Author: ThirdCat

twitter rethunk

Twice, I have deactivated my twitter account. The first time, I was able to retrieve it, but the second time, twitter wouldn’t let me reactivate it. I’m not sure that I would have deactivated it the second time if I hadn’t had the first success reactivating it, but given that I didn’t know I would be able to reactivate it the first time, maybe I would have (do you get that? sorry if you don’t – I’m feeling lethargic today and have only enough energy to write, not to redraft or rewrite).

Anyhoo, watching qanda one night just after I had landed in Australia on our ‘summer’ vacation, I realised that qanda would be even better if I were logged in to twitter. Then I started hooking into the #ausvotes updates regularly and before I knew it I had set up another account.

I joined twitter in a completely different way this time than I had the previous time. Instead of following anyone, I just followed the #tags. My, but it was fun. I guess at times I felt a bit stalky, always listening and never saying anything, but then I reminded myself it was just old-fashioned lurking. I’m sure I’m not the only one using twitter that way.

Writing about my decision to leave twitter, I hypothesised that the reason it was making me feel bad was because it was making me feel a bit like a 16 year old schoolgirl, back on the fringes again, but clearly that wasn’t it, because here I was quite happily on the fringe.

But I wasn’t completely wrong. At that time, twitter really did make me feel left out, and it did become a tool of desperation – desperation to be at home. On the one hand, I liked the sense of attachment it gave me to Australia, but on the other, it exaggerated the distance between here and home, especially at around five o’clock as the tweets tapered off and one by one the lights went out, and I was left with lots to say, but no one to say it to. I really was using a virtual conversation as a substitute for a real one.

So, I’m not exactly sure what I’m going to do about it now. I mean, there aren’t that many events like #ausvotes where you can sustain events-based twittering. There’s plenty of people I’d love to follow again, but I want to be careful. You see, I’m coping remarkably well with my return to Abu Dhabi at the moment. I’ve had a great couple of days catching up with people, getting back to the gym and so on and I’m in a better state of mind than I’ve ever been while living here.

But I don’t want to test it. There’s still a little way to go before we leave. And not that re-joining twitter will be the make it or break it of life in Abu Dhabi. Just that there’s no need to break something that’s just been fixed.

Which all makes it sound a lot more agonised than it really is. Really, I just meant to tell you that I did go back to twitter. And just so you don’t get the wrong impression, when I left twitter I wasn’t wrong , I just changed my mind.

So begins the first day etcetera

Right then, I’ve finally wrangled a draft of the memoir into shape enough that I can call it a draft and today I will ship it off to someone for their feedback. Which means that it is time to take step two in the return to my freelancing career.* I have determined that I am strong enough to return to the cycle of rejection, rejection, rejection, sniff of success, rejection, rejection, acceptance, oh sorry journal has just folded after all, rejection, acceptance.** This means, today I shall be finding a journal or magazine currently taking submissions and then, over the coming days (or weeks – see asterisked explanation of career) writing an entire complete piece and submitting it for consideration.

*career applied here in the loosest of possible applications
** yes, yes, happiness and success gurus, I know I’m supposed to be envisioning success, but please to be allowing me some reality…for as Dr Phil says, ‘The best predictor of future behaviour is past behaviour’

cracking up

I’m not sure of the happiest moment of my life, but I do know the funniest thing I’ve ever seen is this. I can’t tell you how many times the mister, my dad and I have watched it and it never, ever fails to crack me up.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=teoL6FKEtCY&fs=1&hl=en_US]

PS for those of you who weren’t in Australia at the time, it’s from a series called The Games, a mockumentary about the staging of the Sydney Olympics. My, but it was brilliant.

Eid mubarak

I woke inexplicably early this morning, and, even more inexplicably, got out of bed. The sky was lightening. The sun, and the colours it creates, when not affected by the humid haze, are especially evocative here, ranging from peach to tangerine.

It is the first day of Eid-al-fitr and the air is filled with prayers, broadcast from mosques around the neighbourhood.

I don’t remember this from last year, so I can’t tell you any more about it than that it is very moving.

Thursday morning

Today is the 30th day of Ramadan, which means Eid begins tomorrow.

I had intended to follow that sentence with a comma (which, you are right to note, would have left it as a clause and not a sentence) and the words ‘which means the mister does not get a day off work’. Just in time, I realised that was a fairly disrespectful and narrow way to look at an event which means a lot of things to a lot of people.

I shall live through these days in the same way as I do Easter or Christmas. That is, events which mean a lot more to some people than they do to me, but are, nonetheless, opportunities to reflect a bit on life and all its wonders.

And to think, I used to be a librarian

Now, we’ve just spent a few months living on the favours of others, and so perhaps I am more sensitive to this than I need to be, but my children do seem to be extraordinarily noisy. Staying in and visiting other people’s houses and spaces means I’ve spent a lot of time on edge, trying to make sure we’ll be invited back and/or not evicted on account of their exuberance.

Why the school opened this week I will never know, given that the end of Ramadan and thus, the Eid holiday is now upon us, which means another five days of me and them, but this time with the added bonus of heat. And me, once again noticing that my children do seem to be extraordinarily noisy.

Good morning

I’m reading Orhan Pamuk’s The Museum of Innocence a book I most highly recommend, though perhaps not as something to be taken on the plane as it is, on its own, the size of a small suitcase and most certainly does not fit into the pocket in front of your seat.

Anyway, this morning, I woke at 5.30 – not to run in a vertical marathon, but because my body is still on Australian time – and picked up my book. I was rewarded with this reference back to the book’s most excellent opening sentence:

In fact no one recognizes the happiest moment of their lives as they are living it. It may well be that, in a moment of joy, one might sincerely believe that they are living that golden instant “now”, even having lived such a moment before, but whatever they say, in one part of their hearts they still believe in the certainty of a happier moment to come. Because how could anyone, and particularly anyone who is still young, carry on with the belief that everything could only get worse: If a person is happy enough to think he has reached the happiest moment of his life, he will be hopeful enough to believe his future will be just as beautiful, more so

Which was astonishingly close to my experiences yesterday only in the complete reverse. I survived yesterday by recognising, at around 8.30 am, that this was it. Between now and the end of the year, this was as unhappy as I was likely to be. Tired, jetlagged, hot, helping children find their new classrooms and both of them separated from all of last year’s friends, no coffee in the cupboard at home. This was the worst it would get.

I think that is why, at the end of the day I sat on the lounge not happy, but not unhappy either.

Thursday morning

‘Mum.’ The door is pushed gently open, the words are whispered.
‘Yes?’
‘Have you started?’
‘Yes.’
‘So that’s what you look like when you’re meditating.’
‘Yes.’
‘Oh, okay. See you in ten minutes.’
Closes door softly, then runs down passage yelling, ‘She’s doing it. She’s really meditating.’

It’s just over a week before we leave Adelaide and return to Abu Dhabi. In anticipation of this event, I have been practising mindfulness, awareness, gratitude and have, after a great number of years of thinking, ‘I really must get back to that’ returned to meditation.

Now, according to all of the self help books I’ve read over the last six months (and if there’s one I haven’t read, I’d be surprised), this mindfulness, in the momentness, this too shall pass kind of approach is just the trick for getting through stressful times and situations. And I think at this stage we can agree that living in Abu Dhabi is stressful for me.

I’m not too bad at being in the moment and so on (yes, yes, I know I’m not supposed to be judgmental about it, where I am is where I am and so on), but I’ve got one piece of logic that I just can’t work my way through. The question I keep asking is this: if I can be content at anytime anywhere, then why do I know that I am, overall and on balance and weighing everything up, happier here than I can ever be there.

There’s a long stretch from here til enlightenment. And hopefully enlightenment can be achieved without silence.