Month: April 2010

two really rather awesome moments

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Don’t you just know these two scenarios, drawn from 1000awesomethings, a blog that’s been turned into a book of 1000 awesome things, published on Friday:

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#997 Locking people out of the car and then pretending to drive away. My Dad was a big fan of doing this. Most Dads are.

#527 The night before a really big day.

Stare at that ceiling. Sweaty palms, white knuckles, deep breaths in bed.

Maybe the ring’s stowed away and the reservations are made. Maybe the results are coming in and everyone’s coming over. Maybe you’re buttoning down for a new job or following your heart and leaving an old one.

As the moonlight shines in your window excitement bubbles in your brain.

It’s almost here.

Love this. I get excited the night before Big Things. I hope I never stop getting excited in this way. Christmas Eve, sleeping on the family room floor at home, I get that sense of  anticipation and specialness described above. Kind of dorky. Yes.

Before a big, scary job, I’ll go and stare at the sky, or sit in the dark, and think about the enormity of things. And the incongruency.

Me?!! The Bigness? !! Wow, how does this fit? The fact that I’ve been plunged into Something Big feels so incongruent that I just can’t put it down to my own doing. It feels bigger than a work of my orchestrating. It feels inevitable, preordained, destined by a force bigger than me. And very, very special.

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what your surname says about you (if you’re a woman)

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This is kinda interesting. Something I wonder about a bit. New research says when a woman changes her surname when she gets married, or hyphenates it, she’s judged as more feminine, in the painfully stereotyped sense of the word.40674_1_468c

Surname-changers were seen as more dependent, less intelligent and less ambitious, according to the study by Tilburg Institute for Behavioral Economics Research in Holland. Participants were asked to judge a hypothetical woman based on five categories: caring, competent, dependent, intelligent, and emotional. When she used her own surname, she was branded with more “powerful” terms.

The worse bit? How it affects pay:

“These judgments affected the chance that a woman would be hired as well as the estimation of her salary: compared to a woman who kept her own name, she was less likely to be hired and her salary was estimated considerably lower”

…about 861 Euros/month lower.

I’d add this: It’s a disaster when it comes to your Google rankings.

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mondays…they can be hard (but, here, some tweaks to make them better)

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I think Mondays are a struggle because it’s s hard to get the momentum going again. Like peddling away from a standstill…when your knees have gone flaccid. Plus,  there’s a discernible sense of “lack”.

stressedA lack in impending reward… because, have you noticed, we don’t reward ourselves on Mondays with that walk in the park at lunch or a slightly early finish to go to yoga. We punish ourselves on Mondays. We overlay Mondays with dread and ‘get back on track’ expectation – a punishing gym session, the start of a diet, getting on top of emails.

Hmmm, some tips to have a life bigger than such a rut? Gretchen at The Happiness Project shares a few good ones:

1. Avoid getting the bends, I. One friend used to hate the frantic rush of Monday mornings, so now she doesn’t try to do any “real work” until after lunch on Monday. She eases into the work week by checking email, reading professional email newsletters, and doing more substantial tasks IF she feels like it, but doesn’t consider herself “at work” until 1:30 p.m. The result? She gets about as much done as she did before – she just feels less pressure.

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Sunday life: how to quit multi-tasking, already

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This week I unitask (albeit unsuccessfully)tumblr_koces2eSAq1qzrvo0o1_500

Dear Reader, I think it’s time I stepped down from the lofty stead upon which I’m often perched on this page. And be honest with you. As I write I have nine screens open on my computer, which I’ve been toggling between incessantly as I research this column, as well as email and Skype. I’ve just ridden into my office while listening to lectures on my ipod from the nutrition course I’m studying by correspondence. This was after I returned three calls while hanging out my washing. I only ever seem to return calls on washing day.

In short, I have not been unitasking.  Which, given the scope of this column, makes me a tedious fraud. Lump me, if you will, in the same basket where I like to put snooty hippies and spiritual materialists.

Worse, as I share my ludicrous multi-tasking ways with you I find myself feeling superior. Which women of my generation tend to do when it comes to multitasking. We brag we can find the butter in the fridge. And define ourselves by our ability to juggle kids’ breakfast bickerings and Blackberrys and oversized Starbuck coffees. While men – the poor things – struggle to tie their shoelaces and stick their tongue out at the same time.

But my failure this week in testing a life-bettering technique shouldn’t stop me from sharing with you the virtues of unitasking (as researched across eight screens). By way of an abstract, multitasking doesn’t work. Full. Stop. 

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insomnia: an artistic representation that somehow makes it feel less lonely

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If you’re an insomniac these images by artist Paul Davis at copyrightdavis.com will very much resonate. Not so much for the meaning in the squiggles. But the demented aesthetic.

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How much do you totally get the hatred you feel for the loved one lying next to you…asleep (HATE HER SLEEP). How come it works for them? How can they be so unaware of where I’m at when I’m so damn hyper-aware of them – their every cell, their every flicker of the eye? Why does sleep work for them, and not me?

I was an insomniac for years. I went for a 6-month stint when I was in my early 20s in which I slept 1-3 hours a night. I went demented – accidentally set fire to my apartment, got pneumonia from sleeping in a puddle…etc. etc. And, to this day, if I’m to be upfront, I find it really tough sleeping next to someone else. I like the IDEA of it. But the reality hurts. Around 4.17am I get to a point where I reckon I can actually hear their cells multiplying. And feel their aura. And see their dreams. And know their fears.

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a fully sick rap

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My friend Kate sent me this video by Christiaan van Vuuren (The Fully Sick Rapper), a friend of hers who, has spent the past 104 days in quarantine.  He has Multi-Drug Resistant TB and has to be isolated, and treated with a cocktail of antibiotics. He was an outdoor advertising sales rep and was rushed to hospital on December 9 after continuously coughing up blood during a work meeting.”I thought, I’ve seen this in the movies before and it’s only when someone’s taken a bullet in the stomach or an arrow in the back or something,” he told a journo recently.

After detecting a hole in his right lung the size of a 50-cent piece, doctors identified the disease as tuberculosis, suspecting he contracted it during his travels to South Africa or South America.

He was meant to be out after 7 days. But things went wrong. Now, he doesn’t really know when he’ll finally be released. He spends his time making kooky rap videos.

The idea of being trapped and isolated fascinates me. To be completely clipped of your power and freedom…how’d I cope? Especially when there’s no end date.

I emailed Christiann in hospital and asked him three questions. His answers are long and considered and I really love the way he explains how the experience has been part of a shift he needed to make to the next phase of his life…

1. Do you feel this happened for a reason?
It’s interesting… I wouldn’t exactly say that I feel this has happened for a reason, but I definitely think that a lot of positive things have come from this situation, which I first looked at as being a very negative one. Yeah, I would say that it makes sense to me that this has has happened, and even go as far as to say that perhaps something like this needed to happen to me to help me grow up a bit. That may sound weird, because in all of my videos I carry on like an absolute child, but please allow me to explain…

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mountainbike ride like you just don’t care

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Check this shit out from Collegehumour. It’s poetic and meditative. I’ve ridden BMXs or Mountain bikes for close on three decades. My brothers and Dad I have competed in 24-hour races and I’ve done a lot of off-road travelling – in New Zealand, Vietnam, America, Spain, the UK, Tasmania and 3000km up the Bruce Highway … Read more