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Being Someone You’re Not

Let me explain something very carefully.

Imagination is a wonderful thing, and people should use it sometimes. I can throw myself into anyone’s position through imagination, and it’s not very often I get it wrong. Occasionally, yeah. Most of the time, I don’t though, because I see what that frustration is — what it really is.

Now, I can see the cocky bastard who hasn’t got a care in the world, because he/she comes from money, right? Let me show the other side of that cocky bastard. “I haven’t got a clue. Will you teach me? I’ve never done this before. Could you show me how? I never listened. I’m listening now.”

Unfortunately, although this is all great, the cocky bastard doesn’t understand that this takes time, and effort, and tends to put other people in a position where they start, not only losing money, but not making any. It also means the cocky bastard might start doing shit illegally because he’s above all the rest of us plebeians, and he can make money just like that *snaps fingers*. Language barrier not withstanding, he just keeps doing whatever the fuck he likes because “why not”.

That’s one example. Then you may also have someone who might be, for example, particularly good looking. Now, because they are particularly good looking, they’re not taken very seriously. “Stand over there. Look like this. Move over here, and look like that.” This person might think to himself or herself, ‘Ya know what, I can do a lot more than just look good. Ya know what, I can actually think for myself and I’m actually kind of clever. Funny that.’

Nobody sees this, they might think. They’d be wrong. A lot of people see it. Not everyone, it’s true, but a lot of people. They might say, for example, “Keep going mate, you’re doing a fantastic job. Ignore ’em, buddy, they’ve got no idea what they’re talking about. See those ones there? They might be a couple of nutters, and they have no fucking idea what they’re talking about either. See how they made assumptions about me just then? Not too flash, is it. I’ve got your back. I understand. When we get these little self-centred shit-for-brains people out in the open, maybe we’ll teach ’em a lesson or two, eh?’

Now, there might be a few other people involved in this scenario. They can see it too. It’s happened to them enough times. They might decide to be a little more switched on than other people, and they might say, ‘Take a break, mate. I’ll take over. No one will know. Do something for yourself for a change.’

Unfortunately, the fact that some are female and some are male, and some decide that it isn’t anyone’s business what they are, make it a little difficult for people to be just mates. Why? Because there are other people involved, and they might just have partners that would not understand. Then, you’ve also got the ones that think, ‘hey, you know what, I could hold all these people to ransom by finding stuff out about them.’ But, you’ve also got the ones who say, ‘I might think exactly the same way as you, and there is absolutely no feckin’ chance anyone’s gonna find out anything they could use against ya. If they do, they might have a whole lot of other very angry people to deal with.’

So, here we are. Some of us are making nothing to keep our independence — so it’s kind of not independence anymore, ya know? Some are so entwined in their own misery they keep hanging on to someone else like a barnacle attached to a jetty. It’s been a long time now. The jetty here is starting to get rotten. It’s time to switch things up.

Me personally, I don’t have all the tech savvy shit I need and I don’t have the patience to read through piles and piles of rubbish to learn nothing. I can’t do it for ya. I’m probably none of the things some people think I am, and a lot of the things some people think I’m not, so please don’t make assumptions about me. I know who I am, and I know exactly what I’m incapable of. I’m kind of honest with myself about shit like that.

Everything I’ve asked for help with I have not received. Not once. Everything I have done, I’ve done mostly for other people. Many people feel the same way, I know, but the burden of carrying all that on one’s shoulders, and getting it repeated back time, and time again, is beginning to wear thin. The one thing I will not do, is get rid of my own stuff to make way for others. I’m not a packrat. I’m not illogical. I’m not bragging either. So, to those who think that’s who I am — you’ve got the wrong person.

Let me tell ya a little bit about…

strength in numbers, and being taken advantage of.

Ya see, people have tried to take advantage of me a number of times. I have also been threatened by idiots at my former place of work a number of times. Because I worked alone a hell of a lot, I had to learn to stick up for myself. Actually, that’s a lie. I already knew how to look out for myself, and I knew all the stupid, horrible things people would do because they, for some reason, even though they had no idea what the f*** they were doing, thought they could do whatever the f*ck they liked.

They still think they can do whatever the f*ck they like.

This is where I start to get, not mad, not irate, but incredibly f*cking angry. I believe it’s called rage.

I think the angriest I got, was when people did not understand, nor refused to try to understand, that I am also a writer. So, what they’re endeavouring to do now, knowing I’m a writer (and a published author of other books unrelated to the other types of writing I’ve done over the years), is steal my stuff and use it for themselves.

I have a number of extremely succinct words for these types of people. Aside from the fact they think they can do whatever the f*ck they like, they are not particularly bright, in my humble opinion.

Incredibly, people also like to believe other things that are distinctly untrue, circulating around the internet. Things that have come out of other people’s books, and other people’s true stories that certain people have used for themselves. It’s kind of sucky.

My stories, certainly the ones about my family, my husband etc, are actually true. The others may have a lot of truth in them if you look very carefully, but, and here we get to the sticky bit, certain people are a tad naive, easily led, and feed off other people’s misery just for the hell of it.

I had another WordPress site quite some time ago. In it were stories about all sorts of things related to myself, and other people. Stories about wolves, and sheep, about smiles and how much one really needs to pull up a smile sometimes because someone else wants ya to. Stories about eight hours, and the fact that when one is a parent and a wife, one needs to extend one’s own eight hours and add everyone else’s eight hours in there as well.

Now, I know certain people may not believe this, and that’s okay too, but sometimes, just sometimes there are actually nice people out there who may very well have experienced something very similar to myself. Those people may not be in quite the right position to say something, due to “conflicts of interest” in regards to the type of work they do, and the fact they need to make a living. But, it does not give people the right to freely access my writing, or the kind of writing I do.

What they can do, is read this. I do not give people permission to access my work, and never have. I have said, however, if they wished to use certain ideas within my work to help them write their own things, then that’s fine, but that does not include accessing my work illegally. Unfortunately, when someone, not myself, accesses certain things of mine “freely” and “Illegally”, bad things start to happen… And not always to me and mine.

I don’t go to gyms. I can’t afford it. I’ve never gone to a gym. I don’t talk to people who are not my friends very often, unless I get the impression there is something very wrong. When I was working in the fuel industry, for example, the longest conversation I would have with a customer was not particularly long at all. Oh, I had a lot of disagreements with customers, because after all what the hell would I know, I only worked in a servo. Obviously I had never done anything else with my life, aside from, you know, get married and have kids (which is certainly nothing to be ashamed of). My long working life, training, and life experience in general could not in the least have anything to do with the fact I knew what the hell I was talking about.

When I see people have stolen certain photographs from other people’s facebook pages to perhaps boost their own confidence, and when I see certain people think there must be something wrong with someone who is quite comfortable in their own skin, I truly start to wonder if those few, unreliable sources might have something a little skewiff within themselves.

Still, there isn’t much I can do about that, except perhaps try to teach those people about what life is really like. It’s not all romance and flowers. It’s not all hearts and bunnies, and if you knew a little something about where I got the term “hearts and bunnies”, you might think a little deeper about that too. It’s not who I am personally, mind you, but it is certainly a historical fact, not fiction.

Perhaps, some other people might want to learn more about those certain, very important things and stop giving the rest of us a hard f*cking time.

You’re welcome.

‘Why there should not be In-fighting.’

I personally, have not travelled all the way up the West Australian coastline, although, luckily for me, my Mother-in-Law has. During her travels, she has picked up memorabilia and souveniers (I always spell this wrong, apparently) , as one does when travelling.

This morning, I went into the spare room in our house looking for a broom, as I’d quite forgotten I’d moved it back to where it was originally meant to be. When I noticed the pamphlet/book on the floor, put there almost as if by accident, I remembered a movie I saw a few years back.

‘Red Dog.’

Now, this particular pamphlet from 1993, was entitled “Red Dog, The Pilbara Wanderer”, by Beverley Duckett. There had been a book, and I quote, “written some years ago by Nancy Gillespie”. The writer/researcher of the pamphlet, Ms Duckett had researched this story, along with a lot of people who provided stories and photographs of a red kelpie cross.

I noticed the writer of the booklet was very fond of exclamation marks. Now, one notices these things, because each writer, just like a gambler, has a “tell”. When a passage, or story is first written, before it is edited, these “tells” are fairly evident. After editing, and other people’s input, the tells become less evident and more confusing.

When one has done most of, or all of, the editing themselves, and finds it rather tiresome and annoying, one may leave the occasional “tell”, that others may find if they look carefully. This then gives this “copier” or “forger” more little habits to pick up. It is then unfortunate for them when the original author of a particular work finds someone else’s “tells” sitting in front of them, and thinks, ‘Hmm, there seems to be a few missing little things here, and a few added on things there, and some rather unfortunate word choices here, and some, “Hang on, is this originally in another language?” here.’

So, to prevent confusion, I now tend to leave little things of my own behind. For example, when I see something underlined on an editing or spelling program, which is an incorrect correction, I think to myself, ‘Let’s just leave my own mistakes here, and no one else’s.’

When I see someone who may have studied the way I write trying to add more of my own little tells to my own work, I think, ‘No, I think I will do it my own way, because if I did it another way, and didn’t correct it almost immediately, that would be someone else’s way of writing, or perhaps me in a past life trying to get through something as quickly as possible due to outside interference.’

I’m not in a hurry today. I guess, when one starts getting headaches one has never had before in one’s life, one begins to assume there is something going on. I guess, that’s when someone might think, ‘You know what, I’m going to take all the time in the world, for however long that time is, and I am not gonna let any bastard stop me, and that’s that.’

I will add a photograph of what I have of “RED DOG The Pilbara Wanderer” when I get a moment. I would hope the people on page 38 can see what unknowns are trying to do with this particularly written history, and perhaps do something about it by alerting each other.

“I’ve got three weeks to go…”

.’…until I get married, and three years to go until I’ve finished my studies.’

The handwritten note had been tossed onto the bed in front of him and he stared at it for quite some time. He hadn’t quite figured out why these things were all happening, yet, but knew he was partly to blame.

‘I didn’t take those pictures,’ he muttered. ‘I just look at them from time to time and wonder who these people are.’ Up until now, he hadn’t questioned why he’d stolen them from the lady’s page. It just seemed like a good idea at the time. He was beginning to regret that now, though. Now, he was starting to wonder if he might have made a terrible mistake.

‘Did you get much for those stolen scenes?’ asked the little voice in his head, conversationally.

‘I didn’t steal them. You said you weren’t doing anything with them, so I took them, that’s all.’

‘That’s considered stealing, in my book.’

‘I didn’t let them take it… you did… I did… I didn’t… Just let me think about it, you’d said.’ He was grasping at straws now, and he knew it. Breaking into other people’s laptops was pretty easy when you knew how, especially when one was an ugly little weasel who had run out of ideas for scripts. ‘I obviously didn’t think this through,’ he added. ‘But now, I think I might have made a terrible mistake.’

‘How many other times have you stolen script ideas and writing over the years? What other things have you nicked from people’s laptops? I find this very interesting.’ The person in his head was definitely not him, he knew that now, and he was beginning to regret many, many things he had tried to do over the last twelve months.

‘I was told you were offered a controlling portion of great and wonderful things,’ he cried.

‘I think you might be wrong there. I, personally, haven’t been offered anything. At all. Ever.’

‘Oh just let me get something out of my drawer,’ He wasn’t going to be getting anything out of his drawer today though, was he.

‘That’s not how it goes, buddy. No one says, “Just let me get something out of my drawer.” That is very badly written. I know where you’re heading with it, but you know, why waste a perfectly good scene on badly written scripts, when one could just say, “I have made a terrible mistake, and I apologise for taking several key parts of a story written on the internet quite some time ago, and putting it all into one shambling episode that ended up making not much sense at all”.’

‘Nobody watches it anymore, anyway, you said that.’ The producer had wet his pants, again. ‘ Free to air TV just doesn’t get the viewers it used to, and my boss dolled it up, and I think I am dreaming of something but I know we all get paid, so I just don’t understand why no one went and paid the lady we got these things off, because we didn’t think it was a good idea either. How do we get hold of someone we owe a great deal of money to, when I thought she was dead? Why didn’t anyone fly out west and offer her something at least?’

‘Like I said, someone else did it, not me,’ said the sad kid. ‘I just went along for the ride and stayed up all night watching the kids getting better, cos that’s what it’s all about, right?’

‘Right. It’s also about not getting greedy and taking other people’s things because you’re trying to “Save a show”. I guess you mob have only got two choices now. You can’t exactly say it’s iconic anymore, anyway, and, although I am very sure it is very close to some older actors hearts, I am also quite sure they would be as equally disgusted as I am, that someone, or several someone’s, have sunk to such an incredible new low.’

‘Look, we just forgot you guys were on the other side of the country, that’s all. No one goes there anyway.’

A number of people who had lived in a certain part of the world until just recently, raised their eyebrows at their eastern states counterparts. It wasn’t like they could say much, not really. They had forgotten about this place themselves.

‘I guess the more of it I see appearing, on that show in particular, the higher the compensation will be,’ the frequent flyer from one side to the country to the other nodded his head. ‘No one should be making money out of other people’s misery, should they? Especially when the entire story, except for just a few little snippets on the end, was written at least ten years ago, and the lady in question is not doing too well, not really. You see, someone thought it would be a great joke to break into her laptop and steal all the things she’d been writing, and other things besides, and despite the fact she spoke with several people, no one did a fucking thing about it. So, here we are holding out a very empty hand full of nothing, and suggesting perhaps you put something in it.’

Verily

‘Yeah ana yew, do boobybom…’

The name of the song was Beautiful People, but it took me years to figure that out. The band was called Australian Crawl.

I thought to myself when I heard the song (possibly every time I heard the song to be honest), ‘Where are the lyrics saying beautiful people?’ All I could hear was those words up there, and some guy swearing about ‘never gonna make it, never gonna take it, never gonna make it, never gonna take it down.’

Oh I did hear the words, “Pee pole”, and didn’t think it was inappropriate at all, because I didn’t understand anything else about it.

I had a friend who thought (Cold)Chisel’s song about cheap wine had three day old toast in it. It did not sound very appetising. I did question that, but she was adamant that’s what it was.

As for my husband, he makes it very difficult to remember the meanings of anything, because he makes stuff up all the time. It’s bloody annoying sometimes, but absolutely hilarious at others. I still remember the time he very seriously explained to me he’d heard “someone got salamander poisoning”.

So, I guess when I hear the words in my head to “Posthumously”, I correct it very carefully to “post humorously” because posting anything else wouldn’t be too flash, would it. It reminds me of the little girl across the road when I was a kid, who had found a mouse in her toaster that morning. It looked like it had been toasted for approximately four minutes, slightly more, and she had put it in a little bag to take to school for show and tell. I do not remember what the outcome was, but do remember being slightly horrified at the time.

This is why, a lot of the time, if someone else writes something, and it isn’t quite right, I’ll correct it in my head. If it’s mine, sometimes I’ll leave it there to remind me that no one is perfect, least of all myself. It all takes me back to a crispy mouse in a paper bag.

Meanwhile, I’ll leave you with a clip to a song.

The Funny Thing About Getting Older

I put the first picture up on my gravatar or whatever the hell it’s called, because frankly, it’s safer. I seem to have adopted more sons than I actually gave birth to, again, and really I don’t want to frighten them off, they are all very sweet. (That is, when they’re not swearing and carrying on and being all masculine and shit — which can be very f*cking annoying).

Some of my imaginary friends may be male, but they have the same understanding of what this means.

‘I haven’t put on my makeup yet,’ an unnamed friend screeches through his bedroom window. ‘Kindly remove your hands from my buttocks until I look twenty years younger and twice as good-looking.’

I think he had to man up to say that one, because it is rather funny. We won’t say anything else about that though, will we. Yes, I know, he wasn’t quite real, but he was real enough for someone else to say, ‘I want to be Harry.’

Not too many fellas wanted to be my ‘I am now in the Special Forces and am terrified of losing my marbles like the guy I thought I could look up to.’ Possibly because they recognised it, wished to avoid it, and when it may have been suggested to them through, once again, unnamed channels, they decided it was perhaps the perfect time to ask their long term girlfriends to not run away on them quite yet, because they needed to ask them a question.

We don’t all get to live the dream. This part of a long ago story was probably a little too real to a lot of people, and not something they could laugh about for too long. Maybe that’s why so many of us shed so many tears over the aeons.

Anyway, I took a few shots of me trying to look more cool than I actually am, this morning, and I took them without my glasses on. When I did put them back on, I thought, ‘Jesus effing Christ, what the hell, and definitely not my idea of a good time thanks very much by crikey.’

Fortunately, I could move the blur button around on my phone, and I felt much happier about myself. Twenty years, or possibly fifteen, or maybe slightly less, who knows really in the scheme of things (the last year has been quite shit) gone in the push of a finger along a screen. The wattle neck remains, but I don’t really care, to be very honest. It’s who I am, after all, which is why I will show the last picture first and not the other way around.

That feels so much better.

I’m not very good at taking myself seriously, but I will add I have a reasonable ego, so those who think I took off from other places through fright, or not believing in myself, or other equally ridiculous things, sorry to tell you this, but you’re wrong. I left those other places because I have a seriously awful temper, and the people I “crashed into” for lack of better words, well, “some” of them had tempers as equally horrific as my own. It was not a pleasant time for any of us.

There were some lovely, slightly misled, people who, though they were not experiencing quite the same battle of egos I was experiencing with unnamed bullshit artists and ratbags from hell, thought I may have been having problems with my mental health. I was, to be honest, because who the feck let those bastards in there, is what I want to know. Bloody hell.

Still, I will show them I am not being kind today, so they’ll have to put up with this one. I’m not kidding, this one is a pain the arse.

You’re in trouble now.

Just for good measure, I’ll add the weird school teacher who isn’t a school teacher at all, but may possibly pass as one of those mean old ballet instructors with a bung leg and one eye. I haven’t put a colour in my hair for a while, so you’ll get all the grey bits too. Have fun with that.

Right then. Now that I’ve done this and made myself look like a right twat, you can go back to sucking on your dunked toast and scrambled eggs.

Have a fabulous day, and don’t let the bed-bugs bite.

Love mum x aka the people mama, aka la chat (not le chat, because he’s a boy).