Future Motivation

So after yesterdays dreary little post, i'm trying to keep the motivation on track. I figure the best way to do that is to just post as often as i can, everyday if possible, whether i have much to say or not. If i dont have anything to actually talk about, maybe i'll just post a photo or a music video or... i dont know... just something. I've found in the past that the best way to find motivation is to just start " doing ", and "doing " regularly, until whatever it is becomes a habit that you enjoy.

And so, in the interests of keeping this blog alive ( and to take up sometime, seeing as this office is beyond quiet today ) i thought i might make a small list of things i am looking forward to in the next few months ( not exactly in chronological order, because i have a slight case of baby brain and i forget specifics like dates ):

1. Anzac Day - sure, its nice to get a day off during the middle of the week, but Anzac Day is also my Dads birthday. We see him pretty much everyday, but i'm looking forward to getting Flynn to draw him a picture or do him some "craft " and watching both of their faces light up when Poppy unwraps it. We're also planning on taking Flynn to his first Anzac march this year, so that important too.
2. Having our garage converted - from a garage into a bedroom/playroom for Flynn. It will mean more space for Flynn to play, less toys in my loungeroom ( in theory ) and once Flynn has moved out, his old room will be ready t set up for Little Miss Jelly!
3. " Elmo's World Tour " - this Sesame Street stage show is coming to our regional theatre and got Flynn and myself front row tickets! He loved The Wiggles but Elmo and the Sesame Street gang are Flynn's favourites, so i'm looking forward to seeing his awesome "excited " face!
4. Roadtrip to Sydney - just me and Mick. As we're business owners now, and Mick is really the only driver we have, he cant take annual leave for at least the first year or two... all of which made me think that we need to take every opportunity we have to get away ( ie public holidays ) or to make our opportunity. So i got all sneaky and booked us a weekend down in Sydney with the aim of doing something that we would each enjoy. So the Saturday morning we'll have a sticky beak at the Baby and Toddler Expo at Homebush, and then in the afternoon i've booked us a one hr ride around the city, out to Bondi and return, on the back of a Harley Davidson trike. I'm not sure which bit i'm more excited about ( aww hell, i'm dying to get on this trike! ) all i know is that we better get nice weather or we'll have to reschedule our trike tour - which would mean a roadtrip down with a small baby sometime later this year.... :/

And thats about enough for now. There is Mothers Day of course, and i'm still tossing up whether to attend our belated ten year school reunion on the June long weekend.... and how can i forget there is a baby coming sometime in August! I just know that i seem to cope better, to function better, when i have something on my calendar to look forward to, to keep me going. Its so much easier to make it throughe the day when you can say " Man, today sucks the big one... but hey, i get to see Elmo next week! "

Blog Motivation Proclamation

So the ever entertaining Sheena over at If These Walls Could Talk has issued a challenge to her readers - she wants to know all about our blog motivation: why we blog, what made us start blogging, how we go about the whole blogging process ( that is, if we have one ). Hell, she's even made it a competition of sorts - the " winner " gets treated to a weekend with Sheena sometime in the year 2010. Thats a prize worthe entering for, in my humble opinion. Therefore i have decided to take Miss Gates up on her challenge. Read on, if you will:

It was an online chat buddy who encouraged me to blog. We used to chat for hours on end : long, articulate, funny, often playfully argumentative discussions on topics that none of our " real life " friends cared to talk about. He'd started his own blog on the social networking site that we favoured and, after a few choice comments from me, asked me why i hadnt started mine yet. Why ? Well, why not ? To " web log " had never crossed my mind before, but the more i thought about it, the more sense it made. Truth be told, I have always been an avid writer; when i was a little girl i loved spending time in my room writing stories, reading through baby name books to make a shortlist of monikers for the various characters in my " novels ". This grew and morphed somewhat into a favouritism for poetry, most often written when i was low and/or angry. In my late teens i kept an exercise book full of my poems with me almost all the time and pulled it out whenever i had something i needed to say. But it occured to me that everything in my poems was hidden, cryptic, metaphorical; why wasnt i saying what i really felt? Why wasnt i getting all those thoughts and feelings out, in honest and frank terms that any old person was going to be able to understand ? Why? I didnt know. So i started to keep a journal. Every night i wrote in a notebook the exact thoughts and feelings i was having that day - nothing hidden, nothing left out, no holds barred. It was pure and honest and raw. And it was good.

I dont necessarily mean the writing - whether that was good or not would be entirely up to the reader. And seeing as i was the only person who ever read my journals, i guess we'll never really get an unbiased opinion on that. No, what i meant was that writing itself was good. The putting of thought to pen to paper was cathartic - it didnt matter that nobody else was reading it, just to free all the thoughts from my over-active mind was cleansing in itself. So, when the idea of having my own blog was put to me, a journal which was their for everybody - nay, anybody - to read, i thought it couldnt be anything other than a better version of that first baptism by written word. And it has been.

Blogging has brought me so much more than keeping a " regular ", old school journal. On top of bringing the sweet relief of unbottled emotion, blogging has opened up a whole new world of people and places. Blogging has introduced me not only to new friends, but new ideas, ideas that i would only have come across second or even third-hand without the blogosphere. Its brought me a support network that, despite being made up primarily of people i have never actually met, has been the sunshine on many a rainy day.Blogging has brought me a confidence that i am not the only weirdo in the world - that quiet often the things i thought were uniquely my problems are issues for other people to. It has lead me to see that i am, in fact, not alone. And that, my friends, is comforting.

Blogging may be the only part of my life where i dont follow a process. That is unless you count often incoherent rambling as a process in itself. I write as i think: quickly and often, without editing. That is to say i blog on a topic so quickly that i often dont stop to think what is that i am actually writing and this, in turn, means that very rarely self-censor. It has, on the odd occasion, meant that i have written about things that i probably shouldnt have, or at the very least, written too much detail, made things too personal. This is in opposition to my real life where i am very guarded, so readers of my blog should know that they getting the very core of me every time thy venture onto my page. I have written of battles with personal demons; of core events in my childhood that have shaped my emotional landscape; of sexual encounters, as few and far between as they are; and of regret, loss, pain and hope. These things are not so much about me but often they ARE me - the things i write about ( most often ) are the essence of who i am, and who i'm hoping to be. And they are true.

What else is true is the good that has come from blogging. The best thing that has come of my blogging thus far has been the relationships i've developed. I know its cliched to say " My blog helped me make friends! " but thats the answer to the question. So many of my friends and family question why i blog and just how genuine any relationships developed via the inetrnet are - but, in some cases, the fledgling relationships i have developed with fellow bloggers are the some of the most " real " relationships i have. Friendships developed via my blog ( and blogs the world over ) are based on personality, on brain and soul alone: they arent subjected to how pretty we are, how much money we have or how much power and influence we hold. They are based on a mutual attraction to ideas and attributes, and what could be more real than that? It may be a standardised answer, but the friendships i've made, the people i've come to know and love through nothing more than well written words, is the best thing i could have asked for from this whole blogging gig. Its the standard answer, but its true. And being true is always right.

I guess thats what i've been trying to say : blogging is right. Its the right fit. Its the right way. Its the right, and the real thing. The notion may be over-dramatic, but I've become addicted to this blog, and the others that i read. I'm able to share in the lives of others, and in turn share mine, and if sharing isnt caring, then i dont know what is.....

Stop searching the obituaries, i havent died...

Nor have i fallen off the face of the planet, or moved underground to live with the mole people. I merely decided that i needed to take a complete break from blogging, just for a little while, because if i cant escape the confines of my own mind i can at least escape from putting them to print. You would think that getting thoughts and feelings out would do a person some good, would at least get things off my chest, and in some part it does, but it also lets you read and re-read things that perhaps you'd rather not live through again. But never mind that, here i am, alive and sort of well, at least today.

See thing is, just after my last post in december, which was relatively sunny in comparison to the other recent posts, i had a nice little meltdown. Not exactly on a Britney Spears kind of scale, but big enough for me to take notice and need to take a step back. I'm talking a full blown panic attack, crying and thinking ( and hoping ) that i would die; strangely enough, the start of this panic attack happened in front of my parents and younger sister, at their house, which i fled in tears. I drove home, erratically mind you, and tried locking myself in my house in the dark but my mum kept calling and calling and within 20 minutes or so they had turned up at my place, trying to help. And they did a little, in that instance anyway - i still kept crying, stopping and starting, still struggling to draw breath at some points but they managed to calm me down and talk me through what was plaguing me at that particular moment. Apparently my parents are a lot smarter than i thought - they told me they'd noticed that i'm lonely, that my behaviour had been more depressed and nonchalant lately, that a lot of the time it appeared like i really didnt care about anything. They also told me that unfortunately there isnt a lot they can do to help me with the loneliness issues, and any self-esteem or self-worth things i have going on, well, they dont really see where any of it could stem from. They think i'm fantastic. But you're parents are supposed to think that right ?

So there you be - i had my breakdown that, lets face it, we all knew was coming. Nothing much really has come of it, except for a few days afterwards i felt a little lighter because i had managed to get something out. But that feeling of emancipation hasnt exactly lasted long - i've had bad days since then, and have an almost constant feeling of " blah ". By that i mean that i have almost no motivation to do anything, or at least anything important. I havent eaten properly in at least three weeks because i cant bring myself to cook anything ( i've been eating fruit or making toast, or buying takeaway, and yep, i know thats not healthy ).I have a few ideas running around in my head but no drive to make any of it happen. Not that any of the ideas themselves are important on a world scale but they would at least give me something to work on. And the stupid thing is i know that i have no motivation, i'm disgusted by the fact that i would really like to get out and go for a walk, or do 50 sit ups, or even fold my basket of washing, but i have no inner feeling pushing me to do anything other than lie on the lounge and watch the cricket. It makes me sick. It makes me think i need to be back on medication, or in counselling, or at least reaching out to someone and asking for help but i dont want to admit defeat.

The other thing that has come of the shit hitting the fan is that i have decided, after me originally suggesting it jokingly a few months ago and then having my parents bring it up for real, is that my sister is going to move in with me when she gets her drivers licence. I am both happy and apprehensive about this. On the one hand it will mean that i have a room mate, that i wont be coming home to an empty house, and that will be nice. Plus, i'll have better finances because she'll be paying half the rent and bills, so more money is a nice incentive. But on the other hand, my 17 year old sister is almost the complete opposite of me. Dont get me wrong, for siblings we get on really well, i'm not worried about that. What i mean is that she's a beautiful girl, popular, has all the self-confidence in the world, and the people to go along with it. What i'm worried about is her inviting friends over at the weekends, or the new boyfriend she seems to chop and change every month or less, and me looking like the sad older sister who has a sibling for a room-mate because she has nobody else.Of being the sad old spinster who always seem to be sitting around Erin's house, doing nothing, with no-one.I dont want to be that.

And thats it for now. I was thinking i would make a post with my favourite stuff for the year, like movies and music and world events. I've been meaning to do it for a few days now but, strangely, i havent been able to muster up the motivation...