Community counts

I read an article weekend before last where a 30 something single woman said she is fine being single and wrote that she took offence when others (not single) would give her the pity look. She wrote in a manner which suggested other singles of her vintage felt the same way (I would have posted the link to the article, but this is the best I found on a quick google search for it: http://earlybirdcatchestheworm.wordpress.com/2011/05/25/newspaper-clipping-of-the-week-all-the-single-ladies/)

I could be off doing adventurous, culturally enriching and spiritually enhancing things overseas as I have no dependents by way of children or partner, but it has been my choice and circumstance that I am Melbourne-bound.

I have a 17 year old pet dog who is too old to leave with others for care and too able to send off to doggie heaven before his time (yes, 17 is a fabulous innings - Walter is a most special dog).

And while I consider everyday with Walter a blessing, outside the pet ownership - confessional...life can be lonely. Lonely living in a city where your best friends from your fun and carefree 20s have either moved away or long been coupled up and raising young kids. The single mates I do have are living interstate or overseas, doing what I would be if I didn’t have Walt.

So unlike the warrior single from the article who vouched she's happy with said status, I’ve declared as a single woman that the 30s can be tough.

As a single like me, you’re likely to be one of the very few in your friendship circle, and if you’re not, life’s going to be completely hectic with a partner and young kids - too chaotic to catchup over brunch or yoga class with a single friend.

During such times, most people can lean on their family, but on that accord I’m more a character from Sex and the City (yes, ok, Samantha wins here in terms of character likeness (but more for her direct and no bullshit style than promiscuous bedroom antics - let me assure you!)) than Brothers and Sisters.

I lost my mother 15 years ago and my only brother lives in Adelaide with his wife and their two young children – again, hectic, not much time to nurture his sister's lonely heart (although he does a good job trying - thanks bro).

My mother had three sisters, all of whom are wonderful sources of support – but again, they’re in Adelaide and they themselves have their own lives and families.

So more and more I’m on my own.

To help combat the sense of aloneness, I have for some time interwoven my wellbeing with a connectness to community. This provides a level of comfort and company when I’d love to have more of it from the friends and family in my life.

It’s the married yoga instructor who asks me how life’s going (thanks gorgeous Chris); and reads excepts from books offering up tit bits of wisdom about dealing with every day life (your "being human is a guest house - greet everyone (happiness) and anyone (malice) with a smile for it's a guide bringing exactly what you need" helped thanks Jen); comments on my new hair colour "I'm liking the red" (from Amanda the 50 something rocking yoga guru at Fitzroy yoga); Sam, the naturopath who smiles and greets me at the health food store at the South Melbourne markets (high protein low carbs Caroline); Robin, the pet food store owner who has never asked my name but calls me “Walter’s mum” every time I visit and gives Walt a regular treat.

It’s young, spunky Matt who takes my Wednesday night spin class who I overhear talking to others about marathons he’s been busy prepping for or about the status of the baby he’s about to have (and would have had by now).

The list goes on.

Yes, politicians will sprout the values of community and its benefits to people's mental and emotional health (and Lord Mayor Rob Doyle does live around the corner).

I find myself the Cate Blanchett poster girl for advocating the benefits of their spin.

Keep community close because the loose netted support these friendly acquaintances bring, can just be the thread magic weaves.

The Royal Wedding

In an ever-changing world and one where there seems to be more leaving than staying in relationships; there’s something very comforting for me that Prince William provides a role model to today’s young man.

For women like me (unmarried 35+) we’ve kissed more frogs than we care to mention and breathe a collective sigh, that yes, it’s more likely we’ll be reading “He’s just not that into you” than a bridal magazine.

But when presented with a sweeping romance steeped in tradition such as the approaching Royal Wedding – this ordinarily strong woman gets a little teary with emotion.

In his proposal, Wills declared to the world he intends to ‘officially’ hold onto his girl and ‘waity Katy’ proved there’s virtue in hanging in there through thick and thin.

Very much the modern couple, Wills and Kate have been dating some nine years, weathered a momentary breakup and live together. Now they’ve chosen to follow tradition, tie the knot and in the future when William becomes King of England he has his bride.

Of course all around me are the naysayers – shaking their heads in wonderment: “Why all the fuss?” I shake my head right back at them. The majority are riding my bandwagon of course, that’s not hard to miss – everyday the global media reports on the Royal Wedding in a mass of excitement.

Fair, at times the circus around the pending nuptials is nothing short of a spectacle (namely the kitsch wedding memorabilia), but the significance of the Royal Wedding resonates way beyond the couple getting married.

In our society, to marry is the highest proclamation of love and who can deny the spellbinding power of love?

Come April 29, the watching world has Wills and Kate’s word of commitment to each other and this is not so easy to give publicly if in doubt.

I’ll get comfy on my couch, pooch by my side, glued to the TV and watch in eagerness as the beautiful Kate marries her handsome prince.

Cafe culture turns office

Have you noticed how once you’ve been made aware of something, it begins to take form everywhere you look?

I recently read an article by Rachel Wells at the Sunday Age about people using cafes as their office space. See story link: http://www.businessday.com.au/executive-style/management/meetandeat-revolution-at-the-coffice-20110405-1d0om.html

Of course we’re all drawn to things that resonate and strike a chord and yes, for me – this article produced what Oprah would coin an “a-ha” moment.

I meet clients and potential clients in cafes; work on my laptop; jot down ideas on post-it notes; as well as spy opportunities to solicit business when the occasion arises.

During my cafe time I’ll catch-up on the papers and listen in (as well as start and contribute to) conversations between staff and customers to keep abreast of the general chit chat around town. Finger on the pulse for this PR maven.

I guess you could call Park Lane Cafe in South Melbourne my second office - but it’s also like a welcoming, home kitchen. See link to an article I secured for its owner Harry Humphries (Barry Humphries’ nephew!):

http://www.theage.com.au/entertainment/restaurants-and-bars/south-melbourne-dj-grinds-out-a-good-cup-20100412-s3hz.html

Of course, there’s not just one cafe to do business - we home-based business operators have a few faithfuls at our fingertips.

I went to Nacional in Middle Park the day after reading Rachel’s piece. Equipped with my notepad to write my To Do list for the week – I sat two tables away from a young woman tapping away at her laptop, mobile phone pinned to her ear, engaged in conversations the bulk of the time I was there. I wondered what on earth she did to be constantly on the phone for a full hour. In between calls, she would casually pick up her piece of vegemite toast, take a bite, sip on her latte, then back to tap, tap on the laptop.

I smiled to myself and it prompted me to send a “you’re very much on trend” email to Rachel Wells. A week later I was back at Nacional and so was the young woman. It was a slice of déjà vue.

You can’t keep a good trend down.

Did Facebook form out of unrequited love?

I recently saw the film The Social Network and it’s been playing on me ever since.

According to the film version of events, CEO Mark Zuckerberg created Facebook on the back of a bad breakup.

I can relate to being spurred on to create or do something meaningful after such a heavy emotional hit. Finding that creative space helps lift me out of the doldrums and get me back on track to reassuming my identity as a solo rather than part of a couple. Even if it's to prove this to myself alone.

In The Social Network’s opening scene, we watch as the character Mark Zuckerberg and his girlfriend are talking in a bar. Tension builds in the conversation and finally Mark’s girlfriend has had enough. He clearly doesn’t want her to end the relationship but it’s too late, she wants out and Mark’s left with little choice. He’s been dumped.

And so the story begins and now....we have Facebook.

As the film closes, Mark is on his own, contemplative, and we watch him at his laptop search for a profile name on Facebook. He taps in his ex girlfriend’s name and up pops a picture of a beautiful, young woman. It’s her.

Mark is tentative to sending her a ‘friend request’ but after a moment of hesitation we watch him click ‘send’. Every few moments he refreshes the screen. Is she online? Has she accepted his friend request?

This moment makes my heart swell. It reveals two things that are very real.

1. Money can’t buy love; and
2. It can be excruciatingly hard to halt a yearning heart.

Even for Mark Zuckerberg – the world’s youngest billionaire who arguably by society’s standards has it all. This closing scene suggests to me that he’d happily let it all go to win back the girl money can’t buy.

An untimely death

I remember our time mainly because it hung off one of those significant events where people look back and recall where they were when...

I dated Mati (Mathew) around the time the Twin Towers collapsed. I was living in a single fronted terrace in a one way street in Prahran, one of Melbourne’s trendy inner suburbs. I shared the house with an English flatmate and my two dogs Maggie Charly and Walter.

My flatmate used to while away the evening hours tapping at his computer ‘chatting’ on gay sites. I remember this activity being a source of immense irritation for Mati – he hated the sound of tap, tap, tap so late into the evening and would urge me to say something otherwise he threatened to go home. I never said a word and I can’t remember whether Mati left? Almost 10 years have passed.

My good friend Renato told me Mati died last week. On Valentine’s Day. Mati’s father told Renato today the coroner believed the cause of death was heart attack. There was nothing in his system to suggest suicide (Renato and I automatically assumed this as Mati was only 38 years old).

I’d met Mati through Renato and we dated for a short time before he announced he didn’t want in anymore and ended it. I didn’t love him, but I had grown to like him. So while I wasn’t heartbroken, I was upset and remember crying over it. But that was that, a clean break.

About two months later Mati called me on my mobile. I was shopping in Coles and remember standing in the aisle while Mati asked me whether I wanted to pursue a “casual relationship”. No, I said, I didn’t.

As time marched on I saw Mati on and off through Renato. He befriended me on Facebook not so long ago. I remember being proud that I could be civil to an ‘ex’ and put any uneasiness behind us. Especially impressed by my behaviour when Mati was the one to dump me!

Mati was a reformed alcoholic – I hadn’t known him during his drinking days - and while it didn’t seem to bother him me drinking – in the end, it must have as I believe this was the catalyst for him ending the courtship. Mati was in AA and would openly talk about going to meetings. Instead of booze he lent on cigarettes but was to eventually give up smoking. He had conquered two powerful demons.

Only over brunch the day I learned of Mati’s passing my father had asked: “How’s that friend of Renato’s, the one in real estate, do you still hear of him?” “Yes, I answered, he’s fine. Still in real estate, asked me about speed dating on Facebook a few weeks ago.”

It’s funny how these things happen. You talk of someone you rarely mention and then...something like this happens. I called dad to tell him the news as soon as I’d heard it from Renato. It had been so weird I said to dad – we were only talking of him this morning!

Although Mati and I were not close, his untimely death serves as a reminder how fleeting life can be. It also shows me how much I lean on my friends. Renato had invited me to his friend Cameron’s for dinner on Sunday night. Their mutual friend Sami was also there. All of us had met Mati and in sharing our shock at the news, we were providing comfort to eachother. I left dinner feeling buoyed by their company.

The funeral is on Friday and I decided I would not attend. I was not a good friend. But Renato called me today and asked if I would go with him. So I’m going to go – and now more so in my friendship for Renato. I’m sure Mati would understand. Good friends band together.

Attached photo: L- R Mati and Renato (from days gone by).

The lure of the road

It would be fair to say people gravitate to what they know. And nothing really echoes this sentiment more than taking a moment of your childhood and reliving it – or recreating it.

My last boyfriend adored going to his childhood beach house. Still in the family, his parents were living there when we dated, and he and I would track down almost every weekend and stay overnight. We’d swap houses - his parents would stay at his home in Melbourne and we’d move into theirs.

Otherwise reserved, he came alive on return to his childhood playground. He would shed his armoury from the week's corporate battleground and reinvigorate in the tranquility of where he spent a carefree youth. He referred to the beach house as his ‘sanctuary’.

Everyone has a place they feel a strong affinity with and one that is personal to them (I understood his desire to be there and the relationship benefitted from it, but after a few months I began to miss my city weekends; brunching with friends, seeing a play, food shopping at my local market).

But to be fair, his sanctuary was exactly that. His. And mine? Well, I’ve come to realise more - my sanctuary is the road.

Growing up as a kid our family clocked up alot of miles. We lived in Alice Springs for a time and would travel back and forth to Ayers Rock (now Uluru) to show friends the iconic feature Oprah rearranged her itinerary for when Paul Simon counted it “unmissable”.

It took about four hours to reach destination and I remember the feel-good vibes experienced on the journey. Dad would let me play Melissa Etheridge and Toni Childs on the cassette player and he and my brother liked to listen to Dire Straits. We'd stop to eat mum's prepared sandwiches and snack on her home made boiled chocolate cake with chocolate icing and coconut sprinkles. The long open road, the sun beating down, the red desert surrounds.

Perhaps these memories are why my haven is as it is. Certainly they play their part.

Melbourne-based, I’ll regularly drive to Adelaide (my old home town) to visit family and I’ve driven up to Sydney twice to stay with friends this last year. Me and my old dog Walt - the road warriors.

There’s something very special about leaving a place behind and going the distance for another. No-one can get to you during this time, there’s no 'needing to be anywhere', you're only accountable to yourself (except of course the cops!) and there's a camaraderie with the truckies and other drivers. We’re all going someplace but our shared place is the long stretch of road. Where time seems to stand still.

The cheat's guide to living rich

There’s a saying in property, buy the worst house on the best street and you’ll boost your chances of maximising a profit when it comes to resale.

For a few years now I have lived that philosophy, not intentionally and not in property, but when it comes to my friendship circle. It has come to be that among the majority of my good mates, I’m the tired, old shack and they're the renovated mansions.

Of course not everyone I socialise with has oodles of cash, but there are those who do – and this is how I cheat living rich.

Interestingly, the friends who have the beautiful homes and even some with beach houses alongside it, are usually coupled up and (now) with children (reminder: me single, no kids and on a bit of a sea change from the corporate career, which naturally comes with an income dive).

Three sets of friends who live in homes with a resale value of $2million - $3million + also have their kids going to or enrolled in private schools. A private education can be up to $50,000 per annum.

Some buy designer fashion - I don’t need Vogue to see what’s hitting the catwalks. One of my besties is a partner in a law firm and has a penchant for designer clothing (shoes and handbags too – of course). She’ll drop off bundles of clothes for dry-cleaning every Saturday after our yoga class pulling them from the boot of her brand new BMW convertible.

I attended a very swank garden party in Sorrento (beach town next to Portsea which is repeatedly written up as the playground for the rich and famous) in the New Year and was about to put on a pair of Marc Jacobs' sandals (bought on sale from a designer outlet) when my generous friend offered to loan me her Chanel shoes. She had decided to give the Versace dress a miss, opting for slim jeans and tank, and no longer required these shoes to match.

The resulting garden party was an affair to remember. I saw one like it on TV where Kate Winslet and Mick Jagger were on the guest list!

There was the entrepreneurial doctor in Sydney who opened my eyes to what having means, means. He hopped on a plane like you and I would get in a car. A party in Adelaide? No worries, count me in. The AFL Grand Final in Melbourne? Of course – and I’ll book the Hyatt for the night. Derby Day – see you there, the Hyatt again or perhaps the Westin?

He had an uncle who lived in a $10million + property in Mosman with the most glorious views of Balmoral beach, and another family member who had a fabulously, modern apartment at the Docklands in Melbourne and another in Potts Point in Sydney. In the two years we dated, we were quite the jetsetters – across Australia and overseas too. He was ambitious, hardworking, clever and successful. And unabashedly wealthy.

So, I socialise among some richies. I spend time at their beautiful houses (there’s one couple who are building their dream home overlooking Sydney’s middle harbour (the vista from their infinity pool in attached photo), and we joke there will have to be a “Caroline’s quarters” in the laid plans as I visit and stay so often), admire my well-off buddies' luxurious belongings, drive their Mercedes, and marvel at the Sydney Harbour Bridge and Opera House while being whizzed around in their private boat.

It’s all fun and games living the high life through the people I love. As time goes on and the years march past the wrong side of 35 - I think I ought to build a bit of that myself.

Fortunately looking into their world has helped abate any grudges I may otherwise have had about people who have money – the perception they’re the privileged few and all that. I'm grateful for that, as I relax in my shanti shack in one of the best neighbourhoods in Melbourne!