Sweet sweet nectar

Have you ever heard of a nectar list? It's like a challenge to the bucket list. Rather than setting goals and achieving challenges, it's all about acknowledging what you HAVE - the 'nectar' of your existence thus far. A brilliant idea, one I first read about in women's health magazine, but I believe ultimately coined by Huffington Post

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sierra-vandervort/the-nectar-list_b_5753464.html

So. Here's my nectar list for 2014.

1. I've purchased two houses
2. I've reduced my alcohol intake by more than half.
3. I've done my first hip hop yoga class (and many more since).
4. I've married the love of my life.
5. I've ran around Hoan Kiem lake with my friends and written funny post it notes over Vietnamese iced coffee in Hanoi
6. I've changed jobs and found an incredibly interesting / challenging position.
7. I've attended three beautiful weddings.
8. I've eaten at Tetsuya's.
9. I've started the foundations of my own business with my best friend.
10. I've swam in the glorious Maldives.
11. I've eaten fabulous tapas in Barcelona and strolled the streets of this gorgeous city.
12. I've visited - and loved - Hobart. For the first time.
13. I've been spoiled rotten and inspired by my beautiful friends over a weekend in Sorrento.
14. I've written off a car ( a first, hopefully a last).
15. I've attended the 80th of my stoic, loving grandmother.
16. I've eaten at Messina.
17. I've done by 5 km PB.
18. I've seen Wicked for the second time.
19. Michael and I have welcomed our first nephew into the world.
20. I've shopped up a storm in Kualan Lumpur.
21. I've cleared 7 years of clutter and junk away.
22. I've seen my favourite band - The National - in concert.


And I'm not even sure it's the half of it. Pictures to follow!

Thanks 2014. You've been bonza.

She was a one eyed, one horned, flying purple people pleaser.

The concept of addiction is all around us. People for centuries have been addicted to alcohol and drugs. The concept of addiction has now stretched into our modern world - we can be addicted to social media, addicted to technology, addicted to sex.

But what about the more subtle and subconscious addictions that can manifest without you even realising? These can go months, years, even a whole lifetime without ever being recognised, named, and 'treated'. They might impact your health and happiness in ways that you can't articulate and may never even notice, and you might go through life feeling stuck or not quite right in some aspect of your life.

My addiction? People pleasing.

Yeah. Weird, right?

It started long before I was an adult for reasons I won't get into here, but suffice to say, it's been evident for most of my life. Being perfect, getting the tick of approval, always being there to offer a solution or assistance to anyone, making sure I worry about everything else and everyone else.

Not such a bad thing on the face of it. I mean, what's wrong with wanting to be liked? What's wrong with wanting to help others? Especially when those people are the people close to you - people you'd go to the ends of the earth for, or even watch an Adam Sandler film with.

Nothing, on the face of it. Just as drugs and alcohol aren't problematic, in and of themselves. That's the thing with addiction - it only a problem when it becomes a problem, right?

For me, being a little purple people pleaser has manifested itself in some less than ideal behaviours for me. The perception of being perfect, capable of anything. The fear of asking for help or showing vulnerability. The stress when someone has a problem or issue that I can't fix. The exhaustion of trying to be 'all things to all people' (a concept that anyone who has read the excellent Rushing Woman's Syndrome by Dr Libby Weaver will be familiar with).

This year has really brought this to the fore for me and I can see it causing damage.  I'll get into that in a later post. So how to tackle any addiction?

Action plan - to break the cycle of habit. For the next two weeks, I will:

 - Put a buffer between being asked to do something and responding
 - Asking for help (I will be writing a list tomorrow of all the things I am going to ask for help with)
 - Starting to accept help where it is offered to me


Bananas, right? All seems pretty intuitive, right? Well, not for this little purple people pleaser. It's gonna be hard. Here goes....

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.

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