Possibly too much information

I know, a long time since I last posted. Can we not talk about that please?

Career0ne just sent me this personality profile. It doesn't take long, and was eerily accurate for both Lovergirl and I. Try it yourself.

Apparently I'm best in project type work where I'm in complete control and people will leave me to get on with the job. L is best in jobs where she uses her verbal skills and has authority, such as 'counsellor' or 'minister of religion'!

Me at work:

This is a person who can be very enthusiastic about an environment where they have a strong level of knowledge and where they can take hold of a project, own it completely, work on it from its initial inception and pursue it until a successful conclusion has been reached. Ideally, such projects are short-term in nature and are within an environment where they are an "expert" and feel very competent. Otherwise, they can become pessimistic, critical and doubtful, although, in the early stages of achieving the project, their enthusiasm and energy will keep them buoyant through some of the difficult moments.

A tendency to be so focused on quality can result in some time-management issues, and they can move between being highly distractible and wanting to interact with others, to then wanting to focus 100% on their work, to the point where they resent interruption. The key motivators are also varied. On the one hand, they need and love interaction with people; it is important for them to feel that they are a significant and well-regarded part of the team. On the other hand, they also need to have the opportunity to focus on their work and pursue it, preferably without interruption.

The need to feel secure and to have sufficient data and skills makes them, at times, somewhat pedantic about collecting information and spending quite some time in the preparation phases. Then again, another aspect is that they enjoy being in an environment which is very busy, ever changing, allowing them to work on issues that are short-term and which still allow them to juggle many priorities and be responsive to ever-changing challenges. Under pressure, this can lead them to over commit and take on too much.

Their work style can vary considerably. Ideally, they will enjoy a situation where they are completely on top of the challenges that might arise, familiar with the type of work that they are responsible for and experienced enough to ensure successful outcomes. They are most suited to short-term projects for which they can have total ownership and which require attention to detail, precision, awareness and the pursuit of high quality outcomes. The environment should also allow them to have a number of different projects on the go that can, once completed, be discussed with colleagues. The interaction aspect of their work is important, however, it is just as important for them to control when that interaction occurs.

These individuals can be quite volatile. Despite their genuine team orientation, it is not unusual to find them becoming quite annoyed and reactive when they find themselves under pressure or interrupted for what they perceive to be trivial reasons. They can also be quite pedantic, needing much detail and support, a great deal of time to get on top of their challenges and reassurance that they have the capacity to achieve what they have been set. When they feel on top of their projects and when they are in "people mode", you will find a very warm, enthusiastic and compassionate individual who's good intentions can override the irritation when forced to consider what they perceive as trivial issues.

Summary

An individual with this type of temperament is a scientist for the people, enjoys contact with others outside the workplace and prefers projects that can benefit society in the long run and provide security for them.

Vanity fair

I've had my hair cut - my first cut since the babies were born! - and I've bought new glasses. I look really cute.

I'm finally into my old clothes. I'm planning to breastfeed until the children are, oh, twenty or so - it's a great weight management strategy. I'm eating like a horse (only not so much of the grass). I'm back to my pre-baby weight, but strangely, things seem to be, erm, not where I left them. You remember the 'pencil test' from high school? You know, where you put a pencil under your breasts and if the pencil stays there, your breasts are too saggy? Yeah, well, I fail the pencil test. I always thought, somewhat smugly, that one had either perky breasts or saggy breasts. Apparently not. Is this too much detail for you?

And another thing. I seem to have rather more tummy than I started out with. From the front I look fine, but in profile there's a (how shall I put this?) womanly softness to the abdomen.

I've borrowed 'What not to wear' by Trinny and Susanna. Apparently I have to get some princess line dresses, wrap tops and flat fronted boot-cut pants.

And I think I'm going to need some industrial-strength bras. And maybe some of those large flesh tone underpants with diamond insert support control panels.

We will return to normal viewing in a moment

Two o'clock in the morning and I'm jolted awake again by another dream about the lesbian-mothers-of-wrongfully-born-twins case, my third rude awakening in three nights. In my dream they have been trapped in my childhood laundry since their children were born, which is why they are suing. I suppose that might accurately represent their view on how the situation feels. Tonight - just a few minutes ago - I was the unnamed mother in question, and was just about to be chloroformed.

There's been a lot of internatter about the case, and the bloggers I respect have been much more thoughtful than my initial explosion. The Muriels have been frustrated by how the ignorant hordes have picked up and run with the fact that the parents are lesbians. Over at Larvateus Prodeo there's a long string of mostly sane comments on the issue. Both of them, and a few of the less-hysterical newspaper articles, focus on the fact that this is a simple and rather dull medical negligence case, which happens to be newsworthy because the parents being lesbians taps into people's prejudices about same-sex parents.

So for sensible, thoughtful comment, click on those links and off you go. I want to work out why I am so affected by this, why it wakes me up night after night. It may not be pretty. It's my thoughts and emotions and gut feelings, okay? A proper teenage journal entry. Then I'm going to leave it alone, because really, who am I to comment?

There seem to be four issues that disturb me.

There's the lesbian thing; not in the way the media is beating it up, but that they are lesbians is relevant for me. I've realised that I do expect a higher standard of parenting from lesbians. I'm not sure whether it's gender stereotyping (of course two women are going to be better than a woman and a man) or a natural inclination to believe that one's own family structure is the best, in the same way I would believe that a Christian upbringing was best if I was Christian, or a traditional Greek upbringing if I was Greek. I'm disappointed to realise that lesbian parents are human, get overwhelmed and say they have 'lost their ability to love.' I'm making a judgement, of course, that what is reported in the paper represents less-than-ideal parenting. Maybe once I've had twins for three years I won't feel quite so opinionated.

In the last couple of months, three of the lesbian families in my extended social circle have broken up - two of them quite amicably, one with great acrimony. In all of the cases the (single) child was about three. I suppose I fantasised that, well, we have to put so much work into getting pregnant that it somehow creates a more solid base, more realistic expectations of childrearing and the pressures on a relationship that it creates. Now I wonder whether the difficulty of getting pregnant actually can create a fantasy world, a belief that everything will be wonderful if only we get pregnant.

I thought we were going to demonstrate a brave new world, a model of women-led families that would demonstrate the potential of families for listening, caring, being co-operative, child-focussed and nurturing. All of those derided 'feminine qualities' would lead to a better sort of family and thence to a better society. Gentle, secure, non-bullying boys and confident young women leading the next generation.

God, I should have written a novel! A science fiction one along the lines of 'The Shore of Women'.

That's only the first part. The second aspect that I wonder about is the medical negligence part. Maybe the doctor made a mistake or maybe he didn't, the courts will decide. But I wonder about the expectations we have of superhuman infallibility in doctors. When I make a mistake, a typo gets published in a magazine, or a bunch of trainees goes away with a misremembered statistic from a journal article sloppily cited. But a doctor can never, ever make a mistake. Obviously i don't want doctors making mistakes on me, but isn't some human error inevitable, as long as we have humans doing the job? Perhaps the doctors have brought this on themselves, with centuries of marketing themselves as superior to all other forms of healing. But it seems a bit harsh that someone can have a written document expressing one set of wishes, then articulate a change of plans minutes before they go under anaesthetic, and expect that that will be communicated all the way down to the lab.

I don't know how we would resolve this, practically. If we accept that some fallibility is inevitable, does it pave the way for sloppy work generally? is the only thing that keeps doctors practicing effectively the threat of punishment if they are found out? Yes, in some cases, I'd say. But should the test of a 'reasonable person' (I'm not a lawyer so I'm not exactly sure how this works) be not, 'Would I have made this mistake in this particular circumstance?' but rather 'Would I have the same mistake rate - is this a reasonable rate of error to expect from a competent human?' Obviously this would radically change medicine. Imagine if your doctor said, 'This operation has an eighty percent chance of success and a one percent chance that I will make a mess of it.' I wish I could find out doctors' mistake rates so I could truly make informed decisions. How many times has my ob crushed a baby's head with forceps? How does this compare with other obs? How many incorrect decisions to caesarean section - or an incorrect decision to not? How many people have been paralysed by my anaesthetist's epidurals? The risk, they say, is one in 100,000 - what if all of those ones have been created by my anaesthetist?

Okay, I'm halfway through. I haven't got any answers, only questions.

Next,the idea of wrongful birth offends me deeply. In a concept I've just discovered, again in The Age comment by Sushi Das, I'm 'morally dumbfounded'.

In his new book, The Happiness Hypothesis, psychologist Jonathon Haidt from the University of Virginia argues morals are tied to religion and politics. He explores the idea of "moral dumbfounding" — when people feel strongly that there is something wrong but cannot explain why. He says morality is driven by two things: moral intuition, based on behaviour driven by emotions that evolved before we had language; and moral judgement, which came when we were able to articulate why something was right or wrong.

Moral dumbfounding, Dr Haidt says, comes when moral judgement fails to come up with a convincing explanation for what moral intuition has decided.

So, I 'just know' that the idea of 'wrongful birth' is wrong. Unless, I suppose, I wanted to prosecute a case myself, against my parents? Should a person be able to decide for themselves their birth was wrongful?I won't follow that particular rabbit hole. Back to the point - I'm trying to get my 'moral judgement' to express itself. I wonder how any parents could subject their children to that. It's like that bad Demi Moore movie that asks 'Would you have sex with a man for a million dollars?' Would you tell your child s/he shouldn't exist for $400,000? Being diagnosed as clinically infertile, I understand I'm biased, and prone to the delusion that a child is a blessing. And if I was carrying a child with a significant disability (and maybe I am, we elected not to have amniocentesis, about which I have occasional anxieties), I would want to know and make a decision about whether or not to keep the foetus.

I feel some pressure to support them simply because they are lesbians. That disapproving of bringing a case like this is tantamount to saying 'lesbians shouldn't be parents.'

On the other hand (there's always an 'other hand' when I'm being honest), if someone had specified a maximum of two embryos, and got three, then I might think they had a case...triplets are hard. So go figure. Maybe I'm just inconsistent.

But I can't imagine ever saying 'I've lost the ability to love'. Not over having a healthy child. Maybe if I was captured and tortured, that might turn me off the human race a bit. But maybe that's a bit of misreporting.

But if you didn't want the second (or third) child, why not give it up for adoption? Not necessarily to a straight family, which is what the rednecks are calling for, but to a nice same-sex couple who don't usually have access to adoption? Maybe to a couple of gay boys who don't even have the option of using IVF clinics? Then I suppose you could just sue for the extra inconvenience of having a multiple pregnancy (how much would each street-chuck be worth, I wonder? and the extra tiredness - I could get compensation for all the extra blog entries I was too exhausted to write, not to mention the hours and hours of well-paid consulting I didn't take on. A few more dollars for the extra stretch marks and saggy boobs and you're done.)

'Giving it up for adoption' seems to be positioned as a right wing response, but I'm not sure why. Maybe because it's about adapting to the society as it is, rather than changing society to meet the needs of the people in question.
Then (I'm going to stop in a moment, I promise) there's the price. I think that's a straight-out case of envy on my part. They can't support two kids on $120,000? My god, how are we going to survive? I'm the primary wage earner and Lovergirl is going to be a student finishing her doctorate for the next two years. If they can get $400,000, why can't I? Hmm...maybe I can...

As a few people at larvateus prodeo commented, from a compensation perspective, how would you ever separate out how much of the chaos and overwhelm is due to having one child, and how much is due to there being two? Some twin parents (admittedly not the majority) have told me that after the hell of the first six weeks, they found two actually easier - better at settling themselves at night, and less demanding of attention as they have each other to interact with.

Finally, I think I'm having a straight out illogical mother-bear response. I confessed to Lovergirl, 'I feel like someone is telling our twins they are unwanted.' Said Lovergirl, sensibly, 'But they're not.' They're not unwanted, and in my case at least, twins are definitely not a devastating accident. I feel like I've won the baby lottery! Although all this bile about lesbian parents has been unleashed by the case, I don't think it's new, and I am optimistic that it's changing. Our babies are going to be noisy, and exhausting, and expensive, and put strains on our relationship that I can't even imagine. I am delighted to be having them, and anxious to meet them, and concerned about the state of the planet we are dumping on them. We've cancelled our tickets to Italy, and I've dropped out of film school, and Mum's in Bali this very moment on a holiday Lovergirl and I had organised for ourselves six months ago, before we got pregnant. If it had been a singleton pregnancy, we still would have gone. Life is never going to be the same again. And that's okay.

No title

<--Lovergirl and me at a ballroom dancing competition. There, you learn something new every day.

I have a friend, let's call her Karina, from the North Coast. She was our ballroom dancing instructor when we lived there. Three weeks ago her husband Ry broke his neck in a rugby accident. He's now quadriplegic. He's been helicoptered up here for rehab, she's moved up and is looking for a wheelchair accessible house to rent and the four year old daughter has been flown to New Zealand to stay with her grandparents for this first crisis period.

I don't know Ry so well. One of the things I like about straight friends is that they don't come as a package deal - it's perfectly acceptable to have a friendship based on 'girls' nights' and not really exchange more than a 'hi, howrya going?' as their partner heads out for his own activity. (or, in the case of friends with kids, busily tucks them in while absentmindedly kissing his partygoing wife goodbye). So I never really spent any time with Ry, although he struck me as a good, straightforward, decent bloke.

Lovergirl and I took Karina out for dinner last Saturday night, with a couple of other friends. She took a few hours off and organised a close friend of Ry's to sit by his bed. It was an intense night, with Karina fluctuating between being wildly, hysterically amused by very mediocre anecdotes, and angry. Angry with the hospital, with the social worker (who does sound incompetent), with Centrelink, with the doctors' complete lack of social skills ('Oh, didn't we mention? No, he's probably not going to be able to swallow independently ever again' and the usual complete inability to introduce themselves before they start prodding and poking and making acronyms at the charge nurse).

In the weeks since the accident, two things have struck me. (I wish I was a more subtle writer so these would not sound like banal insights from some self-published self-help book, accompanied by a photo of a constipated kitten or whatever.)

One is that it's enough to live a life that doesn't have any major disasters in it. It doesn't have to be amazing. I just have to avoid the really big abysses (I spend a lot of time struggling with a sense of failure. Does anyone else ever get that?). And if this baby doesn't happen, well, that's not a big abyss. Just a different life path. (I'm serious, not trying to cheer myself up. I was offered some more film work yesterday, and while I said 'I'm booked til June - I'll let you know after that,' what I meant was, 'I have to wait and see if this baby sticks.' Being a filmmaker - that's not such an odious alternative to having a family).

The second thing was just the privilege of watching the intensity of their love for each other. Karina talks about Ry with so much pride, and planning for a future with him, even though those plans have taken a radical shift and that future looks very different from anything she's ever imagined. And that (okay, get your vomit bags out now) a great relationship is a rare thing. A relationship where you think your partner is sexy, and you can imagine them being sexy when they're eighty, and they're smart, and funny, and relaxing, and generous, and you are both healthy...I've spent a bit of time appreciating the small things, in the past couple of weeks.

My career in fillums

<--underside of Story Bridge

I haven't told you about the sequel to Sigh, mainly because I've been too busy doing it. When I rang to say I wouldn't be doing the short film after all, the Project Officer said, 'A producer has just pulled out of another one, do you want to have a look at that?' Might as well, I thought.

Well, it is a mile ahead of the others and I've taken it on. It's about the relationship between an indigenous man and his son. Initially they wanted an indigenous producer, but they couldn't find one, so it's me.

This is a bit scary I must say. Unfortunately it's written by a young white boy, who seems completely naive about Aboriginal/white relations ('They used to be discriminated against,' seems to be his schema) but the director is indigenous and is talking to uncles around these parts about how true the story seems. So far their feedback has been good.

I get very tense around indigenous issues. Even as I write this, I'm thinking, is it more p.c. to say 'Aboriginal' or 'indigenous'? I think, being a lesbian/woman/child of migrants I'm more accustomed to being the Other, rather than this position of bumbling along as the big oppressive white person come to appropriate the culture. And it seems so easy to be offensive. As a lesbian, I like it when there are gay characters in movies; as long as they are truthful characters I don't think much about whether the team who created them are gay themselves. In fact I think it's good when creative teams remember we exist and make a character who happens to be gay (or in a wheelchair, or Muslim, or whatever). Working on Aboriginal stories seems a bit more fraught. I keep thinking, if we don't do this right it could really blow up in my face.

(And people who have had babies, how on earth did you get anything done while you were pregnant? I keep having to go and have little nana naps. Thank god I work from home)

Sigh

<-- next door neighbour's backyard, from my last life in the bush.

I have had a moment of elation in my filmmaking career, followed by sharp disappointment. On Friday I was selected as an 'emerging producer' to produce a short film. (This was a fairly informal affair that involved me talking confidently about my organisational skills and how easily they would transfer to the Fillum World). They have fifteen short film scripts that were selected from the earlier round of 'Emerging Writer' competitions. Eleven have already been allocated (I was late getting on board) so they sent me the last four for me to decide over the weekend which to produce. I get a team together, make the film by June 30th, and they do the work of submitting them to short film festivals and so on.

Well, the scripts were abysmal: violent, juvenile and stereotyped. And so incredibly misogynist it took my breath away. The young characters didn't have names: in one she was called 'Sexylady' and was the instigator of a presumably hilarious moment in which she leaves the petrol hose in the car and drives off, destroying the petrol pump (Ooh, and haven't we all done that? Those hoses are so tricky to manage). The second script's female character was called 'GorgeousGirl' and the lead (who had a name) fell in love with her while she waited on his table (setting the tone for a beautiful relationship). The third script's female character was in her fifties, and such a harridan her husband kills her and feeds her to the pigs; and the final one had no women characters actually in it, but the lead character was involved in cutting them up and putting their body parts into rubbish dumps around the city.

Presumably the other eleven were much better, and some, I imagine, were even written by women. What I don't understand is how scripts like this make it into the top fifteen. Maybe only sixteen people entered, and the sixteenth couldn't write. And I'm frightened by the thought that the people who make this stuff up are in training to be the next generation of feature filmmakers. Really and truly, Nothing Has Changed.

Thankfully I have a gorgeous script written by my friend Hilary I've been procrastinating on- although I won't get funding to make it - and this has galvanised me into action. But if you happen to be sitting on a delightful, smart script for a film under ten minutes long, let me know*.

*It is incredibly unlikely you would make any money from this

Sperms of the world

Thinking further about that vat of USA Sperm.
It's striking that of all the sperm in the world, we use USA sperm. I presume this a simple logistical issue. But as a post-Colonial society, why not British sperm? Or (gasp) Indian or Chinese sperm? I won't go Aboriginal sperm as I can't even joke about it without bringing stolen-generation spectres to mind.

I'm assigning national characteristics as I type - USA sperm: fat and arrogant but energetic, so will probably do the job. British sperm, well-dressed, a bit restrained, might be a bit slow to get moving. Intelligent Indian sperm. Maltese sperm would be far too laid back, it would never get to the point, sitting down and having a coffee with every other spermatazoa it passed along the way. 'There's no hurry, here, have a pastizzi.'

(Are assumptions about national characteristics racist? Or are we meant to assume that every race has the same intrinsic characteristics? Bearing in mind I think these characteristics are cultural not hereditary. So many shoulds).

Cow of a day

(<--- One of the candidates)

... and I mean that in a good way.

Film school is proceeding apace. I've got myself an internship with a guy who does documentaries and corporate productions, which is what I imagine I would like to do (He is, of course, younger than me, but I Don't Let That Bother Me). Documentaries don't pay very well, generally speaking, unless you happen to make An 1nc0nvenient Truth or What the B1eep D0 We Kn0w, so corporate productions - training videos, I imagine, given my background - are a necessary part of my forecast income stream.

An internship, I've discovered, is a fancy way of saying 'doing dogsbody work without getting paid'. But it's a lot of fun. My first task has been to find a cow for a corporate production about bovine health, always an important topic. So I've emailed all my rural contacts looking for a cow - so far I have five wannabe supercowmodels. I feel like Anne Hathaway in The Devil Wears Prada, trying to track down the unpublished Harry Potter book for Meryl Streep's twins.

I gotta tell you, I love film school. And I love interning. Do you know what I love the most? I'm not helping anybody. I'm not doing anything worthy. I'm not being a special person, as in 'Ooh, it takes a special person to do that.'

Earlier this week I was driving along chatting about life and goals and Lovergirl said, 'What's most important to you in this hypothetical new career?'

'I don't want to help anybody,' I blurted. I was shocked! I thought a lightning bolt would strike me dead! I was so excited I rolled down the window of the car and started yelling out the window, 'I don't want to help ANYBODY!'

So bugger it. Today not one person refrained from committing suicide because of my skills. No one found a better way of relating to their family through me. No one discovered that they were an intrinsically good person despite everything, no one realised that sexual abuse wasn't their fault but the perpetrator's, and not one person has been able to work with me to develop a meaningful plan for their future with achievable goals and rewards along the way.

No, I spent the day finding cows. And I had a great day.

D'oh

I feel bad about the last post, but reluctant to remove it. It's hard to know the right tone to strike with blogs. My favourite blogs are sassy comments on the minutiae of daily life, while there's a swag of people doing great stuff with political and cultural comment. There's not much point me adding my two bobs' worth of uninformed opinion. The only thing I'm an expert on (apart from psych0s0c1al rehab1l1tat10n pr1nc1ples and pract1ce and rec0very from l0ng-term m*ntal 1llness, a subject dull enough to stop the liveliest dinner party) is me, unfortunately; and having just moved from Byron where no fleeting emotion is too personal to go unplumbed I probably err on the side of self-disclosure. So I know, from the rousing chorus of silence (so different in quality from the usual silence of loving approval), that every single person who has read this entry since I posted it two days ago (I'm referring to both of you), thinks I'm a horrible, stone-hearted eugenicist and if I live a cold lonely barren life in poverty it will only be my just desserts.

I had a second conversation with my brother yesterday. He's sounding more positive, planning to stay home and look after the baby while Mandy goes to work. 'I just don't know why God would do this to me,' he said. 'But I'll just do the best I can'.

A good slogan for us all to live by, I suppose.

Definitely not cool enough for school

I like this photo - it's a swimming pool in Cairns with a waterfall in it. I love the shapes of the round drops caught mid-air.

I saw a photo in a newspaper last week - it could have been the Courier Mail, or the Australian, or the SMH; I'm being a newspaper dilettante at the moment while I figure out which one I'm going to read while I live in Brisbane. The photo showed an 84-year-old man, one or two teeth lone sentinels in his mouth, crumpled into a tiny desk in an elementary class surrounded by a crowd of eager five and six year olds. They all (elderly man included) had their hands up, urgently attempting to answer a question that had obviously just been posed. I can't remember what country they were in - Somalia? Sudan? Schools have recently been re-opened after years of strife and he had always wanted to read and write, so he went along. He's intending to go all the way to university. If I could find it I would stick it on the front of my INKNSAS1 - Film Industry Knowledge folder, creating my own version of the decoupaged folders of my classmates, plastered as they are with rock bands and star stickers and elephants and teen actors.

This week I managed to make it to Film School. Walking in, I was tempted to walk straight back out again. You know when you walk into a room and it just screams at you, "You don't belong here!"? Of course, missing last week's orientation night, I hadn't met anyone before, didn't know what room we were in or even how to find the entrance (go through the underground car park and up the back stairs, obviously). At first glance, I am older than my classmates by at least fifteen years, and probably twenty. The majority are straight out of high school, and doing all four first year units, so had already spent two classes together that week (and, of course, orientation last week). I was acutely self-conscious, not to mention already preoccupied with beating down the mental tape recording that tells me, more and more shrilly, that this is a completely ridiculous endeavour to be wasting my time, money and hopes on.

The class is painfully juvenile - the lecturer, before commencing, gave the spiel - 'If you want to goof off with your friends, that's fine, just go now - I'm not interested in talking to people who aren't here to learn. Anyone want to go? No? Great, let's get started.' Yawn. Textbooks were being handed out by admin until 5.45 - I got there at 5.50 and of course wasn't allowed to pick it up, so I have to go in specially one day next week, sigh (this was related to me in a most snooty tone). I think that's to teach us responsibility and the importance of deadlines. Once the lecturer got started, he was actually great, with lots of immensely practical tips. So I just need to focus on my goal and see my advanced years as an advantage - with all my accumulated wisdom, and maturity, life experience, and contacts, I will sprint through the hierarchy...Certainly some of them seem not too bright, as happens with full fee courses, and I imagine they'll drop by the wayside as we progress, or find their place as lighting technicians, or something. (Me trying to reassure myself that I'm not too old to be doing something as foolish as going to Film School, instead of a PhD in something to do with mental illness or an MBA or something. Whatthehell, when I'm sitting in the nursing home in fifty years will I want to talk about my life as an executive, an academic or as a filmmaker?)

The boys are all dreadlocked and floppy, with red underpants peeking out from low slung jeans, and the girls, like all Brisbanites, are trim young blondes with highlights in tight singlets and jeans. Where do all these blondes come from? There really does seem to be a much higher concentration of them in Brisbane than anywhere else I've lived. About halfway through the lecture I realised the woman in front of me, whose slightly unruly blonde (must be a local) curls had been obscuring my field of vision, could possibly be my age. I'll try and wangle a seat next to her next time. There's also a woman who could possibly be a lesbian (she had on a loose t-shirt not a tight pastel singlet top) and could possibly be the ripe old age of twenty-five.

The most important thing, the lecturer kept emphasising, is to get some work experience. Now. I'm telling you this to hold myself accountable to this task.

I want to go home now

Last night I dreamed I was back in my old room, the little loft bedroom in the bush. I woke up in the middle of the night, harassed by mosquitoes, and couldn't work out where I was.

Today I worked hard all day being a consultant - there's a ridiculous amount of work in Brisbane, which is flattering, after years cobbling together bits and pieces in Byron Bay. Suddenly everyone wants me. Two men had words over who got to employ my services - that hasn't happened for a while, I can tell you.

I've only got the one work outfit - two at a stretch. I've pretty much spent the last five years in fisherman's pants and T-shirts. Hopefully they assume I'm washing my little summer suit in between each time I see them. I might have to break my Compact and go and buy some clothes on the weekend.

This evening I knocked off early because I had Orientation Night.
I've enrolled in Film School.
I've a small, curled up dream that hides embarrassed from naysayers and the sensible decisions.
I'm going to be a producer.
So now I'm a film student.
Might as well, I thought, seeing as we're going to be in Brisbane for the next couple of years.

Anyway I left work (home) at 4.30.
Orientation was at 5.
My school is two suburbs away.
It should have taken ten minutes.
There was traffic.
I got lost.
I got there at ten to six.
Orientation only went for an hour.
I was crying into the mobile phone to Lovergir, lost on some main road in bumper to bumper traffic inching forward at a tectonic pace.
'I know I shouldn't be crying (sniff sniff), it's just bloody orientation (sniff). But it's compulsory and now they're going to kick me out and I will never get to make films and all I'll do in Brisbane for two years while you're following your dreams is workworkwork (proper sob)'

So I came home

Lovergirl's cooking me spaghetti bolognaise.

That should make it better.

Xmas Retrospective

Just to finish off Christmas, this meme from PC:

1) Do you have a tree, and if so what is hanging on it?
I'm staying at my sister's in Melbourne. She's been in Europe all year, and her tree is covered in wonderful baubles. Each time I ask, 'Ooh, where did you get this?' she says, self-consciously, 'Oh Czechoslavakia... Croatia... Spain... Moscow...'

2) What's the most successful bit of Christmas cooking you've done so far?

Uh - all the stuff I cooked was good (it usually is - I'm a good cook). Buttermilk pancakes for breakfast with Dad, yummy little smoked trout, avocado & cream cheese hors d'oevres and a kahlua egggnog - with a non-alcoholic version for the teetotallers.

3) And the least successful?
The eggnog did have an unusual texture this year. It wouldn't go thick. It still tasted good though, and was polished off quickly.

4) Which bit of your Christmas shopping are you happiest with?
I suggested Lovergirl buy my sister ten metres of Daintree rainforest which was the most successful gift of the whole extravaganza. I bought Lovergirl a delicious thick fluffy pink dressing gown which seems a fitting representation of the state of our relationship - gorgeous and comfortable. I gave my mother-in-law a book by Women's Weekly journalist David Leser - stories of twenty-one inspiring women - she said she loved it then bought a copy for one of her own friends.

5) Have you opened any of your presents yet? What was it / were they?
Next year's diary from Lovergirl - a stunning photographic publication - a subscription to the Monthly, and an Italian phrasebook. A necklace from Dad that definitely looks like something a nice Maltese girl would wear - just a little bit too much. A Women's Weekly cookbook from Mum - oh, and that ticket to Bali. Crocheted flannels - no Christmas would be complete without them.

6) Do you have any bad Christmas associations that will have to be tackled?
Oh, it's all too close to the bone to relate right now. Just the same as always. See below.

7) What's your favourite carol? Why?

I don't know what it's called but it goes,
'Said the little lamb to the shephered boy
Do you see what I see?
Way up in the sky shepherd boy?
Do you see what I see?
A star, a star, dancing in the sky
It will bring us (something something hum hum)'

Do you know it?
It has a great swelling last verse and I think the very first time I heard it, it was sung by a mighty choir. Ever since then, when I hear it sung by creaky old voices, my mind's ear hears it sung properly, perfectly.

8) Which part of your Christmas plans is most likely to go awry?
All the family dynamics were definitely a risk. My strategy is to sail through obliviously, like Mr Magoo. Then fly back home 2,000 km away.
9) What's your most favourite thing about Christmas?

The hope. The kernel of goodness in everyone. Feeling part of something bigger. The idea that we could do this for longer than a week a year - feel good, and hopeful, and kindly-disposed. Walking to midnight mass smiling and greeting other church-goers.

10) What's your least favourite thing about it?

How it always lets me down. Christmas is over in a morass of holly-sprigged paper and we all snap back to default position.

11) What Christmassy thing have you seen or heard in the street or on the teeve or in the blogosphere that has
(a) touched your heart

Watching Lovergirl's nephew in his Christmas pageant (see photo at top of entry). Again - it's the hope. Naked hope always makes me cry.

(b) hit a nerve
All the stress and overconsumption. I'm swept along, but a part of me berates myself. I'm eating and buying twice as much as I need to while children in other countries... (you know how the rest goes).

or (c) made you want to barf?

Christmas carols stuck on permanent repeat in my mind after too much time spent on aeroplanes. 'Do They Know It's Christmas' and 'The Little Drummer Boy' are particularly intrusive.

12) Who do you wish you had contacted to say Happy Christmas but haven't so far?

A woman I lost contact with years ago when a mutual friend of ours died of ovarian cancer. I saw her at the Melbourne Writers' Festival earlier this year, she gave me her address and I meant to send her a card. Now I've lost the address.

Celebrity photographer

<-- That's Rikki on the left, in case you didn't know. The other lass is The Lucky Winner.

I wish I knew some people who were actually into Idol, so I could impress with my brush with B-list fame.

But *I* am now up there with the likes of Lord Snowdon and Diana Arbus - celebrity photographer me.

We've been down in Sydney for the weekend, for Lovergirl's family Christmas activities (Christmas pageants with children wearing Dads' white t-shirts and tinsel halos, trips to see Santa, Nippers, more trips to see Santa, presents under the tree, etc) and in the middle of it all my keen photographic eye was co-opted.

Lovergirl's Sydney-based sister Samantha is involved with a teen girls' fashion chain and they had had some competition running in which the prize was a shopping spree with - gasp! - Rikk1 Lee from Australian Idol. Was she last year's winner, or this year's winner, or something? Anyway Samantha asked me to take the photos, so there I was at some Westfield shopping mall, fighting off gaping passers-by (okay, there weren't that many gaping passers-by) and saying, 'Just stand over here and hold the jewellery up to me,' and 'Grab armfuls of stuff as if you're going to buy it all,' and so on. It was a LOT of fun. I really liked bustling around importantly being The Photographer and teenage girls are great to photograph - they love playing at being models and once you tell them a few times they look completely gorgeous (and mean it - why do we never know that when we are teenagers?) they relax and play up to the camera.

Now if this was a movie of my life, Samantha would casually mention my name to someone she happens to know in Brisbane and my photographic career would take off.

Rainy day life check

<-- It's raining and raining and raining today so I'm catching up on all my inside-the-house jobs. I whipped up these summery trousers this morning (in the background is the material I've used). They'll be fabulous for working in Cairns next week. I'm not quite so willowy as the model, so they look a little less - well, willowy - on me.

Isn't it great to see that the Jews, Muslims and Christians can all come together when the issue is important enough? Like, say condemning gays, for example. Really bodes well for the world. 'We hate you and you, and you're going to burn in hell... but we hate gays most of all, don't we, my brother?'

Eww, gross
In other important news, I am feeling quite seedy today after removing two ticks yesterday - big fat shellbacks who seem to have spent a fair bit of time feasting on my body before I found them - one on my scalp and one in soft skin where one's leg meets one's torso.Today I'm achey and swollen and generally cranky.

The main problem with our toilet arrangement is that when it rains one has to crouch on the grass holding a large golf umbrella. The other problem is that when one crouches over grass in tick season, ticks jump on one. As demonstrated.

And offering you the benefit of my poysonal growf...
I had my second life coaching session yesterday. I am so focussed now. Well not yet, but I will be, any minute, I'm sure. I have just completed this checklist, which I reproduce here for your own poysonal growf journey.
You only get the option of True or False. 'Don't know' or 'unsure' rates as False.

Work

1. My work stimulates me
2. I am proud of what I do for a living
3. I feel appreciated in my workplace
4. I respect the people I work with
5. I know where my career is heading
6. I respond to calls and emails with 48 hours
7. I don't let paper work pile up
8. I complete my work withing reasonable hours
9. I manage my time well
10. I delegate without guilt

Finances

1. I am satisfied with my income
2. I have a budget that I use
3. I pay my bills on time
4. I know how much I owe and when it will be paid off
5. I have an active long term financial plan
6. I am able to reward myself without feeling guilty
7. I use my credit card wisely
8. I have a will
9. My wallet is uncluttered
10. My tax affairs are up to date

Home

1. I am happy with my home
2. My home is generally clean and tidy
3. I surround myself with things that I love
4. I don't acquire clutter
5. I recycle at home
6. My personal files are in order
7. my bed supports me havaing a good sleep
8. My bed is always made the way I want it
9. I have photos of loved ones around me
10. I am happy with my mode of transport

Health and Body

1. I am happy with my current weight
2. I do some form of exercise at least three times a week
3. I have a balanced diet including lots of fresh food
4. I don't smoke or drink alcohol excessively
5. I drink at least 2 litres of water every day
6. I am up to date with allnecessary medical and dental checkups
7. I am happy with the sleep I get
8. I have appropriate clothes for my work and personal interests
9. I am not concerned about my stress levels
10. I feel generally well.

Relationships

1. I am happy with the level of intimacy in my life
2. My partner and i respect each other and are equals
3. I get along well with my work colleagues
4. I make amends easily with people I have had conflicts with
5. I trust the significant people in my life
6. I am on good speaking trerms with my neighbours
7. I consider myself to be a good friend
8. I see people who are important to me regularly
9. My friends and family know how much I care about them
10. I am satisfied with my social life

Personal

1. I like myself
2. I have had a birthday party in the last two years
3. I have a life outside of my work
4. I have enough confidence to do what I want in life
5. I have adequate holidays each year
6. I don't lie or exaggerate
7. I am comfortable saying no when I need to
8. People know they can count on me to do what I say I will do
9. I can easily recall the last time I really laughted
10. I have a form of creative expression.

I did best on home & relationships, and worst on work & finances.

Social phobia sucks

[I wish the council would come along and do an emotional rubbish collection]

Does anybody else ever get those attacks where you are so convinced you have done something incredibly stupid that you can't even think? Your whole body is just convulsed with shame and you walk along the street just absolutely cringing with embarrassment? To try and stop the flood of self talk shouting at me, I do things like hum loudly and tunelessly, which attracts startled glances, as to all intents and purposes I appear basically normal. Sometimes I'll skip a few steps, or kind of bounce and jiggle about, trying to shake the excruciatingly embarrassing moment that is playing over and over in my head like some hellish perpetual video loop.

Lovergirl calls them 'shame spirals' which is fairly descriptive. The spiralling is all down. The only things I can do to combat it involve flooding my body with some alternative sensation, driving all other thoughts from my head. Like singing really loudly, or reading and watching TV at the same time, or eating and reading. Oh, and of course I have to immediately leave the environment in which I have done aforementioned completely stupid thing (which may or may not be completely stupid, from an objective point of view). So today I had to leave the training session I was attending at lunchtime

This is, I realise, evidence of an anxiety disorder. The problem with familiarity with the Diagnostic & Statistical Manual, the international manual of psychiatric diagnoses, is that every fleeting uncomfortable emotional state has an associated label (and course of pharmacological treatment). An anxiety disorder is a response that is out of porportion to the threat. But I work on the theory that a level of disproportionate anxiety is normal and everyone has moments where they walk down the main street of their capital city in their business clothes humming loudly and tunelessly while bouncing up and down on the balls of their feet to rid themselves of waves of debilitating humiliation.

So you can put this in context, the embarrassing thing I did was I went up to the trainer at lunchtime. She's here from America. Clearly a dyke. (I could tell by the big sign on her forehead) Anyway chatted briefly about the training so far then invited her to come down to Byron for the weekend. Then I heard myself sounding like some sycophant breathlessly sucking up to the trainer and asking strangers to come and visit. She'll think I have no friends and just accost people in the street! She'll think I'm one of those losers who desperately wants people to like me! When actually I have a rich and vibrant social circle, many dear people who will attest to my social skills....

Then I had to leave.

Comfort food

<-- stern neighbour looking on in disapproving fashion Baked beans and cheese jaffles for dinner on this Sunday night.

Got me thinking about all the other comforting foods I loved as a kid.

Tuna mornay casserole with crumbled cornflakes on top.

Pea and ham soup with what Mum called 'Italian scones' - scone dough scrolls filled with tomato, parmesan, onion and oregano.

Spaghetti with rabbit and peas.

Any other candidates?

Insomnia

Four a.m.

Apparently Peter Beattie wrote his autobiography during bouts of insomnia. Myself, I can't think at this hour of the morning. It also strikes me as unreasonable to expect that not only am I awake, but that then I should do something 'productive' with my time. Not that writing an autobiography would be productive, in my case. I'd rather think of sleepless time as an unexpected bonus, a bit of free time to unashamedly lie in bed, drink cups of tea and read novels.

Our bush house is just one room, with a loft bedroom, so accommodating a person with insomnia is tricky. Too many lights on or thrashing around trying to get to sleep or listening to weird night radio is disturbing to slumbrous parties. There is a shed outside that we've converted to a study, but I'd rather sit in here in the gloom by the glowering embers of last night's fire. I put an eye mask on Lovergirl to shield her from the glare of my computer screen, so she looks like some 1950s beauty doing an overnight treatment of Pond's Ladies Rejuvenating Creme.

The koalas are mating at the moment. Mating koalas sound like wild pigs, hrornk-hrornk- hroooornk all through the night. The cows also seem to be unduly communicative. And now - it is taking me a long time to type in the dark - the first uncertain peeps of the morning chorus are starting up. Do you know the morning chorus is always in exactly the same order? Up here it's first what sounds like a fairly small bird, calling 'peep-peep' in an uncertain tone, as if it merely wants to check who else is awake. Then silence for a while. Then the raucous kookaburra has a long laugh, which startles everyone and then they are all off in a noisy cacaphony.

Yesterday I said to Lovergirl, 'Isn't it interesting how people are really fascinated by blogs? They are a whole new form of communicating that have just burst onto the scene.'

She said, 'I'm not fascinated by blogs.'

'Oh!' (taken aback; I waste far too much time reading blogs and deliberately keep my sidebar list of regulars as short as possible). 'I think they have the potential for getting a deeper understanding of people, taking time to read entries rather than just exchanging emails, and discovering points of view you would never have considered,' (that sounds more articulate than what I actually said, but you get the idea). When I was a child I had three penfriends, two in Australia and one in Japan. I still write friends letters on paper occasionally, although I haven't since I started blogging, I don't think. I've never been a fan of the rambling phone call, and it took me ages to get a mobile - Lovergirl is often immensely frustrated by me forgetting to take it, or turn it on, or it's run out of battery...

Lovergirl's theory is perhaps that people aren't so taken with reading and communicating through blogs as they are by writing about themselves, and thinking other people might read it. A kind of egotistical journalling.

Initially I started this to keep a record of the pregnancy thing. That got way too tedious fairly quickly - how many ways can you write 'Inseminated, nothing happened'? - and at the same time I started the Brisbane job, which has led to me feeling fairly cut off from the North Coast - I'm a weekender here now - so for me it is about wanting to connect with people. I miss my Melbourne friends and don't want to lose touch, but as time away from Melbourne goes on that becomes harder, we've all got lives.

It's only a perception of connection, of course. I think Lovergirl's right, some people just aren't fascinated by blogs. How can that be? But there are lots of staggeringly clever, interesting, politically aware bloggers to distract me from all the things I should be doing. And they are always reassuringly there, when I am stuck in a hotel room in the far reaches of Townsville or Grafton with only 143 pay TV channels for company.

And isn't it exciting when someone actually comments?

Why I have to leave

The Northern Rivers really is Paradise. Endless unpeopled beaches, rampant rainforests, perfect weather and smart, articulate locals. The problem with Paradise is that all there is to do is sit around playing the lyre.

The last couple of years I have been struggling with a sense of meaninglessness here. I've been working on my stuff, as you do here whenever there is something awry. 'What is wrong with me?' I ask myself plaintively, in my journal and at 2am during bouts of insomnia. 'Why am I having this existential crisis?' I also berate myself - People in third world countries don't have the luxury of indulging in existential crises. I've got shelves full of trashy workbooks with titles like 'Stop Improving Yourself and Start Living,' and 'I Could Do Anything If Only I Knew What It Was,' not to mention Clive Hamilton's 'Affluenza', De Botton's 'Status Anxiety', and Frankl's 'Man's Search for Meaning' (apparently he suicided in the end).

Today, on my morning walk around the featureless plains of suburban Brisbane, I realised the problem is not within, it's without. I'm a bit of a slow learner like that.

The Northern Rivers (and maybe all rural areas - I've never lived anywhere else) works for two sorts of people - people who are interested in working at a grassroots, community level and artisitic types who can create their own meaning.

Lovergirl, for instance, is passionate about her work. She loves being a psychologist and she's learning new things every day. She's intrigued by individuals' problems and angsts and fascinated by the challenge of working out new ways to approach the tangle of issues people bring.

Only people who are that excited should be in the field of human service work.

I, on the other hand, did an extended stint on the local crisis team to make money. It's good money, seductive in fact - it's hard to walk away. But - hour after hour of people relating their suicidal fantasies, previous attempts and what they are going to do to themselves tonight...I couldn't stand it. I said all the right things, but I have to say it's hard to care. I reckon there must be some shut-down mechanism in my brain.

In the small community where we live there are lots of local activities. There's a fire brigade (which we really ought to join - one shouldn't live in a rural area without being a member of the fir brigade), a film society (I am in this, we show old films once a month in the local hall, as a community fundraiser), various Landcare groups to rehabilitate different bits of the region (I'm in one of these), a chapter of Save the Koala and other wildlife carer groups, a choir and a writer's group (of which I am also a member, although I don't think I wrote a single fictitious thing the whole time I attended. These are great and fun and filled with active interesting people - although being such a small village, they tend to be the same active interesting people. But lately it's been feeling a bit like diversional therapy.

The other people for whom the Northern Rivers works are the creatives. I'd like to be a member of that group - a poet or writer or painter or film-maker, holed up in my studio, passionately creating my interesting slantwise social comment, emerging occasionally to attend writer's festivals or theatre workshops or speakers' dinners.

But I'm not. The stuff I like to do, the stuff I'm good at doing, is about getting a bigger picture and trying to make a difference. A difference on a social level, not an individual one. Even a small difference. In Queensland at the moment, I'm a mere gadfly in the state mental health system's hide but at least I'm annoying. I like doing that. I like being involved in decision making, I like trying to change things. I like having to think about the big picture, and I like talking to other people who are thinking about the big picture. Hibernating in the bush house, I'm not annoying to any of the institutions responsible for social injustices. I'm just aanother dropout.

The Northern Rivers is a beautiful place to retire. But I'm not ready to retire yet.

To move or not to move

Where I stay in Brisbane is near a factory, out in the suburbs. I don't always notice it but in the early morning quiet there's a constant whirring, an airy hum that never stops. If I'm awake in the bush house early in the morning, I can't hear myself think for the cacaphony of birds. I remember the first few mornings that we lived there, the morning chorus woke me up - I couldn't sleep through the shouting of kookaburras and whipbirds and honeyeaters and whatever else.

Lovergirl and I spent the weekend looking for places to rent or even buy in Brisbane. It's very sad but I think my time in the bush house is coming to an end. I can't work out there and I'm too young to retire. I feel very sad at the idea of moving, but I feel a bit stuck there. It's a hard area to get work - as a rural area there are less jobs, but because it is such a desireable area there are thousands of overqualified sea-changers looking for something fulfilling to do. It's a real problem. Maybe I could have been more assertive about doorknocking.

Now that I am working in Brisbane I am being inundated with job offers. Well, there are three at the moment that I need to choose between (or none of). Jonathon is keen for me to stay on where I am, and is pretty confident he is going to get the funding for it. That would be easy for me, and I have lots of ideas of things I would like to do in that position. And I could keep up the same arrangement as long as we could stand it - traipsing up from the North Coast during the week. That's hard on both of us though. Another chap has offered me an exciting job, although it sounds a bit overwhelming and I don't know if I can do it! He drew diagrams up on the whiteboard and kept saying meaningfully, 'And of course there will be a very generous package. Very generous.' Although I won't get too excited by the idea of 'very generous' in the NGO sector; anything more than $55,000 and they are breaking into piggy banks to pay you. And of course there is the business plan with Chris. That's the most interesting to me I think, but it means doing things like taking out business loans and taking a big risk, and living on bread and dripping for a few years...and Lovergirl wants to go back to uni if we move to the city & do a Masters.