i am annoyed at myself for my whiny last post. seriously, a crushed bumper bar and some anxiety about travelling and i want to feel sorry for myself. please. i dropped the subaru off this morning for its repairs, and my insurance policy includes a hire car, so i picked this thing up afterwards
its a holden cruze and really, its crap. i tested it out properly on the way home from sydney just now, it revved its silly little head off getting to 140km/h then it sat up there and purred quite nicely until this happened.
i have a deep and abiding affection for law enforcement and a nice clean driving record, so i just sat behind him the rest of the way home. i went to sydney to see rosered, who is in hospital having given birth to little Harry yesterday and i had to go See The Baaaabeee. i cuddled him for oh, about an hour or so.
he cried when i put him down. i am crap at swaddling. he smelt beautiful, jane looked fantastic, and i cried on the way home, because babies. also, because i live nearly 2 hours away from my best friend and her gorgeous little boys, and i dont get to see them enough and i miss her.
i have been thinking a lot this week. a lot, like, more than usual a lot. i dont know if anyone else has this happen, but sometimes i feel like i go into a little cocoon, and i can feel the cogs and wheels in my brain working through things. when i was in rehab, there was this little sign on the group therapy room wall. it was called The Tunnel of Change. it had all these crazy arse arrows going in one end of a tube, and then they came out the other end as one solid strong arrow. the tube, the tunnel of change, was all greyed out, signifiying confusion. i think i remember there was some kind of pamphlet about it too (lots of pamphlets in rehab). it was printed on pink paper and i carried it around in my pocket for a long time so i could take it out and read the bits about change, and coping with change, and having faith that change would be good. oh thats it, The Triangle of Self Obsession it was called! change used to make me very anxious. sometimes it still does, which i think was part of the fear in my last post. but i remembered that change can also be exciting, and sometimes fear and excitement feel the same, and maybe im not just anxious or fearful about what this year has in store, maybe im also excited.
i have firmed up some extra travel arrangements when im in the US and i feel genuine excitement about that. im excited about living in the middle of a major city, and living like a local in brooklyn for a while, and im really really excited about the work. i keep thinking about what lyn said, all that time to THINK, and she’s right, just to be able to immerse myself in those archives and have that time to sit in cafes and libraries and at my apartment overlooking spruce street, and start to put all these ideas together. yes i will miss the dogs, but you know that feeling, that something amazing is just waiting around the corner if you have the courage to step off the cliff? thats where im at today. to come out the other end of the tunnel a nice stong arrow you have to just hold your breath and dive on in, right?
i have also been through a big growth spurt at work. i am the honours co-ordinator for my school this year, and for the first time we have a group of students starting together (usually its only one) so i’ve had to put the program together and make decisions and plan timetables and get supervisors and students together, including chairing sometimes volatile meetings. i dont like being out the front, and i still suffer from imposter syndrome in my new school (i’m not a nurse, im just a historian, i dont know anything about practice, im too outspoken, im not professional etc etc). but ive been watching. i’ve watched what other people do in the school meetings, watching the people i respect, how they talk, how they listen, and ive made conscious decisions to emulate them, to shut my mouth, to let other people talk, to hold my opinion, to think before i speak. its working – i feel more confident, more competent, and i dont beat myself up about what i didi or didnt say. i also got a lovely surprise, the head of postgrad studies came to me and said one of my students from last year wanted to pursue a research degree and had asked for me to supervise. i’m really thrilled, he was a challenging student but has so much to offer and so much potential, so we’re going to be working on a project looking at person centred nursing in aged care.
i’ve also said no to a few things at work this week. as people get to know me more they realise what i can do and ive been inundated with requests for help. i wanted to say yes, but i could see my weekends becoming actual work days, and i just cant do that to myself. i have enough to do with my own subjects (running one, teaching in another), marking, research students, writing papers, grant applications. the big task is bringing it all together so that im building a coherent body of work in one or two specific spaces, not spreading myself over a dozen projects that dont tick the outcome boxes i need. im getting better at explaining that to people, and im trying to ignore the guilt. as the lovely rosered keeps reminding me, Would a man think that? would he feel guilty for saying no? would he hesitate asking for a raise? would he worry that people thought he was too confident? no HE would not. i feel so grateful this week to have gotten out of the arts faculty and be working in a genuinely supportive and nurturing environment. its a bit of an oasis in the minefield that can be academia.
so i’ve been thinking about people, and about acceptance, about how difficult i can be as a friend, how long it takes me to trust and how quickly i dismiss people. i rang trent last night and said ‘i think im doing that thing i do when someone does something i dont like and i say oh you’re fucked’ and he laughed and said ‘oh yes that thing you do’. sigh. so ive made another conscious decision this morning to practice acceptance (and i do need to practice it) and think about people in my head as i would like them to think about me, that we’re all just doing the best we can, that maybe they need love and kindness, to try not be part of any gossip or meanness. i really believe that you get out of the world what you put into it. if you’re bitchy and snarky and mean, dont be surprised if people give that back to you.
i know it sounds like im over analysing things, but these are the thoughts that keep me on track, the self talk in my head that helps me get through every day and not drown in a sea of negativity. its probably also because its been raining, and we’ve all been cooped up inside a lot, puppy especially bouncing off walls. we managed to get a couple of runs in down the park in between deluges
and there has been a lot of knitting, including the sleeve completely frogged and reknit
(with ends, sigh). its not the worlds most perfect sleeve but it will block out fine. i was complaining to W in brooklyn that i hated all my knitting at the moment and she said i needed to take a break from the Task Knitting, that i needed to do something mindless and self-satisfying. she was of course right, so i went back to the half finished sock thats been sitting in the basket under the coffee table, and finished one sock while binge watching House of Cards Season Two (i think i tweeted OH MY GOD HE DID NOT JUST DO THAT about every three rows).
i love these socks. the pattern is ‘my cup of tea’ and the yarn is madeline tosh sock in ‘scarlet’ that i actually bought with W that day in brooklyn, and i can not wait to get back to that store because i’ve been thinking about this idea for a quilt for a while, my ‘american’ quilt, made of fabric bought on my various trips to the US. i probably have about half as much as i need, and im going to be on a bit of a mission this time.
anyway. thats enough thinking for one day. i have a second sock to work on
and zombies and mcconaughy as a crazy arse detective to watch. so much tv, so little time.
k xx
