STOP! Collaborate and listen...

Books in New Zealand are expensive. Far more expensive than at home. And although I could be selfish and say this is a problem for me, actually, it is a problem for the people who live here permanently. Reading is, I believe, more and more unpopular. Not just within the younger generations but also the working ages, as people simply cannot find the time to sit down and read a book. And why should they when they have been at work all day and can instead flop down in front of a box that will do all the work? You don’t have to have an imagination to survive anymore, you don’t have to be able to think ‘outside the box’ ‘cos the fancy flat screen one in the lounge will do all that for you. And it’s a shame. It is also a bleak outlook. But by far this is not the case for everyone, there are still people who have a passion for reading, it just doesn’t feel enough to me. I think the introduction of e-readers has helped encourage readers because I guess it doesn’t feel ‘old fashioned’ and they take reading to ‘new and exciting levels’?! I don’t know. To me there is nothing better than making the first crease along the spine of a book you’ve just purchased. Inhaling that ‘booky’ smell and knowing that in two hundred odd pages time your life will be altered forever. And you were the one in charge of making that happen, you turned the pages, you constructed the images of characters, you made something come to life. This just isn’t possible with films. Someone has already done the best bits for you. Don’t get me wrong, I love films, I absolutely adore them, but nothing can compare to the feeling I get when I finish a magnificent book. It sends me into a trance, I can think of nothing else, and those characters are now a part of me. Forever.

So it is a shame that books over here are more expensive than Dvd’s. It’s as if they are on a pedestal and only the ‘well to do’ can reach them. And what a shame. What a shame that so many people are missing out. This is not a country filled with particularly affluent people. I know that if I only had $30 to spend and it was a choice between a Dvd for my family and a book, the Dvd would have to win. Hopefully their National Book Week has inspired some people to use their $5 off voucher and purchase a little piece of wonder, but I’m not so sure. There have been too many homes I have been in where there are absolutely no books to be seen. I couldn’t even begin to imagine my life without loads of books, let alone none! So when I used my own voucher and bought a book I’ve wanted to read for ages, my excitement was of course great. Out of the store, straight to the coffee shop to be glued to my seat for as long as possible. Perhaps one day someone will buy my book and race to become lost in it just as eagerly as I get lost in other writer’s. I suppose that remains to be seen...

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The subject of this weeks blog is a personal one. Since being away I have had time to reflect on my life, on where I’ve come from, where I’m going and all that sticks those two things together in between. One doesn’t have to leap across to the other side of the world to gain some perspective, but I’m not going to lie, it certainly helps. We’ve only been away about five and a half months but that has already been time enough for me to introduce myself to me, and find out just what I might be all about. This might sound silly but honestly, at home when your life and everyone else’s is speeding past at a gazillion miles per hour never letting up for one second, it kind of becomes impossible to just stand still for a moment and decide if you’re in the right lane. But I am only young. Perhaps with more years grows the ability to command your surroundings better and make more balanced choices. Like Neo in The Matrix slowing down time so he can dodge the bullet. Like I said, I don’t think you need to leave your home to dodge a bullet, but for me it seems to have worked. 

I am not an easy person to live with. I never have been and quite frankly, I don’t think I ever will be. I’m one of those people some might call a ‘worrier’. I worry about everything. But you’d never know. Anyone who has ever met me would probably think I’m the most care free person in the world, but the fact is, I’m not. I’m also an impulsive person. The kind of person who’d create a massive argument just because they wanted a dramatic moment to give a particularly dull day some substance. The kind of person that no one would actually know what they really wanted, because in all honesty they don’t actually know what they want themselves. I’m as high as a soaring kite one moment and the next diving, falling deep underground into a hole. And maybe for no apparent reason. I play complex games in my head, parallel lives of what could have been, what might be, but always, always coming back to the one that is real. If I didn’t I suppose I would be in trouble. It is this small glimmer of sensibleness that I suppose keeps me in my life. Without it I think I would have fallen off the edge of the world years ago. So in a way it was my idea to go travelling initially. I had always wanted to do it, ever since I can remember I’ve planned my ‘escape’. Did I really think I’d do it? I don’t know, dreams don’t come with a deadline. 

And it was because of all this that I knew I wanted to marry Ollie. You see I didn’t think there was anything or anyone in the universe that could stop me wanting to see the world, to stop me leaving England, to stop me full stop. But then I met Ollie. Suddenly nothing else mattered, I was willing to give up everything I wanted if it meant I could have him. And I mean everything. When we were first together he told me he wasn’t particularly interested in travel, he hadn’t read a book in over ten years and he had the emotional range of an amoeba’s hair follicle (this turned out not to be true, but he just doesn’t realise!). Basically I’d fallen in love with my polar opposite. And it was pretty obvious in the way we both behaved. Ollie was a reliable pillar of his family’s life while I was the ‘Ohhh Amsie’ of mine. But for some reason none of that was a concern. But as much as I was flinging everything I wanted (or so I thought) out the back door as I said ‘I Do’ I just didn’t care. But I suppose ‘I’ wouldn’t have, because that’s me. Impulsive. But no. No it wasn’t that. I really was willing to put my dreams away in a box because to me Ollie was more important. I wouldn’t have married him if he wasn’t. Because I never actually really wanted to get married until I met him. Ollie was my everything, I just hadn’t known it.

If only life was that simple though. If only I really could have put the other things in a box. But I think we all know that’s impossible. Dreams are created to be dreamt, to be acted upon. And so after the confetti had settled I felt them start to creep. Like a rash they spread, slowly at first but then more feverishly all over me. I’d find them between my toes, at the ends of my bitten fingers, in the corners of my eyes and on the tip of my tongue. I had to be honest. Aren’t you supposed to live without regret? Well I would regret not seeing the world. And so I had to find a way to tell Ollie. To tell him ‘Sorry Ol’s but actually all those things I said weren’t that important to me, those things I said I didn’t want, well you see, I actually do.’ What would he say? And if I didn’t get the answer I needed, what would that mean for me? Even in hindsight I still can’t believe what happened. I still can’t believe that Ollie didn’t just say ‘O.k. we’ll do what you want’, he actually said that he’d changed his mind about what he wanted too! And so we left to go travelling, both fully committed and jointly participating in a decision we had made together because it was what we BOTH wanted. How cool is that? Do I need anymore proof that marrying Ollie was my best decision yet? That worrying gets you know where and unless you speak your mind, tell the truth and trust you won’t solve anything?

I can only actually begin to understand all this now since I have been away. Like I said, I needed to stop my world for a second so I could see the full picture. And already I am happier. We are happier. Having accomplished all that we have in the past few months has made the future a far less daunting prospect. I now agree, if you want something you really can make it happen, you can have whatever you want. It just takes hard work to make it happen. And you only really know you want something if you’re willing to do that work.

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Another change that has occurred for me recently is the decision to become a vegetarian. In the past I’d never been a huge meat eater (I think it stems back to a childhood error of trying to feed dead pheasants but that’s another story) but I’d also never really given what I ate much thought. I’d never taken the time to think about where my food came from. Obviously I knew the basics, I wasn’t like the group of Aussie kids who were polled recently and found to think yoghurt grew on trees! But I’d never considered how the demand for food with a population as big as the worlds could be, and is, met. How our want for cheap food was affecting the way it was produced and what we might be doing to our environment. I know I keep saying it but when I was at home and life was flashing past without me making a chance to have an effect on it I wasn’t really thinking about what I was putting in my mouth. But that was wrong, I should have been thinking. It’s all very well to toss a plastic bottle into the recycling or buy an organic cucumber but if I’m still buying the cheap meat, milk and cheese then I may as well have melted the bottle and posted the carcinogenic fumes to the nearby primary school! (If I was on television, that last comment would have cost me with OfCom I’m sure!!) 

Ollie always wanted to go to the local market to get our fruit and veg and visit the local butcher, but to be honest I could never be bothered. What was the point when you could get it all at half the price and all under one green and white roof? How ignorant of me. I wince now just at the thought. I’m not saying shopping at the supermarket is wrong, of course I’m not, but I think personally, I should have been making myself more aware of the impact my food choices were making on the world around me. Now, I’m not one for shocking people into change, I am more of a believer in posing a balanced argument and letting someone make an informed decision. But in some cases to be shocked is necessary. 

I didn’t mean to come across the film. I was actually looking for a vegetable bake recipe. But I was on one particular site and curiosity got the better of me. I wont say what film I watched, I’m not writing this as an advocate or to change people, this is about me. So recommending people to watch a ‘shocking film’ would be pointless. Like I said, you have to want to be thinking about making a change, not be forced into it because you can’t get an awful picture out of your mind. Anyway the film I watched was pretty horrific. In fact it made me cry. Not just because of what I saw but because I had been foolish enough to think that in some cases it could have been any other way. Now I’m fully aware that not all meat production is done in the way I saw. I am astute and intelligent enough to realise that the film makers were using the worst cases. I get that. But that wasn’t the point. The meat I used to buy would have come from places like those. I know because I remember the price I paid. I wouldn’t have felt so guilty had I bothered to take an interest before, to have listened to Ollie. But it was guilt that I suddenly felt. I was part of the awful treatment that does go on, I was part of the demise of good farmers, I was part of the mass consumerism that is harming decent food production. 

So sitting on the sofa I made the choice. To be the difference. To make a change. Not only do I not miss meat in the slightest I also feel a hundred times better in myself. I’m eating healthier, I’m thinking about what I put in my mouth and I actually feel pretty great. Not great because I’ve done a ‘good thing’ but because I have made a choice that I hope will help me to make more educated choices in the future. And it is all about choices. I have also stopped drinking cows milk. It was actually that part of the film that affected me most. I stopped to think about just how much milk must be needed in the world. All the things that contain milk, all that it is used for. And I decided that if I could make one little alteration and switch to another form of milk for my tea, coffee and cereal that maybe in some way I could save a few pints of milk each week. O.k. it’s not a life altering difference and ripples won’t be felt across the globe, but it will make a difference to me. And I guess, ‘That’s all I have to say about that’.

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I apologise if this blog has been a rather self indulgent one. And I’m sorry if it hasn’t ‘entertained’ as others might have but there were some things I needed to say and felt that maybe this blog was the place to think them out. I promise that next time there will be a new adventure and I will leave the personal evaluations alone...

12/3/12

*Please note - Before I am accused of plagiarism...I am fully aware I have used lyrics from a song as the title to this blog and a line from Forest Gump part way through!