Exhaustion

Exhausted. Just exhausted. The morning was characterised by some phenomenal dream that had me thrashing about. I have no memory of the dream itself, but did wake to find my pillows perpendicular to each other and items from my bedside table flung unceremoniously across the floor. I wonder what it was that had me so agitated?

I went to bed irritated and don't doubt for a second that that was what triggered the dreams, but the actual content of the dreams completely eludes me. Whatever it was, it had me flailing like I was fending off some monstrous beast.

Sleep has once again become an issue. It had been controlled for a while with the advent of regular swimming, but it's been nearly two weeks since I last swam any laps and I'm climbing the walls. Motivation is hard to find and lethargy curls its sinewy fingers throughout the day. My eyelids grow heavy and my brain grows dull. I hear the buzzing return of tinnitus and know that there's some low-level infection working its sinister magic on my immune system.

It's a vicious cycle this exercise and sleep business. I exercise, I sleep well and wake with energy. I don't exercise, I sleep poorly and fitfully and wake exhausted to my very bones, unable to muster enough interest or ability to complete even simple tasks.

My day has consisted of completing online forms and sending emails. Another contributing factor to the lethargy. Instead of revitalising me, it has made me long to curl up and sleep. My head feels filled with cotton wool and I cannot wade through the viscosity of it. I know there are tasks to complete, but have no will to summon. I suspect the weighty burden of all that needs to be done is also adding to my paralysis. I find myself near catatonia every time I consider the enormity of what remains to be done.

I'm sure there's a solution. I daresay it's a simple one - perhaps a reversion to my trusty lists is what will snap me out of this. The cotton wool in my head makes thinking clearly seem like trying to swim my way through a swimming pool filled with treacle. Every time I think I'm making progress, the sticky, gooey morass of impending deadlines and tasks yet to be done drag me inexorably to the bottom.

Still, to quote my favourite southern belle, "tomorrow is another day".

First Encounters

So here we are on our orientation trip to Houston, preparing for the big move over at the end of the year. We have a one week orientation to the city and surrounds and it's our opportunity to see if this is really something we could do.

We had always talked about living outside of Australia at some point in our lives, preferably while the children were still young and able to make the transition relatively easily. Over the last 10 years or so, we have considered and rejected many possibilities for overseas postings. LomL works in the petroleum industry and that pretty much limits the number of fun places we're ever likely to live in the world through his work.

A few job offers have come up for Mauritania. Ones we did seriously consider for a minute, but the thought of living 24/7 in a gated, barbed-wire, electric-fenced community and taking the kids to school with an armed driver, really did very little for my peace of mind.

There were job offers for Qatar and Saudi Arabia. Both involved living in gated compounds and, for me, living a very restricted life. Singapore came up once or twice, but we couldn't see that the life would be better for us than what we had.

Eventually, we got to the point where we began to resign ourselves to a life lived in the same place. This may not seem a big deal to most people, in fact, I can see how it would be a comforting thought to many. The familiarity and comfort of all you know, all you have ever known surrounding you. The problem for us, however, is that we're essentially restless and adventurous souls. LomL came to the realisation the other day that this is the longest we've ever lived in one place since we've been married; 9 years. Recently, I had a very dear friend tell me I'd done a lot of brave things in my life. It has never felt like that. We've always just faced the challenges and lived our lives without consideration for how hard things were - without ever really considering that things were hard. I think that because of that, we've managed to have fun and make wonderful friends in some of the most unlikely places.

Still, after 9 years in the same place, doing pretty much the same things (with a little overseas travel thrown in), one does tend to become rooted to the spot. I don't know whether familiarity breeds contempt, but in my case, it has certainly bred complacency. One does tend to give greater importance to petty worries and irritations than they deserve, because life is overwhelmingly carefree. What that parent said at the last school event suddenly gains far more importance and weighting than it should in my mind. I worry over what this person thinks, how that one was affected by my words or actions, I worry about whether I'm advocating enough or too much for the children at school. I worry about minor, silly things that deserve no time or space in my consciousness, because, frankly there are no big worries. We are surrounded by family, by friends, by support systems and by unnervingly familiar ways of working and living. I find myself growing roots out of my toes to the place we live, the places we shop, the places we visit. I appreciate less what's around me, and take for granted more all the advantages we have. I complain more. I become more scared of doing things and going places. And I become lazy about fighting those parts of my personality that I don't particularly like. There's no need. I have family that love me. I am surrounded by a wonderful network of friends that love me. Why change? Why even be pleasant or make an effort?

While my initial reaction to the prospect of moving permanently to another country was fright and anxiety, it really didn't take much thinking to know it was the right thing to do for us. The children are both young enough not to be adversely affected by the change and old enough to be excited by the prospects of a new adventure. LomL is going to a new, more exciting job that has effectively been created with him in mind. And I, I am going to a new place. A new house, a new community, a new way of living. I don't have to worry about learning a new language or be super cautious of cultural sensitivities. I do have to learn a new way of thinking about distances and temperatures and other measurements. All in all, there's some new stuff to learn, but quite a lot of what awaits is familiar. But the best bit of all? It's a huge opportunity to reawaken my adventurous spirit, dust off some cobwebs and push myself to be less introverted and more social. That excites me.

Plane Musings

Fighting begun? Well, not quite, but certainly loss of patience. Plane full of freshly-minted rising classes, foreign-returned and flashing gold and phones. Ostentatious in their employment of those phones. Loud voices announcing their sense of self-importance. Arms waving back and forth lending emphasis to the volume of the conversation. "Look at me" it shouts. "Look at how well I've done. Look at all that I can afford".

It used to be only the domain of those foreign-born or foreign-bred, this ostentation and preening. But now it's a mark of wealth, of coming up in the world. Perhaps it always was. It just seemed to those of us on the other side, a mark of difference. We never understood the envious daggers that flew so true from retina to heart. We felt their green-hued points pierce the thin shells of our ego-armour long before we ever heard the snide remarks or cruel taunts - the jeers about our now-changed accents, our fancy modern clothes, our westernised, unoiled, short-cropped hair, or worst of all, the easy assumption that our western lives necessarily meant easy morals too.

That is the hardest to encounter still. The apparent comfort men feel in holding their daughter's hand on one side while happily pinching a bottom or groping a bosom on the other. That is the part, the hallmark of every visit to India (or at least Kerala) since the age of 13, that fills my heart with dread and leaves me in a cold sweat of stomach-churning trepidation for weeks before entering the country.