Sydney Life

Hello interwebs. Sincere apologies regarding my lengthy absence on Sydney Life. Here's what I've been doing...

I haven't embarked on an overseas trip. I haven't started postgraduate study. I haven't walked into a graduate job and begun to climb the career ladder.

I'm actually doing some work experience in a film post-production company. And I'm also editing a 10 minute documentary based on a really exciting architecture project called Global Studio, which was conceived by Sydney University's Associate Professor Anna Rubbo in 2005. I'm not making any money from it, and in my current situation the idea of being a "poor student" is actually quite a pleasant one, because I'd be significantly better off.

So why do it? For starters, because I enjoy it. Just weeks after finishing my degree every second person I spoke to wanted to know what I was doing next. Or specifically, what job I had lined up. I thought a swift stab-in-the-guts-with-a-sharpened-pencil might do the trick for the next well meaning person who enquired about my future, but I figured since I'm way too old for Juvy these days, and not as well-connected as Paris Hilton, I'd better not head down the delinquent path too far.

I just didn't know what to do. It all seemed far too serious, finishing university. Somewhere along the way it had become a dichotomy in my mind: there's university, in all its wild and tasty diversity... and then there's the rest of your life. Where you be an adult, and it's all terribly serious, and you do everything right the first time because you don't make mistakes when you're a grown-up. Sound scary? Well, it was pretty awful to be in my head for a while.

I stopped writing blogs because I felt like I'd messed up. I had completed my degree (with some pretty good results, all things considered) enduring light-hearted jibes from Commerce students who told me the only thing I'd be qualified to do with a humanities degree would be hospitality. And here I was now, post-university, facing up to the prospect of finishing my degree and taking up a bar job. How utterly humiliating, I thought.

And then one day I sat down and had a cup of tea and thought, screw this. I wrote down everything I really like doing, at uni and work experience and jobs and life in general, and I realised that something that stood out for me during uni was the class I took in video production. And how I watch Greys Anatomy and wonder how they do all the gory bits. How I hear songs and think about how they could be used in a movie. How I resize and redo my Facebook picture in Photoshop because I like retouching photos (oh, and because I'm a tryhard narcissist with too much time on my hands, naturally...). Editing film, even without the promise of payment, seems like a great idea, at least for now.

I guess I just decided that you never know when your number's up, so spending a sizable chunk of your time doing things you don't enjoy seems pretty counter-intuitive. Oh yeah, and realising that a person isn't defined by their job definitely helps things along too.

And on that note, here's a picture of a kitten.