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Adventures in teenage miscommunication
“Mum, my friends and I want to cook meat in the forest,” said my son one night. “Is that OK?” Now what you have to understand is that near my house, we have a fabulous ravine. Great unofficial trails that my kids and I have walked along with Maggie the dog for years – since my youngest could toddle along without falling over tree roots. We scramble down ravine banks, throw sticks for Maggie to chase, look for wildlife (scat searching was a big hit when the boys were young!) and generally have a great time in this special piece of nature that… Read more…
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Dreaming up the next dream
As I wander through my 40s in what sometimes seems like an aimless fashion, I occasionally find myself feeling completely out of sorts. This malaise is difficult to understand, when so much is going on – and much of it is going so well – in my life. Busy is good, right? Yet focusing on all this busyness can make it hard to see very far into the future. To try and clear the fog from that vista, I’ve started carving out some “me” time in the last couple of years, when I can completely disconnect with my usual world.… Read more…
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Nightmare on appliance street
Let me tell you a story …. Once upon a time, in a chapter of my life many years ago, things were not going very well. My marriage had fallen apart and my now ex-husband had all but left the marital home. I was absolutely frantic about finding full-time work, because with three children under the age of nine, I had been home for much of the past decade doing only enough freelance writing to keep the door open with my big toe. There were a lot of cheezies and pop in those days. And then it happened – the proverbial last… Read more…
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Pushing past scared
I’m a chicken. A scaredy cat. A cowardly lion. Always have been and probably always will be. But I’m a chicken with aspirations. Which is why the zen saying that popped up on my Facebook feed in late summer from a local writer and editor I know really spoke to me. “Leap and the net will appear,” it said. It reminded me of something very similar I’d heard at a conference almost exactly a year ago. Take a chance, the speaker encouraged us. “Jump out of the plane and build your parachute on the way down.” It sound so exhilarating – freeing… Read more…
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Who chooses your news?
I’ve been reading a lot about Facebook and possible soon-to-come Twitter algorithms recently and it’s a bit frightening.You probably know – although maybe not – that your Facebook news stream is ranked. According to a 2013 article by Facebook itself, the newsfeed algorithm responds to what you do, including things like: How often you interact with the friend, page, or public figure (like an actor or journalist) who posted The number of likes, shares and comments a post receives from the world at large and from your friends in particular How much you have interacted with this type of post in the… Read more…
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Young love
I went to a movie with my daughter the other day all about young love. A real tear jerker, it made many of the teenage girls seated all around us sob. I guess I must be getting older, because I only let a single tear roll down my cheek when the grandfather told his comatose granddaughter that it was ok if she needed to leave them. But the movie stirred up memories of first loves and the impact they have. The thrill the first time a boy notices you. The anguish when he ends it. The way you feel when the… Read more…
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One down … my son’s new chapter
Like many, many of my friends, this weekend marked a big, gigantic first – the first time leaving my firstborn child at university. Photos of new dorm rooms have been popping up on my Facebook feed all day to mark the occasion. I first wrote about this then-upcoming event in March, and now, a little over 1,300 km later, my boy has been collected from a summer camp counselling job, unpacked, repacked and unpacked again to begin the next exciting chapter of his young life – university. And you know, it wasn’t as hard on dear old Mum as I thought it… Read more…
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When the view of gratitude is hazy
My Facebook feed is awash with gratitude postings right now. It’s a good thing, I think, to focus on what makes you happy in life, and I certainly have much for which to be grateful. I’ve read that by thinking positively, we can make more positive things happen and that should make it easier to show and feel gratitude. Experiments have been shown that the simple act of being grateful can make you happier and healthier – this blog from 2013 is one of many that references several scientific studies to that effect. But come on – let’s be real – at… Read more…
