I hate my brain

I hate my brain.

I hate it, I hate it, I hate it, I hate it, I hate it.

Is it too much to ask for a working memory that works just enough for me to feed myself?

Some days, all I want from my stupid, idiotic brain is to let me get my food into the fridge. To somehow, just keep track of the fact that this thing that I bought to eat for lunch tomorrow – and am *really* looking forward to eating – is not yet in the fridge.

But my stupid brain is no longer satisfied with forgetting what is in my bag (or that I even have a bag) by the time I get it from the car into the house. Oh, no. It’s now graduated on to letting me forget what’s in it as I unpack it. I successfully get to the fridge. I successfully unpack what I think is everything in the bag. I look at that bag over and over again that night and the next morning and think, “No, I actually remembered – I successfully put my cold stuff in the fridge. I’m sure of it.”

But NO! The thing I most wanted to eat is, in fact, still in the bag. I somehow looked directly at it while taking out the item next to it, and managed to forget it was there. It can be over a day before, I discover it – still in the bag and completely ruined.

And yes, if I just tidied the bag away after I unpacked it, I probably wouldn’t have this problem. Instead I’d have the other problem – the one where I put the item on the bench in my direct line of sight and forget it exists. Or where I find the bag a week later and realise there’s still something in it, even though I swore it was empty when I packed it away.

And this crap just keeps happening. Over and over and over again. All these quirky, “oh, ho ho, Sharon has such a silly memory” stories are funny, until you actually are Sharon and you can’t rely on your brain to let you function.

I can’t rely on my memory. I can’t rely on my perception. I can’t rely on my ability to look in a bag and see what’s there, or look at something I’ve forgotten and remember that I’ve forgotten it. Such a simple thing – to look at something and say “oh, yeah, I needed to do something with that” – that’s all I want, and I don’t have it.

I can’t rely on my brain. For anything. And that’s not funny so much as alarming. I live in constant fear that I’ve forgotten something important (like locking my door or turning something flammable off), and I’m completely incapable of saying “Oh, no, now that I’m thinking about it, I do have a reliable recollection of doing XYZ.” Because I could very well remember doing XYZ, but that doesn’t mean I actually did it.

God, I hate my brain.

Where you lay your head down...

I sometimes wake up in the middle of the night feeling disoriented - it takes me a while to realise or remember where I am.

The weird thing I've noticed about this is that it takes me a shorter time to re-orient myself when I'm sleeping in a "strange" bed to when I'm sleeping in my own. If I'm in a hotel, or visiting family or house sitting, I'll wake up with that "where I am I?" feeling, then almost immediately remember I'm not in my own bed and I'm not supposed to be. "Oh, yeah, I'm in a hotel somewhere."

And I'm good then. I can quite happily get on with sleeping in an unfamiliar bed.

But when I'm in my own bed, in my own house, I still wake up in the middle of the night with the "where am I?" feeling, but it takes a while for the pieces to click into place that I'm where I should expect to be.

I don't know why this is, but it's something that has followed me around for a few years, and from house to house. Wherever it is that is actually "home", that's the place where I take the longest time to realise where I am.

Unfinished Business

Photo by Samet Kurtkus on Unsplash

I think one of the reasons why I love reading books about decluttering, organising and tidying is because I’m a very messy person. Left to my own devises, I’ll just put things down wherever I happen to be at the time with a promise to come back and deal with them “later”.

Of course “later” is a bog of eternal stench from which nothing emerges in good time or in good condition. “Later” is a non-time. A time that simultaneously exists and does not exist, in which nothing has actually happened, but theoretically will happen “soon” (whenever that is), so it’s in a state of flux. Partway between nothing and something – but still, in point of fact, nothing.

Whatever I actually want for myself and my surroundings – whatever drive I have to see orderliness and purposefulness in my world – there seem to be two things that I believe on a cellular level:

1. I’m too tired/busy/distracted to deal with this right now
2. If I put away, I’ll forget to deal with it, but if I leave it where I can see it I’ll surely get to it “soon”.

I drove my poor mother to distraction when I was in high school and university. I was always in the middle of so many things – and, of course, because I was in the middle of them, I couldn’t put them away. They had to stay close at hand so I could easily see them and remember to pick up where I left off.

I thought I was being quite practical. Why put something away when you’re still working on it? Why increase the likelihood that you’d never remember where you got up to if it’s “out of sight and out of mind”?

She wanted to live in a house that seemed tidy, clean and organised. I thought she was an impractical neat freak. I recently stumbled across some photos I took of the living room back when I was a uni student, and I finally understood how much pain I gave her back then. The place looked like every piece of paper I owned was strewn in a careless fashion over every given surface.

There is nothing worse than being forced to live in a space that is beyond your clutter threshold. The teenage/twenty-something me did that to my mother for years.

What I realise now, that I was too full of my own sense of self importance and manifest destiny to realise at the time, is that the mess was both an expression and cause of my own anxiety.

It was an expression of anxiety because I honestly believed I would forget or lose anything that wasn’t directly in front of my face, and I felt overwhelmed by the pressures that were being put on me at the time. I know now that my brain is actually a piece of mouldy Swiss cheese and I couldn’t really keep on top of everything I was asking of myself and everything other people were asking of me (1). Keeping everything I thought I might need in sight was a way to feel some control. I didn’t need to remember this thing, because I could see it. Whatever I couldn’t see was Schrödinger’s cat. Maybe it existed, maybe it didn’t. Maybe I would only remember it existed a week after the due date.

It was also a source of anxiety because I was in the middle of too many things (2). I never had the time or headspace to finish anything (3), so it stayed “out where I could see it” so I’d get back to it. Along with everything else. For a very long time. Looking back on it now, I realise I was surrounding myself with unfinished business.

Everywhere I looked, I saw a half-finished job (4). Many half-finished jobs. Too many half-finished jobs. The books and articles I hadn’t finished reading, the clothes I was going to fold, the dishes I needed to rinse off, the bed I hadn’t made, the hobbies I had started but not progressed, the instruments I should have practiced, the scripts I was supposed to rehearse… every single surface was covered with things I needed to do. Things that I had forgotten (or neglected).

But the more the unfinished jobs piled up (and I could see them piling up – they were in very visible piles all around me) the more I felt too overwhelmed to do anything about them. By keeping all of the unfinished business where I could see it, I was keeping my own failures in view at all times.

Most of the time, I felt impotent. Directionless. When you are surrounded by so many things that require your attention, how do you chose which one to do right now?

And I did what many kids in their teens and twenties (and beyond) do when they feel overwhelmed and unable to deal with their lives right now – I retreated into the things that brought me joy and asked nothing of me. Science fiction, comics, books… I gave myself something else to throw all of my energy (and most of my money) into, so I could avoid dealing with the things that most needed my attention.

The result? I was still surrounded by unfinished business. But now I was also surrounded with all of the things I had bought to distract me from the unfinished business.

Clutter and mess.

I’ve learned, over the years, that making the bed, doing the dishes, folding the clothes and the linen and putting them neatly into the cupboards… these things give me the sense that I’ve done something. At least one job is finished – look, I can see the neatly folded clothes! It’s low hanging fruit that has a big visual impact. Taking 10 minutes to put away things I don’t need right this minute makes me feel less surrounded by things I need to deal with. Maybe it’s a con – but it’s a useful con. It’s getting something done, which is a huge improvement on nothing.

Sure, I’m still surrounded by unfinished business in every single aspect of my life. But some of the jobs I needed to do today have been done, dammit! And most of what I’m drowning under isn’t visible in my home. I can come home to a space that’s actually somewhat calming.

The decluttering and tidying books haven’t cured me. I’m still a mess (in soooo many senses of the word). But every time I read one, I get a little bit of motivation and mojo to get something done. To chip away at the piles. I see less evidence of my unfished business. I feel less overwhelmed by the things I should have done.

They’ve also helped me come to realise that there’s no such thing as “finished once and for all”, which was a big issue for me. If I couldn’t get it all done now, then I’d wait until some magical time in the future when the stars aligned and I could do it all in one fell swoop. If I put all that energy into a big push to get on top of things, and they all got out of hand again, then what was the point of even trying?

But thanks to some of the books about tidying I’ve been reading (I really feel they are the philosophy books of our age), I’ve come to realise there is great value in “little and often”, and that some jobs will need to be done over and over and over again – and thank goodness (as Zen Master Raven would say). Getting stuff done, taking care of stuff and moving stuff from here to there is the stuff of life. So I don’t need to do Everything Once and for All. I just need to do something now.

These things I know: things will get out of hand and start to pile up, and I will do one little job right now and that will make a difference.

(1) I still can’t.

(2) I still am.

(3) I still don’t.

(4) I… still do.

Sharon's Guide to Grumpy People

 I am a naturally Grumpy Person. At certain times of the day, I'm particularly Grumpy. I'm mainly Grumpy when I'm tired, but I'm always tired, so that's a bit of a moot point.

Like most Grumpy People, I pretend to be happy and sociable and "okay with other human beings in my space" for a large portion of the day (sometimes I even fool myself). Like most Grumpy People, I can only keep this up if there are times every day where I don't bother pretending and I just avoid people like the plague. Or like we should avoid the plague.

Without my "people free" time, I just get to a point where the Grumpiness creeps in to every moment of my day and I'm just a complete and utter Grump to all and sundry at all times.

Other human beings have trouble accepting this.* As a Grumpy Person, I can tell you that any other human being in your space (unless they are also Grumpy People - and sometimes even them, if they aren't currently feeling too Grumpy), will try to jolly you out of your Grumpiness or cheer you up.

Please understand that this is the worst thing you can do when faced with a Grumpy Person. Grumpy people are Grumpy precisely because they don't want to engage with other people right now. The Grumpiness is a way to say "go away and leave me alone". Being extra friendly and engaging to a Grumpy Person in the middle of their Grumpy time is a bit like trying to put out a fire by adding gasoline. 

You may think you're doing them some big favour by dropping by and saying "Hey, friend, I just want you to know I'm here for you and I like you!" but Grumpy People genuinely like being alone and not having to think about how they're interacting with you for a moment. If you interrupt their quiet time with rubbish like this, you may as well just knock a delicious piece of chocolate cake out of their hands just as they were about to savour it and expect them to thank you for it.

My Grumpiness stems in part from the fact that I'm always "on" when I'm around other people. Like may folk (Grumpy or otherwise), I have to make an effort to figure out how I should be trying to act and sound in order to make people feel okay about themselves. 

I think about how to make my voice/tone sound light and friendly so people don't think I'm cranky with them. I'm not normally cranky (just Grumpy), but my natural tone seems to come across that way. I make a conscious effort to sound friendly.

I'm trying to remember what I've probably forgotten so people don't feel forgettable. My memory is genuinely problematic, and I literally can't remember things people think I should. I make a conscious effort to at least act like I've remembered everything they thought I should remember if I truly cared about them.

I constantly try to stay focused when I'm listening to people, even though my attention is so poor I struggle to keep track of what I'm saying most of the time (and, yes, I'm well aware of the fact that I fail miserably at this - imagine how much worse it would be if I wasn't struggling to do this).

When you're not a natural "people person", these things all take a heck of a lot of energy. It's a high cognitive load.

And at the same time I'm trying to keep track of all the other things I should be thinking of, paying attention to and remembering - which is damn hard when you think with a limp.

So I have quiet times (and by "quiet" I mean "not engaging in any way with other people"). Times when I can just let my mind wander without thinking about other people and what they want/need from me. Times when I can focus on getting myself ready for facing the world. Times when I can just try to remember to lock the car. Most mornings before work, I don't want to even know you exist, let alone have a conversation with you. 

If I pass you in the street I'll say "Good morning!" but that's because it's an accidental meeting that requires no real thought or engagement on my part, and I don't have to care about you. If I have to talk to you or engage with you for and actual, practical reason (e.g., you need to give me information about where I'm going), I can deal with that. But if I have to acknowledge your existence as a person with feelings, I want nothing to do with it. Or you.

It's harsh, but true. I don't want to think about you. I enjoy not thinking about you for large stretches of the day.

I tried explaining this to someone not too long ago, but they clearly (or perhaps willfully) misunderstood, because they interpreted "I don't want to engage with you or anyone else in the mornings" as "feel free to text me to say hi as long as you don't want me to text back". No. You see, even if you don't expect a reply, you do expect something from me. You expect me to think of you. You expect me to see your name pop up and think positive thoughts about how nice you are for thinking about me. No. NO. FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THINGS HOLY, NO!

The parts of me that accept you as meaning well are not switched on until later in the day. Heck, the parts of me that graciously ignore your intrusion into my headspace don't even switch on until I get to work. You will get nothing from me except annoyance and exasperation (unless you step into my space too often, and then you'll also get "anger" and "lashing out").

This is true of all mornings. If we happen to cross paths, so be it. If you go out of your way to make me aware of your existence for no practical reason, I will despise you for it.

I often need quiet times when I get home, too (and occasionally during the day), but I'm in a slightly better space for dealing with your crap then. Odds are, though, I will be Grumpy - just not the monumental Grump I am in the mornings.

I'm not unique. Pretty much everyone who is Grumpy is just trying to have some "quiet time". If you encounter a person who is Grumpy, be kind and give them that time. And if you have a Grumpy Person in your life, and they have intimated to you that there are certain times when they are particularly Grumpy, please pay close attention and understand that if you keep trying to be "there for them" when they want you "far, far away", they won't thank you for it.

*And also puppies. Puppies also have trouble understanding "quiet time"

Dream Job

Photo by Alexandra Mannius
on Unsplash

 What's the dream job you have when you are already working in your dream job? 

You know, you thought for yourself for years "when I grow up, I want to be a..." or you slogged through who knows how many other jobs trying to work out what was the right career for you, thinking all the time "I really wish I could be..." — and then, somehow, you pulled it off, and actually got the "dream job".

But after a while it just became your day-to-day reality, and you became better acquainted with it's problems and imperfections. Maybe you're over it. Perhaps you still don't mind the job, or perhaps you still love it and fully expect to be here until you retire, but people being what they are, you still wonder if the grass is greener in another pasture. You've been here, done this, and there might be new horizons for you.

When you fantasize about doing a job that's not this job (which you thought would be The One), what do you dream of being?

Being a librarian is my dream job, and sometimes I'm still perfectly happy here, but sometimes (more and more frequently as the years pass) I yearn to be something else, somewhere else. 

I used to think I wanted to own and run a bookshop cafe, but I know too many people who have owned either a bookshop or a cafe, and I know that's just a bucket of pain waiting to smother your hopes and dreams.

So for a little while now, my "dream job" has been groundskeeper.

I just want to mow lawns, weed garden beds, shovel horse poop around the base of plants and generally make things look nice in an estate somewhere. I don't know what kind of a... ah... poop show the job actually is when you do it, but I have a deep yearning to stop looking at a computer all day every day and just take care of things that need taking care of in the outdoors. I want to keep some grounds.

Sometimes I get fancy and think I might want to be an estate manager which, as I understand it, is a bit of a cross between the old Groundskeeper and Housekeeper roles from days of yore (when Grand Estates had a entire team of groundsmen under the groundskeeper and "staff" under the housekeeper). But I'm not sure I'm up for that kind of responsibility. Groundsman is probably more my speed. Let me shovel the poop and be happy.

Has anyone got an estate looking for a poop shoveler?

Are you hurting yourself to punish others?

Photo by Juan Rumimpunu on Unsplash

This is something I noticed I was doing a while ago. I try to do it less these days, but I still catch myself doing it occasionally.

And, of course, once I noticed that I was doing it, I started seeing people all around me doing it too. I could quite clearly see that they were doing this harmful thing to themselves that I had been doing to myself, but I also know from my own experience that there is no point in telling someone that this is what they're doing. This is because we can't be told - we have to notice it for ourselves. 

If someone tried to point out to me that I was hurting myself, I would have come up with a thousand excuses for why that wasn't the case. I would dig my heels in and double down - determined that I was doing the right thing, and refusing to accept any alternative.

I can't tell you that you are doing this (even if I can see that you are), I can only ask an open question in an hypothetical kind of way and hope that you ask yourself this question, and answer yourself honestly in your quiet moments when there's nobody around (so you don't feel you need to save face).

Are you hurting yourself to punish others?

Think about the pain points in your life right now - the ones that involve other people. Your work, your family, your relationships, your interactions with certain businesses or random people on the internet.

Think about the things that are causing you pain, inconvenience or problems. The things that are hampering your ability to do what you want to do or need to do.

Now, ask yourself if these pain points are currently more painful than they would be if you weren't "taking the high ground" - or whatever you want to call it.

Is it possible that you are holding onto a hurt in the hope that the person who is "responsible" for it realises they've done you wrong and feels terrible about it? Could it be that you are making things worse for yourself in the vain hope that someone else tries harder to make it better?

What bridges are you burning to show Them that they should have tried harder to fix those bridges?

What things are you cutting yourself off from because They should have done better, and you're not going to reward their poor behaviour by ignoring it and making a decent fist of things regardless?

You might not notice that you're doing this. It's hard to spot the first time, but the more you notice it the more obvious it becomes. I still catch myself doing something (or rather, not doing something), and in a position where I need to say:

"Okay, yes the company I'm dealing is definitely in the wrong, but I'm not talking to the company, I'm talking to a person who's just trying to do their job, and I'm getting demanding and obnoxious about this, which is not going to put them on my side so they want to help me and fix this."

Or:

"Sharon, you're wallowing in something that person did, but you're the one choosing to hold onto it. You're making this situation untenable, not them."

Or:

"Sharon, you're punishing those people for not offering you what you want by not taking what they are offering, even though it's better than nothing - this hurts you more than it hurts them."

And that's the test. 

You look at the pain points, you look at how you're responding to the pain points and what you're doing about them, and you ask yourself: "is what I'm doing in this situation the thing that's hurting or hindering me?"

Yes, sometimes we need to fight the good fight, stand up for something and/or get the hell out of dodge if it's a bad situation. But before you go off with your guns blazing, make sure you don't shoot yourself in the foot. Take the time to think about whether the way you're going about it is having a negative impact, and see if there's an alternative way to deal with this situation that doesn't result in you setting your own hair on fire (or letting your hair keep burning because that's the course of action you've taken, dammit, and this is how it has to be).

Could you start handling this situation with more... grace? Choose to be the "bigger person" instead of taking the "higher ground"?^(*)

Oh, and please stop assuming that just because you've started something you have to see it through. You can put the fire out if you realise setting it ablaze was a bad move. You can rebuild bridges. You can change your mind and change your tactics.

And, above all, you can say to yourself "I don't have to hold onto this."

Because, here's the thing - life is unbelievably short and we are incredibly fragile. We don't have much time left. How much of it do you want to spend stewing over this? 

And the world is just so much better when you're not adding more negative energy into the mix.

(*) Having said that, I need to point out that "choosing to be the bigger person" isn't really grace - it's a crutch. It's better than "taking the higher ground", but it still nurses a hurt. The better option is to remember that we are all disappointing failures who have hurt or offended other people, cut them off in traffic, or let them down in some other way. If everyone was made to feel "suitably sorry" for what they'd done, we'd all be miserable. We all need and want grace - forgiveness, understanding, mercy. The best way to stop hurting yourself by punishing others is to remember how much grace you hope to be given, and give it to others.

Forcola

 So, here's the way it works:

I say to myself, "Self, get to bed at a reasonable hour tonight." But I'll be listening to an audio book where the characters are rowing across a lagoon in a pupparin that has beautiful hand-carved forcola, and I'm like "I have no idea what any of that is, and I can't picture what they're doing."

So then I find myself staying up half an hour past the time I wanted to be in bed, deep diving into Venetian rowing boats.

And other rowing boats.

And stand up paddle boards.

And open water swimming in rivers.

See, this is why I avoided having any kind of data plan for years.

Sbisolo, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

This particular book that I'm "reading" is a Donna Leon novel, and it's still in that bit where character development is happening before the murder/crime thing kicks in - and I have to admit I'm really enjoying this bit and wishing it would continue without a murder.

The police detective (Commissario Guido Brunetti), spending two weeks on sabbatical, has convinced the caretaker of the country house where he's staying to take him on rowing trips around the lagoon as the caretaker checks on his bee hives on the lagoon's islands. There's a bit of mystery afoot as many of the hives are dying, and they shouldn't be dying off so dramatically like this. Is it varroa mites? Is it sabotage? Is is some sort of chemical pollution?

I know, because I read the blurb on the book, that there's probably going to be a murder (at least a missing person), but I'm enjoying all of the mucking about in boats and the so far non-murdery mystery involving the bees. I want it to be "Brunetti takes a break from rape, murder and corruption to solve a mystery of a different sort". 

Alas, I fear a more typical Brunetti mystery is about to unfold...

Shredder. Or, a chunk of time you're never getting back

This story is really boring and entirely pointless, but I swear every word is true.

I bought a new shredder the other day. I wanted to get one for my garden. Not a garden shredder, mind (I already have one of those), but a paper shredder. It will live in my office and shred paper work.

You see, I have a compost tumbler. I've become somewhat obsessed by it. I never thought I'd become one of those people who evaluate everything in their lives for its compostability, but there you are. I can't see "rubbish" anymore without thinking "I wonder if that will compost?" I now spend hours on "Compost This!" style websites. I have borrowed books about composting from my public library. It's a bit sad, really, but we all need hobbies.

I need more paper in my compost - it's too "greens" heavy and needs more "browns". A balanced compost bin needs a combination of nitrogen (from "greens" - vegetables, grass clippings, egg shells, teabags and the like), and carbon (from "browns" - dry fallen leaves, straw/hay, dry mulch... and shredded paper) in order to do the composting thing. Without a good balance of greens and browns your compost will either be too moist or too dry to break down properly.

There are a lot of different "ratio rules of thumb" out there in terms of how much of each you should have, and I'm just getting into composting, so I'm not going to hitch my wagon to any of them and swear "It must be so!", but I do like the advice that it should look nice and loamy. Observe and interact! If it looks too damp (rather than just "nicely moist"), add browns. If it looks too dry, add greens.

Well, my compost needs more browns. And I need to get rid of my paperwork. Sounds like I need a shredder!

Except I already have a shredder. It's a strip-cut shredder, which means it doesn't shred the paper into small enough pieces for the type of compost tumbler I have.  I had to keep ripping up my shredding by had to make it small enough to go into my compost bin. I found this time consuming, so I wasn't doing it. Instead, I was just growing an ever increasing pile of paperwork that needed shredding. Also, I didn't think it would work for things like newspaper and paper bags, so I didn't even bother trying. Once again, I was ripping it up by hand, and therefore just generating a pile of paper I was "getting around to at some point".

So I thought it was high time I bought myself a shreddier shredder. I did what all good librarians do, and engaged in a spot of research regarding shredders. It turns out there are three types of shredder - strip-cut, cross-cut and micro-cut. Given that some of the work paper and dried leaves does in a compost bin is adding some gaps for air to circulate, it seemed to me that cross-cut was probably going to be more compost friendly than micro-cut, which might compact down too much and require more breaking up (because even though it's in a tumbler, I still find myself having to stir it up regularly - possibly because it's too damp and needs more browns).

As I was learning about "run time", "rest time" and "security level", I came across the statement that strip-cut shredders were "entry level shredders" - which seems like a bizarre idea to me. What the dickens is "entry level shredding"? Is it for people who are thinking of taking up shredding as a hobby, but aren't really sure they want to commit just yet? Would anyone who has actually read about the different security levels of shredding choose a strip-cut shredder over a micro-cut shredder for any reason at all?

And then I remembered two things: a) I bought a strip-cut shredder precisely because it was cheap and I didn't know if I was going to be all that dedicated to shredding (I saw it on special in a Big W and thought "Ooh, a shredder! May as well give it a whirl"), and b) I compost for a hobby, so who am I to judge? Also, I shred for the composting, so I guess I kind of shred for a hobby, too. 

Look at me, leveling up my hobby shredding game!