Suits, glasses, Hawthorn

Today began like a normal day. Alarm went off and I hit snooze three times before actually rising from my delightful slumber. I showered, with the usual process of hair, ears, body but after that - things began to go differently. When I made my way to my room, I dried myself off and began to suit up. "Suit up?!" Yes, that's right. Why would I do this on a Tuesday morning, you might ask, well in order to attempt to achieve some financial interdependency I've been searching for a job for quite some time now. This morning marked my first interview.

 

Oh. Yeah.

It took place at Dick Smith, Eastland Shopping Centre. It's a good store, with a wide variety of electronic products. I guess there Power House stores, such as the one at Knox City are very similar to Harvey Norman, however the one at Eastland is much smaller, but stocks similar items in smaller quantity. Anyway, they were pretty swamped, so I had to wait a while before the interview began. However, it was actually not as long as I expected, and the assistant manager (who interviewed me) was really friendly about the whole process. I think I impressed. He said they had to look over the candidates again, but they'd let me know by Thursday whether or not I'd get a second interview (the next stage in the process). So thumbs up!

Afterwards I headed over to Knox and picked up my new specs, and da-yum! They are nice. Here's some photos of them. The first two photos are the standard glasses, and the latter two are the sunglasses.

They've got a thicker frame than my old ones, but they're still blue

 Naturally this means they're a lot more sturdy. The frame - not because they're blue :3

  These are a lot thinner than my previous sunnies, and are a sleek black

 

The best thing about these ones is they won't fall off my head :3

Anyway, I'm heading out to the Hawthorn tonight for a friend's birthday. I reckon it will be a miracle if I stay for longer than an hour. I hate that place. Still, I'm trying to get a better outlook on life - and I haven't seen so many people for so long, so I feel obliged to attend. I do want to attend, I'm just sure I won't enjoy it - that's the catch. Oh well, tomorrow's another day. To your health!

Egglicious

So blogy faithful, it's that time of morning again when I inform you of my daily activities. To begin with let's talk about juice. I really like juice - this may be an effect of disliking soft drink with a passion, but even so - it kicks arse! Apple and Blackcurrant juice is the culprit this evening, with around 7-8 glasses, but Orange Juice is another prime time appearance. It makes me wonder how wine can taste so bad - it's basically the same idea. Ah well, no time to ponder such life changing questions, let's get on to some lighting fast bursts of my interesting, daily activities.

 That beret... is horrible

I awoke at around noon, despite my proclaimed 9am wake up, that I declared on D.I.D (a group blog, with an unclear purpose and general lack of themes, much like this one - but occasionally entertaining) yestereve. One of the main disadvantages of waking up around noon is you become confused about meal times. "Do I eat breakfast, or do I eat lunch?", I hear my body say. "I don't know", comes my reply and together, we stand looking at the pantry shelves open the fridge two or three times, until eventually we find a hardboiled egg, from the day before and eat it. That's the great thing about egg, you can consider it any type of meal. Yes, even desert. Bring on the cakes. It's simply a wonderful piece of food, and because of its aforementioned versatility, I didn't feel guilty when I returned about an hour later, for some Vitabrits.

Don't feel guilty at all. Nup.

I think you know you've wasted time, when you can't remember what you spent time doing - and that's exactly what ensued after breakfast. It involved the Internet (most likely Facebook and YouTube) - but anything that involves the Internet and can't be recalled is a waste of time. I did play some guitar afterwards though and learnt the main bass line of "Jungle Groove" from Donkey Kong Country. Damn, it's catchy. However I didn't play anything particularly breath taking, nor enlighten my audience (which was Christoph for all of 2 minutes). After that I had a shower. It was a good shower, and it involved music. Mum had given me a ring a while earlier, saying she'd be home around 2.45pm, as we were to head over to Knox, so I could get my eyes checked at Specsavers and pic up some new glasses. My shower ended at 2.30pm, so I leisurely took my time as I dressed. Mid-way through said dressing, Mother rings, informing me she's practically already home, and wants me to meet me on the street. Great time estimating skills Mum.

So anyway once we'd found a park and Mum stopped complaining about a really slow driver, we arrived at Specsavers and after a couple of minutes waiting, one of the receptionists did some strange test. I look inside a standard eye testing scope thingo, but it had hot air balloons as the imagery. Very weird. She then informed me that the Optometrist would call me when she was ready, and I could go look at frames and what not. I found a nice pair of sunnies, nice and black, but sturdy too - and decided they'd be the go. Then Sanja, the wonderful Optometrist, began my test. It was pretty standard. Two lens strengths, "which one is clearer? Or about the same?" Nothing new there. My eyes have degraded a little, I've gone down another 0.25, bringing me to a -1.25. Nothing too serious, and probably a combination of expected deterioration with age, and enhanced perception which comes with mental maturity. After that picked up two pairs of glasses (2 for the price of 1), but they won't be ready for around 2 weeks. However, photos and comments will ensue shortly after their arrival.

When I arrived home, I'm once again not sure what I did - and therefore it was a waste of time. I probably surfed the net a bit, posted on Vooks and chillaxed to some awesome video game remixes. Eventually, Dad arrived and he took me down to Shell for some petrol. That was very kind of him. Unfortunately, the pump was acting up and I got petrol on the side of the car, but that's hardly the end of the world. Upon returning home, I got going with some Super Luigi Galaxy (I have 57 stars to go before I begin Super Mario Galaxy 2) and then I completely re-did the layout/theme of both this blog and The Game Over Blog - they both look delicious now.

I then spoke to my wonderful girlfriend Kim, who wasn't in the best of moods - and despite my best efforts, her mood did not improve much. It's difficult not being able to just be by her side, but I'm committed to holding on until it's easier for both of us. Eventually things will turn out fine, we just have to stay positive and keep chipping away at the mountain the separates us. The important thing to remember is - mountains are climbable. No matter how tall they appear. I finally got to sleep around 4am, which wasn't very ideal and I'm hoping to rectify this tomorrow (which as of writing, is now tonight - however I woke up at 2pm, which won't help).

So pretty <3 (Kim, not me)

Where do we go, where do we go now?

Hello readers! There isn't many of you - but that's my fault. Nothing worse than an infrequent blogger - but to be honest, I've got some excuses. I'm actually trying to peg my efforts at something - and I'm achieving it, to a degree. The last time I graced this blog with mediocre vocabularly was over 3 months ago, and much has changed. In fact now, I should be able to post here at least monthly - (I would say weekly, but lets not get hasty, I have things I need to do).

If you recall (or indeed just read my previous post), I was trying to sort out all of that University hoo-ha, to little avail. The mission seemed simple, complete the degree, worry from there. However I forgot one crucial factor. Motivation. The best way to generate motivation is to visualise the outcome. For me, the completion of that degree had no clear income. The only income I could conjure up in my imagination was me receiving a diploma, wearing a graduatory scholar's hat - and to be frank, it didn't seem particularly awe inspiring.

  Although to be honest, this does look hella' fun

So with no motivation, everything began to slip. First I fell behind in Japanese. Not just a little behind, very behind. The pace was alarming. I recall in high school, my friends and I used to comment on how slow our German studies were. Heh, well the Japanese language faculty at Monash University don't know the meaning of the term slow, nor moderate speed for that matter. What I did (which if anyone reads this is going in to an art degree heed my warning), was assume that one or two subjects would be the bulk of my work load, and ultimately shape my degree, while the other two would be more "hobby" subjects - i.e. skills to pick up along he way for fun. No subject at Monash is structured this way. They are all treated as if you will eventually major in them. I learnt it the hard way and was forced to discontinue my unit.

This made me realise just how career focused everyone around me one. Whether they wanted to be doctors, IT specialists, engineers or business associates - everyone had at least a vague idea of where they were going. I did not. The epiphany caused the complete and utter destruction of my motivation. My work rate for both History and Psychology plummeted, and a mild interest in Literature was the only cause for any work I got done. About a week before my final exams, I discontinued both History and Psychology - as I hadn't done a drop of learning for either after the mid-semester break. I did however, manage to complete my Literatue unit and probably a level in between half-arsed and studious. Average, I guess you would say. Anyway, I'll be getting my results for the unit back tomorrow, but honestly, they mean little to me.

 "We're doctors - behold  our fashion sense!"

"Hang on, hang on", I hear you say, "You dropped out of University?" Well no, I haven't technically dropped out. I'm on defferal for 12 months, but yes, I don't particularly wish to get back. The only conceivable way I can see myself returning, is if I'm focused on what I want to do, and feel I require tertiary education to do it. "Did you think this through at all? What are you going to do now?" You know, I think we should ban you asking questions from now on audience, I'm sure you're creating the illusion that I'm insane. Ahem, but yes. I did think this all through. I discussed it with many a people: my mother, my girlfriend and many friends and eventually came to the conclusion that I needed to be doing something that would motivate me. The idea would be to get a job, and hope that it would at least, provide me some financial independency. "So what are you doing now?" Shut up.

My first call to port was to work out what I wanted to do with myself in live, or at least strive for. This took a lot of time and effort. I spent many hours pondering what I could actually do with myself. I couldn't seem to list any real skills or areas I excelled in. Ironically, I could have found the answers in a very simple way. You see, there are probably six things I enjoy most in life. Spending time with my friends and family, reading, writing, watching films, listening to music and playing video games. Yes, I'm not particularly interesting. Oh wait, I forgot to include "making random noises/flapping my arms all over the place/screaming". Alright, I'm kinda interesting. However I never made the connection that some of these things, perhaps even all of them, could be formulated into a career. This is how I discovered my dream job. "Dream Job? How lame". Seriously, audience, you're killing me here!  Anway, yes. Dream Job. Video Game Journalist. It's doable and it incorporates everything I love: story, music, cinematics, gameplay, writing, reading and even an social element of discussion. Maybe not the screaming and yelling stuff, but I do that when exciting news is announced, so all is forgiven.

 An artist's impression of my crazed antics

So how did I start down this road? Well my first step was to create a second blog. The Game Over Blog, is my answer to this. It's been up for a few months now, and I used it as a platform to both reveal some opinions of mine regarding the industry and its developments and also to hone my writing skills. I took it a step further this month (July), by applying for a volunteer news writing postition at Vooks, one of Australia's premier Nintendo websites. I've written a few articles there now, and you're bound to stumble across one by me if you search through the latest headlines. Everything is going well in this department - the dream job is heading places. "How about that financial independency job?" Well this is a problem.

I'm finding it difficult to acquire work. I think it's because of my age, and lack of experience. I'm too old for places like Kmart, but not experienced enough for places like Dick Smith. It's a vicious cycle. I've posted resumes online, and carted a few around to different shops, but no responses as of yet. However, I'm admant I will get there. I've had my license for about 3 weeks now, and it's helping greatly with independency. It's a little painful though, as not having a job makes the fuel cost hurt. A lot. My best option is to just keep at it. There isn't really much more I can do. In the mean time I can use the extra free time to work on the dream job concept.

Speaking of that concept, what is the next step?  This is where the current dilemna lies. If I lived in Sydney, the answer would be easy. Work Experience. However, for some strange reason, nearly all Australian video game publications are located in Sydney making this near impossible. I'm searching for some in Melbourne, but so far to no avail. If anyone knows anywhere that might be suitable, please give me a line. In this light however, my options are limited. I will probably press the question to a contact of mine, who is in the industry and see what he thinks/knows. However, if there is no work experience available in Victoria, what will I do? Well I think the best thing to do would be to strengthen my position at Vooks as much as possible. I intend to do this anyway, but there will be extra drive there if I can possible gain some freelance work from other online publications through my efforts.

Looks like you're not the only thing Sydney has afterall

Honestly my blogy faithful, this is a mountain we are all faced with sometime in our life. Some deal with it well and easily, some don't, but ultimately the important thing is we support each other, and do not judge individuals just because they haven't found their path in life. We're still teenagers after all. We're not smart, the world tells us this all the time. So if we're not smart, we can't be expected to know what we want to do over night, now can we?

I hope my friends who are students enjoy their Semester 1 break, and those that aren't, like myself, are putting their best into their endeavours, what ever they may be. We're all in this together.