Today was not earth shattering for this fat little hobbit.  But the earth was certainly shattered in a lot of ways and a lot of places.

Heavy rains made their way from Australia causing closures, floods, and slips.  This shit is just going to keep getting worse kids.  Yet, somehow, so many people just seem to give not a single fuck.  Pains my brain.

My daughter stayed home from school with a sniffle, so I left her with our lovely Lolo (CEO of all things Rame Road related) an I went to the gym with the husband.

We don’t talk much on the way to the gym.  A few bad jokes and some sweary commentary is enough for the ride, as we’re both swimming in our own slightly different but inextricably linked seas of stress and worry.

The chemical weapons coverage from Syria was on Al Jazeera and the children’s limp bodies rolled across the screen on high rotate while I was paying penance from the banana cake I had for breakfast.

I’m so fucking sick and tired and ANGRY about Syria, and North Korea, and Isreal and Palestine, and West Africa, and all of humanity for just fucking continuing to hurt, mame, starve, kill, damage and break this planet and its inhabitants.

So I had a nice sweaty cry and rage ran on the elliptical trainer for a quarter of an hour.

Then I just kind of carried on with my life.

I remembered that I never did write that letter to Murray McCully (foreign affairs minister) about being happy to take in refugees personally at any of the three self contained houses I have to offer for such an endeavour.  I figured the historical lack of upgrading refugee numbers and support programs over the last decade was a pretty sure bet that my thoughts and pleas would fall on deaf ears (or eyes) anyway.

So I headed to the office on the way home.

I wished some very special people a happy birthday on their FB feeds, because I so often forget to, I wanted to try and improve upon that.

I saw my staff briefly and they got out the new display. It was very large.

Then I just sort of bobbed home to work on some school stuff.  I didn’t really get very far with that as recent travel changes became urgent and I haven’t booked from Iceland to Berlin, nor do I currently have any idea how the boys and I will be getting from Paris to Rome to catch our flight home in mid May.  Managed to change all our flights and score a sky couch so I can rush back to my other babies and ignore them all and get stuck back into the work I have been so clearly neglecting lately.

And the moment I wasn’t incredibly “busy” doing something, those pictures of limp children, the same age as my babies came back.  Some of them are dead after waking up alive this morning.  Some of them are fighting for their life, and all of those who will survive will have PTSD that doesn’t even register in the realms of possibility for the super sensitive brain I host in my skull.

But all of this anger, all of this helplessness, all of this emotion still has purpose and value.

I believe that the news of what is happening to the world around us serves to help us to help and learn in better and more productive ways than we ever did or could before.

I believe we need to know some of the news because ignorance is not bliss, ignorance can be incredibly dangerous and divisive.

I believe that my relatively new friend Monica (who is an international environmental and social activist extraordinaire!) was feeling the same way I was at basically the same exact moment today.  She in Costa Rica, I am in Auckland New Zealand.  And I believe that feeling of sadness, grief, dread, anger and helplessness will be fuel for us both to continue the varied work and the varied ways we are trying to make the world a bit more liveable and loved than it is.  This war, violence, climate change, corruption, greed, tyranny shit has got to fucking stop already!  We, as individuals, are each strong enough, smart enough and connected enough to create a future where civilians aren’t gassed to death from a distance on a Tuesday.  I wouldn’t do that, would anyone I know do that?  I suspect not.  So how is it even fucking happening?

Later in the day I bonded with the daughter, she did my hair and make-up and we went out for sushi before a pecha kucha presentation I was due to deliver for the Ecomatters sustainable community.

My friend Ella was there, so that made the evening immediately wonderful, not just bearable, but an actual joy to be in attendance.  She’s an incredibly smart, conscientious lover of the planet and her clever and quirky kids.  I am always shocked that she likes me, because she’s quite far up the food chain of humanity compared to the batshit craziness that is me.  Shocked, but pleased.  She’s a wonderful human.

So Steph jumped at the chance to just hang with her mom, because I know that the kids miss out on me.  Not just because I am busy and fly around the planet (ironically) in an earnest effort to halt climate change.  They miss out on me because the time I am around I am often so exhausted or disengaged that I do not give them the Love or attention that they so richly need and ought to receive from me. I need to work on that.

The presentation was a huge amount of fun.  It was to a small but engaged group.  I was the loudest and most animated by far.  I managed to make it through without dropping a single F bomb and I also steered clear from calling, or even strongly insinuation, that some of the people and corporates we deal with are a sackful of cunts.

What I DID say, however, is that it’s time to put aside our shit, and work together to make things better.  The fact is, this is an election year in New Zealand, and sadly I don’t feel like even a change in government will change things to the degree that we need to see them change.

Shortsighted policy and self serving suits will not reverse climate change or encourage innovation and change to clean up our oceans and our rivers and our lakes.  We all need to get seriously passionate about something socially and or environmentally sustainable and DO THAT FUCKING THING.  There’s so many things that need to be done, if we all did SOMETHING the fear, uncertainty, and bullshit would in theory be kept at bay.  Resources and power and money will need to see a fairly hefty overhaul, but that’s not my job… Right now… My job is quite simply to encourage as many people as humanly possible to buy a fucking electric car and plug it into some clean electric fucking power. For fucks. Sake.

And that’s what I did today.  And I will do similar stuff tomorrow.  And there are at least 58 people who won’t be getting up to do the same tomorrow, and that fucking sucks, so I will just be that extra bit better because my heart hurts for them and their families.