Busy bee

Last week was an extremely eventful week. There where so many fun things happened that now I’m all funned out.
I went to the Opera house twice, once to watch theatre and once to watch opera. I realised I really liked Carmen, however I do think that the subtitling of opera does take some of the beauty out of it. It’s good to know what the stories are about, but I found it hard to focus on the singing and read at the same time.

Then it was big night out for comp day on Wednesday, with the side effect of loosing my phone in a cab. Then the rest of the week to me to see a lot of music at the Good Vibrations music festival. My high light was watching Miike Snow.

However Ludacris did put on a great show, so did Eryka Badu, Kelis and the other bands we watched did alright as well. The only let down was Ting Tings, but then that could have to do with that by then it was raining very hard and their stage had no cover.

All an all, I left the festival, soaked through and covered in mud. As one should I assume
Sunday took me for a nice Sunday lunch in Randwick and ended with a Burlesque show in the city. It was entertaining, for sure, and you got to give a lot of credit to the girls. It takes some guts to do what they do. Unlikely that it will be something that I would get myself into. I do not have that kind of confidence.

Today is Valentines day, and my exiting date night will include, taking out the bins, cleaning the shower screens in the bathroom and vacuuming the living room floor. Might make a night of it and throw in a bit of grocery shopping and a load of laundry.
The saddest thing, this is actually making me pretty happy. My flat is a mess and I’m looking forward to putting the music up loud and dance around with my hover.

Life architect

I for the first time in my life have no plans, no goals and no real direction. I’m finding this thrilling and scary at the same time. I am the kind of person who always have had a 10 year plan, I’m going to study this, then work here then do that, do this etc.

Now that is not to say that the plans have always come together, been what I expected or lead me where I thought I would end up. But there has always been a plan, normally a 10 year one.

Now there is no plan, whatsoever, no long term plan at least. There are short term plans, like this weekend I’m going to a music festival and a dance performance and a lunch. But no long term plans, no future idea of where I’m going to go, work with, live with, city to live in.

This is an unbelievable uncomfortable situation for me, who is not a natural “take-the-day-as-it-comes” kind person. Carpe Diem my ass. This is not my normal habitat. But I think for now, making plans to fix, sort out, get on would more then likely lead to ending up in a very wrong place. So for now, I’m making 10 minute plans. Plans for today, eat something before going for a 3 hour opera at the opera house.

I’m going the distance, I’m going for speed.

Well that is how it felt when I was doing my first driving lesson since I was 16. When I was 16 I did do a few driving sessions with my dad. But since then, all I’ve done is practicing parking.

So I did 30 minutes in a parking lot figuring out how to use the clutch and changing gears using my left hand, and then out on the streets at the breakneck speed of 70 km/hour. It was pretty exiting.

There are things that I’m not very good at yet, such as getting off at green lights. I stalled the car so bad I missed at least 3 green light sessions. Got really flustered cause there where cars behind etc. I was really scared that they would start honking, not cause of the honking but that I would get really angry, jump out of the car and run over and start yelling at them. That won’t happen; I’ll make sure of it. But you know, it’s in my personality to do that.

I also went to my PT for the first time yesterday and today there is so much pain. Good pain, no joint pain, but still pain. Tomorrow I’m suppose do to the Great Urban run, it’s a 5 hour orienteering/running/quiz event that you do in teams. It will be good, except it’s going to be 38-42 degrees in Sydney. I reckon there are going to have to be a lot of water drunk, and not a lot of beer drunk tonight. Probably a good thing all in all.

M.I.A

I have not been writing for a while. For many reasons, mainly time constraints but also disinterest and a general feeling of not wanting to.

So since I wrote the last time a lot of things have happened, Christmas and New Years came and went, with the pleasure and the pain that they brought with them. I had a lovely time on both occasions, but not without a fair bit of sadness that I tried my best to ignore and shovel down. Christmas was particularly hard, but I was lucky in having my dad here and also having places to be and people to see.
The picture above is from the fireworks over Darling Harbour, that you could see from my balcony. Look to the left and you see the outline of my dad.



Then I went bridge climbing and took a helicopter ride over the harbour. That was pretty awesome. I’m a great lover of the Sydney harbour and it doesn’t get much better then seeing it from a helicopter. The picture above is from that Event. The helicopter flyer is my mate. Pretty good thing to have a friend who can fly the helicopter, I guess.

Since then I had some more friends visiting from Europe which was lovely.

I also have been working stupid hours and got myself my learner’s license. So I can now take Kurt (the car) out for a drive as long as I have fully licensed driver supervising me in the car. I’m having my first lesson today, with my mate the helicopter flyer, indeed a brave soul considering I get aggressive and rude when I’m trying to learn new things.

PH11, has taken a really bad turn, no weight loss, cut down on the disco dancing and drinking mainly cause I have no people in the house, the smoking is going so so.
But as my sister says, failure is not an issue as long as you pick yourself up and try again. So I’ll have to do it again, do it right. First session with a personal trainer today. Maybe that will get my arse in the gear.

PH-11

I have decided that January 2011 will be the kick off time for my new Project Health 2011. Why is this, well the main reason is that I’m feeling very unhealthy. I have had so much fun in the last couple of months, so much fun; which can be seen on the increase of waistline that I have and the fact that my stomach ulcer has come back in full force.

I can’t blame it all on the fact that I have had great visitors in my flat since early October even if I would want that. It does come down to the fact that I have eaten to much, drunken to much and smoked far to much.

Now it has been lovely to do this, but I am starting to see the side effects of this hedonistic couple of months that I have been having.

All the dresses and skirts I bought in New York in August are too tight in the waist.
My attention span is really bad.
I have much less energy then I normally have.
My skin is getting prickly and I have got breakouts again. Wrinkles and pimples in combination. Not fair at all.

As I’m a all or nothing person I will try to do this as a project, but my aim is
1. Not to let it take over my life.
2. Not get injured from the increased training.

These are things that I have never been able to do. Ever. I normally get far to into it, cutting out all socialising and focus only on eating well and training hard. Rendering my personal life a bit dull and also about 4 months in I will have got myself injured again.

So I will not do it that way this time.
I have made a project plan, I have divided the time from January to April into stage 1.
In stage 1 I will stop smoking, I will eat more vegetarian food and get back into regular exercise.

In stages, not all at once.

If I would do it all in once, then one is very likely to fail. So first step is, stop smoking, stop drinking for January and go to one yoga class a week.

This is my plan, or Project Health 2011, or PH-11 as I will refer to it.

Membrane

the kind of armour I would like
I have not been writing for a while. I have been very busy as I have had guests in my flat since the second week of October and will continue to do so until the first week of January. It has been lovely to have so many people come and see me. But it has also lead to much sadness as I have to see them leave. My friends who are staying at the moment are leaving on Friday and Sunday, and my dad arrives on Monday. So it will be a weekend of mixed emotions.

At the moment I feel like my shell is getting very membrane like and I let things in and out to easy. I like it better when it's like armour, I know that might not make me the cuddliest person in the world, but there are plenty of pandas to take that role. Anyway, in regards to my armour, my friend pointed out last night that why don't I just let myself feel the way I feel and remove all the strategies of avoiding feelings I don't like.

That seems like a terrifying way of life, to much emotion, to much drama. I don't do drama. But I guess that is what people mean with live in the now and all incense that stuff.

I have had such a fun fun fun time in the last few months. To much fun, I feel my energy is depleted, in combination with hyperness. Unenergetic hyper me, Isn't my dad a lucky guy who will get to hang out with that person for a month. Really hyper but can't be bothered doing anything anymore. Let's hope he is jetlagged the first couple of days so I get a decent amount of sleep.
I feel a need to centre and kind of quiet down. I have started a plan for 2011, for a more sustainable way of living. However much fun I have had I also know that what I'm doing at the moment is so scatty and un-organised it kills all creativity I have, all extra energy and a lot of the feeling of caring for others. And that is not a good thing.

1 Year anniversary

Today it’s a year ago that I started working in my current organisation.
It is one year since I was convinced that I was going to be fired within two weeks. I seem to have survived for longer than that, I’m pretty chuffed about that.

Anniversaries of all sorts are interesting occasions as they make you think about what has been happening since this time last year. By God has a lot of things happened. I was reading back in my blog post from the first day last year. I was so scared and uncomfortable. Now I’m not scared, I’m still uncomfortable sometimes but that is mainly because my role has changed to be a very different from what I have done before. I enjoy that very much. But it is still challenging.

Separating or getting divorced is obviously the biggest change in 2010. I’m still pretty surprised about that one. I never saw that one coming. That knocked my sense of control of my live to the curb. Funnily a friend pointed out to me last night that I have more control of my own life now then I have ever had before as I can make decisions only for me. No one else has to be involved in the process at all.

How come I feel that I’m standing in the middle and things are just happening around me at record breaking speed then?