I have maybe -$80.16 in the bank at the moment.  It was a combination of a pricy car service, my birthday, paying back the future fund, and the UQ bi-annual book fair.  I managed to snag 2 volumes of the Harmsworth Magazine.  I.  Regret.  Nothing.

Being broke and between paycheques does present an interesting challenge in terms of food.  Here’s the breakdown of food I have:

• 2 cans of beans
• 13 eggs
• 2 cans of tuna
• 2 frozen pies
• Rice
• 1 packet of chips
• 5 tomatoes
• ½ pack of salad
• 6 chicken nuggets
• 3 magnum ice creams
• ½ pack of cereal
• 4 juice poppers
• Soy sauce
• Nandos sauce
  

...Looking at it now, I realize that it’s not really a challenge.  The rice will sustain me.  I make a killer fried rice with just tuna, egg and soy sauce.  And I’m not above having cereal with juice. 

It’s moments like this that I get an insight into what it would be like to live from paycheque to paycheque.  To know that you don’t have the luxury of buying chips on the way home.  Oddly, because money is now always on my mind, I find that I desire to consume more.  I want to eat more food because I’ve psyched myself up to believe that I have very little food (even though I don’t).  I can easily see myself reaching for the credit card, buying a bunch of junk food, and regretting it as I stuff my face.    I wonder if I will splurge when I get paid.  It will be interesting to see what happens. 

Voting for the April contest entries has started!  My favourites are:

TRasa’s dark take on social media gone wrong. 

Emerald Viper’s literal and heart-felt interpretation of ‘going through hell’.

And Master Chief’s very own Rogue Squadron.

Solemn Coyote also posted a second entry, which he did not enter due to work count, but is nonetheless a great thought experiment – what would it be like to create humans for entertainment?

This month has been absolutely brutal.  Without going into details, I think that, as Manatee suggested, I earned the ire of a Shinto god while I was in Japan.

Hopefully May will be better.

I haven't been the most productive, but today I knuckled down to write Deliverance, my contest entry which I abandoned many times.  I've already noticed and fixed up a bunch of errors since posting, but no doubt that I've missed some.

I'm at a cross roads at the moment with work and writing.  Part of me is excited about the possibility of taking on more responsibility, but another part of me realizes that the more I get into my psychology job, the further I drift away from my loved one and my writing.  I don't know whether the human examples I have come across lately are role models or cautionary tales.  

Writing today reaffirmed my love for it and made me realize the importance of structuring my life around time to write.  It was the original goal when I came to Hervey Bay, but in the last ten months or so, I seem to have lost it.  I've taken on too much, which has reduced my focus on writing significantly.  The scary part is that I don't know if my writing will get me anywhere.  I can see clear career progression with psychology, but writing is a great unknown.  The rejection of Vert Glace by numerous agents doesn't help.  Do I sacrifice security to pursue a dream?  It's odd.  My younger self always expected my older self to have more answers, but I only find myself with more and more questions and ambiguity.