I feel like this year is going to be a crucial time for me. 2008 opened with me desperate to leave St Albans, where I no longer feel at home, depressed and confused. Despite some major money issues this year, I've spent most of it in London, living with Bethan and no matter how unhappy my work situation (or lack thereof) has made me, I love living here. I don't want to leave. Now my mother has started to guilt trip me about my apparent failure to find gainful employment, and is suggesting heavily that she expects me to move back home, broke and unemployable, at the beginning of this year.

For a while I thought she might be right. Sometimes I still do.

This year I can clearly see the two paths I can take. I can fail to find work, to scrape together my rent, and I can go back to my parents and be sad, and broken, and fail. Or, I can not. I can find work. I can do something, anything to avoid that fate. I drunkenly told a friend that I would rather, if it came to it, if I'd exhausted every possible option, throw myself off Tower Bridge rather than admit defeat. Too much pride, you see? And this is very melodramatic, I know, but I need to remind myself to be determined. To try other options. Hell, if I have to, I'll start over somewhere completely new. I'll run away to sea. Or something.

Perhaps my mum is being really clever here, actually, because nothing has ever motivated me more than her casual assumption that I will fail.

So that's resolution number one for 2009. Keep living my life. No one elses. Everything else is just a bonus.

But because "earn enough to pay the rent" is a little bit dull as resolutions go, I have at least one more so far:

I think I'm going to actually start running this year. I need to exercise, and it's cheaper than gym membership. I'll get some cheap running shoes to start with, and a sports bra, and I'll give it a go. It would be nice to be healthier, and my solid little beer belly would worry me less. I'm thin, but I'm not fit. And I think an exercised me might be a happier me, too.

This is probably TMI but whatever, it's my journal.

I have run out of loo roll. This is bad. I forgot to get some while I was out and now it is cold and I am sleepy and headachey and ready for bed and really NOT wanting to put on three extra layers to run to the shop for loo paper.

BUT it's a very inconvenient time of the month! It's like a train wreck down there! All gore and severed limbs (okay maybe not that last part). And this makes the need for paper more pressing, but also makes the likelihood of me leaving the house again tonight very slim indeed.

I think I'll just wash. Like they did in the days before loo roll. I'm sure, uh, Cleopatra didn't fret because she was a bit gorey. She probably just bathed in goats milk or something. Hmm. We do have some skimmed in the fridge, but I think I'll just stick to soapy water.

In less gross news, I got a haircut today. I am very paranoid about getting haircuts as I find hairdressing salons the most terrifying places on earth. My mum's friend used to cut my hair in my kitchen when I was a kid, so I just don't really know how they work. And then people pull you about and massage your head and TOUCH YOU and UGH. And then how on earth does one tip a hairdresser? I never do, because I don't know if I'm meant to, and I'm sure they always think I'm stingy. And they judge you. "Oh, you don't spend much time on it do you?" they say, tutting. Well, no I don't actually. Because it's just HAIR. Washing the stuff is effort enough. My hair straighteners only come out for weddings and funerals.

ANYWAY, the point I was trying to reach was that this particular trip was fairly untraumatic. They were very chilled out, and gave me tea (I was supposed to get beer but they were obviously fooled by my baby face and I didn't want to embarrass myself by pointing out that I am actually 23 and would quite like some booze now, please) and the hairdresser did her utmost to fix the mess of a mullet-y thing I got last time. Actually, the look on her face was priceless. She even said "I'm not a miracle worker!" and then gamely attempted to make it look less stupid. She was very encouraging too, and told me to be patient and grow it out and it'd all be fine.

Anyway, she gave me a sort of long side fringe to try and make my short layers at the back look a bit longer. It's quite nice, but I'll have to see what happens when I style it myself (by style I mean wash and blast with a hairdryer. None of this weird, blow-straight with brushes malarky, which seems like so much effort, just thinking about it makes me sleepy).

I dyed it darker too. Pictures later, I'm sure.

I am achey in one arm from blood tests and the other arm from tattoos...

I R NEEDLE QUEEN!

To briefly expand on that statement, I got a new tattoo on Sunday. It is lovely and brilliant and I loved getting it so much that I nearly dozed off in a little bliss/pain trance on the bench with my hand flung in the dude's lap while he inked my arm. Yummy. And not too pricey either, so I am happy. My laptop fund is slightly less than impressed, but I decided my need for a new computer was not as pressing as my need for a large, blue-shaded diamond on my left arm. Pictures to follow.

The blood tests (ohsomany) are because my stomach pain that I keep whining about but then ignoring finally kicked my arse on Sunday evening, and I was left in agony, collapsed in a heap on the floor, while my long suffering housemate Bethan brought me codeine (mmmmmmmcodeine) and hot water bottles and things. My stomach looked like I'd swallowed a bowling ball. And I may have gotten very sad about these things. So I went back to the doctor, and she asked about the bowel cancer and the suspected food intolerances and stuff and decided to test me for EVERYTHING EVAR. Which also includes another, less pleasant test, involving certain othe bodily functions. Yeah. GROSS.

Um, yeah. And I'm very, very sleepy. But the third collected graphic novel of Buffy season eight arrived today, so I am going to read that until my eyes glue themselves closed and I HAVE to sleep.

My tummy hurts all the time at the moment. No longer is it purely a response to dairy goods. My doctor said something about gall stones or something but I am now convinced I have bowel cancer. It's all the fault of the Cancer Research UK briefing I got sent on at work, where we got told this story about this twenty something guy who had a tummy ache and it turned out to be bowel cancer. I'm not usually a hypochondriac but since my entire family had bowel cancer (two of my aunts, and my granddad had part of his bowel removed and had a colostomy bag half his life) I am not convinced by my doctors mumblings of "probably just indigestion". That's what case study guy thought too! I try to laugh it off, but I'm definitely rotten on the inside.

I'm chilling out before bed with Neil Young, who I had forgotten that I loved until I went to the East End Thrift Store on Sunday and they were playing his greatest hits. I heart him.

In more music news, a guy started talking to me, quite unprovoked, about Bob Dylan. Dylan's okay. I'm not a fan. He's a bit like the Beatles in that you're supposed to think he's a genius, and that if you admit you find his voice a bit grating and his songs a little uninspiring you are automatically reviled as knowing nothing whatsoever about music. I like some Dylan songs. He's alright. I think Dylan never really got a fair shot with me, as so many of the Dylan fans I met at university are hugely pretentious wankers who use Dylan as an opportunity to show you how a)deep they are and b) how much more they know about music than you.

As a counter balance to how much I hate my job (muso guy in the office, you are not helping), I actually love living in Bethnal Green at the moment. It's not perfect, but my flat is lovely. It's cosy and, yes, the size of a shoebox, but it's very cute. And Bethan is easy to live with (I am only occasionally struck by a crippling fear that I am the worse housemate in the world ever and somehow this manifests in being even more annoying than ever as I try, with unfunny, potentially offensive jokes, to find out if she really hates me. But no one's perfect). And we have some nice little rituals. Like Sunday brunch at the greasy spoon, which is a relatively new tradition, but one that I thoroughly enjoy. Especially when hungover. And this is often followed up by some pottering about the east end. Like last Sunday's visit to the amazing East End Thrift Store in Whitechapel where Bethan, Jo and I stocked up on vintage winterwear (I got two jumpers for £20, which makes me a bit more confident about the suddenly freezing weather). I also went to the Vicky Park fireworks and had a pint after in the Misty Moon, which is nearly the closest pub to my flat (it was chosen over the trendier boozers on the merit of being nearly empty).

Maybe this is all just yet more proof that you can't have it all together. One part of your life is great, another is rubbish, and that's the way of the world. It's like the Chucklebrothers intro. You pick up one letter and another letter falls over. To me...

To you.

I have had two spider situations in 24hours. Last night I can home to find a sizeable spider on the ceiling. Spider phobics will know that on the ceiling is the least manageable situation. I am solo in the flat. Spider is on the floor. I can trap it under a (big) glass and with much huffing and panting and crying and wailing and shaking, I can probably get rid of it, or at least move it out of my room. Wall, I may be able to hit it with a shoe and run (I hate killing them but sometimes it is, as a last resort, neccessary. It's them or me, people, and I like me better). Ceiling, and you have to tackle it from below. Which means potential for droppage. Which means, it could fall onto ME. Which is NOT GOOD.

Eventually, with much coaching and the fear that if I lost it in my room I would never be able to sleep in here again, I hit it with a sponge mop (decent firm, flat surface, plus long handle for drop avoidance) until it was dead and stuck to said mop. Then I left it in Bethan's room for her to deal with when she got back, long suffering flat mate that she is.

Then, of course, all last night I couldn't sleep. I felt like it was on me. Every over-tired black spot in my vision made me jump out of my skin. I actually sat bolt up right at 3am, scratching at myself all over, convinced a spider was on me.

Yes, I am a crazy person.

Then this evening I only find a dead one in the middle of my floor! The suspicion is that the cat brought it in (I'm STILL cat sitting) as why would a spider walk into the middle of my floor and die? In a ten minute window when I wasn't in there? Unlikely. So it probably didn't come from my room (it was a body dump. A secondary crime scene, if you will. I am a crazy person but I'm still a dork).

But now I'm all paranoid again! So this'll be another sweaty, wrestless night of many-legged nightmares and periodically waking up to switch on the light and check for spiders.

I really fucking HATE being an arachnophobic. The panic attacks are horrible (crying, hyperventilating, shaking uncontrollably) but they're followed by intense paranoia, and usually, humiliation. "Don't be silly, it's only a spider! It's so small it can't hurt you!" I KNOW. STOP PATRONISING ME. Clearly, if being obnoxious was going to help, I wouldn't be screaming and crying. Thankfully, Bethan is absolutely lovely about it, and always reassured me that it's an irrational fear, and that I don't need to be embarrassed... In fact a lot of people now are much nicer to me about it. It's probably down to the sheer levels of terror I go to.

I want hypnotherapy. Seriously. I'm going to save up.

I managed to make it through Monday without buying anything! I joke, but really, I'm beginning to get a sense of how stupidly hard this is going to be. My brain is hardwired into associating new stuff with success, and therefore, no matter how ridiculous this might be, buying stuff makes me feel like a winner.

Which is dumb. New shoes are not going to make me a different person. I am not what I wear.

This might all sound like a cross between some horrible chick lit novel and Tyler Durden's anti-consumerist rants in Fight Club, but I hope it will help to examine the way I think and pull it apart, showing it to my conscious self as the crap it really is.

I fully intend to keep a diary of my progress in my Livejournal (and therefore, a syndicated diary through my Facebook). I hope that through this, I will be able to look back on this experiment and learn from it.

Considering I last went shopping on Saturday, I next thought about something I wanted, and usually would have made a note to buy, on Monday. I was wearing my hair down and sort-of-curly (I sleep with it rolled up so it's a false kind of curly when I wake up, on nights when I can't be bothered to blow-dry my hair before bed) with part of it pinned behind my ear on one side with a nice kirby grip with a daisy on that I found in my draw. I liked it, so I made a mental note to buy more pretty decorated kirby grips.

This was the point that I caught myself doing it. Whereas sometimes I'll stop myself thinking, "ugh, you don't have any money" this time I actually thought "you don't need that!" and I felt a bit ridiculous for having made a conscious decision to buy something I didn't really need.

A quick rummage through my draw turned up the partner to the daisy grip, plus a couple of gold coloured slides and a flat hair clip. Which is plenty, really. Plus a hell of a load of plain brown bobby pins which could be easily embellished if I so wished. I do own a lot of buttons and odds and ends of material, so it would be fairly easy to manufacture something new if I really needed to.

I made it a day before I wanted to buy something. This, sadly, hasn't really surprised me.

I also saw a sewing machine in Woolworths for £49 today. I want to spend some of my Christmas money (ostensibly already spent on crap I don't need, really) on this. The money was intended for my new computer fund, but since I got him some new RAM and a new hardrive (or rather, my Dad kindly did for Christmas), Hodges-the-laptop has been running beautifully, and I haven't had any of the annoying problems that were making me desperate for a replacement in the first place. But I kind of feel like this would be giving in. Despite the vow only excluding clothes, shoes and jewellery, to spend any money on something that isn't a necessity smacks of failure.

But on the other hand, a sewing machine is an investment, and not excluded by my terms. And it might also make not buying clothes easier to handle if I can make my own with some cheap, market-bought material.

Hmm.

I think I just had a revelation. Today has been divided between knitting, revising for my media law exam, and reading my new copy of Bust. This has been a bit of problem, because no where near enough of that time has been spent on the exam revision part, and the exam is tomorrow. Oops.

The questions that always plague me during a bout of procrastination have been whirling around my empty flat. Why do I leave everything to the last minute? Why can't I motivate myself? Why do I waste so much time doing nothing? This morphed into the usual pre-deadline self-hatred. Why do I spend money I don't have on things I don't need? Why, when I have a wardrobe that literally wont close, do I still buy new clothes on regular basis? Why, if left to my own devices, would I spend myself into bankruptcy with nothing much more than a box of barely worn, ill-fitting Primark shoes to show for it?

And I got to thinking, maybe all these things are symptoms of the one problem? There is something wrong with me. I'm sick. I need new things to feel happy, and when it comes to attaining my goals I am suddenly filled with lethargy. Then I punish myself, either by not eating for days, or through some other, more imaginative form of self-discipline, after which I console myself with something new. Something I don't need and can't afford. And then I punish myself, and the cycle starts again.

The fact that I am obviously addicted to buying things is obvious. I can control it to a certain extent- I buy things then feel guilty and return them, and sometimes I deliberately go, by myself, to a cheap shop like H&M or Primark and allow myself to buy one item, to get my fix without breaking the bank. But it occurs to me that this is a ridiculous way to behave. If it were alcohol that I was craving like this, I would have identified my behaviour as a serious problem a long time ago, but because it's shopping, and women with an addiction to shopping is normalised and made light of, I hadn't really twigged until now.

I'm hardly in debt up to my eyeballs with several maxed out credit cards hiding in the recesses of my wallet, but I can point to around £300 at least of unwarranted expenditure in my recent statements. And for someone currently sans-income, living off loans until May, this is unnacceptable, stupid, and verging on ridiculous.

I propose, therefore to kick the habit. I am going to go cold turkey on my most extravagent form of purchases: clothes.

Oh God. I'm dithering here at the computer now. The very prospect of stopping buying clothes fills me with dread. Ugh, which in turn fills me with revulsion. I clearly need to break this habit as soon as possible.

How long for? I want to say a year. I want to vow not to buy another item of clothing for a year, but my head is literally filling with images of pretty summer dresses that I look forward to all summer.

How sad is that?

Okay, no, a year will be too hard to maintain. Like a New Years Resolution that never gets past March. It's overreaching, and it seems like forever, so for starters I'm going to say three months to try and avoid feeling too defeatist about my chances. Considering I can't usually get through a week without buying something, this should be challenge enough.

Here's the vow, then. As the internet is my witness, I will not buy an item of clothing or footwear or jewellery until the 13th of July. Until then, I will make do with my extensive wardrobe. If the need arises, I will mend clothes rather than replace them, I will alter clothes that no longer fit, and I will make clothes if really necessary. I will borrow, and I will draft in the help of friends with sewing machines to make sure I stick to this resolution. I will avoid clothes shops as places of temptation with no real merit, and I use the time I would usually spend in them going through my wardrobe and removing things that I really will never wear or have never worn and getting rid of them.

This, my friends, is day zero.

I lost half an article in a computer spaz out at college today and had to type it again. I was so frustrated/irate/destraught that I stopped trying to make an effort not to swear in class. At the end of the day my tutor told me to get a swear box.

Do I really swear that much? I don't even notice it, but I think I hardly get through a sentence without swearing nowadays. I have no idea why it's so bad. But I really let rip today... I was so angry with myself and on the verge of tears after I lost my work that I really turned the air blue. Especially when some people from a news class walked in when we were all working. The classroom is off the common room so people just walk in to use the computers and don't seem to notice when we're actually in the middle of a lesson. I actually did that really horrible "yeah, okay, we're actually in a fucking lesson if you wouldn't fucking mind?" thing. The poor embarassed girl legged it... although at the time I wanted to punch her for making a noise when I was trying to concentrate.

This pretty much sums up the relationship between news and magazine journalists, I think. Certainly at our center anyway.

Fuck a fucking swear box, though. Fuck it up its fucking arse.

I wrote my article in the end though. It's meant to be aimed at a business audience, so I wrote about the Beijing Olympics and about how we shouldn't boycott it because it's fucking hypocitical and besides, we don't want to give anyone ideas about boycotting ours in 2012. Oh and blah, morals, blah, leading by example, blah.

I don't agree with China's human rights back catalogue, and I don't agree with their actions in Tibet, but I don't agree with the war on terror either, so who am I to be jumping on them "they're soooooo much worse than us!" bandwagon.

On a lighter note, I have been listening to some really good new albums lately, which I would like to recommend you.

The Raconteurs' second album, Consolers of the Lonely, is better than their first. It's less pop hits and more The White Stripes. Let me explain. The drums are wilder, the song formats are less conventional, and there's more of a retro 70s-rock feel to the whole thing. There's also a nice country/folk influence that adds depth. Broken Boy Solider was alright, but a bit too safe and no where near dark enough for my tastes.

Blood Red Shoes- Box of Secrets was a super long awaited first full length album release, but now that it's here it's sure to be the cream of the indie rock releases for this year. A more garage punk influenced indie sound with louds of stuff that'll sound sweet on the dancefloor as well as some nice vocals. I'm not much of an indie conoisseur so that's all I feel I can really say... Suffice to say it's good shit.

I also had a listen to Camille's new album whose title I forget. It's sort of Goldfrappy, slightly off-kilter stuff. Some beautiful, husky vocals and some good hooks as well as unconventional sounds looped in there. Camille's obsession with her ability to hit the kind of high notes Mariah Carey would be envious of gets a little bit annoying though, as does her cutesy, "French Karen O" schtick. Having said that, there are a couple of really lovely, enduring songs on here!

OH also I updated my Rainlendar desktop calendar with some cute new skins. I now have one that's, okay, French, but displays a different piece of sushi on my desktop every month. How cute is that?!

Le sigh. Break over. Back to work. I have three more articles to finish today!

Ugh, do you ever have those weeks where the universe seems to be ganging up on you and you just want to hide under the duvet until it goes away?

Yeah, of course you do. Who doesn't? Well, this week is my week:

- I started my new short journalism course thing and it's a bit slow so far. We're only two days in but I failed spectacularly at an impromptu we-need-your-classroom-for-an-exam-so-go-away excercise in going out onto the street to find a news story. I cannot find news. I am hardwired to find the world boring and mundane, apparently. I found a good feature but sadly since we were looking for news, I failed. And then felt really bad about it and started doubting whether I'll really be any good as a journalist at all. Except, of course, I don't WANT to be a news reporter. Never have. Hmm. Hopefully I'll do better when it comes to the feature writing section of the course.

- I'm moving house this weekend and I hate packing more than anything else in the world. It never fails to make me ridiculously depressed and therefore make all other things seem so terrible, far out of proportion with the very small amounts of terrible that they actually are. My god that sentence made no sense.

- My Creative Zen mp3 player died on me. I think the battery's gone, most likely. Very upsetting- see above. I think I'll try and send it off to the manufacturer to be fixed...

- I have just had two periods in a row thanks to being sick two weeks ago and fucking up my pill-taking and biological cycle or whatever. Seems to be ending now, but really. A two week period is Not Fun.

- I'm stressing about asking my Dad for money. Which I shouldn't, really, because he asked me to tell him how much certain things were going to cost me so he could give me the money for them, but I hate asking for money and it's driving me crazy.

- I'm commutuing to London this week. This is expensive and uncomfortable and boring since my mp3 player died, and makes me very tired and cranky.

- I'm trying to sort out work experience at a magazine but I'm stressing constantly that I'm not cool enough or I don't know enough about music or fashion or art or cinema or politics to work at any of the ones I'm applying for. Why oh why do I have to be the person who knows a little bit about everything but a lot about nothing? Why am I such a stupid fucking idiot? Why am I letting myself get this stressed out?

At least the following things are good things:

- I am moving out, which brings, yes, more stress but is also a positive step towards... uh... not living here any more.

- I am listening to the new Hot Chip album in demo form and it sounds brilliant. I am also doing the same with the new Cat Power and it too is fantastic.

- I'm struggling with a third, here. I have Cadbury's Caramel in bar form and season two of Buffy on DVD in my room for later on, when I can't resist the urge to hide under the duvet any longer.