Must Love Normal

This year I have to become normal, for study reasons. Obviously I live a decadent L.A. party girl lifestyle - youtubing early Mariah Carey videos and drinking cordial at 3am - and this is going to be hard. I have also recently become a "rock chick" which involves straight spirits out of the bottle, heaps of eyeliner and throwing glasses on the floor at clubs, and this is also going to be a hard lifestyle to turn my back on (we'd only just begun).



My first day of school I felt old habits creeping up on me. I tried to discover all the different sorts of birds I could draw instead of taking notes (toucan, parrot, kookaburra, magpie, crow, pelican, duckie FYI). I wore clothes from the day before. I didn't talk to anyone. So I am setting myself a deadline to be a good, normal, balanced person by NEXT WEEK, in particular addressing:

- getting up at 7am: this is when normal people get up, I have discovered. When you "go for a run" you get up earlier, like 6am and you work on your glutes.
- eating breakfast: normal people don't drink free coffee all day until you can get home to finally eat some weird sandwich (basil and cheese toasties). They eat yoghurt and fresh fruits. They also don't put the free muffins from their introductory lecture in their handbag for an afternoon snack. NOTE!
- bus activites: normal people don't try to fall asleep on the bus for extra nap time. They read some papers, or a Jodi Piccoult novel or sms text message.
- conversing with colleagues: this is hard because I'm not very good at computers and I don't have any video games and so no one is that into me within the Chemistry department. I introduced myself for the first time to people I have been taking classes with for 4 years today, so that's a good step. They found out that I don't know much about programming, and that I can draw birds ("Is that an owl?").
- wearing khaki pants with running shoes: this is pretty specific to my field, but I'm sure heaps of normal people are into it. Functional, smart, subtly sexy. Also any sort of superfluous clothing - scarves when its not cold, unneccesary belts, jewelry can GTFO.
- regular entries into a weekly planner: normal people go nuts when they lose their diaries. "What do I do!". They don't know. I'm not gonna know.
- doing errands on weekends: washing is not something you do when you realise you've been wearing your housemates' clothes for two weeks (sowwee Hill st!). Groceries are not just bought when you run out of basil for your weird sandwiches. That shit is weekly and you do it on Saturdays. Sundays are for team sports and joining local things, like "Pick up rubbish club!".

See ya on the other side!!

Love Clarke xoxoxo