my psychologist: “I don’t think you’ve got depression. I think you just ruminate far too much.”

me: “I’m a ruminant? I’m a ruminant! I’m like a cow!”

my psychologist: “Yes, exactly. Or a goat … “

so, why am i awake at 1am when i’m supposed to be getting up to go to work at 6am?

this is a common thing. i always forget about it, and am taken by surprise when it happens, but then i remember “oh yes … tomorrow’s a “special day” of some sort”. tomorrow i go back to work.

when i was young, i could never sleep the night before school went back. and even now, any night beforethe day  i am returning to work, i find myself completely unable to power down.

i suspect it is a mixture of trepidation and an out-of-sorts sleeping pattern. the sleeping i should know better by now (but i am a complete idiot), and the trepidation just makes no sense, but here we are. strange days, me not making sense, after all.

and because i worry about not being able to go to sleep, that exacerbates the situation, of course.

*sigh*

due to my inability to control my own alcohol intake and the resultant embarrassing situations i find myself in, i have declared 2010 a booze free year for me.

i prefer not to think of it as a NY resolution per se, just coincidental and convenient timing.

i drank too much at the family gathering for Christmas- resulted in much crying (me) and screaming over the coffee table (my brother and me) about things we can’t change.

i drank too much on NYE - most of the evening’s gone, and bits i do remember i either wish i didn’t, or they’re so vague it’s like they happened to someone else. being violently ill, yep, that’s one of the former.

my mum asked me surely at 29, i’m a bit old for binge drinking? and i thought it strange, because most people i know binge drink. it’s a cultural thing.

and i don’t imagine it will feel awesome when i’m in one of those situations where i always relied on drinking to get through in the past. but nevertheless, i gave up chocolate - i can give up alcohol.

i got into aggrotech a bit more this year (thanks to emusic, we recently discovered bands Grendel and Psyclon Nine, and a new album from Wumpscut!)

and i got really into some bands / songs that we’ve had for ages, but i’d just never taken the time to really listen to

and i went to see NIN in concert in March which meant i listened to NIN way more than usual

and Patrick Swayze died, so i listened to his song heaps ’cause i’m really lame :)

so my soundtrack for 2009* is as follows:

Pop Will Eat Itself - Wake Up, Time To Die
Chemlab - Force Quit
Grendel - Zombienation (v2k5)
Public Enemy w/ Anthrax - Bring The Noise
Root! - Home?
Chemlab - Codeine, Glue and You
Papa Roach - Blood Brothers
the Dismemberment Plan - I Love a Magician
Grendel - Soilbleed (v3)
NIN - Terrible Lie
Chemlab - Queen of Despair (Ode to the Diode)
Psyclon Nine - INRI
Machines of Loving Grace - Albert Speer
She Wants Revenge - Love to Sleep
Negativland -  Aluminum or Glass : the Memo
David Bowie - Life on Mars?
Skinny Puppy - Worlock (Rhys Fulber remix)
Apoptygma Berzerk - In This Together
Patrick Swayze - She’s Like The Wind
NIN - Reptile

* now with mouseovers over the song names with some of my favourite lyrics and samples!

my whole life i’ve struggled with feelings of inadequacy. one of the issues is associated with me being a girl.

i’ve always been a tomboy - i spent the first 15 years of my life emulating my older brother in attitude and behaviour. no doubt heavily influenced by this, i’ve always found it easier to relate to guys, and enjoyed hanging around them typically more than girls, something which got a wee bit complicated when i hit around 12, because i went completely boy crazy (and never stopped).

but my mum always wanted a baby girl. and my dad is very old fashioned. between the two of them, i have always been treated like a little princess - delicate, sweet and nice, all things that i’m not - with them always wanting to wrap me in cotton wool and dress me in pink and set me up with a lovely rich gentleman who would take care of me forever and ever. because i’m a girl.

when i was in year 11, some of my male friends played D+D. i didn’t know a lot about D+D or gaming by that point, but i knew i wanted to do it. i wanted to do it sooo badly. but i “wasn’t allowed”. because i was a girl.

my circle of friends is made up predominantly by guys who have been friends for years and their partners. a few years ago, the boys decided they needed a blokes’ day - a day where they could all go out and be guys without women hanging around. and i have to admit, i was really hurt. i tried to be understanding, but i *couldn’t* understand. why wasn’t i welcome? oh, because i’m a girl. the same with bucks parties - not welcome - even though i am often closer to the guys than their partners.

the thing is, as i’m sure most people know about me by now, i dislike being defined by my gender. because i don’t define myself by my gender. much like all the other little details in my life, it’s just one of those things that contributes to who i am in my entirety.

today i have had a startling realisation.

in spending so much of my life trying to stop people defining me as a girl, i’ve gotten sidetracked. it was supposed to be something that’s irrelevant to me, not something that i have an inferiority complex about.

i don’t have much control over the way that people perceive me, i know this, but what i’ve just realised is that there are always going to be some people that see me primarily as a girl regardless of what i do, but that maybe that’s not the horrendous, world ending thing i used to think it was.

and maybe that’s not ALL they see. maybe they do see the sum of my parts, but they just happen to notice the individual things that make up that sum.

it doesn’t mean anyone thinks any less of me just because they see me as female, and even if they do, it doesn’t mean I should think less of myself because of how i think they might feel.

and so what if i don’t get invited out because i’m a girl? i often don’t get invited out somewhere, for a whole variety of other reasons, and i shouldn’t get all angsty about those situations either.

so yeah, what i’ve just realised is that all this time i’ve been feeling downtrodden for being a girl, i’m the guilty one. i’m the one who associated being a girl with being JUST a girl.

isn’t that interesting?