Debbie and I are both entering a local short story competition. It's for Kapiti residents and is starting up this year. The conditions are pretty open - write a short story of no more than 500 words. Be a resident of Kapiti.
Pretty simple really :-) It's actually kind of hard to know what to do with such a blank canvas but I'm pretty happy with the story I came up with. The result of the contest won't be announced until August.
I had a head-scratching think about it a few days ago (Friday?), slept on it, then wrote the story on Saturday. Debbie gave me some very good feedback and I made a few minor tweaks, and it was good to go. I actually wrote two drafts of it really, as I wrote one in a notebook in the lounge when Dom was up early, then typed it up when he was having a nap. For the most part I typed without looking at the notebook, so it really was a second draft rather than a transcript of the notebook version. I think the handwritten version pretty much mapped out the beats and turned up one or two nice phrases, but the crafting and sparkle was 90% second draft stuff.
I downloaded Picasa the other day and have been playing with the collage function. It's pretty wintastic! Incredibly simple to use and it produces very pretty collages :-)
I've been reading 'The Element' by Ken Robinson after being lucky enough to receive it as a birthday pressie and I'm thoroughly enjoying it. I don't read much non fiction but it is a very entertaining read filled with lots of interesting anecdotes and even more interesting ideas about intelligence and creativity and the thought processes around them.
I first was introduced to Ken Robinson's ideas when I saw a clip of one of his presentations during New Curriculum professional development a few years ago and it's good to know he's just as entertaining and funny in written form.
I'd recommend the book to anyone who in interested in teaching and learning or just creative thinking in general, which, in my opinion and one that would be shared by Robinson, is everyone. We are all teaching and learning, and being creative everyday. Or at least we should be.
One of the interesting sideffects of reading a book like this is that I'm now finding weird connections and wisdom in everyday activities, such as watching children's cartoons and reading kids' books with Dom.
One example is Dominic's favourite cartoon from Fantasia - the yoyo Flamingo.
If you watch this enough times, which is a scaringly high number if you let the Dominator have his way, you end up strongly identifying with the goofy flamingo who loves to yo-yo and find the journey to find a way to do what you love in spite of the pressure to conform really moving.
But the 'The Element' point for me that this cartoon really illustrated is the idea that doing what you love is the most important thing. Your creative endeavours may not be considered 'art' by others, they may not appreciate what you are doing or may actively discourage you but you should persist in doing it anyway.
To use the Robinson phrase, when the flamingo plays with their yoyo, they're in their 'element'. They're being highly creative and loving every second of it. It doesn't matter that others don't think playing with a yoyo is art or even a worthwhile activity and try press them to join in the synchronised dance.
You don't have to be a dancing flamingo. Stick with your yoyo. If others, throw your yoyo in a tree, get another yoyo.
The important thing is to keep yoyoing if that is what you love to do.
As Matt has mentioned, Dom is also very fond of the show 'Yo Gabba Gabba'. Normally, the sogs often only the very young useful advice. I already knew that I shouldn't bite my friends or eat too much candy.
However, frequent listening to one of the songs lead me to further analysis of the lyrics. The song is 'What is fun?' Plex the robot doesn't know what fun is and asks the others to explain it to him. (the exact line is 'What, what, what is fun, fun, fun?')
They answer, 'It's something that makes you happy.'
Plex then questions further, 'But what, what, what does it mean, mean, mean?'
Wisdom then follows, 'It's doing something that you really like.'
Then the other characters give Plex examples such as picking flowers, running in circles and eating noodles.
On the face of it, the idea of fun is a straightforward concept and only a robot on a kids' TV show would require a whole song to understand what fun is.
However, I finding that fun is a concept I need to redefine with age for myself.
When I was a child, fun was the ultimate goal of everything. I was able to find fun is almost eveything I did. School was for the most part fun, playing with friends was always fun and almost anything could be turned into a game. I was unburdened with any responsibilities and even doing a chore like washing the dishing was kind of like playing grown ups and often involved playing the bubbles or flicking tea towels, and more often than not, probably making more of a mess than I was actually cleaning up. If I was stuck inside on a wet day, I roamed about looking for some way to make fun and always manage to concoct some sort of game or mischief of some kind or another.
Everything was, and had to be, fun.
When I was an adolescent, fun was more about the places I was and the people I was with than what I was actually doing. I spent a lot of time feeling awkward and uncomfortable or so any time I was with people I felt comfortable around or in a place were I felt safe to be 'myself' became fun.
At this point in my life I realised it was possible to find things that other people thought were fun, distinctly not fun. Parties could be unfun if you felt uncomfortable around the people there and felt like everything you said or did was being judged in a bad way.
As an adult, the idea of fun largely became associated with relaxation. Responsibilities of work and money and owning cars and paying mortages are stressful. In my twenties, it came as a bit of a shock to me that now that I had the 'freedom' of being an adult, I had far less time than ever before in my life to do the things that I wanted to do. Fun became associated with free time and holidays. I was having fun doing the things that I chose to do in that time. I might enjoy large amounts time at work and like my job but they were also tainted by the aspects of teaching I didn't enjoy, like writing reports, taking home hours of marking or admin.
Fun was what I had in my evenings, weekends and holidays. Fun was about having control what I wanted to do and generally based around indulging my various hobbies and interests and/or spending time with friends.
Now, since becoming a parent, my views on fun and happiness have changed significantly again. A lot of it has to do with the scarcity of free time. I can't view fun as solely being the couple of hours when Dom naps during the day or the small part of the evening between him falling asleep and Matt and I conking out. If I did that, I would be viewing my life as diminishing in fun because I have far less 'me' time than ever before.
Also my attitude towards happiness, or at least my awareness of being happy has changed. Not long after we had the 20 week ultrasound, I got the gut-wrenching phone call saying that they detected some abnormality with the Dom's heart and lungs. The following days while we waited for further tests and did some disturbing research on the internet were not good. The worst case scenarios were too awful to contemplate, which meant our minds did little other than contemplate them. I vowed that if everything turned out OK and the baby was born happy and healthy, I would never take the good stuff in life for granted again. I would always appreciate how happy and lucky I was.
It's been surprisingly easy since then to reflect at the end of every day that I am indeed happy. Dom and parenthood have well exceeded my expectations and it doesn't take any self-brainwashing or force of will to be aware of my own happiness on a conscious level every day. Of course there are stresses in every day life and there are hard days or days where you're so tired that your fingernails ache from exhaustion but for me, happiness is a more permanent state than a fleeting period of relaxation or enjoyment.
Happiness for me comes from two things. Firstly, knowing that you did something worthwhile and fulfilling everyday. Secondly, acknowledging that you are lucky to have or had people in your life that you both care about and that care(or cared) about you.
Skipping back to the first point, to me it has become essential that every day feels like I have achieved something worthwhile. Not earning money caused me a surprising amount of alarm when I left my job. I had worked some sort of job for virtually all of my adult life and I realised that in many ways I had been conditioned into equating earning money with doing something of value. Obviously, looking after children is neither easy nor unimportant yet it feels rather undervalued when one becomes (ugh, I hate the term but for want of another I shall have to use it) a 'stay at home mum'. As a society I think we tend to equate the value of work with the size of salary. Certainly, as a teacher and in many other jobs, your pay increases as your perceived competence does. As your pay increases, you feel more valued, so it's not surprisingly that when you then move to doing something without pay, you can question the value the society holds on what you're doing. This feeling is not helped by bumping into childless colleagues who ask 'what do you actually do all day?'
It's become vital to me that I remained ardently convinced of the value and worth of looking a child. In many ways, it's easy. On the whole it is a challenging, enjoyable and immensely rewarding occupation. However, while it is fulfilling, there are no extrinsic rewards. No remuneration, no appraisals or performance bonuses, not even a colleague, boss or pupil that can say 'thank you' or 'well done'.
I have also found that I to do something productive in Dom's nap time as a valued part of my daily 'me' time. For me, this doesn't mean housework or anything domestic, or indeed practically useful. It means writing or, sometimes, editing.
And there is where I finally get back to the point about fun.
In my current lifestyle, I have often to forgo my previous adulthood notion of fun. I can't go off to watch a movie or slip out to a cafe to catch up with a friend while Dom is asleep, and more importantly, I don't want to as much as I want to write.
By the time Dom falls asleep, and more often somewhat earlier, I can't wait to get out the laptop and start typing away. At times in the mornings when I'm out with Dom in the park or I'm dancing around with him to music, my mind sneaks off to think about what I'm about to write or how to fix up something I did the day before. I now get excited about writing and crave the approaching times when I'll get to do some the way I used look forward to heading off for a glass of wine after work on Friday.
I'm amazed that even when I'm exhausted or have had a hard night or long morning, I can still get excited about my two hours of fun.
There was a line in the book about this. 'Activities we love fill us with extra energy even when we are physically exhausted.'
Parenthood has meant, at times, huge deficits in sleep and relaxation time, and yet I wouldn't say that it's made may less happy or less productive in writing terms, in fact it's the reverse.
Rather unexpectedly I'd say that making myself consciously aware of my own happiness and gratitude has made me more productive, and doing more of what makes me feel fulfilled each day makes me less tired.
Fun for me now is about being active and proactive towards achieving my goals, not passively enjoying relaxing activities (although I do still enjoy these when I get the chance).
Or as 'Yo Gabba Gabba' puts it:
It's something that makes you happy. It's doing something that you really like.
I've been meaning to do this for a while, and it was quite fun :-) I didn't photograph the cup of tea, hot chocolate or glasses of coke zero I had. Foods only.
Delicious Weetbix with lite milk and no sugar. It took me a loooong time to get used to eating flavourless mush for breakfast, but now I quite like it. And find it has flavour. I didn't eat both these cheese and tomato tuna sandwiches. One was for Debbie :-) I have two apples and a banana every day at school, and most weekend days too. I often have more than one mandarin. Small amount of dry roasted peanuts.
Mmmm, beef and potato and kumara korma with onion and cauliflower. And basmati rice. I ate half this fruit platter. Debbie and I have fruit in the evening every day, usually 4 or more types of fruit. This one even had two types of grapes. Nom nom nom.
Weekday mornings, TV2, at about 8.15am Dom's been enjoying American kids' show Yo Gabba Gabba. It features DJ Lance Rock with his mean ghetto blaster filled with characters:
The models of the characters are very nicely crafted (I kind of want a Moono and a Plex doll - for Dom of course). And the costumes for when the characters come alive are fantastic (I definitely want a Moono or Plex costume).
The show has lots of songs and animation and important messages like 'don't bite your friends' as well as a guest most episodes who demonstrates a dancey dance.
Elijah Wood's dancey dance can be seen online at the official Yo Gabba Gabba site (yogabbagabba.com). They recently had Jack Black doing disco dancing, and have had Tony Hawk as a guest too (he skated, rather than danced).
Debbie tells me it's slightly less compelling if you have to dance to it *every day* but I'm really enjoying seeing bits of it before I race out to work in the morning :-)
