ontheblog&beyond

here we go again. it's that time of year where your parents start getting excited about their 'big girl growing up', your sister tries to not so subtlety disguise her way through a conversation about gift-giving, and you've started feeling the birthday blues. i was not aware of the alliterated label already attached to this feeling in the urban dictionary, but alas there seems to be a word for everything. although, the definition doesn't seem to encompass all my birthday hatred correctly. you see, when I turned 20 I was in luck. my bandmate booked in a bunch of gigs for us over a 3 month period and I made no mention that my day of aging overlapped. i saw this as a gift. wrapped up with a neat bow of news we were out of town for this gig - precisely 166km away. this was going to be the best birthday yet, because why would a bunch of boys freaking out about their gear squashed up in a car pay any attention to the little girl singer who was going to age another year in...

I'm baffled by the amount of variations of "I don't know" one person can convey in a subject line. There's double spacing and ill formated punctuation. Half a sentence taken over by a derailing train of thought and a finishing touch of a phrase that comes off as a question instead of the solution I was hoping for. No wonder sleep has been such a struggle. Last night I had a conversation with my soundboard to make sense of the days one liners and distractions that took away from my getting anything done. No sense of accomplishment or pride from me, just uneasiness about what my tomorrow would bring. Here I am hoping that there was a way to influence my 9-5 outcome, but those ambitious days drain the bank of energy you'd need for a week with sharon.  Subject Line: What's the office phone number?? That email had to be the highlight of my day and yet I still couldn't muster even a giggle when venting to every breathing mammal that would listen. A women who...

let me preface this piece by letting you know that I am and always will be someone with an unsettling fear of being ordinary. it's a concept of the human experience that I cannot understand or accept and am at a loss as to who and what sets the standard for ordinary to begin with. so when I tell you that moving into a new job (fit for a functioning adult mind you) has thrown me down a rabbit hole of questioning, you will not be surprised that this new sensation has brought out a new, underwhelming feeling of succeeding at the level of ordinary I despise. let me explain... as a student working through my semesters of business units, we've already hit a roadblock in removing the cliche from my narrative. I was a child with potential who was not built for the grey area that much of adult life brings. so when my feet were itching for a course that made me 'feel' something like journalism did, the number of changing emotions was not something I could handle at that point in ...

using polymer clay to create jewellery pieces you just want to eat up and wear out coming home from school as a child on a Monday or Tuesday was the highlight of my entire week for many reasons. 1. got the bus to nonnas which made me feel very grown-up at 7 2. cornetto ice cream cone (my top choice) as a Monday treat 3. obviously nonnas dinner 4. always made it in time for the onslaught of ABC programs that was used as the drawing board for... 5. the stack of scrap paper that would eventually get turned into some wild (almost sturdy) creations I had what is commonly referred to as an 'active imagination' which led to the usual talking to my many sidekick characters about adventures we were taking and what we needed to prepare for our quest, the answer was always crafty. ladels for cooking expeditions, doll houses for curing boredom, cameras for capturing the moment and telescopes to see the far beyond. Paper was ultimately my best friend for those few hours a week I would be ha...

I t’s your birthday today and I don’t remember what you sound like.  I wanted to hear you on your voicemail but the automated message is gone. I left the closest thing that I could say without begging you to come home, to come back to me, even for a damn second.  There was that feeling yesterday that I couldn’t shake. The one that felt like déjà vu, mixed with an overwhelming sense of something missing, a gut feeling that you were close and an anxiety attack that I’d never get the chance to again. It fuelled me and drained me all the same. How one can sustain this level of whatever you can call this feeling is barbaric.  Every shade of red that zooms past me when I’m crossing the road or idle in traffic, looking out the bus window, I hope to whatever god is out there that it’s you, that you haven’t completely ceased to exist in my life like so many other things I kept so near and dear to my frail heart. That I’m not a player in the game of cruel intentions.  Littered...

a memoir to after laughter my favourite album by some of my favourite people, released during a time i needed it the most, and now in my revisit remembering how once i was burnt and those turned to glittered ashes, who's to say a scorned woman evolved only happens once? a love letter to the pastel trio that reinvent reinventing i will scream lyrics tattooed in my ears from stomping on repeat dripping like gold from my finger tips like i wrote them myself until i am embodying each note with every inch of exterior threatening to expose my secrets neatly versed in the hands of a stranger that found me firstly on the bathroom floor to the bays waters and the shitbox that carries my broken pieces from point a to b chanting a rebellion of glittered tears and liquored love and the absence of both  in daylight and spinning onto roundabouts a fake happy plastered to your face an unfinished now unsent letter or two attached to the heels of your boots one titled 'help' the other for  ...

another valentines day done and dusted, this one filled with unspoken conversation that must be had, please i must let you know, but for now a stranger can read this and i will wait another day to tell you this in person.  Mister, I don’t know if you’ll read this or if it's even a good idea to write this down but I can’t get rid of this feeling that we or this isn’t meant to just stop. I’ve gone over every moment from the last three years, our conversations, interactions, bad times, very bad even and all the beautiful experiences over and over again trying to find some kind of non-existent answer as to why we’re here. Everyone has made a point to remind me that it’s normal to fall out of love and its different for everyone, but it does come back and that’s just how you grow in a relationship. We were in some kind of blissful honeymoon period for so long and as soon as that went away maybe you felt that it was a sign that it wasn’t meant to be but who the hell stays in this honeymoo...

My psychic and psychiatrist both agreed that 2021 was going to be the year I got my adult shit together (and since they've never met each other and each encounter was a unique exploration into my life, the uniformity in their delivery led me to the conclusion that a higher power is getting annoyed at the overthinking stage of each battle and to start sorting it out). Any next step in this endeavour would be to write down a list of things that needed sorting in priority order, maybe colour coding each priority with etsy labels to keep the desk organised, even adding a pretty water bottle to the shopping cart that'll make me want to drink those recommended 8 cups a day, we are setting the bar very low here. Instead, we take the road most travelled and seek the answers from someone else who has succinctly put their embarrassing and unorthodox life experiences into an easy to transport paperback. Behold the land of guides and self-helps - except one that may actually work??? The Sp...

if i had to pick a favourite day, this one would be it -  it's october 2018, and you sat down one day and really wanted to describe this one magical 24 hour period that couldn't be replicated. here it is to remind you what was once happening and what could still happen again, only time will tell... "[to future you]" last night was your bands ep launch and you know what all the important people came and that made you so damn happy like how much fun was that you got a new t-shirt out of it and you’re matching with your girls! there was more jumping then ever and you got so carried away you were about to introduce someone to your friends as your boyfriend because you couldn't get him off your mind your hype woman is such a lil angel and she spilled the 'no making moves on the girl' rule that came to be after my performing debut which now makes more sense I couldn’t help but laugh (what are the odds) but she made it feel real and she was rooting for it which m...

The king of cliché "coming of age" moments that I’ve been brainwashed into following in the footsteps of has got to be one of the most expensive decision making moves you can make in your "i'm a teen adult" phase. Tattoos. Just before I joined the twenty club, there was one irreplaceable night of entertainment that involved bus stop benches, the search for sangria, a weirdly fascinating wall, and a challenge from a bartender. Picture a 'little too green' working girl, lanyard around her neck, walking aimlessly around the city because you can't actually arrive to dinner with your friends on time or it'll make you look like you were anxiously waiting for them to not show up. It's the middle of winter so by the time I'm done with work the sky is almost charcoal and the jacket I wore was for aesthetic purposes only so walking up and down the train station tunnel was the only way to both calm my nerves and remain warm.  Calming nerves was a re...

YouTube has come a long way since its inception in 2005 by three average americano's who really wanted to see Janet Jackson's boob exposed during her 2004 super bowl performance on a loop. Now with over 2 billion monthly users and an eclectic array of content being shared every day, we're watching the past, present and future of our world through a 16:9 talking rectangle.  One of the ways I have always enjoyed learning is through multimedia platforms like YouTube and once I was done with  highschool and the need to watch every boring analysis on the themes of pride and prejudice, naturally I turned to learning about true crime. The psychology behind killers, the stories from the victims families themselves and understanding the harsh realities of the justice systems all over the world, you are given the complete information package on a case from any in-depth true crime channel video. The true crime community has grown exponentially and if psychologists like Dr Meg Arroll s...

punching bags and therapy you'll never know what you did to me cause all i ever seem to dream is something besides harmony a phone passcode an aging foe who wants to live a fantasy conversations never had still written in love and all that jazz

Here's a little hello from me.  The name's ness, she's 22 at the moment, terribly in need of a new job and is the type of person who changes her phone time to 24-hour to get the attention of a boy (but also why the hell am I talking in third person? and why does it feel more comfortable? who knows) I like to write, i've written a lot of shit in my short life. From shadow writing a biography for my grandfather before his dementia started kicking in to lyrics for my short lived band career all the way to calling it apart of my job description by using fancy words to sell creative industry tertiary education to the poorest bunch of kids. I've been talking way too much my whole life, to the point where my jaw is clenched and has started cracking on a daily basis in need of regular acupuncture appts. so instead of writing to no one and giving myself the opportunity to edit my feelings as i look back on old work, we are publishing live on the internet so i can't take ...

When we think about pinning the label 'anxious' on someone, there's a very generic character that will come to mind almost immediately. Whether that image comes about through the conditioning that has been placed upon us by society or through the lack of information and understanding around mental illness that is still present in our society but one will suggest it was through no fault of their own, we all see this character. You've already picked the gender, she's a female with the assumed pronouns of she/her without the question being asked. She's an adult, not yet old enough to be considered 'ready to make her own life changing decisions in life', but makes the decisions for a national company under the guise of the boss she works for because this woman can't remember what she wrote in an email thread she's got open right in front of her.  There's the smell of a fresh haircut lingering as she walks by and you're eyeing her bangs wonder...