Technology and I do not mix.

I do not like technology, or, rather technology does not like me. Technology annoys me. If the device I am using does not do what I want then I get quite irritated. I also suck at fixing any sort of problems, learning anything new and well, doing anything really.

This morning I had to take photos of some documents on my phone to send off for a course I am doing. That sounds simple right? It should be simple but this is me and I have an unfortunate habit talent for making even the most simple tasks quite complex. So I got my birth certificate to take a photo of it.

Taking a photo of an inanimate object should be incredibly simple right? And it was simple, if you know if you consider taking 100 million photos to get one that is not blurry is simple. I got agitated. I decided I cannot possibly do this course if I cannot do something as simple as take a photo.

I was also supposed to take a photo of two other documents. I didn't. My will had been broken from attempting to take a photo of the first document, so i made a coffee and played Candy Crush instead. I told myself that I would just have a coffee then continue with photographing the documents. That was at 9am. It is now midday. I may have been distracted by another piece of technology, my laptop.

The stupid windows on my stupid laptop decided it needed to update just as I was playing candy crush doing something incredibly important, so I had to then wait with as much patience as possible for windows to update, while drinking more coffee. I would also like to mention that after windows had updating it changed absolutely nothing on my laptop so I am unsure why I needed the update in the first place, I am convinced my laptop is out to annoy me.

So now, it is half way through the day and I still haven't photographed the other documents I need, or emailed them off and all I have done is play candy crush, drink coffee, read interesting blog posts and write this post. I should probably attempt to get something done. I really hate technology.

I will say YES

I have been reading Shonda Rhimes' book Year of Yes. It is amazing. It is funny, honest and a lot different then most books written by celebrities. It is not about how amazingly famous she is, or how much money she has. It is not about how amazing she is - and she is truly amazing - it is simply about Shonda facing her fears. She is human, she admits she has fears and flaws and she admits she is not perfect. I like that. She has made me feel a lot more normal. Especially the chapter I read last night.

In the chapter I read, she talks about being a mother. She talks about how she isn't any less of a mother because she doesn't bake things from scratch, or do crafty things with her kids. I love that. Every mother is different and no one has the right to judge. She talks about being a single working mother of three and how it is hard. She doesn't claim its easy, she doesn't claim she is superwoman. She is just honest. And I love that.

Shonda describes in her book how she made a promise to herself to say yes to everything that scared her for a year. She describes how it has changed her life and she is a lot happier.
This book has come into my life at exactly the right time. In the past 8 months I have seen amazing highs and devastating lows. These past 8 months have been the hardest of my life and it seems now this hard patch is coming to an end. I have made a promise to myself. I am going to be like Shonda. I am going to say yes to the things that scare me, that challenge me. While Shonda's challenges included giving a commencement speech at Dartmouth College and appearing on Jimmy Kimmel, my yes's will be a lot different. It will be to a much lower scale. Perhaps I will say yes to working and studying at the same time. Maybe it will be a new experience I am worried about doing. I don't know yet, but I will be spending the next year challenging myself and saying yes to things I normally wouldn't. It is worth a try. After all, I could change my life, just like Shonda.

I made a mistake....

I lay down in bed last night rather excited. I looked at the cover of a book I have recently bought, read the blurb and lovingly opened the cover. It is a book about Shonda Rhimes, frequently called the most powerful woman in hollywood because of her success with Grey's Anatomy, Scandal and How to get away with murder, she is one of my favourite women. This blog post is not about Shonda though, it is about the author of her biography.
I started reading the book, excited to learn all I could about the genius who created my favourite show. The first page was alright but I was getting more and more annoyed the more I read. The grammar in the book was atrocious. I got rather annoyed. I had to stop reading, and I hate stopping reading, I try not to, which accounts for the lack of sleep I have had since I was a child.

This post was originally going to condemn the author. I was annoyed and I wanted to publicly out him as a bad author. I was going to complain about him, but then this morning I stopped to think.
Why should I condemn him? What gives me the right to label him as a bad writer? I don't know how hard he worked on that book. I don't know how long it took him to write it. For all I know he spent many late nights, giving up time with his family to write that book so people like me can read about the person who created amazing shows, shows people love to watch.
It got me thinking. Not just about how unfair I was to this author but how sometimes everyone can be unfair to people, whether it be friends, family, celebrities or strangers on the street. I see it all the time, people assuming things, people do not agree with someone so they condemn them. It recently happened with my partner and myself. A friend of his did not agree with a decision he has made, so he decided that my partner must have been manipulated, because he would not make the decision himself, and that is okay. He doesn't have to make the same decisions as my partner but he also does not have the right to try and cause trouble either, same as I had no right to condemn this author.
The best thing about people is we are all unique. It is okay that we all do not want the same things. It is okay for someone to make their own choices. It is not okay for people to be condemned for making different choices, or for trying something such as writing a book.

It is time that we all let everyone be individuals, we need to stop criticizing people. We need to embrace people's individuality and support our friends and family to be the best that they can be.
I was mistaken for the things I said and thought about the author of that book. I was not right to judge him, It was not okay for me to label him as a bad author. He did the best he could. I am grateful that I thought about it before i wrote a judgemental post about someone I do not know. I am going to try and keep this in mind whenever I feel myself starting to judge someone.

The negativity of social media.

I have watched the comments section on many posts on Facebook over the past few weeks. I have been shocked. Very shocked. Everyone seems to be an expert when it comes to news items on social media. Everyone claims to know what happened and know intentions of strangers by reading one news article. This annoys me a great deal. I know it shouldn't, I should not care about what a bunch of strangers say about other strangers. I should not care that I have witnessed grown adults use petty name calling if someone disagrees with them. I should not care that people have threatened the lives of someone's family or dealt out rape threats or acts of violence. But I do care. I  care a great deal.

At a time where cyber bullying is rife, where young teenagers are taking their own life due to bullying, isn't it time for adults to stand up and say that enough is enough? How can we expect children and teenagers to stop the bullying and be kind to each other when they see adults bullying and belittling people on social media constantly? How can adults teach children respect for others and kindness and understanding when adults will not do the same?
Since when is it acceptable for people to gang up and bully the most vulnerable? When did it become okay to disrespect someone else's opinion?

I was reading a post about prostitution last night. It was an article about how prostitutes are commonly abused and there are limited places to turn. I made the mistake of reading the comments section. There were some very kind comments, comments I was grateful to read, comments that proved to me that human decency and compassion still exist, Then there were negative comments. The negative comments annoyed me greatly. What gives people the right to judge someone based on the job they have? Why should the sex industry be exempt from protection from abuse, both physical and mental?
It is time to step up and not accept this behaviour. It is time people learnt that they can have a difference of opinion without resorting to bullying.
I have made a promise to myself. I will no longer read comments on news items. Life is hard enough without adding extra negativity to it.

Social media can be a wonderful thing. We can keep in contact with friends and family that live interstate and overseas, we can recommend movies and restaurants and festivals. We can easily invite a large number of people to an event. We can share exciting news quickly with friends and family. I think it is time to go back to that, not using it as a platform for bullying and threats.

It's been a while.

It's been a while since I have written anything. I have just spent the last few hours transferring my old blog posts to this new blog. I don't know why. I needed a change. Change. It is a word that has been used a lot by me lately. I have entered a new relationship. My kids have all had birthdays, There has been Christmas and Easter, my birthday, new experiences and new friends.

Tinkerbell is now in year 3. She will be nine years old next month. I can barely believe it. She still loves reading. That hasn't changed. Pirate Monkey will be eight this year. He is in year 2 and He is going well. Mate is four and attends kindy. He is still totally insane and loveable. Bubba is not a bubba anymore. He has just turned three. He has discovered his favourite animal, lemurs. He is obsessed with them.

I no longer have anything to do with my family. I will not go into details about the reasons and I will not badmouth them on a public forum. I have changed a lot of my friends and cut people out of my life who did not have the best intentions. I now see the world in a very different way and a few of my beliefs have changed.

I went through quite a bad patch over the last few months. I will not get into it on this post. Perhaps another post, on another day, but not here.
Change can be good or bad. Change can just simply be different. Human beings change as they get older. It is part of life. Some people change for the better and some change for the worse. Sometimes we think people change when in reality we just see their true nature. I have learnt this lately and it is a very painful lesson to learn.