Overthink and underachieve

Compare yourself to the right people and you can find ways to make yourself feel like both an underachiever and overachieve.

I find it flattering when people think I've achieved a lot for my age. But their compliment gets swept up in my thoughts of other people. People my age with careers earning close to six digits. People with houses and cars and actual independence. People with jobs chasing after them while I beg to get free work experience.

Then there's other people way older than me, still trying to figure out what makes them happy.

The question we should all be asking ourselves is whether or not we feel like we've done okay given our own personal circumstances. Only then we can finally start to give ourselves credit, or at least confront us into reevaluation.

I hope she knows you only like the beginning of things

"I hope she knows you only like the beginning of things" 

- Faye, Mad Men

A friend got me hooked on Mad Men recently. It got me thinking about a few things. Like, did admen of the 60's really consume that much alcohol while on the job? 

Lose a client? Have a drink. Win a client? Have a drink. I need to see you in my office. Here's another drink. 

It wasn't until Faye's quote above that I got to thinking about things other than whiskey. Unfortunately it made me empathise with the wanker in the situation, Don. After they had already started seeing each other, Don calls Faye to say he's marrying his secretary, to which she responds "I hope she knows you only like the beginning of things."

For me, the beginning of relationships is the most exciting. You know that feeling you get as a little kid opening a present? Even if it turned out to be shit (which, in most cases it was), somewhere along the line I got addicted to that little thrill of discovery. Everything is a surprise, everything unexpected. 

Like the way they do things. Their likes and dislikes. Their stories. Their eyes under different lights and the way they laugh, then committing it to memory so you can replay it back later.

But like lines memorised from your favourite movie, relationships can get predictable. Maybe predictable is the wrong word. Others might call it stability.

However, another friend made a really good point in that, each to their own, people confuse lust for love as much as people confuse comfort for it - the truth of which relieved me of some of my guilt.

"I love the tension," he admits. And keeping the spark alive? Well that's a whole other life skill...

Love, Noeline

X

Life after Red

Yesterday was my last day as a PR assistant at Red Agency. The past four months have absolutely flown by and I've learnt an incredible amount. But I'll miss the team the most. It makes me wonder if I love PR because I love PR, or because I love them. Let's say it's probably a bit of both.

Prior to my internship I had never considered a career in PR, and now I see it being as being a real option. I love the variety of clients that working in an agency gives you. I love the busy work environment because it makes it feel like yesterday that I was being interviewed, asking for my login details and being shown how to use the coffee machine.

I will miss all the "Colin" references, pulling out "the claw" at waiters with canapés, Adam's appetite, sword dance and obsession with Delta Goodrem, Liz yelling "taxi," Rach's nirvana inducing home-made rocky road, Lexi's posh expressions (deeeelightful!), Tash's hand gestures when she speaks, James' stories of faraway lands with ice-cream flavours that shouldn't exist and Nicole's constant victimisation for being a Westie.

These sweethearts surprised me with a heartfelt farewell card, chunky necklace (very me) and a Red velvet cupcake (very on-brand). I was definitely feeling the love.

With a semester of uni to go, it was a shame that the end of my contract didn't coincide with the end of my studies - or that my availability didn't change with my new timetable. The worst case scenario is that I got to work in an amazing agency with amazing people and gained invaluable skills and experience.

So now I'm on the search for an advertising internship to try my hand at the industry I've spent the past four and a half years studying to get into. I hope to love it as much as the course subjects. I haven't done an advertising internship before and am itching to know what it's like in practice.

But anyone else studying advertising would probably understand the predicament of such positions being few and far between. Applications for advertising internships don't usually open until the end of the year, and there are hundreds, if not thousands of applicants. The process can be strenuous, with applications often resembling university assignments them selves.

Wish me luck!

The promise loophole

Maybe he thinks it's not really breaking a promise if he forgot, so he goes ahead and makes so many.

Response to The Shire

Love it or hate it you're doing The Shire a favour by talking about it. The very people bagging it out make up half the target market.

We lost brain cells while they got ratings and money and a shitload of Facebook and Twitter updates i.e free publicity. All for the simple price of making you feel better about yourself, morally superior.

A lot of people seem not to realise that the show was never positioned to be inspiring in the first place. They knew that even the smartest, most educated of us wouldn't be able to resist. So who are the real losers in all this?

Although, I've noticed that trash inspires the best in wit and sarcasm social media has ever seen. And they're pretty fun to read.

Oh the tragedy

I think a lot if people fantasise about hardship. So they create drama where there was none. So they can bitch about it and have someone admire them for overcoming such adversity. Even if they put it on themselves.

#firstworldproblems part 2

• When your hair randomly decides to start parting from the other side
• Wanting to pour yourself a drink but not wanting to put your food down to do so
• When you order something you've been craving all day, and it doesn't hit the spot
• Lint on your stockings
• Lint, in general
• Uni timetable clashes
• Track work
• When the only seat left on the train is the one that faces everyone else

#firstworldproblems

• Hot meals and beverages with your glasses on. Hello fog!
• Getting your HELP statement and being reminded of how much debt you have waiting for you at the end of your studies.
• In winter, that moment before jumping in the shower and having to take your clothes off.
• In winter, that moment after jumping out of the shower and reaching for the towel.
• In winter, getting out of bed.
• Winter.
• Being overwhelmed by imagined scenarios and factors that you don't know what to pack.
• So much food, don't know where to start.
• Stomach full, but it tastes so good.
• Being hungry, and cursing your past self for not having eaten more.
• People who support the right, yet complain about company lay-offs, unfair redundancies, lowered pay and commission rates - or just workplace instability in general. Isn't that what capitalism is all about?
• Being 200 pages into Fifty Shades and not wanting to finish the book, but hate starting things and not finishing them.
• Winter.

Follow me on twitter @lovenoeline

Never been Kept

I've never been with the kind of guy who bought me things (fast food meals notwithstanding). As nice as I think it would be to be excessively showered with expensive presents - I can't help but equate it with a proportionate level of insanity. Possessiveness, to be exact.

Hypothetically, I think a part of me would feel obligated to stay with him. I'd feel bought out, literally.

I mean, it's all fun and games when the money's not yours. But is he really the kind of guy you'd want to share a bank account with? And what kind of shit values would he impart on your future children?

I once knew a person who complained about her boyfriend only ever buying her 'cheap' jewellery from Angus & Coote. "He never buys me anything from Tiffany & Co.," she puffed.

And here I am cheering when a guy buys me a drink. Which again, is still never.

To equate how much someone feels for you through material things, I think signals some definite insecurity issues.

Or maybe this belief in myself is really a defense mechanism against the fact that I've just never been worth it. Hmm...

This

Guys who act all macho, when at the end of the day all they really want is someone to boss them around and tell them what to do. They'll complain about it because it's the least respectable thing they can do for themselves while being treated like shit. But they'll never leave her. Never.