FWIW

Hello loyal followers - all five or six of you!

I have been shamefully remiss and for many various reasons. Much has happened since I posted last, not least of which being I finally joined the Legions of the Eternally Damned. Or in other words, I got married.

T'was magic, t'was brilliant, t'was all a girl could have hoped such a day could be and more, so I've been very blessed but I don't plan to blog about it. There are, after all, about a hundred gazillion kajillion wedding blogs to read in the digital universe and I'm quite happy to keep my story to those that want to specifically ask about it, rather than foisting it upon those that could give less than a flying....you know what I mean.

So today I gaze back instead on the wee emotional trip I was having in the last post, some of which was perhaps caused by the realisation that marriage in and of itself is a kind of an end, as well as a beginning. I did indeed have a bit of a freak out at leaving the last wee vestiges of my single girl persona behind - those memories of life and love in my twenties when everything was still raw and bright and almost entirely without any real consequence. Or so I thought.

A big thank you to those that posted encouragement to the notion that I should share some of my poetic and lyrical meanderings.

You may regret it once read, when you feel obliged to suggest (through unseen gritted teeth, as you poke your keyboard with one reluctant finger to edge out a response) that there is any merit in the work whatsoever.

I hope not to cause you anything close to cringe worthy but as they say something or other favours the bold doesn't it? So, after another night at the keyboard pumping out commercial drivel, I feel emboldened. (It's likely the Red Bull talking....)

A selection...

Curve Player

Bring it back to the flesh where 

every whisper lived and we spread love like fire -

burned with the clumsy, ached with the holding, longed

for the letting go because the cut was just  so 

fucking beautiful, y'know?

Couldn't wait to wake, scattered thoughts across the curves you

played for me, the only one who ever gave life melody.

I am, I remain, will forever be

The silliest girl in the world....

The Speaker

Your life

My heart

These tears

For you

Strong woman

Small part

No fear

True blue

Speaks the words that others can’t

Shows the way for younger ones

You have lit a fire again

In the souls of these women

Rest now

Take peace

Lie back

And sleep

Fight for Light

That Black Crow came a’calling

With his harsh voice every morning.

He’d sit atop your bedhead

and convince you to keep falling.

My white cat came a’creeping.

(I set her loose while you were sleeping)

-sits calmly at the bedpost

to wait for that Bird appalling.

Clawed feet

scratch the space around your head

Body leaps –

feathers fly

That fucking bird is dead!

No more harsh voice every morning

to convince you to keep falling –

only a white love cat that’s purring

to help you smile in each new dawning.

Embers (lyrics, work in progress)

I was just a little wick

In the corner of your sight

Waiting for the world to pay attention to my life

Trying to keep my mind dry so that one day I’d ignite

And then

I’d take off

Take off

Take off

Grind a little fusion stick

To create some kind of spark

Act like you are bathed in light while stumbling in the dark

Nothing but a flicker there to stop me growing hard

Before

I take off

Take off

Take off

Blow my mind

Into orbit far behind

Revolving out of time

We’re all out of time

Exile (lyrics, circa 1987)

You are alone within yourself

you have a self inflicted exile from the world

and all I ever did was try and help

and all you do

is put me through another form of hell.

And you tell me I shouldn't care

but it's so damn hard when I see you there,

and I don't know what I'm doing sitting here writing this

but I don't know about that much any more.

'cause you made me feel like it could be something real

you picked me up and then you let me fall.

And just at a time, yes, just at this time

when I could have given you my all.

I have come down from my high

it came on from the look in your eye

Now all I can do is sit and cry

and all you do

is turn your head as you walk on by...

New addition - August.  As an update to this earlier post and related in part to my previous blog where I wrote about having and then losing the passion to write at all, and why I found it again (at least a little...)

Said friend has finished the album and has released it. At almost the same time, appears to have found something else new and shiny and wonderful. Again on reading this in a recent email, I picked up the pen and the words just flowed...it's not literary brilliance, it's not even good but when it comes so easily, it's one of the best feelings in the world...

My heart, he came to the end of his love

And saw that all new beginnings

Start in time and in hopes good faith

You lose before you start winning.

His love, she grew away and crossed a line

And severed all new beginning

Ended her time in such bad faith

Her lies kept stringing and singing.

Open now, embrace how the years have passed 

but the game of chance still captures and whirls you, 

dares to improve you,  

this dance of

whatever may come.

Step out and know that you’ve won.

Emotional Trip

The other night an old friend made contact. We caught up and I learned their partner of over eight years had just cleared out, which was sad and a shock because there was a lot of love there.  It's obviously been on the cards a while as a number of tracks from an impending debut album were sent to me that evening. I listened, was deeply touched at the raw emotionality and moved by the lyrics, which were superlative and have been a consistent hallmark for this songwriter in the entire time I've known them.  I cried for a lot of reasons that night. And then I wrote.

We've not been in touch much in the last eight years but we were once very close. Close in that way that you are when you're emerging into so called adult relationships, where the years under your belt are supposed to assign you with some level of maturity but the reality often is you're still very much caught up in the heat and raw emotionality of being a teenager.

It's a raw time and it's a good time for that reason.  These are the years when we are often passionate enough to really want to confront our feelings, when our values are forming beyond that of our parents. We haven't yet put on all the layers and masks that we will later use to defend our emotional territory as adults. Often it's the last opportunity young women have to meet men at their most honest and the best time young men have to express themselves creatively before their interest in certain forms of communication becomes bogged down in restrictive ideals of 'adult' masculinity.

All through high school I dabbled in poetry and writing lyrics. Terrible stuff. Exactly the kind of self involved, shmalzty, broken hearted nonsense that you might expect from a teenage girl.  I wasn't a fan of poetry per say, I didn't consume it, study the greats or even understand it as a discipline. All I knew was that sometimes feelings were too big to hold in and too hard to talk about. So I wrote.

I tried keeping a journal but it never took because somehow when I tried to write factually about the things that were burning me up or keeping me awake or playing on my mind, they always sounded really trivial. That, of course, is because they were and I was at least self aware enough to recognise this but, when one is burning up over some boy or heartbroken because of the actions of a friend or confused as hell by the behaviour of adults - you don't necessarily want to acknowledge that it's silly and let it go immediately. Part of the great aspect of those years between 16-24 was the ability to really throw yourself into the emotional wash and go with it. So, poetry and song lyrics were a great outlet because I could present ideas in a new way. I could play with meanings and present my feelings like a pass-the-parcel, all wrapped in layers to be peeled away only by those that really understood me best.

Beyond the lyrics of popular music, (and lyrics always defined whether I liked a song or not), there was a singular poetic influence in Rod McKuen. My parents had several of his published collections and I was always struck by how he expressed feeling.  It should not have come as a surprise to me when decades later I discovered he is also an award winning song lyricist.

Looking back now, it seems odd that I did not pursue my personal affinity for poetry through to an academic study of it.  I used to blitz poetry units at school and more than once got almost perfect marks for my analysis of various works through the first three years of English lit at university. Where the perfect right and wrong of math always escaped me, poetry to me was like painting with words. I loved being able to unravel the mystery in a poets work - to try and decipher the message and the emotion being expressed.

There was a pretty strong scene on campus as well, but I didn't explore it. Once, I walked into one of the atrium areas on campus and there was a woman standing on a podium doing a reading. I can't recall the whole poem but I have always remembered this line..."I plucked a hair for every time you never called. Now look at me, I'm fucking bald..." Why is it my brain latched on this this image and can still recall the line and the woman and the look on her face when she spoke it? It is this of poetry and song lyrics I love - the ability to capture a single emotional moment in a few words.

I guess back then I didn't contemplate life as a writer, which is ironic, but it was also a deeply personal thing and I wasn't all that keen on having my deepest thoughts raked over by others. I recall another friend who was accepted into a very small and elite class for writers at University. She used to get physically sick when it was time to submit her work and the tutor and other class members were extremely harsh in their 'constructive' criticisms. Not for me and to this day there are only a handful of people that I have ever shown my personal collection of musings to.  Some I look back on and think "heyyyyy - ok" and the others are just cringe city but that's to be expected.

As years passed I wrote less and less of matters personal. I matured emotionally as well and found myself tormented less often, which is when I used to write what I viewed as my best stuff.  I think it was Pink who said she feels the stuff she writes when she is happy is crap. Ditto.

The last deeply personal piece I wrote was for a man a decade ago. And he misunderstood it so profoundly and completely that I should have heard the warning bells sounding on the relationship then and there. I've been blocked on expressing my own feelings in a poetic or lyrical form ever since.

To have been so touched and so moved by the work of someone else the other night that I actually upped pen and expressed was important. Something unlocked, more has come since then as well. So I am extremely grateful to my dear friend, who always knew how to tap into a part of me that others could rarely reach.

I'm still too chicken to put it out there even for my five loyal followers but maybe...one day...I'll get up the nerve. Until then, it's nice to be reminded that I can write about something other than boxes with blinky lights and cables and stuff...

When was the last time you wrote creatively?

Class Trip

Something in the political wind is making me real itchy.  

I've been watching general sentiment sweeping the international political landscape and particularly, I've been watching Michael Moore and the Madison Movement.

For anyone that is not familiar with this, you might want to visit www.michaelmoore.com and read up. Right now in Wisconsin, there are hundreds of thousands of people protesting against what is happening in America, to their economy, to job conditions, to education and to the very notion of what it means to be living in a democracy.

The fight is to prevent the continuation of what they see as the Corporate States of America. There is a lot of anger at the Corporatocracy and in particular, 400 people that MM has identified as being so obscenely wealthy that they possess amongst them more money than the rest of all Americans combined.

It's probably a fact. And it's a deplorable one. Marx said (and I believe) that capitalism will eventually eat itself and this will happen when and only when people wake up to the fact they are being exploited. We've been sold freedom in the form of consumerism and sold globalism on the basis that our need to consume will be propped up by developing nations all too willing to produce.

It's just not sustainable. I know this and yet, still with the itching because class politics gives me damn hives.

MM may point the finger at the Uber 400 and damn straight yet where does the moral outrage at the wealthy end? 


In the USA, the UK, Europe, here in Australia and across much of the West there is so much anger and when there is this much anger, it is easy for those in power to divert us against ourselves.

For those that have nothing, everyone that has something more is fair game and so the very poorest are turned against the have somethings, the have somethings are fired up against the havemores, the havemores are pissed about the havealots and the havealots feel, like everyone else that precedes them, that they earned what they have and don't want to be lumped in with the Ubers.

I came from nothing. I was a public school kid. I was a single mum. I had jobs and lost jobs and was self employed. I struggled. Now I have a nice house, a nice car. My kids go to good schools. I pay high tax rates, private health insurance. I cover my own so that the Government can cover those who can't. But with so much anger, who cares about where folks started if all that matters is how much they have now?

There. I've said it. I'm worried that my status amongst the borgeois champagne drinking, McMansion living suburb dwellers is under threat because of the winds of anger that continue to prevail following the GFC.

Feeling those winds shifting toward a change they don't like, the pollies are dragging out the oldest trick in the book and even MM is part of this machinery whether he realises it or not - because we all need to watch the birdie instead of focusing on the role of Governments in creating the GFC in the first place. And the birdie they want us to watch is 'those rich people'. 

"Those rich people" whose kids go to private schools, or that live in big houses or drive nice cars.

It is apparently All Our Fault. Everything. Job losses. Cutbacks. Petrol prices. Food pricing. You name it.

This morning I heard a NSW Labor representative on ABC 702 Sydney, saying that NO state funding should go to private schools.

Once upon a time I used to agree. Now I can't help but ask myself why the Labour Govt in NSW thinks that the State does not have a responsibility to and vested interest in the education of EVERY school kid based simply on their economic class? Will my kids not be jobseekers, will they not be future tax payers? Do children that go to private schools where their parents pay fees not create classroom space in the public system for other kids?

If you earn above a certain amount you are told it's your civic duty to pay for yourself in order to relieve the state of costs, so that money can be fairly distributed amongst those that have less. You are told this is the same reason why you should pay more tax than anyone else. So you cover health care and dentists, you pay for private schools and everywhere you turn there is another user pays argument being made. You're afforded little protection in the employment system and less if you work for yourself.

And yet when the pollies want a soft target to divert attention away from what the issues really are, let's go poke the $100,000 bear. This seems to be the magic number above which you earn some kind of scorn from 'real Australians' - including Julia Gillard who, during her maiden press speech, described who she barracks for amongst the 'real' Australians. As a white collar worker and a writer, I apparently do not count amongst them.  

The seeds of indignation are sown, waiting to be reaped by those that would ensure our attentions are so focused on envying our neighbours that we'll forget about focusing on them.

Yet where are the frameworks for something new? 

With what will we replace a broken model of democracy? How can we incorporate the social ideals that we need to house a new set of global priorities? How can we express the desire to work along side others in relative equality without abdicating our preferences for advancement based on individual merits?

Over five years ago, I worked on a concept with my old boss around the notion that Cold War language  constrains our thinking about what is possible in terms of our social, political and economic structures and must be replaced. The fact is the communism, socialism and yes, even democracy have little currency any more, because all systems have been shown to be desperately flawed. We wanted to develop a language that would form the basis of ideals more in step with Gen Y and harking back to some of the Brown Rice and Free Love spirit of the 70's.

Our new lexicon was Socialitics, Environomics and Communeconomy.

Loosely, Socialitics expressed the idea that was so brilliant embodied by the Live8 concerts, where the expressed public will of people from multiple nations acting in accord and unison, directly guides the creation of policy, wherein that policy will impacts the lives of those in many nations.

Environomics - this was not a word that even existed based on our searches at the time.  Environomics provides for progress and development wherein the ability to show a positive outcome for the environment as the first, guiding and constant principle must be upheld.

Communeconomy - Wherein it is not an evil to strive toward individual achievement or financial gain, but wherein the incentives are in place to share of resources, ideas, tools and skills freely to others on the basis that should they successfully commercialise, market, increase the trade on or otherwise gain additional value from what was given to them freely, then they will return a proportion of the gain back to the person or entity that assisted them. This is a common practice amongst the open source technology community and I believe it has many applications in business and life.

So I have the heart of a political radical. I feel pretty certain that everything must stop being the way it is and it is time for things to be different.

But here I am - scratching scratching scratching.

While we need a revolution and there is surely that whisper in the wind, the fact is that those most likely to revolt with the most fervour are those that feel they have nothing and have been cheated by 'the system'. To them, every one that has achieved what they have not is part of that system and before you know it, there are a lot of heads in chopping blocks that did nothing wrong, except for having some modicum of success at all.

May balanced heads prevail here and abroad until we can find a new language and new frameworks to share that will unite, advance and progress our consciousness entirely, beyond the dollar, beyond possessing and having and into a shared will toward creating and belonging.

Kiddy Trips. Wisdom from 5 Year old Mugglesam

I stumbled across this as a result of searching out organisations devoted to one thing - Kindness.


During that search, I discovered www.spreadlovelikefire.com and their associated blog. I can't encourage you enough to check out what these guys are doing. Every time I feel like the world is getting on top of me I read their blog and am uplifted.


One of the most delightful discoveries I have made via these guys is this. From the mouths of babes. I am reminded how clear is the vision of children.


Enjoy!

Ego Trip

Today I've had a comeuppance. The kind that is delivered with a sudden and shocking flash of self awareness, so sharp and clean it feels like your face just got rubbed in a glacier.

Someone I hold dear, although I do not know her well, has experienced a lot of shit in her life over the past 18 months. So much poo has been poured upon this woman and her family that even Kenny would step out of his overalls and call it a day.*

This week she got served another bout. It Scared me. I don't do Scared well. I wanna fight Scared and punch its little lights out. The best way to do that is to DO. So I did. I issued the clarion call. I rallied the Lady Troops. I conceived of a plan so lovely, warm and fuzzy, Barbara Cartland would want to hold it on her lap, give it a nickname and stroke it all afternoon.

Oh! I was on fire. Something about this particular woman sends me into action stations.  Hither and thither I bounded, issuing emails, cooking up plans, interviewing candidates and convincing some of her closest personal friends to agree that my idea was indeed worthy of Cartlandish affections. There were words of warning, delivered with love and respect for my intentions but I was determined to get on that road to hell, so took little heed.

You ever find that your ass hurts when you hit the floor after crashing out of your bubble?

Mine did. This friend and her family had the audacity - nay - the sheer temerity to politely refuse the wonderful, kittenish, bursting full of cuddly love offer of support that I had decided would be good for them to receive! The bloody cheek of it!

When crushed, my first reaction is always to fight, fight and then fight some more. In this case, I started banging out a really upset email and at some point, around about when I wrote the words "get your ego in check and wake up" - BAM! Ice cold glacier to the face!

Who was having the ego trip?

Suddenly I was drenched in the reality that my actions had been all about me, and not about her at all. I was no better than Xenaphon and his grandstanding little mate Wilke - just acting on something that would create popular appeal and not actually addressing the real and expressly articulated needs of those affected.

And what was worse, I had dragged other people into it. And then in what is the absolute worstest, scummy and puerile aspect of all, I went sniveling off to everyone that was caught up in it and begged them to help me feel better about having been a blind, dopey, ignorant, pushy, meddling, busy-bodying dork.

Love a little, meddle a little

And let me tell you when the word busy body popped into my head and I applied it to myself and realised IT WAS TRUE - that was truly a punch in the chops because last time I looked, I wasn't someone with nothing better to do than mess around in the family affairs of people I barely know.

So what happened? From whence did this pushy arrogant and self-sick making behaviour come?

Still working on that one. I'll figure it out eventually but of one thing I am sure - a mirror got held up to me today and all the accusations I was about to let fly at the object of my meddling intentions got flashed straight back in my eyes.

 I believe the saying goes "I was blind, but now I see."

What I saw is that I did ask "what can I do to help" and I was given a very straight forward answer.  But instead of going with the flow and accepting, I tripped on some serious ego shit.

Every time I come into contact with this person and her circle of trusted friends, I grow. Even after I made some really dreadful errors in judgement today,  I was forgiven by everyone, including the person who should never have been put in such an unfair position at all.

And to that person I say, I have never been so happy to be called a fucktard in all my life. And I love you too.

*In joke for Australians. For all others http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0kJ1wYpzQek

A Political Trip

When you're on a roll and procrastinating over a deadline, there is nothing quite as satisfying as being reminded about a politician that really pissed you off because it gives you a great excuse to re-examine exactly what it was about them that shit you so much.

And today's candidate is...*drumroll* Australian Senator Nick Xenaphon.

Aside from the fact he has a last name that sounds like an instrument used to apply auditory torture, this guy is a spectacular policy gnome.

He paints himself the defender, the crusader and man of the common peeps and he is sometimes. But most of the time he's no different to the rest of them. He's just looking for a soft target to land a few punches on in order to elevate his own position in the political schoolyard in Canberra.

The issue that shits me right now is Xenaphon's cozy little arrangement with Andrew Wilke - a neurotic, paranoid pollie mate of his from down the Apple Isle (Tasmania for those of you outside Oz). They've both climbed on board an emotionally charged bandwagon and set off around the country to throw a few bombs at the club industry.

The shitty issue of the day is poker machines.  These are a highly contentious and divisive subject.  The presence of poker machines is a very common thing in NSW. Casinos have them. Clubs have them. Pubs have them. In fact, it is said we have the highest ratio of pokie machines per capita anywhere in the world.

Lots of people hate them. Lots of people that have never put any money into one have objections to their existence.  One of this country's best loved indie bands The Whitlams even wrote lyrics about the evils of the pokie machine into a hit song.  Poker machines have a lot of money pumped into them.

For some people it becomes an addiction - the same way cigarettes, alcohol or endless episodes of Will & Grace do for others.  Serious addictions very nearly always carry financial risk to the addict and those around them.  

(Will & Grace is a rare example of a truly victimless addiction although my fiancee would disagree after more than four back to back episodes).

Xenaphon and Wilke are on a mission to abolish pokies. They have contented themselves for now with leveraging deals with the minority Labor Federal Government and the desperate, soon to be deposed, State Labor clowns that will dramatically change the way information is collected about poker machine users.

They have proposed all poker machines be fitted with biometric readers so ANYONE that wants to use them must cede their data to the Government. This is the kind of shit I choke on.

Here's the thing.   I am well educated and aware of the facts, figures and statistics related to how much social tragedy the issue of problem gambling causes.  I am equally well educated about the club industry and it's close relationship with community.

Here's the trip. I can not agree with the extent to which the personal freedoms of the majority are being legislated against in order to address the issues, weaknesses and failings of a very small minority.

On a percentage basis, a very small number of people have a poker machine gambling problem. The vast majority of folk can go to their local club and enjoy a bit of a flutter from time to time with no ill effect on their personal circumstances.

The very notion of offering the Government my biometric data in order to exercise my  right to spend my own money in a way I want to, engaged in a perfectly legal activity appalls absolutely every fibre of my being. It is the very worst kind of paternalistic policy making. Control and limit  the many in order to target the few - it is wasteful and invasive in the extreme.

What really rips me about this issue is that this has NOTHING to do with any real regard for the addicts or their victims. This has EVERYTHING to do with political profile building for Xenaphon and Wilke. In the process of their self aggrandised roadshow around the country spouting nonsense like "harm minimisation" they are going to rip the guts out of the club industry and in doing so, will irrevocably damage thousands of small community groups, NFP's and charities.

This is because a very substantial proportion of money derived from poker machines goes back into the community via what is known as the CDSE programme.  Major organisations like the Ted Noffs Foundation would not be able to run some of their most important programmes without the funding that flows from the CDSE. There are literally thousands of groups and community organisations that would not open their doors each morning if not for the support of these major clubs.

It is rare for me to become so incensed about a political issue that I will contact one of them. I'm not a trainspotter and as someone who holds an Honors Degree in Political Science, I expect politicians to be full of the good old fashioned ka-ka.

So all I wanted from Xenaphon was an answer to a couple of questions that might help me ascertain how much of his political ego trip was based on a genuine desire to help addicts and victims and how much was photo opportunity and media spin.

If you are an avid despiser of the pokies and you love to pump your fist in the air and cheer everytime a gnome like Xenaphon or Wilke lands a blow to the club industry, or if you just want to know whether they have any real policy beyond wanting to capture a shit load of personal data about average punters, have a read of these questions.

Tell me if you think these are feasible approaches to solving the poker machine part of the problem gambling issue.

I'd really like to know why Senator Xenaphon won't answer the questions. I think he's trying to sidestep my shit...

Senator Xenaphon - can you please advise if you are doing any of the following in parallel with your poker machine campaign: 

1. Are you tackling federal and state govts to stop dismantling the mental health system. Problem gambling is a mental health issue. 
2. Have you put forward any motions, proposals or other actions that would seek to extend the legal protections for victims of problem gamblers - ie: give them the right to freeze family bank accounts, take over possession of family assets such as the home or have the salaries of the problem gambler diverted into safe accounts - and this could be a legal recourse available to children in those cases where both parents have a problem and would have to be subject to evidential processes. 
3. Will you tackle the manufacturers to remove the hooks from their machines - this includes the flashing lights and the repetitive music that peals from them, and put the images on the spinning rollers in black and white, rather than in colour - all of these are well known psychological hooks that are designed to embed with the user. Removing them from the machines themselves would be very likely to greatly reduce the appeal of them. 

Senator Xenaphon - Any reduction in the use of machines forced by the use of biometrics (causing a mass aversion to use by everybody) not only unfairly limits the personal freedoms of the responsible majority, it will prove a hollow victory.  It will simply funnel the worst of the addicts into other activity - and that will include an increased level of underground activity, where the stakes are higher and the methods used for collecting debt can have very dire consequences.

Senator - please can we aim a little higher than simply stomping on the rights of the majority because of a small percentage of individuals that have tragic failings?

It's a Road Trip

I promote myself as a writer, right? So why's it taken me so long to get my shit together and blog along with the rest of the universe? I guess because as a writer, I have been following some really talented people. Funny, witty, incredible intelligent people that have a hook for their blogs - a theme if you will - that ties their posts together with a kind of conversational red thread. Usually it's their particular passion, their hobby or their cause.

So I've been trying to figure out what my hook will be. Problem being I don't have a hobby, a particular cause or a particular passion. I am generally interested in many things, generally passionate about a lot of stuff, less inclined to get involved in much of the things that do interest me because I have three kids and work for myself, so I can be selfish with my time. Which is probably another reason why I haven't started blogging.

But I might have finally worked it out. Over the past few weeks I've been grappling with many things.  A lot of change in my family circumstances - my kid started school (we're a blended family), one of my besties got a metal plate in her head as some kind of 'solution' to the crippling migraines she's been having ever since her hysterectomy (she doesn't see the connection but I wonder...), a woman I love and admire and barely know in this lifetime but am sure I have adored in many others, is in hospital following a minor stroke, I'm organising a wedding in another country (my own, Fiji) and trying to figure out how to make enough money in my business to meaningfully contribute to the family without having to work 60-70 hour weeks.( I actually know the answer to that and have acknowledged my own time management is half the issue but)...

the point is, there is just all this shit in life. There's funny shit, and sad shit. Crazy shit and amazing shit. Generally speaking, sometimes you're gonna fall in it, sometimes you're gonna get stuck in it, sometimes you'll avoid it and a lot of the time you'll just trip on it, have a brief stumble and roll on happy that you saw it in time to avoid the worst of it.

This is the stuff that gets me going. Just the every day kind of stuff I see going on around me, from the politicians (of course) celebrities (oh puleeze) experiences at work and with the people I love.  Sometimes it makes me laugh my arse off and wry, sartorial and even funny observations will result. Sometimes it makes me angry as hell and I'll go on a ranting bender (quite often at my long suffering and bewildered fiancee.) Sadness is a common reaction although it may take me days to work out what has caused the bout of pouts.

I'm not a funny girl but I greatly admire those that can write with such acerbic wit that it literally makes me cry from the pain of laughing so hard. I don't have a specific bee in my bonnet about any one thing but can frequently host entire hives of them when the mood strikes me. I'm not such a political tragic that I spend my time pouring over the media to address the issues of the day but I'm never shy about getting up on the soapbox when I think politicians are being arsehats (which is a lot of the time). My reading material is lightweight in the main although I can at least honestly say I haven't read a Jackie Collins novel in about ten years so that's an improvement. Food is something I eat not something I hold up as an art form. Art is something I occasionally exclaim over (and when in Paris recently, actually cried as I viewed) but is not something I typically get off my bum to go and see. My life has thrown me challenges that other people may not have coped with but certainly not as many as others I know, who show a great deal more grace under considerably more pressure than I ever did. I'm bloody ignorant about a lot of things and incredibly opinionated about others.

So I guess this is a welcome to those of you that decide taking a few minutes out to read a bunch of self-indulgent carry ons is a worthy exercise.  We're all on the road and maybe we'll share a few laughs and conversations about the kind of shit that we nearly tripped...