good for you Buddy...

yep, I was there - at the Telstra Dome with 49, 056 others to witness a piece of AFL sporting history - Buddy Franklin (arguably the Hawks best full forward) got his 100th goal in front of a capacity crowd, and even though I was hoping that Brendan Fevola (the Blues full forward and one mine and Daniel's AFL heroes) would get his first, it just didn't seem like it would work out that way from the get go...

and good on Buddy - he's been the leading goal scorer all season, he's the first indigenous australian to boot 100 in a season (the home and away season that is) and me and my 3 favourite boys were there to see it...

it was manic! thousands of people ran onto the ground - this is simply no longer the go in AFL anymore - especially not in the 1st quarter - it was great - great too to see that the security guards made sure Buddy was safe, escorted him off and then just let it continue - and to their credit and coz they didn't make a song and a dance of it all, people eventually got back into their seats for the remainder of the game...

Fevvy (as Daniel calls him) came up short with 99 goals - but let's be serious, 99 goals is still a fabulous achievement - for a team that has had a bad few years and is rebuilding - he's not had consistently good ball all year but has still come up only a handful short of a top 4 team - Fevvy, we are proud of you and hope (despite your disappointment) you are proud of a great 2008 - looking forward to seeing you in 2009!

sooo as I start to think about removing the CFC logo tattooed on my right cheek (I didn't take an eucalyptus oil to melbs) another football season is over....and I can't say I feel gutted - sure the blues did not play their best lastnight and sure they aren't in the finals! but here are the positives:
- they have rebuilt themselves and have a lot to look forward to in 2009
- fev came a very close 2nd in a fabulous goal kicking contest
- they aren't that far away from top 8 contention
- despite everything they have the biggest fan base in the league

bring on 2009! go Blues

melbourne here we come...

yep, that's right ben and i are off to melbs this afternoon - ben's first time down there so i hope the weather forecast of rain and cold for both days is not true!!!

we're going down there to belatedly celebrate his birthday....

yippee....

go blues! and go fev...

closure...

is an interesting term and means different things to different people and honestly, until i started studying to be a therapist, i didn't have any real idea of where the term came from or it's origins...

well! turns out it came out of gestalt therapy - a type of therapy that deals in the here and now (ie not focussed on the past as traditional forms of psychotherapy were) and still acknowledges that there might be things in the past that are not yet put to bed (actually, gestalt therapists would say that not every aspect of oneself was integrated nor whole but we'll stick with more day to day english)...and voila we have the concept of closure...

even more interestingly was that even before i knew this concept existed, i had long held a desire for things in my own life not to be left open - for them to be closed, as it were! and no more so than yesterday...

as you know the weekend was not the best (and i'm not gonna re-hash it all - if you wanna read it, then do so!) and despite a reconciliation on sunday afternoon and a good 24 - 36 hours thereafter, i found myself bogged down in self talk, self recriminations, guilt (amazingly - i'm NOT catholic as my dad chose to point out to me) and frankly an overwhelming dose of fear...

it seemed there was very little, despite the obvious distraction of work, which did not really work, to get my mind to quieten down - this is something i have worked on a lot both myself and with the help of my therapist in the last 3 years - and i'm pleased to say, mostly with an enormous amount of success...

but pretty much NOTHING bar getting some closure (and a healthy amount of re-assurance) was gonna work yesterday, no matter how hard i tried, and man did i try...

so as i walked home lastnight the competing voices in my head doing overtime (one telling me that no matter what i had to put on a brave face and not be sad and the other telling me that i had to be authentic no matter what the consequences) it occurred to me that maybe, just maybe, instead of trying to solve it all in my head, i could simply ask for some help...

and this help turned out to be closure - a desire to accept what had happened and move on, or in this case move back - back to that wonderful place of the last 5 months...

so you see it's true - some stories do have happy endings...

fear is a terrible thing...

and it seems to be ruining my day...not really sure why! had a good chat with ben on sunday, had a nice afternoon/evening with him, had a good day yesterday (bar my therapy session where i re-hashed the events of the weekend) and today i feel like i am in a downward spiral...i'm starting to second guess myself and as a result feel exposed and vulnerable and just wishing i could go to sleep and wake up to how things were...or maybe they are how they were and i'm just being overly cautious because i'm scared...

guess loving someone and caring for them with every fibre of your being hurts sometimes???

please let it go away...

my dreams, and sometimes ben's

are a source of continual amusement and pondering for me...

i am always intrigued to find some way of making meaning from the dreams we have - being a student of counselling and having studied frued and jung, i feel as though an opportunity for self development or awareness presents itself in almost every dream we have, and as such, i find myself compelled to 'analyse' my dreams...

some are easy - the manifestation of what is going on in your life right now shows itself in a different (and yet easily identifiable) way in a dream...

some are not so easy - the abstract ones, the ones where nothing seems to make sense and doesn't seem at all relevant to what is going on in your life right now...

well this morning's dream was a little bit of the latter...a mish mash of good friends (some current and some from my past) came together in a bizarre and very disjointed dream...in one scene i am talking to uncle campbell about the need to hurry up to catch the plane we are catching, but we are in what looks like a side room of an rsl and i find myself swearing at him (this is not something i would do)...next scene i find myself shopping for earrings with laurel and a group of her friends in a massive department store, then i find myself with helen (a friend i had at telstra who i haven't seen in over 10 years) and we are getting a lift from 2 other women as something bad has happened to helen - turns out it was her in one scene (the one where we are reporting the incident at a desk) but then in the next scene she appeared with straight blonde hair (in the first scene she had, as she does in real life, black curly hair)...

soooo what to make of that one? there is a theory that all people in dreams are actually representations of some part of our self, so whilst they may look like someone else, they are actually parts of our psyche...interesting! there is yet another school of thought that all dreams are essentially wish fulfillment - this one i find harder to grasp as my dreams are often disturbing and as such, not something i would 'wish' for...

soooo methinks that whilst i am supposed to be having a day of 'study leave' to finish a critique due on thursday (yep, thursday this week) that i might find myself surfing the dream interpretation website and madly going thru my freud/jung books to work out what my dream meant....

procrastination is alive and well!

do you ever wish you could take

something you said back? yeah well that was yesterday for me - it wasn't a good day (actually it was way worse than that) and i found myself in a situation i wasn't comfortable in, not feeling well and i said something in jest which hurt ben's feelings...

what followed was the worst 24 hours i have experienced in as long as i can remember...

i have few regrets in my life, in fact until yesterday, probably none of significance, but i couldn't help but hope that everytime i shut my eyes (either tear filled or in a vain attempt to sleep) i would open them again to a different scenario...

nope, turns out i couldn't turn back the clock or erase what had been said - instead i had to (as did ben) live through the consequences of my stupid, unthoughtful, and mean words....

i have cried more tears in the last 24 hours than i thought possible - i've said sorry so many times it no longer has any meaning, and i've wished more times than infinity that it wasn't so...

so now that things are starting to resemble normality (or what we have known as normality for the last 5 months or so) i have learnt a valuable lesson...and one which i should have learnt earlier...

so to ben - thank you for being you and for helping me learn...i do love you and am truly sorry xox

and i thought i spoke english....

apparently not!

classic case of miscommunication or shall we say male deafness....

so ben's had a migraine all day and been home in bed, i've been fighting what i hope is not going to turn into the flu for a day or so and finally come home from work mid afternoon only to fall on the couch and cover myself with a doona...

coupla hours after that i look at ben and say 'chinese?', even though i took organic beef sausages out of the freezer this morning, i know i do not have the energy (nor frankly the inclination) to cook tonight...

yep, chinese it is! so we have twice picked up dinner from this place in neutral bay (mido) and the food has been good - not the best chinese i've ever had but good nonetheless...

so tonight i figure i'll call them to see if they'll deliver - my criteria tonight for good chinese being that it arrives at my door without me having to leave the couch..

so far so good - a girl answers the phone - not the one who's usually there when we go - the crankiest and most abrupt girl on the planet - a nice one who speaks really good english...

so i say to her - do you do home delivery? yes she says, where you live? i tell her naremburn and clarify by saying 'behind st leonards' - she doesn't even respond but simply hands the phone over the old guy who works there

he says hello, i ask him if they deliver to naremburn and almost before i finish talking he says 'no sorry' and hangs up the phone...

ok, so we look on the internet at a few more local chinese restaurants but we figure we've had food from mido before, it's good and i could drive there even tho i didn't really want to...

so i ring up to order and he asks if i want home delivery (this is the SAME guy i talked to the first time) - i say sure but i called a while ago and you told me you didn't deliver to naremburn - he says 'of course we do home delivery'....so i tell him the order and then when he asks for my address and i tell him he says 'we don't deliver there'....and i point out to him that we went through all of that just a little while earlier and for the 3rd time in the conversation he calls me 'sir' even though i've told him it's 'madam'...

fuck, how hard is it? seriously? sure we don't speak the same language, sure i have a cold and my already deep voice might sound a little deeper than usual, but fuck me....

anyway, we got chinese and it was good, and they did deliver to naremburn!!!

mental health...

is a subject very close to my heart and i was fortunate enough to have been invited to a 'mental health in the workplace' meeting which was hosted by my company today...

the subject of mental health, and indeed at the other end of the spectrum, mental illness is one which has often caused me to wish that the world in which we live (or perhaps just the people who inhabit the world) was different...

and by different i mean open, accepting, caring, appreciative of diversity and just a wee bit more humane...

the stats that were presented at this session were astounding (and sadly, not surprising) - in particular what stands out to me as an enormous opportunity (not just for humanity, but for the social fabric of the world we live in) is how much easier life would be for people living with a mental illness if we could raise awareness and improve the support available to these people, who mostly suffer in silence and isolation...

the most frightening statistic was the one where of people surveyed (across a number of big organisations) only 9% of people with a mental illness (be that depression, schizophrenia, anxiety disorder etc) are comfortable talking about it with a colleague...

and the reasons for that are pretty self evident i would think: questions about the ability of the person to do their job properly, concern around how to 'talk to' people like that, at the extreme end discrimination when applying for roles with more responsibility...sad sad sad

seriously what is the difference between someone who is suffering from depression (but medicated) and someone with asthma? probably not much - both will occasionally need time off work to recover from a bout of their illness, and yet depression is not a topic of conversation in the same way that a physical illness is...

i long for a world where the people who most need our help are free to ask for it and actually get it...

public displays of affection...

kind of an interesting topic and not one i would have thought to blog about previously! but today i saw two couples embrace and kiss (passionately) in the station and instead of my mothers voice in my head saying something like 'there's a time and a place for that sort of thing' i simply smiled...

so what does it all mean? am i getting older? am i glad that now i have someone to publicly display affection to i'm ok with it? is her voice no longer the voice in my head? or am i simply not offended by other people showing their affection for each other?

not to say that i am in favour of (nor particularly comfortable witnessing) overtly sexual behaviour in public (there really IS a time and a place for that) but what sort of a society do we live in where showing how much you care about someone is inappropriate???

seriously, society would be a better place, people more humane and accepting, if we were in fact comfortable being 'human' in front of other people...

and i'm not just talking about being happy either - i remember a time when my life wasn't what it is today and after a painful therapy session i couldn't stop crying - i was on the bus at the time and whilst i was mainly wrapped up in my own little world of grief, i did notice the sideways looks i got from fellow commuters...

kinda sad really...and really not the sort of place i want to be a part of, so i guess that's why i have worked hard to overcome the childhood conditioning (the stiff upper lip...) and to be courageous enough to allow myself the freedom of expression...

so to all of those lovers out there today whose love for each other was on display: thank you...

i got a new job....

not gonna say too much more than that! pretty chuffed with myself and now thinking about what 'present to self' i might reward myself with...

was thinking shoes - who wouldn't?

was thinking jewellery - another good options?

but in the end, it's gonna be a doona cover! yep, you read it correctly, a brand new king size sheridan botanique doona cover!

see, the simple things in life really are the best!

never rains...

but pours...which is good - this is NOT a complaint...

seems just when you make your mind up about something, a whole lot of universal forces start conspiring (in a good way) to help out...

see a coupla weeks ago i was having a rough time (not just at work) and i started to realise how unchallenged i was (note use of this word rather than bored, which frankly, is probably more accurate but less politically correct), sooooo after much soul searching and feeling a wee bit bad that i had only been in my current role just under 9 months, i decided to do something about it...

i met up with my sponsoring GM (she helped me make the transition from finance to HR) - i do this anyway about every 4 to 6 weeks (her diary depending) - and after we'd had a general chat i brought up my desire to take on something more challenging! as always (and i shouldn't be surprised, but i am) she was very happy to talk about the roles in her team and how they would would work (given the current HR support structure) and my suitability for one or two of them...

i left feeling not only excited, but encouraged - she is pretty good at doing this - in fact, i can't think of a single time when i have asked for her help, that she hasn't come through - now i know this is not all out of the goodness of her heart! there is obviously something in it for her too - and by this i do not mean that she is opportunistic or mercenary - on the contrary, more that she sees some value in the skills/experiences i bring and is happy to support me - oh for more of these people in corporate life!

soooo i have an interview this wed morning with the head of transformation for a certain 'stream' (i can't say too much - a) in a vain attempt to maintain some corporate anonymity and b) just in case i jinx myself!)....

but of course the story does not end there....today, after meeting with the head of HR for the company i work for, i also met up with her 2IC (who i have known for years through a variety of non HR related events we both attended) who i meet about 4 - 6 times a year - a seasoned and practical HR professional whose advice has always been sound...we get talking, i tell her about how things are going (she's more interested in hearing about Ben than anything work related!), my meeting with my GM and the transformation role and she tells me about another opportunity i might be interested in (portfolio job, could utilise my coaching skills etc), and she's right - i am interested!!!

soooo in the next week or so i expect to have something of an update and a rather more challenging role! yay...

happy birthday.....

to my ben....i hope you have had a wonderful day - i enjoyed sharing your birthday with you, for what i hope, is the first of many :-)

on another note, things are starting to look up - i seem to have moved through the funk of the last week or so (getting a period means the PMT has gone!) and i am starting to get back in touch with some of the simple but very important things in my life - things that for a little while seem to have taken a back seat (and with perfectly good reason i might add)...

so i've learned a coupla things:

- taking time out for me is actually a necessity, not an indulgence;
- the simple pleasures are the best;
- sometimes you just gotta ask for what you want rather than waiting to be asked;
- checking in with your goals to remind you why you are doing something is good;
- setting yourself new goals re-invigorates passion;
- accepting challenges that you know are gonna take you out of your comfort zone are good; and
- last but not least, having the love of someone special is absolutely the best remedy for a bad day....

nite x

a little on edge

that's really the only way i can describe how i feel....about work! loads of changes which usually i would see as nothing but opportunity but right now i seem to be incapable of finding anything positive in it all...

so i have only been in this new gig (in fact read as new career altogether despite being with the same company i've been with for nearly six years) for 9 months and in the space of a week have lost my favourite customer (i only had two but this one was my favourite), one of my staff (i had 3), my other customer (the non favourite one - the one whom i have had a rocky ride with - but finally after 8 or so months i felt as though our working relationship had reached a good place) who has taken on a bigger role for a few months, he has been replaced (only temporarily) by someone i neither respect nor like (and am doubtful i can learn anything from), my boss has resigned so he's leaving (this is not good - nice guy, high integrity, knows heaps about HR).....so you can see, there is a LOT of change and it's not over yet! the next week is supposed to be when we find out what is going on and hopefully get some stability.....

so why i am i so anxious (and anxious is a good word - i really am - i'm not sleeping that well, and i'm a bit temperamental - this won't be helped by PMT but all the same, i'm on the edge!) is that i am seeing decisions made in a way that demonstrates no integrity, and nor for that matter, the values that the company i work for espouses....and i guess i am nervous that with a couple of key advocates out of the way i may get forgotten about as the jobs are handed out...

so you see there's a lot going on in my head! seems the voices haven't really been quietened in the last fortnight or so, and i wonder why i was a feeling a little out of control....guess i hadn't realised how much of a toll this was taking on me (and my sanity!)...

anyway, a lazy morning followed by some long overdue cleaning of my lovely little home, followed by a picnic with ben at balmoral this afternoon, then a little bit of tv research (yes it is called research when you are looking to buy a new tv!), a nap and some law and order and in a minute an early night and a good book....and yes, i feel much better, much more myself, a little less concerned about what might happen at work and very much looking forward to my bank holiday tomorrow (yippee!)...

guess there are times when we all need to get back to basics and the things that are important to us and with everything going on in the last few weeks i haven't had any me time - something i used to have a LOT of (that's being single for you) and in recent times haven't had a chance to do

mental note to self: remember that having time for oneself is essential to sanity....

nite