The Sunset

My favourite time of day is late afternoon. For some reason, the waning sunlight, crisp mountain air and lengthening shadows over green rolling hills bring a sense of nostalgia. Maybe it was the regular family driving holidays, where the afternoon light was a herald to new discoveries. Or the camping trips where early evening signaled the time to light the campfire and share deep, meaningful (and mostly funny) stories with a steaming mug of tea in hand.

One default during these moments, is to look back. To remember, to reflect, to wonder 'what if'.....

Sometimes these can be good reflections. Reflections that help make today better...or more bearable. Memories that bring smiles. Though looking back is not always helpful. Some memories of what was or what might have been can have an derailing effect and cause today's blessings to be overlooked or undervalued. Some memories can breed discontent.

Another time I might be sitting facing the setting sun, light on my face and cool breeze at my back and just drinking in every delicious moment of beauty around me. For one perfect moment, the chaos of day to day life is forgotten. Or, I might be looking out with regret that current situations can't ever match the perfection of the scene before me, longing for answers to be found amongst the shadows.

Occasionally, looking around at the rolling landscape carved out by long shadows of ancient gum trees can give hope for the road ahead. A brighter tomorrow and the comfort that it will get better. Through all the storms the trees stand firm, continuing to grow, providing food and shelter and still having the ability to evoke wonder at their magnitude.

Life can be a struggle. For some, it's downright hard work with challenges that cause the positive perspective to get lost in the tousle.

A wise friend once summed it up like this: "Learn from the Past. Live in the Present. Believe in the Future".

There is a precedent to do all three, but in a way that brings the best, not focusing on what hasn't been done, or isn't achieved. Or can't be decided, or articulated, or resolved. Life will always have the propensity to be negative and it is our choice of perspective that brings mindfulness to the positive - to the things that matter.

Next time I see the sun set, I will be remembering the lessons learned, be thankful for the blessings of today and will live in hope for the road ahead (though not necessarily all at the same time!).

Most of all, I will be marveling at how the weakest moment in the sun's day can create the greatest beauty.

The art of choosing...

People often tell me I’m a chilled personality – relaxed, calm, and a roll-with-the-punches kinda gal (comes with the territory when you’re a conflict-averse introvert who doesn’t like to rock the boat). There are the natural flip sides to this part of my personality, like lacking drive and a certain motivation to getting things done, but I do prefer a less dramatic lifestyle.

Many years ago, however, I knew this girl who was a little more into the dramatic. About 18 years old at the time, she was introverted like me, though would fly off the handle at the smallest of stresses. Banging and crashing around like the exertion would somehow change the course of the day. This temper would then bring out language that would rival Eminem.

Yikes.

That person was me. Double yikes.

I find it hard to believe that that was the person who I really was back then. The total antithesis of me now, in some respects. In my very first job in a pizza takeaway establishment, my end of the year award was ‘the employee who was most likely to lose her cool’, or something like that.

This was a defining moment for me. As much as I thought this kind of behaviour matched who I was at the time, I hated the label. I realised I didn’t want to be that person.

Roll on three years. I had been in my second clerical role and on the cusp of my third. It was my last day. The parting word from one of my superiors was, as he shook my hand, ‘Grace under pressure. That’s how I will remember you’. I hadn’t even realised I’d done it, but I had changed the course of people’s perception just by changing my attitude.

Some might say my new husband mellowed me, though if you knew his dynamic, extroverted personality you might think otherwise! Some might say it was the faith in God that I found during that time, and I can’t deny the impact of my belief in a loving Creator who gave his life for me. All these factors contributed to my change, but what was the biggest factor of all?

Choice.

I made a choice, all those years ago, NOT to be ‘that’ girl. I made a choice to take a deep breath when I was stressed and to look at what I could do, not panic over what was out of my control. Oh, I still get stressed out (just ask my children) but I choose the kind of person I want to be in that stress. Sometimes it works and sometimes I fall into a screaming heap (just ask my children) but as Anne Shirley from LM Montgomery’s book Anne of Green Gables used to say, ‘tomorrow is fresh, with no mistakes in it’. Sometimes ‘tomorrow’ is next week, sometimes it’s several, but I still try to choose to focus on my reaction, rather than the circumstances.

These days (and here’s where I start sounding like my grandmother) are troubling times. Being a victim is the flavour of the era. Kids are obese because of food advertising. Politicians are ruining the country. Intolerance is the flavour of the decade. What happens to us is often attributed to someone else’s responsibility.

But society seems to forget that we have a choice. A choice to say NO. A choice to turn off the TV. A choice to make a stand for what we believe in or who we want to be. A choice to respect the opposition in a disagreement and a choice to value people for who they are, as opposed to who they could or should be. Your choice may not be the thing that changes the world initially, but who knows, maybe collectively it could be. Maybe we CAN have a positive impact, reaching wider than we could ever imagine, if we stop blaming and start choosing.



So, who are you going to choose?

The 'F' Word

The 'F' word

There are few words that illicit a bigger gasp on its utterance.

However, before you send the censorship board to have me banned, hear me out.

I'm not talking about the Gordon Ramsay style of expletives, just an ordinary word that people find hard to say. And hear.

Failure.

It strikes everyone at some stage of life, and most likely more than once. And yet, so many anxieties are caused over the fear of facing failure. Myself included.

I'm not sure if it makes me a people-pleaser, or that my twenty years of administration experience just can't allow for the inefficiency of not getting it right the first time. Whatever the psychological reason, I have an aversion to failing.

So on a particular day when I was dwelling in my own inadequacies, I turned to social media for a welcome distraction only to be faced with a link to a motivational video from Oprah Winfrey. On, you guessed it, failure.

Rolling my eyes as I tried to scroll past the video, the subtitles grabbed my attention. 'There are no mistakes.'
Seriously? I just made several colossal ones. I know you are a multi-billionaire, but I am evidence of a challenge to your theory. But I kept watching.

'Failure is just that thing moving you in another direction. You get as much from your losses as you do from your victories. Your losses are there to wake you up. Your life is bigger than one experience.'

That's ok for her; she's uber successful and one of, if not the, richest women in the world.

Except I remembered that she was fired from her very first TV journalist anchor position. In that moment of her demise she was demoted to, you guessed it, a talk show host. This perceived 'failure' catapulted her into one of the most successful media personalities in the world.

The mind boggles (well, mine does) as to the course of history if Oprah hadn't experienced that 'failure'. That difficult, demoralising, humiliating time in her life was the very thing that pointed her toward her destiny.

Excuse me, people - there will be no more lamenting tonight. I have a destiny to chase.

School Reunion

There’s freedom in being over 40. (Well, maybe in spirit rather than in body.)

Finally, you know stuff. Stuff they could never teach you in high school. Maybe you have kids or maybe you don’t. Maybe you’re married, or not, or was. Whatever the situation, people over 40 have had to learn through different experiences and have (we hope!) more wisdom about issues than when we were teens. No matter what your teen status, adult life has delivered a level playing field.

I left my teen years behind, quicker than Speedy Gonzales (now, THAT’S showing my age). Painfully shy and a bit of a nerd, school for me was a place of fear, uncertainty and longing. Fear of doing the wrong thing, uncertainty of who I really was and a longing to be appreciated and accepted for me, even if I didn’t think very highly of myself at the time. As soon as that final exam was over, I was planning a new life, a new destiny in a new city, in the hope of leaving all the angst behind.

But insecurities have this annoying little habit of following.

Twenty years on and married with three children (thankfully nothing like the TV series of the same name), I now appear to be a confident woman with some wisdom about life. I have spoken to a crowd, sung in front of a congregation and given a eulogy or three in my time. But it has been a twenty year process. Little by little, one decision before another, I am winning the war, though the insecurities have been a constant battle ever since the school days.

Which is why a random Facebook invitation to ‘catch up’ with a school crowd I haven’t seen in ten years, or in some cases twenty, left me a little unravelled.

Do I go? Do they want me to go? But I wasn’t in the ‘cool’ crowd. But I was invited so maybe I should go? Who else is going? What if I have no one to talk to…? Yada, yada, yada. I couldn’t believe the schoolyard emotions could still be there after all these years.

These questions were followed by my own rebuke: “What are you, 16? Pull yourself together, woman!” – said out loud, because we old ladies do that sometimes.

And then I got to thinking…why? Why did those emotions resurface? Why did it bother me?

After some soul searching, I think it’s this – in the teenage years, when adulthood is emerging, classmates are there. Whether you liked them or not, they were the first friends, the first foes, the first crushes (and there were plenty of those), and maybe the first kiss. They are the first people to see your new adult self and for some reason, whether I admitted it or not, I cared what they thought.

Against my fears (which involved me saying yes, then no, then yes, then maybe) I met up with the school crowd...and it was the best thing I ever did. In some ways, it was like time hadn’t passed and we had the familiarity of a bunch of kids who grew up together. Even though, we spent very little time associating at school and many years have passed since. All of us now have the wisdom to see the person behind that unfortunate label we gave each other back in the day. This time, there were no cliques, no ‘cool’ groups, no nerds (yee-ha!) – just a group of people catching up on the last two decades.

If only I knew then what I know now….

I can’t go back and change time (wouldn’t we all, if we could?), but it did get me thinking about what this middle-aged lady (gasp, did I really just use that term to describe myself???) would tell her teenage self. Or more so, her teenage children…. 

• Acknowledge your strengths and be proud of who you are: a work in progress. And that’s okay.
• Learn how to laugh – but make sure it’s with others and at yourself, not the other way around.
• Everyone has a story, just some choose not to show it. Don't judge just on what you see.
• In twenty years, you are going to be having a beer with people you don’t speak to now…and it'll be fun. 
• In twenty years, you'll all be laughing about who was actually in the 'cool' group - we all thought everyone else was!
• Most of all, believe that childhood friends are unique and indescribable. Treasure these friendships and they will last a lifetime. 

Twenty Fifteen

Even though it has been six months since my last post, arriving at the end of the school year has brought many reflections. Twenty fifteen. What. A. Year.

If you have had told my 2014 self the events of this year, I would have thought you were making it all up. I mean, that stuff can’t happen to one family, can it? Rather than bore you with details, I will say that our year involved a phantom sleepover, a few kids birthday parties, a Sydney party (times 4...in a row!), non-existent soccer match, three NRMA calls in as many weeks, unexpectedly great end of year results, approximately 113 nights without my man, lots of lurgys, no traffic, fresh air, loneliness, a visit to the Principal’s office, depression, anxieties, lots of family time, but also lots of tears.

It’s been hard. Harder than I had thought when we made that idyllic decision 12 months ago to move to the country. It’s not just moving away from friends, it’s losing the security. The unspoken understandings that years of time together have allowed. The blissful freedom from small-talk. Being able to share a moment without explaining why it needs to be shared. Dinners, picnics and pool swims. Knowing who’s who and who they are related to. In essence, we miss being part of a community. Hard enough for me, but treble for my teenagers for whom security and friendships comprise 50% of their existence (for the other 50% is hormones).

A wise person told me once that you need to give a big move six months before reassessing. And here I write, eight and half months of birthing this new venture and I can categorically say they are 100% right. On one particular dark day a few months back, I asked my daughter if we should move back to the city. I didn’t know if we had made the right decision to yank them away from their secure life and on that day, it just seemed like too much of a fight, for them and for me. Her reply was astoundingly mature – ‘Mum, they’ve changed and I’ve changed. It won’t be the same as what it was. It will be, in a sense, like starting again.’ Wow.

I realised at that moment that time doesn’t stand still. We make decisions and no matter what decision we make, each one has fall-out. Sometimes we barely notice it and sometimes it takes a hard slog to get through. Sometimes the decision is made for us and we have no choice but to cope with the journey that is thrust into our laps. We can never go back because we can’t erase the lessons we learned through our new set of circumstances. Events like ours change who we are. The only choice is to keep going and not run away from the tough times. And only look back with fondness, never regret because the ability to change the past is out of our hands. We need to embrace the new, knowing that the lessons learned through the events that led us there are sometimes the most valuable.

I still get the mother-guilt attacks when my kids are having a sad day. After all, it wasn’t their choice to move, even if they thought it was a good idea at the time. Though, my daughter is right. Going back would not be as it was. The life lessons they have learned are privileged to those on a journey and my great hope is that this road will make them more resilient and able to cope with the future circumstances that await them in adult life. Of which, I know you all agree with me, there are many.

We are so privileged to call the Southern Highlands home. We have space to move and fresh air to breathe. Driving to work and school is a country drive every single day – no traffic, even no traffic lights! We have had more family time in the last six months than we used to get in a whole year. I park where I want, when I want (although even I have learned that weekends are not good times to find parking in Bowral). Our day to day lives are so much simpler and less stressful. And even though we are yet to develop those deep friendships similar to what we’ve left behind, we’re on the journey, looking forward.

The glass is half full (well, it is now J ).

To write or not to write?

The act of writing is a delicate balance. There needs to be the time to think and process - time to formulate a story around a funny moment or an event that has happened. Although, sometimes the busier I get, the more I feel compelled to write. Not sure why, but perhaps there are more stories to be told when there's more chance for chaos. Though being too busy can result in not enough time to write and so the cycle continues.

I'm not sure I've found the balance yet. The chaos of moving house gave me many inspirations for blog posts, though when life settled down a bit and I had time to write, I found it hard to find things to write about.

Now, after living the life of a kept woman for two and half months (I can hear the chortle...no such thing as a 'kept woman' when there are children to get to school!), I have been catapulted back into the land of the working mum. A financial necessity at this stage of our family's journey, I found a part time job as a medical receptionist with a lovely team in a medical diagnostic clinic. Having not worked in this industry before, there is a steep learning curve. Gargantuan. I know nothing, but having fun learning.

So will I keep up with blogging? Who knows? The eight hour days are a hard slog, and enjoyable as this job is so far, I'm sure the time away from home will take its toll in some way or another. The flip side is, the ensuing chaos might give me more fodder for funny stories and I may need the occasional break from using numbers and acronyms as a form of communication.

I have adored writing so far - thank you for being a patient audience! It has been such a great place to process the events taking place in our family's journey this year.

And you never know, life might get chaotic enough again that I just have to write about it.

The Quiet Life...NOT

Just imagine....on a picturesque weekend away, strolling down the main street of town. browsing and marvelling at the price of houses compared to the city. The crisp, clean air gives clarity and the momentary question of 'could we live here' rests in conscious thought. We could be content in this calm, serene existence for the rest of our lives, right? Mmm, not quite.

Don't get me wrong, I am really glad we moved - it has been categorically the best move we've ever made (and we've made a few). However, there is a moment where the idyllic is replaced with the reality of getting on with life in a busy family. That's the stage we've have reached now.

It's been two months or so since we moved to the country. At first, the clear air and sweet smells of pasture grasses were intoxicating. I had to keep pinching myself - all those holidays where we entertained the idea of moving out of the city and we finally did it! Every drive was another exploration of this new town we call home; every discovery exciting.

This has now been replaced with school drop-offs, emergency trips back to school to deliver forgotten items, soccer training, birthday parties and the usual errands that go along with family life. While we haven't yet discovered half of this beautiful location, children still need to get to school, groceries still need to be purchased and cleaning still needs to be done (sad, but true).

Of course, a holiday location will seem amazingly serene and perfect because life is left behind while visiting. Sometimes it involves someone else cleaning the hotel room, and eating food someone else prepared and subsequently cleaned up. The holiday weekend is just about the here and now; a few belongings and a beautiful town. Have you done it? Imagined yourself in the place of your holiday destination, living a life of simplicity and serenity? Easy to do without thinking about work, school and general demands of family life. We did it - every time we left the city!

Moving to the Southern Highlands has highlighted to me that no matter where I am, life still happens. It demands attention and won't take no for an answer. For example, I am indulging myself time to spout my musings to you all, while the washing still sits in piles (well they were in piles two days ago; regretfully, now a sea of clean, crumpled clothes masking the presence of a couch underneath). The bathrooms are silently protesting, while the floors are screaming to be relieved of yesterday's crumbs. I can bury my head in the scenery and idyllic lifestyle, but it will be at the expense of a family that is cared for and can locate their uniforms when they need to (hard enough on a good day).

However, there needs to be a balance. We can equally bury ourselves in busyness (apologies to spelling aficionados, but I think the 'y' makes more sense), but there needs to be some escape, some sort of balance, to help recharge the soul and focus on the blessings in our lives, even if for a short time.

I saw a post on social media today, which is an important reflection in the chaos of life.

 "Almost everything will work again if you unplug it for a few minutes...including you" (Anne Lamott).


I am realising that moving to the country doesn't give me a magic pill for a quiet life; there are still the same amount of hours in the day and the same amount of things that need to be done. How time is spent is largely by choice so it's up to me to find the balance. I can choose to do the washing, or choose to write a blog, as long as I'm ok with living with the fallout (clearly, I am). Somehow, somewhere, there needs to be a balance between the productive and the reflective.

In the quest for finding that balance (which is a constantly moving set of scales), I feel like the overriding theme that keeps coming through is how to remain content, even when life doesn't quite turn out as first thought.

I think one of the chief elements of contentedness, is gratitude. Dwelling on the 'busy' is frustrating, (I know because I do it) and sometimes I just have to take a moment, a deep breath and remember all the things I love about being here. Not naturally a trait of mine, I'm trying on optimism for size (my husband will be rejoicing).

 (Lake Alexandra, Mittagong)

Dr Caroline Leaf, a brain scientist and campaigner for positive thought, posted this yesterday on social media:

Saying "I can't change my way of thinking" is just as much of a decision as "I can change my way of thinking". The choice is yours. (Dr Caroline Leaf)

I'm thinking social media is trying to tell me something.....

In any case, I am on my second coffee (thinking about how much I love this liquid gold) and about to tackle the housework (thinking about how great it is to have a warm house in this cold climate).

Busy? Yes. Optimistic? Trying to be. Content? Absolutely.