Day 216: how many humps?

Remember a couple of weeks ago, when I said no more fucking around on the music front? Well, I haven't been fucking around. I've been taking positive action to get something new happening, doing my singing practice, writing new songs, playing my bass. Then I got sick and had to stop singing for a while. And then I got stopped in my tracks by a mic recording issue that is probably tiny but that I cannot seem to solve. This hasn't deterred me, and I have made arrangements for Ben to come and have a look at what I'm doing (he knows more about these things than me), but it has caused me to wonder, just how many frickin humps must I get over before I get anywhere musically? As you know, I have been on the band and music road for a long time now in various guises. Some phases have worked more easily than others. Along the way there have been some tantalisingly close brushes with real success. But the situation I'm in right now is that I am flying decidedly solo and finding it freaking hard to drag my sack of tunes up the mountainside. Recently Ben, my former drummer, stepped into a fully formed, oft playing band poised for international touring and success. That's the kind of ease I'm talking about. That's how things that are meant to happen happen right? Or maybe they never happen that way, and Ben has just received a perfectly packaged miracle in the post. I don't know. What I do know is that his lucky turn has left me short of a drummer. I don't feel any resentment about it, it's just a practicality that needs looking at. One small consolation is that my voice seems to be getting better. I'm finding new places in it I didn't have before. Notes are coming out stronger and clearer at least in some areas of my range, and this is all good. My latest thought (like I literally had it about an hour and a half ago) is that I need to start a new band. I don't know if Ben will have time to be in two bands (judging by his current schedule) so this means I might have to start a band with entirely new people. You want humps? That's a whole heap right there. Psychological ones, practical ones, musical ones, financial ones. I just feel like I've put so much of my life into music and bands that I cannot walk away until I have produced something decent. I would like things to be easier than they are right now, but there's something in me that just refuses to give up until I get this thing across the line. I just wish there was a little less thinking and lamenting going on, and a little more actually happening. Oh well, if I'm going to get anywhere, there's nothing else to do but take it one hump at a time.

Day 215: a baby!

My best friend Jane in New Zealand has given birth to a beautiful little boy called Arlo. How to celebrate? With Champagne of course! And no, don't worry, I will not be drinking it. I will simply be sending my very good pal a bottle of my favourite French, so the new parents can toast the health of their new arrival. I always find the bringing into the world of fresh, new humans completely amazing, but this one in particular gives me pause for thought. Jane is the first in our old group of high school and university friends to have a child. It marks a step into a new zone, from a kind of extended childhood into adulthood for real. For Janie it will be some kind of transformation no doubt. And meanwhile, over here I am undergoing my own little transformation, if quite a self-centred and probably therefore quite an infantile one. So far on this journey, I have changed from a burger-munching booze hound suffering from chronic unhappiness and dissatisfaction, to a vegan teetotaler, generally pleased and entertained with much if not all that goes on around me. Surely all that has changed cannot be credited to not drinking? But not drinking was certainly the trigger. Well, I do not know how this will all end up, or where I will find myself on day 365. And for now that's enough about me. There is a baby boy who has newly entered this world, so welcome Arlo. I wish you the best of health and the best of luck on your travels through this extremely interesting thing we call life.

Day 214: tea and therapy.

Today I went to another crafternoon. This time it was at a totally cool cafe in Newtown called Coffee and Yarn that actually has knitting needles, patterns and even half done knitting sitting in little boxes on the tables. You can literally come in, order lunch or coffee, pick up some knitting and do a bit, then put it back down when it's time to leave. Could there be a venue more suited to our crafty purposes? I think not. Now I know that meeting up to knit and crochet and sew stuff really does have the whiff of nerd about it. But I couldn't give a rat's. It's not nerdy, it's awesome. Here's why. Firstly, crafting things for the sake of crafting things (and maybe because you want to make someone a little present or something useful) is incredibly satisfying. You start with what looks like nothing (a long string of wool or some scraps of material) and you turn it into something cute or cool or funny. It's creative. It's fulfilling. Second, doing something that is mainly handwork, puts your brain into a special free-to-think-but-not-free-enough-to-fixate-on-thoughts state. Your brain kind of calmly works through issues while your body concentrates on stitching or whatever. It's almost meditative. And then there's the chatting, which is the particular charm of the crafternoon model. Just making stuff on your own is therapeutic in itself, but making stuff with a gaggle of cool girls to talk to is the kind of therapy you just can't buy. You see chatting is how girls work their shit out. It's how we reconcile ourselves with the craziness that is our lives. It's how we find out we're not the only person in the world who feels frazzled or freaked out or silly or at a loss (or excited and happy and in love with everyone and everything, as the case may be). Am I wrong? So today, in between stitching and knitting and sipping coffees and teas, we aired our troubles, our fun plans, our frustrations, our funny stories. And at the end of it (and during it too) I felt great. I couldn't have designed a more pleasant afternoon. In fact, I was so enthused with the whole thing, I went and spent 27 bucks on one packet of tea. Expensive? Maybe. But then again, good therapy has never come cheap.

Day 213: no room at the inn.

Today we bid a longstanding employee farewell. A good chick, she was moving on to explore other things, and as is customary in these parts, the farewell began with lunch at the pub. By now I am extremely comfortable with being in alcohol-centric environments, and have no fear of feeling tempted to drink. But for me, this public house was not a good fit. Firstly it was a real pub's pub (whatever that means). It was rammed with blokes sculling down schooners and inhaling steaks or schnitzels and chips. Yes actually, let's talk about the menu. In an offering of maybe 25 or more mains and sides, there was not one thing I could eat. There was one vegetarian option, but it came in a buttery sauce. Or I could have lunched on hot chips, presuming they weren't cooked in animal fat. Well if I will eat like a healthy weirdo. I didn't order anything and I really found it hard to stick around for long. Oh my God I'm sounding like such a party pooper. But the reality is, if you're not drinking and you can't even eat anything, a pub full of drinking, steak-eating people doesn't hold a lot of appeal. I did have a couple of nice conversations, but after those it just felt like with no schooners, Sauv Bs or Shiraz to sink, I could probably be doing better things with my time. I guess for the time being, I'm just not a lunchtime pub-going kind of gal. And judging by how packed it was in there today, I'm sure the other patrons won't mind the extra space one bit.

Day 212: will I or won't I?

In general, when people find out about my little sober journey, what follows is speculation about what will happen when I return to the land of grog. My party line tends to go something like, I've kicked the binge-drinking thing, I don't want to be teetotal forever, but when I do start drinking again it will be in a limited and sophisticated fashion. But the reality is, I don't know what's going to happen. If history tells us anything, it's that I don't do things by halves. And just lately I have been getting little vision flashes of the fun that can be an unbridled party afternoon or evening - the long boozy barbeque, wines in the sunshine, dinner parties that last all night. It's like my brain has been giving me little tastes of what I used to like about drinking - that sense of relaxed freedom and zizzy fun. Of course, this might be my head rebelling against my current state of purity (let's not forget I am a woman of polar extremes), and even admitting these kinds of impulses makes me feel like a traitor to my clean, happy body. But there is every chance that I might taste alcohol again and tumble speedily back into my evil ways of old. Of course, another possibility is that I will be such an alcohol lightweight by that time, that a long drinking session will be physically impossible. Who knows? And actually, at this point, who cares? With 153 days to go, there's plenty more water to pass under the bridge before we start worrying about tidal waves of wine.

Day 211: vegetable soup.

Work has been a little hectic this week, but this evening I found myself quite miraculously at home at a reasonable hour. Usually, if I wasn't working, I would be exercising of an evening, but because I have the cold that won't quit and a nose I can't breathe through, yoga-ing or jogging in the night air were not options. Neither was singing practice because of my current squeak-voice. And so a glorious expanse of early night time stretched before me. I decided to make vegetable soup. At the beginning of this week I ordered a box of organic fruit and veg online. On Monday evening it arrived, packed with more food than I could poke a stick at (or, more correctly, fit in the fridge). So all week I have been doing my darnedest to plough through my mountain of silver beet, lettuce, carrots, potatoes, beans, tomatoes, etc. Lucky I like my greens (oranges, reds...). Tonight's soup deftly and deliciously took care of what had been a worrying quantity of vegetables, and some even more worrying tempeh whose ruthlessly earthy flavour it successfully masked. It was also exactly the wholesome and relaxing task I needed to make me feel like a happy humanoid again. And now I have megahealthy soup for at least a couple of lunches. You never know, packed as it is with organic awesomeness, it might just help me clamber out of cold land and breathe freely through my nasal passages once more.

Day 210: freedom through restriction.

Shall we add another contradiction to my ever-growing list of personality weirdnesses? Here's one: I believe I have discovered a source of personal freedom in what might seem to be its polar opposite - restriction. Recently, as you know, I have taken the leafy and vegetable festooned path of veganism. Despite expectations to the contrary, I have found this highly restrictive diet to be a very easy adjustment and really not painful at all. Indeed, as I've said, I would even go so far as to claim the restrictiveness has actually given me a new sense of freedom. How could this possibly be? Well. I have realised through recent observation, that "regular" eating, while seemingly free, comes with its own set of restrictions - although quite different ones. I have noticed that normal eating and drinking comes with a very special set of can'ts, namely all the things you can't possibly do without. People, for example, can't give up chocolate, can't give up cake, can't give up meat, can't give up cheese and can't give up alcohol. Even if consuming these things might a) contribute to ongoing weight issues and unhappiness with the state of one's body, b) make you ill, c) be bad for the planet, many humans do not feel powerful enough to shake them off. Ironically, the "freedom" to eat whatever, becomes some kind of psychological (or otherwise) addiction, trapping people in other undesirable predicaments. Through my non-drinking, and now veganism, I have realised that I am entirely free to choose what goes in my body; I do not accept the can'ts of others as the necessary can'ts of my own; I am the master of my domain. Hilariously, since this realisation dawned on me today, I have been sent a hail of food freedom tests. In four meetings in a row at work I was offered 1) a chocolate brownie 2) a box of butter shortbread cookies 3) Natural Fruit Co. lollies (delicious things) and 4) wait for it, no less than 20 pizzas accompanied by beer, wine and soda pop. But while in the past "I can't resist pizza" could have spilled easily out of my mouth, today I say "yes I can. I can do anything I bloody well like". So you see, what may have started as a restriction, is actually a freedom. I have opened myself up to the possibility of not eating meat and not drinking alcohol, instead of just blindly accepting that humans cannot live without these things. It's a choice I have given myself, rather than one I have taken away. And if I can apply this thinking to what I eat and drink, surely I can apply it to other things too. What other possibilities have I closed off just through accepting the status quo? If there's one thing people are always saying, it's that you can't be serious about being a rock star. Are there other can'ts like this I am applying to myself? Like you can't have a band without a guitarist and a drummer? Is it actually the case that the things I feel are hampering me, might actually set me free? Maybe it's time I free myself up a little, and start looking at things from the downside up.