1. I wake up at quarter to seven everyday. I’m not one to wake up and lie in bed. I get up when I wake up. “You’re wasting daylight” my dad would bark at me when I was a kid. Sometimes he’d say it even when the sun wasn’t up. I don’t scroll on my phone or stare at the ceiling. I get up straight away and march to the shower. I keep my showers to under 4 minutes. I’m conscious of my water usage. Water consciousness. It’s something I inherited from my dad. He used to wash our dishes in a bucket in the sink and use the murky grey liquid to water the plants. He also claims he “water-proofed” the house by replacing our dying lawn with Atsro Turf, and the dead council lawn with gravel. Gravel does in fact, look better than dead grass.

2. After my shower I moisturise my whole body. From my legs to my neck and my fingers to my face. I used to suffer from eczema when I was a kid. It was because of the chlorine. I was a competitive squad swimmer. I swam every stroke. Freestyle, backstroke, breath stroke. Yes, even butterfly. I used to train in the morning and afternoons. My skin was severely sensitive due to the over exposure to chlorinated water. I developed excruciatingly inflamed eczema. It covered my arms and neck and face like a virus. To remedy it I developed an obsessive and extreme regime of lathering my body in eczema creams and soreblines. I was too competitive to give up swimming, despite my debilitatingly itchy skin affliction. I’m eczema free now, but only because I lather myself in sorbeline at least twice a day. Sometimes three times if I’m lucky.

I'm my father's daughter

3. 3. I don’t swim anymore. I gave up competitive swimming when I was 15. I decided I wanted to be an actor instead of an athlete. I’m neither now. Though I do have a heartrate of an elite athlete. This is something else I inherited from my dad. Bradycardia. It’s a fairly ‘minor’ heart condition where one’s resting heartrate is lower than you’re regular john citizen. A normal resting heart rate for adults’ ranges from 60 to 100 beats per minute. On average my heartrate rests at approximately 40-45 beats per minute. Sometimes my ticker gets as low as 39 when I’m sleeping. A low resting heart rate isn’t necessarily bad if you’re a ‘healthy’ person, it just means my heart function is more efficient and I have better cardiovascular health. Although I did read about an Italian cyclist who had such a low heart rate, he would have to wake up in the middle of night to cycle on a stationary bike in order to get his heart rate up to prevent a cardiac arrest. His name was Marco Pantani. I love the name Marco. Low resting heart rates are also common with people who have eating disorders. This is because your body and your organs are in survival mode, whether you’re an athlete or an anorexic.

4. My unhealthy relationship with food is also something I got from my father. I developed an eating disorder when I was 11 years old. I’d ‘forget’ my lunch and starve myself during the day which was coupled with over exercising. I often think I wouldn’t have been so obsessive over my food intake if my dad wasn’t so obsessive. My dad calculates his daily calorie intake in his head and then proceeds to tell everyone at the table. He always eats less than everyone else in the family, and only allows himself to eat more if someone else eats more. Although, I like to think I’m in recovery, I also do this in my head. My disordered eating got so bad that I developed psycho somatic symptoms. I didn’t get my period for over a year which led me to believe my ovaries were going to explode. I started to feel actual pain in my lower abdomen. It wasn’t just hunger pain. It was acute stabbing exploding pain. I went to RPA, and they ran some tests. The gynaecologist told me my ovaries were fine and they weren’t exploding. He told me that while I felt pain, it was my brain, not my ovaries. He gave me a pamphlet about eating disorders and told me to see a psychologist. I chucked the pamphlets away. This was around the same time when I found myself obsessed with watching interviews with Princess Diana. There’s one interview where she describes her experience of living with bulimia. I used to replay the part when she explains that eating food gives you a sense of comfort, like having a pair of arms around you. But it's only temporary. Food is like a warm hug. Too bad it isn’t a good fuck.

5. My dad is 70 years-old and he rides his push bike at least 50kms every day. After that he will go to the gym to work on his strength, which is followed by a 2-3km swim. He doesn’t run anymore though. He used to run at least 10kms a day. He hasn’t run since ‘the apple juice incident’. This is an incident that happened when I was only 3 years old. I don’t recall it myself, but my dad reminds me every couple of months. My mum says he reminds her every week. Apparently, I had spilt apple juice on the ground and my dad accidently slipped on it and fucked his knee up. Despite getting knee surgery, he could never run again. I am still swallowed by guilt over the apple juice incident, in spite of my inability to remember that I did in fact spill the juice or not. By the time I was 9 years old I started running my dad’s running leg in the local triathlons. Contestants were allowed to have someone else run, ride or swim if they were unable to compete themselves. It was only 4km, so it was pretty sinch. It was only when I gave up sport during my teens, when I realised, I only really ran for my dad because I felt guilty. My mum tried to tell me that my dad’s knee was already on its way out because he ran too much in his 20s. My dad claims that before the incident, he had run over 100 000kms in his life. I think that’s plenty of running, don’t you?

6.My disordered eating habits are not so disordered now. Although, whether I’m consuming or not consuming, I’m constantly thinking about what I consume or not consume. It can be pretty exhausting, not to mention time wasting. It’s the mental load that’s the biggest burden. I often think I would probably be a CEO or an engineer by now if I didn’t think so much about my calorie intake. One day I hope that I stop thinking about. One day I hope I just stop thinking all together.

7. I do remember one time in my life when I stopped thinking so much. I was riding a skateboard and fell off on flat ground. This culminated in an ambulance trip to RPA and medium-grade concussion. As a result, I lost my sense of taste and smell for approximately 7 months. It was isolating because my friends and family would often forget that I couldn’t smell or taste. I stopped going to restaurants or cafes because I thought it was a waste of money. I stopped eating most foods.
I could taste some things. I knew the difference between sweet, sour, salty and bitter. I developed what they call smell distortion. Garbage smelt good and my shit literally didn’t stink. I became very insecure about how I smelt. I decided to buy a very expensive perfume to wear every day to mask the potential odours I might have been omitting. My friend told me to read Perfume by Patrick Süskind. The novel explores the sense of smell and its relationship with the emotional meanings and memories that scents may have. I never finished the book. I began to think about all the smells I missed smelling. Freshly cut grass. The smell of rain. Coffee beans. Burnt toast. Wet dirt. I even missed smell of sweat and dirty sheets. I really took my sense of smell and taste for granted before my concussion.

8. Another symptom that I developed from my concussion was a change in mood. I became a very angry person. If I was upset about something, instead of crying I would punch my pillow and scream at the ceiling. I often think about how footy players feel when they are repeatedly knocked in the head. I only knocked my head once and it took me out a whole season. Footy players get concussions every other week. Studies have shown that many footballers are suffering from a degenerative brain disease which is directly linked to sustained blows to the head. It’s almost exclusively only found in footballers and boxers. In the last couple of years NRL have attempted to prevent excessive head blows by changing the rules to have more penalties and sin bins for head high tackles. Although, there were already repercussions for high tackles, the amount of sin bins that referees have had to call out means that the fundamental rhythm and energy of the game. Footy fans are not fond of the changes in rules as they believe it ruins the game, they are so dearly invested in. These more stringent rules are not often enforced for important games like grand-finals and semi-finals, which highlights the value ‘the game’ has over the brains of the players. It’s a shame that the players have to risk so much for the fans. I’m an art history graduate and I have to admit, I am still yet to meet anyone as passionate about art, as a footy fan is passionate about footy. Of course, I know many people who are passionate about art, but footy fans are a different breed. The footy is air to footy fans. They need it to survive. It punctuates their weeks, years and lives. Art is indulgent. Art is important for living, but footy is vital for surviving.

9. I liken it to how Breatharians purely live off breathing air. I was reading on Wikipedia about a Breatharian who lived for 70 years without food or water. He got all his energy off air and sunshine. Apparently, it is an ancient diet that was practiced by monks. I’m sure the all the Breatharian monks had a low resting heart rate like me. I don’t think I’d be cut out to only survive on breathing air and nothing else. I tried to live off only orange foods for a week and I couldn’t even do that. I gave up after two days after eating a corn cob. Corn is yellow not orange. I just couldn’t help myself, the corn cob looked so delicious. I’ve been thinking about corn a lot lately. I’ve been thinking about the McCain’s juicy corn commercial. I’m sure most readers remember it. It’s set in on a dry desert property. Two kids are hanging from the upstairs window sucking a couple of extra juicy cobs of corn. Their farmer dad mistakes the super juicy corn droplets for rain droplets. He runs inside the house to tell his wife. “Marge the rains are here!” he yells. The corn cobs are so juicy they’re simply bursting with flavour. McCains definitely did it again with that commercial. I still think about those mouth-watering corn cobs. I also think that the farmer did a terrible job at drought proofing their land.

Like father, like daughter

10. After I have a shower, I read the news. I actually read the news every morning and night. I wouldn’t say I’m a very serious person, however I am serious about the news. I love the news. All of it. You name it. Sport news. Politics. Business. World news. Health. Technology. Arts and entertainment. Local news. Good news. Bad news. In between news. Lots of stuff happened in the news today. The Reserve Bank maybe announcing an aggressive hike in interest rates. The world has recorded 5 million COVID-19 deaths, but the News reckons that the real toll is likely double that. Researchers are developing glass to make phone screens ‘unbreakable’. A behavioural and evolutionary ecologist at the University of Konstanz in Germany have determined that spiders are also scared of spiders. I read an article about the oversupply of share bicycles in China. The images of the unused share bikes are truly astonishing. They look like mountains, towering over the city. It's kind of a mass grave for bicycles. I wonder if any of them ever got ridden.

11. I used to ride bicycles competitively as a child. Track and road racing. I loved it. Until I gave it up to be a drama kid. I got back into cycling when I moved away. I ride my bike every day. I ride over there and everywhere. I just feel so free. Every time I get off the saddle and push the peddles down, I get the rush one might get when they stand up too fast. Sometimes it’s disorientating. I did have a situation happen to me while riding my bike recently. I was riding home from work. It’s a short commute. Google reckons it’s a 13-minute bike ride. My personal best is 8-minutes and 32 seconds. Anyway, I was about 500 metres from my home when I saw the most peculiar thing on the other side of the street. It was Philip Seymour Hoffman. He was also riding a bicycle. You’re probably thinking, that’s impossible, Philip Seymour Hoffman died on the 2nd of February 2014. It’s now 2021, how could he possibly be riding his bike in the Sydney’s inner-western suburbs? Well, it was him, in the flesh. He wasn’t wearing a helmet, so there were nothing impeding my vision. It was him. A before you start undermining my experience by suggesting it was a Philip Seymour Hoffman dopple-ganger, you better hold your horses. I know it was him because he winked at me. That wink solidified the fact that it was in fact the real PSH. It was a knowing wink. Like he knew that I knew that no one would believe me when I tell them that Philip Seymour Hoffman is alive, and that he winked at me while riding a bicycle. It does make sense that he has decided to fake his death because of the stresses of Hollywood and then move to Sydney, Australia. There are not many major cities with beaches as blue and pristine as Sydney’s and would be too on the nose of him to hide in the Bahamas or Mexico, so why not start a new life down under? He doesn’t have to worry about people seeing him on the streets, because no one would every believe anyone who say they saw PSH post fake death. I told a friend about my encounter with Philip, I even told them about the wink. They told me I think too much, and I need to practise meditation. I showed them images of PSH riding a bike in response.

12. I think I do think too much. I often wonder how the living statues get home from Circular Quay every day. In their gold garb and metallic body spray. I have never seen a living statue on the train. Parking would be too expensive at Circular Quay, and I doubt the living statue salary would provide enough to get a daily Uber home. I’ve also been thinking a lot about cop dogs. Do civilian dogs know that they are pigs? Or do they just see another dog? Perhaps they feel sorry for cop dogs? While they’re job-free, sniffing around and peeing on the ground, cop dogs are on duty. I’ve been thinking about the water they sell at Maccas. Not the bottled water, but the water from the machine. You know how Macca’s Coke and orange juice tastes really watered down? I think the same goes for their water. It just tastes like watered flavoured water. Like how vegan chicken tastes more like chicken than real chicken. How is it even possible? To extract the nothing flavour of water, and then intensify the nothingness taste. I’ve also been thinking about micro plastics. Apparently, we are filled to the brim with micro plastics. I cannot wait for the day when humans have micro-dosed on micro plastics for so long that we are 30% plastic and 70% human. It would be impossible to preach self-love, while being a part of the anti-plastic movement. Because then you’d be hating such an integral part of yourself. I’ve been trying to practice self-love lately. I’ve been eating more and trying to think less.

13. I have been thinking about my childhood quite a bit lately. Every night, when I go to bed, after my daily routine, I dream of my hometown. My dreams are almost always set in my childhood home. It is strange, even though my dreams are set in my house, I’m never in my own body. I’m always in a stranger’s body, but it’s still me. I suppose I feel like a stranger now. I haven’t been back home in a while. I suppose it’s not home anymore. My parents moved because my dad was sick of the draught, despite his efforts to “draught proof” the house. Even though I’m a stranger to my hometown, I religiously use water as if I were under water restrictions. I still keep my showers to under four minutes and you’ll never see me leave a tap on. My housemates think I’m a fruit cake, but I guess they’ve never lived under strict water restrictions. My dad doesn’t believe that I saw Philip Seymour Hoffman riding a bicycle. He reckons I should just leave the man to die in peace. On one hand I agree with him. I should respect Philip’s privacy, but on the other hand, I think Philip’s knowing wink was his way of telling me that it doesn’t matter if no one believes me. We shared a moment in time and that’s all that matters.