iekenner.com

I had a dream last night.

I had a dream and for the first time in YEARS (I would estimate), I can remember it!

It was only relatively short, but somehow I was having a rather delightful lunch with Madonna at an on-street, outdoor cafe.

I don’t remember the details of the conversation, but I do remember waking up thinking that she was delightful company and what a nice chat over lunch.

I’ve never met Madonna in person and I tend not to watch anything celebrity-related, so I really have no idea what she would be like if we had really eaten a nice lunch together. I will continue to believe that it would be lovely.

In the dream, I was eating a pear, rocket and walnut salad (with balsamic dressing). It seemed rather tasty for dream food.

Anyway…So there’s me dream-name-dropping. Look out, Dream Elizabeth Montgomery*!

— IEK

*I know she passed away in 1995. I just LOVED her in Bewitched (I mean who didn’t?).

Yes…my name is something starting with “I” and it has been 21 days since my last blog post.

I am a bad monkey.

It’s not so much that I haven’t had anything to post about, in fact, Co-Consul, 7yo, 6yo, 3yo & I just spent 10 days in Asia partying like it’s 1989, but rather while myself and my family are overseas I tend not to like to post about it. I’m not sure if I’m so much a private person or whether it’s more the relentless fear my parents drummed into me regarding being broken into & robbed which prevents me from blogging about or while on holidays, but either way, I put a ban on it. The utterly shite WiFi in some of the hotels we stayed in* was also a minor factor.

But here I am! Back to the land of Oz, rather a lot colder than I was in Singapore, Malaysia or Thailand, but all the better for having travelled.

Before we left I was feeling tired, stressed, overwhelmed and I wasn’t writing very much at all because I felt so tired, stressed and overwhelmed. Yes, yes – I know I should just keep going, but it’s very hard to do that when there is approximately 1 hour per week in which you can just keep going. My life seemed to have scheduled writing out of it and not being able to find time to write was part of what had me so stressed.

While we were away it was even more difficult with the kids sleeping in the same room as us, the timezone changes throwing us all out juuuuust enough to be annoying and there being SO MUCH to do during the days that the nights consisted of putting the kids to bed, then sleeping. But I got to thinking: I need to write, I WANT to write, I LOVE to write, so why don’t I just write? Why don’t I actively schedule in some writing time and just ignore everything else for those periods?

So here’s the plan:

• Monday: Write on the bus + Monday Night Games (optional blogging when MNG goes tits-up…you know like tonight)
• Tuesday: Write/Edit from 8 – 10
• Wednesday: 5am Writers Club (yes – ouch. But it’s SOOOOO good)
• Thursday: 5am Writers Club + 30 min blog window which could be filled with Writing/Editing
• Friday: Party night. No writing unless Co-Consul is out, then it’s WriteClub!!
• Saturday: 30 min blog window which could be filled with Writing/Editing
• Sunday: 5am Writers Club + Write/Edit 8 – 10

So let’s see how this goes, but if I can actually DO this, it should give me around 8-9 hours writing time per week. Which is around 7-8 hours more than I’m getting at the moment and means I should have Bifrost’s second draft finished by the time I can draw a pension. HUZZAH!

Yes, I’ll write a travel blog post soon.

— IEK

*Not LEGOLand – its WiFi was solid

So my Twitter diet lasted 7 days (almost exactly). In the end I think I returned to Twitter because I had learned a couple of things:

1) Twitter allows you to connect with and be contacted by like-minded (and oppositionally-minded) people. This is its great strength.

2) I like to have a day on a lot of things & Twitter is the one place I can do it in the moment before I forget all about it. This is Twitter’s blessing as well as its curse.

If I can control the urge to tweet when I really shouldn’t (been doing it for 7 days now), Twitter could stop being so much of a curse.

I’ve been slightly less angry lately which is good. Let’s see how the next week goes. Hopefully Twitter is not a factor, but if it is, then there will have to be significant changes.

In the end, the wonderful Leigh Sales & Anabelle Crabbe and their podcast Chat 10 Looks 3 were my Achilles heel. They were talking about TV show intro music and then they mentioned the West Wing which is a show Co-Consul & I loved (twice) and a show with intro music which still gives me chills. It it also intro music which soothed 7yo when he was a newborn, so it has multiple layers of brilliance for us.

Righto…back to Twitter.  Ah…I mean writing – yes, writing, not Twitter. Haha! Aaaaah shit.

— IEK

No, this post has nothing to do with food, veganism, paleo, juicing, organic produce or any other gastronomic fuckwittery. Oh no, like all of these celebrities I seemed to find on Google when typing in “quitting twitter”, we’re talking zeroth-world problems here – I’m taking a break from Twitter.

Yep, hold onto your collective hats.

So…unlike these celebrities, I’ve received pretty lightweight mean tweets and I have only a few hundred followers and the question you would really like to ask (I’m sure…right?) because you totally give a shit what I’m doing with Twitter…you’ll bite, right? Go on – ask me why!!!

Please?

OK…SO glad you asked!

You see recently I’ve noticed (as have those around me) that I’m quite angry. Like all the time (Bruce Banner-style). Unlike Bruce, there is precious little in the way of upside to my anger. I’m trying a LOT of things to control it – anger management techniques, relaxation thingies (not drugs…yet) and I figured – hey I’ve been spending an awful lot of time on Twitter, why not give that a break for a couple of weeks too? Just in case those arseholes* I’ve actually been attracting tweets from lately have actually been affecting me.

So it’s day 4.

…and I’m writing a blog post about it already. What addiction?

Anyway…not sure how my anger is responding because it’s only been 4 days.

What I’m really noticing is the times when I would automatically open Twitter, read a few posts and respond to them. Instead I’m going to click on Twitter, resist, then open Facebook instead, get depressed at how much clickbait shit there is and close it again.

I’ve also still been reading Twitter infrequently. Yes, shut up, I’m reading Twitter. SO DESPERATELY want to reply, retweet, quote and get involved, but my unwritten rules specifically state that I’m not going to do that. So here I sit. Writing about not tweeting instead of tweeting.

Yeah, shut up, it’s been 4 days.

FOUR DAYS.

— IEK

*Some may call them “Trolls”, I like to call them what they really are.

OK, so our abject failure Prime Minister doesn’t believe in climate change. Fine. No brains in a statue.

But how’s this for an observation: this summer has been the summer of tropical weather in Sydney (a city many hundreds of over 1000km/700mi from the tropics). I’ve spent a little time in Brisbane (very much in the tropics) and I can tell you that during the wet season (tropical climates do not have 4 seasons, they have two: Dry & Wet) every afternoon, you get a torrential downpour.

This summer, in Sydney, we have experienced basically exactly the same thing and though our top temperatures haven’t quite reached the heights of previous years, it’s been pretty consistently hot & sticky. Yesterday I learned that 2014 had the second-highest average temperature for Sydney ON RECORD. This follows 2013 which had the HIGHEST average temperature on record. Here’s the people who actually monitor this stuff:

Bureau of Meteorology: Sydney in 2014

So it’s been warm. I did think that winter 2014 was pretty meek. Right now I’m sweating, it’s 11:30pm & every window is open.

Anyway…I’m hot is all, dammit. I know you poor suckers in the USA are freezing right now, but – hey the world’s getting warmer, so don’t worry you guys will be the same temperature as Brazil in no time! Hooray for climate change!

…you know, except that hot areas will all become deserts and coastal towns will become scuba diving exhibits…but hey – warmer weather!

— IEK