Exploring Chaos

Sometimes I feel that my life is like that movie - sliding doors… like there’s these two paths skipping along and sooner or later one path will close but until then it’s a coin toss as to which will be the outcome. I’m torn on so many levels at the moment and just when I think I’ve made a decision on which path to take something almost totally out of my control changes it for a little while and I feel that maybe the other path will win in the end, only to switch again.

Australia or England? IVF or wait and see if nature will provide? Two major decisions to make and no answer in sight for either of them. I love living here, I miss my family. I want kids, but do I want them now? I’d like to plan but I can’t make a decision. We decide to move home at the end of the year only to realise that we enjoy our life here, that we can’t decide where to move to, that there’s too much world to see. I love my job, would I be that lucky back home? I want to be pregnant but do I really want a child, would I have a child over here knowing we don’t have any support?  Would I really raise a child in this country knowing the richness of life in Australia? Why do I miss Australia so much when every damn time I’m given the opportunity to go back for good, something makes me want to stay? How come when I think of the future all I can see is now?

I’m so frustrated with everything at the moment. My reasons for taking a contract role were simple, take the contract work like crazy, do IVF and go home when pregnant. I’ve found I really love my new job, I want to work towards my contract being made permanent but where does that leave me? And IVF? I can’t bring myself to even go to the specialist when I know damn well all I need to do is go and I’ll be scheduled for the next cycle.

I need a kick up the backside, something to point me in the right direction, this limbo is driving me mad.

It should be spring, the world should be warming up but yet again, this weekend we had snow. I wonder how the animals and plants are coping with spring coming later each year, surely blooming when it seems to warm only to get caught in April snow can’t be good for them.

Me, I love snow late in the season, somehow it seems so much more joyful to wake up to snow when the week before was mild or downright warm.

Spring and summer are coming though, the bugs are back. I can’t stand England in the summertime, I long to have windows covered with a fly-screen so I can leave them open all day and night, allowing air to circulate but leaving the bugs out! I don’t like flying bugs, spiders I can handle, they crawl but are easily caught and removed and generally they don’t persistently try to come back in… but wasps, bees and daddy-long-legs (not the daddy long legs we all know and love, weird flying ones!) are the bane of my summer existence.

Sometimes when you need to make a change, it’s best to withdraw, lick your wounds in private and come back feeling fresh, it’s been a crazy few months for us, coming home from Australia was supposed to feel good, only this time it didn’t.

We feel like we’re existing here, but what has happened to all our plans for travel? What has happened to seeing the world and living life to it’s fullest? After a lot of soul searching we realised my work happened, there’s always someone on interview, always an urgent role to fill, always a guilt trip and often someone to ask you to take your holiday another time.

I finally said enough! No more! You work so you can live, you don’t live so you can work… and I quit, just like that walked in and resigned and the weight was lifted. I spent a few weeks figuring out what I wanted to do and then, as always fate stepped in and handed me a golden opportunity on a silver platter. Everything I love about my industry and nothing I hate, I now work for one of the world leaders in Printers/Print Supplies/Projectors and so much more and I am now the person agencies have to call, send CV’s to, wine and dine and generally please. I adore it!

I used to spend all my day advising people to tell me what their dream job was and then I’d work my backside off to get it but now I actually get a taste of this dream job thing for myself. The move from recruitment to HR is usually a difficult one and I am blessed that it came to me so easy, without years of study.

Sometimes that leap of faith is all you need to transform your life!

We arrived in Australia on Christmas Eve, excited, sunburnt and most of all tired! Customs was surprisingly hassle-free for once although, as always we had to giggle at the broad accents of the people working. I know that they deliberately chose the people with the broadest accents but honestly, next time you fly into Australia, see if anyone speaks like the rest of us.

Nan picked us up from the airport as planned and drove us down to the Coast, sopping just outside the house to let us out. We had a cigarette and waited five minutes before sneaking up the driveway and through the patio doors. We were lucky and my sister (K) was engrossed in a movie so I just said “Merry Christmas” and watched her freak out, it was really amazing and she was so happy. I hugged my mum before running upstairs to surprise my dad who had snuck off to bed before H and I practically passed out.

I woke early on Christmas morning and got up to watch telly, waiting until 6am to wake the family; I knew my other sister (L) would bring my niece (C) round nice and early and wanted to be up and showered and in the dress I had bought before she got there.

When they arrived H and I hid outside until they were all in and opening presents, then we knocked on the door to surprise them. The rest of the day followed in the same vein, there were 30 odd people around for the day and each one was surprised in turn, I still honestly don’t know how I lasted that long without telling them, normally I’m the kind of person that says “I have a secret, I can’t tell, wanna know what it is?” so this was a huge feat for me.

The last few days have been great; we’ve gone out a few nights, had family games nights and been able to catch up with everyone. Tomorrow we leave for Melbourne for a week and then back here for a couple of days before home. Our holiday is already half over and I’m really not sure where the time has gone.

I’m not a huge fan of Christmas, in fact the older I get the more annoyed with it I get.

My children will not be celebrating Christmas. Now before you get up in arms, hear me out. Christmas is a Christian bastardisation of a pagan tradition that goes back much further than the Christians. For the Babylonians it was the Feast of the Son of Isis, for the Romans, Northern Europeans and many others it was winter solstice, the time to celebrate that the days were finally getting longer and gaining blessing on the crops for the next year, and above an beyond that, I am not Christian, I am not any organised religion but what I do see is that it makes so much more sense to worship the sun, the earth, the air, the wind and the rain, rivers and lakes and the sea over any other form of god.

Christmas isn’t even about religion anymore, it’s a hallmark holiday, where people burn plastic and rack up giant credit card bills so that it can all be over in one hour with mountains of discarded (and expensive!) wrapping paper thrown to the bin.

Seems to me like it’s also used as emotional blackmail; if you’re not good Santa won’t give you any presents. Well face it, Santa doesn’t give you presents anyway, your parents and family do and isn’t it better to know that it came from them rather than some mythical being that feeds your sense of entitlement.

Not to mention that Santa scares me. Don’t you find it frightening that some fat man creeps down your chimney and into your house at night? It sounds to me more like the tale of a paedophile than of ‘good cheer’ and don’t get me started on what kind of man wants to sit in a shopping centre all day having little kids sit on his knee!

My husband agrees, our children (if we are blessed to have them) will be bought up knowing that there are many religions in the world with each celebrating many ways; and that while we celebrate the winter (or summer if we move back to Australia) solstice, with gifts and feasting, others will have Christmas or Hanukkah, or one of the many other festivals that take place around this time of year, and that’s ok.