A Five Year Sentence

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Just before New Year I was given a very attractive five year memory book. Essentially there are 365 pages, each page being designated for a particular day and each entry appearing five times on a page. The premise is that you just add the year and then write a line or two in the box – every day for f5 year memory bookive years. Because of the way the book is structured, you can then look back at any particular day and see what you had on your mind on that day over the course of the five years. It’s a way to keep track of both the everyday and the exceptional events in your life – but in brief, rather like a Twitter-log,  so that you don’t have to feel that it takes up a lot of your time or mental energy to keep it up to date.

The quandary I face is that I’ve actually kept a journal/diary and then a blog for many years and my entries tend not to be particularly concise. Whilst I do subscribe to Twitter and have learned to keep within the 140 characters that it dictates, my posts tend to be along the lines of passing thoughts or comments. I see the line-a-day diary entries as more personal and perhaps even meaningful, but have realised that I need to ‘Twitterise’ them so that they fit into the space provided in order for them to be succinct and interesting.

Thinking about all this brought to mind a Bernice Rubens book I read a while back. A Five Sentence is is about Miss Hawkins who, on retirement, is presented with a five year diary. For varioubernice rubens_a five year sentences and complex reasons, Miss Hawkins feels compelled to write in the diary – but has nothing to write about. So instead of writing about what she has done, she writes about what she will do – and then follows through on what she has written as though the entries are instructions, returning to tick the items off with a red crayon when she’s completed them. It’s a strange and disturbing little book, but a beautiful example of character development and clear, crisp prose. Sadly, I leant my copy to someone. Happily, I just found that it’s available as an Ebook and have downloaded it to reread.

Miss Hawkins and her five year diary, along with my attempts to Twitterise my thoughts for my five year diary, resulted in rumination as to the nature of compulsion and as to why people keep diaries/journals/blogs (of whatever sort). Some reading on the topic suggests that the reasons for doing so are probably as diverse as the people who keep them, ranging from tracking daily and/or special events to annotating holidays, from writing practise to therapy.

In my own case it started out as a means to discard or offload thoughts and feelings that I didn’t want to or couldn’t  share with anyone else. I was a moderately introverted teenager and had a range of complex issues to manage on my own, so I was basically writing to myself – and it worked very well. I was able to live in the moment and not hang onto angst or issues unduly and, as a result, to become somewhat pragmatic about life. This has served me well over the years.

More recently I’ve taken to writing for a wider audience, sharing my thoughts with others as a way of broadening the scope both of what I write and what I think about — and I enjoy it. This brings me back to day six of my line-a-day five-year-diary. I’ve managed five days of short entries and I think I’m getting the hang of it. I just hope that the three ladies in my life who ended up with one of these diaries at much the same time are busily writing in theirs each day too…

Loss and guilt

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The harsh reality of having a pet in one’s life is that they will almost certainly die before you do. I am told that dogs – my preferred household pet – sometimes live up to 19 or 20 years and can be hale and hearty for most of their lifespan. My experience, however, has been that 10 years is the best that one can realistically hope for. This indicates a clear need for acceptance and understanding of this outcome from the start in order to minimise emotional upsets further down the track.

Advice of that sort sounds sensible and is easy enough to give, although implementation can be a tad more problematic. What seems to happen in my case is that pets come into my life, become part of my family and that I give little thought to their possible or probable demise. I/we feed them, walk them, take them with us to the beach and on holidays, make sure they have regular checkups at the vet and that they get their inoculations on time. In short, we simply live our lives and enjoy the companionship they provide.

In due course, however, some or other event catches up with us and brings home the stark reality of their relatively short lifespan. In every case this has left me saddened and – in some cases – quite bereft. Looking back across my life, I remember each of my furry buddies – and the gap they left when they died. Time eases the ache and new furry friends come into our lives, but I’ve found that it’s impossible to simply replace a friend with another friend.
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Most recently Nuschka came to us. She was two years old, seemed fit and healthy and was in need of a secure home. We all thought she’d be with us for a long time to come and incorporated her into the family post haste.  In the yearn that followed we had a lot of fun together, but there was also a good deal of dog stress – low levels at first, but mounting over time to quite significant proportions. After months of her suffering chronic diarrhoea, numerous vet visits and all manner of investigations, we agreed to a procedure called a fecal microbiota transplantation (FMT) for her in mid-December. Essentially this involved surgical intervention to empty her intestine and bowel and to then repopulate them with healthy bacteria. At the same time biopsies of her gut and intestine could be done in order to eliminate cancers as a possible reason for her ill health and to establish whether there were any other issues.

We brought her home after her surgery and, although she was clearly happy to be at home and pleased to see us, after a week she had lost weight, was vomiting and dehydrated. Despite  calming words from the vet, we rushed her back to the surgery at 3am on Christmas Eve. The week that followed was spent waiting. We waited to hear from the vet each day – and each day brought no new plan, no improvement and no clear idea of any resolution. The biopsies had shown that she had both inflammatory bowel disease, as suspected, as well as lymphangiectasia – a chronic and pathologic dilation of the lymph vessels.

We finally ran out of options just before New Year.  The surgery was very busy when I got there to see her and we ended up sitting together in a back room, my Nuschka and I, until our turn came. She was so happy to see me, her great plume of a tail swishing back and forth as she sniffed me and licked my hands and face. We sat there for four hours, cuddled up on the floor, my hand compulsively stroking her as I talked to her. I think I even dozed off with her at one point.

In due course the vet came back to give the lethal injection via Nuschka’s intravenous drip, after which we just sat with her as her life slowly ebbed away – and then for a while longer, chatting quietly about dogs and loss and life. This was the final thing I could do for my girl – to be there and take responsibility for my decision to end her life. Even though the decision was certainly in her best interests, I could not leave the implementation completely in the hands of others. She was my responsibility, not theirs.

It’s hard to sit by and watch a beloved family member fade away – but it is much harder to watch them suffer, particularly when there is an alternative. By the time I got home I thought I was all cried out – but I was wrong, apparently. Dear Nuschk – what a damn shame it ended up this way.

Ten things

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When I was in the shower yesterday I found myself thinking about an incident I’d witnessed earlier in the day and the surprising level of rudeness expressed by a random stranger. This sort of thing always bothers me and thinking about it led me to consider other things that drive me crazy. Not a positive train of thought, really, so I thought about the things that make me smile instead … the things that combat the crazy-making things so that they don’t win out.

As is my way, I started to make a mental list, randomly deciding to try for ten of each. It was easy enough to come up with quite a few negatives, so I switched to the positives – but ran out of shower before I came up with 2×10.

Not surprising then that the topic was still on my mind when I woke up at the crack of dawn to take the puppy outside. That doesn’t drive me nuts, by the way – it’s just part of puppy training and won’t last long. Not getting back to sleep afterwards – now that is a bit crazy-making, but I often offset it by just getting up and doing some work. 4am is a pretty quiet time round our place (other than potty breaks for puppies) and a surprising amount can be done then – like listing my ten things of the moment (they change over time). So here are the current lists:

10 things that give me the crazies
People who don’t pick up their dog’s poop in public places
Misunderstandings resulting from poor communication
Politicians – pretty much everything about them
Tiring a little too easily (mutter!)
Indecisiveness (I call it dithering) – in myself as much as in others
Unkindness – ditto
Litter – just litter. Really, why do people?
A chaotic environment, particularly a messy kitchen
(Loud) mobile phone use in public places, e.g. the train: much rudeness, so discourteous
Poor planning – whether it’s for events, meetings, whatever – it’s simply not efficient and is time-wastey

10 things that make me smile
The crazy and unexpected things that people do
Dog, puppies, wagging tails – our dogs are particularly happy-making
Our visiting kittens, Cloud and adorable Prism. So much purrrrrr…
Finishing a project – any project
Entertaining friends & family
My art shed – sometimes just having one is enough 🙂
Kindness in strangers
The beach
Riding my bike
Doing something that makes someone else smile
Quiet time to reflect

They’re not very exhaustive lists or even very profound ones – but they reflect the mood of the moment.

Time to wrap gifts to pop under the tree. Feliz Navidad ~ Prospero año y felicidad.

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Self-indulgence – or self-nurturing?

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One day this week, as part of my daily activity regime, I wandered down to the local shopping centre to pick up a few requirements for dinner. In an unexpected moment of weakness I also bought a chocolate-covered, nut-encrusted ice-cream-on-a-stick. Feeing slightly guilty, I loaded all the purchases into my little backpack and started the uphill trudge back home in the late afternoon sun. By the time I was most of the way there I was tired… and that ice cream seemed to be crying out for attention… So I found a shady spot, plonked myself down… and ate every last super tasty morsel of it!

Watching the traffic and listening to the wind in the gum trees while I nibbled the chocolate coating away and then got stuck into the ice cream was remarkably restful. Ficecreamor a while I was just in the moment, completely absorbed in the taste and texture, the delicious richness of the slowly melting treat. Before long, however, I found myself starting to think about how self-indulgent I was being. I hadn’t bought ice creams to share with the rest of the family – I had just bought one. For me. To compound this indulgence, I was sitting there having a rest, not thinking about work, dogs, cats, children or dinner – I was just watching the world go by and slowly consuming my treat. Definitely self-indulgent, right?

This train of thought made me start to consider the difference between self-indulgence and self-nurturing. Like many women of my generation, I come from a background where ‘self-indulgence’, i.e. greedy or selfish behaviour, was discouraged – both by example and more actively. I assume that the objective was to instil some notion of self-discipline and restraint in us as children and to make us more inclined to think of others. If so, then this was probably not a bad thing to aim for. Whether it was successful, however, is debatable.

Talking to my female contemporaries, it seems that many of us have ended up with an inculcated notion of guilt. We feel guilty when doing things for ourselves, things that don’t directly or clearly benefit others in some way. Social conditioning as to the role of females in our society – or at least the one in which I grew up – reinforces that outlook, encouraging women to put the needs of others first. It’s taken many years of introspection and self-analysis for me to get to a point where I know myself well enough to be able to figure out what my needs are – and to use this to examine and temper those notions of externally imposed guilt.

As an adult I can see the many ways in which my mother denied herself simple pleasures so that we, as a family, would benefit. She did so willingly and as a matter of course, having lived through the post-war depression years of food and employment scarcity and thus having a very clear understanding of sacrifice for the greater good. As a nurse, the greater good was the well-being of her patients. As a mother, it was that of our family.

This outlook certainly benefited both my siblings and me in diverse ways, enabling us all to got through school and into adult life largely oblivious of the sacrifices made for us. We didn’t stop to consider the impact on Mum, both mentally and physically, or to wonder who looked after her while she was looking after us. If I could reach back into that distant past I would like to tell her to be a little kinder to herself. I would like to suggest that she stopped – just sometimes – and enjoyed an ice cream in the sunshine, putting everything else aside for those few minutes. It’s not an indulgence, I would to tell her, you’d just be taking a breath and enjoying the moment for a change. Self-nurturing is simply looking after yourself, being mindful of your state of mind, your body and the world around you  – and responding appropriately to ensure your continued good health.

Despite knowing this, and despite giving advice to others to take a moment, I still sometimes get glimmers of those deep-rooted twinges of guilt when I do so myself. Then I give myself a little mental shake and remind myself of the real necessity in everyday life for self-nurturing in all of us. Particularly at busy or stressful times, such as when the year is thundering to a close… and that ice cream was delicious 🙂

The (lost) art of conversation

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I recently had a conversation about conversations with a friend. She was bemoaning the fact that conversation appears to be becoming a lost art. After doing some reading on the topic. I  found that Cicero had a few pretty sensible things to say on it. Now, I do realise that he was around a VERY long time ago – he was a Roman philosopher, after all, and died in (approx.) 43BC, but the points he makes seem to me to be as valid now as (I assume) they were then.

He suggested that conversationalists bear the following in mind:

  • Speak clearly and with ease – but don’t overdo it and ramble on interminably.
  • Try to ensure that you don’t prevent others from having a turn to speak.
  • Adopt a tone that’s appropriate to the topic of conversation.
  • It’s a good idea to avoid criticising people in their absence – it’s demeaning to all concerned.
  • Try to keep your topics of conversation to those of general interest.
  • A thing to remember is that talking about yourself has pretty limited audience appeal – you’re just not that interesting to everyone.
  • Conversations usually draw to a natural conclusion, so allow them to rather than dragging them out endlessly.

Most importantly, bear in mind that polite and respectful interaction is a key to good conversation: don’t interrupt – and keep your temper in check at all times

I imagine that all of those points sound perfectly reasonable to most people. After all, I’m pretty sure we all want to speak with assurance, not be boring or rude and avoid offending others if possible. In which case, why do so many people seem to ‘grab the speaking baton’ and just not let go, resulting in one-sided, rude or thoughtless conversations?

Perhaps Cicero could have added that we would all be well served if we tuned in to the body language of the person/people we’re talking to. Doing so provides a host of clues as to whether they’re engaged in the conversation or simply either startled rabbits or captives to our monologue. (Admittedly tricky in online conversations, in which case refer back to Cicero’s key points re conversation.)

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In short, conversations are about two or more people making connections, finding a common language, taking turns to speak, being courteous and, in no small part, non-verbal communication. So how does it all go wrong – when it does?

There seem to be a number of common pitfalls, and I’m pretty sure we’ve all fallen into one or more of them; I certainly have:

  • Reacting to the content of the conversation in an aggressive way – this generally ends up getting a bit personal and turns a conversation into a win/lose scenario, rather than a sharing of information. An alternative I’ve had some success with is to take a deep breath and to try for a neutral response – this usually gives me a space in which to regroup so that I can redirect the point and keep my temper reigned in. The outcome is that I feel in control and don’t end up looking silly.
  • Not listening – this is when you zone out a bit or start thinking about a related point or are simply waiting to take your turn and say your piece. The thing is, though, that that’s not conversation and, as I’ve discovered, can end up with you being caught out when a question is directed your way. Active participation requires that you pay attention to the speaker and notice their verbal and non-verbal cues. Try to imagine and action the sorts of responses you’d like to get if you were the speaker.
  • Not interested – this is the trickiest one for me. My attention always tends to slide when I’m not interested in a topic. I’ve had some success in simply moving the conversation along by slipping in a transition sentence – this is a sentence that’s sort of relevant, but that works to shift the focus of the conversation. Something like ‘Oh, before I forget, I wanted to tell you…’ or ‘I was wondering if…’ They’re polite redirects and usually work. Well, often work. Might work 🙂
  • Dominating the conversation – the answer to this one is body language. If the other people in the group are pulling away, avoiding eye contact, fiddling with things in their pockets – that sort of thing – you’re losing them or have already lost them. One way around this is to try to avoid your favourite topic, at least sometimes, since that’s probably an area where you’re likely to take over and dominate the conversation. But if you’re already in it – well, just take a breath and move on. Really, just let go – you don’t need (or own) the conversational baton. Give others a chance and you’ll find that everyone enjoys the conversation more – because then it is a conversation.
  • Conversational narcissism – closely related to the last point, actually, but more along the lines of always steering a conversation back to oneself. We all do it to some extent, but if a conversation is what you’re interested in, then try to ensure that you don’t shift the focus onto to yourself too often.

It’s probably impossible to follow all of Cicero’s conversational guidelines in every conversation – people are people, after all. We will inevitably find ourselves not only the target of conversational pitfalls at times, we’ll also be the perpetrators. The key is to try to be alert to both and aim to be good at conversation – work on the art of it; I’m pretty sure it makes it more fun for everyone.