This update is brought to you by the number 28.

28, apparently thats the number of days it takes to make or break a habit...  I'm not okay with this, because tomorrow will be the first day I walk to work, in the cold, in an effort to save some cash on fuel. This means that I will have to endure another TWENTY SEVEN days until my brain shifts and decides that this morning walk is just 'a part of my routine'. And, walking to work also creates the task of walking home. Goddamnit! I just know that I will be dragging my feet and hoping that I don't come across another (unfortunate) person walking in the opposite direction, because one thing I hate more than walking in the fog that is a Canberran Winters Morning, is doing that stupid side-to-side-shuffle (you know the one, when you don't know which side of the foot path to walk on so you basically end up bumping noses and then apologise without ever looking each other in the eye... The correct side by the way, is the left side, you drive on the left, so walk on the left, this is also the general rule with elevators and corridors, just so you know). Tonight I will be spending a little time creating a play list on my ipod that I can use make the mornings more enjoyable, but in all honesty I secretly wish someone would just follow me around blasting 'eye of the tiger', imagine what that would do to my productivity! I'd be unstoppable, or less-stoppable at the very least.


As I write this I can't help but feel a little jaded, are there going to be a lot of changes? will they be worth it? And why cant I just win the lotto (like everyone else!) and just pay to have my butt shrunk down and pay off my debt that way? But then I get to thinking, and I realise that I very VERY rarely drink anymore, and that, my friends, is HUGE! I use to drink so much that there was a time that I thought that maybe my perfume was starting to smell like a vodka and squash, turns out it was just me. But now I   just don't do it that often, maybe once a month, (except in december, of course), I guess I just got to the point where I thought I had gotten to old to be drinking a bottle of bourbon and falling in to animal-shaped-hedges every weekend, I use to be completely fine with skipping the pretence of being responsible and just having a bag of goon for breakfast (mostly only on weekends), these days however, at my moderately-responsible-but-occasionally-reckless-age of 26, Every beer I have while I am out causes me to have flash backs of hangovers past, where I would be so hungover I would sit on the toilet and reach for my seat belt! I'm not particularly fond of those 'bathroom floor' kind of mornings where I lay on the cold tiles and spend an hour trying to write a short text along the lines of "hey, can you come over and kill me real quick" and sending it off to people I hope might actually do it. The point here is, I broke a habit, and in retrospect I remember it being a bit of an effort to start with, but now it's just "what I do". So, let me raise my tea cup to the next 28 days, where I will slowly be breaking bad habits and replacing them with better, cheaper, healthier ones.


While I have your attention I also just wanted to say, press the damn follow button!!! It's at the bottom of the page, (if you have an email addy then you have a 'google account'), I know that a bunch of you are following because you've told me, but I secretly want to be able to see it... 


Once again, thanks for reading! xo

I don't handle being landlocked very well, and I am not that big on winter (unless it's proper winter, with snow and... piano music), so it's no exaggeration to say that I am struggling a bit to be all smiles at the moment, but this little clip is getting me through... He's on a bike, I can see the sea and it's filmed in my heart-throb-country Brazil. I do like a decent montage! 

AND SO IT BEGINS...

Numbers really aren’t that threatening, are they? They’re just numbers after all… If I was to say 5 or 3248392 or 18 or 1040000 to you, you wouldn’t even blink (unless you were a bit freaked out by the crazy person rambling numbers for no apparent reason), BUT when I told you that 5 was the number of years it has taken me to accrue $32,483.92 debt, to gain some 18 kilos or to spend an insane $10,400.00 on cigarettes you might blink, or if you’re my mum, you might even cry. However, there is another number, 27, and this is the number of countries I have travelled to in those five years that have allowed me to gain the debt and the backpacker bulge. So I can’t be too upset about it all. And then the last number, 16, this is the amount of months I am giving myself to lose the J-LO booty, pay off the debt and save enough money to go on another trip oversea’s. This time wandering the earth with my backpack and laptop for a year… that’s the goal. This blog is where I will be recording the victories and the probable defeats in my war against numbers. Things are bound to get messy, hilarious, exhausting and down right emotional... I hope you’ll stay for the ride, I might need a cheer squad.

ON MY RETURN TO AUSTRALIA FROM MY LAST JAUNT OVERSEA'S, I CAME HOME TO NO JOB, NO HOUSE, NO CAR AND NO BOYFRIEND... THIS IS A SUMMERY OF WHAT HAPPENED NEXT.

I moved in with my very gracious and 'world's best' uncle, who allowed me to go rent free until I was "on my feet". This uncle of mine also fixed my car!  I then did some number crunching, discovered the amount of debt I had and then quickly began looking for work, while spending my precious $29 a month phone credit whinging about my situation to a very supportive ex boyfriend.

Then this...

"I have $41.00 in my bank account, cost-cutting is about to get serious. So I was thinking about what I can save my pennies on and the answer was easy. Cigarettes. Not only will they kill me but they will also leave me bin-diving for my supper if they cost me my last dime. So they are out, easier said than done, I know. I can usually abstain from smoking for a few days at a time, especially if I’m sick, but it's when I drink that my lungs face their most severe punishment. It’s like corn chips, they’re good on their own but they are better with salsa… alcohol is better with a cigarette. When I have a beer in my hand I feel the desperate need to have a cigarette hanging limply between my fingers. Unfortunately for the publicans of my home town I can't afford my much loved trips to the pub, in fact in the coming months I predict that my social life will be nothing but a pile of dust on the stool I used to park my derriére each Friday afternoon. So beer and cigarettes are out, and for the time being so is fresh food! But, I have canned food, canned EVERYTHING! and a few frozen food items to boot, so that will have to be breakfast, lunch and dinner until I secure an income. And as for income, I have been shooting off emails and attending interviews and had a few call backs but nothing that seems to really fit exactly what I am looking for, but with $41.00 left to my name and a looming debt cloud building above my head I might need to take the next offer that comes my way".

Then this happened...

"Cigarettes are steadily on the way out and drinking only occurs on Impromptu-Trashy-Pink-Champagne-and-Bollywood-Movie-Night.  

I also now have a job, It isn’t my dream job but it does pay and is only 2km from my home, which will be quiet perfect when my little car inevitably gives in to it’s many, many problems. Finding myself night and weekend jobs are next.

Things are slowly shifting in to gear".

And now I've started this here blog, a very public attempt to be held accountable for the choices I will make in the coming 16 months... Stay tuned!

Ash x