Do I wish you a Happy New year? It feels kind of off right now, but I do. I do wish this year is happy for you, better for all. I even made some ‘semi’ resolutions, I don’t call them that because they never work. I am making some gradual life shifts instead. Honestly, thank fuck 2023 is over. It was one of the most stressful years of my life and I am one of the ‘lucky’ ones. But everyone is feeling it right now, aren’t they? It seems to cost an unattainable and offensive amount of money to feed your family, to pay the bills, to put petrol in the car, to do the things that were once more manageable. Interest rates? I can’t keep up. Daily coffees, an occasional movie, some nice Thai takeaway food? Forget about it. regular groceries would be nice. (Obnoxious first world problems hey) It is time for some major shifts, a move away from all the bullshit and greed. There is a strong yearning in me for a simpler, healthier and more peaceful life. To find a more affordable way of living, a deeper way of connecting with nature and others and sending a big middle finger to the corporations, banks and rich folk actively destroying our lives. Greedy buggers, I am sick of them. This year, I’m focussing on my health, my home, my kids and my creative work. I’m keen to revamp and expand my vegetable garden to help reduce grocery costs, have access to fresher, healthier produce and to be a little more self-sufficient. The supermarkets are out of control, and I don’t want any part of them. I’ll focus more on bulk buying, cooking from scratch, getting rid of processed food as much as possible (there are some things my kids won’t part with!) and reducing my use of plastics. I’ll actually compost this year and not just produce a tower of stinky sludge and I’ll barter what I can for what I want. This way of living really appeals to me. I would really like my kids and theirs, if they decide to have them, to have a healthy planet to live on when I am long gone. But I fear it may be too late. I hope I am wrong. My creative work over the past year is coming to fruition and will hopefully begin its journey out into the world, that’s fucking scary but the goal nonetheless. I need to be braver, because I often say things that pisses people off, and I care way too much what people think. I am a person who easily offends, who speaks too quickly, too abruptly at times. It is a flaw I am aware of. Is it a flaw? My words are not subtle and I refuse to shy away from the hard things. I admit this way of living stresses me out at times, but I will continue to create, to write, to speak. I’ll read more because as a writer, you must read. I’ll teach more, because people loving to sing makes me happy and I’ll write more music because without it I can’t exist. I’m not on socials right now for several reasons but will return soon, to a lesser extent. I existed for decades without it and can do so again. I’ll put my phone in a drawer, it’s a convenient but irritating thing. Once upon a time, ‘back in my day,’ we would just take the phone off the hook. Done. I’ll walk more, I have two dogs that need exercising now. (Aren’t they cute?) My little home is complete. I’ll look for little pockets of joy and sink into them. It could be sipping a hot cup of tea under a blanket, reading a new book that enthrals me, a new song I can’t stop playing on repeat, a chat with a friend that makes me laugh so hard I pee. I’m at that age now. I bloody love it. I’m grateful to be able to grow old, to pluck the chin hairs, to see my kids grow up. Many aren’t that lucky. Most importantly, I acknowledge how fortunate I am to be able to write these things down as my focus for the year, that I am not spending my days dodging bullets and bombs and destruction. I’m not losing my family and friends, or losing my home. I am so fucking lucky. I acknowledge that I am blessed to have a home, that my children are safe and no matter how much we struggle it is nothing compared to some. Watching the world in chaos on a screen is surreal and traumatising, and it is so easy to disconnect, to keep scrolling, but please don’t. Those who are suffering need our voices, our help. I have actively lost people from my life this year for speaking up and out, but I won’t stop. I won’t ‘shut my mouth’ as I have been told. How can I truly live in peace when others can’t? I wish it for you, I wish it for all. Liz x
0 Comments
Being an adult was hard this week, toffee hard, crack your teeth and pull out your crowns hard. But as always, I chew on, whacking a bit of super glue in to hold it all together. Firstly, we had Mother’s Day and I’m not a fan of Mother’s Day. I’m a single mumma, so there isn’t much fan-fare, I did get the book I asked for from my youngest which was sweet, but the actual day was the same as every other. It’s a bit like New Year’s Eve for me, I feel the pressure to ‘have a good day’ to be indulged, taken care of, spoilt even. But that is not what happens for most single mums. We still have to do all the things, no one else is going to cook, clean, manage the pets, manage the stupid fucking laundry or deal with any other ‘chore’ that needs doing and half the time we buy our own presents from the school Mother’s Day stall. The other reason I dislike Mother’s Day is that my mother died on Mother’s Day 23 years ago. She had the Big C, I say it was big because it was all consuming, it consumed her body, her happiness and in the end her life. Cancer is a motherfucker, let’s be clear. I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy, or maybe… well no not even then, because I believe in karma and I hope I am a good person. I also have healthy dose of medical anxiety, that means basically I think everything is going to kill me. As I get older the chances of this happening increases, in my opinion anyway. I’m needing tests for things I had never thought about when I was younger, back when we were all invincible. I didn’t think about colonoscopies and mammograms, skin checks, eye tests, hearing tests and pap smears. I was blessed with good health, not good mental health, let’s be honest, that’s dodgy as shit, but my body worked okay. These day’s my body breaking down, falling apart, needing more servicing than ever, but I am still here, I am lucky. Speaking of needing a service, my car overheated this week, my radiator had died, so I got that fixed. Then once I got my car back and went on my merry way, my car started shaking like it had been possessed by a wicked car demon and smelt like it was burning the souls of car now passed. I got home safely and had the NRMA tow it back to the mechanics and of course they found nothing wrong with it, so said demon had moved on - hopefully to a Tesla. I have decided one day I would like to replace my car with a Peugeot. My Dad drove a Peugeot when I was a kid, back when our butts stuck to the plastic seat covers and we didn't have seat belts. I loved that car and was crushed when he sold it cheaply to a neighbourhood kid and replaced it with an old BMW. Having a Peugeot of my own will allow me to indulge myself in some nostalgia from my youth, minus the sticky seats and with more safety options, hopefully it won’t be open to possessions either. (PS Peugeot – hit me up) As I said being an adult was hard this week, besides Mother’s Day kind of sucking, missing my own mum and car demons, I have had several appointments with psychologists and psychiatrists, and not even for me, but as the parent of the child requiring these professionals and I was given homework. I don’t do well with homework. I get the logic behind the assignment I was given to work on with my child, but it just piled another layer of stress on me and when I asked for clarity on the homework I was told to, ‘Just do what I said.’ Righto, fucking brilliant that is. Our homework will be checked tomorrow at our next appointment, I hope I got at least 60%... but honestly, don’t give tired, overwhelmed single mum’s homework. I am also trying to sort my health out and have a zoom call in an hour with a potential coach that might be able to help me get on track, but that probably means more homework right? I would really like to tame the medical anxiety beast by at the very least looking after myself a bit better. You see, I don’t look after myself. I haven’t put myself first in decades, I still can’t really, but I can do better than I am. Physically I’m twice the woman I used to be but inside I feel like half… I have to fix this, sort this mess out. I can talk about getting healthy until the cows come home but they never come home. So I am ringing the cow bell and calling them in. I hope your week has been kinder, I hope Mother's Day was nice to you or if it sucked like mine, you have support. Let see what next week brings? Peace I had my first Covid test this week. Came down with a cough and a sore throat. I’ve been careful - masks, hand sanitising, social distancing and really not going out at all except for groceries and occasionally visiting a friend. Had to isolate completely until I had my results, ran out of cat biscuits… how privileged that that was my biggest concern. I am so lucky, so many others are struggling, so many others are not with the same privilege I enjoy. The Australian Government has increased the subsidised therapy sessions to 20 a year instead of 10. I hope this helps people struggling with their mental health throughout this pandemic. It will certainly help me. It will take a long time to recover. I doubt life will ever go back to the way it was pre-covid. Do we want it too? People seem to be reassessing what is important in their lives, moving out of cities in mass exoduses to quieter towns. Working from home, focussing on family. Thinking about what they want out of life. Some people are mad. I get it. There is great suffering. The planet has been given some reprieve but so many losses. Unbearable to consider. We need to care for each other more than ever. Do you have someone to talk too? Sharing a coffee with a friend is my mental health staple. My results were negative. I am fortunate. I hope you’re ok. Peace. I’m sending out resumes today. I need to put down some roots. This casual gig is fun but not sustainable. Find the balance between bringing in money and creative expression. Sometimes they merge but not often enough, Covid put a swift end to that. Cannot sacrifice one for the other as both are important. Financial security versus the lifelong urge to spend my days creating. Financial security versus my brain urging me to keep moving, standing still is hazardous. All my nerves are twitching and I long for the new. Racing thoughts, grand plans all pulled into line by therapists who work to ground me in my hypomanic moments. They have quite a job ahead of them. As do I. Never quite give up on the grand plans but know how to quieten them enough so I can function in my day to day. But always, always lurking. My resume is a confused, lengthy scattering of jobs. I rarely land. ‘Look at all that experience.’ Jack of all trades, master of none. I am good at what I do, just need to do it more. I want to earn more, I want to contribute more. I want many things. Sometimes my energy throws people off, they sense how trapped I can feel. They sense how hard I try to please. Searching for validation. Prove I am capable. I am. Sometimes the mirror is too strong for them and they walk away. That’s ok. Can’t make everyone happy. You do you. Peace. When I had just finished acting school, I moved out of home for the first time and lived with a classmate who also happened to be vegetarian. It appealed to me, especially after a life time of eating chops and boiled vegetables, so I became one. As the years went by and I became more informed about how we get our meat and dairy I started to consider veganism. If slaughterhouses weren’t bad enough, the absolute misery of dairy farms and the cruelty involved is heart wrenching. I’m not going to go into it here as it has been well documented but I will say that the torture a cow feels when their male baby is taken away from them right after birth to become veal is shockingly heartbreaking, it fills my heart with anguish. The primary reason I am plant based is because of my love for animals, they are beautiful sentient beings who deserve to live their lives without fear, abuse, torture and death. There is no such thing as a humane death. A bolt to the head is a bolt to the head. Now though, my health is also a primary concern when it comes to being plant based. I have read extensively about plant based health and nutrition, done several courses and am thoroughly fascinated by the plant based world. Check out Dr Fuhrman, Dr Esselstyn, Dr Barnard, T Colin Campbell, Dr McDougalland Dr Gregor(for starters) I guess I am a plant based nerd who eats crappy vegan food more than she should. Why am I writing about this? Maybe because I believe in order to heal ourselves and our planet and to truly be compassionate people we need to stop eating animals. Simple as that. Would Covid -19 be around if people weren’t eating animals? I don’t know, I’m not a scientist or even remotely qualified person but I hesitate to guess that it probably wouldn’t. Would our hospitals be filled with people with heart disease, cancer and diabetes etc… probably not so much. I get that people like to eat animals and a lot of people think it is our right and biological necessity but it isn’t. Honestly even if it was, I wouldn’t. Let’s try and lessen the suffering in the world, including for animals. Try a vegan burger, they are quite delicious. Peace Adele has lost weight. A lot of weight. She is also an established, successful recording artist. She has numerous awards including Grammy’s, Brit awards, Golden Globe, Billboard Music awards… She has released 3 albums and more. She is a formidable talent, a strong mother, forging a career in a brutal industry that places enormous pressure on artists, especially women to look and certain way, to be desirable, half naked and thin. Adele has successfully bucked all of this and is the epitome of class, style, elegance, integrity and she has a wicked sense of humour. She has also for most of her career been what society considers, overweight. So the weight loss. She looks wonderful but then again she always has. I say good for her if it was important to her to improve her health and to change the shape of her body. I hope it has nothing to do with a bunch of keyboard warriors relentlessly condemning her for being larger than what they think she should be (hypocritically regardless of how they themselves may look) What is so typical and boring is how excited media/social media gets when a woman loses weight. It is as if the weight loss is their biggest accomplishment. Now come on. Adele is phenomenal, size 14 or size 8. Who gives a fuck. Celebrate how much of a strong, talented, smart woman she is. Can we once and for all stop commenting on women’s bodies. Can we please get past it? There is not a woman on earth who avoids this. I vividly remember boys and men commenting on my appearance throughout my life, letting me know what was good and bad about it. Yawn. There are currently protests going on in Australia against the Covid lockdowns and footage emerged of a woman who had her young son with her, being arrested. The footage is harrowing; the boy is clearly traumatised. I absolutely believe she has the right to peacefully protest, which is what she was doing. She also probably shouldn’t have had her son with her and probably shouldn’t be protesting while Covid is kicking our arses. However whilst reading some comments about it on social media, some people were commenting on her appearance, criticising her for having Botox. What the fuck does her face have to do with anything, who cares if she has Botox, how does anyone know she has Botox, fillers or a face lift and why is it worth mentioning. Grow up. This is yet another example of what women face everyday of their lives. We are not allowed to simply exist. We are constantly told how we must look and behave. I tell you if she was older and has jowls she would have been criticised for that. We are never enough. I am so tired of it; I look at my amazing daughter and just think we must do better. I want her to know she is perfect the way she is, everyday and forever. But what a battlefield she will face as she grows up and navigates the world. I only hope I can help to make it a little easier for her. And while we are at it, don’t shame yourself if you put on a kilo or two or three throughout isolation. It is ok, you are ok, you are perfect. No more fat jokes. No more fat shaming. Peace |
Writer. Bipolar Rambler. Archives
March 2024
Categories
All
|