I've never dreamt of what I do

Am I lucky? I find myself in a fulfilling job - yet today as I lounge around my house, trying to dose myself through the pain of the mystery boil, I wonder how I got here.

How did I become a writer?

I often find myself correcting myself or my mother when I am introduced. I do not feel like a journalist - after 3 years in a journalism school I knew that wasn't what I wanted to do (that said, after the same three years studying politics, I knew that wasn't for me either).

Telling stories has apparently been a pastime of mine since I could talk. As a kid, spending my weekends steeped in Suva coffee culture, I would rattle off to my mother's friends (about god knows what) endlessly.

As I grew, I found myself unable to speak. I grew nervous and worried but watered my imagination everyday and now it sits, unkempt as my body hair, overgrown and wild.

This imagination garden, my haven, my home, has become my double edged sword. I have so many stories, but it's grown a life of it's own and often manifests in anxiety, a curious depression and doubt.

I worry that while I love my job, I love where I am, the people who surround me and everything else... that I am beneath it all.

I worry that my job is not "a real job" - not the classic 9 to 5 we expect. I always have a story idea lurking at the back of my head, a concept for a piece, a video, a proposal. I worry that I have a voice that shouldn't be seen or heard because... well... I worry I am not "Fijian" enough.

But isn't all of that just the fine print? Why not continue to colour the walls with sweeping gestures, painting a wide, wide picture that no one will really see detail in - hiding the details from scrutiny?

Ah well, maybe this is all part and parcel of my unkempt, life-of-its-own garden. Who knows?

Time flies, so you might as well have fun

It's 2015. The first week of the year is over and I can barely wrap my head around the fact it's a new year and I only have 51 weeks left.

I can remember this time last year so vividly... but that might just have been the stress of it. I started the year as an expectant graduate, counting the days to the ceremony to receive my piece of paper that still lies among a whole pile of others today.

I felt pressure to figure it all out; pressure I had put on myself, it has to be said. I wanted to work for real. I wanted to finally find out what I wanted to do with my life. Hell, alongside all that I was still reeling from the fact I had lived through a whole year and then some of my "grown up" relationship.

The year sped by. Now my graduation, the second anniversary, my grandmother's cancer experiences, my first real job (lasting a month) and my second (that Im grateful I still have)... it's all over and gone.

All I've got are the memories that make me, me. All I've got are tattoos I've gotten along the way, including the two newest from the past year. I've gained weight, an extra hole along my outer ear and few new bugs to last me the rest of my life and an intense love to work.

Here I sit, pulling together work at midnight for the morning back at the office. I mull over whether I should make a list of resolutions, think about how seriously I want to take my dive into vegetarianism and wonder if I am really going to get up at 6 and do some app-guided yoga.

I'm going to be 23 and while that may not seem like much, at my age my mother was married and probably expecting my brother. I'm going to be 23 and while it doesn't feel like much I wonder how much it means to be the first of my secondary school year to make it out of university. I'm going to be 23 and I shake my head at the fact I still havent made it to a papsmear.

2015, you are going to be a rollercoaster. Let's enjoy the ride, shall we?

Please stop fixing everything by shutting the door.

Imagine if you will: I walk into work this morning, sit at a cubicle and scroll through my morning newsfeed, full to the brim because I haven't touched it in days. However, now out of my drug-induced haze, words actually have begun to make sense. But I find nothing that really makes all that much sense.

It's been about a week of not coming in to the office so I may have also forgotten my social skills but there was one thing I had to share in the newsroom: “Village enforces law”.

Now apparently there's a problem in Cakaudrove; marri3d wom3ns bin touching up on th3m bach3lorz. Or something. Yes, I totally take this issue seriously. Honestly, it is a bit of a concern given the article suggests that violence ensues when the whole affairs come to light.

The “solution”?

"TRADITIONAL leaders and village elders in Cakaudrove have enforced a decision to have married couples drink grog in their own homes."

Ok. So... enforceable valuable family time? I don't know, but honestly I don't think this is address the real problem. First, there may be the nature of marriage in the area. Is it shotgun? Boredom? Love? Who knows!

Again, if you aren't spending time hanging out with your husband, how much do you like him really? Again again, are the bachelors blameless here? Apparently so.

Perhaps then the real problem is the issue of communicating - expressions of frustration and anger bound to be expected but we're supposedly higher beings with the ability to process and have thought and highly developed language on our side. Or maybe we just don't use any of that... I guess.

I don't know if this whole solution will fix anything. I hope things get better but I don't think all the problems will go away with a closed door. Unhappy marriages are still unhappy.

How about we get our values train back on that “sanctity of marriage” track? Have babies, do whatever, be whoever and love whoever – but keep that huge rest-of-your-life commitment maybe for someone you actually want to spend the rest of your life with.

It's funny people in power still refuse lifelong partners recognition because they may be of the same sex when stupid straight people can do whatever they want. Sigh.

Hungry hungry gamers

I dinged 100 today. That basically meant that I sunk my weekend into medicine hazed gameplay of Warlords of Draenor. I did, however, force the Owl to take me to the newest Hunger Games movie.

He's read all the books so I have forced the spoilers out of him (it's a bad habit of mine, I want to know what happens because I don't trust myself to pay enough attention). The biggest take away from the whole thing?

THIS - WHOADAMN

Ok, before the "ermmanermynerms", I want the hair. I am in a situation where merely cutting my hair is frowned upon by friends and family. I dont blame them, I said myself (probably a month before I shaved it for the god-knows-what'th-time) that I wasn't going to cut my hair until I had children. 

But after seeing this whole Natalie Dormer/Cressida thingymabob I... WANT... IT.

It's probably the attraction of the head tattoo. Idk. That just seriously weirdly appeals to me. 

Again, I doubt I'll get the emotionally-supportive go ahead for a new tattoo, a crazy haircut or just... anything. 

Sigh. Time to keep growing this mass of god-knows-what on my head.

Welcome to WoD

As I pull myself through the newest expansion, I find myself ecnhated by so much but now it's time to take a look back at the launch day.

Of course, first the Owl and I have a little pre-launch party so we went to Dalalag and partied it up after he helped me top up the Travellers Mammoth fund.

party parttyyy

The I had to say goodbye and retire the poor old farm in Pandaland. I was roaming around reddit and saw that someone had retired their farm with a whole bunch of  trees and figured that was something I wanted to do too.

I dont miss you, miss you farm. I have a garrison now.

And then... I sat around Org, and the quest popped 15 minutes early and thus began the mad rush to stand on the quest giver. Buttholes, all of you.

WHY YOU GUYS DO DIS :<

So now Im steadly making my way through alternative timeline Draenor and Im sitting at a comfortable 98, although the Owl is well already 100 and doing all the dungeons. I have, however, spent way too much time fishing, cooking and first aid (the last of the 3 I've managed to max out yesterday.) 

What does it mean to have a child?

Today I read something disturbing. Pre-term baby statistics. You can find it here because I dont want to retell anything. Its too damn depressing. The worst part? No consideration for the carrier of the lost life. The women are lost.

I have never had a child. I have never been pregnant. In fact, as a teenager I had a very strong fear of sex because I knew... "the implications". That said, I was also a child of divorce so I never really wanted that to be a thing that the kids I ever had to go through. Just generally.

I do, however, have friends with kids. I also have many acquaintances with them. While I acknowledge that children are amazing, it is incredibly important, in my opinion, to be able to afford them.

To afford the time, resources and attentions. Children are one thing but we must remember that they grow into human beings. Fully functioning, we hope, humans that make a positive difference in society. 

I was brought up in a mixed family. When I was about 7, I remember my stepmother working with UNFPA and having me a kind of after school class at home about puberty and stuff. I got stuff to read, I had folder of sheets of paper with little questions and stuff. At the time I figured it was all stuff being shoved down my throat but today I guess Im glad that happened. I figure it started early because she and my dad where about to have my little brother and so I needed "to know where he was coming from".

In other words, I was terrified by the whole damn thing. 

When puberty actually hit me, I was an angry, angry young woman. I used to get violently sick and I hated everything including the crappy baby bag and its associated parts that would put me in pain and make me throw up everywhere. Where? In a school bin during winter school in Primary. In many, many bushes. At several office bathrooms. In all the different female toilets in both high schools I went to. I think I threw up in front of a bakery in Lami in a bin at one point. 

Why tell you about this? Because in my head, if period nausea was bad, how bad was pregnancy nausea going to be? If my depression during my mid cycle was bad, what about post-baby blues? 

And with all these thoughts, I am the minority. I think about my own body, my own life, in the face of the possibility of a child. I am afraid that many women and young women might not have that opportunity. I should not be the minority.

Societal expectations may force a newlywed couple to procreate. Shotgun weddings are frequent. A woman is barely consulted on the whole family planning front and she will get shamed (Still!) if she seeks out contraceptives. Education systems still dont teach the whole notion of a cycle and when to track your own fertility - a last resort if medical centres and otherwise are far away or just uncomfortable. It still seems like we barely allow women choice over their own bodies. 

Shame on you, society. Our mothers, sisters and women in general deserve so much better than this. 

There are things I cannot explain.

Hello! Why are you here? Who knows! But you are now, so stay a while.

The other day I was watching a metric buttload of QI, one of the world's greatest shows, and there was a whole bit about hysteria.

Apparently hysteria used to be understood as a wandering womb. Now, I dont necessarily have a womb that wanders. I have a double reinforced one or something with the probable adenomyosis but today i talk about... THE FEELS.

gaddamnnnn son.

As a female, there is a time where my body expels awful awful things and makes me feel awful. It's just a lot of awful. That said, it is always a time for "Im not pregnant yay!" things but again we're talking feels.

So with the feels; about 2 weeks before the expulsion (hehehe), I start to get all the feelings. I cry over everything. So far it has been pictures of puppies, the Fine Brother's Teens React to Malala, a Yogscast update video and getting a positive outcome on a WoD garrison mission that had a 70% success chance.

I have little under a fortnight for more cries. Let's see how it goes.

Update: I literally just cried over my brain-pronunciation of "momentous". I blame this.