Brains are weird

Why is it that sometimes, in dreams, you can be in the most bizarre, unexpected, incongruous, unfamiliar situation, and yet already know EXACTLY what it is you have to do.

Like, I’m in a huge kind of warehouse/ factory that’s got multiple floors and it’s decorated on the inside to look like a jungle, complete with parrots. I’m the passenger in a sand buggy that’s driving full-pelt around this building and I’m standing/ kneeling up in the seat, looking around and behind us. I have no idea who’s driving, I don’t recognise them, yet I trust them completely and know that they know where we’re supposed to go. He’s (I know it’s a he) turning corners on two wheels (I think we’re being chased), but I keep my balance with no problems and yell out obstacles when I know he hasn’t seen them yet. We drive up unexpectedly wide staircases between floors, tyres screeching at every turn. I have no clue why we’re there, or how we got into this building at all, but I know that the SS is trying to stop us. They keep jumping out and throwing things to make the driver swerve, but it doesn’t work. He’s unflappable.

And throughout all of this, I have the clear and certain knowledge that what we need to do is get to the very top floor, then drive off the edge of it, down into a fountain that’s way down on the ground floor. The top floor is at least six floors up, and plummeting into the fountain will mean both of our deaths. I know this, and I’m afraid, but I know it’s what we have to do. The time comes: we reach the top floor, burning rubber. There’s a kind of balcony rail up ahead and my driver heads straight for it. We smash through it and immediately curve down to see the fountain, growing larger and larger as we fall toward it. I don’t know the driver well enough to hug him, he was just doing his job, and he’s done it perfectly. So I hug the back of my seat and watch the top of the fountain grow closer in a strange slow-motion. Then, just as the front of the car hits the top of the fountain, I wake up.

This is by no means the only time I’ve known what to do in a bizarre dream situation, but it’s the one that’s stuck in my memory the most.

Who decides who you are?

Something has been getting to me recently. It's a tricky one to reconcile, because all the variables are completely subjective.

What if my inner critic is right? What if I *am* the worst things I think about myself? What if the people who don't like my methods are correct? And how do I tell?

Now, this isn't a cry for help or casting for compliments, just an objective exercise, if you like.

We all have times when we question ourselves. It's perfectly normal. Very, very few people are completely confident and comfortable with themselves all of the time. Babies possibly. And enlightened Buddhists perhaps. Sometimes these periods of doubt follow a personal setback, or are the result of having your actions questioned by another. Sometimes they just happen spontaneously in the middle of the day but no matter how they come about, there is absolutely nothing we can do to prevent them. What's important is how we deal with them. Or, more specifically; what's relevant to my point is how we deal with them.

Because it's all very well saying "Haters gonna hate" or "Believe in yourself", but what if the haters have a point? We can't ALL be lovely, decent and kind. Some people are arseholes, it's just a fact of life. The idea that we should believe in ourselves and ignore the people who would knock us down, is only really relevant if you are a lovely, decent and kind person. Or, at least, the sort of person you actually want to be. Statistically, you might not be. It might do you good to be taken down a peg or two, to realise that you're not as great/ talented/ whatever as you might think (unless you want to be an arsehole, then you're golden). But how can you know? And whose opinion do you trust? If a stranger called me an arsehole, I'd be momentarialy saddened, then I'd dismiss the matter from my brain forever. That person has no frame of reference for my behaviour, and I have no frame of reference for their decision-making. To analyse their opinion would be pointless.

Actually, that's bollocks. I would fret and worry about it all evening and for several days afterwards, analysing every aspect of my behaviour, wondering what I could have done differently to gain that person's approval/ love/ grudging respect/ utter ambivalence. That's who I am, an overly-analytical worrier with a schizophrenic desire to be stubbornly individual, yet accepted and liked. But all that stuff I said before is what I - and you - probably should do in that situation.

But what if you're thought of as an arsehole by someone you know? Obviously, context is everything, but if someone has observed your actions over time and is familiar with your personality, what if they think that you are an arsehole? (I'm using the word "arsehole" as a catch-all for any derogatory or negative labels others might have for you. They might think you're incompetent, or a bully. Perhaps you smell. I don't know, just stay with it). If this person is (or has hitherto been) a friend, someone whose opinion you would ordinarily respect, then chances are you might just be an arsehole. That's a potentially life-altering realisation, if you don't want to be an arsehole and you value this person's opinion. Changes must be made. Even if it's someone you don't like, or who doesn't like you (the two are not necessarily mutually inclusive), you might be compounding your arseholery if you dismiss their opinion out of hand, purely on the basis that you/they don't like them/you.

I don't want to be an arsehole. I fully accept the fact that I have my arseholey moments. So do you. Yes, you do. But I think, on balance, I'm a fairly decent person. But don't we all? And the existence of an apparently inexhaustible supply of arseholes in the world suggests that we really can't all be right about ourselves. But since the the very concept of arseholery is subjective, and the way our actions are perceived is equally subjective, whose opinion counts? And who do we trust to bring us back down to earth if we start to go wrong?

I think I know the answer to this. Make a decision to be who you want to be, surround yourself with carefully chosen, loyal friends and try to do the decent thing. Seems straightforward enough.

But what if I'm wrong? Who's going to tell me?!

The Right to Complain vs. Not Pulling My Weight

I'm not sure how it works. Of late, my contributions to the smooth running of our family life have been - at best - the bare minimum. I can cite various excuses for this, but that's not the focus of this post.

What I want to know is - if I'm unhappy with elements of our home life that are caused by someone else, do I even have the right to complain when he's the one who goes to work, earns the money, etc. and I barely manage to get dirty mugs out of the bedroom?

Well hello!

Bloody hell. D'y'know, I'd actually genuinely forgotten I had this blog. And then I remembered.

I've just been re-reading my posts. Non-sequiteur city, for the most part, which is really annoying and I'll fill one of the gaps now. I noticed that I go from two months into a new relationship with an old friend to suddenly being a mother. Well, that's pretty much how it happened, only it took longer. We got together, about a year later we started trying for a baby, she was born in 2007. She's still with us today!

On that subject, here's a thing I've been musing on:

What did you expect when you were expecting?

Recently, I’ve been reminded of what it’s like to live with a small baby. I already have a child, her name’s Jess and she’s five and she’s marvellous, but my memories of her earliest months have been sort of mashed in my brain into a weird sleepless-zombie montage of smiling, crying, hiccoughing, sleeping and puking (that’s her) or smiling, staring, cooing, wiping and worrying (from me). We have many, many photos of this period, but I have very few really clear memories. It’s amazing what cumulative sleep deprivation can do.

Now Jess is well past the baby stage; she’s started ‘big school’ and I’ve made a couple of friends among the other parents, one of whom is a single-mum with a son in Jess’ class and a four-month-old daughter. Spending the odd couple of hours a week with them has reminded me how it really was during those first few months of motherhood. For example, I’d forgotten how intensely satisfying it is to make a baby laugh (seriously, it’s the best pick-me-up), but also how relentlessly knackering it is to look after a small, wailing thing all day and night. It has also reinforced my determination not to have any more of my own. Sorry, Jess, you’re an only child. Get used to it.

But, strangely, what’s really come screaming back to me is the memory of the night she was born and some of the weird, unexpected feelings that came out of that. The birth itself was relatively straightforward; the odd minor emergency, some mild panic, nothing major. (No pain-relief either, and I don’t say that proudly, I say it angrily. I wanted pethidine, I wanted an epidural, I would’ve accepted vodka on a drip, but what I got was a couple of double-strength paracetamol five hours before the birth. Grrrrr. But anyway…). But as soon as she was handed to me, I was surprised that I wasn’t more surprised.

Let me explain.

TV has told me that, when a baby is born, the mother will sit up in bed with her newly-swaddled progeny in her arms and look upon its face with unadulterated wonder. She’ll gaze at the human she’s carried for the last few months as if it’s an astonishing miracle. I’ve seen this image so many times on telly that it didn’t even occur to me that it might not actually happen. Now, in hindsight, I wonder why it happens at all.

When Jess was born, when the birth was over, the overriding feeling I had was relief. Relief that she was whole and healthy, relief that the labour had been relatively uncomplicated, and huge, massive relief that it was all over and the pain had stopped (well, mostly stopped. There was no sitting up for me, my hips and coccyx were aching like mad. Anyone else have that?). But what I DIDN’T feel was awe. I looked at my beautiful baby and loved her, but I didn’t feel that sense of amazement that I’d been led to believe would wash over me in a tidal wave of maternal something-or-other. I was weirdly disappointed – not with Jess, I want to make that perfectly clear, she was (and is) gorgeous – with myself. Wasn’t I supposed to be overcome? Why was this?

Well, I’ve given it some thought and come to the conclusion that a beautiful baby is, really, what I was expecting to get. All the scans and check-ups had been fine, and everything I’d seen, heard or read about pregnancy led me to believe that, at the end of it, I’d have a baby. I mean, that’s pretty much what I’d been aiming for in the first place.

So why on earth do (apparently) so many mothers look so surprised at the first sight of their child? What were they expecting?

“Darling, look! For a while during the labour I thought we might have been blessed with the entire collected works of Neil Diamond, but LOOK! It’s a baby instead!”

In a pinch, if I wasn’t to get a baby at the end of it, I’d’ve settled for a puppy. THEN there would have been cause for genuine shock. Imagine the look on the midwife’s face.

“Holy crap, it’s a Labrador!”
“Hmm, I guess we’ll have to redecorate the nursery then. Those toy kittens will have to go…”

There are many reasons to be amazed in life, but being astounded at the sight of something you knew was coming, that you’ve been looking forward to for several months, that you might already have given a name to, well with the benefit of hindsight, that actually seems a bit weird to me now. I wonder if I’m the only one…

 

Short musing

On deities.

I don't know why I've been thinking about religion today. Possibly as a result of looking at the frankly loony happehtheory.com. Such a nutter...

Anyway, every once in a while, a random stray thought occurs that crystallises an aspect of my belief system. Something that was previously difficult to put in to words suddenly becomes simple in my head.

In this instance, it's the existence of god.

Y'know, that little chestnut.

Basically, while I'm prepared to accept the existence of a god (agnostic, remember, NOT atheist), I just doubt that he's a benevolent/ benign/ vengeful presence in our every day lives. My thought is that, if god created the world, then that's all he did. He made it, he populated it, then he left us to it.

Here endeth the blog.

What am I doing?

Well, me, that's an interesting question.

My answer would, truthfully, have to be: At least 80% worrying and stressing.

This is not new. Or news. I have been a champion worrier since my early teens, an affliction that I assumed would pass with puberty. Instead, it seems I am eternally cursed to ponder, worry and niggle at every feature of my being, thought of my brain and event of my life. Here's an abridged list of things I've worried about in the last 24 hours:

1. My motherhood skills
I'm currently a stay-at-home-mum. The reason people have NOTHING to say to women who, when asked what they do, say "I'm a stay-at-home-mum" is because they, perhaps subconsciously (and rightly, in my opinion), assume that there is absolutely no crossover between the working life of a working person who works for a living, and the (equally, if not more-so) labour intensive home life of a woman who spends her day looking after her own offspring. This is because the two have absolutely nothing in common, unless the person asking the question works in the childcare industry, and even then it's shaky. For example, you can't compare employers. A working person says "God, I had such a rough time with my boss today" and goes on to describe how the person they work for is such an arse, they always give me a 'five minute job' at 5:15pm that inevitably takes at least an hour, he only ever talks to my cleavage, she belittles me in front of the entire office, etc. What does the average SAHM (Stay-At-Home-Mum, abbreviated henceforth for labour-saving purposes) have in response to that? As a working person, you can't enjoy the same camaraderie as you might with a fellow worker, because the boss in the SAHM's case is a dribbling child. More than that, they're a member of their immediate family. More than THAT, it's the fruit of their own sodding loins. Many people assume that any implication, however slight, that being a SAHM is ANYTHING other than beautiful, wonderful and intensely fulfilling will be taken as a mortal insult. And in some cases, they are (unfortunately) correct.

Not me.

I knew before my daughter was born that I wasn't cut out for SAHM-ness. While I do have certain hippy aspects, I lack the patience and the mother-earth-gaia elements completely. I've met other SAHMs and seen a few blogs of same, and they all seem to be endlessly patient, relaxed, with a healthy "my child's development is paramount" attitude, which I simply lack.

The fact is, while my daughter is lovely and brilliant and bright and all of that, she's also irritating, annoying, incessant and frustrating, with each day full of "what's that?, what's that?, what's that?", "want pingu!", "want orange drink!" and the newly added, triggered by nothing "waaaaaaaaaaaah!", and I'm just not cut out to deal with it.

So I worry. I worry that I'm not a good mum.

2. What do I contribute?

This is kind of two-fold.

One of the aspects of being a SAHM is being a housewife (strictly speaking, housegirlfriend, but who's quibbling?), which means doing washing, washing up, vacuuming and generally keeping the place clean and tidy. Anyone who's been to my house knows that I accomplish exactly none of these things. I am a naturally untidy person, incapable of seeing mess until I'm wading in it. It's a weird affliction, but I simply don't NOTICE mess until I've had to climb over it to reach the sofa for three or four days in a row. Some people think I'm lazy, and I won't deny it, but that's only part of the problem. It just doesn't occur to me to move stuff out of the way, to tidy up. In part, I think it's because of my mum. Don't get me wrong, I'm not blaming my mum for this, it's entirely my problem and I take responsibility for it, but as a youngster, I came to understand that, once mum had noticed the mess and become exasperated by it, it was only a matter of time until she cleaned it up herself. And I think that bit of brainspace still rules, the part of me that abstractly realises that something should be done about the mess, but ultimately, someone else will eventually come along and deal with it for me. As a result, my daughter learns new and interesting things about random flotsam that accumulates in the front room.

The other thing: I'm meant to be starting my own business holding workshops and lessons on upcycling (yeah, upcycling. Look it up. Come on, what am I, your mum?). I quit my last job a year ago with the intention of starting said business pretty much immediately. A year later and I've made almost no progress.

This is largely due to fear. I don't have a proper business brain, I lack organisational prowess (as mentioned previously) and I lack start-up funds. All of this is easily overcome, and I know it. I know what I want to be doing, I know how to do the actual workshops/ lessons/ teaching bit, I'm just terrified at having to take responsibility for it, both financially and emotionally. If it doesn't work, my rational brain says, then fair enough. At least I tried, I gave it my best shot and I've learned valuable lessons. My irrational brain, however, kicks in with all manner of hard-to-pin-down-but-all-too-real terrors and fears that I'll bugger it all up completely, that I have no clue how to do anything, that I'll lose any money I've spent, that no-one will be interested, blah, blah blah, blah blah fucking blah.

Long story short, I've done nothing, because my utter lack of contributing any damn thing to the running of the house has built up to this huge pressure in my head and now I'm unable to think of my business ideas without being washed out by white noise.

3. Girlfriend skills

All of the above leaves me tense and stressy. The ideal environment for my poor fella, who has to come home to it. He's a much better cook than me, too, and now we have this system where he cooks on Saturdays, Sundays and Mondays (when he doesn't work), I do it on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays, and we have a take-away on Fridays, so I worry about my lack of cooking prowess.

For example, two days ago I made bangers & mash. I made the mash with potatoes and carrots (for added flavour and crunch), and Fella decided peas would round off the meal perfectly. Turns out he was right, but I considered my Bangers & Mash to be a rousing success. Possibly the simplest meal since Cheese on Toast, but I was very proud. To put this in perspective, Fella makes incredible creations without trying. He never uses recipes, just relies on basic intuition and whatever's in the cupboard at the time. I'm simply proud if I can make something that's edible and stays down.

That's one example of my girlfriend-related worries, the myriad others are too diffuse to really go in to here. Perhaps another time. You can't wait can you? Just be patient, all my demented neuroses will eventually be unearthed for your pleasure and delight, you lucky thing.

4. My body

In no particular order:
Stretch marks, hairy toes, hair that won't do what I tell it, unwanted fat, desperately unfit, knobbly knees, a missing right pectoral muscle (and subsequent boobular lopsidedness), large nose, large pores, cellulite, gapped teeth, poor coordination, huge feet (for a girl), small boobs, boggly eyes, a mole with a hair growing out of it that I keep pulling out and keeps growing back, and I realise, reading this list back, that the visual image conjured here is something akin to Quasimodo's twin sister...

I'm not that bad, but those things bug and bother me.

5. That I worry too much

Oh, the irony.

Ha. Ha ha.

Haaaaaaaaaaaaaaa.

Right. So then...

Well, this is awkward.

Not only have I not written a single damn word on this blog in over four years, but not a single damn person has visited it.

In All. That. Time.

*sigh*

Well, I now consider this to be my secret place to write stuff that may or may not make it onto my actual real life website, to be possibly revealed at a later date. Or I'll just write any old bollocks. Like now.

Ignore all that has gone before. It is time for a new order...