Spilling Ink

Another year, my dear

2012-01-28T09:18:00.000+11:00

It's my birthday today and I'm not quite sure how to feel about it. Maybe it will just be like today's weather: sunny periods and occasional showers.

Something's shaking lose

2012-01-27T18:10:00.000+11:00

I cleaned my bedroom today. After months of using the floor as a wardrobe I picked everything up and put it in drawers or hung it up. It's nice to get to know one's bedroom floor again.

The state of affairs when it comes to how I've been treating my clothes of late has definitely been a sign of what's been going on in my mind. I don't think I've ever felt such apathy before. It's not all gone but when I start cleaning without having to nag myself it's a sure signs that things are getting better in my mind.

I don't know for sure what's really changed. Maybe it's really the fact that I no longer report to the same manager, that I managed to bring about change again in my workplace and that I somehow almost feel like I can trust that Mr Department Head will take better care of me. Hoping is scary. Having hope is good.

The path to recovery begins

2012-01-22T13:27:00.001+11:00

I've had two days to mull over my little victory. If I get all logical with myself I have achieved more than I thought was possible in the area of curbing bad workplace behavior.

I have shown that it's not OK to disregard workers' mental health to the point you cause them to have a nervous breakdown, I have shown that a company have a responsibility to care for a worker injured with a nervous breakdown and I have shown that it's not OK to bully a worker having suffered from a nervous breakdown.

I have shown that you can use the system in place to achieve these things and that the system actually work.

I should be proud of myself. I should be dancing naked under moon to celebrate my victory, or victories, and I should be feeling unstoppable.

I can't own it.

I suffer from a problem a lot of people suffer from. When something good comes their way or they achieve something great they expect that there has to be a trade off, a price to pay if you will. That's a psychological problem, I think. It's an attitude problem.

I think there is a price to pay. People get a little weary of people who kick other people's arse. I kicked someone's arse.

There aren't many people who like my boss. I don't dislike him. I couldn't care less if he was on a space odyssey or if he was sitting at the desk next to me. What I care about is the way he was behaving towards me and the impact it had on my ability to recover properly. It made me feel hopeless and powerless.

I'm not powerless. Obviously.

Hope has been restored because I will no longer be subjected to his behavior.

I won for me. I achieved something that will help me.

I feel guilty though. I have not just put a kink in this man's career path, and I know how ambitious he is, I have effectively prevented him from going anywhere in the organization. He will more than likely have a huge target on his back for the next redundancy round. I somehow feel I used excessive force simply because I knew that on order to truly get him to stop his bullying I had to stop everything. It was the only way. The man has no room to move now at all.

Maybe I will feel a little better about this on Monday when I go back to work or maybe it will take longer. Maybe I will be able to feel proud that I stopped one bully in his tracks and that it will help many people.

Maybe I just feel like I've put a huge target on my own back by doing what I have done.

My main priority, as Mouse so rightly pointed out in a comment, is my own recovery. I need to recover and I need to heal. Most of all right now I want to get off the medication again so I can get control over my brain again. I really do feel like half of it has been shut down. I need my mind back.

Soon, very soon, I hope to be able to write posts that are inspiring and that will help others in similar situations find strength to right wrongs in their workplace or in their lives.

I have to rest first though, I really do.

Did I tell you guys I love you? I do. There's much to be said for support and it has meant so much to me to be able to come in here and see your comments! You guys are awesome!

A new era

2012-01-21T07:57:00.000+11:00

I hope, oh dear God I hope, that this is the last post I ever write talking about my struggle after the breakdown and how things have not gotten any better. I really do.

Yesterday afternoon when I went into the meeting with HR and the department head I had a plan. I was gonna go in. I was gonna come out. Nobody was gonna get hurt.

I had a preferred outcome.

My preferred outcome was that I by a sheer miracle caused by a solar eclipse some decades ago, an event that had against all odds set things in motion to pave the way for the sheer miracle, and that the sheer miracle was that I was going to come out of the meeting reporting to the department head.

The odds for this miracle to take place were pretty slim in my mind.

You've guessed it already, haven't you? I mean I can't keep a secret, can I? I walked out of that meeting reporting to the department head.

I was given some flack about my assertiveness. I told them that I can probably tell them exactly what events my now ex-manager had talked about when he accused me of being assertive. I told them that it was when he had been wrong and I had to stand my ground or it would have caused, shall we say, some issues.

I think we can safely call this a win.

But it didn't stop there. Not only was I handed over to the department head but I was also presented with a strategy for the first month me reporting to him. First week he's on holiday but after that we will have probably three meetings in which he will get to know what I do (and he really already know because we've worked together before when he was a project manager) and also so we can have a strategy for how we're going to deal with my recovery.

HR promised to keep tabs on me for now on too.

So as much as I was given a little whack across the nose I was also finally given the support, it seems, that I should have had all along.

A plan. A strategy. These things are music to my ears because when you're depressed you're fighting your own apathy. It's hard to set goals and make plans.

I'm so tired and I feel like I need another holiday. I've certainly haven't the energy this post deserves and I which I could have written a better post about this because it's huge.

I hope I will find myself again soon and my groove. I miss my groove. I really miss my groove.

Dear Universe, please kill SOPA and PIPA

2012-01-20T08:08:00.009+11:00

SOPA and PIPA are like taking a sledgehammer to your fine china. No really, it is. If you want to break your china it’s better just to throw it on the floor. No need to hit with a sledgehammer.

I don’t agree with pirating per se but we have to look at why it’s happening before we try to stop it. Massive marketing campaigns mean that we want to see every movie out there, for example, but there’s no way we can afford to so if you want to keep up to date you have to cheat.

Personally I don’t think Tom Cruise should get $30M per movie, he’s not that good an actor, and while I believe people who make movies should earn a decent living (if they make a decent movie) I also think that we’re being duped into thinking that the industry is hard done by.

It’s the small budget movie makers that are hard done by but isn’t it the larger movie makers responsibility to keep them afloat and not the public who don’t earn anywhere near the amounts the movie studios have to play with? They have to stop making their industry less about making money and more about art before they get all huffy and puffy about the pirating issue I think. (And this is why capitalism as it is today sucks, my friends…)

So as much as I don’t agree with pirating per se I also don’t agree that we need to pay $20 to see a movie, $30 for a movie on DVD or $30 for a music CD.

SOPA and PIPA are scary. You do realize that your blog is at risk, right? If you have ever put a little image on your blog and you “borrowed” from somewhere else and that somewhere else happens to be American, Google, in my case, runs the risk of having to take Blogger down. That’s how bad it is.

I can’t help but think that SOPA and PIPA are trying to tackle the problem of pirating from the wrong side. If large corporations came to, shall we say, a more reasonable agreement when it comes to pricing and how they distribute their wealth then I think we would be getting somewhere but as it stands right now:

Dear Universe,
Please kill SOPA and PIPA before it kills the internet and the relative freedom we have through it to express ourselves and connect with others. Please do that and please make it your priority. Thank you!

Yours truly,
Spilling Ink

P.S.
I have a plan for this afternoon’s meeting with HR and the department head and I’m gonna go in, I’m gonna come out and nobody will get hurt. I would really appreciate some help with that too, Universe. Thanks again!

2012-01-18T18:25:00.000+11:00

And so I made off to the doctor yesterday to do the regular check up for the Workcover claim. She wants me to take time off. She doesn't like how things are panning out. She thinks that the corporation (I work for) hasn't done enough to help me.

Nor did my psychologist today.

What can I say?

I hope that meeting I have with HR and the department head on Friday is useful!

Inspiration

2012-01-17T08:00:00.000+11:00

"Any time you sincerely want to make a change, the first thing you must do is to raise your standards. When people ask me what really changed my life years ago, I tell them that absolutely the most important thing was changing what I demanded of myself. I wrote down all the things I would no longer accept in my life, all the things I would no longer tolerate, and all the things that I aspired to becoming."
Anthony Robbins

I stumbled across this today and it describes precisely what I'm in the process of doing.

For a brief moment I forgot

2012-01-16T14:04:00.002+11:00

For a brief moment, you know like three or four years, I forgot who the hell I was. Not who I am but who I was.

I was safe.

I was sure of myself.

I was secure.

I was full of hope.

I was powerful.

Granted I've not been any of that in decades so it's easy to forget but it's time to remember. It's time to remember!

I come from good Viking stock and Vikings are not easily beaten. People who sail oceans in wooden dinghies don't fear emotional waves, they surf them with reckless abandon because that's the only way to go!

Everything drifts to shore eventually. My job right now is not to swim. It's to float! My job is to bob along until I get thrown up on a sandy shore somewhere and that sandy shore is precisely the right place for me to be when that happens.

I don't lose faith! How can I lose faith when I have me? What was I thinking? I'm here to look after me and I'm not powerless.

My thoughts are...wait for it...my thoughts! Since they're my thoughts I can change them. I own the copyright. I don't have to ask permission.

How I feel is how I feel because I choose to feel how I feel. I'm going to start choosing to feel a little different now. I'm going to choose a better state. I think that will be nicer and we will take it slow this feeling better so that I don't lose my way and get overwhelmed.

Did I tell you guys I love you lately? No? Well I do.

Creative burnout

2012-01-12T07:35:00.003+11:00

It’s high time, high time, to get serious about my shit! I say this with my best nigger impersonation voice and with nigger I mean nigger as in how African Americans say it to each other to show that they’re brothers and not the very derogative way whites say it to African American in the south of the US of A. Or did. We stamped out all that KKK crap, didn’t we?

When you’ve just had to come to terms with the fact that you’re burnt out you need to speak to yourself with a voice full of conviction. I think it deserves James Brown kind of voice that don’t mess about and bother about political correctness. Maybe it even needs a bit of a preacher touch to it.

If I’ve offended anyone I apologize. It’s not my aim to offend. My aim is to make a point which I quite clearly can’t do.

If you think having a nervous breakdown is hitting rock bottom you’re wrong. There’s actually something beyond that and while it’s not quite as stressful it’s still bloody awful. It’s the burnt out state and it’s a state that brings you from stress to powerless and apathetic.

To be honest I prefer this state. It’s not nearly as disruptive. The reason for why it’s not disruptive is that you stop caring and you feel completely powerless. It’s like that last stage in the grieving process when you’ve come to accept that someone is gone and they’re not coming back and there ain’t nothing you can do about it.

Only when you’re burnt out you can come back. You can get your mojo back. That’s the truth.

I’ve ended up doing a life review. The past few weeks have been awful and not so much because of outside influences but because of the depression. It has brought me to new lows and I’ve had to medicate at full dose again just to get to a state where I can concentrate on anything else but the depression.

I don’t like being medicated but I like the state I was in a lot less. There are times when we have to rely on medication to get by. Lesson number one.

Lesson number two is that we have to admit we have a problem.

Lesson number three is to ask for help.

I have to revisit lessons number two and three again. I have a problem and I need help.

This is an important time for me. Inadvertently I have been forced into doing a life review. Who am I? What am I really compared to what I have been lead to believe I am by others? How have others opinions of me influenced me and forced me to be what I’m really not? Who are my parents? Why did they treat me the way they did when I was growing up? How did they show me that they love me? How did what they are influence me? Who were their parents? How did they love my parents?

Etcetera.

The conclusion at its core is that I’m not a bad person and there’s nothing seriously wrong with me that I will need to change. Except for the depression. I need to change the depression state into a state where I’m more comfortable. It’s pretty big shit, and I use that word on purpose because it seems to fit the best, to be able to become comfortable with oneself in the throes of depression. I feel better about myself than I have in ages. I don’t have anything left to prove because I’m good as gold already.

“because I’m good as gold already” < Words I thought I would never hear myself say. It’s a huge step for me!

I’m lucky enough to be left with only having to deal with being burnt out and depressed as a result of that.

I think there are four stages of burn out.

The first one is exhaustion. You may still be holding it together but you’re not doing well. You come home and head for the fridge and grab whatever is in there, maybe self-medicate with alcohol and TV, and become comatose as soon as you stop moving. Normally you pride yourself on doing your job right but now you’re looking for shortcuts and that erodes your self-esteem because it makes you feel guilty.

The second one is shame and doubt. You’re asked to take on more and normally would jump at the opportunity but there’s a voice inside that screams “What? More?!” and you’re not feeling confident about the future, you’re dreading it and you’re even discounting your past accomplishments. You’re feeling like you’re an imposter. You start sighing heavily, the way people sigh when they’re grieving or feel completely powerless! You’re experiencing a profound sense of vulnerability and powerlessness.

The third stage is when you bring out the armour and you become cynical and callous. Look out for number one. Cover your butt. No one’s getting to you! You become short and obnoxious with other people and they start avoiding you, they don’t hassle you anymore. They’re all fuckers anyway.

The fourth stage is when your coping structure becomes unglued. It’s about failure, hopelessness and crisis. You’re one little step from the psych ward, my dear. What you’ve been doing is like trying to run a marathon at full speed the whole race through. Your mental apparatus is wearing out and the reason for why this stage is so disruptive is that your psychological defences have worn down. Painful memories and old hurts surface. Any bump can set off an overly sensitive reaction.

Burn out is not for wimps. Most people pike out long before getting to burn out. They give up, leave their jobs or families and try to start anew somewhere else. Getting to stage four requires determination. It requires a strong sense of responsibility and rigid perfectionism. You have to think there’s only one way and stick to it. Usually the people who get to this stage are responsive to others and others lean on them for support and they’re the emotional sponge for others.

If you’re burnt out you’re going to need support. You may need professional help because you’re in crisis. You need to confront your denials, cynicism and your helplessness. You have to allow yourself to grieve past, present and even future losses so you can move onto turning guilt, hurt, anxiety and aggression into focused energy you can use to help yourself. You need to acquire new skills to create new options so you can develop productive attitudes and take productive actions, attitudes and actions that help you not fight you.

The trick is to become creative about your burn out and turn it into a transformational experience. This is the probably the best opportunity you’ll ever have to transform.

Recover.

Rejuvenate.

Heal.

Create.

Can I do it? Hell yeah! I didn’t even really hit stage three or four before I screamed for help! I’m just not stubborn enough to see it through ‘til the end.

I have a daughter, she's my daughter

2012-01-06T11:25:00.000+11:00

I woke up this morning and I woke up reluctantly.

Yesterday I ate too much good food, realized that people aren't always fair no matter how old and wise they are and I followed it all up with talking to a friend.

The talk, if it can be called a talk because it was more a rant of observations, was fueled by a fair amount of Cointreau and the most evil Brie I have ever had the pleasure of meeting smeared on French bread. Brie like that is made to eat in anger because its creamy texture and taste goes a long way to distracting you and preventing you from picking up the phone to tell people you really think. What you really, really think.

The pleasure of meeting the Brie was last night and the displeasure of having met it is this morning. You can actually get hangover from cheese I have discovered. I discovered this when I encountered an extremely precious Stilton not long ago. It made love to my taste buds and ruined my ability to think straight for days.

In the words of Withnail in the movie Withnail and I, this morning I feel like a pig shat in my head and it's not all the Cointreau's fault. I think the Brie prevented the Cointreau to have any effect on me at all.

Children are precious. Children are also not already perfect beings and most likely they will never be. If they're lucky they grow up to be successful and if the rest of us are lucky they grow up to be nice, good people who treat us with respect, love and compassion.

Bee is a child. Bee is a child who is at the cusp of entering a pre-adult state during which confusion will reign supreme and more will be expected of her than she's possible of achieving or being capable of.

It's like that for most people at that stage in their lives.

Bee is beautiful and kind. Bee has ADD and finds it hard to sort things in her mind at times especially when met with multiple instructions that seem to contradict each other.

Bee spent most of the garden party organizing the other children, most of them younger than her, in play so that the rest of us, the adults, could eat, talk and relax. Bee was also accused of getting into a cupboard to get a large packet of chocolates she had been given at the beginning to take home that I suggested be put away because too much sugar will mean trouble for Bee. Bee wanted so desperately to be well behaved.

She was accused of getting said chocolates out of a cupboard to eat them and share them with the other kids. It turned out that he husband of the lady who had given them to her had taken them out of the cupboard to give the kids chocolates and of course Bee got a bit upset, they were her chocolates because they had been given to her, and when the lady accused her of having gone into the cupboard to get them herself she got extremely upset. The husband never said anything about him getting them out of the cupboard. Not so much as a murmur. He stood by and watched her get accused.

Being 13 is confusing. Being blamed for things you didn't do hurts a lot at that age. Trying to do your best, to make your mum proud only to be accused hurts so much that you break down. The mother's of the other children rallied, bless them, and thanked Bee for being so good with their kids but Bee was so extremely distressed because she had, in her own words, ruined the whole party.

I expected more from my hosts. They're in their seventies and really should know better. They know Bee has behavioral problems because of her ADD and instead of making allowances it was used against her in a way that was really unfair.

I'm angry. I'm very angry. The friend I talked to last night about it is the son of these people. He was disappointed too. How does one explain to a 13 year old that some people just suck?

Old and grumpy

2012-01-05T11:04:00.003+11:00

It's been tiring. It's been very tiring. That's why I'm not going to talk about "it". I don't want to talk about "it".

I'm about to head out to a garden party and I don't feel like going. I don't feel like being around people today and that's a shame. Today is one of those days when I feel soooo less confident and like I don't want to do my hair. I want to hide.

I used to suffer from social anxiety except I didn't know it was social anxiety. I just thought I was awkward and retarded. This is a a bit different to how I used to be. I'm fully aware that as a person I stack up pretty well, I don't have any real traits that make people recoil in disgust, but what I do have is low tolerance for prattle. I don't feel like prattling today even though I'm perfectly able to.

So I'm a sourpuss. I admit it. I've turned and old grump about 30-50 years too early and I'm not ashamed of it, not one iota, in fact I'm wearing it like a god damned badge. There are days I feel like I've lived two lifetimes worth of "it", "it" being things that piss people off and that tends to make them old and grumpy perhaps even prematurely, like "it" has me, and that I have a god given right to feel a little at odds with how my life has, is and will pan out. The whole future thing is of course stil up in the air but it doesn't mean I have to shy away from being at odds with it!

Every time I whinge about "it" there's someone who's done it worse and that does nothing to improve my mood because now I'm not even allowed to feel sorry for myself without having some jerk "trying to cheer" me up with stories about how they or someone else did it tougher. That kind of different from being supportive. It's a kind of one-upmanship. It's just that I prefer supportive right now and I don't want to compare with others.

I get it! I'm not doing it harder than anyone else but I do feel grumpier about it now. Right now. I want easy breezy and I don't want to be told that life is not like that. There has to be times when that happens. Now would be a good time. I kind of feel I earned it. I kind of feel entitled. I have a sense of entitlement.

So it's with this mindset that I will social butterfly today. I don't think they are compatible, do you?

I will do my best not to roll my eyes when someone tells me ALL about their very interesting and high powered job and I will avoid alcohol. Alcohol is the truth serum and today isn't the day for truths. Today is the day for fake smile and.....*shudder*.....idle prattle.

And, I lied to my lawn mower guy and told him I didn't want to him to mow the lawn today because I'm not home today to pay him. He just busted me being home. I was hoping he would come later after I'd left. I'm not happy. He shouldn't have insisted on coming today. It's all his fault. I'm trying really hard not to feel bad. It's not my fault that's for sure.

I hate the sound of the lawn mower. It does nothing to improve my mood.

I still love you guys though. I can say that without being drunk.

Cherry Almond and White Chocolate Lime Tarts

2012-01-05T10:24:00.000+11:00

Going to a garden party today and was talked into bringing a tart. I'm bringing two. I made these yesterday. Can't wait to taste them.


Cherry Almond Tart

Lime and White Chocolate Tart (with a chocolate base)

Blogger is always hateful when I try to upload photos. I will try to fix the line problem, maybe, at a later stage. You get the idea though, right?

My Expectations are so Low they've bottomed out Completely

2011-12-31T11:18:00.003+11:00

In about an hour's time the "in-laws" are arriving to try to facilitate some sort of communication I guess. The house is a mess. I'm not a mess but I don't feel like I want to pretend at all. O and I have not spoken since last night and right now I just want him out of my house, and yes I will say my house, because it's where I live. I don't want him in my living space. Lebensraum. I want it free of things that make me feel bad.

Somewhere behind all this lurks a little sadness but I'm not sure if it's the depression or if it's the break up. Does it even matter? I don't think so. I think in my mind there's no turning back so let's get this over and done with. I think that's what he wants too.

Nothing will be said today that will help at all. Nothing will be achieved today that will help at all. I have thought through every single thing that led up to this and I'm firm in that I shouldn't have to put up with this shit because I....don't have to put up with this shit. I just deserve better. I actually really believe that.

I'm developing some nicer thoughts about what I want and what I want is a relationship where I actually feel valued. I know that's a hard ask at the moment what with the depression and all but if I can't have that I will have a relationship with myself and this time I'm going to make that relationship functional. We're going to get loving ourselves and we're going to love ourselves until we're better, so much better.

I have work to do but not as much work as I thought. I have some way to go but not as far as I thought.

One thing that I don't like is the anger that's lurking. It wants to lash out but it's not going to achieve anything. That is the one thing that should not enter into this. There's simply nothing to be angry about. It's over. Now we go about mending our own fences in separate ways and we don't dilly dally around in some half arsed way where we pretend that we're friends. We're not friends. We're are not enemies either. We are nothing. That's where I want it to be.

I'm hurt. It's not the kind of hurt that rips you apart and leaves you gasping for air. It's the kind of hurt that comes from being slighted and from realizing that you're a giant jerk because you've made a mistake. It's the kind of hurt that mutters "I trusted you and you brought it to this."

I have no expectations that he will go easy. He will stay here forever and try to pretend that we can live in the same house as flatmates. He will argue that he pays rent so he has a right to stay. I will argue he has a place he can stay and the civil thing to do right now is to leave and give me and Bee space. We need space. I need space. The only person I want in my space right now is Bee. I have to right my fuck up in Bee's mind so that it doesn't become a problem for her.

Bee's state of mind is essential. It has to be the priority. It has to be the one thing that is treated with compassion. She is thirteen and this is very hard for her. Suddenly her world has changed into something she didn't want or anticipated.

It's been a hard slog being up until now but I can't help thinking that I in my mind has made it so much harder for myself. I sent our Christmas photos to my parents and didn't hear from them for days. When my Dad finally sent me an e-mail one of the things he said was that I'm a handsome woman a father can be proud of. I needed to hear that. I needed to hear that so much. My soul gobbled the sentence up and gently mulled on it because it felt so good.

The Universe has thrown family by way of Facebook my way in the past month and on Christmas Eve an old friend of mine, and old best friend of mine, found me. I don't care if it's just Facebook. At least they want to get in contact with me.

The last day of 2011 brings no real surprises it seems. It will end pretty much the way it's been ticking along the whole year. Major blows mixed in with some blessings. It appears I will start the new year single. It appears I will have to rely only on myself again. It appears that I will continue to dream about finding someone to love me. It appears I'm free to plot a new course in whatever direction I feel like heading.

Happy sailing in a Happy 2012! The sky's the limit (only if you require a limit - if not: From here to infinity!)

Bonne navigation dans un 2012 heureux! Le ciel est la limite (seulement si vous avez besoin d'une limite - si non: D'ici à l'infini!)

Angenehmes Segeln in einen guten Rutsch ins 2012! Der Himmel ist die Grenze (nur wenn Sie eine Grenze erfordern - wenn nicht: Von hier bis unendlich!)

Lycklig segling i ett Gott 2012! Det finns inga gränser (endast om du behöver en gräns - om inte: Härifrån till oändligheten!)

Glade sejler i en Happy 2012! Kun fantasien sætter grænser (kun hvis du har brug for en grænse - hvis ikke:! Herfra til uendelig!)

Happy New Year my friends, Happy New Year!

Far Out Brussel Sprout

2011-12-30T18:20:00.001+11:00

I'm slowly siphoning off a bottle of Cointreau. Slowly. I'm not trying to get drunk. I'm trying to get even. Even enough to plan a course forward.

Please read the last post first if you haven't already read it and you want to make sense of this one. I mean you can read this one on its own but you're probably going to feel you are lacking some important information.

It's messy. It's a break up.

First I would like to say that SP and Merry and Mouse are wise people. You may not think so you three foxy ladies but I have been taking your advice on board and I may be the kind who tries to fix things rather than end them but right you it's your girl power that is making me feel strong. You need to know this because you are so differently awesome. Yes, I know I sound desperate, like someone who desperately needs friends right now, but you girls have strewn your pearls of wisdom in comments for a good half a year I think. Please let it be known it was not wasted effort. I was listening. I was just also listening to bullshit I wanted to believe at the same time. There was a lot of it.

I just did something one shouldn't do. It's just not classy. It's horrid. I messaged "the other woman" on Facebook. I don't expect a reply but if I do get one I will converse with her in a civil manner. She is not the dog. He is the dog. He will be very mad if she tells him.

He's also asleep in his room because he's too tired to talk and I'm over it. I'm over this whole thing. I'm not over him, that sort of thing takes time, but I'm over this. The two are distinctly different parts of the issue and I treat them as such. One thing at the time. I will get over him too.

The sooner he gets out the better. The miracle it will take to turn this around will not occur so the sooner he's out the better. I've not been played for a fool here but I've been way too tolerant. I need to draw some sharp lines in the sand and most of them will mean that we're done here. Over and done. No turning back ever again. We will not be friends or civil after this because we won't speak at all. This will be harder because we work together. I hope we will be decent enough to leave.

I feel OK with this. I really do. I don't feel OK about losing my friend, he was good at that and believe in giving credit where credit is due. There. Credit given. He makes really good coffee. That's another good thing that I will miss.

I will not list the things I won't miss. That would be tacky of me.

I'm looking forward to getting me back again. It sounds odd but I do. Maybe I'm meant to be alone although I doubt that seriously but if I'm not meant to be alone then I'm meant to be in a really good relationship. This relationship is not it. It's not good for either of us unless there are drastic changes made. These changes will not be made. We will therefore part.

I need to learn how to pick them. That's the common denominator in all this is the me picking them. I need to get a firm grip on my reality and stop picking people - men - who can't engage emotionally. Are there men that can? I don't know. Let's just pretend there is for now because it gives me hope.

I don' feel particularly sorry for myself right now which I find rather strange. I know I pushed it a bit today and it resulted in it coming to heads but it had to. Things were ticking along in a way that was bad and sometimes you need to push people into action. I know this from experience. When it comes to relationships it's tricky business but when you say something over and over and it's not getting through you can either shut up and retreat or push some more.

You're never going to be thanked for pushing. Nobody likes to be pushed no matter how necessary it was.

Another thing, don't think that who you friend on Facebook doesn't show up to your other friends. They do. And. I'm not stupid.

When it comes to break ups I'm not real good at it. I don't know what the rules are. I'm just winging it here.

One Crazy Day when the Year is about to end and other things seem to follow suit

2011-12-30T13:57:00.005+11:00

I would like to start this post by saying, no admitting, that I'm drunk. No, not drunk but a little bit tipsy. I'm a little bit tipsy because today things went wrong and I decided to self medicate. As one does. When things go wrong.

I don't actually know if things went all that wrong or whether I kind of brought it to a point where it burst and probably ended my relationship with O. As some of you know it's been a little weird at times. I say weird because I don't want to say bad. I don't want to be judgmental at this stage.

Yesterday was a really bad day for me. I literally woke up thinking I couldn't care less if I was dead, in fact it may even be preferable. That's not the same as being suicidal because being suicidal makes one want to act on it and actually make it happen. It was more a thought that if I was dead I wouldn't feel pain. I wasn't too alarmed by this state because it's part of the depression although I can't say I enjoy it.

Today things happened that apparently made me go nuts again. I don't know if I should tell you about these things. Maybe I should. I have come to realize that there are some very wise ones out there and I need wisdom at the moment. Not my own but other people's wisdom.

O can't be in a relationship. He doesn't get it. the whole thing of being in a relationship is like being shackled to him and my mistake is that I've been trying to have a relationship with this man. It's not going to work.

In O's mind we're great mates which is apparently better than anything else in this world. My mind finds it confusing and thinks it diminishes me as a woman. It makes it feel like I'm unattractive. This is rather warped.

A few months ago when the whole shitstorm was on I found out that O had corresponded via e-mail with a woman and written her two erotic letters. He had been honest enough to tell her, apparently, that he's in a relationship but they kept talking. They apparently stopped when I found out but today he added her on Facebook. He's only just started Facebook so her and I are the only people on his friend's list. I did my nut.

I don't think I'm wrong with doing my nut but I'm now faced with him storming out and Bee mourning. Bee should have nothing to do with this but she does because she is part of the family. Where O is I do not know and I don't expect us to stick together after this. Apparently he feels "caged". I don't know what I feel, maybe I'm a bit relieved...., but I'm sure I'll find out soon. Not as soon as I sober up because I ain't drunk but rather as soon as I decide to feel something.

You know what? I'm tired.

I just want things to smooth out and things at work to be well. Merry said in a comment the other day that she hates my work even if she doesn't work there and it made me think. Merry, you made me think, you made me think that what was my whole word is a very poor companion indeed.

Through my two (bad) marriages I hinged my whole existence on my work and my so called career. It was dependable. It did what it promised to do and since I never asked it to fulfill me or make me happy I was "happy" with it.

My two marriages were rotten. The first one should have disappointed me but I was too busy surviving, literally. The second was a failure from the start and I knew it but I tried to stick it out and make it work because I didn't want to fail. It did.

When I met O I had no hope that it was going to turn out OK. I didn't want a relationship, or so I thought. I must have wanted it because I accepted it and I accepted his inability to not quite commit and to not give me a label. I was his friend. That was a higher status than anyone.

If I called him now I wonder if he would answer but I don't think he would. I think he will move out and then we're left working together and it will be very awkward. Bee will be very sad. All is lost.

But maybe this needed to happen. Maybe there is really something better out there for me. I don't know how that could be because I'm so god damn faulty and apparently I need a therapist even though I think in this case I really don't. I think in this case my head was screwed on precisely right when I asked him why the hell he had added this woman to his Facebook.

Take me or leave me. I think that's what it comes down to, no?

Later addition:
He came back and he came back to tell me that he's moving out. I told him that I would like him to leave now but apparently I should go stay with his parents. That makes sense. To him.

I ended up calling his parents. I'm not proud of it. He had already called his parents. They knew. They told me he's the mad one. I don't know if they're paying me lip service but is that even important?

His dad talked him into coming out of his room to talk to me only he didn't talk to me at all. He just say there. I tried to talk because that's what I do. I try to talk things through. This is a tactic that doesn't work with O.

This is all getting a little tedious and as the story progresses I'm realizing that I'm quite the arse. For putting up with all this. What's wrong with me? Do I have some sort of self esteem issues? Yes, I do. That's why I put up with all this.

I'm left with this:

a. I'm crazy. I'm a raging crazy and I need to have my head checked. Those are not my words but sometimes it's important to consider input from others.

b. I'm crazy. For putting up with this shit and for thinking I could keep this "relationship" together. I need my arse kicked.

c. I'm a freakishly awesome person who just sold herself really short and who thought she could have a relationship with a guy who is rather messy in the head. I still need my arse kicked.

d, I'm crazy because I really need to kick get my arse kicked and wake up to what a healthy relationship really is. I need one of them or I don't need it.

e. I need to have my ego stroked to realize that as much as I needed my arse kicked I now need to have my ego stroked. I'm smart, I'm gorgeous and I can kick my own arse. Basically I rock. See I can stroke my own ego too, there's simply no end to my talents.

f. Things need to change around here! Oh yeah, they need to change around here! They need to change in whatever way they need to change so that I can get on with my life and be happy. Remember happy? That's the little fussy feeling one gets in the chest or stomach area that makes your mouth smile for no real apparent reason. I need change and I need happy.

Now we can take any of those or even a combination. I would like to write off a immediately because my therapist doesn't seem to think that's me. I would like feel good right now about what I just wrote and I would like to feel like I can do something right in life because that would be nice, a bonus if you like. I would like to feel OK and I would like to kick depression right in the nads because that's where it hurts the most. Other than that I'm actually fine. Other than that I think I will be absolutely peachy my dears (I say with a trembling voice and a fair dose of disbelief).

I'm a survivor. My therapist told me so.

Oh yeah, and Merry is right. I listen to Merry and I will keep what she said in mind.

Did I tell you guys I love you?

Oh yeah, then there's the part about how friends don't treat each other like crap. That's an important part right now.

Corporate think

2011-12-30T11:52:00.000+11:00

When I don't write I sometimes draw things...

A mood that's not lifting

2011-12-29T14:09:00.000+11:00

One thing I don't like about being on leave is that it gives me time to think. I don't need time to think right now especially not if it means that I will start thinking things I would rather not think. I find it, I have to admit, extremely hard to enjoy what's going on in my head right now.

I long for the days when I was carefree but here's the real problem with that kind of longing. I can't honestly remember a time after the age of five when I really was. I'm not sure if it all changed when I started school and it was all so traumatic that I developed social anxiety and just decided that the world was an unkind place and the people in it were no better.

I know that world view is not true because I'm surrounded by people who care. When I say this year was really hard and I say I have to be fair and say it brought a lot of benefits I'm talking about the benefits that having people support me brings.

I also have to be fair and admit that I have a really hard to time accepting help because I feel I don't deserve it. It's a trust issue in the end and even though it's not hard to see that people give support because they want to I simply can't reconcile in my head that they do it for me because they want to do it for me. That would mean I have to admit that I have some sort of value.

When I wake up in the morning, like I have today, and I feel like I'm just one big raw open wound I wonder when it will all stop and I do feel like it's all hopeless. I want to get away from this feeling so desperately that I start fearing that I will take drastic action. With that I don't mean suicide, I'm nowhere near that point, but it all seems to pointless fighting with this disease. There are times when I just want to let it take over and give up. I want to turn my back on people before they have chance to turn their back on me because I'm becoming such a pain in the arse.

One of the things I can see rather clearly about myself is that I just don't have any value of self at all. It's all been eroded and I'm desperately looking for confirmation that I'm of some value to someone. I want to wake up in the morning and feel like there's someone who cannot do without me, that I would be missed if I was gone. I know Bee would miss me desperately but it's not enough for my mind. It wants more and it wants the big gaping whole in my soul filled with love. I can't generate that love myself so I'm constantly looking to others for it. It's not hard to see that it's a sort of disease I'm suffering from.

Feeling like this isn't normal and trying to squash it down and pretend that it's not there is not going to work. Right now I'm incredibly tired and it used to be that tired was what I longed for but now that it's here it bothers me because there's so much I want to do. If I could just figure out what it all is.

I'm beginning projects though and one of them is to dye jeans. I bought three new pairs yesterday (and I'm down a size from half a year ago - not enough but still nothing to be sneezed) and I will tie dye, or something, the white pair just for funsies. I think projects are important for me right now because keeping my mind occupied may be the only thing that stands in the way on me doing the Titanic.

Stocktake of sorts and a new plan

2011-12-28T18:50:00.002+11:00

The end of the year is going so fast I just can't keep up. The end is very neigh and I will be glad to see the back of it. It's been a hard year but I have to be fair and say that it's not been without benefits. To be fair there's been a lot of benefits.

I've been thinking about work and I realize that I have to change tactics. I need to change the way I approach things. There's been a lot of right-sizing, managerizing, incentovizing and emerging leadershipping going on and it's easy to lose track of where you are exactly as an individual in the corporation. As such I have decided we, my team and I, need to enter a new phase.

I shall call this phase the Fuck Phase. It's a prepubescent phase symbolized by a face in which the eyes in the eye-sockets have been replaced with two penises. I feel this is the only way we're going to be able to survive the coming year and not go completely bonkers. We need to approach it in a completely immature way. Let the managers manage and allow ourselves just to fuck around doing work.

Having said that I have some growing up, some maturing if you will, to do so that I can emerge into the new year, or perhaps I should rather burst into the new year with complete reckless abandon, as a more emotionally mature being who doesn't need reassurance from others constantly. I shall also have my hormone levels tested because I'm beginning to suspect my thyroid for being responsible for my depression.

And I should stop reading Private Eye. It lowers my maturity level significantly.

Oh yeah, I love you guys and I'm not even drunk.

Today in my Garden

2011-12-26T22:19:00.000+11:00

Another little beauty - perhaps a friend of the other one

Vintage cat's head ashtray - a must for anyone living with a smoker

When you have no canvas palings from your broken fence will do


Another fence paling recycled

Bee's dragon guarding our treasures and keep evil spirits away

Caterpillar Day - Today in my Garden

2011-12-22T16:58:00.000+11:00

Hello....

I'm just a little caterpillar noming on your Morning Glory

Don't mind me...

Little my butt - yes, those are my fingers in the picture and as you can see this "little" caterpillar is quite large

This is not a caterpillar. This is a lemon on my lemon tree. Soon it will be ripe and I can nom it.

Arcccch and a lot of things I shouldn't write

2011-12-21T17:26:00.000+11:00

You know when your dog is chasing its tail? You don't have a dog?! Work with me. Please. Picture in your mind that you have a mutt and it's one of those poor misguided creatures that likes to chase its tail. You have a dog? Your dog may be mentally stimulated and physically satisfied enough not to chase its tail and I applaud you for it. If you have a dog that chases its tail: I'm sorry. Try some of Cesar Milan's trick or exercise the poor bugger more.

Where was I? I was chasing my tail, that's where I was. I have been chasing that tail for some time and while it's a very good way of exercising my mind I'm growing weary of it. I need to start doing something else.

Patterns. I have patterns, patterns that are a little like airplane holding patterns and currently being in the holding pattern includes a message from the pilot saying I'm in a holding pattern because the landing gear is stuck and won't come down. That's the depression part of it. Figuratively speaking.

Did I mention I'm a little tired of being depressed. I'm actually suffering from depression, that is the correct term, because when I should be kicking ass and dancing to the beat of my soul's music I'm doing the hard slog believing every damned word that my subconscious chooses to dish up at me.

I'm worthless. That's my personal favorite, or it was at least until I grew very tired of it. I'm very tired of it. I'm also tired of waiting for someone (SOMEONE!) to tell me that I'm not even though I will dismiss it and will be in need of persuasion.

There are few people who are willing to persuade you. People tell you that they care but they really don't like sticking around for the persuasion part. They don't like spending time reassuring you.

I understand that it's a giant drag. I understand that it's hard work. You may not think it but I would do it for them, I really would.

Today I've come down again in a giant heap and it's so easy to blame the depression but what came first, the chicken or the egg?

I think of my parents who don't want to talk to me. I have failed to show them that they're important. I know I have. But here it is my friends, here it is as naked as it can possibly be, they have failed to show me that I'm important too. I can't remember a time when I felt important. I can't remember a time when I didn't feel like I'm a drain on someone's resources, a waste of space. All I want, no all I need, is a little bit of feeling important to someone. To feel like I'm worth something to someone. Like I have value. I need to hear it, I need to feel it.

Fuck it O. I need you to step up to the plate.

Heh! ...and other stuff

2011-12-20T13:32:00.004+11:00

I just had my feedback session for the manager survey they did at work. They actually got the plebeians to rate their masters! I like it! Except in my case I’m left with two direct reports and it’s easy to tell who out of the two gave me lower ratings consistently.

Heh!

You can have fun with that sort of thing. Like I am. He’s still got his performance review coming up with me beginning of the year. He’s shitting his little pants right now. I’m not mean y’all and I will be subjective, oops objective I mean, a mere Freudian slip I assure you, but I’m kind of enjoying the power it brings me at the moment. He’s been a bit of shit this year. Like when I had my breakdown and he cut his workweek short by two and half hours a week not including the one and a half hours every day he spent writing his own book. He doesn’t know I know but I know, you know.

Heh!

I’m easily amused at times. This is one of those times. Thank God! It's not been a lot of that lately what with the depression and all.

It’s a good thing though getting rated as a manager and I’m not saying that because I actually rated very well, above average, but because I think it’s important as a manager to get feedback on how you’re managing to manage your direct reports. There should be more of it. How you perform as a manager should be part of your performance review.

But I’m a little more worried about something else at the moment and that is the complete lack of a decent hairstyle and clothes.

I’ve decided to grow my hair. Having chopped it off completely after the March breakdown, don’t get me wrong it was a really good idea and it suited me, I have now come full circle and I want my locks back again. Problem is that like Rome long hair is not built in a day. I have to wait. I’m not a patient person. I try to take the stance that what I have now is a completely tolerant other kind of hairstyle, not just and in between kind of hairstyle, but it looks like Princess Di hair on a really bad day. It’s completely lame. What can you do but wait for this stage to pass? I suppose a scarf is a good alternative if all else fails. Maybe I should spend the holidays knitting beanies. Or maybe just give mirrors a miss. Arrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrch!

Although, it can work...

Adding the hair dilemma, and believe you me it's a dilemma, my wardrobe is failing at the moment. Failing to excite. It’s not working for me. I would love some hip vintage dresses rather than just jeans I tend to wear. I would ideally like some vintage dresses that go with Doc Martin boots. This would be a complete fashion faux pas, or more like and epic fail, as we know and it’s impossible to pull off but this is like trying to fight eating chocolate when you’re PMSing. Do not try that at home. Or anywhere. It’s not a good idea trying that anywhere. It’s very likely someone will get hurt. I want to wear Doc Martins with dresses. That’s what I want Santa!

I’m conflicted about the wearing dress thing though because I have big calves and flabby upper arms. I need to lose weight. I’ve been saying that for ages. I even started a page here in October to track my progress only to realize the other day that it’s gone. To where? I don’t know. Maybe it realized it was an embarrassment and shoved off. I don’t know. I do know though that one shouldn’t try to lose weight while in the throes of severe depression. It’s like trying to row a boat up a waterfall.

So for now I will have lame hair, wear jeans and no Doc Martins and I will try my damnedest to be content at the weight I am. I feel better today. I will try to hold on to that because trust me it’s more than something. It’s a lot.

Over and out! I have things to smile about (for once).

I can think again it appears...

2011-12-20T08:18:00.001+11:00

I’m back again. At least for now.

Today my brain is back in the “WTF world?!” mode again and I’m looking around at the BS sprouted at us that we’re supposed to believe and not question. Problem seems to be that most people actually choose to believe and not question. I find that worrying.

I would like to start by saying Windows is dead. Yep. For most of us it comes as a great relief because we’ve been battling with the beast for far too long. Let’s face it. The Windows beast sucks. It may be cheaper to get a PC with Windows than it is getting a Mac but for Christ’s sake realize that you will need to know how it works (and you will need to know magic) or your local PC shop is going to make more money out of you anyway. You should have bought the Mac and realized that you would have a user friendlier system to work with.

I had to make the move from PC to Mac early this year when my laptop (running Windows Vista – I use the term “running” loosely) gave up the ghost because of hardware failure. It had served me well and when I was given a Mac mini to use in lieu of my laptop I snickered and sneered because I was told I would never look back. I stopped snickering, I stopped sneering and I never looked back. My questions for Microsoft are: How can you not make a better system? HOW CAN YOU NOT?

Cars.

We’re lazy, not because we use cars but because we’ve not come up with a more energy efficient means of travel yet. You cannot tell me there’s no better technology out there. You cannot convince me there isn’t. Where is it and how can we get it out there now? If we’re really serious about “saving” the planet we can’t afford to wait. We need to jump on this now.

Here in Sydney if you’re cycling you’re basically seen like some sort of feral animal who takes up space on the road simply to annoy motorists. As a cyclist you will tell people that you cycle to keep fit, get to and from places and to save the environment. We need to encourage more cycling.

Seeing that most of the low skill jobs and to some extent medium level skill jobs are now getting outsourced to Asia how will first world countries be able to sustain their economies? Is it just me or is there a complete lack of planing? Is it a surprise that the EU is falling to bits? It doesn’t seem surprising to me. We cannot afford to sit back and assume that the people we elected are in fact looking out for our best. We cannot allow corporations to run away with profits while less and less money is put back into our economies. We need to open our eyes to what’s happening around us and realize that capitalism is no longer working for us but against us. Time to turn it around folks, and it’s time to turn it around in our favor.

Here in Australia, at least among the people I’m surrounded with there seems to be a lack lustre response to Christmas this year. It’s almost as though people are over spending big and lashing out on gifts and extravaganza. Could it be that we’ve become afraid to open our purses wide open to be raped by retail? Perhaps.

Anywhoos.

Have a good one won’t you? It appears I will for a change.

Lost and Found

2011-12-19T09:46:00.001+11:00

I'm really struggling with my depression. It's not getting any better for now at least. Add to that the fact that my parents don't want to do our customary Christmas call because they have to walk their dogs before they travel to my brothers to celebrate Christmas. Needless to say I now feel rejected by my own family. I was sitting here the other day thinking that I need my family now and perhaps I need to make more of an effort...or something.

The other day I read an article in a Swedish newspaper. It was about domestic violence and the comments (never read the comments unless you want to get mad - rule no. 1) got me so mad I had to comment myself using my Facebook profile.

I was not prepared for the result. At all.

Within a few hours I had received three requests on Facebook from people belonging to the same family. Not actually knowing who they really were I accepted them, something was telling me I should, and as it turns out they are from a part of the family that we didn't know existed until I was in my mid teens (some distant memory of them must have existed for me to accept the requests...). Two of them are my cousins and one of them is the wife of my mother's half brother. They all seemed so happy to have found me.

Today I arrived at work to find the loveliest e-mail from my uncle (said mother's half brother). At a time when I really needed to belong somewhere I'm desperately fighting the urge I have to think I have no business accepting their kind invitation to be part of their family now. They're so happy to get in contact with me - I'm the lost and found - and are tentatively reaching out and simultaneiously worrying about intruding.

But as I said my dears, I sat here and thought I need family just the other day only to have my parents call me and break the news about the phone call.

Do you believe the Universe is listening to you and is ready to help when you need it?

Today I do. Today I really do.

Sometimes it arrives in an unexpected way but it's the still the same wish fulfilled.

Thought stopping

2011-12-16T11:32:00.001+11:00

I find it really hard to write at the moment. Let me say that again: I find it really hard to write at the moment. It’s important that I do though, very important.

When I saw my psychologist last Wednesday she asked me if I had considered journaling or any other form of writing to “get it out”. You know I do. I also told her about my cute little notebook where I write down things about me. Good things. Great things. Wonderful things. Beautiful things. Things contrary to the script that runs in my head.

Fred from the Fred Effect popped over and left me a link to thought stopping. Without really knowing it I’ve begun practising it in a slightly different way.

I’ve noticed that there are a few things that I can do that distract my mind from becoming too occupied with the script (the script that tells me how worthless and god awful I am…). I say “too occupied” because it’s also important for me to sometimes listen to it so I can change it.

The things I find help stopping the script from running:

Yoga
I really enjoy yoga and wouldn’t want to be without it. We’re going to get married because as much as I love yoga, yoga loves me too. The most important thing about yoga when it comes to stopping the script from running is that it’s virtually impossible not to concentrate on what you’re doing when you’re “striking a pose” and breathing your way through holding that pose. Like I said, yoga and I will get married. Soon.

Gaming
Broodwar is my new friend. It’s an old game but it works for me. It’s impossible for the script to run when I play it. I’m too busy being zerg commanding my zerg hoard grinding another zerg hoard into the ground and working my way to an E P I C W I N ! Another bonus is that when I win I feel really good. (If the computer zerg is winning I quit the mission and start a new one. HA! I win either way. Watch me do the victory dance. Do you see me baby? Shaking that ass!) When I start feeling really anxious or down I find that playing a computer game is by far the fastest way of getting myself away from those feelings. Quick diversion tactic then I can go back and start to think differently.

Meh v. Celebration
I’m dividing outcomes into two different categories: Meh and Celebration. Anything that can be seen as a loss is met with a meh and anything that is a win, however small, is celebrated. I’m purposely going about celebrating every damn thing I do that’s even remotely good. Yesterday I celebrated how well I stacked the dishwasher. I was awesome. I wish you could have been there! You would have been super impressed! Now this will eventually become a little demented but for now I really need that much encouragement. Believe it or not.

Thought stopping is probably the next natural step because there will come a time when I will really need to start teaching my mind that I don’t accept the kind of stunts it’s currently pulling on me. In order to change the habit that the negative script is I have to notice the opposite of it as much as I can so I can prove it wrong. We are collecting evidence of the contrary here, mmmmkay? I also have to stop the thought pattern as soon as I notice it beginning to play its little script (See how I made it feel small there? It's because it is! It's nothing to me. Nothing! It's not even the dirt on the soles of my shoe. It's lower on the evolutional scale than doggie do). It takes a lot of work but it’s going to work. You know what I mean. If you don’t go read Fred's thing on thought stopping. It’s useful.

Over and out. I have thoughts to stop.

Strike a pose! Bring me another hoard of zerglings to be sacrificed by my lurkers! Go me!

Love is the answer (in case you wondered)

2011-12-14T18:53:00.003+11:00

I went to see my psychologist today and I'm glad I did. It was a little like doing yoga was yesterday. I didn't feel like doing it but once I had done it I felt better.

I have major depression. You don't get any awards or special recognition for telling me things like that now. I've kind of figured that out. I have a huge gap in my soul and I need to fill it to make my soul whole. You know, like it once was in the beginning. Landfill.

It's not going to happen because someone tells me I'm awesome and smart. Believe you me when I say that my psychologist is my biggest fan but I pay her yo so she ought to be. I kind of like to believe she would be anyway. I think she would be but it's hard for me to believe it. That's how my mind works. Anyway, what worries her is the turn things have taken.

I have no real reason to feel the way I do. I mean, sure I have this really bad manager who's making my life less pleasant but in the big scheme of things it could be a lot worse. I think we can all agree on that. I can certainly agree on that. The fear I feel in relation to my situation is disproportional. The state I'm in is a kind of grieving state. My medical doctor wants to medicate me again. I just want to walk through this fucker once and for all and be done with it. Once and for all because it feels like this has been going on an eternity when it's really just been the last few months that I've been depressed.

My problem is the mood that had descended on me and that is sticking to me like a band aid. It's eating away at my heart and soul, at my very essence, and I want it gone. We're getting a divorce whether it likes it or not.

Love is the answer.

Like I told my psych to day, if I had my way I'd be sitting curled up in a corner having someone, preferably O or Bee or even better both, telling me how much they love me, how awesome I am and how much they have to have me in their lives because they love, love, love me that much. That however would only be a band aid.

You see when there's a lack in one area in your life, when you feel completely unappreciated and hard done by in one area, you run the risk of starting to tax another too much in order to achieve some sort of balance. I could easily bleed them dry and I don't want to do that. What I want is very simple:

I want to become so whole that I don't need the love of others to get me by. The love of others should be the icing on the cake, it should never be the cake. My own love for me has to be the cake. I love cake.

I need the script that is running in my head that's telling me I'm ugly and particularly worthless to be removed once and for all. I have watched it play over and over for the past few weeks and it's amazingly destructive. It's gone viral in my head and it's time to bring in the big guns whatever they are. Is it still possible to buy old Cold War nukes off the Russians and are they still affordable?

I have to stop waiting for someone to save me. No one is going to. There's no magic rescue team that will turn up, apologize for being late and then proceed to get me out of everything that makes me feel bad. It ain't going to happen. I need to get myself out of this....with a bit of help from my friends. You cannot underestimate the help you get from friends but at the end of the day I need to be my own hero. I need to become my own knight in shining armor minus the sex change and take responsibility for my own life.

I need to deal with the whole massively huge issue I have with feeling like no one cares. I have issues. I really do believe that I'm so worthless that no one cares. I'm wrong. I care. A whole bunch of other people care too and not only the people who get paid to do so.

Today the fog lifted a little and I hope tomorrow it will prevail. In the meantime I will be monitoring myself closely, eat right, exercise and remind myself how god damn awesome I am.

Over and out. I have an ego to build.

Opposite and a bit about how I feel right now

2011-12-12T18:03:00.002+11:00

I meant it when I said I had nothing to post about but every time I say something I have to do the opposite just to be.....opposite.

A friend said, when we were still in our teens, that I would be like the old lady who died in the old folktale who was so stubborn she would float upstream when they put her in the river.

I, she claimed wouldn't do it because I was stubborn though (although my mum has always claimed that I am), I she said would do it because I had to explore the opposite to what others found natural. Had she been aware of the term "devil's advocate" she may have used it.

I think she was right.

I'm of the firm opinion that an opinion is just an opinion. One should play with them, exchange them, examine them, debate them, explore them, turn them upside down and inside out, and change them frequently. Opinions are things we have to amuse ourselves with.

This is why I find it hard to post at the moment. That and the fact that I don't have anything inspirational to say. You can only whinge so much about your lot before you feel like you're starting to burden others.

You see I appreciate every reader I get here. I appreciate the comments I get (duh, obviously!) because I love the exchange of opinions and ideas.

I don't like bringing to you week after week of me describing my battle with the beast (aka depression) because it will be how I got out of it that will be nice to post about. I would like to fast forward to that simply because I'm not enjoying this particular phase I'm going through one bit.

I'm discovering though some pretty raw wounds that I have applied to current situations that belong to the past. I need to deal with this be they related to my current condition or not. I need to make myself understand that I'm not the worthless troll I think I am. I can see it but I just can't believe it.

I need to love myself out of this, that's such a cliche but that's exactly what I feel I need to do. I need to once and for all understand that how I feel about myself is just plain wrong. I need to look around me and see more of what others think of me, and that is oddly enough very contrary to how bad I feel about myself.

I'm fortunate my friends in that I have people around me who mirror good back at me and who show appreciation for me. I'm fortunate that I have a good therapist. I'm fortunate to have you dear reader here who when I today posted that I wasn't going to post and felt bitterly disappointed in myself for so many reasons, reassured me and told me it was OK. And this is the hard part to admit, told me that you may even be impatient for my return. It's hard to believe because it's not how I feel about me.

I'm so very grateful I have that now. It helps.

In the end though it's clearly myself that I have to battle with and the beliefs I hold about myself. Maybe the posts will be weird when I post but I hope that someone will recognize themselves, find inspiration, and perhaps even courage, in them because that is what ultimately want when I write. That much has become clear to me.

So it may be sporadic. It may be a little disconnected but like I said, I'm here and I'm reading your blogs. I'm just doing more lurking than participating.

And having said that (refer last post): Thought...

2011-12-12T11:12:00.001+11:00

In our modern society are there only two accepted female roles, I mean generally speaking, and are they the frustrating mother figure or the sexual object?

It sure feels like it at times, like there are no other roles that women can play however much we wish there were.

Yeah, I know. Depressing thought right? But really truly, and this kind of comes down to a lack of role models in other areas than in the ones I mentioned I guess (please argue with me on this one!), isn't it damned hard to feel that you are anything else but those two?

I'm not Disappearing - I'm really just Battling my Depression

2011-12-12T07:18:00.001+11:00

Depression not only makes me boring but it also makes me quiet. It's becoming a full time job monitoring my own thoughts just so I can weed my mental garden. It’s really important that I do. It’s like now or never.

I refuse to up my dose of meds. I don’t believe in that stuff except for in emergencies. I don’t believe I can be in a state of emergency for almost a year. If a state of emergency of this kind lasts longer than three months it’s a habit. Habits are there to be changed. And so are beliefs.

So, with the risk of sounding like I’m trying to not just be like but become Tony Robbins, I’m choosing to look at this as an opportunity. I’m forced to dive into the messy wardrobe that is my mind and I’m finding some really interesting and useless stuff in there. And I’m finding gaps.

Various out-of-fashion and ill-fitting beliefs are hanging about like they actually belong there and they’re the kind of stuff that should never be worn. Ever! I hate paisley and they’re paisley.

Various habits and beliefs that could possibly be worn again with a bit of modification have been identified and hung on a separate rack. They need attention and won’t be worn until they’ve had it.

Some cool vintage thoughts that definitely suit me have lovingly been brushed off and put aside to be worn again, every day no matter what the occasion.

New additions have been identified and work is currently underway to procure these additions and if I manage to fix getting them I should be happy and whole in no time.

In the meantime it seems I will be posting and commenting less but please know I’m not far away. I’m just having a serious debate with myself as to what to wear mentally. It’s not worth writing about.

Cause for Concern

2011-12-09T07:16:00.004+11:00

I worry far too much. I mean I worry all the time. It’s not good for me. Or so I’m told.

I’ve decided that as a means of trying to help myself worry less that I will define a list of things that are worth worrying about. The small things, like will there be enough potato salad for everyone to have with Christmas lunch, should I make the traditional Swedish herring-beetroot salad for the lunch even though I will be the only one eating it and is it OK to wear black nail polish at my age, well those things are quite frankly not worth worrying about.

So, currently my short list of things that are worth worrying about looks something like this, it’s a draft so it’s subject to change, but this is it for now:

You’re suffering from a rare form of leprosy which has caused you to lose both your legs and you can’t afford a wheel chair. You’re trying to dial for pizza but your fingers keep coming off because they get stuck to the phone keys.

Someone has lost their head, literally, and you caused it to happen when you were swinging the samurai sword you for some odd reason were given for Christmas. Your mum’s really pissed about the mess but you’re more worried about the whole prison-dropped soap-shower thing.

The sky has fallen down on you, literally, because unlike in the Asterix and Obelix adventures where people just worry about it and it never happens it did actually happen to you. It’s your turn to do the cleaning and you wouldn’t even know how to start. There’s sky and space junk everywhere!

Your Siamese cat has embraced white supremacy and is making demands that you kill your two black cats immediately preferably by gassing them. He is gathering other cats in the backyard and they’re working on some sort of manifesto.

Your two black cats are in negotiation with the guys who made the Nuremburg trials happen and they want you to pay their solicitors fee. They’re threatening to involve the UN if you don’t.

The internet is down and your ISP is refusing to take your calls.

You wake up one morning and realize you’re the captain of a slave ship doing a run between Africa and America, only you’re black and you’re transporting whities to Africa to become slaves to be used in the local farming industry. Knowing what you know about the whole African-American thing you’re faced with a moral dilemma that threatens to cause you a nervous breakdown. There’s no Xanax on the ship and you’re out of rum.

Your meth lab blows up and now everyone knows you’ve been supplementing your income. The tax department wants their slice of the profits and rival gangs are shooting through the windows of what’s left of your house. Your kid tells you they’re ashamed of you.

You wake up one morning to realize that you’re a man trapped in a woman’s body or vice versa. You don’t know how to break the news to your spouse or partner. Not the news about being a man trapped in a woman’s body or vice versa but the fact that you’re going to have to charge your sex change operation on your joint visa card.

There’s no peanut butter.

...I feel this is going to work for me you know.

Edit:
Another thing worth worrying about....
This year Santa Claus actually turns up and not only is he pissed that you don't have a proper chimney, and all the arguments you make about living in Australia where chimneys aren't really needed seem to fall on deaf ears, but he's also royally peeved about you having bought gifts for people who are on his naughty list. You're D I S R E S P E C T E D Santa's authoritae! You think you're worrying now...

C oM m u NiCa Ti oN

2011-12-07T07:12:00.002+11:00

There are many situations in my life past, present and probably future in which I have ended up feeling like I’m not being treated right. It usually manifests as anger at the person I perceive has having done me wrong but when the situation is more difficult, when I can’t easily separate myself from the person, I usually end up feeling distress and/or depressed especially if the person is someone I care about. Let’s face it, when someone you care about does the dirty on you, you end up feeling like crap.

There’s no real protection from this happening to you as far as I can. Most of the time in these kinds of situations there is a lack of effective communication and a lack of empathy. If it’s a close relationship there is bound to be a lot of hurt involved. A lot of the time you end up going separate ways when this happens.

It’s amazing how poorly we understand each other and it’s even more amazing how poorly we communicate. It has to be the reason for conflict 99.99% of the time and it’s only later we have those aha-moments when we realize that what we heard may not have been what was said.

I wish I could tell you how to prevent it from happening but if it’s already happening to you then it’s probably too late in the game to intervene. It’s extremely hard to turn a situation like that around unless you decide to involve someone else.

When you can’t effectively communicate with someone what you need is more than likely someone to sit there with you who can objectively look at what’s going on. It’s no use trying to squish your own feelings down to the bottom of your toes in an attempt to pretend everything is fine. There has to be a way for you to express what you feel with the clear understanding the no party involved at that particular stage is thinking clear.

It’s when you can’t do that, or you don’t get the opportunity to do that, that things escalate and it’s probably the most common reason for break ups.

What does this tell us? It tells us that for all the education we’re getting and for all the wealth we have we are not getting educated or are not wealthy in the area of effective communication. We don’t feel safe expressing ourselves and we are not taught how to do it.

The most important gift you can give others this Christmas is learning to communicate effectively. Don’t forget that communication includes listening. Don’t forget that sometimes we all say things we don’t’ mean and don’t forget that when someone needs a hugs it’s really good communication to give it to them.

Let’s be nice to each other this Christmas. Let’s communicate a little, eh?

I'm just saying.

I’m adding this song because it fits my mood today….no other reason really.

Tony Robbins style like

2011-12-06T18:33:00.000+11:00

No my head isn't where it should be and I'm angry. I'm angry at 2011 and all the hassle it's given me.

It's good to have a scapegoat, something or someone to blame and some way that makes sure you don't blame yourself.

I don't prescribe to victim mentality. I don't feel victimized. I have watched people enough to realize the difference between people who never get hassled and people who do.

I have a fundamental problem with the balancing act of trying to be a professional woman and not being a doormat. I tend towards the doormat because I like being good and liked. I want to be professional because that's what I'm good at.

I have a problem with being told that I'm a bitch when I stand up for myself. I have a problem with people who can't have a discussion or argument without making it too personal. I have a problem with not being allowed to negotiate. Am I a control freak? I don't think so but I've been called it during arguments (but I don't think statements said in anger qualify as truths).

I'm still waiting for an outcome from the complaint I made about my manager. I don't like my chances at this stage but I don't want to give up. That would be a bad thing at this stage.

I'm done with the self help treadmill stuff but I can't help thinking that I need to change something. Like Tony Robbins type change something. I don't want to have to put up with people treating me like I'm a nong or some sort of subordinate little thing who shouldn't speak.

How does one learn what one needs to learn not to have that happen all the time?

The world is full of people who treat other people bad. They do it because they're scared, because it gives them the advantage and for many other reasons.

I run a real risk of feeling pathetic here. I have allowed myself to be subjected to bullying in one form or another for most of my life but I just don't want to cop it any more. I have a real problem with allowing it to continue and I have an even larger problem with being told that I should tolerate it. Be it in the workplace or anywhere else it's just not OK. Isn't that what we keep telling ourselves?

Like I said in a previous post of late, I don't know how this latest action I have decided to take will pan out. I've made another appointment with my psychologist next Wednesday should things go haywire and I think no matter how it turns out it is a good thing that I did. I need to have my head sorted.

In the meantime though I will be having a think about how to change my life Tony Robbins style like. Where there's a will there's a way they say. I have the will. Time to find the way.

Don’t let the bastards get you down

2011-12-06T08:52:00.001+11:00

No really. Don’t!

I’ve ended up in a situation where my psychologist and my doctor don’t want to sign off my medical certificate to close my Workcover claim. I would like it to be closed so I can to put all the having the breakdown business behind me because I think it’s of psychological importance to me. It would be a psychological line drawn in the subconscious sand.

My doctor and my psychologist don’t want to close the case because even though I was moved out from under the manager who caused my breakdown I’m not in a situation where my current manager is causing another problem: depression. In other words, the cause of anxiety is removed from me, I have fulfilled my obligations when it comes to my recovery but I’m in a new situation where health professional feel there’s a risk I will break down again.

My current manager is a scared little guy who micromanages people. He thinks nothing of making others look bad and has a tendency to repeat private conversations to others. He’s taken to completely bypass me in an effort to, I suspect, show me that I’m not needed which has caused a number of hours of work to be done for no good reason and on the odd occasion complete confusion.

I knew he was like this. I’ve worked with the man for five years. I was hoping when I was moved in under him that he would have changed or that my situation would allow me some sort of reprieve but instead he began some sort of upmanship with me. I finally lost my block with him last Thursday because every interaction I have with this man is negative, i.e. he won’t talk to me, his direct report, unless he wants to criticize me.

This is a man who doesn’t know company procedures. This is a man who’s protected by his manager and I’m told this is because they’re personal friends. This is a man who treats people who aren’t submissive enough badly by leaving them out of the information loop, by only talking to them about negative things and by stopping them from taking steps to improve things unless he gets credit for it. He undermines direct reports who have direct reports, i.e. in my case he has stopped talking to me so he can give my direct reports direct orders.

He is everything I believe a manager shouldn’t be.

He is also not terribly bright.

Friday I decided not to let the bastard get me down. I reported his conduct towards me, I reported three other incidents that are in serious breach of company policy and did so because I cannot recover fully while under the thumb of this person. I told on him. Basically.

I don’t know what will happen now. I know that it’s making me incredibly nervous because I had a full on panic attack on the way one yesterday afternoon. I don’t feel weak. I do feel very annoyed. I’m sick of being stepped on and not being allowed to feel like a full person. I’m sick of being told that no one feels like a full person and others are treated like this too. I want this to stop and I want some good damn easy cruising and happy. Now. Please.

I'm not gone

2011-12-05T18:06:00.003+11:00

...I'm just dealing with a bit of corporate crap right now, the aftermath, and hopefully tail end of my Workcover claim.

I will tell you about it.

But first I will sleep.

Because I'm very tired nowadays.

Tired of corporate crap.

I went out swinging and I hope I hit them in all the right places.

No words needed

2011-12-05T11:46:00.002+11:00

Cold

2011-12-01T07:26:00.002+11:00

I’m wearing a cold. I refuse “have it” as it would be accepting it as being part of me so I’m wearing it. Or it has somehow just attached itself to me. It’s following me around like a little dog suffering from separation anxiety.

Wearing the cold has made me spend time worrying about getting laryngitis because even though I‘m just wearing the cold it has that kind of power over me. It makes me do things I wouldn’t normally do. I used to get laryngitis every year and it always shut me up for a good three days at least. I tried to look at it like a vacation from talking but it was really more like a form of torture.

Wearing a cold sucks. You’re not sick enough to bunker down in bed and just sleep, or to sit through a Sex in City marathon while camping out on your couch.

You’re sick enough however to feel out of sorts, be listless and begin to suspect that you’re wearing a polystyrene box over your head. Your hearing is impaired and your eyes feel like they’re a size too big for the sockets they so happily inhabited just days before. Your nose produces so much snot that you have no doubt that when they say there’s a water shortage they’re telling the truth. You know because it’s all in your nose and your discarded tissues. Suddenly your life is all about having the next hanky or tissue ready.

You spray god knows what chemicals up your nose in an attempt to stem the flow and keep your airways free. You’re snorting that stuff like you would meth if you were an addict (which I sincerely hope you’re not because meth’s nasty shit). You curse the bastards who make meth because they’re the ones who made Sudafed hard to get and requiring you to show ID when you buy it. You never carry your ID around with you because you only have a cold once a year.

There’s not enough tea or water in the world to keep you from feeling like you’ve been crawling through a desert for days. You could try juice but it just gets weird because your tastebuds are on strike. Eating becomes about texture not taste.

You become an outcast. You’re not sick enough to stay home so you front up to the office with your cold in tow. You look like Rudolf the Red nosed Reindeer because of all the times you’ve blown your nose and it doesn’t matter how much you keep telling people it’s cute because it’s seasonal, they still shun you like you had a rare form of ultra-contagious leprosy.

You can’t wait for it to end but you know what’s coming next: your kid will get it too and kids are a little like men when it comes to being sick. When they get sick it’s sooooo much worse than when you do and so the games begin again.

I suppose it could be worse. I suppose it could have been leprosy.

In which I shamelessly spam a friend's brand new blog

2011-11-29T14:44:00.000+11:00

A friend of mine, a colleague in the US really, was recently persuaded (by me) to start her own blog.

She, like me, is a technical writer who is sick of the corporate world and would like to go into something more meaningful. In her case it's holistic healing and nutrition.

She's a great lady and she knows her stuff. When I checked into her blog today there were three posts.

The Future of Mankind

You should go check it out.

You should totally check it out.

In which I have nothing to say - again!

2011-11-28T17:56:00.000+11:00

I'm tired. I can't remember the last time I actually felt this prepared to sleep. It's almost like I'm relaxed and just kind of rolling with it. I'm almost starting to see something of the old me, you know the old me that could easily sleep in to lunch unless the roof feel down on her.

There's something else that seems to be wanting to return. I used to have the most amazing ability to daydream. I would just slip into it and take off on my little adventures but somewhere along the line Corporate 1.0 was installed and it's not compatible with daydreaming so it had to give. I'm slowly finding my way back, it's a kind of crawling thing and it's not going to happen in a hurry.

I don't have any rants to share and there's really nothing upsetting me in the world today. I'll just let it go on without me keeping track on it for a while. It seems to be doing alright. Even Kyle Sandilands looks like he's finally falling out of favor with the people. If you were in Australia you would know why it's important that he does.

I'll be back with thoughts. When my brain decide to come back from vacation.

An Eschatological Laundry List - A partial register of the 927 (or was it 928?) Eternal Truths

2011-11-25T16:59:00.003+11:00

1.   This is it!
2.   There are no hidden meanings.
3.   We can't get there from here, and besides there's no place else to go.
4.   We are all already dying, and we will be dead for a long time.
5.   Nothing lasts.
6.   There is no way of getting all you want.
7. You can't have anything unless you let go of it.
8.   You only get to keep what you give away.
9.   There is no particular reason you lost out on some things.
10. The world is not necessarily just. Being good often does not pay off and there is no compensation for
      misfortune.
11. You have a responsibility to do your best nonetheless.
12. It is a random universe to which we bring meaning.
13. You don't really control anything.
14. You can't make anyone love you.
15. No one is stronger or weaker than anyone else.
16. Everyone is, in their own way, vulnerable.
17. There are no great men.
18. If you have a hero, look again: you have diminished yourself in some way.
19. Everyone lies, cheats, pretends (yes, you too, and most certainly myself).
20. All evil is potential vitality in need of transformation.
21. All of you is worth something, if you only will own it.
22. Progress is an illusion.
23. Evil can be displaced but never eradicated, as all solutions breed new problems.
24. Yes it is necessary to keep on struggling toward solution.
25. Childhood is a nightmare.
26. But it is so very hard to be an on-your-own, take-care-of-yourself-cause-there-is-no-one-else-to-do-
      it-for-you grown-up.
27. Each of us is ultimately alone.
28. The most important things, each of us most do for themselves.
29. Love is not enough, but it sure helps.
30. We have only ourselves, and one another. That may not be much, but there's all there is.
31. How strange, that so often, it all seems worth it.
32. We must live within the ambiguity of partial freedom, partial power, and partial knowledge.
33. All important decisions must be made on the basis of insufficient data.
34. Yet we are responsible for everything we do.
35. No excuses will be accepted.
36. You can run but you can't hide.
37. It is most important to run out of scapegoats.
38. We must learn the power of living with our helplessness.
39. The only victory lies in surrender to oneself.
40. All of the significant battles are waged within the self.
41. You are free to do whatever you like. you need only face the consequences.
42. What do you know...for sure...anyway?
43. Learn to forgive yourself, again and again and again and again...

Sleep

2011-11-25T08:06:00.001+11:00

I suffered from insomnia.

I remember those days.

Like it was yesterday.

Because it was like yesterday!!! (The blatant overuse of ! denotes that I'm going through some sort of emotional ordeal because of the situation. I just don't overuse ! unless things have gotten really bad.)

In the space of, mmmm, a week I have gone from having to use all sorts of sneaky methods to make myself sleep to hitting the pillow and sleeping through the whole night. Which usually means I wake up busting to pee because some of us still haven't learned that it's not a good thing to drink a lot at night.

Yes mum, I know you told me decades ago. You are right. I am wrong.

I love sleeping. I really do. Although the whole dreaming thing can get a little complicated. I don't enjoy having a whole night of dreaming of disemboweling. I know I watched a David Lynch movie before going to bed but COME ON! I like dreams that are made of fluffy bunnies and kittens, and the occasional unicorn. Oh, and at least half of the male cast in True Blood.

I remember a time when I used to nudge O all the time because he was snoring. When he's snoring it's sleeping with a grizzly bear with a cold. Between grizzly bear and its left leg, a leg that sometimes get possessive and decides that my right leg belongs to it, I had a hard time getting shut eye.

Not so anymore.

I now put on my little beanie, it was one of the little tricks I used to make myself sleep, and I disappear for the night and travel to places in my dreams where Stephen King would shit his pants if he was with me. But he's not and I don't care. The dreams don't even bother me to be honest. (I'm really all that desensitized. I sat through Blair Witch and I came out a changed woman - and I didn't pee myself even once!)

I would love to go back to bed now. It's my day off and it's winter weather out. It's November in Sydney, Australia and we had the heater on last night. Global warming?! My Dad is right. Someone's made a mistake. Al? Can we talk about this please? I'm a little confused.

(And don't give me all those scientific explanations about how it all works and it gets colder in some places but it's still global warming and we should be in an ice age now and you're making me tired with all that stuff and you're making me want to sleep!!)

I have to go clean now. As I'm renting my house we have a house inspection today and I have two hours to get things ready.

Then I will sleep. Maybe.

Or Christmas shop. I have figure out what grizzly bears like.

In which I talk more about depression

2011-11-23T08:57:00.003+11:00

Judging by a couple of the comments on my last post and by what I’ve seen as a sort of general trend when I’ve done my rounds in the blogosphere and the internet there a lot of people who attribute their depression as a result of being burnt out or generally as being in the corporate environment.

I have a sneaking suspicion that there will be more posts coming about that in the future because it’s a pet subject of mine. I have a lot of thoughts when it comes to how the corporate world is affecting us even if we’re not directly in it on a Monday to Friday basis.

More importantly today is that if you’re in a situation where you find yourself suffering from depression as a result of your work you’re not alone. Nor are you alone if you suffer from depression for any other reason. Not being alone doesn’t make you less special, your pain more average or your situation less dire. As anyone who has ever tangoed with the black dog knows, depression is very real and it can be a completely debilitating condition. Most often you will need help if the black dog has taken to stalking you. Most often you will need to talk about it…with someone.

That’s why I started posting about it. We need to shine a light on the black dog so it’s not looking so much like a nasty old wolf but rather more like a misbehaving black Labrador that we can teach to behave again.

I’ve made no secret of my breakdown. I’ve talked about it here and I still talk about it. I will admit that I was a little unprepared for the depression that followed but it’s not the first time I’ve been diagnosed as suffering from depression. The first time was back in 1999 when I was diagnosed with postnatal depression.

What particularly bothers me now is that there seems to be a lot of depression about that is a direct result of work. In my own case suffering from depression that is more than likely to a large extent as a result of work, a work injury in fact, is a huge blow.

For me work was for the longest time the most stable part of my life. While my relationships were tumultuous and abusive I could always count on work. I was always good at what I did, I was always a bit of an overachiever and I always got good feedback even from people that I didn’t really get along with. (Like the born again Christian boss I had whose sole purpose of being at work seemed to be to blackmail his direct reports into joining his church.)

Suddenly I was in a situation where work was hurting me.

I see a kind of pattern in the people who have ended up having nervous breakdowns and suffering from depression as a result of work. They seem to be overachievers. They’re the people who will go the extra mile and who are a manager’s dream in many ways because they manage their own performance and correct behaviors when needed. The challenge with managing people like that is the need to emphasize that they’re doing a really good job, not taking it for granted, and to get them to acknowledge that there is a need to balance work with life.

I believe that one of the reason corporations are talking about work/life balance is that research has shown that it’s not good for people to concentrate on work too much. The people who tend to take work more seriously than their life outside of work are great for corporations. What’s not good for the corporation is to have conditions from which workers are suffering attributed to their work environment. It’s Catch 22.

More needs to be done to emphasize the need to look after the self and to create a self that isn’t so dependent on work. If you, like me, identify everything good about you with your work then you can be is serious risk of ending up in a very bad place mentally should you lose your job or should your situation at work change for the worse (i.e. you’re placed under a manager that is not sympathetic to you or the work you do). Our self needs to lie somewhere independent of work and even of others. That’s why it’s called Self.

Years ago when I saw a therapist as a result of a very messy marriage she suggested that there were two parts of me. One was a positive part that reaffirmed all the good about me and the other was a very negative part that spent a lot of time spouting negative self-talk. She asked me to make lists of what the two “voices” were saying and bring them to our next session which was two weeks away.

I never got to writing the negative list properly because as I started I realizing what utter crap it all was. Everything I wrote down seemed to have been tailor made to bring me down and some of it was so absurd I couldn’t believe it was coming from my mind. I didn't want to make it more real by giving it a more concrete form on paper.

Before I went back to see the therapist I began to see this part of me that was talking negative as a separate part of myself. I began visualizing it and it became a little girl who I named Alice. Alice was beautiful on the outside but utterly vile, nasty and vicious on the inside. I would visualize myself kicking the crap out of Alice but in the end I realized that this part of me, as unpleasant as it was and as much as it was out to hurt me, had been born out of a need to be loved so I made peace with Alice and loved her out of existence. According to the therapist this was a very healthy way of dealing with it.

I was reminded of Alice today when Angie Uncovered wrote about her inner whore Roxanne. In my case Alice is kind of back but she’s not a little girl anymore and her negative talk is a little more sophisticated than the last time she was around.

So this morning as I couldn’t get a particular song out of my head – Sonia Dada’s You don’t treat me no good no more – and I began changing the words to the song and it became a song about Alice. I thought I would share it with you.

First the original song courtesy of Youtube, in case you slept through the 90s and missed this one hit wonder, and below that my changed lyrics.

Have a good day out there folks. You deserve it!

Well the truth, well it hurts to say
I'm gonna pack up your bags and you’re gonna go away
You’re gonna split, I can't stand you
You’re gonna give it up and quit and ain’t never come back

Girl but before you get ta going, I've got to say,
I know you used to bug me but that was yesterday,
And the truth, I won't fight it,
When the sadness is too much you got to do what's right.

Woh-oh Alice Alice Alice, you don't treat me no good at all,
Woh-oh, woh-oh Alice, Alice Alice, you don't treat me no good at all,

Well the truth, well it hurts to say
I'm gonna pack up your bags and you’re gonna go away
You’re gonna split, I can't stand you
You’re gonna give it up and quit and ain’t never come back

Girl but before you get ta going, I've got to say,
I know you used to bug me but that was yesterday,
And the truth, I won't fight it,
When the sadness is too much you got to do what's right.

But before you get ta going, I've got to say,
There was a time, oh Alice, when you used make me fear you,
but now, all you do is just leave me cold,
Aint gonna take it no more, you gonna walk out the door,

Woh-oh Alice Alice Alice, you don't treat me no good at all,
no good no at all at all at all at all
Alice Alice Alice you don't treat me good at all,
yeah yeah yeah yeah

Alice Alice Alice you don't treat me no good at all
(repeated in unison with rest of song and to end)

Well you’d wait up for me almost every night
and I'm hurting so bad ‘cause you don't treat me right
oh Alice, oh Alice you know I don’t need you so
‘cause you're so mean to me baby, now I'm showing you the door,
oh Alice over, oh Alice, yeah-yeah

Woh-oh Alice Alice Alice you don't treat me no good at all

I know you that you hurt me in every way
so now I’m giving it up, I’m tired of crying my babe
I can't stand it no longer, it hurts me to say,
but I’m packing up you bags and you’re going far away,

oh Alice, yeah-yeah
woh-oh, woh-oh Alice Alice Alice you don’t treat me no good at all
woh-oh Alice Alice Alice you don’t treat me no good at all
(you don’t treat me good at all)
Alice Alice Alice you don’t treat me no good at all
(you don’t treat me good at all)

Alice Alice Alice you don’t treat me no good at all
(you don’t treat me good at all)
Alice Alice Alice you don’t treat me no good at all

If you want to be the best, you must... lose... your... mind

2011-11-22T11:25:00.002+11:00

No, the topic is in no way related to the topic of this post. No really. I mean it.

Some of you were here with me when I lost my mind and my grip on reality, and I began to relate to my manager at work with the same fondness one would a T-Rex. No really, that is how I felt. She was a T-Rex, I was going to die and she was the one who was going to kill me. I didn’t literally believe all that but that’s how I felt.

I realized, even at the height of the breakdown (or should that be the lowest point?), that I was going through something that distorted my reality profoundly. It took me longer to figure out why my mind had a meltdown and the cause of it.

I think most breakdowns occur when you’re faced with something that conflicts with your own beliefs to the point that you can’t match facts with those beliefs. If you believe something strongly and you suddenly have irrefutable proof in front of you of something contradictory then you’re going to have some trouble reconciling things in your mind.

I’ve figured out what caused my breakdown and that was a huge step for me. It was a very important step. It made my recovery easier. I was so glad when the penny finally dropped.

It’s not over for me yet it seems. I have apparently been left suffering with something related and that’s depression. I think I can safely say that I’m suffering from depression. If I go and read a list of depression symptoms I pretty much tick all the boxes.

I regard myself fortunate that I know enough to realize that it is depression and that it’s not me. It’s my dark passenger, the black dog that shadows my every step, the little black cloud hovering over me every step I take.

It’s not me. It’s something I suffer from. It colors my work, my relationships and my outlook.

I’m currently on a very low dose of mirtazapine. I was put on mirtazapine so I could sleep and I decided to cut down a few months ago because it didn’t help me sleep anymore and I was experiencing severe bouts of sadness.

I know it will pass but I don’t how it will pass. I know I’m blessed because I have so much going for me. I’m afraid and I’m very sad most of the time. I know this is not me. I know that’s the depression.

I will not, if I can help it, get on other medication to help with the depression. My aim is to get through this and find the root cause. I believe there is a root cause. I believe my depression is a symptom of perhaps something I haven’t dealt with. I have a very strong sense that there’s something I have to break free from, something from the past.

If you have suffered from depression I would love your input. I would love to hear from you, leave comments, because I know more and more people who are feeling depressed and who are getting that diagnose. I’m interested in hearing who people cope with it and what they do to find their way out of the darkness again.

Name's Barf. I'm a Mog, half man half dog. I'm my own best friend

2011-11-21T20:33:00.000+11:00

I feel decidedly much too serious and I completely lack a sense of humor at the moment. Not one funny thought went through my head today to entertain. As I sat there and played with Sharepoint all day at work, and I use the word play loosely, I resorted to watching documentaries about serial killers on Youtube.

They're not funny. I'm just saying.

So basically I need to chill and relax and stop being so serious.

The world is serious enough as it is.

What we need now is a clown.

I came here to build a bridge

2011-11-21T18:12:00.002+11:00

I did set up that third worm farm and it was at the end of setting it up, in the finishing phase like, that I came to realize that I was missing one important ingredient:

Enough worms.

The simple solution to a lack of worm is to get more worms. You can wait for the worms to make more worms which they will especially in the warmer months. If you're a little impatient like I am, apparently, then you find a place that sells them and you buy some more which is how I've come to sit here and wait for 2000 little beauties of five varieties and 1000 eggs (which hatch within three weeks and take six weeks to mature) to arrive.

You're not going to believe this but when I was living in the actual city I used to own a business that sold worms to the local council. I was a worm farmer. We had 25 working factories in our little concrete backyard.

Food for the worms came mainly from a local fruit and veg shop that was more than happy for us to take old veg for our worms in return for some of the castings to use with their own plants in their homes. Sometimes they would even leave us a tray or two of plums that were too ripe to sell. Worms love sweets. I bet you didn't know that!

I'm hoping that my next project will be to grow some corn. I like the idea of growing something we can eat!

Apaches, Captain! The hills are swarmin' with 'em

2011-11-20T12:06:00.002+11:00

The heat is pressing in Sydney, Australia this weekend. Thank goodness O went and got new ice cube trays. Ice cube trays that make ice cubes that look like space invaders.

I'm tired but I still set up another worm farm this morning and am currently contemplating setting up a third. I already had one that I started last year.

We compost all of our organic matter and the compost heap is a hap hazard heap that we just throw things on. I dug around in it this morning to find some earth to put in the new farm, accidentally chopped a huge earth worm in half which upset me a bit and irritated a whole bunch of flies who obviously consider it to be a five star restaurant. I was half expecting the heap to start talking and begging for mercy when I first put the shovel in it. It's teaming with life.

Have any of you out there got worm farms that you feed your compost waste through?

Hello, hello, hello. Is that the clinic?

2011-11-18T14:43:00.000+11:00

It's Friday. I've decided to name it Finally Friday.

This week I discovered how to stretch time. Apparently.

Intrinsic value

2011-11-18T04:36:00.000+11:00

Intrinsic value is:

The actual value of a security, as opposed to its market value of book value.

or

The amount by which a call option is in the money, calculated by taking the strike price and the market price of the underlier.

I don't claim to understand any of that. It's investor talk. It's also what you get if you google "intrinsic value". I told I was going to have to come back to it.

My worry is that applying terms that are quite clearly based in investing and marketing to people is really eroding humans being. I think it really devalues us. We are not numbers.

I'm going to have to circle back to this one again and I try to figure out that the equivalent of "intrinsic value" is when applied to humans, why it's important to have and how you go about getting it.

That's for a later post though. Not right now.

America, America – we have your president (we promise that no harm will come to him)

2011-11-17T07:49:00.002+11:00

I was out in the kitchen fixing myself the first cup of coffee for the day. That is, to be precise, the first cup of coffee at work for the day.

Anyway.

The TV was on in the general lunch area and I caught a glimpse of it. Kind citizens of the USA, apparently we have your president. The President of the USA. He’s visiting apparently.

It’s just by sheer fluke I realized that he’s here now. I’m not paying attention. Not to that sort of thing anyway. Apparently.

Apparently the English Queen and her main squeeze Phillip were here a few weeks ago too. I kind of missed out on paying attention to that too which is why I have little to say about it. I saw the Queen back in the 90s. In her car. My puppy dog and I waved to her. I’m sure she thought that my Cattledog pup was a Corgi. She seemed excited.

I saw the Pope too. Not the German one (I don’t like him), the other one (I liked him). He didn’t seem excited.

I would have completely missed out on knowing that the Swedish princess Birgitta, she’s the Swedish king’s sister for the uninitiated, was visiting Australia recently had it not been for my partner’s father who kindly told me then proceeded to find a local newsrag, with a picture and all, so I could be part of it all. Exciting times!

Anyway.

I swear I have ADD. I just can’t keep my thoughts straight.

I remember posting a pic on my blog the last time our prime minister and Obama met. Y’all don’t mind if I call him that, do you? It’s a catchy name!

The picture was of Julia (she’s ours so I can call her by her first name) and Obama (it is a catchy name!) playing football in the oval office. I think they were tossing an Aussie rules ball around and I couldn’t help thinking “Wanna play ball Julia? Here! Fetch the ball Julia!”

I’m not saying our prime minister is a dog but it just seemed so out of place.

Look! A chicken!

No, it’s not. That’s all in my mind.

Anyway.

There’s apparently been no ball play this time around. There’s what seems to be the obligatory photo in the office though.

I can’t help thinking that we could have done this better. I know what you people think the Aussies are like and as such I think we should have given it to you. It’s only fair.

I want to see pictures of Obama in Julia’s backyard with her partner Tim wearing an apron and throwing a few shrimp on the barbie. And we would call them shrimp just so all y’all wouldn’t be confused by our provincial weird way of speaking the English language.

I believe in giving people what they want and I think they want Aussies to barbeque. Ever since Paul Hogan, remember him, he was Crocodile Dundee, did that ad for all y’all over there you’ve come to expect barbeques. We should stick to that because it’s less confusing.

“Where’s the President now?

“I don’t know. Wait! They’re showing him in some backyard at a barbeque.”

“Aah. Australia!”

It’s not too late, I hope, to save this whole circus from becoming Cirque du Désastre. I’m sure Julia’s neighbors wouldn’t mind nicking down to the butcher’s to procure some snags. The neighbourhood ladies could surely whip up some coleslaw to go with them.

We can do this Australia! We can fail to disappoint!

I’m just saying.

Unless of course you think that the fact that a fullscale US Marine force was given the green light to conduct its own war games on Australian soil for the first time, under a new military agreement signed yesterday is more interesting.

I would totally understand.

Things I think may be useful to develop a positive outlook

2011-11-16T12:37:00.003+11:00

I tend to make a distinction between positive attitude and positive outlook. It’s more than likely because I’ve got a bit fed up with the whole positive attitude cult. At the same time I know, God do I know, that having a positive outlook in life does helps you enormously.

Here are some of my tips for whatever it is worth:

Pay attention to your internal dialogue. If the majority of your thoughts are negative, especially if they’re about you, then you need to do something if you want to improve the way things are for you. Some people recommend making a list out of the negative thoughts then rewriting them and keep doing this until your negative list gets down to a more reasonable size.

If you’re having trouble communicating, then do what you have to do to learn. Not saying how we feel can lead to frustration, anger, anxiety and hurt. Find ways to communicate more effectively both with yourself and with others.

Get back to basics. Stop trying to do it all and do more of the things you really enjoy doing. Reconnect with friends, for a walk, visit an art gallery or read a favorite book.

Spend time somewhere you’re guaranteed to see people worse of then you are. A friend used to go sit in the shopping centre during the day when he was out of a job because he would always see people who were quite clearly worse off than he was. He claims that it made a huge difference when it comes to how he felt about his own situation.

Learn to let things be. There are things, situations and there are people we can change. There are a lot more things, a lot more situations and a lot more people we can’t change. It’s easier to change how you look at things, your outlook, than it is to change things that are outside of you.

Allow love in your life. Loving and being loved are basic human needs and when we do it makes it easier to combat emotions born out of fear.

Laugh. Trawl youtube for stand up acts or whatever else makes you giggle. Have a great big laugh at it all.

Exercise and eat healthy foods.

Read blogs. Yep, I know I don’t have to tell you that but just in case you’re wondering why you do it I can tell you why. Blogs are often very inspirational and you can learn so much from reading about others’ experiences.

These are just some of the things that are off the top of my head.

Outlook is to an extent a matter of choice and it is something you can work at changing so it works for you and not against you. Sometimes it’s hard work but it pays off in the end.

I’m just saying.

On being positive in the workplace

2011-11-15T19:59:00.004+11:00

There’s been a lot of talk about being positive lately and I have my own little opinions about the usefulness of being positive at all cost…

Google is my friend and yesterday I googled (don’t you just love how it’s become an accepted verb?) “being positive in the workplace”, a favourite topic of mine possibly of all time.

I found some handy tips at http://www.rezamaze.com/ by way of the article The top ten ways to be positive in the workplace of life by BZ Riger-Hull, Certified Success Coach. He/she should know what he/she is talking about.

I’ve taken the liberty to quote some of the bits out of the article and adding my own comments because I think we need to think critically about the whole thinking positive cult. If it’s so good it should stand up to scrutiny, shouldn’t it?

Please keep in mind, when reading my comments (the quoted parts are in italic), that I’m grouchy and I really feel completely at ease with pointing an accusing finger at the world and blaming it for just about anything.

Ready? OK. Let’s go.

“There is a growing volume of research that shows’ staying positive is better for your health; you can cope better with stress.”

There’s also plenty of research showing that putting a lid on your feelings and pretending that you’re feeling positive works to some extent but that it also can be very harmful and can leave you feeling disempowered. We all know that having a great big whinge to a friend is a great relief and does reduce stress. My therapist thinks along these lines but that’s maybe because she makes her living listening to people whinging…

“It’s better for relationships; you keep from judging people and getting the bad habit of gossiping.”

I’m a little confused by this one to be honest because it seems to be directed mostly towards the people who don’t have a lot of power in the workplace. Every worker who has KPOs (key performance objectives) to work to and be judged against knows that there are managers who love using them to criticize people. Basically it ends up like this: It’s better for some in relationships if you don’t tell them that you’re not happy. Gossiping of course is not nice but there’s a fine line between sharing your experiences with a particular person with your colleagues and gossiping.

“It takes much more energy to be negative, always worrying, thinking of the “what if’s”, the “should’s”. Being positive, living in the present will lighten your life and the mood of others around you.”

I don’t know but being negative seems to come easily to me if scrutinizing the system is being negative. Worrying is a drag but it’s easy to slip into the habit of doing that if you have manager who likes to dog you or you work with evil bitches. The author seems to assume that the problem lies with you and your thinking, not the attitude of others toward you. Both can be a problem.

“Attitude is everything. It is the lens that you look through to experience your reality. Take a look at your attitude. Are you negative? Do you color everything with fear or need? How will your life change if you change your attitude?“

Attitude is important, no doubt about that, but let’s not exaggerate. Attitude is not the only lens you look through when you experience your reality. The beliefs you hold about yourself and the world colors your every experience. Are you fearful? Ask yourself what it is that makes you feel fearful and try to find a way to deal with it. If you’re constantly being told that you could lose your job any day because of “right-sizing” then you’re being exactly what they want to you to be; don’t try to change your attitude in that case - look for another job.

“Treat people with kindness and respect. Everyone that you encounter should be valued, treated with courtesy. Acknowledge that they have feelings and their own perspective on life, they may be different than yours but they are also valid.”

Your mama taught you to be polite and you should be. Respect others and most of them will respect you. You don’t have to value each encounter in the workplace, let’s face it some people are pains, but you should strive to at least keep it civil. Valuing it is optional.

“Avoid comparison- whether you are looking down at the people who have not mastered special strengths or up at people who may be more experienced or accomplished. Constantly comparing yourself keeps the focus on the other person instead of what you can do, want to do, and are good at doing. Look inside and improve from there.“

Comparing yourself to others can really help you set new goals. For example, telling yourself that “I’m going to become a better technical writer by striving to become just as good, or better, than the other writers in my team” is not a bad thing at all. We need people to look up to, aren’t they the people we call role models?, and sometimes we need to look down on people too in order to help them perform better.

“Take responsibility for your work, actions, and life… Don’t pass the buck. Don’t make excuses. Take responsibility; acknowledge a mistake fix it and learn from it. Don’t beat yourself up about the mistake, or hang onto past mistakes. Resolve them, own them and move forward. Today.”

The only thing I can add to this one is: Ask for help when you get stuck. There’s no shame in asking for help. Asking for help is a must and is why they have us working in the same building together in the first place.

“That doesn’t work for me. Keep this in mind when someone offers a put down. When they cross your boundaries. Your worth comes from you; your being, your true self. They cannot change your intrinsic value unless you let them. Make it clear that what they are doing doesn’t work for you, keep your boundaries and move forward.“

I have real issues with this one. How many people do you know who have the self-confidence to truly fob off a put down? How many people feel empowered enough to do it? I don’t know many at all to be honest. Most people don’t have “intrinsic value”; hell they don’t even know how to define themselves. This one is bigger than Ben Hur my dears. We’re going to have to circle back to this one in another post at some stage.

“Respect other people’s time and boundaries. If you are having a bad day, feeling stuck, or you are just enjoying procrastinating. Make sure you don’t use that as an excuse to waste other people’s time or cross their boundaries. Time is the most valuable thing we have. If you feel like wasting your time that’s your decision but don’t waste other people’s time.“

Time is the most valuable thing we have in a stressed out world perhaps because that’s all we end up focusing on. The most valuable “thing”, I prefer the word resource personally, is other people. We need to allow each other time to bounce things off each other and not call it wasting time. Not having time is the most popular excuse used by managers when it comes to not dealing with issues the people they manage have.

“Make a “what I have accomplished list”. Too often people make huge to-do lists and then beat themselves up when they have only accomplished a few things on the list. Keep your master list of what you want to accomplish so you don’t forget things that are important to you, but keep a second list you update daily. Each day keep a specific list of all the things you did and how much time you spent on each thing. You’ll know where the day went, can feel good about what you did accomplish and see where you need to focus, to get what’s most important to you, done.”

“Celebrate your victories”. It’s the new favorite in corporations. Maybe we should all get some gold stars to give to ourselves to acknowledge our own achievements. How about you break down some real barriers and acknowledge someone else’s good work? Now that’s useful.

“Take notice of the people around you; co-workers, customers, clients, vendors, and other people you come in contact with each day. Acknowledge what they are contributing and don’t take them for granted. Thank them for buying from you, for their help, their value to the relationship, and for a job well done.”

Sure, if they’re doing a good job. Comes back to being civil again, doesn’t it? If they’re giving you crap then please don’t. You don’t need to stay positive in the face of their mess ups.

“Enjoy the little things that happen in your day. The compliment someone gave you on the insight you shared at the staff meeting. The big smile the customer gave you when they picked up their order. By recognizing your accomplishments even if they seem small or routine, you are acknowledging a job well done.”

There’s nothing intrinsically bad about this one except that you have to keep tally all day. I think this happens automatically though…

“Coming from a positive attitude and perspective you will feel more in control. Consider each job and interaction as your best performance, rather than just running them together as part of your day. You will see the impact you have and the value you offer. People will be attracted to this. They will notice how well you do things and they will truly value you.”

How about you just make it your goal in life to enjoy things more? How about you take stock of what really makes happy and do more of that in whatever way you can? If you’re a cleaner and you don’t enjoy the floor scrubbing part of your job then please don’t feel like you have to change your attitude to it. You hate it, end of story. You’re glad when it’s done and you can go on to doing the favorite part of your job – scrubbing toilets!

It’s probably not lost on you that I was being a bit negative. I was being negative because I think it’s important that we don’t go about swallowing being positive hook, line and sinker at the cost of our own health and well being. Sometimes we have a right to complain and should do it or nothing will ever change. We'd be standing out in the fields trying to grow corn to eat and not worrying about sitting in a cubicle farm being miserable.

I believe that one of the most common tools used in corporations today is telling people that it’s their attitude that’s bad and that there’s nothing wrong with the actual work environment. This puts the responsibility firmly back on the individual and leaves the corporation free to do pretty much what it wants. This is not a good thing. This is a very bad thing and it causes a lot of stress for people.

You’re allowed be negative. You have my permission. You health demands that you have a negative outlook occasionally.

I'm just saying.

Hunger strike, eh? How long has this been going on?

2011-11-15T14:32:00.000+11:00

Is there a way one could bottle and sell the way you feel right after you've done yoga? No? That's a shame. I'm going to have to keep doing it then!

I love yoga. I would marry yoga if it was single and willing.

It's not all gloss and fairy floss! (Fairy floss is provincial English for cotton candy all y'all)

2011-11-14T08:21:00.003+11:00

I’m not known for being overly positive on my blog I should think.

I’ve shared my breakdown with you and I’ve shared too much about the man problems I had a few months ago (we need to talk about that you and I but now is not the time).

I spend a fair amount of time sniping at the world in general and especially at things corporate. Lately I started snarling at capitalism too (and I now fear that I will soon be referred to as “Castro’s little bitch” in the blogosphere).

I’m discontent and grouchy. The best thing about writing about it is that I’ve come to realize that I’m not the only one feeling bitchy. I’m not grouchy because of hormones. I’m grouchy because there’s something amiss in this world.

Don’t get me wrong, I count my blessing every day.

All three of them.

Or six if you count the cats.

I think that most of us in the blogosphere want to paint a rosy picture of our lives for fear of being seen as failures if we don’t. Partially at least. Perhaps even more importantly though we do it because we want to inspire. I would bet my last dollar that most of the female bloggers out there have some sort of “hidden” agenda that makes them want to write things that inspire other women into doing great things. We all have a little Oprah inside us that just can’t wait to shine on through.

Some of us want to appear to be Wonderwoman too. Look at me! I can make the kids’ lunch, counsel friends on the phone, do my beauty routine and exercise, have a great sex life, quilt pillows in the shape of vegetables for starving children in Africa and blog all at the same time, and so can you! You go girl!

I’m guilty of it and I have to admit that even in my darkest moments I get all kittens and fluffy bunnies on the inside when I get a comment on one of my posts that tells me “I needed to hear that”. Is there anything that could possibly validate you more or to make you feel that it’s all worth it, and I mean ALL worth it, in the end? No. There’s not. At moments like that the little Oprah who lives inside me (yes, I have a small black woman living inside me and so do you!) puts on her cheerleader uniform, brings out the pom poms and does a little dance for me. Oh, yes. It's good.

One of the reasons I read blogs is that they inspire me. Another reason is that I thirst for the experiences of others. I can’t possibly do it all with the limited time I have in this life so I cheat and assimilate the experiences of others. It’s nice when those experiences are good but I tell you what inspires me the most; it’s the experiences that show me that something needs to change and brings about action as a result of it.

The truth of it is though that I'm just one woman living one life.

It’s easy to feel lonely when things are not going well. 2011 will go down in my history as being one of the most tumultuous years of my life. It’s one of those years when I should have had it together but lost it completely.

In March I suffered a nervous breakdown as a result of work related issues. You can read about it in any post tagged “the Breakdown”. I wish I could say I was OK now, it’s been a long time, but the result seems to be that I suffer from depression and anxiety.

I don’t cope with work very well, or perhaps it’s more a case of me noticing how stressed work makes me now, and every day I think that there has to be a better way to make money and to live. I’m capable. I’m awesome at what I do. I have come to loath the word career. I don’t like my job one bit. I like some of the people there but I don’t like my job. I would like to have a job where I get to inspire people to greater things than they even imagined they could do themselves. The black monolith building I work in is full of people who feel like me.

I don’t spend enough time with my 13 year old daughter. I fear that we will drift apart and that I seem to her as distant and disinterested as my own parents did when I was a teen. She still needs me. I should be more available.

I live from holiday to holiday. I don’t sleep well and coffee is my best friend.

I’m one of the fortunate few who earn enough money to be able to put some away for a rainy day. That’s being fortunate. Many people I know are losing their homes and can’t afford to put food on the table. These are scary times. I’m blessed.

I’m in a relationship that is a bit weird. Some of you know about the troubles I had a few months back. Some of you told me to get the hell out. Maybe I should have or maybe there is such a thing as being scared and mouthing off not really knowing what you said. Take a swing before the opponent does. I’m hedging my bets and things are a lot better. I am though, as always, deathly afraid of being abandoned but I would be no matter who I was with. This is one of the major issues I need to deal with and it’s what kept me in relationships that were not great in the past.

I’m a survivor but I hate to admit it. I carry scars that I don’t feel I’m entitled too. I feel I didn’t suffer enough to warrant the scars I know are there. I try to forget about being shoved up against a wall, having my life threatened and being dragged through the house in front of my scared daughter. I count my blessings every day that I had the guts to leave. I kick myself every day for allowing myself to be in two relationships that were like that, for wasting years and years of my life. I wonder if I will ever be OK and feel good about me again, if I will ever feel safe in a relationship. I walk around saying things like “It’s not like they nailed nails into my feet to keep me from running away” because I have developed some sort of weird survivor’s guilt. I blame my parents for my poor self-esteem.

My mind is sometimes a very messy place and right now I feel like I can’t structure my thoughts enough to write a good post. I want to do so many things and write so much. I forget that I started this blog just to write without thinking about if the content was any good or if what I was saying was important. The ambitious part of me demands that I be inspirational, clever and witty. The real me keeps telling me it’s just a bit of fun and to relax.

No, it's not all gloss and fairy floss (remember that's cotton candy all y'all) but at the end of the day I can’t complain. All in all life’s not all that bad and I can certainly see, very clearly indeed, that things could be a lot worse.

Have a great day out there! You know you deserve it.

Confusing

2011-11-13T18:44:00.001+11:00

I was just talking to someone and we were on the subject of aftershave. I love scents and I have way too many perfumes but I can't say that there's an aftershave that I actually know of that I really like. I used to love Lagerfeld in the 80s and then in the 90s Artemis but I don't think guys wear those anymore. At least if I'm to believe my nose.

When I was still in school and in my teens and I was doing my engineering course there was this guy who was from Paraguay or Uruguay, I forget which, and he was a friend of my friend Carlos who was from Chile. The guy's name was Jorge and I thought he was so hot. He had the nicest behind I had ever seen. I never went out with him or anything because I was quite content perving at his behind while I was hanging out with my friend Carlos wagging classes so we could smoke and drink coffee.

One day I realized that Jorge wasn't all I thought he was cracked up to be. His behind wasn't really all that nice to look at suddenly. I was puzzled for a while but then I realized that he had changed aftershave. He went from wearing Lagerfeld to wearing something else that my olfactory sense didn't find nearly as appetizing.

Not long after that I was having dinner with my family and I can't remember why we were talking about aftershave but I declared at some stage during the conversation that Lagerfeld aftershave was the kind of stuff that could make any man, and he could be butt ugly, look dead sexy and completely irresistible to any woman.

Within a few weeks my father and my brother were both wearing Lagerfeld.

It was a very confusing time in my life.

Fair game - the art of only worrying about your own work

2011-11-13T16:33:00.000+11:00

It's become a bit of a theme in the comments on this blog and to at least some extent it's provoked by subjects I choose to write about. Women feel like they're not getting an even break in our society.

I don't think we are, I think I've made that much clear, but I think it's more due to our won mindset than anything else. Yeah, you heard me. I think it's our own fault, not fully and wholly but we have to take responsibility for at least some of it girls!

We're very quick to say that we are taught to behave like good girls. We don't seem to get very far when we do but we still do it. When we don't do it the men around us are pretty quick to call us bitchy and most of the time we start behaving again.

We were sent out to work in a man's world and what we have failed to do is to make it our as well. Women do think differently and I think we have more of a tendency to try to be fair and to think more of the team than the majority of men do.

I'm not all for changing yourself until you can't recognize who you are anymore but what I am in favor of is playing the game the way it should be played. If someone is giving you the shits you should tell them and I don't think it matters what level that person is on. What is wrong with turning around to your boss and say 'I don't like the way you treat me!" There should be nothing wrong with that at all.

And as for being called bitchy. Take a look at how men treat each other and you soon realize that most of them call each other names too. They get over it though.

Personally this is something I need to do. I have spent a lot of time covering for the shortcomings of my senior writer because I felt it reflected badly on me. Truth is that it reflects far worse on him but I have to allow others to see it. That means that I don't check his work and correct it before it goes out. It means that I allow documents to reach others so that they can see.

The attitude is all wrong, I know. It's about getting the work done and to do it well but this guy takes credit quick enough and when the other guys in the department walk past me to talk to him, I am his boss, and he proceeds to talk like he runs the show then I think it's kind of fair game. Don't you?

This week I will take full responsibility for everything I author and I will take none for what he authors. I need to do this because I need to play by the rules that exist in my workplace. There is no one for all, all for one. There's only one and none.

It's an experiment.

Literature v. Entertainment

2011-11-13T09:14:00.007+11:00

I'm not really a snob when it comes to reading material.

It's not like I go through everything I read and edit it in my mind.

If the writer has something decent to say I'll read it no matter how bad the grammar or spelling is, it matters not to me one little bit.

I'd be hypocrite if I picked on others for that sort of thing considering I'm just about the laziest person there is when it comes to proofing my own blog posts to make sure everything's above board.

I do, however, take issue with certain writings being referred to as literature.

There are days when I and my senior technical writer end up having heated discussions about that sort of thing (one favorite topic is capitalism - I think it's not working and he thought, please take note of the past tense used, that it's really good for all) and we seldom agree. Our last discussion of this nature started with me ranting about Stephanie Meyers and her god damn Twilight Saga. It's badly written. Period.

I don't have to clarify why I say that, you're a clever cookie.

My senior technical writer loves bullet points, they're sometimes our friend but not always, and also tried to convince me the other day that you can drill out a rectangular cutout in a cabinet in the field (i.e. after it's been installed at the customer's dig and is no longer in manufacturing). Think about that for a brief second my dears...

Drills make holes that are round and we're looking for a rectangular cutout...

Anyway, said senior technical writer's wife is reading Twilight and she loves it. My comment was that he shouldn't let her read that shit because it will rot her brain and he actually got angry.

Literature. There's a difference between it and entertainment. Twilight is entertainment and as such it is adequate for some. Literature it's not.

I couldn't personally sit down and read Twilight because it makes me angry. I have read pieces and that'll do me, thank you very much. To be honest, I had enough problems reading Dan Brown's the Da Vinci Code but it suited me at the time. The chapters are very short and I was traveling on public transport at the time.

I guess what I'm trying to get at there is that just because something sells doesn't mean it's good. It very much depend on marketing and the ability to get merchandise out there with a movie or a book. In the case of Twilight it's saturated the market and people get used to seeing it and accept it because of that. A lot of people automatically assume that because something is popular it means that it's good. I disagree.

I think it's really important to know the difference. When I was studying engineering I had a Swedish teacher who used to hammer on about James Joyce and Fyodor Dostoevsky to the point that you wanted to fill your ears with pieces of glass rather then listen. She had a really good point though: By all means read anything that you can get your hands on and if you're entertainment by it then that's good. Just make sure you know the difference between literature and entertainment.

It's taken years but I agree with her. Still don't like admitting it though.

Remember when I was five...

2011-11-11T18:52:00.002+11:00

I've been quiet this week because I've had nothing concrete to say.

I do that.

I have a massive spurt of writing and giving birth to ideas then I withdraw as if I need to stop and collect data again. It's not so much that I don't have anything to say during the withdraw phase, it's just that I lack the right vocabulary to say it with it seems.

I've had better weeks and I say this because I have hit some really low points. I've had moments of extreme sadness and of feeling utterly lost and fearful. I'm starting to learn that this is not me, it's something I carry with me. What I can't tolerate is my inability to figure out where it comes from. I suspect that I know I just won't let myself see it yet.

End of last year I junked every single post on this blog and started fresh again. I won't do that this year but it is time to change direction a bit. I've been lacking real structure in life and what I write (just look at all the labels I've used for my posts!) but it feels now as if I'm heading somewhere. I'm not sure where that is yet but things are changing in me and while I'm unsure of the details it's feeling rather profound.

I stood in a kitchen a few moments ago and I remembered a feeling I had when I was perhaps five.

I had been sitting in the backyard carving a piece of wood with a knife (those were the days when kids were allowed to use proper tools...) and my mother had told me several times that unless I cut away from me I would end up cutting myself. I stubbornly continued doing it "my way".

I did cut myself. I cut one of my fingers. When it happened I didn't cry and I wasn't afraid. I went to the bathroom where the band aids were kept and put one on my cut after wiping it clean and washing it. I went back out into the backyard and began carving the piece of wood again this time cutting away from me.

My mother noticed a while later. I knew she did because she stopped obviously noting that I had changed the way I used the knife and of course she also noticed the band aid. She never said anything to me though and I remember feeling glad that she didn't especially since I was already fully aware that it was my own fault that I had been cut.

When I stood there in the kitchen moments ago I found myself revisiting how I felt when I was five and how utterly unafraid I felt back then. I felt like I was truly in charge of what was happening to me and I knew that it was mostly about how I chose to react to things that determined how I felt. I felt protected and it wasn't only my parents that made me feel that way, there was something bigger that I was aware of too, as if I was aware that what was happening to me, my life, was just a temporary experience and nothing to worry about.

That's the me I am, that's the me I want to be again. When I felt that feeling again I found myself grinning from ear to ear.

When we talk about feeling empowered I think that's what were talking about, the knowing that you're not a victim of circumstances and that you have the power to change if nothing else just how you feel about something.

When others are breaking

2011-11-07T18:06:00.001+11:00

I have an awful habit of feeling powerless when it comes to my own life and situation. There have been days after the breakdown when I have oddly enough felt the complete opposite. I began to get that real feeling that I am really in charge of my own fate, that I am the captain of my own life.

I have a friend who's breaking and he's breaking bad. He suffers from the most debilitating panic condition and the problem is that it's not a mental health condition, it's more like seizures. He's never found anyone who could tell him exactly what's wrong with him and there's certainly no hope of a cure.

Slowly but surely I've watched his attacks get worse over the past month to the point that he actually has what almost looks like an epileptic fit only he gets to be completely conscious through the ordeal.

He's ready to give up. He knows that the attacks will get worse until he ends up in hospital. He knows that he will again be told that there's nothing they can do to help him. He'll spend time in there until he's well enough to get out again.

I don't want him to go through this. I need him. He's a very important person in my life and I really can't stand the thought of him not being there. Selfish huh? Most of all I can't bear to hear him say that he can't take it anymore. It scares me.

There are days when I wish I had superpowers, days like today.

Starving Demi

2011-11-06T11:46:00.001+11:00

I was reading a newspaper, the Sunday Telegraph, today and I usually find something I think it utterly ridiculous in it. Today it was Ros Reines (to be honest I'm not even sure who she is - some sort of celebrity peeping Tom?) dissecting Demi Moore and her relationship with Ashton Kutcher.

Or should that be flailing marriage to Ashton Kutcher the philanderer?

Or should that be the marriage of two philanderers?

Or should that be the marriage of two people of very different ages?

Or should that be the marriage of a cougar and a toy boy.

I don't know.

I kind of prefer to think of them as Demi and Ashton.

The media has been watching Demi like a hawk of late giving us constant updates on her alarming weight loss. It is alarming. the poor woman looks like she would break in two if there was a sudden strong wind gust.

You have to be a little concerned but then I don't think we need to really know why she's lost so much weight. I don't anyway. If Ashton's been a right bastard well then he's been a right bastard but of course perhaps she was a right bitch. Maybe the relationship has just run its course. Maybe having relationships last forever just isn't anymore.

I don't care.

Seeing Demi Moore starving is not nearly as alarming as seeing one third of the world starving. Maybe Demi is taking a stand against starvation. It would be kind of cool if she would front up one day barking at the press for taking such interest in her getting too skinny when they can't be bothered writing about starving Africans anymore.

Alarming


A lot more alarming

I'm just saying.

Consequence

2011-11-05T19:22:00.001+11:00

Oh, there's just so much of it!

2011-11-04T09:48:00.002+11:00

Mouse over at A mouse in France commented on the last post (and she’s got the Che Guevara t-shirt) and it made me think. Again! There’s no bloody end to it once my brain gets a hold of something to entertain itself with. The internal conversation is pretty much me telling it shut up and concentrate while it finds references and new ideas and ways to string that together in posts. I’m not in control. That much is apparent.

“I am still incensed about the bankers and their bonuses.”
Oh my god, yes! Do they need that much money and what have they done to deserve it? I’ll raise you the Qantas CEO last week stranded 68000 travellers because he had a bit of a tantrum over talks with his pilots. Oh, I forgot to mention that he just got a $1.7M pay rise a few days prior so he now earns $5M a year. Poor man!

“…about the hypocrisy of the whole BP thing…”
How big can you make a carpet? Big enough to cover huge oil spills should you ever need to sweep one under a carpet.

“yet Bhopal is still a toxic mess 25 years after the 'accident' that killed thousands.”
Have you ever watched The Yes Men Fix the World ? If you haven’t you must do it as soon as possible. There are two movies and in one they take on Dow Chemical (Dow bought up Union Carbide after the Bhopal disaster) and set up a fake interview with the BBC in which Dow announced that they would pay for the cleanup. Dow’s share price plummeted as a result. Andy Bichlbaum and Mike Bonanno have balls the size of volkswagens (watch it and you’ll know what I mean) and as a bonus are not bad to look at (I had to throw in a bit of sexism there – had to).

“..the War On Terror which smells too much like 1984”.
I can’t talk about that. I wouldn’t know where to start or how to for that matter. I can’t even look at it. I avoid this topic because it’s so loaded. We’re going to have to talk about this soon some time though, we really do, but it’s a landmine of epic proportions.

I’m loving this, not because I get attention on my blog but because we’re talking about really important stuff here.

I’m just saying.

P.S. I need the t-shirt. I really need the t-shirt.

Overwhelming

2011-11-04T07:03:00.001+11:00

OK, so there are a lot more people out there who think that the world leaves a lot to be desired and that we could do a lot better than we’re currently doing. Basically we want more fluffy bunnies (julochka has some of those) and kittens (any animal shelter should be able to help there - I hear they have a massive surplus – watch out though, they grow up).

Seriously, I thought I was alone and radical but it appears that I’m almost mainstream. I tried to feel bad about that, who wants to be average right, but I realize that it’s all very encouraging. However, I will need to buy a T-Shirt with Che Guevara on it to stand out a bit. They kind of look good if you’re wearing jeans.

I’m being naughty. I’m writing this at work. Let’s call it a warm up before I get to writing about machines and equipment. I need more coffee.

Anyway.

The last 24 hours have made me realize that the Wall Street movement is just the tip of the iceberg. As much as that movement seems a little vague and disorganized I think we need to look at it more as a sign that things are brewing. They’re not rioting yet but they’re expressing their dismay at…a lot of things. This is good. We can’t expect everyone to have a clear view of what they want instead and we shouldn’t tell them to shut up until they do. They’re unhappy and they’re letting us know. Good on ‘em.

I think it’s easy to feel overwhelmed when you look at the world and you know you want it to change because it’s basically going wrong. As normal people we have a feeling that things are out of control and that we, the people, are not having a lot of say in where it’s heading.

Democracy. Anyone remember that? We elect people to represent us in parliaments…yeah, you remember? How do you feel it’s working for us?

To me it’s seems that politicians have completely lost the plot. I don’t think it’s their fault necessarily but I think the system needs a shake-up.

Here in Australia we finally got a female prime minister last year. She didn’t get her job through election. There was a sort of hostile take-over. Now the previous prime minister whose job she took is rumoured to be plotting a hostile take-over, this month, so he can get back in power. Come on people! This is not a personal power struggle! This is our government! Keep your eye on the ball and lead the country people! Concentrate and do what you were elected to do.

We actually had our prime minister appear on Junior Master Chef as a judge here in Australia. Cute (PR smart as well) but not terribly useful. Keep your eye on the ball.

It’s time for me to switch into corporate mode and do something useful.

I’ll be back. Except not Terminator style OK.

Blog meltdown

2011-11-04T06:37:00.000+11:00

It appears that my blog has had a meltdown and my template is all messed up. Please bear with it until I can get home and fix it or until it fixes it self. Until then it will have to be an assault on the eyes I'm afraid.

Wow and hi!

2011-11-03T20:41:00.002+11:00

Today brought a nice surprise. A mention of me and my blog at julochka's moments of perfect clarity brought an avalanche of new traffic which means I had some new faces around here. All that really made me happy.

I was going to write a follow up to yesterday's post but I think julochka pretty much covered everything I wanted to say about it, at least for now.

I've never really had any real intentions for this blog. I just really like to write, Most of the time I write to get things out of my head so I can look at them a little more objectively.

I guess when I write about things that tick me off, like corporate crap and injustices in the world, I do it also in the hope that it will make more people think about those things should they happen to stop by and read it. I also like to see if there are more people who think like me out there. Especially in the past few weeks I've had people comment and they're expressing their own individual views and I love it!

I've had this blog for a few years and it's almost a year ago since I decided to delete all the old posts and start anew. I've thought about adding them all back but I'm not sure I want to. I don't think I'm the same person I was even a year ago.

Right now, at this exact moment, I feel incredibly blessed. In the past few months I've stumbled across a lot of really good blogs that I started to read regularly and these people are now coming to visit me. I feel humbled.

All this may seem a little like sentimental crap but I'll tell you why it feels so important to me right now. I have a voice again. For so many years I wasn't talking at all and I've held it in. The moment I let it lose in this blog I expected that it would be ignored or criticized but instead I'm seeing people come back and I keep track of them in turn on their blogs.

If you're one of the people who come by regularly, and I know you are because I look at the stats, and never comment please join in. I'm no comment whore - I just love a good discussion.

I've had so many great comments today and I hope all of you stick around. You've all just made my day!

This little possum is off to her nest to get some well earned sleep.

If I'm lucky cat #3 wants to play teddy bear again and I get to cuddle up with her little warm body against mine. We pretend we're little bunny rabbits but we don't tell anyone because we fear they will think we're being childish. Cats worry about things like that too you know.

Some realizations about women and work

2011-11-02T13:23:00.001+11:00

I had a comment yesterday on one of my posts from back in July so I went back and read it which was interesting. I’m glad I blogged about the breakdown and I’m glad I’m still blogging my way through it. To be honest, I’ve not blogged about nearly everything it’s taught me; it’s an awful lot. I may blog more about it but I’m not really sure if people find it all that interesting to be honest.

It’s taken me up ‘til now to start realizing that I’m a person in my own right. I’m speaking specifically here about me in the workforce but it probably applies to my personal life as well at least to some extent although in a very different way. Sounds a bit cryptic I know and I won’t elaborate on that right now; I want to talk about women in the workforce.

If you grew up in the 70s and 80s there seemed to be a drive, at least in Europe, to get women into careers and professional jobs. We were told that we should go out there, ninja kick any obstacles in the arse and carve out a career path right through the corporate jungle. We were sent out to break glass ceilings and to climb to such elevations on the corporate ladder that we probably should have been given little teams of Sherpa to accompany us, or at least oxygen tanks.

I think a lot of us went into the workforce expecting an awful lot of ourselves, the world and the companies we worked for, not to mention the people working for those companies. What they really failed to mention though was that we were entering a man’s world.

I suppose we should have seen it but we were young and idealistic, and we believed it when they told us that we could do anything men can do, that are brains are just as good as theirs and there was nothing that could hold us back.

Let’s face it, we weren’t always welcomed with the open arms we were promised and what they failed to tell us is that our brains are not like theirs, the men’s brains I mean.

As the good girls we were brought up to be we tried to fit in and please everybody. We knew that if we worked hard we had as good a chance as anyone (they, the men) to succeed. We did what women do. We tried to compromise and accommodate, and we were surprised when that didn’t work as well as we thought it would. If we’ve been around for long enough to sit back and look at half our lives being in the workforce many of us realized that it’s been a very hard slog to get where we are.

And where is that, this where we are?

Well, where we are is a place where you get up in the morning to get a cup of coffee into you before you get the rest of the family up, fed and out the door. We take the kids off to school and get our butts to work usually in peak hour traffic.

We get loads of e-mails, phone calls and we go to a lot of meetings where we talk, and at the end of the day we end up with a bunch of conflicting information and no real time to do the job we were employed to do. Then we leave the office later than we should, pick up the kids, cook dinner, put everyone to bed and do the dishes. By the time the weekend comes around we want to go comatose.

I didn’t sign up for that, and at this stage I would like to recognize that men basically don’t have it easier, but I did sign up for happy. See I still think there’s a possibility, however small, that we can actually create work situations where no one breaks, fights or gets stressed. I think we can create work places where people enjoy working and have managers who tell them to get out the office when time’s up for the day because they can come back and finish off tomorrow. “Shoo! Off you go. Don’t sit here in the office wasting your life away!”

A lot of companies are getting the right idea about the whole work-life balance thing and that’s a really good thing. Where I see it continuously fail is management. Most managers I know seem to think that the longer you keep people in the office the more successful you are. Something is utterly wrong if your people manage to put in a good days work in 8 hours.

I work with a woman who regularly did 80 hour weeks and who wore the exhaustion and stress like it was gold badge. She fell down the stairs three times in as many months and burned herself on the boiling water time so many times that she stopped reporting it so it wouldn’t end up on the injury list. It’s completely insane and she was completely impossible to work with. Everyone hated her. I bet if you ask her she’d tell you she didn’t sign up for that.

I really think it’s up to us women, at least to some extent, to bring about change.

My options currently are world revolution to change this stuff or to hoard enough money to pack my stuff up and move out of Sydney down to Tasmania. There I will start forging a career as a check out chick in a local supermarket. Except I’m not qualified for that. Never mind. You know what I’m saying.

Earlier this year I broke and it was really unpleasant but good things came out of it. Good things came out of it because I had to disassembly myself to find out why it happened. I found out some pretty interesting stuff about me in the process, things I needed to know.

We sleepwalk through our lives because we are exhausted and we just don’t have the energy to enjoy ourselves. I had bigger plans for myself and I’ve come to realize that I still do. There are a lot of things I want to change and one of them is the kind of environment I earn my money in. Hopefully we can bring about change in the workplace and make it a better place. Failing that, Tasmania here I come, just wait OK…

Yesterday beet. Today yawn

2011-11-01T20:33:00.003+11:00

I arrive at this point occasionally. The point is that I'm tired but not in a bad way. At this particular stage I feel something akin to contentment and I may even be a little satisfied.

Things aren't perfect but they're good enough and good enough is pretty good.

Maybe it's finally being off the medication that's making me feel like this and more, ummm what's the word, normal than I have in years it seems. But then time tends to be deceptive and it stretches and contracts in your mind as it pleases.

I feel like something is concluding, coming to an end and is about to get off my back once and for all. I hope that feeling is right. I have a list of things that want to get off my back.

Today, my dear friends, life's not so bad after all.

So, no profound thinking today I'm afraid folks. Tonight it's just little old me ready to curl up into a little ball so I can fall asleep and dream pretty dreams. I want to sleep like little bunnies do: innocently and huddled up together with other furry tiny bodies to remind you that sometimes when you feel alone nothing could be further from the truth.

Bonne nuit mes amis...

The beet

2011-10-31T14:08:00.002+11:00

It's, in my opinions, one of the best introductions to a book of all time. How could you not love it?

The beet is the most intense of vegetables. The radish, admittedly, is more feverish, but the fire of the radish is a cold fire, the fire of discontent not of passion. Tomatoes are lusty enough, yet there runs through tomatoes an undercurrent of frivolity. Beets are deadly serious.
Slavic people get their physical characteristics from potatoes, their smoldering inquietude from radishes, their seriousness from beets.
The beet is the melancholy vegetable, the one most willing to suffer. You can't squeeze blood out of a turnip...
The beet is the murderer returned to the scene of the crime. The beet is what happens when the cherry finishes with the carrot. The beet is the ancient ancestor of the autumn moon, bearded, buried, all but fossilized; the dark green sails of the grounded moon-boat stitched with veins of primordial plasma; the kite string that once connected the moon to the Earth now a muddy whisker drilling desperately for rubies.
The beet was Rasputin's favorite vegetable. You could see it in his eyes.
In Europe there is grown widely a large beet they call the mangel-wurzel. Perhaps it is mangel-wurzel that we see in Rasputin. Certainly there is mangel-wurzel in the music of Wagner, although it is another composer whose name begins, B-e-e-t—.
Of course, there are white beets, beets that ooze sugar water instead of blood, but it is the red beet with which we are concerned; the variety that blushes and swells like a hemorrhoid, a hemorrhoid for which there is no cure. (Actually, there is one remedy: commission a potter to make you a ceramic asshole—and when you aren't sitting on it, you can use it as a bowl for borscht.)
An old Ukrainian proverb warns, "A tale that begins with a beet will end with the devil."
That is a risk we have to take.

From the introduction to Jitterbug Perfume by Tom Robbins.

Head crusade

2011-10-30T10:09:00.000+11:00

I'm on a god damn head crusade. There's not limit to what ticks me off in the world today. Right now it's double standards, or at least what I perceive to be double standards.

People moan and whinge about violence in movies and how it's desensitizes but spending time yesterday with a friend who smokes I couldn't help noticing how the warnings on the cigarette packets are getting bigger and grosser.

When I was still smoking some twelve years ago there were warning labels on packets. We used to ask for the packets that harmed babies or others as a joke because it was all a bit silly. The warnings had zero impact on my decision to quit smoking.

Nowadays cigarette packets are covered with cut up cadavers and gangrenous feet, and it basically seems like someone has gone on a photographic rampage at the coroner's or something. Here in Australia they're now proposing to cover the whole packet with gross photos like that because obviously what's already on there isn't horrible enough.

Has anyone even considered that people get desensitized and that if your addicted to something a photo isn't going to make you stop? If we can apply the desensitization rule to movies shouldn't we also apply it to the whole make-them-quit-by-showing-them-gross-photos campaign? Or, am I just being stupid here?

We were sitting in a cafe yesterday, outside, and my friend lit up a cigarette and he was chastised by the waitress. No one was bothered but they now suddenly have a no smoking rule. OK, that's fine, it's their restaurant but it's also our money. We cut our dining short because my friend wanted to smoke. Our choice. We kept our money.

My point is that it's not illegal to buy cigarettes, smokers don't buy them to be obnoxious and most smokers I know want to quite because they know it's killing them. All the while the government is making huge money from tax on cigarettes and that's hypocritical. And by the way, I hate the smell of cigarette smoke...

I think it's the unwillingness to deal with the smoking issue head on that made me get mad at the whole issue. If you really want to get people quitting then ban cigarettes and put some decent treatment programs in place. If you really want to deal with problems then take a look at alcohol and how it's currently killing more people than cigarettes are. No one's touching that holy cow now, are they?

Just like fat people can't help eating, smokers can't stop smoking, alcoholics can't stop drinking and gamblers can't stop gambling. It's not even about banning the things people are addicted to or that they abuse, it's about making a better society where people don't need to rely on self harm to get them through the day.

We think that because we live in the Western world what with our wealth and health care that we have no right to ask for something better. People are starving in Africa you know...

I think we have a right to demand things that will inevitably help more people lead a better life and that it's really not even something we should have to demand. As long as companies like cigarette companies are allowed to make and peddle their wares we should lay off the people that these companies prey on. Why don't we go to town on these companies and call them for what they really are: Murderers!

New Year started last Thursday

2011-10-29T17:16:00.001+11:00

You know my losing weight by changing my mind thing? Remember that? Well it's working. I really don't want to eat chocolate bars anymore. I've tried and I don't even like that taste of them anymore.

So far so good but here's the kicker. There are a lot of other foods that I really like and when I get rid of my urge to eat chocolate bars I eat them instead because I LIKE TO FRIGGING EAT!

I like to shove things in my mouth, chew them a bit and then swallow them right down into my tummy. I especially like to do this when I feel sad, stressed, depressed and anxious and since they're common states with me I eat too much food and I need to stop doing that.

I've decided, and I put this to a vote with myself and I won because I got 100% of the votes, that I will lose 25-30kg (55-65lb) because that's where my healthy weight range is, and I will do this by the 30 June 2012 (just in time for the world to end or something - I want to go out looking good).

The variation is there because I know when I was young and I was fit 67kg (148lb) was optimum for me and 60kg (132lb) made me look bloody anorexic even though that's smack in the middle of my healthy weight range. When I weighed 60kg (132lb) people were thinking of interventions and of force feeding me junk food because it scared hence I say I may to want to go that low again.

Losing weight by changing my mind is obviously what I need to do. I need to make sure I feel better about myself and that I can start working with the anxiety and the sad thoughts. When I had my breakdown earlier this year my life changed enormously and to be honest, I'm still not all well.

For the past month or so I've tapered down the medication. They were starting to give some really nasty side effects and one of them was that I was feeling really unbalanced. The less I took that better I felt but I also realize that now I have the raw me to work with and what the medication was still able to mask is not staring me right in the face.

I'm not alone in this journey though. I have a kickass doctor and a kickass therapist on my side. I also have a kickass HR lady and a kickass OHS manager in my corner. I'm not alone so I'm not afraid of having to deal with this anymore and I know that in the process I'm also dealing with some pretty old ghost. Those ghosts really need to f*** right off (pardon the language) because they've been with me for far too long.

So the weight loss journey I'm on isn't just but physical one but also one on which I have to deal with emotion. Mid next year I want to be able to wear skinny jeans and I want to have set myself habits that mean that I will never get this big again.

It's not going to be easy but I will wear skinny jeans with Doc Martins and look good damn it if only I do it once!

Happy New Year y'all!

Peace on earth – is too much to ask for?!

2011-10-28T12:29:00.007+11:00

For as long as I can remember peace on earth has been at the forefront of what we wish for. In the Western world we were programmed to use it as some kind of mantra as kids, which is kind of weird when you think about the Gulf War (twice!) and all that…

How do we go from bringing up nations of little kids who want peace on earth more than anything else to getting these same little kids to join the military forces as soon as they’re old enough? It’s not that hard you know if you manage to roll wanting peace in with some fear that war will touch the very place you’re living in.

A friend’s mother, who is a Buddhist (I don’t know why I had to mention that but I did…), has a small sign in the back window of her car that says “No war”. Simple enough, but I was saying to her on the weekend that I’d like it to say “More peace”.

This woman and I don’t normally have a lot to agree on (It’s hard to find common ground with a Polish Jewish mother who’s 80 and who spent the best part of her childhood hiding from Nazis and eating the walls of a house because there wasn’t enough food…I’m a spoilt brat compared to her no matter how you look at it …I’m just saying.) but on this we agreed and I think the reason is that “No war” seems bloody impossible to achieve what with the current level of maturity of the world leaders and all. More peace just seems a little more realistic. It’s easier to get your head around that and you can start small, like with your neighbors or something.

Apart from that I think it’s important to focus on things in a more positive way, I’m hedging my bets here really in case the law of attraction people really are right and because it’s less depressing that way. We established the other day that depression is just not funny (refer that post that I’m too lazy to link too...I must have tagged it Depression if you’re interested…which I hope you are).

I suppose there are some people who like war, though they’re probably making some sort of career out of to be honest, but most of us are scared witless of even the thought of going through war. We don’t want it. We’d much rather give it a miss and have a root canal if those were the only two options available to us. War is bloody awful stuff. Nothing good ever came of war. One has to wonder why there’s so much of it. I know people who went to war and they got seriously messed up!

It’s almost as if we can’t stand it when it’s all peaceful with little fluffy bunnies and kittens happily running around in the grass playing. It’s almost as if when there’s no drama we feel lost because we think we lack purpose or something. I see this all around me at work. As soon as things are going smooth someone has to throw their weight around and put an obstacle in the way. Things just can’t be easy and smooth, can they?

But just as a reliable economy and better wealth distribution is not too much to ask for it’s not too much to ask for to have peace on earth. We’ve tried the war thing. It’s pretty much a lose-lose situation. Peace and quiet, no one really loses there. It's just that it seems like such a huge thing to ask for but it's not.

So no, peace on earth is not too much to ask for so I’m asking for it now.

PEACE

ON

EARTH

NOW

Please.

And better wealth distribution (I think that will help with the peace too).

Thank you.

Arrrrrch at the world

2011-10-26T15:02:00.004+11:00

I think the world is a bit of a pisser at the moment. It’s all a bit disappointing really.

I don’t want to go ahead and blame people or even humanity; it’s so easy to do though, isn’t it?

I’ve kind of come the full circle with the whole self-help thing and I confessed yesterday to y’all that I had in past done the rounds with various spiritual paths.

I’ve toyed with the Law of Attraction and frankly I laughed in its face. The Law of Attraction got the last laugh though when my daughter found a small notebook that I had told her about. She asked me to read what was in it. She knew it was my “wish book”. I was a little taken aback when I realized that most of the things I had wished for were in my life, maybe not exactly the way I had imagined but none the less there. I’m still not convinced you know.

I do think though, and this goes together with my post from yesterday, that I right now am almost purposely seeing the world through dirt stained glasses. I’m a reality girl you see and as such I’m in constant search for the truth. Trouble is that I have long since realized that the truth is a funny little thing that can vary enormously depending on who you talk to and what situation they’re in. It also depends on what facts people have and whole lot of other things. Truth is fickle in other words.

My truth is that I know my mind well enough to know that truth is something that if applied to rigidly can lead to the apathy. You have to let your mind expand and play and you have to imagine yourself out of the quagmire sometimes before you can actually find a way out of it.

This is what I need to do. Imagine.

I find that I feel so completely at the mercy of the world that it’s starting to affect me badly. What with the looming economic crisis and all it’s not going to get any easier so it’s time to really take stock of what it is that makes me smile and feel good. I need to create a new worldview that suits me better and that has nothing to do with the truth. The truth is that the looming economic crisis has zero impact on me personally right now and I should really wait to worry about it until it does.

I’m not meaning to be selfish y’all because I care deeply about the world and the people in it. I’m at a complete loss to try to figure out why there people out there who find it hard to just exist and they live in friggin’ Europe! Africa, well we know they have issues there, God knows that with a little creativity we could solve that little problem in a jiffy but we don’t.

I despise the fact that wealth is accumulated by few when others are clearly suffering. Why is that OK? Why is it tolerated? It makes me so angry. “They” have made us fear sharing. We’re like little dragons sitting on treasures ready to kill anyone who even dares to side glance at our pretties.

A third of the world’s population is starving to death.

A third of the world’s population is eating itself to death.

What?!

Is it just me or is that not completely insane? I don’t need 20 different types of crisp chips to choose from especially not if they’re going to kill me!

I’m not sure how I got from the Law of Attraction to starvation but I do this a lot. I start somewhere and just ramble on (and make lots of spelling and grammar mistakes…). In a way it’s all connected though because I’m fairly certain that all those starving people wish they had food and the fact that they don’t is why I doubt the Law of Attraction….and that there’s a God. Frankly, if God can’t be bothered helping those people why the hell would he bother with my little petty problems?

The only ones that are responsible for the state of the world are us and we’re the ones who have the responsibility to fix it. We need to stop this corporate selfish BS thinking and smarten up and stop being afraid of sharing. I don’t think sharing’s ever hurt anybody. Really. Do you know anyone who was hurt by sharing? I don’t.

So cop this world:

I need y’all to quit being selfish pratts and start sharing a bit. I’m not talking to you Joe Blow, I’m talking to you Mr Suited-up-greedy-bonus-in-the-millions-grabbing arsehole who think that you are better than the little person cleaning the toilets on which you do your poo poo. We’re sick of being afraid and feeling helpless. We’re sick of working long hours for nothing and of being pushed around. We’re sick of feeling desperate because we know little kids are starving to death in Africa while knowing that any donations we make won’t really make a difference. It’s your turn now. You need to clean up this mess.

On faith or lack thereof

2011-10-25T19:36:00.003+11:00

**Warning! The following contains personal admissions.**

I envy people who are religious, not the religious nut kind but people who have faith that there's something bigger and better out there looking out for them. I especially envy people who have faith so deep that they're certain that there's something better waiting for them "on the other side".

I'm not of the religious kind. I'm the scientific kind. I could never embrace creationism because to me there are too many things that prove that it's just baloney. I just can't find proof that God exists.

I just can't find proof that God doesn't exist.

I have come so far. Just this year and the breakdown I had brought about so much good change for me. To have come from where I was when I left my first husband and then to go through a second abusive relationship, I know now that I'm strong or else I would never have survived that. It was only a few months ago that I allowed myself to think of myself as a survivor.

I have no faith though. I'm still afraid of....things. I'm still anxious. I wish I could surrender and just allow myself to be. I need faith to do that.

I sat there today and watched Dexter, of all things, when I realized that having faith is not about being "saved" or "finding God". It's about creating another belief in your mind, one that will serve you and carry you forward, one that will ease the burden a bit. Some people call the rituals they use to bring that about religion and some practice a certain set of rituals or a particular religion.

I can't do that. I'm not religious.

You see to me God may as well be called Steve and be a tiny rabbit just as long as Steve will be there in some capacity so I can talk to him. Or her, I mean in all fairness Steve may be a girl. Never mind, what I'm trying to say is that I need to allow my mind to create a deity of sorts it's comfortable with and that I can believe in so that I can foster a relationship with that deity.

I need faith y'all and I don't want it to come in a prepackaged format. I think faith is far more personal than that.

I'm just saying.

That I can 't be told. I mean you can't tell me to do anything without giving me a bloody good reason and it just seems to me that no religion really does that. No offense. I'm just saying.

For “the good of the business”

2011-10-24T08:53:00.003+11:00

I’ve been thinking this weekend of that good “excuse”, and I have no other word for it I’m afraid, that most of those who are in the corporate world come across over and over again:

It’s for the good of the business.

Managers and company leaders can get away with doing some pretty awful stuff and it’s pretty much accepted if it’s for “the good of the business”. I used to wonder what this “business” was because if business isn’t about people what the hell is it about?! Any business deals with people in the form of employees and customers and those are just the most basic relationships a business has with people. How can it not be about the good of those people? What is this other entity that exists that seems to take priority at just about every turn?

I was thinking on the weekend, actually to be honest I was having a bloody good whinge to myself about the “state of the nation” (meaning the whole bloody world and its economy), and I was thinking about how times had changed. This thing, this “for the good of the business”, is something new that’s crept up and it’s really ugly.

Then I remembered something…

When I was a kid growing up in Southern Sweden we went on a field trip. I can’t remember how old I was exactly but I guess I was 10-11 years old. We went to visit a place that had a stone that commemorated Ansgar.

In 829 the Swedish king Björn av Hauge requested a mission to the Swedes and Ansgar was appointed missionary. Together with the friar Witmar, he preached and converted people for six months at Birka, a settlement located by the lake Mälaren.

We were also told that contrary to what most people were told the methods of converting people were rather, shall we say, persuasive. We were told they usually started with the chieftain and they asked him if he wanted to get baptized. If he said no they would chop an arm off. If he refused again they would chop the other arm off, and of he continued to refuse they would go on with the legs and then the head. The result was the most people readily accepted God and were baptized.

For the good of the people.

For the good of the church.

For the good of the business.

Not much has changed it seems except that the methods are perhaps a little gentler nowadays, I mean at least people are only losing their jobs not limbs…

Streamlining processes

2011-10-21T09:20:00.001+11:00

Does anyone here love corporate jargon much as I do? In case you missed it I did type that there with a heavy dose of sarcasm. Sarcasm can be a little problematic in print, can’t it? It’s really at its best when there’s sound involved, isn’t it?

I’m all for improvement and stoping time waste (although I’m not all that certain how you can waste something that linear and infinite and that ticks along at the same pace not matter what you do) but once you’ve been through your processes and streamlined them you really don’t need to do it every time you get a new manager i.e. every six months.

It’s very fashionable changing managers nowadays which is probably the main reason streamlining processes has got as much traction as it does in the corporate realm. Every new manager has to be seen to be doing something, right? Most of them have no clue what it is the plebs they’ve been put in charge of do so hitting up the processes seems logical, doesn’t it? Sure it does.

For the average worker though it gets a little obnoxious. Once you’ve gone through process streamlining that means that you can produce documentation 1600% faster you’ve kind of taken a giant step forward no matter how inefficient you were to begin with. It’s hard to muster enthusiasm again.

I’m not quite sure where we got this need to be so god damned efficient but we just need to try to make everything faster and and cheaper (not necessarily better) especially if it has to do with someone else’s job.

Mother Nature doesn’t do any of that streamlining crap. There are over a million species of animals. There are 1000 different types of bats alone, that we know of! Some may still be hiding from us holding out for discovery. How many types of bats do you need? Apparently that many!

If we streamlined bats there would be three types maximum: small, medium and large. Maybe you could even get rid of the medium size. Really. Two types of bats should be enough. You’d save a bundle on production cost, you only need two part numbers and imagine all the money you would save on documentation plus it would be much easier for people to choose their favourite bat because everyone knows that too many choices is just too damned confusing and that there’s not a single person who gets happier when they have too many choices.

Streamlining, that’s where bats should be at.

I’m just saying.

On managing people

2011-10-20T18:36:00.003+11:00

The worst part of being a manager is having to tell someone they don't have a job anymore. It's even worse if you have to tell them it's because there's no way you can see them ever being able to.

That was what I did today.

I love managing people. The best part of managing people is when you can nurture their growth and help them step out of their comfort zone to learn new skills and new things about themselves.

It's picking out their weaknesses and turning them into strengths that makes my heart sing and that puts a smile on my face.

It's subtly prodding and sometimes blatantly telling and then seeing it being absorbed to become a catalyst for transformation.

That's what makes me want to wake up in the morning and cycle through rain for 45 minutes so I can get to work.

Too many managers think they have to manage people by telling them what to do. Too many managers don't trust the people who report to them and won't allow them the room to take responsibility. Too many managers control and micromanage.

Very few managers are great leaders.

You don't have to understand what your direct reports do to be a great manager to them. You need to respect them and allow them room to move. You need to be proud when they achieve and you need to be supportive when they don't. You need to step in when others attack and be their bullet proof vest. You need to remove obstacles for them. You need to understand that the better they do, the more proof you have of you being a good manager.

That's what I like to do. That's what I aspire too.

What I did today I did well, I did it as best as I could, but it made me feel like Dr Mengele. I know it was the right decision but I can't say I was only following orders.

Depression just isn’t friggin' funny

2011-10-19T17:04:00.004+11:00

A lot, no wait, A LOT of people are depressed. Depressed is the new ADHD.

I suppose it’s lucky that depression has been around for as long as it has, as a recognized condition I mean, because it’s not only important to know that a condition from which you can suffer is available to suffer from but also that it has some cred.

Depression has cred and it’s just not street cred. It has med cred, psych cred, general population cred and a whole lot of other types of cred that I’m frankly too tired to think of right now.

Depression sucks which is why it’s so important to get help before you realize that you are suffering from it. Ideally.

Ideally if you feel like crap for any prolonged period you should talk to someone about it. For those of us who are socially inept, like myself, and who are also psychologically burdened with a tendency to not want to burden others with our burdens, it’s especially important to reach out. If you have friends reach out to them.

If you don't have friends or have friends that you feel you can't talk to it about then reach out to one of the many organizations that exist and that have people who are eager to listen to your problems without wanting anything from you. There are people who volunteer just so they can listen to people feeling depressed and help them. You should show them the respect they deserve and talk to them because they want to help you. I'm just saying. Respect.

I’m not making fun of depression. It’s not available to make fun of. Depression just isn’t friggin' funny.

I, in my own brain tired kind of way, am writing this post because I spend a lot of time talking on Communicator with a lady in our US office. She lost her daughter to suicide because of depression. We talk about how she misses her daughter every day. She spends every moment of her life wondering why and asking herself why she didn't do anything/enough to stop it from happening.

If you're depressed it can be hard to remember that you will be missed but you will be. If you're depressed seek help now. Don't wait. You don't deserve to wait.

If you know someone who you think is depressed the best thing you can do is to be their friend. Just be there and as much as it can be really hard to be around depressed people just be their friend. You can also talk to one of the organizations that are set up to help people with depression. They can give you advice on how to help others.

If you're depressed I need to let you know that you matter. I don't even know you but you matter to me.

If you're depressed and you haven't reached out do it now. Please. Right now. You don't deserve to wait.

I'm just saying.

Is how things are at the moment

2011-10-17T14:41:00.000+11:00

On being mothers in today's world, education and mental health

2011-10-13T09:53:00.007+11:00

For the past week or so I haven’t had a lot to say. It comes and goes in cycles and it manifests in that I go about finding information about topics that interest me and that leads me into new subject areas. Inevitably I get to the stage when I feel like I have formed a new idea or way of thinking out of the new information I have acquired.

I was reading some posts about being a mother and the comments left on those posts. There seems to be some sort of movement out there that preaches that as mothers we need to find ourselves, return to our old selves or generally do something to have motherhood impact less on us. It’s as though being a mother is some sort of condition you need to cure yourself of because what you were before you hatched your little wonder creation was a superior state.

No. I don’t like being dogmatic but I can categorically state that it’s not. It’s neither less nor more as a state. It’s just different.

For me personally it’s been a journey that has severely altered my view on intelligence and development. When my daughter was born I had dreams of her becoming something great and the way I saw that happening was through education. I was hoping that unlike me she would love the classroom environment and that she would thrive in it. I always felt locked up in school and always regarded the subjects to be too narrow. There wasn’t enough room to ask why and certainly not enough room to ask why not.

It didn’t take long once Bee had started school to realize that something wasn’t right. She didn’t learn to read or to count. She was falling behind drastically and she was bullied mercilessly. Teachers gave up on her over and over. The occasional teacher would tailor work for her and make sure she learned something and felt valued but for most of the seven years she spent in primary school she was miserable and depressed. I gave up my dreams of her excelling academically very early in the piece.

This was a child who at four and a half years of age sat down and watched a Discovery channel program about heart operations and who in great detail described the differences between using life support and lowering of body temperatures to me and my dad when it had finished. My dad was floored when she did this and commented on how much smarter she was than her three month older cousin who’s also a girl. The child is not stupid, she just can’t learn in school and she is no good at learning to read the traditional way.

I’ve always suspected that we’re not meant to all fit into the sausage factory style education system that we’re plagued with. We waste enormous talent in this world by discounting people at a very early age because they can’t learn in a certain way. It’s sad. It’s very, very sad and it contributes to a lot of problems in society. How can we have a system that systemically weeds out those who haven’t got a certain type of intelligence and then go about calling that society good? It’s good for some but it’s utter rubbish for others!

It’s also sad to see how narrow the view we as women have of ourselves. Feminism didn’t bring about the changes much needed. We somehow sold ourselves short and instead of rising with the occasion we limited the opportunity to once and for all break free and allowed ourselves to be boxed in again. We’re still paid less than our male counterparts and because we take time off to have children our careers are limited.

Ours is not a happy world.

I don’t think there’s any doubt that at least to some extent pharmaceutical companies are behind the rise of use of drugs like Ritalin to control behavior in children and SSRIs to control what seems to be an epidemic of depression and anxiety. What’s causing all these behavioural and mental health issues? Could the way we’ve structured society be the cause? Could it be that what we’ve created is so limited that we’re creating an array of new problems.

Being a mother isn’t easy but I believe that the last thing we need is to ourselves, as mothers, jump on the bandwagon and start telling each other what we should do. We need to be supportive of each other but we also need to understand that every mother will experience being a mother differently and she needs to be able to embrace being a mother. As mothers we will never get back to what we once were and we shouldn’t try.

Being a mother is not a disease just because it changes our bodies and our priorities. We ourselves are perpetuating the myth that women are only sexy and therefor valuable when they are young and beautiful. We as women need to put a real value on being mothers and rise with it. It’s not just a cliché when we say it’s the most important job of all.

I'm just saying.

There is no wrong way to have a body

2011-10-11T19:15:00.004+11:00

I'm just saying.

Embracing fear

2011-10-10T10:02:00.002+11:00

Many of use stop taking risks very early in life. We’re taught by experience and by our caregivers that taking risks is something you should avoid. Sure there are times when you ought to play it safe but most of the time it’s just fear standing in your way and stop you from progressing.

If you take risk there will be opportunity. It’s inevitable! You need to encourage yourself to take risks. Ultimately you have to embrace fear and put that bear in a cage!

Then maybe you’ll realize that what’s holding you back isn’t something all that grand after all.

In which I ponder the state of the world in general

2011-10-09T18:33:00.001+11:00

It may just be me and how I have changed over time but I seem to recall that when I grew up, and when I was in my twenties, the people who lead countries and large corporations were better leaders. These people weren't always right and that made them seem more human. They were more open about what they were up to.

I grew up to be politically aware and I have always swung more towards the left than to the right because I like an equal playing field. I'm simply of the opinion that money is nice but we don't need to have a lot of it to exist happily. Most of all we don't need to have a few people have a lot of it while the majority doesn't and some even living in abject poverty. That doesn't make for a successful society.

I believe that people should have more rights than corporations, that they are more important, because no matter how you put it corporations depend on people in so many ways. It seems odd to take profit away from people and hoard it while you want to sell the same people your product.

We know so much more about so many more things than we did in the 70s, 80s and 90s. The internet has allowed us to exchange ideas and information at rates you could only imagine previously. People are more aware of what's going on around them, of alternatives and of how things are going in other parts of the world. It sometimes mean we suffer information paralysis but overall we are better informed and better equipped at making informed decisions.

What we lack is great leadership.

Despite the Cold War keeping us focused on keep the Russians at bay we countries still managed to bring about social reform that is now being whittled down because of a lack of money. Where's the money gone? It seems that the money is now being held by large corporations rather than countries and as a result it's locked up in shares that people can hoard and hope will earn then big bucks. How on earth can a country carry a huge debt like the one the USA is currently burdened with?

Now here's the weird thing: Back in the days of the slave traders bringing Africans over to America to work in the cotton fields there were, I think, about 80000 Africans taken from Africa and brought to America a year. Today human trafficking means that hundreds of thousands of people are sold and bought every year mainly to be forced into the sex trade. A lot of these people are young children who end up being raped by hundreds of men, and these are men who are fathers, brothers and sons, who go about their daily business as though nothing ever happened. These men are "normal" men.

All this goes on in a world that we somehow think is fairer than it ever was and while people earn more money in the Western world than they ever have. They earn so much money in fact that they can now afford to eat themselves to death.

I find it a very scary prospect to let my daughter out in this world. It's not a fair world. It's not a caring society. It's a scary situation with absolutely no certainty and it shows on people's stress levels and the utter confusion some of the people I know are hit with. There's not a person I know who feels safe in their job. How can you get the best out of people if they feel like they're going to lose their job soon anyway?

I want a better life for myself, for my daughter and the people I care about, and for everyone else for that matter. I think we can create a better world but there seems to be other forces at work, forces that want to keep us in fear of the future to make us buy things and to make us work longer hours. That and fear of growing old and not having enough money. It seems the current thinking also is that he who dies the richest wins.

Since I had the breakdown I've pondered long and hard about myself and how I want my life to be. I can tell you that this ain't it. I can't single handed safe the world, I know that, but I'm beginning to feel like I ought to save myself while I can.

I'm just saying.

In which I was duped

2011-10-08T12:04:00.001+11:00

I've been battling with whether I should talk about this one or not but I think I'll have too. It's just too damned intriguing to leave alone.

Just over a month ago I hired a new technical writer. The ad had said one to three years experience but this lady really had none. She did however have 5 years plus as an editor. She had a tech blog that had some good stuff on it - it wasn't perfect but it was something you could definitely develop a decent technical writer from.

The only potential problem the recruiter flagged was what he had perceived as an inability to connect with him in the interview. It worried him because he was afraid that this lady would crumble when confronted with some of our stronger engineering personalities (i.e. the arseholes).

We tested the "man connection issue" by getting her together for a coffee with me and my senior technical writer and my illustrator. It all went fabulously. We all agreed she was a really nice lady and we felt that she was as keen as mustard and that this was going to be easy.

When she first arrived I put her to work on converting documents from one software to another. The idea was the she would get an idea of what we wrote about, formatting and so on which would then enable her to go on to bigger and better things.

Unfortunately this was not the case.

A month later I realize that I was more than likely treated to a hell of a display in the interview. This woman saw herself as a technical writer in the interview and it projected really well. Her resume said all the right things, she said all the right things, but she has zero to back it up with.

To make up for that she has proceeded to flirt with all men who venture into our little corner of the office landscape and more specifically with my senior and my illustrator. I'm amazed that a women almost 40 years old would behave like that.

I'm baffled. I'm usually a really good judge of character but in this case I didn't see it coming at all.

Last week we had a young graduate do a two day stint with us and I gave him the same work to do as I gave her. What took her a week to produce he did in two hours. His I could use. Hers I have to rewrite.

It's all very well to go into an interview and do everything to get a job but for god's sake make sure you can do the job before you accept an offer. It's bleeding painful to have to tell someone that they're not up to par and you have to let them go.

It turns out, and only an extreme amount of googling dug this up, that the 5 years plus editing she claims to have is for some fan fic forum she created herself. The stories she's posted on it are awful. I can't explain the tech blog because I have seen none of the writing capabilities I saw there in the work she's done for me. She's expecting me to tell her exactly what to write! I mean what the what?

While I lick my wounds and try to find out what the hell happened in my head, and try not to suspect that I'm still off my game after the breakdown, I will try to figure out how to repair the damage she's caused. I'm not talking about the wasted time, I'm talking about 20 odd people being laid off in our building alone last week while she kept her job. These were people with good experience, years of it, and emotional investment in their jobs. I'm also talking about the fact that I will not be able to rehire because now there's a hiring freeze.

This makes me angry. And baffled.

I'm just saying.

The art of Creativity

2011-10-07T07:38:00.001+11:00

“Creativity is just connecting things. When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn’t really do it, they just saw something. It seemed obvious to them after a while. That’s because they were able to connect experiences they’ve had and synthesize new things. And the reason they were able to do that was that they’ve had more experiences or they have thought more about their experiences than other people. Unfortunately, that’s too rare a commodity. A lot of people in our industry haven’t had very diverse experiences. So they don’t have enough dots to connect, and they end up with very linear solutions without a broad perspective on the problem. The broader one’s understanding of the human experience, the better design we will have."

Steve Jobs in Wired, February 1996

I'm not a fan of the apply hype although I have to admit that since my Windows laptop died early last year and start using a Mac I've had to admit that they're so much easier to use. I have the tiny little Mac Mini on my desk and even though it's a few years old it's just happily chunking away. Macs are more intuitive and certainly more stable (like when you use Linux...)

Apple's strength has been understanding that the human experience plays a huge part when we use technology and how friendly we perceive it to be. Let's hope Apple doesn't fall into the money cutting approach.

The art of being polite despite...

2011-10-06T18:53:00.001+11:00

I stopped off at the fish shop this afternoon to get some salmon and having purchased said salmon I stepped outside onto the footpath where I stopped to put on my cycling gloves. I was cycling you see.

I was standing there on the footpath putting on my gloves, facing towards my bike and getting ready to get on it so I could keep riding home when I heard the beginning of that turned out to be an angry mutter. I turned around and I copped the most insane dose of stabby eyes I've seen in a long time. This was coupled with an angry tirade along the lines of "Are you going to stand there and block the foot path or are you going to move out of the way?"

I politely said "I'm sorry!" but I can tell you that it's not what went through my head.

I felt like running down the street to the hardware shop to get a can of spray paint so I could run back and tag that pepper pot's sky blue, synthetic, pathetic tracksuit pant arse 'cause that shit stains and there's no way any amount of Preen or White King bleach is going to remove that shit so she would have to hall her sorry arse back down to St Vincent's shop to find another god damned synthetic, pathetic pre-loved, bargain track suit 'cause that's the only god damned place you can buy that shit. ARRRRCH!

(And I'm so not even attempting to make the sentence grammatically correct. Or shorter.)

I mean really people. Is there something wrong with being polite? Is there an actual age limit for politeness? Is the world so bad that you cannot allow other humans in it to make simple mistakes without acting like a complete bitch? I'm so sick of rude people and Sydney it seems is full of them.

The art of will power

2011-10-05T12:44:00.001+11:00

Who and what is will power and where to you get some? Is will power something that you can only obtain after years of practicing Zen Buddhism in a desert where there’s nothing, absolutely nothing, to tempt you? I know this much, I don’t have a lot of it. Not desert or Zen Buddhism. Will power. I don’t have a lot of will power.

It’s come down to this: It’s me against crap food. It’s not because I’m horrendously overweight or unfit anymore. I’m OK for my age. I could settle for that, being fit and overweight (no longer classified as obese which I found out didn’t take all that much) but I don’t want to. I want to be skinny because I know it will make me feel better in so many ways. There’s also the little problem of diabetes. I don’t have a family history of it as such but I do have an awful lot of people around me who have suddenly developed diabetes. Getting diabetes is scary. That shit makes you go blind!

One of the guys who work for me was diagnosed with diabetes last year. He’s made enormous changes to his diet. He used to have things in his lunchbox that would have an eight year old envious. He’s lost weight, he eats healthier and as a result of that he’s healthier. He comes in the other day and tells me that he was reading an article in a diabetes magazine about this weird diet that could cure diabetes. All you’re allowed to eat for two months is onions and capsicum. You’d lose a hell of a lot of weight if you only ate onions and capsicum. I asked him this because I’m a curious person:

If he knew that sticking to that diet for two months would cure him, would he do it? Would he eat only onions and capsicum for two months if he knew it would cure his diabetes?

He looked at me for the longest time because it was obviously a valid question and one that he hadn’t yet asked himself.

Having played mind games with my colleague, something I always find satisfying, I found myself asking myself the same question in a slightly different way:

If I knew that I could prevent myself from ever getting diabetes would I eat only onions and capsicum for two months? I mean, if my doctor told me that this was the way, would I do it? Would I start, cheat and then pretend, or would I really do it?

Now I don’t have diabetes and I don’t show any signs of being on my way to getting it but it could happen unless I smarten up now and change my ways.

Eating to keep healthy seems like such a no-brainer but it’s not. Unless we’re staring certain death in the face we don’t really take action. Unless we’re staring certain death in the face we choose to be sold on marketing for products that are killing us at worst and making us a lot unhealthier at best.

Why do they even allow these products to be sold? Companies are making money off slow murder! And don’t tell me that it’s a free world, that's what capitalism is all about or that people should be responsible for themselves and make smart choices. It’s clear that the majority just can’t be responsible in that way and it's costing us millions in healthcare (just so that these companies can make a profit).

Anyway.

Perhaps the way to start taking weight loss seriously and to start eating like a grown up is to get at least a little paranoid about bad health and dying as a result of it. Maybe that is the way to develop will power…

I don’t care how it happens; I just want to stop eating crap.

I’m just saying.

Oh, and by the way, the guy who works for me has decided to lose ten kgs (20 pounds roughly) before Christmas. His doctor thinks it may cure his diabetes. No onions or capsicum though.

The art of eating like a grown up

2011-10-04T19:41:00.001+11:00

I've been thinking. How come I eat so much crap? I don't let my daughter Bee eat as much crap as I do because I don't want her to grow up addicted to junk food.

I eat healthy, don't get me wrong. I eat dark rye bread because I love it. I put smoked salmon on it. I don't butter the bread, I avocado it because I love, love, love avocado. I put Jarlsberg lite cheese on it because it's the lowest in saturated fats. I have no more than two slices.

I eat apples, golden kiwis and a sushi roll at work for breakfast and lunch.

I have a glass of apple juice, gold pressed and no added sugar, in the morning when I get to work because I find it completely kills the problems I had with too much acid in my stomach and it makes me stretchy as hell when I do yoga. I kid you not. That apple juice helps me stretch into positions my cycling legs just wouldn't before. It's mad. I tuck my hands under my feet doing a forward bend with straight legs easy since I started with the juice. It's insane.

But here's the thing. My fat little secret is all the little sugary sweets I sneak in especially when I can't sleep. Luckily I'm getting better at sleeping. Since I started my Lose Weight by Changing My Mind experiment I have come realize just how many of them I sneak in. This is what keeps me fat y'all!

What is it that still makes me eat like a kid? I don't even like the taste of the sugary treats but yet I have to somehow get them in my mouth and swallow them. It's like I'm rebelling against my mom telling me I can't have too many cookies and like watch me now mom 'cause I just ate a whole packet of Oreos. I don't even like the taste of them. I buy them because they're so sweet.

The art of eating like a grown up is something I have partially mastered. It's the partially unmastered part that I need to change. I need to change it because I want to wear dresses again without my thighs chafing. I want to wear sleeveless things without having to worry that I have begun the process of developing bat arms. Arrrrrrrrch! (<--- Yes Merry, I stole that from your iPad. I'm sorry but it just stuck you know.)

I need to stop buying crap food and just ban it from the house for like a month or something and then ban it for another month again. I need to learn to eat like a grown up because consarnit, I don't need to eat like a little kid!

Big City Love

2011-09-30T16:39:00.002+10:00

Along the big city walls
I walked for a while
looking for that face
I always recognize
hello hello
it's been a while
ages ago
but your voice still feels

this it what they call
big city love
just play it by heart
'cause I believe in true love
this is what they call big city love
play it by heart
though it's a sad sad call

this is what they call,
big city love
'cause I believe in true love

there's no where to fall
along the city walls
along the city walls

And all the letters that you wrote
I want them all gone
I send them back to you
with a red heart on them
and in my memories I'll try
erasing you for good
and all the hopes I had
projected on you

was looking for
was looking for
a place to hide away, to hide away
instead I lost, instead I lost the
heart I gave away,
oh we sang those songs
sang those songs
you comfort me you comfort me
and now and now
let's call it destiny

This is what they call
big city love
play it by heart
cause I believe in true love
this is what they call
big city love
play it by heart
though its a sad sad call
This is what they call
big city love
play it by heart
because I believe in true love

There's no where to fall
along the city walls.

The art of spicing up a blog

2011-09-29T17:31:00.003+10:00

There comes a time when you start to wonder if your blog is just same old same old all the time. Maybe your readers are getting tired of it, provided you have readers who return so they can actually get tired of your blog, and maybe you need to step it up a bit.

It's not easy though, right? Most of us end up here in the blogosphere without a real plan. We just kind of want to write and have someone read it. Maybe.

There are a few tips and tricks to increase traffic like get guest bloggers, have competitions, ask your readers questions so they feel involved and want to comment, you know the usual stuff. The problem with that stuff is that it requires a bit of work from you.

So for the lazy bloggers, like myself, who still feel a sort of commitment to their small tribe of followers and regular visitors and who want to really wow any new visitors who stumble across their blog, I have come up with the perfect solution.

Odds are that you're already on some kind of medication, I mean who isn't nowadays, and odds are that the medication affects your mood in some way. The best way to spice up your blog and to inject a little variety into it is to mess with your medication. I know! It's brilliant and it requires very little effort from you!

All you need to is to "forget" to take your medication or somehow mix up the dosage and voila a new you is sure to emerge. Then you set about writing some posts, you can write several and save them for later when you want to "guest blog" again without causing yourself undue stress or harm.

No need to thank me. I'm more than happy to share this kind of solid advice any time because you, my dear readers, are my friends. Unlike those other bastards I hang around with. I don't think they're my friends, do you?

The art of losing interest

2011-09-28T07:52:00.000+10:00

Losing interest.

Sometimes it takes work and sometimes it's not as natural as it should be, you have to put some work in it. Sometimes you really have to sit down and look at the pros and cons and make sure that the cons outnumber the pros. Just to save your own sanity.

It beats destroying something. Losing interest has got to be less destructive.

The art of sticking to your guns

2011-09-27T16:59:00.001+10:00

I went to see my therapist. I love this lady. She rocks. Best of all I think she gets me. It’s important for your therapist to get you. When I rocked up to yesterday’s session and I was not happiness she just got it.

“I’m drowning.” I said. “Not literally,” I quickly added because this woman deals with crazies all day and she might get the impression that I was hallucinating. I didn’t want to get off to a bad start or alarm her needlessly.

She nodded. Instead of asking me what had happened to change my status from “recovering nicely from the breakdown thank you very much” to “drowning” she allowed me to first tell her how I had finally figured out why I had the breakdown, because I have finally figured it out, and it was an epic win for me.

It dawned on me when I was watching someone else talk about their breakdown that the complete brain fail that happened to me back in March had a very simple cause. I, who once thought I was empathic because I seemed to know how people felt without telling me, figured out a few years back that all I was really doing was reading people’s body language. I was good at it and I was good at as a direct result of being in abusive relationships.

In February my department was placed under a new manager, a woman who is completely devoid of facial expression. If it weren’t for all the wrinkles on her face I would have suspected she was addicted to Botox. This woman went about eroding the power of the three team leads put under her and then in turn every single person in their teams (including me and mine). People began to dread the weekly meetings during which they all felt like they were on trial for some poorly defined crime like coming to work. Bah! It was like the times of the Spanish inquisition and the witch burnings had returned but it lacked the drama a good burning brings.

In late March my mind broke and I suffered a breakdown. I just had to leave work one afternoon. I was like a caged animal. I left and as I sat on the bus on the way home a voice in my mind, a voice of reason no doubt, told me to go see my doctor. Best decision I could have made was to listen to that voice because it got me help from what turned out to be a kickass bunch of women who have in their own rights, and without talking to each other, conspired to help me recover. My therapist is one of them.

By the end of my session with the therapist yesterday I was no longer drowning. I was finding my way out of the swamp Bear Grylls style. It was more like I was getting ready to go ninja on someone’s arse again or to simply make use of the little business card she had pressed into my hand towards the end of the session.

“This woman writes resumes for professionals! Doctors, CEOs and,you know, professional people like you,” she told me. She knows how to make a girl feel special. The point is that I’m trying to stick to my guns here. I’ve promised myself I wasn’t going to quit. I was going to hold out for redundancy. It’s getting harder y’all. I’m just saying.

'Cause it's all about me me ME!

2011-09-26T19:07:00.000+10:00

It's a pretty steep learning curve I'm on and I'm learning more and more that I don't want to learn. Around every damned corner is another one. Around every damned corner do I find another neat and tidy little gift left for me by that special someone.

I'm still in the disbelief phase. I'm still trying to hope that all is not what it seems but it seldom turns out that way. Most of the time when I think I see something it's really there.

So why do I persist? Why do I not just tell him to get stuffed and get out of my life. Because I don't want to believe folks, I don't want to believe.

Now when will I be done torturing myself.

My life is about to change maybe forever

2011-09-25T18:46:00.000+10:00

I've said it before, life has a habit of swinging around to give you a kick in the back of your head if you don't pay attention. Life also has a habit of making you grow up even if you're resisted it for a long time.

I'm kind of tired of people. I've had enough of them. In fact I've developed a severe case of misanthropy in the last few days and not even the people I usually care about are escaping being bunched up with the rest.

Except for my daughter Bee, she's a genuine exception.

And some people I track on the internet that I don't even really know.

Others though who I trusted to care for me have turned out to be some sort of strange creatures that I just don't understand. More importantly, I don't understand why they would think I would want to stay in their lives.

When you offer something that is of little value to someone they may accept it for a while but then eventually they get tired of it or confused.

I'm confused. Personally I'm confused.

Have you ever tried to save a drowning man? Have you ever given anyone CPR desperately hoping that they will again join with their life force and miraculously animate again? The odds aren't good when you give someone CPR but we learn to do it because it's worth a shot. I've never given anyone CPR nor have I saved a drowning man. I have, however, tried to save plenty of failing relationships. I have cried rivers in the vain hope that it would somehow save it.

Same difference. The odds are the same. They're not that good. Miracles seldom happen, at least not in my life, and yet there I am breathing into it and pushing at its chest like my own life depended on it. I just don't know when to give up. I wish someone else would take over because I'm really tired.

Today I thought a lot. Today I thought more constructive thoughts. Today I made some decisions. I don't know if I can follow through on the decisions but I do know that the thoughts represent my truth, you know the one that lives inside of me and that is the essence of me.

I wish my lover read this blog but he doesn't. He just not that curious about me.

I realized today that the reason for why I have felt so hurt of late is that I feel like he's not trying hard enough. He's turning away and I jump into action and try to do CPR. I've been doing CPR for a while now and I'm tired, so very tired. I just want someone else to take over and I really want someone to breath life into me. I'm sinking but not the dying kind of sinking, just the one where you lose hope and give up on things and people you don't really want to give up on.

I wanted so much and yet I hope so little. I didn't dare to hope too much because it was like the outcome was inevitable. The inevitable outcome is here it seems and now I don't dare to hope that things will change at all. I have to stop giving CPR and I have to let go. I have to stop trying to save it.

The thoughts I had today had a lot to do with why we arrived here and how. That's not as important though as what's next and I think I know what's next and it's not what I wanted. It's not what I hoped when I had hope. But it's here all the same and it's not going to go away and it's not going to change. Its magnitude is equal to having an elephant suddenly turning up at your front doorstep, brushing past you and then taking up residence on your couch hogging the remote. It refuses to change channel and my only option is to walk away.

I left my house today because I couldn't breathe in there anymore. I jumped on my bike and flew down bike paths and very nearly got locked in the park because it was sundown by the time I finished. I thought as flew through the cool rainy air and I left a huge part of me behind on that trail. Not the part I wanted to leave but something. Maybe it's what needed to be left. I don't know. I wish I did but I don't.

What will tomorrow bring? I'm not sure. I'm not sure of anything anymore except for this: I am going through a transition. I'm not sure I'm enjoying it.

Now or never, or I have to do it again later

2011-09-25T11:30:00.001+10:00

When I lose direction I get truly unhappy. When I lose direction I feel truly lost. When I lose direction I find it hard to find my way back and I feel fearful and I hold onto the few things I think are the ones that are still making me happy or that I think provide with some sort of stability.

Through living I have learned though that it's the opposite of what I should do. I don't beat myself up any more when I do these things. I don't need to be beaten up by myself any more. There are always plenty of people around who are willing to tell you what you should to different and how you're not behaving in the best possible. Sometimes these people are the ones near and dear to you. Most of the time they're people who are somehow in close vicinity to you.

We forget that most of the time people do the best they can. I forget that most of the time people do the best they can. I forget that I cannot be loved by everyone and when that happens it doesn't automatically translate to me being useless.

Today I stand on the threshold of something new. I have passed through the baptism of fire that was related to this particular transition and I'm on my way out on the other side. It's been bloody and painful, at least emotionally for me, but I'm emerging on the other side and I have not a clue what my life will look like from now on.

I know I will be going to the same job I was going to last week but I don't know how different it will be.

I will be in the same relationship I was on last week but I'm not sure that I will keep being in that relationship, if it will change to suit me better or of I will find my way out of it into new completely unknown territory.

Most of all I really don't know how drastically I will allow myself to change this time. I can still turn around and go back to everything that was but that means I will again have to face the transition, there's no way of stopping this.

There are things I really want in my life that I don't have. They're so basic to my nature that I know I don't want to compromise at all. I feel ready for them and somewhere in my mind I figure that if I'm so ready for them they must be waiting for me. They must be ready to come into my life or else what's already there would not be so painful to deal with. What's already there wants to get away from me and I need to stop being afraid of letting it go. It's really as simple as that.

This step I take on my own. This step I do without a friend to hold my hand to help steady me. This time I have no one looking out for me. This time I have to trust that god gave me wings so I can fly.

Trust. Trust in life. It's now or never. It's really that important you know.

I've passed through it to the other side and it doesn't feel so bad.

Why don’t we have more women in top positions?

2011-09-19T09:41:00.002+10:00

When I finished my engineering diploma I was fully convinced that I was going out into an even playing field and that I as a woman would have the same opportunities as the young men I graduated with. I can’t say whether it turned out like that for the other three you women who also graduated in mechanical engineering with me among 60 young men but for me it didn’t.

I moved to Australia after graduating in 1989 and I was immediately faced with the challenge of finding a job in unfamiliar territory. I managed to get a job as a mechanical draftsman. The job lasted for three months, it was a contract position, and it was the last job I had directly related to my chosen field. It wasn’t until my last job as a draftsman that I was asked why I had abandoned mechanical engineering for a career as an electrical draftsman.

It wasn’t my choice. In Australia in the late 80s and early 90s there were hardly any women working as mechanical engineers or draftsmen. In my 11 years of working as a draftsman I came across one. One! I made a good living out of being an electrical draftsman and I was really good at it, and it served me well when I eventually applied for a job as a technical writer a job I had wanted to do since my early teens, but that’s not the point. I couldn’t get a job easily working in my chosen field.

I don’t think a lot has changed since I graduated. It’s scary but I don’t think it has. In the department I’m in now, there are 40 engineers, technicians and graduates. Two are women and they’re both electrical engineers. When my team moved back into this section we doubled the number of women in the department to four. It’s scary.

One of the female electrical engineers recently commented on her Facebook page that the project she was doing at the time was the first one where she had felt like she was allowed to work as an engineer and not some sort of assistant. I know the guy she worked with. He’s of Eastern European extraction and over there they seem to have a lot more women in technical fields than we have. Maybe for him it’s more natural to let her do her job, I don’t know.

In the company I work in there is also a lack of women in power positions. The ones that make it to the top seem to have everyone gunning for them. Women don’t really stick up for women surprisingly enough. Women appear to wait to be told what to think and what to do rather than going out there being all pushy even when they know they’re right. Women don’t function like men do. They don’t have the same sense of entitlement and they’re a lot less quick when it comes to selling themselves and promoting their achievements.

The question for me is really whether women should learn to become more like men in the workplace or it’s time to change the workplace to better suit women. It seems to me that we push women into being something that we’re not naturally and by doing that we don’t necessarily help women stay in the workplace to plan careers. I think it’s high time that we change the way we look at women and start, as a society, to think of them as highly intelligent beings.

There’s no doubt in my mind when I see Michelle Obama on TV that she’s a capable women but she could be so much more. She is the first lady of America and she should be allowed to be more of a role model to women!

When it comes to Australia’s prime minister, the first woman prime minister of Australia, the papers spend more time talking about her clothes and her hair than anything else. When it was announced that she was the new prime minister my daughter came home from school and announced with great excitement that finally we have a female prime minister and then she asked me if I realized how significant that was. She was twelve years old at the time and for her it was a sign that women can be just as good at leading as men can. It’s shame the media can’t treat her appointment with as much excitement as my daughter did.

I don’t know what happened to the momentum we had at least in Northern Europe in the 80s that really made young girls believe they weren’t all that different from young boys in the brain department but I want to see more of that again. Women in the Western world have far more opportunities than their sisters in the Third world but surely we can do better than what we have now! Surely there should be no difference and surely women have as much to add to society as men do!

When you think about it it’s really backwards that it’s not already more equal.

More Lose Weight by Changing My Mind

2011-09-17T18:07:00.000+10:00

Yesterday I talked about reprogramming my mind so I can lose weight. I know there are doubters out there and they’re going to tell me that it’s not going to work. We’ll see. This is an experiment OK? My theory is that if it worked for me when I quit smoking the odds are pretty good that it will work with weight loss.

I also talked about the chocolate bar and how I don’t particularly like anything that’s listed as being the ingredients of the bar on their own and so it stands to reason that I don’t like the bar. Right? That’s what I want my mind to believe anyway. I want to stop wanting to eat chocolate bars (or anything else that’s bad for me and makes me put on weight).

What happens when I eat a chocolate bar because I haven’t been able to convince my mind that I don’t like eating chocolate bars yet? We know I’m failing to stop eating crap because I’m still overweight. I ate the chocolate bar and since this is an experiment I decide not to embark on the usual guilt trip. I’ve eaten it. There’s not much I can do about unless I go and throw up and I don’t like doing that so the chocolate bar stays in my tummy. I have to do something else. I want to turn this into an opportunity.

How good was it to eat that chocolate bar? Did it make me happier? Did it actually make me feel better? Did it fill me up? Did it live up to all the expectations I had? Do I feel satisfied after eating it? How much did the chocolate bar improve my state of mind or my life? Is the feeling that eating the chocolate bar gave me better than how I would feel if I could go and buy those skinny jeans I really want to get into? If I was healthier because I weighed less would that make me feel better than eating the chocolate bar did? If I could have the chocolate bar feeling right now or the getting into the skinny jeans feeling right now which one would I choose?

I think you get the idea, right?

By asking yourself questions like the ones above you’re starting to give your mind alternatives to think about. When we have more alternatives to choose from we tend to be less happy with a choice we’ve just made. We begin to wonder if we made the right choice. If we know we didn’t make the right choice then we can begin to wonder if making another choice would have made us feel happier in the long run.

You know how when you go to a restaurant and order a meal and when you get it you wonder if you should have ordered something else because it may have been better? If you were served the same meal, and you were just as hungry, and there was less to choose from then you wouldn’t worry so much about it.

Our minds are funny in that multiple choices actually cause us unhappiness so asking yourself questions that paint a picture of there being alternatives to how you feel after eating that chocolate changes things. You can make your mind unhappy about the choosing to eat the chocolate bar. The next time you eat a chocolate bar you remember and then you can again reinforce the message by doing the same thing again by asking more questions. Eventually you will start to feel a little hesitant before you eat a chocolate bar. If you keep at it you will begin to identify the chocolate bar as an inferior choice. Eventually you stop craving chocolate bars because you now believe they’re not a good choice at all.

Now you may think to yourself that there are a lot of things that you need to reprogram here because you like a lot of different foods. True. It’s not going to happen in a day. Remember though that these are beliefs you’re programming that are going to last you a life time unless you go about changing them again because you want to. It’s going to be worth it. If you’re a afraid of brain washing even if it’s you doing it yourself then you should probably stop watching TV it happens every time you turn the damned thing on and there you’re not the one deciding on what’s getting programmed in your mind. Take control. Decide on your own programming and do it to help yourself.

I’m doing it. I’m going to keep you posted on how I’m going with it.

Lose Weight by Changing My Mind - my weightloss journey begins today

2011-09-16T11:47:00.000+10:00

I’m overweight. I’m no longer obese but I’m still overweight. I’m thinner and fitter than I was three years ago and that’s great. I’m now fat and fit. That’s, according to research, much better than being skinny and unfit. It’s not good enough being fat and fit but I’m half way there. Go me!

The journey to being half way there began almost three years ago when I looked at a photo of myself and realized that I looked like a frigging air balloon. The person I saw wasn’t me. I didn’t recognize myself in the photo as the person I really am. I did, however, recognize that it was the way I looked.

It was unhealthy. I felt old. Little things were going wrong with my body and there were pains that weren’t there before. I realized I felt far too old for my age. I realized I needed to change.

With two failed marriages behind me, two abusive marriages, I was in no state to tackle the weight problem head on. I knew I would fail if I did. I’m an emotional eater and I was still emotionally raw. I was going to eat no matter what.

I decided to break my journey into three steps. First I would get fit or at least fitter. Secondly I would emotionally fit or at least emotionally fitter. Thirdly I would lose weight.

Today, I believe I’m ready to start tackling the weight issue.

If you’ve read my blog before you know that I’m currently battling with an issue of a relationship that isn’t working. You may say that this is not the time to tackle the weight because this must be a very emotional time for me. It would seem like it’s completely insane of me to even think of starting my weight loss journey now and perhaps it is. My gut tells me though that it’s not. My gut tells me that this is somehow connected and now is the time to tackle this too.

We live in societies that provide for unlimited choices when it comes to food. We can’t escape food. It’s everywhere and we’re wired to want it when we see it. We’re programmed to want it when we see it through advertising. Much of our existence revolves around food and if you’re anything like me you spend a lot of time thinking about what to eat and when you’ll do it, or what not to eat and when not to do it. Then you eat it.

I’m fully convinced that what I’m now embarking on is not a weight loss journey as much as a brain washing exercise. I have to convince my mind that I don’t need as much food as I’m currently eating and that the pleasure I get from not eating crap foods far outweighs the limited pleasure I get from eating a chocolate bar not to mention the guilt trip that comes with eating it

I have to convince my mind that in order for my health to be good and perhaps even improve even as I get older the most important weapon I have is food, the right kind of food, and the most destructive thing I have working against me is food, the wrong kind of food. I don’t lack the knowledge needed to distinguish between the two. I already have all that data available right in my head including the exact calories in most of the foods I encounter every day. I’ve been obsessed with it from time to time.

When I quit smoking some 12 years ago I realized that I was never going to make it with will power. I always got to three weeks and then I found an excuse, usually related to feeling stressed, for lighting up and only have one, then two, then three…

I switched tactics, and this was before I knew anything about affirmations and self-hypnosis, and I started to list all the negative things to do with smoking I could think of every time I lit up. It smells bad. It costs too much. It makes me stink. I have to go outside to do it. On and on I went with listing the negatives until one day I felt repulsed when I lit one up. That’s when I stopped smoking. It wasn’t easy battling the cravings but what always stopped me from lighting up was the repulsion I felt, and that I still feel now. I’ve tried putting a cigarette between my lips and I just can’t bring myself to do it and I’ve lived with two smokers since I quit so there were cigarettes around.

Important lessons were learned from this “experiment”. I learned that habits and beliefs form a very important part of how we do things and why we do them. I learned that I can break habits and that I can form new beliefs if I want to. I also learned that it’s not an easy thing to do. It takes a lot of effort. The good news is that the effort really pays off.

Your mind will resist anything that is trying to reprogram you. Your mind will find ways to put up a fight and to trip you up. The trick is to recognize them for what they are and begin to enjoy playing mind games with your own mind and you have to be prepared to wait for the result. Brainwashing yourself takes time. (This is why we have ad campaigns; one ad wouldn’t work as well.)

If you think you’re a fat person then you’re a fat person. If you think you can’t lose weight you’re not going to lose weight. If you tell yourself that you need to diet then go about restricting what you eat odds are that you’re going to fail at least in the long run. If you on the other hand treat it as an experiment in reorganizing your mind’s priorities you have a completely different game on your hands. You’re in control as long as you allow yourself the time to play the game.

My goal is to reprogram my brain to want the right kind of foods and to start abhorring foods that are bad for me. If I read a list of ingredients on a chocolate bar wrapper most of them sound pretty awful. I don’t like any of that. If that’s what makes up the chocolate bar the question is Do I really like chocolate bar? Based on what’s in them I don’t. Now I have something to work with. If I start drooling over the thought of some cookies and begin to think about all the fat around my tummy and how bad I look in a bikini I will eventually if I keep that up start to associate the cookies with my beached whale look. It’s going to take some time though to override the programming that tells me I get a cookie when I’m a good girl and I’m always a good girl, right?

I’m going to post sporadically about this reprogramming experiment. I will not diet. I want to make that very clear. I will change my mind and my attitude towards food. I will attempt to reprogram my mind to see food as fuel and to start to recognize when my tank is already full.

I will keep you posted on the techniques I’ll use, none of them are scientific, and what my discoveries are. I will keep you posted on my failures and my successes. We will do this together if you decide to keep reading. All the posts about this will be tagged Lose Weight by Changing My Mind. If I can do this then so can you and you can do it with anything you want to change in your life.

And you may wonder what this has to do with my current relationships issues. Do you? Well of course it’s all related because this is about taking control and becoming the pilot of the vessel that is me. If I can reprogram myself when it comes to food I can do it when it comes to what people I allow into my life and the kind of relationships I choose to have.

Hope you stick with me on this one! I would love your comments!

My relationship

2011-09-16T10:22:00.000+10:00

A perfect relationship, if there’s such a thing, is one where you can overcome all the little things that could ruin it.

In my case it’s been a matter of me sitting down and asking myself if what I’m being presented with is something I’m willing to settle for and it’s simply not.

If these things don’t become things we work on then it’s forever going to mean that I’ll be unhappy in the relationship. That’s where I’m at.

I feel fairly removed from the emotional part of the breakup at this stage if you know what I mean.

I’ve been able to sit down and look at what I am, what I want and need, and how much I can compromise and still be content and happy. Let’s just say that it’s too much that I have to give up to keep this going and I know, in my heart, that I can’t do that forever. I can’t shut down a part of me that’s really vital.
I’m a loving person and I need to express that. I need to do that. I need to be touched and caressed. I need to be loved. I need to be appreciated. I need more than I’m currently getting and unless the other person in this relationship does something that will allow me to have that I’ll not be happy in this relationship.
It’s not a matter of being greedy or difficult. It’s to do with a basic human need that’s not being fulfilled, and that need is at the heart of being in a relationship anyway. I cannot forgo that part. I cannot be in a relationship without it.

If we are not working on addressing these issues I’ll have to leave not because I’m being difficult but because I’m not getting my basic needs fulfilled. I'll never be happy in the relationship. That's all there is to that.

God, Goddess, the Universe, I and the rest - about me and having faith

2011-09-16T08:19:00.001+10:00

I’ve shared some of my struggles of late. I’ve hinted at what it’s about and I don’t think that if you’ve read my posts that you’re in any doubt that I’ve been talking about man problems.

The problem is far from clear cut. I like a challenge so that’s not the problem. I usually excel at collecting enough information to find a solution any problematic situation that works for all. I like win-win situations. They give me great joy. This one though has been so complex that there really is no clear way forward apart from the fact that I’m crystal clear when it comes to what I want and need.

Conflicting evidence is what they would call it in court. That’s what I have in regards to the situation. It’s probably not as easy as lies but it feels like lies and it smells like lies, and when it does you tend to think of it as lies. Perhaps that’s a trap in its own way. Or perhaps there’s no truth to be found here at all. Perhaps there really is only confusion.

The good news for me at least is that the crossroad I was stuck at is no longer a crossroad. The problem related to it is still there but I have, through beating my head against the wall several times over (gives you a headache but it’s a great way of beating sense into yourself), started to have a real good think about what is happening around me. I’ve come to realize that it’s not about choosing a course of action. It’s about eliminating some people, or the things that they do, and including more of other people.

You know how you sometimes sit down and take stock of what you want in life and then decide to plot a course? That kind of stuff is useful. It’s really useful. I think you should do that at least once a year if not with regular monotony like weekly. It’s good to check in with yourself and see how you’re doing. I’ve not done well in a fair while if I was to be perfectly honest.

For me this time it’s not about what I want. I know what I want and, more importantly right now, I know what I don’t want. That part is crystal clear to me.

The challenge I face right now is of a different nature and it’s largely unfamiliar territory for me but it is progression. I have become a lot more emotionally mature. I have come to realize above all that I’m not a freak, that I’m completely normal. The feelings and emotions I have are no different from what others experience. How I react is perfectly normal. The responses I have to things are perfectly normal.

I have perhaps a little better self-knowledge than some. The real catalyst for that was the breakdown. I have begun to truly recognize that what doesn’t serve me has to be removed or destroyed, and once it has it will make way for something better as long as I allow it to happen, as long as I don’t stand in its way.

My challenge right now lies in having faith in the Universe to bring me what I need and want. I have collected enough examples of that happening to see that it can happen. The challenge is having faith in it happening one more time. In order for things to turn out for the better I have to step out of my own way and stop blocking progress. I have to trust in a miracle occurring. It’s hard to do that. It’s hard to trust and handover your life to some force that you claim not to believe in.

I’m not religious. I can’t say I hand this over to God. I guess I could say I hand this over to Goddess because I’m a little more comfortable with that term. I tend to call it the Universe because I have no real way of defining it, that force I feel is present that is so much bigger than me and that connects me through my subconscious to others, and that I sometimes lose connection with which leaves me feeling alone and without love.

You see, for the first time in my life I don’t feel like I’m doing it alone. For the first time in my life I feel like there’s something, or someone, looking over my shoulder gently prodding me in the right direction. It’s something much bigger than me, or something that I have at least not recognized as part of myself until now. Maybe it’s been there all along but I was deaf to it because I couldn’t trust me or that there was such a thing.

There’s no coincidence I think that there are so many people now appearing in my life who are suddenly there for me in small but very important ways. It’s like I’ve discovered the concept of women as caring friendly creatures. I feel strengthened by it. I feel supported by it. I feel suddenly like I’m not at all alone in this world. I think this is what they call faith. My faith doesn’t come from believing in God, it doesn’t come from knowing Jesus or any other deity for that matter. It comes from suddenly realizing that there are good humans everywhere. They are gentle, kind, supportive, beautiful women. They’re my goddesses and they’re very much flesh and blood.

There are times when you shouldn’t stay. When it’s best to say goodbye and with this post I’ve done the full circle in my mind it seems. I no longer belong to him or anyone else. I’m once more free. I’m once more unattached, (unhinged,) without love in my life and I am once more wondering if I will ever find a man that can be friend and lover. I need both. I can’t settle for just the friend. It’s not in my nature. I deserve to have it all.

There will no doubt be many posts in the next few days, probably several per day. Ii need to talk my way through this. You’re welcome to take this journey with me. I value your comments. I value your presence. I invite you into my healing journey as I enter stage two of the breakdown. The first stage was about recovering from the breakdown caused by work; this stage is about the relationship I hoped would be the one I could feel comfortable in for a long time coming to an end. If it doesn’t come to an end I would be very, very surprised.

If I had known when I was 20 years old that a lot of the things I thought I would absolutely have in my life by now wasn’t going to be there I wonder if I would have plotted a different course. Will I plot a different course now? Will I finally allow my dreams to grow and become reality or will I forever compromise and settle because I can’t see that there’s so much more to this than I’ve allowed myself to see? Is this really all there is? I don’t think so, but how do you get to the rest of it? How do you get to a place where you can relax, stop worry and feel enormously content? How do you find love, the kind of love that lasts forever and that's not scary, problematic and filled with conflict?

If you have the answers to any of those questions please share. We could make a fortune you and I if we found a way to sell those answers!

How to not enjoy life

2011-09-15T08:45:00.003+10:00

Expect everyone else to behave and think like you do.

Worry and fret about everything. Make sure to include things unlikely to happen and when they don’t happen, worry even more.

Don’t enjoy life’s simple pleasures. Fixate on meatier matters. Stop enjoying sunsets and the first cup of coffee of the day. If your dog wags its tail when it sees you, decide not to take it personally.

Don’t appreciate your achievements, instead minimize them and regard them as things that any fool could do.

Keep raising the bar and turn striving for excellence into an exhausting, everlasting quest without an end goal.

Be much harder on yourself than you would be on others. Embrace martyrdom fully! Make things harder on yourself.

Expect others to know when you’re upset and regard their failure to know as a sign that they don’t care about you at all. If they still care tell yourself it's because they are codependant and they have no choice.

Blame your parents, siblings, cousins, co-workers, bosses and teachers, hell even your neighbors, for how your life’s turned out. Let there be no statute of limitations on their perceived transgressions and wrong doings.

Find people to associate with who have a similar negative outlook on life so you can reinforce each other’s’ feelings. If you can find someone who also berates you for your neagtive outlook on life it's even better.

Forget about breaking your goals up into smaller incremental steps. Accept nothing but the full achievement instantly every time.

Don’t set deadlines. You’ll get there eventually, right?

Expect an even playing field because, as you know, the world is renowned for being fair.

A moment in my mind

2011-09-14T17:50:00.004+10:00

My mind is a messy place at times. It's a state chiefly caused by all the things I let lie around in it.

This morning I woke up about an hour or so too early. Having checked the time my mind and I, for once in total agreement, decided that we should go back to sleep until the alarm actually went off. Why get up early on a cold winter's morning when you can stay in your comfortable, warm little nest for a bit longer?

I began to dream. It was as if my mind had decided to come up with all sorts of scenarios to scare the crap out of me. It wanted to nightmare.

First there was the vampires. Now, I love True Blood and I loathe Twilight so vampires aren't particularly scary to me. The mind really tried but they just didn't scare me.

Then there was the werewolves. Again, I love True Blood and I still loathe Twilight, and I adore wolves so the werewolves weren't particularly scary to me either.

This was followed by flesh eating zombies. Now I don't love or loathe anything with flesh eating zombies in it but I can tell from my experience this morning that they're not particularly pleasant to be around. They don't scare me though. Not one bit. They were more like annoying flies really.

It was at this point I decided that it was all really lame. I loudly proclaimed that fact in my dream because by that stage I was dreaming lucidly. I had also come to realize that I was in a sort of parallel world to which I had traveled and because it was all so lame I decided that I wanted to go home.

I went back to my hotel room, apparently they have hotel rooms in the vampire-werewolf-zombie parallel world, to pack my things so I could catch the flight back home. Apparently you fly there. Just keep that in mind if you want to visit. I would imagine that the airfare is fairly cheap.

In the hotel room I gathered my stuff, and there was a lot of it, folded it all up neatly and reached under the bed to pull my suitcase out from under it. I had obviously stuffed it under the bed to keep it out of the way. Very organized of me.

When I pulled out my suitcase I got the shock of my life. I couldn't believe what I saw. I felt utter panic. There was the suitcase no bigger than a briefcase and I had at least two normal suitcases' worth of stuff that I somehow needed to get in it. I became increasingly frantic and panicked even more. I completely lost it but luckily I was woken up by the alarm clock.

So apparently I'm fine with vampires, werewolves and flesh eating zombies but I cannot, I simply cannot, handle the mere thought of not having a suitcase big enough to get all my stuff into.

There. A moment in my mind. Are you as worried about me as I am? It's a good thing my psychologist called me Monday to let me know she was lodging paperwork to get more sessions paid for by my breakdown claim. It appears I need them. Badly.

The day after the day that marked the ten year anniversary

2011-09-12T12:58:00.000+10:00

This is good because we need to remember and grieve...

But not this, the “We Shall Never Forget 9/11: The Kids’ Book of Freedom” coloring book because we don't need to hate and make more anger...

"These attacks will change the way America deals with and views the Islamic and Muslim people around the world.

In Bin Laden’s house in Pakistan, Osama used his wives and children as shields as he tried to escape and get away from the American Military. But the coward Bin Laden could not escape. He was killed hiding behind the dress tail of a young woman.

Throwing his body into the sea showed him more respect than he showed to the people who died on 9/11."

Please stop that. We don't need that.