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As a preface, this blog is quite personal and whilst I'm willing to share my experience, I'd appreciate due consideration to my life and my personal situation. I'm more than happy to answer any questions you have, but please make it intelligent and steer clear from obtuse comments. Also, this is a bit more of an informal writing style, don't be put off it it jumps from descriptive to almost broken thought - I'm just writing what I'm feeling at the moment about everything.

It's been a while since I've written a blog on here. I'm not sure about everyone else, but I feel as though it cheapens the writing experience if you haven't lived, experienced and learnt more since the last time you wrote something. I suppose that's a convoluted way of saying "I don't like to write blogs often."

As cliché as it seems, I figure I'll describe myself at this point in time so as to make this whole blog a little more personal and hopefully allowing you to relate to it in some form or another.
I'm sitting at my computer, blinds closed over the windows, embracing the tangible humidity of Brisbane city. My cat is weaving around my corner desk as I write this, but he's bound to be in and out of this room throughout the duration of this blog. I'm listening to Hessian Peel by Opeth; it's quite a beautiful song - powerful in emotion, yet subtle enough to let me write without being distracted. I'll keep linking different songs as what I'm listening to changes throughout this blog.

These days, my focus wanders between finances, my personal relationship, my studies, and how I'm progressing in life. I like to tease myself with the idea that one day I won't have to worry about my, or my partner's, financial situation - it helps me free myself from struggling with issues at hand, if only for a few moments at a time.

The past year or so for me has very much been a learning experience. After finishing my secondary school education at the end of 2011, I moved down to Brisbane post ACL Gold Coast, 2012. I spent around half a year in Brisbane, moving twice during that time, before having to move back to Toowoomba due to a car-crash in which my girlfriend's car was written off by a rogue cab-driver. Up to this point I think I covered in my previous blog, so apologies for brushing over this much of the story. (As a side note, I'm now listening to Sun of Nothing by Between the Buried and Me)

Upon settling back into my parents' house, after a particularly nasty few weeks involving drama with my girlfriend's mother, I managed to organise a part-time employment with my old employer, Dick Smith. Over the remainder of 2012, starting in around October, up until early February, I was probably working around 30 to 40 hours a week - nothing out of the ordinary. Over this time, I found myself struggling a lot with how my life was progressing. Life in general felt very much like a monotonous requirement - I was a live so I just had to keep living, doing what I was always doing. Never did I really feel as though I was progressing anywhere, expanding my horizons or developing as a person. Constantly I would be regretting my decision to take a gap year - a regret that I held up until a few weeks into the commencement of my university studies. Sleep at night would be disrupted by contemplations of death - how it would feel to be no longer existing on a conscious level in this world and the universe in which we are a part of. This pseudo-obsession with my own morbidity is generally a good indicator of when I'm not feeling overly satisfied with my life. The thoughts and the feelings exist almost exclusively together.

Post-Christmas time brought a sudden change to the routine, in which I was thrust forward into running the store I was working in for a period of about 5 weeks. My manager had hastily organised long-service leave and promptly left me with very little preface on my duties and presumably, I was to work this out over the next month and a bit. Running a store is certainly an experience - feeling the absolute responsibility for the sales figures directed to head office at the end of the week can be a little numbing, especially if they're mediocre at best. On the other hand, becoming more and more proficient with the systems at hand and resolving issues day by day did end up giving me a sense of satisfaction. (Ants of the Sky ~ Between the Buried and Me)

Unfortunately, my increased workload was affected by the lack of presence of a solid second-in-command. My assistant manager had only been employed at the same time as myself (I had worked for the company for around four and a half years previous to moving to Brisbane for the first time). To-do lists gradually piled up as I was the only one in the store with the capacity to complete managerial tasks. Large sums of money went missing from the safe and my accountability was brought into question. This haze of uncertainty stayed with me for about four weeks - eventually it was found that prior to leaving, the usual manager had created a number of incorrect banking slips leading to the theoretical, yet not tangible, loss of around $400. Thankfully, whilst being audited by loss prevention, the erroneous banking was noticed and I was off the hook. So began my (further) disenchantment with head-office.

5 weeks came and went - amidst running a store to the best of my capabilities, I spent a number of days rushing around Brisbane with my girlfriend in an attempt to organise a residence for this year. Fortunately enough, signing a lease coincided with the end of my time as manager back in Toowoomba, allowing for what was essentially a seamless change over. In my transition period post-moving, much to my dismay, it came to my attention that I'd been underpaid for my duration as first-in-charge at work. Cue seven weeks of bullshit with HR starting here. In my manager's haste to begin his leave, no temporary contract had been written for me at the correct level of pay. Despite my own submission of a temporary contract, promptly after starting my new position five weeks prior, HR had lost this contract and were attempting to claim that no back-pay could occur until the contract was found. To cut a long story short, I was led in circles for a number of weeks before finally I gave up and made a complaint to Fair-Work Australia. Unsurprisingly, my pay was sorted out that week. HR suddenly found out that they could just write another contract and pay me based off that.

All of these financial curiosities lined up with the start of university. I'd spent a few weeks working at my new store in South Brisbane, acquainting myself with my new co-workers and spending many hours in mutual-lament regarding head-office, but now it was time to embrace the next three or so years of my life. (Now listening to The Count of Tuscany by Dream Theater)
The first week of Uni was certainly a big adjustment. Having not gone to the orientation week, I had absolutely no idea where anything was throughout the campus. Furthermore, Optus reception is, at times, virtually non-existent once you step past the buses at UQ lakes. Combining these two factors, you get a very confused me trying to find my way to my first lecture. Thankfully, the next few days bring about a much greater navigational confidence regarding UQ. As the weeks go by, everything regarding the Uni is essentially second-nature.

Coming back to regretting taking a gap year, I found the first few weeks were a mad scramble to remember all of the maths and physics that I'd forgotten since high school. This alone wasn't so bad, but combining it with applications of calculus I hadn't even done yet for my Electrostatics course made for a bit of a stressful time. I'm not someone to really articulate the pressure I'm feeling - for me it becomes a more subconscious frustration (not the Perth kind, sorry!) that persists and grows, day after day. Throughout my time at school, I consistently found that I very much dislike not knowing how something works, how it applies, how it's derived; it turns out not much has changed. Having two of my four subjects introducing unfamiliar concepts straight off the mark led to me expressing some poorly veiled passive-aggression at home as a direct result of my confusion towards - and lack of comprehension of - my course.

Conquering my demons has always been one of those constant battles. Being lax when it comes to ensuring that your own personal state of mind is kept healthy can lead to small things piling up and bringing you down. I'll be the last person to claim that I have a difficult life, far from it. However, that still doesn't make me immune to letting everything pile up on top of me. Two of the things that have really kept me from sinking beneath everything have been my girlfriend of almost three years and returning to my old habits of weightlifting. The old adage of "healthy body, healthy mind" really rings true here. Simply getting back into pushing your body to the limits and feeling yourself struggle against adversity in order to grow (quite literally) as a person serves very well in reminding yourself that you can do the same with your mind. Coupling this with really coming to grips with the extent of my relationship with my girlfriend has certainly acted as a buoy with respect to my mental health. (Song changed over to Tides of Time by Epica)

I hate to wax lyrical about my relationship, but for those of you who are in a positive long term relationship, I'm sure you can relate. Throughout the moments of isolation in your life, you can sometimes feel as though everything is an uphill battle against the odds. When you have someone there who genuinely cares just as much about you as they do about themselves, and vice versa, it is truly a sense of euphoria. The absolute happiness you embrace when you share simple things with someone else makes the dark days seem insignificant. Despite the fact that there's no certainty with how life, and the people in it, progress, at this point in time I'm very much content with who I share my life.

Overall, life for me has continued. There have been peaks and troughs, bright days and gloomy nights, yet still I can say with honesty that I've grown as a person. (Switched over to For You To Know by In Mourning)

Just upon concluding this, I've got a phone call from work. Redistribution of wages means that I'm going to be working every second week. Due to my 9-5 Uni days every day bar Friday, which is a 9-12, this means I'm looking at being severely in debt. Sounds like it's time for a new job. I'm pretty upset with this, having my weekly income cut time and again by budget changes. But in the end, it's no surprise - being casual in the retail world is always dealing with receiving sweet **** all respect and consideration from your employer. I'm not quite sure what I'm going to do, but hopefully I can make ends meet. Apologies for the to-and-fro writing in this last section, I'm a little unsettled at the moment.

And with that, I've summarised the past 'almost-year'. I hope you enjoyed the read and felt something other than the need to make a snarky comment below.