Word Of The Day: Introspective

Do you know who you are?

What makes you tick?

What kick-starts your heart; makes your soul rise from your chest and expand to fill every corner of a room, until no air is left but the sweet scent of At Last! and Is this what it means to feel whole??

Do you know who you are?

Would you recognise yourself without a mirror? Do your deeds and actions reflect your beliefs and values?

Are you constantly at war with yourself, saying one thing but doing another; compromising yourself until so little of you is left that it could slip through your fingers like water?

Are you unsure what “taking a stand” even means?

Take a moment.


Sit with yourself, in darkness or in light, or on a boat on the sea away from everyone, away from expectations and ask yourself: Who am I?

What do I want from this life?

Do not ask what you have to do, do not ask what does it want from me?, because in life, there will always be conflict. There will always be someone, or something you feel you must defer to.

Do not defer life. Do not defer who you are.

Know who you are.

Introspection is never wasting time. A life without knowledge of who you are is not living.

Know who you are.

Be who you are.

Everything else will change.

Stalk me, stalk my blog: http://socialsmores.blogspot.com

Naked Rules Of Engagement: A Change Of Plans

My rules of engagement are as follows:

1: NEVER give up without a fight.

2: Never kick a man when he's stupid down.

3: If you do have to kick him, aim for the face.

4: If you're done, you can lie down, but NEVER take it.

So, I just quit my job.

Resigned. Finished. Completo.

I said my piece. In fact I've been saying it for six months. I've had meetings about it and lodged paperwork and hugged it out and yelled and ranted and cajoled and you know what? When you're done, you're done. I was done.

Is it just me, or does the world seem a shiner, happier place, full of glitter and magical sparkly things? Oh, it is just me?

Maybe that's because y'all are still working at 4.20 pm on a Tuesday afternoon. Me, I'm blogging on my front porch, with three cats and a cup of green tea. It's lovely out here. Beach weather.

I won. I fought and I won. Not the way I expected I would win, but a win is a win all the same. Because I am alive, and I am free, and I am whole, and the future has shiny shiny possibilities.

I have never lived to work, although I do work with passion and relish. But when that's gone, I work to live. And when working starts to eclipse living, why, that's no way to live at all. And, There's No Crying In Baseball.

You do what you can, you say what you have to say and if you change even one person's thinking - and I changed two - sometimes that has to be enough.

So, anyone looking to hire a sassy, passionate writer with media and political expertise, who can turn a phrase on a dime and leave it begging for more?

I'm available.

Stalk me, stalk my blog: www.socialsmores.blogspot.com

Thoughts on Australia's Human Rights Charter

Prompted by a Sydney Star Observer story (yeah - "rughts" act. Whoops, right?)

My thoughts (November 5th, 2009 @ 6:04 pm)

If it wasn’t against what we both stand for, I’d marry Kirby and have his gaybies. Trufax.

One need only look to – strangely – Australia's ex-PM John Howard for the best pro-Human Rights Charter argument. In his August 27, 2009 opinion piece in The Age, Howard said this:

“If the US and Canadian experience is a guide, issues such as abortion and gay marriage would not be resolved by our elected representatives but the courts.

“Comparing the Australian and Canadian approaches on gay marriage is illuminating. In Australia, the government which I led decided in 2004 that the Marriage Act should be amended to define marriage as a voluntary union for life between a man and woman to the exclusion of all others, thus precluding the possibility of recognising same-sex marriages.

“In Canada it was not so simple. In a series of decisions the courts had declared that prohibitions on gay marriage, enacted by some provinces, were contrary to the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Only by Parliament passing a law expressly overturning those decisions could the provincial prohibitions have been revived. This was a theoretical power only. In practice it was not a realistic option.

“Thus it was not Parliament which expressed the will of the Canadian people on this sensitive social issue, it was the courts. Surely that was wrong. Irrespective of the views one might hold on the issue, don’t the people, through their elected representatives, and at all stages, have the right to decide those issues?”

Yes, Mr Howard. The court had the right to overturn the parliament on an issue that would have involved denying the rights afforded to every human being, whether their voices are in the minority or not. Because it is not the loudest people that are the most deserving. It is, simply The People.

In Australia, where parliament obeys the whims of the loudest voices even though they are not of the majority opinion, a Human Rights Charter is essential. Because our voices may not be loud enough, but we do count.

(For you sadists, the ex-PM's wank rant can be found here at The Age website.

My S&M affair with Bruno: The Top 5 things he taught me about gay rights and marriage equality

I watched the movie Bruno as part of the Equal Love gay marriage equality fundraiser, and so began my sado-masochistic love-hate affair with Austrian flamer and celebrity whore Bruno.

It hurt so good. Watching him cavort across the screen through splayed fingers and laughing until every ethical sensibility ached like a broken tooth, I then left the theatre to join a room full of people asking each other the same question: Did you like it? And I knew what they were really asking was: Do I like it?

Oh, there was more laughter and applause than gasps of shock and wailing, but we struggled to admit that this was a guilty pleasure we devoured like a full-fat cheesecake while standing with our heads in the freezer, or that time our partners fell down the stairs and really hurt themselves, but we laugh-peed a little bit anyway.

Did I like it? It's a question I've been mulling over all night. I don't know if I've settled on an answer yet, but I did come up with a list. So here's the Top 5 lessons that Bruno taught me about gay rights and marriage equality.