Considering what is going through someone else's mind

My family was walking through the city tonight. We thought we would do a bit of Christmas shopping, grab some dinner and then look at the Christmas lights. The lights in Perth are traditionally not a huge deal, but checking them out always reminds you that Christmas is coming, and it's something we like to do together as a family.

While walking through Perth, we came across some people who my wife used to know from her last job. I won't go into the details here because it is not important, but let's just say that her departure from that job was not planned or pleasant, but at least she exited on her terms, and moved on. She chatted with them for a while, asked how the shop where she worked was going and then we headed off to get some dinner.

About 10 minutes later, my wife was starting to get quite short with both me and my two daughters, and within about 5 minutes after that, it was hard to converse with her, because my daughters and I couldn't basically say the right thing when it came to expressing what we felt like for dinner etc.

It would have been easy to react straight back at her, or allow the situation to fester into an argument in the middle of town and ruin the evening for all of us, which to be honest is what nearly happened. As we were ordering dinner, we briefly separated into two groups to get our food. It became clear while I was waiting that this was not my normal, cheerful wife, and that something had happened. The chat with her former associates from her last job had dredged up some very raw emotions that we thought were a thing of the past.

...and as we sat down for dinner, we talked about it, everybody including my daughters expressed their regret, and we got on with enjoying the rest of our family evening.

I think it is important that when we are interacting with others, whether they be our partners, our friends, our customers, our work colleagues or even our enemies/competitors we consider what is going in their minds and take that into account when dealing with their reactions to our statements, expressions and behaviour. This might seem like stating the bleeding obvious, but when we get caught up in the heat of the moment, it is too easy to overlook, and then everyone can end up reacting inappropriately and drive the situation to a very unrewarding conclusion for all concerned.

So the long and the short of this post is that my wife is now relaxing and putting the negative bits of our trip to the city behind her, and concentrating on the positive, enjoyable family time we had with shopping and checking out the Christmas lights.

I am going to make sure I keep an eye on her for the next few days to be comfortable that she is ok.

...and try to remember to be aware of what might be happening in someone's mind when I am caught by surprise by how they react to something I've said or done.

Later.

Nothing like a project to bring a family together

Our family is going through an interesting time at the moment. We decided to go ahead with extensions on our house. We could have taken the easy route, and move out while the construction was underway, but no, that would be too easy, so we opted to save some money and stay.

It's been an interesting experience so far, to say the least. The changes are quite extensive, including tearing down effectively half of the house and then rebuilding it further out to give us a much larger kitchen for my wife and a slightly bigger home theatre for me. The driving force for these changes however were my daughters needing bigger bedrooms as they approach their teenage years. To that end, we are also adding a second storey which will feature a new master bedroom for my wife and myself, so that our eldest daughter can then move into our old master bedroom, and we will then knock down the wall between our two existing daughters' bedrooms, effectively turning them into one double size bedroom for our youngest.

At the end of the construction, it will all look fantastic, and I have no doubt that we will be very happy with our "new" home. The only challenge in the meantime, is that we have had to move everything into half of our original house space, and then live with dust and noise as the other half gets demolished and rebuilt. There is also the problem of keeping comfortable during periods of no roof over some of the area where we are still living, and trying to keep our clothes etc relatively clean. We are also also living without a true kitchen, which has also kept things interesting, but we have put together a very basic camp style kitchen using our outdoor camping stove and a basic tub on a table as a kitchen sink. It's basic, but it works.

We will have to keep living like this for another 2 - 3 months, but I think we will make it, and our family will be stronger for it. There are definitely times when we all want it to stop and get our house back, but at the same time we are taking on the challenges of making do with less, and on the whole enjoying the adventure together.

My daughters are getting a little fed up going to see kitchen fit out stores and lighting shops as we seem to spend most weekends choosing light fittings, and tapware etc for the new kitchen and other new rooms, but even this has brought us closer together as we go out and between all of us have some say in how the new parts of the house will be decorated and fitted out.

...and we are all waiting to reap the rewards when it is finished. My wife in her new open plan kitchen, my daughters in their new larger bedrooms and me in my new home theatre. It has only been a few weeks so far, and I am already missing my 132" screen and projector setup. The television we have is not a bad size, but it is just not quite the same...

Projects like this, taken on as a family, or challenges taken on by a work team from the office can sometimes stretch relationships, but seeing it through and enjoying the final outcome makes it all well worth it.

You never know, but you might also just grow a little more out of the experience as well.

Later.