Enough

Just lately I’ve been thinking about what is enough. Or at least when am I enough? When is what I have done or what I do enough?

This thinking has been the result of a bit of soul searching on my part. Something I’ve avoided for quite some time because the trouble with searching is sometimes you find stuff and it’s not always pretty. However, my constant discontentment has forced me to take the advice I usually give to my clients and ‘go within’ just a little bit.

I’ve told you about my new job, how much I like it and the people I work with it and they seem to like me too. I also whined about the decisions I had to make about more study or continue with the business etc. I won’t go on about it again, I still don’t know what I’m doing. Anyway….what I have realised is that this is a bit of a pattern with me (at least in career terms). I run away from what I really want, find something that I quite like and will settle for, then decide that I have to BE MORE for this role so I start cramming my life with more hard work and study and angst about my abilities. Until one day I collapse in a heap of disillusion and depression and exhaustion – and slightly lose my mind for a little while. And then I start all over again.

Sigh.

Why do I do it, why am I constantly putting myself in the position of thinking I have to be more, always more. Never ok just as I am, never ENOUGH.

Jennifer Louden writes about the ‘Hounds of More’ she says “Hounds of More are petrified you won’t be able to do what you most yearn to do in your life, so they keep you running in circles, chasing your—and their!—tails.”

Mine are there, always snapping at my ankles making me go faster, search harder, grasp at more, and more and more. So much to do and learn and achieve and BE!

When in actual fact I don’t think I really want any more – at least not that stuff. I want a peaceful life, I want to plant a herb garden and draw again and grow some vegetables and walk the dog and play with the children.

I just haven’t quite worked out how to pacify the hounds.

Yulish stuffs

Yuletide greetings from the Southern Hemisphere. Here I am writing from my blog called ‘Bridget’s Flame’ a Solstice goddess whose flame will pierce the darkness.  Here I am celebrating the Winter Solstice, with all its symbolism around rebirth (of the Sun), introspection and planning for the future. Here I am among all this and with absolutely no idea what the future holds for me.

I have spent yet another 24 hours immersed in the ‘internal debate’ I mentioned in my previous post. Thoughts, plans and ideas playing tag in my head until I thought it might explode and fall right off and into my cornflakes. I’m tired, tired of thinking, tired of being confused and tired of holding on so tightly and having to know NOW. This minute. IMMEDIATELY!

So, when faced with a dilemma of such momentous proportions, I decided to do what any sensible girl would do… I consulted my astrologer.  She said;

“The course of Venus brings you to an even deeper level of thought. Realisations of what motivates you, what really makes you happy in the core of your being, rise to the surface and bloom in the light of consciousness. A freedom and a responsibility in one. ‘For am I now seeking the favour of men, or of God? - St. Paul’”.

Right then. Lovely as it was (thanks St Paul) that didn’t really help, it just confirmed my confusion.

So I did the next logical thing and moved on to my Goddess Tarot iPhone app. For we all know that nothing answers life’s little questions like an iPhone app. It said ‘it is time for us to take our fantasies and transform them into reality’. At first I thought that meant I should make that call to Johnny Depp but it probably didn’t. Unfortunately.

Sigh.

I’ve already said that this week I’m going to blog it all out. A great spewing forth of all the revolting mixed up-ness that has been accumulating in my head for some time now.  It’s not life and death. It’s not even that important in the grand scheme of things. In fact at times it will make me sound like a whiny, ungrateful little pain in arse.  Sorry about that.

Because really, what have I got to complain about? With my health and my education and my family and a roof over my head and food to eat and shiny things to play with.

Yeah. Well unfortunately saying all that doesn’t make it go away, it doesn’t ease my confusion or pull me up by my bootstraps or help me make decisions about how I want my life to be.

So…tonight I’ll light a candle, meditate on the solstice, fly my freak flag from the tallest tower and then tomorrow… I will begin.

Solstice blessings to you all.

Deprivation..or is it?

A week ago I temporarily deactivated my FB account. I needed to stay focussed on some other important jobs and it’s too easy to lose hours on the various sites and general internetting that I do.  So I have entered a period of what I thought would be web deprivation.

However, I’m here to report that it really hasn’t been as bad as I thought – the first two days were the worst.  A FB friend sent me a text message on day 2 asking how I was coping…I told him ‘crap’.  Then after another day or so I started to notice how much I was getting done (not blogging obviously).  I caught up on some work I was behind with, I listened to some teleclasses and audiobooks while I was working and got a little bit inspired to do some other things.  It’s been good. Really it has.

I have to confess that I do pop back to Facebook every few days to tend my farm for 15 minutes, then I shut it down again.  I also had to leave it open for a day so that a friend in Egypt could add me – but I didn’t spend any time there and as soon as he’d done that I closed it down again until I’m ready to be permanently open. 

I think eventually I will be able to reactivate it and just not spend as much time there, but to begin with I had to make it a bit more definite.    

Go me.

The obligatory weather post

Things wouldn’t be ‘back to normal’ in my blogging world if I didn’t post about the weather and have a good old bitch about the heat.

As usual the Australian summer is getting to me. That will come as no surprise to you all, it always has been a thorn in my side and I’ve let you know it. However now there seem to be more extremely hot days (days over 35C) and they are lasting for longer periods – several days in a row before any relief – then starting up again too soon. This does not a happy Caitlin make.

My Northern hemisphere thermostat is designed to deal with this…..

Not this…………….

……….so that all you want to do is this……………

Stupid weather.

Friday Fever

Woohoo! It's Friday!! The weekend! I'm delighted. We're having Sushi for dinner tonight, then when the girls have gone to bed Tom and I will relax, perhaps watch movie and have another glass of wine (to follow the one we'll have with the Sushi).

There is only one little blot on the otherwise crystal clear horizon that is my weekend and that is....... The Pageant. I hate the Pageant. Some of you may remember this post from last year. I like the idea and I love doing that kind of stuff with the girls but for me, with 'the phobia' and the whole having-to-get-up-while-it's-still-dark-drive-35k-then-sit-waiting-for-4-hours-with-a-bunch-of-clowns-tormenting-me, I'm frankly not keen. I don't know what to do. The girls want to go, they're not making a fuss which kind of makes it worse. I feel like the worst the mother in the world for even contemplating not taking them. Also, if we decide to go I'm going to have to spend a considerable amount of time this evening packing provisions and chairs and entertainment into the car (you need something to do during the LONG wait). I just don't know if I can take it in my already fragile emotional state. Tom suggested we go every second year, but since we didn't tell them that it seems a pity to spring that plan on them now.

Am I being selfish? Probably.

It's not like it's the only Pageant they'll go to, there is the small local one which they are actually participating in, but it is small. And kind of lame compared to THE PAGEANT!!!! I personally prefer the small one because parking is easier, there are loads of cafes open because it's not 6am and one year Santa was drunk. So cool. And funny. What? The kids didn't know, they just thought he was slapstick-falls-over-a-lot-Santa. They liked him.

Then of course there's the other thing about The Pageant. It officially marks the start of 'The Christmas Season'. It's just something else to fill me with woe because you see....and now I'm really opening a can of worms, but here goes......I don't like Christmas. There I said it. I have my own reasons for not liking it which I may talk about at some point but the fact is I could happily do without it. For me it is utterly meaningless. Bah humbug.

However I have children, they love it and they want to go to The Pageant....come full circle haven't we?

Tomorrow's post may or may not have a photo of a clown and perhaps one of me being administered oxygen...or Last Rights...one of the two.

Don't mention the war...

....actually by war I mean website - but it's close enough to being a battle ground to merit being called the war. Because I am working on it again. Hey! Regular reader! I just saw you fall off your chair laughing......cut it out. Anyway, previous experience will tell you here, here oh and here that I find working on the website slightly rather totally effing frustrating. So I am not going to write about it.

So this is the official 'don't mention the war'* post.

It is really difficult to think of something else to blog about when I'm in the death throes of web design (HA! 'web design'....my turn to fall off the chair laughing) because it is so all-consuming that I become obsessive, but I'll try.

I can talk about the 'picnic' the girls and I had yesterday. We went to a local park and Hannah 'accidentally' dropped her sandwich on the ground, Aislin ate a quarter of hers and wanted shortbread instead. At one stage we were joined by two other families, they had three little boys each so the girls made friends with them. At one point I saw the crowd of 6 little boys wandering away from the play area to check out some cars. There in the middle of the crowd I spotted Aislin. The shape of things to come I wonder. I took a photo of Hannah on the Flying Fox....

...at least she was on it when I started to take the photo.....so I guess this is actually a photo of Hannah falling off the Flying Fox. Not to worry, nothing broken.

While we were there Hannah kept taking off her shoes and just leaving them lying wherever she kicked them off (much like home). I told her repeatedly to pick them up and leave them by our table. But what do I know. We left the park, went and picked up the mail, stopped at the local shop for milk and it was about then that Hannah announced that she'd left her shoes at the park. I ranted all the way back there and all the way home again and most of the way through dinner......just to be sure.

If you like I could talk again about the heat and also mention the fact that neither of the TWO ancient air conditioners we have are working. No? No, quite right too.

I'll just leave it at that then shall I?

*You probably have to have seen this episode of Fawlty Towers to fully appreciate this blog title.

Clowns to the left of me...jokers to the right...

I have a phobia. It's serious and has been known to reduce me to tears and cause a racing heart and anxiety attacks.

This is it.....

Yep, clowns. I'm terrified of them. So you can imagine my delight when once a year the annual Christmas Pageant comes round.... oh yeah let me at it.....

However, my children love to go. So we go. It's very, very popular which means we need to get there at least a couple of hours before it starts to secure a good spot. So yesterday morning we were up at an ungodly hour and all packed sleepily into the car so that we could get there before the hoards. We arrived, a full two hours before take off and still didn't get a front row spot. However, we were closer than last year so we settled in, marking our territory with a picnic rug and some fold up chairs (this is serious business people). Tom went off to get me coffee (because he's scared of caffeine-free me) and soon returned laden with a couple of lattes and a selection of fresh pastries like the good hunter-gatherer he is.

Almost as soon as we settled in the warm-up acts began. Clowns. Because we all know how hilarious they are don't we? Walking, running, skipping, dancing, uni-cycling clowns. Big, over made-up freaks with giant shoes. Sorry, I just do not see the attraction. So, I read the paper, white knuckled thinking 'don't come near me, don't come near me'. But they're like cats aren't they, they can smell your fear so of course they were hanging around us A LOT!

Here's another one

And the crowds.....good God in heaven why do we do this to ourselves?

There are more photos of floats, fairies, princesses, more clowns and of course the main man himself (Santa) but I am so exhausted trying to download the clowns without actually looking at the computer that I've quit for the day.

Special thanks to Hannah who acted as photographer because she got sick of me falling backwards off my chair every time I got a clown in the view finder.

Fun times.

Therapy is the only answer

I have a problem....yes - that's it - in the photo. That, my friends, is my collection of notebooks, journals, diaries and organisers. I have four filofax organisers (four! WTF?). And they are real filofax organisers - the big one cost me $400 about 10 years ago (hey, I got a promotion at work, I was celebrating). I have journals in every size, silk bound, leather bound, even plain old spiral bound. There are many, many notebooks.....for all my....well.....notes. And lists of course, I make lots of lists.

They are all beautiful, I love them but I have enough to last quite a while now. But still I covet this, this and these.

Oh yes, I certainly do have a problem. I tried to explain it to Tom (who incidentally just spent 2 hours wandering around the hardware store - enough said), 'it's a disease' I said. He just shook his head and walked away.

You like them don't you? I know you're examining that photo closely, I know you want them too. You're secret is safe with me.