life – Musings from the cold

Marathon experience

Posted on October 25, 2022 by Sharon

I planned but I didn’t prepare. And that had consequences for later.

I’d arrived in Berlin on Saturday afternoon, and on Sunday morning it was time for the Marathon.

The Berlin Marathon is a big event. Huge. So big that the accommodation reserved for us was about an hour out of the city by train, all other city accommodation having been snapped up months earlier. Much of the public transport was disrupted on Sunday morning, especially closer to the centre of the city and even the hop on-hop off bus wasn’t running. Ironic really.

I was leaving by train the following weekend and wanted to make sure I knew how to get to the Berlin Hauptbanhoff without the issues I’d faced the previous day. So I thought I’d have a practice run. On Sunday morning. While the marathon was on and public transport was disrupted.

No tram for me today – train all the way. The train station was a mere 500m from the hotel, it was a crisp, clear morning and a walk in the fresh air would help blow away some of the remaining jet lag. One train from Spindlersfeld Station to Schoneweide (2 stops – the bonus being how lovely that word is to say), and then another train (10 stops) to the main station. Easy.

I bought my ticket, marvelled at the lack of ticket barriers, and enjoyed the train ride(s). I saw runners on the marathon route as the train drew closer to the main station and so once there and familiarised with the route and the station, I followed the noise, over the Spree River, through the Spreebogenpark, to Otto-von-Bismarck-Allee. Crowds of people lined the street, cheering on the runners. They had all kinds of noise-makers – one woman was banging two saucepan lids together – and they weren’t afraid to use them. I walked in the same direction as the runners and soon came across the 7km mark.

Crowds lining the streets to cheer on the runners

I kept walking, not at all sure where I was going or what I was doing, but it seemed like the right thing to do. I came across the 8km mark. I was a bit like Forrest Gump at this stage, although with less facial hair, and just kept walking.

More runners than cheerers at this point

Near the 9km mark there was a man standing on the side of the street holding a punching bag out in front of him. On the punching bag was a photo of Vladimir Putin and an invitation to punch it. Many runners used a little bit of their precious energy to give it a good wallop.

9kms and still going strong – the runners that is. Me, not so much.

I wonder if the smiling man had seen the sign on the window.

Over the past year, various members of the family have been involved in a weekly photography challenge. We catch up on Sunday evenings to chat about the photos and how our week has been. 7:30 on Sunday evening in Australia translated to 10:30 on Sunday morning in Berlin, so as 10:30 approached I searched for a cafe. I found one – the Röststätte, on Ackerstraße – which just so happened to be on the other side of the road.

Yes, that meant crossing the road. Yes, crossing the road down which hundreds of runners were running. Crossing in front of them. Cutting through them to reach the other side. I had seen a number of people step nimbly across the road, not getting in anyone’s way, so knew it could be done. I started out confidently, timing my not-so-nimble steps with what I thought was a gap in the group of runners. It turned out not to be a gap, and so I got half way across the road and stopped. They ran around me like I was a boulder in a stream. One man kindly told me I was going the wrong way, but I could tell already that a marathon wasn’t for me (sorry Jen).

I eventually made it across – hoping I hadn’t cut time off someone’s personal best in doing so – and found a quiet corner in the cafe.

After our catch up, I kept walking until I came across the U Rosenthaler Platz (an underground train station). I slowly made my way down the steps to the platform, got off at Brandenburger Tor, made my way slowly up the steps to the street, and headed towards The Brandenburg Gate – which was very close to the finish line.

The Brandenburg Gate – only a km or so to go at this point

When Neil Diamond’s Sweet Caroline played over the loudspeakers the whole crowd, including many runners, joined in. It lifted their spirits in a way that few other songs did and seemed to give many an extra boost of energy as they drew close to the finish line.

By the time I got back to the hotel later that afternoon, my right knee, which is problematic at the best of times, my feet and my calves all let me know, quite forcefully, that I had overdone it.

I walked over 12kms that Sunday – nothing like a marathon, but it was a distance I had not adequately prepared for.

I had also, I realised with a big dose of ‘I can’t do this’, not adequately prepared for the reality of meeting a group of strangers, travelling by bus with them to a different country, and then spending 5 days with them at a conference. WhatsApp messages had started coming through earlier in the day – of people’s arrival times in Berlin, invitations to meet up for a walk/drinks/dinner, information on COVID testing centres. Dinner was arranged for 7pm for those staying at the hotel, and in a fit of bravery (of course you can do it Sharon!) I headed for the meeting place in the lobby.

As I headed towards the group I noticed they were all men. At that point my bravery jumped ship and I veered off into the hotel restaurant to have dinner on my own.

What had I done? Why had I said yes to this when I so easily could have ignored that particular email? Two years ago I’d been all for stepping out of my comfort zone, but now, right at this minute when I was on the cusp of stepping out, I wasn’t so sure. In fact I was positively sure that stepping out was something I definitely could not do.

It wasn’t only the knee, calf and foot pain that kept me awake that night.

Life, Travel

The beginning experience

Posted on October 24, 2022 by Sharon

In my previous blog post, I wrote:

I’m heading for what I hope will be an extraordinary experience, with people from around the world and from a range of different fields.

I’m ready to do something that challenges me … to be brave!

I might even blog about it.

I did not blog about it.

It’s now a month later. I’m home, my bags are unpacked, my washing is drying, and the fridge is heavy with new magnets. The plane touched down at 10:50 last night, we were home by 12:14, I was asleep by 1:43 and awake at 7:04 this morning. It’s now after 5 in the afternoon and I can feel the drowsiness washing over me. To stave it off for a few more hours I decide to write.

I was systematic and thorough in my planning, choosing wisely when buying new tops, underwear, shoes; planning which countries/cities/towns to visit, where to stay, and how to get from one place to another. I chose the seats for each flight carefully with attention to where the toilets were and where young babies were more likely to be (close to one, avoiding the other). I did a practice pack two days before to ensure my backpack did not go beyond the 7kg limit (my suitcase was never going to get anywhere near the 30kg limit). I packed slowly, methodically, over a number of days. I didn’t make decisions based on rush or the ‘oh my goodness I’m going in an hour, have I packed …?’ panic.

6:30 Friday 23 September

Time to go. Only one, slightly anxious ‘I-have-to-repack-my-bag’ moment, an hour or so beforehand. The bags stood ready. Little anxiety, less fuss, no stress. It felt easy to pick up the bags, load them into the car, and head out.

Smooth …

It was a theme that continued through the drive to the airport. Calm, no stress … smooth.

Smooth packing.

Smooth trip to the airport.

Smooth passage through check-in, bag drop, security and passport control, boarding.

Bumpy flight.

I was in the back row, no one in the middle seat next to me so I could stretch out a bit. The 13 hour flight didn’t even feel that long.

Doha – smooth transition: off one plane (6am local time), time for a cuppa, onto the next (much shorter) flight.

Berlin. I’d been travelling for over 24 hours by this stage. It had been amazingly smooth. Not that anything major happened at this point, but things began to feel slightly less smooth.

There was a long, long wait for the luggage to arrive – time I spent wisely, hooked up to the airport WiFi, planning how to get to the hotel by train. Once my bag had arrived, I headed for the train station, remembering to buy a ticket at the top of the stairs. I clunked my bag down the stairs to the platform, boarded the train when it arrived, went to hook up to the train’s WiFi only to discover the train didn’t have WiFi.

I remembered that the first step in the journey was to get off at the Terminal 5 station. I imagined that the Terminal 5 station would be somehow connected to the airport and so would have an airport-style station.

I blithely got off the train and found myself here:

It looked to me like a Soviet railway station that had been abandoned 50 years before.

I remembered that I had to catch another train, but I couldn’t remember which one/where to … and searching the map I – eventually – found, wasn’t a whole heap of help to me.

When the next train arrived, I got on. The map had mentioned something about Adlershof and so when we arrived there, I got off, clunked my bag down the stairs and wondered ‘what now?’.

Adlershof train station – Source: Wikimedia

I crossed the road, seeking out some free WiFi but there was none to be found. A toilet would have also come in handy, but I couldn’t see one of them either.

I had no idea where I was, no idea where I was going, and even less idea about how to get there.

I suddenly remembered International Roaming. I turned it on, went back to Google maps and put in the name of the hotel. The recommended route was the 61 or 63 tram, but I couldn’t see a tram stop – or tram tracks even – anywhere.

When I asked Google for directions from my location to the tram stop, it told me to cross the road to the station and keep walking. When I was halfway through the tunnel (shown in the image above), it told me I had reached my destination. I didn’t feel – in any of my bones – that I had in fact reached any destination.

I took a punt and walked to the end of the tunnel – to what had appeared as a wasteland – and lo and behold there were tram tracks and a tram stop. Within moments a 63 tram arrived and I got on. It turned out, to my great relief, that I was not only on the correct tram, but that I was also going in the correct direction.

It was now 3pm local time – I’d given up counting how many hours into my trip I was – and I was getting a little more than just a little weary. I checked in, walked miles down the corridor to my room, had a shower, a rest, a chat with Tim, booked a COVID test for the next day, then decided to get out and about and explore the local area. The local area happened to be the old city of Kopenick.

There I came across a COVID testing centre that was offering far cheaper COVID tests, a 10-miunute turn-around time, and was available right then and there.

And so I had my first ever COVID test – standing at the window of a shipping container otherwise known as a Corona Testzentrum. Luckily my grasp of German was strong enough to know what that meant.

In my wondering I came across the local fire department family day and so popped my head in – bouncy castle, bbq, DJ, lots of kids – and continued on my way.

Dinner at the Rathaus … and then it was time for bed. Luckily I was within walking distance of the hotel otherwise I might have had to find a park bench for a quick nap.

Life, Travel

Ready for an extraordinary experience

Posted on September 23, 2022 by Sharon

It has to be said that the last few years haven’t been easy. In early 2020 I wrote a post – A (brave) new year – thinking that after the year we’d had in 2019 and the bushfires of that summer, I was going to turn a corner … I was determined it was going to be my year.

The universe had other plans.

As you know, 2020 was not a good year and 2021 wasn’t any better. Along with the pandemic, we were also hit with Tim’s cancer diagnosis, and then my redundancy.

Putting them into the same sentence does not mean they’re of equal weight or significance, but it’s safe to say we’re still coming to terms with both situations. Luckily, we haven’t had to personally deal with COVID, which really just means we’ve remained relatively isolated.

I’m quite proud to say that I haven’t ever had a COVID test. Getting close to three years into a pandemic and no need for a test.

Well, that’s about to change.

I’m heading to Germany – flying out tonight as it happens – to attend a conference, and one of the requirements is that all participants have a COVID test before attending. I figure it’s a small price to pay and am determined not to let it put me off! I wonder if the fear of COVID should be stronger and that I should remain in relative isolation?

Too late … my bags are packed, my passport has been found, and I’m ready to go. Two weeks in Europe and then two weeks in the UK … yep, I’ll be away for a whole month.

My sister recently spent a month in the UK visiting her daughter and grand-daughter and was so concerned about the lost luggage situation at the time that she decided to take only carry-on luggage. Yes, only 7kgs worth of gear for a month.

I’m not doing that! I’ve packed my bag so it’s almost at the limit. Deb went in summer and apparantly autumn is coming in fast in Europe. I’ve been told to expect chilly weather … and so a bigger bag is required.

I’m heading for what I hope will be an extraordinary experience, with people from around the world and from a range of different fields. I’m used to attending conferences where most attendees work in some form of educational field. But this is going to be different.

I’m ready to do something that challenges me … to be brave!

I might even blog about it.

Life

Total control

Posted on March 8, 2022March 8, 2022 by Sharon

My youngest daughter rang last week with a confession.

‘Mum, I’m addicted to plastic.’

I knew how she felt. I’d been feeling somewhat the same.

I thought about this confession and my own (very similar) feelings and decided that I would reframe it with a more positive spin. I’m not known for putting a positive spin on anything, so bear with me as I struggle to articulate my reframing.

When Tim, my husband, was diagnosed with cancer in July last year, I took over kitchen duties. When we’d moved in, eight years before, we tended to dump things in cupboards and drawers, and over the intervening years we’d not done a great deal to move things around. It meant the cupboards that might more usefully be used for food and kitchen-related storage, instead stored boxes of CDs, VHS tapes, jigsaw puzzles, framed photos, x-rays, and the like.

I took over kitchen duties and thus kitchen organisation. It started my affair with plastic – specifically, Tupperware. One of my daughters-in-law had hosted an online Tupperware party some months before and I’d bought some modular mates to store basic baking needs (caster sugar, cocoa, icing sugar, brown sugar, etc). In my reorganisation I put them in the drawer where the saucepans used to be. My eldest daughter hosted an online Tupperware party some time later, and I bought bigger modular mates for plain and SR flour (regular and gluten free) and cleaned out the DVDs to create space for them. I got a buzz each time I opened the drawer or the cupboard and saw the containers so neatly labelled and organised.

More recently my eldest daughter decided to become an Independent Tupperware consultant and in the spirit of supporting her business, I quite quickly built up my collection of Tupperware. A few weeks ago, my youngest daughter took the same step. Two daughters, two businesses to support. The outcome is that not only are my kitchen cupboards beautifully organised, so too is my fridge and now my freezer.

The satisfaction this brings me could be put down to any number of things (shallowness, not enough else going on in my life) but my positive reframing led me to see it in a different light.

We are into the third year of a global pandemic. This has meant I’ve had limited opportunities to see my family – I haven’t been to Tasmania since January 2021, so it’s been over a year since I’ve seen four of my children and the vast majority of my grandchildren. I haven’t seen my other son, his wife and their children (who live in Qld) in 11 months. I saw them last when we were all able to visit my mother in southern NSW, and so that was the last time I saw Mum, my sister and my brother.

Tim was diagnosed with cancer in July last year. The day before he was to have surgery, we went into a ‘five-day’ lockdown that extended well beyond five days. It meant I wasn’t able to visit him for the whole time he was in hospital apart from a quick visit on day 10. He had a number of complications and so his stay in hospital (the first he’d ever had) went well beyond the 3-4 days we were expecting. Tim started a six-month course of chemo in August and again he had to go through that on his own as I wasn’t allowed to accompany him to any of his treatments.

Not long after Tim started chemo, I was officially informed that my position at the university was to be made redundant. My last day was November 19, 2021.

There’s a lot we have no control over:

COVID isn’t over (no matter how much everyone wants it to be)
Chemo affects a person’s body in often uncontrollable ways
Universities cut thousands of jobs (around 40,000 staff gone across the sector)

And then Russia invaded the Ukraine.

At roughly the same time, floods devastated northern NSW and SE Queensland.

And mosquitoes brought a form of encephalitis to piggeries in the border region of NSW-Victoria. Some people have now been infected and some of them have been hospitalised.

The other thing that’s been on my mind, in terms of ‘things I have no control over’ is turning 60. Today, as it happens. My sister, Debbie, told me on Saturday that 60 is the new 30 (twice), but that didn’t make me feel much better, I have to admit. It’s not that I’d prefer the alternative, it’s just that 60 sounds so old! I know, when I think about it, that it isn’t old – it just sounds it. Deb wrote about this in a recent blog post – and also added some great photos of us from over the years.

After talking to her over the weekend, and after a (very lovely) surprise virtual birthday party on Sunday night, I’m starting to feel better about it. Well, it’s not like I have any control over it. I’m 60 whether I like the idea of it or not.

While I have no control over wars, the pandemic, cancer diagnoses and treatments, being made redundant, or turning 60, I do have control over my kitchen.

I realised, in my reframing, that I’m not addicted to plastic; rather, I’m addicted to an organised kitchen. A little space over which I have control.

And, I have to admit, it feels good.

In Deb’s blog post, she included a clip of Missy Higgin’s singing Total Control (from her latest album). It took me back to the days of Countdown and so I dug out the The Motels’ version, from 1980.

What do you feel you have control over?

The Motels – Total Control

Family, Learning, Life

Mothers Day: Living the realities

Posted on May 9, 2021May 9, 2021 by Sharon

I was scrolling through my Twitter feed this morning and came across a story on the ABC News site that caught my eye.

After the birth of her fifth child, Roseann Hall decided to do a photography project on the often ‘unseen’ side of parenting – the mess, the tantrums, the food smeared everywhere, the moments of stress and tension and of the ways new mothers coped with them.

After Roseann had her fifth child and again found herself scrolling through photos that didn’t reflect her experience, she decided to use her skills as a photographer to capture something more authentic.
ABC Radio Brisbane

Hall’s images instantly took me back to my early mothering days and I began to wonder if any of them would have been worth sharing on social media. I highly doubt it.

I have recollections of constant mess: of food-smeared surfaces, of unmade beds and unwashed washing, of piles of unironed clothes and of floors strewn with toys and clothes and the debris of life.

None of it was social media worthy. None of it was worth sharing to a wider audience. But for many of us with young children it was normal. It wasn’t pretty that’s for sure, and mothers and mothers-in-law and aunts and grandmothers would sometimes step in, a working bee would be organised and the house would shine.

For a day.

And then the inevitable inertia and overwhelm of being a mother would take over – the monotony, the everyday struggle, the sameness, the mundane decision-making (should I do the ironing first or the vacuuming?), the inevitability of mundanity. Nothing to look forward to but more mess, more washing, more cleaning, more ironing, more vacuuming, more dusting … the finger run along the mantlepiece when he came home for lunch to see if it was dust free.

It never was.

Mothering has been happening for thousands (and thousands) of years, and while, I imagine, no two mothers’ experiences have been the same across those years, how did we come to decide that ‘normal’ is a tiny box that only some people fit in? And who decides what’s in that box?

How have we come to the point of looking at others’ lives and deciding that their life is “normal” while ours isn’t? Or that their life is different and somehow that means better?

In the ABC article, Divna Haslam, a clinical psychologist and family researcher at the University of Queensland claimed that “we should all normalise all the aspects of parenting, not just the pretty ones.”

When did we stop normalising the unpretty aspects of parenting? Does any mother of young children imagine, when she sees images of others’ lives, that they don’t have unpretty moments as well? That their two-year old doesn’t have temper tantrums that can last for hours? That their toddler, being introduced to a new food, doesn’t spit it out or wipe it over every surface they can find? That their three year old hasn’t ever picked up a crayon and drawn all over the walls with it?

Have we really become that naive?

Maybe it isn’t about that. Maybe it’s not naivety at all. Maybe it’s the visuals and the access to other people’s lives we’ve only experienced in the last 10 years or so.

Social media, the thing that’s allowed us to connect in ways we’d never been able to before its invention, has maybe also caused us to unconnect from reality. We see others’ unreal images and imagine they determine the reality of someone’s life. The totality of their life.

But do we really think we’re the only ones with children who make unreasonable demands in the supermarket at the tops of their voices? That we’re the only ones with children who refuse to get into their car seat? That our newborn is the only one who doesn’t sleep through the night? That our two-year old is the only one to have a temper tantrum in the main street, requiring us to carry them – kicking and screaming up – under one arm while trying to wrangle their trike with the other? That our four-year old is the only one who swears like a trooper when Grandma walks through the door, that our eleven-year old is the only one who verbally baits his sister till she’s in a paroxym of frustration?

It’s sad if we have. But we don’t have to, and I know that may be easier said than done, particularly from my vantage point. We know – in the very core of our being – that the vast majority of little children will be unreasonable at least some time before they’re five. And while we might not want to post images of those moments on social media, let’s not forget what sits behind the cheery images of happy-looking kids and the ‘perfect’ settings in which they live.

If you’re looking at others’ lives on social media, imagine the corner of the room you can’t see, full of life’s debris – the clothes that moments earlier where all over the couch, the bowl from breakfast the child threw on the floor, the toys they’ve been told to put away a million times but never do.

Think of the “perfect” images that appear on social media as museum or gallery pieces. They might be tightly curated images of a life, but they don’t represent reality.

Life

Diary of a distancer: Week 53

Posted on March 14, 2021 by Sharon

One year and one week ago I started working from home.

It was new then. Novel. Needed. We were unsure how long the situation would last. Time slowed down and then sped up; March dragged, while it seemed we raced through April. Then the year tumbled into some sort of mud pool … there were moments of clarity, and then in the middle of the year the situation became dire. Life changed.

I started my working from home days with my computer on a trestle table in Mum’s/Deb’s/Emma’s room. It stayed that way for 12 months, before I decided I needed a proper set-up. It means I now have a proper desk, with space for my monitors, somewhere to hang my headphones, a place for my morning cuppa, a different place for my water bottle, and a place for photos of my grandkids. I also have a bookcase behind me which has been expertly styled by the very stylish Alison. She happened to pop in on the day the bookcase arrived and was gracious enough to lend her considerable talent to elegantly arranging the items I dragged out of cupboards for her to approve (or not, as the case may be). It provides a carefully curated background to my meetings and more importantly provides me with a beautiful place to work.

My office is now neat, stylish, and slowly filling up with indoor plants. I have a heater, music available, a printer should I require it and a window – a door no less, to the outside world. There’s a huge tree out there and on stormy days, I sit here watching the branches being flung about like countries in the time of corona.

An email drops into my inbox. My workpace announces it is a ‘located’ workplace. After a year of being told we would be able to continue to work from home should we choose, we now have a new term to add to our list of new terms we’ve collected in the previous 12 months, and are being encouraged to return to campus … to add to its vibrancy. I sit and think for a nanosecond and decide that sitting in a cold office with no natural light, no view of a tree being thrashed around in the wind, no music swirling around me, is not for me. I’m quite comfortably located where I am. I’ll let others, those who have been working from their bedrooms or dining room tables, wrangling children and dogs and cats during Zoom meetings, make up the 75% allowed back into workplaces.

Life has changed since this time last year when a number of state premiers announced statewide lockdowns would commence on Monday March 23. The Prime Minister then announced a national lockdown. Toilet paper became scarcer than hen’s teeth; pasta and flour were also hard to come by.

It seems, though, that it’s changed for some more than others – often depending on location. I was fortunate enough to go to Tasmania over the summer. I spent a month there, something I wouldn’t have thought possible in the depths of last year’s winter. It was fabulous to be in a place where the fear of COVID was kept in a small place in the back of my mind. Social distancing was a thing people paid attention to, checking-in to cafes was part of the experience, and hand sanitiser was readily available in all shops … but, these are part of what has been termed ‘COVID-normal’. There was a time when we didn’t have to go through security at airports – and it’s now normal. Some of these new behaviours might also become ‘normal’ and we won’t think twice about taking a mask with us wherever we go.

Although, that depends where you are. When I was in Tasmania over the summer, I didn’t think about taking a mask anywhere. As of today, March 14, 2021, Tasmania has remained COVID-free for 92 days. There was a ‘blip’ in December 2020, when four new cases were reported in Tasmania (from a family returning on a repatriation flight) but if you take those cases out of the equation, it really hasn’t had an outbreak since May last year. That’s really quite remarkable in a world overrun it seems by COVID.

Life has changed. The ebb and flow of 2020 saw various members of the family exercising together and then not. It saw some of us involved in photography projects and then not. It saw visits to family in other states planned and then cancelled. It saw low points and lower. It saw the spead of misinformation, daily press conferences by Daniel Andrews and a tide of people expressing disappointment, disgust, distress at much of the reporting emerging from those pressers. It saw less – less going out, less contact with others, less exploration – and for us, less television watching, less reading, less …

In my first blog post in the time of COVID, I wrote

It seems we’re in this for the long haul – a few months rather than days. Perhaps even longer. I’m sure we’ll work out how to live in this disrupted world, but it might take a while.

Has your world continued to be disrupted, and if so, have you worked out how to live in it?

I’m not entirely sure I have.

Learning, Life, Studying

Chapters

Posted on December 20, 2020December 19, 2020 by Sharon

A number of years ago I was feeling stuck in my academic work. It seemed there was no end to what I was doing and no capacity for change on the horizon. As often seems to happen, I stumbled across a journal article that expressed exactly what I was feeling and also presented a way of thinking I hadn’t thought of for myself. That’s one thing I love about reading – you learn of other ways to think, other mindsets, other perspectives.

This particular author suggested that one way to look at the situation was to think about chapters – this is the teaching chapter of your academic life and the next chapter might be the research chapter or the leadership chapter or the something entirely different chapter. It helped me realise that my situation wasn’t going to continue in the same way for the rest of time. And sure enough, over time, the teaching chapter finished and I was able to start a new chapter.

I like metaphors and their capacity to explain a concept, though of course there’s the danger of pushing a metaphor too far. Any good author will know that there are other ways to structure a narrative than in a straight line. It’s the same with our lives, which is, in some ways, a different form of authoring. Our lives don’t travel in straight lines despite the chronology that suggests we take a straight line from one point to another.

We are born, get to be five, head to school, emerge more or less damaged by that experience some years later, and tumble into adult life. We work, we get married, we have children and so on and so forth. Or so the story goes.

But some of us combine highschool with motherhood, either as a teenager or an adult or both. Some of us don’t move through the ‘stages’, the ‘chapters’, of our lives in the right order. We have a baby and then some months later, get married. We have another baby and then finish high school. Some of us don’t do things at the ‘right’ age, and by ‘right’ I mean ‘standard’, ‘accepted’, ‘proper’, but we do them anyway.

We don’t live linear lives.

Our stories get woven around other stories, stories that have already happened, stories we thought we’d shed the skin of, stories that get tangled in our memories and in our retellings. Parts of our lives connect with other parts in ways we don’t necessarily expect; some things we thought we’d finished with re-emerge and take up space again. The re-emergences push us in directions we hadn’t ever expected and we circle back and find we’ve picked up threads of an older story and the newer threads give it added depth.

We change and develop and grow through the chapters of our lives. We cook and clean and harangue and clean and cook and nothing changes. Is it always going to be like this? A sense of hopelessness. Going through the motions. But deep within, a reluctance to accept that this is all there is. Change. Unsettling. Upsetting. Challenging. Difficult. The transition from one thing to another, from one chapter to another.

And then another.

We teach – about language and tone and purpose and audience. About human emotion expressed through movement and words and no words and space and silence. We study and learn and develop, and another new chapter starts, full of more learning and challenge and motivation and no motivation. And struggle. Personally and professionally and we feel stuck. Is it always going to be like this?

With each transition from one chapter to another, we build up who we are. In one chapter we’re a teacher, in the next we’re a teacher-educator, but then there’s the chapter that weaves research with teaching and the two parts sit uncomfortably with each other. There’s no time to do both properly and compromise is unsettling. And then the next chapter adds leadership and it’s difficult, challenging, upsetting. We feel stuck in our academic work. Is it always going to be like this?

Some chapters are so long we can’t see the end of them. The PhD chapter of our lives can be like that .. it goes on and on and on. Our energy flags, we can’t see a way through; there’s work and kids and your supervisor saying ‘just get it done’. If only it was that easy. It drags. It’s intellectually tortuous. It’s mentally draining. There’s no ounce of motivation left. It becomes a grind. Will it always be like this?

Robyn, one of my PhD candidates, was at that point this time last year. It was intellectually tortuous, mentally draining. It was a grind. Scraps of motivation lay on the ground at her feet. “Sharon, will it ever end?”.

It ended. Robyn submitted her thesis, it was examined, accepted and just last week, Robyn’s doctorate was conferred. All those years. All that work. And now she’s a doctor, by virtue of having a doctorate.

Will she use her title in the next chapter of her life?

You bet she will, kiddo.

PhD bonnet — This makes it all worthwhile! Well, almost.

Life, Melbourne, Writing

Diary of a distancer: Week – not sure

Posted on September 6, 2020September 6, 2020 by Sharon

Do weeks exist any more? Do months or seasons for that matter? Days do, I’m sure of that. They start, often grey here in Melbourne, and finish, just as grey. One day follows another in a regularity of routine. There’s the morning presser if I’m not in a meeting – tuning in to hear the latest from Premier Dan Andrews and CHO Prof. Brett Sutton – or CHOttie as some people have taken to calling him.

There’s lots of talk about the mental health challenges of this time of lockdown. Reading the comments during the pressers is very bad for my mental health. As is listening to many of the journalists’ questions. You’d think I’d stop doing it, but I can’t seem to help myself. I’ve even started writing my own comments. It’s not a healthy place to be, yet, there I am, tuning in like a moth unable to stop flying into the light.

Two days a week there’s my 30-minute exercise routine – the one designed by my physio to help keep arthritis at bay, to help keep my bones strong by strengthening my muscles, to help strengthen the muscles around my knees so they stop hurting, to help me develop shoulders that look like they have muscles in them. (That last one is just for my own vanity!)

I have a tendency to work through the exercises too quickly – I am my mother’s daughter it seems, at least in this regard. Last week I was given information (read ‘stern talking to’) about not allowing time for recovery in between each exercise and that being bad for my body. I have to make the workout last for 30 minutes at a minimum. I was getting it done in 20.

It was a lovely (cool but not windy) morning on Thursday. I do some of my exercises outside as I need a strong anchor point and we don’t have any inside. It was suggested that doorknobs would be sufficient, but all of ours fall off with regular monotony, so I knew not to use them. One of the trees in our courtyard/backyard is about the sturdiest anchor point we have so I tie the orange powerband around that and do rows and supported squats, and I wrap the blue theraband around it and do L Pullaparts. (No questions about the L part of that – I have no idea).

In between each rep (I use the shortened form to suggest I can speak ‘exercise’) I have to rest – for a minute. Thirty seconds at the very least.

Thursday morning, cool, not windy, I head outside armed with my exercise bands. I look around the neglected garden and decide it could do with some weeding. I get busy: 10 powerband rows – 1 minute of weeding; 10 supported squats – 1 minute of weeding. 10 L Pullaparts (they’re for my shoulders) – oh, there’s a great photo just waiting to be taken! I rush inside and grab my camera. Whoops, my rest break seeps into multiple minutes. Ten more powerband rows, more weeding.

The garden is looking much better! Who knew exercise was so good for the garden?!

I check my watch – 34 minutes. Yes! Go me. Rob, my physio, laughs fit to burst when I tell him about the weeding. He says he’ll buy me a deck chair so I can properly rest between reps in the future.

Breakfast. Porridge. Tea. I’ve taken to making tea in a teapot since I’ve been fulltime at home.

Shower – although that depends on the time – so most often not.

The commute to work takes ten seconds. Up the stairs, and into my office. I know it’s my office because it has my name on the door.

Tim has already plugged my heater in, opened the curtains and turned on the lamps. Between 10:30 & 11am he’ll pop in with a cup of tea.

I’ve taken to scheduling in a lunch/brain break each day – an hour where I eat, then read education-related Tweets and articles and learn stuff. It kinda makes up for the negativity of the comments section in the morning’s presser.

Home time – no afternoon traffic to contend with, no rain on the windscreen, no avoiding flying debris from the wind whipping through the trees. No road rage, no horns honking, no slamming on the brakes to avoid the car in front that stopped suddenly to avoid the car in front that stopped abruptly …

The commute is now calm and peaceful – a mere 15 stairs and I’m ‘home’. I don’t even need to get the front door key out. Actually, I’m not even sure where my front door key is any more. Or my car key for that matter.

When it’s not physio-exercise day and when it’s not windy, we often use our exercise hour to walk around the neighbourhood. We’ve found laneways we didn’t know existed – not the hip kind of laneways in the city; these ones don’t have graffiti-covered walls and cafes serving single origin machiato soy almond truffl-infused cold ‘brew’. These ones have cobble stones to not twist your ankle on, and high fences with little doors built in, and sometimes on the non-windy days the sounds of families playing tennis.

And then it’s Saturday. I know it’s Saturday because of the street corners. They’re abuzz in ways streets corners in my part of Melbourne had never been before this year.

People, with slight morning tremors, gather on street corners now. They stand, mostly silent, a good arm’s length or two apart, straggling across the road in some instances, masked faces staring intently at the hole in the wall.

New friendships have formed in this new, regular routine called Saturday-morning-waiting-for-my-fix-in-the-time-of-COVID. I wouldn’t be surprised to hear of engagements and marriage proposals resulting from these now-regular gatherings. Each Saturday morning as we ride by, the crowds are bigger, the masks a little further down faces, a little less distance between each slightly tremoring body. More kids on bikes, more dogs on leashes, more conversation, more bike bells dinging frantically as we weave our way through them.

It’s Melbourne. They’re waiting for their coffee.

And now it’s Sunday. Father’s Day. Roadmap day. What time’s the presser? It’s the question on everyone’s lips. 12pm says the authority that is the Twitter account: What time is Dan’s presser. An account that keeps us up-to-date so we know when to tune in.

Will I tune in today?

Probably … I want to know what’s ahead. But I’ll do my very best to avoid the negativity and ignorance that is the comments section.

Stay safe.

Life

Diary of a distancer: Week 5

Posted on April 11, 2020 by Sharon

See Week 4. Repeat.

Except, without working on Friday, and now being the mother of a 41-year old. Yes, Ben, my eldest son turned 41 yesterday or, as he told me, 14,974 days.

Talking of numbers … the numbers this week are much bigger than last week.

1,700,816 cases as of April 11, 2020, 7:38GMT (5:38pm Melbourne time). Of those, just over 22% have recovered.

It’s easy to look at the numbers and forget to feel anything, because … well, because they’re just numbers.

But they aren’t, are they?

I read an interesting piece in The Guardian yesterday, written by a junior doctor. She made the point that politicians and some commentators have the perspective of gods – in that they see the big picture. They see the numbers of people hospitalised, the numbers of ICU beds and ventilators and PPE required, the number of refrigerated trucks to house the bodies of those who’ve died, the numbers of businesses affected, the number of unemployed people … numbers. But she was seeing people. People struggling to breathe, people struggling to cope, people who are fearful and anxious and scared for their own lives.

I’m finding it a challenge to deal with patients who are so unwell because I wish this hadn’t happened to them. When you’re providing one-on-one care, it hardly registers that there are hundreds of people in the same position. We talk of curves and peaks but that has nothing to do with lived experience. Politicians and journalists now speak with the perspective of gods. They have an overview of the situation that I just cannot have. As a doctor I feel like an ant standing next to an elephant: I can barely make sense of what I see, and it’s hard to throw my tiny weight against it.

We can look at the numbers and keep the situation at arm’s length. We can protect ourselves from the reality and head off to our holiday homes at the beach or in the bush. We can flaunt our privilege, like Justin Timberlake did in a radio interview recently, when he said that him and his wife weren’t exactly coping with ’24 hour a day parenting’. Is there any other sort?

Apparently, there is.

While I don’t flaunt my privilege, I feel it. I have a house, it’s (mostly) warm, there’s food in the fridge and running water. Things it’s so easy to take for granted. I have the technological means to contact members of my family so we stay connected.

I also have a job I can do from home, unlike many of those in places like New York where the coronovirus has split the city into two unequal parts.

Different boroughs, even different neighborhoods within each borough, are experiencing coronavirus almost as though it were two different contagions. In wealthier white areas the residential streets are empty; parking spots that are fought over in normal times now stand vacant following an exodus to out-of-town weekend homes or Airbnbs.

In places like the Bronx – which is 84% black, Latino or mixed race – the sidewalks are still bustling with people making their way into work. There is still a rush hour. “We used to call them ‘service workers’,” Williams said. “Now they are ‘essential workers’ and we have left them to fend for themselves.”

Source: A tale of two New Yorks

I feel uneasy everytime we get a parcel on the doorstep. Someone has had to put themselves on the line so that I can eat and have the medication I need. Someone who can’t work from home has packed that item, and someone else has delivered it. Am I putting them at risk? Or am I keeping someone in a job they might otherwise not be in? The answers seesaw through my mind and I’m yet to feel as though I have an answer that I feel at ease with.

Perhaps it’s both and there’s no easy way to reconcile my dilemma.

I’m writing to remember, so that next year, when all this is over (will it be over by this time next year?), I can look back and read some of the things I’ve been thinking about during this time of isolation.

Not social isolation, of course. Well, not for many of us. We’re lucky to live in a country with a relatively reliable internet connection, and to have access to so much technology. And we’re lucky that there’s a ready supply of pens and paper for children to use when they write letters to those living in aged care, or to their own grandparents. Who says you need digital technologies to stay connected?

But we now talk about having a ‘Zoom’ as if we’ve been doing it all our lives – and even many oldies who hadn’t thought FaceTime was worth their while are now using it to stay in touch with family members. HouseParty is something I’m hearing a lot about, but it’s mostly negative at this stage, so I’m staying clear of it until I can see a use for it.

I scrolled past a Facebook post earlier that mentioned something about the ‘interminable long weekend’, and I have to say, I haven’t felt that at all. If anything, it’s going way too fast for me.

Tim set us both a challenge yesterday – a photography challenge (my favourite kind). We are to take a photo of things around the house for every letter of the alphabet.

We set to work yesterday, writing lists, storyboarding ideas (well, that was me, Tim doesn’t storyboard), and then we got clicking. It meant the day sped by, and even better, meant I wasn’t sitting in front of a computer all day.

I mentioned it in our post-exercise hangout yesterday and Deb decided that her and Grant would join in … so between now and the end of the month we’ll be taking photos that we’ll compile into a book I’ve decided to title Images in the time of coronavirus: An alphabet of isolation.

Or should it be ‘from isolation’? I can’t decide.

Plenty of time for that.

Anyway, while I was taking a photo for ‘I’ yesterday, I noticed the yellow rose out the front was open, so I captured it and thought I’d share it with you.

Life

On living a disrupted life

Posted on March 22, 2020September 10, 2020 by Sharon

Hello.

Well. Here we are.

It’s a cold and cloudy day in Melbourne. Nothing new there.

The washing is on, we’ve had breakfast, the bed is made, music is playing throughout the house. Nothing new there.

I’m sitting here trying to craft a blog post. Tim is out on his bike. Nothing new there either.

But it doesn’t feel the same.

On the surface life looks the same. We get up, shower (or not), have breakfast, check our socials, get on with the day.

But it’s not the same.

A week ago I’d never heard of worldometers.info/coronavirus but now it’s the first site I check every morning. If you take off the /coronavirus from the end, you get information on a whole range of things: how many hectares of the world have been deforested today, how many mothers died in childbirth today, how many cigarettes were smoked today, how many new book titles have been published this year. It’s a wealth of information. No, not all of it is cheery, but it’s still interesting.

Except, it’s also worrying. I probably shouldn’t check it every morning as it doesn’t really get my day off to a good start.

So there’s that. A less-than-cheery start to my day.

I worked from home all last week, and will continue to do so for the foreseeable (or unforeseeable, I guess) future. With that in mind we spent much of yesterday setting up a proper workspace for me. It means I can feel like I’m going to work in the morning and can return to home-life in the afternoon. It also means I can more clearly distinguish between home-space and work-space and not let them overlap in the ways they did last week.

I now have a long desk (trestle table, but let’s not quibble) with my ‘home’ computer on one end, and my ‘work’ computer on the other. I’ll be using them both for work – one for Zoom/Skype meetings and the other for developing resources, but who knows. I might flit between them or that might get too messy. It’s just one tiny thing that’s an uncertainty and in a world of big uncertainties it’s not occupying a great deal of my brainspace.

My husband also worked from home last week and will continue to do so until it’s safe to be in shared space with others. He claimed the ‘study’ early on, and so he’s well set up with clearly delineated work and home spaces. Each morning last week, when it was time for him to go to work, he’d kiss me goodbye and head upstairs. I’d hear him on what seemed like wall-to-wall Zoom meetings, supporting staff, providing them with ideas and calm reassurance that they can teach audio production and ensemble and journalism online. It’s interesting, after all this time of working for different universities, to hear him in action again. His interactions are different now that he’s a senior leader in his workplace and he’s been receiving a lot of praise for his calm and steady leadership.

We did encounter one problem, however. I’m blaming Cheryl from Sales (Tim tends to think it’s Stefan from Accounts) … but whichever of them it is, they can just stop. One of us will take a break and make a cuppa … and next thing you know the cup is empty and I have no memory of drinking said cuppa. The only explanation that makes sense to me is that it must be one of my new co-workers.

Things aren’t the same. The world isn’t the same. People are losing income. Many, many people are losing loved ones. Travel plans have been disrupted and businesses are failing.

The curve hasn’t yet flattened. Are we doing enough to ensure it does?

Many of us want to know why schools haven’t yet closed.

We have new daily routines … it’s clear that life isn’t the same.

I now tune in on Twitter each day to hear Ricky Gervais rambling for ten minutes or so. I look out for Ben Abraham’s impromptu concerts on Instragram. I watch videos of those in Italy and Spain playing music and singing together. I am disturbed to still be seeing people buying much much more than they need each day, leaving the shelves empty for those who come after them. I am extra concerned when I read about thousands of people on Bondi Beach (which has now been closed) and to read of the four cruise ships allowed to dock in Sydney.

I watch videos on how to wash my hands properly, videos of those with the virus warning about the dangers or not acting swiftly enough, and videos full of really vital information presented in easy-to-understand terms. (The last link takes you to a really useful video, and I encourage you to watch it if you haven’t already.)

The message is clear: Stay home. Buy only what you need. Wash your hands.

In the scheme of things it doesn’t seem hard advice to follow.

And yet … for many it seems beyond them.

And for me too if I’m honest. Being told to stay at home is different from choosing to, and so I feel myself wanting to get out more than I usually do. Luckily, I have a very sensible husband!

Life is disrupted. It’ll take some getting used to. Thankfully, unlike those in 1918 who were caught up in the ‘Spanish Flu’ epidemic, we have loads of ways of staying connected. So while we might be staying home, it doesn’t necessarily mean we need to socially isolate ourselves. Physically isolate, for sure. But we don’t need to socially isolate.

And that’ll take some getting used to as well. This flow chart might help you decide whether you really need to go out.

Let’s be kind to ourselves while we make the necessary adjustments. It seems we’re in this for the long haul – a few months rather than days. Perhaps even longer. I’m sure we’ll work out how to live in this disrupted world, but it might take a while.

What’s been working for you as you get used to living a disrupted life?