life changes

My life has changed alot lately.

Actually scratch that.

My attitude to life has changed alot lately. It sort of started as a subconscious thing... a reaction to things changing around me. But as I realised it, I've made even more of a conscious effort to work with it. What has changed? You may well ask. Really, it's that I've decided that there are things in life that are much more important than my computer and my desk. There are things in life that are more important than my bank balance - namely, my time, my friends, my family and within all of these, my happiness.

So, I have dropped some students, I finish earlier at night, I am making a conscious effort to talk to and see my friends more regularly, I am spending less time on my computer and sometimes... well, sometimes I even turn it off. I am not logged onto skype and msn all the time, and I've started going out to dinner without my phone, because the people I'm with are more important than work calls that I can return later. I am, for the first time in my life, doing my uni work consistently rather than leaving it all for a last minute stress, I've started running again, because I now have enough energy to DO things when I get home after I finish teaching, and I've been reading books - real books with real pages.

One of my friends put it quite succinctly to me last night: "you've worked out that you're more driven by being happy than by money or a high-powered career." And I really think that's it. That's not to say that my work suffers, because I am just as dedicated to getting everything done, I've just realised that I don't have to be available to work 24 hours a day to make it happen. I've realised that I don't have to know what I want to do for the rest of my life, as long as I'm happy at the moment. I have a vivid imagination, and i've started to scheme all sorts of grand things. Some of them will happen, some of them might not, and i'm fine with that.

In short, I'm relaxed and I'm happy. I'm not stressed, and I don't dread the end of the weekend NEARLY so much. The week goes more quickly, and the weekend goes more slowly, and I feel like I have enough time to do the things I want to do, and I'm excited about it!

ooh i couldn't resist

OK. It's been a LONG time since i've felt so compelled to write about something I've read. But today, I happened to read this opinion article in The Age, "Why do some women still change their names?" The author talks about deeply insecure women who are "diluting themselves" and who are in deep denial. She talks of women who change their surnames "because their husbands want them to" and because it's easier when they have families. She ridicules all of these ideas.

Here's an idea for you Catherine Deveny: perhaps some women change their surnames because THEY WANT to. Perhaps they change it because they want to show the world that they are now more than just themselves, they are part of a unit, part of a team: the same team she talks about in regards to parenting later on in the article. "We need to take the focus off the role of mother and put it on to parents as a team." Yep. A team. You don't see TEAM members running around the traps with different uniforms or calling themselves different team names do you?

ooh so-called "feminists" like this make me absolutely SEETHE!!!!! Dammit when I get married i'm changing my name, and it's not because i'm either deeply insecure, deeply conservative OR deeply stupid. It's because I want to. One second she's saying that women should be allowed and encouraged to do anything they want, but then she's saying they shouldn't WANT to change their name. Hell, why don't we just abolish marriage altogether... I mean, that's the archaic part, isn't it?

Whether women want to change their names or not is up to them... but I don't think it is archaic, misogynistic OR sad. It might be unnecessary, but so is owning 20 pairs of shoes, and it's my right to choose those as well.