Feast vs. Famine

For what seems like forever, I've had very little to do. Actually, when I think about it more closely, it hasn't been forever, but it has been a few months. Basically since I came back to work after our wedding and honeymoon. It's funny how the less you have to do, the longer it seems to take. I'm possibly experiencing the much spoken about "post-wedding depression," but I think there's more to it than that. I'm someone who likes to be busy. In fact, often I'm busy to the point of ridiculous. I plan things, I organise things, to the point where at various stages I have to actually plan to do nothing. If I'm not busy, I get sad. I have too much time to think. Lately I've been like that because I've had a massive void in my life... hours and hours to fill with mindless nonsense. That time has been Monday to Friday, generally between about 8am and 4.30pm.

WHAT? I hear you say. Are those not the typical "work hours". Yes they are. You are correct dear friends. I've had nothing to do at work. As a combination of a restructure, post-end of financial year (read: post-projects finishing) and general timing issues, I've been floating. It's been a veritable famine of work.

However, in looking at my calendar for the next 2 1/2 weeks until I go away, I am either away or out of the office for every day except one. From one extreme to the other. Don't get me wrong, I'm pleased I'm going to be busy. I'm actually really, really looking forward to it. I just wish that I hadn't had to endure the famine in order to get to the feast. Now I just hope that once I'm back from holidays, the fun will continue!

Customer What?

This morning I heard a story about bad customer service. You know what that is.... in fact, many people are probably more familiar with bad customer service than they are with good customer service. So I wondered....what is it about customer service that makes it so difficult to get right? Surely it's not that hard to hire people who are polite, friendly, and who genuinely want to create a positive experience for and interaction with their customers.

Unfortunately, it seems to come down to individuals. Some individuals will bend over backwards and go out of their way completely to make sure a customer is happy. Others clearly won't, and seem just not to care. A recent experience with Telstra provided me with examples of both within the same 35 minute (!!!!) phone call.

After my husband having to ring Telstra to have me added as an "authorised" on our account for the SECOND time (no problem with once, but when it's already been done and they've spoken to me many times previously, "um, hello, look at the notes on the account" it makes me cross), I finally was able to speak to someone about an internet bill that was higgledy-piggledy. To begin with, the first person I spoke to spent an entire 15 minutes asking me to read out the account number, then to read it out again, then telling me that no, that's not correct, i must be reading the wrong account number. Can't I see it? It's at the top right hand of the page. By this stage, having read out the account number AND the mobile number associated with the account possibly 5 times, I was beginning to get rather agitated because in fact, I am not an idiot, I can read where it says in bold letters ACCOUNT NUMBER. She then asked me t he bill number. Apparently this is also a bill number that doesn't exist, and I must be reading the wrong thing. Was this in fact my first bill for this account? Despite me having told her that I had two bills in front of me, both with the same account number, and yes, in the same place at that.

Thankfully, she then put me on hold, and without saying a word, put me through to another "customer service operator." This person admitted right up front that they were unable to help with this kind of account (honesty that I appreciated by this stage), and put me on hold while they found somebody who could help me. Finally, I found someone who spent 5 minutes talking to me about the bill, what had happened, and put me on hold while he worked out what to do. Apparently in this time, he spoke with another colleague who is an expert in these accounts (who would have thought a wireless internet account could be such a challenge?), and whilst I was on hold for longer than I was expecting, when he came back to me, he apologised for the extra wait, but he had wanted to make sure he had a solution.

So, after $10 a month telstra credit to account for the difference in what I was TOLD I would be getting initially, fixing the current bill, telling me the new amount to pay and generally being pleasant to talk to, what started off as a negative experience turned into a completely positive one. The lovely guy apologised for the wait, apologised that the mistake had been made in the first place, and made sure I understand what was happening next.

Surely, that's not so difficult?

A little list.

I've been inspired to start writing again. It's been some time, as anybody who looks back through my previous posts will realise very quickly. It's been a busy time, and lots of things have changed.

Anyway, I thought I'd re-start my blog with a list (inspired by Jeanie).

A list of things I never thought I'd do (or do again):

1. Live in the country.
Melbourne city girl, that was me. Ah, how love changes us. I'll be a Melbourne city girl again one day, but I'm a country girl for now, and I'm happy about that.

2. Have a career.
I've never known what I wanted to be when I grow up. I have worked lots of different jobs, one for 6 years, but still, I was never quite satisfied. I'm not quite satisfied in my job right now either, but I can see that it's heading somewhere. The only reason I'm not satisfied now is that I've been in this position long enough and learned enough. Now I need a new challenge. It's coming....

3. Insist that our bed be made every morning.
Not only does it have to be made, but it has to be smoothed out and be straight. Inevitably this leads to me being the one who has to make the bed every morning, because dear husband just can't seem to get it quite right. Don't ask me why, but it irritates me immensely to come home from work in the afternoon to a bed that is all skewiff. As a child, I would rarely ever make my bed. I never understood people who did it every day, I didn't see the point. My mum would laugh to read this.

4. Get up 4 mornings a week to exercise.
I honestly thought that all those years of getting up at 4.30am to swim 6 mornings a week had ruined me for normal exercise forever. Now I do group training 2 mornings a week and pilates 2 mornings a week. I so enjoy my sleep in on Wednesdays!

5. Think that having muscles so sore that it hurts to walk is a good thing.
Kind of related to number 4, but currently every movement causes me pain, and yes, it's a good thing.

Life altering

It's been a very long time since I've posted anything on this blog. I find it very interesting that the last post I wrote was about the transition from being a child to being a "proper" adult. I think I may have finally made that transition. I am in the process of making some very big changes in my life. For so long, I've been working for my dad, driving back and forth to Alexandra, trying to be everywhere all at once and succeeding in not really properly being anywhere. All of a sudden, after possibly the most stressful year of my life, I made the decision that I needed to make some decisions. Adult decisions. Difficult decisions. Life altering decisions.

So - now my life is changing. I'm thrilled about it. Nervous, but thrilled.

Sleepless in my life

When I was little, all I wanted was to be grown up. To be an adult. To have a grown up life. To do the things that grown ups were allowed to do. It all seemed like such fun.

Funny, at the time when people said to me "these are the best days of your life, enjoy them while you can," I did as I'm sure many others before me had done. I laughed bitterly and thought to myself... "yeh, what a typical grown up thing to say. You can't possibly understand what it's like to be me in my life." etc. etc.

Now, I wish i was 15 again. or even 20. Even at 20 you're not a proper adult. I wonder at what age that transformation from child to adult finally takes place. Obviously it's a gradual thing, but at what point did it suddenly become all about just coping with life day to day instead of enjoying it?

Being grown up is not all it's cracked up to be.

I can't sleep. I wish I could. Surely this is just the insomniac in me writing. Sometimes having too much time to yourself to think is not a good thing.

HELP!

I like things the way I like them. There's nothing wrong with that.

I like things the way i plan them. There's nothing wrong with that either.

I don't like things to change.

Actually that's not true. I am ok when things change, just as long as I know in advance. Do not spring change on me at the last minute. I might snap. Seriously snap.

I plan. I organise. I like to be on time. I like to know what's happening, where and when and with whom. IN ADVANCE. I like to feel in control. I like to be in control. I need to be in control.

Oh. I've just realised something. I think I might be a control freak.

Won't you help me please?

Help.

Lily I love you!

I love Lily Allen. Seriously... i think i'm in love with her. Well... with her lyrics anyway. So much of the contents of her songs really seem to resonate with me and reverberate within me. The funny thing is, that in trying to think of some specific lines to relate to you, I can't think of any. I know almost all of the words to almost all of her songs, but I think it's the real effect culminates with the lyrics and the music of the whole album together.

She's a genius! On top of her music, I really admire someone in the public eye who has the guts to speak their mind and tell it like it is. It seems sometimes that the world is just full of fluff, so it's refreshing to hear someone who's happy to cut right through it.

I think i'd like to be that gutsy. And that clever!

And i'm very upset i missed out on tickets to both her Melbourne concerts in June and I am loathe to have to pay twice the price for them on Ebay... but it is something I might just resort to.

Have you ever?

Have you ever missed someone so much you just want to cry; someone that you just saw yesterday, and the day before. But someone you haven’t spoken to properly for such a long time. And somehow you’re just not quite sure how to make them understand.

Have you ever had so much going on in your life and needed just one person to talk to. Just one, but it has to be the right one. It’s not their fault they’re not there. Sometimes life just conspires against us.

Have you ever felt so upset but not really known why? It seems silly. Selfish. Needy. Frivolous even. All those things you swore you’d never be but you just can’t work out what’s going on in your own head, much less in your heart.

Have you ever felt lost in your own life? In need of something but just not quite sure what. You can’t put a finger on it. You can’t explain it. You need some kind of reassurance, you don’t know what for, but you know you need it.

Have you ever felt like even though you’re lost, you want to lose yourself in something. Anything.

Have you ever had the feeling it's not actually you i'm talking about?

Yesterday....

....all my troubles seemed so far away....because i saw....

The Biggest.

Helibopper.

Ever.

His name is Elvis. And he's my neighbour.

Scale

There is a big difference between seeing pictures of things and seeing them in real life, whatever the circumstances and no matter how amazing the photos.

Last year at the end of a trip around Australia with some friends I went to Ayers Rock. It is a stunningly beautiful area. How can one rock be so much? Before we got there, I actually had very little interest in visiting it. "It's just a stupid rock," I thought. I only agreed to go there because we were drivig home within just a few hours of it, and it seemed a waste not to. It's not as if I was ever going to make a special trip there just to see it... "It's one of those things every Australian should see," I'd been told. So I went.

I don't even know how to describe the feeling that came over me as I saw it in the distance, and remained with me as we approached. I couldn't understand how something I had seen in so many photos right throughout my life could at once be so the same and yet so very different. How could it be so familiar and yet so brand new? Surely, you would think i would have learned by now, that as brilliant as modern photography is, one thing it cannot and will never be able to accurately portray is scale.

Anybody who has ever looked at real estate photos probably has a good grasp of this. Anybody who has tried to insist to friends that their holiday photos "just don't do it justice." Anybody who has driven down the Hume or Melba Highways in the last couple of weeks will also begin to have an understanding- anybody who has seen the loss and devastation on the faces of those who have lost everything, and the stress and worry of those who still feared they might.

Many people have said to me recently, "I've read the newspaper and found myself crying," or "oh isn't the news just so sad at the moment - those poor people." The generosity of Australians and the world has been amazing, obviously many people are aware that this disaster is beyond the realms of anything most Australians have ever endured. However, I think the only people who can even begin to understand the real scale of this catastrophe are those whose lives have been irreparably changed: those who have lost friends or relatives, those who have lost their homes and memories. Those people now have to begin the mammoth task of trying rebuild their lives. and that's something I am certain they don't want people taking photographs of. They don't want strangers thinking they understand something the scale of which they cannot possibly understand and something to which no photograph can ever do justice.

Disappearing

Blogland is like a massive block of apartments. When you've lived there for a while you get to know your neighbours. If you don't see them for a while, you miss them. After a while longer though, you get used to it and then one day you find yourself wondering whether they still live in your block of apartments at all. But you can't find out, because you don't remember their names.

So you trawl back to the blogs you vaguely remember the names of, looking for links that sounds familiar only to find that the same thing happened to those people as happened to you - life got in the way. They haven't moved out of their apartment, they just haven't painted the walls in a while and there are cobwebs all over the place. Some people gave notice they were giving up and getting out. For others, I suspect that a day turned into a week which turned into a month which all of a sudden became a year. Kinda just like what happened to me.

All of these people inspired me in various creative ways... I felt like I had a good long glimpse into the inner workings of their souls. Reading someone's writing can have that effect sometimes. I am sad that they are gone now. I can only hope that one day, as I have, they feel the urge return, and that they let me know when they do.

Sadness

It's funny how things change you know...

I have just been reading bck through some posts I wrote eons ago. Yes, it has been eons since i've regularly written anything at all, much less a blog post. It's kind of sad really. Reading them though, I've decided that I used to feel a whole lot more cheerful than I do currently. Crazy random musings... that's what those posts were. I enjoyed reading them and I decided to write some more.

I think i've grown up alot though, in the last couple of years. I feel wiser - sadder. I love my life, I really do, but things have happened, things have changed, not least the events of the last 10 days. It feels as though it's been months since my world was smoke-free and consisted of normal hours, normal people and a normal town. I feel selfish, and really I am, and don't worry, I realise it. I have so few things to worry about and so much to be happy aboutand thankful for, but I still wish everything would just go back to normal.

I wish the sky was sunny and blue and smoke-free.
I wish i could drive down the roads I used to drive down without driving past tens of kilometers of blackened trees and buildings in rubble and ash, past acres of charcoal fields and
I wish our town wasn't full of people in mourning - both mourning for their lost lives and lost loved ones.
I wish I could see my beautiful boyfriend every night instead of spending them by myself worrying that he's out on the fireline.
I wish I could drive my normal way home, but the road's closed.
I wish our town wasn't full of fire fighters and emergency services.

Mostly, I wish that the events that caused all of these wishes to come about had never happened.

If only life were exactly how we wished it.

I know there will be happy times again. I know life will return to "normal."

Right now though, it doesn't feel like it will be any time soon, and that makes me sad for us all.

Aussie Aussie Aussie!!!

Oh. My. God.

Ok... so there are alot of exciting things happeing in my life at the moment.

Probably the most exciting though... is that i'm going on a trip around Australia for 10 weeks...
This is AWESOME for a number of reasons...
a) I get to spend 10 weeks with some of the most fun people I know -my boyfriend, one of my best friends, her husband-to-be, her brother and his wife.
b) I have 10 weeks off work. Seriously... 10 whole weeks. I only just got ACTUAL permission from my boss (dad) for this on Monday... so despite having been planning this for aaaages, it was never actually REAL until this week! NO WORK FOR 10 WEEKS. YiPPEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!
c) I get to see soooo many places around this great land of ours that i have never been to. Seriously... i got out a huge map of northern Australia the other day (I'm flying to Weipa and meeting the crew there, then going up Cape York, across to Darwin & Kakadu, down to El Questro and the Bungle Bungles, and across to Broome. From Broome, up to Cape Leveque, back and across to Alice Springs & Ayers Rock, down to Adelaide and finally home to Melbourne).

It's bizarre you know... how many Australians have never seen Australia. I mean... we've all been to most of the capital cities, but I'm talking about what's beyond the city lights. Most twenty-somethings are so keen to make what now seems to be a rite-of-passage overseas for a few months or a year, but they could often much more easily (and much more cheaply!) spend months travelling around Australia. My sister and my mum in particular have said to me many, many times, "why don't you go to Europe... you could spend the same amount of money and see sooo much more. You'll love it there." From this comment alone, it's obvious how little either of them have seen of Australia. I don't doubt I would enjoy Europe, but for me, that will come later.

We have an amazingly beautiful and diverse country here people...

WHY do most people want to see so little of it?????

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.