Brendon

Joined March 2020

44 stories

Stories (44)

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Bali 2018
Have you ever been in such a shit place your spinning and spiralling has hurt the people you love most? This is a story about an earth quake. A serendipitous moment where the very earth we stand on was mirroring my destructive inner world.
By Brendon6 years ago in Wander
Six Degrees of Separation -
When I was in preschool, I was besties with a boy named Taylor. Years later I was working in the cinema and I was the bible belt version of Paris Hilton. For those of you with no respect for history, Paris Hilton was an OG It Girl back in the day. Young, dumb, beautiful and popular. Girls and gay guys wanted to be her, and boys and closeted lesbians wanted to do her. Picture a low rent pre-breakdown Brittany, but without the talent, living in middle-class suburbia instead of Hollywood. That was me.
By Brendon6 years ago in Humans
Quinn
In the beginning, Quinn was everything you could ask for in a friend, or at least what Buddy and I had thought. Little did we know that it was just a surface veneer of goodness and you didn’t have to dig all that deep to see the festering fucked up underside to her evil soul. There were always signs, red flags you ignore in the first flushes of a new relationship whether its sexual or just a friendship. The endless stories of people who had wronged her, her regular habit of cutting people from her life, the tales of being continuously let down and victimised. There are people in this world who are repeatedly victimised, for example a molested child is far more likely to be molested again, but as a general rule, if someone is continuously ‘the victim’ they are either putting themselves in a position to be repeatedly victimised or they are spinning a victim narrative when they are in fact the problem. Quinn turned out to be the latter. She burned the people around her and spun a tale where she was the victim each and every time.
By Brendon6 years ago in Humans
Kronos Pathology -
Sometimes someone power hungry makes a new rule at your workplace. It's unnecessary. Its counterproductive. It’s an irritant. It removes some of the pleasure and meaning from your work, but you tell yourself it's all right, it's not worth complaining about. Then it happens again. But by failing to react the first time, you have trained yourself to accept such things, and shown the power-hungry types that enjoy their little displays of power, that their mind games are ok. The second time it happens, you're a little less courageous. Your opponent, thus far unopposed, is a little bit stronger. The institution, a little more corrupt. The process of bureaucratic stagnation and oppression is underway, and you've unwittingly contributed, by pretending that is was OK. Why not complain? Why not take a stand? If you do, other people, equally afraid to speak up, may come to your defence. Dr Phil, that wise old sage of day time tv says ‘You teach people how to treat you, by what you accept’. Perhaps a little victim blamish in today’s current political climate, but by God the man speaks some harsh truths. Sure, people will push your boundaries, and they will lash out when you draw your line in the sand, but you teach people how to treat you by what behaviour you accept from them. If your friends are always late, it’s because you wait for them. If you said fuck it, and left without them, they would soon learn. If your partner repeatedly cheats on you, it’s because they know you will take them back. Stop that shit right now. You are more often than not 50% responsible for how people repeatedly treat you. If your workplace treats you like shit, it’s time to find a job somewhere else, where your soul is in less danger.
By Brendon6 years ago in Journal
Gossip Girl - The Cinema Style
Have you ever watched The Bachelorette or RuPaul’s drag race? Or any other reality TV that gets you invested in the story? They may be ‘reality’ but they still rely on characters; Villains, Heroes, Miss Congenialities, The hot one, The nerd, The quirky girl, The jock. Reality TV is populated by the same tropes and stereotypes as its non-reality cousins. I find it funny how much editing goes into ‘reality’. What I still find surprising however, is that I always end up loving those characters that in the beginning I hated. Contrary to the first impressions thing, the ones you instantly love turn out to be cunts and the ones you instantly hate turn out to be misunderstood dark horses. One simple edit, one piece of misinterpreted gossip can make or break someone’s reality career, or their life. The old trope, there’s your truth, my truth and the actual truth is very much a thing. Much like a reality TV show, with this book you only get to see one side of the story. In this book you are seeing only snippets of my life, told from only my perspective, (with regular narratorial interjections by my editor) long after the events themselves occurred. You don’t know the backgrounds or the histories of the characters involved, just a brief story about how they entered and exited my life from my perspective. They are people, with pasts, perspectives and stories of their own. But due to structural and contextual limitations inherent to storytelling, on paper they are little more than side characters to my tale.
By Brendon6 years ago in Humans
Damsel in distress
Buddy, is undoubtedly one of the best people I have ever met. Buddy manages to dance the line between meeting her responsibilities to her family while still enjoying life. It’s a hard balance to find, but somehow Buddy makes it look easy. I think it’s because Buddy knows who she is and isn’t trying to be something she is not. One balmy summer evening Buddy and I decided to go out on the lash to Manly. If you were paying attention in the earlier chapters you will remember that Manly is the backpacker mecca, thus the vibe is generally pretty carefree. We pre-gamed for hours before heading out. After many mellow happy hours partying backpacker style, the evening started to wind down. Our plan was to end on a high note, we were going to have pies. Perhaps it was the hordes of backpackers, but the night wouldn’t be complete without a nod to all that is great about our humble country, a salute to one of Australia’s proudest traditions, a genuflection before our greatest culinary triumph. Sure, the Greeks have their kebabs, the French have their pastries, Indians have Butter Chicken. But after a night on the lash, nothing quite compares to the mystery meat delights of a humble Australian pie. So off we staggered to the pie shop, like trained homing pigeons, guided by instinct that defies explanation. I am prone to occasional moments of profound existentialism when en vino veritas. On this balmy evening, my vision romantically blurred, I spied a middle-aged woman who was the picture of melancholy. This felt unacceptable to me in my mellow state, so I gave this melancholy stranger an enormous hug and told her “You’re beautiful!”.
By Brendon6 years ago in Humans
The Beginning -
Now you could be asking yourself, what does a 30-year-old have to say about life that can’t be said in a single tweet or Facebook post? Or maybe you are 20 years old and asking yourself how someone that old could possibly only have one book worth of interesting stuff in them, and God you hope that you are never that boring by the time you are that old. Well the answer is: if you asked yourself either question then you are a basic bitch and totally wrong. 30 is the perfect age to start a biography, old enough to have seen a bit and done a bit, young enough to still remember it, and with projected life expectancy the perfect starting point for any epic trilogy.
By Brendon6 years ago in Humans
Just Another, Ordinary, Extraordinary Life -
They say every great writer is essentially telling the story of themselves over and over, that they imbue every character with someone they are, someone they know or someone they want to be. The people I discuss in the pages to come are people I love, people I hate, people I know, and to spice things up some people I wish I never knew. This is the story of people who are bold, beautiful and true, and it’s also the story of people who are poisonous, venomous and undeniably insane. This is the story of the good times and the bad, the ones that can shatter your heart into a million little pieces. This is my story, as seen through my eyes. It is the story of what it is to be me. Because I am equal parts whimsical, inspired and ADHD, the story of my life is best expressed as a collective of short stories with no real rhyme or reason linking them beyond the fact each story deserved to be told. There are stories of opportunity, stories of regret, stories of amazing moments and stories of devastation. They are the stories that make up a life both ordinary and extraordinary. To protect the identities of the innocent and the guilty I have assigned pseudonyms and obscured identifying details. For the people I love, I do it to protect their privacy, and for the people I hate, I make only a token effort so that when they are easily identifiable for the poison they are, I can at least claim to have tried. This is a story of me. At times I will employ artistic license, because sometimes it is not the facts of the moment that matter, it is how you live through the moment, and how the moment shapes your life that matters. This book is dedicated to all of the individuals who found a place in my story, and is a homage to embracing positivity and enthusiasm in even the darkest of times. It is dedicated to all those seeking the courage to walk their own path, and seek their own happiness. This is the story of my ordinary and sometimes extraordinary life.
By Brendon6 years ago in Motivation