Do you remember your halcyon school days?

In addition to navigating iffy teachers and smelly lunches, was discovering your ‘place’ in the schoolyard pecking order fraught with fear and loathing? Did you aspire to be in the ‘cool’ or ‘sporty’ groups or were you the tough loner that smoked behind the girls’ toilets?

While I am fortunate to be able to look back on my school years without too much eye-rolling, I have no desire for a repeat performance..

Imagine my horror, then, to discover an encore at my child’s primary school!

They were all there… The cool group (with its sad sycophants) whose members choose not to associate with the rest of us for fear of being tarred with our uncool brushes.  The barefooted and planet-saving hippies who sit high in their metaphorical trees and cast aspersions on everyone else’s unearthly approach to life.  The aloof goth-like whingers whose disdain can be felt for kilometres.  Etcetera.  Had these people followed me from previous decades?  The simple answer is YES.

You would have realised by now that I am not referring to my child’s friends but to their parents.  Living proof that our insecurities and prejudices can stay with us for life – limiting our capacity to grow up.

I admit that as a teenager, I battled my own insecurities and these group forces with intimidation and sarcasm. However, many years later and in an attempt at being an adult, I am trying to resist the urge to fall back on my old routine.

This can be difficult when watching a parent change her lifestyle and appearance in a quest to mirror the cool group leader. And almost impossible when being verballed by a hippie who potentially hasn’t grasped the core values behind his argument. Etcetera.

But I keep trying because as a tired, middle-aged woman, I now understand the constant desire that people have to fit in.  To be part of something.  No matter how ridiculous that something may appear to be.

This need drives patriotism, defence forces, religion, gangs, sporting clubs and even those incessant ancestry websites (to name but a few).  We all want to know who we are and what our place in the world looks like.  However, this need often translates to corruption, groupthink, blind faith and loss of individualism: potentially useful for the chosen-few leaders but often terminally mind-numbing for followers.

So, it is not only my job to be kind to the parent ‘gangs’ at my child’s school, I should support those disciples who have enough individualism to move on.

Good luck with that!

I will now dismount my high horse (apologies) and light my symbolic cigarette while I head to the bathroom!

I love to write.

Even dry, corporate reports rock my boat. However, I am concerned that these same corporate documents may have completely removed my creativity!

When I was an impressionable high schooler, I liked nothing more than writing short stories about dubious characters in uber-dubious situations. Some 30 years later, I am struggling to use the word “dubious” properly!

That said, I am determined to embark on a journey to find my writing mojo…

The title of my new blog – Are you write there? – is obviously a play on an Australian saying (meaning “what’s your problem, mate???”). Though, I also think of it as a motivational push into the here and now (rather than my usual lamenting of the past or overstating the future).

First few words written; first step taken.  Hurrah…