Change

If this year has a theme for me, it is "change" and so much has changed for me. My parents have split up and both left Melbourne, where I am. I have had to find a new place to live, and I have now moved out of the family house of the vicar and moved into the house where I'll be staying. Tonight will be my third night sleeping here. I've also, within the last week, successfully got a new job but it in sales and commission-based. It was not my ideal working situation but even in the last couple of days, I have learned heaps and I'm sure that this job will give me HEAPS of experience and help me get another job in the future if this one doesn't turn out ok. Having said that, I'm not actually minding it too much at the moment. I don't mind the work, the issue is whether it will make me enough money to live on, and that depends on my own performance.

Today was my first "official" day where I first started making sales, and I made my first sale.

One of the issues I'm worried about (other than money and long hours) is that doing this kind of job might change a part of me that I like about myself. I don't even know what that part would be, but, as at least one friend has warned me to be, I'll be careful.

Interviews, Houses and Earthquakes

I had a job interview today and even though I was late, have no experience in the area, and basically admitted to being "not very outgoing" (it's a marketing job) I've been invited to a second interview (the first time since I've been invited to a second interview since I've been looking.)

Also, if all things go to plan, I'll be moving into my new place in about a week's time, maybe a week and a half.

There's also been an earthquake in Christchurch, I've heard. Buildings have fallen down and bodies are being pulled out from them.

I really like staying with the people I'm staying with at the moment, although at the same time I am also looking forward to moving to the new place, (although I'll still see the family I'm staying with now quite often) and I'm not quite sure whether I want the move to happen soon or if I wouldn't mind waiting a bit longer.

One Step Closer

I've moved house again - but not finally. The house I'm supposed to move into is not ready and the house where I was staying, well, my agreed stay-time was expiring (and I wasn't in the mood to ask for an extension.) Fortunately, one of the people in charge of organising the house who told me that the house is being delayed knew that the place I was staying before was temporary and offered me a room to stay with her family if it put me in a tight spot (which it did). I accepted her offer and so I've moved in the area staying with ANOTHER family but not yet into the house. I'll be moving again before the end of the month.

I am grateful for the previous family for giving me a place to stay while I was in waiting, but at the same time, I am relieved to be out of there, even if it is with yet another family. Even from the beginning I felt tense with Eel, (the mother in the house), who cared about different things than I, (which was fine), and seemed to think I should care about the things she cared about instead of the things I cared about (which was less fine.) It kind of got a bit worse a bit later, and some of that was my fault as well, but I just felt tense around her and I think she was getting a bit tired of me, too, by the end.

Anyway, I feel much more comfortable with this new family I'm staying with, whose company in the house I'm actually enjoying and who seem to be making special effort to make me feel welcome without making it look like they're going out of their way (either that or they're just naturally good at it.)

My mum came to Melbourne on Saturday and even helped me move into the new temporary house, and only then found out that she actually knew the husband of the woman who I was in contact with about the house! Talk about coincidence. (Although not that much of a coincidence because this always happens within Christian communities, I've noticed.)

So there's Vicar, the male adult (who I've named after his occupation), his wife Fin, the female adult, and their children; Star, who is friendly, polite and helpful for a teenage boy, and the daughter (also an adult, but just not one of THE adults, in her early twenties) Shimmer, who I only just met less than an hour ago because she wasn't around the last couple of days since I've been here, but has made a good first impression by being friendly and sociable.

I feel a lot more relaxed than I've been in the last few weeks. I'm also trying to get to know the area a bit since, even though I've not yet made it to where I'm going to be living, I'm only a few blocks away from it. Being closer to the city than I was previously, there are plenty of places nearby that I'm quite happy are nearby.

Things are moving

Well, I guess things might be happening, soon. There are two houses that I'm looking at, and whereas I don't yet know whether the one I'm most interested in is going to be offered me, there is another one which I'm fairly sure I've got if I want it. So I guess things might be happening soon.

I'm also getting plenty of job interviews, so, if any of them go well, I might also be having a job, too. Unfortunately, job interviews aren't my strong suit but we'll see.

So... yeah, I guess it's happening. Good thing, too, because I was starting to run out of time to find a place.

Nothing's certain yet, but I feel a bit better about the situation than I did a couple weeks ago.

My Future

Well... life has been kind of stressful for me lately for various reasons. One of them is that I'll be forced to move in about a month's time, and I don't yet know where I'm going to be living or who I'm going to be living with. I do know that, no matter what, the details of my life are going to change. I don't know how, but it definately will.

None of my options are ideal but I do have a couple.

1. Live with Mum.
This has a couple of pros but one big con. It's far away from my life and stuff I care about. She's moving far away out into the country. I visited the house she's going to buy and it's a really nice place. There's two bedrooms. She even mentioned that if I did live with her, I could have the master bedroom (since she won't need it and there's not much room elsewhere where I could keep my computer. She uses a laptop) which is really generous of her. It's even aross the road from this all-purpose convenience store. It's a nice place to live, and I wouldn't hate it. Living with mum would be really nice, too... but I'd have to leave my life, and I'm not quite willing to do that.

2. Live with Dad.
Okay, this isn't really an option and I've already decided against this. Dad's moving to Sydney, even further away than mum is, and to probably somewhere not as nice. Nor do I even get along with my dad that well. I love him, but he's a very stressful person to live with. The one benefit to this is that it's geographically closer to my brother, but it's not like I'm that emotionally close to my brother or anything, and I'd just be trading proximity to one sibling for proximity to another.

3. Live with my sister.
My sister and her husband have kindly offered me space in their house until I can get my own place. They have a spare room I can use, and one of the most tempting parts of their offer is their electronics and gaming system. The other is that they live in Melbourne. Unfortunately, they live at the wrong side of Melbourne, which means that commuting to places where I have commitments might, unlike the previous two options, be plausible, it'd also be extremely inconvenient and problematic. The other concern is that although I'd have no issues with taking advantage my parents's hospitality, who are my parents, staying with my married sister, I'd feel like a bit of a burden. In any case, it'd be a temporary arrangement most likely and this may be the best option in the short term if I don't get any better options.

4. Find my own place.
This is the one I'm hoping for but it is also one that I don't know if it will be on the table on time. Until recently, this was impossible since I did not have a large enough income to support myself, to pay for my own food let alone pay rent. I have recently started being on the dole, however. (One of the other things I have been stressed about lately.) So now I'm getting some money from the government, it's a matter of finding a place that is both cheap enough and close enough to public transport that I can get to places I need to get to. It's also scary. I have no experience in how much it does actually cost to eat and buy stuff, or any of that stuff that most adults probably should know about, as I've never had to take care of that kind of stuff and there's a good chance I'm going to bad at it.

Random stuff and Magic

Not much to report. Well... I have Writer's Sports tonight at my TAFE! It's a bit like Theatre Sports but with writing instead of theatre. I'm anticipating some fun so I'll let you know how it goes, although I haven't decided if I want to compete, yet, or not. I'm sure you'd be interested in hearing about non-church related activities for once.

I've been invited to a party on Saturday but I haven't decided if I want to go, yet, or not. I probably won't decide until on the day.

I'm also going to this... women's afternoon tea thing on Sunday. And, yes, it's a church-related activity.

Well, I guess that's it. I just felt like blogging right now. There are going to be people going through the house today, as there seems to be every now and then what with the house being on sale. To be honest, it kind of stresses me out, having strangers wander through the house and looking in my room while I'm feeling self concious about the holes in my unflattering places in my trackies but still being too lazy to bother getting dressed in my outside-in-public clothes, and me being too stressed to do something relaxing OR to do homework!

My bosses are in Vanuatu at the moment so I don't have any work for this week, either.

Oh, I've also been playing this game, Academagia which is a lot of fun, and yet I'm not sure if I'd recommend it to others. It's just that you do have to buy it but it doesn't come with a Free-Trial or Demo version like most casual games these days, so it's a bit of a gamble and I don't think it'd be for everyone. I decided to give it a go, I've been trying to save money lately but I did have my very first payment not that long ago for my new job, and so I thought I'd treat myself.

And it's really intimidating at first, you're throw straight in the deep end and the amount of information that you come across is overwhelming, not being quite sure which info is important that you need to pay attention to and remember, which information is just world-building, and which information is okay to wait until later for you to get familiar with it, with most of the gameplay you're having to work out yourself. It's probably a good thing that there isn't a demo version because no one would buy it with how intimidating it is at the beginning. Not that if you did buy it, you'd regret it, because having spent money on it, you're more invested in giving it a go, which means you'll push through that initial information overload, and once you get the hang of it, it's immensely fun and the replayability factor is immense, with so much to learn about the world and the characters that you couldn't possibly discover playing through only once, and so many ways to play.

Torchlight

I've been wanting to update my blog but haven't really been sure what I wanted to write about. That is, there have been plenty of things that have happened that I could write about and have thought about writing about, but ended up deciding against it for one reason or another.

One thing I'm happy to write about is this game I've become addicted to, Torchlight. It's very similar to Diablo in gameplay but without giving me nightmares of demons slaughtering my family. (No, I didn't find Diablo scary when I played it but some of the imagery occasionally seeped into my sleep. I had to force myself to stop playing it.) Instead of some hidden catacombs underneath a church where generations of demons have been breeding for centuries unbeknownst to the surrounding town, it's a recently discovered mine of some magical ore where monsters have recently been emerging from some ancient civilization, or something? Anyway, same gameplay as Diablo but the imagery is less religious, which makes it for more relaxed and less blasphemous play on my part. And it has its own unique charm, too, is even a little steampunky at times which I love!

What Torchlight has been giving me is, if not nightmares, then headaches. It is an issue with me when I get addicted to a computer game. I spend too much time playing it and all that time focussing intently on a computer screen gives me headaches. It's always a toss-up for me when I have to decide whether getting a headache is worth another hour or so of fun, addicting play. I might take it a bit easier, today, but we'll see how I go. (Just so you know, I am on holidays at the moment.)

Hm... another thing I could write about is that I'm going to my sister's tomorrow and then staying there until the end of the weekend. I'm very excited, I can't wait to play on her X-box and her Playstation 3 on her hi-def widescreen TV... oh, and to spend time with my sister, of course... :p

Actually, the reason I'm going over is to housesit so I can look after her gorgeous cat and her birds, but she's invited me to come over a couple of days earlier so we can spend some time together before she and her husband go away. It's also her birthday on Monday, so tomorrow (Thursday) Mum, my sister, her husband and I are going to go out for dinner, although I don't know where, yet.