Category: Diary Page 28 of 47

I had planned to watch a film with the Elderbeast this evening, but he disappears early to a friend’s house for the rest of the day and a sleepover. I take the Kinderbeast to a birthday party, but end up leaving him to play and coming home for a bit to cook and clean up the kitchen. Coincidentally, my mother-in-law drops by for a welcome visit at the same time. After that I collect the Kinderbeast from his party. Then we camp out in the front room and I decide to start sorting out our crates of LEGO into some new sectioned tubs that I’ve bought. I don’t yet know how I’m going to sort the LEGO (by colours? by type of brick?), but I get started anyway. The Kinderbesten plays with some of the LEGO. At one point I decide we need some background entertainment, and I put Rogue One on.

The rest of the day goes much the same, ambling nicely along according to no fixed plan. I’ve decided to think of it as unplanning: a day where you may have had some preconceptions about how the day was going to be structured, but those plans get thrown out and replaced by whatever happens to come next.

Unplanning. It’s cool. I must do more of it.

It’s Friday, the last day of my week off. With the Kinderbesten returning from school at about 3pm, my week off effectively ends there. Inevitably, I’ve been reflecting on whether my time off worked.

I took the week off as a bit of a reset. After everything that had happened this year, I wanted some extra time to myself so I could work out what life looked like for me now. I didn’t have a grand plan as such; just an instinct that a week off was the right thing to do.

I did some of the things I wanted to do; ran out of time for others. I was sick, so I had some downtime, but not in the way I’d intended. I watched some TV, but didn’t get the level of binge-watching in that I thought I might. I’m left thinking that the week off wasn’t the awesome, inspiring break it perhaps should have been. I’m left thinking that a week off work should be like the best Christmas present ever, given the alternative of getting up every day and going to work. I’m left thinking that my week off didn’t work.

But then I realised something: holidays often feel awesome because they’re a change from dull and tedious daily life. And my daily life isn’t dull and tedious. Sure, it’s somewhat repetitive, and it’s often tiring, but it’s by no means awful. My job isn’t awful either. Having the time off has made me realise that my week off wasn’t awesome because the rest of my life is already pretty awesome. My life has it’s low points and its highlights, but overall it’s pretty well balanced.

So, I guess my week off worked after all.

Sick. Yes, I am.

There are three types of Being Sick. The first type is where you’re mostly able to get on with things and continue in denial that you’re sick (and this is usually when you make everyone else around you sick). On the other extreme, there’s the Being Sick where bed is the only option. Then there’s the sweet spot of Being Sick where you’ve accepted that you’re sick, and that you should do nothing, but where ‘nothing’ can still be watching TV or reading a book, or generally chilling out.

Unfortunately, I wasn’t that kind of sick.

It’s halfway through my week off and I think I’m getting sick. I’m tempted to bemoan my terrible luck. However, whenever I catch myself trying to pretend I’m in any way getting a raw deal, I like to remind myself of something.

I’m one of the luckiest people in the world.

For starters I’m white, male, straight and able-bodied. This level of privilege already gives me a head start, and it would be churlish on that basis alone to suggest that I’m particularly cursed with misfortune. I’m also healthy, relatively comfortable financially, have a decent enough brain in my skull, and don’t live in the middle of a war zone. Just to add insult to injury, I have a job that I enjoy, have a handful of exceedingly awesome friends, and have two Kinderbesten who are healthy, smart and generally decent miniature human beings.

So, yeah, let’s all curse my rotten luck shall we 😉

Today is possibly the only day of my holiday that I have in which to properly relax. By that I mean I get to drop the Kinderbesten at school, then I get about six hours in which I have expressly decided not to mow the lawn or tidy anything up or visit financial advisers.

Properly relaxing brings its own set of dilemmas. I’m the sort of person who still likes to get some vaguely useful things done with the rare gift of free solo time, so I have scheduled in some writing. I also want to have some quality time on the sofa in front of the TV. But, do I attempt to binge-watch a TV series? Or do I watch a film? Or two films? Should I watch something I’ve never watched before? Or revisit an old favourite? If I want to watch a film I need to watch it at the right time so I can have time afterwards to do some writing. Or, do I watch a film after lunch? In which case I need to time it so I can see the end before the Kinderbesten come home and ruin everything. Should I also get a laundry load in the washer? Can I properly relax in the front room if I haven’t tidied the toys away from the TV cabinet? Then I should probably wipe it down too and do the job properly. Maybe vacuum the carpet as well. Oh, and I’ll need to grab a shower before it’s too late. Oh, maybe I should do some reading. I hardly ever get time to read during the day. But if I read, will I have time for writing? And for watching a film?

Wait a minute: where did all that free time go …?

Today is the first day of my week off and I start it, somewhat annoyingly, by meeting with a financial adviser. The meeting is at 10:30, but I have to be out to drop the Kinderbesten at school for 9am, which means I have 90 minutes of time to kill. The financial planning aspect, plus the inconvenient timing, has prompted me to think about living in the moment vs planning for the future.

I’m looking forward to a full week off work, which means I’ve felt able to have a relatively lazy weekend–given that I have a whole week in which to get things done. In part, I’ve taken the week off because I want to do things (such as gardening) that I don’t usually have time for during the average working week. I’m also taking a week off because I want to have some time to do … nothing.

One thing I have learned during this year is that you can spend too much time looking at the future. I’m now finding it almost refreshing to be taking things one day at a time: to live in the moment. On the other hand, this financial adviser meeting reminds me that I *do* need to keep an eye on the future, or possible futures: I need to make sure I’ve got adequate insurance; I need to make a will; I need to make sure that the Kinderbesten are covered if anything happens to me. I need to be there for them now, but also in the future. I need to be in two times at once!

So, when it comes to living in the moment vs planning for the future … ultimately you’ve got to do both. Too much of one will come at the expense of the other. The future is out there, waiting, whether you like it or not. But, if you’re not doing something with the [majority of] the moments that you’re given right now, maybe it’s time to stop and smell the roses.

Oh, and the financial adviser meeting was a big waste of time. So, I don’t really know where that leaves all of this …

Today is Father’s Day in Australia, so I guess that’s what I’ll be talking about today. It was a #childfree weekend, but Rachel brought the Kinderbesten over in the morning to give me gifts and have some late breakfast.

Father’s Day itself means very little to me–it’s an excuse to sell cards, and there’s rarely a day goes by where I don’t, in some way, get a more genuine sign of appreciation from the Kinderbesten. In some ways, I’m still surprised to find myself a father. In other ways, it feels like something that I always wanted to be, even though I never actively sought it out. Inevitably, now that my marriage has ended, the Kinderbesten have become the main focus of my life and my relationship with them is all the better for it. While I still make sure to have a life of my own, I’m content to come home from work each day and cook for them, make their lunches, get them in the bath, put them to bed, etc. And I never forget how lucky I am to be able to do that.

We ended the day, mostly by a quirk of timing, by watching one of the most father-centric films I can think of: Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol. 2. I’ll always love it because it’s funny and awesome, but also because almost every character gets to provide at least some commentary on fatherhood: whether it’s Rocket acting as a surrogate father to Groot; or Nebula and Gamora fighting over what their own surrogate father took from them; or Drax innocently revealing his father’s fireside tales of his own conception. Obviously the theme of ‘father’ vs ‘daddy’ is the big one, and the last ten minutes or so will probably never stop bringing tears to my eyes.

I’m pretty lucky that I get to be both a father and a daddy 🙂

As this is a Saturday, and one of my #childfree weekends, it’s hardly surprising that the topic of solitude is on my mind. I’m in the, perhaps, enviable position where I can truly appreciate the relatively rare times I get to myself. I spend my working day surrounded by people and most of my spare time surrounded by my family.

Then, every second weekend, the Kinderbesten stay with their mother and I get the house to myself. After more than a decade of marriage and family, being entirely on my own is enough of a fresh experience that the novelty has yet to wear off. I do find myself missing the kinderbesten, though, and every so often I get a hint of what a [home] life spent entirely alone might be like, and I’m not sure I’d like it.

I enjoy my own space, I’m comfortable in it, but I’m also grateful to spend much of my life surrounded by people I love.

Though I imagine exhaustively detailing the minutiae of my day is of paramount interest to you all, I’ve decided to do something a little different with these diary posts for the month of September. What I will be aiming to do for the next 30 days is to pick just one element of my day; something that, for whatever reason, has bounced around in my mind for more than a nanosecond. Hopefully that will result in some generally shorter posts, but I will also throw in the odd highlight of my day here and there, where there’s something worth sharing.

My thought for today has largely been inspired by spending more time than is wise on Twitter, and it’s essentially the old adage that states: Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and to remove all doubt. This was predominantly inspired by Lyle Shelton’s continuing opposition to marriage equality, which has resulted in almost everything he tweets being something that any person with even a shred of critical introspection would immediately throw in the mental shredder. But, no: good old Lyle keeps on furiously proving to us all how limited his ability to actually think before he tweets is.

And, of course, it’s not just limited to Lyle. You only need look at any relatively attention-hungry Trump supporter to see the same.

Anyway, there were some highlights of my day that I do want to share. Firstly, I was invited to the Kinderbeast’s class today to enjoy a brief Father’s Day event. Given that the last time I went to a school event during work hours I was the *only* father there, I half expected attendance to be low, but I was wrong. There were at least a dozen of us, which introduced the brief panic that I might have to socialise with other parents (an increasing risk now that I’m essentially a single Dad). That didn’t come to pass. Instead we were made to stand up at the front of the class while the collected Kinderbesten sang to us. And it was lovely. They sang a song that was basically “I love my Dad” and my little Kinderbeast looked at me the entire time he sang it. Awww.

Later than evening I watched The Old Dark House as the Fridate Horror Movie component of Fridate, and it was awesome. I’m amazed I’d not only not seen it before, but wasn’t even aware it existed. I had no idea that, as far back as 1932 (and long before Scream was ever a thing), they could make a film that was both creepy and funny. Highly recommended.

It’s Thursday, but it really feels like it should be Friday. Nevertheless, it’s a suitably noteworthy day for the last day of the month: it’s my first full day of being a sole homeowner. A new era of my life now formally begins. Accordingly, I’m going to try something a little different with these diary posts for next month, but you’ll have to wait to find out what 😉