Weekends? (Sophie)
I’m restless…my mind is on overdrive and it’s been a long time since I had trouble sleeping at night.
I wanted to share how meaningful the advice a friend gave me on Friday was.
For the first time in my life I had someone tell me “Don’t you think you’re being a bit unrealistic aiming that high?” after I told them what kind of marks I was hoping to average at uni.
Lol. I know it sounds crazy. I recoiled in shock. How dare someone tell me I can’t do something!
But you know what?
It was one of the best things I’d heard all week.
To have someone say to me that it’s okay to set your standards a bit lower sometimes. That’s it’s okay to sacrifice some things in order to LIVE. That enjoying life is more important……and that I don’t need to look like a genius to get into an Investment Bank.
It gave me some relief.
Despite being relatively short-lived…
I spent the weekend doing about 15 hours of Accounting, teaching myself how the hell to use Quickbooks. Brad Potter’s introductory audio recording to it was helpful in the sense it explained the most basic of things….but when it came to the things that were more compex there was zero explanation. I wasted quite a few hours working out some really small but essential elements of knowledge to do with using the program. It is a good feeling to finally master something though. I also worked at the tennis club from 7:45am on Saturday til about 11am, then 4 hours at Target on Sunday.
My happiness was brought to me through 15 minutes of online window-shopping with J late on Saturday night.
I receieved a call from the President of the Melbourne Uni Political Interest Society tonight. He was calling to check I was nominating for the committee. I really appreciated him taking the time to personally call me like that. Consequently…I have nominated for the position of Social Secretary. I organise the social events! (If I get the position that is!). It would be fun. He told me that he, himself, had taken that role in first year.
Tomorrow morning I have to call Motorola with the intention of getting them to replace my phone. I’ve had it since the end of last year and it’s been switching itself off. At first I thought I’d accidently switched it off myself, but now it’s become more worse and noticiably NOT my doing. Plus the battery is not holding its charge. I am not looking forward to doing this but I can’t afford to wait 2 weeks or more for them to ‘fix’ it. I hate multinationals!!!!!!!!
I spoke to the guy from where we bought it the other week…’it’s not their decision’ ect ect to replace it – the decision rests with Motorola and Motorola insist they look at the phones and fix them. He told me they hadn’t had many problems at all with my phone (the V3) so consequently, trying to appease my frustration told me jokingly “The phone must hate you.”
The result was that a slight chill ran over me as I considered the possibility of the phone being an entity of its own with some kind of control/power over me.
In many ways…it does control me. Switching it off (which I do on the rarest of occasions) is an incredible feeling of being able to relax at last – the joys of modern technology and its hold over your life.
J has psychometric testing all day (or whatever its called) for a certain well-known company. The whole job searching game is stressful and I live vicariously through him. I’m learning early what I will later face.
We’re doing dinner in the evening…he’s been there a lot for me the last few days so I wanted to show my appreciation by making the time to meet him after he’s had a busy day and spending time with him.
Before that I have also managed to fit in a last minute coffee with M. I miss her so much. These days I’m a nightmare to schedule with unless its a week in advance. Last week I tried to organise something with her for Monday but she was meant to be recording….at the last minute it was postponed. By that point I had organised with J to meet, do dinner ect.
Anyways. I’m glad I can see her for a little while at least :- )
Okay I’m going to try to sleep now because I am truly exhausted!
It is way past my bed time!
xoxo
Sophie
2:06 am, I am impressed! Quickbooks…fond memories. You work yourself too hard young Sophie, though it’s always interesting reading of your exploits.
Here’s a twist on an old axiom:
“To reach the sky, I had to aim for the stars”
If you set your focus that far away, you risk losing sight of what’s right in front of you.
Motorola had issues with some of the earlier iterations of firmware on the V3, and the phone is notorious for low battery life. You can usually get a replacement straight away if it’s under warranty, you just have to chew their heads off somewhat to prevent them from brushing you off.
*Raises glass of Pinot Noir* To lazy weekends!
PXW
Off topic: where is all the commentage? Is is just me or is everyone keyboard shy?
Lol…yes I’ve reverted back to old habits (I’m hoping they don’t stay!!!). Going to bed early is so much more restful.
I know I work too hard sometimes…but we have an accounting test this week to do with Quickbooks data…so I really felt I needed to become an expert at it so I don’t have a stress attack!
You are definitely right about not forgetting the importance of what is right in front of you.
I am angry at the phone. At Motorola….gah. Spent about an hour on the phone to them this morning. Dealt with a bitch then finally got a helpful girl. The best compromise I’ve got is a promise for them to ‘fix’ it within 48 hours instead of 2 weeks +….So I am slightly happy.
I bought it for the ‘long’ battery life. It’s an f-ing joke.
I will never buy Motorola again. I hate them so so so much.
The warranty for the phones is replacement within first 14 days then getting fixed after that.
I gave them a hard time. Sometimes companies just won’t budge (much). If there are any more problems though, because they have my case on record, I should be able to get them to replace it.
I’d imagine they’d be a hudge manual to that Quickbooks. Sounds like my use of Cubase SE, which took a good day just to correctly set it all up and understand how to just use basic features. Also my midi keyboard took forever.
Good to see you’re trying to balance your life. Of course that doesn’t mean that you should just disregard your studies, but it looks like you’re doing that anyway.
Unfortunately there was no ‘huge manual’ to Quickbooks….the instructions we receieved were very basic. I think they wanted us to figure it all out ourselves so it was like a ‘learning on the job’ type exercise.
Cubase SE sounds tough!!!
I’m trying my best to keep things in balance…it’s hard but at the end of the day study must come first…well actually I should probably say my health comes first!
Thanks for the comment.
Soph –
Just a simple sentence to keep everything in perspective:
You are not your final mark!
xx –
jez
damn, you have so much off-school duties to fulfill. U can study with some friends next time,maybe that will help.
also i got a questoin to ask, does the relationship with ur boyfriend take up time or distract your mind? I am trying to figure out whether i should have a gf or not. But i guess everyone is different. It is something new to me though, so i am a bit afraid.
But i think it might help me to live life more. 🙂
Hi Jim.
Thanks for the comment. Yes! I am a very busy person!!!
Having a boyfriend does take up a bit of time….but I think it’s manageable. You just have to make sure you have your priorities (uni first) and they understand that you can’t spend all the time with them because you have other things you need to do.
It’s nice to be in a relationship though; i really reccomend it because it’s nice to have someone there to spend time with and it’s definitely part of the ‘uni’ experience -going out with the opposite sex.
I could have sworn that going out with the same sex was more the Uni experience Soph but there you go!!!
In all seriousness though, (and I can confirm this re. “C”) a b/f (or in my case g/f) does enrich your experiences so much. Perhaps, more appropriately, when you start prioritising study over people, then something’s gone wrong. Badly wrong.