Luck
At the moment I’m supposed to be busy at making yet another portfolio for yet another agency. But I need to minimise Illustratior and InDesign for just a few minutes to give myself a break. I need to take a second to appreciate how lucky I really am.
First of all, I managed to have a civil conversation with my mum when she came home from work yesterday. Normally when she comes home from work she whines about how nobody respects her at her job. Normally it’s followed by the complimentary war story of a rude customer. Then after that she normally has a nap on the couch while I make dinner. Last night was different. She took the time to talk to me about me moving away from home. This time without the cursing, screaming and slamming of doors. She told me that I have her support. But she felt that if I move to Wellington there will be nobody to look after me. Coming from her, that’s a pretty much a victory.
Next I have to be thankful for a new friend of mine: Michelle. She’s so kind hearted. She told me she had been praying for me in hopes that I will find the job that I want. Out of all the friends I told about moving to Wellington - she has been the most supportive. A small gesture such as prayer really has helped me keep my spirits up. The past couple of days I’ve been feeling really low because of my job hunt. Most places I applied for didn’t even bother to reply to my expression of intrest me at all.
This morning things took a change for the better. Ryan had told me that he saw someone looking for a junior graphic designer on twitter. He passed me her contact details and hopefully my folio will be sitting in her inbox by Sunday morning. Like how damn lucky I am? That he just-so-happened to be online when she posted the job listing? I really do feel like there’s someone watching over me and helping me find my way to Wellington.
Anyway, I’ve gotta run. I have a Lucy’s birthday celebration to go to. I have to get a bit more done on my folio, make dinner AND get ready before 7pm. When I go out with Lucy and her friends I always have to make the extra effort to look presentable. She always takes a million and one photos at events. Needless to say, I dont want to look like a zombie infront of everyone on Facebook…
I hope everyone has a relaxing weekend. Happy Friday!
♡ Nina-Sue.
URL / Username change
Incase you’re wondering, I’ve changed my url/username to ‘nina-sue’. I’ve had a problem recently with a stalker, hopefully this will stop the problem and then I’ll feel a lot safer here on tumblr. If the problem persists I’ll probably just disable anon asks. I really don’t want to do that because I love talking to everyone here on Tumblr ❤
Sorry for my moment of weakness.
Sorry for all of you that had to witness my moment of verbal weakness here on tumblr. You see the Wellington plan has gone terribly wrong. Because of the new student loan policies anounced in the new budget, I’m not sure if I’ll be able to keep studying or not. Either way, I’ll probably have to work for about 6 months in order to save up enough to go now…
Man life sucks sometimes. I really wish I would stop having such horrible luck. Hopefully I’ll have the willpower to write you something to explain what on earth is going on, but for now I’m going to take my sorrows out on Diablo 3.
Happy Friday.
Going back to Auckland tonight. I wanna stay in Wellington… It’s not fair.
12th of May in bulletpoints
- I gotot a box of white chocolate guylain chocolates and a packet of pascall berry swirl marshmallows. They look so cute, but I can’t see why they’re labeled ‘berry flavour’. They just taste like regular marshmallows. doesn’t matter. I got both of these items for $2.10.
- I reached half way on my stock-take. At Ikes we don’t do stocktake like normal shops. Instead we have little clipboards and pens. We count everything individually and work things out with calculators. Down to the buttons. I have to admit I’ve been a little bitchy whilst doing it over the last month. But who can blame me? I’m up to 40 pages of stocktake. They gave me the largest section of the shop. And I’m only here for 2 days a week for crying out loud! Anyway, I’m just trying to tell myself it’s the last stocktake I’ll do at Ikes before leaving for Wellington for good. I hope.
- I Filed my tax return. Yay free money! (although I did earn it technically speaking). The return I’ll be getting is smaller than expected. But it all goes into the Wellington fund, with all the rest of my savings. It takes a lot of willpower to not spend money. Gr.
- I finished ‘The Hunger Games’ by Suzanne Collins this afternoon. I actually started reading it on Monday. I nailed 330 pages in one sitting, but then I lost interest to read the last 120 pages (ish) since I saw the movie first. Fail. In addition I learnt today that you should never read during breaks at work. I didn’t want to put the book down again once I had started reading again!
- I had a dream about my friend Sascha living in New Zealand again. I told him that I was sad when I woke up to find he wasn’t here at all. He messaged instantly to tell me he had dreamed of me too! Call me cooky but this kinda stuff freaks me out. It’s like subconsciously we made a connection to remind us to contact each other. It’s nice to hear he thinks of me still while going about his life in Germany.
10:30pm and I’m off to bed. Tomorow morning I will get up and wish Mum a happy mothers day (even though I’m fighting with her) and then I’ll be gone for a whole week. I can’t wait to get to Wellington. On Sunday I’m staying with Ryan. The best part about his flat, is there’s no reception in his part of Karori. No recpetion = No problem and most importantly… no nagging phonecalls from mum.
Morning After
There’s a feeling of ‘the calm after the storm’ in our house at the moment because I’m the only one home at the moment. Again. I have no problem with that. Because when my parents aren’t home the house is blissfully quiet.
Waking up this morning was lovely. I woke up naturally by the sunlight flooding my room, a nice message from Haru whom I went to Natcoll with in 2009. Thanks for that, I really needed it. And I got a nice email Fishpond.co.nz. A month ago I ordered the hunger games trilogy from them. Except they sent me an extra copy of ‘catching fire’ by accident. They told me to keep the extra copy. Yay! I’m thinking that I should either sell it and add the money to my Wellington fund or donate it to the Takapuna library.
Anyway, enough with the grumpy blogging. I know nobody likes to read ranty blogs. I’ve decided that I’m going go to Wellington for a break on Sunday. I know it’s not healthy to avoid your problems. But I just need to get out. I’m sure my parents will appreciate the week without me.
Next week is Ryan’s graduation ceremony and Berni is going a little crazy too this week. Her boyfriend recently left for 7 week trip to Europe or something. Normally she’s not the clingy type. But all of a sudden she’s morphed into this crazy organisational control freak . She’s started organising her 21st birthday party. Not that it’s weird or anything. But the way she’s drafted 7 friends to be her ‘organising committee’ to help her is a little… extreme. I mean, I dont think there will be many more than 7 of us going. I got drafted into the ‘graphic designer’ role. GOD. This always happens, graphic designers, I know you feel me on this. How come we always end up designing endless invites, band posters, and other stuff? Oh well, I’m not doing anything with my time at the moment. And Bernadette has been my friend since high school, so I won’t say no.
I’m determined to have a productive happy day today. Even if it’s midday already. I have packing and washing to do. I also have to sort out some things I want to be left in Wellington at my friend’s place. Also if time permits I’d like to talk a walk to the supermarket to get some piping bags for some cupcakes I want to make for a friends birthday.
And more importantly, I don’t want to be home when mum arrives. Whatever time that is.
Parental barrier
I feel so isolated. For the past 2 weeks I’ve sat at home alone in my room. I don’t know what to do with myself. I seem to be suffering from this crippling sickness that never goes away. It has no physical symptoms and I feel no pain. I just feel empty and unfulfilled. I feel anxious to move on with my life, but I don’t know how. It’s just easier to sit in my room and watch reruns of gossip girl on demand. Everything seems to be too much effort, all because of this crippling sickness seems to have a chokehold on my life.
I’m dying to get out into this ‘real world’ and be a part of it. Except my parents are still trying to shelter me from it at the ripe ‘ol age of 21. Every single day they still instruct me on how to do day to day things. It’s beginning to drive me up the wall. It’s like they think I’m not capable of doing things on my own without their guidance. For example tonight when I cooked them dinner (I do so almost every night now) - my dad watched me like a hawk and gave me prompts for everything. From cooking the veggies setting the cutlery correctly… I know he’s just trying to teach me something, but it’s become such a regular occurrence that it feels condescending.
I want to move out of home, but to tell you the truth, I’m terrified. The way they’ve constantly babied me all through my life has led to me feeling fearful of moving out of home. I tried to tell dad I wanted to move out of home a couple weeks ago. Obviously because my mother is completely bonkers, I didn’t want to bring the subject up with her (yet). I thought I would discuss it with my dad first, since he’s always been the more understanding between the two of them. But the only time I get to see dad one-on-one during the week is on sunday mornings when he drives to work. Because the drive to work is only 5 minutes, I chose to break the news to dad in the supermarket that evening, since it was the only window of opportunity I had.
Not my brightest moment.
We ended up having an all-mighty fight in the vegetable isle in countdown. Luckily for me it was 8pm on a Sunday, so hardly any people were around.
What gets me about my parents is they’re always the first people to criticise me. My mother’s favorite card to play in an argument is ‘When I was you’re age Nina-Sue, I was married and your father and I bought our first home in Timaru!’. Well mum, I’ve got news for you: this isn’t the 70’s anymore. Most 21 year olds are lucky to have even graduated from university by my age let alone get married. She’s so infuriating the way she uses that example. Times have changed completely. You just fail to see it.
What irritates me the most, is I don’t have the confidence to stand up to them. They make me feel like their happiness is dependent on me and what I do. The little confidence they gave me is easily destroyed in seconds when they lecture me about how they know whats best for me. How can anyone live with this pressure? I just want to run away and hide. Which is why I have decided I want to move to Wellington.
I’ve had this idea in my head for a couple of months now. Every time I tell someone new, it feels a little bit more realistic. Like when I kept the secret to myself it felt like it could never eventuate. I’ve saved a little money, and I’ve talked to a few friends about flatting and everything looks like it’s possible. The only problem is, I’m too scared to tell my parents. All because I don’t want them to be disappointed in my ‘poor life choices’. I want my parents to respect me. But it never feels like I’ll earn it at this rate.
Moving to Wellington will be a great financial risk. But I cannot stay in Auckland any longer. I hate this place. There’s nothing keeping me here apart from my parents and a handfull of friends. I hate how Auckland is a city divided because of the 4 areas. I hate how far away everything is. I hate how poor the public transport is. I hate the weather and most of all I hate how unfriendly everyone is all the time. That all makes for a pretty good reason to leave in my books. Of course, this all depends on whether or not I get offered a place at the Wellington Natcoll to study web design. It all seems so overwhelming. But I’m making baby steps. I want this to be the first of many good things I’ll do to make myself a better person.
I have to manage to stand up for my parents. Because if I don’t learn to stand up for me, who will?
Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m being yelled at for not doing the washing correctly.
Quick update: After being yelled at for not doing the washing correctly my mother continued to scream at me for 3 hours because I accidentally broke her ring binder. I can’t take this anymore. I just want to run away from home.
Rose tinted glasses
At the moment I’m going through a phase of sifting through all my belongings and sorting things I want to keep and those I dont. Being a design student - I have diaries upon dairies of words, sketches, digrams and samples. Along with the small library of black covered books, I have all sorts of momentos and miscellaneous objects. All have their special memories embedded in them. I’m a horribly sentimental personal - it leads to me hoarding even the smallest and useless things.
Today i found a beautiful old box full of various gifts from an ex boyfriend of mine. I’ve never talked about this person before on my blog because I felt like it was unfair to talk about him with you when I was dating Chris because there were unresolved feelings between me and that person. Of course, it’s been years - but I never felt like I got closure.
For his privacy I’m going to call this person Henry. Henry and I briefly dated for a year and a bit during the last year of high school and first university. Henry and I were perfect. In my eyes at least. We never fought, and things were easy. Nothing more than an innocent relationship. We simply enjoyed each others company. However our relationship was doomed from the start. He moved to south island to pursue his university dreams and I remained here in Auckland. As time went by, our group of friends drifted and we all fell appart. And unlike any of the others - my world fell apart as he dropped the bomb. He broke up with me. I was left with the shards of the former life of high school. Unable to put them back together. I had none of my high school friends to help me through this time and I didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life. During this time I suffered greatly with mental illness. Of course, my group of friends never found out until months later. Only one of them seemed to care and that person was Henry. I had no choice to distance myself from him and burry myself in work to distract myself from getting too attached to him again.
I looked through all the various things in a the box. Photos, a dried corsage from the school ball, a string of rainbow origami cranes and a helium balloon (that due to a miracle of science) was still inflated. The balloon reminded me of Henry had tried so many times with me to be my friend after the break up. But each time I deemed it to be too difficult emotionally. It took me 2 years to manage to pull together the strength to accept his friend request. Time and time again he had tried to rebuild our friendship. But I was too scared. Against all odds, the little silver shaped balloon still was inflated. As if it was a sign for me that I should try to patch things up with him. After all, he never gave up on my friendship. So why should I? I was the only thing stopping him from being my friend.
I thought about it for a while, I wanted to tell him I still had the balloon in the least creepish way as possible. After all, I didn’t want him to think I was one of those crazy exes who hung out in bushes behind his house while sorting through his garbage. It wouldn’t be hard to start conversation with him. But I didn’t know where to start, so I looked up his Facebook page to see if there was anything I could start a conversation about with him. Then I saw Julia.
On his Facebook timeline there were cute coupley photos with him and her family, various links sent between one another with messages like ‘This song is for you’ and ‘We should have dinner here sometime’ etc. My heart sank instantly. Not because he had moved on, but because I realised that my timing was too late. For me to bring the topic of the balloon up in a conversation could potentially upset his new girlfriend. And that’s the last thing I want for him. So with those thoughts in my head, I quietly packed up my box of memories and stored them back in the wardrobe.
When looking back on past lovers it’s easy to look at the with rose tinted glasses. They feel oh-so-familiar. But that’s the problem. People move, people change, people’s lives take them in different directions. And whats most important - that person will never be the same as you remember them. While the memory of who they used to be is so raw, the reality of who they are now could be completely different. People meet to have impacts on each others lives and teach them lessons. To be frank, I learnt my lessons from Henry. He taught me how to be strong. Without him I wouldn’t be the person I am today, and if I ever see him again I will tell him that. But for now, the only way I can show that I want to be his friend is to stay my distance. For now, I will store my balloon away in my memory box until there is a better time. If ever.
I’d really like to start an illustration blog, but I’m way too unmotivated to keep it active and interesting.
Seriously. How do illustrators keep themselves so inspired all the time? it’s such a mission.
