Dedicate

I haven’t been taking enough care of myself this year, despite having chosen “Balance” as my word theme. It took until very late in the year to find a way to gain outer accountability for this obliger, but I finally got there. Along the way I took an Obliger Vacation that looked a bit like rebellion at the time, and a lot more like it as time went on.

So today I decided to give myself a final gift of self-care for 2018.

From the start of January I’ll be making an effort to spend the full month taking time out to do yoga every day.
I’m no yogi so I’ll be following along with Adriene from Yoga with Adriene on YouTube. She is doing a month long series called ‘Dedicate’.
It’s my attempt to nudge myself towards more self-care and further away from imbalance – literally and figuratively.

If you think you would enjoy doing this too I’ve added a link to the invitation on the image below. And if you would like to chat with me about it as we go along, you can always join the newly created Oh Waily Waily Discord server*.

In the meantime, I’d like to wish you all a Happy Holidays. I hope you enjoy time with family and friends, as well as taking time out for yourself too.

And I will see you all next year!

*if you already use Discord just drop me a comment asking for the invite link and I will email it to your comment email address. If you aren’t familiar with Discord but would like to know more this article from Lifewire is a good rundown.

Retreat

Unlike !

It has finally happened.

I have removed Oh Waily Waily from Facebook. In fact, I’ve removed both of my personal blogs’ Facebook pages and have reduced my time online there altogether.
It’s long overdue and part of my gradual retreat from the behemoth of social media.
In truth, if I could remove myself entirely I would. Sadly it is the ‘go to’ place for ease of community building and there are a couple of communities that I still value more than my full retreat.

As I continue to reduce my time on social media I’ve come to realise that there are plenty of things I won’t miss.

I won’t miss the Friends List, most of whom didn’t interact with me or I with them. This is not meant as a slight to those on the list, but simply an acknowledgement that time doesn’t stand still. We may have been mates back in the day but rarely, if ever, see each other in real life or even chat online. Over time I found the Friends List became an obligation to live in the past for fear of offending people with the dreaded “unfriend” button. Then one day I had an epiphany… these people pretty much never comment on or like my few remaining posts and there’s a good chance that I am buried in their 500 friends and will never be missed should I quietly disappear. So I chose to disappear.

Ooo, I’m such a rebel !

Now my remaining Friends List consists mostly of old friends who live overseas, family who live overseas or folk that I still hear from. But I’ve finally decided to ditch the unfriend guilt and continue a regular cull of the remaining list members until eventually it really is down to those for whom this is the best or sole way of keeping in touch.

Another thing I won’t miss is the banality of Facebook posts. I like a good meme as much as the next person, I really do, but my timeline has become almost nothing but memes, Year in Review and “Memories” posts. Once I had installed a browser extension to rid me of the stalking posts and promotional posts it really showed me what was going on, and the memes and memories were pretty much it. There are one or two friends who liven it up with personal, humorous and real life stories, but they are an extreme rarity.
I don’t blame any of my friends for this, it’s what the platform encourages and I am as guilty of it as anyone else. My friends aren’t my entertainment committee, although Jane Austen may have been correct:

For what do we live, but to make sport for our neighbors, and laugh at them in our turn?

Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

So perhaps I should cut the platform some slack on that front.

What I will miss is the ability to quickly and easily post something I think would interest others. Things that I don’t want to spend a lot of time writing a blog post about.
But then, I won’t miss the ease of quick posts and dropping links, which I have come to realise has slowly eroded my motivation for thinking and writing blog posts over the past few years. This hasn’t sat well with me.
In real life I’m not really interested in small talk as I’d rather have a meaty chat about the state of the world, the random stupidity and genius of the people who populate it, and what makes up a meaningful life.
Susan Cain describes this really well in the quote below, although it’s overstating my preference for interesting discussions to say I have ‘a horror of small talk’.

Introverts, in contrast, may have strong social skills and enjoy parties and business meetings, but after a while wish they were home in their pajamas. They prefer to devote their social energies to close friends, colleagues, and family. They listen more than they talk, think before they speak, and often feel as if they express themselves better in writing than in conversation. They tend to dislike conflict. Many have a horror of small talk, but enjoy deep discussions.

Susan Cain,  Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking

Although I may also be overstating the idea that I “listen more than I talk” as some of you who have known me a long time in real life* can attest to.

So here we are, retreating back to the blog. Retreating back to the quiet of my thoughts, a blank screen and a keyboard.
Not a meme in sight.

Hopefully we can have some deep discussions together.

*does anyone remember Mr Edmonds from Primary School? About the only thing I recall about him now is the fact that he got me to shut up in class one day by nicknaming me “Parrot”. Not a kind thing to do, in hindsight, but quite probably an accurate representation of my talkativeness.

Obligation Vacation

I was listening to episode 71 of the Happier in Hollywood podcast today and they beautifully described the situation I find myself in this past week.

It turns out that I’m on an Obligation Vacation.

To be fair, I rather think I’m in the midst of it’s darker cousin, the Obligation Rebellion.

It’s been a long year in the Oh Waily household and there are still three months to go! Unfortunately I seem to have finally found that point where tiredness, personal expectations, external obligations and reality have all collided and resulted in a mass gathering of tweety birds circling my head.

Truth be told I’m kind of like the human equivalent of Wile E. Coyote at the moment; lots of grand plans that have ended in me hitting the dust.  Repeatedly. And it isn’t pretty.

Unlike Wile E., who displays persistent-to-the-point-of-painful-optimism, I have the ability to tell when reality is saying enough is enough and the time has come to stop ordering things from Acme Corporation.  

For me that time arrived this past week when my brain finally decided, all on it’s subconscious own, to take me on a surprise Obligation Vacation.  I had no idea where we were going and that such a detour might even have a name, until tonight; but I like it.  It suggests a positive outlook and a healthy response to maintaining a balance between obligations and your own sanity.  And it’s definitely more upbeat than Obligation Rebellion which is, truthfully, what overcame me.

For close on a week now I have looked at my rather huge list of obligations and other people’s expectations and have thought, “Nah. Not today. I think I will stare at that blank wall for a while.” 

My rebellious, wall watching holiday has absolutely nothing to do with those folk patiently waiting for me to email, phone, organise or otherwise contribute.  It has everything to do with my tightrope walking act of balancing everyone’s needs, especially my own.  Just like Wile E. Coyote I started out looking and feeling like I’ve got it all under control and then…

Lickety-Splat!

Here I am, on my impromptu rebellion vacation.

And it’s a bittersweet one.  I dislike seeming to be disorganised, rude, uncooperative or otherwise “just not getting the job done”.  It goes strongly against the grain. But, oh the freedom from doing the drudgery !!  I could almost slip in to not Adulting as a full time gig, if it were not for the fact that I am often the only adult in the house.

And that raises the issue of the end of my Obligation Vacation.  There has been another adult in the house during my rebellious vacation – in case you were concerned – but that is soon to change again for a few weeks.  I suspect that my sly and cunning subconscious took the opportunity of another adult being around to sneak in a much needed rest.
Well done Brain, well done.  But next time a bit of warning would be good, or pre-planning at the very least.  I’m not big on unwelcome surprises, as you really ought to know.

That leaves me with the question of how to work Obligation Vacations in to my life rather than have my brain spring them upon me.  It’s one that I will have to take time to ponder.  For now I will remain, mostly, on Vacation. 

At least until Mr Oh Waily’s next trip away.

Each person deserves a day away in which no problems are confronted, no solutions searched for.  Each of us needs to withdraw from the cares which will not withdraw from us.
― Maya Angelou

No Endorsement Included

For those of you who are locals, you may recognise which political party this catchphrase belongs to. Let me be clear right off the bat, I am not publicly endorsing any political party, and I never will.

My personal political views are kept strictly between me and my voting paper – and perhaps the long-suffering Mr Oh Waily.  I have many reasons for this and most centre around my desire NOT to live in a bubble of politically similar people.  I do not want to drive people out my ‘friends list’ simply because they DO wish to live in their own personal political bubble.  I actually like the diversity of opinion, even when I wonder to myself where some folk get their ideas from.  I don’t feel like I need to agree with them or have them agree with me. That strikes me as quite arrogant – the “I know best” worldview, better suited to those who want to be an actual politician.

Politics is tribal enough without my help in pushing the ‘us and them’ agenda by arguing the case for my point of view.  It’s a well-known fact (yes, a scientifically studied thing) that pushing harder against ingrained views makes those views even more ingrained. And I most certainly wouldn’t indulge in a discussion online about it, with all the missing body language cues and subtlety that can come from a live conversation on a topic.

So what am I doing with a political party’s slogan attached to my blog?

Simple.  I agree with it.

In its entirety.

No matter what your political persuasion, viewpoint or whatnot, the key to our society being a vibrant one is to have a voter base that “Cares”, “Thinks” and “Votes”.

The scary thing about this slogan is that it asks you to ‘think’.  It’s easy to care and relatively easy to vote.
I care enough to want good things for my family, my friends, my fellow country folk. The hard part is to think through what that looks like in practice and then to assess the plans to get us there that are being ‘sold’ by political parties. Will the policies actually deliver the society that you are envisaging? And make no mistake – they are ‘selling’ you stuff… and often only the pretty side of their stuff, not the dark side.  And please don’t imagine there isn’t a dark side to anyone’s stuff – because there is.  We do not, and can not, live in a Utopia.  Someone somewhere will be negatively affected by most policies offered by all the parties and we shouldn’t forget that when making our decisions. Those people matter too.

There are plenty of observations about the political scene and what seems to drive the voting public that I could make, but for today my message is a simple one… please don’t be a sheep.

It doesn’t matter if you are a blue sheep, red sheep, green sheep, black sheep, yellow sheep, or rainbow sheep… please don’t just stay stuck in your tribal rut because you think it matches your world view or your internal picture of ‘who you are’.  Take time to reassess the validity of your tribe’s plans and actually read the other tribes’ plans too… not with the intent to tear them to pieces, but to examine them and think about where they might lead.  Mindless voting, by routine tribal identification, is like putting your ladder up against a tall wall without even looking up to see where that’s taking you or our country.
Just because an idea may have worked five years ago, or ten years ago, or twenty years ago doesn’t mean it will work in the next five or ten or twenty years.  The world changes. Circumstances change. Society changes. The ways to reach your ‘ideal society’ may need to change now, too.  It may even involve some self-sacrifice… a concept that has seemingly gone out of fashion. But that’s another story.
Anyway, please take the time to do the “thinking” part, don’t brush over it.

And then, do the important final step – go Vote !