almost home....

I wrote this a couple of days ago, but my host came home before I got round to posting it online, so I'm finally sharing it now!

Well I'm not sure if this is tempting fate or what, but I have so far managed to keep up with what I had planned this holiday in terms of energy. Only one more night and then I'll be home.

Planning the trip in such a way to be kind to myself and with mostly short travel times (except the last, and even more so the first day) and giving myself plenty of rest time seems to have paid off. For an assortment of reasons beyond the driver's control the bus yesterday was 3/4hr late getting in to Christchurch. One passenger who thought she had plenty time to spare went haring off at the airport with about 2 mins to spare before check-in. That was the moment when I felt really glad I'd decided to avoid such potential problems by doing one leg of the journey per day. Whilst my energy levels have been pretty good for me, relatively speaking, I would still struggle to run for a plane, or anything else! The added stress would not be good for my brain that can still only really cope with one thing at a time even when all is going well...

It is in the last few days that I have really started to notice the fact that my brain is feeling akin to jetlagged. The 'where am I, which meal is it?' feeling is fairly understandable when you've flown across several timezones but it isn't usually a feature of domestic travel! Another reminder that whilst my physical health seems to be improving in leaps and bounds, I've still a way to go before I reach what I'd like to consider as 'normal'.

It's the usual things that throw me, like decision making. You know, the really tricky ones like being asked 'what do you want for lunch?' Somehow that is much harder to deal with than me looking at the food in the cupboard/fridge and deciding what to eat. When I'm just left to it I can start on one thing and end up making something completely different, but when someone else is making it they generally want to know what the end result will be before they get there! I've been pretty much catering for myself for lunches this trip and know I have had Corn Thins, (British) Marmite, hummus and miso soup available so some combination of the above is what I have had, not exactly taxing. But when Catherine started reeling of a list of ingredients available today my brain just went into panic mode and blanked out. I knew having something different from the last few days would be nice, but I didn't know where to start! Yet last night I managed to successfully cook two different curries for us simultaneously, complete with giving chopping instructions, and hold a sensible conversation without any problems... go figure!

My short term memory has never been my strong point, but I know it is considerably worse at the moment. Usually I can look at a map to figure out how to get somewhere and then hours, or even days and weeks later I can find my way no problem. Yesterday evening I checked the map to find my overnight stay for tonight, I'd got my landmarks all sorted out. Then I arrived off the plane this afternoon and realised I could only remember where to get off the bus and the rough direction to head in. Admittedly it didn't help that half the streets in this neighbourhood seem to be missing their signage, but my recollection of where the street I was heading to in relation to Croydon Road (a name I wasn't likely to forget having lived on one!) turned out to be completely opposite to reality. Little things perhaps, but things I know that usually wouldn't happen. Thank goodness that not only had the morning's thunderstorms passed by the time I was wandering around, but that I actually had the energy to do so and the wit to ask for directions when I realised I was completely disorientated!

On the flight from Christchurch to Wellington we got The Hobbit safety briefing, the new one that is! (the old one is pretty good too). Having come through the Southern Alps yesterday, and having watched part of LOTR plus The Desolation of Smaug with the boys over the weekend I got quite choked up watching it. I'd been showing the safety video to them online just a few days before but having got Bear Grylls on the way down I didn't expect to see it on a plane so soon! I found myself surreptitiously trying to wipe away tears so the flight attendant standing right in front of me couldn't see. I did feel rather silly, but things still catch me off guard like that and for all my hormones are supposedly being sorted out now it is pretty obvious at times like that that there's still a way to go. Mind you to be fair to myself it's never easy saying goodbye to my self-appointed nephews and it's hardly the first time I've been teary on the way home from visiting them. But I did catch myself welling up whilst watching the films with them as the stunning local scenery was shown off to good effect. Ten years ago when that happened I put it down to homesickness, even though it was for a place I'd at that point only spent 2 months of my life in. I can hardly claim homesickness now for scenery I'd been travelling through a couple of days beforehand and would be returning through very soon!

On the whole though I coped far better than I thought I might. With a bit of luck this will turn out to be an ongoing improvement and I won't collapse in a heap once the travelling is over. If I can just get my brain to manage to multitask again I'll be happy and consider any further improvement a bonus. But simply getting there and back again over the last 10 days has been a pretty big achievement in itself and I'm really glad I decided to go for it, even though it felt something of a daunting prospect before I set off.

on the road

This was written a few days ago, it's just taken me a while to simultaneously have time and an internet connection in order to post it....

There are times when you just have to make space in life to Get Things Done. For one of my co-editors of the national Friends Newsletter that meant going on retreat this last weekend to catch up on some academic writing. For me it has been allowing myself not to feel obliged to make the most of being in Auckland for a few hours and find someone to catch up with. So a couple of work in-house training questionnaires and a report on Yearly Meeting later (yes, exactly – that was in May!) I'm feeling as though the first half of my 3hr wait at the airport has been quite productive. It's much harder to procrastinate when doing what needs done is probably the most interesting option available!

I was about to pack away my notepad when I decided that I could draft a blogpost too, especially having failed to write one all month. Well that's not quite true, there are two half written ones in the Drafts folder... so it might be a case of buses posting again – nothing for ages then three come along at once. Then again, perhaps not.

I'm heading off for my annual tiki tour around assorted f/Friends and family, both a blood relation and adoptive whānau. It's a few months later in the year than usual but back in July I wasn't really up to it. So instead I'm encompassing Labour Weekend in order to get three non-school days with the boys in Hokitika in the middle of it all. I'm hoping my carefully planned bunny hops with a night in a bed between all but the first two stages (ie this one from home to Wellington) will ensure my energy levels keep high enough to enjoy the trip rather than simply enduring the travel. So far so good...

I must admit I'm feeling someone less organised that usual with several days only sorted in terms of a bed for that night rather than a busy diary of people as would be usual. This is partially intentional in terms of wanting to allow crash-out time should I need it, but some of it is simply slipping into the Kiwi 'she'll be right' attitude and making it up as I go along. Which was fine until it appeared that someone had changed their cellphone number and I realise I've left at home an address I need... ah well, it'll work out somehow [ed note - it did!]

Having set off though I've decided that I'll leave this trip very much in the lap of the Gods, or Fate, or whoever else is listening; but hopefully Thunder will be rolling sixes elsewhere and Death will be too busy rescuing kittens! (Mum you really do need to read some Discworld books then this will all make so much more sense...). These days the universe generally seems to have more of a plan than I do anyway. I've just come across this Harry Potter quote in my notes from the Yearly Meeting Co-clerks' address It's our choices that make us who we are, not our ability (Dumbledore to Harry, J.K. Rowling) I'm not entirely sure what that is saying about me at present, but choosing to let the universe decide is still a choice after all! My abilities are still something I'm getting to grips with as they continue to change week to week; many things that used to be easy still feel quite daunting, especially when they are cerebrally challenging. But at least physically things are somewhat easier again.

ps I'm still quite impressed that the first session of our YM included a Harry Potter quote; as the t-shirts say, 'Quakers are cooler than you think!' ;)

standing up to be counted

Well it has been a disappointing time for me in politics lately. Firstly the Scottish Referendum delivered a 'No' vote, quite possibly on the back of probably illegal and most definitely unethical last minute 'Devo Max' offers from the combined Westminster parties (there were to be no new offers from any side less than 28 days from the vote according to the Edinburgh Agreement - the Electoral Commission agrees that what happened was against the spirit if not the letter of the law. There's a petition here that sets out the full explanation. It isn't calling to question the referendum results but the cavalier attitude with which the law was disregarded).

Then to run salt into a wound a couple of days later we ended up with a third term Tory government in Aotearoa NZ despite some pretty grim revelations about their modus operandi. Yet in some ways it wasn't that much of a surprise; the Labour party has been in a mess for the last couple of years with in-fighting over leadership, and after putting his not inconsiderable money behind the left wing Internet-Mana alliance, Kim Dotcom didn't have the sense to leave the politics to the far more credible politicians he was funding. So basically the left was in a mess. The Greens hung in there but found themselves once again without a viable coalition partner to get into government. 

Things were not looking particularly bright, especially with Tony Abbott over the ditch running Australia into the ground and assorted Western powers deciding yet again to get involved with a conflict situation that no doubt will turn round and bite back later...

The one bright spot for me is the response in Scotland post-referendum of the 'Yes' campaigners. I know many No voters are feeling pretty fed up and are thinking 'we voted No, get over it and shut up', but really? After 307 very long years do you really think the pro-independence lobby is going to shut up a few days after coming so close to success??? Quite. And if the boot was on the other foot I doubt if they'd be keeping quiet either. The bright spot I mentioned was that apathy and despondency didn't kick in as it very well could've done - had they really 'come all that way for this' yet again? But the determination that saw the birth of the vigil on Carlton Hill in 1992 has been seen in action again but magnified a hundredfold as thousands, literally thousands, have joined the SNP and the Scottish Greens (who also campaigned for Yes) in the last ten days. I don't think either party has seen such numbers before, and last I heard the SNP have become larger than Scottish Labour and are on track to become the third largest political party in the UK, let alone Scotland! [Update: They already are! Over 40,000 new members in less than two weeks! Plus the Greens now have a waiting list to attend their next party conference :) ]The Westminster elections next year have suddenly become a lot more interesting than they have been for a long long time. 

Many of those joining up, according to reports, are those who were involved with non-partisan Yes campaign groups, like Commonweal and Radical Indy, who've not been members of any party before, a lot of others are disillusioned Scottish Labour members from both yes and no campaigns who feel let down by both their own leadership and that of the UK Labour Party as the promised goods of Devo-Max have (unsurprisingly, some might add) failed to materialise. Given that Scotland is a nation that has had crying into her beer down to a fine art in recent decades (but never into her whisky, that would spoil the taste!) this mass pro-active response and determination not to lie down quietly and be trampled on yet again is testimony to the power the referendum debate has had in mobilising and engaging the entire nation. No matter whether you were a yes, no or maybe until the day, it was a topic everyone seemed to have an opinion on and was more than happy to share it with friends, neighbours, the postie and just about anyone else in the street, and of course on Facebook.

Given that almost a million people who could've voted in our general election a week ago didn't bother, that level of engagement is mind blowing. How on earth could we replicate that here? What would it take to get up to 100% voter turnout at some polling stations? In Te Tai Tokerau electorate (the Māori seat for north of Auckland) there were 47 polling stations where fewer than 6 people voted! Okay so we actually had two weeks in which we could vote early and usually that was at separately counted polling stations, and there isn't necessarily much of Māori roll anyway in some of those areas, but even so. 

Having taken great delight in seeing yet more status updates on Facebook about friends of mine joining SNP/Greens, whether or not they agreed with every one of their policies but feeling that there was a principle at stake here, I realised that had I been there I'd be doing the same. So if there, why not here? 

So for the first time in my life I'm a member of a political party. Having studied psephology (voting behaviour) as part of A Level Sociology I've ended up being a tactical voter for the last 26yrs. It seemed the most effective way to use my vote, especially in a first past the post system. There were always some policies I wasn't comfortable having my name against, so keeping out the worst of options (where relevant) rather than voting for the best of a bad bunch seemed a fairly logical choice. On the odd occasion in the UK where I was in a safe seat I didn't mind the outcome of then I'd vote Green to show they did have support when so often they were written off as irrelevant, plus they got my party vote for the Scottish Parliament - quite possibly the only time in the UK someone I'd voted for had actually got in! 

In the two general elections I've been eligible to vote in here the Greens have got my party vote, and the constituency one has gone to whoever had the best chance of beating National (ie our Tory party)... which realistically wasn't anyone, but Labour came closest. Given the mess both Labour and Mana are in, it wasn't rocket science, or even much psephology, to figure out that if I was going to join a party now it had to be the Greens. I still don't agree with all of their policies, but at least now I get a chance to have a say in them. 

The more of us that pro-actively join in the debate, the more we'll be able to engage those who for whatever reason feel they have no voice or chose not to use it. As long as we don't put them off first that is anyway...

to do...

As I've no doubt mentioned in the past I've gotten into the habit over the last 15yrs or so of keeping a 'to do' list book when I've needed to. I started doing it when I had four part-time jobs and it was the only way I could keep track of what I had to do for where by when on top of what needed to be done for home and various Quaker committees I was on. Since then I've drifted in and out of using it, but generally finding that unless I'm in really good form it is the only way I can keep on top of things. Generally speaking I have to be really ill or extremely well not to require it to keep track of what I need to do, and whilst I've never yet gone back to juggling that many different forms of employment I seem to make up for that with voluntary work!

I have to admit I've been known to write things down once I've done them just so I get the satisfaction of crossing them off the list and proving to myself that I have got something done today, honest. But I will also carry things forward time after time for over a year in some cases to make sure I don't lose sight of things I mean to do eventually. The trick though is keeping enough easily achievable things on the list so I don't end up with two pages of carried forward tasks which are for whatever reason well and truly in the 'too hard basket'.

This year, when energy levels and brain functionality have been challengingly low at times there have been weeks where I've not even opened the book, either to add anything in nor cross anything off. But when I get a good day or even better a run of good days I find my response to the 'carried forwards' is a good indication of just how good (or not!) I'm feeling! If my heart sinks I just move on, find something else to do that is easier. But days where I've had a reasonable run and several of the easy things have been satisfactorily ticked off I make a point trying to find something that has been sitting there for a while to tackle.

One of the tasks had involved making a phonecall I wasn't looking forward to. I've been finding phonecalls hard to make this year, much preferring email/facebook which are much more manageable in terms of energy. But a week ago I decided that well I'd just grit my teeth and do it. And surprise surprise the person was out! Gah.... a whole month of psyching myself up to call and then I get nowhere. Oh well, it has waited a month, what's a bit longer?! But although I didn't get the information I needed to finish off one task, being ready to tackle it meant I did manage to complete a similar task that has been waiting just as long to be finished. I still haven't had another go at making that phonecall though...

The 'active' pages in the book had stretched out to four or five, generally I try to keep it to two, or the most three. So I carried forward various tasks and tidied up my list. Admittedly the carried forward lists is longer than the recently added by a long chalk, but once I'd got them all written down together rather than spread over several pages the list didn't look anything like as daunting. The thing is this week we've had some lovely spring days and the garden has been way too tempting to ignore. So whilst that is definitely looking better for some extra care and attention; and Joanne and I tackled to woodshed yesterday and apparently got it looking the best it has in the 30 or so years since it was built; my list has been carefully left to one side...

So today I am concentrating on celebrating the fact that I have had energy 'to do' quite a lot this week, more than I've done in months in fact. Tomorrow I'll go back to the list in the book though and see what I can clear off the the 'to do' list.... well they are forecasting rain after all!

transformation

I've been catching up with some photo uploading on to Flickr. Some people use their Flickr accounts to showcase their best photography, others like me use it for several purposes: to share photos, a back-up, and a record of progress - be it the life of a child, renovation of a boat or in my case the gradual development of a garden.

Many's the time I've looked back and wished I'd taken photos of all the spots that used to be over-grown and thriving on neglect. Unfortunately the plants that tend to thrive through neglect aren't usually the ones you want to have an abundance of, if any of it. But it didn't occur to to me back then to photograph the unlovely and unwanted, it was only after the transformation began in earnest did I think to start taking 'before' pictures as well as 'after' ones.

Looking back through the album of garden updates I see certain areas of the garden cleared of weeds and then gradually slip back to a more overgrown state again, never quite as bad, and much more easily cleared again. Sometimes the offending plants aren't ones that would normally be classed as weeds but over enthusiastic garden plants who don't want to be contained. A weed, after all, is simply a plant in the wrong place.

Something I've got into the habit of photographing is the rather unlovely green waste pile, partly because it is incredibly satisfying to take a couple of trailer loads to the tip and see the pile shrink. But it all too quickly grows again hence the need for a reminder! This pile is made up of the stuff that won't compost easily and any invasives we really don't want to put back in the garden. Next to it is the pile of stuff to be mulched and re-used on the paths, or if big enough chopped up for firewood. Being able to look back on old photos and remind myself of just how much has been dealt with and disposed of over time is quite satisfying.

As part of the treatment for my health problems I've been going to counselling for the last few months. When giving my counselor an overview of my life to date early on in the piece I pointed out I'd been to counselling before, after my marriage break up, and I'd dealt with a lot of stuff then. 'When was that?' she asked. 'Oh from sometime in 1998, through to about the end of 2000 I think' I replied suddenly realising that actually I wasn't entirely sure, but I knew I'd just stopped going by the time Colette died, but which year was that??? I was busy drifting off in my own little world trying to figure out just 'when' it had been, when I was broken out of my reverie by it being pointed out that I'd lived through 14yrs of life since then, and not exactly an uneventful 14yrs either.

Oh.

Those bits of garden you weed and get them looking all lovely and then they suffer again when you neglect them whilst you focus on something else? Yup. Those bits.

The good news is that as with gardening the hard work you put in earlier does pay off and sorting out the mess is a lot quicker the second time.

I wonder if this is why I like to look back at those piles of garden waste as a measure of progress. Seeing the 'problems' all lumped together rather than spread out around the place makes you appreciate better just how much crap there is to deal with even though a quick glance around doesn't reveal anything like the depth of the issue. (Those convovulous roots are a right pain to get out, and they grow back if you leave so much as an inch and turn your back on them.) Seeing the pile grow and shrink over time proves to me that a lot of work has been done, even when it doesn't look like it at times. It is also a reminder that life isn't static, and just because you've dealt with something once doesn't mean you won't have to do it again. To be quite honest I'm getting sick of pulling out canna lilies but if I don't keep doing it they'll take over and smother everything else in their path, except the convovulous of course!

I remember thinking back whenever-it-was that having gone to counselling and found it really useful I wouldn't shy away from going back again in the future and I'd be really positive about it as a tool for coping with life if anyone asked me. Yet when it was suggested again this year all my old reluctance had slipped back when I wasn't looking. However I do know it is helping, I am seeing patterns in my life that I'd never quite joined the dots up about before. So in theory I can either avoid certain things happening again, or at least go into a situation better prepared for it. In theory anyway, there's a huge part of me that is thinking up 'Yeah, right...' Tui ads in response to that idea, but hey who knows, it might just work!

There are times when the only way to tidy a cupboard is to empty everything out and start again, or clear a patch of land and replant it. We can't dispose of the clutter of life experience quite so easily, but we can take things out and have a good look at them from a different angle; and that is so often when the connections and patterns start to show; when the things that really don't need to be right in front of you all the time shaping your responses to the world can be acknowledged, dusted off, and put somewhere out of the way to make room for more positive influences to grow. Unfortunately large scale clear-outs require energy, and when you've got less to spare is usually when the clear-out is needed most. 

Energy can't move when life is too cluttered, and it might not just be cluttered with material 'stuff' or doing too much. I thought that last year where life was much simpler than it had been and I had space to focus on some of the things I wanted to be doing in life, it would be what I needed to find a new direction. But whilst I was busy adding things in to life, I wasn't doing anything about clearing out the 'clutter' inside of me as I was too busy literally clearing out the clutter in the house and garage and getting on top of the weeds in the garden! It took getting really quite ill to get me to stop and take stock of life on a different level.

It is harder to document piles of emotional clutter than it is piles of green waste in a way that can be looked back on to appreciate progress later, or to bolster you on those days when it feels like no matter how hard you work at it you feel like you're getting nowhere. So this post is as much a reminder to myself as anything that yes, progress is being made, but also that I need to keep working on these things otherwise life gets out of hand again.