I believe that the reason women feel so pressured to find a mate is that they want to have children. If women had the same freedom over their genetics that males have – ie. if we could give life to healthy children in our 50s, 60s, and 70s, we would all be a lot more relaxed.

Animals have this issue solved because they don’t believe in monogamy. With the exception of a tiny species of tapeworm, no animal on earth has a perfect track record for monogamy. They don’t believe that they have to “mate for life”. This then means that they can have babies whenever they feel like it. They don’t have to first wait for Mr. Right.

But for humans this is generally not so. There is nothing wrong, of course, with wanting to wait until marriage to have children (rather, this is quite commendable!) but it also doesn’t mean that the ticking clock which over time begins to feel more like a ticking time bomb needs to push you to the point of total desperation and freak out. As I explained in my previous blog, doing that will only serve to push your intention even further away.

As single women I believe it is our duty to focus our energy on our passions and interests – even in the times when that ticking time bomb is making us want to prowl the town and drag home a man like a limp piece of meat. Female animals understand this. They never worry about being attractive or luring in a mate. They simply enjoy their lives, do their thing, and if they so desire – choose from the many males vying for their attention. They understand that spending your time indulging in your passions and interests rather than chasing after guys makes you more alluring to them, anyway. After all, nothing is more of a turn off than a desperate, clingy woman who has nothing going for herself.

Doing things you enjoy also puts you in situations where you are more likely to meet men! So many us (including my former self) put so much attention on the one particular guy that we think is “the one” that everything else in our life becomes a blur. We then spend our free time at home waiting by the phone, checking our Facebook page obsessively, and not going out and doing things we love .. essentially, by obsessing over a guy (and usually anyone you are obsessing over is not worth obsessing over), we take ourselves away from opportunities where we could actually meet someone who is good for us!

And let me say, too, that when I say “going out and doing things we love” I am NOT talking about going to night clubs. It’s fine to go to them if you enjoy them but don’t go to them to “pick up” or “hook up.” More than likely the kind of guy you can pick up in a club is not the type of guy you are going to want to get into a long term relationship with. The real gems will be met in non-pick up locations like photography courses, hiking groups, university programs, exercise classes, etc. The right man will have similar interests to you and so it only makes sense that you would meet him while indulging in those interests.

* Note: I use the words “men” and “guys” deliberately here. I believe there is a very big difference between a “man” and a “guy”. A man is what you want. A guy is what you think you want.

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I am convinced that the vast majority of single women approach dating the wrong way. They fight against nature and it puts men off.

I know this because for years I was doing it the wrong way. I approached the dating world the way I approached my professional life. If there was something I wanted (or in this case, someone I wanted) I would analyse the situation (read: obsess), come up with an action plan, be persistent in carrying out that action plan, and not stop until I was successful – or else completely humiliated. And I know for certain that this strategy is a common one. In the job market this tact can get you long way but in the dating world you just come out looking like a stalker.

You then start down a dangerous path of self-doubt, self-criticism, and believing that there is something very seriously wrong with you.

Well I am here to tell you that there isn’t. There absolutely isn’t. The problem is simply that males of all species are programmed a certain way and you need to approach them in a way that is consistent with their nature.

In the natural world, the trend by and large is for males to pursue and females to choose.

When I explain this theory to men they almost always say “duh” but when I explain it to women they very often become offended. And I can understand this because it does seem offensive in a way. If I tell a woman that it is not her place to pursue it’s as if I’m saying that men can do whatever they want but women just have to sit around passively with a “come hither” look on their face. And why should this be so? After all, in this day and age women are equal to men in every way so why should courtship be any different? Why shouldn’t a woman be able to go pursue a man in the way that a man can pursue a woman?

Well let me first say that you can. Of course you can .. but I have come to believe that it is counterproductive. In fact I beleive that a woman is most powerful, most liberated, when she flat out refuses to pursue a mate. The female animals of our world would agree with me here. They understand that they are desirable to males simply as a virtue of their gender. Sure, if they are in the mood they’ll dab on a little purfume – pheramones – to signal to the males that they are interested (it always helps, after all, to give a little green light) but never wouldn’t they be caught dead prancing around in front of a guy trying to get his attention.

You find in animals that females are wildly pursued by the males – to the point where some have had to evolve elaborate defenses against them. And they get all this attention without even having to try. And the aren’t even that good looking! Most of the time they are relatively drab, far less decorated than their flamboyant counterparts. If they were human they would balk at the idea of wearing makeup or high heels or colourful clothing* because they would see no purpose in being attractive. To them, males are the ones responsible for this. They are the ones that must attract, lure in, dance for, and fight off the competition in order to win a mate. Females mustn’t worry about any of this. A Female need only sit back, relax, and choose amongst the many males vying for her attention.

And this, by the way, is why playing hard to get actually works!

By playing hard to get you are refusing to pursue and forcing men into their natural, biological, primal states. Wombats have this system down pat. They completely refuse to mate with any male who doesn’t go to extreme lengths to chase them (remind me to write a blog soon about the wombat archetype. It’s a fascinating one).

But my message here is not to tell you to play hard to get. I simply want to drill in you the understanding that there is absolutely no need as women for us to think that we have to be perfect, be attractive, or come up with strategies and sneaky little schemes to get the attention of men. We are deserving of it and capable of receiving it simply by being ourselves.

Now this starts to become a bit more challenging when it comes to one major thing – our biological clocks (click to continue).

* Note: Please don’t believe that if you enjoy wearing bright colours and makeup that you are sabotaging your chances of finding a partner .. it’s fine so long as you are doing it for yourself. You do start to get into trouble, though, if you are doing it to be attractive to men.

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The main excuse that people use to ignore the voice of their dreams is that they are “too busy”.

There is a famous life coach named Cheryl Richarson who talks about how so many people (and women in particular) don’t take care of themselves or pursue their dreams because they are so busy putting their families first. She talks about how women are adamant that “their kids come first” but then she will ask them if they think that they would have had a happier childhood if their mother had taken better care of herself and pursued some of her indivudual interests. Every time she asks this the people answer with a very confident “yes!”. So we truly have no excuse.

Taking practical action to pursue your dreams will make you a happier person and therefore a better spouse and parent.

But how do you go about pursuing your dreams? Well .. in the words of Nike you “just do it”. YOU JUST DO IT!

If you want to move – just do it. If you want to pay off your credit cards, just do it. If you want to write a novel – just do it. If you want to lose 20 pounds – just do it. If you want to learn to ride a motorcycle, just do it. If you want to get a phd in molecular biology, JUST DO IT!

JUST FREAKING DO IT!!!! Stop talking about it, stop making excuses for why you aren’t doing it or why you can’t do it, and just do it already!

Because if you don’t do it, it will eat away at you later and you’ll become jealous and resentful of the people who DID do it.

And let me just say that this doesn’t mean being irresponsible. It simply means taking serious action in your life and not sitting passively by letting life live you. The famous motivatorAnthony Robbins encourages people to create a massive action plan (a MAP) for your dream by figuring out what you want to do and then taking massive action toward it. Jon Acuff talks about how to be a responsible quitter – how to transition from your day job to your dream job without destroying your finances and relationships.

So you don’t have to destroy your life to pursue your dream. But if you want it, you do eventually have to get in there and do it.

… because I don’t know about you but I don’t want to wake up at 90 years old and realise I just never got around to living my life.

I read recently that when people are in the final days and weeks of their life one of their biggest regrets is that they lived their life according to other people’s expectations. They had big things they wanted to do but never got around to any of it because they were too busy keeping up with the whole marraige – baby – house – vacation – retirement – gardening timeline that society presses onto us all.

Cinderella taught us that “a dream is a wish your heart makes” and while this is very sweet she unfortunately reflects the way our culture views dreaming. We’ve come to believe that dreams are the stuff of fairy tales. They’re not practical and they’re not realistic – a t least not for any one over the age of 6.

When we’re kids it’s fine to dream – it’s encouraged. But not for very long. When I was 6 I told my parents that I wanted to be a writer. With the best of intentions they told me that though that was a very nice idea it wasn’t realistic because writers don’t make any money. This annoyed me because I knew it wasn’t true. I knew my favourite writer, Roald Dahl, wasn’t secretly working at the 7-11 to make ends meet and so I knew it didn’t have to be true for me. But I was one of the lucky ones – I was stubborn. Many kids would have given up right then and there.

Did you know that if you ask a class of kindergarteners how many of them are artists, almost every one of them will raise their hand? It’s wonderful! But then if you ask the same question to a class of sixth graders, only a few hands go up – and they go up sheepishly. Already at the tender age of 12, we believe that it is unpractical – embarrassing – to be passionate about something creative.

And this of course gets worse and worse the older we get. Our culture does not embrace dreamers. We are looked at as flighty and irresponsible – not as anyone who could make a difference in the world or – heaven forbid – be successful!

Many people claim that they do not have a dream. They say they don’t know what they want to do with their lives and to that I say “bullshit!” We always know what we want to do. Our dreams are always speaking to us but we tend to talk so loudly over the top of them that often we cannot hear them.

Our dreams are the things we say we’d do if we weren’t married, or didn’t have kids, or didn’t have a mortgage, or weren’t so busy, or … They are the things we make excuses for not doing. They are the things we have always thought we’d be good at and the things we’ve always had a geeky interest in. And we don’t have just one dream in our life, we have many. We have some that stay with us a short while and others that stay with us for years – it’s those ones that stay with us for years (and then decades) that we’d be foolish to ignore.

We all have dreams but unfortunately we also all have excuses.

I was totally inspired this evening by an article my friend Stacey sent me about eco-homes.

The article talks about how in a lot of ways “sustainable” homes are not that at all because despite the fact that they might have grey water recycling toilets, all the materials and labour has to be trucked in. Buying a simple, modest home where you open a window instead of running AC, plant a veggie garden instead of going to the super market, and use good old fashioned cow poop on the garden instead of chemical fertiliser is likely to be just as sustainable of a lifestyle as what any snobbish “eco-home” can offer.

It reminded me of the line in the flick “Baby Mama” where Tina Fey asks Amy Poehler why she doesn’t eat organic food and she says “that stuff is just for rich people who hate themselves”. That line always cracks me up because in a lot of ways, she’s right. Organic foods and “green” products have become elitist and pretentious!

For the record I believe that the philosophy behind the green movement is awesome and I’m all for it. I buy as much organic stuff as possible (including all my cleaning products and makeup) BUT I really believe that the “green” homes, the “green” cars, and the fucking $7 “green” carrots just make the average person feel like living life in a sustainable way is out of reach for them.

And when the whole Green movement isn’t elitist it is really hippy, right? Well I don’t know, anymore actually, because I always have associated hippies with being broke and there’s no way you can be broke and afford the crap these eco-pushers are selling.

Have you ever been to a “co-op”? You’d think they’d be cheap-as because everyone who goes there is either a uni student or a dread-locked, bare-footed 22 year old BUT A JAR OF PEANUT BUTTER COSTS LIKE ELEVEN DOLLARS!! Honestly, maybe these kids could afford shoes if they weren’t buying such expensive peanut butter!

Also, have you guys ever seen those “eco-clothing” stores? I’ve wandered into those on occasion to find FIFTY DOLLAR T-SHIRTS!!!! OMG!!!! Seriously, have you people never heard of the SALVATION ARMY? Second hand clothing does not require any extra resources to create, wearing it prevents it from being thrown into a land-fill, and usually it’s been sourced locally. PLUS IT COSTS LIKE THREE DOLLARS! Granted, a lot of people (myself included) have an aversion to second hand clothing because a lot of it is ugly but I’ll be the first to admit that we all need to give it a try. It’s just a matter of wading through the crap to find the kick-ass vintage treasures. I’m going to plan a thrift store adventure soon. I’ll post some pictures here for you guys when I do.

OK this post is getting a lot more ranty than I had planned but honestly, this whole subject makes me angry because I really think that we should be promoting the cheap stuff that people can do to live more sustainably instead of raising the “green standard” to a level where it is unrealistic for the average household.

Here are some of my ideas for alternatives to elitist, green snobbery:

You don’t need an “eco-home” – you need a fucking small house that you don’t pollute with nasty chemicals (or a yurt if you can stand to be that awesome).

You don’t need a Prius – you need a fucking bike! (click here for an awesome set of baskets for carrying your groceries on your bike)

You don’t need $7 carrots – you need a fucking veggie garden!

You don’t need organic free-range beef – you need to become a fucking vegetarian! (or at least cut out as much meat from your diet as you possibly can and then buy the free range, ethical stuff.)

You don’t need $10 free range eggs – you need a fucking chicken! (haha)

OK I better stop before I get too carried away but honestly, if you want to live sustainably just go visit your grandma and ask her what life was like when she was growing up .. and then just go do that. It’s really that simple.

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This is going to be a fun blog to write, I can tell already.

Some of you know that I have put myself on the Dave Ramsey personal finance plan. I’m having a great time with it and two of my old friends from high school are doing it, too, so it’s been cool to have some support in those people. The plan takes you through a set of seven “baby steps” where you essentially pay off all of your debts, build an emergency fund, and learn how to live your life without credit cards, loans, or finance plans. While you are in the early stages of the plan, you are encouraged to do everything you can to increase your income (taking on over time or a second job) and decrease your spending.

To decrease my spending I have come to appreciate SO MUCH all the free things in life like the radio, the library, free podcasts, and hand holding (aww).

Another thing that I’m learning to love is thrift stores! I still have a slight aversion to buying clothes at thrift stores although I’m starting to get over that. I’ve always, though, been really into them when it comes to furniture (not couches – yuck – but old wooden hutches, book cases, etc). Every single piece of hard furniture that I own was either given to me or purchased at a thrift store – and I have some killer pieces! I’m also really into buying old kitchen stuff from thrift stores – casserole dishes, teapots, china, wine glasses, etc.

I really like the look of sexy, modern pieces mixed with really old, interesting pieces. There is something sort of sterile about a house (or wardrobe) made up completely of brand new stuff. And similarly, someone who hasn’t bought a new item since 1974 is just weird. I think you need a mix.

Also, I have been gifted some unwanted cosmetics/bath goods and clothes, lately (thanks Shaz and Lesh!) and that has been just awesome. If I didn’t constantly throw stuff out (and therefore had stuff I didn’t want) I would throw a clothes swap with my friends. It’d be fun to put on a chick flick, order a pizza, and have everyone throw their old frocks and purses and things in a pile for people to try on.

It all got me thinking – the environmental impact of keeping up with the Jonses’ .. or Kardashians, for that matter – is just huge!

All the new stuff we buy costs energy and resources to make and then has to be packaged in disposable plastic crap, and shipped in big, dirty trucks around the country or world to get to us. Actually, there are so many more costly, energy-zapping, resource-squelching steps than just that. Most things are manufactured in one area (with all the supplies similarly manufactured and trucked into that area) and then shipped somewhere else for labeling, then shipped somewhere else for packaging, then shipped to a storage warehouse, then eventually shipped to a store where you will buy it and then throw it away five minutes later.

OMG we are wasteful!

Imagine what the environmental impact would be if we all acquired 20% of our possessions from “second hand” sources. It’d be massive! I know, I know .. the word “second hand” sucks! I cringe at it myself at but hey, “vintage” is second hand, right! “Antique” is second hand! It can be cool.

So .. my point, what is my point? Ah yes. Free community resources and cheap, used stuff is awesome! It not only helps you get your finances under control but it makes a huge positive environmental impact, too. This probably seems obvious to most of you but I think we could all do with bringing less new crap into our homes.

Most of my vintage furniture is in storage at the moment (waiting to move to bring them out again) but here are a few of my favorite thrift store finds: my “shoe rack” (a wine rack), my “bud vase” (a beaker), and some of my dishes.

*I have no idea why these pictures are showing up as squished together squares but you get the idea

Hiya folks!

A recent trip to Floraide in Canberra inspired this blog. Video version below, text version below the video.

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Here in Australia we’re moving quickly into Spring and I’ve been noticing people around town feeding bread to ducks and swans.

This is something that is very deeply ingrained in our culture and it’s become an important way people to interacts with wildlife .. and I think that’s important. I never want to discourage people from having meaningful encounters with animals but I just have to tell you that feeding bread to wildlife is just never a good idea.

There’s a few reasons for this.

For one thing, bread is usually full of empty calories and preservatives which can be very harmful to birds. It fills them up and stops them from foraging for their natural foods where they would normally get the vitamins and minerals that they need. As a result, a lot of birds in tourist areas have very brittle bones and are severely malnourished. They can also sometimes become aggressive, demanding food from humans and sometimes they will be killed for this aggressive behaviour.

Also if they have a constant artificial food source they will sometimes stop their natural migrations which is not something we want to see happen.

And most frightening, water birds will sometimes ingest a bunch of bread while on land and then drink some water causing the bread to expand in their throats, suffocating them. And I have actually heard vets speaking of birds whose stomaches have exploded after they ate a bunch of bread and then drank water causing the bread to expand beyond their stomach capacity.

It is similar to the whole situation with pigeons and rice .. it used to be that people would throw rice on newly married couples but when everyone heard that the rice would expand in their stomaches causing the pigeons to die, people started blowing bubbles at weddings instead.

We need a similar culture change to happen with waterbirds and bread so I would suggest that if you really enjoy feeding bread to birds, consider instead feeding them lettuce. Lettuce is a more appropriate food that will not cause the severe damage that bread will but allows you to still have some special intimate time with birds which is so important in this day and age where human society seems to drifting further and further away from nature.

So there you go, guys. No bread – lettuce instead.

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I’ve been going back and forth lately about whether or not I want to write this blog but I suppose I might as well. I watched a wildlife documentary the other night that totally disgusted me. It was about elephants and I wasn’t planning on watching it but I had just been praying to the elephant spirits and then turned on the TV and saw it there so I thought I better – I pay attention to these so called “coincidences.”

The doco was definitely not the sort of thing I would normally watch. Part of the reason I am interested in making wildlife films is that I feel that most of them are just unbearably boring but I don’t think they have to be. This one fit into the general category of programs I would usually find boring except that this one was even worse than usual and I only managed to tune in for about 10 minutes before I had to shut it off, angry and horrified.

The film followed a small community of female elephants and their young. They were struggling through a drought and were desperately trying to make it to a greener area so that they could nourish themselves and provide milk for one of the infants who was near death. They were unsuccessful and the young elephant died.

My first reaction to watching it all unfold was “oh it’s just so horrible that there was nobody around to help these poor animals” and then I realised … hold on a second .. there was a WHOLE FUCKING CAMERA CREW that could have helped!!!! I have met wildlife film makers who have told me about watching animals die but doing nothing because they see it their job to record but not “interfere” with the natural order of things. To them, interfering and intervening are one in the same but to me, they’re not at all.

As I see it, “interfering” is to hinder whereas “intervening” is to help.

As a film maker, I believe it is ok to intervene and that actually, we should. As humans we have “interfered” so much that we have pushed the planet into the fastest, highest rate of species extinction that it has ever seen .. surely it’s time now to “intervene” for the sake of making the difference. And no, the species extinction crisis is not just a “natural cycle” in the world’s history. It has been brought on by large scale habitat loss and the introduction of non-native predators (ie house cats, etc.) to delicate habitats.

When I worked as a professional animal rehabilitator people told me all the time that when a wild animal dies it is just “nature’s way”. 99% of the time, though, the animals I treated were in care because of “human’s way”. They were in dire straights because of the world we have created for them – not because of nature’s cruelty.

I don’t hold anything against the film makers who take a completely hands-off approach and I think that in some situations, this approach is necessary to raise awareness for important issues (for example puppy mills). For the most part, though, I believe that this style of film making is out-dated.

I was thinking as I watched the elephant doco how if it had been a Steve Irwin program he would have been on the phone to elephant shelters figuring out what kind of alternative milks are appropriate for baby elephants. He would have done something. He wouldn’t have just stood passively by and let the animal die for no reason.

Imagine if the situation involved a human. Actually, imagine if your closest friend was in a horrific car accident and there was only one person around but instead of calling an ambulance or administering CPR they just filmed the death and then sold it to a major television network.

I don’t really know what else I want to say about this except that I can promise you that any wildlife program I ever make will take an active approach. Where I can help, I always will.

* photo credit

I attended a compulsory staff training day at my work the other day and it was surprisingly enlightening. It gave me a lot of insight into the work that I do and also into my own personal quality of life. I thought I might share with you a few of my insights.

One of the activities we were asked to do was to write down on note cards the five things that are most important to us in our life. The one thing that I have been focussing most heavily on in the past few months is my upcoming film project and so it was a big surprise to me when I filled out my five cards and realised I hadn’t actually mentioned my film career at all! My list was:

1. Make a positive difference in the lives of animals and people
2. Financial freedom
3. Health and mobility (ability to get around town independently)
4. Healthy relationships with no drama
5. Lots of belly laughs on a regular basis

We then were instructed to turn the cards over and list the things we do in our lives to achieve these things. I put down:

1. My work, wildlife caring, film making
2. Live simply, budget, save
3. Go for walks, do yoga, have a happy spirit
4. Never gossip, forgive people right away
5. ??

I realised at this point two very important things about myself and my life:

1. My film work is merely a means for me to make a difference in the lives of animals and people.
2. I am clearly not having enough fun.

I called up a friend and told her about the day’s insights and we made plans to have some FUN! We’re now planning to get together soon with friends to watch funny movies, go to a water park, and go snorkelling. FUN!

And it has helped me to see that the ultimate goal for my film work isn’t to have a program broadcasted for millions to see – it’s for the film to have an effect on people and make a difference.

Not much else to say about all of this but I did want to mention that if you aren’t 1000% thrilled with your life, it might be worth grabbing five note cards and seeing what you come up with. Let me know how you go!

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Hey guys!

I haven’t done a rant post in a while but lucky for you (or maybe not) I am in a ranty kind of mood today!

I was just thinking about how it has been five years since I decided on a whim to go to Borneo for four months. The people I was going to be volunteering with were willing to give me a free place to live and food so all I needed to pay for was my airfare there and back. After I booked the tickets I only had $600 left in the bank but I went anyway and made the money last that whole time (not too hard in rural, poverty-stricken SE Asia!). I’m pretty proud of my 22 year old self for going. I’m only five years older now but I’m not sure I’d have the balls to do such a big trip again with so little money.

One of the things that stuck with me the most about that trip was that when I came home a lot of my friends and family members said things like “you are so lucky” and “I wish I could do that.” I remember always telling them “you can! Anyone can! They need volunteers! Do you want me to put you in touch with them?” but as soon as I said that they would backtrack. Out came the excuses. They didn’t have the money. They didn’t have the time. They didn’t have this. They didn’t have that. I didn’t have any of those things, either, but I went anyway!

I never judged any of these people, though. We all have our own unique paths that we need to carve out and most people aren’t in a position to just drop everything and run away to Borneo for four months. I get that. But it made me realise that we really are our own biggest obstacle to making our dreams come true.

When we are kids we aren’t afraid to dream big. We dream of being astronauts and ice skaters and all kinds of far-fetched things. I wanted to be a writer. But there comes a time in life where dreaming is discouraged – and that time comes early. A lot of people are expected to pick a profession by the time they finish high school (if they are going to be going into a trade, for instance). Other people are expected to pick out a career before the even hit their 16th birthday! They have to work out which AP classes to take to give them the best chance of getting into pre-law or business. It’s just crazy.

Some people wait it out a little longer. They might go to a four year university and take a couple of years to declare a major. But by what I remember from Uni, people kind of look at you as a lost soul if you do that. And by the time you are in your mid-twenties you are definately meant to have things figured out.

And I think that sucks!!!!!

It’s totally fathomable that the average person alive today will live to be 100. There are so many different things you can do over the course of 100 years. In 100 years you have some time to dream.

It’s so under-rated, though – dreaming. It’s kind of seen as this childish idea .. some unrealistic Disney princess ideal. Grown-ups don’t dream. Grown-ups say things like “It’s called work for a reason” or “you should just take what you’ve got and be happy for it”.

Why???

Why do we believe that our wildest dreams are unattainable? Why do we limit ourselves to the average and mundane? Why do we think we have to stick with a crappy job that we hate? Why don’t we demand something better?

I have always been frustrated by this type of limited thinking. I have always been a dreamer. I know I used to really frighten my family with my big dreams but my dreams are a part of who I am. I wouldn’t be Carly without them. I just can’t imagine working 8+ hours a day for decades on end for some company that I have no real passion for. Whyyyyy would I do this? Seriously?! Why? I see no point to it. And yet so many people recommend it! That’s the part that really blows my mind!

This doesn’t mean, though, that I bludge the system or am in debt or am living in a van down by the river. I’m not. I have a very comfortable life. The difference for me is that I match my dreams with real-world action. This is where the magic happens. In fact I regularly remind myself of the miracle formula.

Intention (ie focussed dreaming) + Action = Miracle

Anything is possible, people. But if you tell yourself that you can’t do something then you can’t. It’s that simple. You are never going to find someone who believes in your dream more than you do. It has to start with you.