I Have a Dream ...

I have some new goals that I would like to share with you. They are totes important, and have been the work of at least twelve hours of careful consideration. So they are not to be mocked. I will list them in order of them being achieved:


1. On Monday, I am going to win a Jellybean bike worth five hundred dollars. I have next to no idea how good a Jellybean bike is, but it will be free, so I will still be able to buy my Trek bike if a Jellybean bike is just a prettier more expensive version of the shithouse bike I have now. I am going to get a green one with blue wheels as I don’t believe “blue and green should not be seen unless there’s something in between” is still in vogue any more.

Besides, there will be something in between: the tyres are white. Awesome! I was going to get yellow and green, but then I realised I’m not sixteen any more.

2. I am going to finish the application for my PhD. I’ve kinda-sorta gone off the idea a little bit, because I think it will be a lot of work and I may end up hating the very sight of Jane Austen – which would fracture my very identity! – but I need to have my PhD to complete a dot point further on down the track. (It can’t be the next one as I have to do this in order of accomplishment and I will not be Dr K. Molony for a Very. Long. Time.)

3. I plan to try and scam Deakin University by also studying a degree in International Development at the same time – at the same uni - with a second major in Italian.

4. My reasons for this are simple: I have decided I want to work for the UN. Yes, you saw correctly. I want to go and help in refugee camps. True Story. The language part is not only because I foresee a few more Italians in refugee camps in the future, but a lot of these jobs (yes. I have already looked. I would have left yesterday) require a second language. Actually, they ALL require French, but I don’t want to learn French, and I don’t really want to go to Haiti either which is where a lot of these jobs are.

An interesting factoid that I only recently found out: Somalia was colonised by the Italians a long time ago. Maybe I could speak Italian there.

I doubt there are any refugee camps in Somalia though. I think that’s the point.

5. Oops. So, apparently I’m continuing my PhD from Somalia. I hope I have internet access.

6. I plan to stop making stupid deprecating jibes about things that are actually important to me. A lot earlier than dot point six, actually. My cynicism isn’t actually very funny. Well ...

7. I’ve graduated! Hooray!! I’m now about fifty-five years old! And I get to wear a ridiculous floppy hat - with Gold tassles!!!

You are right. I need to work on my tassle-drawing skills. But otherwise, this is what I will look like at 55. Not bad. Probably need to use the Clairol more often.

8. I am going to publish a memoir that will be completely self-illustrated. In Microsoft Paint.

9. I’ll be sitting on a plane on my way to a United Nations Conference in New York, which is where I now live, and someone will call out “Is anyone a Doctor?!” And I will pretend I am, because – well, I am. But only if I know it’s not serious. Which may be difficult because, unless they’re also teaching physiology in Doctorates of Philosophy these days, I will not have the training to tell. And then I will look stupid because I already lied.

I would like to scratch dot-point nine from the records.

10. I will look back on my life and sigh. Because none of this is what I really wanted. And I'm still being glib when I shouldn't be.