I am stressed, and it's making it hard to write, but I promised. So here are some men I happened to see today.
A young man walking up a busy street looking lost, clutching a large handful of fresh mint.
A man in full Woody from Toy Story costume, Woody expression fixed on his face, wandering around the make-up department of John Lewis.
An old man with crazy curly hair, wearing an enormous hunting overcoat and a rhinestone-covered women's watch, standing on the tube apologising to everyone in a tone that was either profuse and well-mannered or straight-up bald-faced sarcasm, and I spent the entire journey trying to work out which.
A man with a baby strapped to his chest, attempting awkwardly to teach her about basic anatomy. He was thrilled when she seemed to understand him, but at the same time clearly perplexed about why such a thing should make him so happy.
A man sitting on the tube as it came into its final destination and continuing to sit as everyone else left. He was asked to move, and did so slowly and with a sigh, like he'd been expecting this but was nevertheless disappointed that it had happened.
(Also, I am one minute late posting this. I wrote it on Wednesday and haven't gone to bed, which makes it still Wednesday by all sensible laws.)
Thursday, 19 March 2015
Tuesday, 17 March 2015
...but the plan
[Note: post is about current emotional state. Post may read as whiny and/or daft]
I went to therapy today. My therapist wrote an agenda for the session on the whiteboard, as he always does, and we started talking. About fifteen minutes before the end of the session I realised that we were still on item two of four and there was no way we were going to get to the other two things today. This is an entirely normal thing to happen, but it stressed the hell out of me. I stopped listening to anything he was saying because I couldn't get past how he wasn't sticking to the plan, dammit. Then I started trying to justify my reactions in my head.
He did this last week as well. With those same two things! One of which I asked to talk about! We are never going to get to those things. Why is he still talking about this thing? We should be done with this thing. Nobody cares about this thing! Why did he spend over half the session on the homework and telling me about the lizard brain again? Why does he even write these agendas if he's not going to stick to them?
This carried on until I got frustrated enough to burst into tears, which of course he asked about, and professional therapist though he might be, I could see that he had absolutely no idea what my problem was. He's usually great at listening to me, but he couldn't understand that I wasn't upset about us not dealing with those specific subjects so much as I was upset about the fact that he said we would. He said.
This afternoon I took a meeting at work. The chair is crap at chairing meetings, so I never expect them to run to the time we set out in advance. But this time, just before discussion of the final item started, someone asked him how long it would take so that he could plan his journey home. "Oh, about fifteen, twenty minutes," said the chair. "We're definitely not going to need the whole half hour." OK, I thought, good. That's a plan now. He obviously knows what needs to be said. In practice, this last point took an hour and a half. Even though he said. Most of it wasn't relevant so I didn't have anything to do except sit there and freak out. I drank an entire decanter of water trying not to cry.
It's ridiculous, and I know it's ridiculous. Being pissed off that he wasted an hour and a half of my life is normal. Freaking out about how that wasn't the plan and why was nobody else bothered about the plan is rather less normal. But I'm doing it all the time. I do it when a friend tells me they'll do something and then don't do it. I do it when my boyfriend and I agree a plan and then don't immediately start doing the planned thing. I do it when the train says it's ready to depart and then fails to depart.
I don't really know what to do about it either. There doesn't seem to be any advice on how to stop this because people don't generally think it's a thing. But it is a thing, and it's in my head and I can't get it out. Gah.
Monday, 16 March 2015
annoying things about my office falling down
- My office is falling down, and I don't consider falling down to be the ideal state for an office I have to work in.
- My office fell down last year as well, but they hastily patched it up and decided it would probably be fine for a couple of hundred people to keep working in it.
- It was discovered that the office was falling down (still falling down, or a whole new falling down, I'm not sure) because they did a refit to allow one of the bigwigs to have a bigger office, a sofa, and a 40-inch TV.
- That refit was over a year in the planning, and everybody decided not to check if the office was falling down, or if any building work would make the office fall down more, until they started drilling into things.
- Immediate evacuation of the falling-down office has been advised, but apparently it's not falling down badly enough for us to not have to work here until they find somewhere else to put us.
- Most of us will probably be moving to the offices of our sponsor department, who have been imposing ever-increasing space restrictions on us but have 50 spare desks just lying around waiting, presumably, for an emergency like this.
- The closest tube to the sponsor office is a scary busy one, and I have a history of losing consciousness (falling down, if you will) on scary busy tubes.
- The powers that be have informed non-London parts of the organisation that the reason for this immediate and unplanned evacuation is that the office (which, may I remind you, is falling down) is "quite expensive".
- It has been suggested to us by mid-level higher-ups that we not make a fuss about the office falling down, because the higher-level higher-ups don't like it when people make a fuss about silly things like offices falling down.
- All the doors to offices and kitchens have been locked and taped up with stripy hazard tape.
- I do not appear to be in possession of any stripy hazard tape.
- We are obligated to fix, but may choose not to return to, the office that's falling down, which annoys me because of a) uncertainty and b) unnecessary effort.
- The idea of buildings falling down in general unnerves me, because inside is where it's safe and I don't like the thought of inside suddenly not being there anymore.
- I am sitting twenty-two floors up, and if the office falls down our fate will be somewhat worse than "exposure to traffic noise and March weather".
- Sitting twenty-two floors up and being told the office is falling down fills me with the need to write unnecessarily dramatic sentences about "fate".
- Thinking about my office falling down while I'm in it is making me eat anxiety chocolate I don't want.
- Seriously, why am I sitting in an office that's been declared "about to fall down"?
- This just happened:
Me: Why are we sitting in an office that's about to fall down?
Manager: Well, I suppose it's not really falling down.
Me: So why are we evacuating?
Manager: Because the building's falling down.
...and I feel at once too smart and not smart enough for this level of logic.
- My office fell down last year as well, but they hastily patched it up and decided it would probably be fine for a couple of hundred people to keep working in it.
- It was discovered that the office was falling down (still falling down, or a whole new falling down, I'm not sure) because they did a refit to allow one of the bigwigs to have a bigger office, a sofa, and a 40-inch TV.
- That refit was over a year in the planning, and everybody decided not to check if the office was falling down, or if any building work would make the office fall down more, until they started drilling into things.
- Immediate evacuation of the falling-down office has been advised, but apparently it's not falling down badly enough for us to not have to work here until they find somewhere else to put us.
- Most of us will probably be moving to the offices of our sponsor department, who have been imposing ever-increasing space restrictions on us but have 50 spare desks just lying around waiting, presumably, for an emergency like this.
- The closest tube to the sponsor office is a scary busy one, and I have a history of losing consciousness (falling down, if you will) on scary busy tubes.
- The powers that be have informed non-London parts of the organisation that the reason for this immediate and unplanned evacuation is that the office (which, may I remind you, is falling down) is "quite expensive".
- It has been suggested to us by mid-level higher-ups that we not make a fuss about the office falling down, because the higher-level higher-ups don't like it when people make a fuss about silly things like offices falling down.
- All the doors to offices and kitchens have been locked and taped up with stripy hazard tape.
- I do not appear to be in possession of any stripy hazard tape.
- We are obligated to fix, but may choose not to return to, the office that's falling down, which annoys me because of a) uncertainty and b) unnecessary effort.
- The idea of buildings falling down in general unnerves me, because inside is where it's safe and I don't like the thought of inside suddenly not being there anymore.
- I am sitting twenty-two floors up, and if the office falls down our fate will be somewhat worse than "exposure to traffic noise and March weather".
- Sitting twenty-two floors up and being told the office is falling down fills me with the need to write unnecessarily dramatic sentences about "fate".
- Thinking about my office falling down while I'm in it is making me eat anxiety chocolate I don't want.
- Seriously, why am I sitting in an office that's been declared "about to fall down"?
- This just happened:
Me: Why are we sitting in an office that's about to fall down?
Manager: Well, I suppose it's not really falling down.
Me: So why are we evacuating?
Manager: Because the building's falling down.
...and I feel at once too smart and not smart enough for this level of logic.
Sunday, 15 March 2015
so far
In the first two and a half months of 2015, I have:
Been to four different countries
Learned to sew
Gone to a therapist
Switched to a different therapist who doesn't tell me to solve my problems by bothering strangers in Tesco
Taken up kickboxing
Made a birthday present
Started seeing an osteopath
Cleared most of the extraneous crap out of my bedroom
Made a couple of hard but sensible decisions
Organised a birthday party
Accidentally found myself in a beginner pole dancing class and been hilariously awful at it
Booked onto an acrobatics course
Booked onto a dressmaking course
Not freaked out on being served a plateful of fish with heads (there is much more to be written about this one)
Been to various dinners, shows, and dances in a variety of company
(It's easy, at the moment, for me to convince myself I'm not doing very much, not being productive enough, not learning enough, letting life pass me by. I'm writing this down to show myself that I've actually done a hell of a lot and really don't need to speed up or try to cram more stuff in. I'm doing OK and don't need to keep endlessly asking more of myself.)
Been to four different countries
Learned to sew
Gone to a therapist
Switched to a different therapist who doesn't tell me to solve my problems by bothering strangers in Tesco
Taken up kickboxing
Made a birthday present
Started seeing an osteopath
Cleared most of the extraneous crap out of my bedroom
Made a couple of hard but sensible decisions
Organised a birthday party
Accidentally found myself in a beginner pole dancing class and been hilariously awful at it
Booked onto an acrobatics course
Booked onto a dressmaking course
Not freaked out on being served a plateful of fish with heads (there is much more to be written about this one)
Been to various dinners, shows, and dances in a variety of company
(It's easy, at the moment, for me to convince myself I'm not doing very much, not being productive enough, not learning enough, letting life pass me by. I'm writing this down to show myself that I've actually done a hell of a lot and really don't need to speed up or try to cram more stuff in. I'm doing OK and don't need to keep endlessly asking more of myself.)
Saturday, 14 March 2015
people watching: mindfulness
The man in front of me stepped off the escalator and approached the ticket barrier. He stopped in front of it, and took a moment. Here he was. Here the ticket barrier was.
He took out his Oyster card. Another moment.
He laid it, with slow, assured precision, on the card reader.
The machine beeped and the gates swung open. He took another moment and nodded to the machine. Not a gesture of thanks; just an acknowledgement that all was as it should be in the world. He strode through, fully satisfied with his experience.
I wanted to be charmed, but mostly I was just irritated that he'd made me fifteen seconds later than I otherwise would have been.
He took out his Oyster card. Another moment.
He laid it, with slow, assured precision, on the card reader.
The machine beeped and the gates swung open. He took another moment and nodded to the machine. Not a gesture of thanks; just an acknowledgement that all was as it should be in the world. He strode through, fully satisfied with his experience.
I wanted to be charmed, but mostly I was just irritated that he'd made me fifteen seconds later than I otherwise would have been.
Friday, 13 March 2015
there is no justice
...THERE'S JUST ME.
Terry Pratchett has died, and I feel like I ought to say something.
Celebrity deaths don't generally have much of an impact on me, even if I liked what they did and what they said. I feel sadness, but it's sadness about death as a concept, sadness because people have lost someone they love. I don't feel sadness for myself, as if I've lost something. The one exception to this was Linda Smith, who I still miss as strongly as though I actually knew her.
But now Terry Pratchett has died. And it kind of hurts. I can't think of anything to say that doesn't sound monumentally dorky, so I'm just going to go ahead and sound monumentally dorky.
Terry Pratchett was my very favourite author, as he is for many people. He occupied that space where so many people loved him that it wasn't considered the thing to write positive reviews. The ones I remember reading all said "oh, this silly little piece of genre fiction is very silly, isn't it? There is absolutely nothing to criticise so I shall praise it with all the condescension I can muster, because despite being excellent, it's not a real book. It's not literature."
Susan hated literature. She'd much prefer to read a good book.
I don't write fantasy. I've tried, and I can cobble together something OK-ish, but it's not what I'm good at. Where Pratchett influenced me most was in my general philosophy of life (I KNOW I KNOW I AM SUCH A DORK I'M SORRY).
I read the Witches books as a teenage baby Wiccan who had read many books on the subject of being a Wiccan and knew that one was supposed to have a large supply of ceremonial tools that one used solely for ritual and spellcasting purposes. I had two or three boxes full of supplies that I'd put together from the lists I'd read; most of it had never been used, but I'd done my research and I knew that this was the way to do things right. Pratchett's Witches were not this kind of witch.
She took the breadknife. It did all the things the other knife could do, plus you could cut bread with it.
Pratchett's Witches changed me. I stopped accumulating stuff and following stupid complicated spells (spell recipes? Spell instructions? There must be a word for this, surely), stopped having weird rules about what could be used for which thing, and after not too long a time stopped calling myself Wiccan entirely. I decided that spirituality and common sense weren't incompatible. I changed my approach to reading Tarot cards and started treating them as a focal point for a problem-solving session.
Cardboard isn't very bright.
I'd spent a lot of time in unhelpful corners of the internet, reading about life and religion and philosophy and things that were right or wrong from the perspective of other inexperienced teenagers and getting thoroughly confused by it all, when I read Carpe Jugulum and had a lightbulb moment.
"And sin, young man, is when you treats other people as things. That's it. That's all sin is."
"Surely there are worse crimes."
"But they starts with thinking of people as things..."
Life made so much more sense after reading that (YES I WAS AM AND SHALL ALWAYS REMAIN A DORK). I am a different person for Pratchett's Witches, and I feel a loss in my life now that the mind which created them has gone.
I met Pratchett once. He signed my book and said something polite. I had a mild freak-out and babbled something about Primark. He nodded patiently and waited for me to get out of the way of the queue. I was touched. And also a dork.
So thank you, Sir Terry, for everything you wrote. You changed me. I hope Death was as you pictured him.
Terry Pratchett has died, and I feel like I ought to say something.
Celebrity deaths don't generally have much of an impact on me, even if I liked what they did and what they said. I feel sadness, but it's sadness about death as a concept, sadness because people have lost someone they love. I don't feel sadness for myself, as if I've lost something. The one exception to this was Linda Smith, who I still miss as strongly as though I actually knew her.
But now Terry Pratchett has died. And it kind of hurts. I can't think of anything to say that doesn't sound monumentally dorky, so I'm just going to go ahead and sound monumentally dorky.
Terry Pratchett was my very favourite author, as he is for many people. He occupied that space where so many people loved him that it wasn't considered the thing to write positive reviews. The ones I remember reading all said "oh, this silly little piece of genre fiction is very silly, isn't it? There is absolutely nothing to criticise so I shall praise it with all the condescension I can muster, because despite being excellent, it's not a real book. It's not literature."
Susan hated literature. She'd much prefer to read a good book.
I don't write fantasy. I've tried, and I can cobble together something OK-ish, but it's not what I'm good at. Where Pratchett influenced me most was in my general philosophy of life (I KNOW I KNOW I AM SUCH A DORK I'M SORRY).
I read the Witches books as a teenage baby Wiccan who had read many books on the subject of being a Wiccan and knew that one was supposed to have a large supply of ceremonial tools that one used solely for ritual and spellcasting purposes. I had two or three boxes full of supplies that I'd put together from the lists I'd read; most of it had never been used, but I'd done my research and I knew that this was the way to do things right. Pratchett's Witches were not this kind of witch.
She took the breadknife. It did all the things the other knife could do, plus you could cut bread with it.
Pratchett's Witches changed me. I stopped accumulating stuff and following stupid complicated spells (spell recipes? Spell instructions? There must be a word for this, surely), stopped having weird rules about what could be used for which thing, and after not too long a time stopped calling myself Wiccan entirely. I decided that spirituality and common sense weren't incompatible. I changed my approach to reading Tarot cards and started treating them as a focal point for a problem-solving session.
Cardboard isn't very bright.
I'd spent a lot of time in unhelpful corners of the internet, reading about life and religion and philosophy and things that were right or wrong from the perspective of other inexperienced teenagers and getting thoroughly confused by it all, when I read Carpe Jugulum and had a lightbulb moment.
"And sin, young man, is when you treats other people as things. That's it. That's all sin is."
"Surely there are worse crimes."
"But they starts with thinking of people as things..."
Life made so much more sense after reading that (YES I WAS AM AND SHALL ALWAYS REMAIN A DORK). I am a different person for Pratchett's Witches, and I feel a loss in my life now that the mind which created them has gone.
I met Pratchett once. He signed my book and said something polite. I had a mild freak-out and babbled something about Primark. He nodded patiently and waited for me to get out of the way of the queue. I was touched. And also a dork.
So thank you, Sir Terry, for everything you wrote. You changed me. I hope Death was as you pictured him.
Thursday, 12 March 2015
seven
I've been struggling to write lately, so in the hope of brute-forcing my way through it, I intend to do a seven-week stretch of daily blogging taking me to the end of April. I am not expecting length or quality of myself, just words on a page to remind myself how words on a page work.
The fact that I haven't been able to write fiction for so long bothers me. All I managed last year was eight straight pages of incidental dialogue, and I had a similar problem the year before. My creative energy is all being channelled into increasingly stupid schemes, imagining a webcomic I have no way of actually drawing because I suck at it, and rewriting I Will Survive to be about whatever the last sentence someone just said to me was (I have landlord I Will Survive, ketchup I Will Survive, Satan's minions I Will Survive. It's getting really hard to do now that I've buried the actual lyrics under all my stupid rewritten versions). I want to have a story this year. Even if it's not all written down, even if the words I write don't quite add up to the story in my head, I want a story. I want characters and a plot and at least one page that doesn't make me want to break the nearest three objects with my head. So I hope that somewhere in the next seven weeks, I'm able to post something I made up. Two sentences, a paragraph, whatever. Just... something.
I will also probably invent some kind of ongoing project or series, in case I get stuck.
The fact that I haven't been able to write fiction for so long bothers me. All I managed last year was eight straight pages of incidental dialogue, and I had a similar problem the year before. My creative energy is all being channelled into increasingly stupid schemes, imagining a webcomic I have no way of actually drawing because I suck at it, and rewriting I Will Survive to be about whatever the last sentence someone just said to me was (I have landlord I Will Survive, ketchup I Will Survive, Satan's minions I Will Survive. It's getting really hard to do now that I've buried the actual lyrics under all my stupid rewritten versions). I want to have a story this year. Even if it's not all written down, even if the words I write don't quite add up to the story in my head, I want a story. I want characters and a plot and at least one page that doesn't make me want to break the nearest three objects with my head. So I hope that somewhere in the next seven weeks, I'm able to post something I made up. Two sentences, a paragraph, whatever. Just... something.
I will also probably invent some kind of ongoing project or series, in case I get stuck.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)