Are you a Troll?

When we are kids, especially after we start school, we go through fads.  You know, like, hula hoops, yoyos, tamagotchi, sudoku, pacman and trolls, to name a few.

Who remembers trolls?  Those ugly little men with the big colourful (pink, green, orange) furry hair?  You could buy them in all different sizes and even small ones with holes in their bottoms so that you could stick them on the end of your pencil or pen.  They were pretty cool, in their time, but the fad didn't last very long.

Wasn't there also a fairytale about trolls under a bridge or something, who ate people who tried to cross the bridge???  My memory fails me.

Whatever ... trolls are ugly and supposedly nasty.

Recently I learned about a new phenomenon called 'Internet Trolls'.  They, apparently, troll through the Internet looking for blogs, chat forums, Facebook comments etc., and attempt to stir up trouble by posting derogatory comments and trying to incite anger and arguments with their words.

I remember, about 8 years ago, registering with the games site 'Pogo'.  You can play all sorts of different games for free, like Keno, Bingo, Hangman etc.  Pretty innocent stuff really.  Each games room had a little panel on one side where you could chat with the other players.  I was quite addicted to this site, mostly because I had found it at a time when I was very unhappy with my life.  I found other lonely people in there and formed nice cyber-friendships.  They helped me through a tough period...but I digress...

Quite often, while in these games rooms, if we had a lively happy chat going on with a group, a stranger would suddenly appear and start trying to cause trouble.  They would pinpoint one name in the group and start calling them names, or accuse them of having done something horrible like stealing from a friend or dealing drugs to children.  Something that might make the rest of the group question  the integrity of the person named.

Sometimes their ploy worked and it would make people very angry, but luckily, there was a 'report' button and we were able to have them ejected from the room fairly quickly.

I'm just not sure I understand the mindset of Internet Trolls, who are essentially, bullies.  I don't understand bullies at all.  I don't understand people who choose to BE unhappy or choose to make OTHER people unhappy.

I also don't understand people who take the bait.  If you take the bait, aren't you satisfying the bully's desires?  If somebody sends you a bullying text message, shouldn't you delete it and ignore it?  Why would you take it one step further by responding to the message or trying to set a trap for the bully, or reacting in any way?  Doesn't that just incite more bullying?  Such wasted energy.

If you put your energy into creating a happy, peaceful life for the people who love you, for the people who you love, and for yourself, wouldn't the world be a happy place?  Isn't that what everybody wants?  To be happy?

I feel like bursting into song! ... What the world needs now, is love, sweet love.  It's the only thing that there's just too little of...

So, if you are an Internet Troll, just as an experiment, would you, the next time you find a site to harass,  consider just saying "Hullo!" and wishing everyone a happy day?

You might just make a friend or two along the way!

http://www.flayme.com/troll/



 

This is for you KG

After receiving a very kind comment about my blog today, I'm remembering with fondness, my year at Tafe in 1991.

After my marriage break-up in the mid 80s, I received income support from, what was then, Dept of Social Security, for about 4 years.  I earned some extra pocket money with a bit of fruit picking, lettuce de-hearting, pumpkin chipping and carrot sorting.  I also did some domestic and commercial cleaning.

As you can imagine, these were not the most stimulating of jobs, but I did meet some interesting international travellers out in the farm fields!  After a couple of years cleaning other people's homes, I decided to change my life path, by learning a new skill.  I was 30 yrs of age with no work experience, no goals and not much hope.

By the time I'd found my way to the Tafe College for enrolment, the only course that had any available positions, was the Cert III in Office Administration.  I was not in the slightest bit interested in this, but I figured it was better than nothing, would help ease me into 'study mode' and would hopefully keep me motivated until I could get into something more interesting the following year.

I remember my first day as being one of the more frightening days of my life.  I could not attend on  day one of the course, as planned, because I'd had some minor (well, maybe halfway between minor and major) surgery done the week before and my recovery took longer than the doctor had predicted.  I can't even remember how far into the first week, my first day was, but I was absolutely terrified!

When I got into the classroom and saw all of those young people, I wondered what the hell I was doing there, and almost talked myself into withdrawing from the class.  They were all younger than 21, most of them just out of high school and they all knew each other before coming to the class.  I felt like such an outsider!

Luckily for me, the teachers had organised some group activities for that first week, where everybody got to meet and interact with each other, and that's how I was drawn in and became one of the girls.

My beautiful girls.  They were all at that awkward, uncertain age where they were having trouble with parents, or boys, or girlfriends or their casual job employers or somebody in their lives.  I don't remember offering any life changing advice, but I do remember listening, and I think that's all they needed.

They were all so good to me and made me feel special.  We shared some good times.  Had some girl's nights out.  Giggled often.  I did chant my mantra a lot 'All men are bastards!'. (Sorry Granma)  In our English lesson, we were given 10 words each week for which we had to find the definition and then put them into a sentence.  I made sure all of my sentences were directly about men and my strong dislike for them!

For example (and I still have all of those sheets at home with my sentences on them!) one of the words was 'voodoo', so I wrote 'Every night before I go to sleep, I twist the pins in my male voodoo doll, hoping to cause pain in males all over the world'.

Even the teachers looked forward to my sentences and passed the sheets around to each other before returning them to me!

Anyway, now all of those girls have grown up and are, or are heading towards 40.  They've been married and/or divorced and they have children of their own.  When I go back to visit that town,  sometimes, I'll bump into one of them in the street and it's always great to see them and relive memories and have a giggle.

That year turns out to be one of my favourite memories in my life.  I came first in the class and finished with Distinction!  That was another pleasant surprise!

So, KG, thank you for your lovely comments today and thank you for being a part of one of my best life experiences.  You've come a long way and grown into a lovely young woman (yeah well you are still younger than me!) and I will always remember you fondly.

Oh ... and not ALL men are bastards.  (But most are!)

 

The Roller Coaster of LIfe

Some people have such high expectations of themselves.  Sometimes we think our families have much higher expectations of us than they really do.  Sometimes we feel like we can never live up to theirs, or our own expectations, and as a consequence, we can make life choices in a panic.  

At 17 years of age, I dropped out of school halfway through year 11.   Within five months I'd convinced my parents to let me leave home and move into a unit with a girlfriend from school.   Three months down the track,  I was engaged to be married and pregnant with my first child.  Within a year of leaving school, I was married with a baby.

My life seemed to be speeding out of control!  Within six years I'd had four children and a dozen different addresses in two states.  I felt like there was no way to take a breath and find some control.  Life seemed to have taken control of me and I just went with the flow.  The current got stronger and stronger and just before I was swept away to oblivion, I grabbed a branch and pulled myself free.

You would expect that by grabbing that branch, it would give me the opportunity to take stock of my life and re-evaluate.  Make some hard decisions and set myself a new path to a great future.  

Unfortunately, some of us, like me,  have to learn the hard way.  It took a few more years, but I did eventually take stock and make some better decisions for myself and my family.  Even at the age of 50 I don't always get it right.  I have a few regrets about the choices I made along the way, but I like the person who I have become, and I know that I have more lessons to learn yet.

Life is an adventure for us all.  We make mistakes.  We make bad choices.  We fall down and we get back up again.  Admittedly, some of us make more mistakes than others, but that's how we learn.  That is,  hopefully, how we become better human beings. 

As long as we learn from our mistakes, every new path that we take, gets a little less bumpy.  Every mistake that we make, builds our character and hopefully gives us empathy for others.  It hopefully erases character flaws and gives us new character traits like empathy, sympathy, humility and tolerance.

I have spent the afternoon offering the above advice to two young people.  One of them is less than 20 yrs of age and the other is less than 30, yet both consider themselves to be a failure already.  

There are lots of inspirational quotes out there that hold value, but basically you can take the good with the bad, learn from your mistakes and enjoy the roller coaster of life!  

"Drive into your future looking at the open road ahead rather than into the rear-view mirror of your past."

- Jonathan Lockwood Hule

"Any change, any loss, does not make us victims. Others can shake you, surprise you, disappoint you, but they can't prevent you from acting, from taking the situation you're presented with and moving on. No matter where you are in life, no matter what your situation, you can always do something. You always have a choice and the choice can be power."

- Blaine Lee

Old Japanese Proverb:

Fall seven times, stand up eight.

"Today is the first day of the rest of your life"

- Charles E Dederich

   

Chicklet ROCKS!!

I'm a bit excited about the 2011 football season - Rugby League that is (thinking I may have lost some readers with my opening line and pretty sure that Vegan Chickie and Bare-chested Chef have already left the blog!)

This post was going to be about the 2011 Australian NRL season, but while I was writing it, I got to have a cuddle with my little Chicklet and the cuddle lasted for well over 4 hours!

She and I chatted for most of the first hour, about her Mum and Dad, about her hiccups, about the lake that we could view from the window, about her lovely knitted stripy tights and other such important subjects.  She told me that my input was very important to her because now that she was getting older, she needed the extra stimulation to aid in her personal growth.

Then we spent about 20 minutes on some concentrated burping and farting.  These are two of her most important duties during her day and if she doesn't focus properly on these tasks, it can have a detrimental effect on her evening hours.

By the end of this 20 minutes, little Chicklet was quite worn out!  She was reluctant to go to sleep however, because she knows that her time with Bella Roz is very limited, so she desperately wants to squeeze in lots of quality time with intelligent conversation (and secretly, I think she enjoys my strong Aussie accent!).

She fought long and hard to keep her eyes open and she was quite successful for a good 20 minutes, but eventually, Mr Sandman won,  her little eyelids closed heavily and she fell into a warm, snuggly, deep sleep.

Well, to my surprise, somewhere in the last 9 days, little Chicklet has developed the wonderful skill of talking in her sleep!  Not JUST talking, but also singing, humming, moaning, groaning, buzzing, clicking, blowing raspberries, squeaking, huffing, puffing, whistling, snorting and sighing.  She also has a fabulous facial expression to go with each sound that she makes!

At one stage, when I tried to have a conversation with Vegan Chickie, little Chicklet's humming got louder and louder.  The louder I tried to speak over the top of her, the noisier her humming got!  I'm thinking she wanted my full attention ... even in her sleep!

So, our sleeping conversation included subjects like NRL football, motor bikes, helping Dad cook dinner, snuggly cuddles, her extreme cuteness, synchronised farting and snorting, the rain on the roof and cowlicks.

It was my longest stint of Grandmotherhood yet and it made me feel all warm and fuzzy for hours on end!

In conclusion, my little Chicklet is the most intelligent and advanced 9 day old child in the universe.  She is a strong forward thinker who will probably, one day, lead at least one country. She will be the saviour of the world by initiating world peace forever more and by bringing an end to world hunger.  She will single-handedly save the world's environment and she will spread the word of 'LOVE' for all to practise and embrace with overwhelming enthusiasm.  

I'm here to tell you that a 3 hour nap with Chicklet is one of the most entertaining experiences that you will ever have.

Chicklet ROCKS!!

Seven sleeps and counting

Well, my junk food day did not agree with me at all!  It was fun while it lasted, but then I got a headache from eating too much chocolate and potato chips and ice cream.  Because I don't take pain killers, I went to bed to sleep it off and lost pretty much all of Sunday.  It wasn't fun at all.  I've learnt my lesson the hard way!

Today I am feeling much better.  The Bare-chested Chef gave Chicklet  her first bath today and she loved it!  She kicked her feet in the water and looked up at her Dad with those big trusting eyes and enjoyed every moment of it.  She got a bit annoyed at the 'getting dressed' part, but settled very quickly once she had her clothes on.

Then I got to cuddle her for a long time.  The best part (and I've been told often over the years that this was the best part) was when she got hungry, squirmy and a bit noisy in my arms, I was able to hand her back to Mum!  Yay!

I have just 7 more sleeps here with my new little family.  I have loved every second of it.  I got a whole 9 days with my Vegan Chickie while The Bare-chested Chef worked and Chicklet had not yet entered the world. 

I got to share in the birthing experience of my first grandchild, which was almost as amazing as giving birth to my own children, and now I get to spend the last 2 weeks watching how the new family work together to create a new harmony in the home.

The Bare-chested Chef has taken on the role of Father and Husband with gusto and Vegan Chickie is pushing through the pain and discomfort of healing stitches,  painful hips and bleeding nipples with persistence and inner strength while keeping a smile on her face and love in her heart.

All of us with children, know how immense the changes are when the first new baby comes into our lives.  It doesn't matter how much we learn leading up the birth of our child, every day after is still an education.

The transition period going from a married couple to a family of 3 and learning to cope with the demands of a new baby is an interesting one. The broken sleep, the constant feeding, the continuous washing, the sacrifices we make with our time.  It doesn't matter how smoothly it goes, it still creates a huge mental, emotional and physical drain on our whole being.

This family has shared the load incredibly well, so the transition period, so far, has been pretty smooth.    I haven't even been needed, except for maybe a little moral support during the 'third day blues'.

I feel confident about going back home to Australia (God!  It's a whole other country!) and I know that this family is going to thrive.  They have a good support system around them (New Zealand supports it's new mothers a whole lot better than Australia does, that's for sure!) and help is just a personal phone call away.

For now, I have to get as many cuddles with Chicklet as possible, prepare myself for the break and the looming 'separation anxiety' that will follow **sad face**.

Thank goodness I have open arms awaiting my arrival home in the form of Adoring Husband, Burrum girlfriends, my old local boys, psychotic dogs and the lovely laying chookies. **happy face**

Adoring Husband has already started the countdown.