Monday, May 21, 2012

GUILT TRIP

To My Darling Daughter,

You are my sunshine and my moon. Where would I be without you?
Your funny little laugh and your beautiful smile make everything so worthwhile.
You are patient and you are kind. You are compassionate and very wise. Although I am the grown-up one, you have  taught me to be a Mum. At times I am not there to play. It must seem that I work all day and never stop for very long. I know it's true and it's just plain wrong. If I could have my time again, I'd be your playtime MummyBestestFriend. We'd spend every day out chasing snow on chocolate unicorns, away we'd go! Down broccoli streets and past fields of laughs, we'd sleep on strawberries and have lemonade baths. I'd take you where there was no sky, no ground below, just you and I. We'd see each others lives gone past and be two cosmic rainbow blasts!

But our life is here and now and long, so we'll have each other to stay strong. Two girls together, forever true. I'll never have a better friend than you.

My daughter is missing me. I see more of this computer screen than I do my kid.  She clings to me like a limpet, just wants so much to be seen and heard, given attention and played with.

I'm guilty. Guilty because I spend too much time working, guilty because if I don't work I let my clients down, guilty because if I do work the hours, I am tired and hopeless as a mother, a wife, a colleague. Guilty because I know the crap I am doing to my body in order to meet my work obligations is probably ruining me on levels I don't even want to think about. Guilty because I choose to spend half an hour blogging instead of meeting another deadline.

How am I supposed to explain this to her? All she knows is that I work all the time. She's gotten so good at playing by herself. I'm guilty for having her as a single parent, knowing she would likely never have a close sibling to bond and play with through her childhood.

I wrote this letter for her at 3am one day last week. I don't even know which day because it was just a shocking crush of deadlines that saw days and nights run together. I read it to her last night. She loved it. It kind of rhymes because she loves words that are 'married', which is how she describes them. She thinks I'm a rocking rhymer.She'll think I rock for another 6 years or so, and then she'll be mortified at having to spend a weekend at home with me. I'm so fucking mortified all these years have passed and that her babyhood has gone completely.

I'm so grateful that she is old enough to read this little thing I wrote, as my way to trying to help her understand how I feel. I'm scared that she is old enough to understand it because it's like I blinked just after she arrived on the table at the hospital and the best part of a decade had already gone by.

In truth, I have developed some horrible habits as a working parent. I remember what it was like to have a workaholic father. Late to get us to school, late to pick us up on the days he had to. Often racing up to the school gates because he had forgotten to pack us lunch and literally throwing paper bags at us that had pies or pasties or sandwiches in them. His liberal use of the word "promise" and how little it added up to.  Feeling like we were always in his way, we came second. His job came first. He always told us he loved us, he was always affectionate but I'm not sure it ever really made up for the temper, the controlling moods and the tension in the house when things were bad at work. Am I now parenting the way I was parented, hoping that words and hugs are enough to make up for not being able to simply give of myself?

God.

What are the things you feel you missed as a child from your parents and have you been able to focus on giving them to your own kids?



Tuesday, March 20, 2012

FORESIGHT AND FACEPALMS

Today I feel like taking a match to everything. I'm pissed off, tired and really over my own ability to see shit coming long before it hits. I'm over having this ability because no fucker ever listens.

I'm not psychic (much) it's more just an ability to see threads between things that others think are unrelated. To understand and know when they are going to converge and create demand, issue, opportunity.

There are numerous examples, big and small. Some of the standouts include:

I was working for The Australian some 15 years ago (or more).  When the first internet job boards landed (anyone remember Monster Board) the powers that be had conniptions because it threatened their cash cow of IT recruitment advertising on a Tuesday. They decided to lock Monster Board out and would not accept their advertising. I argued my ass off (no right to do so, I was a kid) but said to anyone that would listen "don't shut them out, lock them in. Get them on exclusives, the internet is the way everything is going to go, so let's work with them and be the first to do this."  I knew nothing about the internet. Did not own a computer. Had rarely even used one. But I knew it made no sense to shut out innovation instead of partnering with it.  Remarkably, this argument is still being had with print publishers that continue to fail to get it, as their print publications continue to fail.

Not long after I left the Oz, I started doing a bit of PR and marketing for an outfit called Quantel. They make high end editing gear for broadcast. I remember saying to the Australian MD, who was questioning my media strategy "you guys need to be talking to this market because in five years time you'll have opened your platform to 3rd party developers, be competing with consumer brands on editing capabilities and applications and have to know how to talk to telecommunications companies, because they will be broadcasters So you should be talking to them now and leading their thinking about how your technology will apply." He told me I was an idiot.

Once upon a time, I walked into the office of a guy who was also flogging broadcast equipment and had briefed my flatmates agency on a catalogue he wanted to create. My flatmate didn't understand the brief. I didn't know the first thing about this guys business, or his brand (Sony) but I marched into his office, told him I believed he was setting up a new division, outlined the business case for doing so and how he would then take his channel business into branded stores with his leading partners to open up a new category. He asked my flatmate if he had bugged the office and demanded to know how I knew all this when he hadn't even told his own wife what he was planning. He hired my flatmates agency to launch the division. He ended up running Sony AV/IT marketing. When he left the pro division and went to consumer, he dumped the agency and didn't take me with him. I still give him shit about that on a regular basis. I married him last year. He sometimes listens to me now :)

I flew to Columbus, Ohio with a client to pitch on the launch of a new product into SEAsia. It was not long after the Sydney Olympics and during the whole Bush/Gore election fiasco. Smack bang in the bible belt I was, in my 20's and still clueless. Got asked what I thought of the election and what would happen. Being Australian, I told them. Said history would show Gore won the popular vote, but Bush would take it on a point of law. Said in his first 100 days he'd be rattling his sabre at China and the Middle East and if they were not already scenario planning for war, they'd better. My Australian client went green and kicked me repeatedly under the table. I came home with the business. In April of that year, I had a weird breakdown and cried my heart out to my agency boss, told him something terrible was coming, something bad was going to happen and so many people were going to die. Started warning my clients to look at their exposure in the US. Very few of them listened.  When Sept 11 hit, I was numb. I'd already grieved.

Recently I said to a CTO I greatly admire and respect two things "soon, everyone is going to choose which application they want to use to do their jobs, even if they are all doing the same job. They'll do to their app cloud bank and choose the application that best suits their purpose, download and use it and the enterprise will let them." He said "It will never happen."  I also said to him after a round table "the thing your brand needs to focus on talking about at this level is not technology, it's people, because that is what is fucking your clients up." He said "our technology can't help them with that " #facepalm

He recently tweeted from Gartner that BYO Application is the next thing...duh, really.  Oh, and the marketing gurus at corporate in the USA have come up with new positioning that includes having to change the human element of thinking. They even have a nifty slogan for it and one of their blogging gurus has started referencing how many conversations with clients are not about tech, but about solving the human issues. Double Duh.

I mean, none of this matters. I'm not saving lives. Watching an interview with a young unknown actress starring in an indie film called Mystic Pizza and saying "She is going to be huge" when I was 15 didn't change the world. It's all swirling around up there but I'm not a millionaire because of it.

Right now I'm tired and pissed off because I have been seeing shit coming down the line for my own family. And today it hit. And it's a storm of crapola. I could not have stopped it. Talking about it would not have prevented it. But every now and then, it would be really good if someone stopped and took the time to consider "what if she is right."

Sunday, May 29, 2011

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.

Sunday, March 13, 2011

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?

Monday, March 7, 2011

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.

Sunday, March 6, 2011

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!

Tuesday, February 8, 2011

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