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!

Ah, another year is gone.

The time has come to grab a rum ball and reflect on how your existence is contributing to the world. You find yourself confronted with a bit of travel time and you have nothing to do but take stock on how you frittered away a perfectly good year. It’s like when you judge the outfit choices of celebs on the red carpet, but you judge yourself. This is why the consumption of alcohol skyrockets in the holiday season.

So how am I doing? Well, let’s take a look at the facts.

Now, before I press on, I must remind you that I did this on Monday, when I was feeling rather tired and was sitting in a dark room facing a wardrobe with mirrored doors. Mirrored doors are fabulous until you find yourself faced with the reality of your existence and can’t escape your bland reflection, which is decidedly less Disney-like than you’d prefer.

So here are the results of my stocktaking:

Yesterday I went on a pub crawl wearing a Santa suit that looked like it was made from a blend of carpet underlay, stray dog hair and the whiskers of three backpackers who had to shave their adventure beards off to return to work after trekking through Nepal for four months. Imagine how that would smell, then add stale beer, sweat and sea water to that equation and you’ll have the musk of me on this particular outing.

I cracked the glass cover of my phone, wore a beard around my thigh and went swimming in the ocean wearing socks and sneakers.

The following day I had to listen to Disney songs in order to perk me up at work.

The last video on my phone is a recording of the beach with me screaming the lyrics to Total Eclipse of the Heart. I am alone in the video.

The last song I listened to on my phone featured Justin Bieber, but then I also found myself jogging to Slim Dusty’s classic beat Duncan the other day so I don’t know what I can deduce from my music choices. Maybe I’m eclectic, or maybe I just have terrible taste it depends on who you ask.

My dinner last night was a free sausage sizzle and a custard-filled doughnut, but today I had zucchini noodles with shaved turkey so I guess that’s what they call balance. The worst thing I ingested today way a Scotch finger. This could be interpreted in two ways. The first is that the worst thing I ate was a plain biscuit, I must be treating my body like a temple. On the other hand, you could argue that if the world’s plainest biscuit besides the milk arrowroot was my big treat I must lead a very dull, depressing existence.

And we all know from my earlier admissions that I don’t treat my body like a temple, but more a house you rent out with a group of mates for a hen’s party – you have a good time in it but make a rushed, panicked effort to clean it up enough to get your bond back.

Good lord, it sounds dismal.

Add to this that through the week, two of my friends announced they were writing books – one had just finished, the other had secured a publisher.

Two others had just graduated as doctors.

Another fabulous friend was admitted as a fully legit lawyer and, better still, got a fresh batch of bitchin’ business cards.

Meanwhile, this year I had what some people might call a mid-twenties crisis. After leaving an unhappy workplace, I found myself without a job, without a permanent address and with a shitload of boxes. But I didn’t do any of the classic life crisis things. I didn’t trek across the wildness to find myself. I didn’t start my own business. I didn’t even write the mini series I would tell people was a comment on country journalism and an examination of small town Australia in the context of a changing media landscape when it was really based on me and hugely egocentric.

I spent all of today baking gingerbread that was underwhelming at best.

I haven’t yet showered – or brushed my teeth – and it’s 3.02pm.

My breakfast and lunch was said disappointing Christmas biscuits.

So what all does this say about the life I’ve chosen to lead? Did I spend my year wisely? Am I proud of who I am?

Hmmm. I don’t know about you, but I think I’m going to need some much stronger rumballs to answer those questions.

Patheticness is in the eye of the performer.

We make our own decisions about what makes us tragic, ultimately being the only ones who can make us feel one way or the other. The difference between being lonely and being a lone is a mindset. Although that doesn’t stop people from making their own assumptions.

My friends go to the dog park just to look at the dogs. They don’t have one. They just go to look. It’s good for de-stressing, my friend says. And she’s right – dogs do wonderful things for the human psyche. And there’s nothing wrong with checking out a few happy pups. It’s a public place after all. But it does sound sad and borderline creepy that she goes there purely to look at the dogs like some kind of canine-loving pervert. I don’t think she takes treats to lure the pups away, but she does know each of the dogs by colour and personality like there were contestants on the Bachelorette.

So what’s worse? My friend and her boyfriend going to the dog park with out a dog just to watch? Or me?

Because right now I am at the dog park. Alone. And it’s the setting for my new local Carols by Candlelight. And not only am I without a dog, but I am without a family, a friend or even a bottle of wine (and by wine, I mean cheap nasty carbonated grape juice so bubbly I can’t taste the actual wine).

I am also being paid monthly so I am living off my credit right now, so I can’t even buy some delicious fruity ice cream thing from the truck that is getting no attention from kids and parents when there is real ice cream and Nutella crepes available elsewhere.

I’m not here for dinner. I’m not meeting friends. I am not even wearing my jogging gear so I can’t even pretend I am stretching after a long, impressive run (although I have considered throwing on my runners precisely for this purpose).

It’s very odd to be alone at these kinds of things.

I used to be able to go to all kinds of shit at home by myself. Because if I didn’t run into my friends, I’d run into their parents or the lady I talked to at the bank or the family I buy my bacon from. Apart from my sister, I knew of two other Colleens I could cut a rug with on the d-floor (otherwise known as the patch of bitumen in front of the truck trailer acting as a stage).

I’d be able to confidently strut down the street to whatever festivities going on and know there would be at least five people aged 16 to about 78 I could sink a few tinnies with.

But I find myself here sitting up the back with the two other friendless wonders.

One is sucking a lollipop and pretending to read the program.

Another is texting, presumably to make it look like whoever he isn’t meeting here is merely lost and the pair are working out logistics. They aren’t coming, mate. You know it. I know it. The couple next to you would know it if they weren’t too busy being happy to notice this tragic trio.

I am sitting here texting too, but I am texting myself, writing this column via multiple blue speech bubbles, so it’s a totally different thing.

We all have our coping mechanisms for when we find ourselves alone in public. Because being alone in public isn’t always as blissful as being alone in private. Being alone in public means sitting with your knees close enough together to avoid an indecent exposure charge. Being alone in private means wearing only your saggiest undies and a stained jumper.

Ah, the lollipop eater has a child. She’s not a lone watcher, she’s here on official mothering duties.

The texter has “gone to meet his mates”… or cry to his reflection in the bathroom mirror.

And I remain, texting myself this column and getting bitten on the upper thigh by mozzies. Why am I staying? Perhaps it’s because the blood sucking disease spreaders are the only living beings going anywhere near my crotch tonight.

Maybe it’s because neither Netflix nor Stan have Love Actually and my roommate doesn’t has a DVD player set up with the television.

Maybe I’m just fishing for blog material. I can pretend I’m doing this purely for literary reasons. This isn’t pathetic; this is research. My defence for any sad situation I find myself in is that it’s memoir material. As such, I’m able to justify any humiliation by reasoning it will make me appear more relatable to all the plebs who will read my life’s story to make them less depressed about them never being in my league. I’m not embarrassing myself; I’m merely gathering material for my memoirs.

But the truth is my lingering/loitering/borderline perversion is probably due to a combination of all three.

Oh! The texter came back, he’s now walking among the crowd taking video for snapchats. At least he’s not sobbing on a couch somewhere.

They started playing Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas, and it sounded like Noah Jones should have been signing it. I was reminded of the deeply depressing original lyrics like, “faithful friends who were dear to us will be near to us no more” and “but at least we all will be together if the Lord allows – from now on, we’ll have to muddle through somehow.” And I have to admit, as the spikey grass dug into my thigh skin I began to feel a little sad. I began to feel that lonely Christmas depression I see on movies before some grand dramatic gesture. If I were in a romantic comedy, some bastard I knew would have started singing All I Want for Christmas Is You and a spotlight would have shined on me in an unrealistically flatting glare. Instead, I nearly had my foot run over by a disobedient child with a mini scooter. I hate it when my life isn’t a Christmas rom-com.

Update: my friend who watches the dogs is doing the EXACT thing I am right now. By herself. We’re alone in different states together. And that means we’re not only not alone, but also not lonely. We’re not pathetic, just quirky!

I’m too snotty to make sense of things right now.

I’m not completely choked up with phlegm, but I’m fluey enough to know that can’t be trusted to coherently string a full blog post together right now. There’s no way I can find higher meaning in anything when I’m in this state. I just kind of look around with lazy, squinty eyes and repeatedly opening my mouth in a way that tries to pop my ears. This makes look like a goldfish on Valium.

So instead of trying to produce a polished, well-written parable (yes, that is how I would describe my previous posts), I’m just going to list the things that happened to me this week. Because while I am sick, I am not so sick that I can ignore my to do list, and writing this post has been a looming “to do” that hasn’t yet been did.

These are like three mini adventures to tied you over until I’m well enough to appear mentally unwell again. It’s like those Little Treehouse of Horrors episodes of The Simpsons that have three stories to it, except pathetic instead of scary.

Today I got the new iPhone. I also finally when out and bought two new pillows for my bed. When I moved here, my sister’s boyfriend kindly brought a bunch of my possessions in the back of his ute which was loaded in my absence. As such, only half of my pillows were loaded on. And as a fun twist of fate, my two worst pillows were brought interstate. So for the last few weeks I’ve been sleeping on dust-mite-ridden sacks of mouldy disappointment. It didn’t make for a great night’s sleep but it also made me look chronically single having just two pillows on a queen bed (I mean, I am chronically single, which is fine, but no one wants to look chronically single. Being chronically single and looking chronically single are horses of very different colours. One is a classy yet carefree gal who knows what she wants and the other is a crying mess wearing a stained singlet eating cold baked beans straight out of the tin. Don’t be the bean-eating mess). Today I finally snapped and bought two new pillows.

I walked into the homewears shop hoping I wouldn’t pay an arm and a leg for pillows, because the nearest store selling pillows is one of those stores with classy middle-aged women as the shop assistants. And these women have expensive fruit bowl habits to support so their stores are always slightly higher in price range. Thankfully, I was wearing my “active wear” when I walked in, which included a pair of college merch ruggers I’ve worn on every jog and gym session for the past five years with the thighs worn out of them so I looked poor enough that the lady who served me didn’t bother trying to upsell the pillows. Sometimes being poor has its advantages.

Anyway, long story short is that I was more excited about the pillows than the new phone. What does that say about me?

Today I went running with very oily hair and smelled like a snack food. Let me unpack this further. I read somewhere that it’s good to work a bit of olive oil through your hair as a natural conditioning treatment, and when I was roasting some veggies for this week’s lunches, I used a bit of olive juice in my locks while I had it out. You see, my hair hasn’t been cut in about a year and I’m looking very much like that girl who was trapped down a well so I thought I’d give it a crack. About half an hour after I rubbed the oil in (which was a weirdly satisfying job, I must say) I decided that I should take my sloppy rig out for a spin and didn’t see a point in washing the oil out of my hair only to have to wash it again after running.

Now, I’ve been a little slack on the jogging front lately so I became fairly hot rather quickly, particularly in the cranial region – with all that hair on my head, it’s a bit like running with a woollen jumper on. Bear Grylls could survive for three days off the sweat that collects in my hair when I exercise. My head juices infused with the olive oil, which was heating up thanks to my sweaty scalp. Together they released a smell that was kind of like a deep fryer mixed with the stale head odour you have the morning after a big night. Basically, it was like Smiths chips released a special edition dandruff-flavoured chippie. I’m not ashamed to say that it made me hungry.

** Update: I tweeted about this experience and received two likes and a retweet. I’m hoping it goes viral so Smiths will actually make my chip flavour suggestion seriously or a shampoo company will send me free products. Either outcome would be welcomed.

Earlier in the week I ate the chocolate of a stranger. I moved into this place about a month ago. I didn’t need to bring a bed because the guy living in the room before me is leaving it behind. That bed actually belonged to the guy who lived in the room before he did. This bed has been here a while (but don’t worry, I have a mattress topper so I can lie to myself that I’m not actually sleeping on a bed of the dead skin cells of strangers).

Ok, now that you have that information, consider this: Last week I found an Easter egg under the bed and I ate it.

That egg had potentially been there for two years.

It could have been laced with poison.

It could have been used in some weird sex ritual.

It could have been planted there by a cruel practical joke reality show with hidden cameras set up in my room to capture my shame and broadcast it to the would.

And I ate it.

I was in a dark place this week.

Published in On Our Selection News, November 3, 2016

I spent my first Saturday night in Sydney tweeting at Whoopi Goldberg.

To be fair, that first sentence made it sound like I was in a conversation with the shoe-loving presenter on The View who filled my childhood with song. I wasn’t. I tweeted at her while watching a back-to-back Sister Act special on television. It was glorious, obviously. The habits; the jazzy choir numbers; the wholesome fun dotted with a few spicy jokes. It’s all brilliant and I wanted Whoopi to know that. So I did what any attention-seeking homebody with access to the Internet would do: I tweeted at her.

And I like to think that if I were an already-established person of interest, we would have had a lovely online exchange that some smutty tabloid could have written about with a headline going something along the lines of “DMags [in my mind, the press would see me as a slightly bogan Jennifer Lawson/J-Law] shows us once again why she is the celeb we’d most like to have a sleepover with – and wins over Whoopi Goldberg in the process!”.

But let’s be honest here, there’s no way someone like Whoopi was ever going to respond to me. She was probably out doing cool stuff, and understandably ignored me like the lowly person that I am.

In fact, if you look through my last few tweets, you’d understand why the woman who had a brief cameo the 1994 family motion picture Little Rascals didn’t respond to me.

As a young media professional (yes, I’m calling myself a media professional because this column is nothing if not professional) I really need to work on building my online presence. You know, getting likes on my Instagram pictures and building an army of followers on Twitter. Twitter is that social media platform that lets you post your opinions in 140 letters or less. This can be anything from your disgust about the state of politics, or think your thoughts are important, when we all know they are worthless trash.

Twitter great because the only people who use it are celebrities, trolls and budding journos trying to build their profiles. And if you’re a budding journo trying to build your profile, you’re not famous enough to get attention from trolls and the fame-hungry twitter users like yourself tend to favourite your tweets to trick you into reciprocating. This means your real friends usually miss out on your cringe-worthy attempts for attention. But a sad consequence is that the celebrities you desperately try to contact rarely respond.

And maybe it’s a good thing the celebrities don’t look at my tweets, because they don’t make me look like the most fun or emotionally-stable person on the planet.

Here’s my bottom three tweets:

“You know you need a sleep in when you’re crying to 60 Minute Makeover.”

“Woke up hangover-free as my neighbourhood is too fancy to stock the only red wine cordial-y enough for me to drink.”

“Aaaaand I just teared up over a bread ad on TV.”

I guess I’m going to have to work on changing my image. Or go on a Tweet deleting rampage.

Published in On Our Selection News, October 27, 2016

Blackouts make for a dark time.

Losing power during a storm has a lot of negative consequences some trivial (not being able to see in the dark) and some not so trivial (not being able to charge your phone).

Take, for example, refrigeration. I have a very strong memory of our freezer dripping with blood after a blackout like something from a low-budget remake of The Shining.

We had recently bought half beast – no doubt thanks to the incredible bargain sniffing of my father – and the power was out for far too long. Kilos of meat thawed, got warm and oozed out their thick, red juices. It was pretty devastating, especially so for my mother who is practically a carnivore with glasses – she has been known to gnaw on bones and I once caught her eating raw mince. It obviously hit the family hard because someone thought it significant enough to take a photo of this bloody freezer (and this was back in the day when you had to take your film into the chemist and have it developed). It might have been taken for insurance purposes, but we still have it for some reason. If you riffle through the Maguire Phamily Photos you’ll eventually come across this confusing image which would no doubt raise suspicions if the Criminal Minds team unearthed it.

Blackouts are inconvenient, kind of creepy and make it very difficult to shower. And because the first person to walk away from the group during a blackout in a horror movie is the first one to have their spleen ripped from their body, power outages usually result in whole families gathering in one room. And herding several stressed, scared and slightly smelly people into a confined space doesn’t sound like a good idea.

But (and I say this with full access to electricity) there’s something kind of nice about the power going out. Because the Internet modem is off, videos of Sister Act choir performances you planned on spending your night watching take too long to buffer and you end up putting down the phone and breaking out a deck of cards with the family.

And depending on how many siblings are currently sponging off our parents, this can get quite loud. I would probably describe the sound that comes from our house as a cacophony  – which, incidentally, is the collective noun for cockatoos.

People say that getting away from technology is a good thing because once we disconnect with the Facebooks and the Instygrammers, we start connecting with each other. But in our case, being glued to screens is really an act of maintaining a peaceful society.

Because when left to our own devices, we revert back to our childhood selves. One of my sisters will ask penetratingly personal questions, another will start talking over someone, another will start talking over everyone to rouse on the person who was talking over someone, I’ll overshare, mum will say something laced with innuendo (sometimes wittingly, other times accidentally) and my father will have a mini aneurism. It’s great fun.

When I say blackouts are dark times, I mean so more for the neighbours – who can’t turn on the radio to drown out the noise.

The other night I had an uplifting experience, and it only cost me $37.50.

I paid to go along to Matt Groening’s talk at Graphic 2016. I had the option to buy a $37.50 seat or a $137.50 seat, and was happy to take a gamble on the restricted view. Oh boy did it pay off. I was in the front row of the box at the side of the stage, and while I had a side view of his face I was so close I could have thrown a ball of paper at said face (which is saying something, because I have a terrible throw).

It was pretty exciting sitting just a few metres away from the man who is responsible for an estimated 37 per cent of my communication (a further 20 per cent comes from Gilmore Girls, 2 per cent from Olsen Twins movies, 13 per cent from Cougar Town and 4 per cent from Drop Dead Gorgeous and 2 per cent from Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead – the rest is somewhat organic material, but I would say at least half of this final percentile comes from movies or shows that fall into the “other” category). This was a huge deal.

His talk was phenomenal. It was funny, it was insightful and it featured my favourite Instagram account @thesimpsonstattoo, which is a collation of all the great and so-not-great-that-it’s-great permanent odes to America’s favourite yellow family.

I walked out of the theatre feeling entirely inflated, despite the fact that I didn’t have in my hands a signed original drawing like a few lucky others did.

This feeling of elation was quite remarkable, as I’m feeling a little uninspired at the moment (even buying shoes or reading Oh, The Places You’ll Go can’t really get me out of my funk, which is frustrating because years of television exposure has led me to believe that these activities are somewhat cathartic). I’m tired, irritable and can’t really see where my life is heading as I tunnel blindly into the darkness and decay – I’m like a grumpy earthworm. 

So I’m going to do what I always tend to do in a crisis instead of seeking professional help like a sensible person – I’m going to attach meaning to a recent encounter and delude myself that cosmic timing made me hear what I needed to hear, and saw what I needed to see. I have a troubling way of thinking that Fate is heavily involved in my life to the point of obsessive stalking, while also questioning whether Fate can really give a fuck about a middle-class white girl’s minor affairs when there’s shit like Syria’s civil unrest going down. I can never be sure, but maybe Fate just has one of those universal remotes and is flicking between whatever’s happening with me, and the actual great injustices of the world.

Existential crises aside, it is also fun from a writing point of view to apply the great lessons of lives lived before us to our own inconsequential existences. 

After showing us his father’s home movies, clips from the show and revealing how he came up with his characters (Milhouse, incidentally, was only created so Bart would have someone to talk to in a Butterfingers commercial. I’ve alluded to this fact before and will so again, but thank the heavens for commercialism and advertising) Groening ended his talk with a couple of words of advice for us audience members.They were offered kindly and in good faith, so I’m going to do what I do with any gift – pick them apart and pass judgement on them.

Box up your favourite childhood items and don’t let your parents throw it away

He said things like comic books and figurines and such, but I didn’t really have comic books, and I ensure that my Harry Potter figurines are with me at all times.

So this is a lesson I don’t really need.

There are a few things I had stowed away before flying the coop and, thankfully, my parents haven’t thrown too much out. That’s because one time Mum got rid of my toothbrush and frayed trackpants that were part of the “old uniform” during our high school’s wardrobe update (and at that time, the old uniform was waaay cooler. Our school was an odd place where dressing shabbily and purely for comfort was trendy. Only the losers dressed up to look nice on a free dress day, but if you wore trackies you were a legend) and I never let her forget how much the thoughtless toss wounded me. So now my mother is terrified of throwing anything away without my permission. It helps that I come from a line of hoarders: my 20-canvas artwork from Year 10 is still in our storeroom for this reason. Unfortunately, this hoarding doesn’t come by the way of posters, something I learnt the hard way when I came back from uni to find the picture of Hugh Grant fondling a woman’s bottom with a speech bubble in a foreign langue has been ripped from my old bedroom’s wall. And I’m not sure that this was really what Groening had in mind when he distilled this advice.

Finish your projects

He mentioned cartoons and scripts and even an unfinished novel in his drawers just sitting there.

This is one I could do with reminding myself of. It’s illustrated by the stacks of half-read books in the corner of my room and the dozens of Microsoft Word documents I have saved to my desktop of things I’ve started to write, then abandoned.

But I reckon this applies to anything. If you’ve started something and then run out of steam do what you have to do to get back on track. Take a break, go for a nap, do some star jumps and then get straight back into it. Because completing something feels great. Ticking off the to do list is like doing crack off a businessman’s chiselled abs (something I don’t have any experience with as I actually don’t really know what crack is or how it finds its way into the bloodstream, as you might be able to tell, but go with it) or putting that last piece into an increasingly difficult puzzle (something I DO know about, thank you very much). It’s magical, satisfying and makes you strut, just a little bit. So if you’ve already started that squat track, you may as well get to the end. You should always finish what you start in life, whether that’s a book or a beer. Get it done.

Don’t save your ideas for another day – more will come to you. Go with those ideas now!

I’m sure this was purely in relation to the creative process, but I think the premise can be applied to other things in life, much like the previous rule.

Act on your ideas! Do it now! Seize the day!

This is all very positive, but let’s not blindly ignore the undertone here. I take this ultimately as warning you one of two things: you will either forget your fantastic idea because you are living with early-onset dementia and your idea will be lost forever; or do it now before you die, because your demise is coming for you and coming for you fast. Life is fleeting and you will soon be in the dark, soupy swamp of the unknown. Everyone you know is going to die and soon your soul will flake away from this earth and everything you ever thought will disappear and become meaningless. 

Don’t let your critics stop you from creating

This is supposed to tell you to keep drawing/writing/creating even when people tell you it’s a waste of time. Even when they put you down. Even when they tell you you’re never going to make money with your pathetic craft.

And it does.

However, this rule only applies if you actually have talent. I mean, if you’re good at whatever creative thing you’re putting your mind to, tell those naggy bastards to shove it. Because they don’t know anything and you’re going to go on to create a multi-million dollar television series. These critics are not your friends, but are great, sloppy shits who seek only to bring you down to their shitty level by smothering you in excrement. Don’t let them smear you.

But if you’re actually quite shit, maybe your critics are trying to help. In which case, maybe you should listen to them. If what you’re creating is cringeworthy or looks like a drunk two-year-old drew it using their toes, then it’s best that your utter shitness is brought to your attention.

You can either give up and spend your time on a more profitable pursuit – like running a nursing home, which will make you millions thanks to the rapidly aging population – or getting better at it.

So, this rule can be translated to two things: don’t be friends with shits and don’t be shit. I prefer a combination of both.

Look for the hell yeah moments in life – have as many of those as possible

This is one I can really learn from.

Because these days my idea of living large is having a second bowl of All Bran. I mean, I love the taste and texture of All Bran, and I love the idea of using fibre to speed up the digestive process and I bloody love a good, cold milk. But this isn’t even considered an exciting cereal. And going for a second helping of the stuff was the most exciting thing I did with my Sunday. I don’t want the highlight of my life to be a fibre-rich cereal. I want it to at least have a few nuts or even some dried apricots, you know?

Bu then, you also don’t want to be something sweet and colourful like Fruit Loops ether. Because while it may charm you with it’s sugary taste and rainbow of colours, it is devoid of any real nutritional substance. The colours are artificial. The sweeteners are artificial. Your happiness is artificial.

No, it’s best to be a nice, decadent muesli.

Good grief, I’m comparing life to cereal. I am boring. 19-year-old Dannielle must be furious.

So there you have it! Follow these rules and you might continue living a mediocre existence until the weight of your failed attempts at success crushes you into a pancake of disappointment. But you also may possibly become the greatest thing to happen to pop culture who doesn’t start with a K.