Originally published in The Clifton Courier, November 8, 2017

I hate the way my brain decides to deal with my problems.

I had to get up at an ungodly hour one morning last week and this was a source of stress for me. As fate (slash my poor planning skills) would have it, I ended up going to bed much later than I’d planned on the night before this early start.

Of course, I went to bed concerned about the tiny amount of sleep I’d be getting that night.

Generally, being sleep deprived when I have nothing to achieve that day is bearable. In fact, if my sleep deprivation is the result of a night painting the town a metaphorical shade of red, being tired actually puts me in high spirits. Everything is funnier. The presence of any kind of food is cause for jubilation. A simple cup of tea is even elevated to a higher state of glorification than usual (and, as anyone who has every chinked mugs with me before would attest, the level of exaltation I attribute to a cuppa is already bordering on chants of “hosanna”).

But this strange high that comes from a lack of shut-eye is generally limited to Sundays.

Having to be a functional, productive human who wears shoes* and forms complete sentences while sleep deprived is not my jam.

* Look, shoes are great. I have nothing against them. I like that they form a barrier between me, the hot bitumen, the chewed gum and the used condoms one occasionally skips over on a footpath. That’s very noble of them to expose themselves to that grime for my benefit. But sometimes you just don’t want them on your feet. Sometimes you just want socks. 

I either find myself being infuriatingly excitable and talkative to the point that my co-workers want to stab me in the eye with a ballpoint pen (or so I imagine) or being catatonically dopey.

Either way, I don’t get a lot done. It’s not a good workday. Nobody wins.

So given my brain is what controls me, and that “me” is essentially the collective firing of neurons in my skull, what I want my brain to do and what my brain actually does should be aligned.

You’d think that being faced with a limited amount of sleep, my brain would act accordingly. And considering my brain belongs to me, you would think it would act with my best interests at heart.

But it turns out doesn’t have a heart (figuratively speaking, because you could argue for and against a brain having a heart considering it is powered by a beating heart but doesn’t have an independent, internal heart within itself as a singular organ).

In fact, my brain could probably be likened to another part of the human anatomy – specifically, the orifice at the end of the digestive tract.8

* Yep, that was an arsehole joke. One for the adults. And the smart kids. I’m all about the smart kids. I want so much to impress them. 

Because my mind decided to deal with the sleep dilemma by giving me even less sleep.

It woke me up with phantom alarms and jolted me awake hours before I needed to be. It decided to screech, “you’re going to be so tired tomorrow” over my neurological PA system when it could have just run a loop of ocean sounds. It could easily just shut down, but decided that it was the time to practise the emergency flight or flight drill.

It’s almost as if my brain was doing it on purpose to torture me – like it was resentful that I didn’t feed it with the works of Tolstoy or because of how many times I took advantage of $3 basics specials* during its final stages of development.

* But this might be my brain’s fault anyway, I mean, it wasn’t my left knee that reasoned $3 for a shot of tequila was a good deal, was it?! My left knee doesn’t have that kind of authority. 

And when I did actually have to wake up, it decided to “help” the situation by playing Time Warp – one of the top 10 most annoying songs ever written – on repeat. What kind of strategy is that?! It was like my brain was taunting me, rubbing in the fact that I was going to be a wreck that day by making it even worse with the poor song choice.

Essentially, my brain was turning its figurative back on me while also laughing in my face (well, technically from behind my face, if you think about it).

I thought I called the shots up there, but it turns out I was wrong. I don’t control my brain. My brain controls me.

And it seems my brain has a sick mind.

Original published in The Clifton Courier, November 4, 2017

Something incredible happened over the weekend*.

* And by this I mean, the weekend before. Last weekend the only incredible thing that happened to me was that I was stung for TEN BUCKS for a bloody bottle of water for the table when I met some friends at cafe. I was livid. It might even become an entire column, I’m so angry. Please stand by. 

For one thing, I went into a port-a-loo barefoot and managed to avoid contracting any major diseases. This probably deserves an entry in a medical journal, as I’ve heard that feet are quite absorbent (which, I guess, is why the old Vicks vapour rub on the soles of the feet sealed in with socks is such an effective cold remedy).

But something bigger than my fortuitous swerving of a fungal foot infection happened.

It was if the stars aligned, like some higher being was up there pulling the cosmic strings from the heavens to orchestrate a miraculous event in history. It was strange, as if I’d known deep down on a cellular level for some time that this collision of fates was not only coming, but had to happen for some greater purpose. However, I didn’t realise the gravity of this apparent prophecy until it actually eventuated.

And then I knew that I was born for this moment.

So just what in the heck am I talking about? Is all this hyperbole and lukewarm poetry going to be worth the payout?

You’ve already read more than 150 words, but was this worth the investment of your time when you could have made a start on the crossword on Page 4?*

* I must admit, I’ve started doing those crosswords and hoooooy boy are they satisfying to complete. I can understand why someone would bypass my smutty dribble fora cheeky brainteaser. 

That depends on how you view things.

If you think that rounding up three people with the same, slightly obscure first name is a waste of time then perhaps the crossword is for you. But if you believe in magic, then you’ll know that this is something to be celebrated.

Because over the weekend I achieved a long-held goal of mine: I finally managed to get all three of Clifton’s Colleens together for a photo.

After years of trying to make it happen, it happened. And it was glorious.

The power of C* combined and I could feel the aftershocks reverberating inside me, almost rattling my ribcage.

* Yes, I made them make a “C” shape with their hands. 

The result saw me chalk up more than 60 likes on Instagram, but it’s hard to quantify something like that.

Especially because I think this photo represents something more than the assured legacy of an Irish name.

It represents a new phase in this marvellous continuum of adulthood for me.

With all the complaints us young folk make about growing up like the never-ending onslaught of financial responsibilities and having to call to make our own appointments, there’s a lot of negatives surrounding adulthood.

But one thing we should all raise a teacup to is the fabulous perk that is realising you can be mates with the grown-ups from your childhood. Somewhere along the line our brains matured, we could legally hang out in licensed premises and our bus drivers and the tuckshop ladies became people. And not just the people who could get us from A to B or handed out hotdogs in brown paper bags, but people like us.

When this happens, your friendship base expends beyond the people you went to school or swimming club or uni with and you have all these extra people in your life to spin a yarn with.

The even nicer thing about this is that being in a place like Clifton where you still talk to the lady who taught you how to type is that these people aren’t just limited to the parents of your schoolmates. They’re the everyday people who happened to be around as you were growing up. I like being able to rock up to the pub or the rec grounds alone, knowing there’ll be a good handful of top-notch people there to have a good chat with. Some people go their whole lives without knowing that kind of connection, so even though our water supply could be a little better*, we’re pretty lucky to be here.

* A lot better. I mean, there was a lot of calcium build up in Mum and Dad’s toilet before they finally replaced it. It always made things awkward when guests weren’t briefed on the Number Two situation for the main toilet in the house. 

On a related note, if there are any other Colleens in the area who weren’t part of the Cosmic Colleen Convention*, please make yourselves known**. I’ll see you at the show.

** I’ve since been informed that there were at least two Colleens I missed in the photo. I’m genuinely hoping to round them up for the Clifton Show in February. Hopefully this means I’ll be able to write my plane tickets home off on tax. 

* I’ve started brainstorming ideas for what this meeting could be, asking mates for what they think the collective noun for a group of Colleens should be. So far I’ve got “COLt”, “COLLection”, “COLony”, “COLLege” and “COLtivation”. I’m always open to suggestions. 

Originally published in The Clifton Courier, October 25, 2017

Over the weekend* I moved and it taught me a lot about myself.

* As in, last weekend because of the lag. 

And no, I didn’t move back to Queensland – although that’s the dream – but to a beachside neighbourhood. My idea is that being being closer to the ocean will not only improve my outlook, but magically transform me into one of those fit, toned people you see jogging along the beach who can crack walnuts with their perky, perky glutes. I’m also reasoning that the sea air will mean I’m inhaling less toxic airborne Sydney soot and will hopefully result in a thinner layer of filth coating my lungs.*

* The concerning air quality is in my top five things to complain about Sydney… out of a list of about 547. 

And while I’m yet to confirm the place is definitely not haunted*, I’m feeling like this was a good move.

* Although I’m very wary of keeping mirrors facing away from me when I switch the lights off. I wear and eye mask too, which helps. It’s not so much that I’m worried about the threat of what the paranormal might do to someone who sings as many Christmas carols as I do moving into their space, it’s more that I don’t want to see them. I’d prefer to be oblivious, even consciously so, if I have to.

My room is larger. I’ve got somewhere to line up my totally-not-creepy Harry Potter figurines. If you hold your head juuuuuust right, you can see the ocean from the lounge room.

But the journey to reach this point wasn’t so cruisey.

And by “here” I mean on my newly-built Ikea flat pack bed.

Yep, I finally lashed out. After going through my entire life not paying for a bed or a mattress I have finally invested in a raised sleeping platform of my very own.

And I have to say, I learned a lot about myself in the process.

For one thing, I had no idea how stubborn I was until the weekend.

The instructions included with the bed told me I’d need a hammer, a Phillips screwdriver and a second person to turn the pile of metal into a functional piece of furniture.

And instead of accepting the wisdom of the Swedish furniture gods, I dismissed it. Even though I had access to a hammer, multiple screwdrivers and two helpful new housemates.

I wanted to prove something. And that something was that I could put a flat pack together without help from anyone else using just my own two hands and the sheer power of my pig-headedness. What good comes from proving something like this?

Perhaps it was my way of proving to myself that Sydney hadn’t softened me, the straight-talking, would-kill-a-sheep-if-it-came-down-to-it country girl I pretend to be after two beers. I’m someone who can change her tyre herself thank you very much. I’m someone who will fix a broken blind with a hair tie and duct tape her bumper bar back on to her car. I can do things. I guess I like to think of myself as an industrial, sightly bogan kind of Beyoncé.

So a simple flat pack should be a piece of cake (in case you’re wondering, carrot cake with cream cheese icing is my current fave).

And somehow, without a single swear word I managed to pull it off. The hammer would have been overkill. The screwdriver wasn’t really necessary. And who needs living, breathing humans when you have two boxes the perfect size for holding things up?! A dingbat, that’s who.

I was amazed at how much this boosted my self-esteem (which was kind of low considering I’d stuck my hand in a toilet that morning and smelled awful from moving all day).

The second thing I learned is that I’m an intolerant, irritable person. As I crawled under the covers and nestled into a sleeping position, I was ready for a blissful night’s slumber. But when I moved and heard a faint squeak. I shifted around and there was another squeak.

With each movement a small but audible sound came from somewhere in the framework of my totes-impeccably-constructed bed and my anger grew. Each sound ground my soul just that little bit more, like a knee with the thinnest layer of cartilage.

It was unbearable.

But the third thing I learned about myself is that I can also be lazy. Because it’s been more than 24 hours and I have done nothing to fix the problem.

* Yeah, this baby’s still squeaking and it’s been a fortnight. Maybe this weekend I’ll do something about it. But then again, maybe I won’t. 

Originally published in The Clifton Courier, October 18, 2017

The other day the fire alarm went off in my building.

It was actually very convenient because I was just about to do a workout that promised to “build strength” and “build endurance” in 46 minutes. I’d been putting it off all afternoon and just when I finally psyched myself up to do it, the alarm went off. Some people think that fate is a load of hogwash but really, if that wasn’t a sign that I shouldn’t exercise than what else could it have been? It’s just too much of a coincidence.

Anyway, after the alarm sounded for a few cycles it became clear that it wasn’t stopping. And while I didn’t smell any smoke or see any signs of a fire, I thought it was probably a good idea to follow the instructions of the automated voice blaring through the speakers in the hallway.

But because I’m only one floor away from the exit, I felt like I had a bit of time to prepare myself to leave.

I know from my experience with school fire drills that you’re supposed to leave everything behind and bail in an orderly fashion, but no one ever did that. You’re not just going to leave your Nokia 3315 sitting in your pencil case for crying out loud.

I was fairly confident this was a false alarm, but the voice in my head that shouts “what if” and clangs saucepan lids together is capable of creating a lot of volume so I generally pay attention to it (I know this goes against all the parenting techniques I learned form watching Supernanny, but it’s hard to ignore a tantrum).

So in case I wouldn’t be able to enter my apartment again, I decided to grab a bag.

But then I had to work out which items from my personal inventory of crap were worth saving.

As a child I used to get very paranoid about natural disasters and planned my response to a severe flood or bushfire scenario (I also used to think Nazis were coming for me via rail thanks to my exposure to a couple of World War II movies at a pivotal time in my development… but that’s probably a story for a psychologist). As such, I would store a little plastic bag of my prized possessions so I would be ready to go. From memory, this included my teddy bear and whatever jewellery I possessed at the time that would have been valued as merely “sentimental” by an Antiques Roadshow expert. I was ever ready.

But now that I was actually in this situation I was totally unprepared.

So what did I grab? My laptop that is almost heavy enough to use as a something to break the door open. Like in Titanic when Leo teams up with the stereotypical Frenchman and the stereotypical Irish lad (whose deaths no one seems to care about) to smash a gate. You know, they rip the bench off the side of the wall with their sheer male anger and bust open the gates to save the lower class?

They could have done that with my laptop.

I also grabbed my wallet, my phone charger, a ring I was given by my sisters and an old Linotype block with clown faces on it. Then I legged it in an orderly fashion downstairs.

I still had plenty of room in my bag. It seemed everything else I was happy to let burn.

Maybe this means I’m non-materialistic. Perhaps I just don’t care about physical things. Like, maybe I’m just super enlightened and know that if I have air in my lungs and a heart that beats, I have everything I need. I could just be really spiritual, man.

Or maybe this just means that I have no valuables worth saving and my meagre possessions are worthless.

Read into it what you will.

Originally published in The Clifton Courier October 4, 2017

The other day I had a confronting thought.

This is nothing out of the ordinary. I have confronting thoughts all the time. Sometimes they’re deep unanswerable questions that only lead you down a rabbit hole of despair and confusion like “what would my life have been like if my parents decided to move to Allora instead of Clifton?” or “what if gravy powder didn’t exist?”*. Other times they’re rather uncomfortable involuntary visualisations of political leaders, people on television and whoever happens to be near me in various states of… the human condition. And then you get those startling revelations that hit you like a medicine ball* to the guts.

* And I’m not talking about those medicine balls you get at the gym. I’m talking about the ones from primary school that were full of dust and smelt like mice after being locked up in the sports shed for the past 37 years. They were not pleasant. 

And my most recent confronting thought was one of those starting revelations.

I realised the most exciting part of my day was taking probiotics.

Like the thing that got me bounding out of bed was the idea of 26 billion live bacteria having a gatho in my guts. I mean it. I open the fridge in the morning, see that little brown bottle of capsules and it gives me this weird flutter of excitement.

I don’t have any significant health issues this is going to magically solve. I wasn’t urged by a doctor to host a probiotic par-tay inside my digestive tract like that slightly dodgy best mate in Year 10 trying to con you into turning your carport into a rave cave while your parents are away.

Nothing particularly dramatic is going to happen. Maybe my immune system might be stronger. Maybe my digestion will run slightly smoother. Maybe this slight increase in my overall health will help me sleep better.

But I feel this gradual change won’t be something I can post a before and after selfie of.

And yet, I still get so excited about taking those capsules that look like they’re filled with dried yoghurt flakes/superfine dandruff.

You could take this gut-health-buzz as confirmation that I’m some kind of holistic health nut. And there is evidence to support this hypothesis. I buy bags of carrots for snacks. I jog often enough to own a pair running shorts with inbuilt bike pants. When the after-work hunger binge kicks in of an afternoon, I opt for walnuts over the slab of Swiss chocolate my housemate kindly brought back from Europe, it seems, to taunt me*.

* Lately, this has not been the case. I don’t even like the orange-chocolate combination but I still find myself sneaking a piece every now and then. My self-control is as strong as the elastic on a pair of well-worn undies that came out of a five pack at Coles. 

But then, there is also evidence to counteract this wellness claim. Most of my exercise is based purely on a desire to have a tight-looking rig. I once found an old Easter egg under the bed of my current apartment and, not knowing how long the religious-themed confection had been under the bed, ate it. And one of my key “health rules” is “don’t drink unless you’re drinking to get drunk”. So… I could be a healthier health nut.

I think perhaps it means that I am simply at the point in my life when I can derive excitement and joy from the simple things.

I mean, I recently cleaned the dank, grimy sink strainers using bi carb soda and was so impressed with the result, I told practically everyone about it. I sent multiple “after” photos to friends and acquaintances on Snapchat. It boosted my mood by at least 97 per cent.

And when I think about it, those times when I actually use toilet bowl cleaner are great. I find myself lingering in the bathroom just to get a glimpse of that white, shiny porcelain. I used to think the women’s reactions on toilet cleaning commercials (because apparently the advertising world thinks that only women can clean stuff, as if a set of ovaries is a prerequisite for not wanting to contract an e. coli infection from a filthy toilet bowl) were over exaggerated. They were not. I realised this after the results of a bathroom deep clean left me strutting around with the kind of glow you get from listening to an empowering Beyoncé song.

So yeah, I’m finding happiness in the simple things. While that sounds mind-numbingly mild, maybe it’s not so confronting after all. Because the simple things really make my day. And as the great Sheryl Crowe once sang, “if it makes you happy, it can’t be that bad”.

I feel like if my day isn’t “that bad”, then surely that must be good – right?

** Also the title is a direct quote from Kris Jenner, who was making fun of Kim for being boring. She says it in a fabulous deep voice which is fun to mimic and oddly relevant to man conversations with my sisters.