This is Skye

Hey You!

Yes you, the poser!


There are some things that you should know...

That degree you're in the middle of, the one you're tiring of - you'll finish it.
It won't amount to a journalism career but you will apply the skills in other areas, and you will make yourself proud.

You know that boy you're holidaying with, the one you've been seeing for the past few months?
You'll fall deeply in love with him and you'll be together for years to come.
You wont marry him and have his babies like you'll hope.
You'll grow together, just not old.

You wont make it to Bible College and you wont become a youth Pastor.
In fact, give it 3 months and you won't be with the church anymore.

This time a year from now you'll have moved into an apartment in South Yarra.
You'll own a couch and a fridge and a bed and you'll have bills, like a grown up.
It will both excite you and scare you witless.

Don't get that credit card you've been thinking about.
No good can come of it.

Stop messing with your hair or you wont have any by the time you're 40.
Most people in your life love you whether it's long, short, blonde, brunette, straight, curly - whatever!
You need to learn that as well!

You are going to make some strange, and ultimately hilarious fashion choices in the next few years.
But don't worry, you'll figure it out soon enough.

Probably best to stay away from tequila.

Your health will fail you at times.
You will have to have cancer removed from your body and you will have to endure treatment to get back on track.
I wont bother trying to tell you how much it will scare you.
You can't understand it yet anyway.

There are going to be days when everything overwhelms you and it all feels too much.
But you won't give up and you'll surprise yourself with your own strength.

You'll get fined for indecent exposure.
I know you don't believe me now, but you will.
Your charm and wit and 'exquisite'-ness will save you.

Don't ever forget to use your charm and wit and exquisiteness.

You'll learn to appreciate your family even more.
You and Kane will grow to be extremely close and your relationship with your mother will be strong.

You'll have a step family soon.
Try to be nice to them.

You will continue to cry at even the slightest hint of heartbreak in movies.
That will extend to advertisements at some stage too.

One day you'll live alone.
You wont entirely enjoy it, but the first time you kill a spider for yourself will be one of the proudest.
Even if you do have to do it with hairspray.

You will travel and fall in love with people, cultures, food, life.
You'll drink beer in Laos with friends from every continent on the earth (besides Antarctica).
And you will be a better person for it.

One day, a rich man will buy you Tiffany jewelery, just like you've always dreamed.
And you won't have a clue what to do when he does.

You know how you're adamant you'll never try drugs?
You'll smoke pot a few times at parties.

You will realise that you have some of the greatest and most supportive friends in the world.
And the best part? You'll keep finding more.

You'll know joy and you'll know hurt and you'll know love and you'll know loss.
There will be days when you don't want to get out of bed and days you wish would never end.

You'll be alright.
You won't remember it each time, but I promise you, you will be.

You'll live Johnson, and you'll live well.
Enjoy it.

(Thanks to everyone who is doing these at the moment and inspired mine! Ali & Katie & Elise Blaha!)

My Current Love.

My brother came to visit me one weekend recently when I was unwell and bought with him a DVD of a movie called 'Once'.
I fell in love with it.
Completely and utterly.

It's an Irish film about a busker and this immigrant girl he meets, falls for and literally makes beautiful music with.

This song has been one of my all time favourites EVER, ever since I first heard it.

It's particularly speaking to me and the way I feel this week.
It sums up a lot of where I'm at.

Just wanted to share!
xx
Skye

Country Soul.

I grew up in country Victoria.
In a small rural town, whose main claim to fame is they used to be the main supplier of sugar beet products to Australia 100 years ago, or something like that.
I think...
I didn't pay a lot of attention in Primary School local history classes.
At any rate, it's a small town. Small, and beautiful.

I love the weekends when I get to go home.
I love the weekends even more when I get to go home and there isn't a whole lot going on.
Everything slows down in my home town.
You know the song Flame Trees? 'There's no change, there's no pace, everything is in it's place'.
That's what it's like there.
And I adore it.

I get to sleep in, in my old bedroom.
I get to see my family and my old friends.
 
I get to sit on the grass and drink my cup of tea and bask in the sunshine.
I get to play with my dogs.
 
I get to just BE.
The contented hippy in me comes out, and it's so restful for the soul.
 
I don't think I could ever live there again.
I like the anonimity of living in the city.
It's much less claustrophobic and (as much as I love that I know every second person I pass in the street) you can get away with existing in the city without everyone knowing how you go about it.
But every four or five weeks, it's almost a necessity.

I might be becoming more and more of a city girl the longer I live here, but I'll always be a small town country girl at heart.
xxoo

Singularity.

I'm not sure who actually reads my blog.
Like, really reads it, not just looks at the pretty pictures.
But this post isnt going to have any pictures.

I've been thinking a lot lately about love and relationships.
Actually it's something that I always think a lot about, but even more just recently.

Most of you know that I am recently single.
After 5 and a half years in a (mostly) extremely happy relationship, Jesper and I decided to break up.
That was in April and since I haven't really stopped & thought too much about it.
From the minute it was over I've had weekends away and birthday partied and people around and places to go and generally enough things to do to keep myself busy and not let myself think about it.
And even now, I probably still do.
I dont know if it's all the time I've been spending sitting, thinking in hospital waiting rooms, or the intense relationship talk with the girls over the weekend, or just a case of me being a little bit sooky at the moment, but over the last couple of weeks I've had time to think about it, and I've decided that it sucks.

I'm not good at being single, and that bothers me.
It partially bothers me because I didn't expect that to be the case.
I've worked really hard to become what I deem to be a strong and independent woman, so the fact that I feel like something is missing just because I'm single feels a little bit like a slap in the face from a different, weaker, version of myself.

But it mostly bothers me just because I simply don't like the way it feels.
I don't like waking up in a big empty bed in the morning, I don't like cooking for one and I don't like feeling like I have to be go go go all the time just to fill in time so I don't stop & think too much about it.

A few months ago, I got an email from a friend, discussing his own situation that said the following:
"I'm of the opinion that some people are happy being single, some aren't. I don't think there's a rule that says I have to like being single, that I have to be happy about it".
At the time I was still in a relationship, but it still struck a chord with me.
 I agree with it wholeheartedly.

I'm better at being in a relationship than I am at being single.
I know that if there is one thing I am good at, it's being a girlfriend.
Actually I'm good at loving, as a general rule.
I don't take to people very quickly or easily or often, but when you do fall under my radar as being someone worthy of my love, then you're going to be loved fully and you're going to be loved well.
And that goes for family and friends just as much as it does for romance.
I love attentively and wholeheartedly and passionately and strongly.

I'm worse that a hopeless romantic.
I'm a hopeful one.
I'm one of those people that still beleives in the bohemian ideal of love; in that all consuming feeling, in the magic and the fairy tales and the type of love that exists in movies that have John Cusack in  lead (he's much more real and loveable that Hugh Grant, dont you think?).
I beleive in all of these things even with the knowledge that they are, on a whole, unrealistic.
I still hold out hope that if you love someone or want something enough, the universe has a way of giving it to you.
But in the same respect, I do realise that you can want someone or something to happen so much that you feel like your heart is going to leap out of your chest and you have to remind yourself to breathe, but it still won't necessarily be so.
That you can't make things happen just by wanting them to.

Maybe being single just takes practice?
I dont know.
I've tried being jaded about it, and it just didn't work for me.
I like my childlike optimism and I like being hopeful, even if it does get hard to keep it up sometimes.
Maybe this is part of that path to being strong and independent that I continually try to push myself down.
Maybe it's just a lesson that I need to learn.
But for just now, I still think that, maybe just a little bit, it sucks.

(Sorry to bombard you with my rambling!)
xxoo

One Lucky Girl

I am blessed.
I've said it before and I stand by it.
August is shaping up to be one of the months that is proving that assertion to be true.

I am going through one of the hardest times in my life at the moment, with visits to the hospital 3 mornings a week, medication that is, to quote Waynes World 'sucking my will to live', and also very possibly, just a  large dose of the winter blues.
But I'm still being reminded of how lucky I am on a daily basis.

One big reminder was how I spent my weekend, with 7 gorgeous girls in the town of Daylesford, being pampered, talking for hours and hours on end, and generally having a gorgeous relaxing time.

We rented this little gem for the weekend:
 
A little bit lovely!

We spent the day at Endota day spa having foot baths and scrubs and wraps and massages and facials.
Possibly the most delightful morning I have spent in a long time.
Finished the day with a spot of shopping at the secondhand shops and a dinner a D Bar (Which was interesting, to say the least!)
 That is also where we coined the phrase "wearing our cougar pants", thanks to one hilariously dressed older lady that Ali spotted across the room.
 
I think we all managed to wear our cougar pants quite successfully that night, right?
(I'm a little bit in love with my new skirt!)

See what I mean about being blessed?
Even though it exhauseted me and I'm still catching up on my sleep 4 days later, I strangely feel refreshed at the same time.
It was just what I needed at the half way point of my treatment.

Anyway, nothing else much else to say or share today, will hopefully be back tomorrow with some sneak peeks of the class I'm teaching at Bons next week.
If you're a scrapbooker and you're reading this, have you signed up yet?
If not, why not? It's as easy as clicking here! ;)

Hope you're all well, lovely peeps!
xxxooo