Sometimes I like to imagine that it is the end of the world. I know that that sounds really fucked up, but it's not like I'm thinking about it because I want it to happen, I just like to imagine what I would do if I knew that the end was nigh. Believe it or not, I firmly feel that this type of cataclysmic thinking is actually quite good for putting things into perspective, because when you really whittle things down to their most finite reality, it's amazing the clarity that can be gleaned from it. 
For example, let's just say that some worldwide apocalyptic event was about to occur, something swift, close and something that no-one had any control over - it's the end of the world and it's completely unstoppable. What would you chose to do with your final hours? Who would you chose to spend your final moments with? Would you run around like a lunatic freaking out or would you just accept the hand that fate has dealt you and go out peacefully? Would you loot and pillage your final moments away like some crazed viking raider or would you just chill with your friends and family? 
For me it is the latter, but I am pretty sure that thousands would decide to go all 'opportunist' seizing a final moment of 'whatever goes' and attempting to go out in a blaze of glory. I think that what you would prefer to be doing in those last moments, really puts your real life into perspective. It places your true values and genuine nature into perspective, and makes it very easy to see what you have been living for up to this point.
It is the people that have nothing to lose that will always become the most dangerous, it is the people that haven't accepted their own mortality that will always struggle the most and it is the people that realize that this is all just fleeting and that nothing is forever that will go peacefully. Personally, I like to imagine that my final hours will be spent with my loved ones, sharing a last good meal and a few drinks, holding onto each other and reminiscing about all of the wonderful things that we have been so lucky to have had together. Because when it all boils down, all we really have is each other, everything else is just filler and fluff, it's meaningless - it's just a way to pass the time. 
​It's the moments, the memories, the relationships that we have forged over our blood, sweat and tears that are going to take centre stage for most of us in those final hours. And this is why it is so cathartic to imagine that it is the end of the world, because those amazing relationships shouldn't have to wait for it to be the end of the world for your nearest and dearest to take centre stage. They should be the most important things every damn day and if they aren't, well, you're doing it wrong. I say, make the most of every single minute, every single moment that you can and never ever miss the chance to let someone you love know how much they mean to you.
The end of the world may never happen, but your place in it will end one day, that much is certain, so don't fill your life and time with too much fluff and crap, focus on your meaningful relationships and just take it one beautiful day at a time. Yeah, I said beautiful day, because when you think that you may not have many of them left they all seem pretty beautiful don't they? 
So put on a smile and enjoy yourself, after all, it's not like it's the end of the world or anything!

The staff retreat turned out to be a lovely and cathartic experience, loads of time to reflect and meditate, I actually found the entire thing quite zen and appreciated the opportunity to escape the daily grind. I have been noticing that I am on a bit of spiritual retreat in general at the moment. I find that I become quite easily overwhelmed in social situations lately, and have been suffering from a type of syndrome that I like to call "fish out of water." 
This does happen to me from time to time, I feel the need to be alone and find being around people virtually intolerable. This can come off badly, so it is always best for me to just retreat and seek some alone time. When I am in these types of modes, I find myself extremely intolerant to the plight of others, their complaints appear whiny and mostly self indulgent to me, so I can be curt and extremely insensitive without meaning to be. I also find that small talk has the effect of nails on a chalkboard when I get like this and I generally find myself tuning out and seeking the nearest exit. In short, I am not good to be around, and I am old enough to recognize the need for retreat in my own self now, so I know that there is no point in making myself do anything social until the moment passes. 
Perhaps it is the plight of all introverts to feel like this, but to be honest I find these feelings of anti-socialism perplexing and uncomfortable myself, is it normal to not to want to be around anyone for long periods? A week with no phone, no visitors and no human interaction with anyone apart from my immediate family sounds like heaven to me right now, is it wrong to feel this way? I do feel guilty when I get in one of these moods, but there is honestly nothing that I can do to stop it from happening, it just comes out of nowhere and if I don't heed the call to retreat I continue to get worse and worse and I just become a complete and utter bitch. Perhaps it has nothing to do with being an introvert and everything to do with being slightly unhinged, but it is what it is, and I can do nothing about it but surrender, own it and retreat to a quiet corner until I come good again... which I know I will do....eventually. 

I have to go away tomorrow for a staff event and training session, this event - or 'retreat' as work likes to call it,  only happens once every two years but requires the logistical co-ordination of a well planned army attack from my end in order for me to go. It is times like this that I realise that my life has so much predictability and routine that I can literally give Craig a blow by blow detailed list of what he needs to do in my absence to ensure that everything continues to run like clock work in my absence. 
Considering that he only needs to organise one child, a rather senile old cat and an overweight guinea pig in my absence, which I know that he is more than capable of doing, I still feel obliged to leave him a list as long as my arm.
In the mornings, Craig generally only has to concern himself with himself, and no-one else, which is really fair enough when you consider that he is generally already gone when I rise at 6am. He doesn't need to think about things like school drop offs, uniforms and lunch boxes, he doesn't need to ask "have you brushed your teeth yet?" fourteen times in half an hour or wonder whether the cat has any water in her bowl, I do all of that stuff because my starting time is much later than his. 
Now I don't want to say that he is clueless, because he is certainly not, but the devil is in the details and he is not great at remembering all of the little things that need to occur to ensure that it is smooth sailing. Sending Seth to school with unbrushed teeth is hardly the end of the world, but no lunch and a pissed off incontinent cat can be mighty inconvenient. 
I know that I should just relinquish all control and let him do whatever, but the thought of coming home to a shit-storm after retreat doesn't exactly spin my tyres, so nah, he's getting a list whether he wants one or not! 
God I look forward to not being such a routine driven slag in my old age, what adventures I will have when I am no longer a slave to obligation and the clock, makes me think of a movie that I saw recently. 

Remember when you were a kid and you watched the first horror movie that scared you shitless? Last night Seth watched a horror-comedy with Craig and I, yes, I said horror- comedy, and it was rated M, not MA or R, which he is usually okay with. It was called The Final Girls and was a spoof of the 80's slasher/horror genre. It had the formula down to the letter, a dude in a mask (hand carved Tiki mask mind you- remember this was a comedy) toting a machete, a bunch of horny teens, a cabin in the woods and a killer that only wants to slay people that are going to have sex, or that show their boobs. Boom, every 80's slasher in a nut shell right there. 
Well it turns out that even the comedy, which by the way was highly entertaining, wasn't enough to get the concept of a lunatic with a penchant for killing out of Seth's head and it totally freaked him out. I would imagine that living out here in the pines was part of the problem to be honest, because his bedroom looks out onto the pines behind our house, so that's not terribly comforting when you have already allowed your over-active imagine to conjure up some psycho lurking in the bushes with a sharp implement and murderous intent. I think that he finally succumbed to sleep around 2am, poor bugger, he looks pretty ruined today. I seriously over-estimated his tolerance on that one, bad parenting on my part there, may need to knock it back to PG for a while again I think. 
I recall the first horror that had me crapping my dacks back in the day. It was some werewolf movie, I can't even recall the name of it, and this dad got attacked by a werewolf and then turned into a werewolf himself on the next full moon. Then he went on a rampage, slaughtered his family, and chased his son who was around ten years old relentlessly through the forest for most of the movie. It absolutely freaked me out, I think I was about 11 when I saw it and I could not sleep that night at all. The image of that werewolf with a bloodied up mouth was burned into my mind and was not going to let me rest, it was awful, and I recall torturing my parents with my scared shitless antics all night long too. 
In my early teens, every slumber party in town was all about horror movies. Kids were just dying to watch Nightmare on Elm Street, well before they could handle the content  mind you. I know for a fact that old Freddy Kruger was responsible for a lot of sleepless slumber parties back in the day, but oddly enough, that film never freaked me out at all. I was around 14 or 15 when I do remember seeing a movie that did have me holding a pillow up to my face again, for the first time in a while. It was the first graphic R rated horror that I had ever encountered and even though I have re-watched it a couple of times since then, it still does have some creepy-arse gross shit going on, even by today standards. It's a horror classic for sure, but it's still definitely not for those with a weak constitution, those Cenobites are some freaky demons for sure. 

Went to Geelong on the holidays to stay with Zoe and Lachlainn for a couple of days. Staying over at your kid's place is one of the weirdest things that you will ever do as a parent. For me it was made even weirder by the shattering and somewhat compounding reality that Zoe has left our home for good now, that she is certainly not a 'kid' in any way, shape or form anymore and that she doesn't need me as much as she used to. Ouch....it hurts. 
There is no doubt that she will always be my baby, but after observing her in an environment that she has eked out and shaped for herself, I was ever so slightly unnerved. It is difficult to know whether to puff out your chest that you have done such an awesome job of parenting that your child can claim their independence easily, or whether to feel utterly miserable that they can manage so well without you.
To be honest, I'm still not 100% settled with her absence from our everyday lives. Sure we get together at least once a fortnight for a good catch up, but I know that those visits will get fewer and further apart as time goes by, because these things just happen. Also, not having my number one confident around to vent to all of the time does have its challenges. I am finding that the most hideously selfish parts of myself are the parts that are struggling the most to let go of her completely. 
On the positive side, I now have somewhere to go anytime that I want to escape, a place to go where I know that I will always be welcomed and a place to rest my head after long contemplative strolls along the beach, and that is a very good thing indeed; but it will never be a substitute for having her around everyday. 
I have never been good at letting the things that I love dearly in this world leave me, and I doubt that I will ever really get over my daughter leaving home, but at least I can glean some comfort in the knowledge that she is doing just fine without me, no matter how much that reality cuts me to the bone.
Curses on my 'independence/ tough-love' parenting techniques, what a fool I have been! If only I had made her utterly hopeless and scared of the world I would still have her right now! Ahhh yes, spoken like a true wicked witch, see I told you the selfish parts of me were going to ugly places. Oh well, never mind, I've blown it really, because it is far too late to put her in a tower and hide her away from the world now I suppose, but I'd be lying if I said that the thought hasn't crossed my mind. 

I have become a bit obsessed with The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows by John Koenig. It is a deeply ponderous web series that defines newly invented words for strangely powerful emotions. New episodes are published every week on YouTube, and I just can't stop watching them. If you haven't seen these short and beautiful clips yet, you should, they are visually pleasing and are also great for extending your vocabulary.
I stumbled upon these clips when I was looking up the meaning of the word sonder, it was in a poem that I had read and I wasn't familiar with it. By definition it means - the realization that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own. Turns out that even though I had never used the word before, I had certainly been sonder many, many times, but it was John Koenig's clip that really brought it home for me. 
I can recall spending a lot of time as a child looking at other people's faces as they passed by in other cars on the highway or walked passed a window that I was looking out of and wondering about what they were thinking about, or where they might be going or how they liked to spend their free time. It would be fair to say that I have always been fascinated by the lives of others.
Seth and I have a game that we like to play when we are sitting at a cafe or anywhere that we can observe passers by. My sister introduced this game to us years ago, and it has become a bit a guilty obsession that we regularly like to indulge in. We choose a random person off the street and try to determine what it is that they do for a living, and also what they do for a hobby or when no-one else is looking. We base our assumptions on the way they look, how they dress, objects they may have on their person and their body language.
This is a great game to play with kids, highly imaginative and fantastic for oral language and observational skills, and as long as your child hasn't got a foghorn of a voice when they are making their observations it can be a lot of hilarious fun. Seth has been virtually rolling on the ground with laughter about some of our observations, like the burly bricklayer we spotted that we decided had unfulfilled desires to dance in the ballet and goes home every evening to pull his hair into a neat bun, put on a tutu and some opera music, before pirouetting around his lounge room for hours on end, or the lady that vacuums at Big W who is really just using that as a cover for her real job as a Colombian drug-lord and is secretly addicted to chocolate royal biscuits. 
It is a fascinating exercise, pondering the lives of others, but also understanding that we are all wired so uniquely and that we all have a tale of our own to tell that is marvelously intricate and deeply profound. Now that's sonder thinking if ever there was, I'm adding that newly created word to my vocab, I like it a lot. 

I always seem to jam pack my holidays with busy things, which is fabulous because I get to spend time with a huge array of amazing people, but it does also mean that I generally find myself stalking around at all kinds of ungodly hours trying to sate my need for movies and TV series, of which I have an abundance of to watch and catch up on. 
It is nothing for me to be starting a film at midnight when I know that I don't have to succumb to the 6am alarm clock, which does take it's toll after a couple of weeks when I am running around like a mad thing during the daylight hours as well. Don't get me wrong, I am most certainly not complaining in any way here, I actually love this lifestyle and could adopt these days of long drunken lunches and midnight specials as a way of life permanently; if only I could find a profession that would accommodate that perpetually. 
Had a couple of friends out to Enfield today, one of whom cooked some kick arse gnocchi that she made from scratch (god bless her soul) and the other supplied a delicious gluten free apple crumble which topped off the afternoon perfectly - seriously what more could a girl ask for? Good friends that are willing to make and bring their own food, good wine (which I managed to drink too much of - can you tell?), a full night of viewing ahead of me and still another fours days away from work, seriously, life just doesn't get any better than this.
It is the sweet sweet days like these, that I realise that I have a mighty fine life, and even if it's just for a couple of weeks at a time, I get to live a life that I would love to have every damn day - and those small glimpses are enough to get me through all of the other shitty days and to keep me smiling - oh hang on, I'm rambling now....that may be all of the wine that I had over lunch talking now..... oh well, never mind, I'm gonna enjoy the fuzzy feel goods for now while they last....tomorrow I may feel differently. 

Had a lovely Chinese lunch with the folks and then took Seth to the Grampians because he really wanted to climb The Pinnacle. I have done the climb a few times already, but it had been years since I'd attempted the climb all the way to the summit, so I knew that I was in for a challenge before we even arrived. Did we complete the climb? Of course we bloody well did. Did I find it difficult? Of course I bloody well did! I can't remember the last time that I voluntarily hiked for 4 straight hours, most of which was on an incline and on dodgy rocky surfaces, so yeah, it is fair to say that it was a challenge, but we did it! We even took a selfie of ourselves to prove to the world that we did do it, mostly because I figured that no-one would believe that I had actually done it if I didn't have photographic evidence to prove that it really had happened. 
​Anyway, when I woke up the next morning, my body was telling me no - 'no, don't do that again in a hurry' it screamed from every crevice of my flabby body. How the hell did my back, chest and shoulders get so sore anyway? It's not like I slithered up on my gut like snake or anything, but for some reason the strangest parts of me ached. Totally weird to be honest, but I was obviously using my upper body more than I realised I was, and I am 100% sure that when I did the climb about a decade ago that I wasn't sore in any of those places the next day, proving again that my body is rapidly turning to shit around me.  
However, there was no time to sook it up, because I was out and hitting the road again, this time I was off to Bendigo to spend the weekend with Helen. We went to see the new Marilyn Monroe exhibition that is currently on at The Bendigo Art Gallery, and I have to say that although I was never a huge Marilyn fan, I was thoroughly impressed by the exhibition. A huge array of personal items, clothing, images and information is on display, which really helped me to understand who Marilyn Monroe was, not just as an icon, but also as a person. I swear that she was utterly incapable of taking a bad photograph, and considering she was around in the days before Photoshop, she looks bloody incredible in every single shot. She truly was gobsmackingly gorgeous, and I can certainly see why men tripped over their own tongues and went gaga in her presence, because there is no denying it, she was insanely hot and her look is the epitome of timeless beauty. The exhibit is worth going to just to see her incredible wardrobe alone, what style! 
There was a photo that was on display that was apparently Marilyn's favourite photograph of herself, and after having a good look at it, it actually made me feel really sad. There is clearly a deep sadness in her eyes and some unspoken sorrow in her expression that cannot be missed; how telling that she favoured that photo of herself the most. Like so many other icons that went before and after her time, she too was drowning right in front of the entire world. Seen on every billboard and plastered in the public's eye, and yet so very lost and secretly damaged. Marilyn's short life and legacy is a tragic tale for sure, and one that we keep on seeing time and time again. Unfortunately, we keep witnessing these incredibly talented and influential people succumb to the pressures that the limelight thrusts upon them, and it is truly an awfully sad thing to witness.