22 & not a clue

I run around Melbourne in thongs or heels all day (talk about all or nothing), clutching my fake longchamps that is long passed its best. I throw myself into trams & trains wedged between tiny Asian woman & a man with a suspicious smell issuing from his bag. Faintly banana like. You know who you are. I get to my office, basement, air conditioned & light adjusted white room where I spend 8hrs of my day thinking about all the other things I want to or need to be doing.
I swan around the office as the youngest team member frustrated at the lack of men & bored with my lunch by 11 & I wonder what the hell I am doing here.

The weather in Melbourne since the heat wave passed has been similar to a teenager. Sweaty, changeable & prone to tears. I wake up wondering what the hell to wear for 23 degrees with rain all day. Its like some form of sadistic pathetic fallacy. This heat with this weather just freaks me. It throws me off. We are supposed to be in autumn & it's 24 degrees. I am a duck out of too hot water.

So I priss about all day wondering whether I will work out tonight at home.
I do Pilates you know. That's floor exercises where I think I look like the woman on YouTube I have enlarged on my battered Mac book for the sole purpose of finding my 'abdominals'. I'm sorry, what?
What is this? This fuckery I am calling adult life. I'm still checking to make sure my skirt isn't in my knickers most mornings. How do I qualify for life right now?

If I am an adult then how did that happen? Why did no one teach me at school how to fill in a tax return? Why was I not taught how to work out which electricity company is cheapest? This bill is in Chinese. Why did I have to learn to write a cover letter the hard way? And why does no one prepare you for what seems like an endless gap between right now & your career. Where are the rungs of this ladder I am apparently climbing?

Is it just me or are you also sitting on public transport heading for your air conditioned box wondering why the hell you tore your hair out over Pythagoras theorem at 15? That your mother was wrong, it will never be useful & as a financial administrator I can safely say that calculators are the only option. Curriculums are all fucked. Why are we teaching our kids Pi & not teaching them about tax & insurance. Why did I have to teach myself how to change a tyre?
Where has life learning gone.
And we wonder why teenagers don't know how to boil an egg. Seriously.

I have to believe that I manage quite well all things considered. If I can cross the world & hit the restart button without total melt down then I must have done something right. But as a person who gets upset when the kitchen knobs don't all face the same way ( & I am not referring to my male flat mates for a change) I am finding just coping with all this a struggle.

I am tired. I am hungry. I am bored. I bandy on on this blog about changing your life & positivity when frankly I am a grumpy so and so whose just full of good advice. So if anyone has any tips on how to be a successful adult throw them my way because if I don't get some sleep & my head screwed on properly soon I may find the banana smelling man & make the fat man on tram 59 sit on him.

Or maybe I just need it to be Friday already. I'm pretty sure in 20 years time I will still be the woman checking my knickers.

The morning commute is never a pleasure. It is to most, a dreaded part of the 9-5 routine. Although let's face it, it's more like 6:30-6:30 by the time you factor in the shower, lunch, morning tea & on the other end the bread & milk you forgot at lunch. Bugger.

I plug out. I find man kind is much more enjoyable to be around if I just don't engage. So I am unfortunately that girl on the tram with earphones in and a calm look on her face which just doesn't make sense for this time of day.
The truth is the commute is where I get most of my inspiration from.
I look at people. I am that creep. I am stealing details about you and learning about you. So much so that people no longer appreciate just how much can be learnt about them from a single glance.

It is possibly one of the few perks of being tall that I tower over most on public transport. It means I see things others don't. Like the girl who stood in front of me this morning, though immaculately groomed, had evidently stopped using ear buds years ago. The middle aged woman to my left had put her earring on backwards, how? And the elderly gent on my right had ripped a button off his collar. Does he have no one to sew it back on?

Yesterday on a tram a woman in front of me was reading a pamphlet on pregnancy. She could only be in her first trimester. Another woman, heavily pregnant then sat down next to her opposite me. I had this wonderful moment of life in motion before me.
And yet the two did not speak. The heavily pregnant woman glanced at the pamphlet, then at the woman's stomach and then hugged her handbag closer.
I don't know her story, but surely something could have been said, a connection or shared moment where the two acknowledge their achievement and position in life.
I sat across from them both and wondered how did you both get here? And why doesn't this unite you rather than leave you silent and indifferent?
I know I am a hypocrite here as I choose to tune out to morning commuter life. But it leaves me free to voyeur, to watch as the world spins madly on and we do and say nothing in its wake.
Why won't people reach out? Why don't we smile and share together. A stranger is only so until you speak.

I read the Mx everyday after work & the section 'Vent Your Spleen' is filled with angry commuters voicing their disdain for others. Everyone is indignant about the lack of consideration from others. Few give each other the benefit of the doubt or wonder how things have come to be for that person.
Maybe it's the writer in me, but I feel that as man kind progresses we are losing our ability to empathise or care.

Consider for a moment the attractive man or woman you saw last on public transport. You were interested, intrigued and wondered how their path had come to cross with yours. Where is that curiosity with everyone else? I'm not saying stare inquisitively at every other person like a weirdo, I'm saying have compassion.
Move over on the tram and don't be so awkward, don't throw such scornful looks because someone has pushed onto the train.

They are simply another A getting to another B. Just like you.