I could be brown, I could be blue

And so the rollercoaster and mood swings continue. The peaks, dips and troughs are becoming more even, but they are still there. Some days I feel like I’m watching my life in third person: a detached, soap-opera-like viewer of life. It feels like I’ve lived the gamut of emotions, back and forth from one to the other, over the past two-and-a-bit weeks.

Carefree.
New years eve. Singing along to Mika, complete with falsetto voice and camp facial expression, with a bunch of strangers in varying states of drunkenness—“Everybody’s gonna love today, gonna love today. Any way you want to, any way you've got to, love love me, love love me, love love me”—I was having a great time, I was with friends and family, dozens of cute boys, and I was very very stoned. For one night, one brief nine hour period, I had not a care in the world.

Frustrated.
Last week some time. I was given a novel for Christmas which, while an excellent story, was very badly written. Actually, to be fair to the author, it wasn’t badly written as such, more badly edited. There were seven times when the author used the incorrect spelling for words like your/you’re, waist/waste, or fowl/foul. The name of the street on which the character lived changed halfway through the novel and then returned to its original name towards the end.

Ecstatic.
Monday. I was woken by the phone. This is a usually a precursor of a shitty day, and often if the phone wakes me I just won’t answer, but luckily I wasn’t thinking quickly enough to think to ignore it, so I answered it on impulse. It was the lady from the housing unit at university. She told me I have secured on-campus housing. That woke me up. I would have done a victory lap of the house, except I was still groggy so I sat in bed grinning like an idiot for a few moments before emerging to face the day.

Smiling.
Tuesday. I was on a downward swing, sitting on the lounge with Rox watching inane daytime television when I received an email from a reader of this blog. He was very complimentary and made my morning, spelling criticisms notwithstanding. He pointed out that I had mistaken loose and lose and bear and bare on a few occasions, but unfortunately no matter how hard I try I don’t think I will ever be able to tell them apart. The irony of the situation wasn’t lost on me, considering how hard I had been on the author of my novel the week before for a similar crime.

Pissed off.
Wednesday. I was arguing with a computer at the office and I was losing. I had to call the tech guy to get him to explain something to me, something I knew was very simple and demanded only a simple explanation, but he managed to complicate it. In the end I got the stupid contraption to do what I wanted, after a good deal of swearing and snapping at poor Lala, Roxie and Olly who were the hapless victims of my wrath, guilty only of being in the room as my anger rose.

Content.
Thursday. Today. I am back home now for a few weeks before I make the move down to Sydney to live at uni. My back is still giving me the shits with the mysterious lower back pains, so I’m lying in bed while the rest of the family watches tennis in the next room. All I hear is silence, punctuated by the occasional “aww” when something good or bad happens. To be honest, “content” is the wrong descriptor for today; perhaps “flat” or “ambivalent” would be better? It always amazes me how homesick I get when I’m away, only to be replaced with holiday-sickness when I return home.

Oh well, I’m off to bed now.