Student Life

One of the hardest things to get used to I've found about playing at student life is the complete lack of disposable funds.

Now, I'm dreadful with money. I can make it alright, but keeping it has always been kind of beyond me. To be very honest, part of this student-life experiment is to see how well I can manage against that. Life lessons, ahoy!

Anyway. Money + me = fun but transient.

So. I'm on a couple of hundred dollars a week, drive a lovely old car (the air works, I'm happy), and live in what is essentially glorified student housing.

Best. Experiment. Ever.

There are plenty of things I wish I could do, and far, far more things I've always taken for granted. The freedom to go splash money on friends, for example, or the ability to buy a book that I'll finish in a day and pick up again six months later. Or to impulse buy, to pick up new shoes, new clothes, new toys, new shiny things.

One of the things that suffers most, I've found, is the freedom to not-think about things. To be a bit lazy. A bottle of wine, for example, is $12 at the store and $30 at my local. Petrol is a few cents cheaper half a k out of my way. The cafe on the corner offers better deals than the one down the road.
The ambiance, quite often, isn't the same. A bottle of wine with a friend is wonderful regardless of place, but a glass of wine at home isn't always as fun as one out. (....though, to be fair, a glass of wine enjoyed in a bath is only acceptable in very certain places). The corner cafe might not be as lovely as the other, but be better than the $35 place by the foreshore.

On the upside, though, I've found out all sorts of things about myself I'd never have known. Nigella is my new goddess, and it turns out I love to cook. I can iron a shirt like nobody's business. Libraries = awesome. Laying out in the sun, on the grass, with a book? Quite possibly heaven.

There are all sorts of things I still need to learn. All kinds of things that play differently to how they do in my head.

And I can't think of anything more terrifying, or more exciting.

Let's see how it goes, hey?