All posts filed under: Insights

How To Get That Fresh New Year Feeling All Year Round

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It’s now four days into the new year and that lovely feeling where everything is new and possibilities are endless is quickly starting to slink away into the dusty corner where it lives for 360 days of the year. Something about the simple progression of the four numbers we write at the end of the date imparts us all with a fresh sense of wonderment, opportunity and imagination for what we can achieve, not just in the coming months but in our entire lifetime. In the real world, nothing has changed since I went to bed on December 31st and woke up on January 1st. I still live in the same house, sleep in the same bed and eat the same food. The sun still rises and sets at around the same time and people all over the world still face the same trials and challenges that they faced the day before. So what is it about the new year that makes us so hopeful for change and personal betterment? I think it’s because we need this artificial shot in the …

Turned 30. Still, It Could Be Worse

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I just turned 30. In the week leading up to my birthday I put a colour in my hair, got a facial, and started wearing suncream every day like the beauty magazines advise. All of a sudden my DIY moisturisers (aloe vera, olive oil) just didn’t seem to be doing the job, and my knees hurt when I went for a run. Not to mention when I played netball against girls half my age. The furrow in my brow has signed a long-term lease and I am officially ineligible to apply for those competitions aimed at “youth” pursuing artistic or community projects. But I can’t be 30! When I look in the mirror I still see the same face I had when I was at uni, the same one I had when I got married. That girl wasn’t 30. I haven’t even learnt how to correctly apply my own makeup, or change a car tyre. Isn’t that something 30 year olds should know? What’s more, I’m not convinced that 30 is the new 20. Rather, …

I can see clearly now the dishes are clean

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I’m starting to think that a little bit of hot water and a little bit of suds does more than just get egg off a frypan. In fact, the waters of your kitchen sink hold deeper truths than a Dalai Lama quote on facebook. As dirty dishes are immersed and sparkling clean ones are raised up, they reveal much more than simply what you had for dinner. It’s WHO had what for dinner, and HOW. A microcosm of life at this particular instant in time. Take my sink for example. Your standard one-large-one-small-plus-drainage-area kitchen sink, in your standard early-1990s-light-peach-with-cream-lino colour palette. Each day it gets filled with small, brightly coloured plastic bowls, of which I clearly don’t own enough because I am forever washing the same ones. Floating under those are several small, multi-coloured plastic spoons, some with rabbits on the handles and others with heat-sensing rubber technology. Into the murky broth goes the stick part of the Bamix, some Tupperware containers, and I like to finish it off with a nice cheese grater or potato masher. If I’m feeling celebratory, I might chuck in some wine glasses (exaggeration, of course I wouldn’t actually chuck them), but that’s a rare occasion. There …

Nasty Nostalgia And The New Life Crisis

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It can strike at any time. When you’re driving in your car. Or, for me, more often around 8.30 at night when I’m elbow deep in washing up water, while the microwave dings to announce that my frozen peas are ready and the washing machine fill cycle gurgles away in the background. Nostalgia. A wistful desire to return to a former time or place. In my case, to the time before my gorgeous baby boy came along and altered not only my physical state, but my emotional, financial and social states as well. I’ve heard plenty of parents say that becoming a mother or father has changed them for the better. It has helped them to realise that they are not the most important person in the world, or at least not anymore. It makes them less selfish, more patient, more generous; which are all lovely attributes in a human being. And all this from simply spending less time thinking about their own wellbeing, and more time looking after their child’s. Well, you might as …

Blessings Can Come In The Strangest Packages

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This week some strange things happened in our house. Not in a ghost-in-the-attic, Round The Twist kind of way. Each event was not even particularly remarkable on its own, but coming as they did, one after another, they eventually made me sit up and take notice. It began when my office phoned to let me know about some extra work I might be interested in. After hours, they said. Possibly able to be done from my home computer, they said. As much or as little as I could fit in around my day-to-day mothering duties. I was thrilled and accepted right away. Not exactly mind-blowing, but still enough to make me a wee bit excited for the extra money I would be contributing to our single income family. On Monday evening an informal jam session had been arranged with one of the singers from our church band. Just a casual practice at our place to go over a song that needed work. Our guest arrived and let herself in, walking into the kitchen carrying a …

Crossing Over

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I’ve crossed over. Not in the creepy John Edwards TV show psychic sense, but in the child-becoming-adult sense. I know, I know. Didn’t I pass puberty about 15 years ago? But it seems there was one last bastion of childhood still remaining. Now I am even an adult when it comes to Christmas. My first Christmas with my son officially marks the end of me as one of the children on Christmas Day, having gifts and food lovingly showered upon me by my parents and grandparents, with not much needed from me in return. I always gave presents too, of course, but I belonged to the youngest generation, the one at the end of the line. Now I am a parent, and my son has taken my place, in fact the place of all my siblings, in receiving the fun, joy and deliciousness that we have prepared for him. This year we hosted Christmas at our house, which further cemented the transition of my husband and I from beneficiary to benefactor. We had a huge …

When Your Newborn Isn’t New Anymore

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I feel fine. My skin has stopped glowing and my boobs have almost shrunk back down to their usual size. I don’t have bags under my eyes and my nails are starting to fall apart for no reason again. My pregnancy hormones seem to have now fully retreated whence they came. The truth is, I’ve been feeling this way for about a month now, but sort of wishing I wasn’t. I know this sounds like I’m trying to have my cake and eat it too, but it’s a sobering thought to realise that my life has stopped being consumed by my new baby, and, like a gyroscope that always rights itself, I have now absorbed my son into my life so much so that I can’t remember what it was like before he was here. While this is clearly a wonderful feeling, and I am relieved to have got to this stage, I’m also a bit sad that the daze of pregnancy and new-bornness is over. It affords you special status, where you can be …

A Mother Of A Decision

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I don’t often receive nasty comments about the direction of my life. Not being in jail or on drugs or having a suitcase full of hateful ex-boyfriends, I’d have to say my life is pretty good. Sure, I’m not going to win the Nobel Prize for Chemistry tomorrow and I haven’t written a bestseller (yet), but I think I’m doing OK at this thing called life. Not so! I found out this week, when two women from my past just couldn’t help but share their disdain at my latest endeavour, if you can call it that: the birth of my first child. “What a waste [me] having a baby.” Pow! If that doesn’t knock you sideways you must be built like an Olympic weightlifter. I didn’t know that putting my reproductive organs to good use would actually cause the rest of my mind, body and soul to wither away into nothingness. Not to mention render invisible any great feats achieved during my first 29 years of life. I guess if I had read more of …

Poll Position

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In China there are elections, but all the candidates are from the same party. In Afghanistan, voters face physical intimidation and bribery before they even get to the polls, and corruption and electoral fraud once their votes are cast. In Fiji the military leader cancels and postpones elections according to his own will. In Australia last weekend, voters were asked to attend a polling station of their choice, at the time of their choice, select the candidate of their choice, and cast their ballot for the federal election. Unfortunately, the mere privilege of having free elections appears lost on many voters as they are forced to give up half an hour of their Saturday to perform this duty once every 3 years or so. The contempt which is shown towards our electoral process only serves to highlight a self-centredness we rarely acknowledge. “Let’s get this shit over with”, one wife said to her husband as they walked in through the school gates. Disgruntled constituents arrived to see moderately lengthy queues, scrunched up their faces and …