Work with me

I've been afraid of changing, because I
Built my life around you
But time makes you bolder, even children get older
And I'm getting older too
             'Landslide' Fleetwood Mac

Remember how I said in my last blog that if the shit hit the fan it was all right because shit isn't shit in the end? Well bugger me, I am a prophet because that's exactly what happened. Long story and I am over talking about it and it's time to talk about something else now. But the shit did indeed hit the fan courtesy of the Home Office, resulting in a cross country dash to Liverpool and me getting my permanent residency visa.  Stress!!!!! Relief!!!!!!!

Time to do and think and be other stuff now for which I am very bloody grateful and I am sure you are too. There's only so long you can be a moaning minnie about one particular subject before everyone wants to shove your head in a bucket of water and even you think it's a good idea to leave it there.

In the midst of the shit hitting the fan, other than deportation I was thinking a lot about the whole concept of 'bodymind'...that idea of the body and mind being an integrated whole and therefore needing to be treated as one. I should point out that for a lot of reasons I have spent a lifetime and a lot of time and energy trying to keep my body and mind separate. Hard going as even if you don't buy the integrated theory one is pretty much stuck with the other innit? Hmmmm.

I think all you need to grasp the concept of bodymind is to observe the effect of extreme stress on the body, which is what I was doing the day after I found out the Home Office was returning my permanent visa application a week before I was due to become an illegal immigrant. Well, observing the effects of stress on the body and trying not to fall over or throw up, because I had an absolute killer migraine. Why did I have a migraine (a body thing)? Because I had stress (a mind thing). If the body and the mind were separate, would I have had stress but no migraine or migraine but no stress? Hmmmmm.....

Extending that idea...does the way you think about yourself and respond to the world, not just stress, have a direct effect on your body? Louise Hay talks a lot about this stuff.  I'm not sure I'm down with her list of emotional conditions and the directly corresponding list of illnesses resulting from it because frankly I don't know if, for example, not being able to forgive your mother for burning your birthday cake when you were 12 can correspond to ONE thing that can go wrong with your body.  We are much more complex creatures than that. If it was that simple we'd all be perfect specimens of mental and physical health, wouldn't we? Or am I just overcomplicating things? Wouldn't be the first time haha.

But, but, can't get away from the basic concept that the way you think ultimately determines what you are. If you don't think you can improve your life or you physical or mental health, you probably won't.  You only need a crumb of belief to get started, but if you don't have the crumb, don't look for it or choose not to eat it, won't your mind and your body respond in kind and just give up?

In one of those 'confirming your thinking' kismet moments I happened to be reading an old Grazia in the bath this morning (as you do) and they had an article about emotional cellulite, i.e. you may have dumpy thighs because of your inability to let go and forgive yourself.  No wonder my thighs are massive!!

All right so you probably shouldn't take the word of women's magazines on complex physiological and psychological issues but do they have a point? If I can get migraine, more hardcore ME symptoms and neck ache through stress, why not incredibly chunky legs?  Is the size of my arse a reflection of my lifetime of self loathing and doubt?

I hold my hands up to spending waaaay too much of my life trying to get rid of symptoms rather than address the disease, or dis-ease as the self help gurus call it. Given that I have spent a fair bit of my life in chronic pain, overweight and trying to overcome a past best described as challenging, that is a lot of symptoms and a lot of life and there are some things you can't take pills for, because frankly there are no drugs that good.

There are plenty of times I would have quite happily climbed out of both my body and my mind and gone in search of a better place to live and no that's not a veiled suicide reference. There have been a few occasions where death looked pretty good but I'm too bloody minded to give in basically. I'm only just now getting to the stage where I'm comfortable enough with myself to think my own mind and body are actually OK places to be, even if some fresh paint and repairs are required. Climbing out of your own body and mind is not an option obviously so as the renovation experts say, don't move, improve.

Need to think more about this stuff and what it means for me, the weight, ME and general physical and mental wellbeing.  Also call a meeting and convince my body and mind they are actually on the same team.  If I can't work with me, who can?

Sleepwalking

I tell myself I won't do it again, but I know I will be
Lying in my bed my thoughts racing
Like they always have been
                'Wide Awake' The Twang

I am awake. Well, that's probably self-evident, although for all you know I could have the ability to sleep type. I don't, which is fortunate. I manage to contain my mentalist rants OK when I'm awake, but gord knows what would come out of me in an uninhibited sleep state given a keyboard under the covers.  Note to self: leave the laptop downstairs!

I am awake in the middle of the night again and it's safe to say after a couple of weeks or three or four years of this I am over it.  I'm still not sure how somebody with ME can regularly have sleepless nights.  I am however sure the combination is frying my brain. You can imply an apology for lack of bloggage lately and potential upcoming massive rants from that.

While not gracing blogland for the last week and a half I have been busy trying to sort various bits of my life out while the most important bit, whether I get my permanent residency or not, hangs around in the corners like a bitter smirking relative pointing out everything that can go wrong.  The relative does have a point.  I can work my arse off trying to get signed up with the Open University and getting a stall for a Christmas craft market and thinking about part time jobs, but what's the point if I'm not going to be here? That's a lot of pointing for one paragraph and of course I am going to be here but, but, until I get the barely polite letter from the Home Office saying oh all bloody right, here's your permanent residency, how do I really know? I could be having endless debates with the Open University about my residency status for nothing. That would blow, particularly as I would lose the opportunity to strangle one of their staff. That's a whole other story probably best not told while I'm trying to convince the Home Office I don't have violent criminal tendencies.

This whole process has led to an uncomfortable discovery about myself.  I like to think of myself as this easy going, let life take you on an adventure and go with the flow kind of person.  As it turns out, I'm actually a rabid control freak.  You can tell me that handing my and the kindest man in the world's fates over to an unfeeling, uncaring bureaucracy and having no power over the outcome and feeling a tad stressed by that is a normal reaction and you're probably right but it's that feeling of loss of control over my own destiny that's doing my head in right now.

It will be all right and even if it won't be all right it will be all right because I may be a chronically fatigued insomniac with no brain right now and I don't know how the universe works really but I do know that one way or the other, sometimes with shit hitting the fan and sometimes without, that things work out for the best sooner or later. Warning, I'm about to go Zen master on your arse but some things are just true whether you want them to be or not. If you keep working towards better, shit still happens but in the end it all comes good, even if it's not the good you planned for or expected.  That much I've worked out. How not to get stressed during the 'shit happening' part I'm still working on, but I'm sure I'll get there one day.

How not to be a control freak in the face of uncertainty is another thing I need to work on but if I've just acknowledged that life is self-sorting if you let it be why do I feel the need to control everything?? Pain aversion, obviously.  Pain can be avoided, certainly, but only if you avoid everything else that makes life rich and varied and awesome.  And I want to live, dammit!! I don't want to hide in a nice safe infinitely boring corner. Best learn to take the bad with the good, knowing you can't have one without the other in any sort of life worth having. Yin and yang, woman, yin and yang!!

So life goes on, courses get signed up for, business ventures get pursued, and somehow in the middle of all this I have *looks around furtively* managed to get my eating back under control...six days and counting yeeeaaaahhh!!  I've made a decision, I'm not thinking about having lost five stone already. I'm approaching it like I've just started.  It's new and shiny and fresh and I'm not complaining about having lost so much but still having so far to go. I just have some weight to lose and every day I wake up and say right I'm eating well today and not thinking about having to do the same tomorrow, or the next day, or in two months. This particular mountain will be climbed, conquered, and danced like a loony on. It's happening.  That is all.

Self hypno has also been awesome and while the Sandy who wants instant results might be peeved slightly with what might be termed concrete progress, particularly in the weight loss arena, the holistic bodymind Sandy is bouncing and not only because of the size of my arse. It's evolution rather than revolution right now with the occasional smashing of mind walls. Can't complain at all about that. Beats devolution and despair hands down and I sense the wall smashing is leading up to something big. Could be delusion on my part but I'm still working for better and better will come one way or the other.

Life goes on. And really, it's all good.




                      

The rules

Actually I don't really want to call this post 'the rules', because I don't really like rules.  But I have this collection of principles by which I live (or try to) and, inspired by Gibbs from one of my all time fav series NCIS, it might be time to get them all in one place. I could go all hippy-dippy and call them life philosophies or learned wisdom. I could, but I think you know why I won't.

As with the famous Mr Gibbs I should probably point out that I don't live by these all the time. They're not aspirational as such, but occasionally one has problems picking oneself off one's arse to live by them.  What can I say, I continue to try!

So here it is, Sandyology in a nutshell. Or case, I'm not sure which.

1. Why be half-arsed when you can use your whole arse?
2. Life is too short for one hair colour.
3. Only listen to the opinions of people you respect.
4. Dr Martens ARE appropriate for all occasions, especially now they have ones with high heels.
5. Self esteem comes from yourself. That's why it's called self esteem. Don't be looking for it elsewhere cos it's a waste of time.
6. Would a fashion designer wear a shirt with YOUR name on it? Think about it.
7. Never give up or chicken out. You don't know what good stuff you'll miss out on if you do.
8. Strength doesn't come from physical capacity, it comes from an indomitable will. (That might be Gandhi's idea).
9. Work for better, live for now.
10. How about putting all the energy you use hating yourself into something constructive?
11. Justin Bieber. Just don't.
12. You aren't always wrong or always right.
13. Nobody makes you feel bad about yourself.  You allow them to. Deal with it.
14. When you take a chance, sometimes good things happens and sometimes bad things happen. If you take no chances, nothing happens.
15. Even the bad things can come good in the end if you let them.
16. Western democracy would be a good idea. Yeah, I nicked that from Gandhi as well.
17. Not everybody loves Raymond.
18. Gratitude for the things you have makes you happy and less of a whiny pain in the arse to those around you. Win-win.
19. Self-help gurus do have a point, even if you occasionally want to strangle them.
20. As Gibbs says...sometimes, you're wrong.

The return of the fat white Aussie

'Here am I, floating in my tin can
Far above the world
Planet Earth is blue and there's nothing I can do'
                                   'Space Oddity' David Bowie

Just checked the date of my last blog and seen that it was two weeks ago. Eeeee where does the time go!!

Since last going bloggy on your arse Sandy has written, collated, quadruple checked and lodged a permanent visa application and applied to study design with the Open University. You could say the second is a sign of faith in the first coming good.  The cynics will say it's putting the cart before the horse. I say if the horse is stubborn enough to push the cart and the RSPCA doesn't mind who's to say which should come first? Not me but then I am now in the odd position of not really knowing what hemisphere I'll be living in by Christmas so I'm bound to be a bit addled.

Realistically I don't think the Home Office will knock me back but it's the not knowing which has done my head in while writing, collating, checking and lodging.  A major flaw in my personality has emerged over the last couple of weeks. Well, it hasn't emerged because I always knew it was there but it's risen up in front of me, slapped me around a bit and told me to get a grip over the last fortnight.  I freeze in the face of uncertainty. Yep, the very moment when Sandy needs to get her shit together before it hits the fan, she wants to hide under the duvet, cover her ears and go 'lalalalalala' in the hope it all goes away and of course it doesn't, does it. Something else to work on. Hurrah!!

Anyhoo!! The application is in and now all I have to do is wait. That and try and keep the kindest man in the world, who isn't coping too well with all this, from deep despair or alternatively trying to start some kind of anti-Home Office revolution that will either land him in jail or wind up getting us both deported. Can't complain really as it shows he loves me and wants me to stick around.  Makes all the bullshit worthwhile, innit.

Since the application went in on Friday, along with mute terror at not knowing the outcome, I've felt a huge burden lift. I've done everything I can do and it's out of my hands now.  Time to get on with other stuff and live, dammit!!

Sandy is back!!!!!!

Not quite the return of the thin white duke, more the return of the fat white Aussie but I'm back and ready to push on with the self help malarkey and expanding my mind and my life and shrinking my arse.  OK so technically given my Australian Aboriginal heritage I'm not really white but let's not split hairs. It's the back part that counts.

Went to see hypno-dude last Saturday and we talked about me applying to the Open University to study design and he asked what my dream job would be afterwards.  I've been pondering that one since. Actually I've been pondering that probably since I was five and somebody first asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up.  One day, when I grow up, I might actually work out what that is.

Some people have a passion in life and make it their career and that's it, they're sorted. I am not one of those people.  I've had 'good' jobs and some of them even interested me but I can't say there's one overarching thing that I've wanted to do or be.  The thought of doing the same thing for the rest of my life actually kind of scares the shit out of me.  Am I flighty?? Or am I just too multi-talented to restrict myself to one field, har har. Pardon me while I spew, I just sounded like one of the Gen Y know it alls I so despise but you get my meaning.

Writing has always been an undercurrent that has carried me along in terms of interest and career and occasionally I have even made money out of it but stuffed if I know how you make it your life's work. Well, people do obviously, but I don't think there's a full time career to be had in massive rants about life and politics and trying to get your own shit together that doesn't also involve international infamy and a substance abuse problem.

What I need is a multi-faceted creative career that will allow me to write, create, design, rant and wear my Dr Martens to work.  It's a beautiful dream.  What that actually means is I probably need about three different jobs and a therapist on tap so I don't have a breakdown. Again.

The tension in me at the moment is that the artist who wants to be known as Sandy says just do the course and let your future evolve.  The hard-arsed pragmatist Sandy says you're 45 years old, you dipshit, how long do you want to evolve before you do something useful? Then there's money. The artist says money will work itself out. The hard-arsed pragmatist sings 'money, it's a hit, so don't give me that do-goody-good bullshit' along with Pink Floyd even though Pink Floyd are bollocks. Yeah, I said it. The kindest man in the world may be lodging divorce papers later.  That would solve the which hemisphere to live in question nicely.

I don't know what the answer is but can I at least have fun working it out? When I don't want to tear my own hair out at my grasshopper mind, that is.  Is that possible? Must be. I would say first thing is to not take myself or my life too seriously and I've got that down. I'm Aussie, for godzakes. Taking the piss out of ourselves is the core of our cultural heritage.

I might be floating along in an indeterminate residency status haze right now but there's plenty to be getting on with and sorting out and in the end all we have is today.  So with all the what is my destiny palava, must not forget that the foundation of whatever tomorrow we have is what we do today. Plan for tomorrow, live for now, or something.  Ask the question, work towards the answer, enjoy the journey. And celebrate the grasshopper mind.  At least life's never boring.