When It All Gets Too Much

No one's perfect but this is a concept I am still grasping. In fact, this is my second attempt at this post and to be honest the subject has completely changed. I was going to tackle the issue of terrorism given the events in Brussels this week, but the words just weren't coming naturally. It felt more like a dreaded assignment than something from my heart and I wasn’t feeling it.

My day had been far from perfect. I confused everyone about what time I should be awake, resulting in a dazed conversation with my Dad in the wee hours. I then caught a cramped train and couldn’t write the mentioned blog post. I did however witness three middle-aged women swig an unidentified bottle of booze whilst travelling to the city (yep, still on the Caboolture line). Once I made it to Uni, sober unlike my fellow commuters, I bought a less than ordinary hot chocolate. I then continued to waste my time writing about how our young people need to be given the support to avoid radicalisation. Once I got to my Journalistic Inquiry lecture I once again realised I don’t know what’s happening in the news, despite the amount of content I am consuming. These current affairs tests are doing my head in! If we hit fast forward the rest of the day was pretty grim with a tutor consult, an interview with a local artist for a profile piece and some boxing in the afternoon.

I am telling you this because at approximately 8pm, after my beloved Home and Away had finished and dinner was done, I had a little melt down. It wasn’t full of tears and I didn’t slam my bedroom door but I had had enough.

I was worried about how I had gone in my interview. It wasn’t anything bad and the talent was super lovely but as I drove away from the house there were questions that I hadn’t thought to ask. This started to feaster and before I knew it I had convinced myself that I was never going to make it in the journalism industry. From there I thought about the 120 job cuts that Fairfax had announced last week and further decided that I had chosen the wrong career path. I would probably die with a HECS debt that never furthered by employment prospects.

Whilst this was going on I thought back to my previous post about terrorism and started to unnecessarily worry about the possibility of attacks in Australia. What would I do if they were to happen here and what could I do to stop them?

I practically word vomited (no actual vomit as I did not consume that alcohol on the train) this to my parents and they both looked at me like I had lost the plot. Dad gave me some sound advice about how the journalism industry is changing and will look different when I finally graduate. Meaning that it will be something to worry about in a whole two years time. We then talked about the terrorism thing and how I probably can’t do anything to stop it. I have to have trust in the authorities and live my life without the, what if’s.

This was a good experience and I will take some lessons from it but it just goes to show that even when you think you are going along fine there are days when it gets too much. As a perfectionist I find days like this impossible but writing it down has helped. So to the Internet, thank you for giving me a platform to write about my life.

#ashleighdwan #beyondthestory #journalism