The New OK

I'm doing okay. Even a $4000 debt to the Australian Tax Office isn't getting me down. The new okay. I beat myself up about the mistakes I made on the music video a week ago but I'm okay. I didn't punch myself too hard, just a light beat-up to remind myself of my standards. No word from the BG and that, admittedly, is a bit bothersome. He's had more success in his career and here I am still 'learning by my mistakes'. A mistake of a career choice perhaps? But once again I am okay. It's like the ocean of my mind now has a higher salt content, like the Dead Sea, meaning I don't sink as easily. I'm more inclined to float. I don't fall apart. I'm very much disappointed in my work on the music video but I'm not letting it trip me up. I stride on.

The financial wake-up call I had yesterday was like the big bang, but my reaction was subdued. I went for a long walk on the beach. The beach is free. I kind of knew I was getting myself into the tax mess that I am now in, so I'm not shocked. It's a kick up the arse. I'm 29. Soon I'll be 30. I had an idea a month or so ago that I don't want to borrow money off anyone beyond the age of 30. It's a shame I need to make such resolutions, but why not? It doesn't seem to be happening naturally.

But I'm okay. Got no money. Got no man. Got no flat stomach. But I got plenty to be happy about. I played tennis tonight. I did a good job on a few different tasks today. I changed my friend's baby's pooey nappy for the first time. 

I just had dinner with a friend who also works in film and television. She was talking about a highly esteemed director she is working with. What makes her different to the others she's worked with recently I asked? Her focus. She is focussed completely, all the time. She lives and breathes the job. I want to be focussed. I want concentration powers. I've got a new stopwatch program on my computer - so I can track how much time I'm spending on different things. I've nearly been online for 30mins. Time to prepare a hot water bottle and read up on the Tamil Tiger conflict in Sri Lanka. A seriously un-okay situation.

Bad Day Test Dummy

Not happy Jan. Bad day. Not that bad but comparatively bad. No joy. Disappointments and frustrations with work. A bad meeting. An unattractive pallor. A last minute decision to take a $350 gamble at kudos and I don't want to do it. Feeling sick in the stomach. Still no word from the Boy Genius but that's the least of my worries. Good people around I guess. Pleasant weather for bike commuting I guess.

I'm looking after a 13 year-old this week. Living in and minding her. Cooking dinner etc. It's like domestic boot camp. Must eat, sleep, cook and masquerade in some kind of normality costume. Too much work to do. Lost motivation. Crushed by my mistakes of Sunday. Feeling very unclever and very incapable and very much wanting to hop off the self-promotion treadmill.

Calmly Fantasising

The Boy-Genius is overseas. Yonder. I miss him. He'll be back in about 10 days. I'm highly aware that he's not in the country. I won't run into him on the street, I won't receive a phone call and even an email is unlikely... I'm feeling calm but definitely excited, is this humanly possible or am I kidding myself?

I've accepted my love-sickness and am not feeling guilty about it. Not questioning why I feel the way I do or trying to stop what I'm feeling. I'm feeling good. I'm feeling giddy. I'm feeling worthy and confident but also pondering weight-loss and physical improvement strategies.

I see and think of things I want to buy, make and give him. Of course I don't know him very well but already I think I have an inkling of what he would like. I can't wait to swap music again. I want to know what kind of furniture he likes. I am climbing so high up this mountain aren't I bound to come crashing down?! I am aware I need to be gentle with him. I don't want to twist his arm or heart into anything. The more slowly and sweetly it unfolds the safer it will be and the more palatable my appearance.

Pondering the 1995 catastrophe made me realise that I have an expectation or preconception that all I want in love won't work out and that if I desire something, I must have it wrong. Of course, I dearly hope this isn't true and keep playing the same old tune in vain. But I feel as though I need to cut-out the idea from my brain that desire and desired result are mutually exclusive. Yet, I'm aware or deluding myself that this time it's different. I've been keeping his delightful email correspondence in a safe place. I usually delete all electronic trails with boys of interest. I believe in love of course and believe that I will one day meet someone who's soul fits mine like a cosy ugg boot. I just can't quite shake the feeling that if I desire someone, they'll never be mine.

I must find a way to shake it. Please send remedies and magic potion recipes!

The Struggle Switch is OFF

After the catharsis of last night's post about 1995 and its repercussive effect on me, I ate pancakes, cleared some crap off the floor, finally put away the tent from December and tucked myself up in bed. I love flannelette sheets and my flannelette doona cover and pillow cases. I am flannelette woman!!

This author of self-improvement 101 leafed through the book that changed her life. The Happiness Trap. Bizarrely looking for some kind of comfort, solace or wisdom. Brain too skewed to concentrate on narrative fiction.

What I read made me immediately regret spilling 1995's sorrow out into this blog. Made me regret all the anxiety I'd been anxious about; the boy-preoccupation that I'd been nervously preoccupied with; the emotions I'd been emotional about. According to The Happiness Trap, I've had the Struggle Switch ON. It's been stuck on. I've felt that my feelings and actions are somehow wrong. I've known and been told that they're natural, but they've annoyed me. I've been annoyed that I've been anxious about and focussed on the BG. It's like using two cleaning products together when they clearly state they should not be combined. Knock a potent emotion on the head with another potent guilt-riddled, shameful emotion - that should do the trick. So I'm turning off the struggle switch, or at least trying to. According to Dr Russ Harris (gotta love a doctor called Russ!), when the Struggle Switch is OFF our emotions are free to move, we don't waste time or energy fighting or avoiding them, we don't generate all that 'dirty discomfort' (emotional pain that is dirtied or made worse by feeling bad about it - that what we're feeling is unacceptable, wrong, negative, defective, fucked, etc.). So naturally I realised that I've spent most of my life struggling against or deeply analysing and investing in anything that was causing me emotional upset. I was bothered by being bothered. I was wasting time and alot of energy. Glorious hindsight, hey?

Now I'm fine! Ha! But truly, at risk of sounding like a new-age wanker, I am making profound inner progress. My strength, self-confidence and emotional stability is building day by day. I'm becoming a happy well-adjusted person - who would've thought?!

There's boundless merit in the particular therapy The Happiness Trap is centred on - Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT). It finally clicked for me. Reading back on my post of last night makes me realise how absorbed I am by my feelings about things. I am even absorbed by the fear of feeling bad at some unidentifiable point in the future. This has to change. It will change. Lets hope this blog takes a turn for the better too. I'll keep you posted.

Fear and Loathing in the Past

A dear friend and reader of this blog teased out of me (very easily) the memories of my seminal heartbreak in 1995. We were discussing why I'm so nervous about being 'wrong' about the boy-genius. 1995 was one of the worst years of my life. My mother agreed I was mightily unhappy and disturbed that year. I was fucked over by a really good, close male friend. He and I had developed a platonic but intimate, hilarious and intellectual friendship during Year 10 at school - 1994. He was good-looking of course, but I got over that very quickly and had no crush-like feelings as I didn't believe a relationship was even within the realm of possibility. We hung out at school everyday and then saw each other during the school holidays between Year 10 and 11. It was the first close male friend I'd ever had. He and I were dark characters. Emos I guess, but without the dark make-up, clothes or trendiness. To my astonishment, early into Year 11 (1995) he declared he had feelings beyond friendship for me, he'd been thinking about me as a girlfriend, someone he romantically and sexually desired. I was flabbergasted. I was flattered. I didn't know what to do. A boyfriend!? The first I'd ever had! I wanted to jump into his arms then and there but I was terrified. I felt so safe as his friend and now I felt I didn't know what to do. After many heavy discussions and inky letters exchanged (I still have them) it seemed we'd nutted out the possible issues. It was worth the risk. We respected and loved each other so much as friends and had now declared there was a mutual attraction. He invited me to his house for a weekend. There was plans made to visit the cinema and beach. My mother would've been horrified that I slept in his room. But nothing happened. It seemed we were so used to being friends and I had no idea how to cross that line, even to hold hands felt monumental. Off to the cinema and the beach the next day. I even remember the dress I wore. I also remember that I was wearing my daggy one-piece black swimsuit, for some reason the bikini wasn't available.

At the beach, in the water, in the lolloping waves, he first held and kissed me. I still wasn't ready and awkwardly kissed back. I was nervous in the company of my best friend. I don't remember much after that, but everything was fine. I'm sure we kissed again and held hands on the way home from the beach.

A day later he declared it didn't feel right. He was wrong and didn't want to be anything more than a friend. Spear through the heart. I'm starting to cry now even writing this! I was so angry and confused. I told him I felt like i'd been auditioned. And failed the audition. Rejection on a Greek tragedy scale. He consoled me and said he valued our friendship more than some silly romance. We were only 15 anyway and that friendship was more important. After more heavy discussions and inky letters I came round and got over the humiliation. We were such close friends we could rationalise the problem and get over this. After a little while I felt better - it was meant to be. Then the school term broke. We were on holidays for a week or two, I can't remember. I think it was the Easter break. He went to Melbourne to visit his father.

Upon his return everything changed. Everything had changed. He was as cold as a stranger who worked for ASIO. He was unfathomable. He was impenetrable. When I finally got through to him, albeit with crushed demeanor, he muttered something vague about his trip to Melbourne changing his whole outlook on life and relationships. We barely spoke ever again.

There were several subject classes we shared and we had many mutual friends. His relationship with everyone else didn't change at all. I couldn't even explain to my close female friends why I no longer made eye contact with this tall boy who'd been my best friend. I spent the ensuing 9 months of 1995 crying in bed, writing depressive scribbles on my bed side chest of drawers, gushing poetry and grappling with something I couldn't understand. Mum didn't understand it and was not really equipped to console me. I think she assumed that I'd had some kind of traumatic sexual experience with this guy that was supposed to be my friend. 14 years later, I still don't understand what happened.

This is easily and clearly my first heartbreak. But I forget how it has fundamentally shaped my approach to relationships and expectations. For the first few years of the soul-mateship with the EX, I fully expected him to change his mind overnight. To wake-up or come home from the shops and declare it over. No warning. No explanation. Take my vulnerability and flush it down the toilet. I confided in him this story of the boy who broke me, who fucked 1995. The man-boy called Aiden. The EX felt my pain and consoled me and said that he wouldn't leave overnight. When he finally did leave in 2007 it didn't feel the same, it felt somewhat justified, we had a library of issues collected in 8 years and he wasn't cold overnight. We're still friends.

But the point is that my friend deduced this 1995 experience might be what's causing me so much fear about the special friendship with the boy-genius. I'm being reeled in and I can't help but follow the lure. But what if I'm caught then gutted? I know it's a risk how deeply invested I am in his affections and yet I can't stop myself revealing my vulnerability. It's just sickening as I do it. I've had a good old cry as I've written this post but it's going to take more than that to shift this auto-emotional response. I fear lying in bed crying my eyes out. I fear misreading someone's intentions. I fear someone changing their mind about me overnight. I fear being loved, then immediately unloved. Aiden looked like a man but he was just a boy.

I could bore you with more tomes of rejection and its offspring. I must return to my work. I am making a music video this weekend and despite feeling in control I got overwhelmed this afternoon. Fear of half-arsed failure. Fear of mediocrity. I know that I can stew in front of this computer and write to-do lists and complete some other overdue documentary work - but my inner doctor and GP Angel are telling me to get down-to-earth in the kitchen. Make pancakes. Clean the house for guest arriving on Wednesday and come back to basics. Attain confidence and comfort through domesticity. Pass on any notions of error or misjudgment of the BG. Feed my tummy, rest my mind and above all - turn off this bloody computer!!

Jinxing

A bloody twisty-necked bird got me all worried a few days ago.

jinx (noun)
1. a person, thing, or influence supposed to bring bad luck.
jinx (verb) (used with object)
2. to bring bad luck to; place a jinx on: The strike has jinxed my plans to go to Milwaukee for the weekend.
3. to destroy the point of: His sudden laugh jinxed the host's joke.

Origin: 1910–15, Americanism, jynx wryneck (bird used in divination and magic)

I felt like I was jinxing the evolving special friendship with the boy-genius. Although I want to keep it private and special (why the fuck is she blogging people?!), because the giddiness is bubbling over I can't help but answer questions - "yes, there is someone special" - "no, nothing's actually happened yet" - "yes, I'm convinced there's a vibe". Blah, blah, blah. But researching the origins of the term jinx as well as finding in my notebook a thought that I'd jinxed it a few months ago (before we even met up) made me realise that this was all just superstitious. Ridiculous to think my life's destiny can be turned by a weird-arse bird!

But what does it mean when an image, thought or feeling about someone is the last thing on your mind before sleep or more amazingly - the first thing presented when you wake up? Sometimes I think that my imaginative nature might predispose me to this sort of carrying-on. I'm also questioning whether my imagination has distorted reality for its own romantic delight?

Anyway, the Dalai Lama also poked a bit of sense back into me. Fear and anxiety can be quelled if you connect to your sincere motivation for wanting or doing something. Why do I want to call the Boy-Genius? Because I think he's special, because I want to express my care as a friend and because I enjoy conversation with him. The basics. The bare necessities. I don't want to trick or coerce him into anything. I don't want to pull the wool over his eyes and drag him to the bedroom (though it might get to that point). I simply want to be a friend and reciprocate a friendship that seems to be growing. There. Sorted. No more brain dancing.

I went sailing proper this morning. I finally got the hang of it. I was in a little boat, a Laser, on my own. I'm hooked. There was much peace to be had out there in the calm bay. Just me, the birds, sun glittering off the water and the marvellous boat. Of course I imagined being out on the water with the BG. But also with friends, family and the desire to continue this as a solo-pleasure.

I must wrap up. I'm posting from bed and my infected and inflamed throat demands attention. The cupboard is almost bare. I wonder what I can scrape together tonight? What is bizarre is that I am in some stasis or cone of denial about money. I have about $40 left to my name and hoping like hell I can make a contractor pay me early next week. But right now I'm fine. I'm warm and cosy in my little cubbyhouse. Life is okay. Better than okay.