yo ho blow the man down

Well it is certainlly BLUSTERY today. The kind of ne'er do well wind that tangles washing and blows leaves and dust into your eyes. The kind of wild woolly wind that tangles up your thoughts and plans and makes the day go all unruly. Or at least that's my excuse. Some days you just don't want to go in to the office - am I right? Some days it's not that you particularly dislike what you have to do it just seems all a bit - sigh - dull, and mapped out and prepacked. Somedays I'd rather be tooling around at home and drawing or making scones or having a tea party. Still. Maybe work is the grit I grow my pearl around. It certainly pays the rent, and, well, it's not nice to all the other people who go there to bail on it completely. Am I right?

Wind has also blown my southwards and westwards these last few weeks. Went to the mountains for Winter Magic festival and caught up with old friends and felt some real proper cold winter weather. Drank tea, got drunkish, laughed. Blew me to Melbourne too, just a few days, for work and then a day off to mooch about the funky burbs and catch up with a friend. Drank cofffee, bought comics, played online scrabble together in person (warning this tends to result in accidental playing of each other's hands). Blew home, feeling caught on an upswell, happy, but glad of own bed, home to roost.

I bet Woodie Guthrie had a worse day than you did

...is what I was thinking tonight. I mean think about it, all those freakin dust storms burying the whole town, all that living through the depression, all that singing in a twangy (but soulful) voice. Exhausting. Makes my list of unanswered emails, my to do list unmarred by ticks, my shitty list of anoyances at the end of a tiring day, fade into insignificance. Almost.

Not that my day was particularly bad, in terms of terrible disasters. Sure, I left work exhausted and wondering how I'm meant to get done the last few things not yet done, that I don't want to do,so now face either working late tonight (ba ba - not likely) or doing it on my day off tomorrow, or tomorrow night, etc. Sure I felt cranky with myself for not having done some relatively trivial things I should have done but am not excited about doing. Sure I then wondered if in fact I'm any good at my job at all, since I haven't got everything done, and am working across so many areas I don't feel like I'm becoming an 'expert' in anything, and often stuff scares the bejesus out of me, even relatively simple things that I should be completely confident to do.

Don't know why, I've just been feeling really cranky and down on my self lately, in general. Have days where I just feel like I'm a total loser and my life doesn't amount to anything. Like I am just one of those social outcasts, who will end up old and talking to herself at bus stops, wearing woolly socks with polycotton sundresses and scaring small children with her general witchiness. No this isn't a teenage tantrum, or cry for help, I'm just being honest, offloading. It's funny, because when I feel like that I feel like everything is shit, and that I'm doing a bad job at everything. Hair. Clothes. Ability to get my work done. Ability in general. Social life. Love life. Not in that order neccessarily..! Although I do wonder if my earnest attempts to eschew hairdye in the name of being kind to waterways is really paying off, or whether those insidious grey streaks are freaking me out everytime I look in a mirror in a bathroom with good natural light. So maybe a haircut is a good place to start.

And, though I know there are pro's and cons of every situation, I have started to feel like being single is difficult when everyone around you are in relationships, not least because that kind of intimate daily chat and venting that you might otherwise do with a partner doesn't get so easily vented. Case in point - friend rang tonight to ask about borrowing our car space and - voila - I am bemoaning in detail my hair cut options and telling her about my visit to the dentist, and about *what an excellent patient survey they gave me*, just because I hadn't had the chance to talk to anyone about it since I went yesterday. I miss having people checking in on the details of my life. I miss having people to share the little things with. Living with a couple is proving challenging in that regard, as they have each other for that stuff, and I feel like the third wheel. So somedays I feel like I just drift between work and home and both are places for a brave cheery coping public face; neither feel like a place where I can be really honest and open to people who support me. Like everyone's booked up, everyone's busy, everyone's already filled their quota of intimate interpersonal relationships.

Plus, as an insightful older friend pointed out recently, this is potentially a challenging 'stage' (I feel like that means I'm about to get pimples or grow taller), because I'm a 32 year old woman who is not in a relationship, but is not feeling like doing all the stuff I did in my twenties. It's a funny space to be in when you really are not interested in going to bars/ student warehouse indie band venues with your very best shiny lipgloss on to jiggle your cleavage/ wit/ new accessories/ stories of how cool you are to impress, but are also plagued with the niggling inner Aunty Marjory voice that tells you that 'you're never going to meet someone watching a DVD and cutting out pictures for collage in your loungeroom on a Saturday night'. And I see her point. She is also of the firm opinion that unless you do meet someone who picks you for better or worse you're some kind of failure. Which I don't agree with, rationally, but it is easy to feel like the odd one out, and a little lonely, and wonder if she might have a point.

My friends are not overtly discouraging or preoccupied about it, at least to my face, but there are mixed messages about the importance of being in a relationship, or at least what single life should be like.

One friend suggested maybe I'll find myself a divorcee with children, as the first round of marriages break up and men become available again in their mid thirties. I felt kind of heartened and kind of depressed that I might end up with only those who had failed with their first loves and were old and battered around the edges. Although maybe that describes me?

One friend tells me about her plan, when she was 30, to have her first child by 35. Working back, she knew that this meant she'd need a year for having the baby, a year or two for being in a relationship with someone (so they could have holidays and get to know each other without children) and so, therefore, at the latest, she needed to meet someone at age 32. And voila! She did. And now they're happily partnered up with baby and house and a dog.

One friend is in a relationship but seems to be quite keen on single life, and is overtly positive if I 'go out and meet people' and less if I don't. I wonder if she secretly wants a place at the bar herself.

Another friend has said before that having children is the only way to not be completely selfish, and to hand on what you learn. Though she is reconsidering.

My mum doesn't say anything to my face, but told a friend of mine that she was worried about how I might feel now that all my friends are having babies. She's stopped saving baby clothes for me. She's suggested I come and live with them in their back room - 'it's lockable'. I have to tell her 'mum, 32 year olds aren't supposed to live with their parents'.

I have stopped going to things where I will be the only single person with a handful of couples, because I feel like I'll upset the balance. I feel like friend's husbands/partners endure me but would rather be catching up with other couples where they get a blokish person to talk to while the girls do girl talk.

So there you go. Just what you wanted. The complete low down on my shitty self esteem and insight into the psyche of some kind of dumpy yoga pant wearing bookish Bridgit Jones: fan-fucking-tastic.

And, to top it off, I think part of this is that I miss my cat. At least when I had my cat there was someone to come home to, someone who missed me and wanted me home, and who purred and seemed happy to see me. How lame is that?

Coming out in a nasty rash

Do you think maybe work is like peanuts?

If you have too much of it, too soon, you run the risk of coming out in a rash at some point in a few years time, or worse, developing a condition where your whole body swells and it gets hard to breathe? If you have a genetic predisposition maybe, if others in your family have had similar sensitivities.

Or maybe a job is like random mystery nuts – you just can’t tell in advance whether it’s some benign almond, omega 3 rish walnut, or potentially life threatening peanut.

It’s not that bad.

But I am starting to wonder whether exposure is necessarily mellowing my experience of work. This particular job. I haven’t blogged about it for a while (hey, I haven’t blogged at all much for a while), but for those who have been reading this blog on and off for a while the themes will be familiar. For those who haven’t, here is an abridged version, in suitably workish dot points (dot points make the modern office go round after all):
- Golly jeepers, what a lovely workplace I find myself in – such inspired, highly talented, passionate people! Such a nicely fitted out eco-office! Such an array of nice tea! Such green and lush pot plants! Such a participative, consultative, strategic, big picture culture! Yah. Etc.
- Whoa Nelly! What’s that? Another project for me? Gee the work here is diverse. Oh and abundant too, richly, lushly, dripping from the walls type abundant. What’s that – there’s nothing we wont try our hand at? Really? So I guess I’ll be doing some work on another topic I know nothing much about and will be thrown in the deep end on and quietly shitting my pants about whether I’ll be able to do– oh yah? Etc.
- Ugh. What time is it? 10pm? Again? Have I just worked through dinner and typed my fingers off to meet a deadline? Hmm. Looks like I have. Am I wishing I was better at saying no to things? A bit. Wishing that I didn’t feel so responsible for everything, want everything to be done well, feel like I have to do everything I’ve said yes to. You betcha. I’d be passionately regretting a few decisions right now, but I’m too tired to be particularly passionate about anything and I have to hurry down the road to get noodles before the Thai takeaway closes. Oh fuck it, maybe I’ll just have a biscuit or a piece of toast and get home instead.
- Hmmm. I’m really over being here. I think I might take Christmas holidays early, and do my darndest not to have anything to do with the place for a few weeks. Maybe I’ll skip the Christmas party too, because I can’t stand to be around these cheery, enthusiastic, fabulously talented, fresh faced, committed, consultative, friendly folk. I think cranky is taking up all the room where my cheery used to be.
- Aaah, new year, new leaf. It’s all not bad really. I’ve got a lot done in this role, some good experience. Not sure exactly what in – kind of in everything, kind of in nothing in particular. That’s ok – a new year, new opportunities. Training, I’ll do some training. Holidays, I’ll take some. Publishing stuff – I’ll do that.
- Erm. Do I actually like doing this kind of work? I mean sure, I like the intentions and themes that the organization tackles, and sometimes I get engrossed in exciting little problems to nut out, tricky thinking and diagrams to draw to capture that willowy wispy spiderweb of thought as we float around in new space. But. I don’t like this tick box, fill out a detailed timesheet kind of shebang. I don’t like this jumping all over the place in topics and never getting to dwell, and go deep, deep enough. I don’t like this sometimes working with people whose thinking is tick tock a few clicks slower than mine, and having to be patient (or pretend unconvincingly to be patient), having to share thinking around and let people catch up, having to file innovation away in dog eared folders and wait for the right time, gently suggest and encourage and wait 18 months till people are ready to try something new. Slow. Boring. Step by step dullard predestined bollocks.
- Also, sometimes I can’t stand working with other people. Yes I realize this isn’t something you’re meant to say – it’s not cool to be antisococial and critical of happy chatty office peers. But too bad, that’s how I feel. I find it all very noisy, talky, annoying, interrupty. Sometimes even the haw haw laugh of someone over the partition can make my skind crawl with annoyance and make me want to up and leave. Sometimes I want a quiet little office with a window and a pot plant or two and contact with people to be something I get some say over, nice, preorganised meetings or the occasional spontaneous coffee catch up, but not this constant chaotic cacophony of sound and dance of contact, erratic, boundless contact and conversation. Right in the middle of thinking about something. Or scrap the work and just make my job to answer questions and have cups of tea, then I wouldn’t bother getting started on anything that could be interrupted.
- Jackhammers?? Jack hammers?? Across the road? For three months? You have got to be kidding? Oh. Oh I see – you weren’t.
And then, lucky last:
- Hey, spontaneous, guess what, I’m going to rent some studio space, and go 4 days a week. Yeah, I’m going to art stuff every week, make some room for it in my life. I love drawing and painting and making a mess, and I want to do it even if I don’t know why or for what, yeah, have some contrast, have some imaginative, creative, me-directed work in my life. Woohoo – colours, what fun. Oh. You mean I have to go back in the office now? Already? But I only just got started, oh shit.

So there you have it, a comprehensive executive summary of the work related woes I wallow in from time to time. I guess now is a time of change; 2 years into the role, trying to learn from the last two years and be careful to not overload with projects, trying not to be a workaholic (because I know I can’t sustain it, and after too many months of long hour weeks I will end up standing on the board room table screaming ‘guess what? I don’t give a shit, I’m going to a forest somewhere to watch the bugs eat leaves. Help yourselves to my desk drawer post it note collection, I’m leaving!’).

I’m trying to get into the rhythm of a 4 day office work week, and how to use the day in the studio in the best way, and not end up using it as a ‘go to the post office and catch up on paperwork at home’ day. How to have projects for myself that give the time some structure, and also space for those days of whim and inspiration and off on a tangent. How to think tentatively about what might come of this, without making it a list making box ticking enterprise.

Using new muscles, moving in new directions. Takes a lot of energy, and be achy afterwards, but in time, it gets easier, you extend your repertoire.