Holy!Goodness! America.

This can’t end well.

xxx

Notes:

I’m no Hillary fan – she’s far, far too right wing for my tastes.

As a feminist I’m opposed to the idea that I should support a woman because of her gender if I vehemently disagree with her conservative politics.

I’m very pleased we have the electoral (and multi-party) system we have here – and that even our extreme right wingers look like communists in comparison to the “left wing” in the US.

It’s kind of poor form not to address your devoted supporters when you’ve conceded (and to send out a dude to tell everyone to go home).

Holy fuck politicians everywhere, just engage with actual people, be plugged into your constituencies, respond to their concerns, and this sort of crazy shit won’t happen.

The person who cooks should also do the dishes.

What? No! This is a terrible idea!

Apparently the argument is that if you’re cooking and doing the dishes afterward you’re likely to make less mess, because you have to clean it up.

What?!

I mean I guess leaving a huge cooking mess spread all over the kitchen for your partner/family to clean up might be the case if you’re a passive-aggressive inconsiderate dickhead, or just a plain inconsiderate dickhead.

sweet birdy from our hotel in tokyo

This evening we dropped into the local pub to very sedately celebrate Joan’s forthcoming Big Trip. 

Her flight leaves on Friday morning and it’s going to be exceedingly strange and very quiet without her kicking about in ThePalace(OfLove). She’s been here for 6 months and is a very big presence. 

Mad props to her. This is exactly the time in her life to be living out those crazy adventurous travel dreams! (When I was her age I had three children, but those were very, very different times!).

sunset tonight – must bust out the dslr more often

So reading. I’m currently all about the self-improvement and the non-fiction and October was very oriented to that.

You’ll recall that I was testing a bunch of sample chapters, and I pulled the trigger on a couple of them. I’m pretty surprised at how little I read.

✪ Pia Edburg: The Cozy Life: Rediscover the Joy of the Simple Things Through the Danish Concept of Hygge
Lesson: I should know by now to avoid self-published books. It wasn’t too bad, but wasn’t too great either. The author is very sweet, but this is pitched to an audience that is not me. If you know a 12-14 year old, I think this might actually be pretty well suited for them.

✪ Bill Burnett, Dave Evans: Designing Your Life: Build a Life that Works for You.
I didn’t really connect with the voice – kind of a hokey, jolly, bonhomie that I find a smidge grating. Nonetheless, I did get a good deal out of this – if only to pass on the learnings to my peeps at SML. I find I’m very oppositional to written exercises from books, being of the “screw you man, you can’t make me” school, but I did them in my head and was particularly challenged by the think of 3 alternative career paths exercise (as were my peeps). I’m still challenged, but I’m pretty convinced that I’d love to pursue private investigating as my wild and crazy option. Either that or be an assassin.

✪ I’m currently half way through Derren Brown: Happy – Why More or Less Everything is Absolutely Fine .
Honestly, I’m struggling. I was compelled to buy it after the sample chapter brilliantly slammed The Secret, and there is very much good within – but it is so rambling and discursive that I can’t keep track of where I’m at. I’m totally down with the principles, and I’m enjoying learning more about stoicism, but this really, really, desperately needed a good editor (and a whole lot of culling).

Perhaps I need a break and to move onto something else.

xxx

I’ve downloaded another bunch of sample chapters and picked up a couple of new, as yet unread, books – both as a result of podcasts:

✪ The aforementioned Chade-Meng Tan: Joy on Demand: The Art of Discovering the Happiness Within.

✪ Willard Spiegelman: Senior Moments – Looking Back, Looking Ahead discovered on the always excellent virtual memories podcast.

xxx

As an aside, I’m trying to wean myself from reading news as distraction at SML. You know, those times when you’re in the middle of something fiendishly complex and need to mentally step away? I’m trying the kindle web app and all manner of sample chapters as an alternative to my mental step-away. This is working a treat so far – makes for a much less cranky me!

But maybe I just need to get myself onto some good escapist fiction.

pink bottlebrush!

In the past little while I’ve been super-grumpy and curmudgeonly. I’ve attributed this mostly to the on and off drinking, but I had a bit of a revelation yesterday that my huge stockpile of positivity has been depleted by the negative jerks I’m surrounded by at SML and my attitude to them.

xxx

But lets rewind a little.

The week before last was really pretty awful.

– The ToddlerConsultants (really must get onto that post about them) are back in the building for a 5 week bleed-us-dry engagement. Truly, they’re like vampires … once you invite them in &etc. And they’ll spend a good bit of this time slagging me off and suggesting that they’d be better at my job (for 10x the fee) – mostly because I’m an old lady and they’re dynamic young go-getters with gold star education of the UK type.

– We had what I thought was a brilliant Leadership Team | Culture group workshop. During the workshop I made a very considered remark that [newbie in Comms] wouldn’t have been exposed to the extreme levels of dysfunction at SML because they didn’t have much to do with a substantial % of SML. 2 days later I received the longest, most defensive, insecure email I have ever seen from the Comms Director detailing everyone in the business his team had contact with (ironically missing the substantial % I was talking about). So had to deal with that. Bobs says I need to help InsecureNewCommsDirector understand how to interact like a human. I say fuck that, but will do it anyway. These Comms peeps are supposed to be leading our culture transformation. Dispiriting.

– Lunch with DishyExBoss. So much of the “your transformation project won’t work, I’ve seen it all before”. Yeah, thanks!

– Workshops with fighty OldSML peeps of the “we tried that 10 years ago”, “things will never change” type.

– Engagement with ExcellentBigConsultingFirm reviewing processes. I’m leading. Cathartic, but brings up So Much Stuff about what we do badly. At least the many ExcellentBigConsultingFirm consultants love me.

Exhausting.

Add to this lots of reading the news and I was brimful of GRAR and annoyance and whinging and “get off my lawn”. All of my positivity and energy and enthusiasm were really depleted. I had become one of THEM.

xxx

So what changed? Well …

I’m a big fan of the Note to Self podcast and early in the week received the usual email with deets of the new episode about mindfulness.

Of course you can imagine my reaction to the “for he’s a jolly good fellow” job title – all eye-rolling “this is the end of civilisation!”, grumpy old person, gen-X-cynical schtick.

Anyway, yesterday I was walking to work with Don and was ranting about the dickheads I had to deal with and how people were so difficult … and ToddlerConsultant and TheOaf … GRAR GRAR.

After Don and I parted company I shoved in my headphones and listened to the episode and I was really taken with the loving kindness exercise at the end.

I wish for X to be happy.

And so I tried it. I wished ToddlerConsultant to be happy. I wished TheOaf to be happy. And I felt quite a bit calmer. Actually I felt a whole lot calmer. I was radiating calm. Radiating!

Just what now?!

And so through the day I wished for all of the miserable, horrible people I have to deal with to be happy. Sure it was along the lines of “I wish X to be happy … because they are a miserable, negative dickhead who obviously has a horrible life”. Kind of like a curse, spat out with a crooked pointing witchy finger: “I wish for you to be happy!”.

Don and Heather and Vincenzo and Knut were all like “I’m pretty sure this is not exactly what they had in mind with the wishing happiness”.

But hey, I feel a WHOLE lot happier and content and whatever works.

And of course I have bought the book. Because I want more of this. It actually feels pretty great.

Yipes! What a week. It seemed to go forever and was full of frustration and a whole bunch of negativity. Holy!Goodness! some people are utterly full of suck. This change thing is going to be a whole lot harder than Panglossian me anticipated.

Next week will be equally as insane, but (after a whole lot of introspection) I have a renewed positive outlook!

But first I need a very good sleep.

sunset: yesterday

The SML wellness challenge continues apace, but has recently evolved into a slightly different format.

Now, rather than picking 5 items to achieve in a week, the challenge lasts for a month. There are 39 nominated activities to complete and the person with the most items crossed off the giant list is the winner. We piloted this for 2 weeks in October and everyone was mad for it. I came in second in the pilot – if I had only complimented a colleague, bought some flowers (at odds with the Extreme Frugality) or watched a Robert De Niro film, that ghastly $2 shop trophy would have been mine (for a month)!

What this now means of course is that I have a whole lot of SML challenges competing with the 50before50 ones. This is a bit tricksy because I’m kind of horrifically competitive. Do I want to smash my colleagues? Or do I want to achieve my personal goals?

The grown-up thing to go would be to focus on the secret personal goals.

I think we know which option I’ll go for.

twenty-eight weeks!

1. I cannot believe these wee figs are still growing!

2. I also cannot believe how slowly these wee figs are growing.

3. How can it be 28 weeks since I started growing these wee figs?

4. What am I doing with my life?

xxx

The slightly-less-wee lemon forests are in the midst of a growth spurt.

They’re now about 2 years old, last pictured back in February. I’m pretty sure you cannot have bonsai lemon trees, but I’m going to give it a good crack.

xxx

Bonus geranium. I spied a bunch of geranium prunings on the footpath while running a while back and snaffled one very small piece. Stuck it in water, it grew crazy roots, stuck it in some soil, it went pretty crazy and just flowered!

Though I don’t think it is quite happy in its current location (front verandah, full sun, busy road).

picasso: momat

I’m sure pretty much everyone is saying the same thing, but just how can it be November already?

SML is a bit crazy-busy right now. In the next couple of weeks I’m dealing with three (soon to be four) sets of consultants, have a two day training course and will be bidding farewell to one of my direct reports (which is a very good thing) – and picking up his responsibilities (he isn’t being replaced). I also have a bunch of my old work to hand over to new owners, which will take a little time, but which I’m very motivated about!

In addition to all that we’ll be saying goodbye to Joan for a few months – she’s off adventuring in South America!

And then, of course, there is that big, scary number at month’s end. Eeeep!

or, it’s late, i’m tired and this was the first photo on my phone that i hadn’t used

Clockwise from top left:

Fridge controls which we barely pay attention to. Must investigate this Super Freeze setting.

Souvenir fridge magnet feat. small section of the magnificent Arthur Boyd tapestry in the great hall at Parliament House.

Fridge magnet (of my own design) showing our oven settings. The settings keep getting wiped off the oven when it is cleaned (I write them back with a sharpie which doesn’t last a hugely long time). One reason I’d not get another Ariston.

Fridge magnets made from ¥1 coins.