A decade in review

A friend (and countless lists) have inspired me to blog. Since I haven't blogged in a while, (being busy with doing two TAFE courses) there is a lot to blog about, or you'd think there would be? Anyways, here is my look back at the year, and decade that was.

Living out of home can suck

Due to circumstances outside my control I found myself being a transient in this great city, moving from suburb to suburb (at least once a year on average) during the majority of the decade. Living with various strange individuals, cooking spag bol with spam (it tasted awful) and having people fuck in your room (other than you) can be rather unsettling. On the other hand, when I was living by myself I had some great times. But then I lost my job. And then I moved back home.

Living at home can suck too

So yes, I lose my job, have bugger all money, move back home. Did I hear the sound of a million women's legs closing? I thought I did. There is nothing worse than living at home, no job and no car. Or quoting Young MC "Got no money and you got no car. Then you've got no woman and there you are".

Women

I wonder why I bothered to put this paragraph in, but yes, this decade did have a bit more action in that department than the decades preceeding it. But still, in the end I am no better off than I am when I started the noughties, so that makes this a dead rubber! So, why am I in this situation where I have no lady friend to speak of? One theory for me (coming from the 40 year old virgin) is that I have to stop putting the pussy on a pedestal. I treat these ladies with too much respect, too much planning, etc and that I need to just take risks.

Being selfish

Wow, these are kinda falling into each other these things. My mentor has recently told me to be more selfish (and take risks). This decade I spent the majority of it helping family in one way or another (either me being a live in maid, or someone living in my flat) and due to being unselfish, I have lost opportunities that could have benefitted me somehow. Or as one teacher said this year, "Opportunity cost".

To dream the impossible dream

So, this time 10 years ago my dream was to be on radio as a DJ. Nothing much has changed. The other day though, when trying to do a demo for radio, I was doing a demo as a "time and temp" announcer. My radio teacher told me that perhaps being a DJ wasn't for me. I spoke to a mate and she said that she had never imagined me to be a time and temp DJ. Neither had I. So, maybe my demo should be different to being Mr Jukebox. I had always imagined myself as someone who would be able to use satire and comedy to entertain. Someone like Vic Davies, Shaun Micallef or David Mitchell.

Happiness

Over the ten years I'd been looking for happiness, but first I had to define what happiness was. What makes me happy? Well, the last time I was happy this year was when I went overseas and spent a few weeks with my (ex) lady friend across the sea. Upon returning back I thought that that was a place where I could be happy. But, instead, I have been told not to come back. Here I was thinking that NZ was a nice place where you're not judged and people are even nicer than Australia, but I guess I was wrong. So, the search for happiness continues it seems.

What to do?

So, with all that happening, what do I do? I have some ideas I might develop, I've got stuff to do before I start my Business degree in March, so I will be giving it a red hot go.

Three out of three will be great

[Hazem kicking the goal to get the NRL record]

Everyone has goals in life – I have three things I need to be successful in my eyes.

Sure, the approval of my father would come in close fourth but there are three things that if all the stars are aligned and those things happened at once would be bloody awesome.

One: be happy at home.

Have a nice place to live in. Somewhere I can bring mates over, make a noise. Who cares? I can play that Meat Loaf CD as loud as I want. I can sing Take On Me on Sing Star all night if I want to.

Two: be happy at work

A job where I go to work and I’m happy to be there. The old saying goes that if you’re happy at work – it’s not really work is it? Well I’d love to be in that situation again. There’s only one time when I was truly happy at work and where I left there on great terms. Everywhere else has been average in one way or another.

Three: be happy in my heart.

To have a girlfriend/wife/whatever and be so damn happy that all my happiness is just shining everywhere to see.

I’ve had two of the three (home/work) but never three. Right now I have none.

With nine more months of TAFE, I hope to get a job in radio early next year and then have my own place in the country and we’ll see what happens from there. A lot of planning and procrastination has gotten me to where I am right now. I guess we’ll see what happens.

Being positive

It's good to be positive through the bad times.

I have been unemployed for about three months now, although it seems a lot longer. Yeah it's tough, but you've gotta keep being positive about the future and the big picture.



[It's good to be positive - but maybe not as positive as this bloke!]

So today has been a strange day. I have gone from being positive (thanks to some berry V which always hits the spot) and doing an assignment with a disorganised (and I think not commited) assignment partner to being late to class (due to having to take extra time to finish off said assignment) to a job interview which I thought was good but I didn't say the magic words (great place, great job yada yada - I was just enthusiastic and smiling) to coming home and having my computer shit itself.

Aaah yes, my wonderful computer. This year alone it has killed off 19 years of songs I wrote, 1 musical, 1 short film, 12 years of web work, 10 years of fantasy football data and a whole lot of other stuff.

You may say "Make a backup" - I did.. but it was done about a year ago. And now that doesn't want to work either! Maybe one day it shall work - or I will have enough dosh to take it down to forensics.

But yes, back to being positive. Sure it may be the generous amounts of caffiene via two bottles of V, a can of Mother and a mocha, but it is good to be positive.

I'm not normally a bubbly type of person - I've been known to be dryer than the Simpson desert, but it is good to be positive and to smile.

I'm usually laidback enough for people to think "he doesn't give a shit" but sometimes that doesn't work and you need to make more effort.

So I say - you don't need to be like Travis from Big Brother - you don't need to be a pushover that just serves people (Lord knows I've been that to many people in the past...), but it is good to be positive.

Do positive things, take positive actions.

PS: I know you might think me "criticising" things like the Olympics as above may be negative. I tend to think of myself as a "media critic". So, I do need to be critical sometimes - as well all need to be - but it is good not be critical all the time in life itself. If life is getting bad, perhaps it is time to make positive steps to make it be good. I know one person who did that and she will reap the rewards in time.

New Thing Of The Week: Contact my teacher!

[he's not quite Robin Williams but he's still pretty inspirational]

The other day something strange happened.

Someone thought I was good!

I've lived all my life with not much motivation from my Dad yet when my teacher (the Robin William type) said "I reckon I'd have a job for you at my (radio) station" I didn't think anything of it.

But later on, after leaving the class early to go look after my little sister I thought about it more and more - I realised I should have probably talked to him more about it.

You see, he does run a radio station in the country and I wouldn't have to move to the country to work for them - but was he serious?

If I were to get a job there it would pretty much complete the majority of HAPPY resolution.

I ended up emailing him but got the wrong email - I then passed on a message from another teacher to give to him - hoping he will contact me.

It's all about experience, and to think that I could go and do something that is 100x better than what I thought I would get out of this (instead of community radio - a real radio job), that would be great.

As always, I will let youse know.

New Thing Of The Week: Rock TAFE

TAFE is going well, but I have a major assignment coming up - radio play based on the history of radio, the technology and the future.

We chose our groups of 3 for the presentation and I chose Josh (not to be confused with another Josh) and Sebastian.

Sebastian left TAFE a week later and never came back.

Now Josh (at TAFE) has been somewhat amiss and unfortunately hasn't been to as many classes as required so I ended up writing the whole play myself.

Josh did do some revisions but other than that I basically wrote the thing in half an hour.

I got 91% for my audio editing assignment, so I hope to go as well this time.

The play is pretty much 80% filler (humour, drama) and 20% information - so I'm not sure how that will go.

Life's pretty good actually

[The Beatles couldn't've said it any better...]

On Valentine's Day I felt happy for the first ever.

I've never had a Valentine but yeah, on that day I decided to give Anne-Marie a gift and yeah, she loved it. She was so surprised.

That felt good.

I hear that half her family now knows about the gift and I'm not sure whether that's a good thing or not, but it can't hurt.

Life's going so well that as well as the above I just got a semi-promotion which gives me more responsibility as well as taking me off the phones for half the day.

In a few months I will go for a raise as well and hopefully hit that sweet number that I want for my salary.

And I just did my first full week of TAFE and while a lot of it is revision to me I am learning stuff and there are some nice people there also.

So, overall life is pretty good. All I need is to see Cass more often and get my little brother out of this rut he is in and things will be pretty much perfect.

New Thing Of The Week: Join TAFE

[Actors pose as TAFE students for this photo from the official website. How do I know they're actors? TAFE students never look like they're actually studying!]

So, last night I went to TAFE's "information session" (really a selection night where you are sized up against other people to see if you can take part) in the hope of getting into TAFE.

Last year I missed the info session due to being sick - I had a doctor's certificate but as Monica Lewinsky might say - no cigar.

Six months later I went to the info session for the same course, the TAFE website said that evening sessions were available for the course I wanted.. when I rocked up I was told this was wrong and they blamed the website team and said to come back in six months. Great! A year wasted!

So, I was a bit worried when I got to TAFE last night and there were 100 people going for a 15 person class. I might be a multi-skilled entertaining son of a gun but as to being compared to others I'm a bit pessimistic.

How I was wrong though. Today I got a phone call and an email asking me to take part in this 6 month course.

Woohoo! I'm really happy and I officially become a TAFE student on Monday when I enrol.

Josh today asked "What are you going to do with the skills that you get from TAFE?" and while it may only be a short course, I will still get something out of it.

Good things come to those who wait. So, Cronulla Sharks fans have been waiting too long. Hehe