Category Archives: changes

Love and the Art of Self Loathing

Posted in blogging, changes, frank turner, life, new york, Relationships, the joker, Uncategorized by

I’m back bitches. Worst blogger award goes to…

So The Good Girl and I have set each other a blogging challenge to blog every week and this week, Week 1, is catch up week as we’ve both been very naughty little non-bloggers.

Anyhoo… I’ve been busy doing weird, fucked up relationship shit. Breaking up, getting back together, moving in together, breaking up. In summary the Joker and I have left no stone unturned in our quest to prove that love is not enough to sustain a relationship.

We’ve proven beyond reasonable doubt that a mutual love of Frank Turner, doughnuts and dark humour isn’t enough to sustain a workable, live-in relationship between two broken, fucked up middle aged people with a Mack truck full of baggage. At least it wasn’t enough for us.

All the pretty words and good intentions  count for bugger all when after a short while your love emotionally vacates the metaphorical premises and you’re left wondering what the fuck happened, twisting yourself into a pretzel to fit the uncomfortable and unreadable parameters of your situation. Bottom line: you’re back being lonely in your (now live-in) relationship and reading the tea leaves for how it came to this. In my case this turns love into self loathing. Why aren’t I good enough??!! Why can’t I fix this?

So it’s over and it was hard but this time at least I feel that it’s 200% done and dusted. There are no doubts that for the Joker and I love was not enough. I’ll let Jeff Buckley have the final word: “It’s never over, (he’s) the tear that hangs inside my soul forever”.  Except it is most certainly over.

Onwards. A couple of weeks after the END Miss M and I left for our much anticipated girls’ trip to Medellin, Colombia and NYC. It was just what the doctor ordered. Travel takes focus, especially when traveling alone with a child.

It was truly wonderful to revisit Miss M’s city of birth. This time it felt like a very different sort of adventure. The city had changed, it was safer and we were able to explore further afield. While the opportunity to meet Miss M’s birthmother did not happen it was still very much a worthwhile trip.

Then onto NYC. While Sydney is my home and my life, NYC is my love. I truly adore that city and yearn for it. I recently listened to an interview with the writer Bill Hayes talking about how he’s never lonely in NYC. I concur. Anthony talks about LA being his companion in “Under The Bridge”, that is how I feel about this city. I can simply walk along any street, at any time, and feel whole and happy and loved.

Of course quality time with my darling sister and BIL was great. We went to Philly for the day which was really fun…mmm, doughnuts…mmm, fried chicken… Where was I? Oh…we saw Tim Minchin’s Groundhog Day on Broadway. Brilliant. Wouldn’t be dead for quids.

On the last night we sat on the roof of our hotel, in the flower district – 28th Street, and listened to a fabulous singer kicking around some cool covers with her little band under the New York sky. A beautiful way to end a wonderful holiday.

I’ve been home a month. Back into work and school stuff and a little volunteering and exploring new possibilities. I never stay still long enough to contemplate things too deeply; at least not on the surface. Like a shark I’m always in motion but underneath the cogs turn and the gears grind and at odd times, like at the Botero Museum in Medellin, the tears come and the familiar punch-in-the-gut feeling visits.

Who knows where things are headed but I have my kids, my family, my friends, Frank Turner and endless Trump memes…to name a few of my favourite things. Life could be much, much worse.

Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes…. (part 2)

Posted in changes, life, working by

So where was I? Oh yes… bonking the graphic designer. Ha! Sorry… I was starting work as the bookkeeper/office administrator for my dad’s new business. It was 1991. I was young, keen, enthusiastic but sort of aimless. I worked to live, definitely not lived to work.

As the years went by this job kept me secure and anchored through university studies, another relationship (and eventual marriage), trying (and failing) to have children, adopting children, building a house, selling a house, moving into a new house, selling the house, moving into an apartment, getting divorced… not necessarily in chronological order.

Basically this job was my rock, my home away from home, my constant in an ever changing world.

While it may not have tickled my creative spot I am eternally grateful for the privilege of a secure income and flexible employment during all of my major life upheavals. It can not be underestimated how lucky I have been to have fallen into a job which has allowed me to study and raise my kids on a solid foundation.

(May I also say how lucky we all were that this fledgling business with no right to succeed has gone from a turnover of around $100,000 a year and three employees to 16+ employees and a turnover nudging $5 million. Goodness knows we’re all pretty surprised around here.)

But in recent months things have changed and I have taken those changes to mean it is time to uproot. My dad has finally sold his share of the business and semi-retired. An opportunity presented itself earlier this year which, at first, I was dubious about… but then decided to throw myself into it. It seemed that life were nudging me to step out of my safety zone and test myself a little.

This opportunity is still changing in its form but in essence I will be operating a café situated in a beautiful park with an all abilities playground run by the wonderful Touched by Olivia organization. So I will be able to work with food (my love) and with my love (The Comedian) in a social enterprise environment with aims and goals I feel strongly about.

I’m confident of the future though it is still hazy in detail. I have become lazy and complacent after so many years in a safe and stable job I know inside out. But I’m not too old to learn and the part of me that isn’t shit scared is buoyed by the excitement of trying something new, testing myself and changing all the parameters of my life.

As I clean up files, shred old documentation, transfer data files onto a portable hard drive and make notes about what things I need to show my replacement I don’t feel very sad, right now it doesn’t feel that real. I’m sure as my last few days here approach I will feel nostalgic or something close to that but right now my feelings come in waves: fear, excitement, loss, uncertainty, excitement, hope. I’m unsure yet confident that all will turn out as it should.

Onward.

images

Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes…. (part 1)

Posted in changes, life, money, working by

Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes
(Turn and face the strange)
Ch-ch-changes
Don’t want to be a richer man
Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes
(Turn and face the strange)
Ch-ch-changes
Just gonna have to be a different man
Time may change me
But I can’t trace time

(David Bowie “Changes”)

I’ve been at my present job for just short of 25 years. Well and truly over half my life time. It’s hard to get my head around at times. I started my working life as a typesetter. It was an accident really. I had little clue about what I wanted to “do with my life” (as we so grandly seem to say these days) when I left school a few months before my 16th birthday. I knew two things: 1) I wanted to make money and 2) I wanted to leave home. The first was a necessary precursor to the second.

I had been working after school and during school holidays at a child care centre where, at the ripe old age of 14, I would often be left in charge of a room full of toddlers. Because at 14 I actually felt more like an adult than I do now (because ignorance is bliss yo!) I took this completely in my stride and loved it. What I loved best was the money. My very own money that I didn’t have to ask my mum for. I could do whatever I pleased with it and that feeling was bloody intoxicating. Like your average meth head, I was hooked baby.

So the year was 1983 and I was in Year 10 and there was no way in hell I was staying on. I knew the workload that the HSC required didn’t work well with the amount of partying and slacking I was intent on doing. Plus it did not work with my plan of earning money and moving out of home (see above).

Despite the protestations of my parents (who had, after all, travelled around the world and survived countless hardships to provide me with this better life and these opportunities) I was dead set on being a working girl. So my dad lined up some work experience for me at the HCF art department (because what 15 year old girl doesn’t want to do something “arty”?). Of course the art department did not involve any actual art. We produced the brochures, posters and forms required to make a paper addicted 1980s corporation run.

That was fine by me. I did my week’s worth of work experience and fell in love with working in the city. There was nowhere I felt more alive than in the city. I loved working with adults (who strangely seemed to take me seriously), I loved being productive, I loved the hubbub of the city, I loved buying my buttered finger bun at the deli downstairs for morning tea.

The work experience led to me being offered a full time job as a “junior”. Looking back it isn’t impossible that my dad twisted some arms to get me in there. It’s never been expressly stated but as a parent now I wonder…

Anyway, in December 1983 I started full time work. In those days I was keen, eager and ambitious. I learnt the trade of typesetting and finished art quickly and progressed as different technology (cough… what passed for technology in the mid 1980s wouldn’t look out of place in a dinosaur museum today) was introduced. I moved from company to company and enjoyed the people and the challenges… oh, and the money.

Sorry I’m meandering… At the end of 1990 I was working part time at a small design/type agency in Surry Hills and wasn’t really sure what it or I was all about. I was bored and listless. So when my dad told me he was starting an engineering company with his business partner and would I come work for them as a bookkeeper I couldn’t see why not. I knew little about bookkeeping (though I had done an evening touch typing and bookkeeping course during Year 10 – who remembers the Receptionist Centre Girl ads?) and double entry journal keeping was certainly amongst my considerable skill set.

January 1991 I was ensconced in our new offices in Ultimo. It was mostly boring at that stage. Just me, dad and Bob. I was lucky if I put out one invoice a month. I think we turned over about $100,000 that year. Microsoft it wasn’t. But I kept myself busy by making sandwiches for us all for lunch, soldering the occasional batch of circuit boards, getting divorced from husband #1 and bonking the graphic designer who shared our office space.

Part 2 coming soon…

August

Posted in august, changes, life, new york, the joker, yearning by

Tomorrow is the start of August. I’m excited about August. There are special things happening.

A day which isn’t meant to mean anything but means a lot to me.

A big birthday for someone very special to me.

August was meant to be the end of something but looks like it won’t be. It’s the month before September and for the past six months or so it’s been SEPTEMBER in my mind. A month of change, a looming month, a pivotal month. But now it’s unlikely September will be that month so I’m refocusing on August and letting September go, setting it free.

It’s amazing how some days seem like a battle, like nothing will ever work out, like nothing is worth the trouble… and other days everything seems so easy, what will be will be, the future’s not ours to see (nod: Doris Day), life is just how it is, nothing more, nothing less.

This time last year I was getting ready for the New York trip with the Joker. My goodness I love New York, it’s my happy place. I yearn for the streets and the light and the smell and the bars and the $1 oyster happy hour, the surprises around each corner, walking, my sister. I want to go again; often I get an attack of NEW YORK. My brain starts to work out the logistics of just going, next week. But I don’t. I’m an adult, of sorts. It hasn’t much to do with August… except I’ve been to New York in August/September two years in a row and my heart is telling me to go.

But instead I’m going to stay right here and jump into August feet first… and see where the road takes me.

Pop Up

Posted in blogging, changes, frank turner, life by

This blog is badly neglected. I don’t know why. Well I do: mainly laziness and an “I’ll get around to it” attitude. I think about it often, every day just about. I read other blogs and I intend to visit mine. Regularly I have an idea for a blog post that feels so very important at that time, it just about writes itself in my mind instantly…  usually when I’m driving or pushing the trolley around Coles or doing one of a gazillion other things. But when I’m actually near a computer all inspiration evaporates and I lazily spend my time reading others’ writing or mindlessly scrolling Facebook. Bad habits: I’m completely made up of them.

There is a lot of stuff swirling around me right now. Almost every aspect of my life has either undergone changes or is about to undergo changes and yet I can’t write about most of it. Some is personal, some is temporarily secret, some is hard to grasp and wrangle into submission with a couple of hundred words in a blog post.

I walk a constant and ever evolving tightrope between gratefulness, joy, satisfaction, plenty and yearning, frustration, crazy anger, defeat.

I want to process my life and thoughts through my writing but I am overwhelmed by too much and not enough.

By no means is this a whingey  post. I didn’t pop up to whine about anything. Life is pretty fucking marvellous really. Wouldn’t be dead for quids. I guess I’m just trying to put into words where I’m at right now. Somewhere and nowhere, like everybody else.

I’ll leave you with my go to song of the moment. You know I’ve been having a very public, very annoying yet totally beautiful love affair with Mr Frank Turner for the last two years and this song has been my almost daily mantra for the past few weeks. I’m all about the lyrics and this song says everything I need to remember right now.

If Ever I Stray

Forgive me someone, for I have sinned
And I know not where I should begin
Some days it feels like you just can’t win
No matter what you do or say.

Things didn’t kill me but I don’t feel stronger
Life is short but it feels much longer
You’ve lost that drive, you’ve lost that hunger
To pull yourself through the day.

But if ever I stray from the path I follow
Take me down to the English Channel
Throw me in where the water is shallow
And then drag me on back to shore!

‘Cos love is free and life is cheap
As long as I’ve got me a place to sleep
Clothes on my back and some food to eat
I can’t ask for anything more

Come on everybody sing it 1, 2, 3, 4

We’ve all got secrets that we hold inside
The worst little things that we try and defy
The worst one of all that you never can hide
Is that you’re never quite as strong as you sound

So I’m sorry baby, for the times I’ve hurt you
Sorry friends, for the times I desert you
Most days it feels like I don’t deserve you
No wonder that you’re all still around

But if ever I stray from the path I follow
Take me down to the English Channel
Throw me in where the water is shallow
And then drag me on back to shore!

‘Cos love is free and life is cheap
As long as I’ve got me a place to sleep
Clothes on my back and some food to eat
I can’t ask for anything more

Come on everybody sing it 1, 2, 3, 4

Come on and join me in the water
Swim for hope
Sometimes it’s hard to remember
I couldn’t do this on my own

If ever I stray from the path I follow
Take me down to the English Channel
Throw me in where the water is shallow
And then drag me on back to shore!

‘Cos love is free and life is cheap
As long as I’ve got me a place to sleep
Clothes on my back and some food to eat
I can’t ask for anything more

I can’t ask for anything more

The path I chose isn’t straight and narrow
It wanders ’round like a drunken fellow
Some days it’s hard for me to follow
But if you’ve got my back I’ll go on.
If you’ve got my back I’ll go on.