Negatives & Positives

Hello friends

It’s been a while since I have posted on my blog and I have missed you! My one and only excuse is that I finally started on my Blog motto of ‘creating’ my life and I went back to school…and I hated every minute of it! But, I’ve come out of it with a Certificate IV which I am rather happy with, and being the glutton for punishment that I am, will go back next semester to do the Diploma for another 6 months of sociallife-removal-activities.

Last year finished on a high for me with achieving my study goals (personally and professionally), going on a mini holiday with the girls, receiving a pay rise (yes another one!) and promotion and deleting my profiles from the world of internet dating.

This year I am doing all I can to start the year off as I would like it to end with a positive and happy outlook, organised and looking for the best in situations – and I was also hoping that I would attract the same in return. But for some reason I tend to attract negative people. In the scientific world Negatives and Positives do attract, to give you fusion. Although in my case it gives me frustration.

This year I am hoping for a skinny body and a fat bank account, and no mentally deranged people! We are only 2 weeks into the new year and already I have a ‘mentally deranged’ person affecting my life. I hope this doesn’t mean that I’m now going to get the opposites of what I have wished for…a skinny bank account and a fat body (although this wouldn’t be any different to any other year!).

But I ended 2011 on a good note and IN A RELATIONSHIP!! which has continued into the new year, so hopefully that means something. Although the mentally deranged comes with the relationship in this case… you have to take the good with the bad I suppose! And no, I’m not going out with a mentally challenged person :)

I have also had a sea-change. I have moved from the bustling city apartment (if you can call Perth that) to a waterside townhouse on the coast in a smallish-country-town-feel suburb. Being originally from the country, I never thought I would be able to return to that type of lifestyle, although I think this may be the happy medium that I didn’t know I was looking for. I think I have more country in me than I wanted to admit. So far this move is only temporary, but I’m already loving it and hence, have a bit more time to talk to you guys.

So all in all life is looking good for 2012. I will be back with more updates soon.

Courtney

Disheartened

I’m sick of meeting men from internet dating sites and then finding them not to be what I expected.

I’ve tried all sorts of scenarios now – chatting for a week or so before then meeting for coffee or a drink. Chatting for a short period of time before dinner. Chatting and then talking on the phone before meeting in person. And none of them seem to help me in my mission to meet Mr Wonderful.

What about meeting men not from internet sites, I hear you say? Well, I just don’t meet men that way, and if I do I feel I get to know them too well that I don’t want to go out with them, or I work with them, or I know their ex etc etc.

Last night I went on date number 87 (or so it seems). Let’s call him CaringGuy. We have a lot of the same interests, he said he had a sense of humour, he is nice looking, he likes pets, is studying to further his career, has a full time job, part owns a house and he drives a nice car. Yet, the guy I thought I was chatting to was cheeky, into motorsports, triathlons, sporty and down to earth, a leader, and career driven, blokey, but sensitive at the same time, with a dog. And somehow these two men are different men in my mind, but the same on the wonderful world wide web.

I find no matter how long I chat to someone on line, I tend to build my own profile of what they are really like in real life. Hence, when someone says they are into motorsport I think of them as blokey, good with their hands and likes to tinker in car engines yet it really means he likes to sit on the couch and watch Formula 1 for days on ends. When he says he loves taking his dog to the beach, I’m imagining a border collie, kelpie or golden retriever running with him on the beach and catching balls; really he means taking his Chihuahua to sit and watch the waves crash from the dashboard of his car in the beach car park. When he says he’s studying to further his career, really he means it’s taken him 3 years to do a 2 year course and he has been having a break for the last 6 months, and he still has another 3 years to go. When he says he owns his own house, he really means he bought his exes ex boyfriends share of her house who is now his ex and he’s lumped with the house and mortgage until he sells it. When he says he’s been divorced for 5 years, he really means he’s been divorced for 5 years but only single for 4 months.

Why oh why wonderful world wide web can’t I meet a guy who is who he says he is and why can’t I just go with that instead of imagining him to be my version of that? When do we just accept what he says is gospel and just go with that – no expectations and all that? Maybe when I stop knowing what I want?!

Time to Think

I haven't been writing much lately and I think that's just because I haven't had much time to myself. Sometimes I find that I just get carried away with life in general, and I forget to have time to think and be with myself - even though I do have a lot of 'me time' doing things I enjoy like reading and cups of tea at cafes etc; it's not time out from the world where you are not doing ANYTHING. I think most of the time I don't even realise I am missing this time to myself. I bet a lot of people never have this time, but because I need it, I feel it when I miss it.

I'm originally from the country and a family person - I really value family time and just being myself and being able to relax and I suppose they are the people who I can totally be myself around and don't even have to try and be someone else. Like if I want to just sit back and listen to the conversation going on around me I can, I don't feel like I have to participate. Lately I have been seeing my family quite a bit what with long weekends and Mother's Day but this week I've really felt like I needed some family time. So when I realised I didn't have any plans on this weekend, I couldn't wait to get in the car and drive 2 hours to the country for the weekend.

Driving those 200 kms doesn't feel like anything to me; it's like I'm back in the country in a blink and I think that's because I like my me time and am not afraid of being on my own or with my own thoughts at all. I actually value it, and am wondering if people who are like me, like this, and get to have this time thinking are different to those who don't and don't even realise they are missing something so valuable in their lives.

I mean, how often do you get to have a couple of hours of time on your own where you aren't doing anything productive, or listening to conversations around you, or reading, or wandering around the shops, or waiting for someone? Although during my drive home I was concentrating on driving and the road in front of me, I had 2 hours each way of thinking time. Not only then, but this week I have also started walking home from work again which is giving me an hour of time in my own head each day that I don't normally have. It hasn't been until this week that that I've really realised how much I miss this time and needed it.

It's allowed me to re-evaluate my dreams and hopes and what I want for my life - and now that I'm back in the real world I just have to put the hopes and dreams in place. It's also allowed me to think through some things I've been getting angry about this week but I've realised that they are someone else's issues not mine; whereas last week I was happy to avoid the situation although it was making me look like the one with the problem. You can only guide other people, but they are the ones that make the decisions - it's their life after all. So coming back to Perth today I feel so much better about things and am ready to get in and tackle my life head on.

I've also had a change in job in the last month. In my last post you would have seen how miserable I was in my role, but since then I've moved in a totally different direction that I didn't realise I wanted, but now that I'm there I'm so happy and feel that I've totally made the right decision. I don't think I realised how unhappy and unsettled I was; I knew I had to do something but I didn't know what it was and was feeling a bit lost - it was also affecting my personal life and where I thought I wanted my life to go. Having this time to think and new direction in my work-life feels like it has worked a treat and I'm looking forward to getting stuck into things and making a start on making things happen. And I even seem to have a work/life balance at the moment!

So with all this thinking going on and all this time to get any aggro feelings out of the way and get on with my new positive outlook; having a new job and new direction in my work life to grow and build from, I feel so much better about things today and am really looking forward to whatever is coming next.

New Directions

I am beginning to hate my job, or resent the people and the company I work for; I feel like they are holding me back - making me do things that are not high on my priority list but not allowing me to do the things that are important to me and make me better at my job. It's not the management style I would like to work with either, the structure of the company pigeon holes you with the department you work in or the role you are in and they give the impression it's all about you and they are supportive etc, but really they don't want to move on to bigger and better things but talk you into liking your job or thinking you can get more out of it than you currently are. I'm now in a role where I can't move any further up, just across - into another department but still doing the same thing, under the same management and still having the same issues to deal with. The guys I work for in my department cause me a lot of stress and put me under a lot of pressure because I don't believe they are doing their jobs properly, so in turn I end up being the scapegoat but the guys I don't work for in my department are so much fun and friendly and easy going and I can't imagine my working life without them in it.

One of the reasons I think my social life has been put on the back burner is because a couple of years ago when I was promoted to my current role I got too involved in work. I was working late most nights of the week, getting home late and then got into the habit of doing it - having to cancel social functions because of work thinking it would pay off in the long run, but it hasn't. And of course the people you work with get used to it and then start to expect it. So since the new year I've been trying to put the breaks on that type of work lifestyle and bring in the work/life balance thing that everyone talks about. It's been really hard because not doing the extra hours causes stress and angst between everyone - the work is not getting done, we all have deadlines, everyone gets narky at each other, my workload gets bigger, there's backlog and so on. And if I do do the work, I get stressed and tired, shitty that I don't have a social life, having to do the work for free, not getting any time off in lieu etc. It's a lose lose situation really and the only option I can come up with is to leave and move on. Even though I'm unhappy, it has made me re-assess everything and wonder if I'm just fed up with doing the same old thing all the time, talking to brick walls and and having no opportunity to grow.

So I've been looking for a new job but it's really hard to find the perfect role from a job advertisement. I've had a couple of interviews and while I'm playing the waiting game now I'm wondering if this is the right thing to do. I'm not worried about starting a new job because I know I can do it, whichever role I apply for otherwise I wouldn't be applying for it. But I'm always worrying about what is the right decision and where my life is going. I know it's a good thing to move on and grow and meet new people and learn new things etc and I know that if any of my friends were to ask me what I think of this situation, I would say 'JUST DO IT!', surely no bad can come from taking a new job? I think it's the stepping out of my comfort zone that is getting to me and the fact that I want to do so many things which I feel like I can't do while I'm in this role...am I asking too much? Can I make this happen? I am the only person who can answer that, like I am the only person stopping myself from doing anything.

Second Chances - Take II

This post is in reference to my last post Second Chance?

So it turns out that second chances don't exist. I haven't been waiting this long to tell you, I did realise a while ago, but just haven't had time to tell you.

I think that those people we consider to get a second chance at something just haven't had their chapter closed, it's still open, as if you haven't finished living it yet. But in my case; in this case, I closed my chapter last year when I decided it wasn't going to work with that guy. Now I don't know if that is because I knew something without actually knowing that I knew it (like how my life was meant to pan out), if that makes sense, or if that's just how this life thing works. Anyway, no second chances there, but at least I got to say sorry. And if you're wondering, I got no response from my email. Nothing. But oh well. Next!

Second Chance?

I've always believed in second chances but at the same time I've always lived by the motto to look forward and never look back. It's a contradiction in itself. How can I have a second chance at something if I never go back to something I thought was finished?

I have always thought I'd never leave a job at one company, to move onto another company and then in time go back to the first company. And people that go back to exes are thought to be gluttons for punishment because the relationship didn't work for a reason and they are still going to have the same problems the second time around... And I've never been one to break my own rules; rules are in place for a reason.

But things feel different for me now, I feel I need to go back and fix something I broke. Last year I met a man who at the time I thought was everything I had ever hoped for in a partner. He was fun, patient, willing to teach me things (like camping!), wanted to travel, was handy, funny, cheeky, a good cook, relaxed, level headed, educated, caring and sensitive yet I couldn't feel the spark; I couldn't make it happen no matter how much pressure I put on myself. At the time I just thought maybe he just isn't the one for me - he is everything except for the spark and maybe this just meant that I was getting closer to meeting the one. I met this man just a few weeks after ending something that I thought was the real thing, someone who broke my heart. I thought that if I just got back out into the dating scene, my broken heart would just mend, just like that. But it didn't. It probably made things worse because I know that I hurt someone who I would never have hurt otherwise. I treated this nice man with disregard, the same way that I have been treated in the past, I know how it feels to be hurt and 'led on' like that, although I had no feelings, my feeling mechanism was broken and I didn't realise. And I was putting pressure on myself to make it work which was also causing problems. I tried to explain to him the best I could that he was wonderful and everything I had wanted but I wasn't feeling anything and that I didn't want to lead him on anymore, but I know he probably thinks that was just an excuse.

Anyway, in the last couple of months, I have been thinking about him a lot. I want to get back in touch with him and explain things properly, now that I know exactly what was going on in my head and my heart. In my haste to move on from him I deleted all contacts for him and now I'm struggling to get in touch with him without seeming stalker-ish. I have him at arms length at the moment and I hate that I can't just talk to him and explain. I have left him a message on a dating site which he'll see next time he's on line but he probably doesn't want to talk to me, and why would he?

So that's me in a nutshell for the time being. Will I get a second chance, and if I do, will I always feel that I owe him something and how do I know if the feelings will ever be there - what if they aren't? Anyway, I think I'm getting a head of myself a bit; it is more likely that I will never get to talk to him again. And I'm ok with that; at least I know that I've given it a go.

Life Without Facebook

About ten days ago my Facebook account was ‘disabled’ because I couldn’t remember my password. At the time I thought it was the end of the world and the week ahead ensured big withdrawal symptoms.

How was I going to get through life not having access to all my friends’ photos, weekend antics, status updates etc?

Well after waiting for Facebook to get back to me for a week and having first been told not to open a new account as that will confuse them when they get around to searching for my account and un-disabling me, I then had another go at contacting them and got a response saying how sorry they are that I am having difficulties but they can not answer every email but are reading my reports. Well that’s really helpful isn’t it!?

So we are now at week two of not having access to Facebook and I’m starting to be very thankful. I didn’t realise before how addicted I was! I would have Facebook logged in each night while I sat and watched television, checking in every so often on what all my friends were up to, stalking people I didn’t know, or did know but weren’t ‘friends’ with etc etc. Now I have time to do other things….like, read. I used to read a lot but then in the last few years found I couldn’t find the time. So I’m reading, and I’m going for walks after work, and I’m talking to friends on the phone instead of via Facebook.

At the moment I’m happy being disabled from Facebook; I’m not holding my breath that they will ever get back to me (I suppose they do have 50,000,000 other helpdesk queries to contend with) and I probably will open up another account. There are photos of people’s weddings I want to see, and friend’s kids growing up etc, but apart from that I don’t miss it now. On the other hand, if it was my choice not to use Facebook, knowing that I could access it at any time, I don’t think I would have been very good at keeping away from it.

I hope my ‘friends’ are missing me though. I didn’t get to say goodbye or tell them where I was going or how to reach me now. I wonder if they have even noticed that I’m not there anymore….