Hair cuts and back hip circles.

I have neglected my poor blog again. 

Last week I got my hair cut. It is now the shortest it has been in 8 years and I like it. My hair was waist length and now it sits at my shoulders. My mum had been pestering me for months to get it cut, so finally last Friday I walked into a salon I had never been to before and told them to give my hair a chop. The lovely lady who cut my hair said that she had been told that hair holds onto bad memories, which is why you can feel so much better after a hair cut. 

Whilst I do not believe that somewhat romantic notion in a literal sense, I did feel like a whole new woman after my hair cut and my head most certainly was lighter for being rid of about 25cms of hair. I do also very much like the idea that I have snipped off about 8 years worth bad memories, there sure have been a few.

I don't know if a change is as good as a holiday but I do know that the mind is the most powerful muscle in the body. As long as you believe in the change, then it shall be. 

As of Sunday I am now on my way to becoming an accredited gymnastics coach. I was the only one from my club to attend the course and I was also one of the older participants. 

Whilst most of the other trainee coaches were bored teenagers, I was really nerdishly excited. The all day course was held at the Victorian Women's High Performance Centre, the Victorian Institute of Sport's women's gymnastics facility. It is the most incredible gym I have ever set foot in and now that I have done a back hip circle on the same set of uneven bars that an Australian Olympian has trained on, my life is certainly a little bit closer to being complete. 

So many balance beams... (7 all together, so many that I couldn't fit them all in the one  frame).

Now I have to complete the written coursework and supervised coaching component with my club. 

The day was long and tiring, but I was hopelessly inspired. I couldn't help but think that if I could work in a facility like that every day, I wouldn't care what I was being paid. I can't wait to get accredited, get stuck into my new uni course and throw myself full time into making my crazy dream of making my living from gymnastics based work a reality. 

The main reason I haven't written anything recently is because my mind has been very occupied. 

I've been struggling a lot with some of my important interpersonal relationships and I haven't felt it appropriate to express my feelings about that situation here. There is a level of responsibility that comes with having a blog, even one with a readership as modest as mine. No good can come from making the identity of the person I am struggling to get along with known here.

I am hurt, frustrated and exhausted by the situation. I am trying hard and in many different ways to improve it, but to no avail. 

In recent times, I have come to refer to this chart:

It turns out, the happiness chart does have its limitations. The happiness chart only works in instances where your happiness only depends on yourself. My happiness depends also depends on the people around me, because I care about them. 

I am coming to accept that maybe this is a situation that I cannot improve by being involved and that maybe my only option is to maintain a concerned gaze from a distance. I will have to try and focus on happiness that can be derived intrinsically. 

I know that this person and I are not getting along at least in part because that person is struggling with some things themselves.

One of the scariest things about being in a serious emotional hole is accepting that you are the master of your own destiny. You don't have to do it alone, but you are the one who decides whether anything is done at all. It frustrates me that I cannot decide for this person that the time to take control and improve their life could be now. They have to come to that realisation in their own way, in their own time.

I have said it so many times and I will say it again, I am here for you if you want me to be. I'm not perfect, but I am trying and if you tell me how to help then I will.

I am not a person of faith, but I think the serenity prayer (adopted by alcoholics anonymous) says it well;

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,

The courage to change the things I can,

And the wisdom to know the difference.

The irony of this situation does not escape me and it is giving me a far greater appreciation for what people like my mum must have felt when dealing with me.

Life is mysterious and let's face it, we're all just making it up as we go along. I will keep trying my best.

Wish me luck.

Baby Brebles goes to the formal!

The purpose of this post is purely to share how handsome my brother looked going to his year 11 formal on Thursday night. His date, the truly lovely Clara, looked absolutely beautiful. 

They matched perfectly. Their sandy hair and blue eyed complexions matched Alex's pale blue shirt. His champagne coloured tie matched her dress and the pale yellow roses that made up the corsage tied in wonderfully.

We have known Clara's family since the families each came to exist, Clara's Mum and my Mum became friends in early high school. Clara and Alex have known each other about as long as they have been alive and have always got along famously.

Clara was just about the ultimate dream formal date for a teenage boy.  Ever since they were tiny, Alex and Clara have seemed to be at complete ease in each other's company. It's hard to avoid the fact that she's an absolute stunner, resembling something like a combination of Brooklyn Decker and Taylor Swift. As well as gorgeous, Clara is outgoing, bubbly and intelligent. She is the kind of girl you can take to any occasion and know she'll get along with everyone. 

That being said, little brother isn't a half bad formal date either. I'm yet to come across a teenage boy who likes being in a suit more than Alex! I think he'd be perfectly happy to wear it everyday. A lot of teenage boys look awkward and physically uncomfortable when suited up but Alex looked like he was born to wear one and he did so with a cool, calm  confidence. He looked very sharp and he has such nice friends, so I was confident he and Clara would have a great time.

From a big sister's point of view, there is significantly less to do for a brother going to the formal than a sister. I did Kate's hair and makeup for both her formals, as well as being involved in dress selection, which I loved being a part of. We usually allowed 2 hours of preparation time on the night. 

All Alex had to do to get ready was have a shower, a shave and put on his suit which took all of about 25 minutes and required absolutely no input from anyone else! I wanted to mark the occasion in some way, so I got him a bottle of nice smelling man-fume as a gift. All Kate and I really had to do on the night was play paparazzi!

Since my own year 11 formal was a little bit of a disaster, I was only too happy to live vicariously through my brother and revel in the smiley, happy, perfection of it all.

Brebles and Cla

Learning lessons

I lost my wallet yesterday. I didn't even realise it was gone until I had a number of missed calls from my parents. As it turns out I had left it on the Frankston train and some lovely soul had picked it up. Said lovely soul rang every phone number I had on bits of paper and business cards until he got onto my dad, who got onto my mum who went and picked it up from the Good Samaritan. All of this happened before I even realised it was gone! I'm incredibly lucky, I had ten cents in my wallet (which was still in it) and none of my cards were missing. 

I really can't quite believe how lucky I was to get it back.

I have been struggling to engage with uni this semester. I have been aware of this and trying my best to get myself back on track. Last week I missed an online quiz which was worth 10% of my grade for that subject. I grovelled to my lecturer to no avail and up until today I have been extremely mad at myself for missing an opportunity for some pretty easy marks. I am now trying to view the lost 10 marks as a wake up call. Even though I will be doing a different course next year, I have worked too hard over the last two years to get my academic record back on track to have blips appear on it now out of laziness. 

I'm annoyed I had to learn this lesson the hard way. Now I have to stop being mad at myself and use the frustration as motivation to knuckle down and do better. 

Speaking of uni, I have decided what I'll be doing next year. It got to the point where I just needed to make the decision. The uncertainty was making losing sleep and was making me  feel constantly nauseous. I was mentally burned out from thinking about it. I didn't think there was any aspect of the decision that I hadn't thought over a thousand times. Each time I thought about it I came up with the same three options, the ones I talked about in my last post, but was not getting consistently closer to picking one. 

I made my choice last week. I had taken the train home from uni and had started to think that one of those options might be the right one. When I got home, Mum told me that she had been reading my blog and that if I really wanted, she would tell me what she thought I should do. I said, "Yes please!" Mum's advice was to do the course that I had been thinking about on the train home, so I decided then and there that I would apply for that course for next year. 

I felt instantly relieved and excited. It will be another big change and I am committed to seeing this course through to the end, come what may. 

It is a 4 year double degree, but I should get credit for a number of units I've done this year and a few from my arts degree. I'm excited that after those four years I will have 3 undergraduate degrees all together, each very different from the other. This somewhat excessive undergraduate education will provide me the opportunities to be employed or pursue some very exciting postgraduate options. 

This educational change will be the biggest one yet. If I'm accepted into the course, I will be attending a different university, leaving Monash and the Group of Eight. One of the degrees is in a field I have never studied before in my life and the other is science related, but different again to the science studies I'm undertaking in the present. 

The hardest thing about making this decision has been finding the courage to follow a very different path to the one I always imagined I would. 

I'm a smart person and I come from a family of smart and very accomplished people. I had fallen into the trap of thinking that I should do what I perceived smart people are expected to do, go to the most prestigious university that would take me and go onto become a doctor or a lawyer or some other highly respected and highly paid professional. 

Now I don't think there is anything wrong with following this kind of path in life, if you have a reason to. The problem I kept coming up against was that I was only contemplating this kind of path because I could, not because I had a deep intrinsic motivation to. It would have been a decision to follow a path I've come to see as predictable and very socially acceptable, which made it a very attractive 'default' position. There are plenty of 'right' reasons to pursue an elite education of this kind, but these are not some of them.

I've realised that if I want to be happy, doing something just because I can is probably not going to procure that. At times throughout this process I've been concerned that if I don't do something like law or medicine, I won't be able to afford the kind of lifestyle I'd want to provide for myself or my family, if I have one in the future.

I'm so lucky and grateful to have a very comfortable life. However, as I made this decision I've been thinking a lot about what parts of it I would want to provide for a family of my own and which parts are not so important to me. For example, I don't think the last three and a half years of my private education were worth their considerable cost and whilst I very much enjoy living in a beautiful home, I would be just as happy living in a nice home in a less affluent suburb. 

I want to do things in life that I enjoy and that I'm passionate about. I want to succeed in what I do and be surrounded by like minded people, but I don't want to be consumed by my work in a way that makes me chronically unhappy or unhealthy. I am starting to realise that if I live my life this way, the calm and fulfillment might be more valuable to me than social status or large amounts of money could be.

I would be lying if I said that success and financial reward are of no importance to me. For me, this decision making process has just given me a better idea of where those two things fit on my list of priorities. 

I feel like I'm being a bit crazy going down this path, pursuing a career in a field that many would probably not consider "serious". However, this just serves as further motivation to have faith in my own abilities. Besides, taking healthy risks is part of what makes life interesting and I haven't heard of anyone who did anything truly great without taking a few. 

Yikes

I did pretty well on the punctuality, exercise and food side this week. Much better than last week, but with a couple of areas for improvement, too. 

Last week was a pretty good week. A basketball incident at uni left me with two fingers about double their usual side and very bruised. The doctor wanted me to have them x-rayed, which thankfully revealed that they are not broken. I didn't realise just how much I use the middle and ring finger of my left hand until now. It turns out taking off the hand break, tying my shoes and putting my hair in a ponytail are all activities made far easier by my left hand. I'm really glad they're not broken.

I'm losing sleep over tertiary applications for next year. I basically have it down to three options:

• Law
• Exercise Science & Sport Management
• Some 1 year diploma/ certificate 3&4 course to give me more time to think about what I really want to do

My family have been great at trying to help me talk through the options but I'm feeling the pressure to get this decision right. Don't misunderstand me, I know that it's pressure of my own making, but I feel like the weight of it is putting dents in my shoulders.

I need to put my head down and start working a whole lot harder at my uni work until the end of the semester. I need to make a decision about what I'm doing next year and commit to the course and career for the next 5 years. I need to be on time to everything, attend all my classes, start my assignments, eat and exercise like a monk.

I know this is stuff we all say to ourselves that we actually never do, but since writing about it I have improved. 

In conclusion, I'm over it. "It" translating to "being me, living my life and making my decisions". 

I think I'll just skip straight to crazy, lonely, cat lady...

I hate my teeth. I love my parents and my health insurance. FML

I had an orthodontic appointment today. It was my first ever orthodontic appointment. Thus far, I don't like them. 

About a year ago I started having some pain under in my mouth about a year ago I think. Before long I had sprung a random tooth just on the inside my bottom teeth on the left side. It was as if I was growing a second row of bottom teeth, shark style. 

I got an x-ray at the dentist, who pulled a somewhat discouraging face upon seeing them. He showed the x-rays to a couple of oral surgeons who said it didn't need to be attended to straight away. 

Over the last few months I've started to notice my teeth moving around quite a bit. It has been a painful but I thought the best case scenario would be the surgical removal of the shark tooth and perhaps a plate for the moving teeth.

How wrong I was.

The random tooth came through all shark-like in my mouth because I never lost a couple of my baby tooth. Shark tooth is the adult tooth that has never had space to come through. Turns out the same thing has happened on the other side of my mouth, only it is stuck in an even weird spot in the gums underneath the baby tooth and my mother normal teeth.

My mouth
http://www.scaryforkids.com/shark-teeth/

So the long and the short of it is that I have to have six teeth removed; my top two wisdom teeth, the bottom baby teeth that never came out on their own AND the corresponding adult shark teeth. Yay. My bottom wisdom teeth will be left in and then they and my other teeth will be pulled across into the gap by braces. I will also be getting braces on my top teeth to correct the overcrowding creating by my wisdom teeth coming through.

I am 21 years old and I am about to get braces. 

This is what I will look like
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Braces-Nerd-GEEK-Dork-False-Teeth-/230818780046#ht_2382wt_906

I'm trying to focus on how lucky I am to have parents who love me, who provide me with exemplary health insurance and will take the financial hit to fix my rogue teeth.

That being said, I still want to cry a little bit.

Oh and I still don't know what I'm going to do next year, tertiary education wise, and I have to decide soon. This is making me panic. 

#firstworldproblems

Parasoc ball, not getting drugged & other stuff

Last weekend one someone I love very much had their drink tampered with when they were out at a nightclub. No one knows for sure whether drugs were added to the drink or whether the drink contained a triple or quadruple shot. Whatever it had in it left my loved one extremely unwell and somewhat traumatised. Whilst my loved one was well and truly a victim of a horrible act, was very lucky that the worst that came from the incident was a trip to an emergency department and few days of feeling very sick and paranoid. This person was lucky to be surrounded by friends who came to their aid and probably saved them from a far more damaging experience. 

The incident was a pertinent reminder of how careful everyone should be with their drinks. 

If you can't trace every second of a drink's life from the barman's hand to yours, don't drink it. You have to keep at least as good a track of your drink as the prosecution do of a piece of evidence for a criminal case. If your drink wouldn't be admissible in a criminal court, don't drink it. If an aesthetically pleasing boy or girl offers to buy you a drink either say or no or go with them to the bar, watch the drink as it is made and take it straight from the barman. 

Sadly, there are some very nasty people in the world. I don't think we should live out lives paranoid, but there are some instances where it pays to take precautions. Look out for your friends, keep track of your drinks and don't make yourself vulnerable to something really horrible happening by choosing to get yourself too intoxicated that you can't keep yourself safe or be of assistance to a friend in trouble. 

Consider my public service announcement over. 

In other news, I went to the Parasoc Ball on Thursday night. I really didn't want to go but my friends bullied me into buying a ticket and then my mum and my sister ensured that I did end up out the door on the night. I had a fantastic night with the good people of table 15. 

This was my first uni ball. I didn't bother with the Arts faculty ones because they are such huge events and barely anyone knows each other from uni anyway. The paramedic student ball was different because it was a much smaller event and I was on a table with friends I see  at least 3 days a week. 

We drank plenty (drinks and a 3 course meal were included in the $75 ticket) and danced like no one was watching and generally had a very good time. This was all the fun of a school formal, without the drama of having to take a date and the added fun of being of legal drinking age. There is also a bonus with a course like paramedics that you do get to know basically everyone in your year and there are barely any princessy, cliquey, drama queen types ruining the night by being bitchy. 

I already knew my uni friends were great, but they all looked so fantastic all dressed up and  were so much fun to dance and drink with. There were many terrible paramedic student jokes told and I don't think our poor (very cute) waiter will be forgetting us in a hurry... 

For reasons I'm not quite ready to go into here, getting myself to go to the Ball was a big deal. It was tough to get myself to go, but I'm so glad I did.

http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m5xob51Av41r3gb3zo1_250.gif
This much fun was had

I was hit and miss with my efforts to be on time this week. My overall attendance, whilst not perfect, was much improved. This week I am aiming for perfect attendance and punctuality. My eating habits were better, but again, not what they could have been and the same can be said for exercise.

It was one of the better weeks I've had in a while. The Ball was a highlight, but it was little things like my favourite group fitness instructor very apprehensively illegally using an original song rather than the stupid cover, that made it good. He did this because the cover version of the song provided to the instructors was so bad he couldn't hear the beat. He made us swear that we wouldn't tell.

I also managed to fall asleep on the train and miss my station after having a lovely lunch in the city with some friends I used to work with. Thankfully, I woke up only one station passed mine and the weather was nice enough for the walk to be enjoyable. 

I really love coaching gymnastics and I'm thinking about starting a separate blog about it.

I am starting to feel like my luck is starting to change, so I'm hopeful that this week will be another good one. I don't really believe in luck, I'm more of a "fortune favours the brave"  (and those who work hard) type, but I figure the positivity can't hurt. 

Facing another week

I have been committing some serious blog negligence over the past little while. 

The Olympics just about took over my life for the past few weeks and I think I slumped into some kind of post Olympics blues this week just past. 

I was late to just about everything I had to go to, I struggled badly to engage at uni and I skipped a lecture or two because I was either too lazy to get out of bed in time or too bored to stay. I think I exercised twice in the whole week and whilst I did not commit any serious crimes against nutrition, there is certainly room for improvement in that department too.

This week I will get back on track. My goals for this week are simple; go to all classes, be on time, get enough sleep, eat healthily and do my usual amount of exercise. 

This week I will find the time to write about the gymnastics at the Olympics, how returning to coaching has been the best thing that I've done in a long time and how to work out when a friendship is no longer worth the effort. 

Can't find the original source of this picture, if it is you please let me know and I will credit you!
Aliya Mustafina competing in London. She is one of my favourite gymnasts of the modern era, everything about her is magnificent except  for her form on her triple full.

I will also write a public service announcement encouraging young persons to keep themselves safe when they are out and about, as there was a nasty "close shave" incident in the household this weekend. 

I hope you are happy and well. If you, like me, are feeling a little bit off track at the moment don't make a grand promise that you'll behave like a new person come Monday morning. Set yourself a little goal, something so easy you think you could do it everyday for the rest of your life. If you start that small and stick with it, you'll actually set yourself up for long-term success. Then, once the first goal is as an ordinary a part of your daily life as brushing your teeth in the morning, add something new.