A letter to my diary

Dear diary,

I think I’m in love.

The thing is, I think I’m in love… with you.

It’s crazy I’m only admitting this now. We’ve been friends for a while, so I suppose you guessed, based on how frequently I take you off the shelf, run my finger down your spine, open you, smell your pages, shudder over how beautiful you look when I cover you with my small writing in that regal violet pen. I suppose you knew for certain when I told you all my secrets, but then came back for more. Sure, there aren’t many mysteries within your pages, but you kept everything private, even the smallest things.

Somehow, when they were within your covers, my flaws seemed less horrible.

We’ve talked before about how much trouble I had letting myself make that first impression on your pages. It’s because I’ve made mistakes before. But when I opened you up, you took my words willingly and made them a part of yourself.

There have been mistakes. I had a relationship with someone like you in primary school. He was decorated with pictures of cats, but I liked his bright white pages and bold black lines. The way he could lock up made me let my guard down. He wasn’t flashy but eventually, writing on his stark pages made me realise he didn’t care, really. Secrets were housed but not embraced. And he locked everything up too tightly. Instead of absorbing my mistakes and my flaws and my bad days, he held them inside, and released them when I unlocked him, a fresh wave of anguish.

Then there was the one with silver and purple flowers and the purple pages. Mistakes were made, and you can’t use whiteout on purple pages. He sits near you on the shelf, but I can’t open him anymore. Does he tell you what I did to him? I ripped pages out with spelling mistakes and messy writing. I hurt him. He was too perfect for me.

But you are simple. Blue and yellow, held shut with a piece of elastic. Creamy white pages with pale grey lines. You are unassuming but pretty. You don’t intimidate. You accept me how I am.

It pains me to admit that sometimes I look at others. Flashier versions of you, perhaps, or fatter, or brighter or more intricate. But lately, I always resist, because you are at home and you cannot be replaced. There is no substitute.

There’s an inscription on your inside cover, indicating your purpose to hold my hopes, my dreams, my tears. You have done all that and more. My intention for you became your goal. You have lived to serve me.

And now you are close to being finished. Yes, you will be replaced (and I’ll get used to a new one eventually…) so that I can continue my stories, but what will I do with you? Will you be given away to someone in the future, to share my secrets? Will you be thrown away when I move out or move on?

I don’t know your future, but I know I am grateful for all you have done. You don’t just give my words a house, you give them a home.

Love Liz

Perfect, or just cropped that way?

 

Doesn't the pineapple I picked off my pizza
look better with a square frame!?

 Lately, I’ve become a little bit hooked on Instagram. I think there is something intrinsically addictive about it, and I’ve been thinking about why that might be.

Instagram is an app which allows users to take a photo using their smartphone and then apply filters and frames to it, before uploading it to the social network. Instagram encourages users to make their photos look better than real life, with a strong emphasis on making your photos look vintage, ‘indie’ or arty. Nowadays, there are extra apps you can use to make your Instagram photos look even better, with even more filters and stickers you can add.

Instagram is the ultimate ‘image’-manufacturing resource, which explains its popularity with ‘hipsters’. Urban Dictionary defines hipsters very aptly as ‘a subculture of men and women typically in their 20's and 30's that value independent thinking, counter-culture, progressive politics, an appreciation of art and indie-rock, creativity, intelligence, and witty banter’. Isn’t that just the most fitting definition! Instagram is, however, becoming incredibly popular with the rest of the population who don’t wear rolled-up skinny jeans or ironically chunky glasses. But what makes it so popular??

Instagram operates as far more than just a photo-sharing website, instead allowing users to communicate a precise, framed, filtered and edited version of their lives to their followers. In my media subject at uni at the moment (which actually inspired this post!) we have been discussing the concept of ‘mediation’, which is how the media operates as a mediator between creator and user. So, someone who takes a photo on Instagram is a creator, then the app itself allows the user to ‘mediate’ the image to make it look even better, then everyone else sees the image.

In a recent article in Relevant magazine, Shauna Niequist discussed the ‘envy effect’ that Instagram produces. People who follow others on Instagram see their edited photos, their perfectly framed slices of life, and immediately feel envious that they don’t have the same sort of life. I know I definitely feel this way sometimes!

It’s not like looking in a magazine, because the people you follow on Instagram may actually be people you know in real life. As silly as this all sounds, this can have real problems in relationships.  Niequist quotes a conversation she had in which a friend said “I stopped following a friend on Instagram, and now that I don’t see nonstop snapshots of her perfect life, I like her better.”

As I said, I really like Instagram. It is fun to frame your life perfectly and share all the pretty things in your world. But I do see the danger as well. Niequist also touches on how we use the internet for comparison rather than connecting, and urges us to change the ways in which we use apps such as Instagram.

I’m going to be trying to stop feeling envious of the perfect lives I see on Instagram. Obviously no one has a perfect life, and I (and all of us!) need to stop comparing, stop manufacturing, stop mediating and start living. 

I'm not saying quit Instagram, but take the time to think before you post: is this really my life? Throw in a dorky photo every so often! Take stupid selfies! Skip the extra editing! Make Instagram fun again.

My beautiful addiction?

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I have a confession to make. I’m a bit of a beauty addict.

I am subscribed to at least four different hair and makeup channels on YouTube, I’m an active member of beautyheaven.com.au (to the point of being invited to join their Trial Teams for new products) and I have two overflowing drawers of accumulated hair and beauty tools and products.

My interest originally developed, to be honest, out of procrastination. During my HSC, I watched hair and makeup tutorials as a break from studying, and although this probably wasn’t the best use of my time, it did open my eyes to the world of beauty, and just how fascinating and fun it can be. Makeup and beauty demonstrate fashion trends and cultural movements, and they are fun to try and experiment with. Plus, my newfound expertise meant that I could do my sister’s makeup for her Year 10 formal and she looked stunning, if I do say so myself J (though she always does, not only when she’s had her makeup done!)

Makeup and beauty can be seen as many different things: a way to hide your real self, a way to improve your real self, a hobby, a way of fitting in or a way of standing out. Almost all Australian teenage girls have, at some point, worn makeup and enjoyed the feeling it gives. However, some girls feel that they have to wear makeup. I could go into the media impacts here, but everyone already knows that girls struggle with how women are portrayed in the media as flawless and stunning. I’d prefer to look at the fact that some girls find that other people look down on them for being frumpy and lazy when they don’t wear makeup. This comes mostly from other girls and women, who are the ones that notice who is and isn’t wearing makeup. A flawless, well-blended face is looked at by other females and approved of, whereas a slightly red, rough complexion can be seen as a lack of caring about one’s image. Which, of course, should be a positive thing, but somehow our image-obsessed society has become convinced that if you don’t care about how you look to others, there is something socially wrong with you.

I have fallen prey to the pressure of this society, as many girls do. If I was just going to the shops, I never used to bother with makeup, but now I feel awful looking in a fitting room mirror if I haven’t put any one. I didn’t wear makeup at school (mostly because it wasn’t allowed and I was a ridiculously obsessive rule-follower) and really only started wearing it more than twice a month within the last two months. Mostly I did this because I felt, bizarrely, that people were looking down on me for not wearing it when I wasn’t. Not so much my really close friends, but acquaintances and even people I served in my retail job. I sometimes got comments like ‘you look tired’ when I wasn’t wearing makeup, and certainly no compliments when I left the house without my foundation. This is all part of the perfect-image-obsessed society we live in!

Yet at the same time, girls who are deemed to be wearing “too much makeup” or spending too much time on their faces are labelled as vain. We are stuck in an endless spiral where no one is perfect except the girl who has perfect skin or the one who has practiced her routine so much that she can be in and out of the bathroom in five minutes looking flawless and no one has to know how long she spent honing her craft.

Now I’m not sure what to do. Maybe my hobby has become more than that – maybe it’s become some sort of horrible addiction brought on by peer pressure. Because instead of feeling great while experimenting with eyeshadow shades, suddenly I don’t feel good about leaving the house without makeup.  

Why this girly-girl loves heist movies

I am a really girly girl. I hate blood (as in can't even watch movies with fake blood without hiding and/or screaming), am a member of a beauty website, watch beauty gurus on YouTube, spend up to an hour doing my hair to get ready for parties, wear dresses all the time and have four different conditioners in my shower.

And yet, I love heist movies. (Bloodless ones.) I watched one a few weeks ago with my boyfriend and his family, Man on a Ledge, and loved it. I can't help it.

It's not the shooting that I love, or even the action scenes, really, but the idea of planning something to such detail, to distracting authorities, and to getting away with something so extraordinary. Man on a Ledge had a really complicated plot and heaps of little details that only got revealed at the end, leaving me sitting on the lounge with my teeth clenched and this silly little smile on my face. The same reaction when I watched Catch that Kid with Kristen Stewart when I was 12.

Producers make their movies for people like me, for people who want to be swept away by an extraordinary scheme. Hints of comedy are thrown in to please the masses and a lack of gore means that this is a widely accessible genre for a wide audience, from young teens to the elderly.

I think what gets me most is that heist films appeal to the imagination. Everyone wants to be as strong and smart and sexy as the robbers, getting back at the criminalised elite and winning one for the underdog. Every girl (secretly) has had at least a tiny desire to squeeze into a catsuit do some extraordinary action scene wearing 4-inch heels and with not a hair out of place. It grows from the spy-play that so many children enjoy (I made secret computers in the middle of my notebooks by drawing screens and keyboards and my Password Journal was one of my favourite possessions) but also from a desire to be a little more impressive that the average. Why this expresses itself in a desire to commit major felonies, I don't know. Real life crime is much less glamorous. 

Ten years from now

What did the zero say to the eight?

“Nice belt.”

NO! STOP LAUGHING! I want to tell you something really alarming.

Ten years from now, when we’re all 25 or 26, and maybe considering kids (or already parents!) laughter may not even exist anymore! Instead of you sitting there in your seat, laughing at my awful joke, the kids and teenagers of ten years from now will just be saying ‘lol’.

I’m quite serious. Already, people have started to use this internet-founded expression of amusement in real life, along with other expressions such as ‘rofl’.

There’s just something about hearing people laugh that makes us laugh! Lots of the time, we may not even understand something someone has said, but other people laugh, so we laugh. It’s contagious.

Ten years from now, it’s quite likely that laughter won’t even exist! Kids won’t laugh at the jokes their trying-to-be-funny peers tell them. They’ll just say ‘lol’. They won’t roll on the floor laughing! They’ll just say ‘rofl’. It sounds sort of boring, doesn’t it! ‘Lol’ and ‘rofl’ aren’t contagious at all, are they?

But the text-speak revolution doesn’t end with laughter. What about that great expression, ‘ily’?

‘ily’, I-L-Y, stands for I love you. One of the most meaningful things you can say to a person! People wait their whole lives to hear those three words, and they’ve been reduced to a simple acronym that you can say without even meaning it! In the future, when proposing, will guys get down on one knee and say, ‘ily, will you marry me?’ I seriously hope not! That would be an AWFUL proposal!

And can you imagine wedding speeches? “When I first spotted Sarah, I knew that she was the one for me. Sarah, I’m so glad we’re going to spend the rest of our lives together… ILY!”

Yuck. What a way to spoil the moment! How can something so beautiful, so meaningful, possibly retain any meaning at all when it has been turned into nothing more than 3 letters?

And finally, what about that actually STUPID expression, ‘biffle!’ Um, what? Best friends for life? BFFL? Biffle?

Once again, internet-speak has changed something meaningful, telling someone they mean so much to you that you want to be friends with them for your entire life, into something inane and utterly meaningless only said (currently) by tween girls whose only obsessions are One Direction* and boys in general. You even SOUND stupid when you say it. Biffle. That doesn’t sound like a word at all! It sounds like a brand of pillows or tissues or something!

We really need to do something about this! Let’s not let internet shorthand destroy laughter, love and friendship! I want my kids to grow up in a world where they laugh, hear the words ‘I love you’ and have a best friend for life, not a ‘biffle’.

Ten years from now, I hope that we still know how to speak in a way that actually means something. I want to be able to tell a joke and have people laugh, even though they’re probably laughing at me, not at the joke!

*No offence, girls. I'm just joking. DON'T HURT ME.

18 does not an adult make

My friends have started turning 18. I have another two months to go until I reach that age, but all of a sudden, according to the law, I have adult friends. It's quite weird to look at people I've known since year 7 and think 'that person is legally an adult!'

18 means many things. It means that you can drink, buy alcohol and cigarettes. You can get married, if you want, without parental permission. You can get a credit card, own property, buy plane tickets in your own name, you can even change your name!

But does this make you an adult? According to the law, yes, but I (being close to this age myself) have been thinking about this quite a lot lately, and I've decided that there are a few other factors that should be added to the definition of adult, apart from reaching the magic number.

1. The ability to say no. Kids say yes to everything appealing, even if it's not good for them. They'll lie to their parents about being sick so they can go to a friend's house after school and end up throwing up all over their backyard (it only happened once. A long time ago.). They'll eat and eat and eat junk food just because it's there, not stopping even when they're full. If you can say 'No', you are getting closer to being an adult.
2. Ability to get a job. You don't have to have a job, because some people are at school/studying/living off a massive inheritance, but you do have to have the ability to get one. So good personal hygiene, the ability to look someone in the eye and the ability to express yourself at least reasonably well should be there before you're classified an adult.
3. A general understanding of who gets told what. Yes, I'm talking about tact, secrets, oversharing and other wonderful things like that. Don't keep telling the same friend about your secrets if she just keeps telling others. Don't tell your mate that his acne is looking really bad lately. And DON'T tell me all about the surgery you just had when you know I'm squeamish. Mistakes are fine - but you can't be an adult until you have at least a small understanding of when to keep your mouth shut.

If you can do all these things when you turn 18 then congratulations - in my eyes, you are an adult. Of course, if you turn 18 and you can't do these things then in the eyes of the law you're still an adult, but I am pretty sure you're going to want to develop these things pretty quickly!

Torture in the form of a camera

On Monday, I experienced my last ever school photos. Yet another last for this year, following on from last Swimming Carnival, last Cross Country Carnival, last first day of the year, Music Camp, last first day in winter uniform, last ever day wearing white socks to school... No more hanging around waiting for the previous group to finish. No more rushing out of class, hoping not to miss out on something that will be in the next exam (Yes I am a massive nerd). No more being seated in the front row because you're teeny-tiny and happen to go to school with the world's tallest teenage boys. No more worrying that the top row is going to fall off the flimsy scaffold-thing and crush all those below them into a mush of blazers, braids and shoe polish.

And most of all, no more horribly embarrassing posed photos that you have to wait months to see and are hardly ever happy with.

I'm one of those people who has NEVER been happy with a school photo. Well, not since Year 4 when I somehow managed to pull off a decent smile. That particular photo is still the one in my mother's wallet. And then, the hormones kicked in, the mosquito-bite scar arrived (a putrid scab for Year 5 school photos!) and Mum stopped doing my hair. Not one good photo in high school. So this year, I was absolutely determined to finish Year 12 with one decent portrait photo of myself in school uniform.

In Year 10 one shoulder was higher than the other, so I practiced standing nice and straight. In Year 11, my hair was disastrous, so I washed it the night before, tried to scrunch it with product to get nice waves to add texture and intricacy to my ponytail (or something like that), talking to myself in the mirror like a beauty guru on YouTube... And The Rudolph-style nose I've been sporting every year since Year 7 thanks to a tendency to flush when embarrassed/hot/cold/angry/happy/sad/tired/hungry/asleep? Covered with a layer of foundation.

Of course, we sat down for the photos. I hadn't practiced sitting straight! And my hair? Well the product did work, but as I sleep on my side, instead of the waves I'd been aiming for, I got one VERY flat side of hair and one just normally untameable. It took longer than normal to do my everyday ponytail, and no time for clever braids or face-framing curls. I even think I forgot a ribbon! My red nose was successfully covered the morning of photos, as planned for, but, as if I was being punished for my vanity, a couple of nasty pimples popped up overnight on my chin. Concealer was hastily applied, and then put in my pocket for touch-ups (it was a stick concealer), where it promptly melted. Only within the tube, luckily not on my school skirt, but it was pretty much useless throughout the day. Yeah yeah I know, #firstworldproblems. But I had my heart set on not looking gross! When people look back at their passport-photo sized image of me in 20 years, I wanted them to remember me and my personality, not the leering lady with the nutty hair and the wacky skin.

So my perfect school photo? Well I still don't know. Maybe it will be fine! Maybe I'll look like a witch! Or maybe I should just stop caring and think about how much fun it was to laugh along with my grade at the photographer's lame jokes, and try and get away with flipping over the dangly crests on our prefect badges, and just look back at all the old dorky, silly and embarrassing school photos and reminisce about how amazing these last six years have been?

The art of not killing all your school friends

Anyone who has been to high school is going to know what I’m talking about here, particularly those who are doing or have already done the HSC.

For those who haven’t, I’ll just quickly explain something. In Year 12, your rankings in every subject matter a lot, as they moderate your marks in the final HSC exams. If you come first in a subject, your mark is set, but for everyone else, this system can be pretty terrifying, as you have no idea what effect everyone else’s marks will have on you. The higher your ranking in each task, the better. This leads to something quite odd, something which I like to call ‘The Love-Hate HSC Complex’.

By the time you reach Year 12, you’ve been at school with the same people for six years, maybe more if you went to the same primary school. Deep friendships have developed over years of shared classes, moaning about homework and lining up at the canteen. So in your head, this year is getting quite emotional, as you imagine next year, when, no matter what you do, you’re not going to see these people every day anymore. You start to appreciate everyone in a really, quite freakishly positive way. You forget all the times they’ve wronged you, that party they didn’t invite you to, the way they won’t let you copy their maths homework, that one time they hit you in the face with a cricket bat during PE (Accidentally! Of course!)…

While all these over-the-top emotions are rushing around inside your head, BAM! It’s time to get your marks back for an assessment. Suddenly, your passionate love for your classmates is buried under your passionate desire to RANK FIRST and WIN AT THE HSC. The whole grade is called into one classroom, and you’re sharing a seat with your best friend. You know, the perfect one with the perfect hair and the perfect work ethic? Yep, that one. The teachers are going to give you a big lecture about the assessment before they hand back the marks. This is the first problem. No one listens. They are too concerned with their ranking. Finally the teachers finish, and the assessments are handed out. You hold your breath as your essay/speech/exam is placed face down on the desk, then you turn it over.

18 out of 20. YES!

A great mark, of course. Yet, a niggling doubt still rests at the back of your mind. You crane your neck to try and spot other people’s marks without being too obvious, and catch a glimpse of the red number written on the Perfect Best Friend’s assessment.

19.

What?

The hatred takes over. For a few, blinding moments, you forget all that they are to you. You forget those flowers they gave you when you were sick/sad/happy, or the way they’ll answer their phone to talk to you even when it’s past midnight on a school night. All you feel is PURE, UNADULTERATED HATRED.

It’s natural of course. Everyone is feeling it right now, except the kid with 19. And you know that they must deserve the mark, and that you have no reason to hate them, but there it is. You want to wriggle off your chair and go booby-trap their locker.

Suddenly, they turn to you. Smile. “How’d you go?”

It sounds like an innocent enough question, but everyone knows that behind that open-ended inquiry is the burning desire to ensure they are the best. They want to know your mark. And because they’ve probably already spied, you answer. “18”.

They grin. “That’s great!”

You could interpret their response as them being nice, and truly affirming your result, but you’re still a bit blind, so you instantly think that they’re only glad because you didn’t beat them.

And so it continues.

I frequently see and experience this. You can get a great mark, and still not be happy, because your ranking is not good. It’s unfortunate that the year when everyone finally seems to love each other is also the year in which we have to compete with such stakes. But in my time, I’ve figured out a few ways not to kill my friends (and make sure they don’t kill me!) when the Hate aspect of the ‘Love-Hate HSC Complex’ sets in…*

1.       Remember, if you can, that they are still your friend.

2.       Think about your different goals. Take university entry as an example. Unless your friend wants to do the exact same course as you, you’re only competing to do the best you can, not to get in to the course, so you can’t hate them for threatening your chances.

3.       Remember you’re not the only person who wants to do well. Try and feel some happiness for the people who did well as they try and achieve their dreams.

4.       Don’t take it out on anyone. Wait till you get home and then rant to your soft toys.

5.       Try not to cry or say that you did awfully (at least in front of everyone – again, wait for the soft toys). Sure, everyone has different standards, but even if you think coming tenth is a bad rank, imagine how the person who came fortieth is going to feel hearing you moan about how badly you did. If you come dead last, moan all you like.

*Anyone who knows me may think I’m being hypocritical writing this because of my tendency to lost it a bit over bad marks. To them I say... do what I say, not what I do. But I do try to follow my own advice!

A home for nerds

I am a confirmed nerd. The very name of my blog asserts that fact. And everyone knows that nerds LOVE the internet. They can connect with other nerds, create nerdy things and just be themselves. So out of all the websites, which is the best one for nerds?

Of course, I used nerds in the absolute COOLEST sense. I have simply observed many nerds finding homes on the internet, and have joined them.*
Well, in my opinion, the winner is Youtube. Tumblr might have nerdy elements, but it's so full of hipsters and quotes about romance to be truly nerdy. Facebook has everyone, plus all your non-nerdy friends can see when you do embarrasingly nerdy things. Twitter is too full of oversharing B-list celebrities. What does that leave? Well, MySpace... no I kid. No one cares about MySpace anymore.

Youtube! Youtube is the home of nerds. Before you protest, here are my reasons.

1. Tutorials. Yeah, beautiful people watch hair and makeup tutorials, sure, but they are NERDY people who can be bothered sitting through ten minutes to LEARN. Also, the hair and makeup is far outweighed by the 'How to be awesome', 'How to integrate an inverse trigonometric function' and 'How to solve a Rubik's cube'.
2. TV Shows. If you care that much about a TV show to want to either a) catch up on it online or b) get it sooner than everyone else in Australia, you are being an Internet nerd.
3. Things like this. This is Pride and Prejudice done in a video blog from the perspective of Lizzie Bennet. Absolutely brilliant, hilarious, and featuring the witty, incredulous line from Mr Darcy 'These people are enjoying popular music unironically!' Fantastic!

I could go on about the nerdy value of Youtube for many more points but my subscription box is calling.

*Nerdfighters! If you don't know what this means, shame on you. Now google it.