Kelly's World

When I list all the ways I use social media in my life I get the following:

Of course there is blogging etc, but they are the main 4.

Until recently, I didn’t realize how much my usage of those services irritated C. I didn’t see it, but he recounted experiences where we would be chatting, a twitter notification would go off, I would stop talking and check my phone. Or we would just start watching a movie, and I would grab my phone to check in Get Glue (then promptly talk about it on twitter). Or when we would go out to get something to eat and the first thing I would do is grab my phone so I could check in on Foursquare. Or celebrate a goal at the soccer only to get out my phone and immediately tweet my jubilation.

I didn’t see that my time with C wasn’t “quality time” because I was letting my phone, and socia media, get in the way.

Oops.

I know he doesn’t care if I use the services, it’s my timing that causes the issue. It’s the fact that I let it interrupt me, interrupt us. He has asked me to make a more conscious effort of not dropping everything and letting it rule our time together.

I wonder how many other people are in this situation and don’t realize it.

He didn’t voice it until the point where he thought I wouldn’t listen to him unless he tweeted me (he said “unless I twit you”, and I had to hold back from the giggles that threatened to erupt).

To all my friends that are reading this post and use social media, take a look at your own actions. Do you think it’s affecting people more than you realize? Do you make a conscious effort to curb your use of social media around others?

Well, it finally happened.

C and I had our first dispute.

I wouldn’t say fight. It wasn’t all out screaming/yelling/carrying on. In fact, it was quite the opposite. I was quite silent, a few texts were sent, and a few hours later we calmly chatted about it all until it was all sorted.

When my ex would do something that would annoy me, I would be quiet about it. If I chose to raise the point with him and we were in public, all hell would break loose, especially if he had been drinking. The temper would flare, he would carry on and I would get embarrassed. If we were at his sister’s house he wouldn’t hold back, and a few times I could see her looking on in disgust. Thus I learned to shut my mouth, and bring things up in private at a time where no one could see what was going on.

I can see now how unhealthy that was.

So when I found myself quite upset over something C had done, habit dictated that I became quiet. I knew I wasn’t hiding it well (I’m NEVER quiet) and my change in mood was apparent. In my mind, it wasn’t the time or place to pull him aside as there were friends present. I didn’t want him to get upset and I certainly didn’t want to cause a scene. I didn’t want to make things worse. Instead, by being quiet I merely escalated things.

Thus from our first dispute I learned some invaluable things:

• C is so completely different to my ex, and I am constantly forgetting that. I have habits and ways of treating him based on how my ex and I used to interact. I need to stop doing that, and I need to treat C as his own person. It’s a learning process of how we both cope, and I need to make sure that I am always paying attention.
• I have learned that C doesn’t have a temper like my ex, and is certainly more systematic and logic in his method of dealing with incidents without emotion (probably due to his occupation, where he needs to be able to separate emotion from his actions)
• C would much prefer that I pull him aside for a 5min chat so that I can tell him what’s wrong and he can sort it out there and then.
• I am incredibly sensitive sometimes
• I need to just accept apologies and snap out of it
• I need to become more confident in my relationship and myself, and stop being so insecure

At the time that I became offended, C noticed and he apologised, yet I couldn’t snap out of the mood I was in. He didn’t realise this, thought it was all solved and continued to tease. Then a joke later from his friends designed to stir me made me even more upset (they were trying to cheer me up), and his response (while fine in his mind) certainly didn’t help things.

Once we got talking later about the things that had upset us, I found that there was actually a lot more that I had buried that had been on my mind, most likely making me even more sensitive. I voiced my concerns, and was instantly made aware of how much more we both had to learn with regards to communicating to each other. C had taken it for granted that I understood some things, which was completely the opposite to what I had interpreted. While it really highlighted how insecure I was in myself, it also emphasised that C needs to be a little bit more clear.

Despite having a guy that loves me and adores me, I still struggle to accept that, and as such regularly find myself in a position where I am just waiting for him to crush me. It’s unhealthy.

Thus, we both walked away from the experience having learned a great deal about each other. Next time an issue arises I will need to remember the lessons I learned this time around.

This relationship is really making me grow as a person. I am thankful I have the ability to understand I’m not perfect, and to constantly review my actions with a plan on how to improve. I am thankful to be with such an amazing guy.

A while ago some friends and I attended a charity auction night, where my friend bought a night away at a B & B on the Sunshine Coast for only $100 (worth $300). Due to various reasons, she was unfortunately unable to take up the opportunity to go there before the voucher expired, so C and I purchased it from her, and stayed there last week.

It was amazing.

The original plan was that we would go and check in, then I would go fill in for a friend in netball while C settled in and organized dinner. Instead, we arrived and as I sat on the bed I realized my knee was swollen. I instantly got on the phone and got a friend to cover me; I’m slowly learning how to be sensible.

The downside was that I was planning on going home to get my gear for the accommodation before netball, so without my pj’s and work clothes for the next day I would still have to go back out. When I got back, I found that C had organized dinner, run the spa and started a fire in the fireplace. Before he gets too many romance points I should point out I had jokingly asked him to. I never expected he actually would, so he still got points from me as the scene was very romantic to come back to.

After we had dinner (Chinese takeaway by candlelight) we poured ourselves a glass of champagne each, then climbed in the spa. There we sat for nearly 2 hours, just talking and relaxing. It was bliss.

We finally climbed out when we noticed how wrinkly we had become. We put on our supplied bathrobes, laid on top of the king size bed and chatted some more while dozing off and on.

The next morning we awoke, still in our bath robes laying on top of the bed sheets. It had been such a warm night that the sheets really weren’t necessary. We were both well rested but it was still a shame to have to get up so early and go to work, I could have easily stayed there a few more days. Instead, we made ourselves breakfast from the supplied picnic hamper (the muffins were amazing), collected our stuff and reluctantly checked out.

I am going back there again.

If you are ever on the Sunshine Coast, or live on the coast and just want one night away, visit Amore on Buderim. You won’t be disappointed.

Some photos from our stay:

This weekend I decided to take advantage of my post-surgery (still yet to blog, sorry) and detox weary body by chilling out at home. I’ve watched a couple of movies, and today I decided to do a bit of cleaning out of my cupboard.

I’m a little bit of a hoarder in that I like to keep things that hold specific memories for me. In fact, up until today I still had every single letter that had ever been written & passed to me in high school. Either I was popular or we just wrote a heck of a lot, cause there were a LOT of letters there! I took some photos of the funnier ones with pictures so that I could upload them to facebook and share them with the friends that wrote them, and then put them all into a pile.

I did momentarily stop and think about just simply tossing all the letters out, but instead decided I would burn them. I’m a little bit of a pyro, and fire is fun! I’ll do that tonight when it gets a little bit darker and less windy. My housemate is stunned that I’m throwing it out and tried to convince me to hang onto them, but given that in the last 10 years since I graduated I’ve only gone into the box once to see what all the stuff was, I don’t see any point in hanging onto it. I did find a few year books and things in there, which I have kept though. School diaries went straight into the bin, no one wants to be reminded of homework that wasn’t ever done.

What about all of you guys? Have you ever kept anything from high school?

At the start of the year I decided I wanted to host a themed party. Several ideas were formed, but the best and most obvious one was to hold a halloween party. Back in September I posted about planning for the party, and I’m happy to say that with the assistance of my housemates we pulled off one hell of a party. It was fantastic!

All up we had numbers in the vicinity of 50 people of so over the course of the night. It never felt crowded, but it definitely never felt empty either. I was lucky enough to have friends and family visiting from Melbourne and Brisbane, as well as friends close on the coast. C also had some of his mates in attendance, and combined with the number of friends and family of my housemates it was a well attended party.

We didn’t manage to get the smoke machines (the person responsible for it showed up to the party completely forgetting to bring it), but we did have some pretty awesome decorations if I say so myself. We had the bonfire area set up in the backyard complete with jelly wrestling pool (only one man was brave enough to go in though), a back room filled with a sound system, strobe lighting and dance floor, and a garage with a pool table and casual drinking area. We had it all covered!

Of course, the costumes were by far the biggest spectacle, but due to people wishing to remain anonymous I won’t be able to share all of the pictures with you. You’ll just have to trust me that there were some amazing efforts.

Keep reading to see a selection of photos from the night

The back room, and just out of sight to the left was the stereo system and the strobe lighting

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