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I had to get out of bed because I was in no way tired enough to go to sleep. I hear if you are having trouble sleeping, you should get up again and do something else. Staying in bed somehow trains your body into thinking bed doesn't always equal sleep and it doesn't try and switch off.
I have to admit, it's a strange feeling for me. Before the medication I slept like the dead. The concept of not being able to sleep was completely foreign to me. I understand now what people mean. A couple of things that have been on my mind over the past couple of days...
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Whenever I work for someone new, I hate the anticipation that comes with waiting for initial feedback. It stresses me out to the point I am convinced they hate it until they actually say anything positive about it (and even then, if it's generally vage then I still don't believe them). I think it's because I don't actually like any of my work. Or more so, I don't think I am that good so when I see what I do for someone, I always think it could be better.
I had this the other day with a client. Thankfully, he was happy and loved the website. On the flip side, I'm doing a 'love job' for someone and I am nervous to think what they think of my initial idea. Granted, they have me zero guidance for the content other than colour but I still worry they see it and think, "Oh, that's not that great." There is a difference between someone not liking something, and something being bad. I can usually tell which side they're taking if I'm with them in person. Over email I can't and it's absolutely awful. I started working for myself because wanted to have control over my life. I wanted to know that what I earned, how successful I was and how much of a live I lead was down to what I did and no one else. I didn't want to end up thinking about all the things I could have done, if only someone had not been in the way. This came when a friend of mine inspired me to never regret anything, when she had a baby through IVF at age 42 without a boyfriend or husband in sight.
I learnt that you can basically do whatever the hell you want in life. For me, there's only going to be this one time. After that, it all ends. And sitting around complaining how much it sucks, or how unfair it is the biggest waste of that life. The sky is not going to fall if you do something unpopular, or unusual. I hate excuses. I hate people who use them to not do what they want to do, or let them think that everything is shit. I hate it even more when say, "easy for you to say, you have [insert the thing they don't have]". Someone said this to me the other day, about my work. I'm busy, which is good. This person was done in the dumps about the money they earn, their situation. No matter what I said though, it wasn't good enough. "Easy for you to say, you're making money!" And I thought, "Fuck you. I took the biggest risk quitting work and working for myself. I spent months trying to convince the people around me I could do it. I went against every grain of advice given. I could have ended flat on my face and out of work for months. I worked hard and it paid off. It wasn't handed to me. And I probably would have given you the same advice I'm giving you now if I had fallen over" I'm happy for people to vent. Happy to listen too. But when you've been venting about the same problems for a long time, and you don't expect to troubleshoot a solution, don't tell me. If you can't change something, stop going on about it and focus on something else. If you can change it, then do it. Any consequences have got to be better than what you've got now. Get some perspective people. Whichever way you get it, go. My dads sister and her family are quite religious. Not the stuff-down-your-throat religious, but more love-my-god-and-just-happy sort of thing. I don't mind it. They seem to focus more on God than religion which is a nice change.
So my cousin's wife (my cousin-in-law if that works) writes a personal blog, and this year she's doing Lent. They're not Catholic, but she thought it would be a good chance to slow down, reflect and get in touch with what she believes in. I believe Lent started yesterday (Ash Wednesday), and todays blog post was regarding slavery. Or what she's a slave to. Her list includes a) wanting more stuff (and she is referring to being materialistic, wanting clothes and shoes and a nice house), b) striving for success (almost broken down to caring about what people think of her, and whether she's achieved something in someone else's eyes), and c) addiction (the whole eat healthy, less cake more carrot sort of thing). So it got me thinking... what was I a slave to? Was there anything that keeps me from being the person I wanted to be? It sounds really bad but I am avoiding work at the moment.
A client needs to follow me up regarding a website I am doing for him, and it's become the most complicated job I have had so far. He seems to think that he's a special case, and that I should either work for free or at a ridiculous rate. I would fire him, but being right in the middle of something it seems pretty difficult. At the moment I have hired someone to do some of the work for me (a touch out of my field), but have had to put a hold on because the invoice is getting quite large, and the last thing I need is for him to receive it and determine he's not paying for it. I don't have the money to fund his job so we're all waiting to see if he's okay with the progress (read: have we hit your budget yet?). Waiting for him to get back to me however, is putting me off my other work. So now I don't like him because he's painful and because he's stuffing up the rest of my week. I went out and saw another client of mine yesterday, who makes up for the above mentioned. Him and his wife are lovely. Hard working, down to earth. Their website is really basic, which means the job won't last long and I'll only get to work with them briefly. Pity. I hope they can pass me on to more work, and those people are like them. The two above mentioned clients both have absolutely no idea about the work I'm doing. Very little background knowledge. Client A obviously does not trust me and is paranoid, rude and demanding. His two favourite lines are "I have a mate that could do that at half the cost!" and "If you sort me out, I'll send lots of work your way." Both total bullshit, and I call him out on it each time. He wants a second website but I think I'm going to turn him down. The second obviously trusts me. He's helpful and happy to listen to what I have to say and tries to absorb as much information as he possibly can. He asks lots of questions, but is really good to work with. I just did a really big Facebook friend cull and managed to delete some of the groups I had been part of. I'd really love it if I could get the group down to relatives and close friends, but there are still a couple of random people I interact with, depending on what pops up on their profile. I don't really need to waste time looking at profiles of those I don't talk to. If I am feeling really flat, stuck in a rut and feeling a bit trapped by everyday life I watch this video and it seems to make me feel like I can do anything, and to do something more. Two things happened yesterday.
One, I got a phone call about a girl I knew from school (who was a friend of my little brother) notifying me she'd bee killed in an accident while holidaying in Zambia. The second, my Lucy dog ate a WHOLE box of ratsack, and I ended up taking her to the 23 hour emergency hospital in Homebush to have her stomach pumped. Big thanks to the Animal Referral Hospital, because I would have been screwed without them. I had nothing to induce vomiting myself, and she had eaten a whole packet. She would have been in a lot of trouble. So, about first. When someone dies, it feels so surreal. Like you imagined it or dreamed it. I had a dream once my friend's hubby died and it took me a good couple of hours to shake off the feeling. But he didn't and everything was fine. You forget that we die. Accidents happen or the body gives out. Then you're reminded one afternoon, sitting at your computer. I bet, if you lined up all the kids you knew in high school and you were asked to pick out who you'd think would not make it to old age, you'd be completely wrong. It's almost never the ones you think it would be. You'll almost never find yourself answering, "well, we saw that coming, didn't we?" I have a cousin who has been taking drugs for many years. Admittedly, I haven't heard from him for almost 3 years now but the future didn't look promising. He'd lie, cheat and steal and was graduating to more and more serious stuff. Sure as shit, that kid will be walking around in 10, 20 years time. But this girl, Sarah. 22 years old. Cheerful. Fun. Friendly. Kind. Adventurous. She's no more. I guess she died doing what she loved - she was on an Adventure. Hiking around Africa. A lot of the FB messages are claiming God took her, and that she died too soon. I have this theory about the whole, "too soon" thing. The way I think about it, her life wasn't cut short. She was always only going to live for 22 years. But in that 22 years, she lived a lifetime. Maybe, everything she needed to do, she'd done. She'd touched the right people, saw what she needed to see, made differences only she could make. Some people need 73 years to do it. She only needed 22. I got this theory from a friend, when someone he knew died of an asthma attack at 13. Everyone raved how he was such a good kid, so generous and kind. How his life was cut short. And my friend commented, to know him he seemed like the person who'd already lived a lifetime, and he only needed 13 years to accomplish it. It makes the whole dying thing a lot easier to deal with (for me personally). I hate the thought that she was punished and taken away, those around her were punished and now can never see her again. I guess it's unfair that she died so young. But it's much nicer to focus on when she was alive. But I have never lost a sibling, or a best friend or a daughter or a parent. So I can't really say what her dying means to them. I lost a friend when I was 13, but it was by no means a close companion. So it may be different when it happens to me. To be honest though, even though I have come to terms with the death of people, animals - especially the ones I care for - are a different story. My mum has a photo from when she was a kid, at an Easter Parade. In the photo with her is a boy her age. She remembers exactly who he was, and she'll point him out followed by, "He died", like he wasn't supposed to, and still a little surprised about it. I think the saddest part is, a lot of people will hear the story and sigh, comment how awful it is and hug their children. But then they forget. They'll forget that some things happen completely randomly. I can probably guarantee though with Sarah's passing someone close to her will change their life. They'll be more adventurous, or they'll change a bad habit or they'll do something they never thought was possible, and they'll change a small corner of the world. And that will be her legacy. I keep meaning to come on and post, but I tend to get distracted and never get around to it. This last week has been absolutely cracking. The last two weeks actually. It seems work has started flowing in faster, and I actually have a schedule to keep for the next 3 months. I wish I had more interesting things to talk about. Occasionally things have been popping into my head that I would like to write down, but they are unimportant. Probably a running list at the moment would be:
I started tracing my family history over the holidays. I started doing my mum's side, because she knew so little. Within the week I discovered so much her, and probably the rest of her family never knew. The great grandmother than claimed to be an orphan was not, but the daughter of a drunk who was the daughter of another drunk. "Black George" who was known by the family as her father was discovered to be Joseph, and her younger sister was born out of wedlock to another after a divorce. I never knew it would be so addictive, and I have been slowly filtering information back to my mum who is rediscovering her family history. |
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March 2016
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