Examining your life
Without Prejudice
Do you remember what it was like to be young? What you were like, what you wanted, your dreams, childish as they were. What were they?
The five year old you
The ten year old you
The Teenager and the 20 year old and so on, do you remember?
Hopefully you grew up in a good place and were loved and accepted, just as you were.
Down the hot summer corridors of yesterday, did Summers seem hotter? weeks of holiday stretching before you and you had not a care in the world and could be a child as you had a Mum and Dad taking care of you.
You remember those day where unrestrained by finance and social mores you ran as Tom Sawyer or a Power Ranger or an Annie Oakley or a Marilyn Monroe. Who did you want to be? how did you want to be ?
I know I dreamed of being an Author or a Teacher at 5, plus I had blonde hair, big chest and was glamorous and people danced attention on me as I lay on a chaise lounge draped in an elegant gown dripping diamonds that I pinched off an old movie with Mae West in it.
Some chance at that age 5 I had such exotic images, but they were unchanged by the time I was 10 and 15. I was becoming a teacher or an author and the glamazon with the big chest, blone hair and being danced attention on.
I always knew I wanted a lot of kids, a large chaotic family with dogs and cats and garden and house and cars and driving and being independent. And I did all those things. Achieved them all and by the time I was 30 went into a classic mid life crisis.
The only question in my mimd, was,
"Who am I and what do I want?"
The timing coincided with my youngest daughter starting school, which she loved and that took all four girls off my hands and I had to think about what I was going to do with the rest of my life.
It was nutty for a while as I tried to sort out what I wanted, I left my husband and took the kids with me, moving to Queensland and a new man. Didn't work as my ex would not let me alone and it was easier to go back to him and put up with his shit.
And we worked hard together on the business and made lots of money and then I was the fat blonde woman draped on a chasie lounge and I hated it. Hated it.
So I went back to school which my ex husband almost tried to kill me over at first. I knew what his reaction would be, and feared it. But I went anyway and won the first prixe for English for the year 12 as a Mature Age student.
I began Rusden Teachers College the year after, my marks high for HSC and became a full time uni student with all the practicalities of running a home a family a husband and a business. It was one long rush after another. After two years I decided a teacher was not what I had always wanted to be.
Not to secondary Students, I had my own at home who were full on and I retired from teaching goals and I never wanted to see another teenager round that time and I certainly didn't want to be teaching them.
So after and I and ex hubby split up I went to work elsewhere and preferred it much better. I did credit control and Purchasing but to be honest office environments made me feel like I was caged up for 40 hours a week and was unispiring and dull.
So I decided I had to do something else and I now write stories, which I love.... the writing... and I sell retro things on ebay and I help organise a family of 7 boys and their Mother during the week.
I love a man, and it's good. I have a permanent home, my "Shoebox", a unit in a big backyard and is a good size, enough for one person, my family living in the house at the front and we share the garden. Its a good arrangement.
I have family time with kids which i love and I end up teaching them anyway. helping out on homework and paperwork and endless phone calls. And then I have my space, my unit, where I write and read and rest and retreat to when I crave peace and quiet.
My unit is my haven and I make it so, full of great things that I have collected and love. My bedroom especailly precious and I make sure it's soft and semi darkened and beautiful. A brass bed and white linen covers by Charlie Brown with linen pillow slips. And close at hand are my books and lamps and my favourite pillow of feathers.
I treat myself to the best of everything as I have had so many years of going without. Vintage perfumes that I adore and clothes and retro objects and precious memories and great prints on the walls.
I am like a little magpie having to collect and make shiny, my nest. I have fun things as well that amuse me, ironic and quirky things, from which peeps the shy child I was. I have Snoopies as I collected them as a 15 year old in my Barbie papered room in Ossett. A grand manse and our room was huge, Jackie's and mine with it's own lacy fire place.
God knows what was happening with the Barbie wallpaper but I was just 13 when we first moved there. Not that, thats an excuse. My Aunty Pat did it with help and she had never had girls only boys. I remember the dressing table next to my bed and how I would see how my house was going to look when I moved out.
I loved old fashioned romantic looks, not so much cottage look as sumptuous but simple farm house. A verandah out the front, chooks in the yard, a barn, a cow and a man that I adored.
I'm still going to have that, the farm house when I am older, and there will be flowers outside and in and wisteria over the gate in all its glory trailing down. There will be old couches on the front verandah, faded and fully upholstered, away from the wind and the cold.
And there will be an old tea trolley covered with a cloth and lots of books piled up to dip into to. And I will love it, it's peace and solitude, birds swooping in the back garden, nothing but clean air and the weather to contend with.
And I will be there, opening my arms in greeting and retiring to write eight hours a day in my study and emerge bewildered and dying to eat and talk and watch something on Tv and relax with my man for a meal and a good lie down.
And it was only when I was at Camp Eden away from the phone and the net and the kids and the man that I found me again and I could not be happier.
Love Janette
Do you remember what it was like to be young? What you were like, what you wanted, your dreams, childish as they were. What were they?
The five year old you
The ten year old you
The Teenager and the 20 year old and so on, do you remember?
Hopefully you grew up in a good place and were loved and accepted, just as you were.
Down the hot summer corridors of yesterday, did Summers seem hotter? weeks of holiday stretching before you and you had not a care in the world and could be a child as you had a Mum and Dad taking care of you.
You remember those day where unrestrained by finance and social mores you ran as Tom Sawyer or a Power Ranger or an Annie Oakley or a Marilyn Monroe. Who did you want to be? how did you want to be ?
I know I dreamed of being an Author or a Teacher at 5, plus I had blonde hair, big chest and was glamorous and people danced attention on me as I lay on a chaise lounge draped in an elegant gown dripping diamonds that I pinched off an old movie with Mae West in it.
Some chance at that age 5 I had such exotic images, but they were unchanged by the time I was 10 and 15. I was becoming a teacher or an author and the glamazon with the big chest, blone hair and being danced attention on.
I always knew I wanted a lot of kids, a large chaotic family with dogs and cats and garden and house and cars and driving and being independent. And I did all those things. Achieved them all and by the time I was 30 went into a classic mid life crisis.
The only question in my mimd, was,
"Who am I and what do I want?"
The timing coincided with my youngest daughter starting school, which she loved and that took all four girls off my hands and I had to think about what I was going to do with the rest of my life.
It was nutty for a while as I tried to sort out what I wanted, I left my husband and took the kids with me, moving to Queensland and a new man. Didn't work as my ex would not let me alone and it was easier to go back to him and put up with his shit.
And we worked hard together on the business and made lots of money and then I was the fat blonde woman draped on a chasie lounge and I hated it. Hated it.
So I went back to school which my ex husband almost tried to kill me over at first. I knew what his reaction would be, and feared it. But I went anyway and won the first prixe for English for the year 12 as a Mature Age student.
I began Rusden Teachers College the year after, my marks high for HSC and became a full time uni student with all the practicalities of running a home a family a husband and a business. It was one long rush after another. After two years I decided a teacher was not what I had always wanted to be.
Not to secondary Students, I had my own at home who were full on and I retired from teaching goals and I never wanted to see another teenager round that time and I certainly didn't want to be teaching them.
So after and I and ex hubby split up I went to work elsewhere and preferred it much better. I did credit control and Purchasing but to be honest office environments made me feel like I was caged up for 40 hours a week and was unispiring and dull.
So I decided I had to do something else and I now write stories, which I love.... the writing... and I sell retro things on ebay and I help organise a family of 7 boys and their Mother during the week.
I love a man, and it's good. I have a permanent home, my "Shoebox", a unit in a big backyard and is a good size, enough for one person, my family living in the house at the front and we share the garden. Its a good arrangement.
I have family time with kids which i love and I end up teaching them anyway. helping out on homework and paperwork and endless phone calls. And then I have my space, my unit, where I write and read and rest and retreat to when I crave peace and quiet.
My unit is my haven and I make it so, full of great things that I have collected and love. My bedroom especailly precious and I make sure it's soft and semi darkened and beautiful. A brass bed and white linen covers by Charlie Brown with linen pillow slips. And close at hand are my books and lamps and my favourite pillow of feathers.
I treat myself to the best of everything as I have had so many years of going without. Vintage perfumes that I adore and clothes and retro objects and precious memories and great prints on the walls.
I am like a little magpie having to collect and make shiny, my nest. I have fun things as well that amuse me, ironic and quirky things, from which peeps the shy child I was. I have Snoopies as I collected them as a 15 year old in my Barbie papered room in Ossett. A grand manse and our room was huge, Jackie's and mine with it's own lacy fire place.
God knows what was happening with the Barbie wallpaper but I was just 13 when we first moved there. Not that, thats an excuse. My Aunty Pat did it with help and she had never had girls only boys. I remember the dressing table next to my bed and how I would see how my house was going to look when I moved out.
I loved old fashioned romantic looks, not so much cottage look as sumptuous but simple farm house. A verandah out the front, chooks in the yard, a barn, a cow and a man that I adored.
I'm still going to have that, the farm house when I am older, and there will be flowers outside and in and wisteria over the gate in all its glory trailing down. There will be old couches on the front verandah, faded and fully upholstered, away from the wind and the cold.
And there will be an old tea trolley covered with a cloth and lots of books piled up to dip into to. And I will love it, it's peace and solitude, birds swooping in the back garden, nothing but clean air and the weather to contend with.
And I will be there, opening my arms in greeting and retiring to write eight hours a day in my study and emerge bewildered and dying to eat and talk and watch something on Tv and relax with my man for a meal and a good lie down.
And it was only when I was at Camp Eden away from the phone and the net and the kids and the man that I found me again and I could not be happier.
Love Janette
