Yes, effort IS required

Anyone who knows me well will be aware that I am definitely not the most creative girl in the room. I've been wanting to do something about this but I haven't had any ideas (haha, not surprising!). But then a few thoughts of mine came together quite opportunely.

Thought number one: I love music.
Not that I am the foremost aficionado of music, but I love what it can do to me. I love that it can change my mood completely in a matter of minutes and that it can affect my body even more than my mind. I love the energy and power that it can contain and how it seems to penetrate right to my heart and soul.

Thought number two: I have rarely tried and struggled for anything in my life.
I am one of those people that you probably love to hate ;) Without raising a sweat I received one of the top few percent of VCE scores in the state, I've never had a boyfriend break up with me, I had scouts come and request for me to join their netball team, have been offered jobs with no interview, never had to be careful about what I eat. You name anything I 'have' and I probably didn't work very hard to get it. But there's a whole list of things that I don't have/can't do/don't know. Most obviously because I have never put in much effort. So the aim is to change that.

So I've been playing around on the piano/keyboard all my life and I'm still pretty mediocre. Creativity and melody are shown to be related to the function of the right hemisphere of the brain, while I am clearly left brain dominant with my mathematical and verbal abilities. But considering that I can't fluently read music and have never had professional lessons, I think I'm not too bad (hopefully!). I've always wanted to improve my skills but knew it would take a lot of work, but 'ta da' the time has come.

I vividly remember when I was a teenager that Danny Nahlia (you may remember him from the religious vilification lawsuit controversy) prophesied that I would be a 'tuning fork' and on a different occasion he spoke over me as a 'model'. Since then I was fascinated with the Yamaha trinity-esque logo. While I am the first to admit that prophecy is often fabricated, plain wrong and definitely aligns with the Barnum Effect (the idea that people will readily accept vague and flattering statements about themselves), his words have always stuck in the back of my mind.

So the plan is to learn. To put in effort. To practice. To spend a whole lot of money and a whole lot of time to develop something beneficial to myself and hopefully to others. Fingers crossed the will is in me somewhere...

Crave You - Flight Facilities

Ah, this makes me wish I was chilling in a little laneway bar on a Saturday night with a glass of wine in my hand and the lights down low...

Expectations vs. Reality

I was watching (500) Days of Summer again today and thought this clip beautifully summed up a few of the inconsistencies between what we would like to happen in certain situations and what actually occurs.

Tom desires and also expects that he will receive popularity, acknowledgment and appreciation. More importantly he also craves affection and intimacy from Summer. Instead, after the clip ends, Tom is left alone and rejected.

The discrepancy between his expectations and reality surely exacerbated his disappointment. It would be ideal if we could change reality to align with our desires, but also quite unlikely. We could also change our outlook so that we expect nothing extraordinary, but then we will invite mediocrity. So how do we get a happy balance? Hope for greatness, but be resilient enough to not be crushed by disappointment? Should I just accept that life will not always measure up to the scenario that my imagination can fabricate? Possibly, yes... I say yes, only because I know that my mind can create any number of fairy tales that will never occur, or even if they did occur they would not bring the satisfaction that I had hoped for.

But our imagination is there for a reason. Our dreams and desires are fundamental to who we are as human beings. So I'm going to keep hoping and have faith that anything that can be manufactured by my imagination is possible. Whether or not the realisation of these things will bring the fulfillment that I desire is another matter altogether.

You mean concentrating on the things you want won't make you happy?

My psychology class is currently studying theories of development and today I came across Erik Erikson's (the parents score ten points for originality) theory of psychosocial development. He proposed that there are eight different age related stages of development and in each stage there is a particular crisis that needs to be resolved.

I thought the most relevant ones were:
12-18 years - identity vs. identity confusion
18-25 years - intimacy vs. isolation
25-65 years - generativity vs. stagnation
65+ years - integrity vs. despair

Essentially he is saying that to have healthy development you need to know who you are, be able to form trusting and loving relationships, then work towards the greater good for your family or others and hopefully come to the end of your life with a feeling of peace that your life was well lived.

The other end of the spectrum is to not know who you are, form shallow and superficial relationships, become bored and too concerned with your own needs, lack personal growth and reach the end of your life with bitter feelings of hopelessness and regret regarding lost opportunities.

The bad news is that Erikson believed if you don't resolve the earlier crises properly then you'll have difficulty with every stage that follows. The good news is that he believed any problems with development could be resolved retroactively.

I find his theory so interesting because I (and I'm sure you) have a strong desire to never get to the age of 80 and look back on life with dissatisfaction. I love that he actually proposes some clear means to help achieve that goal. In particular, it's a refreshing idea that perpetually worrying about your own needs will lead to regret rather than fulfillment.
So lets see if I can aim for that, shall we.

What's the trouble with Paris?

To my delight, my school generally has very well behaved students. But this is mainly achieved through tough, consistent punishment and high expectations. So not surprisingly on the Attitudes to School survey, our school rates quite poorly in the student wellbeing category. To combat this, the school has recently introduced a token monthly home group to cover our pastoral care quota for the year. This week's discussion is based around 'working tough', essentially to tell students that even if the work is boring, difficult or purposeless, you just need to sit down and do it. Good advice? Yes. Palatable advice? No.

I was thinking about how to make the concept more attractive and my thoughts were immediately drawn to Mark Sayers' The Trouble with Paris (Paris Hilton that is, seeing that she epitomises the fake, celebrity lifestyle that middle class suburbanites tend to dream about). Here's a quick extract from his website to describe the content of his book and video (which is amazing, by the way).

Doesn't everyone want the good life these days? Our shopping mall world offers us a never-ending array of pleasures to explore. Consumerism promises us a vision of heaven on earth - a reality that's hyper-real. We've all experienced hyperreality: a candy so 'grape-ey' it doesn't taste like grapes any more; a model's photo so manipulated that it doesn't even look like her; a theme park version of life that tells us we can have something better than the real thing. But what if this reality is not all that it's cracked up to be? Admit it, we've been ripped off by our culture and its version of reality that leaves us lonely, bored, and trapped. But what's the alternative?

So the question for my students is: should life always be fun, exciting and pain free? Where does, boredom, death, hard work and washing the dishes fit into life? Do we just run from one exciting experience to the next and everything in between is mundane and void of meaning?

If any of those questions resonate with you, all I can say is, get the video (from me), watch and enjoy. It will be music to your ears.

So in honour of these things, I thought a few photos of my friends at a recent wedding would be fitting. The fleeting, glamorous moments of life that look amazing from the outside, give us sweet memories to cherish, but disappear shortly after with only veiled memories to prove they ever existed.

Ah, the serenity!

I've been down at the beach house with some friends for a few days. Life is pretty sweet :) I have a free holiday house for the whole family to use and ample school holidays to go down there and enjoy.

Here's a pic of part of the top floor lounge room.

As you can see, it's a highly stressful environment! I'm the type of person that usually hates sitting still, but there's something about the serenity (can I use this word now without sounding bogan?) of Venus Bay that forces you to stop and relax. Here's a pic of my beach.


Even though it's a 10 minute walk from our house to the beach, I'm sure you can understand why I call it my beach. Even on New Year's Day, which I imagine is one of the busiest times of the year, we could easily find a giant patch of sand to call our own.

So when it's not swimming weather (which for me is about 90% of the year), I pretty much stick to walking the beach or the bush tracks. I didn't waste all of my time though. I managed to read a few of the German philosopher Immanuel Kant's essays, most notably An answer to the question: What is Enlightenment?.
Here is an interesting excerpt from one of his essays:

The second source of man's dissatisfaction with the order of nature is the shortness of life. It is true that anyone who continues to wish that life might last longer than it actually does must have little appreciation of it's value, for to prolong it would merely add to the length of a drama made up of endless struggles with adversity. Nevertheless, we may excuse those of childish judgment who fear death but have no love of life, and who find it hard to complete each day of their existence with some degree of contentment, yet can never have days enough in which to repeat this painful experience.

Are the simple things in life the best?

Tell me... How can a person plan a life of happiness, when it's often the simple and unexpected parts of life that prove the most satisfying?

Today was lovely. I went to the travel agent and booked flights from Los Angeles to New York. Aside from the thought of an excruciating 5 hour stopover at LAX, it's getting me somewhat excited and motivated to investigate a few hotels.

The comedy festival is on once again and of course Paul and I have been waiting patiently all year to go and see Andrew McClelland's new show. (I just had to put a picture of the blackboard. Maybe it is the teacher in me, but damn, isn't that the most beautiful board you've ever seen?!)

Although I have loyally watched each of Andrew's shows over the last 4 years, I also crave anything that is new. Regrettably, we didn't get around to seeing any new comedy acts tonight but we did have a few minutes to waste before the show began. How better to burn some time than by having a drink at a bar that I had been wanting to explore for ages. Unfortunately, the most exciting part of the bar turned out to be a leadlight glass box that was attached to the roof. Who would have thought that chicken wire could turn out to be a design feature?


So we headed off to see the Somewhat Accurate History of the Fall of Roman Empire. True to form, Andrew combined his storytelling skills and interesting facts into a skit, which had us either listening intently or laughing hysterically. When I look back over the last few years I think Andrew has definitely found his niche. Last's year's show was about time travel, the one before about the history of the 'gentleman' and the year before about cults. And surprise, surprise he turns out to be a history teacher. If he was my teacher maybe I would have been able to pay attention long enough that the lessons would have actually stayed in my memory!

But what surprised me the most is that the best part of my day didn't include any of that. When we exited the theatre it was uncharacteristically pouring with rain. My happiest moment was just snuggling under the umbrella with Paul, chatting and walking the streets to get back to our car. Haven't I heard it said before that the simple things in life are often the best? Or was it the best things in life are free? Or was it some other advertising line, song lyric or anonymous quote? Either way, I'm sure there's something profound I can learn from this...