TheBanyanTree: Hand check

[PJMoney]

Hello everyone.  I'm still here.  Joined Spoon sometime in 97, I think,
after hearing about the place from another Darwinite, Brian Greenaway.  I
haven't had contact with him for a long time.  I think he passed away, in
his late 70s, a couple of years ago.  

I see that the last thing I contributed to the list, in September this year,
was a cane toad haiku.  Since then I have noticed more and more cane toad
corpses on the roads - chiefly in the suburbs close to bushland.  But we
have seen no more in our yard and neither have we heard their song.  That's
good for us, and our dog.  

There are so many different seasons in life and so many changes.  When I
joined Spoon I had hope, my youngest being well established in school, that
it was my turn and that I could start a new career.  But it all went to crap
because I had no idea how to deal with a workplace bully.  

Silly me!  I presumed that people took jobs because they wanted to do well
at them - provide a service to others, gain mastery, or even just earn their
income.  What I learned instead is that some people take jobs because they
want to do well for themselves.  Naïve types who work with such people can
become tools for the bully's self-serving games.  

Belonging to the list(s) and writing down what I was thinking, wondering, or
feeling anxious about, became a sort of therapy for me.  I think it was Dee
who had a sig file that said something like, "How can I know what I think
until I see what I say?"  I can't remember now exactly what the wording was
but I learned the truth of it.  Putting things in words with specific
meanings gave shape to my problems and reduced them to a size considerably
smaller than that of the whole universe.  That is, writing about them made
them manageable.  And so I moved towards becoming content with my life.

At the end of last year I made an agreement with a person from another place
to resolve to spend this year serving others.  I haven't done anything
spectacular but the year certainly has been busy.  I've had precious little
time for myself or for the things that I, personally, want to do.  But being
so busy has taught me that some sorts of service invigorate me to continue
serving and some sorts of service not only deplete me but don't really help
the one served.

I continued teaching RI at one of our local primary schools and finished up
the year receiving hugs from several of the children and expressions of hope
that I would continue to teach them next year.  At the end-of-year
puppet-show even the class naughty boy chose to sit by me which makes me
think that he accepts that I accept him despite his naughtiness.  That's
good.  After all, we're all naughty to some degree.  Standard naughtiness is
not a reason to try to make someone feel as though they're beyond the pale. 

But I'm not going to teach RI next year.  This year of serving others has
made me realise that I need to get my own house in order, literally.  I need
to do the Sidda thing and go through each drawer, cupboard and bookshelf in
the house and chuck out everything that is stopping me from going forward
because it drags me back into the clutter of my past.  There are so many
things in this house that once seemed to hold out the promise of being a
nucleus for a possible future but I've lost interest in those theoretical
futures.  They have become a burden rather than a possibility.  They have to
go.

Though it may sound ridiculous I've decided that next year I'm going back to
university yet again.  I've applied to do a Bachelor of Theology degree,
online, through Charles Sturt University.  I presume that I'll be accepted
but I have no idea where this might lead or if, given my age, there could be
any hope that it could lead to anything.  I just want to do it.  I can do a
minor in philosophy which is something I've wanted to do for years.  Good.

I'm very grateful for the people here who've enriched my life over the last
11 years.  Cecil Talley is one of them.  I've never met him but he always
seemed like a kind, decent, sort of bloke.  There was a time when he stopped
posting and I felt very concerned about him.  Then he turned up again and I
thought, "Phew!  Cecil is still around."  But then he went silent again.
And now, I guess, we know why.

Tobie Shapiro has gone silent too.  I hope she and her children are all
right.  Funny how you can come to love someone you've never met even though
their fundamental beliefs are completely opposed to your own.

For anyone who remembers, I've kept in contact with Sonya Jones whose
husband Tim died of renal cancer about 10 years ago.  Sonya is still working
at the university in Costa Rica and is due to become a grandmother in about
April 2009.  She hasn't remarried but, as for all of us, life still goes on.
She's really my oldest friend, virtual or otherwise.

Janice