The opposable thumb theory.

It's a little Bridget Jones, but...9234 steps and an awesome yoga session. But somehow managed to consumer 400 sausage rolls and imbibe 600 litres of wine.

I was drinking yesterday afternoon/last night with some friends who were once colleagues. While we drank, ate and laughed hysterically, the conversation inevitably turned to work. The drunker we got the louder we became and the more stories were told, more emphatically. Up to the point when one of these fabulous friends told a story of how she managed to tell her manager to, unequivocally, f*ck off and get f*cked.

We all took a giant inward breath. Eek.

A few years ago I lived with another friend who would remind me that we have opposable thumbs any time I mentioned that I wanted to tell someone what I thought of them in a business environment. My friend used to say that having opposable thumbs meant we are able to make choices - and so good choices should be made (or similar - I was drunk most of the time when we lived together). I have since modified this theory to mean that when I want to tell someone what I think of them, tactlessly, like telling someone in authority they are a major douche bag and are potentially the most annoying, vacuous, one-eyed person with the worst case of halitosis, I have ever met, I remember my opposable thumbs and say the complete opposite.

It might be considered lying or duplicitous, but it is the only way I know to keep my sanity and get through some of the ludicrousness. The problem is that somewhere along the line saying the opposite, has somehow become my way of saying what I mean. For instance I seem to have convinced myself that when I say, "Thank you for your feedback, that's most valuable, what a salient point, I'll take that on board," what I hear is "Yeah, good one douche bag. You're a massive fulltard."

When I mentioned this theory to my friend last night as a potential strategy to employ next time she speaks with her manager she asked, "how do you do that?"

Easy, I seem to have reprogrammed my brain to think that when I say a business buzzword that I am insulting the person. It amuses me (and some of my colleagues who know me well), that while seemingly placating folks who think they are doing me a favour, I am secretly, in my own tiny way with my not so cleverly disguised code, brushing idiot suggestions aside. In my line of work everyone thinks they have the skills to do the job. In fact, they probably do, it's not rocket science, but then what is, except maybe rocket science and accounting. So when people tell me how to do my job - like it's my first day in the industry, I say "absolutely, what a great idea, I'll take that on board." Meanwhile, internally rolling my eyes.

I used to work with someone who liked to think he was a bit of a guru at what I do all day. He would constantly give me what he felt was vital and innovative feedback. While my opposable thumb approach is sometimes flawed and I would occasionally  stare wide eyed and slack jawed at some of the more ridiculous suggestions he made, on a good day, I would say, "What a salient point, hadn't thought of that myself. I'll take it on board."  And sometimes when he would bang on about things, I would say "I hear you, I really do."
For some reason, perhaps due to his own reprogramming, he heard: "you're the smartest person I have ever met, oh how do I even manage to breathe without your valuable insight and guidance.  Thank you oh wise one." One side of his mouth would turn up, in an arrogant smile, he would cock his head slightly to the side and wink at me, in his way, giving me a little patronising pat on the head. All while I was comforted in the knowledge that I had practically told him to stick his silly ideas where the sun refuses to shine.

Hopefully, if the opposable thumb theory catches on, we can create harmonious workplaces where anyone who has ever had to work with someone who might not be quite up to the task will be able to smile, Steppford Wife style, and get on with their day, yet in their own little way, they've managed to tell someone to f*ck off and get f*cked (without any negative repercussions).



 (On a more serious note, I have to say, that I have worked with some amazing, brilliant and sharp minds - and while some of my posts are about the fools that I have  worked with, I have also been blessed with working with and learning from some incredibly smart, funny, and mind-blowingly talented people in the business all with wonderful perspectives, that have helped guide and shape my thinking as well as teach me about things that I didn't know I didn't know. But then they're not that funny to blog about. Mx)

General Anxiety Disorder - Weight

The photos were uploaded from the camera and the evidence was damning. The verdict, she thought, was exactly as she had expected. Yes indeed. You missy, are fat.

There was extra skin under the chin, bulging from underneath her face as she smiled for the camera and a distinct lack of jawline in all of the photos. There was a tightness, across the stomach, of the shirt she was wearing. Plus, she noted, there were some cleverly, yet not completely, disguised tuck-shop lady arms.  Things were getting out of control.

While she knew her clothes were tighter than they were six months before and while she knew she generally felt uncomfortable, she had no idea things had become quite so bad.

She'd been fit for a while. Walking 5kms a day and not eating anything that remotely looked interesting or calorie laden. Now she does 3kms a day while walking the dog and eats everything in sight from pepperoni pizza to chocolate and all the other toxic food groups in between. She drinks more too. Not as much as she used to - but then she didn't eat back then.  Food has officially replaced cigarettes.

"Get it off me" she screamed looking down at her body and assessing if the camera really does add five pounds or in her case, 5kgs.

She looked for comfort and assessed her BMI on a calculator she found on the internet. She discovered that she was two points away from being obese. What the? She quickly emailed a friend for comforting words. They were provided. Perhaps, she thought, it's because I'm big boned.

"Yes, absolutely," said her friend, who was probably delighted to find out that she was verging on obese.
The friend would have probably rumbled with laughter as she typed the comforting message. Such is the way for some "friendships".

It was time to take a stand. And stood she did.

*

So I'm on a diet. I am on a mission. I am comitted to losing weight (aside from the pizza I had on Friday night along with two bottles of champagne and aside from the cheesey bread stick and packet of chips I had on Saturday to help recover from said bottles of champagne... I am fully comitted).

I have joined the Global Corporate Challenge. It's a walking competition for people who sit on their bums all day playing capitalism. I am in a team with six others and we have to log our steps each day. The result is a virtual tour around the world. The virtual tour is more naff than I thought - and would not have been possible without Google streetview, but the competition with others is great and the competition with myself is even better.  So much so that on Friday I walked an astonishing and cellulite curdling 4,000 steps yet on the weekend I walked an amazing 38,000 steps. Bam! I am on a roll now. Here's hoping I loose a dress size soon.

I'll keep you, ahem, posted.

The label maker

I went to the doctors yesterday. The receptionist asked enquiringly, “who is your next of kin?”

I was torn between asking if that was a truly relevant piece of information and answering the question like an adult.

Honestly, should I be dying and my next of kin need to be contacted, I am unlikely to be at the doctors. I imagine I’ll be lying on the side of the road after an horrific car accident. Since I don’t carry my doctor’s phone number around with me, I doubt she will be contacted. I think I might be seeing someone in the A&E, not my GP who prescribes antibiotics. 

So, anyway, I decide to be an adult and I give her the name of my next of kin, she asks if he has the same surname. 

“No” I reply.

“So, he is your….?” The question hangs in the air.

“Husband” I say definitively.

She cocks her eyebrow.

I glare into the crown of her head as I stand over the counter. Then I completely surprise myself. Rather than lose myself in creating an excellent, award winning dramatic soliloquy about feminism and the role it has played in our society, in an argument that would never fall on deaf ears, I am lost, instead, in the word: husband.

OMG. I have a husband. I am a wife.

I’ve been married for nearly two years and I still go into a whirlwind spin at the terms: husband and wife. I feel so old, so adult, and must appear so normal. I never thought I would get married. I never thought I would find someone to truly love, let alone have them equally love me back. How on Earth is that possible?

I move along to think about all the other normal things that I do. I work, have a house (with a mortgage) and a dog. The icing on that normal fruit cake with marzipan and icing, would be a child. We’re still deliberating about that one. While, sure a child sounds nice, what happens if I decide that I want to be a contestant on So You Think You Can Dance? What happens if someone in New York decides that I am actually the perfect person to head up their uber cool, totally unique and never before seen creative industry? What happens if my desire to be rock star actually comes to fruition (inability to carry any tune, including Mary had a Little Lamb aside)? What happens if I suddenly become much more exciting tomorrow than what I appear to become today?

Likewise, what happens if Hugh Grant comes to Brisbane, realises that I’m his true love and wants to spend the rest of HIS life with me. BupBow. Too late, Hugh, you missed this love boat. 

Married. I’m a wife. I have a husband.

I am being altogether completely ridiculous. Of course he is the main character in my life. When I go home to him at the end of the day, spend my evenings and weekends with him, when we plan our future, laugh at how stupid we are and laugh at our self-deprecating jokes I don’t even think about our being married. I am too busy being comfortable, contented and happy. 

But when I do think about being a wife and having a husband, I just about crumble under the sheer weight of this barrow-load of labels. Wife is just one, albeit, the most grown up label I have had so far, and it occasionally freaks me out. 

Some labels are fun, like the ones we stick on our feet, or the ones we have as a handbags. Others are more definitive. It’s like when you’re at a party and someone asks, “So, what do you do for living?” in the hope it’s not something better than what they do for a living. Or if you’ve met someone truly innovative they ask, “What do you do in your spare time?” You congratulate them on not asking the work question, all the while enduring their smug smile as they pat themselves on the back for cleverly addressing the dichotomy of our existence. 

“So are you married?” They ask next. I can’t blame them, I suppose, when I’m in a more generous mood. How else do we get to know each other? How else can we start to compartmentalise each other into little boxes. 

In answering this question there are usually only four suitable answers.

   1. Yes, married.
   2. No, single but looking.
   3. No, but in a relationship.
   4. No, just broke up with someone, but soon to be back on the market once my shattered heart heals.

What about:

   1. No, not married, never intend to be, I think the idea is ludicrous and can’t work out the point.
   2. No, not married, not in a relationship, I really enjoy having my time to myself.
   3. Yes married, and hating every minute of it.

Now that I answer “yes” to “are you married?” I am asked 1. When are you having children?  I want to answer: when I stop being a child myself, when I stop thinking drinking mid-week is a great idea, when I don’t want to buy fun, useless, wear one-time pieces of clothing, when I don’t want to have a beige leather couch anymore, when I stop swearing all the time, when I drive a sedan, when I don’t speed at every opportunity, when I manage to cook at least three decent meals a week, when I eat 7 serves of fruit and vegetables a day, when I become more centred, when this yoga thing kicks in, when I finally learn how to get a handle on this husband/wife/marriage thing, then I might, just might, consider becoming a mum. 

I left the doctors with a prescription for some antibiotics and a smile from the woman who didn’t seem to approve of my not taking my LSH’s surname as my own. I went home, jumped on the computer and asked LSH what he was making for dinner. What's in a label anyway?

General Anxiety Disorder - Flying.

I spend much of my time in what I like to call 'a tizz'. I get into a tizz so often, it can be quite debilitating. I have been known to be in a constant tizz for a period of time, only to cause myself some rather interesting side effects. Once, I ended up with some relatively serious health issues, where my stomach just stopped working.

Due to my lack of effective self-analysis I never really noticed anything wrong with that sick feeling in my stomach, or the constant butterflies, or the heat up the back of my neck throughout my teenage years and early 20s. I kind of thought it was normal and then started smoking and drinking - and hey presto, I felt nothing except hung-over for the next 10 years of my life (which also clearly contributed to stomach giving up the ghost on me).

Recently, I have self diagnosed myself, thanks to Google, as having some sort of General Anxiety Disorder, GAD.

GAD , for me, is often displayed in different ways. The first, probably most interesting thing I get overly, outrageously anxious about, is flying.

When I have to catch a plane, I check the weather forecast at least 100 times before getting on the flight. Since the development of the weather app on my iphone, life has been much easier. Prior to that there was only the weather channel.  If there's an expected storm, my body starts to shake uncontrollably (oh yes, that one time we flew back from Melbourne into a severe electrical storm in Brisbane was the closest I have come to death - either from dropping out of the sky from severe turbulence or suffering from some form of Shaken Adult Syndrome).

I also check to see who the other people on the flight are, if they look like nice, normal, decent people, who the universe wouldn't want to fall out of the sky, or if they are completely insane people who the universe wouldn't miss. Clearly, in my mind, Darwin controls the plane's engines.

I ensure I watch the safety instructions closely. Logically I know that when I fly across Australia, all that is beneath me is red desert, so some small piece of yellow plastic, half filled with air, is not going to enable me soar, like a bird, gently to Earth only to land of a bed of feathers.  Likewise, I know we are not sliding, down the slippery dip to Earth. We will be, instead, plummeting at a rapid rate, spinning uncontrollably, all the while I am gripping my long suffering husband's (LSH) hand telling him how much I love him, and that I am sorry for all the moments that we've had that weren't  picture perfect.


On take off and landing my imagination goes into negative overdrive. I imagine the nose of the plane tipping towards to tarmac, it catching on the bitumen, ripping off and sending a fire ball tearing through the cabin setting us all alight, leaving us to struggle to free ourselves from our seats. As we twist from left to right all we see are our loved ones burning and writhing in agony too, until the bitter end, when the cabin screeches across the tarmac and ploughs into the brick wall, shattering the cabin and our burning bodies into a million pieces.

Hoorah.


When LSH flies on his own, I ask him to call me before he gets on the plane so that I can tell him I love him. I also ask him to call/text me when he lands so that I know he's survived the flight from Brisbane to Sydney, a whopping 1 hour. Of course LSH forgets to do this regularly, because he sometimes doesn't like to play along with my neurosis and goes along his casual, easy-going way, leaving me, usually at work, searching the internet for news of a Qantas plane going down. LSH eventually responds to my 700 text messages after his meetings have finished and I am relieved to hear his voice, only to realise that he has to fly back that night to come home - where we repeat the process all over again. I am sure this drove him nuts when he was flying every single week. But he married me anyway.


A part of my brain allows me to realise that I am being ridiculous. LSH always trys to rationalise with me about my fear and how silly I am being. Of course telling me that more people die in car accidents each year than in plane crashes, doesn't help me. My fear and associated anxiety, aren't controlled by logic. As I mention to LSH, if logic and reason controlled fear, he wouldn't be scared of snakes.

Valium might be the only real reasonable answer.


I do fly, but clearly hate every minute of it. My stomach is in knots. I am on constant high alert for turbulence. Once we encounter some, I try to analyse the flight attendants' faces, looking for a fleeting moment of fear or panic in their eyes. Of course, my long-haul flights have been about 24 hours of essentially, pure adrenalin. The last time, I remember being overjoyed with my being able to finally afford an airline with decent in-flight entertainment. I was glued to my private movie screen and planned out what I was going to watch for the next day of my life. Every time I became engrossed in a film and took my mind off the fact that I was in the air, I felt the plane shake, bringing my thoughts abruptly back to being suspended in a heavy piece of metal, and sitting on top of highly flammable liquid, 35,000 ft in the air and this was no time to be enjoying oneself. In fact I needed to keep a vigilant watch for turbulence.  Why does that help me? I don't know. I guess, I also don't want to tempt fate. You see, not only am I highly anxious, I have an Asian mother, who has indoctrinated ridiculous amounts of superstition into my brain. So avoiding tempting fate and touching wood are part of my everyday life. I will even touch wood if I have had a thought about something that might be interpreted as tempting fate. So, perhaps enjoying a flight might be seen by fate as my flouting the system and therefore sending immediate retribution. Thank goodness I'm not religious. If I had Revelations to deal with I would have shut down years ago.