Category: Daily Life

I’ve been listening to a lot of KISS music lately.. I liked the band when I was still in primary school, mainly because all my school friends were KISS crazy, and also because it got Auntie Bern into a bit of a fluster. God it’s amazing how the band was slated back then as a corrupting influence on youth; there’s an old 60 minutes segment by Ray Martin from 1980 – it was an exposé on how this evil band was making lots of money from its young fans. Well, hello.

I wasn’t serious about KISS when I was a kid but I’ve since learnt that anyone who gets to go to a KISS concert is experiencing the greatest rock and roll band on earth; it may not be an absolute truth, but the experience seems real because the guys in the band believe it and they act it out. So I’m getting a bit of respect for KISS as affirmative thinkers.

Was on Youtube last night listening to a few old KISS tracks and to my happy surprise, discovered a song I used to sing along to as a kid. I didn’t know (or had forgotten) that it was a KISS song, it is called “Talk to Me”, and it is all about a young bloke trying to get a girl he likes to talk to him.

It gave me a nice, warm kind of feeling to know that one of my old favourite songs was by one of my now favourite bands. I guess there is also a bit of irony in this particular choice, given the times that I’ve always had so much difficulty opening up.

I’d be feeling so low I was crying, and H. would be there trying to get me to tell him what was wrong.. “talk to me, Liss just talk to me”; he’d get nowhere most of the time, with me wishing I could disengage from the engulfing tidal wave of emotions. Bloody frustrating!

Even though it probably seemed pointless at the time, I really appreciated H. taking the trouble to try and force me to talk. It was a comfort to me then, that he cared so much, and it’s become one of the treasured memories in my heart that remind me of the special person he is in my life.

Talk to Me
(From KISS Unmasked, 1980)

When I see you girl, you turn my head
You make me dizzy, I get a good vibration
When I look into your big blue eyes
I start to quiver and shake, I get a strange sensation
When you walk by me you strut around
You make me crazy, I get no relaxation

Talk to me, talk to me
All I want is a little conversation
Talk to me, talk to me
All I want is a little conversation, talk to me

People tell me that you run around and that you’re no good
You got a bad reputation
I don’t care what all the people say, you know they talk too much
It’s a fascination
All I wanna do is talk to you and maybe go out
And form some kind of relation

So, talk to me, talk to me
All I want is a little conversation
Talk to me, talk to me
All I want is a little conversation
Talk to me, talk to me, talk to me, talk to me
Why don’t you talk to me?
Come on and talk to me

I just wanna talk to you
Girl, I wish you knew the way I felt
You think I’m silly, that it’s infatuation
So we better get together soon because I need you girl
I can’t stand the frustration

So, talk to me, talk to me
All I want is a little conversation
Talk to me, talk to me
All I want is a little conversation
Talk to me, talk to me
All I want is a little conversation
Talk to me, talk to me, talk to me, talk to me
Why don’t you talk to me?
Come on and talk to me

Talk to me, talk to me, talk to me
(I just wanna talk to you)
Talk to me, talk to me, talk to me
(I just wanna talk to you)
Talk to me, talk to me, talk to me
(I just wanna talk to you)
Talk to me, talk to me, talk to me
(I just wanna talk to you)
Talk to me, talk to me, talk to me

Patiently waiting at the busy deli counter for my number to be called, a couple of people before me had given up waiting, and the number after me jumped the queue. There didn’t seem much point in arguing, so I mentally shrugged and hoped to grab the attention of someone else behind the counter to serve me as soon as they were free.

A nice lady behind the counter saw what had happened and took my order next, so I gave her a big smile. Even though they were so busy, when she handed over my order she took the time to wish me a good day and a merry Christmas. Sometimes patience is its own reward!

This article, Be Assertive by Dr David Horgan, had some good rationale on assertiveness.

The leading principle – ‘don’t be nice all the time, be fair (including to yourself)‘, warns of the anger, resentment and negativity that can build up from being continuously timid and lacking in assertiveness. This is one I know pretty well!

Other principles include:

People cannot read your mind – just because we do nice, thoughtful things for other people does not mean they will think of doing nice, thoughtful things for us! It is unrealistic to expect it. Most people expect that if we want something, we will ask.

They may not like me – because we want other people to like us it is sometimes hard to say ‘no’ to them. By continuously doing favours without asserting our own needs or rights we are letting the world know that it is okay to treat us as a doormat!

Assertiveness is a species protective mechanism – this follows from the principle above; being assertive may not always be pleasant but it does alter other people’s perception of us as a confident and strong person, which leads to being treated differently (hopefully better!).

You do not have to explain – in most situations where we decide to say no to a request, there is no law which says we have to justify our decision. It is simply exercising our own free will! In a tough situation it may be helpful to remember that you do not have to say yes or no immediately!

Do say what you think – if someone is more adamant in their opinion it doesn’t follow that your opinion is any less valid! (unless perhaps if the other person is an expert in the area). It is useful to say something like “I understand your point of view and I will think about it, but I would like you to think about my point of view also”.

Visit number four at the psychology clinic last week, where I’m being shown various techniques to re-train my thought processes from the punishing cycle of self-defeating, emotional reactions.

One of these involves guided meditation and mindfulness exercises like those demonstrated by Jon Kabat-Zinn in the Google workshops. I was guided through another of these last week, in which I closed my eyes and visualised myself sitting on the bank of a stream, watching leaves float downstream away from me. Each leaf represented a distracting thought which I had to let go of as I focused on the stream.

I was also given an exercise called “worry time”. The idea is to distance myself from worrying thoughts during the day by writing them down as they occur, then reviewing the list later on, at a fixed time each day for no longer than 20 or 30 minutes. I don’t always have the time or means to write things down, so it hasn’t been going so well. I tried writing things down for the first time yesterday, on a scrap bit of paper. It didn’t really have the desired effect. But I’ll stick with it for a while and see how it goes.

Got myself a couple of new CDs recently – Kiss (Revenge) and AC/DC (Back in Black). Feel and sound pretty wonderful on my car stereo. A good bit of head banging music is great for getting you into an energetic mood on the way into work, and helps you unwind at the end of the day by taking your mind off everything else.

Rediscovering Kiss has  been a bit of a nostalgia trip for me. I was a kid when the Kiss Army first reached Australia, and like all the other kids I went a bit wild over them. Musically, they are a fun and sexy band and it is great to see they are still going strong thirty years on, with or without the makeup.

In all the rain we’ve been having in the past week I missed taking a photo last week, but here it is in week 7.

All the tomatoes have flowers, some are bearing small green fruits. The capsicum plant has a lot of new little babies, the first capsicum is now bigger than my thumb. The cucumber vines are starting to spill over the side and there are a few baby cucumbers appearing.

Radishes aren’t doing so well, some of them seemed to have burst – maybe too much water.

The lettuce barrow is doing ok, we’ve been eating the odd lettuce and rocket leaf harvested from the plants, some of them don’t look too healthy – mostly the ones planted around the edge. In a few months I might plant something else in the barrow – herbs perhaps.