Purely Confident-ial

I dont think its any secret that i've been suffering from a slight crisis of confidence lately - last weeks massive freakout/depressive episode is evidence enough. And though i have a pretty great life at the moment - wonderful husband and son, pregnant, relatively steady income stream - i'm still letting those old feelings of inadequacy be stirred up ( definately prompted by the grand dumping by my ex-best friend back in late 2010 ). I dont know why i'm aware enough to know whats bugging me and why, but not be able to stop it. Bah - the curse of an ( apparently ) intelligent woman!

hate cats - love this pic....

Anyhoodle, along with the awareness of the loss of confidence, there is also - this time - the realisation that there are small things that i can do to make myself feel better. I'm not talking about the big things like actually asking for help instead of doing everything on my own, i'm talking about the little things that can make a frumpy mum feel like a woman again, or a housewife feel like a rockstar.Things like:

* paint my nails - because of the work i do ( using heat and small handtools ) my nails always look crappy. But even a coat of barely there blush pink makes me feel a bit more flash, and a little less " Flashdance ";
* wear red - i always, always, always feel better in red! If i'm feeling particularly faboosh, no doubt i will end up gravitating towards something red, whether its a red cardy, a red dress or my favourite red flats ( which are currently dying. Sad face ).
* put on make up - i know this one is pretty basic for most women but i dont wear a whole lot of makeup. Even as a teenage girl it was a basic foundation and mascara, i never really bothered to learn about liquid eyeliner/bronzer/whatever all that goop is i see plastered on young girls today. For the last few months all i've worn to work is tinted moisturiser and thats it, but now in the first few weeks pregnancy my skin went off the rails and i found i was really bothered by the ruddiness and pimples, pimples and more pimples! So i've invested in some " Nude by Nature " mineral foundation and plan on wearing it everyday. I dont have a lot of time, especially on workdays, so a mineral foundation that i can just brush on and go sounds perfect to me!
* Catch up with friends - i need to this more often as spending time with people who like me FOR me reminds me that i am not the sum of what one person thinks of me. Unfortunately, the two good friends i have left from school are not always ready available ( one lives in another town now, and the other is a competitive horse rider and is off at competitions a lot ), so i need to either find some new friends or make the most of the opportunities i do have with my girls.

So my mission in the next 25 weeks - while i slowly turn into a human blimp but before a newborn baby ties me to the house for a while - is to make an effort to brighten my own life, and to disregard those people and thoughts that are trying to bring me down!

Why Hello There, Little, Old, Me.....

Welcome to Challenge 34 over at Blog This!. The challenge topic this time is:
If you met your younger self - What would you tell yourself? Would you give advice? What advice would that be? Ask about your perception of the world? Give us an idea of who you think you were or who you think you'll be in the future...

( Note, i have done a post similar in topic to this back in 2007, but in the past two years i've learnt so much more! So this challenge post is a completely new and different post to the old one.... )

If i were able to travel back in time, Marty McFly style, and have a bit of a deep and meaningful with my younger self, i think there would have to be three key bits of advice i'd have to impart to teenage me:
Number one: DO NOT LISTEN TO YOUR NEGATIVE SELF-VOICE. Seriously, thats in capital letters for a reason, 'cause its pretty damn important. You miss out on so much fun and adventure because you listen so attentively to your worst critic - you. Thats right, its nobody else saying it but you. Its entirely in your head, and in your head is where you'll be spending most of your formative years if you dont tell your inner critic to back the fork off, okay? Turn it off, tune it out and instead of backing out of things when they get a little scary, run into them head first and see which parts hit and which parts glance right off without so much as a scratch.

Number two: Save more money.  How very pedestrian of me to advise you, but yea - save more money. You start working at the age of 14 which means you've literally earned hundreds of thousands of dollars, but now at 26 its nowhere to be found. I'm not saying you have to turn all Scrooge on me and not spend a single cent - i'm just saying maybe dont waste so much of it on crap. CD's are great and all ( although you could have done without East 17's " Walthamstow " or Ricky Martins self titled release... ) and its great having a different top to wear for every day of the month, but all that money frittered away on junk could have had you paying off more of your house or got you overseas sooner, and more often. Future-You loves to travel, but you wont get to do all that much of it ( a year sent living overseas and one short trip to SE Asia ) before your first child arrives because Young-You didnt save, save, save!

Lastly, Number three: Pay more attention at your Year 12 formal. Particularly to a young man that comes as a guest of one of your classmates. His name is Mick and you will meet him 8 years into the future, fall madly in love, get engaged and have a gorgeous baby boy. When you meet, you have no idea you were both at that same function all those years ago, and find it amusing that the universe sees fit to bring you back together after that first faint brush with fate. If you had both only known, you could have been together so much sooner, and both of your lives would have been completely different!
Also, rethink the velvet dress- right cut, right colour, wroooooooong fabric.......

You Can Still, and Will, Do This....

The past was called to my attention today and i realised that i'm not as contemplative now as i once was. I'm not sure if this is a bad thing - i still contemplate, but the things on my mind are now more often trivial than deep and meaningful. I blog about the days random happenings and make lists of curious tidbits instead of musing on my innermost thoughts. I suppose its because i'm happier now - and with happiness there is a definate lessening of internal contemplation. Or internal damnation , which was quite often what was happening in my case. I've stopped looking inside and trying to figure out what was wrong - i still delve inside every now and then but i dont see much wrong anymore. I dont feel like there's so much i need to get off my chest, which really decreases blog post subject matter. That being said, i could make regular posts about how good i'm feeling, and how things are going so well or how much brighter the world seems - only i know that if i was reading a blog where every second poast was sunshine and rainbows i'd be completely turned off. Life needs its yin and its yang, its black and its white, its ups and its downs, in order to be interesting. And so does a blog - just as a blog that was continually full of doom and gloom would become boring, so would continual " happy-happy-joy-joy ".

Whats my point here ? I'm trying to convince myself i'm still capable of deep and meaningful; that i'm still able to ponder the intellectual and the emotional and not just the trivial and ridiculous; that i can still become absorbed and lost in a film or book or album instead of merely watching or reading or listening. And most of all i'm trying to convince myself that being able to do all these things will help me raise a wonderful person, with an open mind and an open heart.

I want to be the mumma who helps her child to experience and live and learn and grow and.... be. I want to let my child know that its a good thing to be smart; that their are hundred ways to do things but that doesnt mean that any one of them is the single " right " way; that thinking for yourself is awesome and being a sheep is not; that different does not always equate to worse. I would like to think i'm up the this task. Admittedly, its crazy to think- not 18 months ago i was still seeing a pyschiatrist, trying to convince myself that i was not the boring/dumb/ugly person that i imagined i was. I had to learn to rely on myself, knowing that true self-reliance and belief was all i needed. Now ? In approximately 9 weeks time i will have someone in my life who will rely on me for everything; their reliance on me will literally be the difference between life and death. Its a sobering, scary yet exhilirating thought.

My life is not going to be mine anymore - and yet it is, and so much more mine than it ever was. Its just going to be different, thats all. And isnt the proverbial change as good as a holiday ?