All a bit of bad timing, really.

Back in June I was all optimistic about my ability to blog, to record life and get out of my head.

That clearly hasn't happened, for a number of reasons, which can be summed up as "a bit of bad timing".

1. I've been studying 2 nights a week at TAFE. While this has done wonders for my confidence in my knowledge on sustainability in business, it's wreaked havoc on my social interactions
2. Gladesville is lovely, but so far away from those I hold near and dear. Visiting friends involves two trips on a form of public tranport, as we do not yet have a car that can be used for such activities. Score 1 for environmental sustainability, score 0 for social sustainability.
3. Work is... intense. There has been little time to pause and regroup since I started back in February. This has included managing a needlessly stressful project with a tight monthyl deadline. All of this combined with a construction site beside my office window means I come home tired and vague and unable to connect with anything.

Sometime back in January I realised I was suffering from emotional burnout:

"Being burned out means feeling empty, devoid of motivation, and beyond caring."

"Symptoms include low self-esteem, self-doubt, insecurity, compulsive worrying, self-induced stress and a general sense of helplessness. Together, these symptoms needlessly consume the individual’s emotional power at a rate that, many times, exceeds the psyche’s ability to replenish it."

"Emotional exhaustion is the experience of feeling drained of all energy or all used up. When people begin to experience emotional exhaustion they may try to reduce the emotional stress of working with other people by detaching from others. They commonly begin to maintain an emotional distance from others."

Which has compounded the above bad timing. Or perhaps the bad timing has compounded my seeming inability to recover from the burn-out. It's taking all my energy to deal with work and TAFE, with any remainder being put into home and relationship. Leaving no energy time and energy to do the things that will help heal the burnout (relaxed social gatherings with good friends, for instance)

The good news is that TAFE classes will soon be over, which means I can resume my regular Tuesday night sewing and chat circle. The weather has warmed up and there's more daylight in general which always improves my mood.

And I am giving myself permission to be a bit more relaxed at work. Sometimes my sanity and work life will imporve if I take a little time to contemplate life and reach out to friends.

A Rather Lovely Weekend

(which I am recording, so the subsequent back to work crash is somewhat dissipated).

My, what a lovely weekend, possibly the best I've had in MONTHS!

Friday night became unexpected date night. An impromptu "let's have a drink" fell through, leaving Geoff and I in the situation of not yet eating no dinner at 8pm and no groceries in the house. We went up to our (increasingly favouritest) Italian restaurant on the main street (Vespa on Victoria Road, it's lovely). We ate lovely home-made pasta. We shared a bottle of wine and a creme brulee. We canoodled in the corner.

I can't actually remember an evening together like that in a very long time, which I think is possibly the result of the stop-start long-distance thing we've had to put up with since November last year. Now he lives down here, and we're in the same house, the routines and sense of security means we're both happy and able to be more open and relaxed.

Saturday I acted on last weekend's decision to make sure I was out of the house by 1pm. I realised that sunlight, fresh air and walking makes me happy (surprise!). This was following an episode the previous weekend where we didn't leave the house until 3pm and I became a bit resentful.

There is a park at the end of our street that leads onto Glades Bay, with a lovely walk through the remnant bushland, mangroves and local creeks. I suspect this will become a favourite track, as it allows me to be in trees, smelling the smells of a Sydney coastal creek system, watching the local birds (mostly crows), and clambering around sandstone rocks. Must remember to take the camera next time. The weather was gorgeous - sunny, warm-ish for winter, not too windy. Perfectly pleasant for a walk around a bay.

Saturday night we headed into town for birthday drinks with Geoff's good mate at the Opera Bar. Deciding that a cocktail was my preferred drink of the evening I decided to try the Honey Amaretto Sour. YUM! Refreshing, as a mojito is, but balanced through the honey and amaretto sweetness. Could have guzzled them all evening, apart from the price...

Sunday we (again) headed into town for Yum Cha with DrNik and his Italian friend. LOTS of tasty tasty chinese dim sum and tea. Only downside is yum cha in Sydney seems to have become quite expensive, at around $30-$40 a head the last two places we've been to. This now makes it a nice-special-occasion option, rather than a random how-about-it? option. Oh well.

Again the weather was lovely, so Geoff and I then wandered though Pitt St mall nosing around for things we needed for the house. This lead to a side trip to Top Ryde shopping centre to order some chairs (so we don't always have to sit on the couch, and guests don't have to sit on the floor - bonus!), and the discovery that Top Ryde has a HUGE chinese grocery and and Aldi. Our level of enjoyment/excitement is perhaps sad [1], or perhaps and indication of the happy domesticity that's occurring. I'd like to think it's the second. Certainly the second option makes me smile.

After an emotionally choppy year (or two), it's nice to finally have some stability and to be happy-comfortable again. The ability to go for walks, enjoy date nights, and be excited by Chinese groceries stores is, to me, and indication that stuff is getting better. The effects of the emotional burn-out have not completely disappeared, but these are all good signs.

[1]One of the second "dates" that Geoff took me on, was a walk from his place in London to the local HUGE chinese grocery warehouse for the purchasing of ingredients for dinners in future. This was a great sign of compatibility, as a chinese grocery store is one of my favourite places to be.

Last week: Moving house

It was a long weekend, it poured down for most of it. We had belongings to be collected from 4 different places. It was the longest and dampest move I've ever done, but also amongst the least stressful and least emotionally draining.

New place is a two bedroom flat, which Geoff owns, in the old Sydney suburb of Gladesville.

It's on a ridge above the river, so there's a view of water as I walk home, and views of neighbouring ridges. It's reminded me how much I feel more settles and hopeful when I can see into the distance. I grew up with a view of the Blue Mountains, which mostly explains this desire to be under open skies.

Probably the word that best describes it is 'cosy'. It has enough space for two people, with not much surplus. But you don't feel crowded, probably because of the layout. The internal window between the ktichen nd the living room helps with this, giving a sense of a larger space without the emptiness that can come from open-plan

Storage! omg, the storage. I'm in heaven. There's a pantry(!), a linen press (!) and a garage (!!). I don't think I've had any of those since moving out of home in 2000, except at one place for 1.5 years. Geoff redesigned the kitchen in the flat when he first moved in, and so it also has many useful sized cupboards, and a decent amount of benchspace.

Finally, what surprised me the most about the move was the unpacking. Much of my stuff has been in storage for a year. I moved into a fully furnished place in London for my final 5 months there, and then into a friend's place in Sydney for the past 6 months, and hence didn't require furniture or most of my kitchen items, books, etc. Taking the kitchen things out of a box and placing into cupboards was quite cathartic, like greeting an old part of myself that I'd forgotten about.

Given the amount that I have moved in the last 11 years, my sense of being at home and grounded has always related to the familiar objects around me. Perhaps part of the reason I've been feeling so grey and lacklustre for all these months is because part of me was in a box in a storage unit, not being used.

ReBoot

Today I moved into a new flat, in a new-to-me part of Sydney, which strikes me as a good time to reboot this personal blog.

So, welcome back if you still have this on RSS, or welcome if you've been directed here from other places online.

This will be the place for "What I did this week" type posts, and possibly other ponderings and pontifications. Other personal online presence will be in the side bar.

It's good to be back, after a year of blogging silence.