A random post about kindness

My week of mindless activity continues, which means that my week of random thought also goes along its merry way. Today I was gnawing over the idea of Kindness.

Actually, scratch that. I began with Kindness and then segued briefly into why (or why not) women change their names when they get married. I brought that segue home with me, posted a question on Facebook/Twitter about it and watched the whole thing ignite. Answers were fairly evenly divided into the Ayes and the Nos, the hyphenated and the not, those with messy Medicare cards and those with a shared family name. I was left thinking 'now why didn't I write a blog post about that?'.

Moral to the story? Save your big questions for bigger forums.

Anyhoo, back to Kindness.

I read this post on Mamma Mia last week, about how kind words from a stranger can turn someone's day around. "Awww," I thought. I've long thought that kindness is an underrated human trait. Then, on ABC-TV's The Gruen Transfer last night, there was discussion of Kindness as a trend.

Advertisers are using social media to bestow 'random acts of kindness' (RAKs) upon people - usually people with large numbers of followers on Twitter or Facebook. In other words, people whom the advertiser thinks may be of some use in publicising said RAKs (and thus the advertiser) to their social networks. Call me cynical, but I think they need to come up with a new name. PMAM or Pre-Meditated Acts of Marketing comes to mind.

This idea of Kindness as a phenomenon, something people are talking about, interests me. Is it so rare in our world now that we have to broadcast it when someone is kind to us? It's not a new idea. Back in the 1970s, on those long family holidays in the back of the Kingswood Station Wagon, my sisters and I (the TICH was yet to join the Von Tait Family Singers) used to sing a song called 'Try A Little Kindness'. Heaven knows where we learnt it, or who sang it (I could Google it I know, but that would ruin the mystique), but I suspect it was a country singer of some description. It basically talked about how a random act of kindness would not only change someone else's day, but your own.

So now I'm wondering (you know me, always wondering). Have you ever been on the end of a random act of kindness? How did it make you feel? Or perhaps you were the purveyor of said kindness? Was it a spontaneous thing or did you specifically set out to be kind? If you set out to be kind, does that somehow add selfishness to the kindness mix?

Always with the big questions.

Are you brave enough to break free?

Self-reflection sometimes arrives in strange packages. I was flicking through the copy of Australian Geographic (which arrives mysteriously and unsolicited in our mailbox every month or so) when I came across a story about a family who live on a boat off the coast of WA. The parents had set sail with a baby girl around 13 or 14 years ago, to track humpback whales or somesuch, and now lived on board with a younger daughter while that baby was off at boarding school. There was a picture of them, all tall and tanned and lovely (though not, I suspect, from Ipanema).

It got me thinking. Could I do something like that? Not even especially on a boat, but could I pack up my family and dive completely off the mothership and into our own lifestyle? No schools. No 9-5 job of any kind. No routine that I could imagine.

My friend S is off travelling around the top end of Australia with her husband and three kids in a mustard-coloured Kombi. Five of them. They've gone for three months or so, with a sheaf of homework papers for the older two kids to complete and a couple of meet-ups planned with friends. Beyond that, nothing. Every once in a while, we get a Facebook update along these lines: 'We are so in our bikinis, hot, hot, hot... missing my shower.' Not easy reading when it's freezing and blowing a gale in Fibrotown.

The Builder and I have a longheld dream to take our boys to the land of his forefathers to live for a year or so - or at least for a long holiday. Being the planners that we are, we spend a lot of time trying to figure out how it will all work. When would be the best time in the boys' school lives? How will the boys manage? How will we tie up things here at home? How the heck will we finance the whole operation? How will we feel when we come back (I kid you not)? We are very practical people, to the point of overplanning, overscheduling and generally overthinking most things.

When I see that family on their boat off WA, or read about my friends' adventures in their Kombi, I can't help but wonder if we will ever get through the red tape that we create for ourselves. Is it in us to simply get in a Kombi and drive off? Or hop on a plane and go? Probably not without ticking all the boxes, dotting all the Is and crossing all the Ts before we go. Which is counterintuitive.

We both travelled widely when we were young. We know how liberating it can be to cut ties, dump possessions and take off. But somewhere between then and now, we obtained anchors and roots. Not to mention two dependents.

Still, it's good to dream. If we can dream it, we can do it, and other such positive mantras. At least we're aware of the fact that the biggest obstacle to getting there is probably ourselves.

Have you ever pulled up stumps and taken the family off on an extended adventure? Do you dream of doing it? What's the biggest obstacle you face?


[image: VW Camper fabric from Classicreflections1/etsy]

Finding the right approach for writing

I'm going to answer a question today. I'm not usually one for doing that, preferring, as we all know, to ask them. But it's a slow news day in the Fibro and I'm scratching around for a post. So...

When I ran my interview with Mia Freedman on Monday, Gill from Alice Becomes (great blog incidentally by Gill and Nic from Our Park Life) asked the following question in the comments:

"I would love to know your thoughts and how you balance and differentiate between separate styles of writing? Similar to Mia's point of view?"

Mia's point of view, just to refresh your memory, was this:

"Every type of writing I do - from Twitter to books - is different. It requires a slightly different approach and, often, a different tone. Since I'm constantly flitting between social media, Mamamia, my column and books, I barely even have to think about it now. Although, books can be a bit of a gear shift. You need to lengthen your concentration span, which is reduced constantly by tweeting and blogging."

I do agree. Magazine writing requires voice + objectivity. You are writing for a large, faceless audience who have certain expectations about what they will see in that particular publication. There will be a certain vocabulary that will resonate with that demographic (and you must never forget that each magazine has a specific demographic) and you may find yourself using such terms as 'BFF' and 'vajazzle', which you would not generally use. You must also in feature writing make room for expert voices, weaving them in and out, providing a balanced view of whatever your subject may be. Having said that, the essential tenor of the article must remain true to your own style and voice. Easy, huh?

Writing for a personal blog, on the other hand, requires intimacy. Here, it is all about your voice. This is what I love about it. You can truly give voice to your own voice in a way that you can't when you have an editor, a specified readership and others to please.

Twitter and other social media has been very good for my writing in a strange way. While it is not good for the attention span (I agree 100 per cent with Mia on that), it is superb for clarity. Getting a cohesive message into 140 characters can be a challenge and is a simple way to spot waffle at 20 paces. As for Facebook, there is an art to an excellent status update... one which I'm still learning.

Now for books. Ah yes. So many words. With non-fiction books, I usually break it down into chapters, write each as I would approach a long magazine feature and then work out where I've repeated myself so that I can cross-reference and double check. Fun.

Fiction, on the other hand, is a whole different kettle of fish. It comes back to voice - presenting your story in your own words - but also creating characters with their own voices. Not easy. There's also a lot of persistence involved. As discussed, I am not a plotter (though I am rapidly appreciating the value of having a map through a story), so I tend to just start and see what will happen. I find that fiction requires long periods of thinking followed by short bursts of activity. I put down 1000 words here and 500 words there, and then ruminate for a while before banging out another couple of thousand words. I know that many experts say that the best advice is to write every day, but my thinking on that is that I do - just not always on the same project. Perhaps this is why my fiction remains unpublished...

I also write for other websites, do corporate work (including newsletters and media releases), and write advertising copy. All of which require different approaches again (which we might go into a different day as I'm getting sick of the sound of my own voice here...).

So, yes, I am constantly switching between forms, but each has a quite specific approach. Sometimes I do find myself wishing that my next magazine feature was 140 characters long - but I have to say that writing short can be a lot more difficult than writing long. Less room to cover up if you get it wrong.

The one thing that carries over in every form of writing is discipline. Mostly, the discipline to do it.

{image: Natashanb/Tumblr}

How (not) to use Skype

For the latest in what is fast becoming a series on How (Not) To Do Stuff, I roadtested Skype. I remember first hearing about Skype a few years ago when the earliest of my Early Adopter friends emailed her entire list extolling its joys and insisting we all sign up. Given that like attracts like, it will surprise no-one to discover that most of my friends are also Luddites and we all screeched with (cyber) laughter (it looked something like this: LOL, LOL, LOL).

Why would we want to look at each other while we talked? Isn't the whole point of the phone so that you can sit around in your pyjamas and pretend to be professional?

Or maybe that's just me.

Suffice to say that my Early Adopter friend had to make new friends, probably on Skype, just so she'd have someone to talk to.

Fast-forward a few years and the technological revolution has even touched The Fibro. Today I not only conducted my first ever Skype call, but it was recorded and will be available for the whole world to view via the Sydney Writers' Centre website in a few weeks. A situation that combined three of my least favourite things in the world:

a) Answering questions instead of asking them.
b) Being captured on camera (which I abhor, be it still or video)
c) New technology.

Pressure, much?

I did all the right things. I downloaded Skype, read the how-to manual, signed up for an account. Easy. I even tidied up the portion of my office that I thought might be visible via the computer's camera. I was ready. Ten minutes before the appointed time, I attempted to open the application, so that I could work out how I'd work out that I had a 'call' coming in.

No dice. "Your operating system does not support this version of Skype."

Cue: panic stations. It took me five mintues of Googling and faffing to work out that I'd downloaded the latest version of Skype onto my not-latest-version operating system. It took another five minutes to find a version that my not-latest-version operating system would support. Twenty seconds before the appointed time, I had something open on my computer and my fingers crossed.

It worked. I saw my interviewer, she saw me. She asked questions, I attempted to answer them in a meaningful manner whilst determinedly not looking at the image of myself in the bottom left hand corner. Of course, it wasn't until after the interview that I thought of all my best answers. You know, the succinct, witty, intelligent ones. But that's par for the course and can in no way be blamed on Skype.

In hindsight, all that panic and faffing was probably for the best. I was so busy fretting about the technology that I had no time to worry about whether my hair was frizzy or how many chins I was featuring at any given time. I remembered to look at the camera, not the screen, so hopefully people will see my eyes, and not a fab view of my eyelids (thanks Lady Estrogen!). And I didn't even have to take another friend's advice to shut down the computer if the questions got too hard and pretend it was a 'dropped line'.

So here I am. Almost fully functioning member of the 21st century.

Next step: updating the operating system.

Can I ask you a question?

I read today, in O magazine (so it must be true), that asking a lot of questions can help "keep your mind nimble" (their words, not mine) as you age. I was kind of excited by this. Not only because it seems that Misters 4 and 7 will be incredibly sharp 109 year olds (I figure it will take them this long to run out of questions). But because I will be too. Well, maybe not 109 (my Bio Age score at the gym the other day was close to that now). But sharp.

To give you an idea of why, I thought I'd run you through some of the questions I asked today. This does not include the questions I had to answer (which included such gems as "why does that car look funny?" - answer: because it's a hearse - and "where is that story that was due today?" - answer: the dog ate my homework). Just a small sample of the ones that originated from me.

"What do you want for breakfast?"

"Where are your shoes?"

"Where are your shoes?"

"Where are your shoes?"

"Why did you change the time for Reading and not tell me?"

"What do you think of this story idea?"

"What is career resilience?"

"What foods should we eat for more energy?"

"How can I network when I have to pick the kids up after school?"

"How does Skype work?"

"What would life be like for a country solicitor?"

"Would any woman in her right mind drive 1000km to talk to a man who 'needed space'?"

"Do you really need that receipt to finish my tax?"

"What is the difference between a bully and a bitch?"

"When do you need this by?"

"What are the 10 essential things that everyone should know about insurance?"

"Where the hell did I put that receipt?"

"Where are your shoes?"


Of course, I have barely scraped the surface. But, as you can see, I am well on the way to a very nimble mind in old age. Also well on the way to making my children sleep in their shoes.

What about you? Are you asking a lot of questions? Are they meaningful questions?


{image: Jamie'sArt/etsy}

What is real?

Always good with a difficult question, Mr4 surpassed himself yesterday.

"How do you know something is real?" he asked.

Immediately, I was transported back to Philosophy 101 at Sydney University during my much-briefer-than-it-should-have-been flirtation with an Arts degree. A dark, institutional-green room. Cold. Full of mature-age students (I went to uni at 20, after I'd started my cadetship). I wanted to read the texts, have a quick chat, go home. Everyone else wanted to debate the nature of a chair ad nauseum, working on the theory that if they spoke the loudest, they'd win the argument.

My mind flicked back and forth through remembered snippets of Plato, Socrates, Aristotle. How does 'I think therefore I am' relate to reality? Perception versus reality? I remember doing something on beauty. What makes us beautiful? Is something innately beautiful, or do we make it so?

None of this proves helpful. Mr4 is still looking at me, questioning, wondering. I think some more.

He is four.

"If you can touch it, it's real," I finally say.

"Oh, okay," he says, turning back to LazyTown.

Conversation over. And I didn't even have to bring up Alla Hoo Hoo. If only everything in life were so simple.

Got a better answer? Any advice on what I should have said? I'll be making notes for next time because if there's one certainty in an uncertain world, there will be a next time.

{image: Eames chair, via designmuseum.com}