Strictly Emotional Blogging

On September 14, 2011, in Strictly Internet, by Kathy Rees
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A Case of The Rainy Day Blahs
Creative Commons License photo credit: Pink Sherbet Photography

My blog posts are not for everyone – and that’s OK with me.  I wish I didn’t know so much about what I know about – or need to talk about it – or be asked to talk about it – but this is what I know and sometimes what I share.

 

But where does emotion lie in the blogosphere?  I’m watching with great interest Chris Brogan’s posts regarding social media and twitter.  As a little experiment of my own, I left a link in the comments about an old post I had written along very similar lines – did anyone click on it and read it – NOPE – why – because it’s more important for some people to be seen commenting on a well known blog than engaging in what other people are actually saying.

 

Is there a place for emotion in blogging?  Absolutely.  Will people read it – probably not. And it’s not actually their fault.

 

Internet marketing which I use as a glib term about dominating the internet and being the ‘leader’ in social media is about making back links and dominating google.  it’s taught in every decent internet marketing SEO course around.  It’s how you get ‘authority’ and so people leave their comments with back links all over the place – not that humans actually click on them, (more…)

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Strictly Internet Marketing

On September 13, 2011, in Strictly Internet, by Kathy Rees
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Marine Teak Wood Wireless Keyboard Rollbar (vertical)
Creative Commons License photo credit: Carbon Fiber Magic

I’m doing the 30 day challenge again this year, mainly as a refresher to see if there’s anything new out there that I should be doing, and sadly, I’m not enthralled.  In fact I’m more jaded than ever.

 

I’m not bagging the challenge team at all – those guys are awesome and know their shit backwards and if you don’t know anything about internet marketing and want to learn go here, it’s just that I’ve got it already without sounding like a total arrogant prat, and I’m not sure it’s the road I want to go down – in fact I’m sure it isn’t.

 

Here’s the thing, recently I had a chance to use all of my internet and SEO skills for actual work – my job that pays the bills – I was able to dominate the first page of google for 4 phrases and two keywords and we got all the attention we needed in the time we needed it.  It’s over now and I’m glad – but also sad.  It was great to use my skills for ‘good’ but internet marketing, in some ways is ‘evil’.

 

They tell you to find a micro niche and write the shit out of it, often by ‘swiping’ content – re-hashing what is already known, and dominating the market so you get your share of the (more…)

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Strictly Driving

On September 12, 2011, in Strictly Living, by Kathy Rees
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Reflections
Creative Commons License photo credit: tgraham

My eldest daughter is on her L plates, we have another 60 hours or so to go before she completes her mandatory 100 hours before she can go for her P licence and she is driving me crazy.  I tweeted the other day that the most feared and dreaded words I have grown to hate are “Can I drive?”

 

It shouldn’t be this way I guess.  She is actually good, until she gets in a mood and then it can get pretty tense.  I don’t know how other parents handle this, and to be honest, it wasn’t a parental ‘job’ I thought I would be doing – I thought their dad would handle this – another thing left to me.

 

Anyway to get her off on the right foot, I booked her very first driving lesson with an instructor because I didn’t want us to start off badly and her driving experience to be filled with dread. (more…)

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Strictly Dishwashing

On September 11, 2011, in Strictly Living, by Kathy Rees
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Kitchen event
Creative Commons License photo credit: Strupey

I’ve written about this before, but I thought it was time to re-visit it and I think that blog post got lost somewhere in cyberspace anyway.

 

So to summarise, my kids used to complain about emptying and loading the dishwasher which drove me crazy.  I tried to explain to them that they were lucky enough to have a dishwasher as I didn’t when I grew up.  You guessed it – they don’t care. Save your breath don’t even bother comparing your childhood to theirs.

 

Anyway to ‘fix’ it I turned the dishwasher off and told the kids it was broken so they would have to do it by hand.  Well of course the complaints and arguments increased but I believed I had taught them a lesson – don’t take things for granted blah blah blah.

 

Anyway after three weeks I decided that the experiment was over so I turned on the dishwasher again only to discover that the pump had dried out and it was broken.  So the cost of replacing the pump is the same as a new dishwasher so I was up for $600 – doesn’t pay to be a smart ass mother.

 

So we are still without a dishwasher it’s been about four years now.  I just cannot bring myself to pay $600 for an appliance that does something that takes five or ten minutes to do and offers a chance for people to chat for a few minutes and work together, and respect their environment.

 

The upshot is, we still have arguments about the dishes, “I didn’t use that why do I have to wash it” my reply “don’t get me started on which tiles you walk on so you only wash those ones” and on and on it goes but my decision at the moment is final – even in my weakest hour when I get home from work to find the sink covered in dirty dishes which the teenagers have ‘forgotten’ about or ‘didn’t see’ (this drives me batshit) I still refuse to buy a new dishwasher.  $600 is not easily found and better spent on teeth, orthodontists, prescriptions, school and a thousand other things I can think of.

 

Carry on.

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Strictly Wondering

On September 9, 2011, in Strictly Editorial, by Kathy Rees
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Wonder
Creative Commons License photo credit: Frinthy

Today was a difficult day.  It started exceptionally early and I returned to my car exactly 12 hours after I’d parked it to return home, only to pick kids up and drop them off.

 

Yesterday I started a ball in motion that today had me sitting at my desk wondering what the hell I was doing working for the place I am working for.  Some background, one of the directors has hand picked a junior staff member to take on one of the most senior roles in the organisation. She has no experience in three of the core responsibilities of the position, which will directly affect patient care.  There was no opportunity for any other staff member to express interest in being considered for the position.

 

So I asked the director for a copy of the policy document outlining the rules of internal vacancies, to which I was given short and shrift response, stating there were none, and by the way I shouldn’t be using my title at the bottom of my emails.

 

Which led to a reply by me, which led to a bullying email back from them, which led to another reply with my director copied in which led to another reply even worse than before, which (more…)

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Strictly Messy

On September 8, 2011, in Strictly Living, by Kathy Rees
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Creative Commons License photo credit: HollyEma☮

This morning I left the house with the dishes on the sink from the night before before’s dishes on it, a pile of washing to be folded on the table tennis table, a pile of mail on my desk so large that I have abandoned that desk and moved to the one in my bedroom and a laundry that does not bear speaking about.

 

However, all my kids were at school, organising their social lives for tonight, preparing for exams and generally getting on with things.  A far cry from the start of this week.

 

So the moral for me in the mess in which I came home to tonight, with two kids out enjoying themselves, and one completing an art assignment, was that I finally had time to get some organisation back into the house.  After sitting down with my eldest watching our fav tv shows I set about doing dishes and folding laundry until I had to go out and pick up child two and three from their social engagements – and drop one of their friends home as well.

 

It got me thinking about my friend who visited my house one day with her husband.  Now my friend is one of those super organised can drag style out of a paper bag kind of woman, and her house is always meticulous, and her husband expects (make that expected it – they are currently divorcing) it.  I went out for the night and they were minding the kids for me, and like a true friend who cannot stand mess anywhere, she started folding my laundry and generally tidying things up – it took her ten minutes.  She asked her husband what he thought of the place and the children.  He replied that it wasn’t really in such a bad state after you put a few things away it was clean.  Yes but what about the kids.  He said that they were great well balanced polite children, with great senses of humour.

 

So my lesson/point in all this – I never put housework in front of my relationships – especially those with my kids.  If they need my time they have it, dishes will get done eventually and there will always be more dishes to do, and more laundry to put away – we are all going to die with something in our in-tray – but moments with your children, your loved ones, are precious, irreplaceable and often lost in moments that are never recovered.

 

So when you come over, expect a tidy mayhem of existence – clean but lived in – and if you don’t like, well I’m really sorry about that, but I don’t have time for an entry in home beautiful, and chances are, neither do you.

 

Carry on.

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Strictly Speculating

On September 7, 2011, in Uncategorized, by Kathy Rees
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RMB - taking off and will just slip through, I think!
Creative Commons License photo credit: antwerpenR

When I have a day like yesterday, I often find myself, as I did last night, lying awake in bed playing the what if game.  What if my husband was still here, what if I didn’t sell our house, what if I’d moved back to Melbourne?

 

And then I run scenarios in my head about what my life would look like now with all the flip sides of the what ifs and try imagine what my life would look like.  But these are impossible speculations because I’m speculating from a changed place, so whatever the circumstances I place back into my life, I place it in from the place that is already changed, and that can never be healed, can never go back.

 

Trying to work out how things could have been is futile, because each choice we make, once we have made it is a concrete block in our life.  It is cemented in and forever changes our wall so the view from that wall will forever be changed by that block and there is no removing it.  We can look back and wonder why the hell we put that block there in the first place, but to imagine the wall how you should have built it only comes from a place of knowing what the wall looks like now.

 

So when I lie awake at night and play the what if game, I’m going to change it to forward instead of backward.  What if I get a new job, start to write my book again, finish my masters, these are things I have some control over instead of wasting energy on the what ifs that are cement blocks, only weighing my down from getting on with building my wall.

 

Carry on.

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Strictly Struggling

On September 6, 2011, in Strictly Emotional, by Kathy Rees
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Fight to survive
Creative Commons License photo credit: Steve-h

Today was not the best day.  All of my kids are in various stages of melt down.  My youngest didn’t want to go to school unless I was going to be home when he got here – this meant a day off work – another one.  My middle child is in stressed out mode over four assignments that are due and is also fighting off the dreaded bug.  My eldest is still adjusting to her new medication and recovering from her emotional melt down on Sunday.

 

So today I stayed at home, listened to kids throughout the day and tried to work out how the hell I can maintain a career (read admin/researcher job that I barely hold onto because of all the time I take off), keep the kids on track and at school when they want to give up, give them hope that not everything turns out badly and cook dinner.

 

Today was a struggle for sure.  I don’t know how to keep going with all this – giving up is not an option just so you know – but I truly don’t know how I’m going to get through the rest of this year and then the next six to get them all through school and uni, keep a roof over our heads and give them enough of me when they need it.

 

It’s a struggle – no other word for it – and by no means the worse struggle in the world but everything is relative and although my thoughts do wander to those poor women carrying water on their heads, my burden feels no less compelling.

 

Carry on.

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Strictly Get Over It

On September 5, 2011, in Strictly Emotional, by Kathy Rees
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_MG_9347
Creative Commons License photo credit: Marquis Lewis

Yesterday was a tough day for kids without dads – fathers day.  One of my daughters didn’t do so well and then the other kids went out in sympathy so by mid afternoon my house was a bit solemn but as usual we hung together and did our own thing and got through the day in the safest place in the universe – mum’s bed.

 

One of the things that made yesterday particularly difficult for my daughter was the lack of understanding of her boyfriend’s mother.  She couldn’t understand why, after six years, she would still be upset (crying uncontrollably actually) over the fact that it was father’s day.

 

This is the thing with children’s grief – well not only children’s grief, grief in general  - it’s unpredictable. Anything can set it off and things you thought were well and truly dealt with climb up and hit you in the face.  However for children, if they experience a loss very early, they do not have the emotional capacity to understand it, let alone grieve for their loss.

 

As they develop, they grieve, re-grieve and then fully understand what has happened to them. It’s not as easy as just getting over it, as they don’t know exactly what it is they’re getting over, but this understanding develops over time as their maturity and understanding of the world develops with their age.

 

I’ve said many times that I will never get over my husband’s death, I have mutated and moved on. As an adult I can choose this option but as a child this is a process that occurs through adolescence – it’s the gift that keeps on giving in a sense.

 

What is needed here is flexibility and understanding from others around teens and young adults who grieve unexpectedly for a loss that occurred many years before instead of judgement that they should have gotten over it by now.  It doesn’t provide a safe environment for them to grieve and makes them feel even more isolated from the community that they are alone in their grief and no-one understands.  This attitude they face lends itself to more sinister outcomes than an ‘uncomfortable’ morning of having a child cry for ‘no reason’.

 

Just some more food for thought.

 

Carry on

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Strictly Challenged

On September 4, 2011, in Strictly Reflecting, by Kathy Rees
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More cubes
Creative Commons License photo credit: heipei

I missed a blog post – because this is challenging trying to find the time – and head space – to write something everyday, but I’m determined to keep this going and being a bit more gentle on myself than usual for missing a goal.

 

I’m doing the 30 day challenge with Ed Dale again this year, haven’t done it for a couple of years as my priorities have changed a little, but recently I was able to utilise my internet skills for the greater good at work, so thought it might be useful to catch up on new trends etc., and you never know, I might end up getting that elusive second income I need to survive.

 

Finding head space time is a definite challenge with three kids all at different stages of need and all needing to talk incessantly about everything – which is actually great considering some teenagers don’t communicate with this kids at all I’m very, very lucky in that way, but being the only one they talk to is demanding and challenging and no sooner does one leave and I’m thinking about their issues than the next one comes in with theirs and I don’t get much reflective time.  By the time I’m in bed, my only alone time to do all that marvellous reflecting, I’m usually asleep by the time I’ve turned over once, trying to remember what I was supposed to be reflecting about.

 

All in all though, I have nothing to complain about I am just trying to get that perfect balance in life that we all try for and always seems to be the carrot on the end of the stick, always just out of reach.

 

Carry on.

 

P.S. I was interrupted four times while writing this blog post :)

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