Tattoo Dreaming

I had a dream last night.

I dreamt that I finally plucked up the courage to go and get one of the tattoo designs I've been umm-ing and ah-ing about actually etched on my body.

I have two designs I'm particularly thinking of. One is the barn swallow design I've mentioned before, the other is an Estonian word (reisija) that probably warrants a post of its own.

Both are quite small, and reasonably "classy".

However, while (in my dream) I went to get one of those tattoos, I somehow managed to come back with something that was neither small, nor particularly "classy".

In my dream, I ended up getting my entire upper-arm covered in a giant tattoo of Tigger kitted out as an old leather-head style gridiron player. Similar (but not identical) to this:

Kind of awesome, really, but not exactly what I've been toying with having.

I woke up straight after that thinking, "What the hell, Subconscious?!?"

Absent minded something or other...

One of the troubles I've had recently with keeping these blog posts, well, posting, is the fact that I keep forgetting what I want to write about.

I'll have a great idea for a potential post (and by "great", I mean "something is always better than nothing"), but then the rest of my day happens, and by the time I have an opportunity to actually sit down and put pen to paper (figuratively speaking), I've completely forgotten what it was.

I sit, staring at the computer, for a moment or two, trying to will myself to reproduce at least one of the ideas I've had for a post recently to come back into my mind so that I may keep my many (*cough*) fans up to date with the random ramblings that fall out of my brain...

But unfortunately they all appear to have fallen out completely, and I'm left with very little.

In the end, I'm stuck with two sentences about cheese, or something, and wondering why I ever thought I could write coherently about anything at all.

The good news is, it's not just thoughts about what I could be doing for my hobbies that I keep forgetting - I also forget about what I should be doing for work.

I know what I need/want to do, right up until the point where I sit at my desk. And then...

I always used to joke about being an absent minded professor when I grew up.  I used to say I've got the absent mindedness bit down pat, and just needed to work on my academic qualifications.

It turns out that my absentmindedness still had a lot of room for development.

Keeping up appearances

Well, that's an interesting range of numbers.

Last year I only managed to post 10 blog posts to this here blog (and only a smattering on my other blog, too).

That's certainly a drop from the heights of 2011, when I published 169 posts. It's the smallest number of posts since, well, forever.

On the one hand, it's because I just haven't gotten my act together to write much this past year. I'm not sure why - in theory I'm not as busy as I have been previously, when I was studying two degrees simultaneously and working at the same time...

And there have also been a number of posts I started writing, but just never finished. And then I never really saw a reason to bother finishing them...

I guess my head just hasn't been in the game.

Still haven't found what I'm looking for...

So, I've been looking for a property of my very own for quite some time now, and I haven't found anything that I'm willing to pay for.

I very nearly did - I put an offer on a house and was accepted and everything - but then the building and pest inspection came back with a few problems, and I said to myself "I don't want to buy those problems", so I didn't.

I have a slight problem with this whole "buying a house" thing, in which I keep thinking meaningful thoughts about money, and it makes everything much less attractive.

My standards with this, as they are in most things in life, are too high.

I want a house that looks and feels like a nice place to live, that doesn't have any major structural damage, which would be practical for my life style and have good connections to work so that I'm not actively discouraged from riding to work occasionally.  Oh, and I'd like it in a neighbourhood that does not appear to have anyone running a chop-shop or a drug den in the street.

I'd also like it to have enough space in the yard so that I wouldn't feel like owning a pet would be cruel and unnatural punishment for the poor animal.

It all seems straight forward, until I realise that I'm going to have to compromise on something in order to fit in with my budget.  Then I spiral into a pool of self-doubt and constant questioning.

Do I want to compromise on the condition of the house and fix it up?  Do I have the money for that?  Do I want to compromise on the proximity to work?  Do I want to compromise on the size of the yard?  If I'm compromising on the size of the yard anyway, do I even want a house, or should I get a unit or townhouse where my money will give me more bang for my buck?  Do I want to spend that kind of money on a unit? In this town, where units are almost impossible to sell?

And should I be looking at something just because I can afford it, or hold out for something that feels like home?

So I find myself stuck in a loop where I question my very existence and end up asking myself "why do I even want a house/unit anyway" (I can't remember if I ever had a good answer for that), "do I want to tie myself to this town by buying it here" (sometimes yes, sometimes no), "is anything I look at worth that kind of money and being in debt for so long" (hell no)...

... and somehow that keeps dragging me down to "what do I want out of life" to which my answer is, maddeningly, "I don't know, I've never known, and whenever I ask myself that question I start feeling pointless and adrift in life, so stop asking already."

Part of me would like to just say "seeya, suckers!" take the money I've saved for a deposit and go buy a caravan to live an itinerant life.  Or a cabin in the woods - in Estonia.

Part of me is saying "but what will become of you? What will you be when you grow up?  Will you ever grow up?"

I don't know the answers to these questions.  All I know is I don't want to buy a crappy house for the sake of buying a house. And I don't want to put myself into so much debt that I have no freedom to do anything, just for the sake a buying a non-crappy house.

And yet, part of me is just longing for a place that is genuinely "mine" - somewhere that I can fix things or change things based on how I think they should be.  The way I'm feeling at the moment, though, it will be a long, long time before I get that.

Bonsai!

I drove past a bonsai club meeting on the weekend, and saw a bunch of people putting their trees back into their cars (obviously the meeting was over). I thought it must be nice to be able to take your pet tree to a play date with other trees, but wondered what the trees thought of it all. Were they happy to have the chance to hang out with other trees who had experienced similar things, or would a bonsai tree be more of a shy, retiring type who resented being forced to socialise with others? Considering bonsai trees have their growth deliberately stunted, perhaps they regard it as more of a support meeting with other "suffers". I briefly thought of taking up bonsai, once. Then I worked out it was a thing for patient people, and acknowledged that I do not belong in that category.

Why can't we buy female superhero stuff?

I'm posting this everywhere, so apologies if you're one of the few weirdos who follow me in several places.

It's stirring stuff.

"Temporary" things

Have you ever worked for one of those companies that bring in a "temporary" solution to a problem... that sticks around for the next umpteen years?

Like a "temporary" building that's still in use twenty years down the track, or a "temporary" patch that then becomes part of the code and is still being repeated in new versions of the software a decade later?

Like a "temporary" office space that has been in use for song long that people have been hired, worked for the company for several years and then left without ever knowing a different office space, these things never become permanent, but may as well be.

They behave like a permanent thing, but offer no sense of permanence.  Always and forever, they are "temporary", and because of that, they can go on for an indefinite period of time.

You see, most of the time no one would put up with them as a permanent solution.  If you pointed to the building and said "this is what you will be using for the next twenty years", everyone would say "we don't want that building - it's not what we desire or need".  If you said to the software engineer designing the patch "this will become part of the product throughout multiple iterations", that engineer would say "I'd rather not, for a better and more elegant solution could and should be found."

And the people working in that office would all - every man Jack of them - say "we don't want to work here for long".

But the knowledge that it is going to be replaced with something "better" at some point distracts you from noticing that you never solve that problem.  You never find something better.  The "temporary" solution is still working, and there are so many other, more pressing needs to worry about right now... and so it slides into permanence without us noticing.  Even though we would never choose for that to be the permanent solution.

I realised the other day that this is my life.  I've been spending about 10 years living a temporary solution that was always "going to change", but simply hasn't.  I'm not sure what I want to do about that now.