About Cilosophy

Oh Hey!

Welcome to my blog.

It is one of the many, many things that keeps me out of trouble and off the street.

I am Cilosophy. I am a sassy lass in my early-mid thirties (I am not that comfortable yet with mid thirties so going in between). I had a fairly difficult upbringing, which, from a very early age, made me resolve to live the best and most opportune life I could. I am a continual work in progress toward that goal.

I have worked hard and have a great career, which gives me lots of fulfilment and also pays for holidays.

I have been blogging on and off since 2008. In its first incarnation, it charted my first journey into running. I took up regular running as a way of managing a my first nasty bout of depression. Much of it reflected a lot of angst about my body, and whinging about losing weight. That, I realise in retropect, made for fairly boring reading. There is much more to life.

I got well, I ran a half marathon a year after I started running. I had an ostensibly happy and together life. Then I went off the depression medication and POOF, there it went again.

The second nasty bout of depression was demoralising, but it got me back into running. It also made me take a very good hard look at myself, my relationship with my spouse, and what I really wanted for my future, all done with the help of a good therapist, some good friends and a lot of introspection.

A whole bunch of pennies dropped fairly rapidly and, long story short, my marriage ended. It was a very tough and lonely time. It tested me and my relationships.

I set myself a goal of running the London Marathon, which I did. Training for that gave me focus and stopped me from going feral, as one is wont to do after a big life event. I ran that in April 2012. It is the best thing I ever did.

Not long after that, a burgeoning relationship fell apart and I was well and truly in "OKWHATNOWville". I was a bit of a mess. OK a lot of a mess. I drank too much, ate too much, occasionally behaved in an unbecoming fashion and went on a quite a number of epic-fail dates. I was very lonely and really longing for a relationship, often at the expense of nurturing my own self worth. Intermittently, though, I tried really hard to love myself, first. It was a bit of an empty, cliched phrase to me though.

I remember, about mid last year, I was at a conference in the USA. I had been getting myself fairly drunk each night, then drunk-dialling a man back home who was bad for me. One night, I went out dancing and I had pashed a bloke who was a good 12 years younger than me. In retrospect I was lucky that I didn't do anything else. I went back to my room and had a big old cry. I felt so overwhelmed. All of the loneliness and guilt of the previous year or so came crashing down on me.

At that point, I had a thought, very different to the other ones that were popping out.

I thought "You are worthy".

I got home, got off the internet dating sites (it was getting a bit wearing anyway) and made a conscious decision to give the dating bit a rest. I was so sick of longing for things to be different in my life (which I had done most of my adult life) and set about trying to make the best of how things were. I acknowledged that I was sometimes doing that, and I had to give myself a pat on the back for how far I had come. I booked some nice social events around home, but also planned some soothing nights in with a book and some telly. I cried when I needed to, felt sad when I needed to and I did not feel bad about it.  I nurtured the friendships of those people who were "in my tribe". I went out and booked a trip to Cuba.

The day I booked my trip to Cuba, I went out to a dinner group at a nice restaurant in Melbourne. I had been out with this group before, and had chats with lots of lovely people, but had not expected to meet anybody special. That night, though, one of my fellow diners was a bit of a spunk so I thought I might strike up a conversation with him. I sat down at the table and willed him to sit next to me, which he did. We ate together, and chatted like old mates. We ended up at the designated bar afterwards, but we lost the rest of the group. We had a dance to the live music, and this led to a big case of pash rash. We ended up at a quieter bar where we talked till 3am. We had made plans to catch up about a week later, but having been disappointed many times before, I had steeled myself not to hear from him. The next day, he texted me, and asked me if I wanted to meet earlier. We met the next night, and the date ended the morning later (there was only talking. And kissing). And months later, I am just learning what a relationship can actually be.

I still do a lot of the nice, nurturing, edifying things for myself, though... many of which are written about here.

A lot about clothing, a bit about food, a lot about adventures and a bit of attention to the small things. I don't know what it will pan out to be, as I don't know what will pan out in my life.

And that, though scary, is rather exciting.