Shoot that poison apple through my heart.... no, wait. File that poison apple away for later.

We all know that feeling right? You're stressed. You feel like you're being jolted from one thing to another and it seems never ending and you feel like you don't have a second to yourself and DAMMIT you just feel overwhelmed.

And then.

Just when you think you're at breaking point it hits.

A nasty rebuke from your boss.
A snarky email from a friend / partner  / family member.
A rude stranger on the train.
An unhelpful person in your professional life.

BAM.

It's on. You're indignant. You're furious. You're enraged. You think 'HOW FUCKING DARE YOU DO THIS TO ME CAN'T YOU SEE I'M UP TO MY EYEBALLS / ABOUT TO POP  / CRAZY STRESSED, DON'T YOU SEE WHAT YOU'RE DOING TO ME YOU INSUFFERABLE BUFFOON WHY IS THE WORLD SO UNKIND ETCETERA'.

I like to call these little babies 'poison apples'. A psychologist coined this little anecdote for me years ago. He may have gotten it from somewhere else, hell, it may be a known turn of phrase in psychological circles (though the internet doesn't seem to think so, I checked).

These things come up in life, yes, when you're stressed, yes, when you think you can't handle anything more happening in your life, and yes, when things going wrong. Sometimes they are malicious. But most often, they aren't (because they can't see. They don't know. They didn't realise the world was being so unkind to you).

I used to complain bitterly to my psychologist about things that people did that I perceived as unkind / unfair / downright wrong. On and on I would go, decrying other people's deplorable behaviour and the negative impact it had on me.

So here's what he said (and I'm paraphrasing here):

These things  that people say and do to you are like poison apples. They are bad for you, undoubtedly. The are nasty to receive. They might even be given by someone who KNOWS that the apple is poisonous. But you are the one who chooses to eat the apple. You are the one taking the first bite. You could give the apple back. You could put the apple in the bin. You could even put the apple aside until later and decide what to do with it at a later time. 

Food for thought, isn't it (haha, apple, haha, food). I was forced to think about this today, as I received a rather unpleasant email from a friend. I honestly thought I was seconds away from losing at her, ending our friendship, telling her what an idiot she was being.

But then, I remembered this analogy. Sure, I was angry. Sure,  I had a massive rant to my husband. Sure, I was upset. But after I gathered my rage, I filed the email away in  my 'personal' file and thought - yeah, with everything I've got on my plate at the moment, I'm just going to have to put that poison apple away and decide how to deal with it later. I don't have to take a bite, and if I do, I'm not sure I'll like to outcome.

As an aside, my friend sent me an email before I'd had a chance to respond the original, saying that she was sorry and regretted sending it. By then, my head was clearer. Not only was I less angry, but I was more equipped to get to the root cause of her original email - are you angry at me? is something personal going on with you? how can we fix this? or are you just having a shitty day, like I am? 

Do you ever feel like someone is handing you a poison apple and you have to take a bite and react NOW?

image from illeander.deviantart.com

Does not compute / input error

Just a quick one here...


We're all aware of information overload. Nary a day goes by when we aren't warned by a well meaning news article or a stern report on the news about the dangers of information overload, smartphone addiction, overuse of social media. This isn't really about the supposedly detrimental effects of information overload (though the effects, for example, on productivity and decision making skills are showing to be dire, if said reports and articles are to be believed). It's more about, well, what happens to this information? Sure, some of it is used to make very necessary decisions about our day to day life, and in some cases, large life decisions that warrant a little research and analysis. A lot of the information is surely stored, sorted in our subconscious, to affect us at a later day in ways that we will probably never realise and will certainly never be able to articulate. But with all the information going in, what actually comes out? I would have thought that for all that's absorbed, our brains must require some sort of product (a sort of bizarre version of 'what goes up must come down'.... what comes in must go out?). For me, it's writing this blog. This is the thing that I 'create' rather than absorb. With all the changes coming up in my life, I think it's important to have that sort of an outlet where I can actually make something. For others, it's baking or crafting or singing, but I can't do any of those things (well, I can, but the by products aren't really anything I am yet to reveal to the world).

So, the question is, what do you create? What, if anything, is your output back into the world that wants to stuff you full of information?

x

Friendship

This weekend, my best friend, who I have lived with for ten years, moves out.

Although this isn't sudden, I think it's the first time I've contemplated it fully.

Allow me to explain.

My best friend and I went to high school together. A couple of years after high school, we both moved to the city - me for university, and him for new career opportunities. For many years, we had talked about how cool our share house in Perth would be. It was our dream. Eating Red Rooster, watching Smack The Pony. Wielding our fake IDs at Rosie O'Grady's. Sitting around our kitchen table which would double as a fish tank. Yeah, we were cool.

In Perth, we lived with others - some very dear friends. Years on, as I neared the end of my law degree, my best friend (yeah, I'm going to go ahead and call him my BFF) announced that he was moving to Melbourne. I also decided to move to Melbourne at the end of my degree (now, before you write me off as a bunny boiler, I moved at a time that maybe 5 or 6 other people in our circle of friends moved as well. At that time, unless you had a degree in engineering or some other mining-centric field, jobs were thin on the ground).

So we moved to Melbourne and share housed with another amazing friend. The three of us eventually moved to a house that I bought. The amazing friend moved back to Perth to be with a partner, my BFF and I eventually found partners of our own. Both of them moved in. So the four of us, plus our dogs, have been living in our happy, slightly weird, urbane family. Until now. Since the beloved and I announced our engagement, my BFF and his BF have made plans to get their own place.

Now, I know that anyone reading this may think "what's the big deal? It's not like he's moving to Pakistan! It's not like he is her BOYFRIEND". These are points that many, many others have made to me. And I agree!! At least in the logical, sensible part of my brain. The part which organises tax returns and peels stickers off fruit BEFORE eating.

But that part of my brain doesn't always prevail, and you guys, the crazy, emotional, Oprah watching brain has kicked in.  When you live with someone for that long - platonically, romantically, whatever  - well, they become your family. You start to know everything about that person. You start, in some ways, to emulate that person in ways that you don't even recognise. You seek their counsel on everything. You cry to them when there's no more wine in the fridge. You yell at them when they delete your Law and Order from the Foxtel planner. You ask them to console you after another evening of regrettable lady-man liaisons with ill advised suitors. And they do. With aplomb.

Most of all, you love them and you think they are the best person in the world for hanging about for ten years putting up with your bullshit.

Don't get me wrong - I understand that change is a fact of life. I know that this is a fabulous milestone for Michael and I (it's hard to believe that we have never lived together alone in our relationship and I'm looking forward to that). I know I'll see my BFF all the time (we are planning on starting a business together so he's my business partner and will be my office bee-yatch very soon, I hope).

I'm just sad because I'll miss my best friend. I'm sad because in the ten years that we've lived together I never once stopped to think "hey, moron, this might not last forever, so cherish it while you've got it and stop getting pissed at the guy because he beat you at trivial pursuit again."

So. There you go. If you'll excuse me, I need to go and see if my BFF is free to watch some Smack The Pony.

In which I contemplate working for a sociopath....

So I am on my honeymoon, flitting about, doing honeymoon-ey things, gazing into my beloved's eyes, contemplating sunsets, eating copious amounts of food, all the things one would expect, nay, are de rigeur for such an occasion.

Do you know what's not de rigeur for honeymoons? Checking work emails.

And there's a reason for this - work matters necessarily detract from honeymoon-style activities and undoubtedly tarnish or distract you from afternoons spent making love with your new husband followed by him feeding you peeled grapes.

But I did. In fact, I have the whole tine. Mostly just to keep tabs on what's happening back at work, I've made a point of not responding to anything that's cropped up.

Until now.

I received an email from my boss (addressed to a few people, albeit), one of the most rude, arrogant and unprofessional emails of my professional career. Since being in my position for six months, my boss has  made a habit of nasty, manipulative behaviour demonstrative of his psychopathic nature (he once offered to mentor another manager within the business and then informed said manager that he would be docking his pay for mentoring services to the tune of about $40 000 per annum. He was not joking).

I responded to said email. Since taking this position, I've made a point of not tolerating this manager's bullying tactics, trying to (professionally and calmly) rebuff his inappropriate behaviour. Which is what I have done in my response email, however, this time I've added an offer to resign upon my return to the office.

So now I am quietly deliberately what to do. I've decided to wait and see what happens when I get back to Melbourne on Monday. Do I keep working for someone who thinks that everybody in his employ is an 'incompetent idiot in need of micromanagement', or do I hold my tongue and hang on to the (attractive) salary, determined not to let it get to me?

A tough decision. Lena Dunham's book, Not That Kind Of Girl, touches on this in a poignant fashion (albeit her comment is in relation to personal relationships, rather than professional ones):

You are not made up of compartments. You are one whole person. What gets said to you gets said to all of you, ditto what gets done. Being treated like shit is not an amusing game or a transgressive intellectual experiment. It's something you accept, condone and learn to believe you deserve. 

Bravo.

Barcelona, a love note

Now that my beloved and I are married, our honeymoon has taken us across the world and into the beautiful, heady, glorious city of Barcelona. The food is amazing, the weather recklessly beautiful, and my Spanish skills, well, passable.

It's a long running joke between my friends and I that whenever I visit a new city, I fall swiftly, naively and single mindedly in love with the place and declare each time 'I could TOTALLY live here'. Just in the last few years, I can recall with hazy memory wholehearted declarations to move places such as New York, San Francisco, Hanoi, Hong Kong, Buenos Aires, Sucre, Wellington and even Bendigo.

Invariably, the sheen of said city wears of as I become disillusioned with loud traffic/crowds/hectic streets (NYC), lack of ability to purchase simple beauty products (Sucre) or restaurants shutting at 8:30 (Bendigo). Not one to break from tradition, I have now loudly proclaimed my love for Barcelona to anyone who will listen (at this stage, only my beloved, since I have no one else to talk to, and believe me, he's sick of hearing it) and you guys, almost a week in, I STILL think I could totally live here.

Let me explain. This may take a few posts.

The restaurants....

Not just the tapas and paella combination that seems to haunt the most touristy echelons of the city, but the richness in flavour and diversity of Catalan cuisine. Seafood is king, and I don't mind that one bit. I'll go into the food itself in a later post, but some of the places we've eaten are below:

The streets

Barcelona is obviously known for it's Gaudi architecture. For me, it's more the way that the city fits together, full of plazas and wide, tree lined boulevards that makes it so unique. Perhaps this isn't so atypical for a European city, but Michael and I (being Australian) have remarked several times that the city's layout seems to invite a sense of community. Yes, that's me in the last photo, standing outside our apartment building looking suitably smug. YOU GUYS I TOTALLY LOOK LIKE  A LOCAL, AMIRITE?

The routine

Although jetlag has prevented us from engaging in any real way in the typical life you might expect in Barcelona, it (ought to) go a little something like this - wake (late), take coffee (and a cigarette, judging by most locals), work (or not), lunch at around three, walk dog, rest, take dinner at 9 or 10. No one here - no one - seems rushed, stressed, whatever. I'm sure I'm guilty to some extent of naively romanticising European life here, but it just seems to .... work. 

I'm not saying that I'm going to quit my job and run away to learn Catalan (well, maybe I am saying that, just a little), but it's very easy to see why this city attracts a huge number of expats in any given year. 

The downside? 

The only thing that I would say is the that quality of tourists is, on average, low. Any number of travel websites have run articles about how Barcelona's unparalleled popularity as a tourist destination (particularly with young backpackers lured in by the prospect of beaches, parties and cheap booze) appears to be threatening the cultural fabric of the city. For the most part, it appears that most tourists are loud, obnoxious and drunk, acting like idiots and urinating/vomiting in the street. Don't get me wrong, I'm not judging - on my first trip Barcelona almost ten years ago, I was very much this person  - loud, obnoxious and almost certainly drunk at any given time of day (though I would like to think I retained bodily functions).  But to stroll through areas like Las Ramblas and Barceloneta gives you a strong indication of the exactly how many tourists are visiting this city, and yes, you can see the negative effects of tourism very prominently. Has it killed the vibe of the city? I don't think so. But it necessarily begs the question of how to keep tourism alive without pissing of the locals and ruining the good aspects of a city. Having travelled quite a bit over the last couple of years, I'm not sure I can name a single city that has dealt with that issue effectively. It's easy in Australia - we don't have centuries and centuries of rich history or tradition. I would say that a large part of the responsibility lies with the tourists themselves - respect local culture, don't act like an ass, and learn at least some local language and don't behave like the city is your own personal toilet. Simple, no? 

Dealing with failure

You know, sometimes I get thinking about how we deal with failure and disappointment. I don't mean the soul wrenching disappointment of discovering that Ben and Jerry's has sold of out Maple Tree Hugger and now you're left cradling a Phish Food consolation prize (with all it's cheap marshmallowy showiness) when you can lay blame on someone else and think about what an unfair place the world is. I mean the conflicting, uncomfortable and core-shaking feeling of being disappointed with oneself, knowing that your own decisions and subsequent actions are the only reason for these awful feelings of failure. For me, the feeling of having messed up might haunt me for days, weeks, or months that could otherwise have been spent undertaking wholly rewarding and worthwhile pursuits watching an entire season of Girls in one sitting or obtaining formal qualifications in badminton commentating.

Having made a serious - and concerted - effort to improve my lifestyle choices of late (staring down the barrel of my thirties with weekly hangover frankly seems unappealing, no matter how hilarious/entertaining/momentous the pre-hangover shenanigans may seem). Thus far, it's been a challenging and rewarding ride, though wholly satisfying. I've found that awkwardness of fielding questions about why I'm not boozing is far outweighed by feeling, oh you know, like an actual HUMAN BEING when I awake  - not grasping around for my phone wondering if I might owe someone an apology, not bailing on a brunch event because the only thing I can do successfully is eat Nando's and watch Family Guy, not frantically seeking affirmation that I didn't act like a moron the previous night because I can't remember for myself. So for a few weeks now I've been going great guns, and then Christmas Day smacked me straight in my champagne addled face. Whilst I certainly didn't have a blinder, it seems that my body is already responding to the reduced alcohol intake by protesting  - boldly - at even a few glasses of wine.  Drinking amounts that I was able to happily chug back just a few weeks ago just won't fly. The washout of course is that today, I have a headache and am left wondering where things went wrong, toying with those familiar feelings of guilt, regret, and disappointment.

As I mentally begin the self flagellation process, my beloved points out to me that, actually, I've been managing quite nicely for the last few weeks, and maybe I should cut myself some slack, to lay off the guilt, to simply chalk it up to plans gone a little awry. And I think he's right. It's so easy to nestle into the feeling of shame and awfulness, to beat yourself up over decisions made and throw yourself into a juice cleanse/three hours at the gym to punish yourself for the last night's errors in judgement. Perhaps the best approach (for me anyway) is to step back, acknowledge how far I've come (I handled all my Christmas engagements this year booze free, which is something I NEVER would have thought possible). For me, it's all about breaking the rinse and repeat cycle of 'binge and purge' followed by shame and resentment, and I think today I can do that : to say that it's just a hiccup, to acknowledge (gently) what may have gone wrong, and reaffirm my strategy for next time. In doing so, I'm reminded of this:

 

So I think today, I'm just going to lay off the guilt, enjoy some leftover roast beef, and think a little about how I might do it better next time. Besides, I'm pretty sure no one delivers juice cleanses on Boxing Day!

Pharmacy in Buenos Aires, a memoir...

Well now I am in Buenos Aires, and its not too bad. Learning to speak the language prior to arrival would have been a right treat but alas we cannot fulfil all of our dreams, even if they are beginning to include frequent and creative ways to snuff an obnoxious little crumpet known as Pocket who is the dubious producer of a bleating song known as 'Enamorarte' which has Argentinian tweens singing along with their walkmans (walk men?).

But I digress. My lack of Spanish has lead to some intriguing conversation and even more scintillating results. I ventured the other day into Farmacity which is a chain of chemists in BA which which seems to offer a happy assortment of beauty products and I had successfully sourced most of my needs before I was confronted with the unhappy requirement of human conversation to obtain the last product on my list (said product was behind the counter. On a side note, WTF is dry shampoo behind the counter?).

The interaction between myself and our Farmacity friend went a little like this:

Me: NECESSITO SHAMPOO
...
Unsure of the correct word for dry, I use a befuddled head swinging motion - complete with spraying hand charade - to communicate my wishes.

Helpful lady: ajwdgajttvdhj? Si?

Me: NECESSITO SHAMPOO! Si!

Helpful lady:  confused silence

It is now apparent that my earlier dramatic performance lacked the requisite emphasis, so I now proceed to drop my head to my chest and bob it up and down. I'm not entirely sure how this improves on my earlier performance but my objective is met and the lovely lady assistant produces a can of said shampoo. And yes, I'll be wearing Valentino to this year's SAG awards (best new talent: shitty pantomime)

Helpful lady: djsdgyjsg DOS qyyosmmes VEINTE

From thus exchange I gather that if I purchase two, I will receive a 20% discount. I am also ably assisted in drawing this conclusion by the accompanying sign that reads "20% off" but that's neither here nor there and the shop assistant becomes quite excited by the apparent revelation that I understand Spanish. Seizing the opportunity, I ask for face lotion when it dawns on me that I don't know the word for 'lotion' and my repeated utterances of 'VISAGE VISAGE' would only be helpful if my new friend a) spoke french, b) was cameoing in a Nivea commercial or c) all of the above. But by this stage I am too proud to admit that mi no hablar espanol and she has successfully deduced (most probably from looking at my face, and from my disproportionate levels of stress over a simple visit to the chemist) that I need something with anti aging properties.

So in short, I get what I want. The good news is that I leave with an Avene face cream, a brand I rather enjoy. The bad news? I can't understand anything on the label and the phrases I've opted to plug into itranslate offer worrying and somewhat befuddling results such as 'not water' and 'milky juice' (not normally until after I've finished dinner, thanks!)

Of course, I'm joking about the second one. But I'm going to have to maintain my sense of humour I'm to achieve this anti aging. Lotion alone won't do.