Back from a curiously unpretty settlement nestled in the beautiful highlands. Hardly took the camera out so most memories are in my head.
– Watching on helplessly and in disbelief as roadkill happened
– Reading at Starbucks and looking up to discover that everything was white – we were in a passing cloud! Surreal.
– Witnessing Mum and Ah Ee Mummy, who are thrifty to a fault, place their bets at the casino with absolute nonchalance.
– Looking down upon toyland from my castle in the clouds.
Motionless is my one true love, waiting for birds by the window.
Ever since Remus had explained what cancer was, James had insisted on claiming everything from mosquito bites to the common cold was rooted in it. Despite Remus’ subsequent attempts to impress upon him the seriousness of the condition, James persisted, and everybody else ignored him. Except for Lily, who occasionally slapped him across the back of the head and said that if anybody at Hogwarts has a cancerous growth, it was James, who had taught it to talk and wear its hair badly.
Everybody IS dispensable so never let an affected attitude get the best of you.
The opportunity to learn loads may compensate for a small paycheck.
Trite, but it will always be in your favour to take things positively. Learn to enjoy, love and thrive on the things you must come to expect – rushing deadlines, rejected ideas, mornings, people and rules – taking them in your stride like a habit will give your productivity a wonderful momentum.
Suss a company out before any formal commitments are made during the interview – think of it as a demilitarised zone slightly skewed in the employer’s favour. Making an amicable impression should not take precedence over exercising good judgement. Is the workplace bursting with creative energy? Can you hang out with the crowd? Is your potential boss rude and stupid and old and SMELLY?? Does he, horrors, BORE you? Turn tail politely but immediately!
It is essential to assimilate (yes, conform. never expect to mould a workplace to your whims.) well into the office, but do not allow anything or anyone to make you feel uncomfortable in a personal way. If your superior being needlessly condescending and impolite gits at yer, leave. Uncomfortable with an employer keeping cctv tabs on you from his pervert private room? Leave. The last resort is the only resort. Your work and psyche will be affected if you are constantly surly and petulant.
Be receptive to new ideas, suggestions and advice, even the seemingly dubious. Never take criticism personally. Be mindlessly experimental but after that, discerning enough to separate the wheat from the chaff. Try strange things, so that you may always be in wonder. Beware merely hoarding through. inspiration is only precious when passed through the filters of your processes and thoughts, and crystallised into something original.
Be visionary. Creative groundwork can be foolish and fearless but it should birth a vision, grounded in a flawless concept (am i waxing too abstract?) plan the skeleton of your execution meticulously, but keep its tendrils fluid because you will have to improvise to changing contexts.
WORK. YOUR. ASS. OFF. And some more. Working smart does not mean working less, just means you milk each second you have for what it’s worth.
Allow for the fact that however eager-to-please, competent and tolerant you may be, there exist labyrinths of stupidity too dense to penetrate, too complex to navigate. Owners of these intellectual cesspools will give you much shit and frustration, so flee or forever hold your peace.
Try to love your job and colleagues.
PS: I never want to grow up T_T
The flu is here again, particularly infectious strain it seems. Jeremy’s just started burning up while I’m on my second box of Panadol and zillionth favour from Shirley at work. It’s been a lonely mid-week, can’t wait for the parents to get back from the casino tomorrow.
In their absence I am putting Silas through his first working diet. As we’re properly dysfunctional, there is no agreed-upon schedule for feeding the cat. Everyone tops the food bowl up when they wake/before sleeping/during dinnertime and owing to our huge variety of body clocks, Silas eats about ten meals daily. Until tomorrow, however, all his ration are monopolise by me.
As a “creative”, I am aptly wary of employment, choosing to live out a few indulgently domestic months after graduation but alas, Jinesh’s “two internships for summer ONLY” and Hazel’s persistent six-month-no-pay affair has guilted me into pursuing my own sweatshop glory. Productivity, hark me!
how do you scritch
an evil itch
in your throat?
soup the devil made,
TOMYUM
You don’t need to leave your room. Remain sitting at your table and listen. Don’t even listen, simply wait. Don’t even wait. Be quiet, still and solitary. The world will freely offer itself to you to be unmasked. It has no choice; it will roll in ecstasy at your feet.
~ Franz Kafka
I return perpetually to this paragraph when I am helpless and frustrated (thankfully rarely) ; it is luminescent.
Dad brings home lovely stacks of notepads all the time and I am keeping at least three journals running concurrently but these random tons of paper lying around never seem to lie around when you really need them, and you end up buying more or (in a fit of miserly pique) using your palms in exasperation.