10:18 a.m. - 2024-03-15
The Smart Girl

It’s been quiet these past days and other than spending hours online and on the phone trying to re-negotiate better deals for several policy renewals and household contracts, I haven’t felt any inclination to visit here.

I waited at home all day yesterday for engineers to visit and install a new fibre optic internet service. They never showed. I only agreed to upgrade because it was much cheaper than the current technology which has been an exemplary service for years and suited me fine. I couldn’t help but feel I have been pushed into a change by corporate decision makers, the unnecessary need to move with the times and not be left behind. Do I really need a 500Mbps internet service when i was able to update D-Land two decades ago on only a 44Kbps dial up service? The specialist adviser seemed to think so and tells me my gaming experience will be amazing. I will be able to download a movie is seconds instead of minutes.

I don’t game or download movies. I play bass and watch DVDs. I’m an analogue man in a digital world, becoming more cynical as the days pass with how our lives are affected when we buy in to consumerism. And it’s the free speech we pay for every week. Politics is all about money and money drives politics.

It’s no wonder we all withdraw into our own worlds to get away from how others try to dictate our lives. We make friendships we hope will be long lasting, we fall in love, maybe get married, and maybe even have families and try to define a life of our own on our own terms. If all that was perfect what wonderful lives we could lead. But it never is and the consequences of trying to keep our own lives and the choices we make on an even keel just makes us forget politicians and corporations are running the show and getting rich in doing so. It’s that annual policy reminder or unnecessary upgrade that only reminds you of how others are controlling us and want our money, the money we make working for them and making them rich in the first place.

Anyhoo, M tells me she got a new promotion and a good raise. It’s her third raise in six months. She said she was amazed how easily her boss offered it to her after she told him she was considering leaving because she is over worked at present. I’ve spoken to her at length recently about working life and how not to get burned out before her thirty’s due to over work.

I think she’s fighting back and realising her worth more and more in this world as a super smart young woman with a promising career ahead of her. At the same time she also has a desire to make and have a good life of her own, and a goal to get married and start a family before her thirties. She knows in herself it's not easy having everything she want's from life but she is determined and why shouldn't she get what she deserves for her effort?

Im so proud of her and I still feel useful when she has life conversations with me. She seems to value our discussions but is smart enough to make her own decisions.

I told her that while re-arranging furniture in the front room while waiting for the internet guy, I had to move my big bookcase and I found a book given to me years ago by my then American girlfriend. We’d been together a year at the time when she gave me a book for that anniversary. It was titled “The Highway Code For Marriage”.

M asked me how old the book was as she wasn’t interested in old fashioned values where a woman did everything in the home and the man only ever washed the car on Sundays. I reassured her it wasn’t that old. It was in fact a Christian outlook on marriage and relationships. I did read it at the time. I was rather freaked out and in hindsight took the gift of that book too literally. I had no intention of getting married a second time back then and remember telling my g/f just that. I may just have pulled the rug from under her feet as she took it badly, and it was one of those relationship killer moments. We never really recovered after that even with the help of that book. It was one of those moments where you realise no book, or amount of talking about stuff, or compromise, or professional intervention can mend what's broken.

M said she will give it a miss for now, she doesn't need a book to stay good with her boo. Smart girl.