Baby Brebles goes to the formal, again!

Almost a month ago, my younger brother Alex (Brebles) had his year 12 formal. 

Alex took the beautiful young Clara as his date again, just like last year. The year 12 formal is a more formal affair than the year 11 one, with the boys required to wear dinner suits.  

They grow up so fast don't they? 

Clara & Brebles, 1997

Jane and Annabel as pretty young things (Clara's mum & my mum)

The Brebner Griffin household hosted pre formal drinks, which was a lot of fun. Brebles invited his mates and their partners and the invitation was extended to their parents to stay for a drink and for dinner after if it suited. 

The evening was lovely, but not without incident, though. Limousines had been booked to take the 10 couples who came to our little do to the main event. Mum received a phone call about 25 minutes before the limos were due to arrive, informing us that one had broken down and that they could not provide an alternative in time. 

This was very disappointing. Initially we couldn't work out how on earth we were going to choose which couples would ride in the limo, and who would go in cars. One of the mothers had the genius stroke that, because the girls were attending as guests of the boys, they should ride in the limo. 

What made the formal really exciting for me is that Clara asked me to do her makeup. Whilst I do not wear makeup very regularly, I love doing makeup for special events. I did my own makeup for the formals I went to, as well as for my sister's. I also went over to Adelaide to do my cousin Joanna's makeup for her year 11 formal a few years ago.

Makeup is a bit of fun. I was fascinated by it as a child, like a lot of girls are. When I was 10 or 11 I wanted to wear it and by the time I was 12 I went around looking like a parrot. Thankfully very blue eyeshadow and pink lipstick just look like playing dress-ups on someone that young, if I'd been any older I probably would have looked like a prostitute. 

Thankfully I got better with practice. I was quite good at art at school, but didn't pursue it beyond year 9. Doing makeup well requires an artistic eye and I find it quite intriguing how applying gunk from tiny pots to a person's face can change how they look quite dramatically.

Clara's "selfie" of the "finished product"

It frustrates me that so many teenagers and makeup artists cake so much product onto young faces. At 17 or 18, young ladies are naturally beautiful; their skin is wrinkle free and taught, eyes are bright and their lips and cheeks are naturally plump. Even those who have acne just don't have that many flaws to hide at this age. I think makeup should enhance, rather than mask, young features.

Clara is naturally very beautiful, so it was not difficult to make her look a million bucks. She wanted to look like a bronzed goddess, and I had a lot of fun with blush, bronzer and lots of shimmer spray. A girl's appearance seems very important on nights like the formal and I was tickled pink and very flattered that Clara wanted me to do this for her.

I'm completely biased, but I think Clara and Brebles make a remarkably photogenic pair. It is so lovely that after so many years of friendship that they are sharing some of these milestone occasions together. 

The formal really showcased some of the great friendships Brebles has. Over his time at St Kevin's he has formed some friendships that I suspect will last a lifetime. On one hand formals can be superfluous and extravagant, but (within the bounds of sanity) it is so important to find the time to come together and celebrate. 

In time I doubt the boys will remember how much the suit hire or the corsage cost and I hope the price of the dress is not what is burned into the minds of the young ladies. At the end of the day, time spent in good company is what really matters and is worth far more, in the scheme of things, than any suit or dress.

Is 30 the new 20?

One of my friends from high school shared this video to facebook the other day and I'm glad that, for once, I bothered to open the link. My post will make more sense if you take the time to do the same.

In this video Meg Jay articulates a lot of the things that have been bothering me lately. 

I am 22 years old. 

To the gymnasts I coach, 22 sounds so grown up. The other day I was asked by a 7 year old whether I was "married yet". To my primary school aged gymnasts, I have lived and experienced every part of life that they can imagine right now. I have finished primary school, I have finished secondary school and I even have one university degree. 

Children are very literal at this age, and until I told them otherwise, most of my primary school aged gymnasts assumed that all I must be a full-time gymnastics coach, because that is the only thing they have seen me do. Their beautiful little brains don't have a very well formed idea (yet) about what comes next in life after education. The thing lots of these kids see as the next step in life is marriage and children, I suspect because that is what just about all the adults they know (their parents, their friends' parents) are doing. 

From my side of the fence, this assumption is an interesting one. Once upon a time, these little girls would basically have been correct. However, nowadays, the time between finishing education and marrying for the first time is, for most people, getting much longer. 

In previous generations this was not the norm. According to the ABS, in 1974 the average age when getting married for the first time was 23.3 for men and 20.9 for women. We can draw from this that a man who went to university for 3 or 4 years would have roughly 1-3 years as an unmarried adult post-tertiary education, or 5 years if he completed high school and went straight into work. Women marrying for the first time in 1974 would probably have been still in their final years of uni or have had 2-3 years working as an unmarried adult post-high school. 

The most recent data has Australian men getting married for the first time, on average, at 31.4 and women at 29.2, with rates of pre-marital cohabitation approaching 80%. Once tertiary educated women had about 1-3 years of freedom post tertiary education, they now have 8-9 years. 

Whilst the time between education and "settling down" approaches an entire decade in duration, I don't feel like I have very much quality information about what I should be doing with this time. 

Should I still be studying at undergrad level? Should I have started my career already? Should I be in a serious relationship? Am I going to die alone if I don't start one soon? Do I want marriage and children in my future? Am I letting some of my strengths and abilities waste away?

I have a lot of questions and I lot of worries.

Meg Jay thinks that the twenties is a "developmental sweet spot" for adulthood, the time to lay the foundations for the type of adult life you want to lead. She encourages "twenty somethings" to reclaim their twenties and make purposeful decisions about career, love and happiness. 

"You are so young!" I keep being told and I guess I am. But here's the thing, I'm not going to be 22 forever and I don't feel like I'm building a happy future for myself. I don't feel like what I'm doing now is "setting myself up" for the kind of real life adulthood I once envisioned for myself. I don't feel like I'm building anything, I'm just going through the motions. 

Sure, I'm studying, but am I really gaining any of this valuable "identity capital" here and now in my twenties? I have a degree but I have a hard time accepting that my arts degree could be considered an achievement. I also have a solid part-time employment history, however, I am still very unsure about what kind of career I want. I am drifting in a direction, but I'm lacking in conviction.

As for love and happiness... The long term status on both of those things can be illustrated with the image below:

Both love and happiness are something that are filed snugly in the "too hard" basket. This has been a conscious choice made firstly out of a knowledge of my limitations, but remains out of anxiety and fear. I can know see that fear and anxiety is increasingly the rationale behind most of my choices. 

Happiness is something that is difficult to define. It is more of a by-product of a healthy, well functioning life than a "thing" in its own right. Happiness to me does not mean walking around in a bliss like state. Life will always have ups and downs. My definition of happiness is when, more often than not, you wake up in the morning looking forward to or excited about something you are going to do that day. An active desire to partake in one's own existence, if you like. 

Now I'm not saying that I'm miserable, I'm not. But it has been a long time since I felt generally positive about going about my daily life. 

I am anxious about the fact that I don't have a clear picture of what I want. What I know for sure is that I don't want to find myself sitting alone in a caravan on the edge of a forest, surrounded by cats and undergraduate degrees, wondering, "what happened?" At the moment, that's where I feel like I'm headed. 

That being said, I know it's not all doom and gloom. I think that Jay is right about most "twenty somethings" being only a few well considered choices away from a much happier life and I hope that I am no exception. Part of my problem is I am well aware of how important the decision I make now are, I know they count and will have a dramatic impact of the rest of my life. 

I know that, as a woman, I would be foolish not to give any thought to my reproductive options. Whilst I don't know if I want a family, I don't want to get to 35 or 40 and find out that I do out of discovering that I can't. I know that if I want certain career options to be available to me, there is study I need to complete and that it is easier to do that now than later. I know that if I don't want to end up alone in a forest, surrounded by cats, I will probably have to put myself "out there" eventually.

However, this knowledge, instead of helping me, makes me very anxious and fearful that I'm messing up my life. 

http://www.gifday.com/cat-chasing-tail/

I'm chasing my tail. I'm trying hard to solve this conundrum by myself, but I'm not getting very far. You can't keep doing the same things you've always done and expect a different outcome. 

To use Jay's analogy, I am a 22 year old aeroplane just leaving Melbourne International Airport, gaining speed toward the end of the runway, still unsure whether I want to end up in Los Angeles or Greenland. What is become apparent is that, after spending so much time mulling this over in my own head, I need to employ an air traffic controller, of sorts, to help to me make the choice.

An unexpected compliment

I received a surprising compliment from my dear friend and fellow blogger, Kate Swaffer, this week. She very kindly awarded me a "Very Inspiring Blogger" Award. Thank you, Kate! Kate discusses a wide variety of topics, with a special focus on her experiences as a person with younger onset dementia.  

This award comes with rules of acceptance that I will address in a separate post .

Kate's blog has grown into an online community for people living with dementia, either because they have the disease or someone they love does. Her writing evokes different things on different days; it is delightful, confronting, honest, brave and inspiring. Having known Kate for almost 10 years now, it does not surprise me that she has so cleverly found a way to create much a positive and dynamic space that people are drawn to. 

I'm so grateful for this award but I'm not entirely certain I'm deserving. I created this blog because I love to write. After I finished my Bachelor of Arts I was afraid that, with my studies moving toward sciences, I wouldn't have a space to challenge myself to continue to improve the quality of my writing. 

What I have enjoyed most about writing this blog thus far has been sharing. As human beings I think we are all far more alike than different. We all have our doubts, worries, struggles, challenges and weaknesses. I think we can all be a great resource to one another when we share and make ourselves available rather than soldier on alone in times of trouble. 

Blogging has also become a useful tool in my quest to become a more self-aware person. Writing in a self-created public forum has helped me to get a whole lot better at being honest. Writing about yourself can be a bit like looking at your personality in the mirror or under a microscope. Looking at my thoughts, published on the screen, helps me evaluate them. Is what I'm thinking realistic? Am I being too harsh? Am I not being harsh enough? Are there other points of view I need to consider?

What has surprised me most is that practicing this thought evaluation process through writing has helped me change my mentality day to day. Positivity and honesty can be learned and practiced. It is not just a matter of "shutting out negativity" (whatever that pop-psychology phrase actually means), for me it is about choosing to think in a different way, practicing it and surround myself with influences that make it easier.

I think my blog is inherently a self-indulgent exercise. I do it because I want to and because I like to. I find it cathartic, relaxing, challenging and fun. I like to think that sharing my thoughts might entertain, amuse, be thought provoking and make people feel less isolated. 

"Inspiring" is a word that gets bandied around the place these days. The world seems to be becoming a more hyperbolic place by the second. It is lovely to think that my writing might inspire people, but this little blog is hardly providing a social network of support like Kate's does or working toward a great and noble cause. 

I just like writing. And for now, that's reason enough. 

Twenty two!

Yesterday was my birthday and it was lovely. Twenty two used to be one of those not particularly  significant birthdays, until Taylor Swift wrote this song...

Now, according to Miss Swift, being 22 entitles you to do all sorts of things that I've never had much interest in doing, like eating breakfast in the middle of the night.

The significance of the number 22 aside, I had a really lovely birthday. It started well on the Saturday night when some close family friends came around for dinner and stayed until late. On Sunday, "the day", Patsy arrived from Adelaide for the occasion. She was in good spirits despite a few delays and has been great the whole time she has been here. 

After picking up Patsy it was lunch time and that was when the biggest surprise of the day appeared. My buddy Leesa called around and brought with her one of the most fantastic gifts I've received, Patrick.

Leesa is the best kind of friend there is and it takes someone really special to build you a bear that incorporates your birthday and your favourite football team in something so perfectly cute and cuddly. Patrick Brebner Griffin is a limited edition St Patrick's Day mint green Build-a-Bear, dressed in his very handsome Carlton uniform. He's fantastic. 

After Leesa's visit, Patsy, Mum and I went down to the golf shop. Patsy loves that the golf bug has infiltrated the Brebner Griffin household, so she loved the idea of buying me some golf clothing for my birthday. It must have been St Patrick's Day birthday luck, because everything I tried on fitted and I got to chose which things I liked rather than having to reluctantly go with whatever I could squish myself into. We have got to know the guys down at the golf shop pretty well and they managed to find an incredible number of discounts to give us, which was fantastic and very generous. 

We had an early dinner down at the Middle Brighton Baths. It is a beautiful spot down there, but it must have changed hands since we were last there because the food, whilst edible, was somewhat underwhelming. It was so nice to have all my living grandparents in one place and seeming to enjoy each other's company. There were ten of us all together including Kate's boyfriend Tom and uncle Andrew. 

I received so many wonderful presents. I am so lucky that every year on March 17th I am the recipient of many thoughtful, valuable and lovely gifts. This year I was struck more than usual by how truly lucky I am. Getting nice things is great, but what felt different about this birthday is that I think I am the happiest I've ever been. 

The greatest gift that my friends and family give me is their unconditional love and support. Without that gift there is no way I would be where I am right now and there is no way my future would look so bright. No person is an island and it has taken me a while to learn how to accept and appreciate love and support. I think my favourite tennis player, Rafael Nadal, is right, no one achieves anything worth doing alone. I continue to be a flawed human being and my life has its moments of difficulty but day to day, I feel calm.

Material things can be lovely and I love all the presents I received, but it is what I'm given every day by the people that love me that really makes me lucky. That is why I am trying to develop a practice of being thankful.

Here we go again

I am halfway through my first week of first year for the... third time. The week itself has been fine so far, just the usual fun trying to find rooms, lecture theatres, where to park and where to hang out on a packed campus between classes. Now that this is my third time in the ring of first year uni, that part of it isn't all that daunting. I guess that is the beauty of experience, whilst things being new and unfamiliar isn't all that fun, I know that it is normal and that it won't last long.

Something I didn't anticipate about this week is how much anxiety it has brought about. The straight from school first years are a lot more fussed about not having the text book in the first week and being 10 minutes late because they couldn't find the tutorial room. 

These past few days the reality of my educational choice has come home to roost. I AM A FIRST YEAR AGAIN; I am right back to the start and I will spending 3 or 4 more years doing undergraduate study. 

My brain has been running at a million miles per hour trying to plan the rest of my life.  I am worried that I should be thinking about moving out of home; not because I want to or because my parents want me out of the house, but because I feel like at my age I should. I have started panicking that I'm going to be "old" by the time I finish this course and afraid that if I want to do postgraduate study after that then I will be ancient by the time I actually start my career.

Then I'm afraid that if I were to actually meet someone who'd want to reproduce with me and if I want to reproduce with them, my career would only just be starting by the time I might want to do that. 

Then I worry that if I'm not even going to be "ahead of the game" enough to live a basic, normal life in the right order, then what hope do I have of achieving the bigger, crazy dreams I have for myself?!

My brain is going at Usain Bolt pace down the slippery slope of my imaginary future and it is freaking me out. All this anxiety has brought home to me how much I do compare myself at other people and measure myself against societal expectations. In sociology, my Arts major, they had a term for that thing most of us feel we have to live up to: they call it the "social clock". It is a similar idea to the "biological clock" that apparently women of a certain age can hear ticking when they want to get pregnant. The "social clock" is that thing that makes us feel like we ought to do certain things at certain times in our lives; the right age to learn to drive, move out of home, get married, get a job, etcetera. 

From my studies in sociology and my reflective nature, I like to think of myself as someone who doesn't base how they feel on the views of other people. The home truth of this particular panic moment is that I do compare myself to others constantly and base much of how I feel about myself on how I measure up in this comparison. Naturally, in this comparison, I only put myself up against others who I view as being ahead of me.

I'm not that far out of step with the social clock, but it is ticking really loudly in my head. From talking some of my friends about this stuff I know I'm not alone. I think when you are young, everything in life seems like a race. 

So much about youth is about "firsts". It starts in infancy when parents compare when their children first learn not talk and walk. In primary school it becomes about first days at school, first competitive sporting matches and first homework assignments. Through late primary school and high school it only intensifies and the first become more obvious and awkward, firsts to do with puberty and sex as well as sport, music and study. 

Growing up and during school, just about everything is a race. The milestones are specific and the timeline is rigidly outlined, whether it be the school year level system, musical instrument grades or sporting team age groups. Since leaving school, the path to take in life appears to be far less rigid. However, the further I get from school, the wider the variety of choices get, the more I realise that I do feel this huge pressure to make my life fit a very rigid idea. 

I had a chat a great chat with my Mum about this stuff and she was great. She told me all the right things and reminded me that I'll probably spend a huge chunk of my life working, paying my own bills and worrying about giant grown up pressures of life. I don't need to rush my education and I need to remember that at 5 days shy of 22, to most people, I am still young. 

I'm trying really hard to train my brain not to think this way. Whilst a level of organisation and planning is good, I don't need to have my whole life sorted right now. I am so lucky and thankful to have parents who are happy to support me and seem to like having me around. Even writing this I worry that I shouldn't rely on my parents just because they are happy for me to.

I need to calm down. I need to be grateful for what I have. I need to spend more time trusting my own judgement and actually living my life, rather than being regularly struck down by panic. 

Thanks for reading my rant and to quote Ellen Degeneres, be kind to yourselves.

It rains a lot in Queensland in February

The most fun part of my trip to the Gold Coast was certainly not the trip home. My friends and I got to the airport 3 hours before our flight because there was a little whoopsy regarding our checkout time. We had to vacate our accommodation at 10am; our flight wasn't until 2pm but we didn't know what 8 people with luggage could do with themselves for a few hours during a day of torrential rain pour on the Gold Coast. It seemed the logical thing to do would be to just get to the airport early and kill the time there. 

Little did we know that our flight would be delayed by 2 hours thanks to the atrocious weather. In the end we were lucky to be flying the day we were booked to be. The airport was packed with young families and people waiting to collect loved ones but for most of the 5 hours we were waiting, no planes were landing or taking off. At one point there wasn't a single plane at the airport. As increasingly planes were being diverted to Brisbane and cancelled all together, we were very relieved to get out of the Gold Coast.

We arrived home to Melbourne at about 7.45pm to the warmest, driest weather we'd had all week. 

Whilst it pissed down with rain for most of the time we were in the Gold Coast, it was a great week. Thankfully, unlike all the surrounding areas, the Gold Coast did not flash flood whilst we were there. I really needed a break and it was interesting to go to a place that I would not ordinarily have chosen to go to. I overcame my fear of water slides, until last week I had avoided them since I was about 7 when I got stuck face down on one and was afraid I would drown. 

Despite my initial fear, I absolutely loved Wet N Wild. It was a really wet and stormy day when we went which turned out the be a great thing because it kept the crowds away. I just about chickened out of the very first water slide, but after I got through that and was a little underwhelmed by it I went berserk and had at least one turn on everything. That day was a real highlight for me. 

I wasn't able to have quite as an eventful trip as I would have liked. After a few busy days I became very fatigued and had to take a couple of rest days. Whilst this was disappointing, I was very thankful that I didn't have to stay home all together to have surgery earlier. That being said, I still went to 2 theme parks, went out to a somewhat nasty Gold Coast nightclub, went running 3 times during the week and eat way too much Nutella! I also got introduced to my new favourite TV show thanks to the one and only Kate Hardy, Misfits, and had the kind of bus to the airport sing-a-long to Kate's ipod that has to be good for the soul (and probably not the ears of the driver).

Going out at night in the Gold Coast is something I can tick off life's "to do" list but it is not something I need to repeat. It was "ladies night" the night we went, so girls got in for free and drank for free until midnight. That, along with having a much needed dance with some great friends, was the good part. However, there are many images burned into my retinas from that nightclub that simply will not budge from my memory. Most involved strangers dancing so "dirtily" that they absolutely needed to "get a room" and a stockily built woman who needed to have purchased a dress didn't creep up to her waist when she danced, completely exposing her very small undergarment...

At the nasty GC nightclub (at least girls got to drink for free before midnight!) 

The house we stayed in was fantastic, except for a bit of flooding in one of the bedrooms. Having 10 people who have not known each other for all that long living under the same room for a week did have its challenges, but overall was it was successful. You learn a lot about other people and yourself when you live together, that's for sure. 

Given that I am not continuing with paramedics, I was so glad to have the chance to spent lots of time with the great friends I made in the course. 

Plateau Be Gone! Week 5

http://www.betterhealthnaturally.ca/images/frustration-diet.jpg

This picture summarises the situation this week. Following 3 very successful weeks of weight loss, I have registered a small gain on the scales. 

Whilst this is a disappointment, it is not the end of the world. I know where I went wrong; my teeth haven't been hurting so much this week so I've made some poor choices with my diet. I have not been disciplined with myself about getting enough sleep which has resulted in an increased unnecessary snacking and disrupted my exercise schedule. 

Moderation and consistency are my keys to success when it comes to weight loss. Any deviation from my routine tends to result in backward steps and I need to be more aware. I ate very lightly last week because my teeth were so sore from my braces. This helped me have a very big loss on the scales last week, which was great, but it distracted me. Avoiding unhelpful food is easier when it hurts to eat but I did not think about having to keep a more stringent eye on myself when my teeth stopped hurting. 

I have been getting very lazy with making myself go to bed at a reasonable hour. I have a tendency to be a "night owl" and I am so much worse in the holidays when I don't have to get up my any particular time in the morning. Functioning on less than adequate sleep for no real reason is just silly and being tired means I become more hungry than usual, craving sugary foods to give me an energy boost. Weight loss aside, with my health issues contributing to increased fatigue, I need to get on top of this. 

In other news, I am heading to the Gold Coast on Saturday with a bunch of my uni friends from paramedics. It should be really fun and it is the sort of thing that a year ago I would not have had the confidence to agree to go. This trip will force me to confront just about all of my "fat girl" insecurities, from eating in front of other people, being in bathers in front of other people to getting dress up and going out at night (weird, I know, but I'll explain that particular social anxiety  another time). 

Part of me dreamed that by this point I would be further down the weight loss track and I would be ready to dance around in a bikini. It would be fantastic if I were at that stage, but I think being in a one piece with some little boardies in front of other people will be a big enough challenge. As I said last week, the mental component of all of this is huge and I need to make sure I make those mental adjustments as well as the physical ones. 

My impending trip has forced me to face up to one of my biggest "fat girl" fears - clothes shopping. In recent times I have only gone clothes shopping when forced or coaxed by my mum. Having to go shopping usually puts me in my a foul mood and I usually end up crying at some point. My trip today was forced by my holiday at least, something I decided to do.

I think it is fair to generalise that people who do not like the state of their body do not like shopping. I hate shopping for just about every conceivable reason. There is the obvious trauma of trying things on and having them not fit and not being able to try on the styles I liked because I knew they would look ridiculous. I find it really hard to spent money on myself. I don't feel worthy of nice things, plus it is only recently that I have started to fit into clothes that I feel like a 21 year old should be wearing. Before I just bought what fit best and covered the parts of me I could n't bear to bare in public.

There were no tears or tantrums today and I don't think I've ever bought more in one trip. I doubt I'm ever going to love shopping, but today was fine. I was able to get the things I needed without upsetting myself or my mum. It is so nice that things I previously never would have dared to look at actually fitted me.

My mum has been an incredible support to me throughout all of this. She has helped me in so many ways and it has brought us much closer together. She understands me; she understands how I think and feel as well as what it is like to be unhappy with yourself. Thank you so much, mum. I love you very much.

There is still a way to go before I stop losing weight, but today was an important step toward feeling like a normal human being again.