Around two months ago we threw a party.  Or rather, we attempted to throw a party. Or rather, we attempted to throw a weekend long festival of whimsy and delight at our home. It was going to be completely, mind-blowingly awesome and totally relaxed all at the same time. A kitchen so full of smiling faces making brownies it’d make you sick, friends coming and going at all hours, pissing off the neighbors with their banjo led gipsy strummings at 3 in the morning, drinking long into the balmy evening and celebrating the delightful stroke of fate that brought us together to be young and on holidays.

The reality was much different. We started strongish with a lovely evening spent consuming shit loads of salad and performing various spoken word pieces (including a dramatic reading from the Kardashian novel) and musical numbers.

Saturday was altogether a more lonely affair. The very lovely Sarah did come over to make the aforementioned brownies and later on there was a solid craft and Community session but by late afternoon the friends had petered out and after several hours wandering from room to room I found myself playing mini-golf in the hallway with my housemate, his sister and our one unfortunate guest.

A few more people came later on and I had some laughs and smoked a cigar and pretended I was enjoying myself but all night I was inwardly saying “fuck them. Stupid jerky jerks, fuck them all” as I glared at empty rooms and huffing as another totally excellent song came on the playlist I actually put thought into that was now wasted just like the playdough I bought special and my joy and my soul and any expectation I ever have for anything ever.

I gave so much of a crap about how few people came to the weekend. We usually throw good parties. Like, reasonably excellent ones where people fill our house (inexplicably they’re mostly drawn to our stupidly long laundry) and laugh and drink and smoke moodily outside.

What’s worse than how shitty I felt about the lack of interest shown is that in justifying the vastly empty result of the much overplanned weekend (I had made a festival line-up and all), despite the fact that I knew there were a lot of people away and another party on the same night I at one point thought

“It’s because I’m lame and old now.”

Look- on the whole, 30 has been radding all over the place.

(I got a wee bit ramped about the whole 30 deal. Which is good, I think, on account of it means I’m not UN-ramped about it. And it is good, it feels good, it’s going well, I’m talking mortgages and investments (lies- but I have taken steps towards being a lipstick wearer(!!)) or more accurately I’m embracing me at an age that I can do nothing about and am deciding to celebrate the possibilities of me at this age instead of panicking about it).

BUT, when faced with the reality of dead air on my first not in my twenties party, I was, for a time, convinced it was because I was now an elderly person, senile enough to still believe her younger friends want to hang out with her.

It was my first real “holy shit what have I done” moment.

I felt naff and decrepit for days. Even though I knew that there were other parties on. Even though I knew a hell of a lot of people were out of town. I would focus on those who I knew weren’t, and glare at them inwardly, muttering about how relieved they must be to not have to hang out with me.

Poor, sad Carlynne.

Now just so you know how pitiful and stupid I actually am, a small highlight reel of some things that happened after I turned 30, before the weekend that made me Miss Havisham:

• I had not one but TWO nights out with friends for my birthday, one here and one in Adelaide, both of which were stupidly excellent and populated with people who have proven consistently that they don’t find my company naturally repellent.
• Danced like a mo’ fo’ four times, once at a 21^st that I put together the music for (resulting, gratifyingly, in a floor full of mad shapes, stank face and hip hop throw downs the likes of which Carlton has never seen)
• Road tripped with dear ones
• Partied with dear ones until 6 am
• Totally stuck it to the man with a permanent marker and a drawing of a rainbow (on a  wall)

I tell you this not to impress you (Because you know, several parties in one month- , someone alert Perez Hilton cos I’m the new Peaches Geldof) but to lay out the very normal and undramatic and multiple reasons I have to accept that I’m not entirely naff and do in fact take part in non-aged facility related activites so you can appreciate just how much I can ignore in order to feel sorry for myself. 

Geez grrl. Get it together.

Part 2 coming. Wha’ whaaa?