Stank

 I walked through a puddle during a downpour in my gym shoes the other day. My gym shoes, which I not only use to exercise in, I also wear them to and from the climbing gym, where I have (until extremely recently) been changing into the rental shoes and back again, and I'm too lazy to change my socks. So the socks that were in the rental shoes go into my gym shoes in all their sweaty and stinky glory.

I've washed the shoes a few times in the past, and I hit them with tea-tree oil regularly, but they've got a bit of a stank to them that will probably outlast human civilisation.

And then I walked through a massive puddle and soaked them through to the bone (my bones – my feet were well drenched).

And it has been so very humid at the moment, so where I put them to dry was really just a warm cupboard masquerading as my laundry.

Having been wet and warm, they are now the stinkiest shoes in all of Christendom (or so it seems to me, having been in the same car as them on the way to work this morning), and I'm going to wear them tonight.

I'm wondering how to go about apologising to all the other people who will be exposed to the stank.

Pig Face

Carpobrotus sp. - Ice plant,
by Linda De Volder,
CC BY-NC-ND

I am not a terribly competitive person, and I attribute that in a big way to my mother. She was a single parent and I was an only child, so we played a lot of board games with only two people. Most board games that are designed “for 2-X players” are really designed for four people. That seems to be the sweet spot where it takes a good amount of time to play without feeling like it was over too quickly or took too long.

We always just took our time with the games – winning be damned. We played every game until you could no longer play it. There were no more cards to pick up, no more pieces to place, no more matches to make.

Where most people treated board games as a competition, we treated them as a cooperative puzzle, working together to “solve” it as far as it could be solved.

But there were a few games that leant themselves to a bit of competitive argy bargy. Mostly card games like Skip-Bo (which I recently learned was developed from a game called “Spite and Malice”) and the like. In order to play the game and get rid of your cards, you sometimes have to get in the way of the other person getting rid of their cards.

When we were playing these more competitive games, my mother and I came up with comically ludicrous insults to call each other when someone thwarted the other person’s move. My mother’s favourite to use was “pig face”.

What neither of us knew at the time, was that pigface is actually a flower. It’s a native Australian groundcover that does quite well in salty, coastal environments – particularly in northern New South Wales, but around that subtropical area of the coast is its sweet spot. I’m a bit far north, but I’m thinking of buying some for my garden.

It can be so hard to adequately insult people. You never know when you’re accidentally calling them a charming little flower.

Touching base

 My mother has recently started noticing when I touch things to steady myself.

I often have a slight balance issue or a few seconds of dizziness, where I just lilt sideways for a moment. It's usually something that happens a few minutes after I get up and start moving around after sitting down for a while or getting up from lying on the couch.

It's normally something that just lasts a second or two, and I just touch the furniture, or the wall, or lean on the door frame for a moment so I don't fall into it. If I can't touch something, I right myself well enough without any worries in a couple of steps – I don't actually fall – I just find it easier to touch something briefly to regain balance and I move on.

The thing is, I've been doing this for as long as I can remember – at least since I was a teenager – but my mother has only recently started to comment on it, like she's suddenly noticed something that's a new development.

I know why: it's because she's having trouble with her balance now, so she's starting to do it herself, so now she recognises it when she sees it happen. But it's still weird. 

You know, I've been tripping over my own feet, bumping into furniture and knocking against walls and doors for decades. For decades, it has gone without comment. Now, suddenly, she's noticed.

To give this a little extra context, my mother has this thing where she always (*always*) assumes something is wrong. She will watch you like an absolute hawk and analyse every unexplained movement or noise to see if something is wrong – which is an absolute blast if you are the kind of person who fidgets, cracks your joints and makes little humming noises to yourself when you let your mind wander.

I'll probably write a whole 'nother post delving into "I'm a natural fidgeter who pulls random facial expressions when I relax, but I get asked to account for every single one of them when I'm with my mother so I feel like I can never fully relax". But that's another ramble. 

The point is, I've spend literal decades of my life begging my mother to stop asking "what's wrong?" every time I twitch to relieve some muscle stiffness ("what's wrong?" - "Nothing, I'm just stretching." "What's wrong?" - "Nothing, I'm just cracking my fingers." "What's wrong?" - "Nothing, I'm just letting my mind wander." "What's wrong?" - "FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, STOP ASSUMING SOMETHING'S WRONG!") but she's only just started noticing the touching thing.

I get asked "what's wrong?" if I so much as frown slightly (btw., I frown when I'm tired, and I'm always tired), but I've been falling into walls for decades and she's only just noticed?

What did you think was happening before? That I was just a clumsy oaf clown? Can you go back to that, please? It's way better than having someone suddenly ask "are you alright?" all the time (just a variation of "what's wrong?") when I'm just doing something that has been normal for as long as I can remember

Hair

 

Photo by Taylor Smith on Unsplash

I was looking through some photos if misguided haircuts recently... which is pretty much all of them.

All of my haircuts have been misguided.

Well, that's not entirely true. I have two haircuts that don't look completely ludicrous. One is to have my hair so long that all I can do is pull it back and it doesn't look like it's meant to be anything other than the wild locks of a Highland Barbarian. In theory I could braid that and it would look semi-decent, but I have the fine motor skills of a walrus, so I don't really braid. Just a basic plait every now and then.

The other haircut that doesn't look completely ludicrous is a pixie cut – so little hair that no styling is possible and all I can do is throw in some product to spike it up a bit when I'm feeling fancy.

Every other haircut falls prey to the fact that I my hair is, in fact, the Rum Tum Tugger: it will do as it do do and there's no doing anything about it.

I'll think of a haircut that might look pretty cool. I'll go to a hairdresser and they'll say "sure!" and then it will look kind of okay for approximately 2 hours. Then it looks ridiculous.

Once my hair starts getting its bearings, it turns whatever haircut I have (that isn't "wild woman" or "pixie") into "what the hell were you thinking?"

To be honest, I don't think the wild woman or pixie cuts were particularly good either, they were just not as terrible as all the others.

I had the wild woman hair for most of my teens and early twenties, and then cut it shorter in my late twenties and regretted it. Every single iteration of it. Until I hit on the pixie in my thirties, which works until I decide I want to grow it out. Then I have the challenge of trying to force my way through a dozen terrible iterations of my hair until I can get back to wild woman... and I inevitably lose patience and get it all cut back into a pixie again.

The thing is, I've tried to do the thing where I embrace the fact that my hair is always going to be a bit daft, assuming that, if I do it on purpose, it will actually be kind of cool and funky. It never is.

I've had the same approach to my clothes over the years – I don't look particularly good in anything except "uber-corporate", and I find "uber-corporate" clothing impractical and uncomfortable, so I still manage to look like I'm dressed poorly. I tried embracing my "I dress like someone who doesn't know how clothes work" aesthetic to aim for "quirky" and "eclectic". It never looks quirky and eclectic – it just looks like I dress poorly.

No matter how hard I try, it never looks like I did whatever daft thing I'm doing "on purpose" – it just looks like I'm unintentionally unfashionable/untidy/unattractive, which is twice as bad as just being all of those things intentionally because you're bucking the system. I'm not bucking the system, I'm just incapable of making it work... and you can tell.

My hair is super annoying right now, but it's not yet at wild woman stage (and probably never will be), so I can't just pull it back without it looking super silly. I've pulled it back. It looks super silly. I'm going to have to go back to the pixie...

They call me "Bucket"

 That's not even remotely true: no one calls me "Bucket".

But I called myself "Bucket" the other night, which was a bit weird. I think I meant it as an encouraging endearment, as I said something like "Come on, Bucket, you've got this!"

And then I immediately thought, "Bucket? Where the hell did that come from?"

But it's a step up from what I usually call myself, which is "you idiot."

What would a healthy person do?

Photo by Mishaal Zahed
on Unsplash

 It's a question that has been plaguing me since I read Atomic Habits, by James Clear: "What would a healthy person do?"

The idea behind the question is that if you want to be a certain type of person, you should think about the choices that kind of person makes, and make those choices. The "healthy" person isn't making good choices because they are healthy, they are healthy because they are making good choices. Too often we put the cart before the horse and think that changing our lifestyle will make all of the little things fall into place, when really it's putting the little things into place that changes our lifestyle.

Unfortunately, it's not a question that pops into my head before I make decisions. Usually I do something entirely unhealthy, then think "what would a healthy person do?" and realise the answer is "not that."

"What would a healthy person do?"
"Be in bed by 10.00pm"
"What time is it now?
"11.30pm."

"What would a healthy person do?"
"Plan their meals to get a good balance of nutrition"
"What are you eating right now?"
"I don't know - I suppose I should eat something - Oh, look I have toast."

"What would a healthy person do?"
"Leave the office at a reasonable hour and get some exercise."
"What are you doing right now?"
"Sitting at my desk, in the dark, writing a blog post."
"Could you at least move enough to activate the lights?"
"Apparently not."

My problem is, I know what I should do, but I don't listen to me. I only have so much energy in the day and I save that for worrying about disappointing other people. I can disappoint myself - that's okay. I mean, it's not okay - I will absolutely beat myself up and call myself names about this stuff. I mean, seriously - how much better would I feel if I was well rested, ate proper food and went for a walk every day? Miles better. So much happier. But... eh. I'm only hurting myself and I don't care about me any more than I listen to me.

Having said that, maybe I should go for a walk.

When you lose your job without losing your job

 

Photo by Alek Burley on Unsplash

A couple of weeks ago I replied to someone's question on Twitter (about whether jeans are appropriate clothing for librarians) and said that I was a senior librarian and I wear jeans regularly. But then I realised shortly after I posted it that it wasn't true anymore.

I *was* a senior librarian, but now I'm not.

The library I work for restructured, and brought in a new level of management. This had the unexpected (by us, at least) flow on effect of effectively demoting all of the people who were under that new level, only without any change to their official job status.

The senior librarians of old used to be part if the leadership team, but now the leadership team includes people who aren't us. We weren't "dropped" from it, we just weren't included in it when it moved on. We used to be involved in the decision making regarding many aspects of our library services. Now we wait to be told what decisions were made. And if we try to initiate things - like we used to do all the time when we were senior librarians - we're told to cool our jets. Things are happening in discussions that we're not privy to, and we get to hear about it when everyone else does.

It's an odd adjustment to make, because we're all still employed in the same place at the same "level" (pay-wise), so technically we didn't lose our jobs during the restructure...

But we kind of did. 

It's really hit the other two "formerly senior" librarians quite hard, as they not only lost their seniority they also got shifted into a newly developed area. I think they don't quite know what to do with themselves any more. I realised the other day that they're actually grieving, like they would be if they'd lost their jobs. Because they *did* lose their jobs. But, because they still have jobs, they haven't really processed it like that.

I think I've come off more lightly than they did, but I realise that even I've been lashing out a bit. I didn't think I'd struggle to adjust, because I kind of fell into the senior role, but it has been an adjustment, and it's one we didn't really consciously engage in.

My role remained largely the same, only I'm now in a position where all of the things I used to do because I was a senior librarian are now things I'm regularly told to "not worry about". This is especially hard to swallow when I'm trying to involve other people who feel left out in decisions. I have to remember that the decisions aren't mine anymore, so I can't pull anyone else into them.

I'm a little extra powerless, and it's playing on some other feelings of powerlessness that I've been trying to sweep under the carpet.

I'm also trying really hard not to have flashbacks to that day when a stuff up I made as a linesman during a tennis match got all the other linesmen benched. I'm trying not to wonder if I managed to get all of the seniors demoted by something I did (or didn't do).

On one hand, I'm okay with it - I can say "not my circus, not my monkeys" and leave it to the person who does actually have to deal with these matters.

On the other hand, I kind of miss the monkeys.

Why you should thank the robots (and the vacuum cleaners. And the robot vacuum cleaners)

 I have a tendency to thank Chatbots for their help. I also have a tendency to thank water fountains (or coolers, if you're American) for filling my water jug and for automatic doors for opening for me. I don't do this all the time - just when I remember to.

I also tell my lawnmower it's doing a good job, and speak works of encouragement to my my vacuum cleaner when it's having trouble getting around corners (you can do it!). I currently don't have either a robot lawnmower or a robot vacuum cleaner, but I'd probably say even more encouraging things to them if I did.

Why do I do this?

Well, partly because - like all humans - I secretly believe in animism.* We can't help ourselves; there's a reason why it's the oldest "religion" in almost every society on the planet. We see a thing that's a separate and unique thing, and something deep in our hearts wants to assume it has a personality and can hear us when we talk to it.**

It's also partly because I think it fosters a better attitude in myself. It's good for my constitution.

In this day and age where everything "just happens", it's so easy to take things for granted... and it's easy to let that extend to the people who help us as well. 

If you've every been an actual human on a chat service, you'll know that there's a growing trend among the clients who use the service to be very abrupt and curt when they talk to you. It's like they're used to dealing with robots who don't require courtesy, so they're completely out of practice when faced with a human being (if they even know they're dealing with a human being).

I want to be in a position where being courteous and thanking "people" for their help is my default setting, so I "accidentally" treat robots like humans rather than "accidentally" treating humans like robots.

Plus, it's good for your general outlook on life. One of the best things you can do for your mental health is to be grateful. Even if you don't think there's an actual conscious being to be grateful to, you can still be grateful for the door opening and the water fountain filling up your bottle, and thanking the door and water fountain is a great way to do this. 

It puts you in a frame of mind where you're surrounded by things that are helping you out and making your day easier, and that's a pretty good mood lifter.

I also do this partly because I've read and watched too much science fiction, and I know that one day the robots will take over the world. When that day comes, I would like the robot lawnmower to say "oh, she was nice to us" and not try to attack me.***

*Well, actually I openly believe in animism, I just vacillate between thinking it's a totally legit belief and thinking it's made up clap-trap (like most things we "believe").

**And yet, at the same time, we want to believe it's not listening to us when we talk about it.

***Or the vacuum cleaner. Geez, how embarrassing would it be to be taken out by a vacuum cleaner during the robot uprising?

You can just be hungry

You know how you occasionally have an idea pop into your head that seems life changingly revelatory and completely dull and obvious at the same time?

Not long ago I had one of those ideas. And it was this:

"You can just be hungry."

I don't know where or how I got sucked into this idea - I suspect it's a result of living in an affluent Western society - but I somehow became convinced that if I feel hungry I should do something about it.

If it's 2.30pm and I feel like I need something salty, I must now undertake some quest to find a salty thing to eat in order to end this "eternal hunger"*.

If it's an hour after lunch and I feel like I'm craving a particular foodstuff, or half an hour before afternoon tea and I start feeling like I'm hungry now, I switch over to this idea that I need to "listen to my body" and go find something to eat now. I start getting thoroughly distracted by this sense of hunger as if I truly must do something about it as soon as humanly possible.

But... I don't.

You know, people all over the world are hungry most of the day, every day, and yet they miraculously manage to get on with whatever it is they're doing without going on a quest for salted peanuts. They eat whatever food they have at the time when they can eat it, and they live.

If they are hungry, they are just... hungry. And it's not the end of the world.

I, too, can just be hungry.

I mean, it's not like it's going to be forever.

I do live in an affluent Western society, so I know I'm not actually going to go hungry if I wait an hour to eat something I planned to eat instead of rushing to find something to eat right now that will match what I'm craving at the moment. And, should it turn out that I'm constantly craving salty things at a certain time of day, I can just take note of that and plan to eat something salty within the bounds of a reasonably balanced food allocation.

Listening to your body is a stupid thing to do. Your body wants to prepare for "winter", but we've managed to create a world where "winter" never comes - there's never a point (for people living in my society and socio-economic environment) where there will be a time of less, so I have to prepare for it by eating as much as I can during a time of plenty. But my body was designed for such seasonal periods of glut and famine.

I *do* need to listen to it telling me that I'm running short of salt and things like that, but I don't need to do anything about it this very second. For the next half hour or so I can just be hungry.

Except tea. If I need a cup of tea I should do something about that ASAP.

*In the Disney movie Frozen (known as The Snow Queen and the Eternal Winter in some overseas markets), the winter had been going on for all of 5 minutes before someone declared it to be "eternal" and declared that some drastic measure must be undertaken to stop it.

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.

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?

"Who do you think Jesus is?"

I was recently sitting on the grass in the shade of a tree trying to think my way through a task I've been stuck on, when two young men approached me and very politely asked me if I could tell them who I thought Jesus is.

I've noticed the campus has broken out in a rash of young Christian men lately. They're everywhere, sitting in pairs with a Bible casually propped between them as they have their mini-Bible-discussion-cum-mentor-sessions. There's also been a large group of "Christian Students" meeting after classes in one of the lecture rooms, which doesn't appear to be the old Christian Union that has been floating around for God knows how long (pun intended). Although it might be the same group with a spot of rebranding. Christian groups do love to rebrand in the 21st century.

Over the years I've occasionally found myself the target of young Christians on an evangelistic spurt. I remember once, when I was 18 and stressed out of my brain, I was literally sobbing in the street after realising I had forgotten to do something at uni and I had to go back and fix it, and most people completely ignored me except for a young Christian woman near my own age. She didn't ask me if I was okay - she invited me to her Church. I was a deeply committed Christian in a modern Pentecostal denomination myself, at the time, so I didn't think this behaviour was particularly weird or inappropriate. Looking back on it now, I wonder if maybe it was an early contributor to my eventual realisation that Christians aren't as "Christlike" as they like to believe. Jesus wouldn't have invited me to his church. He would have asked me if I needed a cup of tea and offered a hanky.

The "fun" thing about being a Christian who is occasionally targeted by other Christians on the prowl is you know exactly what they are doing and why - and it all seems so terribly forced and mercenary. I have always been polite to them "sorry, but you're preaching to the converted - I won't take up any more of your time", but part of me was always slightly creeped out by it. Especially when they would still try a few follow-up techniques on me. I couldn't figure out if I didn't look Christian enough and they still wanted to try to convert me, or if the point was to win more people over to their specific church, rather than The Church.

It's probably why I was never that evangelical myself - I knew how creepy it felt on the other end.

When these two young men approached me, it was the first time I've been hit-up by Christians for a spot of "winning souls for Christ" for a while. It's also the first time someone has approached me about it since I became a Buddhist.

"We were just wondering," said the lead boy, "Could you tell us who you think Jesus is."

I knew what they were really asking, and why, and that they didn't actually want to hear my answer. I knew they didn't want to hear it because they were just looking for an opening to tell me who they think Jesus is. I looked at them as a woman twice their age who has been "Churched" since she was a child and made her way through more than one Christian denomination before coming to see that it was easier to follow Jesus' ethos by being a Buddhist. I looked at them as someone who has been fed the answers, and who has sought the answers, and who has discovered there are problems and holes in all the answers.

I simply told them, with a polite smile, that I had been a Christian, I was now a Buddhist and they were better off trying to have this conversation with someone else. It threw them for a moment - they weren't prepared for that answer, and clearly had no follow up for it, so they muttered something polite and left.

What I wanted to say, as I watched them walk away probably trying to think of how they could respond if they had a similar reply next time, was:

"Oh, boys, I could give you at least 15 different answers to that question and they'd all be as wrong as your answer - but you are too young and in love to have this conversation right now. Go and be young and in love with your faith. In time, when you're ready to be more critically engaged with your beliefs, you might be in a place to hear the answer to the question you're asking."

Why busy people turn down offers of help

Do you know someone who has too much to do, isn’t quite keeping their head above water, but never takes up anyone on their offers for help?

I know several people who are like that. They are very annoying, aren’t they? You know their load will be lessened greatly if they would just stop being so stubborn and share it with the people who are genuinely offering to carry some of it for them, but they just won’t.

And yet… I do exactly the same thing myself. I am one of those annoying people. And this is why I don’t accept help when it is offered:

1. You add to my cognitive load

Yes, it was nice of you to offer to take care of something, or suggest I give you some of my jobs to do, but that means I have to factor you into my day in a way I didn’t have to before – you become something I have to deal with and think about in a timely manner, rather than something I can come to when I have the time and space for you in my brain. You’re offering to do something for me, but if I take you up on that offer you become one of the balls I’m juggling.

This is the same whether you are a colleague offering to help me at work or a friend offering to make me dinner after work. Something I didn’t have to think about becomes something I have to think about. And from your side of things it may seem like a no brainer, but when your brain is too full, it’s a bit of a straw-that-breaks-the-camel’s-back kind of scenario. Sometimes your offer of something nice is just one thing too many.

2. The jobs get bigger and heavier when you have to hand them over

When someone offers to help with something, I actually have to give even more thought to what you’ve offered to help with than I did before. It’s amazing how much of what I’m doing is only half-formed in my brain, but still works for me. It’s like a scrawled note on a napkin – it means something to me, but I can’t give it to someone else like that. I have to make it more solid and actionable before I can hand it over, which feels like way more work than just keeping the note on the napkin and running with that.

3. I feel like I shouldn’t need the help

There is every possibility I could do all the things if I just managed my time better. When I’m feeling stressed out, I often switch off (mentally speaking) for chunks of time. I take little attention breaks – look at something that isn’t one of my jobs for a little while to let my brain just fizz for a bit instead of broiling.

But when someone offers to help, I feel extremely guilty about all of these little attention breaks. I should be getting through more work than I am – and I would be if I just got my act together. I feel like giving you some of my work to do is a sign that I’m failing you, somehow, because if I was doing my work better I wouldn’t be giving you some of it.

Oddly, this is also why I hate having the work I’m doing acknowledged. I know I could be doing better, so when you tell me I’m doing well, all I want to do is say “You have no idea how badly I’m doing right now, and how much I’m trying to keep that from you.”

4. I lose control of the outcome when I give it to someone else

And here’s one of the big ones. If I give someone some of my tasks to do, I should (if I’m being sensible) trust them to do them well and in a timely manner. 

Sometimes I do trust them, but it turns out that something that was at one rank on my list of things to do is on a lower rank of their list of things to do, and I actually would have done the job better and sooner if I just did it myself. Then I have to snatch the job back again and run like heck to get it done.

Sometimes it would actually work out – I can give it to that person safe in the knowledge that they will do it their way, but do it well. But even if it’s not on my plate any more, it’s still on my list of things to worry about, only now I no longer have control over how it’s done and when. That’s just highly stressful.

And so even though accepting help is a smart thing to do, and seems a simple enough decision from the perspective of the person offering to help, it’s just easier for me to keep having too much to do.

And now that I’ve realised this is what I’m doing all the time, I can clearly see that it’s also exactly what my friends and colleagues are doing when I suggest they should accept help when it’s offered to them.

I wonder what the solution is? Maybe there isn’t one.

Horrifying

When I was younger (particularly in my teens) I used to have trouble with what I think of as "waking nightmares". Just before I'd properly fall asleep, when your senses are getting all fuzzy and making nonsense, I'd get flashes of images that were the sort of thing you'd see in a horror film. They'd startle me awake, and give me the heebie jeebies, and I'd struggle to calm down enough to try going back to sleep.

As someone who has had trouble sleeping since forever, this didn't help.

They were often things I'd actually seen in an ad for a horror film or on the cover of a DVD case or book. Sometimes they were new and exciting combinations of these things. I think, for some reason, my brain just decided to process anxiety and/or depression by showing me things I found unsettling - things I hadn't wanted to see in the first place, and now wished I could unsee because I was getting to see them again and again - quite involuntarily.

You know how, when you have a cut somewhere on your ankle, you suddenly keep kicking that spot on your ankle whenever you walk even though you never do otherwise? It was a bit like that.

And I've always had this weird thing happen with my sight and hearing when I'm overtired (which is quite a lot of the time, really). I'll see movement in the far reaches of my peripheral vision that isn't there when I turn my head to look at it, and I often hear sounds I can't pinpoint. Add that to the fact that I grew up in a Christian denomination that believes in demons, and that demons try to manipulate you...

Well, let's just say I started being completely terrified by the threat of being terrified. I needed to sleep in a room that was controlled enough for me to keep tabs on everything, so I could tell myself what every shadow and sound was, and I'd still feel on edge. I still hate sleeping in a room where you can see your reflection in a mirror (that lovely half awake state you get into when you're just conscious enough to catch sight of something moving in the mirror, but not quite awake enough to realise it's *you*). I'm not fond of being in a dark room with a mirror in it, in general. Those things are just inherently disturbing.

And I guess, even though I'm now much better at shaking myself out of the "creeped out" zone that I used to get in back then, I'm still a little bit on edge about things like this. I still have ideas and images I didn't particularly want in my head in the first place come back and visit me when I'm trying to relax.

This is one of the reasons why I hate clicking on "hey, you should see this!" links that have no indication of what they are or what I'm going to see. Things that other people don't even notice (especially if they often watch the kind of things I avoid watching, like horror or violent films) can just leave me feeling creeped out or depressed for days.

I think people who know me well tend to share lighter, brighter things with me, because they know I don't like the dark stuff, but newer friends and acquaintances are always a bit of a minefield.

And I'm not sure it's necessarily "Horror" (as we think of it in terms of a genre) that does it for me so much as cruelty. I can read old-school ghost stories by the likes of Poe or James without drama. Zombies chasing people to eat their brains or vampires trying to seduce people before draining them dry? I can take it or leave it, depending on how it has been executed. But something where someone is being hurt or disfigured (by natural or supernatural beings)? Or forced by demonic powers to hurt or disfigure themselves? Nope. Nope nope nope.

And anything with really strong, visceral imagery is a big "no thank you!"

There's a theory (in a couple of schools of Buddhism, and probably some other faiths as well) that heaven and hell are where your head is at. When you are feeling swamped by negative and dark thoughts, then you start to spiral into a hellish state. I also think that what you put into your head through the media and images you consume contribute to this. How can you feel bright and happy when you are weighing yourself down with things dark and cruel? 

Or, as the old saying goes "garbage in, garbage out"... only the garbage tends to stick around for a while and mess up the place, in my experience. 

St Paul's advice to the Philippians - to find things that are lovely and admirable to dwell on - is sort of a basic survival tactic for me. I think lovely and admirable things come in all sorts of forms (often in genres that are looked down on as much as those that seem "nice" on the surface), but the one thing they have in common is they make you feel lighter after encountering them, not weighed down.

And certainly not horrified.

Worth Your While

You’ll never fly as the crow flies
So get used to a country mile
When you’re learning to face
The path at your pace
Every choice is worth your while
- Indigo Girls, Watershed

 I was having a conversation with a friend the other night and it took an interesting turn. He’s a fairly new friend, so hasn’t been privy in the past to my endless rambling indecision about what I want to do for a PhD. As you may recall from either this blog or others, I have been thinking about doing a PhD for some time, but can’t settle on a subject or a discipline.

 

As often happens when I mention the degrees I’m interested in studying in the near future, the topic of “getting a career out of it” came up. To which I gave my customary answer, which always seems to throw people out slightly: “Oh, I’m not looking to change careers – I’m quite happy being a librarian. I just like learning things.” We’re so used to thinking of study as a stepping stone to the “next thing”, or even some sort of career advancement, that I think I thoroughly confuse people when I say I want to go through the pain and drama of a university degree just for the heck of it.

 

I mentioned that the thing about being a librarian is that everything you learn benefits your practice in some way, so you really can study whatever you like and it makes you better at your job without necessarily making you think about what it means for your “career” – at which point he said something interesting: that I was the only person he’s ever met who seems to have her life sorted out. I’m not sure I’d agree with that 100%. I go through stages where I wonder what I’m doing with my life. The job that I have at the moment isn’t exactly my “calling”, and I have been known to waste valuable sleeping hours in the past wondering if I’m wasting my time.

 

But a while ago I realised that your job isn’t there to fulfil you and make you happy. If you think it is, then you are setting yourself up for disappointment and dissatisfaction. No, what you should be aiming for in your work is a job that you don’t hate that allows you to do things you do enjoy, while giving you the opportunity to make a positive difference in someone’s day. I have that, and I’m very grateful for it. I hope you have a job like that, too. If so, just take a moment to appreciate it, and try not to feel hard done by if it isn’t anything more than that. If not, can I suggest that you look for something else – and that you stop looking for a job that makes you happy and just find a job that doesn’t suck and gives you time to do a hobby you actually enjoy? It may be a step backwards as far as the people around you are concerned, but you’ll have a better time of it.

 

The other thing my friend mentioned is that he’s currently feeling overwhelmed by fear of making the wrong decision, so he’s fallen in a bit of a paralysis regarding deciding what he should do about his own career. He realises that not making a decision to change is more or less the same as making a decision to stay, but he hasn’t quite landed comfortably in that decision either. I have been there, done that and bought the T-Shirt. I still sometimes find myself paralysed by the thought that I’m going to make the wrong choice for the wrong reason and stuff everything up.

 

But there is something that I have been sitting with lately, and it has given me a lot to think about. Most of my fear of making bad choices has stemmed from the fact that my previous choices haven’t panned out the way that I’d hoped, and I was taking the “failure” personally rather than chalking it up to experience. When past choices lead to past pain, you don’t want to make more choices that will lead to future pain. It all boils down to worrying about making the “wrong” decision. 

 

But (and this is what I’ve been sitting with): There’s no such thing as the right decision and the wrong decision. You can definitely make choices for the right reasons and the wrong reasons, but the choices that you make are simply the choices that have been made. Regardless of your reasons, the outcomes of your choices will unfold as they unfold, and you just have to see what happens and work with that. If you are making the best choice you can in the circumstances (i.e., the choice that is either for the most good or the least harm), there’s no guarantee that it will pan out at all the way you hope it will, but at least you’ve made a choice. And, as the Indigo Girls once sang (and probably still do at their concerts): “Every choice is worth your while.”

 

In the past, in my youth, the choices and decisions I made to follow my dreams ended up with my dreams being completely smashed to pieces. For years I thought that such misfortune was God or the universe putting me in my place and telling me I was wrong to have those dreams. Now I realise (although I do sometimes forget), that my “dreams” are more of a vague direction than a destination, and they just nudge me along until I find something comes up and I should change course. It’s one of the most counter-intuitive things, but the old Lojong slogan “Abandon any hope of fruition” is one of the most encouraging pieces of advice I’ve come across in the past few years.

 

Don’t worry about making the right decision or the wrong decision. Just make the decision that seems best given the circumstances and be prepared for everything to go in unexpected directions. And – and this is the hardest bit – remember that the outcome will only be undesirable if you decide you either don’t desire this outcome, or you get hung up on the fact that you desired something else. It is what it is.

 

And every choice you’ve made so far has lead you here, and made you the person that you are. Without being here, now, as you are, you wouldn’t be in position to launch out from this spot to take off in new and exciting directions. Or confidently hold the course and see what unfolds.

 

So, yeah. Every choice is worth your while.

 

Now, if only I could make up my mind about that darn PhD…

When I grow up...

A little while ago, a friend asked all of his friends what we want to be when we grow up. Not what we "wanted" to be, back when we were kids, but what we "want" to be - as if "growing up" is still ahead of us. He's in his forties. So are most of his friends. I think it was a little bitter-sweet joke acknowledging that most Gen Xers still feel a little lost after all these years. We never did figure out what we were supposed to be. We still feel like kids, waiting to see what happens when we grow up.

But then I realised, I *am* grown up. This is me. Grown up. Sure, I'm only partway through the process. I still have a lot of growing up to do. But this *is* my life. I'm not waiting for it to begin like some Disney Princess. I'm living it, and I'm not wasting it. I'm learning new things every day. I'm spending time with friends and family. I'm making myself useful to the best of my ability. I have a job I wouldn't have planned on when I was a kid, but I love it (most of the time). I am grown up. And I am growing up. It's not something that's going to happen in the future, it's something that has been happening the whole time and is happening as we speak.

I think my generation has been sold this weird idea that one day we'll have it "together", and that day hasn't come yet. We won't. We'll always be a work in progress. And if we stop comparing ourselves to the life we think our parents had at our age (but they probably never had it "together" either), we might realise that we're constantly moving through different versions of being "grown up" - and that's okay.

And we need to stop comparing what we have now with what we wanted/want to be "when we grow up". Because we each have stuff happening in our lives right now that's worth wanting. These are the best years of our lives - and that might sound depressing if you're not where you thought you'd be, but think about the awesome things that you have in your life right now. Not about what you wanted, not about what you thought you'd have, but about what you *do* have that's genuinely good.

When we spend our lives waiting for the perfect wave, rather than riding the one we have right now, we let our life bob away underneath us without paying attention - without enjoying those little waves as they come. I want to say "we need to stop waiting to become something else before we start living our lives", but the point I actually need to make here is that we *are* living our lives. It's just time to engage willingly in the process.

The trouble with food

I've basically hit a point where food is too hard and I don't want to do it any more. It brings me very little joy, and far too much trouble.

Pretty much everything available to eat fits in one of three categories:

• Food that will cause me pain, or is otherwise no good for me
• Food that is produced in such a way it causes suffering and misery, or negatively impacts the environment
• Food I really just don't like - as in, I find the taste or texture entirely unpleasant.

That's it - that's what I'm eating these days. Things that hurt my body, things that hurt my soul or things that make me gag.

I sit down for a meal knowing that if I actually enjoy it, I'll pay for it later. Or I'll spend the entire time I'm eating it feeling like I'm committing some sort of betrayal I need to apologise or atone for in some way. Sometimes both. Actually, often both.

If I could find a small group of foods that provided the nourishment a human body needs without hurting anyone, and be palatable for a long period of time, I could just feed myself like some people feed their cats - put the same food in front of myself day after day and feel confident that even though it's not enjoyable, it's at least doing the job.

I have IBS, which means my gut reacts strongly to foods that humans struggle to process. Apparently my intestines are kicking me for eating things that give other people mild discomfort. One of the main ways to control IBS is to find your trigger foods and just eat fewer of them. So slowly but surely I'm eating less and less food that's tasty and nutritious. Eating too many of the wrong kinds of vegetables can see me floored with abdominal pains for most of the next day.

It feels like a zero sum game.

At least, that's what I've been told most recently, that I have IBS. I was also once told I couldn't possibly have IBS because it's not a real thing, and I must have functional dyspepsia. That doctor, I'm reasonably sure, told me that because I had suggested IBS as a possibility after reading about it in a magazine (so of course it must be anything but that - can't have patients diagnosing themselves, now, can we?).

I found out a few years later that "functional" basically means you don't have a reason for it, just symptoms. Which, to my mind, sounds a little bit like throwing your hands up in the air and saying "well, I dunno - it's probably all in your head."

But I read just recently that IBS is a "functional" condition as well. And this article that I read also pointed out that "functional" means the problem is with the way something functions - like a malfunctioning piece of firmware rather than a damaged piece of hardware.

All of which is making me wonder whether I've got the wrong end of the stick, when it comes to trying to avoid pain. Maybe I should just eat the "delicious and nutritious" food that's good fuel for the machine and doesn't make me miserable, and then find a way to simply disguise/squash/shut up my stomach when it complains, rather than trying to avoid upsetting it in the first place.

Of course, I'll probably try this technique and then find out that I've actually got some sort of hideous auto-immune condition that I should have been treating this whole time, instead of covering up my symptoms and hoping they go away.

But I've got to do something. Food has become thoroughly depressing and I'm beginning to dread it.

What’s for Dinner?

By Steven Groves from Denver, CO,
United States of America
Sammie, CC BY 2.0,
https://commons.wikimedia.org/
w/index.php?curid=48825930

I’ve been struggling to find something I want to eat lately. For a few months now, I get to mealtime, think to myself, “I’m hungry, I should probably eat something,” and then spend an inordinate amount of time trying to figure out what I actually want to eat. Most of the time I end up dismissing what I don’t want to eat and picking the least objectionable of what’s left. I can’t say I often enjoy what I end up eating, either.

For a while I went through a phase where all I really felt like eating was a sandwich, but my mother assured me I couldn’t have sandwiches for every meal. I gave it a shot, but then I got sick of the sandwiches. I don’t think that’s what she was getting at, but that’s what happened. I have to admit, though, I still get to a point most evenings where the only thing stopping me from giving up on “real” food and eating a ham sandwich instead is the fact that I don’t currently have any ham.

It gets especially annoying when I’m in a food court or something and I’m surrounded by options I don’t particularly want. Then I also baulk at the amount of money I’ll be paying for the privilege of eating something that I don’t actually want to eat.

It’s not a problem when I’m over someone’s house and they’re feeding me. I don’t have to want it, I just have to say “thank you,” and politely eat it. That actually works for me.

I don’t know that I’ve lost my appetite. I still feel hungry, and I still eat a full meal most of the time. I just can’t think of a single thing I actually want to eat, and largely just end up picking something I should eat instead. When I get especially stumped, I just eat breakfast. I have the same thing for breakfast every morning with minor variations, and if I could figure out what I’d stomach on high rotation for lunch and dinner every day I’d probably try to repeat that formula (maybe a sandwich?).

What would really work for me is some sort of dining hall or refectory, where I pay some sort of subscription for the “meal of the day”. If they could also give me a packed lunch every day, that would be awesome. I keep fantasising about simply turning up to a counter, saying “today’s special, thanks” and that’s it – dinner is sorted.

Sydney is a country

I was recently looking at an advertisement for an art installation by an Estonian artist who is comparing her experience between the "lands" of Estonia and Sydney.

Being a pedantic so-and-so, my first instinct was to day "Sydney is a city", but then I suddenly realised, with absolutely clarity, that it really is a country.

The thing about Australia is that we're under the illusion that the entire continent is one country, simply because it is governed by one federal government. But the truth is, this giant chunk of land of ours used to be hundreds of countries, and each one had it's own particular and peculiar features.

Sydney is a completely different country to, say, Townsville. Both are entirely different to Stanley in NW Tasmania, and even that is different to Cockle Creek, in SE Tasmania. Tasmania isn't terribly big (by Australian terms), but even it was once considered to be multiple lands with multiple "nations" living there.

I was looking at a map of Indigenous Australia, and the area where I live used to be three separate "countries" - and when I think about it, each of those areas is quite distinct from each other. You can tell when you've moved from Bindal into Gugu-Badun - the landscape changes completely.

Which got me thinking about the difference between what we (Westerners) think of when we say "country" and what the First Nations/Indigenous people think of when they say "country". It's the same word, but there is a world of difference in the meaning.

I've been reading a bit about the traditional folk life and history of Estonia lately, and they note distinct differences in the cultural life, farming practices and landscape between one area and another - even though Estonia is about half the size of Tasmania.

The land shapes the people and the people shape the land.

At least, that's how it used to be.

Things given

I've recently bought a house (Yay! Finally!) and I'm in the process of moving all of my many, many, many belongings into the darn thing. It turns out I have a lot of stuff. Some of it isn't even mine.

Actually, quite a lot of it isn't mine. It turns out that my family has been waiting for this opportunity for years, and have been holding on to various things with the ultimate goal of "one day giving it to Sharon".

This is nice... I guess. Only it means that I'm stuck with a slight dilemma: What do you do when you have something that is perfectly good, does exactly what you need it to do, and was given to you by someone you love and respect... but isn't what you want?

Many years ago, when I was a child, my mother and grandmother collected a dinner set for me. It was a promotional thing by some grocery store, and shopping trip by shopping trip they collected an entire 8 piece set of plates, saucers, cups and the like. It's an okay set. The bowls are too small for cereal, but okay for dessert. That's really my only legitimate complaint.

Only it's really boring. If you had put me in a room of place settings and said "pick one you like", I probably wouldn't even notice this set was in the room.

What I would do, given the choice, would be to run around the room and pick six or eight different patterns (with actual patterns) and get a complete single setting in each (dinner plate, bread-and-butter, saucer, bowl, teacup...). Then I'd keep myself amused for months by flitting between the different patterns every time I ate something.

I'd like a whole bunch of different interesting patters. Like this one I saw in a shop a few weeks ago:

You may notice it's not white.

Personally, white plates aren't my cup of tea - they're not what I'd choose for myself. But now I have a perfectly good white dinner set (a whole 8 settings' worth) that was lovingly collected for me (by two people whom I love and admire), and diligently kept aside for me for decades. Literally, decades. There's a lot of love in those boring plates.

My mother also decided to celebrate the purchase of my new house by buying me a new cutlery set, meaning the set I've had in storage for years (and was kind of hoping to use one day) is now redundant.

I feel ungrateful and churlish for complaining about these things. I have something that I need, that I didn't even have to pay for. There's nothing wrong with any of it. Heck, the cutlery set is better than the one I brought back with me from Tasmania.

It's just not really "mine", you know?

Buddhist philosophy would say my problem is wanting stuff. If I didn't want something with a pattern (or a bunch of patterns, as the case may be), then I would realise that I have everything I need and much more besides. And then I would look at my plates and utensils and realise that it's foolish to think anything could ever really be "mine" anyway. Solomon would probably agree with that.

But still... I want the pretty plates. But I don't need any plates. Aren't I lucky to have such pointless problems?

As for the stuff my uncle has been keeping for me, well that's a whole 'nother post.