Regeneration and new growth

My house is clean, my body is well rested and my head is starting to feel clear again. I'm into the third day of the Easter weekend and I'm starting to feel normal again. After the week that was, I'm doing some long needed de-cluttering and plenty of reading and writing.

The other side is in sight

How do you gauge whether life is busy or not, besides the obvious signs like not having a social life online or offline and feeling like you're running to keep up with life. Side note: my newly purchased pedometer still tells me I'm not running enough steps.

You know without a doubt that you're busy when you go without coffee most of the day, you don't read any blog posts or comment for days on end and your chiropractor bemoans the fact that your back 'is so bad' because you're last fortnightly visit was more than 40 days ago.

Banging on my drum

There's nothing like a nice discussion with your bank of almost 20 years to put you in a happy frame of mind - ignorant morons. Frustrated by a joint phone call tonight with my middle son to the bank to help him organise a personal loan.

Explained to the customer service person that my son was new to this process and what information did he need in front of him to answer their questions. Got told by the 'charming' twit on the phone that they could only talk to my son, not me - yeah I get the privacy thing but some customer service skills would be nice.

Banish negative energy

If they say that we are the sum average of the five people we spend the most time with, then it stands to reason that to be successful - I probably need to expand my group (or change it) 

We all know what it’s like to be around people who are negative, resentful or even miserable and how their negative energy seems to creep in and around you, and before you know it you’re enveloped in that same energy sapping cloud. These kinds of people are exhausting to be around. 

Hoping everything falls into place...

So I had my misery pants on in my last post, well more that I was feeling a little bit bored and unmotivated with life in general. So I'm putting plans in place to hopefully achieve a few things that I've been talking about for more than two years.

There's the problem of everything falling into place at the right time and people being amendable to these happenings, so I'll refrain from shouting it from the rooftops until I overcome those potential road blocks.

I'm a big believer that if it's meant to be, then it will be - yeah mum I listened to your words over the years. This isn't to say that I won't be might p'ed off if it doesn't all come together. After alI, I don't do patience or disappointment too well.

We're three weeks out from our expected 'Go Live' date on the project at work and we're rapidly running out of hours and patience. Everyone is getting tetchy - yes someone used that word the other day to describe people's moods and it seemed to fit. We're all a tetchy bunch at the moment.

This combined with lots of disruption and restructuring within our company at the same time and as you can imagine it's a pretty tense atmosphere to be working in.

It's a long weekend in Adelaide this weekend - yihoo, boy was I hanging out for it. Yesterday I shopped and cleaned - ugh. Today I washed my car, socialised with friends and washed the dog, so now I can sit down and write tonight and tomorrow and not feel guilty.

Hubby is back to work tomorrow, after 5 weeks holidays. No, he doesn't get public holidays off if he's rostered to work. After all, cars break down day and night, hot and cold weather, holidays or not.

It's not going to be a nice day to return to work though, today is our 9th consecutive day of over 30C temperatures, tomorrow and the next day are expected to be 38C. Summer 'supposedly'  finished 10 days ago. Perfect weather for sitting under the air-conditioner, not for working.

Well I hope you're either staying cool and comfortable, or warm and toasty depending on where you are. Keep your fingers crossed for me that everything falls into place and then I can come back and tell you all about it.

The time is now...

Some days I feel like the same day is happening over and over again - you know that feeling don't you? Same shit, just a different day. 

I roll out of bed in the morning at the same time every day (give or take a few minutes) and wish that I could snuggle back down and sleep for another hour or two. I have my shower, make lunches for the day, eat my breakfast, dry my hair, makeup on and I’m out the door within an hour. 

On a good day it takes me fifty minutes in peak hour traffic to get to work, other days and the traffic can be a right royal pain in the butt. Let’s be honest, that length of time in a car surrounded by hundreds of impatient people is never fun. Luckily I allow plenty of time for driving, but additional time spent in traffic jams infringes on my morning writing time. 

Routine can be a killer and yet at the same time it can help keep us balanced and moving forward. I guess the key here is not running on the same path day in and day out, we need routine with enough variation so that we’re not digging ourselves a rut.

My rut is starting to get edges to it, in other words it’s getting bigger. This is a common phenomenon which occurs every now and again. When this happens I have to climb out of my rut and dust myself off, then forge a slightly altered path.

I definitely need some variety or change. A bit of a shakeup and a nice change if that’s at all possible. I’ve had the years of drama and mayhem with my boys, so I’m over the bad change, and the drama filled moments - can I put in a request for nice changes to my routine. 

If anyone has a direct line to the universe, can you tell them I’m ready and waiting and that I’m a bit over the boredom and monotony. I’ve lost sight of the fun things that keep me buzzing along. In actual fact I think I’m way overdue for a holiday. 

The truth is we all need things to look forward to, so what are you looking forward to at the moment?

Cheers, Fi
 

Cultural misfit or reclusive writer...

Adelaide gets a little bit crazy in March. I'm not even sure how the planning works, but every worthwhile event that seems to happen in this city is held in March.

Traffic goes stupid, accommodation is impossible to find and flights in and out of the city are at a premium cost - if you can get them.

It's bad planning on behalf of the organisers to do everything in one month, or maybe it's good planning and plenty of incentive for out-of-towners to come to our humble little city. You can stay for a month and do everything worth doing.

What it does, is make our lives difficult on the project when we're trying to move our project team around the country to train staff in preparation for our project go live date which is only 4 weeks away.

Yeah, okay so we didn't plan our project dates too well either, and lets not even get started on the fact that the cutover tasks (ie the bulk of the transitioning activities) will need to be done over the Easter weekend.

I really do love that my city is such a mixed bag of culture and festivals but couldn't we spread it out a little. Look at this as an example, in Adelaide this week we have the following activities happening;

Clipsal 500 - 4 days of car racing and music concerts. Today they had a sell out crowd with 95,000 people attending the final race day and people having to be turned away. For this race they block off a section of the city to create a massive street racing circuit. Last Wednesday (the day before the event started) and it took me 50 minutes to get from my place of work to where I was doing my night course - that's about a 10km distance, traffic is that crazy.

Adelaide Fringe Festival - The Adelaide Fringe is held over 4 weeks in February and March and it's open-access nature means that anyone with a show, exhibition or cultural event is able to register and be part of Australia’s largest arts event. The result is one of the most diverse arts festivals in the world, renowned for fresh ideas, spontaneity and fun.

Adelaide Arts Festival - Held in the first 3 weeks of March and incorporates arts, dance and visual arts exhibitions.

Writers Week - This festival is part of the Adelaide Festival and is seven days of all things writerly. There's readings, seminars, author signings and everything to do with celebrating the written word.

Soundwave 2013 - Almost forgot this one, a night of absolutely amazing music with heaps of live bands

So given all that activity in my little patch of the world and where did I go this weekend - nowhere! Instead I stayed home and created a business plan, wrote a freelancing project plan and wrote an article which I've submitted for review.

I could have gone to some artsy shows, only none of my friends are really that way inclined and hubby is as far removed from that as is possible. Attending something like that would be up there with walking barefoot on hot coals for him. He did go to the car racing on Friday though, as did middle son. I loathe car racing almost as much as they loathe the artsy stuff.

I looked at the Writers Weeks schedule but unfortunately the things that interest me are not scheduled on the weekend but during the week, which is not really possible at this stage in the project for me to have a day off and attend.

I did however partake in a totally artsy, cultural moment tonight- we dined on homemade pizza made in hubby's wood fire pizza oven. We still need a little bit of perfecting on the cooking times and temperatures, but it was definitely edible and tasty.

March in Adelaide makes me feel like a bit of a cultural misfit, or maybe a social pariah. In fact the reclusive writer title probably fits me well.

Hope you all have a superbly cultural week everyone,