Why do the finger nails have to go?

It should have been an OK day but of course that's not how it panned out. I had to leave home very early at 6.30am to ensure I beat the crazy traffic between Mornington and Frankston, and again at the Ringwood end. I still can't fathom how the shortest two distances can take double the time of the longest in the middle. Roll on Peninsula Link... sorry Baxter Township we need to bypass you to get across the sprawling burbs!

The announcement that Melbourne was set to become Australia's largest city by 2030 is scary. All the wonderful grazing pastures nestling between the outer suburbs and the Peninsula and Frankston region is disappearing behind square bland featureless boxes for home buyers, cramped on small allotments with 30 square floor plans! What about building in community spaces? Gardens, parks, playgrounds... let alone bus stops and TRAIN lines. Every bloody house needs at least two cars just to get to and from work and schools... How sustainable is that?

I know the livestock grazing at present contributes methane but surely it is balanced by the actual trees and grasslands?

Well I arrived some 45 minutes early but had I left 15 mintes later that would have been cut by 30 minutes or more. I am amused by these Committee meetings. The things on the Agenda fall under the responsibilities of Admin staff and our Middle level management yet there is a pretext that this is a consultation process. What a joke... it is top down decision-making where policy drives all and the deck chair arrangements are left to the rank and file at the work face. All the committees look good on paper but there is little scope for radical thinking or challenging hierarchical strategic or policy decision-making.

As for students (clients/customers) they are definitely seen as The Problem to be dealt with. They are the ones whose needs and requests require altering and adapting exixting procedures... what a pain. The main focus is how to document the changes and alterations within existing administrative models and recording rather than the pedagogical or equitable application effective education provision... despite the hollow rhetoric about Teaching and Innovation.

Given the various academics and academic group heads have little input, aside from being delegated tasks and deadlines, there is definitely no space for genuine student consultation and upwards information flows. The levels of bureaucracy ensure status quo rules at all times.

The priority is to wrap things up in under 2 hours rather than looking critically at the procedures (and underpinning policy imperatives). It is the worst kind of administrivia I have witnessed in the Higher Education sector over the past 30 years.

Is it any wonder I leave feeling stressed, despairing and my poor finger nails suffer from savage biting attacks? My head is saying "just think of the cash" but my ethics and heart is saying "do something". But what?

Home and of course all my energy is completely sapped. So much for another day of MY work! It takes all my efforts at present to get up, dressed, attend to my meals (and digestion of), my medications, stress levels, and mental health without attempting serious levels of protracted periods of concentration.

It's the whole Maslen's Hierarchy of Needs pyramid again. Worry nightly about the budget, fear the future but focus on the food/shelter/health issues fisrt and foremost. Intrinsic rewards and sense of academic progress/achievement seem so insignificant amongst the daily grind.

Is it any wonder many of us long to escape to the magic of the 'footlights'. Fantasy sure beats reality, hands down.

A sunny day and a daily whinge...

If only I could quote Barry Humphries... but who knows what a BEX is these days? My good lie downs happen for far too many hours overnight recently. I seem to be falling into the sanctuary of sleep and never want to emerge. I guess that locates my mood state still on the negative y-axis ( It is the y-one, the vertical one isn't it?) God, too long since I have done Maths. But hey, I must need this prolonged state of protection still rather than jump into the day firing on all cyclinders.

Today began around 11 after a long session of old-single-white-woman (I like OSWW better than WASP) patting furry cat (no smart arsed comments here people) for hours rather than getting up. Very much reminded of the scene in the Douglas Sirk melodrama All that Heaven Allows, when adult children present recently widowed mother with a television as a suitable companion for her age. ... She preferred the younger gardener (who wouldn't?), Rock Husdon! Nice idea, but gee her gaydar was as off as mine used to be! Ah, Hollywood and fantasy.

But at least I can reassure myself with the fact that the sexy blonde (I call her) young detective in Cold Case goes home alone to her pet cat and has been seen snuggling together in bed... so that old cliche must be losing power, surely?

Anyway, I am as slow to get to the point in type as I was to get up.

Waking in a somewhat fuzzy state (without the aid of a night on the town last night) I successfully managed to merge both April and May in my mind. I rang a dear friend apologising for missing her birthday (yet it would have been today had if it in fact been May), then confused the Anzac Day weekend, and had a total whinge about why I can't go for a walk in the sun (because I would get pissed off with all the tourists doing exactly that). When it was pointed out that Anzac day was in fact a week away I still managed to dredge up the excuse that the buggers would be down to PREPARE their holiday houses, lawns and pantries for their Anzac weekend guest hosting. GRRR.

See I can find a way out of all excercise even when I need it MOST! I am going to YOGA this Tuesday come hell or high water... I need to become addicted to the excercise endorphins.

Next, I have begun with my usual procrastination. First emails, second FB, now this one. These can change in order but always form the basis of my justification that it is now time for a break from the screen! See how good I am at playing games with myself?

So the point of today's blog is to get my mind into gear. I am now playing with ideas from my general whinge session from the phone call to my friend. So many things in my life scream of the words serendipity and convergence. On a good day this is a positive and generative force, on others it is paralysing.

Whereas last week I was grieving for a past (the performing arts and media), today it is for me possibly a way back to normalcy (in the safe grey zone so relax all).

Having felt decidedly disconnected and alienated at Swinburne last Thursday (mostly through some careless humour and everyone trying to not speak about the bleeding obvious... my breakdown) I felt on the outer and decidedly unwelcome back. I was THAT problem person. Didn't even manage a cuppa with the most level headed of all, Sandra. Missed that one very much.

Attending Swinburne was supposed to be my baby steps back. The first day off Medical Certificate. Earlier, that morning I had told the psychiatrist I didn't want another one from the 15th as I had to emerge from my self-imposed exile.(Even should I need to reach for a settling Valium) Oh good call again, CAC, you were supposed to hasten slowly!

Well, at Swinburne suddenly, I have been forced to acknowledge that I (electronically trashed my PhD work... yep all three years worth) completely in a fit of pique (yep Christine you are correct the word rage is far more apt). For me to recover everything will cost around $300 for a software program. The freeware version has brought back MOST of the files, some 52,000 but all in numbered folders 1-670, and inside are files similarly numbered! At least they carry the suffixes .doc, .jpeg, .pdf etc... so I have a small electronic trail to follow but unfortunately not the TIME to do it in my usual hyper-organised obsessive compulsive manner. This stresses me too.

This would be less of a problem had I not been working towards finishing a collaborative journal article for TEXT (now the October edition not April... thanks Jen), and now I am to write a book chapter that I had already trashed late last year just prior to or marking the beginning of total meltdown. I got shitty that my work on this wasn't deemed up to standard so I did a "Mark" ( ;-)and I still love you Mark), and took my whole bat and ball and went home. I removed my chapter from the book submission and my bio. Now my supervisor has asked if I could write it now? Well, yes of course. It is the perfect time to look back and reconstruct a more cohesive piece of text, one that allows for the convergences from my past.

I can look at creativity/deviance, Higher Ed reforms and policy, corporatisation and marketisation of education (Hi, Jane), markets and critical discourse (thanks Janet), and even Branding with Capital 'B' (thanks PR boys) as it all plays out in the Creative Industries discourses. This finds a place for my frustrations as a PhD candidate sitting through middle management level meetings (discussions in camera of course) which allow me insight into Corporate University thinking. I can now bring in and mobilise critically, terms such as strategic, operational, branding, niche marketing and contrast these with terms such as pedagogy, equity, access, innovation, public good, human capital and above all the YARTZ!

My last 30 years may not have been wasted journies down professional cul de sacs after all. Hey guys, perhaps everything old is new again (thanks PA R.I.P.). This is supposed to be 'baby steps' back... heaven help me if I get busy or employed (which is a whole other category of blog/whinge)... let alone the self-esteem blog.

Talk tomorrow.