Social networking sites – why do we do it?

It’s been a long while  since I was a web-land professional, but I remain fascinated by the meteoric trajectory of the social media genre. Almost everyone, it seems, is engaged in social media in some form – FaceBook, Twitter,  MySpace, Bebo – if you’re not logged-on,  you’re out-of-touch!

Why do we do it? Is it some sick voyeuristic tendency to keep tabs on our loved-ones, a quest for our own 15 minutes of fame?  Or just a sign of the times?

Personally,  I find social networking downright convenient.

As someone who suffers from extended periods of debilitating depression during which the very idea of having to endure the insufferable torment of engaging another human being in conversation teeters on rendering all relationships too damned burdensome to be bothered with, I enjoy the liberation of being able to flutter about in relationships that, while dear to me, don’t require massive amounts of time, energy and commitment to keep them afloat. This then allows me, with only a small investment of time, to maintain relationships that I would otherwise permit to lapse. That’s not to say these relationships aren’t meaningful to me. Due to a combination of factors,  we often find ourselves time-poor, and social media sites make communicating in frequent, bite-sized chunks incredibly convenient. You may not call 50 friends to say you’ve discovered a sensational recipe, or enjoyed a certain book, but this way, if something you comment on piques the interest of a friend, it can start a conversation you wouldn’t have otherwise had.

These technologies provide the opportunity to hold dialogues you wouldn’t ordinarily have and maintain connections you may not have sustained long-term.

Friends long out-of-touch, family overseas, old housemates and school friends. These are people we care about, but, due to conflicting responsibilities and time pressures,  may not keep in touch with as often as we’d like to.

It’s a way of touching base – at the touch of a button.

And why not? We bank online. We shop online. We date online. Why not connect with our friends and family online too? I live a fairly compartmentalised life where the various aspects of my personality and friendship groups don’t overlap much, so it can be interesting to see the eclectic collection of disparate personalities who in various ways and degrees, comprise portions of the rich tapestry of my life,  converging on a single site.

Online, as in life, discretion is the better part of valour. Those prone to over-disclosure can get themselves into trouble. Colleagues could potentially come to work informed that you’re hungover. Friends could be forearmed that you’re miffed that they didn’t turn up to your BBQ.

Regardless of the medium, the need for sound personal judgment remains. Chances are, if you’re the sort of person who’s going to notify the Twitteratti of your break-up before you speak to your partner, in days gone by, the local grapevine would have known about it long before your partner did anyway. Technology doesn’t make a person good or bad, it simply gives them the means and opportunity for impulsive publishing! Drink-and-dial in a new medium!

Today, more than ever before, we strive to feel connected and understood. Social networking technologies permit us to connect at a micro level on a macro scale. The ultimate in personalised expression and democratic communication tools; they provide a sense of intimacy and connectivity that negate traditional boundaries such as distance, time, language, culture.

The don’t replace in-person interactions, they complement them and in doing so they provide a life-line for those that are isolated.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to check my messages…

What women (and men!) want

I used to think relationships were all about love. Then I thought it was compromise…

Following several years of solid reflection following the implosion of my marriage, I’ve decided (at least for now!) that the driving force in interpersonal relationships is not our search for acceptance, but a desperate yearning to be understood.

It is not enough to be loved.

To be loved, or even accepted, without the surety of knowing that the other person deeply comprehends and appreciates every facet of who, how and why you are, (even if they don’t agree with you), is a hallow comfort.

Throughout my marriage, I was loved unconditionally. Despite all my faults (and there are PLENTY believe me!), my husband loved me dearly. He still does. But he did not understand me. Patty Smyth had it right when she and Don Henley teamed up to tell us that ‘Sometimes Love Just Ain’t Enough’. Amongst our loved ones, there are many who love us, but so very, very few truly able to understand what it is that makes us tick.

Even in our most selfish moments of self-celebration, when we’re receiving gifts for special occasions, it is those gifts given with insight, those that show that the giver truly understands us, that we appreciate the most. In relationships, from family to friends, colleagues and lovers, it is always those that leave us feeling , well, known, that move us most. We see it all the time in the best of good-guy, bad-guy movies. The only person who understands the hero is the villian and vice versa, with their growing, grudging respect for one-another cinching the final climax of the movie based on some deep, unperceiveable insight.

When it comes right down to it, in those most private, vulernable moments, when our guards are down, we dearly long to know that despite the unfathomable unknowing of life, someone, somewhere, totally and completely ‘gets’ us. (and, yes, loves us anyway!).

‘Seek first to understand, then to be understood’. So modern management theory (Stephen Covey et al) tells us, and  – sod it – I think they might have something there! If you want to build a more meaningful relationship, stop trying to love your partner – and try getting to know them!

Fish – needs bicycle

Searching for a partner can be a traumatic experience. Often we look for partners that will complete us, not complement us. We say it all the time:

‘he completes me’

‘she’s my better half’

Besides being nauseating company, becoming achingly-co-dependent is dangerous.
When rely on others to fulfil us, we allow others to make us miserable. In expecting any one person to be solely responsible for providing for all your needs, we set ourselves up for disappointment. It’s decidedly unrealistic, unfair and – dare I say it – a tad passive-aggressive. (It’s also a helluva lot of pressure on our partner!)

I rather consider abdicating responsibility for your own happiness is something of an act of masochistic procrastination in that it prolongs any opportunity for the pursuit of genuine happiness and replaces it with a resentful whiney-arsed approach of hoping and wishing your life away – altogether a sure-fire road to disappointment! Happiness comes from achieving your life-goals, however modest they may be.

Asking someone else to take on (or worse, not asking them; just silently thrusting upon them) responsibility for fulfilling the dual-roles of mind-reader and wet-nurse suspends both partners in a tormenting cycle of hide-and-seek. Even when you get what you want, under these circumstances, it’s only ever a short-lived thrill, and, as Mick Jagger would attest – you can’t get no satisfaction. Ultimately, this leaves you resentful that your partner is unable to make you happy, when, in effect, it’s not them failing to make you happy – it’s you failing, by not being willing or empowered enough to get out there and make yourself happy!

Robbing yourself of the satisfaction that comes from reaching your goals (or, even in the worst-case scenario, the personal growth that stems from our failures) is the most soul-destroying disappointment of all. Far worse than the stinging pain of failure is the nagging torment of knowing you didn’t ever reach out for all that you wanted or could have been.

What sort of partner should we be looking for, if not someone who will complete us?
Someone whose stengths and weaknesses complement our own. Someone who makes us stretch, and grow. A partner who challenges our preconceptions and prejudices, and helps us confront our fears. We all need someone who understands the worst of us, and loves us regardless. Who helps us overcome obstacles and remove roadblocks, without always doing it for us. Someone who cares for us enough to know the difference between when we need help, and when we need to do something for ourselves.

This is not always the most comfortable of relationships, but it is surely the most rewarding.  I’m not saying that it’s the differences that make us happy, but it is the differences that make us grow and the compromises and shared experiences that lead to the  intimacy and togetherness that are the bond in any relationship.

Stop waiting for someone to give you the easy answers. Grab hold of your life! Challenge yourself to take personal responsibility for your own happiness – and all of your relationships will prosper.

Manic, who me?!

I frequently wax lyrical about the depths of despair I plummet to when depressed, but there’s a reason I fight the need to medicate my bipolar disorder – mania.

For me, when I’m experiencing it – a manic episode is a beautiful, beautiful thing. For those trying to live with me while I’m experiencing it – it’s exhausting, and sometimes frightening.

This time around, I’ve been lucky.

For the last couple of weeks I’ve been on fast-forward. Surviving on 4-5 hours sleep, one meal a day, frequently working 12-hours a day and powering on at home as well. This weekend I rebuilt my computer; forensically cleaned my whole 4-bedroom-house (I even washed the washing-machine!) and still found time to watch three movies, have a couple of social outings and do all of the ironing. This was on top of completing a mountain of office work, (akin to 2-3 days worth) after having finished work late on Friday night.

This time, it’s been a vital burst of productivity that’s coincided with a peak-need at work. It’s not always such a positive experience.

Often it’s only afterwards that the trail of human carnage becomes clear – the friendships I’ve impatiently and selfishly severed because they became too demanding, didn’t share my vision or passion, or seemed too much like hard work; the staff reporting to me who’ve felt intimated by my emails at un-Godly hours of the night/morning, or my barbed criticisms. The partners I’ve left based on some burning insight I felt I’d had – no breakthroughs, just break-ups. I can be a hard task-master at the best of times – prone to being judgemental, self-righteous and outspoken, but when I’m manic – I’m uncompromising and unbearable. Sometimes the wreckage is financial – in the past I’ve bought tonnes of gadgets I didn’t need or want, clothes, expensive gifts for friends, stupid items for hobbies that are fleeting fads. I’ve even bought a new car and a new house!

Those that see me on a high think I’m driven and focussed; they don’t see me when I’m depressed and dysfunctional – I tend to hibernate at those times. When I’m hyper though, I’m the life of the party. Often I become animated; gregariously social, but sometimes it can tip over and become a destructive force – at those times I’m obnoxious, rude, demanding and downright aggressive. I’m not going to discuss what a manic episode does to my sensual self, but as you can imagine – it’s not pretty.

While I may not like who I am when I’m manic – I do like how it feels to be productive, to feel powerful, driven and totally in-control of your own destiny. The self-belief, focus and energy that comes with a manic episode is something that mere mortals pay a fortune on illicit drugs to experience – yet my high is totally free!

The manic-upswing is one hypnotic little beastie, nigh on impossible to harness, but, for this week at least – I’m enjoying the roller-coaster!

Top 5: Fundamental elements of a successful relationship

Every relationship has give and take. But how much should you give – and how much should you take? Some relationships work seamlessly, and others are more like an endurance event. Whether this is Mr/Ms Right, or Mr/Ms Right Now hinges on just a few key ingredients.

To help you decipher between the two, here are my Top 5: Fundamental elements of a successful relationship:

1. Coexistence – not co-dependence
It’s important to be able to live complementary lives, but living together harmoniously doesn’t mean you have to eat from the same plate, finish each other’s sentences and dress in matching track-suits. You should support one another to grow and develop at your own pace and in your own way. A healthy appreciation of your differences means you’ll experience things through one another that you would never have been exposed to otherwise. This process of discovery, learning and fun leads to richer, more rewarding life experiences – and a whole lot of shared memories.

2. Respect

You can’t love someone you don’t like. Oh, sure you can LUST after them for a while, but when it comes to building a life with someone – respect is crucial. Respect is the cornerstone of every sound partnership. It allows you the freedom to embrace your individuality without feeling threatened; it permits you to trust and to love without restraint. Respect is vital for healing the wounds and overcoming frustrations when conflicts threaten your relationship. If you don’t respect one another, you won’t be able to compromise and find your way forward together.

3. Stimulation

If your partner doesn’t turn you on between your ears and between the sheets – have the self-respect to walk away.  We each have our own preconceived ideas about constitutes romance, humour and thoughtfulness. The bottom-line is that we each need to feel that our partner unconditionally accepts and loves us, and supports our dreams and life goals. We all grow and change over time; but if your politics, sexual urges or sense of morality are poles apart – the relationship is on shaky ground.

4. Trust.
Trust is the warmth and elasticity that bonds a relationship. There’s no turn-off quite as immediate as an over-zealous, jealous partner. Spending your hours accounting for how you spend your minutes is cold, vacuous and pointless. On the other side, if you can’t trust them with your best friend – you’ll both grow to resent it. Suspicion breeds contempt. Once the trust has gone, the relationship is over (even if you haven’t left yet), because a relationship without trust isn’t a relationship – it’s stalking.

5. A shared vision for your future

A sense of togetherness is vital for intimacy, and genuine teamwork is imperative in approaching life’s practicalities. If you want to spend your twilight years meditating on a Tibetan mountaintop  and he wants to spend it in sniffing cocaine of hookers’ bellies in Soho – I’ve got news for you: it’s probably not a match made in heaven. You need to be able to see yourself sitting down to breakfast with this person every day for the rest of your lives. If you can’t see yourself wanting to passing the marmalade  to them when you’re both old and grey – walk away.

Mother’s Day

With Mother’s Day just around the corner, I can’t help but be moved by what it means to be a Mum.

Being a Mum is a tough gig. The hours are unreasonable, the workload is unrelenting, and your achievements frequently go unnoticed. I recall one particularly teary early morning feed where I deduced that whoever coined the term ’sleeps like a baby’ obviously didn’t have one!

For me, one of the toughest parts of being a Mum has always been the exhaustion. I realised the toll it was taking on me when an elderly man approached me in the supermarket late one evening and asked if I had a baby.

“Why, yes, I do!” I replied. ‘How ever did you know?”.

“You’re nursing potatoes” he smiled kindly and nodded towards the 5kg bag of potatoes I was ever-so-gently bouncing on my hip in a vain attempt to lull it to sleep.

Despite the hard slog, being a parent is a thoroughly rewarding and enriching experience.  You learn to find joy in the smallest of things – it’s not always as magical as the first step or the first belly-laugh, but a shoddy, smudged home-made drawing and the dodgiest of inedible charcoaled breakfasts (that I have to clean up after!) still brings a warm smile to my heart.

As children develop and mature, they’re needs change, but the need for our Mum remains. I still call on my Mum for advice on all manner of things, from parenting tips and relationship advice, to cooking and general life topics.

We never stop needing our Mum – and our mums never stop giving.

Mums the world over deserve our respect and appreciation!

So, this Mother’s Day, give a big warm hug to all the wonderful Mums you know!

Single grey hair (I’m getting old?!)

It started with a single grey hair.

My partner and I were staying with friends on the Easter weekend. Getting dressed the next morning,  I noticed a single, solitary grey hair amongst my fulsome head of stylishly salon-coloured, bob-styled locks. In an instant, I felt the spunk drain right outta me. As women do in these circumstances, I called our friend aside, and we shared a giggle and the mock horror over the impending doom of my attractiveness.

A few days later, (after the clinical shock had passed?), panic set in. My head awash with fear of impending middle-age, I lamented the multitude of experiences quickly approaching their expiry date in my life:

• Short skirts
• Random acts of reckless fun
• Walking down the isle

Was this single grey hair the omen of the beginning of the end of my sensuality?

I ran screaming into my bathroom with a bottle of hair-dye under one arm and a bottle of red wine under the other.

Over the next couple of hours, as I lay relaxing in a hot bath letting the hair dye and red wine take effect, the answer to my question – which started as a still, small voice whispering from behind the shrill panic-stricken tabloid-infused vision of fading youthful beauty – came as somewhat of a relief.

Was my time as a woman running out? Well, no. I’m only now just hitting my stride. Now officially a thirty-something, I am a woman in charge of my own destiny. I’ve had a wonderful marriage, and am now blessed with a large dollop of self-awareness, two beautiful young boys to share my journey and the beginnings of a successful career. I have a full schedule of adorable friends and a long list of things I want to achieve.

So what if my days of short skirts are behind me? I haven’t worn them in years. They’ve never looked  good on my tree-trunk legs, only now I have the self-awareness to know what suits me – and what doesn’t! When it comes to having a good time, not being impulsive or irresponsible doesn’t mean I don’t have fun! and as for getting married? Been there. Done that. I’d never say never, but I’m certainly not sitting around waiting for someone else to make me feel whole. Pining is for teenagers.

Grey hair? *meh* I’m not scared. I’m too busy living!

2009: the story so far

In the business analysis world, we have regular performance reviews against business plans and so on. This systematic holding-to-account forces a refocus of energy and resources on achieving an organisation’s top priorities.

So, given that governance is what I DO professionally, with March now behind us, I thought it was time I held a quarterly review against my New Year’s Resolutions, to see how I’m doing so far this year, and to inspire me to continue to focus on my goals for the next portion of the year…

# Personal goals for 2009

Goal one (New Year’s Resolution): Making more time for my kids… aiming to set aside two nights a week.

Achievement (as at 11/04/09): Achieved. Each week Wednesday night has become Board Game Night and Friday night is movie night. The kids and I all sit down to eat dinner together each night and we’re finding time to undertake activities together more regularly.

Comments/new targets: I’m really pleased with my achievement against this goal; it was the most important one for me for this year. I’m taking my kids to the coast for a couple of days next weekend and I’ve recently started the habit of making up fruit platters at night to encourage them to eat better.

• Continue to look for opportunities to spend time together and undertake more activities.
• Annual holiday with my boys.
• Improve their eating habits!

______

Goal two (New Year’s Resolution): Improving my relationships

Achievement (as at 11/04/09): Partially achieved. This has been a tough one. I’ve achieved well in some areas (making more time for my kids, my parents and staff) and abysmally in others (a number of friends I’ve not made enough time for, I’ve been a pretty lame girlfriend for my partner and so on).

Comments/new targets: More consistent effort required. 

______

Goal three (New Year’s Resolution): Improving my fitness.

Achievement (as at 11/04/09): Hmmm, some progress achieved, but there’s still a long way to go. I still look and feel like a lump.

Comments/new targets: More consistent effort required.
______

# Professional goals for 2009

Goal one (New Year’s Resolution): Love my job

Achievement (as at 11/04/09): Partially achieved. Some good ground work done, but I really need to roll-up my sleeves and get on with the job after these schools holidays are over.

Comments/new targets: More consistent effort required.

______

Goal two (New Year’s Resolution): Develop my staff

Achievement (as at 11/04/09): Partially achieved. My whole team now have development plans in place, and I’ve held discussions with them about what they what from the next 12-months. We’ve developed a business plan for each team and after the Easter break we’ll look at forging ahead against those goals.

Comments/new targets: All the systems are now in place to succeed against this goal, and it’s now time to move things to the next level.

• Regular one-on-one meetings.
• Refocused weekly team meetings to discuss business plan objectives.

______

Goal three (New Year’s Resolution): Find the fun

Achievement (as at 11/04/09): Achieved. I’ve successfully instilled a çan-do sense of fun amongst the current team members (with one notable exception for which I will not blame myself).

Comments/new targets: Now that my staff know that they have my support and can bounce ideas off me, I’d like to back this off a little and redraw-the-line regarding the professional demarcation of my role as the leader, as I’m finding all the mate-ship a little intrusive and time-intensive.

• Maintain team enthusiasm, trust and bonding, while reclaiming a little of my own professional space.

The fog is lifting

It’s been a tough month.

I suffered a pretty severe and prolonged down-swing recently. I was depressed  for about six weeks, at least a month of which was severely dysfunctional. Going to work took a concerted effort. Despite it being a difficult time, I think overall it’s a good thing that I have such a demanding role at work, because there’s no such thing as a slack day on auto-pilot when I have so many staff and complex issues to manage! Of course having two school-aged kids keeps me getting out of bed in the morning too, so I’ve no opportunity for dodging responsibility and wallowing in self-pity/loathing.

Good friends a real blessing at times like these. My dear friend (let’s call her Miss X) was an absolute rock. When I withdrew into my fog of impenetrable hopelessness, Miss X patiently waited for me to come out the other side and she was there for me when I was a blubbering emotional mess. Friends like that are hard to find.

I think I’ve turned the corner though, I can feel the serotonin levels rising as my body prepares for the deliciously delirious burst of bipolar mania. HOORAY! I’m about to forge ahead and actually ACHIEVE something! I tell you, there is something to be said for the prolific efficiency and undeniable productivity of a manic up-swing.

This weekend I cleaned my house for top to bottom. It’s a four bedroom place, so that’s no small achievement. I even scrubbed and cleaned the laundry and disinfected the fridge! The cutlery draw organiser even copped a thorough cleaning! I took my kids to the movies, got a pedicure with a girlfriend and bought a few new items for my wardrobe. Yes, things are looking up… (now to attack my in-tray at work…)

Broken limbs, for broken people

My son broke his arm playing at school his week. Poor little lamb. For the next few weeks there’ll be no football, no swimming, and no softball. He’s taking it pretty hard.

On the upside, it has been rather nice to have a couple of days off work for the sole purpose of devoting time to him. We’ve played checkers, monopoly and various other board games; we watched DVDs and we went out to the mov1ies. My favourite activity has been all the time we’ve spent snuggled up in bed reading books.

Spending all this quality time with my son has been lovely,  but I can’t quite shake the guilt that I should be cleaning the house and catching up on errands while I’ve got the opportunity, but I’m hoping to do all that this weekend instead.

It’s a sad sign of how much I work that my son has to break his arm for me to find a few days of work to be with him. *meh* That’s not strictly true,  just the mother-guilt talking. I had already booked the impending school hols off work to take my lads to the coast for a few days.