Ah yes, the end of the semester is nigh. With it brings multiple major assignments and final exams to look forward to. Lately I have had to make good use of every spare moment I have, what with my last two assignments worth 30% of my total marks and the loose-end tying-up portion of my novel-writing and a poor sick friend who’s been out of commission for a week and half.

And of course this weekend, I celebrated, in advance, my 24th birthday which will be this coming Wednesday. I had a lovely dinner with my friends at a Nepalese restaurant in North Adelaide and was nearly made to dance by the owner of the establishment. One of my friends, being of keen observational skills, stopped the progression and let me slink back (not so gracefully) to the table. Or possibly he just saw the sheer terror on my face at the unwelcome prospect of having to boogie in the middle of the restaurant with a dozen strangers watching on… Thanks, Squid, for not forcing me. 🙂 As I said today, I do not have an inner rhythm…

So the one-liner of my blog is “The blog of a writer and live-hard romantic”. Why a “live-hard romantic”, you might wonder. Does it perhaps mean that this writer lives life on the edge, partying hard and fast like tomorrow would be the end of civilisation as we know it? Not quite, my loyal followers. It has more to do with my oldest rule in life – my belief that you have to grasp life by the horns and not be afraid of rejection. Carpe diem, in the words of Quintus Horatius Flaccus. Putting it in my own words, I do not want to have to contemplate the imaginary and dreaded “what if” scenario. I have witnessed too much regret in the lives of those dearest to me because they would not or could not put themselves out there. In order to get different results, you have to do the unexpected, even if it is foreign and scary to you. I’ve trialed this several times with mixed results but upon reflection, I realised you can’t do it half-arsed. You can’t do the same old thing, perform it differently and expect results either. If you want to do something completely out of the blue, you have to do it with commitment and not just with one leg in. And that is why I call myself the live-hard romantic because instead of being an inflexible, stubborn die-hard, I aim to be adaptable but am always, and forever, a romantic.