Love means never having to say Happy Valentine's Day!

When I started dating my husband, almost thirteen years ago, I came to understand reasonably quickly that he was no romantic.   This was a little disconcerting to me because I was used to, and naturally drawn to, players. Boys who knew just what to say; how to make me feel desirable and special.  Boys who almost certainly said the exact same things to many girls before me & after me.  What was different about Filip was that, every now and then, he would come out with things that would just blow me away.  He would just say what he was thinking and it would be so beautiful because it was spontaneous and heartfelt.  And not aimed at scoring brownie points.

That is how I define true romance.  Not necessarily, gestures that aren't gestures, merely actions and words.  After all, it is nice knowing that someone is purposefully trying to make you smile.  But I see romance in spontaneity, in originality, in the little things that say "Your happiness is important to me".  The little things that say "I know you."

To me, Valentine's Day is the antithesis to all that.  It is commercial, generic, insincere, lazy and a farce.  And I think it awful that men be bullied into it & women brainwashed to feel that this is the day than men show them how much they love them.  They show us everyday.  You just have to pay attention.  Discounted chocolates and obscenely priced roses mean nothing.  While they might not dare to say it out loud, I'm pretty sure most men hate Valentine's Day.  I know single women do.  Any decent restaurant hates being fully-booked with tables of two, that traditionally don't spend very much and tip even worse.  To those who cherish this day, please don't see this as an attack.  It's not.  What I'm saying is you are worth so much more than pre-packaged sentiment.  And so is he.

As the years went by, our relationship and our feelings for each other have gotten a lot more complicated & Filip has learned to play the game more. He now says things to deliberately flatter me, and to wind me up.  But he remains a genuine, open-minded person with a big heart who loves me for who I am, even though I drive him crazy.  I'm a very lucky girl, all year round.

Ooh, Shiny!

So tonight's going to be a quiet one.  Which, to be honest, is the way I prefer it.  I've always kinda resented New Year's Eve.  Unless I was bartending, I liked to decide for myself how and when my night ended, no matter what the date.  But staying home, or having a quiet night with friends on New Year's Eve never really seemed an option before & going out was usually super lame and expensive.  I've partied past midnight countless times but New Year's often seemed more like an endurance test than a genuinely good time.  Plus I hated being hungover on New Year's Day. And I love New Year's Day.  The hope, the promise, the sheen.

My resolutions are more specific this year.  No fast food takeaways.  Only free range chicken, eggs and pork, even when eating out.  That one is not going to easy because I fucking love KFC.  Going to be insanely difficult if I do succeed at getting pregnant.  Brushing my teeth twice a day.  Gross, I know, but I can get a bit lazy.  Removing makeup before I go to bed. That's a bit of an ongoing battle but maybe this year I'll win.  Losing my mummy tummy.  Unless the obvious happens, of course.  Cleaning the bathroom once a week.  Another gross peek into my lazy hygiene, I apologise.  Less daytime TV.  Be less irritated by the dog.  Might try pretending that every day is her birthday again.  That worked for awhile after her actual birthday. More play dates for Levi.  New mother has moved into our street who seems more my speed.  Would be nice to have more kids to invite to his second birthday party though I won't feel rejected on his behalf until he's three. No Coke or Pepsi.  OK, shit just got real.  Things are getting out of hand so I better wrap this up.

What about Levi?  He's doing great.  Fussy eater and way clingier than he ever used to be but those things will resolve themselves.  I resolve to be more mindful that he understands more now & will continue to understand even more.  I will try not to bitch about people around him.  To be more careful what he's absorbing on TV or through music.  To mind my language. To be nicer to the dog.  She really is crazy annoying.  I will try to be less boring and lazy around him.  To try to keep things fresh and exciting for him.  Doesn't take money though it certainly helps.

Sorry if this blog post is a bit boring but my world's become a bit small; though I don't know exactly how much of that can actually be blamed on having a baby, to be fair.  I'm going to try and engage more with the outside world next year. Try to make new friends and not bother with the ones that didn't really work out.  Try to do more things as Levi is capable of doing and understanding more. Watching him witness, comprehend and participate is such an honour.  And hopefully he will help me to shake some of the despair, fatigue and disappointment I have with the world.  Here's to 2013!

One year on...

Well, we're almost there.  Tomorrow Levi will have travelled all the way around the sun; though of course the journey was more important than the destination.  As threatened, it now feels like a blink of an eye.  Except of course it was a long, exhausting, trying, boring, beautiful, hilarious, exciting and rewarding journey.  And I have found this year (and the pregnant one before it) went much slower than previous ones have.

A lot of things have weighed on my mind this past year.  That happens when you are a stay-at-home mum.  What have affected me the most were loneliness and boredom.  Actually, loneliness wasn't really the issue.  The issue is that I need to stimulate Levi and he is very much a people person, as well as a massive flirt.  (Also I love to show Levi off.)  The loneliness comes as a result of my attempts to engage with my fellow mothers.  They have, at times, been a source of comfort and support.  But mostly, I just feel alienated.  I have yet to meet a mum that I would have been interested in hanging out with, pre-Levi.

The things that have bugged me the most are really the things that have always bugged me.  My general dislike of people.  Of being on a tight budget.  But what has really been heightened is my sensitivity to all the cruelty in the world, particularly to children.  It feels like I am forever reading about unthinkable acts of violence towards children, even babies. Before Levi, I could never have understood how frustrating and exasperating babies can be.  Combined with sleep deprivation, unsolicited advice and criticism, financial strain and/or lack of a support network, I can understand parents losing their temper.  I have done it with Levi.  But I would never strike him.  And if I shout at him, I apologise immediately.  It is so important to me that he feels safe and secure with me.  And it hurts me that so many children don't have that.  Sometimes at night, I can almost feel their pain, their fear and their confusion.  At this point in time, all I can do is put it out of my mind.  And to intervene, should I actually ever see anything disturbing.  But one day, I would very much like to be a foster parent.

For now, I will content myself with being Levi's mum.  And he does make me happy.  He's not everything I want out of life but I certainly couldn't ask for a more wonderful child.  It's been challenging but I definitely got lucky. Aside from the occasional cold, he's been so healthy.  He is so beautiful.  It shouldn't but it does make it easier.  He is so cheeky, with the funniest little kid laugh that he's had for as long as he's been able to laugh.  He is so incredibly sociable that I find myself being judgemental about parents with clingy or anxious babies.  I have found him easier and easier to take care of; more and more fun to hang out with.  I look forward to each new step, every new adventure.

Here's looking at you, kid.

In Loving Memory

When I realised that today would be the 20 year anniversary of your death, I felt it was fitting that I would finally have in my life, your grandchild - Levi who is 25% you.  I also had no idea how to mark the day.  I thought about taking him to the beach & remembering you out loud but decided that this would be a more permanent way of doing that & he could read and understand this when he gets older.  It is important to me both that I let him know what kind of person you were & that I don't want him to mourn me the way I mourned you.  My grief was an open wound that I wore like a badge of honor, of loyalty.  A few years back as my heart was breaking all over again on this date, my husband suggested that you would not have wanted this for me, not wanted to be this source of raw pain for me.  Not for this long.  And as I struggled to understand the meaning of his words, I realised he was right.  And wondered how I could have got it so wrong, thinking the exact opposite.  Like somehow you would have been proud of the devastation your absence has wrought on my life.  Until I met Filip, I felt like I was living the wrong life in an alternate universe.

I realise now that I should have gotten counselling after your accident.  But for a long time, my grief was very precious to me.  People assured me that the pain would pass, ease with time, and I could not comprehend why they would think I would find that comforting.  My pain was all I had.  But to my horror, it did ease.  The pain numbed as did my heart.  When I could think about you without crying, I just felt dead inside so I would put you to one side.  My memories faded. I struggle to hear your laugh, see your mannerisms; no longer confident that I know how you would react to things.  Unsure of how much of what I remember is real & what I have coloured in myself.

Through Levi, I will try and remember you.  Talk about you in a way I never really did before, not a lot anyway.  Talk about you with the people who remember you.  By sharing you with him, I will reacquaint myself with the amazing person you were.

Thank you for making feel loved and liked, growing up.  I never had to earn your pride, just had to be myself and that was enough for you.  Thank you for being my friend.  Thank you for my childhood all over the world.
Thank you for teaching me to think for myself, to have the confidence that I could be right even if everyone told me I wasn't.  Thank you for teaching me to not take myself so seriously.  Thank you for teaching me to explore concepts just for the sake of thinking.  Thank you for talking to me like I was an important person, not to be talked down to or imposed on.
Thank you for passing on to me a love for good books and good movies. Thank you for passing onto me a wicked sense of humour and irreverence. Thank you for just trusting that I was a good person, that I could be trusted.  Thank you for our year or so together in Japan, the year before you died.  It remains one of the highlights of my life and a huge part of the person I have become.  And I don't know if I would've have made it intact without it.  In the years that followed, when the world was a little grey because I no longer had you to share everything with, I had that year.
With my best friend.

I love you, Dad.

Bryan Neville Laing  (8 December 1941 - 31 July 1992)

Babies 101

Both my husband and I are the first in our families to have a child and it doesn't look like Levi is going to get a little cousin anytime soon.  But I can't wait to be an aunty and I often think of things that I wish I had been told before I became a mother.  I only have one child and he's not quite 9 months old so I am certainly no expert but I know I would really have benefited from the following advice...

Get ready for unsolicited advice.  Get ready for people, even loved ones, trying to stress you out; creating problems where there are none.  If you are OK with how things are going, then things are going OK.  From the moment you announce you are pregnant, get used to people telling you what you better get used to.  Get used to people trying to make you dread the future, dread each next step.  When your baby starts crawling.  When your baby starts talking.  Personally I have found that looking after your baby gets easier and easier & more enjoyable.  Get used to people telling you that it all goes by so quickly and you'll wake up one day & your baby will be all grown up.  To be clear, I'm not actually suggesting you put up with any of this shit.  I'm just saying that you will get a lot of it.  How you deal with it is up to you.

Babies are all different.  Even babies in the same family.  For every theory, school of thought and parenting dogma, there is an equal and opposite theory, school of thought and parenting dogma.  I say, whatever works. Whatever works for you and for your baby.  Use intuition and common sense.  Sure, listen to advice.  Consult Google.  But between the two of you, you and baby will work out what to do.  Whatever works, for now. Babies change all the time.

Mothers, look after yourself first.  Your baby feeds off you in more ways than one.  Eat and drink properly.  Babies need milk, love and to feel secure more than anything.  If people are making you second/third/fourth-guess yourself, your baby can sense your feelings of inadequacy and your lack of confidence will show in how you interact with your baby.  If you're feeling good, physically and mentally, you are going to be far more likely to be able cope with whatever your baby does.

Don't beat yourself up.  But don't beat yourself up about beating yourself up.  I had a great pregnancy & the cutest, biggest baby bump.  But as a mother, at times I felt like a failure, from the very beginning.  For having not only an epidural but an epidural top up.  For wanting to quit breastfeeding on day 6.  For letting him sleep in the bed with us at first because he didn't like the bassinet.  (Handy tip: put something like a phone book under baby's mattress because they often don't like to sleep lying completely flat).  For needing my husband to do almost everything but breastfeed for the first two weeks because I had difficulty walking and sitting.  (Levi was not only big but his shoulder got stuck.  I had stitches and my tailbone was bruised.)  Because I had a couple of mornings where baby and I were crying at each other because I didn't understand he was overtired, not hungry.  Because visitors would play with Levi and entertain him whereas I was too tapped out to.  Looking back, it all seems so ridiculous.  I blamed myself for everything not being perfect despite being warned not to fall into that trap.  And then felt like crap for feeling like crap.

Listen to stories.  Your story, your experience is the only one that matters. But it can be really frustrating when trying to get the answers to questions because the answer is often that every baby is different.  Sometimes it's just nice to hear a definitive answer, even if it won't really have any similarities to your situation.  Sometimes it's not about looking for answers but common experiences.  Sometimes it's just great to hear that someone's had a much rougher time than you.  It might not be that great to hear the opposite but sometimes, with enough distance, you might even enjoy telling your war stories.  Plus, you can be the one to give someone the realisation that they've actually had it pretty good.  Gauge your audience though if you're doing the sharing.  Don't whinge, gloat or gross people out.

You will hear so much in your antenatal class that it will be impossible to retain it all, especially because you're listening about stuff you haven't experienced yet.  I actually can't imagine being a mother pre-Google!  What I felt most unprepared for was breastfeeding.  How painful it was sometimes in the first week or so, even when he had latched on correctly. Waking up marinated in breast milk.  The pain of being engorged as my body tried to work out how much I actually needed to supply.  Not knowing how long that was going to last, or how long I was going to leak milk.  This is the one area that I recommend researching, even if it's just paying particular attention in your classes or grilling your midwife.  And if necessary after baby's born, consult a lactation specialist.

No expectant mother is unaware that sleep deprivation is one of the hardest things that they will have to deal with.  But personally, the hardest thing about being a new mother was having to focus so much of my attention on this little being so much of the time.  This little being that I didn't understand and that didn't understand me. Not being able to just put him down and read a book.  Or not getting a break from him when my husband was at work.  Sometimes the days would seem so long...

Get out of the house.  As soon as possible & as often as possible.  Whether it be walking a lot or taking baby to playgroups or other activities.  I find Levi is a lot happier when we are out and about, being stimulated and experiencing new things.  Everyone comments on how chilled out he is but at home, he gets easily bored and is often demanding.  He is also really comfortable with being held by other people.  Could just be his personality but we let everyone hold him from the beginning, partly because most people seemed to have more experience with babies than we did.  And it really does help that other people can hold him for me & that he is so sociable.  A clingy baby is so much more work.

Keep a diary.  Take photos.  Take videos.  Don't experience life thru these things.  Do experience the moment by being in the moment.  But have a record so it's not all a blur.  (Or as much of a blur.)

Be sensitive.  As a mother and an expecting mother.  There are people who can't have children, or who are having trouble conceiving.  Don't complain about being pregnant.  (At least not to just anyone.)  Don't ask people when they are going to have kids.  Feel free to occasionally talk about something other than baby.  (This can be especially hard for stay-at-home mothers like myself.)  And if you find yourself getting ready to dispense some unsolicited wisdom to a new mother, stop and consider how it will be received.  And if you're not sure...

In other news...

Levi Bryan Quick was born on September 9, weighing in at 10 pounds 9 ounces, or 4.8kg.  He's beautiful, funny, and I am so in love.  It's not easy, this whole motherhood thing, but it is definitely worth it.

It makes me think constantly about the world I have brought him into.  How bad it might get.  How to try to make it a better place.  How to lead by example. How to stop cursing the dog out in front of him.

I love you, little man.

Is this thing on?

So it's been almost a year since I last posted to this blog.  Once I got pregnant, it was almost all I thought about.  The growing life inside me.  My excitement, fears and discomfort. I didn't want this blog to be all about that.  And it appeared I had nothing else to say.  I still don't know I have anything to say but now I have fewer people to say it to.

Now that I'm a stay-at-home mum, my existence has become even more insular.  I don't really have any friends with kids.  I'm trying but I struggle with the whole coffee group mummy thing.  So far I haven't met anyone I would actually like to hang out with. Initially I was quite active on Facebook after my son was born; my cousins in particular were very keen for photos and details.  But then I started feeling like I was spamming my other friends.  I actually didn't post that many photos but I would post often. Then I really started to resent Facebook.  For making me feel like a nuisance.  For making me feel like I was shouting across a large room.  For making me listen to other people shouting about shit I didn't want to fucking hear about.  The number of people I was hiding from my newsfeed grew.  I began to really look forward to my New Years Day cull.  I even accepted friend requests that I normally would've rejected; just to bloat the beast I was going to gut.

But the final straw was when I tried to fundraise for AMI Round The Bays. I didn't go with the default official charity partner but chose one that dealt with child abuse / neglect.  Something that has been close to my heart for some time but more so now than ever.  I got quite excited at the prospect of using online social networking to raise money to help the vulnerable children in this country.  Or at least to do my tiny part.  I thought that the combination of the seemingly constant horror stories in the media and the humour of my fundraising page was going to ensure success.  I wasn't asking for much.  $10 for a great cause.  And yet not a single donation through Facebook or Twitter.  No comments, no likes, no nothing.  Yet if I made a bitchy comment or posted a humorous article, I got plenty of positive feedback.  So instead of a cull, at the beginning of this year I quit Facebook.  I've come pretty close to quitting Twitter too.  Instead I only use it for when I have something I just have to say.  Social networking has tremendous capacity to bring about change and awareness.  But I guess that's true of a lot of mediums and yet we mostly choose to embrace the inane, the glib, the trite, the meaningless.  Fundraising should have been a breeze.  I was really hurt that not one person responded.

So now I have no friends.  I didn't have many friends before, really.  But now I have cut everybody loose.  There are people out there who love/like me who aren't related to me.  But now they have to reach out and contact me.  One on one.  Or wait for me to contact them.  And we've all become such lazy friends.  But I feel happier without the safety net of Facebook. Quite a few of my FB friends don't have my email address or mobile number.  I have probably lost contact with them forever.  We'll see.

Waiting Expectantly..

We are going to have a baby.  And now that we're going to have a baby, we need a car with a backseat.  Preferably a station wagon with a boot for the dog can sit in, so that she doesn't lick the baby's face as it is held captive in its specially designed and designated seat.  Our parents assure us that we need to buy a house, especially as the one we rent has been deemed not appropriate.  I need new clothes as I pretty much wear the same outfit, outside of work, day in and day out.  I did recently buy 3 new dresses for work as my suits were cutting my swelling body in half (my mother put money into my account for my birthday for that specific purpose) & now I just wear these in rotation; each one for 5 days straight. I almost always feel I need a haircut.  I almost always feel I need some beauty treatment or another. I need to exercise the dog more though I would really like to be able to afford to send her back to daycare so that someone else can do it.  I need to learn how to drive.  I need to learn how to cook or to be motivated to cook.  I need to get out of debt so that we can get a mortgage.  (With our parents' help, of course.)

I am not unhappy.  Far from it.  This baby was planned & we are really looking forward to meeting it in another 6 months or so.  I was not unhappy before that.  But I live in a constant state of not being enough.  Of not having enough.  Of feeling so frumpy.  Of being on hold.  Of waiting for my life to get on track.  Of waiting to not be a financial burden to my husband. I am not standing still or moving backwards but progress is sometimes so slow as to not be discernible to the human eye. At least in this one way, I am indispensable. And quite a number of people are currently quite pleased with me.  For a change.

Yeah, so anyway...

When I first visited the States, I judged American girls quite harshly because so many of them seemed so incredibly simple and shallow.  But after awhile, I realised that most American guys seemed quite uninterested in what came out of my mouth anyway.  Any deviation from the usual mating script was met by a blank stare, followed by an announcement that he was going to get another drink or use the bathroom & then a cloud of dust would appear where he had just been standing.  I came to see why girls might not see the value in developing a part of their anatomy that the opposite sex showed little interest in.

While it did seem to me that the situation was particularly dire Stateside, the differences were probably more attributable to my going there straight from university, to my living in a ski-town, and to American snowboarders being way more like jocks than Kiwi ones tend to be.  And to be fair, I remember finding many conversations with my NZ tertiary-educated peers quite wanting; wondering how people could do so much talking without ever really saying anything at all.

I guess it could all be blamed on youth, alcohol and sexual urges except that explanation just doesn't sit well with me.  I'm not saying I think that none of those factors had any influence.  Just that I find, across the board, a lot of people seem to switch their brain off as soon as they open their mouths; have the most slippery grasp of reason and logic; and are most uncomfortable if you try to challenge or discuss all but the most basic concepts in any detail at all.

And I don't flatter myself at all when it comes to my intelligence.  Once upon a time, I was a very bright kid but ultimately I placed way too much importance in my natural ability & never really applied myself, preferring to see how well I could do with the bare minimum of effort.  Combined with the most feeble memory and retention of actual facts, in particular statistics, I turned out to be quite the underachiever.  While I have not consciously ripped off anyone's ideas for this blog, I'm under no illusion that many, if not all, of the conclusions I have come to, have not been arrived at before.

Which is why it astounds me again and again how easily I am disappointed. How dull and unimaginative people seem happy to be.  How few of the constructs and paradigms, that make up their reality, they are willing to explore.  How content they are to be spoon-fed.  And of the ones happy to challenge, they often seem unable to differentiate between being critical and being cynical; taking the lazy path of refusing to believe in anything at all; casually waving off any suggestion, that something might be worth standing for, with some vague anecdote about how they heard an unsubstantiated rumour that it's all bullshit anyway.

Godzone.

By now, some of you may be aware that I have another blog that features NZ-made clothing labels (and hopefully soon, stores that sell mostly NZ-made clothing labels).  So it can be correctly surmised that I am fairly patriotic.  And I do love this country & started the blog, in part, because of concerns about employment, small businesses, and how community and economy affect each other.

I think we have a very special deal in this little country of ours.  It could use a lot of work though & we could stand to be a bit more protective and appreciative of it.  I think this country lends itself to more boutique-style enterprises, as far as customer demand is concerned, but unfortunately the government seems uninterested in helping small business.

But mine is not an unquestioning, wholesale love.  Growing up all over, I considered myself a citizen of the world.  Because I moved around so much & because my mother's Indonesian, it felt weird to align myself so completely to one country.  Of course, it didn't help that I was never really interested in sport.  It is easier to critique something from the outside, and patriotism seemed to me to be rife with faulty thinking and dangerous antagonism.  (After all, wars have been fought over nothing less / more.)  What I do think is important is a sense of community, of valuing each other.  Appreciating what we've got.  And preserving it for future generations.

There seems to be a fair amount of capitalising on national pride and nostalgia at the moment in NZ.  Sometimes I get an uneasy feeling that I am just being manipulated.  Like "Kiwiana" is being used like some kind of artificial flavouring in ads to sell us to us; or in movies and TV shows to tug on our heartstrings & as some kind of substitute for actual substance.

There are numerous T-shirts and hoodies with strong patriotic messages, cashing in on warm fuzzies, that are in fact made by "our friends" in China.  (Most of the NZ Music Month gear is not NZ-made; though to be fair, they are trying to do more than sell clothing.)  Like the truly obnoxious T-shirt emblazoned with the image of NZ & the words BORN HERE, that was of course not made here.

I wasn't born or made here.  But I live here.  And I love here.  I know how special it is.  And I don't need the message constantly fed to me.  Especially by those happy to sell NZ out.

On Our Own.

It used to be that we were told what to think and how to behave by religion, the class system and social etiquette, but these are all struggling to stay relevant and respected.  We can pick and choose traditions now and create our own.  There is a much greater sense of individual freedom, as illusory as it may be.  The majority still rules but what it agrees on, or decrees, is in constant flux and can be more easily ignored or circumvented.  We often don't even know our neighbours.  And can pick and choose our own social networks.  We still have the law to guide us (which is slower to change & the enforcement of which tends to uphold the prevailing socioeconomic hierarchy) but the emphasis has maybe moved, from what we should and shouldn't do, to what we can get away with.

So are we thinking for ourselves now?  About what we want our lives to mean?  About the world we live in?  How we are all connected?  Or have we just stopped thinking about anything but ourselves?  Religion cannot be replaced by science for a number of reasons.  For one, the message needs to be repetitive and completely self-assured.  Science needs to always be happy to be proven wrong & to let new light shine on old subject matter.  Also, by its very nature, it is not as accessible to the masses as religion.  Its focus and scope is often too small or too infinitely large to give us any answers we require in our daily life.  And it tells us time and time again how inconsequential we are.

Might we turn instead then to the arts to fill the void?  (The very thing our education system tends to place very little value on.)  The arts tell us that what our hearts and minds contemplate does matter.  That, whether or not it continues to exist after our bodies expire, in this life, our soul does exist.  Our expressions of love, anger, sorrow, humour and fear live on after us in these mediums.  Which is why it is so important to tell your truth & not temper it in the name of commercial viability.  Art and entertainment have always had a tenuous relationship; and while it may not be possible to accurately gauge whether the balance has shifted, it is always safe to say that we could certainly do with less processed junk food.  The arts remind us, rather importantly, there is no one reality; that viewpoints are just that; and of our interconnectedness and the commonalities of the human experience.

I have read countless online remarks about how undeserving an artist (whether it be an actor or a couture designer) is of reverence or appreciation, even when they have just recently died, because they did not discover a cure for cancer, etc.  How infinitely more noble it is to be a scientist.  Despite the fact that many scientists are merely whores of capitalism, pushing the frontiers of production and exploitation, rather than healing the world's woes.  Much of what ails us has been caused by us.  And the cruelest blows can be those inflicted by the loss of love, of kindness, of hope.  Anyone who seeks to restore these and celebrate beauty and joy is worthy of our esteem.  Anyone who strives to remind us to take our blinkers off, and to think of others, is deserving of our respect.

I believe there is no big plan, no invisible puppeteer.  Bad things happen to good people & good to bad.  Everything can be taken away from you in an instant.  There is no inherent justice in the world, except that which we actively uphold.  It is now that matters.  How you represent yourself.  What you do more than what you say.  What you bring to the equation.  And what you learn from others.  We are heaven and hell on earth.  And there is no-one else to blame.

Resolved.

To...

Stop saying "awesome" until 2012.  I don't say it more than most but struggle to come up with alternatives.  Which is ridiculous in the Age Of The Superlative.

Blog more often.  Sometimes I feel like I am out of opinions but it's more the case that I haven't really been engaging my brain lately.  I need to read more and socialise more.  I will still refuse to stress myself out about this blog.  It will still be something I do only when I am inspired.

Write a web series.  And maybe short stories.  I have problems with story lining.  And getting started.  But not with coming up with a hundred reasons why something won't work or why it'll be crap.  Have to stop fantasising about getting on a writing team for a TV series (and learning on the job) because I'm pretty sure you have to have written something other than a blog to get hooked up with that kind of sweet deal.

Fix my lower back pain with yoga and professional massages.

Halve my debt.  No concrete ideas on how I am going to do this just yet but will work harder on not having gaps in between employment, bringing lunch from home, supermarket shopping more, stuff like that.

Fight for a better world.  A more conscious, meaningful and understanding one.  Not let the bastards get me down.  Fuck the naysayers!  Stand up for the underdogs.  To still be me, just a better version of me.  To make sure that I am spreading love more than anger.  To suffer fools (marginally) more.

That's me for 2010.  Off to Ocean Beach tomorrow where there is no internet or cellphone coverage.  Thank you to those who actually read my blog.  To those who bother to comment, subscribe or are visibly following - it means more to me than I can say.

But enough about me...

When I was a kid, my mum was always harping on at me to at least be honest with myself.  It was a pretty see-through attempt to get me to tell her the truth when she thought I was trying one on, but nevertheless it really stuck with me.  I don't have to always like myself but I do make a constant effort to know myself.

"Do unto others..." is another edict that I lived by that made me feel that I was still Christian in nature, if no longer in beliefs.  I have since had to revise that commandment as I came to realise that people have different comfort zones and sensitivities & that it was important to respect that. When I was younger, I assumed that if I would be comfortable with something then other people would be too.  And that it wasn't my problem if people were more uptight than I was.  I was generous by nature so share and share alike, right?  Which is bullshit.  Not least because I never seemed to have much to share, at least in the material sense.

Over the years I learned not to be offended when someone seemed a lot more stingy than I or less accessible.  I used to hate the saying, "Variety is the spice of life" because people would invariably incant it when I was bitching about what a dick someone was.  But I learned to try to respect everyone's individuality, if increasingly from a distance.

The truth is that as I have gotten older, I have well and truly gotten grumpier, despite all my (minimal) attempts to exercise tolerance. (Though I did get a tattoo of the Japanese/Chinese symbol of love to remind me not to be such a bitch; and to remind myself that since I believed that the average person is an idiot, if people were getting on my nerves more than usual then the issue lay with me.)  In theory, I honestly believe to each their own; in reality, I am more than happy to live and let live, as long as I don't have to suffer their company.

I am a snob.  Well, that's not all I am but, thanks to my mum, I believe you should call yourself on your own bullshit.  While I'm at it, I'm also a bitch, lazy, shallow, thoughtless, insensitive, unsociable, obnoxious, critical, angry and self-centered.  I am also the exact opposite of all those things.  I can be very dual in nature.  Something I attribute in part to my dual ethnicity and the two worlds I have occupied.  That and I'm a bit mental.  While I can sometimes come off as reluctant to mingle and socialise, it is in part a consequence of my need to have true and honest communication and debate.  I guess, deep and meaningfuls but not always.  (Trust me.)  I find it hard to build up to it.  I find it hard to put in the apparently requisite hours of small talk.  It is of little consequence to me how long we have known each other.

So to some degree, I am a snob because I can be a little too intense for people to handle & they withdraw or react badly.  But I am also a snob because I find a lot of people unimaginative, unintelligent, unconscious and uninspired a lot of the time.  Sometimes all at once.  I have tried to accommodate my own issues by avoiding people and situations that annoy me.  Suffice it to say, my world has gotten a lot smaller.  It may have also been my mum who told me that only boring people get bored, which was something that I dismissed as pat and untrue.  But it might actually be the case that my aversion to boring people has made me bored and my life boring.

More questions than answers.

There have been an abundance of tragic stories in the news recently, bringing home what can go horribly wrong in an instant.  In a moment of neglect, recklessness or irresponsibility.  Lives lost and lives destroyed.  My heart has ached both for the families of the deceased and for the defendant in some of these cases.  It's hard for me to imagine which would be worse - the idea of losing a loved one in such a way or the idea of causing someone's death through circumstances under my control.  I hope to never experience the latter and to never experience the former ever again.

When it is obvious that the guilty are truly remorseful and devastated, it can be hard to see the point of sending them to jail when it seems clear that this will never happen again & that they will be forever punished and haunted by their actions.  I have never studied law and so am not remotely knowledgeable about the definition(s?) of manslaughter, what sentences are usually imposed, and how much remorse is taken into consideration by the judge.  (Please feel free to enlighten me, and of course to express your opinion even if you didn't go to law school.)  If someone pleads guilty & expresses remorse, should it even be up to the family to decide whether the defendant goes to jail?  How close would the family members have to be to be allowed to make that kind of decision? Would they have to prove that or indeed if they are emotionally or psychologically stable enough to make that kind of judgement?  What if the deceased had no family?  What if they were pregnant?  This is all highly emotional and variable & it seems to me that the law must be logical and apply the facts of the matter to each case?

Is jail even the right place for these people?  I am not arguing that their lives should be allowed to resume as normal & as soon as possible.  A life was lost.  And some wounds will never heal.  But what is the logic in sending them to be confined with people who meant to commit their crimes & who are not sorry?  Would home detention and/or community service not be more beneficial?

Actually, what is the point of jail in general?  Punishment?  Rehabilitation?  Constraint?  Deterrence?  Vengeance?  Criminal instruction?  Because by and large, unless the last two are the correct answers, it seems that jails do not work.  Not to mention that we just can't build them fast enough.  Jail certainly punishes but often dehumanises in a way that certainly seems counterproductive if parole is likely to be granted.  Jail can't promise to make anyone sorry - except maybe that they were caught.  It seems to be incredibly hard to ever become an upstanding and productive citizen upon release.  And perhaps in cases that are successful, it is despite the prison system and despite the society the reformed is released into?

Size Matters.

In primary school, a teacher once called my mother to school & after a few warm-up questions, asked if she was feeding me properly.  I still marvel at her audacity/courage/cluelessness/ignorance.  Luckily for her, Mum chose to laugh it off.

I grew up skinny and with having it commented on for about the first 30 years of my life.  Most people refrain on commenting on how overweight someone is to their face but for some reason the gloves come off for the underweight.  Of course, these comments would often try to disguise themselves as concern that I might suffer from some kind of eating disorder but without ever really managing to pull it off.  I would reply that I am half-Asian and might sometimes casually but spitefully add that we can't all be built like farm girls.  This all made me extremely self-conscious and insecure about my body.  In a particularly ironic twist, considering the damage she is said to have inflicted on the body image of so many young women at the time, things changed in a dramatic way for me when I turned a magazine page & feasted my eyes on a Calvin Klein ad featuring a young naked Kate Moss.  I was transfixed.  Not just at that face, but at every part of her.  I sat there, comparing, feeling relief and delight wash over me.  Her breasts were smaller than mine!  Yet she was undoubtedly a vision.  And that's when I realised there was nothing wrong with me.  That I was healthy and proportional.  That I didn't have to measure up to some agreed upon ideal of being blond, white with big tits.  That there are many different kinds of beauty and none so powerful as the beauty in deciding not to hate the vessel that carries your big beautiful brain around.  

Skinny models have been a big bone of contention in the media in the last few years.  And I have to say that I frequently gasp in shock, not pleasure, at the state of some of these young women.  I feel like I would know, better than most, the difference between someone who couldn't put weight on if they tried and someone who is starving themselves.  But the issue is two-fold:  the systemic abuse of these coat-hangers and the effect of this persistent message on "real" women and particularly impressionable young girls.  Fashion is an industry that has the tendency to focus these models solely on their external appearance, often making them feel like they have nothing else to offer.  And then endlessly criticising the 'one' thing they have going for them, so much so that apparently most models are unhappy with their appearance but certainly not because they feel they look like they could use a sandwich.  And while I think that whatever standard of beauty is in vogue will inevitably alienate some, we have definitely gone too far;  as is evidenced by how dumpy the sight of a beautiful woman, who has not been almost photoshopped out of existence, looks to us now in a magazine.  And the fact that despite the three waves of feminism, women hate ourselves more than ever & many of our young ones are starving, slowly killing, themselves.

Actually the issue of skinny models is three-fold.  No-one protests against the protests more than designers.  (Though not all feel that way.)  Protesting that these girls are naturally skinny & avoiding the question of why they are deeming it necessary to use younger and younger girls (some of whom haven't even finished growing yet) to sell clothing to adult women.  Protesting that their clothes won't look good walking down the runway on anything other than the abnormally skinny.  Which is hardly a ringing endorsement of the skills of the designers themselves.  Essentially they are saying that if you have an inch of fat, their clothes will show up your every flaw.  Which, for the most part, can't really be true.  And no-one's really suggesting that the current crop of models all be replaced by the plus-size variety.  (Though some in the pro-emaciated camp seem to have a somewhat skewed view of what plus-size means exactly.)  So the answer to me is for us to throw down the gauntlet and challenge the fashion world to embrace variety being the spice of life and to show us that they can design clothes that we want to wear because they make us look and feel good.
 

Money Matters.

Sometimes it feels like all I do is make money and spend it.  Not exactly making my mark on the world, or saving it.  But spending your money can be one of the most socially conscious and political acts you perform.  A bit sad, perhaps, but not if you really think about it.  As an individual, your ability to improve the world you live in can seem laughably limited.  Voting is a case in point that everyone will understand.  And most of us are too busy or lazy to engage in any extra-curricular altruistic or charitable activities.  But what we all do, all the time, is spend money on ourselves and our loved ones.  And unlike voting, what we spend our money on is not inconsequential.  (Calm down, I vote - thereby apparently earning my right to complain about the state of the nation.  Every election, I throw away both my votes on the Green Party; only to watch them get passed over yet again like a homely wallflower.)

In a democratic capitalist society, most significant change or progress is actually brought about by businesses seeing a demand in the market place or a threat to their all-important brand.  No point in decrying that or getting all cynical about it - better to think of it as an opportunity for you to have a say.  Obviously it costs more money to make a more responsible product & in order to make a profit, that extra cost gets passed on to the consumer.  So in order to be a responsible consumer, you will have to fork out more cash.  But the good news is that the more people that choose to pay for products and services that more reflect their values, the more likely that the demand will be noted and rewarded with competition.  And hopefully as a consequence of that, the businesses themselves will have their production needs better met as there will be more of a demand.  Of course, there is always the issue of legitimacy and less than ethical businesses jumping on the bandwagon but those can be dealt with through the usual avenues that questionable business practices are investigated. If you are concerned, then do some research.

It's so much easier now to find free-range chicken, eggs, bacon and pork.  Easier to find environmentally-friendlier cleaning products.  Easier to find organic, vegetarian, vegan, gluten-free foods.  (Ugh, just threw up in my mouth a little.)  Easier to find Fair Trade products.  (What's not easier to find are clothes made in NZ but I am working on that.)  But that didn't just happen because businesses decided to do the right thing, screw profit.  Not to say that their motives are all questionable; just that the market has to be there for it to be worth it, for them to succeed.  With big businesses, there has to be enough of a pay-off, kudos-wise.  It happened because consumers decided that some things were more important than getting bargain bin prices.  More important than living in the Now with easily disposable products and toxic by-products.  So decide what you think is more important and make yourselves "heard".  Put your money where your mouth is.    

PC or not PC?

As soon as I even see the letters P and C together in a non-computing context, I completely lose interest in whatever I am reading.  (Yeah OK, in a computing context too.)  This goes double if they are preceded by "un-" or "anti-".   I say, the sooner we do away with these terms, the better.  Let's say what we really think and be prepared to suffer the consequences.  Let's stop hiding behind ridiculous terminology.  If you don't really care about something enough to actually do something about it, don't pay it lip service.  If you're going to be a cunt, then be one and don't try and flip it by accusing others of being too sensitive or not having a sense of humor.  I don't agree that everything we say outside the privacy of our homes should be sterilised so as to stay in line with what has been deemed appropriate.  But I also disagree with those who shoot their mouths off and then don't stand behind their own words.  When I lived in London, people (strangely enough, white male people) would constantly make the most ignorant, bigoted remarks/jokes then would tell me that they were just winding me up?!  I would then make it clear that I was now wound the fuck up and they should be prepared to deal with that.

Quite clearly I don't exactly have the most PG sensibility.  My language and sense of humor is not always for the faint of heart.  Sometimes I am just straight-up bitchy and shallow.  But I am always ready to back myself up or to apologise for being a dick.  I do try and gauge my audience and adjust my content so as to not offend the people I am directing my hilarious comments to, as well as those in my immediate vicinity.  Apparently that is what's known as being politically correct.  And I thought it was just not being a jerk.  What the hell is wrong with thinking before you speak?  Or just taking a look around?  I don't think that's being hypocritical.  You wouldn't tell your grandmother a dirty joke or your boss a drug-fueled exploit. (Actually get a few drinks in me and I lose all ability to be situation-specific content-appropriate.) It's just unspeakably arrogant to decide, without really thinking about it, that everyone within earshot should not be so sensitive.  I am constantly having conversations inflicted on me (usually at one of my temp jobs) that I am offended or irritated by but can't really respond to because they are not actually talking to me.  Doesn't always stop me but would my silence be considered acquiescence?
 
I have had an issue with political correctness for as long as I have been aware of the term.  It has always seemed to me that the wrong people get upset about it.  Because it is just a trick.  It's just lip service.  It's just using words to rename things, people and concepts without really challenging the establishment or making any real changes to the power structure.  It is alarmingly easy to appease those much lower in the totem pole by just giving their jobs more official-sounding names or magnanimously "outlawing" certain hurtful taunts.  A rose by any other name should still stand up for their rights.  Don't fall for that shit.  Just because they are no longer saying it, doesn't mean they're not thinking it.  I would rather know who stands against me.  I respect honesty above all else.

Of course, the worst thing about PC has been the backlash against PC.  Nothing annoys me more because somehow people have been given (or rather given themselves) permission to be more thoughtless, insensitive and obnoxious than ever.  Perhaps not ever but more racist, sexist and homophobic than has been deemed seemly in quite some time.  And while it may seem that this is the honesty I ask for, it is not.  Because it is underhanded, trying to deny the right to respond. A sphincter says what?    

Buy now. Pay later.

Other than learning how to deal with social adversity and being different, it's hard to recall what the point of high school was.  Obviously there must be a great deal of knowledge that I have retained and allegedly it was there that I learned how to acquire information and how to think for myself.  As the years have progressed though I have to say that I think that the main reason to finish secondary and tertiary education is that people discriminate against you if you don't.  Predominantly I consider high school to be a place where young adults are subjected to last-ditch attempts at brainwashing, socialisation, labelling and peer pressure.  By and large, I think that actual education and free-thinking are pretty low on the priorities of many of these great institutions, deferring to discipline and conformity.  I think that for most young adults, high school is mostly a holding pen that we are obligated to be babysat in until we are slightly less repellent to our elders & that the quality of education at most high schools is not simply not high enough to make willing scholars out of any but the most predestined.

It seems to me that if we all have to be in high school then there should be a stronger emphasis on learning life skills that will help you from making some pretty big mistakes;  information we could all actually benefit from and that would actually relate to our lives.  One of the biggest misnomers is that common sense is actually common.  Of course, it is common for parents to complain that life skills, sex education, etc are their domain and that schools should just stick to the 3Rs.  But if they were indeed doing their jobs properly then they wouldn't be so concerned that these kind of classes will rush their kids into having sex or other experiences they are not yet ready for.  Or that putting an emphasis on something other than higher education will lead their kids to abandon it altogether.  If high schools have classes that teach you how to cook and sew, then why can't they teach you other basics such as how to budget and avoid/manage debt.  (Of course, they may well do now - I wouldn't have a clue.)  I just wish I had learned a lot earlier certain lessons about money and those determined to separate you from your hard-earned cash, about their tricks and strategies.  No-one ever taught me about debt.  All I really knew is that there were two types of people in the world - people who saved their pennies and people like me.  And as long as I paid rent and as long as I had a job, I never really saw the harm in my lack of impulse control and forethought.  That was before I discovered the world of credit.

It took me ages to realise what a hole I had dug for myself.  And even longer to realise that my previous choices mean that I have far fewer now.  Debt means that people stay in undesirable situations, jobs, relationships because they can't afford to leave.  Debt means that people have to put off things they long to do.  Debt means having to spend money on... debt.  Having money saves you money.  Once you're in a significant amount of debt, the future looks grim or at least pretty joyless.  It feels like two steps forward, one step back.  Interest rates on credit cards and hire purchase loans are so high that it can be hard to do more than just tread water.  I pay a lot of money every payday to my credit cards and yet the day when I can pay them all off is so far in the future that I can't bear to think about it.

But I have no-one to blame but myself, though I certainly had a lot of help from banks and other businesses.  I am naturally impulsive and I have somewhat of an addictive personality.  Ten years in hospitality means that I have discerning tastes way beyond my means.  Also I would often spend money generously just to counter the stinginess I often saw in customers.  I was trying to live a life that I felt befitted me.  I definitely made this bed.  (And I enjoyed doing it.)  And my life now isn't so bad!  It is comfortable and it has a lot of love in it.  I have a lot to be grateful for.  I just wish I could have avoided this whole mess.  It comes pretty close to an actual regret.  Especially since it was so avoidable.  If only I had been warned.    

Me, Myself & I.

Towards the end of my hospitality career, I became aware of how much NZers appear to enjoy complaining.  I was serving some of the best food and wine in NZ and increasingly had to resist the urge to make my customers wear it.  Taxes, rates, immigrants, Maoris, Asians, all undesirable and apparently suitable dinner table conversation.  And in public at that.  In the end, I couldn't take it.  And I quit.

I grew up all around the world and most NZers have it pretty sweet as far as I am concerned.  Life has its ups and downs wherever you live but just living in this country protects most of us from many hardships that we can't really imagine enduring.  But we are so fucking ungrateful and we are always complaining.  We have become all about what the world owes us and who is trying to take it all away from us.  Our self-entitlement, our right to be happy has become of paramount importance and our gauging, of just how happy we are, constant.  Like weighing ourselves daily or watching the proverbial kettle boil.

The pursuit of happiness is certainly nothing new but the emphasis on it above all other things certainly is.  In the past, the emphasis was less on happiness and its definitions as it was on satisfaction and its relationship with how one handled one's responsibilities.  Women and men both had their roles and were both burdened and freed by them.  There wasn't a lot of wriggle room but there also wasn't a lot of uncertainty.  Your life was pretty much mapped out for you by the circumstances of your gender, race and class.  Our expectations of life were much lower then as were the expectations life had of us.  Our prescribed circumstances are no longer as restrictive as they were before; the boundaries slowly corroding away, putting the reins of our existence more in our hands than those of society.  The Man is still in charge, make no mistake, but he's no longer micro-managing as much.  More and more, we have choices.  We can opt in and opt out of more than ever before.  We witnessed the obligations that bound previous generations and we have no wish to be similarly trapped.

Quitting is more than just acceptable now; like debt, it is simply a part of modern life.  Quitting is a natural part of the process of finding ourselves.  And now that we can do it by remote control, it's not only easier but it's positively addictive.  We can commit to more things now because we know we are really only committing on a trial basis.  And the relief of texting or emailing that apology or excuse is made even more glorious by the simple fact that we don't have to disappoint in person.  It's practically worth starting something just to experience the delirious joy of getting out of it.

And it really seems so harmless, except the damage is three-fold: the ripples of disappointment that emanate from all our actions (or rather inaction); the corrosion of our ability to see anything thru; and the focus being on what we are running from rather than where we are headed.  I can't help but feel that this plays a large part in the delayed adolescence so many of us experience.  Our increasingly insular existence (strangely coinciding with, and for some of us perhaps enabled by, being more connected than ever before thru social networking technology) makes us so much more focused on our needs than we would have previously been allowed to.  Our conviction that we have the absolute right to be happy often appears to overrule the validity of other emotions that result from our actions.  Guilt and shame are like the modern day appendix or wisdom tooth.  They are what we experience as a result of our inadequacies but we no longer have any real use for them.  We know that it's not healthy to beat ourselves up too much over things we cannot undo so we encourage ourselves and others to all but skip that stage altogether.

Our selfishness is constantly validated by the media and advertising (who can really tell the difference anymore?) bombarding us with messages that we are worth it, that we should indulge ourselves, that we should stop living for other people, and that if we don't love ourselves...  But here's the rub: the unending focus on ourselves and how happy we are and what makes us happy is making us miserable.  Happiness is something you can only really experience if you are truly in the moment; the second you hold it up to the microscope for closer inspection, you taint it.  And if you aren't happy, is the hashing and rehashing of why you're not happy really that helpful?  Is that why many people spend years in therapy with little success?  Venting is finding relief through expression and often from validation.  There is a massive difference between venting and whinging.  Whinging is circular and feeds back into itself.  It's counter-productive.

So get out of your own head.  Get the hell out of your own way.  Focus on the things that make you happy, not the state itself.  Focus on the people that make you happy.  Focus on making other people happy.  Better yet, people you don't even know.  Fuck altruism - nothing makes you feel better faster than stoking someone else out.  Stop being a self-centered, self-indulgent, narcissistic malcontent and everyone wins!          
    

All in favour...

I have been temping for over 2 years now so I've been immersed in a number of different workplaces.  And what I have really come to notice is how much peer pressure plays a part in everyday adult life.  How fitting in is just as important as it was in high school.  How difficult it seems for a lot of people to just let people be.  As far as I am concerned, all my workmates and workplace have the right to expect of me is that I am a hard worker, team player, polite and pleasant.  I also happen to be very obliging, friendly and have an excellent sense of humor.  But as it turns out that is often not enough.  There are numerous morning teas that I am expected to contribute towards (financially, because I sure as fuck am not about to start baking).  I even had to take a half-day off to avoid the baby shower that all the women in the office were invited to but unfairly none of the men.  Every year, there is St Patrick's Day regardless of how many people actually are Irish or are of Irish descent.  (Of course, there are no celebrations of special calendar dates in any other cultures.)  There is general enforced socialising and hilarity in the guise of staff drinks and team building, often not even paid for by work.

What's the big deal, some of you may ask.  Granted, for a lot of people this not only sounds fine but desirable.  And if you are a social person who enjoys socialising with the people you work with, then I can understand that.  And the argument could be made that if you don't fit in then maybe you should find somewhere that you do.  Except if you love/like/don't mind your job, why should you have to, just so people can stop bugging you?

I'm perhaps (definitely) more sensitive to railroading than most.  I have great difficulty just rolling over, even when no-one else knows there is an issue for me to lose face over.  And almost no issue is too small if someone is trying to force my hand.  It's something that seems to be in the very fibre of my being & it is actually a huge nuisance.  I do really like being me but sometimes wistfully long to somehow just be less discerning, less complicated.  My other major obstacle is that I am allergic to small talk.  And I hate conversations about the weather, cooking and rugby rivalry.  Without headphones, I would have gone postal years ago.

Variety is not only the spice of life but actually a major asset in the workplace if it is allowed to be.  People have different strengths and weaknesses and any good manager knows to not treat everyone the same.  How social someone is is not a workplace issue unless it affects how you work with them.  And if someone is not inclined a certain way then backing them in a corner is hardly going to have the desired outcome.  Unless what is actually wanted is conformity not cohesion or harmony.  Not everyone wants to have a drink at the end of the week, at least not with co-workers.  Not everyone wants to play stupid games at monthly meetings.  Not everyone wants to pose for crazy photos at team building.  And there is no positive correlation between people who want to do those things and a strong work ethic.  I myself am quite suspicious of people who seem to delight in any activity at work that isn't actually work.  I have a couple of suspicions actually & one of them is that these people need to get out more.  Or at least, get out of my face.

We will have all learned from school the relationship between peer pressure and bullying.  But what I have learned since then is the relationship between peer pressure and majority rules AKA democracy.  I've also learned the relationship between democracy and apathy.  But the revelation all my own that came to me recently was that workplace conformity could be a major contributor to our general apathy as adults.  Those of us in full-time employment spend more time at work than any one place, at least conscious.  And I would posit that a large number of us assent thru silence quite a lot of the time.  Letting that comment slide.  Putting our headphones on.  Smiling thru our teeth.  Picking our battles.  Letting the so-called majority decide what we think is acceptable, funny, fun.  Longing to get back to our "real" lives.

But that's just it.  Can you just switch on being an individual responsible for your own decisions, your own happiness, the world you live in, when you walk out that door at the end of the day?  Is that when you suddenly find your voice?