From one milestone to another

 

This arrived in the mail today. So it's official. I'm part of the Golden Key International Honour Society for being in the top 15% of my university cohort.

As thrilled as I should be, I'm petrified. By mid November I'll have graduated.

But I'm already feeling the pressure of having to make something of myself. After all, what good are a bunch of scholarships and awards if I can't make it in the 'real world'?

For the first time in a long time, I don't know where I'll be this time next year and quite frankly, it's scaring me.

When people asked what I do for work, I grew accustomed to the comfort of being able to tell people I hadn't finished my studies yet. In other words "back off, I'm not a failure (yet)" - while at the same time telling myself I'll worry about finding a job when the time comes for it.

So here I am, no more emotionally prepared than I was at the start of my double degree.

I always knew I was getting myself into a competitive industry - but I didn't expect it to be so heartless either. I guess I'm all the more disheartened due to some drama that happened a few weeks back. I got a job at an agency I highly respected and admired, only to have it taken away from me in the most deceitful, unprofessional way.

To make things worse, I had given up my internship at another, smaller agency for this very position. An agency who were offering me a full-time job after university were I to stay on with them.

I was flung back to square one.

I was distraught. For the first time in my life, I experienced symptoms of heartbreak women usually go through because of men. I cried until it hurt to keep my eyes open, and I'd surrender myself to a deep sleep. I lost my appetite and fell into a sob whenever someone asked me how I was doing.

Those few days I spent hating life, the world went on without me. And that's the thing. The world doesn't slow down to comfort anybody. So with a bruised ego I got up and asked myself, what can I take away from this in order for me to move on?

No contracts were signed so there's no point pushing a case of 'he-said-she-said'. Next time, I will
sign a contract before quitting my current job. It was a hard lesson. But at least I learnt it young. At least I wasn't older, with bills and a mortgage at stake, nor a family to support.

Lesson two: it hurt because it mattered to me. Because I wanted it. People go through mid-life crises asking themselves if they chose the right path for them - is this what I really want? It was a hard lesson, but it was self-affirming in that at least I know this is where I want to be.

Lesson three: shit happens. And there's no point being embarrassed about it. So you lost a job you kind of never had. The people who care about you just want you to be happy.

So here's to hoping everything works out okay as I try making it alive from one milestone to another.

Love, Noeline
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Dating on difficult mode

Turns out I've been playing the dating game without knowing the basic controls.

I only just discovered that being exclusive with someone is NOT the same thing as being their girlfriend. In fact, they're two completely different levels. I've compiled a step-by-step guide of the relationship memo that seems to have missed me all of the nine years I've been dating.

1. Dating and still being able to see other people
2. Exclusively seeing each other
3. I wouldn't tell people you're my girlfriend, I'd say you're my girl
4. OK, now you're my girlfriend
5. Partners
6. Husband and wife

The last time I used the word 'partner' was in kindergarten, and it referred to the guy you had to hold hands with in line. Pointing this out to a friend, suddenly I was the one over analysing things!

I feel like all these different stages complicate relationships for the sake of complicating relationships.

And apparently, it doesn't necessarily need to be made known when the relationship is transitioning from one level to the other. Apparently, it "happens naturally." ARE YOU BOTH MIND READERS OR SOMETHING? I'm sorry, but could you maybe wave a flag when we're onto the next one? Just so I know?

And also, since you never actually asked me to be your girl, and since you have no intention of asking me to be your girlfriend should that holy grail of a day ever come, are you ever going to ask me to marry you? Or should I just expect to wake up married one day?

If a guy were to come up to me in a club and ask if I had a boyfriend, I'm not going to waste a single breath shouting about how it's complicated, because it would sound a little like this: "YOU SEE, WE'RE TOGETHER BUT NOT TOGETHER. HE WOULDN'T WANT ME GIVING MY NUMBER TO PEOPLE LIKE YOU, OR ANYONE ELSE FOR THAT MATTER. SO BASICALLY, HE WANTS TO OWN ME WITHOUT HAVING TO WORK FOR IT. BECAUSE WE'RE NOT THAT SERIOUS, YET, I THINK. BUT HE LIKES ME, HE REALLY REALLY LIKES ME."

Then imagine if that guy asked you to repeat what you just said. His jam came on halfway through and got distracted. And it's funny because some guys have as much fun defining the different degrees of a relationship as much as the next girl. Like casually naming every single bone in the body and going, "Oh, didn't you know that?"

Fuck. That. Shit. Get over yourselves. Seriously.

Am I with someone or am I not with someone? That's all I want to know. Is that so much to ask? And why did no one tell me about this earlier!

Thoughts?

Love, Noeline
X

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.

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