Virgin Birth and Bus Ticket Wisdom

Spending all day on a computer without a colleague to interrupt me with the stupid  banter that I love and that  bonds humans together is beginning to bug me. First, I really loved being able to get up and make myself a coffee in my bright big kitchen, and not have to crawl around in the annex that was my last workplace kitchen.

But now I question  trading company for space and the privileges of home ownership in a country town. Sometimes I'm not sure that was a good trade.  This comes as another wave hits...Im battling in the surf again. Aghhhhhrrr...splutter!   The other thing I'm finding tough at the moment, is working with sub-contractor designers in Adelaide and having to initiate, initiate, initiate the whole time. I'm feeling a bit out of sight out of mind. I'm only 4 hours away, but to Adelaideans, it's like a world away.  I'm exhausted and need perspective on this business thing. Bring on Christmas. Virgins giving birth and Wotif only had a bloody barn available. Now, there's perspective. I could be in a whole lot more trouble!

I'm going to have to do this better, because I'm spending a lot of time driving projects forward - but that's what my clients are paying me for. I feel like I'm repeating myself - why don't people listen to what I'm saying? I'm not saying it loud/clear/well enough?  Do I really have to be a relentless hounder before shit happens?   I have a feeling I could be a real whip cracker - but when my income is depending on my site being up, and after 3 months it's still in draft stage, I am beginning to get tetchy.

In small business, when you live a long way from others, how do you make your priorities someone elses without being a tyrant or a bitch face hound? Or do I need to be a better bitch-face hound? What is it I'm not communicating? Is it the love? Is it the need? Surely if  a designer says they can do something in a budget and a time frame, and don't, I'm justified in being a little cranky.

Big breath in. Think of the horses I visited today. Im going at a different speed to my surroundings. I need to slow down.  Stay away from the panic button. I'm writing this outside in my backyard under dark clouds, turning pink in the sunset. It's been a wild hot northerly wind coupla days. Im pooped.  I feel like Im walking on that knife edge again, this is taking a lot of energy all this worry...

"Worry is interest paid on trouble before it is due." I love that. Read it on a bus ticket years ago, and its just stuck around, like wisdom does.

Sunshine after Rain

It all started with a massive storm, last week Back Up the Track around Maree way, headed down to Quorn and across the pastoral districts south of here. I sat in the darkness of my kitchen, damp with November humidity, watching the silent electrical lightning display through great looming black clouds outside.

Don't be fooled, this big sky is pretty scary filled with lightning at night 

The wind picked up and was  literally howling and whipping at  the kitchen windows. I scurried around my little house stuffing tea towels under doors keeping out the now heavy rain.  I wanted to feel the wind after a humid sticky day, the chance to open up my home to clear out the hot still air. But the wind refused to come in nicely, it was doing nothing of the sort.

Would the roof stay on? Would the neighbor's roof stay on?! Locally the favourite building material is corrugated iron. The stuff surrounds me and as the storm blew in I imagined sheets of it flying through the air, whipped up into a tornado tunnel ....oh, there goes Dorothy and Toto! Yet, no tornado came.  I was wearing the wrong shoes, clearly.

Since that night, I've been panicky about coping against the reality of natural disasters - will my house be too hot in summer? Will I have enough water in my tanks? Can I afford a new air-conditioner, or should I get insulation? How many jobs do I need to win before I build a veranda?  Should I fill up with cheap petrol here or the next town? Can I live off the contents in my cupboard a little bit longer?Should I get a paid job like normal people? Would life be easier that way? Why am I doing this business thing again?  What would I do if a bush fire came through? Will I get poisoned if something dies in my tank?  I was beginning to feel very, very small.

I need a New Girls' Guide to Country Living! (will probably write it myself ) My optimism was sky high two weeks ago. And then I fell flat, body tired from driving, of thinking, meeting strangers, explaining my business, on the hunt for jobs, from working without being paid.

Being self employed in a remote town and owing my own home is testing my limits and blowing old ones away. Emotionally, financially, psychologically, physically, creatively.

This plant is called Pimpin Mallee and he's a treat to watch growing slowly, next to the compost and the rubble. 

My conversations with others are better,  slower, more paced and more present. Humour is everywhere.  I'm enjoying others' company more, given I spend so much time at home on my own, which apart from the odd occasson I don't mind. I'm laughing more,  I'm happy when I go to sleep, and I'm happy to wake up. I'm happy to leave the house and I'm happy to return home. I'm happy to have a beer at 2pm and wear the consequences.

It's this happiness that doesn't delete the worry, but is an old familiar feeling that keeps me here. I wonder if I leave it will come with me too?

Chilli Mango Muffin Madness

One batch of chili mango muffins later,  Sue Lee can say she has landed a monty!

I won my first 'big job' today and I'm stoked!! And just had to post this, because now business is up and running after 4 weeks of marketing, wondering, doubting,committing, recommitting, applying for night-fill at Coles,  I have landed a retainer job for 6 months which means I can basically pay for my mortgage and eat. Woo-hoo!

The week has progressed nicely. One feels as though the proverbial 'rollercoater' has been workshopped, oiled, wiped down and set back on track to resume her hurly burly way, with full-bellied passengers ready and up for the ride.

Last weekend, to sooth doubting business nerves, I channelled Martha Stewart and baked my little fingers off. When I realised I had more cake  in my house than I can actually eat, I packed up chili muffins with the idea of feeding the entire staff at the Whyalla Regional Economic Development Board on our first date. I drove  104 kilometres on a warm spring morning to deliver them with my own special brand.  Chili mango muffins = marketing 101: "People do business with people they like". Major suck-up? You bet.

Turn these over and you get chilli mango syrup on the bottom,  mmm...they're the business!

But,  in the rush to get out of my car on time I chickened out. I had a great meeting anyway, discussing sheep, workshop ideas and failing supermarkets in Wilmington...and drove to my next meeting happily eating warmed-in-the-car muffins, all  70 kilometres back to Port Augusta. This, took me past the delightfully named Iron Knob turnoff  (I think I know him, he was a steely bastard.... tee-hee) that just gives so much childish pleasure for new locals.... plus the rather speccie twin tank graffiti exhibition documenting the winning local footy teams over the  past decade. Its like Melbourne's Laneways graffiti meets footy bogan culture  on a grand public scale.

With childish pleasure I wonder at the small but endlessly amusing things that human beings do for entertainment in regional Australia.

Re-entry in to a regional town is a pretty nice thing if you haven't burned any bridges.  As a past resident in Port Augusta, I have less nerves and more comfort about where I am and who I'm talking to than I did 3 years ago - the difference to me is massive. People say after the first introduction at the squash club....  "So...why are you back? " Coming back is unusual and locals are quite shocked I've actually returned. The toughness new people face coming to town is the years of stamina locals build to being left over and over again, the waves washing over the glass that breaks down to sand, eventually.

I'm a bit in awe of locals because underneath is really the softest, warmest  and most accepting side of people who are willing to do it tough and looking for a different quality out of life than sheer modern facades, doorbells that chime Australian Idol Hitz and 'look at me I'm 24 and in love with nothing' attitude.

Picture Port Augusta Squash Club - fans whirring the air above, heat rising off the sweating players, balls slamming and scores being yelled out over the noise. People leaning over the railings, clustered around the action.
"So, Sue, are you around for awhile?"
 "Yes! I have no plans to be anywhere else, really..."
"That's the best way to be!"
Smiles all round.  Simple pleasures. I'm back on the squash team, just like that, a regular spot.  Two games of squash won 3-0. Sue Lee is back on track.

I'm being treated like a local, except I've forgotten street names, the cousin of so-and-so, or that you are actually a grandmother not the aunt.  Jeez - where's a chili mango muffin when you need it?