we're all making our own sense of things
One of the questions I ask when I am deciding whether or not I have the right to include a certain person in a story on my blog or in my memoir is:
Does the person have a right of reply?
….and then, I started writing this whole post about exactly what I mean by that, but actually, I want to go and watch the footy instead. I will come back and finish it another day. Yes, yes I will.
I have decided that while I could simply find a way to cope with life here, it would be much better to find a way to be not unhappy. It would be much better to end each day reflecting on a day well spent than to just flop on the lounge, gin and tonic in hand, thinking, ‘well, phew, that’s another day down only xxx to go’.* It would be much better to feel satisfied than to simply survive. What a waste of life it would be, I have decided, if I were to settle for coping when, if I just put some effort in, life could be much more.
Knowing as I now do (remember, I’ve read every self help book published in the last ten years) that we slip into (bad) habits easily and spend a lot of time rethinking the same negative thoughts that we had the day before and the day before that and the day before that, I spent a bit of time identifying the flashpoints in my day. Those points where I just lose it, and blame everything that is wrong on the world around me and am able, very quickly, to convince myself that if only I did not live here then everything would be okay.**
One such flashpoint is the drive to the gym. Many mornings, not every, but many, I drop the lads at school, the mister at work if he’s not already there, then drive to the gym, do my class, then drive home again. These drives involve all manner of negative thinking on my part as I respond to those around me. Now, driving, she isn’t my thing at the best of times, but here that is multiplied by one gazillion and living here, there really isn’t much choice but to drive.
One of the reasons I dislike it so much here is that, for me, the culture clash is, without a doubt, played out on the roads. Of course there are different ways of driving, because we’ve all learnt to drive in very different environments from Pakistan to Sweden. I can cope with that, and I have tried to remember eldest lad’s wise words. But it doesn’t work, and I get myself into a right righteous tizz about the excessive speed, and the headlights of the car behind being flashed at me, and the turning from three lanes across and the complete ignoring of the lanes in the roundabouts. I make gross cultural judgements, based on one interaction with one individual, which is something I do not like to do, and that means I get mad at myself, and that means I am feeling bad about the people around me and bad about myself. Any spiritual and mental benefits that I get from the exercise are well-gone by the time I’m back at the dining table drinking my coffee and reading the paper (another flashpoint, but we can deal with that tomorrow).
What is my solution to this flashpoint? How do I change my attitude to this? I decided to do something that I have never done before.
Affirmations.
Yes, indeed. I know I’ve lost at least half of you now (and all of my friends who are thinking, oh, bloody hell, what’s she going to be like next time we see her, she’s really starting to be a fairly high maintenance friend), but do bear with me for just one paragraph more.
With Abu Dhabi classics on the radio, I repeated to myself, over and over again, ‘I am clear and focused, I am calm and relaxed’. I repeated some other things, but I think that would be over-sharing – I mean, you know, there’s only so much of your ridiculous side you want the internet to know, right?
Anyway, when I arrived at the gym, I realised it had worked. Not because I was feeling calm, relaxed, clear or focused, but because I’d just spent fifteen minutes laughing at myself. Which is way better than spending fifteen minutes getting worked up at the attitude of some dude who really doesn’t give a shit about you or your opinion.
*here, I hesitate to publicly define the remaining amount of time on account of you-know-what
**please to be noting, this is not something I got out of a self-help book, this is something I have figured out all for myself…any day now and imma gonna have my own show, and you are all invited, and there will be special giveaway under your chair, not sure what that might be, but trust me, it’ll be great
 |
| From miscblogphotos |
One day, not so long ago, but long enough that it could be once upon a time, my eldest boy said to me, ‘Mum, why do you have to take everything so serious?’
We were standing outside a shop in Marina Mall, and I had left the shop without the pair of sandshoes I needed to replace the others which had just about worn through the sole. There were too many shoes and I couldn’t choose and instead of crying, I swore at the mister.
Eldest boy was right. I was taking things too serious. Every time I went to a shop, I was thinking of airmiles and packaging in a land with no recycling and of money we didn’t have, and, because I had just finished sorting out three houses and only one of them mine, I was feeling the weight of things.
It was hard for me to see the funny side and I loaded every decision with significance.
When life is going well, when you haven’t quite grown up, you don’t realise, but there’s a lot of decisions in a day. It starts with whether or not to get out of bed and just keeps going from there.
Once you start thinking about every decision, well, it means you’re paying a lot of attention to the consequences of every decision, which means you’re constantly running through scenarios and that means you live every day several times over.
Which would be fine, except that you only ever get enough sleep to live your day through once.
Life is not exactly smooth right now, but it’s nice to realise that I don’t feel that way right now.
In the year that her Christmas wish was motor car airconditioning, the man my grandmother married gave her a window shade.
Just now, just this very most-recent-past moment I got hit by one of those realisations you get hit with every now and then:
I am a grown-up.
Now, I’ve had that realisation before, but what just occurred to me, what just hit me in the very most-recent-past moment is this:
I am a grown-up FOREVER.
Fark.
That makes you think, doesn’t it?
Here, have a cake, they’re a few years old now, but cakes don’t go stale in cyberspace:
 |
| From miscblogphotos |
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.
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’
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.
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.
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.