Ping pong helps me ignore the caffeine-induced voices in my head

What did you do today? Did you go to a jewellery supply shop and help pick out a soldering iron, and then play ping pong in what was possibly an art installation? Huh. That's a coincidence.

To explain. Since Monday, my boss has been saying to me in an ominous sort of way 'we need to talk about your progress'. The progress meeting was initially scheduled for 10a.m. Monday morning. Then it got pushed back to Monday afternoon. Then Tuesday morning, then Tuesday afternoon, and so on and so forth until this afternoon (Thursday) when the meeting finally happened. It was less of a 'let's all tell Tash how terrible she is at her job' affair than I had thought it was going to be, but I'll get to that. The point is, for the last four days I have been working myself into a state of COMPLETE AND UTTER TERROR that I was going to get shouted at. Because, and I'll let you in on a tiny little secret here... I'm terrible at my job. Like, painfully bad. I also hate it with a passion, which goes a long way to explaining why I'm so bad at it. The only thing that stops me from completely checking out and just playing Minesweeper and googling pictures of baby dormice all day is that my fear of getting into trouble slightly outweighs my sense of miserable apathy towards my work.

By this morning, I was a jibbering mess. I just wanted to get the shouting at over and done with. I drank a giant coffee, then went and got a second giant coffee because someone asked me to go to the coffee shop with them, so by midday I was a jumble of nerves and anticipation, and hallucinating slightly from all the caffeine (that's a thing, it's not just me being melodramatic).

L, my work buddy (also known as the Hair Hamster) noticed that I was verging tears and/ or magical laughter and asked me to go on an outing with her so she could spend her birthday money. We went first to a jewellery supply store, where she spent an inordinate amount of time taking to a man about soldering irons. While waiting for her I checked out the sale table, which is always dangerous, even when there is nothing there that I could conceivably want or need. Nevertheless. It took a bit of work to convince myself that I do not really need an economy pack of white cotton gloves (it was only $5 for 50 - I'm sure I could have found a use for them) or a jewellery display case in the shape of a book, just because it was half price.

Then we went to Gaffa, which is absolutely lovely, and you really have to go there if you're in Sydney. It's a tiny private art gallery split over two levels of an old office building in Clarence St., and it shows very small collections from an eclectic bunch of artists, though the focus tends to be on jewellery. I saw some absolutely stunning pieces, and I'm definitely going to go back when I've saved up my pocket money.

Kyoko Hashimoto

Momoko Hatano

There was an installation composed of a sculpture a little man hunched up in the middle of a room swathed in black cloth, which visitors to the gallery were encouraged to write their sad thoughts on. L was all for drawing a picture of a penis, because she is just a simple being, but I convinced her to write 'I am worried that I will never feel happiness' (geddit? hahahaha) instead, because I am just as immature as her, but, as I said above, more scared of getting in trouble. Then we went downstairs to the cafe, and there was a little glassed in room off to one side with a ping pong table in it. So we played some ping pong. A few people stopped to watch us, which made us paranoid that it was actually an art installation that we were defiling, but no one shouted at us, so it was either an interactive piece, or it was just a ping pong table.

By this stage I was feeling much better, so we headed back to the office, just in time for the meeting. My boss went round the table. The advertising manager got told off a tiny bit. Then the online editor got a little bit of a talking to. Then came my turn. I had to explain myself, which I did by shrugging, letting my bottom lip wobble a little bit, and saying 'ummm, I don't know. I'm sorry'. There was a moment of tension... and the conversation moved on. And that was it. I mean, I definitely got the feeling that I am not going to walk out of this job with a glowing recommendation, but I also didn't actually get told off, so I'm putting the progress meeting outcome in the positive column for today. Only just, but still.

What else.

Oh yes, my hair is still falling out with reckless abandon, but either I've come to accept it, or I am in denial about it, in which case there is almost certainly some horrible emotional outburst in the offing when I finally come to deal with it. I think it's the former, though. I've been looking at other women's hair a lot over the last couple of days (in a totally non creepy way), and I've noticed lots and lots of women my age with partings that are slightly too wide and patchy, or who have thin or even bald patches on the back of their heads, or with sparse patches around the temples, and I feel much better. I have also made an appointment to get my hair cut next week - I've realised that the thing that is freaking me out more than anything else is that I have totally lost control over what my hair does, and I am - it may shock you to learn - quite the control freak. I'm hoping that if I go and get a style more flattering to my hair-lite situation, it will make me feel slightly more in control, and stop me from completely losing my mind.

And that's more or less it for now. I've got an evening entirely to myself for once, so I'm indulging in a dinner of beer and crisps, and later I will eat a banana paddle pop. I will also watch last night's First Tuesday Bookclub, and stroke the screen tenderly every time Jennifer Byrne speaks, because I love her and I want to be her. OK, that last thing was a bit creepy, but my reasons for loving her have nothing to do with her hair, so the creepiness is mitigated a tiny bit.