Archives for February 2014

This is me – the consummate professional

February 25, 2014 by 23 Comments

Allow me to take you for a journey into the world of the professional Sharpest Pencil, the consummate corporate professional who consults to business about important matters like social media, seo practices and getting more readers to your site.

Let’s take yesterday for example. I had a meeting with the Marketing and Communications Manager of a huge media outlet.  Proper huge – like household name kind of huge.  I got myself out of pajamas and into the city right on time for the meeting so everything was going well.
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Filed Under: Featured, My Life

Is it normal to be so excited?

February 23, 2014 by 7 Comments

My son returned home from survival camp on Friday thick with dirt. Seriously if the Colo River in New South Wales seems to have broken its banks that’s because half of the sand bank is on my laundry floor.

Camp week is always a long week for me. I miss having my little boy around, I miss his constant chatter and his awesome sense of humour. I don’t miss making school lunches or nagging him about homework and tidying his room but I just miss his presence. Walking past his bedroom in the night and seeing it so bloody tidy tugs at my heart.
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Rest in peace Charlotte Dawson

February 22, 2014 by 27 Comments

I sat down at my computer this morning thinking about what I could write for my blog, I felt I’d been a bit heavy lately and was going to try be funny but then I read about the passing of Charlotte Dawson and I just feel sick. Sad. Stunned and sick.

I have long suffered from some pretty shit serious depression, hospitalised for it many times over. I never speak about it. I’m not even going to do that now. But I do know that swamp of blackness that seems impenetrable. I know the feeling of not being able to carry the weight of air, of not being able to lift your legs to walk. I know that feeling.

I know about bleakness that cannot even be considered close to sadness, of emptiness that cannot be explained. I know those days that have no beginning and never end.

I know that Charlotte Dawson was a brave, brave woman. It is not yet known how she died but that’s irrelevant because we know how she lived – with serious, at times life-threatening depression. And she owned that illness in a world filled with people who judged her punished her without even knowing her

Nobody knows what goes on behind closed doors, nobody knows what you are feeling inside, how you are coping or what’s behind the façade you carry.

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Be-Kind-Quote

Rest in Peace Charlotte Dawson. Only peace

Please remember the number for Lifeline 13 11 14.  You are never alone

 

Filed Under: Current Affairs, Featured

Where do teen boys go to find out about sex?

February 19, 2014 by 3 Comments

sex edI was delighted to find out that the book my teen son is reading has a couple of sex scenes in it, even though I only found this out by chatting to one of my friends who is reading the same book.

I don’t have a problem with him reading about sex scenes at all I only wish there were more of them for him to read – and by “sex scenes” I don’t mean tomes of erotica or porn.

There’s not a lot of places for teen boys to learn about sex. There’s sex ed classes at school, there’s his parents (which is not very sexy at all) and there is a shitload of hideously worrying online porn.

Studies show that 92 per cent of boys and 61 per cent of girls aged 13 to 16 have been exposed to online porn. Statistically speaking that means my son has, or is about to be, exposed to porn. I don’t have a problem with the idea of him seeing porn per se. His dad looked at porn when he was young and I’m pretty sure that his grandfather did too. No issue with that – as long as the people that appeared in that porn did so of their own free will. But that’s not a debate I am getting into right now. It’s more about the quality of the porn he will be exposed to.
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Maybe getting married IS the cornerstone of happiness…

February 17, 2014 by 16 Comments

marriage susan pattonNot a day goes by that somebody doesn’t write some extremely contentious article on the internet. Sometimes it’s a really valid strong point of view, sometimes it’s an attempt to get people to talk about and share the article so that numbers go up the site attracts more advertising dollars and sometimes you write something with the most noble of intentions and it just goes feral.

Parenting and feminism are real big push button subjects. No one really likes to be told how to think, especially in areas where there are clearly so many shades of nuance.
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A mental health system that’s failing the mentally ill (and their children)

February 14, 2014 by 33 Comments

Luke-BattyRecently I had a fight with one of my very closest friends. It was a public fight that took place on Twitter for all the world to see. I argued with her and I argued with other friends, I even argued with strangers. But some strangers supported me and many people I knew took my side, others contacted me privately and told me their point of view. It was a very public fight about a very public story – that of Greg Hutchings who took his daughter’s life before taking his own.

I cannot condone such a hideous act and never would but that does not mean I can’t have compassion for a man who is at such a desperate place that he takes his child’s life and then his own.

There was so much anger expended against this man because… well for one he killed his daughter I guess, but I think they felt anger because they assumed it was an act of revenge or malice. The man had no history of mental illness, he wasn’t being treated for psychosis or depression or bipolar disorder.
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The Winter Olympics and the art of complaining

February 13, 2014 by 6 Comments

sochi olympicsThere is no sport that my husband won’t watch on TV. Rugby, golf, cricket, skiing, NFL, even darts (which I contest is not actually a sport) he is there, eyes glued. Tennis, swimming, athletics, snooker (again not really a sport) he watches with rapt attention. I on the other hand rather love to fall asleep to sport on TV so basically we are very well suited couple.

It’s a nightly routine : Mr Pencil channel surfs for a while grumbling away that there is nothing good on TV and as soon as he settles on a channel and starts watching a ball being flung around a field or people testing the limits of their endurance I fall asleep.

But last night was different. Last night Mr Pencil didn’t let me sleep because he suddenly turned into one of those crotchety old men that like to write into newspapers with a fountain pen and complain to the world in general that they are unhappy.
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I cried the whole weekend

February 10, 2014 by 34 Comments

Mr pencil and little pencilI had made up my mind that I was not going to cry at my son’s Bar Mitzvah. I was going to be big and strong and ridiculously mature and together and not a drop of water would fall from my eye all weekend.

I figured that I had made great headway into this dry eye territory by exhausting every single tear I had in the lead up to the occasion. Gathering photos to display on the night had taken me right back to the very first days of Little Pencil’s life and I shed a fair few tears about all those memories (where a few means about a hundred litres), I had read my speech aloud, in front of the mirror, in a myriad of accents with tears and without tears so many times I just “knew” that it wouldn’t make me cry, I had watched countless rehearsals of Little Pencil doing his thing and I had hardened myself to the point that if a tear came to the surface I could ice it with thoughts of algebra. A nifty trick you should try.
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Filed Under: Featured, My Life

I’m happy not to be religious but I’m even happier to be traditional

February 6, 2014 by 5 Comments

Barmitzvah traditionI am feeling a little overwhelmed by the impending Bar Mitzvah this weekend. Testimony to this is the fact that I have fallen asleep twice day and as I write this it is only 4pm.

I fell asleep at the beautician having an omnilux treatment and then I managed to fall asleep while having synthetic eyelashes adhered to my natural eyelashes. I think that falling asleep with someone’s fingers in your eyes is quite a feat. Waking oneself up with a loud snore is also quite a mean feat but one I was slightly more ashamed about today.

But it’s been a big week. Family have been converging from one corner of the world (South Africa) and preparations for the Bar Mitzvah are at warp speed.  My son has learned the portion that he has to sing in synagogue so well that last night when we watched the full dress rehearsal the parts of me that weren’t leaking out through my tear ducts were bursting with pride. Quite a surreal feeling actually which may have left me with such a tense neck that I cannot turn to either the left or the right (actually that tension may have been caused by my being over controlling, slightly neurotic and bad at being with people for an extended period of time.)
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Nobody chooses to be an addict

February 3, 2014 by 5 Comments

Philip Seymour Hoffman died at age 46. The same age I will be in 4 months time.

The fact that he is dead is tragic. The cause of his death even more so.  While I cannot speculate on his life and how he lived it I do know that nobody chooses to be an addict. No one picks up their first drink or their first drug with the intention of becoming an alcoholic or an addict.

Just because you are rich and you have all the trappings of that wealth it doesn’t preclude you from being human, from being scared or anxious, from feeling pain or emotion.  Just because you are famous it doesn’t mean you don’t have self doubt and think too much or care too deeply, just because you have minders and entourages it doesn’t mean you don’t get lonely or feel isolated.

Just because you have children it does not mean you are not human. Just because you use drugs does not mean you are a junkie.

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(With thanks to Zoey Martin at The Shake where I was first rocked by this video)

Rest in Peace Philip Seymour Hoffman and may your family find strength at this horrifically dark time.

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