I observed a class today back near my old alma mater. Years of trying to find a park, worrying about late assignments, studying lines for the next play and fantasising about the cute boy in my drama class,  came flooding back.

Earlier that day, I had listened to an interview on radio with Daniel Hope, the violinist who played at the funeral of Yehudi Menuhin and who knew he would play the violin when he was just 4 years old.  In my observation class we learnt about a dancer, Steven McCrae who likewise envisaged a clear artistic path from a young age. That night I dreamt about Cate Blanchett and our local theatre. The whole day yesterday was populated by artists.

Several days earlier, my sister had pointed out I was using overtly negative language about my future and was, she suggested, not enabling the positive artistic future I yearned. She was right. If we keep focusing on the old, or saying No to the things we don’t want, we stay fixated on the old situation – we’re facing in the wrong direction and can’t see the new.

So in TESOL speak the plan for this micro life – lesson goes as follows:

Student Level: Pre adult.

Context and target language: Balance the good and bad bits of the past just enough to positively alter the direction of my  work and life

Form and Function: Give myself time to understand how care, optimism,  a sense of exploration and playing to my strengths will enable change.

Resources: Realia and memories, childhood dreams, stolen time and bold brave micro teachers.

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He is a psychologist and a spiritual advisor who coached me over eight sessions to uncover skills I already had and remember the ones that I would need on this next path.

I am changing paths. The old methods of navigating don’t work as well as they used to.  I felt frustrated with efforts to simply plug into a job description, defined by someone else. I’d outgrown the seek.com approach to happiness. It felt like a betrayal to a stronger signal, but that signal was unclear.

My approach to career and life management and its links to self-concept and self-efficacy have been heavily influenced by my late husband,  a psychologist  who specialised in the area.

I have a favourite book, “Dibs in Search of Self” by Virginia Axline. Miss A as Dibbs called his play therapist, is my ideal life coach. My expectations of a psychologist were akin to Dibbs’ – I expect clarity, empathy, intelligence, generosity, kindness, interest and respect.

“Dr A” had all of that – and gave me significant insights into my own process.

In the 1st session I learnt about metaphors. I love to talk, and A had an uncanny ability to listen, pace, raise the pitch and punctuate the conversation – not with a summary of what was said as much as an echo of intent – thereby keeping me dogged on message. He continually clarified the conversation so that I was able to drop ever deeper into the intuitive insightful part of my brain. This is psychology at its best.

In the 2nd session I learnt about the space between making decisions. When the first decision is made, and the 2nd not yet formed, there is often a no-space of waiting. That’s life.

In the 3rd session I learnt about gentleness – to myself and how change happens. I learnt about defiance.

In the 4th session I learnt about father – my own and my reproduced father roles that keep appearing. Joseph Campbell believes the search for father is the search for character and destiny – too true.

In the 5th session I learnt about vantage points. Why use language as if I was just beginning my life, when in fact I was half-way through a splendid well-lived life. It was a lesson in humility and humour.

In the 6th session I learnt about intuition towards wholeness and where play and joy comes in; I learnt I had to trust myself more and I learnt about prayer.

In the 7th session I learnt that anxiety had served me well to protect my heart and that it was ungrateful to judge it harshly now. I just need to adjust the hold it has on me.

In the last and 8th session – I learnt to view my own reflective drama and dance, and acknowledge my ability to engage and reflect the humanity of others again and again.

What a splendid teacher I had – thank you “Doctor A”, Have a great year next year and enjoy your own blessed pilgrimage.

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Nothing new about that concept.

However, this last week in particular has led me to ruminate why it is that some people have a genuinely sweeter nature than others.  Kinder, thoughtful, empathetic – you know, all those qualities your parents and teachers tried to instill in you and those you and your therapist(s) tried to re-activate or even find!

One expects to find those qualities shining brightly in younger people – merely because life knocks most of it out of you the more years you stay walking on this planet. And of those older people – my peers and older - who  still manage to hold onto the qualities, well they’re one step away from sainthood.

This week just gone, I farewelled one of the sweetest people I’ve ever known. No she didn’t die but she did change jobs and after 11 or so years it felt like a little death. We’d traversed so much landscape together, she was there for me at my nadir and I trust, in some small way I have been there for her at her lowest point.

I admired how she left. A lot of us would skulk away, shunning those who treated us badly and leaving the rest with a gaping hole (given that we are soooooo fabulous, they won’t realise what they’re missing till I’ve gone!).  I know I would do just that. I couldn’t risk finding out how few people actually liked me. I couldn’t face the fact that only the die hard loyalists turned up to my farewell. I have tried it before, and there was only a handful – so I’m right on that score.

But in the case of my friend – there were all staff emails, there were enormous group bbq’s there were farewell afternoon teas, dinners; it was as fine a farewell as any of Nellie Melba’s. And she deserved every one of them.

When we are couragepous to mark significant moments like departures, we give ourselves a great gift – the gift of love. We acknowledge our own splendidness and we play it out on whatever stage we strut our stuff.

When we are not courageous, we remain skulking in the shadows. Afraid of rejection and afraid of love. And in that shadow we make friends with the dark. We believe, often erroneously that we belong there.

When you are there, though, it gives you a great chance to make peace with what you find there. Your own dark thoughts and bitchy behaviour, your limiting beliefs and fear. You also great a great view of the light - In its absence.

Whether you can step into that light, spotted at times of transition, is merely a matter of choice and courage. Friends like mine however model it well and give me a gift far beyond the norm.  A lesson on living well.

All the best dearest s.t.g.

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I’m relieved that I made the “cut” and am one of six who have to sell themselves one over another to persuade a panel of three that they are the best for the job.

At the same time I’m preparing for the interview I’m preparing to undergo a radical elimination diet to find out what is making me feel so ”blurrrr” and “blahmk”; to fnd out what is possibly triggering an allergic reaction (to everything!)

Both are eliminations. Both are necessary and both are appropriately simultaneously occuring at the same time. mmmm but why?

Will I be chucked out at the end of the job interview as an “also-ran”, beaten to within a hair’s breadth by a charming younger woman, adept at this and that and even then some?

Will I be retained and identified as a safe food group – easy to digest, no trigger reaction, no cause for sneezes or rashes or hives. I’ll let you know in a later blog.

Today I tried to find out what the panel wanted (I mean really wanted and expected from the person filling the role). I figured that in a 30 minute interview – and I’ve had my fair share of them  – the panel are hard pressed to get through all the questions – let alone give quality time to cogitate on the answers. Of course the answers were not forthcoming.

If my memory serves me correctly, interviews like this are more an endurance under pressure test; and a test of memory, matching your verbal recall to each of the stunning successes you presented in your pulitzer prize winning application for the job.

And then at the end, when everyone wants to just run away, and you feel sure that the reason the older panelist didn’t look at you is because there’s something physically wrong with your face and hair, will there be time to pin the panel down to answering questions I want to ask; will there be time to interview them?

I think so many work choice mistakes are made by the pace of the one-sided interview, invariably with the script driven by the decision making employers.  And we, the interviewees, are often so desperate to sell ourselves, to be liked, to be chosen, we overlook the critical thinking questions that would determine whether the workplace is going to match our personal style, values and for that matter our diet.

My own elimination diet, no matter how much I withdraw from and add in to the mix, will inevitably come to the conclusion I made some time ago, that I throw back far too much wine that can be justified in a healthy life style. This gay practice of swilling and imbibing has got to do with our generation and in my case catholic background. Like my mates,  I’m practically a fermented experience all on my own.

My younger workmate told me this morning of her evening out with 2 older sisters. They,  like me, do a fair share of imbibing, and have a miriad of internal complaints to show for it. It’s sort of like a secret club, that has run out of credit in the healthy bank and have to make increasing withdrawls in the face of a wilting, drooping, decaying landscape. Yikes! I’m depressed writing about it, and I have no panacea, because – yes, you guessed it – wine is one of the first things to be eliminated!

So I’ll throw myself into both experiences with gusto. Relatively clear headed (give or take a sneeze here and there) but keen to explore and interview them about what I want from such a job, and what I can expect from a renovated internal system.  

Do you think I can have fries with that?

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She was particularly enamoured of one where a boat is pointing outwards to the horizon, not yet launched, still in harbour waiting and safe. She thought I should use it on my blog – so here it is.

My aunt is in her seventies and is a fiercely loyal woman, loyal to family and to her faith and to her memories. Loyalty is a fabulous quality to have and if you don’t “get” it at birth it’s hard to acquire along the way.

These days, there’s always something to push our buttons, convince us to change brands and form new attachments. I envy her that gift of the spirit, to stick with what she knows and to love it in all its “ordinariness” and to hang on, sometimes in the face of fierce persuasion, to the direction she set and the choices she’s made. She’s a nun – so she knows all about that.

One of the hardest things in coming home after an expansive trip is to accept that your “ordinary” life, the one you left behind, is still there waiting for you. On first impressions, it doesn’t seem to have changed at all.

Maybe the date, maybe the temperature, maybe even the hair colour of your gal pals changes, but as for deep and sustainable change (to the way people think, behave, live, and choose) not a change at all.  Same playing field – just a different ball game.

But what if you want to change? How to do it? I thought the world would do it first. Isn’t that the way things work? Isn’t that why I went away.  I know from experience there’s no shortage of bad change that happens ‘out there’. Let’s face it, shit happens and your world goes arse up more often than not. So why can’t it change when you want it to (as opposed to when you didn’t want it to)?

Clearly for things to change in my life- it’s up to me. It’s up to me to re-enter the stratosphere with the firm commitment to move away from the things I didn’t miss, and move towards the things I did miss when I was away. Move towards good friends, and away from boring work. Move towards healthy lifestyle and away from too much booze. Move towards creative expansion and away from fear and small mindedness. 

Of course I should expand into new arenas, after all that’s what growth is all about. And of course I should embrace the dying-off of the old. Let it go. Don’t try to put on the top you’ve outgrown, or sit in the chair that’s broken, renovate! move up and out. But I’m afraid.

Despite the fear,  I’m changing from the outside in. I’ve started with the way I work and live. I want less contact hours with a traditional way of working and more hours of a creative pursuit. I want to write more and paint more. I want to carve out work that matters to me, create messages that resonate with me. I want to meet more people and talk to them to make sense of my own journey and the world we live in, and what it means to be human, and loyal.

But now that it’s just up to me – I’m stuffed!  I’m not afraid to admit I need help. I need mentors. Hell I need to re-enter the world with a midwife!

Two very good friends of mine, who have midwifed my last big life change (ie meeting blokey all those years ago) are about to relocate to Canada for 5 months. And I’ll miss them. I was going to stay with them whilst I renovated at home, and I was going to lean on them, learn from them all about living well and living boldly. But they were so bold they went off on another adventure.  

So I have to learn all about being bold for myself here in home harbours. So there you have it – alone again. Admittedly I have an expanded view of the horizon and admittedly my personal world did change from outside after all – the perennial question is, as it always will be, am I up to dealing with the consequences?

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I’ve always had trouble but it’s getting worse. Right now I can’t  decide on the sort of work I want to do  and even more pressing, I can’t decide what to do with my bathroom.

Because the blue and yellow journey is a comprehensive one, I consider all incidents and thoughts as inter-related. If I can’t decide about my bathroom, what does that say about my life in general and most particularly, what does it say about the work I want to do?

I’m an text-book Libran, which means I get swayed by the last expert opinion I received. There is no end of experts when it comes to work and bathrooms. So, what’s a gal to do? Give into the most persuasive, because he’s had 30 years in the same bathroom business  and he simply takes the deciding over? Or go with the other guy, who seems adept and who just does what you tell him – after all you’re the boss of your own bathroom?

Do you take a job advertised in a paper or website because it’s sort of a match, and it’s like what you’ve done in the past. Or do you take a different tack altogether?  Should you determine own work-life mix, with a portfolio approach of skills and talents and abilities and place it out there in the world to see where and how it hits the mark?

So in true Libran fashion, I’ve been sitting with the problem;  actually I’ve been sitting in the problem.

I’m seeing a career coach to figure out how to change the work-life mix. What’s my value added proposition?  What can I do that others can’t?  And does anyone want what I do?  Right now, in the Public Service, there’s a  lot of not wanting what I do. But that’s cool, I’ve had a good soak. It’s like starting off in a nice hot bath but having to continually top it up the longer you stay in. The longer you stay in of course, the more wrinkled you get, and the more relaxed you become.

Because my bloke used to do be my coach and he’s no longer here, I now have to pay for those skills.  I’m OK with that because the bulk of the coaching is self-directed.  The value in seeing someone like a  coach is that you allow youreself a time and place to tackle just that topic.  You talk about wishes, dreams, ambitions and you listen for negative self-talk and limiting thoughts. 

So it’s no surprise I talk to the coach and the bathroom guys about the same stuff – I need more space. Ergo I need to get rid of the bath. 

Baths have had their day. When the dam levels were high and it was OK to lay about and relax That’s not this day. This day is a day for movement. Moving to the right space where I can do what matters to me. Moving around in more space, to change and grow and develop more skills.  This is not a day to submerge ideas and talent in a luke-warm environment,  which, if left unattended becomes soporific. This is a brand new day for doing what I do best of all with people that want what I do. This is a day for change.    

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