Fighting the Flab - end of week four

Same weight, same waist size. I have plateaued now for what seems like forever. So, instead of whinging about my lack of achievement, I thought I would share my latest writing exercise with you. This week we are studying Point of View and we had to write a self portrait. Here is mine:

Self Portrait

I am so close to being 52 it is already a done deal. The day after tomorrow is my birthday. I don’t mind ageing, although I would prefer more control over my physical body. I am tall, 172cms, or 5’8” in the old language which, by the way, is far easier for me to think in. I had to Google “height conversion” to find my height in centimetres. I’ve done it many times before.

I am average weight at 73kg. I just fit into the healthy BMI range. But average weight doesn’t tell you that I’m unhappy about my weight. It doesn’t tell you that I wish I was the same weight as in my teens and early twenties. Average weight doesn’t explain how, even though I watch what I eat and exercise furiously every day; I still remain the same – average. I explain my obsession with weight by using the example of my mother’s diabetes as motivation to stay slim. She had late onset diabetes brought on mainly by weight gain in middle age and I am determined not to go down the same path. But my obsession is more than that. I am not happy with this ring of fat around my belly. It hampers my movements. I feel it when I’m sitting down. It is uncomfortable.

My hair falls just below my shoulders and is naturally wavy. When wet it becomes curly. I am growing it longer. I like the feel of long hair. At the moment it is dark brown with caramel highlights. But over the years it has been many different lengths and various colours.

I like my eyes. They are hazel. Now and again they look more green than brown. If I didn’t already wear contact lenses for sight I would think about getting coloured lenses to enhance the green. I don’t like my nose. It is too big. But it is the family nose. It is my father’s nose and it is the nose my three boys have.

I tan naturally and I love the sun and its warmth. I don’t like being cold and grey days make me feel sad. Knowing this I wonder why I live in Melbourne. But I love Melbourne with all of its greys and blacks and colours and quirks. I love the pace of the city, the energy of the people and the liveliness of the events. Melbourne is culture and multiculture, tradition and innovation, fashion and independence, sport and food, nightlife and family life.

I am addicted to my computer. I love Googling information and I Facebook regularly. I read as much online as I do books in bed at night or during lazy weekend mornings. I love AFL football. I love music and dancing, conversations and debates. I like shoes. I like fashion. I wish I could win a million dollars and spend thousands on a new wardrobe. I love the beach and the ocean. I love the calmness of the bay and I love the crashing of an angry ocean in the middle of the night. But more than anything I love my three sons, no longer boys but adults in their own right. I love my life.

Fighting the Flab - end of week three

No change! I’m still the same weight and still have the same waist size. I’m not happy!

So, I’m doing some research into different ways of increasing my metabolism. I also went to see my naturopath who gave me some detox powder.

I’ve changed my exercises with weights and also my bike sessions. I found some weight exercises in a health magazine at my physio therapist’s office and had the receptionist photocopy the page for me. It was an article on losing the last 5 kgs which is exactly what I want to do. The article also suggested “tempo” sessions for cardio so I’ve changed my bike sessions to “tempo” sessions.

Tempo sessions are similar to interval training but the length of time for the intervals is longer. So I’m spending 5 minutes warming up, 8 minutes at high speed, 5 minutes at a speed in between high speed and warming up speed, 8 minutes at high speed and 5 minutes warming down. Theoretically I should be spending more time on the bike but this is all the time I can spare at the moment. I do this 4 – 6 times a week. Another 3-4 times a week I put on the ankle weights and do a mixture of walking and jogging on the spot for 30 minutes.

I’m playing “hit and giggle” tennis once a week with a friend – we spend more time running into the next court to get our balls than actually hitting the balls, but it’s all exercise! I’m also looking forward to taking up some form of dance exercise like hip hop or Zumba, as soon as a couple of friends decide where and when they want to join up.

Hopefully by ramping up and changing my exercise routine I’ll be able to move some of this flab!!!

Fighting the Flab - end of week 2

This week I have neither lost weight nor inches, but I haven’t gained any either. I’m pretty happy about this because the last three days have been difficult in a kilojoule counting sense.

On Thursday night we had pizza for dinner. I’m not at all ashamed of this. I worked hard all day Thursday to finish and submit two assignments and once I had hit the last “submit” button I was way too tired to cook, or even think of what to cook. The boys both wanted pizza and I was also too tired to argue in favour of a healthier alternative.

On Friday night I went out with a friend of mine. What started as a few drinks and some Japanese influenced snacks, led to a small but satisfying dinner of Chinese dumplings. I had never tried edamame before but I’ve now added it to my list of foods I definitely like. The dumplings were wonderful, soft and light and perfectly cooked.

Last night I went out to dinner with some friends. We tried out a Nepalese restaurant and the food was delicious. We had mo mos to start with, which are a Nepalese style dumpling (it must have been my weekend for dumplings) and some samosas. This was followed by a chilli chicken curry, a prawn curry and a mushroom and spinach dish accompanied by saffron rice. After already leaving my diet far behind, I also indulged in dessert – a couple of atrociously sweet gulab jamin – semolina balls in a very sweet syrup.

Yesterday I spent 50 minutes on the exercise bike and another 30 minutes walking and jogging on the spot after a 30 minute weight session. Today I haven’t done anything much, but plan to do at least 30 minutes of cardio later on.

This coming week I haven’t any plans to dine out or get takeaway, so hopefully I will be able to stick to a lower kilojoule count!

When a bit of knowledge is not enough!

My computer is driving me crazy. Not only is it running slow, there are times it decides to freeze. Even the mouse disappears and once the keyboard turned itself off. I’m going insane. So, as I have got two assignments to churn out before the end of this week, I know a little about computers and I thought I would be clever and run some diagnostic tests.

I should have held that thought for awhile.

I checked out the Dell site and found the instructions. I should have stopped there. But I didn’t. I made my first mistake. I started running the test on Monday night. According to the instructions the test was supposed to finish in an hour. I’m not sure which clock they were using to time the thing but the test was still running strongly on Tuesday morning. It finally finished around 9am. The error messages told me the mic wasn’t working. That would probably be because there is no mic!

Then I made my second mistake.

I found another test that looked at “system locks up”. I should have stopped there but of course I ran the test. It flew through the first few options and I was quite pleased with myself. Then it told me the next test would take 173 minutes! I got my son’s notebook and started working on that instead.

In the end, by late Tuesday night, the testing had finished. I could see there were certain tests that hadn’t made the “pass” grade but I couldn’t work out how to find the error messages. I pressed something and the screen disappeared and the computer restarted. I gave up.

Later on that night I wondered if the whole testing thing was just another way of procrastinating on my part. Perhaps I’m trying to put off writing these assignments?

Fighting the Flab - end of week one

I’m not happy. After weighing and measuring myself this morning, I’ve only lost 1kg (approx 2.2lbs) and one inch off my waist.

Now before anyone thinks I should be happier than I am with those results and I’m sure there are plenty of you who will say just that, my head is still in my teenage years where I could easily lose 1kg a day or even more. So it’s obviously my mental state that needs to grow up and get used to being middle aged.

Of course I’m also not happy because I lost the bet I had with my middle son! He lost 4kgs this week to my 1kg. Next week I’ve told him we will be looking at percentage of body weight instead of number of kgs. I have to win next week!

Each day I’m doing a bit more research into weight loss and trying to find articles on losing weight in middle age. I’m adding flaxseed oil into my protein shakes, trying to have protein when I wake up (thank you mermaid gallery) – a couple of tablespoons of natural yoghurt – and playing around with my exercise routine. I’ve also started to end my morning shower with cold water (thanks again mermaid gallery!) in an attempt to boost my metabolism.

I’m attempting to drink a lot of water. This is not an easy task for me as I don’t drink much of anything normally. I have a large cup of black coffee in the morning and about ½ cup of pomegranate juice to wash down my vitamins and maybe a glass or two of water during the day. So I’m changing that and making sure I drink a lot more water. I’ve also read that drinking icy cold water can help boost your metabolism, so I’m only drinking water from the refrigerator.

I read yesterday that eating caraway seeds after a meal can reduce bloating and prevent constipation, as well as being a rich source of dietary fibre and anti-oxidants. I tried eating a handful after dinner last night and they were awful! So I’m going to see if there are any recipes that include raw caraway seeds that might be more palatable.

Hopefully next week I will be happier!

Parenting and Leadership

“You learn far more from negative leadership than from positive leadership. Because you learn how not to do it. And, therefore, you learn how to do it.”
Norman Schwarzkopf

I didn’t realise that someone else had said these words. I always thought they were mine – well similar ones anyway. I’ve always believed that I learnt more from the way my parents brought me up because they did so much that was wrong, than I would have if they had been perfect parents. I hope I’ve been a better parent by learning from their mistakes and remembering how I felt when I was the child.

I learnt not to ridicule my children, not to call them names or point out their deficiencies. I tried to give them positive messages, even when I was aiming to correct something negative.

I learnt to let my children make their own decisions, although I always endeavoured to present all sides of the story to them first, making sure they realised the consequences of whatever action they decided to take. And I learnt to live with their decisions, even if I didn’t agree with them.

I learnt to give my children the level of independence that suited their age and I always attempted to hide my worry when they were out with friends or late coming home or putting themselves at whatever risk might come their way. I knew they knew I worried, so more often than not they would let me know where they were or when they were coming home.

I learnt to be honest and open with my children. I kept them informed at all times. I remember my parents making major decisions like migrating to another country and not telling me until our journey was under way. I was devastated. I remember that feeling all too well and I have always encouraged my children to be a part of any decision, no matter what their age.

My children are now no longer children. I can only hope that the lessons I learnt from my parents made their passage through childhood that much easier.

Similarly it has been the negative leadership I’ve worked under that I’ve learnt more from than the positive leaders I’ve had.

I’ve learnt it is better to be open and honest with your workers than it is to try to hide things from them.

I’ve learnt that in order to get the most out of your workers it is better to nourish them, help them develop their skills and be patient with them rather than ignoring them or ridiculing them or getting frustrated with them.

I’ve learnt that sometimes a leader has to make the hard decisions and have the difficult talks with their workers in order to prevent undesirable situations, even if they don’t want to.

I’ve learnt that leadership isn’t just about doing the things you want to do. It’s also about doing the things you need to do and the things you would prefer not to do, and doing them as well as you do the things you want to do.

In the Kitchen

Tonight my middle son helped me to cook dinner. We made Fettuccine Carbonara. It was great to have someone else in the kitchen helping me and chatting and just being there. Normally cooking dinner is such a lonely affair. The greater percentage of people worldwide who prepare meals for the family are females and the preparation time for me is one of the loneliest times of the day.

It is the time when we are almost all home at the same time and the time when my boys catch up on what they have done during the day. I usually feel left out, stuck around the corner, chopping and stirring and sipping my wine. By the time dinner is ready their conversation has finished and they can’t be bothered repeating it to me.

Cooking is such a great activity to do as a family. I remember when the boys were little and it took no effort at all to get them to help with baking cakes or cookies or even main meals. There might have been a gigantic mess left at the end of our efforts but it was only equalled by the amount of fun we had and the pleasure we got from eating our home made wares.

It was important to me that I taught the boys how to cook. They can all make a variety of main meals – steak, schnitzels, parmagiana, spaghetti bolognaise, hamburgers and stir fries to name a few. At least they can survive without having to eat out or getting takeaways all the time. I’m happy to say my eldest son often cooks for his girlfriend (or so he tells me…).

They can clean too. I made sure of that. Even though I do the bulk of the cleaning in the house, now and again I make enough fuss that they grudgingly join in. You wouldn’t believe how quickly the house gets done when all of us pitch in and help!

I’ve never believed in the division of labour according to sex. It’s not solely the female’s role to cook, clean and wash and it’s not totally up to the male to make the money. Life flows so much easier when all the burdens are shared. As for raising children, in my mind it is definitely a joint effort. Men who chose to leave the raising of their children to their mother miss out terribly.

My boys know well how I feel about the equality of the sexes. They often tease me, it’s easy to push my buttons, but in the end I believe I’ve brought them up to treat everyone equally and as they would like to be treated themselves. I hate that it’s a male dominated world but I hope that at least by teaching my boys that females and males both deserve the same treatment, the same respect and the same advantages perhaps I’ve done a little bit to change the world.

That Woman, My Sister

Today I attended an International Women’s Day luncheon where the guest speaker was Virginia Haussegger, an award winning journalist, author and commentator. The message this International Women’s Day is about the empowerment of women. Haussegger’s speech was powerful and made more so with the images she showed us. She spoke of the women in Afghanistan and Pakistan and Africa and many other countries, including those we think of as “developed”. She spoke of forced marriages where the brides can be as young as 9, female genital mutilation, the lack of education and the lack of financial security that comes with being born a female. She spoke of the distinct lack of females in upper management positions and on boards in Australia and the games men play to keep women “in their place”.

I know about these games. I’ve lived with them. I come from a European family where, although I was never physically mistreated, I was looked upon as a second class citizen. I was given an education but never encouraged to do more than marry well. Growing up I was smiled on in a condescending sort of way whenever I expressed an opinion, but if a male peer expressed the same opinion he was held in high regard. My ex-husband, who had only met my parents once, was immediately allowed to drive their car. I was never given that privilege.

But the worst thing is my father’s constant reminders that he is the last of his line and the end of his family. Being an only child and a daughter I do not have the right to continue the family, nor does the heritage pass on to my sons. And he is proud of this. To him and many others, I have no rights to my own family; I might as well not exist. The older I get the more important my family and my heritage is to me and I have tried to teach my sons about its history. The fact that my sons can be swept off one of the branches of the family tree, simply because of my gender, is appalling. That my father is pleased with this outcome is atrocious.

I married a man who also didn’t think highly of the equality of women. After staying at home with my boys until the youngest went to kindergarten, their father couldn’t understand my need to go back to work and, once I found a job, made it difficult for me to give it 100%. In an industry that demands both overtime and after hours work, I was continually under stress trying to work, study, run the household and look after the children. He also worked but apparently had the option to either socialise or relax when not at the office.

I know I’m one of the lucky ones. I haven’t been physically abused, sold into marriage or thrown out on the streets. But those girls, those women who have to live in appalling conditions are my sisters. I can chose to ignore them or I can chose to do the best I can to bring attention to their plight in the best way I know how – by writing about them.

The recent social media campaign “Get Kony” proved how quickly word of mouth / social media can spread through the world. We should all be spreading the word about the mistreatment of our sisters. I might not have enough readers to my blog, but my readers are read by others and they are read by more and if all of us highlighted even one issue, maybe we could change the world…

To Keep or not to Keep?

Reading the paper at lunchtime as I usually do, I stumbled across this article which points out the difficulties future archivists will have when faced with our current trend of communicating by technology rather than our past history of either letter or email writing.

http://voice.unimelb.edu.au/volume-8/number-3/communication-past-present-and-forever

I find it an interesting dilemma. How does one preserve the text messages, tweets and chats that now form much of our daily communication? History has proven that, in some cases, letters were not only a means of transmitting messages but also a permanent tactile memory to be felt and relished and stored. Email messages, while they can be printed and physically handled; lose something in their lack of personal handwriting and uniform paper. But what of text messages, tweets and chats? It is slightly difficult to feel them, relish them or handle them!

Of course one of the issues with technological communication methods is that they are often devoid of emotion. Many years ago my then boyfriend was overseas for a lengthy time and we communicated by email. Often he would misread the meaning of my emails and would have to call me to clear up any misunderstanding. The abbreviations and “eslang” used nowadays also sometimes cause confusion and one can only wonder how they will read in the next century!

Historians and archivists often rely on people other than the one they are documenting to provide the letters and articles of interest. In the above article it is the family of Malcolm Fraser who preserve the letter he wrote in 1940 as a 10 year old boy at boarding school. In modern times how many of us would keep an email, text message, tweet or chat that long? Should today’s writers make an effort to save all of their correspondence just in case they are one day famous? One would have to buy several hard drives for storage!

How are you keeping your technological communications? Or are you keeping them?

I'm Back!!!

I’ve been away for a rather long time, but I’m back now. I guess I’ve turned a new leaf in my life and I’ve started writing again so I might as well throw my offerings out to the Universe and see what comes back.

Yesterday I decided I was tired of being middle aged, frumpy and chunky. Nothing I can do about being middle aged, but I can change the frumpy and chunky into fit and fabulous. So I embarked on a new way of living including a new way of eating together with adding more exercise into my life.

I’ve started counting kilojoules (calories). I found this website: http://www.bizresources.biz/KPD/PMP/body/weightloss.htm worked out what I wanted to weigh and how many kilojoules per day I’d have to stick to in order to achieve my goal. Then I found this website: http://www.great-workout.com and have used it to work out the kilojoule count for the food I eat.

By the way, I don’t make any money from those sites, I never saw them before yesterday and I’m sure there are sites out there that are just as good you could use, these two just happen to work for me. They aren’t the only sites I use, just the main ones.

My trick on weekends is to stick to two main meals a day. Yes, I know that would be difficult for many people, but it works for me. I usually wake up around 8.30am and read in bed for an hour or so. Sometimes I put a load of laundry on in that time. This is my quiet time. The two boys I have still at home are adults now and perfectly capable of looking after themselves. I calculate the kilojoules for everything I eat and note them down, ensuring I stay under the total I’ve set for myself.

When I finally get up I exercise. On Saturdays I do weights and then get on the bike for 30 minutes, on Sundays I just get on the bike. Then its time for a shower and, only after I’ve got dressed, do I have breakfast, usually around midday. Later on, sometime in the afternoon, I’ll put ankle weights on and jog in front of the TV for 30 minutes.

I don’t manage to fit as much exercise into my weekdays but I do get on the bike for 30 minutes, three times during the week – usually Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. I’ve started playing tennis with a friend once a week, just a “hit and giggle” but it means we run around for an hour, and I’m waiting for another friend to check out either hip hop or Zumba classes.

So, it’s early days yet but I believe I can keep to this routine. I just hope its enough to lose the kilograms and the inches and get back something like the body I used to have!

Mini Artists Retreat

On Friday I came back to reality after spending four creative and relaxing days in Eden, a small coastal town in New South Wales. I had gone there with an artist friend of mine, she to paint and I to write and we had chosen Eden as it is halfway between Melbourne, where I live and Sydney where she lives. It had been awhile since either of us could fully concentrate on our creative sides and it was planned as a mini artists retreat.

We stayed in a two bedroom self contained unit overlooking the water. We brought our own food, alcohol and items necessary to be creative – in her case, canvases, paints, brushes and drop sheets, in mine, a computer, internet connection and my usb. The first two days we had simply wonderful weather, blue skies, sunshine and, when the clouds appeared, they were the most creative and artistic clouds ever.

Eden is a fishing town, with a season of whale watching, which unfortunately we missed by a week. We didn’t do a lot of sight seeing, but what we did see were spectacular views surrounding a town that sleeps in the winter and no doubt comes to life in the summer. The only downside for both of us was the drive there and back – around seven hours for each of us.

By the time we left on Friday morning, my friend had the bones of one painting well underway and I was halfway through my second short story. My aim is to finish both stories before the end of next week in order to send them off to two competitions. I’ve decided I could seriously cope with the lifestyle of a full time author and writer, provided of course that I can live with ocean views.

I see old people!

I went to a concert of 60s and 70s music the other night. It was advertised as being a concert made up of the original bands and artists, but there were only a handful of originals there, the rest of the band members were ringins from a different, more modern era. I have a fairly good recollection of music from that time but even my memory didn’t stretch far enough to remember some of the artists on stage and I can’t recollect many of the songs they sung. However the crowd that was there obviously did recollect the songs and proved it by belting out each chorus while gyrating as best they could considering the creak of arthritis that filled the air and the beer guts the men were toting with them.

I spent a fair bit of the night gazing at my fellow audience members, as I often do when I go out, and it was frightening to see how many old people were gathered in one spot, under the same roof without being anywhere near a retirement village. It was then the first awful thought hit me – I was one of them. Sure I wasn’t the oldest member of the audience, but I wouldn’t have been the youngest either. I was surrounded by my generation, with all its wrinkles and flabbiness and fake tans and pot guts. Trust me; I did not like that thought at all. That thought made me shiver “like bad news on the door step”... ah but someone has already used that line.

The only thing scarier than an older audience dressing up like they did in their teens and getting all groovy with each other, is watching musicians in their 60s and 70s attempting to swivel sexily while croaking out the songs that made them famous. It is either awesome or embarrassing that they are still on stage at this time of their lives and I’m leaning toward embarrassing. There is something about the effects of emphysema and the use of a cane that detract from their overall performance.

Now I have nothing against any of these performers in their heyday – although there weren’t many that performed the other night that I actually followed in the 70s. But some music just doesn’t cut it when performed live by aged musicians. We aren’t talking Bach or Strauss here – classical music can be produced at any age, one only has to read the tabloids to follow the careers of virtuoso musicians from 8 to 80. We are talking full on rock and roll, which, when performed live, requires all the relevant hip jerking, sexually explicit grinding motions that normally accompany it. Not to mention the jumping up and down and around the stage. It is painful to watch someone 60+ attempting to make those same moves.

I went to the concert with a friend of mine. She had bought tickets for herself and her husband but he refused to go once he had seen the list of performers. Whatever I thought of the entertainment, I enjoyed the night out catching up with my friend and the other people on our table (total strangers) added a bit of comedy to the evening. She never stopped talking and he never stopped trying to shut her up, in between the chatter and the shooshing they drank copious amounts of alcohol and regaled us with stories from their youth.

Wolf Hall

As soon as I saw this book on the library shelves I felt some slight apprehension. It is a very thick book and I wondered if I would ever finish it. My uneasiness only worsened when, glancing through the pages, it dawned on me that this was an historical novel and I don’t usually like historical novels. Luckily the story line was set in a period of English history that I don’t mind reading about – the time of Henry VIII.

When I curled up in bed that night and began to read Wolf Hall the first thing that struck me was how easy it was to read. The language flows in an almost poetical style and, although you get the sense of olde Englande, it is actually easy to understand. Following who is talking can be slightly tricky at times and Mantle’s use of person sometimes confused me, but overall I enjoyed the actual reading of this novel.

The characters were well described and even the lowliest of them was quite interesting. I especially got pleasure from the consistency of the characters’ behaviour as a few of them were with me throughout the entire story and it was nice to know they became reasonably predictable.

Nevertheless this book takes some reading and about half way through I started to lose my attention span and wish that either the story had been told in a shorter version or some of the peripheral bits had been left out. I began to get bored and found myself sneaking peeks at the last few pages of the book. Despite my growing lack of interest I managed to finish the book and I’m glad I did.

Reading this book did mean doing some research, although it’s not a necessity and the story can be enjoyed without knowing the historical detail. However I did look up several of the characters including the main man Thomas Cromwell and Anne Boleyn’s sister Mary. I didn’t even know Anne Boleyn had a sister until I read this book! I also reacquainted myself with some of the historical facts from that time as my high school history lessons are buried deep in the whorls of my brain and not easily retrievable.

I can recommend this book to anyone who gets pleasure from reading historical novels or anyone who enjoys good characterisation and plot.

The next novel I plan to read is The White Tiger and I will let you know how that goes as soon as I tackle it!

The cons and cons of responsibility

At this moment in time I would like nothing better than to have no responsibility.

I’m tired of being responsible for the household budget and constantly attempting to make ends meet. I’ve had enough of finding budget friendly meals and scrimping and saving on a daily basis. I want to be irresponsible. I want to spend money no matter if I have it or not. I don’t want to pay bills any more. I don’t want to make car repayments or pay the rent.

I would like to stay in bed in the morning instead of going to work. I would like to lounge around all day and read or write or just do whatever I felt like at the time. I don’t want to be responsible for the housework or making sure there are enough toilet paper rolls in the bathroom or check that the milk hasn’t gone off.

I don’t want to be the one who is responsible for keeping the clothes clean, getting the housework done, calling the lawn man to do the lawns or doing the shopping. I don’t want to always be the one who remembers to take the garbage out. I want someone else to do the remembering.

I don’t want to be the person at work that constantly remembers to do things that others forget. I don’t want that responsibility.

I want to be more spontaneous. I want to be more fun. I want to be a teenager again. Those teenage years really were the best. I had no responsibility. I confess I didn’t always go to school. I spent many a summer day lazing on the beach. My only worries were what to wear, where to go and which friend to call next. It was a fabulous time of life, full of fun and absolutely no responsibility. The things we used to do! There were parties that happened on the spur of the moment and nights on the beach around hastily lit bonfires that went on and on. There were trips to the country and drives that took us aimlessly to no place in particular.

But the spontaneous life has gone. I can’t stay in bed or, eventually, I won’t get paid. Someone has to stock the fridge and the pantry or there won’t be any food in the house and if I didn’t clean the house I don’t think I could live in it! If I didn’t pay the bills we probably wouldn’t have a house to live in. I doubt I would be allowed to light a fire on the beach these days and I can’t drive aimlessly because fuel for the car costs too much. The friends I used to spend relaxing days and nights with now live far away and my friends here are also weighed down with responsibility.

The only option seems to be to become enormously wealthy so I can hire someone to be responsible for me.

Focus

Setting a goal is often easy. Focussing on achieving that goal is sometimes difficult and frequently unexciting. No matter how many times one reminds oneself that the outcome will be worth it and reward in itself, the pathway can be steep and lonely with plenty of distractions along the way.

I am already a writer. My goal is to become a successful author and hopefully a financially successful author. It’s taken me a lifetime to realise what I want to be when I grow up but now the decision is made, its one I’m very comfortable with. However, the steps I must climb to reach my goal will neither be comfortable nor painless. I guess I could have chosen an easier career, however I’ve always enjoyed challenges.

I’m taking baby steps now, learning to walk before I fly. I’ve joined a local writer’s club and attended my first meeting last week. They are all really lovely people and I hope I didn’t put them off with my contribution to the weekly readings. I’d brought with me my first unfinished draft of a short story I plan to enter in a competition. I might be wrong but I think they were a little bit uncomfortable with the two “f” words and the delicately worded masturbation scene.

Our state’s Writers Centre runs various events including a once a month “Write Club” (the first rule of Write Club is, you don’t talk about Write Club…) and I went there last week. It was great. I met some like minded people, listened to an awesome poet and drank a couple of red wines. What more could a girl want? I plan on attending Write Club whenever I can, as well as some of the other events at the Writers Centre.

I’ve entered another short story competition and, as I mentioned above, I’m planning to enter yet another one. I find short stories incredibly challenging to write. I seem to either be able to write short posts or lengthy screeds, but not much in between. But it’s a challenge I’m enjoying taking up. I know I have stories to tell and I plan to tell them in the best way I can.

However, despite the positive moves I’ve made toward becoming a successful author, I still tend to lose focus now and again. Sometimes I will be sidetracked by other challenges or events or issues and I have to keep asking myself “if I do this will it lead to becoming a successful author?” It’s the only way I can keep on track. If the answer is no, I try hard to ignore the issue, turn down the challenge and disregard the event. There are times I become almost desperate with situations and I have to remind myself to stop, take a breath and refocus on my goal. It’s not easy and it’s not pretty but it has to be done.

Breath

When I was school age I read many books – up to six a day. When I was very young I read Enid Blyton’s novels, the Narnia series, Louisa May Alcott’s “Little Women”, “Little Men” and “Jo’s Boy” and many other books with authors and titles I can’t remember. As I grew older I read John Le Carre, Harold Robbins, Daphne Du Maurier, Elizabeth Goudge and many many others. Sometimes I read books more than once, but that was pretty rare. With all the books I read the one criterion I had that, in my eyes, made the book a “good” one was whether or not I could put it down. My favorites were the books where I would miss meals in order to keep reading and where I would suddenly wonder why the pages were getting more difficult to read and realise the sun had gone down and it was time to turn the light on.

Breath by Tim Winton is one of those books that are difficult to put down, although I have to admit the responsibility of going to work and looking after a family did mean I had to force myself into the real world now and again. I found I could easily relate to Winton’s characters and, as I grew up in Western Australia, I could also visualise the scenery. Even though the main characters were male, I enjoyed their journeys despite some of the uncomfortable twists and turns. I can really recommend this book as one that is easy and pleasurable to read. I read somewhere recently that Breath is being made into a movie and I wonder how they will translate some of the scenes but I’m sure it will be a good one.

Having read Breath I thought I would read another of Winton’s books “Cloudstreet” which has been made into a mini series. I have to admit I didn’t enjoy this one half as much as Breath, in fact I didn’t enjoy it at all. Cloudstreet is set in the early 1900’s mostly in Perth, Western Australia around the suburbs where I lived from the age of 10. I guess I’m not a fan of historical novels and the characters simply annoyed me as I’m also not tolerant of people who sit around and moan about their lot in life or are extremely foolish in one way or another. I finally finished the book last night and I know for a fact I won’t be watching the mini series!

Strange isn’t it how one can have such different opinions of two books by the same author! I guess writers give birth to books as mothers give birth to children – a lot of hard work goes into the process but the outcome is not guaranteed to be the same as the first or the second, etc. And books really do have their own identities and personalities. Some of them demand attention and some are happy to sit quietly on the shelf, overlooked until needed.

I have one exam on 20 June to study for and then I will start my reading again. Looking forward to finishing the exam and reporting on the next book I read!

The search for identity and belonging

"Why am I as I am? To understand that of any person, his whole life, from Birth must be reviewed. All of our experiences fuse into our personality. Everything that ever happened to us is an ingredient." Malcolm X

Although I didn’t enjoy reading “The Finkler Question” (see my last post) it did stir in me, yet again, the desire to find my identity. Not that I ever lost my identity, it didn’t fall out of my pocket or disappear down the drain with the shampoo as I washed my hair. I’ve just never really worked out who I am or where I belong.

Once a week I volunteer at an English conversation class for migrants and refugees. For one hour every week I sit and talk to a group of people, young and old, male and female, who are all attempting to learn the English language. They all know where they come from and where they belong. They come from China, Japan, Iran, Korea, Romania, Vietnam and Myanmar. They are proud of their cultures and they belong to their families and their histories. But when they ask me where I come from, I’m not sure what to say.

Do I simply tell them I was born in America and that at age 10 my parents kidnapped me and forced me to live in Australia? Or do I dig deeper into my family’s roots? Do I tell them that my mother’s parents were Russian, but she was born in France? Do I tell them my father’s ancestors were German, but his family lived in the Baltic States? Am I Russian? Am I German? Am I American or Australian?

Citizenship doesn’t matter here. I have dual Australian/American citizenship. Of the two I have always felt more American. I’m proud of the country where I was born and I always will be. But being proud of being born American doesn’t give me an identity, nor does it create a firm sense of belonging. Conversely it makes me feel even more alone seeing that most people I meet refuse to believe I’m American as I no longer have the accent. I am also happy I live in Australia. If I hadn’t have moved here I would never have had my wonderful boys. In a way I have no country, or maybe many countries.

I sometimes wish I had been born into a large family, one with traditions and celebrations and gatherings. But there was only ever me, my parents and my grandparents on my mother’s side. There was an awful lot of religion, but not much celebration and we were too few to gather.

Recently I’ve been piecing together my family history. It’s a fascinating task and one which will take me a long time to complete. Each time I find another bit of information, go down another path, uncover another fact, I’m finding out who I am and where I belong. It’s a work in progress, a journey rather than a destination and one day I might have the answers I’m looking for and the sense of belonging I need.

The Finkler Question

I had planned to write this post reviewing this Man Booker Prize winning novel written by Howard Jacobson a few days ago. However it took me this long to finally finish reading the book. I haven’t had to physically make myself plough through a book for awhile now. The last time was when I forced myself to finish Tess of the D’Urbervilles and that took me over a year to read!


Thank goodness it only took just over a week to read The Finkler Question because I don’t think I could have coped with it any longer. From the first paragraph I knew I was going to hate the hero. Not only was he dull and boring, but he was also frustrating. I felt like clipping him over the ear and telling him to get a life. If he was a friend of mine, not that I would have such useless friends, I would have spent a fair bit of time trying to organise him into a functional person rather than an emotional leech.

I had read fabulous reviews about this book:


'A real giant. A great, great writer'

Jonathan Safran Foer



'The Finkler Question is wonderful. A blistering portrayal of a funny man who at last confronts the darkness of the world'

Beryl Bainbridge



'Naked, haunting, unflinching. Its account of sexual obsession is frightening, painful and finally very moving. A tour de force'

Harold Pinter


But I simply couldn’t see what they were seeing. No way was Treslove funny. He wasn’t even slightly amusing. He was purely annoying. Granted, Jacobson has a way with words. Some of his sentences are brilliant. But his characters are not so luminescent. They might have been real and true to life, but they weren’t the sort of characters I wanted to read about. I have more than enough questions about my own identity to want to read about someone else’s angst over their identity and whether they are Jewish, or feel Jewish or will ever be accepted as a Jew. There is more wringing of hands and wailing at walls in this book to ever interest me. I guess I prefer to read about people who overcome their childhoods or upbringing or disillusionments to achieve great things. I prefer not to read about those who drown themselves in continual torment and anguish, especially when there is no happy ending. Sorry – did I just spoil that for anyone???

So… onto the next book – Tim Winton’s “Breath”. Hopefully I will enjoy this one a tad more.

Procrastination and Challenges

So here I sit in front of the computer, supposedly working on my last Linguistics assignment for this semester, in reality writing this blog. I got a fabulous mark for my first Linguistics assignment – 86%, a high distinction. It should spur me on to writing another wonderful essay but I would rather be doing almost anything else.

On the bright side my topic is about blogging, so perhaps I can count it towards my assignment. But no, to be honest that won’t cut it. I’m writing on Gender and online participation, particularly on how many men comment on female blogs, using my blog as an example. The answer is not many - not on my blogs anyway. Luckily I only have to write an essay and not do the actual research. I haven’t been able to find much research in this area. There is a bit on blogging itself but not much on commenting.

Apart from the challenge of finishing this assignment by tomorrow night, not to mention just trying to start it, I’ve set myself another challenge. I’ve decided it’s well past time for me to walk the walk as well as talking the talk and write a novel with a view to publish, perhaps an autobiographical or semi-autobiographical novel. In order to do that, I felt I should really read the novels out there that have won the big prizes, the ones considered to be worth reading, good literature.

So, I’m going to read through at least the last ten Miles Franklin Award winners and the last ten Man Booker prize winners. I’m not reading for pleasure, I’m reading with a view to working out why they won. I’ve started on Peter Temple’s “Truth”, winner of the 2010 Miles Franklin Award.

To be honest the first sentence of “Truth” threw me. If I wasn’t reading for a purpose I probably would never have continued to read. I’m halfway through the book now and I can say the language confuses me, the characters confuse me, the plot (or plots) confuse me and I feel as if I’m lost in some sort of maze which is blanketed by fog, however I can’t put the book down. I mustn’t be the only reader confused by the characters as some previous reader has scribbled the names of the main characters in the blank pages at the back of the book with a description of who they are next to their names. I find myself regularly flicking to that page.

There is a lot of dialogue in “Truth”. I’m not comfortable with writing dialogue. I prefer descriptive writing but perhaps I should practise more with dialogue. Temple’s dialogue is just baffling. I often can’t make out who is talking or indeed what they are saying. He uses plenty of slang and innuendo, most of which is incomprehensible to me. But it does make me stop and think. This is a book I can’t just dart through. I actually have to read every word, or I find myself having to go back and re read passages.

I guess “Truth” is not the type of book I envisaged being chosen to win a literary prize. I’m now very interested in reading the other winners to see if there is a pattern in choosing winners. Will keep you updated!

World Peace

I’ve just realised I haven’t posted anything for awhile and I feel extremely guilty. The last few weeks have simply flown by; I’ve been almost out of breath trying to catch up with life. There’s been work of course, which is just getting busier, my study – I’ve had to hand in two assignments, got one more to do and one exam to take before the end of semester, my once a week volunteer tutoring at an English conversation class and the usual home duties. I’ve also been attempting to read more than usual – not for study, but for pure entertainment. But I would only complain if I wasn’t busy and I get bored very easily.


Speaking of assignments, I was just finishing off the last one I handed in when I was startled by a TV announcement that breaking news was at hand. Of course it was the Osama Bin Laden killing that dominated all the TV stations from then on. In a not so politically correct way, I was a bit relieved that at least the Osama news guaranteed there would be no more coverage on the Royal wedding!

I was probably one of the few people in the world who did not watch the Royal wedding. Seriously, to have every free to air TV station showing the exact same footage of the wedding with only slightly different commentaries, was beyond me. Luckily we have pay TV and I watched the football instead! I know – I’m just different.

So Bin Laden is dead. I’ve thought a bit about this and I still haven’t come to a conclusion whether this is a good or bad thing. On the one hand I simply welled with pride at being an American at a time like this. On the other I can clearly see that someone out there will be planning repercussions. There are never any easy options left in this world. Every decision has some sort of consequence that could have global effects. I have to admit, I would hate to have the power to make those decisions.

I guess everyone remembers where they were on September 11 when the twin towers were destroyed. I certainly do and I will never forget the images I saw on TV. I was definitely roused to anger and disbelief and horror at what had happened. I don’t know how anyone can hate another human being that much and I’m saddened to think there is that level of hatred in the world that grows and spreads until more and more tragedies happen and more and more lives are lost.

I don’t put up with any form of racial or ethnic or religious intolerance from my boys. I hope I’ve taught them to try to see everyone as an individual before boxing them into some sort of generalised and usually prejudicial label. I believe that most prejudice comes from fear. We fear what we don’t know and if someone looks strange, or talks in another language or follows religious practices that we don’t understand, we fear them and their lifestyle. The Bin Laden’s of this world are just bullies who thrive on encouraging others to hate and seeing our reactions to their hatred. It’s a vain hope I know, but one day it truly would be wonderful if we could simply accept people for what they are and leave them to live their own lives just as they leave us to live ours. Just like all those Miss Universe hopefuls, I long for “world peace”…