Champagne and Socks

So lessons 2 and 3 go hand in hand. They’re lessons I’ve been working on learning for some time now but they really hit home and gosh I hope they stuck after this year.

Way back in the dark days, when I was at my very worst, I really thought, had decided actually, that I would never travel again. And that was ok because I’d done a lot of travelling and seen a bit of the world. And even though I *love* travelling, it was ok that I just wasn’t going to do that anymore. Except that a) that was my anxiety, OCD and depression talking and b) I LOVE travelling. And I wanted to go to World Fantasy Con in Saratoga Springs. I was just starting to fall into the scene, starting up Twelfth Planet Press. And a lot of Aussies were going that year. And Tansy said to me, instead of deciding that you can’t go, why don’t you figure out *how* you could go – figure out what you’d need or how you can navigate (the OCD). In other words, if you need to take a bunch of antibacterial handgel and use it every five minutes but it enables you to go and have the experience, then Do That. (And I’ll add that that was before the world freaked out about Swine Flu. Now it’s not weird at all to use hand gel and wipe down your tray or whatever. At the time, I had to be in therapy. But whatevs.)

Firstly, how lucky am I to have such awesome friends? Secondly, I went. I fell in love with WFC, I found my home. It grew my friendship with Jonathan. Going freed me – in more ways than one. It broke my mindset about not doing things that might scare me or put me out of my comfort zone. It opened my publishing world. And it ended my relationship with my ex – I always had this feeling that if I went to WFC, I’d come home single. And I did. And it was the best thing that could have happened to me at that time. And the funniest thing was getting on that plane to Sydney? The OCD melted away and I didn’t even really need a whole bunch of the management tools I’d put in place to deal with myself.

In some ways, looking at the world like that – what do I need to be ok with this [whatever “this” is in the moment] was a great tactic. In others, I guess it might have fuelled my OCD. I think C just works around what’s left of that. At least it’s nowhere near as unhinged as it was.

This year I’ve had a lot on to confront in terms of wanting to push forward and do things and having to fight off the darkness in my head. And I’ve had to work a lot to find management tools to make it ok. Or as Tansy now says, I’ve had to figure out how to hack my own brain. Lots of this year was about taking it a day at a time and there’s something nicely zen about that, or there would be if being in the moment wasn’t about how sick I felt. I had some really big, confronting decisions to make. They required being honest with myself and my work arounds. I was lucky to have so many people around me to discuss them with and to feel like I was in a safe, nonjudgmental place. And standing now on the other side of that, I realised that in troubleshooting ahead of time and making choices that were the best ones for me, meant that I could have positive experiences. That I don’t always need to push myself over the edge to prove some point to myself about … I dunno? I can actually be kind and understanding of how I tick and work with, not against, that. And that by doing so, I ensure that I am mentally robust.

And this lesson leads into the third, and possibly most profound lesson I learned this year. This lesson was to learn to tune out the white noise. Everyone has an opinion and everyone has advice. But the most important thing to remember about that is unless they are privy, they most likely are not giving that opinion or advice within the context that is relevant *to you*. Something can be true and not applicable to you at the same time. Something can be “the best choice” in a level playing field but if that’s not where you are playing your game, it may no longer be best. And what I hope I learned this year is how to reduce the value I have previously placed on white noise. To not care so much what other people, out there, think about the choices that I make or who I am or what I choose to do or how I live my life. But also, to be less judgmental of others and their choices, since no doubt I am not privy to the context within which they made theirs.

Looking back on this year, it very much felt like a year where I came full circle. Or that  lot of things got put to bed as I look out from a new beginning. Or that I’ve worked hard all this time just to get to the starting line. A bunch of realisations felt very pointed this year in the way they kept/keep surfacing across a whole lot of parts of my life and various interactions.

The first of which is something that I wish I could tell my 14/15 and 25 year old selves – that life will never cease to surprise you, you just have to live long enough and let enough time pass. Kind of a riff on “this too shall pass” but not just that you won’t be stuck in the one moment or situation or emotion forever but that life really will surprise you. And it’s worth sticking around to find out how. Or as my mother says, “it’s not the end of the story til the end of the story.”

This hit me yet again yesterday. We were at my in-laws for lunch and I wandered in to one of the bedrooms to grab my phone from the baby bag. As I walked in, I saw one of the beds from my childhood (my sister and I had the same kind of beds growing up. My parents recently moved and ended up giving one of the beds to C’s parents who were looking for an extra bed for the spare room). On the bed was some of the stuff C had unpacked to change a nappy earlier. And I just had this moment of coming full circle. Standing in my in-laws’ house, my bed all made up in one of the rooms, my husband amusing our baby in the other room. Being completely happy in the moment and having what I had always hoped to have. And yet it looking nothing like what I thought it would look like. Feeling nothing like I thought it would. And yet being exactly what I always wanted.

The thing about life never ceasing to surprise you? I feel like a lot of times this year I’ve realised that all I needed to do was to give in and give away all my preconceptions about what I wanted (how it would look or feel or how to go about getting it) to get exactly what I wanted. And that chasing after what you want isn’t necessarily the way to get it. In my case, I couldn’t have met C earlier or in any other circumstance. And I spent such a long time being sad, lonely, feeling like I was not good enough or being punished or unlovable when really all it was was timing, and the right person. And I had an idea of what the right person would look like and who they would be and that was nothing like C and yet, how could I be with anyone else? How could I have thought anyone else even came close?

And this isn’t the only part of my life where I’ve had this kind of moment with. My PhD and the topic is another example – it seems I’ve spent the last 7 years collecting reference material for this exact topic, completely unthinkingly. Helen only talked me into this gig late last year. Before that, I could never have even entertained the idea of giving up working for the environment.

And lots of other smaller examples where things have taken a long time to fruition and have been surprising. And I guess that’s one of the pluses of getting older – the living longer so that you do see the full turning of things. It’s interesting. I thought I wouldn’t like approaching 40 and yet the closer I get to it, the more I realise that Life Just Beginning at 40, is really true. And it’s kind of exciting.

Tags: 2013 in review

Towards the end of our wedding reception, my work friends J&S came up to us in a bit of a panic as they wanted us to open their wedding gift. Unfortunately, all the gifts had been packed off to my parents’ place until we got back from our honeymoon. This turned out to be a bit of a problem. J&S wanted us to open their gift before we left as it wouldn’t work after we got back. Intrigued, I got my mum to fossick around for a gift of the description we were given and to bring it to us at Christmas lunch. All was quickly revealed – J&S’s gift was a quest. The creation of a memory.

We were of course to go off in search of the Love Bridge and place our own lock on it for our love. I was floored by such a gift – what a really great idea! We headed off and I think (as judging by how tired I look in the photo below) on the first day to make sure that we definitely got this done.

I’d brought more than a few guide books with me on our trip. I might have been a bit excited to be returning to Paris. But what turned out to be the best buy was  a set of cards of walking tours of Paris. There were 50 in the pack and you could just pick one out at random or one with something you wanted to definitely see on the route or in the area you were interested in. C took to these, which in retrospect I should have realised would be right up his alley. He really enjoyed making sure we followed the tour and did all the stops etc. I really enjoyed the extra little things you ended up seeing on the way – stopping for the best hot chocolate in Paris, seeing significant landmarks or points of interest that are off the standard tourist grid. I ended up seeing a lot more of Paris than I would have on my own and I also saw a lot more cool stuff than I would have thought of looking for. And … bonus was lots less crowds most of the time.

Here’s C checking we’re still on route:

And here we’ve just added our lock to the bridge – and thrown the key into the Seine, which the greenie in me cringed at but the superstitious OCD side did anyway – and C is taking data point photos so we can come back and look for it another trip.

My year started in Paris, and that is a pretty darn fine way to start a year. To back up a smidge, we got married and then stayed around at home a couple of days for Christmas. Some of C’s family had come over for our wedding and were staying for Christmas so we did too. We moved up to the CBD and stayed an extra night or two at a hotel, bumming around the city and generally trying to destress after the excitement of getting married and also you know, process the whole WE GOT MARRIED concept. Christmas lunch was pretty laid back but it was really nice to hang out with our parents and some family and do that all post the whole wedding thing. Jewish tradition has people entertain a married couple for 7 nights after their wedding and welcome them into the community as a couple/family and this felt like a nice nod to that.

And then we headed off to Paris. It was my second trip to this city I love and last time I was there, I’d really wanted to share it with someone, and to be there in love. That’s the cliche after all. I’d read all the stupid bridal mags while planning our wedding, cause again, cliche, and gleaned that the Maldives is where everyone is honeymooning at the moment. I spent a day or two drooling over the beautiful white beaches and blue blue ocean and sky and thought about the lazying about by the pool and hang gliding and then I remembered this was US I was planning a trip for and unless there was wifi by those palm trees, we were gonna be dead bored. I knew I was quitting my day job in 2013 and that this could be the last holiday hurrah for me for some time and I’m not sure when C had last had a proper holiday so … Paris it was! I managed to get a great deal on Singapore Airlines via a travel agent and the flights to Paris were really very pleasant (not so much on the way home but oh well). I sort of had the travel agent plan the trip for us cause I had a lot of other things on. Some things worked great, others not. But she convinced me to book in three different hotels in two different quarters and a decadent couple of nights out of Paris. And I think that was definitely a fab idea I wasn’t sure how it would go moving so many times in about 10 days but it worked out fine.

We arrived at about 6.30am on a very dreary morning and headed to our hotel in Montmartre (or thereabouts). This hotel was a lot of fun – Secret de Paris – on a corner of the street and lit up in purple lights, each room was themed to make you feel like you were sleeping in an iconic structure of Paris. It sounds cheesy but it’s French and they pulled it off! We got the Eiffel Tower room (that’s my pillow marring the decor of the room. And the speccy lighting which again, was more atmospheric and less cheesy in real life) and were told we could request to move to any of the other rooms at any time if we wanted to try out a different room. At the time, we were so jetlagged and coming down off the wedding high that we couldn’t be bothered – we did a quick touristing the first morning we arrived and then slept for most of the rest of the day. And after that, we were either sleeping or out and about and packing up to move just seemed like too much effort. Now, I wish we had tried other rooms out, especially cause ours didn’t have a spa bath. Also, a nicely confronting moment after you just got married, our bathroom was encased in glass. So – bedroom, and then the toilet, basin and shower to the side and sectioned off with see through glass. Bit personal.

We did a lot of recuperation – a lot of napping, I watched a lot of TV (I watched the entire series of The Closer whilst away, cause I don’t nap!). We also ate a lot of croissants – a delicious bakery was on the corner diagonal to our hotel. I think I might have rushed out there as soon as we’d checked and taken our bags to the room to get an escargot and OMG, baked goods are never as good as they are in France. I’m ruined for croissants now because they just don’t come anywhere close to as delicious. Also the Hot Chocolate – I drank a lot of it cause I had a Crohn’s flare up the whole time trip  (started in the lead up to the wedding in about November and went through into my pregnancy). I dunno how they make hot chocolate in France but OMG it’s fabulous.

Here’s a pic from the breakfast room. Sumptuous chairs, they also had a lot of loveseats so you could sit next to your lover and whisper secrets (of course!) in their ear. We though that was a bit too corny for us!

I had this bittersweet moment today – staring into my daughter’s face and listening to her tiny contented sighs as she lay there next to me with a clean nappy and a full belly, wanting for nothing. I was a little envious of her, watching her have everything she needed in the world and not really knowing yet about wanting.

Nobody’s told her yet that girls wear pink and boys wear blue. That girls can’t do maths or write science fiction or play football. She doesn’t know about war and famine. Of hating someone just because they are different to you. No one’s told her to be quiet, to not be so demanding just for speaking up and voicing her needs. No one’s told her to feel embarrassed for farting loudly, or wanting to hug her mummy or that she should be a size 8. She isn’t on a bell curve yet or measured against the population to see if she’s too smart or not smart enough. Right now, she has no labels at all. No performance reviews. No deadlines. No expectations placed upon her (well almost none!)

And I’m really sad that one day I’m going to explain all that shit to her.

I had some unexpected good news this morning. It had me reflecting back on this year which really was full of awesome for me. I have this weird/screwed up mindset where I think that if it wasn’t hard work, then it’s not something I value having and yet pretty much all my life, the things that have really worked out for me have been the things that I fell into or just happened along and the things I refused to quit on and kept trying to push into making work out, never really did. (Maybe one of my lessons was learning when to quit).

Anyway – I had good news today! And it made me realise that this year has been an exceptionally good one for me. And that my year in review would be a pretty happy one. Which reminded me that I’ve not posted very much this year – unusual for me. What happened was we didn’t get our wedding photos until last week. It’s been this long, drawn out, upsetting and disappointing thing that I didn’t really want to talk much about. Not having them hung above my head like a dark cloud and I didn’t want to talk about the rest of the stuff around our wedding and our honeymoon. Then it felt weird to talk about other things out of step with that. I guess I’m pretty chronological. At the same time, I felt bad for feeling bad because the photos were the only dark, negative thing associated with our wedding, and really, if that was the only disappointing aspect, that’s not really so bad, in the scheme of things. But we finally got out proofs last week and whilst I haven’t had the headspace to sit down and work through the next steps for that (picking the photos for the album etc), I do feel a sense of close to closure on it.

Like I might be able to start blogging about my year in review, maybe.

Especially since my year started in Paris – not a bad place to start! Maybe tomorrow. With photos.

I’m watching a LOT of TV right now. Since I brought this little person home two weeks ago now.

Soooo much TV. I kinda hate it in that, I still can’t craft as my carpal tunnel has not gone – it’s eased a lot but my right hand is still half numb. Typing is still a pain in the arse but at least I can hack away at that and correct as I go. Other than that, it turns out baby’s take a LOT OF TIME. I didn’t realise! I’m on that feed, change nappy, sleep cycle until we hit the witching hour (which bullshit about it being only one hour, one hour would be freaking doable!) which can end up taking a whole work day of time. It turns out that bubby likes to be held, by me. She will at a pinch, when whinging, go to her dad but mostly he does the shift when I’m like totally done for the day and he has more patience with crying at the top of her lungs baby than I do (as long as he takes her down the other end of the house because OMG that crying is like a stab through my heart!).

Which all means, I spend a lot of time with a baby koala curled up on my chest sleeping. I have managed to perfect the art of balancing a laptop below said koala to get a bit of work done but mostly we are watching a lot of Foxtel. Luckily I seem to have prerecorded a whole heap of stuff.

So it might be that, for a while, this blog is filled with TV reviews. I want to post a bit about, you know, all the stuff that came before we brought this little being home with us. But wow – when you finally get some free time, it’s amazing how much more appealling sleep is! (I should note, I’m getting more sleep than I was in the third trimester so mostly I am not complaining, just the tiredness it is ongoing.) or trying to catch up on emails and other bits and pieces.

So.

I found the Oprah channel, or at least the channel that streams a good deal of her content from the OWN network (Oprah Winfrey Network in the US). I’ve been watching her Master Class series and also the Behind the Scenes of Season 25 of the Oprah Winfrey Show which was her final season. Both are really interesting to me – the behind the scenes stuff shows you bits and pieces of planning and producing some of the episodes that made up that final season. I really love watching production – I think it’s what appealled to me about Smash (especially after season 1). I love watching how successful people pull off their work and also how they go about problem solving, troubleshooting and navigating towards success. What’s particularly interesting about Oprah’s producers is almost all of them appear to be (white) women. And it’s quite interesting watching their interactions with Oprah. I really enjoyed one scene where one of the producers totally fucked up (ended up over booking her episode by 20 mins) and when Oprah sat down with her afterwards to discuss it (because at Harpo they say “feedback is your Friend”) she told her that this was a learning moment for her (the producer) that offered her the “opportunity to learn and grow”. And then she was harsh but fair with the feedback.

The Master Class episodes are pretty interesting too. So far they’ve been given by successful women in Hollywood – Jane Fonda and Goldie Hawn – and Oprah herself. And they are pretty simple, the interviewee speaking for about an hour, reflecting on their life and what they’ve learned, the paths they ended up on that took them to success, and failures, and really grounded in a sense of deep reflection and reconciled peace with their lives and how they turned out. The kind of soundbytes of “advice” or “lessons” are not that groundbreaking – preserve your integrity, be a good person, seize opportunities, don’t try and be perfect or someone else but rather be the best you etc. But it’s pretty fascinating to hear successful people talk about the key moments of their lives that led them to their success and to hear about their own learning moments. And cause all so far have been women, hearing about the different incidents of sexual harassment, racism and sexism that they encountered and had to overcome. All pretty interesting and empowering stuff.

But something that Goldie Hawn said in last week’s episode really struck a chord with me. Just after she had her break out moment and her career was taking off, she was hit by depression because even though she was getting success, her life was suddenly heading off in a direction she had not planned. And in her reflection of that period of her life, she said that she had been so concretised (not sure that’s an actual word) in her life and what it would look like (what her job would be, who she would marry, how many children she’d have etc) that she left no room in her life for chance and for potentiality. That you can’t preplan and script out your life because then you have no room for serendipity and letting that take you to whatever. And I was sitting there, in Rockingham, nursing my baby and processing book orders for my small press and I just thought “Wow – she’s right”. Because this was never what I imagined my life to be. And yet here I am, happier than I think I’ve ever been in my life. Your imagination might just not be able to dream big enough for what you truly need and what may in fact be possible.

We’re about to head off and see a movie for maybe the last time at a cinema in a while. Maybe not, who can say? But also it’s going to be a great way to spend some Sunday time.

It turns out that hanging around at 38 weeks is a lot like showing up to an exam an hour early (in case your car got a flat tyre). Those who went to UWA, it feels like showing up for one of those big exams at the Undercroft – there’s all that lush grass and flowering trees and a cool breeze but all you can do is worry about sighting your friends so you know you’re at the right place at the right time, but not wanting to talk to them cause they’re just going to be running through some equation or other that you don’t want knocked out of your brain and you’re wondering if you should use the bathroom now or in 45 minutes and whether you should eat something even though you feel a bit sick. And the knowledge that in 4 hours, it will all be over and you’ll feel relieved, but worried how you went, and then moving on to the next thing.

The waiting game. I’m frustrated and bored and sore and uncomfortable and irritated and over it but also really aware that when this is done, I’m only at the starting line. People say you should rest up and sleep now – if fucking only I could! I’m not tired most of the time until I’m keel over and sleep where I’m standing tired. And there are NO SLEEP POSITIONS LEFT! I actually dread going to bed now cause I know I’m in for 4 to 6 hours of tossing and turning and pulling a muscle or feeling sick cause I’m on my back and checking the clock to see how much I just slept. I had two positions left – sleeping on my left side and sleeping on my right side but my right side has almost filed a complaint. My shoulder and arm hurt. And now my right hip has started crying out in pain after just one hour of “sleep”. I’ve moved to using a pillow under it but even so, my thigh cramps pretty badly. For all the bullshit people tell you about “you wait til the baby comes and you get no sleep” I say Whatever Man, I’m running on, as Jonathan said the other day, Jetlag state anyway. I’ve not slept a good night since March. And I rarely get more than 2 hours in a stint anyway. At least my body won’t hurt so much in the act of trying to sleep.

My hands are so bad now that I am really limited by what I can do. Today they are so swollen I can’t really bend some of my fingers and  I look like I have man hands. I never realised how much like my dad’s dad’s hands I have. Maybe it’s just the knuckles. I used to think I had my mother’s hands. This week has been a bad one for them anyway. They were so bad Wednesday that I was in a very very bad place – not just with the swelling and numbness and pins and needles (it feels a bit like constantly knocking your funny bone) but with shooting pain through my middle fingers and through my wrists. C stayed home cause he didn’t think I was coping. It was a tad pathetic, I guess. But not being able to take care of your basic needs is never a nice place to be (luckily I wasn’t quite there but it was close). I have no real grip, I can’t open a jar or a bottle, I can’t shut the front door, I can’t really drive. A couple of days I couldn’t even type – on a good day I can use my fingernails to poke at the keyboard, all my fingertips have been numb for weeks. If I think about that too much, I get a panic attack at the claustrophobia.

Actually, something that has surprised me about this journey has been how much I’ve had to deal with claustrophobia. It’s not really something I thought I had an issue with but it’s been something I’ve really had to manage the last few months. And especially in the dark, small hours of the night.

But now, there is really very little left to do. I’m mostly packed for the hospital. The baby’s room and crib are set up. I can’t craft, I can’t write. I can do very little at all that requires hands, which is pretty much everything. And I hate everything that I have recorded on my Foxtel IQ. There are no movies I want to watch and holding a book is nigh impossible. I am ready to be done with this now. Which is of course how nature talks you into the next thing, which sounds completely unpleasant.

Quick! I must get in all the writing before my hands seize up again! (On the upside, I am catching up on things like proofing, slushing and reading, all of which only require the downwards arrow or the odd tweaked word here and there.)

I knew running a crowdfunding campaign would be interesting and to tell the truth, I’ve been wanting to do one for quite some time. I wanted to pick just the right project and the right timing (babies don’t actually care about such things, turns out) and I spent a lot of time observing other similar projects. After our campaign is finished, I’m planning on writing a series of blog posts talking about what we learned – it’s so much already. And also about the publishing business model and being a small press in Australia. One of the most important things that this campaign will enable me to do, is pay at the 5c per word pay rate, something that has been really out of my reach but that I have been aiming to be able to do.

In the meantime, over the weekend we reached the $4000 mark. We were so excited to reach it that we’ve offered all our early backers an extra reward. If you’re interested in claiming yours and were an early backer, give us a shout via the Pozible messages we sent out and we’ll be able to fulfill that straight away.

With just 16 days left to go, we’re hoping to reach our next milestone of $7000 soon and open to general submissions for the anthology. I just wanted to thank everyone who has pledged so far and has helped us boost the signal. We’re so excited about the stories we’ve already acquired for this book, those that we are still considering, and are looking forward to those we are yet to see or are yet to be written! Encouraging more diversity in YA fantasy offers even more scope for exciting stories to be told and read in the genre. We hope to be able to share one more book that does that with YA readers.

We’re blogging over at our Kaleidoscope blog all this month about why this project is important to us, why diversity in fiction is important to us and sharing a little bit of a sneak peek at some of the stories that will be in the book.

I always thought women referred to this stage of pregnancy as being like a beached whale because of their size. Turns out there’s a lot more aimless, listless lolling about than I expected. Which is to say, I’ve started taking *more than one* nap a day! And I HATE napping! Course, I’m also only sleeping between 3 and 5 hours during the night night so the napping is less optional and more just falling over asleep for periods of time. Earlier in my pregnancy, if I fought the nap, I got morning sickness. Now, if I fight the urge to nap, I just find that time passed and I was not conscious during it. The other day, I was sitting, working at my laptop and then I woke up 2 hours later.

And this whole moving slower thing? I really hate it. I’m used to a brisk walk when I know where I’m going, sure my husband thinks I walk slowly but his legs are twice as long as mine. But now, I miss pretty much any conversation he’s trying to have with me when we’re out and about because he’s up ahead talking into the wind 5 paces in front of me. I’m really annoyed by people who get annoyed behind me on the street cause I’m walking too slowly. It’s not like I can waddle any faster, what do they want? A gold star? And old people! Who think they own walking in whatever direction they want cause their old? I don’t really have a tight turning circle these days. Last night, I totally walked straight into the doorjamb as I turned to leave a room – you’d think you’d get used to being this size eventually. But you don’t.

But I think the hardest thing I’m trying to accept, is my waning energy levels. Everything takes me about three times as long now. Which means if I try and put a hard day in, I pay for it by not being able to do anything for the next two days. I never really realised how much I took for granted my ability to just dig deep, pull an allnighter, whatever and deliver to a deadline. My business model, as Tansy calls it. I work well under the pressure of a timeline and I might have got lazy relying on my ability to just pull it out of the hat when I needed to. So it’s not really surprising that I kinda thought I’d have all the time right down to the wire to get things done before the baby comes. I didn’t really plan on actually being less effectual. Normally, I really would have had enough time to complete my to do list in this last month. And I gotta say, I do not like that I’m struggling to do so – and not because I don’t want to do the work but because I physically can’t. I’m used to being able to force or command attention and concentration when I had to. Falling asleep or just not being able to have a clear mind are not things I can accept! I’m definitely struggling with the having to relinquish that control. And of course everyone is so quick to tell me that I should get used to it cause that’s how it’s going to be come next month. But that’s fine – for next month. I’d scheduled that into my planning. *After* I’d finished this to do list.

And on top of that, my carpal tunnel has worsened. I have been unable to sew for a week and there have been days where I have been unable to type as well. I’d planned at least some of the last days of my maternity leave (ha!) for hanging out on the couch and crafting. Sadly for me, I’ve been banned from any crafting until after the baby arrives now. Which also leaves me wondering what the heck am I supposed to be doing, other than napping?

I still have a bunch of things to finish off:

• Trucksong
• Rosaleen Love’s Twelve Planet Volume
• Kaleidoscope Pozible campaign
• Phd Proposal to submit (even though I am now on leave)
• setting up the baby’s room (it’s sort of started and it’s fine for when the baby comes but it’s not like in the movies)
• spring cleaning my house (yeah, even I can admit this one is now in the land of the never never)
• slush reading/general admin/tax stuff/finances etc

And since today and yesterday were highly productive, by late pregnancy me standards, I’m hoping I’m not in beached whale mode again tomorrow

I do have some good news. It mostly looks like I did not have anaphylaxis. I ended up in the ED last Monday morning – as per the instructions of my doctor, and Twitter. I don’t recommend showing up at 6.15am – it’s right before they switch shifts and it meant that I ended up hanging around for 3 hours (sure they could also have been checking I wasn’t dropping dead) and for peeps with anxiety, it was not a fun time. I think I also managed to get checked for preeclampsia about 3 times last week. Anyway, I eventually got cleared and sent home. I did have a few more instances of the claustrophobia + panic + not being able to breathe thing. And I started to get a rash (not having one when I went to ED was one of the reasons they eliminated the allergic reaction) and I’m still not overly convinced I’ve not had heightened sensitivity to salicylates lately.  I started to try and pull them out of my diet, which has been hard cause I’m almost left with nothing to eat. But thought this might also help with the pain in my hands which has been unbearable some days. Anyway, today my doctor’s visit has it leaning towards being rhinitis and I’m trying some over the counter stuff for that.

I’m on the countdown now – both for meeting my deadlines and to meet The Deadline and very aware that the end of this brings me merely to the beginning.

I feel a strong need to record things here about my pregnancy so I have a place to go back to when biology conveniently does its mind wipe erase. I’m really indignant about that.

Yesterday was a bit of a rough day. No husband to provide access to rational thought and to give me a hug. Just me and my body that was somehow trying to play the enemy. I’m still struggling with getting enough sleep. I’m now at the point where I celebrate getting 6 hours in two blocks of sleep as a huge win. Often I have to settle for 3 to 4 hours. But I’d started to get a bit of momentum and the night before last I was having a really great sleep when I woke up at 3.15 with my throat completely swollen shut. I’d had a bit of what I can only describe as pregnancy induced sleep apnea. I’ve had sinus issues since I hit 5 weeks along. So I figured it was that. And every now and then I get jolted awake as I struggle to take a breath, I guess. But this was different. I woke up and my throat was closed and it didn’t dissipate instantly – I could still breathe through my nose though. Being alone in the house, I got quite scared and wasn’t really sure what to do.

It’s quite funny in that in the cold harsh light of day, you’d call an ambulance or you’d go to ED. But at 3am, and when you’re pregnant, you get quite irrational. And you second guess yourself – I didn’t want to disturb anyone at that hour. And I didn’t want to drive to the hospital by myself. And I was worried that maybe I was overreacting and would look silly for making an issue out of it (hysterical, emotional pregnant lady etc). And by the time I’d got as far as looking to see what the wait time would be like at the hospital, I figured I’d be dead if I was going to die, right? And so I’d wait it out. Where wait it out meant wait for husband to wake up in Sydney and call him and cry on the phone. (Aside: I do have a nasty habit of doing that to people, I remember doing that to my mother when I went to live in Israel for a year and got lost on my first day in Haifa and almost ended up in Tel Aviv, so I sobbed on the phone to her about how much I hated it – culture shock, it passed – and she was like “I’m 27 hours away, I wish I could do something!!!”) Poor husband does very well at going from asleep to being cried at in 5 secs. I think that’s his training kicking in. And we agreed I’d not go back to sleep and would go see a doctor first thing. I ended up taking a Polaramine (sanctioned by doctor previously) and did get a bit of sleep at about 6am.

And? Well. When I saw the doctor yesterday, he thought the most likely thing was that it was anaphylactic shock. Which was a bit left field. I’m still not overly convinced since it feels like I’ve had milder symptoms for a couple of months. But, I’m happy to go with the “let’s just avoid nuts for now” recommendation – I’d had pistachio nuts before bed. Not a nut I have ever had a problem with before. And up til now, my allergy to nuts did not give rise to anaphylaxis. He pointed out that your reactions to an allergy scale up with exposure. And you know, pregnancy does weird shit to you. And in retrospect, I forgot about it at the time, but I had my second AntiD injection this week and it’s possible that has interfered (they monitor you straight after in case you react to that). So. That was fun. If it happens again I’m supposed to call an ambulance. And I might need to carry an epipen.

So there was that. But you know, that’s only partially how I roll. And why I was amused when people were warning me with “you wait til”s when pregnant – cause I ain’t the run of the mill. My Crohn’s is of course gearing up. Course it is. And that’s no surprise. I had that flare up caused by anxiety for my *hen’s night* for heaven’s sake. And that is NOTHING compared to November for me, right? So I was expecting this wouldn’t be a happy horse and cart ride in the park. The next part of this story is cut for TMI but to say that pregnancy and Crohn’s flare ups do not mesh well together. And I was quite miserable yesterday.

On the upsides, I’m still low in iron so my midwife has prescribed B12 to take as well (that’s a no brainer, cause, Crohn’s) so I’m hoping to feel awesome by like tomorrow. That’s how it works, right? And at this point, I am popping so many pills that it’s almost equivalent to the futuristic not having to eat anything, just take a pill, where the pill is actually about 12 different things. And much as I was terrified to go to sleep last night (even though the doctor reassured me your body wakes you up if you can’t breathe, as it had done the night before), it didn’t reoccur. So yay. And also, I think I’m quite happy with that medical practice – I’ve yet to actually move to a GP down here and I kinda need to decide that before the baby comes.

So, you know. This is me. I don’t do things by the book. It’s just how I am. The baby on the other hand has been fantastic – doing all the right things, growing well, very active. All good.

The exciting news for today is that Julia Rios and I launched our Pozible campaign to fundraise for our anthology project Kaleidscope – an anthology of diverse contemporary YA fantasy. We’ve been working behind the scenes on the Pozible campaign for ages but on the project for even longer – we had a meeting in person about it in Toronto at last World Fantasy Con but we’d been working on it even before then. It’s exciting to finally see it start to go live. I’m looking forward to working on this project – we’ve already bought 4 stories for it and we’re looking forward to reading for it. We’ll be open to submissions for the project as well, and there will be more on that later in the campaign. We’ve also got a whole bunch of content lined up for October to discuss the project and what diversity means to us.

So my plan was that I would work my six months on my PhD, turn in my candidacy proposal (at my uni you get accepted into the program and then you have 6 months to write your project proposal which needs to be accepted for you to gain candidacy) and then go on my mat leave Oct 1. And that meant from Twelfth Planet Press as well as my Phd. Go on leave. Hiatus. Do not work. Do not pass go. Do not collect $200.

And then somewhere along the line this plan became, hand in PhD proposal, go on mat leave from PhD and then finish up a whole bunch of TPP projects, have baby. I don’t really know why I haven’t accomplished more in the last 6 months, especially since I’ve been working full time on all this stuff. Which is to say, I don’t give myself slack for the fact that I felt sick for a large chunk of my pregnancy and tired for the rest of it. There was a lot of napping (!) in the beginning and now there is a lot of not sleeping and walking around in a zombified state.

(Seriously, WTF biology? In what universe does it make sense to prepare a woman to go in to a year of not sleeping with … not sleeping? Wouldn’t it make more sense to make her sleep lots?? I can’t stand it when people keep telling me to rest up and sleep now cause you won’t sleep later. Can’t fucking sleep more than 4 hours in a block of time. And OMG the discomfort. Let me tell you, 1 crying baby waking me up at night versus peeing every 3 minutes, hormones that keep me WIDE AWAKE for 19 hours a day, pain in my hands and elbows, numb fingers, not being able to sleep in any of my preferred sleeping positions, pulling muscles when trying to roll over? Yeah, uhuh. I’ll take the baby.)

Anyway, suffice to say, I got a lot less done than I thought I would. I didn’t factor in my moving more slowly. That never really occurred to me. And I still have at least 5 major projects to deliver before I deliver. And I’ve been stressed out a bit about this in the last couple of weeks. Especially since my PhD proposal is still not really in any good shape – I have 7 days left to finish it. I’m not sure if it can be done. And I have at least 3 books I’m hoping to get to print as well. Ahem. And some other stuff. And then stuff I wanted to get ahead on before I do have the sleeping in one hour blocks thing going on.

And then Thursday night happened. And as we’re driving up the freeway at 10pm, I’m thinking about what an idiot I am. And what really would be the worst case scenario if I don’t meet my deadlines. And really WTF was I thinking about not taking 6 weeks maternity leave, let alone 4? And the whole, “what would I do anyway if  I wasn’t working?” is not the real question – the question I should be asking is, what am I doing to myself, and my body by pushing so hard? And why?

So in theory, I’ve slowed down. Slowed my brain down, anyhow. I’m not going to panic about not meeting deadlines. I’m going to work when I can and do what I can and see what happens. And I’m remembering that I have people I can delegate things to and I’m working on handing that over. But you know the most annoying thing? The hardest thing to get myself to do (and this is the real reason my PhD work is behind) is to read. I avoid to do items that are “Read X” like the plague. I’m a publisher and I procrastinate on reading. Sigh. And then of course today, after only getting to bed (not sleep, but at least into bed) by 4am, I was reading cause that’s kinda low energy stuff and geez the reading for my Phd is really fascinating. Sigh. What am I going to do with myself, huh?

I’m guessing this will be the first of many in this series.

Up front I’ll say that there is a happy ending to this story.

Thursday night, we had a bit of a bub scare. I’ve pretty much clued on so far that this whole gig is rigged so you lose. And when you embrace that, you can kinda let it all just roll off you. I guess that’s the expression I’ve seen a lot on the many mothers I have known. (it could be the same expression for: yeah I’m too tired to fight the power of oppression but I did spit in your sandwich and use two day old tuna).

Anyway. The info I’ve been given is that even at this stage of the pregnancy a baby is supposed to move a certain number of times an hour and a day. And that if I notice the movement slowing, I should follow a series of steps ending in giving the midwives a ring. So we record Galactic Suburbia on Thursday night and I’m drinking lemonade during that two hours. After the episode, I go and hang out on the couch and watch TV and then I’m sewing and whatnot. And after a while, I realise that I don’t remember the baby moving. I think about it, and the last time I remember was with my morning fake coffee. Which is weird cause I’d had that sugary drink and  didn’t remember the baby moving at all during the podcast. So I mention this to C and he says, “have some ice cream.” Aside: seriously, it IS pretty cool that a solution to a problem is icecream. Normally, that solution would be inappropriate to apply.

I have a bowl of ice cream. Nothing. *THAT* is really weird. So I say to C, “Nothing!” And he says, “You’re supposed to wait 30 minutes. Have another bowl and wait 30 minutes.” By now, I’m starting to feel a bit ill. And panicky. But I have the second bowl of ice cream. And no movement. After 30 minutes, C comes in and checks on me and then hands me his phone with the number already dialled. I called and had a chat and the lovely midwife, after asking me questions said I should come in because I probably wouldn’t sleep well if they didn’t check it out.

I felt a bit silly about it. But the longer it went with the baby not moving, the more worried I felt. But I felt really bad about dragging C all the way up to the hospital at 10pm when it was probably going to be nothing. Not for the first time was I glad I’d married the right man – I’d gone to the bathroom and put shoes on and when I came out, he’d packed a bag (workstuff and toiletries for him and my laptop for me) and when I apologised about the whole thing he reminded me of a recent example where he had followed the SOP for an incident even though he was mostly sure it was a false alarm and that I didn’t need to explain such things to him.

And so the reality of choosing a hospital an hour drive from home kicked in – 45 mins at that time of night but 1.5 hrs to 2 hrs in peak hour. I began to think I would not like to be in labour and having to make that drive in a hurry. Or on my own. And I got maybe 1, maybe 2, kicks that whole drive in. I felt sick that whole drive up. I tried to make idle chatter but I just felt ill. What if something was wrong? What if we weren’t going to be in, monitored and sent home in an hour turnaround?

We showed up and it’s quite odd to go to a hospital late at night. I think ER makes it look much more exciting than it is. We headed to maternity and the lovely midwife whom I’d spoken to on the phone took me under her wing, busied me into a room and set me up. This is the second time we’ve been there at night (the tour for the birthing class being the other time) and I just kinda expected more noise/activity. C said I meant screaming. And um, yeah. It was basically silent. And it’s not like there weren’t other women there – the midwife said my doctor had been in about 30 minutes earlier to do a c-section so had been informed I was coming in. But we didn’t see anyone other than the three nurses who fussed over me.

They attached monitors to my belly – one to monitor for any contractions and one for the heartbeat – and took my vitals etc. It was a real relief when the heartbeat was located. It wasn’t instantly and I suspect actually the baby was facing inwards and that was the problem. They tracked the heartbeat and baby movements for about 15 minutes or so and whilst I couldn’t feel those movements at all (weird), it was really reassuring to hear that steady heartbeat. I was really glad that they didn’t make me feel silly about coming in – they reassured me that they thought I would feel better if I just came in and got checked out. It seemed like they had never thought there was an issue and maybe I’m not the only person who freaks out about what a friend called later “baby having a lazy day”. And for the 15 or 30 minutes of their time to just put a monitor on and make me feel better, with some kind bedside manner, well I felt much more reassured about coming back for the real deal and also about that long drive.

And then they sent us home.

And we got home at about midnight. And the baby held a jamboree in my uterus for about an hour and a half after that. Course it did.

I did though, nearly get my purple book two weeks early. Though on debate, they decided it better I wait til the pre admission appointment week after next.

(Thank you to everyone who was talking to me on Twitter during that experience. I really appreciated your support.)

I’ve just come home from breaking the fast with my family – the Yom Kippur (Day of Atonement) fast. Which I did not do, obviously, because pregnant. But Rosh Hashanah (Jewish New Year) and Yom Kippur are a time of reflection – for the year that you just had, the kind of person you think you are and the year you would like to come, and who you want to be in that time ahead. I’m also in reflection mode because my time as a pregnant lady is rapidly running out. It’s both taken an age and also gone by in the blink of an eye. I’ve had moments of real personal struggle – of feeling so unrelentingly unwell, of massive energy drains and now the pain is starting to kick in. I’ve also become completely captivated  by watching and feeling a living being inside me. What was at first quite confronting and weird, and uncomfortable, has become fascinating, and I guess magical. And I am starting to really look forward to meeting my kid. Weird as that sentence is to actually write.

I’ve been thinking a lot though about how this has also been our first year of marriage. Not long after the baby comes, we will celebrate our first wedding anniversary. And in some ways, I’ve been a bit regretful that I spent this first year, our newlywed year, pregnant. I didn’t know how I would be when pregnant, but I’ve spent a lot of it tired, sick, sleeping (I’ve slept way more this year than I usually do, even if I now can’t remember sleep) and a bit grumpy and short tempered. I’ve felt awful for a lot of it. And I guess I did always think your first year of marriage would be a bit more swoony than this.

On the other hand, there isn’t a day where I don’t think to myself, “I married the right man”. And I am so so grateful that we ever met. For such a long time I thought maybe that I would never meet the right person for me or that I was just destined to be alone. Or that I was too difficult or was being punished for some long forgotten heinous crime. And it took a long time to get over that wanting to not be single thing, to be ok being just me. And of course, when I did finally do that, C came along. C, who demands and expects me to be authentically me, and calls me out when I wander off that track. C, who has been patient and loving and supportive since the first day I met him, but especially so this year. C, who listens to me and hears and remembers what I say, who finishes my sentences and knows what I’m thinking. And who sits next to me and gently squeezes my hand when a conversation veers out into territory that upsets me, a squeeze that says, “I know this is offensive to you but it’s ok to let it slide this time.” Who helps me pick my battles and stay focussed on what’s really important. And who never ever makes me feel bad or need to be apologetic about who and what I am. And who challenges me intellectually and morally to be better and more.

It’s impossible to be superwoman – to have it all, at once. And this year it’s been rather quite confronting for me to actually have to face up that truth. I can’t both be in the labour ward AND at World Fantasy Con. Much as I would like to. The reality of having to make choices, of having to choose between things, and that it’s something that I as a woman am forced to do in ways that my husband is not. It’s been upsetting to finally have that moment come. (And to counterbalance that with being so very lucky, that at 37, I was still able to be in this position.) It would be extra hard for me to not be in Brighton, were I not going to be very busy right around that time. But it’s really made me have to think through what this means for me going forward. I am lucky to have other mentors around me – women who have done it before me, and have much to offer in advice and support. And I have a very loving husband who is prepared and capable who pulls his fair weight on this team. But there are some things he cannot do for me, or instead of me. And … that’s the really confronting bit. But when I bring him my dilemmas – what, for example, does this mean for next year, when I might still be breastfeeding? – he offers options and solutions. I’m very lucky and so very glad to have married this man. To finally feel like I am in the right place, with the right person.

I’m not really sure what I thought our first year of marriage would be like. We already lived together. We’ve already done the long distance thing when he’s been at sea. We are the very best of friends. It’s been in some ways no different to what it was before. And yet, this year has brought me all sorts of challenges – we travelled overseas together for the first time (and it was awesome), I finally came to the decision to quit my job and try this publishing thing for serious (something he’d told me a long time ago that he was prepared to support me when, and there would be a when, he said, I decided to leap) and when I needed to quit my job early due to morning sickness. And for all these things, C has been there as a sounding board, a support, never a judge, and never ever anything but my cheering squad. He gives me the confidence to believe in myself. And that I’m not in this alone.

We have this next big thing on our journey together coming up to round off this first year. And there is noone else in the world I would want here with me other than him. I don’t think I could do this without him. I’m scared – terrified to tell the truth – but knowing he’ll be standing beside me, squeezing my hand, it will be ok.

I have been remiss in not posting this here so for anyone who is going to be in Perth and is interested in a con stream for writers, consider checking this out. Also of important note is that Friday is the closing date to register interest in submitting work to be critted by Juliet Marillier and Lee Battersby. We’re interested in fostering a sf writers crit group in Perth and are hoping this friendly crit session might kickstart some interest in a repeat event.

Twelfth Planet Press CrimeScene Writing Stream

Saturday, 12 October, 2013

http://www.crimescenewa.org.au/

Pitch Twelfth Planet Press

Take an opportunity to pitch your completed manuscript to editor and publisher Alisa Krasnostein in a one on one pitch appointment. You will be given 5 to 8 minutes to provide a brief synopsis of your story, how it fits in with Twelfth Planet Press’ publishing line and how it stands out from the slushpile.

Twelfth Planet Press novels push boundaries to question, inspire, engage and challenge. We are specifically looking to acquire dynamic, original genre material outside that typically considered by mainstream publishers. We are reading for science fiction, fantasy, horror and crime. We will consider borderline literary, new weird, steampunk, space opera, hard science fiction, soft science fiction, urban fantasy, cyberpunk, military science fiction, young adult, paranormal romance and everything in between. We will also consider novellas in this pitch session.

Pitch appointment slots are limited. To register for your slot, email Linda: Linda@spiralarmevents.com

Critique session with Juliet Marillier, Lee Battersby and Alisa Krasnostein

Join writers Juliet Marillier and Lee Battersby and editor Alisa Krasnostein for a critique session. Selected manuscripts from participants will be critiqued individually by the panellists to an open audience session.

It is our intention to provide a friendly, open and supportive environment that will allow Perth writers to meet, network and develop group critiquing skills. Stay around for drinks after the writers’ stream and meet fellow Perth writers.

What you need to do:
1. Register your interest in participating by emailing Linda: Linda@spiralarmevents.com by 13 Sept 2013. Please provide a brief (one paragraph) description of your writing experience and a brief description of the piece you would be submitting for critique.

2. You will be advised by 18 Sept 2013 whether you have been selected to participate. If selected, you must submit your work by 20 Sept 2013. Manuscripts must comply with the following requirements:
Novel: a one page synopsis and the first 10 to 15 pages.
Short story: Up to 7000 words. Full manuscripts should be submitted.

All submissions should be sent as Word documents attached to a covering email. Documents should be double-spaced ie 15 pages means 15 double-spaced pages.

Juliet Marillier was born and brought up in Dunedin, New Zealand, and now lives in Western Australia. Her historical fantasy novels for adults and young adults have been translated into many languages and have won a number of awards including the Aurealis, the American Library Association’s Alex Award, the Sir Julius Vogel Award and the Prix Imaginales. Among Juliet’s works are the Sevenwaters novels, the Bridei Chronicles and the Shadowfell series, of which the second novel, Raven Flight, was published in July 2013.

Juliet’s lifelong love of folklore, fairy tales and mythology is a major influence on her writing. When not busy writing, Juliet tends to a small pack of waifs and strays. Find out more at http://www.julietmarillier.com.

Lee Battersby is the Aurealis, Australian Shadows and Writers of the Future-winning author of the novels “The Corpse-Rat King” (Angry Robot Books, 2012) and “The Marching Dead” (Angry Robot, 2013) as well as the collection “Through Soft Air” (Prime Books, 2006) and over 70 stories in the US, Europe and Australia. His writing has been praised for its consistent attention to voice and narrative muscle. He lives online at www.leebattersby.com and blogs at http://battersblog.blogspot.com.

Alisa Krasnostein is editor and publisher at independent Twelfth Planet Press, a freshly minted creative publishing PhD student and recently retired environmental engineer. She part of the twice Hugo nominated and Peter McNamara Award winning Galactic Suburbia Podcast team. In 2011, she won the World Fantasy Award for her work at Twelfth Planet Press. In her spare time she is a critic, reader, reviewer, podcaster, runner, environmentalist, knitter, quilter and puppy lover.

The Invisibility of Elmore Leonard: Writing Workshop with Matthew Chrulew

When Elmore Leonard died in August this year, tributes flowed, and his ten rules for writing were cited all over the net. The influence of his gritty and humorous short stories and novels, many of which were made into films and television series (such as 3:10 to Yuma, Get Shorty and Justified), can be found throughout crime fiction and beyond. Alongside his enticing villains and outlaws, Leonard was famous for bringing a Hemingwayesque restraint to genre fiction: distracting description was minimised and tight dialogue carried the drama. His was the art of getting out of the way. His ten rules advised writers to avoid weather, prologues, said-bookisms, adverbs, exclamation points, dialect, description, and “hooptedoodle”—that is, “obvious writing” that readers might notice or skip. Yet their repetition often ignores the qualifications and exceptions in his original article, his awareness of the singularity of his style. We will take a look at his writing and his rules, ask about their value and place, and attempt to write some Elmore Leonard dialogue of our own.

Matthew Chrulew’s stories have appeared in Aurealis, Antennae, ASIM, Pseudopod, Canterbury 2100 and Macabre: A Journey Through Australian Horror. They have been reprinted in Australian Dark Fantasy and Horror vol 3. (2008) and The Year’s Best Australian Fantasy and Horror 2010. His novella The Angælien Apocalypse (Twelfth Planet Press) was a finalist in the 2010 Aurealis Awards. He teaches creative writing at Curtin University and blogs at matthewchrulew.wordpress.com

How to be a Professional Writer

In this seminar, author Marianne Delacourt/de Pierres discusses how to make the transition from hobbyist/emerging writer to professional. Some of the topics she will discuss are branding, when to give up the day job, work habits and networking. As a full time writer with twenty years of experience and (soon to be) seventeen published novels, Marianne will share her insights and help you avoid her mistakes.

Marianne de Pierres is the author of the acclaimed Parrish Plessis and award-winning Sentients of Orion science fiction series. The Parrish Plessis series has been translated into eight languages and adapted into a roleplaying game. She’s also the author of a teen dark fantasy series.

Marianne writes award-winning crime under the pseudonym Marianne Delacourt. Visit her websites: at www.mariannedepierres.com, www.tarasharp.com and www.burnbright.com.au

This week is a bit of a countdown for me as by Saturday, the baby is deemed cooked enough to be able to be delivered at the hospital I have chosen rather than at the women’s hospital specialising in preterm and emergency type deliveries. It is a big milestone because it says the baby is able to survive outside the womb etc.

I had my doctor’s appointment yesterday and started working on my birth plan. I have to say that choosing a doctor is one of the most important things (and privileges) to me. With my various and unrelated medical issues coupled with some mental health concerns, I chose a doctor that my sister recommended since a friend of hers with complications had seen her and  my sister had seen once or twice during her own pregnancy. I prefer to see women doctors. Something that became obvious to me when I was first sick with Crohn’s disease is that women’s parts and women’s hormones can affect progression and symptoms of diseases differently to men and if you don’t experience those quirks, you may not instantly account for them. Or understand them. Which was the case for me describing issues with exacerbation of my Crohn’s symptoms at certain times of the month to my first few (male) doctors.

I instantly liked my doctor on the first appointment when I asked her if it was true I was having a “geriatric pregnancy” – a term, by the way, I have only heard male doctors use. She scoffed at the term, rolled her eyes and said, “oh yes, cause you’re *so* ancient”. My GP had given me the same response. Instant bond.

Yesterday, I had a frank and open discussion with her about things and my concerns. I’m so happy with how supportive she is – she’s very professional and calm and cool but also very funny and concerned that I have the experience I want. I haven’t yet asked if there is a teleportation option though, which is really the experience I want.

What strikes me most about pregnancy so far is how much difference there is for me in knowing something intellectually versus experiencing it emotionally. For me, I guess a lot of my feminism was intellectual. I’ve argued for and believed in it vehemently since I was very young. And my views have not changed. But I’ve come to understand a lot of issues at a deeper level, having not really thought a lot of them through at more than an intellectual level. This is something my friends had warned me about. But it’s still quite something to actually live through.

Obviously there is all the judgment stuff that you experience. You can’t walk five steps without people having to tell you how to do something, based on how they did it. As though all experiences are the same. That’s been my first lesson – my pregnancy experience is mine, and unlike anyone else’s. For a start, I have Crohn’s disease. I went in with a few symptoms which pregnancy heightened. I have food allergies and intolerances and am vegetarian. All of which means that the ways in which I can deal with different symptoms and issues is going to be complicated. So many people told me “you wait til [insert horrible symptom or craving] happens” and you know? Most of that shit didn’t. I didn’t have heightened sense of smell (my smell is already pretty heightened normally), almost no smells turned my stomach (maybe I couldn’t stand peppermint for a bit?), I haven’t had any real cravings (like, maybe strawberries? And I would have eaten maybe 3 or 4 punnets in the last 8 months?), in fact I’ve had almost no appetite for most of it, I felt nauseous constantly til 22 weeks. I felt very tired for a lot of it. In fact, I’ve only really started to feel *good* in the last couple of weeks. Yesterday, the midwife said she thought that was the first time I’d said and sounded that I felt well the whole time. I haven’t had much swelling though I have had carpal tunnel. And I can’t much sleep. And so it goes.

But this whole thing has taught me that experience is individual. And whilst advice is helpful, it’s not always useful or applicable. I think also there is a difference between people who are genuinely listening to what you’re going through and providing a supportive ear and some suggestions versus the people who just want another chance to work through their own horror story by downloading it on you or by trying to one-up your experience. With the latter, I am developing a technique whereby I smile and nod and flick elevator music on in my head. That’s the *polite* and *feminine* way to deal with the driveby when really I want to be able to just tell em to piss off. But you know, that would be “aggressive*.

I have a new respect for women who try many times for a successful pregnancy. I always understood the emotional turmoil of losing a baby. But I never really thought about the physical aspects of that. After going through my first trimester, and being aware that mine was not even the most extreme of experiences, I began to think about women who try and miscarry multiple times. I do not think I could go through that 5 or 6 times and feel so unwell each time only to then have such a devastating outcome (on the other hand, I was lucky in my pregnancy so how can I really understand the flipside? Of really wanting a baby, of carrying it inside you to term and not being able to?). And the physical strain as well of being pregnant – I now look at women who have 5 or 6 babies and I just marvel at how much toll that takes out of you physically – the pregnancy, the birth and the feeding afterwards. (And bearing in mind that not everyone has the same experience as me, I guess if you have relatively few symptoms and easy births, this whole thing would be a lot less taxing and a lot more enjoyable).

The freedom of choice is something that is at the forefront of my mind right now. There are a lot of choices. A lot of ways of doing things. A lot of things to prioritise. And a lot of options and methods which will only become apparent as to which one is right for you and your baby when your baby arrives. We took our parenting classes and we listened to a lot of things. I was most interested to note that whilst last week’s class on feeding stressed that it’s everyone’s choice whether to breastfeed or formula feed, no time in the class was allocated to going through the formula feeding option. We throw the word “choice” around a lot but we attach the act of judging to it in the subtext. I’m already aware of how much judgment others like to place on the choices you make. And I know this is only the beginning. Something I’ve been working on in this pregnancy is learning to set my own boundaries and enforce them. But the thing I’m realising I really need to work on is giving myself permission to feel the freedom in my freedom to choose. To make my choices and not be weighed down with the imagined judgment from others about that choice. Because if I can’t do that, I am not truly free. And I’m learning, that in this game, I will always lose.

Tags: feminism, pregnancy

An actual finished object!

Today I uncovered a thing – a thing where I discovered I had screwed something up. For long time readers, it’s no real surprise that I tend to procrastinate on things. I am excellent at distraction productivity to cover up said procrastination but I tend to avoid things that might be unpleasant. Course, that avoidance creates guilt. And the occasional panic sweats and sick feeling when you recall the guilt. But for the most part, avoidance.

The thing is though, avoidance (and guilt) is bullshit. Another one of those white background noise stresses weighing down your psyche. And as I embrace the GTD lifestyle in preparation for baby boot camp (8-9 weeks to go) I’m discovering that there is no room for avoidance in this way of living and in the end, the only way to feel truly free is to face the thing you are avoiding. So, whilst I continue this last gasp of avoidance on today’s discovery, let me write this post as a sermon to myself on avoiding avoidance.

FINISHED OBJECT!

I actually finished this during the recording of the last Galactic Suburbia episode but then had to get the cushion insert from Ikea before it counted as completed. It’s a cushion cover. And it’s a big deal because I bought this pattern kit possibly at the first Quilt and Craft Fair I attended something like 5 or 6 years or more ago. And procrastinated on it. Why? I have a fear of cutting beautiful fabric – what if  I screw it up? And also, the instructions looked hard. And I needed to translate them from sewing machine to hand sewing. And that all seemed too hard and too scary. So it sat there. In my stash pile. Moving house with me however many times. If you don’t actually sew the project, did you waste your money?

Anyway. I finally cut the material when I was doing some cutting of fabrics for a different project. Now that my work desk is always left as a clear space, it makes pulling out my cutting board to cut fabric whenever I feel like it much easier. And when I was trying to work out how to cut strips for my Jinny Beyer block of the month quilt (more on that later), I figured I may as well do the same for this one. And then I took the cut pieces with me to Conflux (and then on to Tassie) to sew. I didn’t actually get round to it but it was a major step forward out of avoidance.

Then it sat in the ziplock bag for a couple more months as the instructions for piecing still looked scary.

But as part of getting to cruise control on GTD, I audited my craft room, and every nook and cranny round the house and under the beds (I’m still sorting through random garbage bags from moves of just stuff shoved in) and created a Crafts Project list and a Next Craft Actions list. And this project of course was on the list. With Next Actions, all you have to do is answer the question “What’s next?” You don’t have to know the whole plan of a project of A -> B -> C -> D -> Finished. You just need to know A. And then when you’ve finished A you figure out What’s Next? etc. So in answering that, I only had to understand the very first step of the instructions and execute that. And so on. There was some winging it required. The fabric in the original kit was never straight cut or the right size to start with. But then, when I thought about it, I realised, finished is better than perfect so never started. And it’s a pillow. It’s not the Sistine Chapel. Who is going to come along and measure the finished product and check it’s what the instructions said anyhow?

I worked step by step. The final bit is the back where you end up with a pillow slip by laying two pieces, cut of different sizes, on top of each other and sewing round the four outer edges, ending up with an inside pouch to hold the pillow. That bit was a bit boring but the great thing is, I save that kind of no brain sewing (once you figure out the step) to during things like recording a podcast. I can pick it up and put it down without needing to track anything and I can’t go anywhere for an hour or two so it’s the only thing I can do in that time! And voila! I have a finished project that took me maybe 2 hours to sew by hand after 5 or 6 years of being scared of the project!

Now to protect it from the destructive forces of the puppy! And to remember when tackling other long procrastinated and avoided projects that the most important thing is figuring out what the next step is, not needing to have the entire thing planned before you start thereby never actually starting.