How not to adult

I've forgotten to turn the oven off before. Twice. I didn't even realise until my family asked why the oven was still on.

I've slept through the fire department arriving outside my house to put out a car that was a blazing inferno.

One time I had a dream that I was chopping vegetables. I knew it was a dream because I didn't accidentally cut myself in the process.

So believe me when I tell you that yesterday, for about six or seven hours, I forgot to eat. It was only hitting me what my problem was when my brain was screaming at me, my hands were shaking and I started to hallucinate a little. I was on my way home but as soon as I got inside, I ate several pieces of fruit, drank some tea, then busied myself cooking a full meal to make sure I didn't succumb to the feeling that I was going to die.

Regular meals. Apparently they're important.

Even Alice thinks I'm a lost cause.

Out in the sticks

I'm job hunting. I graduated from university, I went travelling, and now I'm job hunting. I applied for a sales and marketing assistant job (by accident, but that's another story) and thought it was going to be sitting in an office, making phone calls and researching products all day.

Oh ho ho. How wrong I was.

So the company advertised a job like the one I just described, and emailed me for an interview about two hours after I sent in my application. Okay, I thought, maybe they're just desperate? Which was good news for me, because that meant Job. And Job = Payment. The pay they were offering seemed pretty good, too. I went for the interview.

The interview was less than five minutes of one of the managers telling me about the company, shaking my hand and telling me that I might get invited back for an 'Open Day' if I was successful. Dazed and a little confused, I left the office.

At 1.53pm I get The Call.

So I've managed to make an impression, I've passed the first stage of the application process. Can I come in the next day for 8.45am and stay until 6pm?

Erm...

I say yes. What else am I going to do: stay home all day? When I arrive promptly at 8.35am, it's to a room of ten other hopeful applicants. Yikes. I try not to let that phase me, keeping my head up, talking myself down from panicking, it will be okay it will be okay it will b

We're split up, partnered with current employees. Like a mentor-mentee system. This is good, I think. I just have to impress this guy - let's call him Hamish - and I'm in.

Oh ho ho. How wrong I was.

Here's my little secret

Oh, Scar. You really thought you were going to get away with it.

Not really guys, I didn't kill any lions. I promise.

So you know all those posts I have complaining about university and how stressful a time I found my undergrad? Disregard everything: I'm doing an MA!

I received my acceptance letter this morning in the post and boy oh boy, I was so excited. I really, really, REALLY want to do it. I had my application looked at twice by the helpful careers department at my university and was so completely stoked when the adviser told me my application was ready.

I've wanted to apply since November. While I was in Connecticut, I attended a couple of MA Social Work classes and found them incredibly interesting. So interesting in fact, that I even took notes. My one complaint from those classes was that nobody was discussing a book - and in that fatal moment, my desire to study a master's in literature was born.

And all the cons of studying melted away.

Literature peeves

Hey all! So I thought I'd build on this blog post, and add a few more personal irks to the list. Feel free to refresh your memory on the things I hate reading about and try to avoid writing.

Ready? Okay!

I didn't find the film all that interesting, either.

5. Explaining your imagery. This was done in a book I'm slightly ashamed to say I've read, but proud to admit I couldn't even get halfway through reading. Every metaphor made is explained by the first person narrator, justifying its relevance to the plot and therefore destroying any impact it might have on me as a reader. The novel was really popular when it was first published and from what I've read, I have no idea why. That's right, it's The Hunger Games. I actually managed to find an excerpt of the book on the publisher's website - you can read it here.

6. Introducing the story with endless amounts of back story. I'm sure it's integral to know how many partners the main character slept with in her youth, or what her parents did for a living, but maybe don't have all this information in a splurge right at the beginning? I am currently reading a book given to me by my godfather - who said he enjoyed reading it and maybe I would too - but I haven't gotten past the fourth chapter. Mainly because there are four POVs and the first four chapters and all of their back stories. Zero story. Urgh. The novel is called Waiting to Exhale, if anyone's interested. I'm hoping it gets better.

Elephant art

When I was a child, everyone thought I was going to be an artist when I grew up. Heck, I even thought I was going to be an artist! I was always drawing something, always sketching, colouring, painting. Art was always my favourite subject in school. I had countless art books growing up and my mum knew that when I was 12, my favourite present (by far!) was the briefcase full of art supplies she surprised me with. Which I still have. Thanks, Mum.

So what happened? Art GCSE. It killed the fun of art for me. I decided if this was what being an artist was, I didn't want it. I stopped telling people I wanted to be an artist. My artwork production declined. I dropped my pencil, picked up a pen - thus Terri the Writer was born!

Like art, I had been writing stories from a young age. However, I didn't really take it seriously: it was just a bit of fun, right? While my writing grew more serious, my art fell into the background. I didn't draw as much and actually went through a period of two whole years where I didn't do any drawing!

Since 2012 I've mostly been drawing the characters in my stories. It's mostly ensemble pieces.