Empty Nest

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My daughter and I have grown up together. I had her fairly young and learned about being mum at pretty much the same rate she learned about being her. It seems to have all worked out okay: I’m still her mum and she’s definitely 100% her 🙂

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Daughter-dearest left home after finishing her first uni degree, heading off to work overseas for a year, then travelling around South America and Europe for several months before heading back to home base. Having flexed her wings and found that they provided more than adequate lift, it wasn’t long before she moved into a share house with some friends.

At the time many of my friends asked whether our nest felt empty, whether I felt sad or even lonely with her gone again so soon. In short, the answer was a simple – but firm – no. I was both pleased and proud when she moved out of the family home to set up independently. I guess it’s a bit silly, but I had one of those ‘Yes!’ moments, a moment when I did a happy dance and thought, ‘Wow, she grew up – we made it – how good is that?!’

It was enormous fun to help her in small (and unobtrusive) ways: with the move, by buying some bits & pieces for her kitchen and by dropping off a banana loaf (or whatever baking I felt in the mood for) every now and then. Share houses being generally notoriously random in the pantry department, both she and her two housemates always received these deliveries with enthusiasm and rather raptor-like self-interest 😛

She moved house once or twice after that first share house – including going to the UK for a while, then to Melbourne – before settling back in Perth and putting down some more permanent roots with a partner. For the past few years they’ve been developing a small acreage about an hour out of the city, digging swales, planting trees, improving the soil, camping out occasionally and, finally, building a house.

This last element has been a stressful journey for them, with many building and bank complications along the way. For a variety of reasons they ended up moving in with us for a few months whilst the house was being completed. This meant that our house of two plus dog(1) & chickens(2), became a house of four plus dog(1), kittens(3), chickens(6) & quail(3) for most of 2015. Quite the little menagerie, really.

This weekend the move to their new house finally happened. They’d already spent a week or so unpacking all their furniture from storage and on Friday they hired a truck to move the many (many!) pot plants and assorted paraphernalia from our house to theirs. After a good night’s sleep (here) and some final packing, they loaded up the kittens (now almost full grown) and headed for home.

It was a great feeling to wave them goodbye, knowing that the next stage of their dream can finally start to take shape. There’ll be days of unpacking and settling in, followed by days of planting and building. But there’ll also be many evenings of simply sitting on their verandah and kicking back – just enjoying being at home in their own home at last.

As a mum, I couldn’t ask for more. But I must admit to a little lurch of my heart when daughter-dearest brought her adorable kittens in one by one to say goodbye to me. Our cat free, guest-free, quail and chicken-free life will seem just that little bit more ordinary and pale for a while. I’ll miss them – all of them… (well, perhaps not the very noisy chickens) … but I look forward to some ‘grandpets’ from SunChaser Ocicats in the not too distant future – and to joining them on their verandah from time to time to share some of that serenity.

Kittehs!

The kittehs in their temp daytime run at our place

Just get on with it

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I recently attended a workshop entitled social media for business at our local Business Incubator. Having attended a number of these sorts of workshops at various times, I didn’t anticipate anything amazing. But, in the spirit of always being open to the possibility of learning something new and (hopefully) useful, I decided to give it a shot. Besides which, it was free (as in funded by local government), fell during my week off and might provide an opportunity to connect with people in similar industries (either community development or writing).

As it turned out, the presentation was well structured, on-topic and useful. The presenter, Holly Walton, was interesting, spoke clearly and (later) emailed out copies of the presentation to all the participants, as promised. I was surprised and impressed – and walked away both better informed and with a much clearer social media strategy.

I also exchanged business cards with a few people and chatted to a lady who had just (one week earlier) self-published her first book. As it happens, this conversation was somewhat serendipitous as I’ve been toying with this idea myself. Earlier this year my manuscript was politely declined by a local publisher and, after licking that particular wound for a few months, it’s time to move on. A logical next move might be to submit the manuscript to other publishing houses, but the return time on the unsolicited manuscript option is lengthy and there’s no guarantee that the outcome will be any more positive. After some internal debate, I’ve concluded that I actually want a speedier resolution so that I can close the door on this project.

Is self-publishing the answer? Well, I do have a completed and edited manuscript ready to go and, whilst self-publishing wasn’t on my agenda when I started down this pathway, that was largely because the work involved in publication, marketing and self-promotion held little appeal. On the other hand, conventionally published authors actually receive relatively little support and promotion from their publishers these days – and most authors end up doing a good deal of self-promotion anyway, particularly for their first book.

The next obvious question is how do I find an appropriate  online publishing company? There are any number of options available and even more reviews and opinions on all of them. My newly self-published buddy told me that she’d signed up for a publishing deal with Xlibris. This included all the usual things: an ISBN, cover art and both paperback and eBook formats, listings on several book sites and a veritable plethora of other good stuff. She bought 300 physical copies outright and intends to market them herself in the hopes of optimising her return on investment. The entire experience appeared to have been a positive one for her, although my research shows that others may not have been as fortunate.

Even so, having laboured long and hard over my memoir and procrastinated mightily,  it’s probably time for me step up, establish a clear plan of action and timeline for publication and put some of my all-new social media skills to work to promote my book.

Tupper-rant

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Early this year I attended my first plastic-novelties party (as my family so charmingly calls them) in over a decade. At the time I was very interested to see how popular Tupperware still is – or is again. Whilst it certainly is both a reliable and attractive product, does that warrant the cost? Does Tupperware work hard enough to keep their market share?

Despite some ambivalence on these questions, I recently found myself inviting 20 or so friends over for a demonstration of the new summer range. We watched the young demonstrator prepare and bake a (delicious!) one-cup coconut and sultana slice, which cleverly showcased the new baking range and promoted it rather effectively. However, since I’d hosted the demo as a favour-for-a-friend, there was no pressure to purchase anything – and this may have added to the relaxed ambience. It turned into a pretty rowdy afternoon of chit-chit, tasty treats and amused reminiscing over past Tupper-experiences.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA few people had taken the opportunity to bring along damaged items for replacement, but found out that this is now all done independently by customers online. The process sounded pretty straight forward so, bright and early on Monday morning, I duly went online to arrange replacements lids for a couple of my storage containers. Both are fairly venerable and the lids have developed small cracks in the corners, an eventuality covered by the “famous lifetime guarantee”.

What actually transpired was an enormous amount of dissatisfaction, time-wasting and heightened levels of irritation. I ended up sufficiently irked to compose a letter about the new “improved” replacement policy on the lifetime guaranteed goods and to email it off – still in high dudgeon.

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After four days of no response, I did indeed turn to social media. I tried commenting on Facebook and also adding comments where other people, similarly irritated and dissatisfied, have voiced their opinions. Still no response.

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If anything, the company seems to be doing a great job of devaluing a brand that’s worked effectively for decades (despite increasing competition in the market place) and alienating long-term customers. This is, at best, shortsighted.

If you’re of a similar mind on this topic, you could trying adding your voice to those already out there by putting a message up on the visitor comments section Facebook page – and by scrolling down and LIKING the relevant comments from others.

It’s time for Tupperware to earn their market share, rather than assume it’s secure.

Hopes realised / dreams fulfilled

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I was up at the crack of dawn yesterday to do some baking for an event at our place. I test-baked an apple/hazelnut cake a couple of weeks ago, replacing hazelnut meal with macadamia meal – because that’s what I had in the pantry (doesn’t everyone?). It turned out pretty well (the texture and taste of the macadamia meal simply delicious) and I was pretty confident that it’d work out okay the second time around too… but, just in case, I prepared a simple vanilla/apple teacake to pop into the other oven as a back-up plan. It never hurts to be a bit over-prepared – and the guests usually eat every last crumb anyway 🙂

I find baking very relaxing – particularly when the house is quiet – and my mind soon drifted onto other things as I pottered away. I measured and mixed, stepping over and around the ever-hungry scrounge that is our puppy and thought about my daughter, fast asleep in the back bedroom. On Friday she received notification that the house that she and her partner have been working towards and dreaming of for so long is finally theirs. From land purchase though design, planning approvals and – most particularly – bank shenanigans, it’s been a long haul for them. The past week in particular had been fraught with anxiety as to whether the house would pass muster, resulting in the funds being released to the builders (by the ever-nit-picky bank). It did – and they both positively glowed as they gave us the news that night – and many spontaneous happy dances of bouncy joy and group hugs ensued. Such happiness all round.

After camping in two rooms at our place for the past 10 months, with a minimum of personal belongings to hand (the rest being in storage), they’re more than ready to move into their own space again. Unpacking all their belongings, sorting through them and rediscovering things they haven’t seen in months will be a bit like Christmas morning. They’ll be able to move their kittens into a whole house (instead of a small cat run), set up chook pens for their gaggle of poultry and plant out the vast array of trees and plants that have waiting in pots outside our front windows. It’s going to be great fun to watch the next stage of their Gallifrey dream take shape and to help out where we can.

Thinking about their unfolding adventure made me reflect on my own dreams and aspirations – and to contemplate where I’m up to with those. Just over a year ago I attended a workshop entitled How to Become a Must-Read Author. The rather ambitious title set the expectations of the attendees fairly high – and  Rachael didn’t disappoint. She entertained and inspired the crowd of writers and would-be entrepreneurs very effectively, telling her personal rags-to-riches story in an inclusive and forthright way, tossing in random humorous anecdotes to lighten things up and to retain audience attention. It was a very polished performance and went a long way to showing why she’s so successful. My friend Karen and I were both quite impressed and came away determined to move forward with our respective book projects, utilising Rachael’s write-a-book-in-12-weeks as incentive to do so.

Part of this 12-week process was to focus on our key objectives for the next couple of years. There are any number of ways to undertake this sort of exercise, but I found mind-mapping worked surprisingly well as a first stage. I wrote down all the things I could think of that I’d like to do, see, be or achieve – no matter how implausible. Then I grouped them into categories and looked at those in an attempt to see what bigger picture I was trying to paint for myself. From there I moved on to hunting down some pictures to represent the various categories and put together a vision board, printed it out and stuck it up in my study to act as motivation to achieve those vision board 2014objectives.

I’m not sure that having the print out on the back of my door helped in any real sense, since that sort of affirmation isn’t generally something that spurs me on. What was valuable, however, was the exercise of creating the vision board. It focused my attention on my wants and needs in a positive and proactive way. It made me actively consider how I could achieve the outcomes I wanted, rather than just dreaming about them.

So what have I achieved since then? It doesn’t feel like an awful lot, really – not until I stop and take an objective look at the past year. In reality, each of the key objectives on my two-year vision board has been addressed to some extent. From saving money to kitchen renovations, exercise to travel, hobbies to getting a puppy, completing my memoir to spending more time relaxing with people who matter to me – the current round of hopes and dreams is well on the way to being realised. Perhaps now that our house will be a little quieter, it’ll be time to set about a new round of mind-mapping and to come up with a whole new round of hopes and dreams to aim for.

Cracking the social code

by ⋅ Aside

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Remaining mentally active and maintaining strong and varied social contacts provides a surprising number of significant health benefits. It helps to reduce the risk of Alzheimers, promotes a longer lifespan and reduces stress, anxiety and depression. I’ve been thinking about this for a while – in fact ever since retirement later this year became an objective. How will I fill the many hours I will (hypothetically) have spare? I have any number of art, craft and writing projects I can finally fall upon like a starving wolf, but most of those can and will be done in isolation in my art shed or study. A little voice in my head tells me that I’ll need more than this, so a couple of months ago I decided I should probably start focusing on the issue now make life more fun for future-me.

I already do some volunteering and have no immediate desire to expand on that, but joining a couple of new social groups sounded plausible. Having decided this, the sociologist in me immediately started to think about the layers of complex verbal and non-verbal cues that would need to be decoded. Whilst many of these are resolved at a subconscious level, social encounters – particularly with new people – require a fair bit of interpretation. There’s always extra information that needs to be processed in any given situation in order to function effectively. This can be exhausting,  but in my experience it can also be stimulating, interesting – even amusing.

Of course, existing groups have their own dynamics, shared history, in-jokes and group behaviours and, as often as not, don’t actively reach out to include outsiders.  They are, after all, already formed and functional and very possibly don’t need to be outwardly focused. The more closely bonded the group, the more difficult it is to gain traction in it. A group of close friends who spend heaps of time together is generally a harder nut to crack than a social group that meets on a regular basis but doesn’t keep in regular contact between meetings – although this isn’t always the case. Either way, the need (of whatever sort and for what ever reason) is largely on the side of the person trying to join in – and it falls to them to do the running, to make the effort. This is obviously made easier if the group is at least somewhat accommodating, but the time and effort still needs to be put in by the wannabe participant.

So how does one go about cracking the code, finding the elusive cryptic clues or secret handshakes that will grease the social wheels sufficiently to promote easy social integration in new situations? In reality there is no one-size-fits-all solution to social interaction, no one thing that will simply make it happen. It takes determination, time, risk and the willingness to listen. Perhaps part of success in this also hinges on finding / choosing the right target audience.

After some thought, I hit on two options for my initial forays. The first of these was to join an aquarobics group at the local pool. This provides me with physical as well as mental stimulation, along with a fair bit of amusement a couple of times a week. My other selection, based on availability and ability,

was to join a knitting group with a friend. Settling in there has been slow going, but the assessing glances and pleasant (but distant) smiles became nods and smiles of recognition the second time round, then warm greetings the next time. We’re starting to fit in and I’ve started to remember some names – and some people seem to have remembered mine. I haven’t knitted much, but I do know quite a lot more about knitting projects that other people have completed (such as a wedding dress, jumpers, blankets, socks and knitted vegetables!) or have underway (just as varied). Common ground is slowly being uncovered – and I’m starting to look forward to the sessions – knitting, chatting, laughing, chocolate biscuits and all.

I wouldn’t go as far as to say mission accomplished, but I think I’m on my way.