This is not a diet blog part 1: How to win friends and throw shit parties.

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 21st 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?

So excitement

This year I’m going to get fit! I know, right?!

Also I’m going to try and be hella creative.

And I’m doing a couple of cool things like blogging for the uni mag and making a monthly soundtrack for my friend Doyle’s life and then writing about it.

Combine all that with a shit-load of excellent people, a trip to Europe and a few ideas up my sleeve for work related projects and I’ve got myself a pretty ok 2012 lined up.

2011, what have you done for me lately?

The stats.

Achieved:

half completed “before 30” to do list

turned 30 (with minimum freaking out)

tagged one wall, one post box, one toilet (raging against the machine, you see)

embroidered one beard, one wolf, one banjo

attended 9 weddings

got significantly drunkish, quite a few times

procured a new mac

made a butt-load of new friends

got heart broken by A Song of Ice and Fire

discovered Chuck, Community, GoT, Big Love and a previously undiscovered depth of devotion to Grey’s Anatomy

Highlights:

Harry Potter wand

weddings

all the dancing in the world and finding shapes I didn’t know I could throw

my family, extended

rooster cardigan, cat vest

my dear, dear, dear friends

Learnt:

I should not be surrounded by good looking/intelligent/witty young men. Bad.

new friends are THE SHIT

I can hold down a job. For a year!

embroidery is quite soothing, for a bit

music will always save my life

I know some stupidly, extravagantly wonderful and loving people.

death is often completely shit

it IS possible to have a mental break down over gingerbread

I continue my streak of being an occasional but thorough douche

the viewing of various 19th century novels-turned-movies is better done without the aid of much blueberry vodka

I can get good marks

I have the power to not like boys but said power is wily and precocious

failing subjects does not feel nice but feels better then losing ones mind

beauty is a drug

music is a drug

coffee is, of course, a drug

I do not wish sadness to be a drug

family, ay? Who knew.

I am addicted to sugar and will find giving it up hilariously difficult

George R.R. Martin is NOT TO BE TRUSTED

the power of a good playlist should not be underestimated

my ability to be envious of others talents and creativity is substantial

my ability to justify the spending of money on music, tv shows, vintage back packs and food is the stuff of legends

If I don’t think I’m wonderful, who will?

though-all of my beloveds seem to retain a steadfast belief in my wonder, even when I do not

I need to write more

to forgive is such good therapy

I’m ok, I think.

 

Another year, it seems. Lovely.

x