A Mish Mash of Stuff!

General Mish Mash

By minsmash on October 20, 2014 • ( 10 Comments )

Lots been going on around here.  The biggest and bestest news is that I have graduated from The Photography Institute with a Diploma of Professional Photography.  No more assignments and a Diploma is on its way to me in the mail.  See exhibit A:

Since I graduated you would think I would be extremely happy and yes I am pleased with my achievement, but the black dog seems to have sensed a prime opportunity to start sniffing around me again.  Ah Ha – she has graduated!  She might start to think she has kicked me for good and is going to make good things happen in her life.  She might think she is going to kick some goals!  Time to bring her back to earth with a thud and torture her back into submission!!  So he prowls and circles me and like the Dementers from Harry Potter he slowly sucks away the light in my life.  I fight back.  I always fight back and eventually I always win.  This time has been hard though and yesterday afternoon I was in the fetal position on my bed sobbing with despair.  With the sucking away of light … in comes all the dark.  The dark comes in an array of very negative thoughts – totally EVERYTHING opposite to what I talk about here on the blog and what I want to be.  BE WARNED – I am being honest here and the darkness is evil and horrible.  This is just some of what the darkness says to me:  Oh now the pressure is on – you’re going to have to make something of this photography now aren’t you.  You who has been selfish and earning no money!  You who has got fat and old!  Get slim!  Earn Money!   Get your house in order!  Bath the dogs!  No one likes you!  You’re miserable!  You have no friends!  Where are they?  Where are any friends?  No-one wants to be around you because you’re a miserable old fat loser with zero personality.  No one reads your blog so why are you bothering with a new blog!  All you do is spend money – when are you going to start making money?  Look at all the people posting holiday photo’s on Facebook.  They work and earn money!  You are not worthy of a holiday!  You need to stay in your box!  You will never be happy!!  There is nothing in your life to look forward to – just more of this!! … and that is just some of it …

I wonder sometimes if being at home and working at home is not good for me.  Too much time alone with my own head.  All those years I worked outside of the home and had interaction with other people was probably good for me.  I don’t want to work for someone else though.  I did that from the age of 15 – 48 and more often than not, my strong work ethic and commitment to quality work was taken advantage of.  I want to work with and for myself BUT I need more interaction with other people – desperately!  I am lonely.  Very lonely!

So my husband had booked tickets to go see Rodriguez in concert last night.  All day I tossed up whether I wanted to go or not.  If you’ve just read the previous couple of paragraphs you would understand that I was not in a good head space.  So – hubby had his sister lined up as a back-up option to accompany him.  I didn’t want to go.  I really didn’t want to go.  When you are depressed you don’t want to go anywhere.  BUT I know that to go would probably help lift me up a little bit from the darkness and so I went.  I told you – I fight back!

My sister just returned from three weeks in the USA for work purposes on Sunday morning.  She had one week of that time for a little bit of a personal holiday in San Francisco.  Mum, Dad and another sister were going over to her place to welcome her home and help her stay awake!  I wanted to get out of this house so badly and I wanted to see her safe and sound back home – so we went.  It was good to get out of the house but it wasn’t enough to lift the darkness.

So we went to see Rodriguez.  There was a fabulous girl who opened for him.  I loved her voice so much!  Beautiful smooth tones!  Her name is Jen Cloher.  She was born in New Zealand but grew up in Adelaide.  She talked with us between each song.  Told us a bit about herself and her life and also about the song she was about to sing.  She’d say what it was about, where she was when she wrote it, stuff like that.  It made the song all the more intriguing and special to listen to.  She was selling her CD’s in the foyer but we didn’t go out at intermission and by the end of the show they were sold out.  I am going to get me her CD come hell or high water.  Jen – you helped lift the darkness a smidge.  I like you!

Listen to this song that she wrote sitting at her mother’s desk after suffering writers block.  She’d gone home to New Zealand to stay with her parents at their house for a couple of years as her mother (now deceased) had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s and was declining rapidly.  Her mother had been a bright academic.

 

After Jen and intermission, on came Rodriguez and the crowd went wild.  First, let me mention that Rodriguez was barely on my radar as I grew up.  He is one of my husbands fav’s from back in the day.  My hubby is five years older than me.  I did know the song ‘I Wonder’ and ‘Sugar Man’ but not much more.  It was hilarious looking around at the people there at the concert.  At 50 years of age, I think I might have been one of the youngest there, apart from those people who brought along their kids!  😉

Here is a little video I uploaded to You Tube which I recorded of my favourite of his songs – ‘I Wonder’.  He really does have an incredibly smooth honey-like tone to his voice – both singing voice and his spoken voice!

 

And so that brings me to today.  My sister phoned earlier and I broke down in tears and declared the black dog was back and the dogs are dirty and have knots and I’m fat and no clothes fit me and anyway ….  She is coming over after lunch to help me bath the dogs because apparently bathing the dogs is all too much for me to handle alone at the moment.

This will pass.  It has before.  I just can’t write a post where I pretend to be all bright and chirpy when I’m not.  I’m keeping it real folks!

Have a great day.  I hope to have clean, shiny dogs at the end of mine! 😉

Ciao for now,

 

Categories: General Mish Mash

Tagged as: #depression #rodriguez, #jencloher, #music #sugarman, #sixto, #sixtorodriguez #photography, #thesugarman