The Weekend
Well, the weekend was good, although I have a pretty bad sleep deficit at the moment.
Essentially, Friday evening kicked off with a LAN at Paul’s house, with me, Paul, Gareth and Robin playing. However, as this was your typical LAN experience, we probably ended up playing for about one hour in total. Most of our time was spent watching amusing clips, introducing each other to games we haven’t seen before, raiding hard drives for goodies, and going through the very tedious process of installing and patching games to the right version so we can actually play them.
In the end we played Joint Operations: Escalation, attempting a couple of extremely difficult co-op stages, where we spent more time dying and spawning than actually meeting our objectives. *Mutters* Stupid one hit, one kill approach.
Anyway, the next morning we played a free-for-all round of Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War. I’d practiced with the Chaos Marines the previous evening, and although my base was annihilated first (as usual), I think I put up a better fight than usual. Although, I did make the rudimentary error of sitting in my base instead of heading out to inflict more damage after my initial attacks. But it’s fine. I’m used to losing RTS games by now.
On Saturday afternoon, Paul and I went to Porn Store Peter and his fiancé Louise’s place in Glenwood for a braai, and to watch the Tri-Nations rugby match between South Africa and New Zealand. G, Mark and Terry and Gillian were also there. Imagine my surprise when South Africa actually won, and played pretty damn consistently well.
For a long time I had a theory that whenever I supported a team and watched the game, that team would lose. Now, however, I’m beginning to believe that only applies to being in the actual Kingsmead grounds to watch cricket (I was at that Sri Lanka / SA World Cup fiasco game). Ever rugby match I have ever been to at Absa Stadium, the Sharks have won.
After the game, we chowed down big time on braai meat, and then got caught up in a game of poker until late. It’s certainly an eye-opener playing with a big stakes gambler like Peter, who was raising 6 -10 tokens at a time. Thank God we weren’t playing for real money. Although, this said, I think it would be cool, when everyone is working again, to have a poker evening once a month, using R20-R50. It could be pretty cool.
Anyway, on Saturday evening, we got back to Paul’s quite late. We got into bed, and couldn’t fall asleep. Instead, we lay in the dark talking, which I’m glad we did.
I struggle to open up and speak about my frustrations and worries. I’ve had a lot on my mind lately, and have been worried and down about quite a few things. One of the main things is my immediate activities and future.
I seem to spend all my time doing things I don’t want to be doing. My heart isn’t into studying – I certainly won’t be doing my Masters next year. I have no passion for lecturing – I tutor without any great enthusiasm when faced with a room of apathetic first years. The old ‘Well, it’s just 3 more months until it’s over’ argument doesn’t really work, because I really don’t want to reach the stage of living my life as if it were an endless series of countdowns to the unknown.
Paul gave me some bolstering and suggested some options that once again pointed to doing something that I love. But what can I do that I love that will give me the kind of money and inspiration I’m looking for? I refuse to accept a peanuts R5000 job again. And I struggle to see how fiddling with lots of little things can accumulate any financial returns. I love the Entertainment industry (movies, books, games, comics), and writing opinion pieces but there just aren’t any in-roads in South Africa, let alone Durban. It’s probably even worse overseas
I suppose it also doesn’t help when you see people around you receiving job offers and nice salaries. It hurts when you’ve worked your ass off to succeed / to be the top qualified person in your academic year, and not a single company sends you a letter inviting you to a presentation or interview. It always goes to the BSc and bloody BCom students. It hurts when you’re not wanted, and nobody is willing to give you a chance.
The other thing is that I’ve become quite emotional, and it concerns me. I didn’t used to be like this, but over the past year and half (since I started working, as well as being on The Pill, coincidentally), I’ve struggled with patches of extreme stress, irritability, anxiety and tearfulness. Maybe it’s hormonal, I don’t know… But it certainly puts a damper on your confidence, when, sitting in a lecture, or in public with friends, all you want to do is burst into tears, and you don’t know why.
Anyway, it helped to hear myself speaking the words I’ve been mulling over for months. And the gentle crying also relieved some of my frustrations.
Sunday was pretty quiet. We skipped the ‘chilling on the beach’ invite to head to Sibaya Casino and ‘launder’ the R500 vouchers that came with Paul’s parents’ season rugby tickets. It was pretty much a case of breaking even. I ended up R20 down, playing with R50 on a Poker machine. Mark, who we met up with, gambled for us at the Poker tables and got out R500 for us to split 3 ways. We didn’t hang around at the casino too long though. I wrote some DVDs at Paul’s place and then we headed back to my place for dinner and the Sunday night MNET movie.
I rounded off the weekend with a little prep for my Monday morning tutorial, a Lost rerun and some Walker Texas Ranger before I was in bed by 11.
Essentially, Friday evening kicked off with a LAN at Paul’s house, with me, Paul, Gareth and Robin playing. However, as this was your typical LAN experience, we probably ended up playing for about one hour in total. Most of our time was spent watching amusing clips, introducing each other to games we haven’t seen before, raiding hard drives for goodies, and going through the very tedious process of installing and patching games to the right version so we can actually play them.
In the end we played Joint Operations: Escalation, attempting a couple of extremely difficult co-op stages, where we spent more time dying and spawning than actually meeting our objectives. *Mutters* Stupid one hit, one kill approach.
Anyway, the next morning we played a free-for-all round of Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War. I’d practiced with the Chaos Marines the previous evening, and although my base was annihilated first (as usual), I think I put up a better fight than usual. Although, I did make the rudimentary error of sitting in my base instead of heading out to inflict more damage after my initial attacks. But it’s fine. I’m used to losing RTS games by now.
On Saturday afternoon, Paul and I went to Porn Store Peter and his fiancé Louise’s place in Glenwood for a braai, and to watch the Tri-Nations rugby match between South Africa and New Zealand. G, Mark and Terry and Gillian were also there. Imagine my surprise when South Africa actually won, and played pretty damn consistently well.
For a long time I had a theory that whenever I supported a team and watched the game, that team would lose. Now, however, I’m beginning to believe that only applies to being in the actual Kingsmead grounds to watch cricket (I was at that Sri Lanka / SA World Cup fiasco game). Ever rugby match I have ever been to at Absa Stadium, the Sharks have won.
After the game, we chowed down big time on braai meat, and then got caught up in a game of poker until late. It’s certainly an eye-opener playing with a big stakes gambler like Peter, who was raising 6 -10 tokens at a time. Thank God we weren’t playing for real money. Although, this said, I think it would be cool, when everyone is working again, to have a poker evening once a month, using R20-R50. It could be pretty cool.
Anyway, on Saturday evening, we got back to Paul’s quite late. We got into bed, and couldn’t fall asleep. Instead, we lay in the dark talking, which I’m glad we did.
I struggle to open up and speak about my frustrations and worries. I’ve had a lot on my mind lately, and have been worried and down about quite a few things. One of the main things is my immediate activities and future.
I seem to spend all my time doing things I don’t want to be doing. My heart isn’t into studying – I certainly won’t be doing my Masters next year. I have no passion for lecturing – I tutor without any great enthusiasm when faced with a room of apathetic first years. The old ‘Well, it’s just 3 more months until it’s over’ argument doesn’t really work, because I really don’t want to reach the stage of living my life as if it were an endless series of countdowns to the unknown.
Paul gave me some bolstering and suggested some options that once again pointed to doing something that I love. But what can I do that I love that will give me the kind of money and inspiration I’m looking for? I refuse to accept a peanuts R5000 job again. And I struggle to see how fiddling with lots of little things can accumulate any financial returns. I love the Entertainment industry (movies, books, games, comics), and writing opinion pieces but there just aren’t any in-roads in South Africa, let alone Durban. It’s probably even worse overseas
I suppose it also doesn’t help when you see people around you receiving job offers and nice salaries. It hurts when you’ve worked your ass off to succeed / to be the top qualified person in your academic year, and not a single company sends you a letter inviting you to a presentation or interview. It always goes to the BSc and bloody BCom students. It hurts when you’re not wanted, and nobody is willing to give you a chance.
The other thing is that I’ve become quite emotional, and it concerns me. I didn’t used to be like this, but over the past year and half (since I started working, as well as being on The Pill, coincidentally), I’ve struggled with patches of extreme stress, irritability, anxiety and tearfulness. Maybe it’s hormonal, I don’t know… But it certainly puts a damper on your confidence, when, sitting in a lecture, or in public with friends, all you want to do is burst into tears, and you don’t know why.
Anyway, it helped to hear myself speaking the words I’ve been mulling over for months. And the gentle crying also relieved some of my frustrations.
Sunday was pretty quiet. We skipped the ‘chilling on the beach’ invite to head to Sibaya Casino and ‘launder’ the R500 vouchers that came with Paul’s parents’ season rugby tickets. It was pretty much a case of breaking even. I ended up R20 down, playing with R50 on a Poker machine. Mark, who we met up with, gambled for us at the Poker tables and got out R500 for us to split 3 ways. We didn’t hang around at the casino too long though. I wrote some DVDs at Paul’s place and then we headed back to my place for dinner and the Sunday night MNET movie.
I rounded off the weekend with a little prep for my Monday morning tutorial, a Lost rerun and some Walker Texas Ranger before I was in bed by 11.
Comments
You certainly never look worried.
Well done for opening up...um...to the entire internet ;p.
You know that if you do feel upset, you can tell us (your friends)? We're not going to think worse of you. Even if you get a bit teary-eyed. Promise.
Frustrations, fears, anxieties, are all normal. I think alot of us struggle to decide where to go with our future, wonder if this is the best life has to offer.
I don't know about the emotionality thing, nor can I really say I know what its like being on the Pill ( ;P), but hey, at least you're getting nookie. It's not all negative eh?
Personally, with my first job, I grew to hate waking up in the morning, felt total apathy. The key to turning myself around was to stop wondering what life had to offer me, and instead resolve to go after what I wanted. Even if it was scary. Even if I risked poverty and failure. Even if I had to wade through bullshit and hard work and low pay to get there. The trick is to have a goal, it helps you weather the storms of life. Its the difference between being passive and active. What do you want to do? Now figure out how to make it happen. You might have to accept a peanuts job or two along the way though, but as long as they are stepping stones towards your true goals...
Don't worry too much about not being headhunted, neither was I, I got one invite to a presentation and they weren't impressed with me (although the reverse was true as well). Its nice to think that a wonderful company is going to come along and scoop you up into a well paid and personally rewarding career fresh out of varsity, without any scrapping and struggling that the 'normal people' go through, but its mostly a fantasy. You can get there though, I'm pretty happy right now, but its still not my endgoal.
Anyway, hope you feel better, like I said before, congrats on open up. It takes bravery to expose your vulnerabilities to people ;-).
If you feel like getting away from it all, there's always a back up bottle of wine in the fridge and a hug waiting for you at my place if you feel the need Noelle. All you have to do is call.
Chat to you soon.
x
Really, I think one day the Internet is going to implode under the weight of all these depressing blog posts and spread a black nuclear winter of misery ;P
And Ash, you hermit, you. Next time we're doing anything on the weekend, we're inviting you!
Well not much i can say Pfangirl. Everything will be all right. Too cliche'? Just remember you have friends that will support you in the dark times. Well atleast the good ones will. And don't worry to much. I always lose at RTS games too.
(um...if that made any sense! But you get the idea...)