Yesterday’s post was all about doubts and worries. It also contained a solution to my problem: do it once a month.
Well it turns out that this was the solution, and looks like the organisation agrees.
Yaay me!

When is an opportunity good enough to push everything aside?
Here’s my problem: I have an opportunity to take up a radio show for the organisation I am doing work for. Trouble is, irony know how I’m going to fit it in around study and work.
Full time study at school l is 2 days a week, with studu at home to take the same amount of time. That’s 4 days. Add one day working and I’ve only got the weekend left. I guard my weekends passionately; they’re my time and I don’t like things taking away from them. Once a month, fine.
So, today I have to work out if an opportunity really isn’t and I’ll end up resenting it. Perhaps the trick is to know my limitations, and to stand by what I’m physically and mentally capable of doing rather than just throwing everything in and hoping for the.best.
Well, today’s the day I find out…

After a nasty hot night I find myself on the tram to work. I’m slightly tired, and have left the house without my morning cuppa, but have eaten and will be, at most, 10 minutes late.

Tossing and turning last night I tried the fan but found it too loud, more a reflection on my state than its – the over-tired mind wanting, demanding sleep yet not finding it and most likely sabotaging itself with its demands. Foolishly I kept checking email in my half-conscious state, the trap of having a smartphone next to your bed.

But today, instead of cranky, I’ve decided to be at peace with the day and to have a nice one. The wirkplace is pleasant and easy, I’ve got specific things to do and am, if truth be told, dazzling them with my geek credentials; in short, I know how to make their lives easier on a computer.

I also have a lovely partner and things are going rather well. We get along, we communicate well and we support one-another. This is a really good place to be.

So what’s to complain about?

There’s always something, but it’s a first-world complaint. My partner and I won a very schmick smartphone each in the weekend and they’re sitting in a box untouched. We’ve researched and researched, made enquiries of friends and there’s a split down the middle: some are saying “bird in the hand, free, nice phone, well done!’ while others are saying the opposite: ‘it’s android, hard to get used to after an iPhone, why not sell it and get a phone you really like?’

Thing is, it’s like a Christmas present in full view, and I’m getting more and more frustrated about it. I’ve played with the phone and it’s a nice bit of kit. There are some things to get used to, but that’s par for the course. For my partner, the improvements will be manifest: they’ve got an old nokia, a crackberry lookalike, purchased before smartphones really were smart.

The only drawbacks I can see are that the new phone has no front facing camera, it runs android and It’ll be slightly less elegant to sync with the Mac. But is that really worth $300 extra money? I would have to buy a new wallet because the one I’ve got takes my phone; a $16 investment before Christmas 2011. If I spend $300 on an iPhone I get to keep the wallet.

It’s not an apple, which seems the over-arching argument, and therefore less good. But it was free, and worth $500.

Like I said, first world complaints. Maybe I’ll chat with my partner about it tonight.

I’m sitting in a cafe called “gypsy” today on high street in westgarth after a day of calm after the storm of Christmas. That’s not to say it wasn’t a fun couple of days though.
My partner unfortunately caught a cold yesterday morning which probably says more about the stress if the time of year than anything else. Not only is Christmas in oz busy in all the usual ways that the time of year is, but it’s impossibly hard to sleep what with the overnight temperatures, exhaustingly hot days and humidity. This time of year is regularly monotonous in this way.

So, my partner went home this morning to rest, to sleep and really to stop. I got to do the same so perhaps the wisdom of the common cold, which forces us to slow down and look after ourselves so our immunity is built up again; to de-stress – affected us both.

Doesn’t mean I’d have preferred to spend the day with them though. But there will be other days, many more to come.

This soy chai rates a “passable but I wouldn’t kill zombies for it” and I expect it was made with powder.

Perhaps that’s what I can do when I get home: two projects I’ve had on the backburner for a while…

But for now there is chai, then a quest for envelopes and bluetack. I tried Northside plaza and k-mart earlier but found myself with the unnerving need to escape the depressive atmosphere. I dumped my coat hangers and bluetack after a fruitless search for the other items on my list and felt better for it. I’m not sure why but department stores create a feeling of claustrophobia in me, a need to get out, escape, as fast as my legs can carry me. They’re just so drab and soulless, and the kmart in question has a relentless feeling of ennui, a horror in the faces of staff and customers alike. I have never liked that store; like a dying man you never liked in the first place, the instinct is to be somewhere else even though you you’re expected do something to help, if not to just be there to comfort the soon to be dead.

The sun is out again and the chai is nearly gone. I will sign off now and hope you will return…

I’m on the 112 tram on my way to meet mum at southern cross station. It’s a cold spring day in Melbourne (is there any other kind?!) and I have a bit of a sore throat, which time and care will determine whether it becomes better or worse.

I find myself at a loose end mentally now school has concluded. Or rather, I now have 3 extra days per week to organize the things I need to graduate.

Also, I have many plans for my organization which have a real chance of coming to fruition.

I’m designing the way it works with a focus on the “end user” (to use the information technology terms I’m used to).

The core issue I have seen in many organizations is either too little or too much engagement with the people they ultimately serve. There is value in community involvement but there has to be a limit, because you can’t please all of the people all of the time. Further, I feel that ideas need to develop in the wider world, with small ones expanding and developing into bigger ones.

Of course, in this way it is possible that mistakes will be made. But as Steve Jobs once commented “at least that means decisions are being made.”.

It is with this philosophy that I’m building the organization; an ideal that with every faltering step forward, with every fall, we still have the courage to pick ourselves up again, learn from the experience and try, try again.

That, as the poet Tennyson says is the goal:

To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield

Amazingly glad
To be in my bed right now
No punchline, just truth!

I met my first truly and vocally homophobic person today. Maybe I’ve been living in a rosy world or maybe I’ve just been lucky, but this woman was a revelation to me that people like this really do exist.

It probably didn’t help that she had a highly religious background, fundamentalist Christian mother and — apparently — a bible in her bag that stated that homosexuality was a sin.

The world she lives in must be very different to mine.

She began a short burst of homophobia by mentioning a poster she’d seen which said “AIDS kills Koori’s”, then went on about how AIDS was a gay man’s disease. I pointed out that AIDS kills everyone, and that it was something that wasn’t just about gays. This was where the holy book was mentioned and I went totally blank.

Like I say, I’ve never encountered this kind of irrational behaviour before. I didn’t want to engage with it, didn’t want to provoke an argument and certainly didn’t have the headspace to even go where she was — it was just such an astonishing thing to believe. I wanted to say that I had good friends who are gay, that gay people are good and decent human beings, but under the circumstances it wasn’t the place or time — and would have gone exactly nowhere. Fair to say though, metaphorically, my jaw was on the floor.

Pick the battles you can win.

I’m left perplexed however, that someone can hold such a view. Perhaps I’m just too — dammit — nice?

Opinions to the contrary can be left below…

Am finding it hard to get going today, on anything in particular. I’d like to be working on the re-jig of the DaisyDonnie book 1, to make it a bit more coherent. I’d like to be scouring the interwebs for potential publishers. I’d also like to convert it to eBook format so I can distribute in other mediums (iphone app store?). But I’m not.

My problem is this: I have grown to loathe computers. The use, the aesthetic, the whole typing onto a screen.

And this problem is being fixed in-part by my decision to hand-over all my web development and copywriting work to J & J (among others). But this can’t happen overnight (although it’d be really nice if it could).

The issue spills over into my writing. As I write the books on my mac, and also work on my mac, I’m having trouble distinguishing between the two. One supposedly is a good way to make money (as long as clients pay me of course), the other is a good way to maintain my creativity and my sanity. So I’m looking forward to being able to just step away very, very soon.

Of course, what comes next is anyone’s guess. I’m going to do a course in June (as long as they run it of course) in transpersonal counselling, held at the Phoenix institute in Prahran. This will be totally different from what I’ve done for the last 12 years and thus restore my balance. It’ll also give me the chance to be a uni student for the first time and do the learning thing again, only this time in something I’ve actually chosen rather than being compelled by others (long story, don’t even ask).

But for now, there perhaps needs to be a plan drawn up to extricate myself from my current clientele, and for the passing of work to others. I also need to just relax and go with this: every time I’ve stood my ground and done something I know is right for me, I’ve landed on my feet (rather than my arse).

So, here goes…