RuOK

Today in Australia, it's national RuOK Day.  A day for asking the questions, for listening to the answers, for checking in.

I believe everyone has a story.

Your story might be jubilant or tragic, dull or explosively exciting.  Whatever your story, it is unique to you and special because of this.  We all stand along side each other in the cafe waiting for coffees, in the queue at the bus stop, at the supermarket checkouts, in the school yard.  We sit along side each other in our office cubicles, at the movies, on the beach.  Yet we co-exist without being aware of what's going on in each others life.  We might know the surface - "oh she's a (insert) and she knows (insert) and she's really (insert)", but often we really truly don't know each other and who we are.  We just know the person we're prepared to share and sometimes that's not a true reflection of who we truly are.

We're the most socially connected generation, yet how often do we genuinely connect, and share our good stuff, our crap stuff and our stories?  I'm guessing not often.

So today is a day to ask each others stories, and to listen.  And for some a chapter in their story may be dark today.  So dark that they can't see the light in the rest of their story.  It's all clouded over and messed up, and they think that's how their story is going to end up.

I had a time when I didn't feel so ok, and I knew if someone asked, I would have told them,  but I didn't want to be proactive and forthcoming, I just wanted to be asked.

Today is the day to ask.  Because by doing so you may be giving the gift of attention, of focus, and of non judgement.

RuOK?

For more information, please do go here and find out more rather than just my garble.

And lets not just make this an Australian thing or a one day a year thing.

Beds are burning.

When I was a girl in New Zealand, the smell of smoke burning meant either Dad was having a burn off  off some grass cuttings in our back yard which tended to be most Saturdays.  Including the one on my wedding day he struck up near the window where I'd hung my wedding dress.  The smell of smoke also reminds me of cold winters early evenings with fires lit ready for settling in for the night as the frosts settled crisply on the grass.

The smell of smoke had nice, comforting associations, of home, of homeliness.

But then I moved to Australia in the middle of a long draught and the smell of smoke suddenly turned sinister.  And the "what to do in the event of an earthquake" in the inside cover of NZ's Yellow pages, were replaced curiously with "What to do in the event of a bush fire" in Australia.

Living beside a national park and the smell of smoke in the air always made us catch our breath a moment until we realised the smoke was burning in a far off national park.  Which made us catch our breath a little more to think what kind of fire must be burning for the smoke to reach us.

One Saturday, in 2009, not long after we arrived in this country, we watched in disbelief and horror as lives were lost in the most terrifying situation with fires racing faster than those who tried to run, could run.  A normal Saturday doing normal Saturday stuff were suddenly consumed with tragedy for many.

Parts of my city are burning tonight.  It's been a hot and windy day.  It's early September.  It's too early. We can see a smokey haze in the air, the smell of smoke is thick and our sunset was orange.  The predictions are bad for this summer with all the signs pointing in the wrong direction.  Suburbs are burning, fires are crossing roads, 15 metre high flames are hungrily chasing dry grass and scrub.  And amongst it, houses are burning, and hero's are trying to stop it.

This is Australia and this is what the smell of smoke means.

If you're at risk of fire tonight or tomorrow or this summer, be safe.

Role Models

In life we often look to people who inspire us, who we aspire to, and think to ourselves, "I'd like to be like "her/him/them".

Sometimes we don't have to look far at all to find role models.  I see them in the school yard as mums greet their children or kiss them goodbye, I see them when my friends lovingly describe their husbands or children.  I see them in my parents-in-law with a love filled 50 year old marriage.  I see them in my online world with clever successful writerly friends, generous mentors, and battlers who keep trying.

I see them in the friendly butchers who dice my chicken thighs even though the shop is busy.  I see them in my lovely blog readers who kindly leave comments.  I see them in friends posting gorgeous images on instgram of places they've run, sights they've seen, clever and stunningly beautiful.  I even talked about it once before here with my lovely bakery people 

Role models provide a motivation and an urgency to be different, to try harder, to be more, to be less.  We learn lessons, we change behaviours.

My neighbour in her early 70's lives alone.  After a year of living next door to her, I still don't know her name after that initial mention of it 12 months ago.  What is that - there's a time when you have the chance to ask again but once that door is slammed shut - what do you do to find out?  Steal some of her mail, get one of my kids to ask, ...own up?  Worse, she always calls out a cheery "hello Lisa" to me.

She's had some work done on her place recently.  Some wooden fence railings and decking were replaced.  Today I saw her  - 'Hello Lisa!", "hello....", she had set up an elaborate painting system with long fence railings stretched out over her drive way, blue paint dripping onto the ground, paint brush in her hands.  She was getting busy and painting her fence railings for when the nice young men came back later this week.  Often she's out gardening, I scurry past my own garden death zone as she nurtures hers.  She is purposeful, she is energetic, she is in her 70's and not restrained by that.

I'm guilty of making excuses, for being lazy, for being a victim.  But I only need to look out over my fence to get the motivation I need to be none of these things.

We are surrounded by role models - who are yours?

Be gentle on yourself

Do you sometimes have periods when you feel a little less able to handle the normal'ness of life.  When normally you can exist satisfactorily (notice I didn't say "happily" here) amongst the racing, the priorities, the homework, the exercise, the work, the nagging, the arguments, the games of handball, the washing folding, the meal planning, the meal preparing, the meal cleaning upping and that a sit down at the end of a day with a choccy biccy and half a TV programme are enough.  Before the cycle starts again the next day.

But do you sometimes have times when you can't cope as well.  When your voice gets raised more than normal, when you huff and puff a little more than you should, when you don't exercise as much as what you could.  When you just feel a little annoyed that life is kind of like this?  And that you enviously think of others who can sit down with the 6 pm news, or  laugh a little more?

This has been a slow burn for me.  No outback epiphany.  No dramatic drama.  Just a slow dawn of realisation.

Now I won't be a victim, nor lazy.  And if somethings not right on my patch then it's up to me to sort it. To do a little analysis.  And find a solution.

My calm times of the day are when I work, quietly, contentedly, my brain overflowing with ideas and things to do.  I think of a pipeline of "stuff to do/read/write about", and it's always chokker block. It's my peaceful time.  And then my babies and their madness and chaos come home, and things start to unravel a little.  This is my transition moment, when I need to get my Personal A game on.  When I need to look after myself and be gentle on myself so I can be how I need to be.

It's working a treat.  Quietly to myself I call it Project Me.  It's when I am my priority.  If I am calm and at peace, then life is calm and at peace.  And lordy, even homework gets done with only some gentle murmurs of dissent.  It's when my boxes are ticked - and the boxes aren't things like "shirts ironed - tick", or "dunnies cleaned - tick", but more like being prepared, less clutter, regular exercise, more interesting reading, more career productivity, more loving ....

It's an interesting exercise in self awareness and control for me.  And for someone who rattles through life a bit, it couldn't have come at a better time.

What do you do to help you deal with life when you're not feeling like you can?

What's in your Project Me boxes?

Travel Gripes

So typical of me not to write for over a week because I'm in an amazing part of the country with dodgey internet reception , and instead of writing about THAT, I instead choose to have a whinge.

But it's my blog and I need to get it out.  And then I'll do the nice stuff because it really, honestly, truly was an amazing experience....

You know how when you're travelling, you're away from your normality and there are just some things that make you really cranky and make you all huffy and sigh'y and give people the evil eye?  Please all agree... well for me it's.....

..cabin luggage.  And not mine because I conscientiously do a head count that we all have our entitled 1 piece of cabin luggage per person allowance (and that a handbag and camera bag, and piece of rolled up art don't count).  We don't cross the line, we follow the rules.

So how is it that some people don't and that they never get busted for it?

We're flying back from Uluru a few days ago, and it was a 'mare of a checkin, think long queues, people pushing in (husband may have made a small scene with the pusher-in'ers - I'm not the only Scene Creator in my family), and of course, the luggage belt broken down.  We were at the end of a week long road trip, our bags were many, including two boxes of left over conference materials (we'd tagged our roadie onto a work conference thingee) that I had sellotaped together (not masking tape, but thin white sellotape from the hotel porters desk), and an akubra hat that hung down my neck threatening to choke me each time I hoisted up my assorted of shoulder bags/camera bags/snack bags/rolled art/ the bag with the leftover breakfast stuff - have any of you ever travelled with a 1/3 box of weetbixs?  I wasn't sure why I was either.

But somehow amongst the heat and the chaos and the flies, we manage to condense all our  bags into the "legal" amount of cabin luggage we were allowed to take on.

So you can imagine my dark thoughts when I saw a tourist getting on with a roll-on bag with another bag attached to it, and a hefty backpack on his back, the rest of his family had the same.  "They've got about 15 pieces between them", I stage whisper to the husband.  We both tut-tut and glare at them.  Like as in the death stare.  There is also lots of deep sighing from our seats as well.

This is a shared passion.  Travelling through the States we could never understand the rush to get on flights until that time we eventually got on with nowhere to put our bags as every inch of overhead locker space was jammed with black hard cabin bags from those that had pushed ahead of us.  And as soon as the overhead locker hoggers had their bags safely claiming that space, they always needed something out of it.  Always.  We'd just sit and glare at them "Get your pens/books/whatever's out before you put them up like we do!"  Simple?

We were flying home from India, we had that jaded been on a zillion flights, seen sights we'd never forget, had cow hair and poo wrapped around the wheels of our suitcase kind of travel fatigue.  It was a late night flight.  We got on, shoved our bags up, including a much loved expensive piece of rolled up art , put our eye masks on the top of our heads for easy access and settled down.
And then they arrived.  It looked like a school trip of very excited teenage Indian boys.  I'm guessing for some of them it was their first flight.  And those who had packed their cabin luggage for them hadn't flown before either.  There was mountains of it.  "This is going to get interesting", we thought.  And they proceeded to cram and jam, and push and shove until they got their monstrous amount of cabin luggage in the lockers.  Until the last boy approached our seats..  We'd watched him.  He'd spent way too much time chatting while the others were pushing and squashing.  There was nowhere left.  So he left his bag in the aisle.  See, we knew it was their first flight.  The air steward came along, wagged her finger at him and told him it couldn't stay there.

So he opened our full locker and thought "I'll give it a red hot go".

He started to push and shove and squash and squeeze his large solid bags into our almost full space.  "Hey mate, you can't, it's full, we have a piece of art up there, go find somewhere else", we both told him.  He wandered off down the plane, and then back to us.  And gave it another go.  My husband may or may not have raised his voice at the poor kid at that stage.

I didn't blame him, I blamed his parents.  Still I've been known to wear jeans over shorts and running shoes instead of sandals in sub tropical heat to bring the weight on my cabin luggage down like I did here...

Whats your pet travel gripe?  You can share mine if you like!

It's happened

I know we get confronted by reality in our mirrors every day, but we can buffer the pain by (a) walking  away from the mirror (b) telling ourselves we look this shite as it's early in the morning or (c) layering on some makeup to lessen the ravages of time.  My preference is for a little of each.

But sometimes, when you've left the safety of your home and you're out there exposed in the world, you can get slapped with reality with no defences to soften the blow.  And this happened to me.

I was just having a bit of a ho hum kind of Sunday, stuck at home surrounded by jobs to do, homework to nag about.  In a fit of pique and deciding that although cricket is something we all enjoy, I'd rather go on some "important errands" than head to the nets with the family.  So with no thought of what I looked like (crap and middle aged), I headed to the busy'ness of Manly on an unseasonally stunning day. (Seriously Winter, I wouldn't mind one good burst of cold weather just once this year!).

I was looking for a squishy hat to take away with me to the Outback this week (yes, I know, more on that later).   It seems every time we travel I squash my solid'ish nice hats into bags and they never, ever revert back to their original shape.  I have a collection of squished unwearable hats, so I thought I'd be sensible.

Manly is a jam packed full of surf shop, name a label and it's there.  Perfect I thought.  So I started trawling the shops.  Hat shopping is not something you need help with.  It's a simple case of point me in the direction of the soft squishy hats, a mirror, then get back to the counter and continue texting, thanks, I'll be fine.

But one young barely teenage staff member took an interest in me, and kept thrusting hats in my direction.  She got me to try a hat on that I'd discounted because it made me look too middle aged and frumpy.  I tried it on "nah, not so keen on this", she kept insisting, and as it always happens with me, I started reconsidering.  If I pulled up the front flop bit, and put my mirror face on, it wasn't that bad.

"Do you like this one the best then?, I asked her.

"I do, it's more suited for mature people, that other hat is for younger women".

*Pause*

Did she just call me MATURE?  She DID.  She called me  MATURE! Have I crossed the line where I can't shop at surf shops unless it's for my kids or niece?  Am I MATURE????

With my mouth pursed like a cats bottom, I politely put the offending item down and walked out of the shop never to return again.

I've always promised myself that I would not expose my ledge of flesh in crop tops, nor wear high topped denim undies, and when the day comes that I should cut off the birds nest in my hair and get a sensible bob or "older ladies cut" then I would.  I will not be mutton dressed up like lamb.  But no waaay am I there yet.

It's ok to see the date on the calendar, to have that quiet shock in the sanctity of home, but it hurts more when Reality politely taps you on the shoulder in a busy surf shop on a sunny day.  I'm sorry Reality, but I am not yet ready to welcome you into my life.

Have you ever been confronted by your age or do you ignore it like me?

post script: That's not me in the photo in case you were wondering.  And age has absolutely nothing to do with that.

Life Stories

Everyone has a story.  Sometimes in my work I am beyond lucky to interview some fabulously interesting people, and sometimes I'm lucky enough to interview some everyday people.  And the thing they share in common is that everyone has a story and there is always something interesting in their stories.

We just have to take the time to listen and to question and to uncover the gems that make up their story and that have created the richness in their lives.

I was lucky to go as a "plus one" with my clever friend Sarah to a morning tea hosted by the National Mental Health Commissioners as part of the Commission's Contributing Life Conversations Project.  It was a busy day in Sydney for the blogging/writing community with quite a few functions on.

But this one was a little pocket of thoughtfulness and sharing, of connection, and of listening.  There were stories shared, intimacies revealed.  This wasn't about goody bags or networking.  This was about genuineness and stretching our thinking.

Of making time to really talk and to really truly listen.

I have a couple of running buddies, and those that know me, know I am notorious for running on my own, in my bubble, head phones on.  But finally I have realised the pleasure from running and chatting.  In particular one of my friends and I solve life's problems and many of our own as we run.  I look forward to sharing.  I look forward to listening.  It's all about being in the moment.  (and don't you think this is an expression we all use but sometimes haven't experienced?).  I do when I'm in the bush running with her.

That is our space.  And we connect.
I'm a shocking small talker.  I don't know how to.  I'm either silent and introverted, or blurting out my deepest darkest secrets as the person I'm talking at, looks nervously around clutching his or her glass and sausage roll, frantically looking for an escape route or person.

But talking, as in really talking and really truly listening fits somewhere in between.

My eldest is transitioning from kids conversations to more mature ones.  He's a little shy too.  "Just ask questions buddy", I told him. "People like talking about themselves and it makes them feel good that you've asked and that you're interested".


We just need to find that space, take the time, ask the questions, share our stories, and listen, and those little pearls that make that person special will be uncovered.

And we'll find that not all conversations are the same.  Some can be just a little more special than others.

When did you last have a special conversation