Daily Prompt – All Grown Up

When was the first time you really felt like a grown up (if ever)?

Even as a person in their early-thirties, I still don’t know what I want to be when I grow up…

Mar 26: Alone But Not Lonely

Do you enjoy being alone? What do you do when you’re by yourself?

Dear Hulk, If you ever read this, please don’t be offended or take what I’m about to say personally… xx

I love being alone.

Well, in the right context. I have always been quite independent, ever since I was a little kid. From an early age, I learnt that it’s true what they say – the only person you can truly depend on is yourself. As a result, when I got a bit older and began travelling interstate by myself, I realised that I didn’t need to depend on anybody. All I needed was myself, and that was fine. It wasn’t until I moved out of home, moved interstate, and found myself living in a share house that I realised just how much I enjoyed being alone.

I was responsible to nobody else, except me. If I wanted to just come home after work and eat a whole tub of ice-cream… I could. If I wanted to come home after work and just go straight to bed and sleep for 12hrs – I could. If I wanted to take a day off to see a couple of movies, I’d do it on a Tuesday because it was ‘Tight-Arse Tuesday’ and all tickets were $9 – so I’d end up seeing something like 4 movies back-to-back. If I wanted to spend a Sunday doing nothing but sleeping, then I would. If I woke up one morning and wanted to go on an adventure, then I’d just do it. I had nobody to consider; nobody to consult with. I was a free-agent and could do whatever I wanted. It was a good time. But in saying that, I did also get quite lonely. Yes, I had a small close-knit circle of friends to fall back on when I wanted somebody to hang out with… but I had a good balance of company and solitude.

Just recently, I was away on a work trip, and found myself feeling quite lonely at night time because I missed having Hulk around… but at the same time, there were some quiet moments that I truly enjoyed being by myself. Swimming in the ocean at 7am when there isn’t a single person on the beach was truly an exhilarating experience. Granted, the water was incredibly cold (hence why it was completely deserted), but there was just something about that moment that I truly loved. Being able to experience that was something that I would never have done had it not been for the fact that I was away at the coast, and only because a few other colleagues had been discussing it the night prior.

I didn’t care. I just enjoyed being in the ocean. It’s been so long since I had been in the ocean, and it’s an experience that I miss quite a lot, and an experience that I have craved for a considerable amount of time.

Standing in icy water, armpit deep in the water on an empty beach, watching the sun begin to rise is something that I’m actually quite glad that I got to experience by myself. I didn’t have to share it with anybody else. It’s an experience and a memory that was, and forever will be, just mine.

Temporary solitude amongst the icy waters of Torquay Beach

When I got back to the hotel, I had quite a long hot shower (to defrost myself) and sat outside on the balcony in my oversized fluffy robe, watching the sun continue to rise, and listening to the echo of the waves crashing on the shore in the distance… and I realised that I could happily wake up to this every single day. I actually began to think that I would like to come back here at some point, purely just to focus on doing some serious writing… like working on a novel or something equally creative.

…however, to stay at that resort would cost an absolute fortune, and I simply couldn’t justify that sort of luxurious indulgence.

Daily Prompt: Sixteen Tons

How do you feel about your job? Do you spring out of bed, looking forward to work? Or, is your job a soul-destroying monotony of pure drudgery, or somewhere in between?

“..a soul-destroying monotony of pure drudgery…” now that’s a great way to describe somebody’s job. I’m pretty sure I’ve had days / weeks / months where I’ve felt like that with my job.

Without giving too much away, my job has a tendency to be rather monotonous, and half of it is spent answering phones, which is really the only part that I really loathe about my role. The other half of my role is actually something that I somewhat enjoy. It’s a role that allowed me to grow with the role; take on more responsibility; given me more autonomy; and it’s allowed me to really ‘own’ the role and take pride in my work.

The problem that I have is that as much as I want to get myself away completely from answering phones, my employers simply won’t have a bar of it. The last person who wanted off ended up having some kind of breakdown, and soon after left the company. Although a part of me feels like I may be not far off having some kind of complete breakdown, it’s not necessarily something that I want to happen in order to achieve a change in my role.

Perhaps I need to try and take on more admin work as a means to demonstrate that I simply don’t have time to sit around idly answering phones and continually getting frustrated by people calling. It’s a tough job, and I know somebody has to do it… I would just prefer if that somebody wasn’t me.

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Jan 28: Responsibilities

Which of your responsibilities stress you out the most?

After sitting here thinking about this for the past few minutes, I’m still struggling to come up with something. I don’t really have responsibilities. I’m not a parent, I don’t have kids, I don’t have to do school pick-ups, or baby sit, or shuttle kids around to weekend sports, I don’t have a pet, I don’t have a mortgage, I’m not paying off a car…

….I think that based purely on that, some people would just consider my life to be sad and empty.

I think that the most stressful thing I have to be concerned about are really basic mundane things like what I’m going to wear to work, is the public transport going to run on time for a change so I can actually get to work before 9am, and what am I going to listen to whilst on transport.

Gee… so much pressure!!