Hubris.co.nz

Yesterday I sent out a twit saying “Oh man, I cheated on Jane & Paul this morning and my punishment was a latte made with trim and a very blah scone. I’m so sorry! #whitewhines”, and that clearly demonstrates both my crime (in my defense, the scone came from the cafe in the Dom Post building where I having my photo taken, all zoomed in on my hands like L** S*** except I didn’t have dirt under my fingernails and the focus was on my sugar scrub instead of my open vagina and I did it for Kimberley instead of NZ Idol). Anyways, today I told them about my infidelity and they still made me the most awesome coffee ever, and I got to have a roast vege sandwich with feta, even though I had to run off to a depressing meeting about the economy while I still eating, but then I had lunch at Cellar-Vate and their dip had salmon in it which I hate, and meanwhile Green Land was giving out rum. So the punishment lingers.

Also yesterday I was twittering about how I was wearing my “I love Helen” badge that Bad Tom gave me for Christmas (hey, so it turns out that public servants are actually allowed to have their own thoughts and opinions! Who knew?) but as punishment from the gods, I was working on a comms plan and I had to emphasize the value for money and the outputs for the public in it. As my (life-long public servant) father had said right after the election and I’d been missing work to stay at home and cry “awww it’s so cute that you think things will actually change with the change in government”. It is still the same project that my intern and I have been working on. It still has the same purposes, ideas and findings. We just have to wrap it up in different language, because apparently, that’s value for money. Retch.

Other crimes and punishment themes that I meant to expand on. I still need a spanking. Wait, what’s the line between want and need these days, in this post 9/11 world? And when will Austrians find Nazi jokes funny?

On that note, I spent the day working from home on Wednesday because I wanted to concentrate on doing some serious writing on case studies instead of being distracted by wiki issues, which meant that I was in theory about to watch the Inauguration, but without Sky there were too many people talking on TV3 so I went back to sleep and read Gawker media commentary on it later and cried. Then I went to Lisa’s to watch Skins 2 and hang, and in the car on the drive home I cried when Roxette played on the radio, and then I cried in joy watching The Daily Show coverage, not least because of all the joy that was so clear in them, not just because it was change that they could believe in, but it was challenging comedically too to capture those moments that were so amazing but to still be all Daily Show all up on them.

Kowhai says that she wishes she could be as in touch with my emotions as I am, but this is me with total motherfucking eat a bag of dicks PMS and I feel like the world is ending, and I want to eat all the bread in the world and oh my fucking god, could I just start bleeding already please? Please? Tonight I was bitching furiously to Good Tom and Good Anita (did we decide to call her that?) about my period’s control over my body and how like, nine years ago KateB told me to have a keep-a-nigga baby when Ass was doing the very long drawn-out breaking off, and I was like “OMG TERRIBLE” but I think there are too many signs of an imminent period (not to mention the whole thing where I’m probably infertile) to think that there was something amiss, especially since my last period was two weeks long.

I was going to go home and get drunk and cry by myself after work today, but I needed to buy a new cellphone charger cos mine has died, and also potentially a new remote control for the lounge dvd player cos that bitch is a fucking bitch, but then there was TCD store open which I’ve never seen before and it was so pretty and shiny, and there was this sexyass dress, and then on the other side of the shop it was available in purple, and I didn’t think it was right and then I thought “what about if I had a belt?” and I thought “what would Joan Holloway do?” and just as the shop assistant was asking me if i wanted help, Good Tom rang to see where I was at, and I asked him if I should buy the dress, and he said “does it make you look ugly?” and I said “no” so he told me to buy it, and the shop lady complimented me In on my whole outfit with it, so I bought it. And now I am poor. #whitewhine. In fact, I’m feeling like an exceptionally poor mother right now, because we’re out of cat biscuits, which means I’ve been giving Sebby extra wet meat, which of course he loves. Also that last expression sounds so eww.

Also, there’s things and there’s stuff, of course, and historians – or rather me reading this two year from now will go “what history? what stuff?” but for now I will nod smuggly. Mostly, being pre-period makes me totally feel like there’s the end of the world arriving, and I know that it’s not, but it’s like you try playing “So here we are” as loud as possible by Bloc Party and put your head down on your desk and see if you don’t cry. I’m considering creating a fictional list like the FCC fictionally assembled after 9/11 of songs that are all no-gos. Pretty much the only things I am left with is hip hop. I know that all things considered, that was as best and as good as it could be. But like still, I’d rather be in Samoa eating snails right now, if you know what I mean.

Today, as expected, was really hard. It’s always the hardest when you’ve been to the doctor’s, and you’ve admitted to being crazier than you wanted to be, and you’ve been forced to change the reasoning for your request for fewer hours at work from the very constructive awesome “I want more time to work on other projects” to “I can’t handle things the way they are right now”. I cried and cried and cried today in my counselling session, and then laughed when my counsellor said “yes, it’s fucking unfair that depression is like this, that it’ll come back unexpectedly” because oooh she swore! But she said it was important to remember that all the hard work that I’ve been doing hasn’t gone away, it still exists and I am still doing the right thing, but there is biology at play in my brain. I know that, of course, but I’m still struggling to reconcile what I know to be logically true, and what I feel. I told her that everything is so fucking hard right now, that I have all these ideas about things I want to be doing, but right now it’s a struggle to move my head from one end of the couch to the other, that I’m walking into doors right now and am covered from head to toe in bruises (I got two in quick succession at the gym yesterday before I tried to sprint it out of me on the cross trainer), and that I just can’t do anything at all, and I hate myself for that. She told me to imagine that I’m a five year old, and that it’s OKAY that things are hard, or impossible, for a couple of weeks at least. I know that my increased citalapram dosage will make things easier in a couple of weeks, so for now, it’s OKAY if I shut down somewhat, and just do what it takes to get me through the day. We talked about coping strategies for day-to-day, like running to the toilets on another floor if I want to have a cry by myself, or buying coffee instead of getting angry that there are people in the kitchen when I want to make myself a cup. And yes, I know that maybe this seems incredibly lame to someone who’s never gone through this – or to someone who’s gone through it differently, and believe me, it makes me frustrated as fuck that I need to think of ways to cope with getting a cup of coffee. This is not a sign of being a super hero. But again, I know this will pass. I’m torn between wanting to carry around a sign with me that says “please just let me get away with weak pathetic snappiness for the next two weeks” and wanting to internalise it all and just be a rock, an island. Today everyone was all “I saw you in the paper”, and I was like “yes, yes you did” all snappy, because I was just so unable to talk in any kind of pleasant manner – although I must send shoutouts to Kimpy who made it happen (even if she rejected what I originally said my mother always told me) and Llew who scanned the piece – but now that there is a medical certificate in circulation around the HR department saying that I have the Medical Condition of Depression, and so I feel like people are all like “Oh hi, how are you?” to me, and at the same time I know that is related to my increased paranoia and short tether and grumpiness that is part and parcel of this super fun black dog.

And that is a long enough paragraph focusing on the crapiness. Let’s talk about the good things instead, after I mention how I channedl my five year old tonight and slept on the bus, and napped on the couch instead of going to see Mel in Chicago out in Titahi Bay which I feel terrible about, but I just couldn’t do it. I got an email from a friend today after I sent her my zine in which she said that it had made me cry, and that I should write more, and that was nice. And I umm hmmm. Tomorrow I get to go out with D&D and I haven’t done that in a couple of weeks. And then on Saturday i will listen to Public Address radio at 2pm on Radio Live to see if I’m talking shit on it, but other than that, I have no weekend plans, which is GLORIOUS. I might stay in bed all day. Go this inner child thing!

I forgot how anal I get when I do quizes. Ohmigosh my team isn’t devoting their full energy to answering the questions? They’re disagreeing with me? THE WORLD IS ENDING! Still, it’s nice to dress up like a pirate every now and then, and then take photos from the 21st floor of your building:

I lost the momentum when we stopped at Jarrod’s apartment for him to get changed, so I ran away to take the bus home instead of going out to Karaoke, but I was also aware that I had a very big night planned for the following night and an early morning to deal with first.

So yes, Saturday, I got up before 11am so that Lani and I could move the fridge out from under the house and back to the kitchen so the repair man could put it back together. We were clever and decided not to lug it up the difficult steep kitchen stairs and around tiny corners, so instead we carried it al the way around the house and inside. And then the repairman was late, and later and latest, but Lani was kind enough to say that I should just leave her a cheque and go to the beach and she’d take care of it, so I went and swam between the flags for like the first time ever at Lyall Bay. There were only two other girls swimming because the water was powerfully cold, but damn it was nice, becasue it’d been ages (umm okay, since Tuesday) since I’d last been swimming. And then it was Jo Time brunch by myself, and I went for a hair cut and nearly purred/came/passed out when the lady gave me a very long, very thorough headrub. I wanted to ask for a happy ending, but I suppose settling for a nice haircut was happy ending enough for me.

6.20 had me pacing at the bus stop all dolled up for my big night out with the Wellingtonista, cursing Go Wellington for sending buses past me that didn’t stop, but 15 minutes later I made it in to Tupelo, to discover all the lights on, no one behind the bar, and all the sliding toilet doors off the rails. Spoooooooooooooooky! So I went and sat outside, and luckily was soon joined by Tom who was enough of a good reader to tell me that I looked smokin’ hott. Heh. While the bartender was still setting up the bar, we were joined by Hadyn and Amy and his mother, and shortly after that the lovely Miss Sue who was escourting Mr Brown and Ryan. Once James had joined us, we were interviewed about the Wellingtonista for Russell’s new radio show, me smirking behind my martini and trying to define again what it is that I hate about the word ‘blog’. And calling myself a wanker, and – according to James – using the word ‘anal’ four times in one minute to describe myself. After the gorgeous Martha bought me a surprisingly not-sweet gin sling, half of us set off for Scopa as the advanced party for our 13 person booking.

We decided that it’d be easiest if we just ordered pizza and wine for all of us, and so I interviewed about being dominant. I’m not sure why I thought it was a good idea to let people record me talking whilst drunk. It’s not like I make much sense whilst sober, and when I’m drinking I’m even more slurry. Still, I thought at the time that I was articulate and verbacious, so until I hear otherwise (possibly at 2pm on Saturday on Radio Live, or podcast later, or broadcast on another date), I will continue to believe that I give great soundbite. It was nice catching up with Ryan too, who I went to uni with, although he was part of the radio posse and I was with the multimedia geeks who weren’t nearly as bondy. Dinner was very very tasty, although I accidently got a piece of pizza with an anchovy on it, but I was able to wipe away that taste with our next destination:

Yes that’s right, PINEAPPLES AT IMBIBE!

Anyone would think that we’d pre-arranged them or something. But our visitors sure seemed to enjoy them, as did Martha and James:

More photos of the night can be see here on flickr.

It was around that time that I think I started to try to convince Russell that he needed to change Public Address to attract a better class of reader than some of the people who’ve stalked me through it or people that I may have hooked up with at the Great Blend. I suspect I didn’t have a very convincing argument. So instead when some girls asked me and Hadyn where we were off to next, I made fun of them and their taste. We said we were off to Mighty Mighty, and they said they were going to Jet, because the music at Mighty Mighty was shit. I was all “yeah I know, like the way they mix indie rock with rare hip hop tracks? What are they thinking, turning out fresh new mixes?” and said that my other favourite bar apart from Jet was Dockside. Well, it amused me anyway.

Then we left to go to Mighty Mighty and some boys outside smoking asked me if I was wearing my flower behind my ear on the single side. I told them it was an umbrella, not a flower, and asked them to figure out the symbolism in that, before skipping off. We were at Mighty Mighty for a while but everyone seemed to be peeling off, so I decided that I would go for a swim, just to live up to my reputation. I was a tiny bit more wussy though, and jumped off the lower dock rather than the high plank cos I didn’t want to hurt my nose, ears and throat again. James came in too, and Ryan got his shoes wet interviewing us about it. That’s dedicated journalism! I don’t think anyone would contradict me if I said that a good time was had by all, although apparently many people felt a little under the weather the next day. But not me! That’s the great thing about swimming.

The next morning I went and picked up Brad who was in town and we had big delicious fresh fish burgers at Maranui and hung out for a while. Good times. Monday Bart came over for flat dinner (green curry with fresh coriander from our herb garden) and to play Cluedo DVD. Monday night flat dinner and games is totally on every week that Smoo’s not working. You can come if you bring wine and/or wash the dishes after. Tuesday was meh. Today I went to the doctor and asked her to up my prescription, and to give me the medical certificate that work asked me to give them to show that I need to only work four days a week. I don’t have much to say about that today. I did before, but then I felt like throwing up all afternoon,and was gagging on the bus (and threw up at home. Mmmm biley). I am somewhat disappointed in myself for needing more meds despite all the hard work that I’ve been doing, but I’m looking forward to the increased dosage euphoria. And looking forward to doing more projects. Yes. And also looking forward to coming to Auckland for the Bloc Party gig on August 8. Woo woo. I am so so in love with A Weekend in the City, and also Neon Bible. ‘Sunday’ is now officially my new walking down the aisle song (“I love you in the morning / when you’re still hung over”). Now I just need someone to marry.

Apparently Russell doesn’t read Next. If he did, he’d know (because somehow apparently it’s easy to miss on Hubris, because it’s only like OH I DON’T KNOW, THE TITLE OF EVERY SINGLE FUCKING PAGE) that “Joanna McLeod doesn’t like the word ‘blog’”. In fact, that’s the first sentence of the piece, entitled ‘Blogging On’, on page 34 in the March issue. And then you can stare at the picture of me and reminisce about the time that the photographers came to my house instead of thinking about how my cheeks swallow my eyes when I smile. Must remember not to smile so hard. Which is easy to remember today since it’s Tuesday, and Tuesdays mean counselling day. But back to the article, I’m pretty sure that I told Danielle that I was one of the first people in New Zealand to write an online journal, not in the whole wide world ever, but Lani has the broadband cord right now, so I can’t check in my emails. But once I can, maybe I’ll post everything I said, so that I can pretend that it’s a whole article just about me, without any references to LonelyGirl15.

I can’t remember what else I wanted to write about. Things I talked about today included how worked up I got when we talked about the thing that I don’t like to talk about, and later when we talked about something else she was like “your hands seem to have calmed down now” and we laughed, which was important because of course I am still trying to keep her entertained, even if she doesn’t actually exist outside of that room, as she said. We talked about things that do or don’t define me, and my homework is to try and come up with a definition of myself(*). I told Lani that when I got home today and talked to her for way too long despite the soreness of my jaw (more about that later) and was like “Oh man, if only I could stand the word, because then I could be all “Joanna McLeod, Blogger”. Lani said she thought I was creative and inspiring because of the cake I made my mother and the story I wrote and illustrated to explain her present, and apaprently also because of the curry I made for Flat Dinner last night. Well, the curry’s not hugely creative, although it had cabbage in it for the first time ever, but the bathroom sure is clean and sparkling, as is the kitchen, and I bought a new shower curtain with gardenias on it. It’s clear, which is rad cos it lets in more light. And isn’t mouldy (and yes, I am still celebrating small achievements). When I showed it to Smoo he was like “well, I kind of wish you’d got one with dragons on it.” Smoo makes me laugh a lot. When I asked him what the proper ettiquite was when gentlemen callers have left their panties (okay, perhaps just underwear, but panties is so much more of a fun word, and wouldn’t it be amusing to think that I did someone who was wearing women’s underwear who wasn’t a woman? Yes) behind and you don’t think you will be seeing them again, he suggested starting a trophy wall. I could hang them between the pictures of STDs hanging on the lounge wall. Heh. What do YOU think the correct thing to do would be?

Anyways, today I felt bleh and also nauseous and then full of mysterious stomach pain, and then the buses didn’t happen, but finally I made it out to O’Bay, and had a swim with Karen out to the raft. Afterwards I sat dripping water on the decking and debated about whether to go home to my house like I really really wanted to do, or to go back to Karen’s to try on the dress she’s altering for me so that I have something to wear on Friday to the Tiki Tiki Party. The sewing won out in the end, via the supermarket so that we could have steak sandwiches with spinach pesto. I cooked the porterhouses rare, so they were succulent but soooooo chewy, and Karen made a mountain of super crunchy coleslaw, and so I chewed and chewed and chewed. Then when she was sewing, she told me to sing to her, trying to distract me from Q, and when I asked what, she said “Ten Green Bottles”. So I did. And she didbn’t ask me to stop, so I kept on going, for about 20 minutes. People should know not to have that kind of stand-off with me, because oh yes, I will be calling your bluff on that. So now both my jaw and my throat hurt. At least the muscle in the inside of my thigh has stopped aching, because man my sisters laughed at me as I limped around on Saturday. I told my parents it was a swimming injury, but it might actually have been a gym thing. Perhaps.

Fuck, I am exhausted. I had big ideas about what I wanted to write about, but mostly now I just want the cord so I can get online, post this and then lie down and vege. It’s 11pm already. Where did the time go?

Upcoming events: Craftwerk on Thursday, Tiki Tiki on Friday, Harvestbird on Saturday, then Fia’s birthday next Friday and Country Club: Australia on Saturday 24, not to mention Shirley and KateH both going to be in town next weekend. And then it’s Peti’s the week after and Bic Runga, and then two weeks after that we’re going to Martinborough and then it’s practically my birthday and Dead Rockstars, and then I must get out of town for New Year’s Eve…

Yesterday I was on fire. I discovered that my doctor had given me a three month prescription so she obviously doesn’t think I am at risk of taking all my pills at once.I went to the gym and wore a singlet instead of a tshirt because it was so fucking hot, and you know what? The world didn’t end. After work I met Karen and Anji and Lisa down by the lagoon. It was my intention to dive off the plank that’s up on the wharf there, but it was surrounded by squealling teenagers and much higher up than I realised, so Karen and I swam from the floating dock instead. The water was reaaaaaaally warm and nice and it was fun. But there were SO MANY PEOPLE THERE, I felt kind of watched. Eventually I decided that I’d hate myself if I didn’t jump off the plank – especially since it was my ambition to give it a go whilst sober and it being light outside in preperation for inevitable drunken night-swimming, but when I swam to the ladder I discovered that it didn’t go into the water and I didn’t have the arm strength to pull myself up onto it. And it would have been a dreadful hassle to go all the way around and back over the bridge just to jump in again, and while I am becoming more confident, the idea of that much walking around in my togs – hott as they are – in front of so many people wasn’t too appealing. So instead I will steal a photo that Lisa took to show how beautiful it was down there in the water:

Lisa is teh awesome photomagrapher

Then it was 6.30, so Lisa and I went up to the Boatshed for the Great Blend. It was too hot inside, so I got a glass of wine from the ladies at the bar who got nicer and nicer as the night went on, and while I shuddered at the fact that they only had Chardonnay, at least it was unoaked, but I will still blame it for my feeling so seedy today, and we ran away to sit in the shade outside and await Martha and talk about Hanson for some reason. We couldn’t think for ages of what the name of the ugly one was, and Lisa called him Baboon Face. I said that if there was a Q&A session in the talks, and they said did anyone have any questions, I would stand up and say “what is the oldest Hanson brother called? Can you tell me? No you can’t, because you don’t know, you don’t knooow oh oh oh” and then I laughed at myself lots, partly because I had some wine at work before I left. As it happens, Lisa was right and his name was Issac, which I didn’t think it could be because there was a Zack, but that’s short for Zachary. And then we went to meet Martha. I was briefly dismayed at how quickly she brushed me aside to go and meet a puppy-eater, but she came back and fufilled her BFF duties. Plus, she introduced me to fun people like Sally and Sue. And Glen bought me a glass of wine when I already had one, so I quickly looked a lot like a lush. Which is of course not at all how I really am. I talked to Tom and Kim about the magical transforming properties of a lei to make one fit in a tiki environment, and made fun of Stalker. The Back of the Y stuff was hilarious, and it was interesting to see what they’d done for MTV in the UK and how it was exactly the same stuff but much more expensive. I remembered watching it when I was living in Mt Roskill and thinking how awesome it was. I laughed a lot. The second panel was not quite as interesting to me, so I spent a while whispering stupid things to Sarah like “you have to marry one person on the panel – who is it?” (the answer is of course the guy who works for Google, cos duh, rich), before I decided to take myself outside and stop annoying her. So I talked to Joel for ages about what year a particular magazine was worse. We had very different opinions.Mostly I just drank and told everyone how much I wanted to jump off the plank. Sue told me she liked my blog and I was like “!!! I don’t have a blog!” but she redeemed herself instantly by saying that she had ordered the same swimsuit as me because it is so awesome. I introduced myself to Russell and also asked Che about his heart. Good times. The bar ladies seemed to love me even more. In fact, I’m pretty sure that everyone was digging my vibe. Eventually I slipped into the bathroom and slipped into my togs again, so when I left with a group of people I’d just met (I think), I strutted over to the plank and plunged in, followed by Sally. Hurrah! Night swimming is the most awesomeness. Sue carried my bag down to the lower dock for me, and I got changed in public. Lovely.

Then we went to Mighty Mighty and once again more good times were had. I wasn’t even embarrassed seeing Baby Hitler there and remembering how I’d asked him to dance and told off the DJ. Feeling good about yourself really does have positive flow on effects, it’s quite perplexing. I mean, it’s entirely possible that everyone did think I was a dick, but I don’t think so. I had lots of fun. On an extension of that topic, a while ago someone tried to insult me by leaving the comment “but I was just expressing my dismay at your blog [sic]; the purpose of which seems to documenting your desperation for a meaningless pash” and I was like “umm… duh! That’s the whole point of having an online journal, right?” – so in that vein I should declare that I “shared a taxi” home with a boy, which meant he had to wait with me on Ghuznee St while I called a Combined Taxi and babbled about my bad experiences with other companies. Later on the boy told me he saw my left boob when I was getting changed on the dock, which struck me as a most amusing thing to say, and then I laughed at him for a while teasing him about how he didn’t evne know what my name was – before I admitted I couldn’t think of what his was either. And tonight I bought Smoo pizza to make up for the fact that he said he’d gone to sleep with his eaphones in playing music and yet we’d still woken him up. Heh.

Maree emailed me this afternoon to rave about the article in Next with me in it that has apparently come out now, but all I could find was the February issue, not the March one. She said I sounded intelligent and that the photo was gorgeous. Hurrah! That made things more gooder today. I was grateful that I had many mindless web updates to do (adding in div id=”page” tags to about 20 pages and so forth) because I was somewhat tired and not feeling in the best health. I also seem to have bruises on every part of my body, a hole in the bottom of my foot, a cut-up toe from last Friday night when I peed under the X-Air hump, and a lump in my arm. I also had a couple of knots in my hair about the size of my fist that took half an hour of brushing to get out. I like salt water in my fringe, but man, I really should have combed my hair a little more often this week. Tomorrow Lani’s moving in, hurrah ,and then I am going to Ngaio for my Mummy’s birthday party. All in all, things are pretty fucking awesome. Everyone loves me. Including me, right now.

In honour of everyone at my work now knowing about my journal (dammit, although given that I’m number one on Google I always sort of expected this), here’s what I told the journalist via email.

Hi Danielle,

Please find below answers to your questions – I’m sure I will talk at
length, but if I haven’t explained myself very well at any stage,
please let me know.

There may be a lot of questions but please note, that most are just to help me set you up in my mind and provide background. I would also need to know your full name, age, occupation and where you live. That’s to provide background to the reader, and helps to introduce you into the article.

My full name is Joanna Tiare McLeod, and online I am known as Jo,
Joanna and Jo Hubris (there was another girl for a long time who moved
in the same circles called Joanna, and so we were differentiated from
each other by our domain names – she was Jo Starla. She doesn’t exist
any more though). I am 26 years old, I work doing communications for a
government agency (I work for * which is part of the ministry of
*, but I’d rather not specify if that’s okay – it keeps
things a little simpler with our incredibly long Code of Conduct), and
I’ve had an online journal for the past eight and a bit years.

SO what I want to ask is first, WHY the online journal?

An online journal to me is the virtual equivalent of a piece of paper and a pen – it’s about writing about yourself and being inward-looking. Blogs meanwhile are more outward-looking – too often they come across like “here’s a link and it’s funny” and that’s about the extent of their content. I’m not interested in doing that. I write because I would like to think that I am pretty good at stringing words together, and because I like to tell stories. A blog is usually about one particular subject, like politics or food or architecture (or at
least the good ones are), wheras online journals are a record of one person’s existence.

When I started my website in 1997, the word ‘blog’ didn’t exist. Back then as well as walking five miles to school barefoot in the snow, most web pages were done either in special programmes or hand-coded in HTML, and then uploaded onto the internet. There was none of this fill in a box and click tomfoolery that there is now, so people who had webpages had to be more dedicated and in to what they were doing than people who use things like blogger and myspace these days. I think in a way that meant content was a lot better. As a whole, people put more thought into it, and because it was so much more effort to get things
online, people were more likely to stick with it. This will sound incredibly stuck up, and please be aware that I am mocking myself here, but when blogging came along, and the media jumped all over it, it was kind of like I’d been doing all these great complex oil paintings and then all of a sudden people were like “woah, check out these awesome paint-by-numbers kits that people are doing!”.

I know a couple of people from New Zealand like Robyn from secret-passage.com and Annette (who’s now at nutandbee.com) and we were all doing the online journal and heavy content thing back in 1998 when there was like no one else in NZ doing it, and so we like to call ourselves the tangata whenua of the interweb. I can’t help but feel like I should get special recognition for doing it for so long. Man I got shitty when Bizgirl won a netguide award when SHE’S NOT EVEN REAL. Well, not that shitty, because James Guthrie is a friend of mine, but still…

What do you get out of it?

There used to be a lot of people who would write disclaimers on their pages things like “I keep this journal for me, and me only so if you don’t like it you can go away”, but that always struck me as being kind of silly, because if you didn’t want someone to read what you were writing, why would you put it out in the public forum? For me, I love having the audience. I think it pushes me to try to write better, to try and include more interesting stories and therefore even a little bit to try and live a more interesting life so that I have more
interesting things to write about. Knowing that I have an expecting
public (haha, oh, that sounds so wanky) gives me good motivation to
make sure that I continue to update my site, rather than just let it
slide like so many other projects I start without finishing. Hubris
serves as a useful place to let out my feelings when I am angry about
things, a platform for my opinions when I want other people to hear me
and also a place to build a sense of community in a way, so that if
there are ever people who find themselves going through things that I
have been through who come across the site might not feel so alone.
Which sounds very altruistic, but there’s something very cathartic
about writing about crappy stuff, even if it’s just in semi-coded
vague references.

It also means I can keep a record of more mundane things like books
I’ve read, movies I’ve seen, places I’ve eaten and when I get my periods. Looking back over journal entries is an awesome way to track moods and mental health, and also to see how far I’ve come in many ways.

Do you look at it as a place to express your thoughts, political views, worldwide views, talk about your life, your day or to vent?

All of the above. Hubris is full of pretty vapid empty crap sometimes,
like a big pile of whatever my catchphrase of the day is (“The Gilmore Girls are so hot right now”), and fairly mundane descriptions
of my day, while my locked down footnotes are where I vent. I have
political views that I think come through in my writing – I don’t
think anyone could read more than one entry and think that I was
right-wing, but I really don’t want to be seen a “political blogger”
because I’m just not that interested in the details. You’re much more
likely to find fairly broad statements about living as a decent human
being from me, or stuff like “so Don Brash has had sex with at least
three women? Really? Ewww”.

And I will bitch and moan about the state of the media or the state of
the world, but usually only about things related to me.

What made you start?

When I used to write a paper journal, I used to get a little frustrated thinking that I’d be the only person who ever read it. I wrote sometimes with an audience in mind, and would occasionally read (fairly censored) parts of it out loud to my friends.

I first came across online journals in 1998, when I was really into
Tori Amos, so I used to go to a lot of her fan sites, which were
mostly run by angsty American teenage girls who used to keep online
journals that were written in tiny little 8 point verdana font, and I
just really related to what they were doing. They had an outpost for
their thoughts and rantings, and an audience, and through their
guestbooks, they built a sense of community. I didn’t think I was as
angsty, or as obsessed with Tori Amos, and I didn’t like their sort of
competitive nature – it seemed like in order to be cool you had to be
on six different kinds of medication, cut yourself and have a
borderline eating disorder or a history of sexual abuse, but I could
relate to many of the things that others would write about – a sense
of alienation from your peers, and a yearning to be a writer, or just
to stand out, and so I started keeping an online journal too.

What made you carry on?

I enjoy doing it, and I love being able to look back on things. I’m
gutted that there are chunks of my life that are not as well
documented (like having the ihug hacker delete July-Nov ’98) or when I
was just too depressed to be able to write at all, but I am grateful
that there is this record, because basically all I really want to do
with my life is become famous enough that I can get an autobiography
published. Hehe. There’s a reason I had to use Hubris as a name…

But on a slightly less hubristic note, I’m full of regret that I never
got to hear enough stories about my grandparents’ lives. They left
behind some stories written down, but they’re handwritten, and on my
mother’s side they’re in Dutch, so I can’t really read them. I want to
make sure that there is some record of my life for my grandkids that
they can easily access, if they want it. I really admire what Heather
from dooce.com is doing for her daughter in that way, although I find
it kind of weird that I know more about what it’s like for this
complete stranger I’ve never even emailed to be raising a daughter
than my own mother’s experiences. That’s something I should work on.

Now that you are into it, do you think you will still be doing it a year from now? Two years?

Having been doing it nonstop for the past eight years, I have no doubt
that I’ll always be keeping an online journal of some sort.

Did you write a diary as a child/teenager/adult?

Yep. It was all descriptions of “she said ‘blah blah blah’ at school,
and pinings for the first boy I pashed. Hubris is pretty much no
different.

Is is something you gave a lot of thought to before starting or a spur of the moment thing?

I had wanted to start keeping an online journal for a while, but I
didn’t really give much thought to what I actually wanted to write in
it until I got going. Content has therefore evolved over time.

What do you write about?

I write about my day, parties I’ve had, injokes that are hilarious to
me and maybe two other readers, tasty food I’ve written, hatred of
people who talk at gigs, reviews of stuff, and I also post writing
that I’ve done for publication elsewhere.

Do you know who reads it? Do you have some sort of mechanism to find out who reads it?

I’m lucky with Hubris in that it’s a customised system my friend built
for me, so I can track everyone’s IP address, and also people can have
their own logins to the page which means every time they visit and
they’re logged in, it keeps a record. People can get themselves to
Level One, which is what some entries are locked to, but I have to
chose to bump them up to Level Two which is what my footnotes page is,
and any kind of rant about things that make me unhappy which shouldn’t
be talked about in public (like work issues), or things that I am
currently squeeing over – like crushes on people. I can actually put
in more levels too, so I can choose what information what people see.
Mostly level two membership just goes to people who I know really well
(online or in real life) or people who actively contribute to the
Hubris community – and by that I mean leave me comments, because of
course as an attention seeker, it’s all about the feedback.

Do you care? How careful about personal info on it are you? Do you include details about other people in your life?

Hubris is the number one result on google for a search on Joanna
Mcleod, so I write on the basis that anything I write can be read by
anyone – although as I mentioned above, I do have some security
measures but I’m aware if someone was dedicated enough they could hack
me. In the olden days before google, I used to use people’s full names
when I wrote mean things about them, and use my friends’ full names
and so forth, but I am much more aware of self-googling now so I don’t
do that so much. My restraint also includes never mentioning who I
work for (I don’t want to get dooced!) and trying not to give away too
much information about other people’s crap. One of my friends last
year made me remove every occurence of her name on the site because
she found her parents searching for her and therefore didn’t want her
name associated with drinking and drugs. Many years ago the first
time I went to bed with a certain boy in the morning he was like “this
isn’t going in your journal, is it?” – well that particular incident
didn’t go in, but I’ve said some very non complimentary things about
him since then, and him being a little drama queen, he’s done the
whole “lawyers, defamation, blah blah” speil. But funnily enough the
only legal letter I’ve had in regards to my website was regarding my
improper use of the word Sellotape (r) without using the registered
trademark symbol. Laaaaame.

Have other people, complete strangers (Like me!) been in touch?

Yes, many many many. In 1999, my friend and I used to have a thing
called The Breast Club, where we made scans of our chests in our bras,
and put them online and encouraged random people to send in theirs,
and so I met lots of people through that. Another time someone wrote
to me and said that since they read my site every day and it made them
happy they really wanted to send me a 21st birthday present.

Have you made new friends from it?

More than I can count – oh I’m so popular. Heh. But no, internet
friends are easy to make – you swap “i like your site” emails – well,
in the olden days you did, nowadays you comment instead, usually, and
that can progress to instant messaging, and then maybe you meet in
real life, and it’s all hunky dory.

Sometimes I meet (online and/or in real life) people through them
coming to my site – getting links from publicaddress.net brings them
in – and sometimes I meet them through contacting them on their sites,
or on forums, and then they come to my site to find out more about me.
It’s a way of demonstrating common interests or feelings, I suppose,
like joining a book club or a sports team might be in the real world.

Do you pay particular attention to what you write should someone you do care about it read it? Like your mum?

I do find myself censoring myself more than I’d like to sometimes
knowing that my friends read the site – sometimes I’d just like to
have a bit of a vent about a particular person without having
repercussions about it, but there are ways and means to get around
that, with different levels, or secret journals that others don’t know
about that.

I asked my parents not to read my site, although my dad did but I
think he was more embarrased about it than I was. I don’t have a lot
of boundaries anyway, so I’d like to think that the person I am online
is the person I am if you talk to me in real life – I don’t have that
much to hide.

Do you expect your family/friends to read it?

I’d actually kind of rather than my family didn’t read it, because
who’s more fun to bitch about than family? No one. And I feel
differently about different friends reading my site – I mean, when
it’s people I met online to begin with, that seems perfectly natural,
but the juxtaposition of my real life friends being in my online world
can be odd (and I know that contradicts my statement of being the same
in both worlds). If I’m away, or if my friends are away, I might cut’n
paste from my journal into emails to save telling hte same story over
and over again.

And if you do, do you feel offended if they haven’t?

If they’re not regular readers of my site, I don’t feel offended if
they don’t read it, but if they’re supposed to be regular readers and
I’m talking to them and they’re like “what? when did you do that?”
I’ll be all “DIDN’T YOU READ MY JOURNAL?” mock angry. But seriously, I
know that my journal can be a higher level of self disclosure than
some people might be comfortable reading (case in point: my review of
the Dimmer gig that was just sex sex sex).

But I would like to think that everyone wants to stalk me and know
every single detail about me ever.

Do you read other online journals or blogs?

Yeah there’s about 70 that I read religiously. Thank god for
Livejournal friends lists and RSS feeds, otherwise I’d be surfing all
the time.

Do you have a favourite? WHy?

One of my current favourite sites is what I’d call a blog if I didn’t
cringe at that word so much – it’s http://wellurban.blogspot.com. Tom Beard who writes it is passionate about Wellington, and he takes the time to
read council submissions and all those things I’d never bother doing,
and provides handy summaries, and he always finds new bars, shops and
restaurants for me to try.

I also love www.dooce.com because Heather writes in an easy, funny
way, but she also writes in great detail about her struggles with her
mental health, and she’s just an inspiration, even though that’s a
cheesey-as-fuck word to use.

and I love my friends’ sites because I like catching up with their
lives. And I like it when they write about me, of course.

Do you expect your online journal to take on a particular direction in the future that you haven’t yet established or are thinking about?

I want to write more stories about things that I did in the past -
like the Lost in Translation entry I wrote recently about moving to
Japan. I want to start writing my autobiography (yes I know, I’m 26,
I’m not that interesting and I haven’t really achieved anything, again
with the hubris), and so that’s what I’m keen to do.

How many times a week do you write in?

I used to write every day, but I also used to have a huge list of
people I could only talk to online that I’d spend hours chatting to
and write at the same time. I also used to be a student who didn’t
have bung wrists, so now I only update a couple of times a week. I
wish I wrote more.

For how long?

Entries take about an hour to write – more if there are pictures and
many links, but that’s an hour of much surfing at the same time.

Would you say this takes up a lot of your time? Does reading other blogs take up a lot of your time?

Yeah it does. But that’s okay.

Before email, were you big on writing letters? Or still are?

Only when I lived overseas. Now I wish I kept the letters I used to write.

Are you personal friends bloggers/online journalist or website owners? Family members?

I’ve always had online friends who were journallers (not journalists -
that’s like, media. Although I am trained in that too), and now it’s
weird, I have a group of friends who are so not into computers but
because of goddam myspace they’ve started keeping blogs. And boy are
they ugly…

What do they think of your new hobby?

Eight years isn’t a new thing. People used to think I was weird, but I
suppose at least the one thing I can thank the word ‘blog’ for is that
it’s mainstreamed me. Hang on, do I really want to be mainstream?

And do you consider it a hobby or something else entirely?

My job is writing website content, so writing online hones my job. And
one day I’d love to write a novel – or an autobiography, so maybe it’s
research for that. I just want to have a legacy, even if it’s a “I
watched Buffy all day and then laughed at some emos and got drunk”
legacy.

Ummm, sorry about the novella-length answers, I hope this helps!

Jo

Okay, this is SUCH a bad sign, that’s it’s 3.15am on Tuesday morning and I’m still awake, unable to sleep so I’m at my computer, shivering in my slip and writing a journal entry. Arrrgh fucking aarrrgh fucking grr. Mind is very wound up right now, eh. Just a little bit. If I hadn’t left it in the lounge where Anji is sleeping, I’d be rehersing my speech right now. I mean, hey, I wrote it at 3am a couple’o nights ago anyways!

From midday until 9.45pm, I was in the computer lab, working on our broadcasting assignment. Well, that included a break for a trip to the bank (damn you Internet banking that promises to do rent transfers and then doesn’t) dinner with Andrea at Boiger King (misspelling intentional to proclaim pronounciation) and a five minute phone interview with a reporter from the Herald. Hi, I’m Joanna McLeod, and I want a job producing content for the Internet. Bob King asked me to answer the reporter’s questions, as apparently, I’m a sort of spokesperson for the course. Yay me! I was actually really proud, especially when the PR woman in Bob’s office who was doing name-badge stuff for the expo whilst listening to me told me I’d given a good interview.

Today I wrote a story about microchips in vending machines that make their products talk that went along with a video piece Trevor and Andrea did. I also did some page laying out, and wrote blurbs about the people in our group, and that kind of stuff. I was so so so proud to teach trevor how to align pictures to the left right in the middle of the text – something people who never used Frontpage Express or any other really bad WYSIWYG programs might never have learnt. And Joe and I did a layout in Fireworks that worked real nice. Wahoo. Yeah, sweet ass. Anyways, around 9.30pm I got a call from Garland and when I answered my cellie, the voice was liek “Hello stinky poo” so I realised that my family had arrived at my flat, so they agreed to come pick me up from tech. Goddamit, it’s SO cool having your parents pick you up from stuff – I think that’s what I miss most living in a flat. They were all hungry, so I took them to D72, but the kitchen was closed, so I suggested bread and hummus from foodtown, and got aggressive defending that situation, because I was just waaaaay too tired to think about another cafe. And as Mum and Neil and Anji had just driven up from welly, they were pretty tired too and took my advice.

Back at home, we ate yummy things on bread (brie! baba ganosh! smoked beef! parents’ money!) and drank (parents wine, Anji and I the last of my vodka) and watched first Clayton’s brilliant documentary on BFM, t then his sitcom. It was the third time I’ve seen the sitcom (and the doco, actually) but I think the tiredness and alcohol proved to be a winning combination, cos i kept giggling and giggling. Then I showed them the Flat Video, that covers my audition for Life On Tape – talking about kicking out Leyton, Clay’s 20th birthday dinner and Simon dancing, Brad doing spicegirl moves for my CD ROM, and our Survivor Final Episode Party. They were very very impressed, and laughed a lot. Then Mum and Neil went to their motel which is just 100 metres down the road – I worked there for all of two days – and Anji and I had another drink. We had the absolute best gossip. It was Anji who told me all the way back in 5th form that giving blow jobs was empowering, and I’m very grateful for that advice – even if I didn’t give one to my best friend’s b/f like she was suggesting at the time. Thanks Anji and Cosmo – my god, how scary is it the first time you go down on someone and you have no fucking idea what you’re doing? Until you remember Cosmo going “there’s no wrong way to give head” and you relax a little, that is. I think drinking from Pint Glasses probably wasn’t the smartest move ever, eh. What you think is a reasonable three drinks is more like six. AND I STILL CAN’T SLEEP! GRR! I hate being so intelligent and thinking so much!

I’m reading this really good book r ight now which I can’t for the life of me remember the name of – something about Johnny Thunder, and it’s about a girl falling for the wrong guy, and her lifestyle reminds me of Anji, and the writing of it’s so real I can see every scene, and if my light was on, I would tell you the name of the book so that you can read it too, but it’s all dark and stuff, cos I’ve been trying to sleep for ages, so I can’t tell you. Woah, that was a very long sentence. Sometimes I think you need a map to navigate these journal entries of mine. My eyes hurt, so I should probably crawl back into bed now. I’m so so so nervous about tomorrow -it’s the first day of the expo, and I’m making a speech and all. One of the grad dips came up to me today and said she was really glad it was me making the speech, since I’d done so well presenting our project to the class, and I just thought that was really really lovely of her. But yeah. I think I’m going to go shopping with mummy tomorrow to find something to wear – I haven’t washed my new media pants yet, and I really should have. I didn’t expect to be at tech so late. “Maybe later – I’ve got creamy goodness in my mouth right now”