Wedding Anniversary

Today is our 2nd anniversary. I seriously can’t believe that it has been 2 years since we said I Do! It only feels like yesterday that I was arguing with my mother about the type of wedding cake I wanted or what colour bridesmaid dresses we would have.

But then I think back about all the things that we have done since then and think, oh yeah, it really must have been two years ago!

Since getting married:

• Husband changed jobs (into a better one!)
• I have freelanced and gone back to being an employee
• I convinced hubby to let me keep a kitten I was fostering
• We rebuilt our deck and rendered our house
• We were adventurous (and that’s all I am saying about that!)
• We made new friends
•  Learnt how to make pies
• Watched a lot of our friends have babies
• Watched even more get married
• Went on a 3 week holiday around the United States
• Drove a Lamborghini
• Went snorkeling in Haiti
• Went zip-lining in Jamaica
• Got pregnant and found out we are having a boy!!
• And we have learnt that we need to be happy and not just always making other people happy.

That last one was the hardest for me. With me just trying to make myself happy first, as long as it hasn’t effected (affected?)other people in a negative way. It has caused drama within my family because they feel that I have abandoned them, rather than seeing it as me spreading my wings and living my own life.

Hubby coped much better with this than I did, as he was already pretty independent of his family due to how he was brought up. He taught me how to put me first. Just let in an airplane, when the oxygen masks fall down, you need to put your own on first before you can help others.

I guess I just need to find a balance. ‘Suffer’ through a few family functions and then spend the rest of my time doing what I want, but I don’t have much of that time left, not with the baby due late June!!

I am so grateful for the past 2 years, and for the 5 years of dating before that, and the 2 years of friendship before that. My husband is my best friend, my lover and my rock. I can’t wait to celebrate the rest of our lives together.

Always & Forever,

Mrs T xxx

Good is not normal

The other day I was listening to someone give another person advice about good and bad moments in that persons life. This lead me to thinking about times in my life that I had deemed ‘good’ or ‘bad’. But what about just normal? When is life just normal?

According to Google, ‘normal’ as an adjective means:

1. conforming to a standard; usual, typical, or expected.

“it’s quite normal for puppies to bolt their food”

synonyms:

usual, standard, typical, stock, common, ordinary, customary,conventional, habitual, accustomed, expected, wonted, everyday,regular, routine, day-to-day, daily, established, settled, set, fixed,traditional, quotidian, prevailing

Usual, typical, everyday, regular. These are all words that make a person feel a little less than enthusiastic or even hum-drum about themselves. But really, these words don’t mean that a persons life is boring or typical. What it means is that, at this particular point in a persons life, everything has been going along consistently without any bumps or disruptions. Again, this still doesn’t sound fun.

But think of it this way: If a person is currently running at the top of their game at work, in their love life, socially, whatever, and it has been this way for a while, sooner or later it will become normal. So when they go home at the end of the day, and they are talking to their partner or their weekly phone call to their mother, and get asked “How was your day?” and they say “It was fine, normal, just like yesterday.”, it isn’t that they are saying their day was boring, good, or bad. They are saying that it was just a typical day, but not actually rating it on a scale of 1 to 10.

It does work in the opposite direction as well. If someone has been living through a time in their life which has been difficult, if this goes for a prolonged period of time, it can just become ‘normal’. In either case, difficult or top of your game, this is a rut. You are doing the same thing over and over again.

So, lets assume that you are currently living a ‘normal’ life, regardless of whether you are at the top of your game or not. You are getting out of bed, eating breakfast, dealing with your day, and going to bed at the end of the day as best you can. Normal. Typical. Standard. Then a MOMENT happens. It doesn’t matter whether or not it is good or bad. What it does is upset the status quo. It is out of routine and will break the ‘normal’. Whether or not this is just a bump that effects the ‘normal’ temporarily or something that is completely life changing, it was just a moment in time.

Then I started thinking about the over-the-top reactions people can have to moments that others might perceive as minor. If I am currently living at the top of my game, my normal is GREAT, and then I get critiqued at work, creating a bad moment, is this moment exponentially worse for me because the gap between GREAT and bad is so big? Would being critiqued at work or by a family member or friend, be as bad if that was a state that had become my normal? But I think that is a question got another day.

All this existential thinking and attempting to write it down has really helped me to appreciate all the great authors and their eloquent vocabularies.

To summarise:

• Life is normal
• Moments happen during life that can upset your normal
• They are called a moment because they are temporary, you do not need to get stuck inside of them. Getting stuck in them is your choice.
• You can turn a moment into normal.
• Sometimes you need to make your own moments.

 

Always & Forever

Mrs T xxx

 

A new day, a new beginning

Tomorrow is the first day at my new job. I am equal parts nervous and excited. It’s a new beginning for me. I am reentering the corporate world after a 6 month break doing contracts and working for small businesses. I am very keen to get back to managing my own projects, having the support of a team and getting time to create high quality solutions, effectively,rather than semi quality solutions in high speed.

Tomorrow I get to decide who I am going to be. The people I am going to work with, they don’t know me. They don’t know my past, my issues or who I am. Do I go in with my very best foot forward, or do I go in as the person I mean to carry on as? It has taken me a long time to realise that I am a people pleaser. I want everyone to like me. And about 9 months ago (a few months before our wedding), I decided that I needed to change that. I needed to start making myself happy. So tomorrow I have decided to put a Good foot forward, rather than the very best, and to carry on that way. This way I am happy with myself and happy with the way I will be perceived.

This does not mean that I am anything other than a good person and employee. I am just saying that, I want people to like me, but I have also decided that I want to be good at my job, and not have my fear of not being liked, continue to get in the way of my career. I am too much of a social butterfly trying to make friends at work. I need to be more of myself, and try less to make friends, if that makes sense. People will either like me for who I am, or be impressed by my skills, ability and work ethic. I am female, and in I.T., I would like to think I can have both, but I have yet to come across a work situation where I have both been liked and respected. But that’s a blog for another time.

So, tomorrow, I have decided that I am going to walk in without a mask on. I am going to be myself from the very first day. A good worker, who knows what she is doing, who has 10 years of experience under her belt, who should be taken seriously and who is friendly and approachable.

I am going to be me, high heel wearing, coloured pen using, glasses wearing, web development loving, problem solving me. I am not going to pretend to be someone else, just to fit in any more. I will adapt to my team, and make an effort to fit with the team, but I won’t change who I am any more. I am happy with me, that’s all that matters.

Reading back over this, I feel like I have made a bit of a jumble over this, but I can’t think of a better way to explain this. In efforts to fit in, I have always tried too hard. Organising ping pong tournaments, Friday team lunches and more. I need to stop doing that. I would prefer to be respected because I am awesome at what I do (which I am), but I think it is diluted by my efforts to fit in, and those same efforts are what cause people not to respect me in my profession. That is going to change tomorrow. A new day, a new beginning.

Always & Forever
Mrs. T xx

Masks Off

The Diary tucked under the mattress of my bed.

I am still a newbie to this whole blogging thing but I am finding that I really enjoy it. As a teenager, I had a diary, which I wrote in every night, or most nights anyway. Now, in this technological modern age, I have upgraded my pen and notebook for my iPad and WordPress. The only difference is that my diary I could hide from my friends and family, this blog not so much. I guess I could publish privately and make everything undiscoverable, but really, where is the fun in that?

And really, what are the odds of someone I know, actually finding MY blog amongst the millions that are out there? I am sure it is slim to none, never the less, I am still nervous they will find it.

I want this to be a place where I can express myself about the people, places things and events around me, but I feel stifled by this fear of exposure, of being caught out by a loved one, where I have gone on a rampage about an argument we had or about an annoying habit they have, or a lovely moment we spent together. Having to explain exactly what I meant when I said “that” about them is a true fear of mine.

I have stuck my foot in my mouth plenty of times before to know that people don’t tend to like my logical, realistic, no nonsense point of view when it is aimed at them. But generally when you say something inappropriate, it’s a complete accident, and it has just come straight out of your mouth without any filtering. But when you write it, you have taken the time to think about what you are saying, to reread for typos, and ultimately click the Publish button. You wrote it on purpose.

So I guess what I am wondering is, how bad can it be? Is using pseudonyms for myself and my family members a good enough cover up? Would they recognise I was writing about them? Is it okay for me to write about them? Will they forgive me? They are a big part of my life, and if this was a diary I wouldn’t even think to worry about this because my diary is tucked safely under my bed where no one can find it. I want to be able to write about them, I want to vent, I want to work through issues (I have always found that writing someone a letter helps me to figure out what is actually upsetting me. It helps me to clarify my issues), I want to write about the perfect day we had together with as much detail as possible so that I can come back to a post months, years later and without much effort relive the day, smell the smells, feel the emotions, know that the sun was hot but the air cold, remember the old lady feeding the birds even thought she wasn’t a part of the story, just a person in the background.

Should I be letting the fear of getting caught and hurting them, stop me from being true and free to myself, to stop me from making observations, learning to understand better, and continuing on my path of self improvement? One day I will take the plunge, and I will just have to wait and see and deal with the repercussions then.

Always & Forever
Mrs T xx