Alas, dear reader, I patronise thee...

I solemnly swear that from this day forward, dear reader, I shall no longer use the term 'dear reader' in any further writing.

It comes across as an appropriate way to connect with an audience, to humanise the text and give you, the reader, dearest, that warm and fuzzy feeling that you are being directly spoken to.

Lately I have come across the term being used extensively, and though slightly patronisingly by the character Crispin Hershey in David Mitchell's The Bone Clocks, it is fitting as Hershey is indeed a bit of a supercilious twat.

Today, as I sat waiting for my Spanish baked eggs to cool in a cafe I had driven half an hour for, simply because my own conceited nature has forced me to go looking for such indulgences away from home and especially before my unemployment gets the better of my finances, I happened upon an article in The Age newspaper (yes in paper form, and if you need explanation as to why the link takes you to the Sydney Morning Herald whilst I mention The Age, then I am afraid we may just not be on the same page).
It was on the very real struggle of determining where to spend one's money, time and taste buds when we are presented with a plethora of options that we somehow deem better than simply throwing something from the fridge onto crockery and being done with it. A topic all too familiar to yours truly.

Upon my eyes eagerly darting onto the second paragraph, there it was. How dare she! The arrogance! You don't know me to refer to me as your dear reader!

From then I realised the danger in using such figures of speech, so I shall be mindful of it, I promise you. I want you, dear reader to be engaged with my observations and elucidations, not to drown in a torrent of overly verbose drivel.

So I bid thee farewell for now, for as they say, time is money.

Here In My Kitchen

How does one explain what you feel as you're bopping along in the kitchen in the house you grew up in to the Fear Factory cover of Gary Numan's classic, Cars through your brand new earphones that you scored for around 40% off retail due to a ticketing error, whilst a rooibos tea is brewing and you know that in five days you'll be boarding a plane for a life changing journey to the other side of the world with no firm plans other than the 13 days of accommodation you've only just booked?

Appropriately the song has ticked over to 'Shock' and the lyrics "electrified, amplified" are probably better than any description I could come up with.

This is the first day, of my last days.

Today, Monday the 16th of May 2016, was the first day of my life after QBE.

QBE is the company I spent 12, 2 months and 2 weeks at.

I started there as an 18 year old, first ever job and straight after high school.

So you can appreciate the fact that I actually had no idea what to do with myself today.

It's not like it's my first ever day off, but it was the first time I've not had work to go back to eventually. I am truly free. And I'm lost.

It felt like a Sunday, that I had wasted the day (I didn't get out of bed until 1pm) and that I needed to 'do' something, anything to make the weekend have felt productive before I go back to work. I kept trying to tell myself that today is just like a Saturday and I have tomorrow off to be productive if needed, but I can't actually trick myself into thinking it is indeed Saturday. Though at the same time, the logic of knowing that I actually don't need to do anything wouldn't kick in. 

I really wanted that feeling we've all had of waking up a little past the normal weekday wake up time with a start and have immediate stress about getting to work then realising there is no work and being able to smile and relax. That didn't happen.

And it won't happen, as I type this now I know that that's it, tomorrow I can't mope about wondering what to do, tomorrow I'm back in the gym and working out what I should do in Sydney before I leave. Doing all of the things that I have put off because of exhaustion and the impact on the mind of having to do something I no longer enjoy.

Right now though I'm going to go read a novel, because that's productive.

Note - the title to this post are lyrics from the Nine Inch Nails song, Wish.

Credit where credit is due and all that.