The Sea Is A Fickle Mistress

Too tiny for my tastes

And so is the ability to book a trip on a boat, apparently!

The fishing trip did not go ahead, though it’s more of a setback than a cancellation. I’m still planning on learning how to fish, but it may be a case of figuring this one out myself. Now that I am a Lady of Leisure, I guess I have plenty of time to organise that.

I think I should do a bit of reading up on it though. This fishing malarky seems to be a whole lot of sitting around, followed by a frantic five minutes of doing EVERYTHING while people stand a little way off. Much like how I remember dating to be.

Skill: Hunter Gatherer

Good Old Fashioned Book Smarts

Time for a practical skill.

I’ve spoken at length, sober and otherwise, about butchery and self sustaining farming, only eating what you grow and malarky like that and I’m really interested in finding out as much practical information as I can get. Knowing how to grow vegies that don’t die! What parts of animals can be eaten? How to you make bread from scratch? Without yeast? With? Food food food. I love food. Can you tell?

What I don’t love isthe politics of organic/raw/vegetarian/vegan eating to come into it, thanks. Food is food: necessary, hopefully enjoyable but not a reason to make yourself feel superior. I won’t be getting into that shit, because it’s all personal choice, not some kind of omnipotent truth. Ok? Ok. Good.

While learning how to butcher an animal is still on the cards, I have decided to start very small and simple.

Fishing.

Persuit of the lazy and hungry alike, it’s something that depends on many variables. Too many, in some cases. But it’s something you can do with the simplest of equipment. In other words, it’s a great skill to learn because you can take it pretty much anywhere there is water. Apparently.

Things I Know About Fishing Already -or – Lies I Have Heard About Fishing:

- Anyone can do it! Using nothing but worms! (just like sex! Wait…what?)

- Catch little fish to use to catch big fish and so on, til you catch a FUCKING SHARK. (Then what? Eat flake for 3 months?)

- It is for old men and children in Great American Novelswho white wash fences for old ladies. (I think I will look just darling in a floppy hat covered in lures, kthx)

- When you can’t use a rod, try fishing like a bear. (This one might be true, I don’t know)

I’m doomed. I think I’ll do some research.

In any case, I see fishing as one of those skills that double as hobbies, both on it’s own and with friends. So Matt, Moose and Me have booked places on a boat, equipment, booze and BBQ included. Sure, it’s a rather ritzy way of starting out but the idea is for someone to show me the HOW so I can take the information back with me, mull over it, make bad fishing jokes and then practically apply my new skill.

I promise to take a photo of me holding a fish, as is tradition.

Level Up: Saying Yes Is Easy

I asked myself a week ago “Do you really want to stay in this job?”

No, I said.

I asked myself “Would anything bad happen if you quit, say, tomorrow?”

No, I said.

I asked myself “So what you’re saying is, you’re going to quit tomorrow?”

YES, I said. And did so.

It was easily the third best yes I have ever said.

So as a result, I have two weeks left of my old job, and then I can say yes to all sorts of things like: reading all day, sewing more clothes, cleansing my stuff, BEING FUCKING CREATIVE MOTHERFUCKERS. Swearing during work hours. Wearing bizarre clothes. Wearing pyjamas all day. Having time to myself, and time to socialise.

I can also say a fuck load of No. No more lunches in a shopping centre food court. No more being sedate. No more small talk conversations with people I don’t like. No more guilt for wanting to take 20 minutes in the toilet. No more pressure to stay late after work. No more jobs I don’t really want. No more gossip! No more beeping fax machines. No more calling people who owe money.

It doesn’t meant that I’m not going to spend the next howeverlong frantically trying to get a new job. Or temping. But it will be far more liberating to do so on my own terms. I feel 100% better about work just from making a positive decision.

FUCK YEAH, POSITIVITY.

So I manned up, leveled up (to unemployed bum) and took some initiative.I need to remember how damned GOOD this feels. How the nervousness before I quit was massively outweighed by the deliciouslikecake, sweetlikeacid feeling of delightfully telling my manager at 8.55am that I was leaving and no, nothing could be done to stop me. I liked the slightly bewildered expression on his face. I kind of wanted to go crazy and say exactly why I wanted to leave, but didn’t. Saying no to burning bridges – so so hard.

Maybe, baby…

I undertook saying yes and no, once more with feeling. I think I achieved something!

I said YES to the following:

• Going out late to dance on a Friday night, where normally I would think of an excuse to stay home, on the internet, being a boring person. Not only did I dance for 4 hours straight, and sing (and rap badly to ‘Shoop’) but I had a magical mystery recovery the next day. Nothing hurt, I felt energetic. Steph was a big help with this one!
• Going horse riding with my sister-in-law next Saturday. It’s been CENTURIES since I’ve been on a horse. I will be interested to see whether I can just jump back into it, with little trepidation? Will I be able to get up on the bloody animal? This and more will be bitched and moaned about on twitter in a few days, no doubt. This also ties into levelling up my skillz. Bonus points!
• Choosing to put a final date on my current employment. I am unhappy, so I have decided to say ‘yes’ to myself, to answer the question of ‘If I don’t like it, I should leave, right?’ It’s wanky, but hey, I’m very good at that.

There was probably more, but they’re the big ones.

Now, the No part:

• Having recently had my workload downgraded to fairly basic, I resisted the urge this last week to say yes to taking on more stuff, or hanging on to old shit that I just don’t want to deal with anymore. This counts as a ‘NO’ right? Sure, it probably also counts as a ‘YES’ … okay, this is a bit of a failure.

To be honest, the NO stuff was a lot harder. I’ve been cramming my weekends full of stuff, trying to accommodate myself, my husband, our friends, family and well, the cat too. I’d say 89% of it is stuff I want to do, so it’s just a matter of timesharing my brain. The rest is…more difficult. A lot of it is ingrained, people-pleasing behaviour that is nearly 20 or so years of weak-willed BS on my part. I think I need to start saying ‘AWW HELLS NO’ to cramming too much into my weekend.

So saying yes to things I’d normally say no to? Fairly easy. Making excuses ain’t my bag anymore.

Saying no to things? It’s a work in progress. I know I can do it, because I say no to all kinds of GOOD things all the time. Now I just have to work on turning it around. I’ll add it to the MetaToDo List.

Skill: Yes and No

EPIC BATTLE

Whilst many practical skills are physical ones, it’s the psychological ones that can be the most challenging. Reversing physical traits can be as simple as breaking the habit, doing something over 150 times or just being aware of what you’re body is going. With a mental one, you have to be conscious until you start changing subconsciously, if that makes any sense. The main theme is though, you have to be aware of the change you’re making in order to do it. And you have to be accountable.

I have a serious problem with pleasing other people. I will complain like a sonnovabitch that I’m too busy, don’t want to, etc etc and yet will still say yes. If I do say ‘no’ to a simple request, I feel like a douche for a long time.

On the otherhand, I will say no to a lot of awesome, shiny things. Is it too late, too cold, too hot, too hard to get to?  Am I too tired, too ensconced on the couch? Then I will more often than not say no. This is just as bad a problem as saying yes.

This is an exercise in retraining my brain.

Say ‘no’ to at least 3 things I don’t want to do in the next 7 days.

Say ‘yes’ to at least 3 things that I am hesitant about in the next 7 days.

Intermission: Do Over

I admit, I’m struggling with this.

What seemed to be such a simple idea has gotten away from me. I want self improvement, but what I’ve achieved so far is self…boredom. I wouldn’t read this blog, so I am having issues contributing.

So I’m starting over. From about Week 2.

Let’s get back to basics. How shall I do this? What I was thinking was breaking a month down into four weeks.

1. Week A: A new skill is posted to learn. Something practical.
2. Week B: A follow up, with progress and maybe some tweaking of what’s being learnt
3. Week C: A fun skill, possibly complimenting the practical one.
4. Week D: Level Up! A pictorial trophy and a feeling of worth. And music videos.
5. Every now and then, a big project, personally themed. Like meat.

So let’s begin…again.

Do you see?

Have you been staring the whole time?

I tried to take in as much as I could, but it all became a blur in the end. This is the problem when you deliberately overstimulate your brain. But I didn’t just gorge my eyeballs on stimuli…

I managed to fit in two different ways from getting from work to the train station at night, and also a wander around the laneways near where I live. There’s graffiti from 1967, some I think is much, much older, scraped into the stone. There’s also ruts in the bluestone where the shit-cart rambled down to collect the toilet buckets. Charrrrrming!

What did you see?

Intermission #1

It's almost as if Folks! should be in inverted commas

I need a bit of a cheer up, usually on a Friday night. Let’s make this a regular meet up, before we go out/get down/go to bed. Some music, a quote, a bit of fluff.Ya know, what them other blogger girls do. But with more meat*

Let’s dance!

I used to do a friday night mixtape, but it was pretty arduous aksually. How about I just give you a few of the things I like listening to at the mo? A mixed bag just like back in the 80s, when I was a kid and you’d get a metric fucktonne of lollies for 50c. No wonder my teeth are bad…

So, shall we dance? No? Looking for something a little smoother? Sexier? Fucking WEIRD? Well, fine, how about some shrieking, followed by David Byrne? And this, this is just to make you feel better about yourself. Cole Porter and I love you.

Because I’ve been worrying about you, you’ve been a bit quiet lately. Hey, you know what will fix that? AN INSPIRATIONAL QUOTE. FUCK YEAH.

Many people need desperately to receive this message: ‘I feel and think much as you do, care about many of the things you care about, although most people do not care about them. You are not alone.’ – Kurt Vonnegut

It’s true, you know.

I’m experimenting here. Next week will have a theme, promise.

*Okay, okay, I’ll stop with the meat already

Week Four: (Don’t) Walk On By

Getting someone to change their routine can be a futile exercise. We take the same train to work, walk the same way home, eat the same lunch once a week. Preference becomes habit becomes routine becomes a well worn rut.

Not always a bad thing, but this week, try to take notice of what you’re doing.

Find one new thing about your routine every day, something you didn’t even realise before. New waitress at the restaurant? Flowers blooming in that house on the corner? Document it if you like, but notice.

Don’t just walk on by… (doo doo-do do-do-dooo)

We Are What We Eat and I Am Meat

Bitch, don't touch my stuff

We’re not getting sick of meat yet, are we?

Good. Because I found this book, you see. A magic book, that tells me everything I need to know. “The Bush Butcher’s Bible” by Michael Gale. You know it’s good because it has diagrams. It reminds me of those old science text books I had in High School. Boring words, AWESOME PICTURES.

Though I honestly doubt it will prepare me what I will actually have to do. The more I actually think about it, the more daunting it becomes. Do I really want to know how my meaty meals are made? Do I actually want to kill, then eat, something that has a name? This is an undertaking that, let’s be honest, is not something a modern human in the First World thinks about on a daily basis. We are no longer the Hunter Gatherers of our ancestry.

When I finish reading all the info I gathered, I will report more on my horrible new meathook task. Though probably for my own cataloging. This meat and killing fixation I have seems to be scaring people off.

How did everyone else go? What is the PLAN, man?

If you didn’t find anything, do not fear. This week is a breather week, no hard thinking. We’ll have fun, I promise.