Well, I have to do some practicing because I’m DJing tonight, so of course I’ve hopped straight onto the internet. Nothing makes you want to fill up your blog like a deadline for something else.
This morning my mother telephoned me to tell me she ‘is on the skype!’ and to ask me who I am on skype. I’m not sure she’s quite grasped the whole skype concept. But then I never use skype, and sure as shit can’t remember who I am on the skype. Apparently my niece (who wants to be a chef when she grows up) set my mother up on a recent visit to Tasmania. The mother is delighted. I’m not sure she’s actually used it yet, but she’s always delighted by the thought of a bargain or some sort of purchasing scam.
I never use the telephone to have actual vocal conversations any more, unless you count those long conversations with friends on my mobile while I’m waiting for a bus at the bus stop. I only make phone calls at the bus stop. Because you can’t read while waiting for a bus in Sydney because you have to be alert to hail Sydney buses and they won’t stop unless they have to. Not even if they see you standing at the stop. If you don’t have that magic public transport finger out to hail the fuckers, they’re just going to drive on by. Suck that up, commuter noob.
I do send a few text messages, mostly to my Squeeze to tell him I’m about to get on a bus, or have just been ignored by a bus driver at the curb. I do quite a bit of texting over exchange weekends when I’m working as the organisational nexus for a group of interstate dancers looking for noms. But otherwise it’s not my communications tool of choice.
The internet, though, well, let’s just say… fuck, let’s just say everything that occurs to us. In 140 characters or less. If you’re not following me on twitter (and I can’t see why you would), then you’ve dodged about sixty zillion full metal jackets. It seems I’m partial to a little annotation. Every thing I do or think, it has to be recorded for posterity. I’m fairly sure this is a natural consequence of working at home and spending quite a bit of time on one’s own, when one is the type of person who ordinarily likes a little high-impact interaction. I’ve noticed that if you’re also caring for a small child the twitter deluge is liberally seeded with poo talk. And mixed metaphors, obviously. I’m not caring for a small child, but I follow quite a few people who do. One clear advantage to following stay-home carers is the amount of kidspam you get in your tweetstream. I quite like a portrait of a child in fancy dress.
I also like the way a meme brings all the tweeple to the yard, just for a moment. Just for a second there, we’re all 13 year olds, laughing at the thought of Keenu Reeves in our trousers, or cheering each other up with very good reasons to be alive. I’m particularly fond of @jellyjellyfish’s #reasonstolive day (Thursdays, thanks, and Jelly’ll be setting the theme for you Wednesday night) because it stops me tweeting a heap of minor complaints and starts me tweeting a rapid-fire round of nice thoughts about things I like (see what I did there?). My one problem is that I’m always a little torn about whether something I really like actually constitutes a reason to live. I mean, I can live without the smell of fresh bread. So is it a reason to live? When I get to this point I usually give myself a kick in the pants and suggest I get back into the proper spirit of things. The point here is to list nice things to remind Jelly (and the rest of us) that life is good.
It is fairly good, you know, but it seems I’m having trouble reminding myself of that right now. I’ve had a couple of pretty nasty anxiety moments lately, and they’ve managed to bed down in my shoulder and neck muscles to give me a headache. Haven’t had a bad anxiety headache in a long time, but all this thinking about competitive solo dance matched with the final round of assignments in the final semester of my postgrad diploma seems a fairly good beginning for a nasty round of bad headaches. Well, it would have been a start, but by gum, I Took Charge. After a little round of public anxiety-bleating, I managed to remind myself that Life is actually Good. And I did it with a little massage (nothing reminds you that life is nice like a pair of strong, comforting hands unknotting your muscles), a little chocolate ice cream (nothing is quite as good as a little unhealthy comfort eating) and of course a nice serve of the right type of low impact muscle stretches. All enabled, of course, by my very wonderful Squeeze.
So I figure it’s worth a (rare) blog post to announce that, even though there are moments of flushed, heart-pounding, scurrying-about-picking-things-up-and-putting-them-down, short-tempered, muscle-tensed anxiety, there’s also an awful lot of warm water, strong hands, good reading and gentle conversation. Life is pretty nice.
Whenever I see the physio/podiatrist I want to demonstrate my latest new strongs. Because I feel that he – as someone who works with elite athletes – is best positioned to appreciate my work. But I don’t want to be too much on the ‘check out my strongs!’ as he is a golfer and I am a lindy hopper and I’m not a mean person. But when he’s back there with his strong fingers buried to the second knuckle in glute-wrapping flesh and I’m wincing in agony, I wonder if he’s noticing the increased girth of said glute(s) and whether he’s thinking ‘well, this is one strong athlete – just look at all these strongs!’