Shame on me

Dear Lizey,

Shame on you.

Life isn't fair, you know this, so stop expecting it to be. 

You must not let something that seems unfair affront you beyond proportion. Your time will come and you want it to be because you deserve the rewards that come your way and on terms that are compatible with your values.

Make it very clear in your mind, choices other people make are about them, not you. Don't create expectation for yourself based on what other people have or do. The world doesn't abide by your rules and values, but use this as an opportunity to reflect on why you value what you do and why those things are important. Remember that you have an image of the sort of person you want to be and you want to be that way when it is difficult to be, not just when it is easy.

You don't cope well when you can't make logical and rational sense of things. There is much about the here and now that defies logic. Stop trying to apply logic, ignore the unfairness and avoid feeling any injustice. Smile at the irony and apply a hefty dose of perspective. Do not analyse any further, no good can come from it.

I know that you are not upset about "missing out" in a situation where others are receiving.  I know you do not want what others will receive. I understand that you in turn do not wish to be a recipient of a gift of great magnitude just to be "on par" with others. 

You are upset because you would much rather have the people whose views you value most to be proud of what you have achieved, how far you have come and how hard you have worked. You find the idea of an "equalizer" somewhat hurtful when you would have much preferred acknowledgement. 

And that childish sense of rejection, just forget it. It isn't flattering.

Have the maturity to accept what you cannot change. Accept your emotional reaction, acknowledge what you feel then take a deep breath and move on. Be proud of yourself and how far you have come but do not be complacent. Dream, plan and work toward bigger, better and brighter things.

If you find yourself struggling with your emotions, apply gratitude liberally. This is well and truly a #firstworldproblem, don't forget that. There is so much to be thankful for.

The events of the past few weeks have caught you off guard but you need to remember not to make other people's troubles your own.

Focus on the challenge immediately ahead of you, your exams, as well as your health. You have been distracted and subsequently not applying your best effort to your study and now it is time to. You will regret it if you don't.  Imagine what the person you want to be would do, then do it. Embrace the responsibility and act accordingly. 

Be grateful for whatever may come your way and happy for those who are receiving. 

Be generous and gracious.

Above all, be kind to yourself and act in a way that does yourself and those around you justice. 

Love from,

Lizey

http://images2.layoutsparks.com/1/209812/simple-spring-flowers-pretty.jpg

#YOLO

Sorry it's been a while between posts, if there is anyone out there reading this!

It has been a tiring week since I last posted. The reason I haven't written is because little of what has occupied the household has directly related to me. Earlier in the week friends of my family received some very bad news that is radically changing their lives. They are facing an enormous challenge, the kind that causes you to reflect on what is really important in life, the people you love.

One of my siblings is quite unwell at the moment and has had a very tough time with many aspects of their health this week. Thankfully they are now receiving the care they need and getting some much needed rest. 

This week I have been shocked and worried about other people and also very thankful that I have not been dealing with a crisis myself. I have been thinking about the measures I've already been taking to improve my own health and experiencing a boost in enthusiasm and motivation. I've also been thinking about the measures I'm taking to make my life happier, satisfying and meaningful and I'm pleased with the decisions I've made about my path of study for next year as well as doing things like taking up gymnastics coaching again. 

The only thing worth reporting that I actually did myself in this past week was book a holiday. A group of friends from uni are going to the Gold Coast for a week in late February next year. There will be at least 8 of us going and we have booked a fantastic holiday house. It is close to everything we need, will fit us all very comfortably and has its own pool. I booked my flights last Sunday and even though the trip is months away, I'm really excited. The kids from uni are really fun and I think we're going to have an absolute blast. 

http://www.carrentalgoldcoast.net.au/

I was somewhat hesitant to agree to go on this trip. I didn't go on a "schoolies" trip after I finished year 12. I didn't think I would given none of my friends were really keen to go anywhere. The other reason was musical. I became quite a "choir nerd" at school in Melbourne, on top of continuing to play a lot of sport. I didn't enjoy school much over here and being involved in music was a very positive kind of "escape" for me.

The school I went to has an end of year Christmas carols service. Most of the kids hate it but the music nerds tend to love it. For a week at the end of the year all the students from years 7-9 had to rehearse with the choir every day for the first 2 lessons of the day. The service has a number of solos in it, which were auditioned for each year. It was very competitive, but I found it to be the kind of competition that encouraged improvement. 

The first year I went to carols, a girl in year 11 had the solo that was the most sought after, a verse of Oh Holy Night in french. She is a very gifted soprano and performed incredibly. From that point,  I wanted to have that solo. The next two years I was given other solos, but other accomplished singers in the year above were rightfully given the one I wanted. At the end of year 12 I got the Oh Holy Night solo. The night of carols coincided with the week that most year 12s were on schoolies. 

In some years, girls would go to schoolies and come back in time for the night of carols. One year a girl who had been given a solo did this and almost had it taken off her when she came back from Byron Bay with barely any voice left. There was no way I was going to miss any rehersal, let alone bathe my vocal chords in booze for a week before hand. 

Singing that solo was a real highlight and I felt so proud to have set a goal and achieve it. However, it was an instance indicative of a habit I've had for a while, avoiding "fun" based rights of passage. As I have written about before, I'm not very good with birthdays. I think in part it's because my family in general has not been all that good at recognising the importance of fun among serious and sensible, though we are improving. I think it is also because I have always enjoyed discipline, focus and structure. Even as a small child, I didn't see the "point" of a lot of the fun things my peers did.

As I have grown up I have come to appreciate that sometimes it is healthy and productive for "fun" to be the point. There has to be a balance, of course, between the fun and the focused. However, not everything you do in life has to be a stepping stone toward a Nobel Prize. Being able to relax and enjoy yourself are important skills that make life a worthwhile experience. In recent years, personal challenges have almost completely eroded my ability to enjoy myself.

So going on this trip is about embracing fun and giving myself permission to live a little more often than I have been. Life is short and precious. Whilst it is a cliche, I guess none of us really know how many chances each of us will get to dance like no one is watching, so I need to get better at taking those opportunities. 

A day I'd rather forget

Saturday was a very difficult day.

We had our dog Suzie for over 7 years. When got her from the Save a Dog Scheme she was already an adult and had been mistreated in her previous home. She was very underweight and didn't have any fur on her nose. She was very timid, would jump at anything and was particularly afraid of men. 

Suzie adjusted to life with our family quickly. Over the next 7 years she became outgoing, loyal and very animated. She has the most expressive face of any dog I have met. She has the most wonderful dog smile and she developed the funniest, quirky friendship with our other dog, Ted. She is loving, loyal and happy.

Whilst her temperament improved dramatically over her years with us, Suzie was still easily unnerved. She is afraid of the hot air balloons that fly over our house most mornings and is always rattled by storms. Her reaction in recent years to anything that unnerved her has been to jump the fence. If were home when she jumped we would let her straight back in. She didn't escape to run away, she would come straight around to the front gate. 

We are busy people, so often we have not been home when Suzie escaped. When no one was home to let her in, she would roam the streets. Recently, she has roamed further and further and has been crossing the freeway. 

We have tried everything we could possibly think of to keep her in. We have taken her to obedience classes, walked her regularly, given her toys and bones, she had another dog for company, we put fence toppers on the fence to add height and for a very short time we even tried a low voltage shock collar. None of these things worked.

It reached the point that the situation had become too dangerous. We did not want Suzie to be hit by a car, nor did we want some poor motorist to go through the awful experience of hitting her. Furthermore, given that we live on a main road and seconds off of a freeway, we had to face the reality the probability of her causing an accident that could not only kill her, but also harm or kill one or more people, was getting higher and higher. That is not something we could let happen. 

It had become clear that we could no longer meet Suzie's needs as her owners as well as honour our civic duty to the users of the roads surrounding our home.

Having to put Suzie up for adoption has been a truly heart breaking experience for the whole family. It took over a week from deciding it needed to happen, to actually doing it because we love her dearly and couldn't bring ourselves to go through with it.

On Saturday when I was at work on my tea break, I received a text message from my Mum asking me if I wanted to say a last goodbye. I replied that I didn't need to say goodbye and that I would be less traumatized if they went ahead and took her without me. In my mind, I had been saying goodbye to her everyday since the decision was made. I had seen her that morning and I could live with that as being our last contact. However, that didn't stop me crying through my tea break.

The people at the Save a Dog Scheme were fantastic. Because they run the pound for our local council they have met Suzie before on her escapades and were aware of our situation. I think they understood how awful we felt about having to give her up and Mum and Katie said they were very good about it all. The Save a Dog Scheme does not put dogs down unless they are too aggressive to be re-homed. They are positive about her prospects to find a new home and so am I. There is no way we could have parted with Suze unless we knew that she would not be put down.

From what Mum and Katie told me, the process of giving her up was far more traumatising for them than for Suze. Suzie was as happy as Larry. Thankfully, whilst I'm sure she loves us, she loves all people and never pined for us when we went away. As long as she is taken care of, she is happy.

I am trying to take comfort in knowing that we tried everything we could to keep Suzie safe, as well as giving her the best 7 years of her life thus far. It had just become a square peg, round hole scenario and we had to do this in order to protect her safety and the safety of local road users. I will try and remind myself of this every time I look out to the table on the deck and don't see her sitting on it. 

It is one thing to try and comprehend this as a human. Ted, now our only dog, does not understand at all why his best friend hasn't come home. He keeps searching the back yard for her. I really wish I could just sit him down and explain it to him. No doubt he will now be spoilt rotten out of our guilt and hopefully it won't take him too long to adjust. 

Goodbye lovely Suzle. We love you so much, we miss you and we trust you will be safe and loved in your new home.

He's pointing at me

We are now heading toward the pointy end of the academic year and I am trying to push through the mental fatigue. 

Now that I have decided on my course for next year, it has become a challenge to remain engaged with the task at hand. You see, my results for this semester will be published too late to be considered as part of my application for my new course. And of the units I am currently studying, I will only be able to receive credit for prior learning for one of them. 

On top of that, I am so excited about all things gymnastics and sports administration that I'm finding it hard to make myself do anything else. I would rather spend hours watching physical conditioning exercises on youtube and plan accelerated gymnastics curricula for imaginary gymnasts in the high performance program that currently only exists in my head. 

I would love to sit here and say with honesty that even though this semester will not count for much in the scheme of things, my motivation levels are sky high and I am as focused as ever because I love learning and studying and online quizzes... However, I am but a mere mortal and I have been stuck in a bit of a rut over the past few weeks. It is alarming how quickly bad habits sneak into my routine when I stop keeping an astute eye on them.

The point of this admission is not to dwell on it or to use "being human" or "normal" as an excuse for laziness. As Dr Phil says, "you can't change what you don't acknowledge" and I think the old, bald, rich guy is right about that. I need to lift my game and to do my best to remind myself that even if this semester won't directly impact my immediate tertiary path, I will still be pretty annoyed at myself if I under perform. 

When I think about the histories of the people I admire; athletes, musicians, humanitarians or family members, I am reminded that it is often hard to see how important the particular step you are taking right now could be in the path of your life. What I'm doing right now might not seem important, but if I treat it that way then I significantly reduce the chances of something great coming from it. 

I often get stuck dreaming in the "big picture" that I forget that "big pictures" are made up of lots of tiny pieces. Lives are made up of tiny pieces, too. 

I think of it like a mosaic. Everyday that you put in your best effort, a little shiny coloured tile is added to the picture. Everyday that you don't, a boring, brown, matte one is slotted in its place. I get frustrated in the "here and now" when the task of putting together an entire shiny picture is too great a task, which ironically results in a brown tile sort of day. I forget that if I just put down only little shiny tile each day, it won't be as long as I think until the picture I want to see appears. 

The other habit I have is not being able to commit to the design of my mosaic. As soon as I make some progress on one pretty design, I think that another one might be better and start a new one. This is a problem that comes about from having many different skill sets and interests and a lack of discipline (or perhaps wisdom) to stick to any one thing. I think this has left me with a lot of half finished mosaics. 

I don't think I need to necessarily do one thing for the rest of my life, but I have certainly realised that the time has come for me to put the blinkers on and establish myself in one field. There are advantages to being a professional generalist, but it seems to take a long time to create any one full picture when you are always working on many. 

At the end of the day, we each decide what is important in our own lives and "right now" rarely the wrong time to get back on track. 

I have also slowly learned that piling a tonne of pressure to fix everything myself usually just makes the problem worse. I will be out recruiting the people I might need for some extra support. 

I know I am not the only one to whom asking for help does not come naturally, feels like an admission of inadequacy and prompts a fear of placing a burden on those you like or love. 

In my experience, when someone close to me is struggling I like to think I can usually tell. Most of the time I am concerned and want to help, but end up frustrated when I'm told their isn't a problem (when clearly there is). I have tried to remember this recently, and I try to remind myself that most people like helping the people they care about. In most cases people would actually prefer to help as it makes them feel included, useful and they know how to best accommodate your needs if the problem you are facing has changed them. You are usually doing that person a favour by letting them in. 

And provided that you surround yourself with well intended folk, thinking less of you is probably the last thing from that person's mind. 

Hair cuts and back hip circles.

I have neglected my poor blog again. 

Last week I got my hair cut. It is now the shortest it has been in 8 years and I like it. My hair was waist length and now it sits at my shoulders. My mum had been pestering me for months to get it cut, so finally last Friday I walked into a salon I had never been to before and told them to give my hair a chop. The lovely lady who cut my hair said that she had been told that hair holds onto bad memories, which is why you can feel so much better after a hair cut. 

Whilst I do not believe that somewhat romantic notion in a literal sense, I did feel like a whole new woman after my hair cut and my head most certainly was lighter for being rid of about 25cms of hair. I do also very much like the idea that I have snipped off about 8 years worth bad memories, there sure have been a few.

I don't know if a change is as good as a holiday but I do know that the mind is the most powerful muscle in the body. As long as you believe in the change, then it shall be. 

As of Sunday I am now on my way to becoming an accredited gymnastics coach. I was the only one from my club to attend the course and I was also one of the older participants. 

Whilst most of the other trainee coaches were bored teenagers, I was really nerdishly excited. The all day course was held at the Victorian Women's High Performance Centre, the Victorian Institute of Sport's women's gymnastics facility. It is the most incredible gym I have ever set foot in and now that I have done a back hip circle on the same set of uneven bars that an Australian Olympian has trained on, my life is certainly a little bit closer to being complete. 

So many balance beams... (7 all together, so many that I couldn't fit them all in the one  frame).

Now I have to complete the written coursework and supervised coaching component with my club. 

The day was long and tiring, but I was hopelessly inspired. I couldn't help but think that if I could work in a facility like that every day, I wouldn't care what I was being paid. I can't wait to get accredited, get stuck into my new uni course and throw myself full time into making my crazy dream of making my living from gymnastics based work a reality. 

The main reason I haven't written anything recently is because my mind has been very occupied. 

I've been struggling a lot with some of my important interpersonal relationships and I haven't felt it appropriate to express my feelings about that situation here. There is a level of responsibility that comes with having a blog, even one with a readership as modest as mine. No good can come from making the identity of the person I am struggling to get along with known here.

I am hurt, frustrated and exhausted by the situation. I am trying hard and in many different ways to improve it, but to no avail. 

In recent times, I have come to refer to this chart:

It turns out, the happiness chart does have its limitations. The happiness chart only works in instances where your happiness only depends on yourself. My happiness depends also depends on the people around me, because I care about them. 

I am coming to accept that maybe this is a situation that I cannot improve by being involved and that maybe my only option is to maintain a concerned gaze from a distance. I will have to try and focus on happiness that can be derived intrinsically. 

I know that this person and I are not getting along at least in part because that person is struggling with some things themselves.

One of the scariest things about being in a serious emotional hole is accepting that you are the master of your own destiny. You don't have to do it alone, but you are the one who decides whether anything is done at all. It frustrates me that I cannot decide for this person that the time to take control and improve their life could be now. They have to come to that realisation in their own way, in their own time.

I have said it so many times and I will say it again, I am here for you if you want me to be. I'm not perfect, but I am trying and if you tell me how to help then I will.

I am not a person of faith, but I think the serenity prayer (adopted by alcoholics anonymous) says it well;

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,

The courage to change the things I can,

And the wisdom to know the difference.

The irony of this situation does not escape me and it is giving me a far greater appreciation for what people like my mum must have felt when dealing with me.

Life is mysterious and let's face it, we're all just making it up as we go along. I will keep trying my best.

Wish me luck.

Baby Brebles goes to the formal!

The purpose of this post is purely to share how handsome my brother looked going to his year 11 formal on Thursday night. His date, the truly lovely Clara, looked absolutely beautiful. 

They matched perfectly. Their sandy hair and blue eyed complexions matched Alex's pale blue shirt. His champagne coloured tie matched her dress and the pale yellow roses that made up the corsage tied in wonderfully.

We have known Clara's family since the families each came to exist, Clara's Mum and my Mum became friends in early high school. Clara and Alex have known each other about as long as they have been alive and have always got along famously.

Clara was just about the ultimate dream formal date for a teenage boy.  Ever since they were tiny, Alex and Clara have seemed to be at complete ease in each other's company. It's hard to avoid the fact that she's an absolute stunner, resembling something like a combination of Brooklyn Decker and Taylor Swift. As well as gorgeous, Clara is outgoing, bubbly and intelligent. She is the kind of girl you can take to any occasion and know she'll get along with everyone. 

That being said, little brother isn't a half bad formal date either. I'm yet to come across a teenage boy who likes being in a suit more than Alex! I think he'd be perfectly happy to wear it everyday. A lot of teenage boys look awkward and physically uncomfortable when suited up but Alex looked like he was born to wear one and he did so with a cool, calm  confidence. He looked very sharp and he has such nice friends, so I was confident he and Clara would have a great time.

From a big sister's point of view, there is significantly less to do for a brother going to the formal than a sister. I did Kate's hair and makeup for both her formals, as well as being involved in dress selection, which I loved being a part of. We usually allowed 2 hours of preparation time on the night. 

All Alex had to do to get ready was have a shower, a shave and put on his suit which took all of about 25 minutes and required absolutely no input from anyone else! I wanted to mark the occasion in some way, so I got him a bottle of nice smelling man-fume as a gift. All Kate and I really had to do on the night was play paparazzi!

Since my own year 11 formal was a little bit of a disaster, I was only too happy to live vicariously through my brother and revel in the smiley, happy, perfection of it all.

Brebles and Cla

Learning lessons

I lost my wallet yesterday. I didn't even realise it was gone until I had a number of missed calls from my parents. As it turns out I had left it on the Frankston train and some lovely soul had picked it up. Said lovely soul rang every phone number I had on bits of paper and business cards until he got onto my dad, who got onto my mum who went and picked it up from the Good Samaritan. All of this happened before I even realised it was gone! I'm incredibly lucky, I had ten cents in my wallet (which was still in it) and none of my cards were missing. 

I really can't quite believe how lucky I was to get it back.

I have been struggling to engage with uni this semester. I have been aware of this and trying my best to get myself back on track. Last week I missed an online quiz which was worth 10% of my grade for that subject. I grovelled to my lecturer to no avail and up until today I have been extremely mad at myself for missing an opportunity for some pretty easy marks. I am now trying to view the lost 10 marks as a wake up call. Even though I will be doing a different course next year, I have worked too hard over the last two years to get my academic record back on track to have blips appear on it now out of laziness. 

I'm annoyed I had to learn this lesson the hard way. Now I have to stop being mad at myself and use the frustration as motivation to knuckle down and do better. 

Speaking of uni, I have decided what I'll be doing next year. It got to the point where I just needed to make the decision. The uncertainty was making losing sleep and was making me  feel constantly nauseous. I was mentally burned out from thinking about it. I didn't think there was any aspect of the decision that I hadn't thought over a thousand times. Each time I thought about it I came up with the same three options, the ones I talked about in my last post, but was not getting consistently closer to picking one. 

I made my choice last week. I had taken the train home from uni and had started to think that one of those options might be the right one. When I got home, Mum told me that she had been reading my blog and that if I really wanted, she would tell me what she thought I should do. I said, "Yes please!" Mum's advice was to do the course that I had been thinking about on the train home, so I decided then and there that I would apply for that course for next year. 

I felt instantly relieved and excited. It will be another big change and I am committed to seeing this course through to the end, come what may. 

It is a 4 year double degree, but I should get credit for a number of units I've done this year and a few from my arts degree. I'm excited that after those four years I will have 3 undergraduate degrees all together, each very different from the other. This somewhat excessive undergraduate education will provide me the opportunities to be employed or pursue some very exciting postgraduate options. 

This educational change will be the biggest one yet. If I'm accepted into the course, I will be attending a different university, leaving Monash and the Group of Eight. One of the degrees is in a field I have never studied before in my life and the other is science related, but different again to the science studies I'm undertaking in the present. 

The hardest thing about making this decision has been finding the courage to follow a very different path to the one I always imagined I would. 

I'm a smart person and I come from a family of smart and very accomplished people. I had fallen into the trap of thinking that I should do what I perceived smart people are expected to do, go to the most prestigious university that would take me and go onto become a doctor or a lawyer or some other highly respected and highly paid professional. 

Now I don't think there is anything wrong with following this kind of path in life, if you have a reason to. The problem I kept coming up against was that I was only contemplating this kind of path because I could, not because I had a deep intrinsic motivation to. It would have been a decision to follow a path I've come to see as predictable and very socially acceptable, which made it a very attractive 'default' position. There are plenty of 'right' reasons to pursue an elite education of this kind, but these are not some of them.

I've realised that if I want to be happy, doing something just because I can is probably not going to procure that. At times throughout this process I've been concerned that if I don't do something like law or medicine, I won't be able to afford the kind of lifestyle I'd want to provide for myself or my family, if I have one in the future.

I'm so lucky and grateful to have a very comfortable life. However, as I made this decision I've been thinking a lot about what parts of it I would want to provide for a family of my own and which parts are not so important to me. For example, I don't think the last three and a half years of my private education were worth their considerable cost and whilst I very much enjoy living in a beautiful home, I would be just as happy living in a nice home in a less affluent suburb. 

I want to do things in life that I enjoy and that I'm passionate about. I want to succeed in what I do and be surrounded by like minded people, but I don't want to be consumed by my work in a way that makes me chronically unhappy or unhealthy. I am starting to realise that if I live my life this way, the calm and fulfillment might be more valuable to me than social status or large amounts of money could be.

I would be lying if I said that success and financial reward are of no importance to me. For me, this decision making process has just given me a better idea of where those two things fit on my list of priorities. 

I feel like I'm being a bit crazy going down this path, pursuing a career in a field that many would probably not consider "serious". However, this just serves as further motivation to have faith in my own abilities. Besides, taking healthy risks is part of what makes life interesting and I haven't heard of anyone who did anything truly great without taking a few.