To Be Continued...

I'd forgotten that the last post I did was about weddings. Hairier Half and I are engaged now. I should probably write about that at some stage.

But instead I'm gonna whine about money.

I have a job. It's not great, but it's ok.
I pay rent and my own bills.
I try to save €200 a month, because it's important to plan for the future.
I pay €60 a month for health insurance.

I don't have a car; I buy very few clothes- no Penneys spending sprees for me; I don't buy cigarettes or drugs; I don't go out often and when I do I'm a cheap date; I don't buy jewellery; I get two haircuts a year; I travel to the UK for my hobby (and go to friends' weddings) instead of having foreign holidays no matter how much I long for a week of sunshine.

I have one expensive hobby, LARP which I love and I do seven times a year. Sometimes (once every week or two,) I meet friends for coffee and buy coffee, and maybe even cake. Maybe once every month, I meet friends and we have dinner in a restaurant. When I'm out of the house and I get hungry, I get lunch somewhere. Usually somewhere cheap.

Do I have to give these things up? Do I have to stop meeting friends for coffee after work? Do I have to bring snacks from home (heavy to carry, boring to eat, have to find somewhere to sit and eat them) every time I leave the house? Do I stop LARPing, or cut down from the seven times a year I do it, even though it would be socially isolating?

Because I'm already not buying new work shoes this paycheque since I had to go to the doctor and get contraceptified, not going to the dentist because I need to sort out the shoes first, wondering whether I'll be able to get a decent winter coat this year and hoping it'll be mild like last year and not another icy one, wondering when I'll need a suit for work and hoping I manage to buy one before then.

I know I'm better off than many but I still feel so stressed about this all the time. If I feel like I'm barely coping now, how will HH and I manage when we move out of the houseshare? How will we manage if we ever own our own home? How will we cope when we have a kid and more than half my salary is gone on childcare, not to mention all the other expenses? How do other people do it?

Weddings

So I'm in my late twenties now and that means I have to go to at least one wedding every six months, I guess. It appears to be a rule of some kind.

I had never actually been to a wedding until a couple years ago, when I got invited to two lovely people who I didn't think I knew well enough to be invited to their wedding but who I like a lot and was glad of the chance to get to know better.

They were younger than me. That was kinda scary. Guess I really am an adult now.

The wedding was a civil ceremony in a hotel. It was pretty traditional in format but with some excellent exceptions and quirks, like the bride wearing Converse, the bridesmaids in 50's-style polka dots and the Playmobil figures on top of the cake. I was mostly standing around in a pretty dress and high heels (grumble grumble ouch) taking it all in and learning what a wedding looks like.

It was a good one to start off with. The ceremony was straightforward and the day matched the Ceremony-Drinks Reception-Dinner-Speeches-Dancing template. (The only thing missing was the trip from church to reception, but so far civil ceremonies in hotels seem to be pretty common among my friends.)There were also enough quirks and differences that I didn't feel uncomfortable. (Social situations with strict rules are scary, ok?)

And after the grand novelty of attending my Very First Wedding, they soon became fairly frequent events.

Next was the pagan wedding in a scout camp in Nottinghamshire, which could also be called I Can't Believe It's Not a LARP Event. The couple are long-term LARPers and so were a majority of their guests, so they did a smart, money-saving thing and hired a scout camp for a couple of nights, knowing that the majority of guests were well used to camping. There was a marquee for dancing and eating, and mead for the wedding toast and it was all very charming and it didn't rain, luckily.

The ceremony was awesome. The civil ceremony is kind of... utilitarian, I suppose, and while I am a godless, faithless spiritual desert of a human being and proud of it, I have always enjoyed ceremony, and religions make for good ceremony. This pagan ceremony was toned down somewhat for the sake of the Very Catholic relatives, which meant it was easier for me to enjoy it as a metaphor when it got into the wibbly stuff. It was lovely standing in a circle and watching lanterns being lit, and the vows themselves were wonderful. They got a laugh at first as the celebrant asked something like "Do you promise to never get angry at your husband?" and the bride let out a derisively-snorted "NO!" but as they went on, they had me smiling from ear to ear. The vows made it explicit that life together wouldn't be perfect, but that the couple were promising to love each other and stick with each other through all of it, not just "in sickness and in health" but when they annoy each other, or fight, or upset each other. Romantic pragmatism is so much more moving than the notion that you're going to both do nothing but make each other happy forever. If you were both happy forever you wouldn't need to love the other person very much to stay with them, would you? (Also, I think I've invented the term Romantic Pragmatism. You're welcome.)

The next wedding I went to was a traditional Catholic one of people I'd been in college with who are now living in the UK. It was in Limerick (Rachel the bride's home town) and so I had the Rubberbandits' Horse Outside in my head for most of the weekend. That was nice, but apart from the unfortunate use of "Mary" as a generic bride's name in the Mass leaflet and an ill-advised Find & Replace resulting in the line "Blessed Rachel, ever virgin" appearing in the leaflet (the poor groom, eh?) it was the most by-the-book wedding I've attended. It was a lovely day, the bride looked stunning, there were the usual "aawww" moments re: the couple, the meal and afters were fabulous, I bonded with a small child and I had a ball... but there was nothing that went on that wasn't Typically Weddingy. Oh, except the Leinster rugby team being at the hotel where the reception was and getting photos taken with the Leinster groom and Munster bride. There was that!

And then there was the most recent, Civil Ceremony #2. Like the first civil ceremony, it followed the traditional format but with everything in the hotel, there was a cupcake wedding cake, the bride wore white (and looked fab) and the groomsmen were all in three-piece suits. I recommend them to all men for the purposes of looking fiiiiine. But. Oh, God, but. Where to start?

So there was the ceremony, where the celebrant broke the vows down into two-word chunks which confused the groom when it came to "why I, James Murphy*," as she said "why I" and he repeated it, and she said "James Murphy" and he said "Oh! Why I James Murphy!" in tones of great relief that she wasn't just getting him to do a mocking impression of a Tyneside accent. So then came the fits of giggles, increased when the groom replaced the traditional "I will" with an enthusiastic "Yup!" and continuing for most of the vows. But then they read their own vows, and there were tears instead. (Both laughter and tears were coming from the crowd, the groom and the bride.) So that was awesome. See above re: social situations with rules and me not liking it. It's always a lot of fun when someone breaks them.

Then there were the wonderfully nerdy references in the speeches, and the gift of a framed pic of bride and groom with a picture of an X Box "Achievement Unlocked" pop-up below, giving him 1000 points. There was karaoke, and the groom kicked it off with a lovesong for the bride. Skullcrusher Mountain. Oh yeah.

So that was kind of a lesson in not taking these things too seriously, and laughing about it if you stumble over your words, and I think fits of the giggles and being moved to tears and a seriously nerdy serenade make a lovely start to a marriage.

So, next up is a Church of England affair in Nottingham in August, which is going to give me another faith to tick off on my checklist. There's a checklist, right? I get a prize if I get them all? No? Aww. Guess I'll have to make do with enjoying the "We Totally Love Each Other Forever!" parties instead. I guess it'll all be "We Totally Made This Tiny Human!" in a while.

* His name isn't James Murphy.

Speaking of crushing self-doubt...

You know the Dunning-Kruger effect? (If not, please follow the above link. Post'll still be here when you get back.) It's scary when, once you've finished going "LOL idiots!", you realise that it's not idiots. It's people who lack skills in ANY area. So at least one thing that you think you're reasonably good at, you're probably terrible at. Cue panicked mental listing of all things that I think I'm not terrible at and a frantic attempt to recall any form of external validation for my skills in those areas.

Though of course, the Dunning-Kruger effect means that I'm probably not thinking of the right ones.

Nothing to say...

I am often shyer on the internet than in real life. There are fewer social cues to let me know when it's safe to contribute, and the web is so full of interesting, well-written content that I end up staring at empty text boxes thinking "I couldn't possibly have anything new to say."

This blog is self-imposed therapy for that kind of thinking. I haven't told anyone about it so I don't need to fear judgement, which is why I don't care about the utter rubbish that's on here. It's just there on the internet, no-one is expecting it to be new or interesting becuase no one reads it. I can write terribly about not much at all and perhaps I'll eventually learn how to find the thoughts and ideas that I manage to have and share in conversation while I'm having the blank-text-box panic.

How to be Not Boring. Part 1.

I swear. I like doing it. There's something about saying "fuck all" instead of "nothing" that spices up an utterance. It's the shock value, I think. It adds instant comedy.

But sometimes you can't swear, or you're in Ireland where a chunk of the conversation say "fucking" like other people say "ehm" as they try to work out their next word. No, srsly. LIke "I was down at the fucking, fucking, fucking bank, and who was in the queue only yer man whatsisname. You know, fucking, eh, fucking, you know the fucker, he's on telly, on fucking well Fair City or something." Kinda wipes out the shock value. You try to keep it up by taking swear-words from other English-speaking cultures but soon, the American saying "bloody hell!" the British person saying "feck!" or the Irish person saying "motherfucker!" loses all novelty value.

The trick in these situations is to get creative. Don't say "What the fuck?" Don't say "What the hell/damn/bloody heck?" etc. That's boring. It's been done. You do have options though. You can go for quirkily retro. "What the deuce?" or "What the blazes?" are good for this, especially if you can also pull the sort of facial expression that belongs with a monocle. But there are only so many old-school swear-words and euphemisms you can use before you get to By Seinte Loy territory, and the odds are you'll just confuse the person you're talking to.

So, what can you do? You can use an unexpected swear-word! Instead of "What the fuck?" you say "What the shit?" for example. Or, if you feel like being more dramatic, you can have exciting swear-word combos, where you have SWEAR + -ing + SWEAR. Like "What the cocking hell?" or "What the wanking feck?" Experiment to see what works best for you.

If you get bored, you can bring it to yet another level. SWEAR + -ing + SWEAR + ANIMAL or COMMON HOUSEHOLD OBJECT. "Cocking fuck-weasel!" you yell as you stub your toe. "Arsing wank-toasters!" says the dude who hasn't hit save in a while as his computer crashes. As you can tell from the examples, this works best if the animal or household item word has two syllables and the emphasis is on the first syllable. Again, experiment. Preferably while drunk, it's funnier.

And next time you need to shock people with your swearing, shock them with your dorkishness instead!

Can has career?

It's a bit like buses, really. The majority of the decade that's passed since I did my Leaving Cert. if you'd asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up I'd have shrugged, or said "maybe a teacher?" or "maybe a dialect coach?" and then would have drifted on not doing anything to further either of those goal-ish things.

And then over the last year I've come to realise that there's this career I might actually like and be good at. I could... write stuff! Not terrifying, having-to-find-a-publisher writing. Just the type of writing that we all see in work every day. How-to guides. E-mail templates. FAQs. The sort of thing that I always notice when it's done badly.

But meanwhile, in my "just-for-now" crappy call centre job that had, three years later, become a pinball-bounce from department to department which was better than taking calls (anything is better than taking calls) and was punctuated by occasionally being told I was awesome. Being told I was awesome sometimes was nice in a company where there's been a pay-freeze even on promotion for the last two and a half or three years.

So there I was in the Evil Telecom, getting seriously seriously bored at my "temporary" gig in the scheduling department despite some lovely colleagues. Every day I rang people and asked if they were available for their connection to be installed the next day, following the same script and hearing and making the same jokes. ("And are you renting the house or do you own it?" "I own it. Well, the bank owns it!" "Ah well, we all own the banks now!") So off to Google I'd go to window-shop for a future; houses, nice apartments, jobs, holidays, other cities I could move to.

I'd been talking to my good friend JK for a while. He is a high-up and awesome consultant-type in the area of technical communicaton, and he kept telling me I was awesome and I could totally do a tech author job, and I should apply for one. So I eventually sorted out my CV (there's a whole nother drama there) and it was sitting on my computer, awaiting tweaking as it was in an imperfect state.

And the three combined; the boredom, the Googling "technical author Dublin" and the CV sitting there, ripe for the sending out, and I said "feck it!" and I sent it off on Friday. On Monday I heard from the company: they wanted me to come in for an interview. Later that day I heard that I was being asked for back in our call centre: they wanted me to come and join tech support.

It turned out, in a comedy of timing, that I began in tech support this Monday, had a second interview and was told I had got the job, and handed in my notice first thing on Tuesday.

So... why am I suddenly sought after now? This happened to me with relationships too. Years of hopeless crushes and the odd snog and then suddenly there I was with people I fancied fancying me back left right and centre and, a bit like the "sure I might as well" job application, I effortlessly ended up with something that was just what I wanted for the rest of my life.

I can, I suppose, track it back to a gain in confidence by me. Said gain leads me to attempt to pursue my goals rather than drift along in the current. But it's almost frightening how, once I begin to stretch out my hand towards the goal, it tumbles into my palm without further effort on my part. I'm missing out here on valuable failure.

Hello world

I'm female, 27 and I work for an evil ISP/telecom on call-centre wages. (That won't narrow it down; they're all evil.) I live in Dublin city centre with my boyfriend and two interesting housemates. (And a gerbil but don't tell my landlord.) My hobbies largely involve escaping from life: reading, writing, roleplaying. This is an attempt to not escape from life.

I sometimes feel the need to write about the various hurdles and twists and sudden sharp drops I encounter, which are probably also encountered by others my age, but my Livejournal is for random fluffy chatting with friends and I try to keep it relatively navel-gaxing free. Not so this blog. You have been warned.

Now, a lot of this urge to share my mundane experiences is undoubtedly due to the fact that they're new to me; it's rather adolescent of me, like how I never had much interest in politics until the government's cock-ups started adversely affecting me, so now I have the same stance on politics in Ireland I did before (no matter who you vote for you'll end up with a corrupt or incompetent government whose policies are unlikely to differ from the opposition's if they were in power) but I can't look away as the country is incompetently piloted, crashing and burning in insolvency and repression.( I asked my mother. She said she felt much like I do now, back in 1982 when she was my age.)

So, watch this space for random musings on how it's hard to save money and get a mortgage when you don't earn much money, on the shocking realisation that I would like to have a family at some stage and that will require enormous sacrifice, and the horror at the fact that good jobs are hard to find. There will undoubtedly be the breaking news that making big decisions is difficult and there is no do-over if I make the wrong one, which results in occasional crushing doubt, and that adult relationships require work and sacrifice on both sides and are sometimes difficult. You'll probably also get the odd ramble about how my gerbil is cute, or a book I'm reading is awesome.