce my intent to marry whomever I chose. If you were to round my age to the nearest 10, I’d be 30. I am mature, I am strong, I am wearing just an oversized t-shirt with galloping horses on it and undies I bought in a two-pack from Coles.

This is an important age, according to the internet and according to me – because when I turn a milestone number I get to live by the rules of Birthday Month instead of my usual Birthday Week extravaganza.

You see, on The Internet, 25 is a pivotal age. Most listicles about being in your twenties – believe me, there are shitloads of them – reference 25 as a landmark mostly for things you’ve supposed to have done/learnt/experienced by. They usually are prefaced by telling you in some “I give zero fucks” way that you should be yourself and stop comparing yourself to others and then proceed to tell you what they’ve learnt through their deeper-than-magma experiences as a middle classed white person like they’re passing down some deep wisdom. They usually tell you to be ok with drinking wine alone and all that shit, because there’s nothing healthier than smashing alcohol in solitude and not talking to people. You just do you! Hahaha hashtag wine!

So for the sake of hypocritically patronizing you with what I’ve learnt in my four lots of five years on earth, here’s my response to what The Internet reckons I should have done by now.

Go to a music festival: Been there, done that, I’m probably cooler than you. The last Splendour I went to I got gastro and ended up in the medic tent after vomiting up my toothpaste.

Buy dinner for your parents: I once drove half an hour each way to a Chinese food store to feed my creators and chief financial backers. That should be enough.

Travel to another continent: I went to Thailand and partied so hard I lost my clothes, my thongs and woke up in my mate’s bed after vomiting in my own. On the plane ride back I smuggled two triple cheeseburgers into my carry on from the airport Hungry Jacks. When the cabin was dark and most people were asleep, I tried as quietly as possible to take my tepid burger out of the wrapper in silence and stealthily consumed that glorious combination of meat, cheese and sin. I felt like the smartest woman alive. 

Try an adrenaline sport: I once had to abandon slipping down a family water slide at Wet’n’Wild while lining up on the stairs as I waited my turn. It was too damn high for me, so I dragged my hungover self to the relaxing safety of Calypso Bay – which is where a gentle currently calmly guides you along an imitation river in an inflatable tube. That was close enough. And I’ve repeadly tried to convince people to go on the Aqua Duck with me to no avail. I don’t think I need to try adrenaline. I think safety is the biggest thrill of all. Who needs a racing pulse when you can be assured of having a continued pulse by remaining alive for as long as possible by minimal risky behaviour? Dickheads, that’s who.

Spend the whole weekend partying: Mate, last night I stayed up until midnight to bake  a cake and today I bought a teapot. I think I’m right.

Have a good convo with someone of a different faith: I’ve had many a stimulating conversation with people who would choose Cold Rock over Baskin and Robbins. They’re not so different from us after all!

Vote: I’ve done worse things for a sausage (like sneakily stealing one from a barbecue tray when I’d already had more than my share).

Dye your hair a completely different colour: I went red for a period in Year 7. It didn’t land me a role as the only Weasley sister. Now I am just the run-of-the-mill-non-friends-with-Daniel-Radcliffe-nobody brown.

Let go of a friendship: In primary school we were assigned pen pals with some random home-schooled kids we used to have to invite to our sports days because our school was too small to make up the numbers. I stopped writing back after I realised her name was Rosemary, which I thought was a shit name at the time. Now she probably goes by Rosie and owns a bitchin’ zine. I’m an idiot.

Like yourself: There have some been some very close calls where I’ve nearly liked my own Insty photos, but I managed to avoid it.

Practice being charitable: Sometimes my sister stinks, I don’t bring it up so I don’t hurt her feelings (but also because it would do nothing to change her habit of brushing her teeth only once a day).

Let the Grudge go: I’ve actually never owned or seen that movie, so I guess I don’t need to do this one? On a side note, I have a copy of The Bling Ring I don’t need anymore, if you’re keen.

Go on a blind date: I met my Uber driver from New Year’s Eve for coffee last week. It was technically blind for me because I was too drunk to properly remember what he looked like. I got free cake out of it and an awkward hug, but that’s about the extent of it.

Exercise: Oh, I eat far too much bread not to. I actually run like the wind (and by “wind” I mean “heavily breathing sweaty red monster who mouths the words to Amy Whinehouse’s Valerie with enough to emotion to make passers-by think she’s going through an emotional breakdown“).

Eat an exotic food: I don’t know if you know this, but I have hummus quite a lot. I’m pretty cultured like that.

Learn to cook: I have one word for you: nuggchos.

Save for your retirement: hahahah. My most expensive asset is an unregsitered car held together with thumbtacks. Retirement is never going to be an option for me.

There’s more to go, but I have to go put pants on and drink beers now. If I’m stumped for ideas for my Wednesday post, I will continue this later!