To Have an Adventure

I think we can all agree that holidays are awesome, right? I knew that, even though I hadn't actually travelled anywhere significant in many years, but I had forgotten just how amazing travel can be. There's something about being far from home that makes everything so much more wondrous. I love the adventure of it all. Now I know three weeks in England with a brief side trip to Paris is not exactly “adventurous.” Sure, they speak the same language as me. And yes, culturally there really isn't much of a difference. And okay, most British people probably don't even blink at an Australian accent any more, but for someone who spent the best part of her thirties practising to be a hermit, it was a huge leap. My anxiety can go into overdrive thinking about all the things that could go wrong just leaving the house, so getting on a plane and travelling to the other side of the world was simultaneously terrifying and exhilarating.

The planning stages were fine. I read every review and travel guide I could find, I planned and organised and saved and booked to my heart's content. But then sometime around January reality set in and anxiety took hold - I became convinced that everything that could go wrong, would. I imagined lost luggage and delayed flights, missed hotel bookings and below-freezing temperatures. Not that any of that would matter, since I'd be laid up with the life-threatening DVT I was going to acquire on the plane, anyway. It got ridiculous, even for me. I seriously wondered if I should get professional help. And then something amazing happened: I just stopped. Worrying, that is. I realised I was wasting precious anticipation time worrying about things I had no control over, and I needed to stop. So I did. After years of letting fear and anxiety make decisions for me, I finally discovered the key to overcoming them was just to do it, despite the fear and anxiety. Yes, after a lifetime of ridiculing self-help books I have finally learned the value of “feel the fear and do it anyway.” Although I haven't completely let go of my previous motto of “feel the fear and hide until it passes.”

I had been to London 20 years ago, but it still felt like the first time. I love London, more than I thought it would be possible to love a city. I feel so comfortable there, in some ways even more than I do in Sydney. It's such a user friendly city. Within minutes of arriving, having to kill several hours before I could get into my hotel room, I had wandered into the nearest tube station, bought an Oyster card and boarded a train. Me, with my deep aversion to public transport, already gallivanting around a strange city like a local. I had surprised myself! But it was on day two that my love for London, and travelling, was cemented. As I made my way out of Westminster station, busy thinking about what I was going to do that day, I wasn't prepared for the sudden appearance of Big Ben, magnificent in the glorious sunshine, right in front of me. I'm pretty sure I stopped dead in my tracks, and there may have been a tear or two. I was in London! The last time I remember feeling something similar was 15 years ago in New York. At that moment, and for much of the trip, I was completely and utterly happy. And that, more than anything, makes me want to do it again and again. For three weeks I didn't worry about everyone and everything, I wasn't anxious or fearful. Sure, there were moments here and there that weren't so awesome (I won't be rushing back on to the Paris Metro any time soon, for example), but they were very few. At that moment, and for most of the next three weeks, I was just happy.

I love that everything seems exciting on holiday, no matter how small. Every day is full of wonder and new discoveries, even a trip to the supermarket feels like an adventure. (Okay, that one might just be me.) I miss so many things about being holiday. I miss London, with its beautiful museums, spectacular buildings, gorgeous shops and lovely people. I miss getting on the tube and going somewhere different every day. I miss stopping at Marks and Spencer on the way back to the hotel and stocking up on British treats. I miss Southampton (no, really) and my lovely friends, who were so kind and generous and welcoming. I miss their adorable pet bunny and her adorable bunny ways. I miss Tunnock's Tea Cakes and my nightly dose of Come Dine With Me. But more than anything, I just miss the person I was on holiday. She was awesome.

That's How People Grow Up. Or is It?

What makes someone a “grown up”, do you think? I’ve been thinking about this a bit recently, and I’m kind of confused about where the line is. For example, I was reading something the other day about a man who's promising $10000 to the person who introduces him to his future wife. This is kind of wacky in itself, I'll admit, but it wasn't that part that annoyed me. The article went on to scrutinise his various attributes in an attempt to decide whether he was in fact “marriage material", or whatever it is the ladies are calling potential husbands these days. Now, again, while I would normally find this kind of list appalling, this is an unusual case and he was sort of asking for it, so fair enough. Anyway, it went on to list the reasons for and against him. Things like his job, where he lived and what he liked to do where dissected and one strike against him was that one of his interests is skateboarding. This is where they lost me. Apparently being a 40 year old man who likes to ride a skateboard in his spare time indicates that he is some sort of immature man-child who never grew up. See, I would have said the fact that he was a 40 year old man (with 10 grand to spare!) was proof enough of his maturity, but what do I know?

I guess I just don't believe you can judge a person's level of maturity based on something as simplistic as their hobbies. As far as I can tell, hobbies are meant to be fun, and therefore should be beyond that kind of scrutiny. Are there people out there who don't indulge in the hobbies they really enjoy because they're afraid to be seen as immature? Or take part in hobbies they don't enjoy because it makes them seem more like a grown up? That would be a pretty sad way to live, I reckon. So what would have constituted a “mature” pastime for this man? How about reading, generally considered a perfectly respectable, possibly even “intellectual” thing to do. But what if, after deciding he's worth a shot based on this mature hobby, you discover that he only likes to read comic books. Does that count? It's still reading, right? Maybe he says he's passionate about movies, which would be great, who doesn't love movies? But then he goes on to tell you that Meet the Fockers is his favourite film and he thinks Adam Sandler has been sorely overlooked in the annual Oscar race. Or he spends his weekends scouring second-hand shops to add to his vintage collections, then proudly shows off his 732 My Little Ponies. Perhaps being a music fan would make him more appealing...until you find out that his favourite band is Nickelback. The point is, any measure of maturity, other than actual age, is subjective at best. As long as someone is responsible when it counts, I don't care if they spend the rest of their time playing with Barbie dolls and indulging in their love of fairy floss if that makes them happy.

Being a grown up is overrated, anyway. And really, what's the big deal about maturity? Maybe I'd feel differently if I wasn't a bit of a kidult myself, but I'm not going to take up golf or give up trashy television in an effort to appear more grown up to anyone. In fact, the older I get the more inclined I am to be child-like - some might even call it childish. Because even though we all step up and do the important things when it matters, a lot of the time being a responsible adult kind of sucks. Giving up the fun stuff just because you're not a kid anymore seems ridiculous to me. Life is too short to waste it on being a grown up.

750 Words

So I read about this site, 750 Words, on another blog a few days ago and I was intrigued by the concept. It's basically a website where you can register and it gives you a blank page on which to write at least 750 words a day - which is either a hell of a lot or very little, depending on what your feelings at the time are. Or maybe that's just me. Anyway, as far as I can tell, the idea is to just write what comes to mind and see where it takes you. Unlike a blog, it's completely private, so it's not as if others can see your ramblings either, which is pretty freeing when it comes to choosing what to write about. I joined for a couple of reasons 1) because I really do enjoy writing but am very bad at motivating myself to do most things, no matter how much I enjoy them, and 2) because I have been doing pretty much a version of this for a while now by writing myself emails.

750 words has some major advantages over the email thing. It keeps stats, for one thing, and I am obsessed with stats. Obsessed! In fact I'm toying with the idea of removing the stat counter from my blog because I spend more time analysing who has and hasn't read it than I do actually writing it. And maybe it's the old Luddite in me, but I still find it amazing that they can do things like tell you exactly where someone who's clicked a certain page lives. It's simultaneously amazing and a little creepy. The 750 words stats are different, though. They not only tell you the number of words you've written, they also tell you how long you took to write them and how many words you wrote per minute. They tell you how long your breaks were and they even have some fancy program that analyses your mood while you were writing. While that bit sometimes varies in its accuracy, I do find the results very interesting and it gives me something different to obsess over, which is great. Anyway, the most amazing thing about this site is that it works - I've only been doing it for a few days, but already I feel more inspired to write than I have in a long, long time. Perhaps it's the freedom of writing whatever I like, or the incentive of a goal to reach. One big advantage over emails is that I'm much less likely to fall into the self-pitying woe-is-me stuff. It may be hard to believe, but I'm even more whiny when no one else can hear me. On here though, I feel like I need to write something more. Something...I don't know...better.

So far I think it's kind of ingenious. I'm sure I won't always be this keen, and I'm bound to miss some days, but I have already found myself making a mental note of things that happen during the day that I can write about. It even sends me a reminder email each day, so I can't tell myself I "forgot". And since I'm writing this on 750 words (I'll copy and paste into the blog when I'm done) I can keep up my daily writing and still occasionally write a blog. At the same time! There's even a challenge where you register at the beginning of each month and pledge to write every day. I'm still considering whether I'm game for April, but I think I might just do it. I literally have nothing to lose, and who knows, I may even manage to write something worthwhile. I mean, it's not likely, but you never know. And if I fail then eh, it's not like I haven't failed at just about everything before. I do have to remind myself that if I run out of anything else to write I can just type 750 swear words. Which would be kind of awesome, actually. Not that I know 750 different swear words (yet), but I don't mind doubling up on a few. Maybe that could be my own little challenge for the month.

My favourite part though, is the last 50 words. I'm always a little nervous about whether or not I'm going to make it, and I love watching the word count creep up as I type. In the end I'm left with a wonderful feeling of accomplishment, which is not something I feel very often. It's been worthwhile just for that.

The Joy of Misery

I like to think of myself as a fairly miserable person. And I do mean “like”. I enjoy complaining. It's fun. It gets the stupid, petty annoyances out of my head so I can let them go before they become bigger, more serious annoyances. It's not that I don't like being happy, that would be ridiculous. It's just...I don't know, I'm happier when I'm not so happy, if that makes sense. I think it's at least partly because whenever I allow myself to think things are going well, something almost always happens to prove me wrong. Why waste precious optimism only to be disappointed? And I like my pessimistic perspective, it means I can always be pleasantly surprised when things do go well, which they actually do occasionally. I guess it's a survival instinct, and after trying to fight it for a long time, I have come to like being a miserable cow.

There's a certain joy to misery that the outwardly cheerful don't seem to get. Don't get me wrong, I appreciate the happy people, I really do. I would even go so far as to say I envy their positive outlook. But I can't deny that I do get pleasure from complaining and ranting; a good rant can be wonderfully cathartic! And I appreciate other people's rants, too. I get it. I understand the need to just let it out, and I'm happy to be the audience they're looking for. Surely we all just want to be heard, don't we? I kind of wish more people got the need to rant, actually. And I do get tired of the hearing the “perspective” lecture, even when it's not aimed at me. I have perspective, as I'm sure most people do. I know I am luckier than most, particularly in light of the tragic suffering and loss that's been going on recently. Complaining doesn't lessen my appreciation for what I have, or take away from the suffering of others. It's just nice to have someone listen and sympathise occasionally, no matter how petty or trivial those complaints might be. It's not about the level of importance, it's just about what's bugging me right now. Let me have my rant and I'll be done. There are very few things more frustrating than feeling dismissed because your problems aren't deemed “big” or worthy enough. Which is why there's so much joy in being around others of a similar disposition, particularly when they share the excitement of starting a sentence with “Do you know what I hate?” Yes! Bring on the ranting!

I realise that my love of misery might make me seem kind of odd, but you know what? I don't care. Okay. I do care. It's hard to give up wanting to be liked, but I am working on caring a little less, anyway. It's part of my new policy to embrace my misery. Ironically, I think mastering that will actually make me happier. Although then I'd have less to complain about. Damn it! I haven't thought this through, have I? I'm going to have to give this a lot more thought...which will almost certainly lead to me over thinking it and that always makes me miserable. Awesome!

Pay Attention to Me! Or don't. That's fine.

So. I haven’t been here for a while, but I’ve been feeling the urge to write something lately so here I am, although I’m not entirely sure what to write about anymore. I’ve covered most of my faults, or at least the ones I’m willing to talk about publicly, so what else is there? I guess I could do a diet update, but even I’m not particularly interested in that, so I’d hardly expect anyone else to be. I miss writing regularly, but I think having a break from it has been a good thing. I'm not sure that many people write or read blogs much anymore, do they? I know I don’t read as many as I used to, so maybe it’s just a bit old school in these days of Twittering and Facebook updating.

I’ve always struggled with the attention seeking aspects of blog writing, anyway. I normally avoid undue attention as much as possible and, if asked, I would say I hate being the centre of attention. But I realise that this isn’t entirely true. I want to be noticed as much as the next person; I’m just very quiet and unassuming about it. It’s more a case of I quite like being on the outskirts of attention, just not right smack in the centre of it. I want to be noticed without me having to draw attention to myself, if that makes sense, which admittedly hardly ever works. And we all go searching for attention in our own ways, don’t we? It’s just that I have a very odd relationship with it. On the one hand I like and need it, obviously, but on the other I don’t assume that all attention is going to be good. In fact, in my mind, the more I put myself out there the more likely it is that someone is going to come along and say something less than positive. How awful would that be?! Of course this has never happened, but don’t doubt the ability of a dyed-in-the-wool pessimist like myself to assume the worst. In fact, blog-wise, all I’ve ever gotten was lovely, like-minded people saying kind and supportive things, so it is an entirely irrational and unfounded fear, but I wouldn't let that stop me. Mostly I just feel like I’m having a constant “Pay attention to me! Don’t look at me! Why aren’t they looking at me?!” conversation with myself. It can be exhausting inside my head; I really must get out of it more often.

Anyway, on the positive side, hardly anyone reads this anymore, which in theory should make me feel less self-conscious about it, but it doesn’t seem to work that way. I now know there may be something worse than getting negative attention – not getting any attention at all. So all this boils down to me, here, writing a blog about writing blogs in an effort to get some sort of attention (hey, it turns out I do have more faults to write about. Awesome.) Not so much ironic as it is pathetic, really. I imagine you feel the much the same way having read right to the end, huh? Sorry about that, but thanks for paying attention.

Where's My F***ing Cake?! Part 3: Danger, Will Robinson!

So, after a fairly “easy” start, I’ve finally stumbled quite spectacularly into the danger zone. That’s the point in every weight loss attempt when I start to feel restless and coveting all that awesome food that I’ve been very virtuous about ignoring up until now. Ironically, it usually coincides with the first signs that the deprivation is actually working. My clothes feel looser, I have more energy, people start to notice that I look “different” in some vague way etc. All these should be good things, which they are, but it’s the people noticing that I struggle with the most. I’ve always had trouble accepting the inevitable “you look so good now” comments that come along with weight loss. I am not disagreeing that fat is ugly, and anyone overweight is going to look better when there’s less of them, but I do struggle with the feeling that no matter what else happens, you’re always going to be more “acceptable” if you’re thin than if you’re fat. Maybe that’s unfair of me, in fact I’m sure it is, but it’s hard to break that mindset. And yeah, I get that it is entirely my issue and people are actually being kind when they comment, but unfortunately a lifetime of dieting has kind of warped my mind when it comes to these things. Anyway, this time around the very mild physical changes also coincided with a sudden influx of online articles about the evils of fat people. Okay, they weren’t really about that, they were mostly about some woman who wrote a blog on the Marie Claire website about how she hates fat people and they’re all disgusting blah blah blah. This apparently created a shit storm amongst Marie Claire readers who were appalled and offended by the article, which in turn spawned a whole lot of other articles about the reaction to the original one. Now the issue for me was not the original article because I don’t read Marie Claire and I wouldn’t have known it existed if it wasn’t for the resulting brouhaha. It wasn’t even about the articles written about the readers reactions or the writer’s inevitable apology. The unfortunate thing for me is my compulsion to read the comments on the follow-up articles which, not surprisingly, mostly consisted of people saying they agree with the original writer and embellishing on the idea that fat people should be shot at birth. Or, you know, words to that affect. Yes, I know I shouldn’t take it personally, and it certainly doesn’t matter what complete strangers on the internet think, but it didn’t help when I was already feeling bad about eating more than I should anyway. And it’s always depressing to be reminded that so many people suck, even when it has nothing at all to do with me. Of course the inevitable irony of feeling bad about my weight is that it only makes me want to eat more. Which I did. And not in that good, 'I’m enjoying my meal so I just don’t care' kind of way. So yeah, all of that is a long-winded way of saying that I’ve been kind of crap at the dieting lately. Although it’s also an odd sort of relief because it was all a bit too easy for a while there, so at least this feels more normal. Oh, and I did get to have some awesome cake before the guilt set in, so that was a bonus.

Happily Unsociable

I have recently uncovered the key to living with social ineptitude that could have saved me countless painful evenings in the company of near-strangers: Just. Say. No. It’s so simple yet so effective; I’m almost embarrassed to admit I haven’t tried it earlier. I stumbled upon this amazing technique when I decided I'd had enough of trying to force myself into being something I’m not (social, entertaining, interesting etc.) so I just wasn't going to bother anymore. It took some practice, and a few false starts, but I'm now quite adept at it. One of the key elements, I’ve discovered, is to offer no excuse. Saying “I’m busy” or “I have something else on” just invites polite questions about the obviously fabulous social event that’s keeping you from this one. A smile and a mildly disappointed look while saying “I’m sorry, I can’t make it” is all that’s required. And the best part is that nine times out of ten no one asks why. Perhaps they don’t ask because they don’t really care if I’m there or not, which is a win-win in my book. Most often I think they don’t ask because it’s assumed the only reason you’d turn down any social invitation is because you had something else to do, which is actually kind of true. They just don’t need to know that the something else is staying home with a good book rather than subjecting myself (and others) to the horror of my attempted socialising. On the very rare occasions that they do ask I’ve taken the boldly honest approach of admitting that I'm just not keen on parties, which most people seem to accept as a valid excuse, at least to my face.

Now I’m kicking myself for all those years of going along to things when I really didn't want to, or thinking up excuses and then feeling guilty about them. Don’t get me wrong, I do very much enjoy going out and spending time with my friends and family, and I even enjoy meeting new people, I just don't enjoy the big party or group dinner with people I don’t know – or worse, with people I do know, but don’t have anything much in common with. It’s not personal, I’m sure they’re all very lovely and interesting people, but I’ve never been capable of small talk and getting-to-know-you conversation, and I just can’t be arsed feeling guilty about it anymore. And while I appreciate the kindness and attempted inclusiveness, most of the time I really am happy to be “left out.” I do think a lot of it comes down to age; it’s so much easier being a dull homebody in my 40s than it ever was in my 20s. It’s a myth that all young people like going out, partying, getting drunk etc. I never did. Of course I do wish I could look back fondly on a wild and crazy youth, but I've never been inclined to do anything particularly wild or crazy, even then. I imagine that to some, much more sociable people, the idea of always choosing a quiet night in over a “fun” party is unthinkable, possibly even a little sad, and maybe they’re right. The main difference now is that I don't much care what people think anymore. Middle age is kind of awesome like that.