Me Me Me

"When it comes down to it, I let them think what they want. If they care enough to bother with what I do, then I'm already better than them" -- Marilyn Monroe

Half Hero - Half Man

Purpose

Everyone seems to have a purpose. A reason why they do what they do. Each day. Every week. All year.

I don't have a purpose. A reason for doing it. No driver. I just do it because it's what I do. Go through the motions. Put in the effort. Head home exhausted.

Is this how it is meant to be?

I'm Sorry

Kate Miller-Heidke says it best when she croons "please, please believe that I'm sorrrrrry".

My friend Angela Ferguson pointed out the other night that I was in a facebook friending frenzy. She does have a way with words. It's what makes her the kind of friend who you stop and listen to.



Ange was right, I was on a friending spree but it wasn't out of boredom or mania. This was purely due to the fact that I want to make contact with new and old friends.

I am back in a good place and people energise me. All those people who have touched my life are welcome back in, if they feel they want to return.

In the past, I shut down anything that harshed my mellow. These days, you'd need to use an accelerant and a match to really upset me. Not that you should try that.

So, friend me already.

Standing Before the Wizard

How gingerly I walk the tight rope that runs across the gauntlet of my chiseled ethos and the driving need to not harm others.

While Olga and I joke of our constant struggle with buyers remorse, the actual struggle that I have faced this week has been one of cognitive dissonance.

Instead of my strong ideals pushing me to follow a course of action, I have found that two opposing powerful beliefs have clashed so violently, I am left in a state of real and present anxiety. Last night was the first time in my life that I lay in bed and experienced true paralysing anxiety. The kind that leaves you unable to breathe and without a rational exit.

The Internet poses many interesting questions and leaves us open to a myriad of situations that would never have existed in a world of pen pals and rotary dial telephones. There are benefits and losses. As a scientist, there seems to me to be endless positives to this futurist Jetson-style world we live in. I long to look outside and see flying cars but then the reality of 3D conceptualisation crashes head on in to the fact that most people have trouble merging in to one lane, as they drive on a linear surface in their 1 tonne boxes of steel reinforced status anxiety.

Everything is accelerated. Faster. Dizzier. Manic. We love it but oh how we cherish the moment it all stops. The duplicity of our stop-go lives leaves me in a state of confusion, often. Then I sit down and wait, think and process then understand the source and meaning of my life momentum.

Last month, an old colleague touched base with me. We often share facebook comments or take a passing glance as the photos posted on flickr. We worked together a long time ago at Quarantine, in Canberra. That was a place full of old guys who had moulded in to furniture and found young upstarts like me too energetic at times. This guy was part of the furniture.

He was fun to talk to online. We even had a coffee while I was visiting the capital recently but the real meat of the story comes in the dark menacing form of the online shadow. A person who sees you are suffering or in a bad place, from your mood online and decides to exploit that for their own gain. I have seen this multiple times and mainly during my deepest depression when people saw I was at my weakest. Luckily, I had good people around me and although I made errors in judgement, there was nothing that caused too much pain. Ask anyone on the Internet and they will have a story of duplicity and betrayal for you.

At first I wondered about the reasoning behind the behaviour of these people. What makes someone prey on another member of their species? What perks up inside them when they see someone who they perceive as weak? What is the reward they seek at the end of the hunt?

The last question is interesting. The WHY of it all.

From my recent experience with a shadow, it was some kind of moral test. A game of positioning and baiting. Pulling me in to a situation and then abandoning me at the point where I stood alone before the Wizard. I am still not sure if I passed or failed the test. What I do know is that as soon as I made the decision to no longer play, I was answered with boredom and disinterest.

So, this will happen. It will happen with people who you once knew. That's a great way to make contact. The best way to respond is to refuse to play the game. Follow your moral compass. Trust your gut. Make decisions based in thought and not reaction to sensory stimulation.

Honour yourself.

Imaginary Friends

There are billions of people on the Earth. Thousands share your popular culture. Hundreds live in the same socioeconomic and cultural group. Dozens will call you friend. A fistful will love you, the way you love them.

Where Tuna comes from

Reach

There are many moments when I call a friend to tell them I'm having a bad day and then cheer up as soon as I hear their voice. Then I mention nothing of my troubles because those troubles have melted away to nothing.

Sometimes reaching out gives you perspective. To have someone to reach out to is sometimes enough. It's the knowing that you have someone, if you ever need.

All the rest is forgotten in the happiness of having wonderful people you love, who love you back.

Easy

Nomad

How Manly You Are

After a night breaking shoe rules at inner-west parties, this rebel awoke to a medium to rare headache. Maybe it was the projectile expulsion the previous night but I felt slightly seedy and not overly precious on Sunday.

Allison and Kellie had been at an all you can drink foodie and wine birthday dinner the night Bernarda and I rocked Linda's housewarming but that didn't stop Allison from going for her normal swim. Today it was at the heated outdoor salt water pool under the coat hanger in Milson's Point. That is an iconic pool. It's one of the first sites I found when Google Earth Street View came online with Sydney snaps.

That area means a lot to me. Milson's Point. I used to work at a company called BCode with Sydney offices above Luna Park. In summer my days consisted of witty repartee with an Irish hardware engineer I wish I'd married and the day long screams from Luna Park-goers riding the scary rides.

Luna Park rides aren't like new parks where you accelerate towareds the ground at the speed of fright. They are those old rickety rides that make you wonder mid-ride if they have been doing the regular maintenance and what years of wear and tear can do to steel. Thus the screaming soundtrack while we worked. The view rocked, if that helps.

Allison chose a good pool for a cold winter Sydney day of swimming. She did however demonstrate the frustration of commuting to Manly on a weekend. Getting from Milson's Point to Manly requires a ferry ride back to Circular Quay and on tp Manly. Not a shirt ride or the most crow flyey path.

The easy enough journey to Manly was made painful by the hangovers that we all had persist past lunch time. Bernie and I were meant to meet a Circular Quay but after we realized we were about to miss the ferry, I got my kindly taxi driver to swoop by pick he up somewhere between Darling Habour and Circula Quay. Sydney people know that area as a deadspot aimed at tourists and lost folk... often interchangeable.

After rescuing B from no mans land, we sat at the ferry terminal and tried to make conversation. It was a major fail and she declared that Candy would be the only one without a hangover and this our only hope. Candy is intolerant of alcohol and can't drink. She's so much the Enetgiser Bunny that it lessens no outing when she attends. Candy was leaving home after giving a maths tutorial and was running about an hour late. No, half an hour with our detoxicating disadvantage.

That slut of a city (as referred to by Bernie) had a calm harbor this day. Luckily for my rolling tummy and the packed ferry of tourists crossing the ditch with me. The sail boats were out and the sun was shining so after my body turned suitably numb, it was quite a beautiful day.

We ended up at a microbrewery, known mainly to the locals. It's always amusing to listen to Manly locals bitch about the hoards of tourists in their British accents. Hate those invaders.

Within arriving, I finished my smuggled in Red Bull and started on Kellie's hair of the dog cure of bubbly, lemonade and oj. It's a personal mix but works wonders for postponing the hangover until later. During this micro-cure for a macro-hinderance in a microbrewery, I managed to hit an attractive blonde waiter while telling an exaggerated story requiring massive hand movements.

That was nothing on K's rant about "gingers" and why they are devil spawn. A post for another day and another writer probably.

We spent hours there and then by a fire in another pub. Candy arrived with her new haircut that for some reason encourages men to approach her and share their secret fantasies of dressing her up as an anime character. It's amazing what people think it is ok to say to one hairstyle that you simply can not say to another hairstyle. If only men realized that we women don't change our looks or dress each morning with their fantasies in mind. *sigh*

I sat there in the last pub doing my best to imbibe an enthusiastically purchased final bottle of bubbles. We were all forcing it down at that stage. No hair of the dog would help at this stage. The hangovers had caught us while we were at our tired weakness and unable to hold them back with our 30 something denial.

Thinking at that point of how rare an afternoon I was having in spending hours eating, drinking, hitting attractive men and discussing life, the universe and everything with my four best friends, I smiled. It was a smile that warmed me from the curls on my head to the heels on my feet and all the bits in the middle. That or I was too near the fireplace. I'll believe the former.

I'm too lucky with this friends thing. Telling Bernie on the boat ride home that a person's friend portfolio tells you more about them then any brand they outwardly portray, I realized that I'm surrounded by brains, beauty, charisma and kindness in spades.

It didn't matter that the place was Manly, it was a day for the girls.

Soul Mates

I will quote anyone if they help argue my point. In this case, it is Samantha in Sex and the City 2. Carrie compliments her for not dumping her friends and going off with a handsome man. She laughs a haughty laugh and says something about how they worked out long ago that men and babies don't matter because the four of them are soul mates.

It wasn't until I heard that a second time that I realized that I have soul mates. People who fill in the cracks when we are are together and make everything feel complete and whole again. People who act as scaffolding until we can hold ourselves up.

There is a corny story that talks of people existing as a perfect vase long ago. One day, the vase shattered in to many tiny pieces. In time as we live and are reborn, we will find the pieces that fit in to us and make us whole again. They are our soul mates.

Do I believe it? Yes, to an extent the idea is good. There are people everywhere but only a few that we fit in to and them in to us. We may travel a million paths and never find that one or few people who make us feel complete. Those who we didn't know were missing until they appeared. Not something we lack that is fulfilled but something that compliments and increases who we already are.

So often, life is either a compromise to accept people in to our lives or a series of shut doors to ensure we don't let the wrong people in. It may even become the case that we reject so many people by default that we don't let certain _right_ people in. I don't believe this is the case with so-called soul mates.

If someone is meant to be in your life then it doesn't matter if they come along too late or too under the radar to register at first because they will continue to reappear until one of you realises.

Is this the same as 'true love' and 'forever friends'? No. I'm not sure those exist. They are fluffy concepts wrapped in Hallmark and coated with pink fairy floss.

You laugh and say soul mates are the same thing. Maybe I'm aging and becoming more idealistic but I'm not convinced. There is too much evidence in my life that says that not making early sacrifices will result in true friendship found. It's a combination of waiting, trusting, not trying and always being yourself. Then when you find it, there is no real effort required to allow it to happen. It simply works. It makes sense. It is easy.

My only active advice is to not let it go. Hold on to it as other forces will surely push to re-sever. Not in a way that forces it because that can cause stress to but more in a way that is conscious and mindful of it's value.

Value the valuable. Somethings lost are wounds we my never recover from. At least for a few more lives, when we attempt to find them again.

Perfection and Assured Disappointment

How on earth can you live with a declaration of perfection thrust upon you when a person first meets you?

It's impossible, right?

I sat across from someone on the weekend who said "So, you're a perfect person?" I'm still not sure it was a question so let's assume it was rhetorical. I did however respond with "hardly". That's because I'm so flawed that I exist in a plain of existence that looks like a whole lot of floors - carpeted; tiled; wooden; floating; and even cave dirt.

There is only one way forward if you do not deal with this unmaintainable perception, in the very early stages.

Like any other belief, it should be based in fact and the one overruling positive and absolute truth is that there is no perfection. In nature... In mathematics... In concept... there exists beauty in flawlessness but that is only relative to the broken and rebuilt. People are failing from the second they are born. Even supermodels abuse airline staff and destroy the facade of perfection with ugly manners. Even rare and exotic triffid-envied tropical orchids wither and die when their time for perfection is passed.

Maybe that is what he meant. Maybe I was perfect for a short passing moment in time. Obviously, I left before I could rot in to the rainforest floor. Obviously, I wasn't snoring at the top of my lungs during his favorite movie. Obviously, I wasn't sulking about the wrongs of me suffering first world problems while other less fortunate people struggle to survive this imperfect world.

Everyone has heard me quote Marilyn Monroe when she said that if you can not take me at my worst then you don't deserve me at my best. This may be a point when the corollary kicks in and spits up on the embryonic idea that you should give me time to fail and see if I still fit in to your view of perfect.

I'm an odd person in many ways. One is that I celebrate the breaks in people. The cracks that make people the glorious random souls they are. The tarnished lives that sprout the best stories from histories lived. All an acknowledgement that there is no actual normal. There is no simply average. There is a bell curve we fit under and round holes we must fit our square peggedness in but that's it.

In our failings, we hold the key to the individuals we are. In accepting those breaks and stains and scars in those and others, we celebrate that although there is no perfection that there sure is a whole lot of really interesting, amazing and magical people.

Pedestals are precarious places. Be awfully careful not to put someone on one unless you are willing to catch them when they surely fall, after a few too many wines.

Airplanes

Airplanes. A great place to write. I spend so much time on them writing stuff that I wonder if that is why I travel at all. It is the perfect place to write. I can sit in a cluster fuck of people and ignore them completely. Pump the music up and chip away at the thoughts in my head.

This time, it was Sydney and Canberra that borrowed me for a while. It was meant to be more Sydney than The Capital but minds changed and plans went with them. Don't ask me why. I'm not sure I know why yet.



Bernarda was the first to see, squee and hug me on arrival in Sydney. We jumped out of separate taxis outside Allison's place in Surry Hills across the street from each other. Wielding a bottle of bubbly and the sweetest, most loving smile she greeted me. Reminding me why Sydney is another home for me. A place I belong and long for.

On this plane, they are serving food but I only want a red wine. I used to worry about the order of things before. Like dessert after dinner, when I now have it before if my mood guides me there. There is the rule of wine with food. Responsible service of alcohol except when the food is plane food and eating that is not so responsible.

Ahhh.... responsible. I want to only ever write it with a lower case R. It is far too big a word already, without engrossing its importance. Feeding its ego with stress and overvalue.

Bernarda and I got Allison's neighbor Claudette to let us in to her place. Claudette knew to expect a Brazilian called Bernie or a Darwin girl called Damana to turn up and ask to be let in. We took the third compound option and the neighbour smiled as she let us in. We know the people on that street very well. Allison has been there for a long time and I lived four doors up from her for a short time. That was at a time when my life was falling apart and I couldn't keep my ducks in a row.

Oh, do ask me about ducks later. There is a story there.

We let ourselves in to Allison's and as Bernarda grabbed the flutes, I opened my suitcase and made the big decisions. Must I change out of my Black Milk lace bell bottom tights or would they sensibly help me acclimatize?

We got distracted by the glasses of bubbly and discussions of new wave condoms before important lacey-like decisions could be made. The bottle was empty as we swanned out the door and hailed a cab heading for Linda's place in Marrickville.

Marrickville to me will always be a suburb close to the airport that is home to one of Australia's best boxers. It will also now be the suburb Linda lives in, where a week earlier down the street a man shot himself in the head when cornered by police for a recent criminal act. Associations.

Linda is an American friend who was having a housewarming. For some reason I always end up at her parties and leave said parties with trouble trailing loose behind and many incriminating photos imprinted in digital worlds.



This party was no exception. The moment when you hear yourself declare "let's make these photos look hilarious for facebook" is often the end to what could have been a fun and reserved night. I don't know if it was the mulled wine or the shots of grey goose in large plastic party cups but all I remember after that declaration is lying on Allison's couch and requesting a bucket with some water in the bottom.

Seeing Linda later for a girly cheese dinner brought out another Damana Sex And The City moment. Apparently, on arriving at Linda's she asked me to remove my shoes. Everyone else had but I kept ignoring the instructions and giving one reason that I thought would explain everything. "These are Campers heels". This seemed like a free pass to break the no shoes rule. Even lying on Linda's bed in shoes.

Fortunately, Linda is nothing but class. She expressed her discontent and we continued a lively night of wine and cheese and wine. Next time, I'll find an attractive man to help me take me shoes off. That could be the new doorman for Sydney inner-west parties.

Bantang

Today was a mess. Things happened that brought thought. The world turned upside down and then righted itself so fast that it shook a little. Not so much that it knocks you over but enough that it makes you catch your breath.

It is cold here. It is cold everywhere in Australia at the moment. My cold may not be your cold but everyone is wrapped up and in bed tonight.

There was one thing that stood out tonight and it was the realisation that you can put others first but as long as you don't put yourself first, you are robbing everyone of the best you.

No more accepting only what is given. Life is more and I deserve more.

As for those who find me lacking, they can step up or step out because I'm going on without the nay sayers.

Vodeeee

Asking

Over time and through desperate need, I have learnt to ask for help from people. In time, I have had the ability to give that back... in part. It is humbling each time. It is humiliating sometimes. It is more often than not, quite freeing.

Now there is something that I want to ask but I have not learnt how or when to do it. It often results in huge explosions from me and I shut everything down.

More than anything right now, I want people to leave me alone. Not fix things. Not give advice. Not probe me for insights in to life or pain or the pursuit of happiness. Not for help with some technical issue.

Lightness. Humour. Happiness. Superficiality. These are all fine.

Anything beyond that and I simply can't aid with it. Hopefully this will change but right this instant, I will not be around for the whims of others.

I don't believe you

Insecure Snowballs

I've seen some crazy stuff in my time but nothing tops the last week. As someone who has learnt how to deal with my stress, I'm always observing those around me and how they cater for a turn in fortune.

The most recent train spotting has resulted in a new form of stress that I call the Insecure Snowball. It happens when someone who isn't very secure in themselves realises that they have been too busy prancing around buying fishing gear and haven't been doing their self-declared-over-inflated-titled job properly.

Their first reaction is to deflect. That's when the first snowflake randomly bounds sideways and knocks in to another one. To explain the initial snowflakes erratic behaviour to the second snowflake, he blames the wind. "What wind?" someone asks. The initial erratic snowflake with delusions of mediocrity screams "the wind that isn't here now because it is easiest to blame". The two scream of their disappointment, when only yesterday the wind was their trusted friend. They float off and deflect sideways suddenly again. Then other snowflakes get bumped in to by the initial snowflake and his friend and they re-tell the tale. Each time the absent wind is to blame.

Reality is inconsequential once the badly done by snowflakes have become a slide down a mountain side. They care not of the consequences of the homes they wreck; the lives they roll and destroy; or the false words they must live with when each individual snowflakes lies in bed at the end of the day and thinks of what kind of snowflake they are. No! It's about riding the wave of insecurity. Deflecting the blame. Running the path of destruction. Never letting on that they did their job wrong in the first place.

The insecure snowflake can cause quite a lot of damage in producing the insecure snowball but shine a little sunshine on them and their insignificance evapourates with the goodness of warmth, blown by an innocent wind.

Antique Bogan Road Show

Women have no feelings

The perfect support email from a depressed person

This email arrived in my inbox on Friday morning. At the point where I wanted to do nothing more than give up, she showed understanding that no one else had shown me. I hope it helps you to either cope or at least understand how to support someone who really needs it.

Hi Mana,
...

I understand how you are feeling at the moment, it's like you have lost an anchor and are at the mercy of the whims of other people's moods, comments, and your own ability to handle those at any given time.

I am definitely not going to tell you to toughen up, in my opinion that is just a bandaid solution wrapped in a blanket of denial. Healing takes time. And time, and more time. And when you think you have done all the healing that you can possibly do, some more time on top of that.

I would say I am at the stage where little comments don't hurt me anymore, but I am still definitely at the mercy of my own fragile brain that decides whether I am "okay" or "happy" or "black".

All I can do for you as well is not offer platitudes such as "don't worry, you'll get through it" or "it will be okay".... because I know how un-okay it is, and how hard it is to deal with the day to day sometimes, let alone worrying that you will ever be "through" it.

I think the key for anyone going through tough times, including myself, is to just hold on, breathe, and dont' be afraid to totally shut down and cocoon and protect yourself when you feel fragile. Be fierce with your self-protection. Don't apologise for it, and feel safe talking to people who understand.

Anyway. I hope today is better for you, and that you are protecting yourself while you feel fragile.

Tash x

Living for the weekdays

I told a friend this morning about a dream I have. A dream I choose to push up the ladder of importance. A dream that I will honour, despite the fallout from rejected normality.

When I hear people happy that it is Friday, I think of them as having lost the plot. Imagine if you so look forward to Friday because it means you will have two days when you are happy and doing whatever you want. Imagine hanging on for two days a week to release the beast inside and let you canter through what should be the better parts of your life.

I don't want to be a person who looks forward to the weekends. I want to hang out for the weekdays. I want to wake up each morning and be glad that today is today, despite it's closeness to the weekend.

Hump day should only be the days we climb the bell tower and hang off the ropes that ring the dings and dongs across Paris.

This year, I've woken up and gone to work and loved it. I've loved coming home. I've loved weekends. None of it feels forced or endured. Life shouldn't rape you. It should be like making love.

To lose that is unacceptable. I shall chase my weekdays like some of you chase your weekends.

Fashionista Kitty

Apparently, this is me

Received an email today saying that this is the Damana LOLcat.

The best quote about depression I have ever read

“Then there is this: in some way, the quiet terror of severe depression never entirely passes once you’ve experienced it. It hovers behind the scenes, placated temporarily by medication and renewed energy, waiting to slither back in, unnoticed by others. It sits in the space behind your eyes, making its presence felt even in those moments when other, lighter matters are at the forefront of your mind. It tugs at you, keeping you from ever being fully at ease. Worst of all, it honours no season and respects no calendar; it arrives precisely when it feels like it.”

- Daphne Merkin on her forty year battle with depression | Life and style | The Observer

-- via Alice Boxhall

Blow Out

There are lots of things that you don't know about me. I used to play state level netball and basketball when I was in school. It's something I've been doing since I was 9 years old. You know those kids who have great hand-eye co-ordination and extremely good fitness? Yeah, that was me. My sister and I played team sports like netball, basketball, hockey and volleyball. We did individual sports too. We were sprinters and that logically lead to long, triple and high jump.

There weren't any sports that were too difficult.

Netball is the sport that all Australian girls play. Meeting a woman in my age group who doesn't know how to play netball is rare, in this country.



The thing with netball is that it is high impact. The pounding your body takes over a long period of time is quite harsh. Especially if you have an injury. In fact, it is the most violent non-contact sport I've ever played, so injuries are common. One day, I landed very badly on my right leg and blew out my knee. Instead of resting it, I kept playing... for months.

The knee injury got so bad that I got used to limping everywhere and standing with most of my weight on my left leg. Finally, netball gave may to recovery time. Over the years, I get overly optimistic and return to netball. Usually last most of the first season and then the knee gets so aggrevated that I can't walk.

This time, it took two games. Playing volleyball, basketball, walking and running hasn't caused it to flare up but netball did it straight away.

It is time that I admit to myself that netball is a game I once played and not one that my right knee can tolerate anymore. Regardless of fitness, technique or recovery tricks like ice and anti-inflamatories, netball is too high-impact for my poor abused knee.


That sux. Unfortunately what sux more is not being able to walk up and down stairs without agonising pain; not being able to wear anything but flat shoes; and being unable to sleep due to that deep ache that comes from a serious inner knee injury.

Goodbye netball. Hello to more indoor beach volleyball and low impact sports.

Am I officially old now?

Alanis for you

Pussyfoot

Some days, I lack the patience to be diplomatic due to tiredness or stresses. Other times, it is due to the person I am speaking with.

Some people say things that show so little understanding of a topic or situation that it would take a huge amount of effort and time to spell out why and justify every reason at every corner.

That is when I get short-tempered and smack them on the nose and say "bad monkey".

I don't have them killed and this should count for something.

No regrets

Good Friends

Worst

I used to think the worst thing in the world would be to disappear and no one noticed.

Now I know it is to be standing in the middle of the room and nobody notices you are there.

They will look for me

I have often wondered how I person gets up and walks out of the lives of everyone they know and love.

How do you just leave and never contact them again? How do you leave them wandering where you are and how you are? How do you cut all ties?

Now, I find it hard to see this as just black and white.

Recently, I have wanted to get up one morning and say bye as usual and then leave. Leave, never to be seen again. Go somewhere far far far far away. Somewhere that nobody knows me. No one takes a second look. Start all over again. Be nothing to anyone. Disappear. No longer be me.

Some days, I just wish it was quiet.

My Kindle's Insides

This is what the inside of my Kindle looks like. I would like to live in there.

The Best Nail Polish Remover

People keep asking me what nail polish remover I use, so as not to destroy my nails.

It's not about the remover. I use Cutex, which is cheap. You can get it anywhere.

Then I use a good nail moisturiser. Foot and hand creams are fabulous and intense.

You don't have to spend a fortune to look after your nails and keep them divine.

Tale As Old As Time

Awww... I love this song.

Not sure who I most identify with.

Sense and Sensibility

"The more I know of the world, the more I am convinced that I shall never see a man whom I can really love. I require so much!" — Jane Austen

you bleed just to know you're alive

And I'd give up forever to touch you
Cause I know that you feel me somehow
You're the closest to heaven that I'll ever be
And I don't want to go home right now

And all I can taste is this moment
And all I can breathe is your life
Cause sooner or later it's over
I just don't want to miss you tonight

And I don't want the world to see me
Cause I don't think that they'd understand
When everything's made to be broken
I just want you to know who I am

And you can't fight the tears that ain't coming
Or the moment of truth in your lies
When everything seems like the movies
Yeah you bleed just to know you're alive

And I don't want the world to see me
Cause I don't think that they'd understand
When everything's made to be broken
I just want you to know who I am

I don't want the world to see me
Cause I don't think that they'd understand
When everything's made to be broken
I just want you to know who I am

I just want you to know who I am
I just want you to know who I am
I just want you to know who I am
I just want you to know who I am

An Angel

My mother is that best human being I know and ever will know. There are good people on this Earth but I see her first hand and I try to learn from her.

Like the Queen of England, my mum has two birthdays. Growing up, we always thought her birthday was on the 21st of July. That is the date of the first moon walk. She was 21 when she listened to that event on the radio, in Papua New Guinea. She was at teacher's college and her classmates went over to hang with the science students and hear about Armstrong stepping out. She was 21 years old.

Today is my my mother's official birthday. That is the day that she was actually born. She knows it even though she was born in her parent's home, in a village named Tufi in PNG. Her mother wrote the date on the back of a door. This is where she kept the dates of all her children. Mum copied these dates down and carried them with her, long after that door and that house were gone. Long after her wonderful mother Damana had passed away, we now celebrate today for mum.

The moon walk birthday is a date that was given to her by the Kiaps. Kiaps were Australian government officials who journeyed in to the villages and remote areas of Papua New Guinea and in this case issued birth certicifates and guessed children's ages. With those guesses went allocated birthdays.

My mother was told she was a certain age and born in July of 1948.

Don't even get me started on the kiaps and their ways, in PNG. If you ever need to suffer some condescension then find an ex-kiap and listen to them talk of civalising the little black people. What a load of cr@p.

Anyway, my mother is officially 63 years old today. She was born in a village in Papua New Guinea. She was orphaned at a very young age. As the second of seven sisters, she brought up the younger ones. She used to babysit to earn money to pay their school fees. Her whole life has been about looking after other people.

I would like to wish her a very happy official birthday. May the year to come be about you and enjoying the life you have made. There are so many people who love and cherish you. We appreciate all that you are and all that you have done.

Happy Birthday to my beautiful, brilliant and kind mother.

Parts of a shoe

The always faboo Shoes of Prey tell us the parts of a shoe.

Bored now

Let me know when we're talking about me again.

Darwinian Fashion

"Ah, Darwin. It kind of divides into rednecks, yuppies and hippies. Anything outside of that just confuses people." -- my friend Lou


So true. Lou is right, as is often the case. I'm going to stick to confusing them with my Mana-isms and make that my thang. Yes, I said thang.

Get your freak on

As I muddy the waters between depression and recovered, the insights in to what goes on in a depressed person's head abound.

Today is a great example of a day that I would have described as "fragile", before I learnt to cope with the negative thoughts. Instead, I realise my brain is hyper-sensitive to the body language of people around me. It takes a small look and interprets it in the worst way possible.

There was a moment a few years ago in Pitt St Mall when I was bumped by a gigantic handbag that a lady was carrying. She turned back and spoke a sincere sorry. There was no malice. It was an accident and no harm came from it. I walked on to work, one block away in the centre of Sydney CBD. It was a typical work day and the place was full of suits, shoppers and buskers.

Once inside the sanctuary of some huge financial institution, I sprinted for the ladies bathroom. There, I locked myself in a stall and cried like I did the day I was born. Maybe I was gulping for air. Maybe I was lost in the self-torture that convinced me that woman with the bag hated me.

Although irrational, it felt true. I was certain that life could not possibly improve and that I would never recover from her bagging me.

Years have passed since that day. Nothing feels that dire these days. Most things are quite funny and leave me in tears of silliness. They are lighter tears that carry you through a moment that could break a lesser Mana.

Today, I'm dressed in cool comic book tights and a flowing white top proclaiming in black ink and rhinestones, my love for shoes. The knee high velvet black boots complete the outfit with a nice upper cut.

In my usual Surry Hills scene, I'd fit in with all the other people who simply don't. I'd walk passed people and admire their comic book tees or purple suede boots on funky jeans, with great haircuts.

In Darwin, I'm a freak. People stare. Teenage girls mumble "oh my god". Mothers pull their children from my path.

You can't say I fit in here. It's not great to be looked at constantly but I must honour who I am and what I want to express. To blend in to Darwin, like all the others would be like a silent death... a drowning.

Does it hurt when people see me this way? Does it make me angry? Do I withdraw and cry?

Nope. I keep on keeping on.

I plan for the next time when I'll get my freak on.

Katherine Airport

There are some things that are so Territorian that you have to laugh so that you don't cry.

This morning, I heard about the Katherine airport and it's problems with kangaroos. Apparently, they get in the way of planes landing there and cause accidents. Skippy the terrorist.

The Northern Territory is not a state of a Australia so responsibility for it lies in the joint hands of the Commonwealth government and the Northern Territory government. Both like to blame the other for all the things gone wrong in governing and otherwise take the credit for all successes.

All the Katherine Airport needed was to be fenced. Kanagroos are quite easily defeated by fences.

The Australian Federal Government did just that. They had the place fenced.

The thing is that they fenced in a mob of kangaroos that were living there and like the proverbial rabbit, they have gone forth and multiplied. Now there is a huge number of plane endargering marsupial terrorists contained inside the land around the airstrip.

Whose fault is this? Who will fix it?

It's the other government's fault, of course!

Yesterday

Workwise, yesterday was a great day. I was so productive that I've almost completely cleared my To Do list.

Otherwise, it was so hard that I'm not sure how I survived it.

So, I hold my breath and try to stop myself from making bad choices and exploding.

I've been pushed around so much lately that I'm angry about it.

Since nothing I do is good enough, I choose to do what is in my heart.

I don't want to hear it, if it isn't nice.

Are we brain washed from birth?

Coming Home

I used to write with such passion and conviction.

Things made me angry. Things made me happy. Things made me feel feelings.

Of late, that has petered out. Somehow lost in a Prozac haze and over-shadowed by real life and responsibilities and... stuff.

It's not that I miss the roller-coaster of emotions that came with depression. Hell no! It just got far too mellow and numb to be on the anti-depressants.

As I emerge from the mist of depression and the auto-tune of being medicated (which did help massively), the passion for life is returning. It's not a hypo-manic ride of good and bad. It is more of an absence of numbness. Being alive again.

Do you know that point when you've eaten a yummy dinner and you feel perfectly full and content? That is how it feels.

Damana is coming home.

Fail

I don't know about the rest of you but I am reminded at least once a week that I am failing as an adult.

There are explicit criticisms about the way I spend my spare time. There are implicit judgements about that fact that I don't have a house or a car or any solid plan for life. Then I'm told that I share too much online. I also don't tell people enough about what I'm trying to achieve in life.

It's starting to get old.

I have done the responsible adult thing. The conformist thing with the marriage and house and husband and friends to have dinner parties with. You all saw how that worked out.

So now, I just want to find stability and happiness in the different parts of my life. Get my savings re-established after 2 years of crippling depression and inconsistent income. Make my brain chemistry function properly on it own, using only the life tools that therapy has taught me and not big pharma solutions. Find a way to trust people again after so much betrayal.

And it comes down to this... whoever wants to judge me can. They can find me lacking. They can disapprove of the way my life is run. They can gather their thoughts and keep them to themselves because I'm frankly sick of it.

Unless you've lived an unblemished life then you have no right to tell me how to live mine. Even then, I'll probably do whatever I damn please anyway.

Black Milk Leggings

A guy on twitter heard me talking about leggings and tights. He's a fan of such things... used by others and observed by him. You come across a lot of them on the Internet. This one was harmless and useful because he put me on to Black Milk Clothing.

This is an amazing trend-setting Australian company, that until recently was running out of it's creators garage.

I considered not telling everyone about these tights so that I'd be the only one I knew with them but I can't hold back. The quality is excellent. The fabric used on the leggings, lace tights and velvet tights I bought is very good. Colours are stunning. Designs are funky. The fit is great and I actually think they could get away with charging a lot more and I'd still buy them. Don't tell them I said that though.

There are more photos in my flickr photostream.

Go buy and try. Trust me, you will not regret it.

Walk a day in my shoes

People - both men and women- keep asking me how I walk in high heeled shoes.

I do my best not to look at them like they are really dumb and asking me how humans evolved to walk and thus free their hands for tool making and fondling each other.

There is one answer... I put my feet in and walk.

There are several tips...

1. When you walk, put weight on to (not in to) the heel as you would with a normal step. Tip toeing is going to kill your foot in a few minutes, unless you are a trained ballerina. If you are a trained ballerina then wear these instead;
2. Start short and get taller. A two inch heel is entry level but I expect you to be settling in to three within a month. Never go higher than 4.5" if you want to walk more than 100m. Your calves will die. Higher heels are for parties where you are driven there and back and will eventuate in some handsome man carrying you through a doorway;
3. Wear the heel with pants or jeans first. Often looking at the height of the heel will result in you thinking it is higher and more difficult than it actually is. Cover the shoe with cool pants or jeans and you won't think about it too much. Do not let the pants be longer than the shoe or you will fall and break something. Once you are confident in the height, wear it with skirts or dresses;
4. Never walk cautiously in heels you are afraid of. It looks pathetic. Be comfortable in a shorter shoe and look confident instead.

Go. Wear beautiful high shoes and be gorgeous.

Muwah!

It is true

Take a bow

My fave pop song atm. It's a kick arse break up song. I dedicate it to my girls who are cleaning the trash out of their lives atm.

Not anymore

This song used to sum up how I felt when I was sick. It doesn't mean that anymore but it does let me not forget that. I do not ever want to feel like that again.

I hurt myself today
to see if I still feel
I focus on the pain
the only thing that's real
the needle tears a hole
the old familiar sting
try to kill it all away
but I remember everything
what have I become?
my sweetest friend
everyone I know
goes away in the end
and you could have it all
my empire of dirt

I will let you down
I will make you hurt

Winning

For the regular readers... yes, Mum, Dad and Candace, you will remember that I had a little issue recently with a crazed stalker bogan. He shall not be named here. That's mainly because he hasn't quite worked out how to spell his own name.

Anyway, I was at a stage where I wanted to get a domestic violence order again him. I was told this would stop the harassment from him and his satanic harem of skanks, who wanted to tell me to leave him alone. They aren't the smartest because I wasn't actually having anything to do with him, which is why he sent them after me. Ahh, bogan genius did not peak at the invention of thongs as formal wear.

I nearly got the restraining order, even knowing that he'd love the attention.

Then one of my besties, Cathie asked me a question that changed the way I saw this situation and every one to follow.

Do you want to win or do you want to be happy?

I wanted to be rid of him and happy. Winning may be important to drug-fueled cocaine snorting washed up TV stars but I knew that wasn't what I wanted. No more drama with someone I wished I'd never made the mistake of stopping to talk to. No more death threats in the mail. No more sentences made of single syllable words. No more.

So yes, I chose to do nothing but ignore and endure. Luckily for me, people with small brains are easily bored and wander off to upset someone else's life.

When someone is making your life hard, ask Cathie's question.

Asked and Answered

A guy asked me the other day what I was looking for in love. What would be the traits of my next boyfriend or husband or partner?

I found that so easy to answer.

I am not looking.

He asked why.

I found that so easy to answer.

I am not looking because I already found it once. He was the man I spent most of my life with. The one I married. The one who left me. I'm one of those lucky people who really fell in love like you do in Jane Austin books. It didn't work out but it did happen.

That was it. That was the love part of my life.

Now, it is time for the rest.

He asked if I was still just getting over it.

I found that not so easy to answer.

I don't know. I think this is just who I am now.

Mea Maxima Culpa

It is days like this that make me stop and reflect.

Today is Good Friday. There are many reasons that it is good. Not many of them are religious to me. I don't mind people believing in a higher power but it simply is not my thing. Maybe science beat it out of me. Maybe I've never had a moment where I needed to believe so much in something more that the moment came and claimed me.

So, my main thoughts today focused on why things feels so good at the moment. On why I am content. Why life is full on wins for me and nothing seems to knock me down.

The other day, an acquaintance said to me "Prozac nation" and I giggled in response. Not at the fact that this person put down my inhuman positivity and happiness to prescribed SSRIs but at the fact that I'm no longer on anti-depressants. There was no need to tell them that. Let them believe that true happiness is not possible without chemical assistance. It's a little like someone believing in Santa. You don't want to break their heart and tell them that it is possible without rebalancing your brain via a Pfizer cocktail.

Then that means that I'm happy, even if I don't have a quarter acre block to house via mortgage, my 2.3 children with my hypertension driven same sex partner. Am I insane?

Not anymore apparently.

It all comes down to one thing. Look at the past and compare it to now. Look at the biggest mistake you ever made and see how you recovered. Take in the downs and compare it to the stability found now, in purely existing.

I am healthy, especially my mind. I have family who are my rock. I have friends who actually rock. I have a job I love.

I don't live with a man who strips me back to my bones and lathers on the salt. I don't work with people who push me down to gain vertical ground. I don't have frenemies who cut me back at every progression forward.

Life is good. I have learnt from my mistakes. I have grown from the lessons. The scars that once ran raw are healed and reinforced with emotional titanium.

There is only beauty now. There is only happiness.

If you accept the biggest mistake you ever made and take something from it, then you will be fine. No, that is not true. You will be brilliant.

Acta est fabula.

Time fixes most things

Sometimes, I want to help people but I don't know how.

Watching people I love going through tough stuff is always harrowing. When I was suffering, it must have driven my loved one to feel as helpless and lost as I do know.

What I have learnt is that sometimes you can't do much at all. You just have to be there if they need you and make sure they know you love them.

Time fixes most things.

Please excuse me while I kiss this guy

"I want your ugly
I want your disease
I want your everything
As long as it’s free
I want your love
Love-love-love
I want your love"
-- Lady Gaga

She's a freak but all the best ones are. Like all music, it's how you interpret it that makes it mean more to you than just beats and sounds.

I remember reading an interview with Seal, in the 90s. He said that he never included the lyrics of his songs in the CD because he thinks you should hear whatever you hear. The song should mean something to you and that doesn't have to be what the song writer or singer said it would be. That has always stuck in my head, especially at times when people correct me for singing the wrong words.

There was a great moment once when my sister and I were playing competition Sing Star. That's Sony's version of karaoke. We were singing Culture Club. It was Karma Chameleon. I can't remember the right line now because I've learnt the correct words. Anyway, we were both singing and our scores were so close. Then we both hit a line and we both sang the exact the same words. They were the exact wrong words too.

We laughed hysterically and then she beat my score. She always does. Don't ever take her on when she is singing Torn by Natalie Imbruglia. She will kick your arse.

I guess the point is that the lyrics are whatever they mean to you. For all baggage and lessons learned. For all experiences that made you smile and weep. For all the losses and battles won.

The world is whatever you make it. It is whatever you see it as.

So what if someone else writes the lyrics? So what if someone with a nice voice sings the song? The meaning you give it is yours. All yours.

Just make sure you laugh if you get the words wrong at the same time as someone else :)

Like the Lama Guy

Some days I feel all wise and shit. Some days I don't. In the last few days, I've worked out some major 42 stuff and feel a need to share it. This is me sharing.

A few of my good friends are single. They are mid-20s+. They spend a lot of time thinking of whether the last person they dated is their next relationship. They spend a lot of time wondering if they should read this in to that and that in to this.

Lately, I have been reminding them that spending time thinking of these things is a waste of time.

Do you remember the days when we were late teens and early 20s? We lived life planning a future for ourselves and having fun. If we met a person that we fancied, we would think about stuff like if they had time between classes to have coffee or if we'd bump in to them in town on the weekends.

It was not a stressful ponder about if they were "the one"; if the wanted children; if they managed money well.

This is not important when you first meet someone. Focus on if you like them and if they are fun or share interests. Over-thinking the future is not that useful. It interferes with other important things like if the person is rude to the waiter or for some horrible reason wears white dress shoes.

Enjoy life. Like yourself. Don't go looking for too much, too fast. That just sucks the joy out of life.

These boots were made for kicking your...

I have never been the kind of woman who dresses for someone else. My clothes and my style exist for me. They are an expression of what and who I am. They are intrinsically driven.

Other women seem very aware of this. They do not assume that I bought a dress to please some random man in a pub. They do not assume that my heels exist to impress a man driving passed in his compensatory car.

My assumption is the women realise that they inhabit the Earth for more than the aesthetic pleasure of the opposite sex.

Unfortunately, too many men that I somehow end up in conversations with seem to assume that my appearance is to benefit them. In particular, the application of boots.

Let me clear this up now. These boots were made for walking and if you don't remember that then one of these days these boots are going to walk all over you.

Maths is for girls too

Honesty

“We need people in our lives with whom we can be as open as possible. To have real conversation with people may seem like such a simple, obvious suggestion, but it involves courage and risk.”

- Thomas Moore

Now Hiring

Like Wil Wheaton said...

There are a million blog posts in my head, at any one time. There are geek ones. There are life ones. There are things I know will be written and never published. There are things that should be written but they will forever ride the neurons, never to become anything other than bubbles on the surf.

On Thursday, I was thinking about how much I enjoy my current job and wondering what makes it different to the places I have been in over the last few years.

Having worked with the best of my generation, on projects that challenged us; bored us; and always taught us something, it is interesting to find a place I like to be in the midst of a big country town.

Then I read Wil Wheaton's post about winning the actor lottery and that summed it up for me too.

If you can get up each morning and look forward to work because your colleagues challenge and teach you while making you laugh until the tears seep from your eyes then that is a good job. When you know that everything you achieve in a day is helping your client do their job better or soon will be then that is a good job. When there is no stupid office politics because people just want to get their jobs done and do them well, alongside you then that is a good job.

It has been a long time since that has been fully satisfied.

Life is fun. Your attitude helps but being around positive and intelligent people helps too.

The huge difference between now and before is that my attitude is different. I don't sweat the little things. I like life. I like people. It takes a lot to stop me from smiling.

The other big variable is people. I finally work with really great people. They are secure, decent, kind, driven, pragmatic, experienced and professional.

If you want to come and work for us then do let me know. I guess I ask only one thing and it's another thing Wil Wheaton says... "Don't be a dick."

You don't have to live with them

I'm a bit of a social butterfly. I have friends, acquaintences, people I air-kiss and other people whose faces are familiar so I smile as I go by.

In the last couple of years, time to myself has become a wonderful recharging break from the noise, excitement and stimulation of people.

When once I was 100% extroverted, some balance has been found. This is a good thing. I will always be a puppy dog who likes meeting new people but being alone and mindful is leveling the scales.

Now for point of this rant.

When you work with a bunch of people, you see them for around 40 hours a week. That is a large amount of your waking hours. I am not going to suggest befriending them all and spending time hanging out with them on weekends but at least be civil.

Too often, geeks can be so antisocial. They avoid work gatherings or sitting around the lunch table. If they do join then they sit silently and stare off in to space or talk at your about their latest technical discovery.

If any social emails go around, they immediately ask to be removed from the list. They aren't too subtle or friendly about it either.

I don't understand this. Some social lubrication makes work a nicer place to be. It seems sometimes as if the whole idea of people is distasteful.

Nothing changes for me. I still love getting up and going to work each day. It must suck to be so negative and uncomfortable around people.

Come on geeks, we don't have to live together. We just have to work together.

My Offer

“I offer you peace. I offer you love. I offer you friendship. I see your beauty. I hear your need. I feel your feelings.” - Mahatma Gandhi

Your style is you

People talk about style as though it is something that you can go out and buy. An acquirable commodity that will appear if you follow a recipe in a fashion magazine. An emulation of the hottest star.

Style is none of those things.

Style is the ability to find a look that compliments your character and expresses who you are.

It is a personal thing. A me thing. A comfortable thing.

When you feel at ease in your clothes and don't trip on your shoes, you are there. Just be yourself and dress in what makes you feel good. That is your style.

Your style is you.