Category: Mid-life blogger

Posted in Life, Mid-life blogger, Writing

Change part 2

Posted on by Sharon

I finished my last post by saying it wasn’t a biggie – all that change at once – but of course it was.

One of the biggest biggies is the decisions about what to take with you to your new place. You look in your cupboards and under the bed, and behind the laundry door and you think ‘what is all this stuff? Do I really need it?’

What do you take? What do you get rid of or give away/rehome/recycle? I have letters – handwritten ones – from my grandmothers dating back to the 1970s. I’ve carried them with me through the countless moves from NSW to Queensland to Tasmania to Victoria. Each time I pack up to move, I come across them and I get a little frisson of pleasure when I see them.

I have a basketball pennant from 1973 when I played in the Shoalhaven ABA Miniballer winter comp, my Year 12 highschool reference from 1983, and my acceptance letter from 1993 when I applied to university (plus my very first university student card).

I loved playing basketball
My first ever student card from 1993

I have airmail letters from my sister who lived in England for a year in 1992 (apparently I made a tape for them – I’d just started working in radio so probably thought I was very professional!). I have a newspaper clipping from 1994 when I interviewed Jeanne Little and copies of run sheets from the Kick Arts show I used to do on community radio in Launceston in the early 2000s. I have a letter from the Tasmanian Department of Tourism, Parks, Heritage and the Arts thanking me for agreeing to be part of the media team for the Olympic Art event in 2004 which I wouldn’t have remembered if I hadn’t kept the letter. I have letters and cards from former students that bring back floods of memories.

I could throw them all away and no one else would be any the wiser. And I came very close to doing that yesterday when I found them again. But they are documents of a life. Of my life.

When my children are going through my things after I die, I’m sure they’ll ask, ‘why did Mum keep this … and this … and this?’ But I hope they’ll read some of those letters and cards and documents and get a better sense of the life I’ve lived.

One thing in particular I came across yesterday was the script of a speech I gave when I was involved with Toastmasters in the early 2000s. I started with a story of a bird I’d set free when I was five years old and finished with the story of setting myself free many years later. It was a cage of “you can’t” – you can’t go to university, you can’t go to work, you can’t make it without me, you can’t live outside this cage.

But what had been called stubbornness in my youth developed into an ocean of resilience. I believe that the bird I set free when I was five made it … that its resilience and determination to survive allowed it to enjoy its freedom … just as my resilience and determination have allowed me to.

So while lots of change at once is a biggie, I have an ocean of resilience and determination to help me weather it.

And I have documents of my life to remind me of that.

Posted in Life, Mid-life blogger, Writing

Change

Posted on by Sharon

Change can be challenging. Not the small stuff like my Pop used to jiggle in his pocket, but the big stuff … location, house, lifestyle, job, hairstyle, friendship group … that kind of big stuff.

Doing one change at a time can be stressful. Have you ever been to the hairdresser and she suggests you have a fringe? The decision can be agonising and you’re under pressure to say yes or no and you don’t have anyone you know close by to advise you and you just do it and everyone says it looks great. And you realise that the decision was stressful but the outcome wasn’t. It’s just a hair cut. No biggie.

Doing more than one change at a time can be ultra stressful. Your hair starts to fall out, and your stomach is upset more often than not, and your legs ache and you snap yes please when your husband asks if you’d like a cup of tea rather than being polite about it, and your mind whirls at a million miles an hour all night or at least until 5:55am and then you fall into a deep sleep and don’t wake up until 7:30 and that means you’re late and the stress builds all over again and even more hair comes out and suddenly you don’t even want a cup of tea and you wonder what’s happening to you and you suddenly realise, three weeks later, that you’re stressed because there’s too much change happening all at once.

Please tell me it’s not just me.

We bought a house. We sold a house. We ended our lease on a place we’d lived in longer than we’d ever lived anywhere. I got a job. I completed a Cert IV in Real Estate Practice. I commuted three hours a day for a month. We packed. We moved. We unpacked*.

Change of job – in a whole new field (so much to learn).

Change of house – no stairs, a garden, loads more room (so much to arrange*).

Change of location – out of the city (so many places to explore).

Change of friendship group – no more U3A photography group, no more U3A reading group, no more baby cuddling, no more oldies at Tech Tip Tuesday (yet to be replaced).

Lots of change.

Lots of stress.

And then you search for something and find something else instead, and the something else you find is so interesting you sit on the bed in the spare room and read it and your mind goes back all those years and you understand afresh that it’s just a new job (and a new house, and a new location) and you’ve done it all before.

It’s just change. No biggie.

* thanks to Emma, but that’s another story