Tuesday 16 December 2014

A sense of achievement

What does our society regard as "achievement"? This time that I have away from work, on maternity, I have been asking myself this question a lot. I've spent six months with my daughter, raising her, helping her grow up, making her (hopefully) happy and yet I only get a sense of achievement when I do more conventional tasks like bake a cake for example;
or buy a gift;
or clean the bathroom;
or something like this.

Why?

Raising children is like doing a PhD: you strive like a slave day after day and on the short term you really have nothing to show for yourself; in the end, however, you get fantastically rewarded, if everything goes well :-)

Anyway, for the festive season I will also post a very non-festive but quite addictive song "I'm too hot - god damn"

Tuesday 9 December 2014

Alone

Morning in bed.

Not much light outside, the winter has come.

P sleeping next to me.

Listening to the radio, having a second coffee.

Staying a bit alone with myself, with my thoughts. Getting ready for the day.

Καλημέρα. 

Friday 7 November 2014

Birthday post

Aren't birthdays supposed to be some sort of taking-stock moment?

Mine is today, and am thinking of my life in the last year: I turn 36, and I still feel like so much younger sometimes. My husband always says to me that our ages sound "so adult" and it's true. I have a daughter now, you can't get more adult than that, no?

Last year on this day, I was pregnant and bopping it up watching Depeche Mode. This year, I snuggle with my girl in bed and it feels so good. We might be able to sneak a quick dinner later, who knows?

"Age is just a number" - why are clichés so true?

Although I have an adult age, a mortgage, a husband and a daughter, I often still feel like the young girl who first came to the UK 13 years ago, ready for a big adventure.

On for the next 36 years then, just bring on the anti-wrinkle creams and we'll be just fine :-)

Saturday 11 October 2014

The two selves


And just like this, you are no longer one, you are two, both literally and figuratively. Literally speaking, you, your body created and produced another human. Mind you, sure you had help from this other guy and all but at the end of the day, this new individual grew up inside you. So there.

Figuratively, there is the 'you' before baby, when clothes, job and friends mattered, and then there is the 'you' after baby where you feel utterly disengaged from the world. I mean, I still like clothes, my job and my friends but sometimes I just feel not entirely present. My brain is half elsewhere, don't know how to explain it really, but I can't focus and I often just don't care about what is happening around me.

It's not that I find my child as the most important thing in the world. It's just that suddenly you need to make certain choices about what happens in the life of another person, and this is time-consuming and profound, so suddenly some little detail at work is just not important...

Now that I am on maternity all this is fine and dandy, but what I am really afraid of is the reconciliation of these two selves when I go back at work. Part of me wants to come back and engage again with my normal activities, and find my old self again. Part of me however really doesn't care about all this at all and just wants to stay here and watch my small individual grow...

It's a tough life for new mothers.

Thursday 4 September 2014

Change

Change is always present. It's not good and it's not bad. It's just there, all the time. Despite this fact, people (including myself) find it very hard to accept it, embrace it, and ultimately know how to deal with it.

This summer for me has been a summer of change: I am a mother and adapting to my new role is a challenge. One of the most difficult aspects has been the change this has brought to my relationship with people: my husband, my parents, my friends. My friends here in Greece have been difficult to deal with this year because so much of us being together requires coordination, which is so much harder with a baby. I have felt bitter, angry, melancholic and so many other things. Most of all I feel that it is hard for me both to accept and to embrace the fact that things are different now. Perhaps I just don't know how to adapt.

I've always wanted to be stoic, blasé, wise. It's hard, more now than before. I guess though that the super emotion hormones are stepping in big time and are not going to let me do that. Not any time soon anyway.

But this is what life is about anyway (as Madonna knows all too well): adapting, changing, evolving, never being the same person twice "cause I'm a million different people from one day to the next" as my old favourite verve song says.

I'll do my best then to accept all this and change with the time. 

Friday 8 August 2014

Two months a mother

On the 10th of August, I'll be a mother for two months. It's a surreal feeling that includes accomplishment, tiredness, excitement, worry, and always amazement at the miracle of life that was created, grows up and thrives.

For me the difficult bit has always been how to embrace this role and stay myself in the process. Not sure I figured it out yet, but is early still.

Little P is beautiful and funny, she looks like a cheeky baby, happy and content and that is so gratifying. Breaks my heart to see her cry whenever she does, which is not often.

Am enjoying my moments of peace and loneliness, when no-one talks to me and I don't have to do anything.

Being home in Greece is so easy, the sun, the sea, the help, the open space.

Scattered thoughts on an August afternoon. 

Wednesday 16 July 2014

What are you doing today?

This is the curse of the modern mother, I figured it out. All your adult life, you spend it "doing something": wake up, go to Uni, have some studying to do; and later working, writing a paper, preparing for a lecture or whatever. Of course you spend some days doing nothing, being lazy, going shopping, being on holidays. But these are the exception, not the rule. These days you cherish, you feel sneaky, lucky for having them.

And then you have a baby. And you spend months dreaming of your glorious maternity. Of the time you will have to think, to maybe read a book, to look after this new human being. But no-one prepares you for the blending of one day to the next, of the repetitiveness of the task: feed, change, soothe, repeat. It's not bad, don't get me wrong. But it's funny when you think about it. You are not used to it, you wake up in the morning and you think: "what am I doing today?" and the answer cannot be anything you used ti do: write a paper, prepare for a lecture, whatever. The answer has to be something else, something you also did yesterday, definitely nothing worth noting per se, at least not like in your previous life.

And this, my friends, is the curse of the modern mother: it will take us time to get used to this new role, this new life where you have nothing to show for the work you did all day, nothing apart from perhaps the weight your baby put on, or the nappies you changed. And you need to learn to cherish that, you need to learn to get used to that. You need to learn to be that.

I just hope I learn to do all that before my maternity vanishes and I feel sorry that I never actually got into it, I never managed to go with the flow and learn to let go and enjoy looking after my child and clearing my mind of all the things I thought were important all these years. 

Monday 7 July 2014

No time to write

No time to write, I am either feeding a hungry baby, or cleaning its bum, or sleeping.

But I still think, and I still want to write - only question I have is whether this should become a "new mother" blog? All (or most) of my thoughts are about adapting to being a mother, breastfeeding, redefining the self and so on and so forth.

Anyway, I'll just go change another nappy and decide what to do after that. 

Monday 19 May 2014

Elitism


"It is true that we are called a democracy, for the administration is in the hands of the many and not of the few. But while there exists equal justice to all and alike in their private disputes, the claim of excellence is also recognized; and when a citizen is in any way distinguished, he is preferred to the public service, not as a matter of privilege, but as the reward of merit." Thucydides, Pericles' Funeral Oration.

How do you find the quote above? Some of you might think it's elitist. Isn't democracy supposed to put all citizens equal opposite the law and the state? I know this may sound like a terribly scary slippery slope but I think not. Democracy only works if the people who vote are educated and can form an informed opinion about the matters of a state. Give power to a bunch of uneducated, oppressed, entitled idiots and what do you get? A disgustingly high percentage of a nazi party in Athens! The Greek media are fluffing about trying to make sense of it again. Some of them call it an "unfortunate surprise". My God, the word understatement was invented for a reason... They talk about people's anger against the older political system that needs to be channelled somewhere, or even people's financial uncertainty that turns them against immigrants etc. And I say: bullshit. Complete and utter bullshit. People do not deserve their vote, because voting should come with some obligations: go read a book, open your eyes, read a newspaper, educate yourself on what these people stand for and don't just sit there repeating the bullshit the media are feeding you. You don't like reading about stuff, no vote for you, then. You want to remain an ignorant idiot? No vote for you. 

I am sick and tired of people talking about their "rights". In Athens, since we are taking the Athenian democracy as a model and an ideal, if you didn't participate in the open political discussions in the Agora, you lost your right to vote. Simple as that. If you cared only for the affairs of your "own house" (that is what being an "idiot" originally meant) then you could not vote. Being ignorant on political matters made you ineligible to vote, end of. 

You call that elitism? Then Golden Dawn it is. 


Saturday 12 April 2014

Kicking and screaming

I am not a maternal person, not at all. I like other people's children, but not all of them. I hang out with (some of) them, but in moderation. In fact I particularly dislike little spoilt creatures that have no boundaries and break everyone's balls.

I am about to put my money where my mouth is though: 31 weeks and counting. In about two months I'll have an alien of my own, keeping me awake at night, not knowing what to do. I haven't felt any fantastic maternal feelings kicking in during all this time, I'm just going with the flow and taking it one day at a time.

But there are mornings like this, sitting in bed, fooling around on the net, the rain lashing outside, and as I am sitting relaxed I get a funny kicks-combo inside my belly. It's a funny feeling, I have to say. I am often tempted to see too much into it: the baby responding in a movement I made, a song playing, or something I say. But perhaps it's just a way to simply say "hi I'm here". Or being squashed in my belly, wants to stretch about a bit. In any case, I have to say, cliché as it sounds, it's a little miracle, and I like it a lot. Makes me think it will be fun to meet this individual who kicked my ass off for all these months.

Two months and counting.

Scary, but exciting.  

Sunday 2 March 2014

Before Midnight, or romance for real



Finally got to see "before midnight" last night. For the uninitiated this is the third movie of the Linklater - Delpy - Hawke love triangle that started 18 years ago in Vienna, continued 9 years ago in Paris and now finds generation X's favourite couple in Greece, married with twins, exploring for the first time a different kind of love: not the "once in a lifetime" love of the first movie, not the "lucky second strike" love of the second movie, but the "love for real" that normal people, with normal love stories have to face, day in - day out.

This is the kind of love that people warn you about, the kind of love that gets you every day, with the good things and the bad things, the kind of love that makes you "wipe the pee off the toilet seat" and see your loved one naked, imperfect, boring, part of reality. They said that this movie was about the "melancholy of commitment" and I guess one couldn't have hit the nail in the head better.

What happens after the fairy tale ends, people ask, after Snow white gets the Prince and so on... With the danger of sounding terribly cliché, the answer is, life happens... Life takes over and fairy tales are put to the test. And I guess for the not-20-somethings-anymore among us, that's the question, at least this has been the one for me: how will we fare differently, us, the clever educated free self-conscious generation that does not have the constraints of our parents. How will we do? Will we all divorce? Will we manage? How will it be?

Jesse and Celine's answer is that we will manage, of course we will, but not without a small sad look in our eyes. Not without a pain in the heart, not without bruises. You manage to go through life but you really must "love [the other person] unconditionally" to put up with the pretentiousness of human existence, with the fact that people are boring, with the fact that sex can be boring, with the fact that the every day reality of family life can be boring, and really break through and keep romance alive. Not for one night in Vienna, not for one afternoon in Paris but for ever and ever, keep romance alive.

Bring it on!

Saturday 1 February 2014

The diary

Reading old diaries can be so depressing: the inadequacies of your older self, presented before you in magnificent glory; the terribly banal old "loves"; the intensity of the drama, even in cases where you now know how stupid it all was...

But most of all this fantastically clear understanding of the past in the comfort of the present: "in retrospect..." what a great phrase. What a great concept. We are all so wise, so cool "in retrospect". We are all insightful historians, we are all profound thinkers, in hindsight. We all analyse the past in such a clear way. What am I saying, it is clear!

And therein lies the drama: why are we all so so clever after all the drama has passed, but never during?

And why do 16(or even 17, 20, 25)-year old girls go through everything as if it is such a drama?

My 35-year old self cannot find a respectable answer to that.

And now back to my old diaries, perhaps they will give me another clue. 

Monday 20 January 2014

No need to be blue...



And Pharell does it again! He brings us an upbeat song, catchy enough to rival the-one-that-shall-not-be-named (are you listening Daft Punk?),  and now nominated for an Oscar!

Most of all I love this song because it is a rare breed: it's beautiful, and poignant but not sad, desperate or desperately about love.

Clap along if you feel that happiness is the truth, he sings, and'd you know what? I am sure clapping along... 

Saturday 18 January 2014

Happy new year

Commonplace (and extremely belated) as it sounds, let us toast to the new year.

The year of the horse, my sign, the sign of success, prosperity and happiness.

Looking forward to another year of changes, (aren't they all?) a year of getting better, learning new things, and facing new challenges.

I'll be back soon with something interesting, but until then, Καλή Χρονιά σε όλους!