Singular Scene

So Singular in Each Particular

Easy as ABC

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I booked in September on a whim.. I mean, I’ve been an Aussie Blogger since 2004, it would be a shame not to attend the first ever Aussie Bloggers Conference, right?

So, I booked – anticipating being the only person I knew there, and embarking on what I thought then was just a random incident of getting out there to meet people ‘in real life’.

As it happens, it won’t be the first this year … but that’s another story.

So then, as I got involved with a blog project for my honest to goodness real life friend Clare from Girl on a Swing it seemed silly that she shouldn’t be there, so the invite was issued and accepted and all of a sudden I wasn’t going to be the only person I knew there…

THEN as the awesomeness heaps upon the awesomeness I chipped in a tiny bit to bring Kelley at Magneto Bold Too up to the conference from south of the border, because, quite frankly the conference would be all wrong without her – she’s ‘teh awesome’ of Aussie Blogging. And thus my joy was complete.

So, there you go, I’m going to the Aussie Bloggers Conference, and I’m not going alone.

PS: Don’t tell the Aussie Bloggers I’ve forgotten how to blog…

PPS: Neither tell them I’m not a Mommy Blogger.

[Edited to correct unfortunate spelling error…]

Therapy Sessions

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The kids are in the bath.

I was going to tweet something about that and realised that the majority of people reading the twitter feed would assume they’re my kids, of course, if I write it here, you know they’re not. Kids being in the bath is unremarkable and the tweeting would have been more about the Armageddon-ish type sounds emanating from said bath, and whether I can bring myself to go in and survey the damage… I’ll wait for the tears, there will be some, no doubt.. that’s how these things always end… tears or floods on the floor, or floods of tears… or both…

But in the meantime, I have 30 seconds to write a blog post, something I rarely get to; much like twitter, really… I have more work than I know what to do with, and between doing it and farming what I don’t have time to do out to my Indian contractor… well, blogging, and twitter seem to get the short shrift.. However, regardless of how busy the studio is, there’s always time for the kids.

I call them my therapy.

I know, right? Kids as therapy? Easy to believe it’s possible when I only have them 1 day a week and because they think I’m the best person on the planet (who isn’t a family member)… It’s kind of like having pets who talk, and laugh, and tease me… the 2 year old calls me Dee Dee. She is the ONLY person on the planet who gets away with it… because, if I make a big deal about it, it will stick – but she knows I hate it… and keeps doing it, she’s just that kind of kid, but Oh! My! the twinkle in her eyes when she does is to DIE for!

Tonight I had to fight with Flyboy because he didn’t want to do his homework. Can’t say I blame him, I think it’s a bit shit to have to do homework when you’re only six, but I sat with him, and we worked through it, (and no, I didn’t do it for him… but I was tempted, let’s face it, my handwriting could be mistaken for a 6 year old’s sometimes…) and together we survived – and I think he really loves that we do it together, certainly the histrionics at the thought of homework subsides if he’s got me breathing down his neck encouraging him…

This time with them keeps me grounded, it makes the stresses of deadlines and code hiccups seem completely insignificant for a few hours of the week. No secret, I totally love it.

And it doesn’t hurt that it’s the only kind of therapy I’ve come across that pays me…

Oh, to be a Duck

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Duck Swimming

I so wish I was one of those people who glide along through life looking for all the world like a picture of serenity, even if all the while their little legs are paddling like mad to stay afloat.

Sadly, I’m more of the kind of chick who’s legs are paddling like our little friend’s above, but who also squawks and flaps about rather a lot as well.

How’s the Serenity*?

Not so great.

My personality tends towards choleric, if you’re familiar with that sort of thing, a choleric person

… is a do-er. They have a lot of ambition, energy, and passion, and try to instil it in others. They can dominate people of other temperaments, especially phlegmatic types. Many great charismatic military and political figures were cholerics. They like to be leaders and in charge of everything.

Actually, from my perspective, a choleric person is all about the control.

And when the ability to keep all the plates spinning is compromised?

Flap, Quack. Flap.

Quack.

Which is not the end of the world until the quacking upsets the rest of the flock. Then I have to suck it up, smoothing over their ruffled feathers (and my own).

I wish too that my mantra wasn’t “No Regrets, No Excuses” – because making excuses feels like I could justify the quacking (or snarling, as it happens). But excuses end up making me look smaller than the bigger person I want to be.

So, I eat my dose of humble pie…

…and do my best to feel the serenity.

*Quote from the iconic Australian Movie “The Castle” – the movie has to be watched in full to be truly understood and appreciated, but at about the 15s mark of this Youtube Clip you’ll get the section of the movie from which the above is drawn.

Diagnosis: Geek

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As is not uncommon at this time of the year I’ve been mentally revisiting the previous year which actually was somewhat extended into revisiting 1981 – my first year at high school (and the years following up till the late 90’s).  I believe if I knew then what I know now my life would look very different.  Not necessarily better… but different.

  1. I preferred to spend my lunch hours in the library.
  2. While I was rubbish at maths and physics I was rather excellent at biology and other natural sciences.
  3. I wrote programs in BASIC and Pascall in Applied Computing and was actually quite good at it.
  4. I saw a mouse for the first time demonstrated on an Apple IIc – this made a monumental impression on me.
  5. I loved movies like Tron, Raiders of the Lost Ark, E.T, Ghostbusters, Goonies and Gremlins.
  6. I read MAD magazine at the public library (there was no budget for our own copies) rather than whatever the equivalent of Dolly was at the time.
  7. I had no idea about formal dresses and so had my mother make me something dreadful for my High School formal.  I cringe still, and no, there aren’t photos.  I didn’t go with a boy.
  8. I didn’t have to sit my University Entrance exams due to the  (now outmoded) process of accreditation… This was due to natural smarts and having sucked up to the teachers throughout the year sufficiently that my only marginally above average marks (due to lazy arse) scraped me in… had I had to sit the exam I would have been a quite badly off.

These are only some of the indicators that as a teenager I was a bit of a geek; I didn’t even know what a geek was and neither did my family. None of my quirks in the area of computing were encouraged, I mean, it was a country school and I was  GIRL and no one had any idea where things would go with computers… so I went to work for a bank.

I was never cool.

Geekery is cool these days… and Katie is a case in point – a little girl with a thing for StarWars became an internet sensation… and out of the woodwork came all these other people, girls and guys alike who like geeky things.  She’s by no means the spearhead, geekery has been becoming cool for a while (think the Big Bang Theory, Bones, ).

I would have liked being a geek to have been cool when I was at school and for people of the internet to be behind me in the things I loved back then (oh, wait… the world wide web really didn’t exist then) … but I’ll be happy instead that being a geek now is basically pretty darn ok, and that I can see what I was then and be happy that not loving girly frou frou and preferring the indoors and books and computer games is nothing of which she need feel ashamed.  I can look back and hug that geeky teen in me and tell her that one day all those things she loved would come full circle…

…and she’d be part of the cool crowd.