4 Oct 2013
So this week I was made redundant.
The dictionary definition of redundant is pretty harsh – (adjective) No longer needed or useful, superfluous.
So I start with telling people – don’t read the dictionary if you’re trying to make sense of major life changes.
Don’t judge. The dictionary can be incredibly comforting to a lot of people at different life stages. Especially those of us who like words. And definitions.
There has been a major restructure, over a period of time, within my company to a new ‘operating model’. It’s been clear for a while that my role would be one to be ‘redefined’ in the context of the new world but it doesn’t change the ‘ouch’ feeling when you sit with your manager and have the conversation.
I’m in good company – there are a number of us across the wider Australia/New Zealand market unit who have been affected. Lots of talented, committed people who are good at our jobs. It’s just that these jobs have been ‘redeployed’. There are lots of words starting with ‘re’ that are bandied about in this process. And it is just a process, there is absolutely nothing personal in this kind of malarkey.
And there are opportunities within the new world as well which will make some people’s redundancies, well, redundant. And those opportunities (ie: other jobs) are available to me too. But I’m not sure that I’m necessarily going to travel that path.
Because this feels like this major opportunity from the point of definition one (noun) – a set of circumstances that makes it possible to do something, rather than definition two (also a noun) – a chance for employment.
And here is why.
1. It’s a job rather than a calling (no matter how evangelical I may be about it on occasion).
2. I’ve recently had a lot of clarity about ‘what I really want to do’ rather than just doing ‘what I am good at’.
3. I am actually quite good at what I really want to do.
4. Change can truly be as good as a holiday because it invigorates the spirit, refreshes the mind.
5. Though, that said, nothing focuses the mind like fear of unemployment.
6. But then, a life lived in fear is a life half lived.
7. And I know that it is better to live on my feet than die on my knees.
8. I know a lot of clichés are currently speaking to me.
9. Which is why they are clichés. Because they are TRUE.
10. If this isn’t the universe giving me a kick up the arse to say CARPE FUCKING DIEM BABY, I’m actually a man named Bruce.
I don’t doubt that in the next eight weeks as I work my way through the process of moving from my current reality to another I am going to go from one place to another. In the past 72 odd hours I have travelled from one emotion to another with the regularity and irrationality of the average hormonal teenager. You should all definitely be in touch with my beautiful man – the poor guy is probably going to need the support. And the beers. A lot of the beers.
But this is not a decision I make in isolation. I have his full, unadulterated, loving and enthusiastic support for this journey. Genuinely. As in pretty much everything I do. (For the love of god people DO NOT mention the fact that I fully intend getting another motorcycle in this existence). For my girls, this makes no difference. They only care that we hug them, feed them, and provide backing vocals for their fledging toddler bands. And give them milk. They really, really, really like milk.
There are things I’ll miss about my current job, but 100% of them are people. I have made some wonderful friendships in the 5.5 years I’ve worked there. But friendships transcend job titles. And we can drink wine, talk bullshit and play Words With Friends anywhere.
And so I end a week that has been a bit of a roller-coaster feeling powerful/excited/terrified. The world is my truly my oyster, as it has always been (but with a teensy opening of ‘HEY WHAT ABOUT NOW AL – GO ON – DO IT*????’. And by my reckoning I’ve only got 50 odd years before I die – I’ve got to get moving right?
Pretty awesome huh?
*I have no clue what IT looks like but it’s going to be LEGEN(waitforit)DARY!!!!!
3 Oct 2013
My relationships with ‘in-laws’ began around 20 years ago when my older brother started dating a girl who I assumed was completely bonkers. I could think of no sane person that would possibly find any of my brothers attractive, let alone attractive enough to be publicly associated with them.
Anyway, turned out all three of them over the years have managed to find highly intelligent, funny, kind, passionate, committed and attractive women to marry them. Including that first girl who was to set a very high benchmark for all future contenders wanting the ‘in-law’ badge.
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| She does. But she doesn’t ride it. |
I have a brother-in-law who is highly intelligent, funny, kind, committed and attractive too. But that makes more sense – my sisters have always been less smelly, less inclined to laugh at bodily functions and less ‘testosterony’.
Marrying my beautiful man got me a highly intelligent, funny, kind, committed and attractive sister-in-law with a fabulous sense of the ridiculous, and a mother-in-law that has failed miserably at perpetuating the witchy bitchy stereotype in any way. My father-in-law is also a lovely man and his son could do worse things than turn out like him.
See my problem?
Yep. I have nothing whatsoever to bitch about.
I have no terrible tales. They are providing me with absolutely NO material whatsoever to write obscure, meandering tales about how they are ruining my life, negatively influencing my children or turning my siblings into drug addicts or whores.
I’ve read some cracking tales of lives ruined, fortunes lost and reputations destroyed by the dastardly machinations of in-laws. People love those kind of stories, comments are attached to those blog posts in a torrent of ‘AHA!’, sharing further tales of woe, bitchiness, betrayal, and more.
Anything which gets people engaged makes a writer blissfully happy.
And then I’ve got my bunch of perfectly lovely in-laws.
Bastards. All of you.
1 Oct 2013
Perception is a funny thing. But it is powerful. Ridiculously powerful. As are our truths.
And open to misinterpretation. As are our truths.
I’ve been pondering the subject in some depth for a while now since my psych asked me to consider why I give more brain space to people that don’t think I’m that great, rather than the people that do. Why does the idea that people don’t like me or believe something that’s not true make me feel so physically ill and take control of my emotions with such crushing totality? Somebody’s off-the-cuff remark can poleaxe me and ruin a day in a way from which I struggle to return. And which I can rarely, properly, disregard.
Part of me would suggest that those occasions in some way reinforce my own somewhat (ahem) negative self-imagery. But she’d argue that I wasn’t born that way. Small people don’t come into the world thinking they are less than others. That is learnt along the way. And people with a strong sense of self aren’t necessarily arrogant. Just confident. I envy the buggers.
She’d also suggest, probably with a lot of hand gestures, that if I was driving a bus somewhere and one of the passengers started slapping me around the head and telling me what a crap driver I was, I’d put them off the bus so both I and the other passengers could travel in peace.
But the passengers on the emotional bus seem to be a lot harder to kick off. They start yelling about having rights too and demanding to speak to my manager. And they keep trying to get on. They’re persistent. And for some reason when I visual them they always wear those straight brimmed trucker hats with terrible logos.
And I know I’m also the manager. I get the metaphor and I love the visualisation. But… still. As a manager dealing with difficult passengers – I totally suck.
Where there are people – there are different perceptions and different truths. That is universal.
There are people out there who don’t like me because they misinterpreted something I said and never gave me the opportunity to sort it out. There are people out there who don’t like me because I was a bitch and either never noticed, or never made the effort to resolve it. There are people that don’t like me because they just don’t and nothing I can say or do will ever change that. And there are people that don’t like me because our friendship existed in a period of their life they would rather forget.
But there are people out there that do like me. There are people out there who like me because I got it wrong and was able later on to get it right. There are people out there that like me because I remind them of a period of their life which they will forever treasure. There are people out there that like me and I will never know why and I thank the gods for them every day. There are people out there who like me even though I got it wrong and never noticed who decided to let it go. There are people out there that like me because I am nothing like them and people who like me because I am exactly like them. And there are people out there who like me because I know the difference between there, their and they’re.
All those people out there with a perception of me. A truth about me. Just one individual in a sea of seven billion yet over the years hundreds, thousands of people will have an opinion. I am, we are all, powerful like that.
And I will just have to live with the very occasional reminders that some people hold on to “hatin’ on others” and I will never understand why. It will hurt especially if I don’t understand it. But we all have villains in our life stories. Sometimes they are our even our good selves and our insane emotional baggage. Other times they are other people. Sometimes, a bit of both. In some people’s life stories – I am that villain even though I might not want to be nor did I mean to be.
As I have grown older (and gotten my therapy on in particular) I have re-learned that people believing something about me does not mean it is true. It may still burn but ultimately – in a life time we can’t please everybody despite our best intentions. Even poor Mother Teresa had haters. And I think we can all agree that she was pretty high up in the ‘people who are really really lovely’ charts.
So much to think about and of course it’s important to draw a line under the thinking – come to a resolution as it were, find some peace on the topic.
So my conclusion (drum roll) is that I give so much brain space to the “haters” because I am an idiot.
My psych is going to so pleased.
24 Sep 2013
When I first moved out of home, I had to ring a friend to get the low down on how you could tell a potato was boiled. The sweet simple genius of that discovery meant that potatoes became my favourite food for the next couple of decades.
And I never really learn to cook anything apart from potatoes and my mother’s macaroni cheese recipe since. Sure I can put meals together but once I crack a recipe I pretty much stick to it forever.
And ever.
When we moved into our current place, my dad suggested it had enough space up the back to put in a small veggie garden.
It’s like he had never met me.
I’ve always thought that one day I would stop buying vegetables that only suffered a long and lonely death in the vegetable tray of my fridge because I never quite found the time to slice them, dice them, julienne them, carve them into swan shapes and stuff them up exotic birds and serve to fabulous dinner guests with big linen napkins who truly believe that calling it gazpacho makes cold soup palatable.
You know? I really thought one day I’d be a grown up.
Take meat. I’m 38 and I accidentally poached chicken the other day for the very first time. And I mean accidentally – I was just throwing wine and herbs into the pan to add some flavour to the chicken and because I threw in too much wine all of a sudden the chicken cooked differently. So I consulted my baby sister and she confirmed I was practically ‘Masterchef’.
I know. My poor family.
And then recently – I just bought some pre-chopped vegetables in a container, threw them in the microwave, steamed them according to the instructions on the packet and VOILA – posh veggie mix to go with the sausages. Full beef, not poached if you must know.
In a moment of clarity I have realised this is the way forward. If I just give up pretending it is ever going to be any different, that my version of adult might not include a culinary flair – I save a fortune in food that doesn’t get eaten and I get to eat food I like. Quickly. With minimum effort. And I can wear non-linen napkins to boot.
Lots of steamed vegetable loveliness. With packet gravy.
Bliss.
***
PS: Even better – when you google you can find evidence to support YOUR point of view. Though there might be something in Dad’s backyard veggie garden. Dammit.
http://health.ninemsn.com.au/whatsgoodforyou/theshow/694154/whats-better-for-you-151-fresh-or-frozen-food
23 Sep 2013
There are times when you want to be the better person.
And there are other times when you want to check out the acceptance speech of Merrit Wever and see what exactly Sofia Vergara wore to the Emmys.
And both are okay. It is really hard to stay tuned to the atrocities unfolding in Nairobi, especially when the death toll keeps rising and you don’t fully understand why the fuck more people are dying in malls.
Again.
I come from a long line of grudge holders. Olympic level. They don’t forgive. They don’t forget. Religion has been part of it. Personalities. Misunderstandings. In fact, if we traced back some opinions and ‘facts’ I’m pretty sure we’d reach a point where official recordings didn’t exist and yet it still continues.
So I get that things carry on.
And on.
But what is it lately that means our news feeds are constantly being populated with the death of innocents? Mass shootings. Violence. Fear. Pain. Death. Ugliness.
I find it heartbreaking that for some, going to the mall is never going to be an act of mindlessness. That going to the mall will never again be as simple as finding a similar dress to the one that ‘Sofia’ wore to the Emmy’s in 2013.
Shopping should just be. Movies should be. School should be. Touristing should be. Working should be. Life should ‘just be’.
A grudge should be nothing more than crankiness and a dislike of a relative who you think may possibly have worn purple on the wrong day in June in 1645.
And yet, generation after generation is begetting an ugliness, a vacuum, a void into which people seek validation in violence and bloodshed. In which religion is used as a weapon and differences are used to justify evil.
No culture is immune. No religion is immune. No country is immune. Bigotry, hate, small mindedness are all traits of successful politicians right across the globe. Politicians represent the mood of a country.
It’s obvious that a lot of countries needs to spend some time in ‘time out’. Until they are ready to play nicely.
Why? Why are we not voting in people who are kind? Who are thoughtful? Who are innately positive?
People who get how awesome Sofia’s dress is?
People who understand that society should function in such a way that the only thing that matters to all of us, regardless of culture, gender, sexuality, religion or race, is Sofia’s dress.
And that if you don’t like it. It doesn’t matter. Because it’s just a dress.
And what really mattered is that we were able to disagree on it without anybody getting hurt.
20 Sep 2013
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| My perfect children |
My girls are learning to swim. This means every Friday for half an hour, I keep an eye on the smaller one while watching the older one splash about in a lane learning to put her face in the water and wave her arms and kick and stuff. And keep her mouth closed under the water. I think I’m supposed to be watching for her in case she does something daft and tries to drown but the only time she did that I was talking to one of the other mothers and missed the whole five second catastrophe.
Then for another half an hour, I bounce around with the smaller one in a wee drenched pool with a bunch of other babies and parents singing nursery rhymes and encouraging her to put her head under the water and head for the wall. She’s gaining in confidence but she lacks any serious commitment to floating or life preservation so we have a way to go.
Anyway, while overlooking the learning of these important life skills, I was chatting to another mum today who looked buggered. I asked if she was okay and she said she was very tired, that it had been a rough couple of days and then she said the best thing ever.
“Yesterday I yelled at my daughter to stop acting in a way that was stopping me being the mother I dreamt of being before I had kids.”
I laughed delightedly. She looked at me in an abashed manner and said “I’m dreadful, I know, but I was so tired and she was being so disagreeable”.
GOD NO LADY – you’re perfect just the way you are. You summed it up in one beautiful sentence to a four year old with absolutely no comprehension of how their individuality seriously impacts your desire to be a bloody perfect mother.
I normally blame myself for being tired, emotional or lacking understanding of their developing selves.
But this lady was DEAD RIGHT. My darling daughters quite often don’t understand when I say things like “Would you like to pick up that doll you just dropped and put it away” I mean “PUT THE STUPID DOLL AWAY RIGHT NOW”
And they reply to my question “No, thank you”. Which is TOTALLY fair. They’ve answered the question I asked. And honestly. Getting cross with them is unreasonable of me UNTIL I REMEMBER THAT THEY SHOULD JUST BLOODY KNOW WHAT IS IN MY HEAD, and answer the question I meant.
That’s how parents operate.
That’s how adults operate.
So when they reply to the things we ask, or the mood we are in, it’s not our fault. We have the best of intentions and its them being all HONEST TODDLER on our butts that makes us react in a manner incommensurate with our pre-baby parenting plans.
And I can tell you – life looks so much better now that I know my imperfect parenting moments are not my fault.
Props tired lady at swimming. Props
