Hello, Crocuses!

Croci. I’ve never especially liked crocuses but in London they seem to be the first flowers – before snowdrops even – so I’ve developed a new appreciation. Brockley Cemetery is beginning to be carpeted with them and they’re so joyfully excited that it’s hard not to fall in love with them a little. I always think of their petals as arms opening up to embrace being alive, having made it through the cold winter earth and into waking to grasp the few rays of sun (or, in the case of many of these, somehow fighting their way through a foot of dead leaves to burst into wakefulness). I’m laying too much upon a simple flower, which grows only because that is what it has to do, but in their brightness crocuses seem so enthusiastic, reaching up with their arms spread wide, and the wider they get the closer the blooms are to going over, collapsing back into the earth to feed the next round of flora. I’ll take lessons about life and death wherever I can find them.

The Anarchitect

I’ve been writing this since early November and it hasn’t been complying. At length, I give up. It doesn’t really want to work. But I can’t bear to delete a draft, so here it is – as good as I can get it, which isn’t very.

the anarchitect

you have shocked this elliptical soul
like an asteroid hitting a satellite,
forcing it into uncharted orbit
with foreign frantic pulls of gravity;

you have cast a seismic brain-quake
to frush this psychic scape to rubble,
a multi-richter split that rips
the threads to un to conscious;

you have unearthed an active quarry
from the dormant caverns of this heart,
churning latence to the surface with
machines birthed into wakefulness;

now

like each contested space
this land must be resettled,
but on plans uncartographic –
remapped / replotted / redrawn:

every compass point magnetic
all of time unchronologic
with new acoustic new chromatic
new semantic new mathematic
astatic / quixotic / hysteric
with new new new new –

curl up the narrativistic scripts:
you have changed the structure of the world.

The Good, The Not All That Bad Really, and The Blindingly Obvious

I would love to say that as I’m writing this on my lunch break I will be forced to precis my discoursing due to time constraints, but in all likelihood I’ll end up saving a draft and waffling on this evening, too. Sorry about that.

Cynical Grumpy Bald Headed Mannequin

The title of today’s missive may seem rather miscellaneous, but in actual fact it is exactly what I feel like. It also happens to be the most recent search term someone found my blog via. Intriguing and apt.

I am cynical because the universe is continuing to cause problems for me, and this tends to bring on a fit of bitterness in which I renounce any faith I had in individual people, people as a species, the city, the country, the world, the universe, and everything. Fie on all of you.

I am grumpy because of the continued problems, because I am visibly bigger than I was a few months ago, because it’s COLD, because even friends who used to be good at making arrangements and who have complained about being the one who always does it are ignoring my ‘when are you free?’ messages and clearly therefore everyone hates me, because I re-read my essay and noticed two typos and realised that it doesn’t make sense, and mostly because it could not be clearer that to my employers I am just a replaceable person doing a job that could be done by anyone and my individual contribution doesn’t register at all.

I am metaphorically bald headed because I am metaphorically tearing my hair out about the general unsatisfactoriness of everything.

I may as well be a mannequin. I feel so disconnected from everything and everyone that I am not sure that I am even alive.

And it’s fucking snowing again.

For 5th February 2012

Don’t worry, there isn’t going to be a photograph of snow. Someone in my Facebook feed was complaining about everyone uploading snow photos and I did have a little chuckle to myself because I’d thought the same thing. It’s really not that exciting, there wasn’t that much of it, and if I want to look at snow I can just look at the actual snow. Plus, I’m so over snow. Last year did it for me, what with the endless snow/ice trauma that made leaving the house mortally perilous, and then the going to Canada and being almost literally housebound by the dastardly stuff. The novelty wears off quite fast, I find. Also, since reading The Road I’ve developed a strange snow-anxiety that causes irrational fear that the apocalypse cometh, the snow will never stop falling and the world will eventually be enveloped in its cold white blankness for all eternity. It creeps me out. And then I discovered that nuclear fallout resembles snowfall and I can never see snow in the same way again. I don’t like it. It is cold, it is slippery, it takes colour away, and it makes everyone first ridiculously over-excited and then ridiculously grumpy. It’s sinister. And it’s like Christmas. In that it builds up, and then it arrives, and then it stops arriving and all the excitement goes away but there are still slushy dirty snow-remnants everywhere like used wrapping-paper just to remind you of how much an anti-climax it all was.

So instead of the customary cemetery walk I stayed in today, cleaned the flat (after two weeks of intense essay-writing there was cat litter covering pretty much every available surface), sorted out backing up my computer, did a job application, and watched Strictly Ballroom for the zillionth time. Sundayish things. I even managed to retrieve some files I thought I’d lost by connecting my broken PowerBook to my iMac using ethernet – not terrifically challenging if you can see what you’re doing, but as the PB screen is scrambled and I didn’t have file sharing set up on either machine it was a bit tricky. Amongst the recovered data are digests of all my blogs since I first started my LiveJournal in 1999, and a copy of the newsgroup that was my first foray into social networking, also in 1999. I had a dip into it, but coming face-to-face with your 14-year-old online persona is something you have to feel quite robust for, I think. I’m surprised I made life-long friends as a result of ‘the NG’ as we used to call it, because five minutes in I wanted to stab my teenage self in the face. Jaysus.

The job is at LSE, and I actually think I’d be quite good at it. Only three days per week, so I’d have to find something else for a fourth day in the unlikely event that I got it, but it’s a bit more ‘up my street’ to be an Online Communications Assistant than a Fees Officer I think. I’m not holding out much hope though; there are a couple of things on the person specification that I don’t quite fulfil, and the outline specifically says that shortlisting will be conducted purely on the basis of how well applicants fit the specifications. Considering the job market at the moment I expect there will be an abundance of folk who are more qualified than I am, and HE jobs seem to be weirdly competitive considering how generally unexciting they are – when I got my lowly University of Sussex job back in 2007, for the princely sum of £13,074 pa, I was one of 120 applicants, which seems like a lot for a poorly paid position so I dread to think how many applicants there are per job in the midst of a recession and employment crisis. Annoyingly, in the process of applying for the LSE job I realised that I haven’t had a rejection from a University or Westminster position I applied for a few weeks ago. Upon checking my email I observe that I never received a confirmation of submission for my application form, so it looks like that never went through. Most HE institutions have online application systems, but not Westminster, nooooo, for them you have to email the application form to HR through a web form but there is no way of logging back in to check the status of it. So I assume that the form I slaved away over for hours never made it to its destination: grrr. Owing to the benefits reform I would not longer be able to afford to take the job even if I was offered it, but it’s still frustrating to have put all that time and effort into an application that probably hasn’t ben considered. It doesn’t help that I would rather amputate my own arm than write a job application. I wish we could return to a time when you could just rock up and speak to a real actual person and say hello, I want the job that you want a person to do please, I would be good at it and I am quite nice, what do you think? According to the episode of QI that is currently on iPlayer – the intelligence one, which is very funny I might add and accurately summarises some of my main issues with looking for jobs and other situations in which you are expected to behave like a tick in a box – according to QI interviewers make up their mind about interviewees within 12 seconds. In light of this it is extra specially vile that one spends hours trying to put themselves into words, and then only if you do this well do you get to go and spend half an hour being asked irrelevant questions by people who have already decided whether they want to give you the job before you even got as far as sitting down in your chair. Because I either do not understand or do not wish to comply with the rules dictating how you must present yourself on an application form I very rarely get to interview, but when I do I am generally successful. Strangely I have I think only been rejected once after an interview for a job with a new place, but I have never successfully interviewed for an internal position at a place where I already worked. This contradicts everything I have been led to believe about myself, which is that I cast a negative first impression but am kind of okay really once you get to know me a bit.

Anyway, I’m not sure how anyone can decide who is worthy of interview based on application forms because the internet proves that most people are nothing like what they sound like. And lots of people lie. It also seems odd to say that you shortlist purely based on what knowledge and experience people have when clearly – I hope clearly, anyway – it is ultimately more important whether you think the person will fit in with the other people and be the ‘right kind of person’ for the place and job. If I was looking for people that’s what I’d want, anyway. I would obviously also like them to be qualified, but I’d rather take on someone who seemed right but was a bit lacking in experience than someone who ticked all the boxes but didn’t quite fit. This is why I think the whole points-based system for appointing people is TERRIBLE because we all know that when you look at points it is generally the most averagey average person who comes out on top and also it completely fails to take into account the 12-seconds gut reaction thing. (I am aware, though, that there is also a big problem with employing people based on just the 12 seconds because it’s pretty much free license for interviewers to go with their prejudices and makes a mockery of equal opportunities… I’m not suggesting I have an answer, I just don’t think totting up numbers is the best way of ascertaining someone’s suitability for the role, when the role isn’t just the job itself but the place of work and the colleagues and all that.)

I did not intend to go off on another rant about sites of enforced conformity. Sorry. It’s amazing I’ve ever been given a job really. And yet kind of funny because I am a good having a job person even though on paper I look recalcitrant and difficult.

I don’t really feel ready for it to be Monday again tomorrow. I’m putting off going to bed so I can hold on to the weekend, but I suppose I should do some sleeping really or it will only be more painful.

I’ve got a few songs for days stored up, but for now here is today’s. I am so in love with it, and I know it shouldn’t make a difference really but when I know someone is dead, especially if they died young, it can’t help but retrospectively colour how I receive their work. It is strange listening to a voice that doesn’t exist any more.

Jeff Buckley – Nightmares by the Sea

Aaaaaaaaaaaaand Relax

Yesterday I eventually submitted my first MA assignment and as a result I am now significantly less of a stressed-out monster and more like a normal human being. Or what is normal for me, anyway, which is according to more than one person ‘not normal’, but normalness aside, I am no longer wielding a trenchant desire to savage every person I see or tell each whiny ‘I was expecting some free money and I haven’t had it so now I am going to come and get all righteously indignant in your face even though I didn’t read the application form properly so it is in fact my own stupid fault’ student to fuck off.

The essay is not one of my finest, but at least it is done and handed-in and 15% of my MA is, for better or worse, complete. Not that one should ever blame their (relative) failures on other people, but I can’t help feeling that I might have written a better assignment – or at least felt a little better about it – if I had received some guidance from my tutor. He’s a very clever man, and his seminars are informative and entertaining, but he’s quite a typical academic in that ‘I can’t concern myself with these pedestrian matters of practicality because my brain is too busy thinking about some obscure philosophical dilemma’ kind of way. It’s almost impossible to pin him down, he only replies to emails 75% of the time, and his responses are mostly rather vague and diffuse in a manner that people such as I, who like to be very clear and definite and know where they are with things, find face-stabbingly infuriating. The course was quite difficult – as in it contained a lot of very dense philosophy and theory – and this essay was everyone’s first assignment, so although at postgraduate level there should obviously be a large amount of independent study, I do still feel that I didn’t really get the support I needed to feel like I in any way knew what I was doing. It doesn’t help that I missed three weeks of the course due to the fist-sized cyst, but I think other students felt similarly bewildered. Whereas those on the other pathways had lists of questions to choose from, we had latitude to write about quite literally anything as long as we incorporated one of the thinkers we’d studied; that’s quite a big task, especially for the first MA-level submission. It did say in the course outline that we needed to agree our questions with the tutor by reading week, but even though that’s clearly unrealistic as at that point only half of the material has been studied, the tutor seemed to have an active resistance to ever agreeing a question. Thus everyone I have spoken to, myself included, submitted their essay without any idea whether even the premise of their work was suitable; it’s one thing to feel unsure of the quality of an essay, but quite another to feel anxious about the whole direction of it. It could be the most amazing essay on earth but if the topic doesn’t meet the course criteria I’ll still be fucked – and if I lose marks because the question is unsuitable I will actually spontaneously combust because my tutor agreed to have a quick read through and let me know if it was okay and of course he magically didn’t do anything of the sort. Its frustrating because I’d understand if he said he didn’t have time to read it or whatever, but it’s a bit shitty to say you will and then just not reply when it’s emailed to you. If everyone on the wider MA was in the same position I wouldn’t mind quite so much, but I know the other pathways had lists of essay questions to choose from, and one tutor even gives feedback on drafts, so it seems kind of unfair that some of us are abandoned with the entirety of the world to write about (it’s an English MA broadly, but the core pathway course is ‘Theories of Literature and Culture’ and we were specifically told that we could write about ‘anything’ not just books) and a tutor who won’t even help us formulate a question.

I was also very nearly fucked over by my shitty Word 2011, which completely lies in terms of word count. It told me that, including footnotes, my first draft was something in the region of 6300 words. I was actually quite concerned about this because I knew I’d waffled – this will come as an enormous shock to you I’m sure – and repeated myself a bit, and also because I am always always always massively over the word limit. When I came to submit my final portfolio at the end of my BA my essays were collectively double the upper word limit and I had to be brutal to cut them down to size. So, being only 300 words over, I was worried – if I can make a 3000-word essay into a 6000-word essay, how come a 6000-word essay is only 6300 words? Anyway, I did some editing, made some changes (after spending a full hour alternately staring at my computer screen in paralysed panic and weeping onto the desk), and emailed it to myself to print off at work, at which point the word count was something in the region of 5400. So when I opened it on my work PC, converted it into a readable font as in its ever-logical way the computer had converted the unrecognised original font – Baskerville – to musical notation (obviously another generic serif font such as the repulsive Times New Roman would not have sufficed), and went to do a final word-count for the cover sheet, it came as a bit of a shock to discover that it was actually 6271 words long (and before you ask, yes, I did have the ‘include footnotes’ box checked on both my Mac and the work PC). Therefore the first draft was actually something more like 7100 words, so it’s a bloody bloody good job I shaved it down or I would have found myself at work, three hours away from the deadline, with 1000 words too many and no opportunity to do anything about it. Thanks Microsoft. (Incidentally, due to the aforementioned general shitness of PCs, I could not submit in my trademark font of Baskerville and changed it to Century, which, although I didn’t realise this until I printed it, made it look like it was written by a pre-OSX Mac (whilst sort of fun in a retro novelty kind of a way, I bet I lose at least 1% for the ugly typeface… the font libraries on the work PCs are so incredibly revolting, there was really nothing suitable at all, and Baskerville is so perfectly elegant and clear).)

So anyway, although I’m not exactly happy with it, it is nonetheless good to have that essay out of the way. The combined stress of work and the assignment were making me feel murderous almost 100% of the time. I have also been eating a ridiculous amount, a large percentage of which has been junk, because food is a default (but not very helpful or healthy, given my various issues with it) reward system. When I’m very tired and stressed and busy I let myself eat not-good things as a ‘treat’, which works on one level but also gives me the ‘treat’ of one more thing to beat myself up about afterwards (it’s actually quite a sophisticated masochistic exercise when you think about it – I let myself have things I usually restrict myself from having because I am having a rubbish time and the contraband will offer some enjoyment, but then I feel guilty for obtaining pleasure from the contraband, and then I feel bad about myself because I didn’t exercise willpower and am therefore weak, and am also convinced I am fat (which is why I should not have allowed myself to have it in the first place), but as masochism by its very nature takes a perverse pleasure in self-flagellation there is a kind of satisfaction in all the negative thoughts that stem from the initial action, which was supposed to be positive). When I look at the audit trail on this one I can’t work out whether the first treat was even ever supposed to be me doing a nice thing for myself, or whether it was a clever ruse by the part of me that feels shitty and worthless to engineer a circumstance in which it would get free rein to go to town… was it a nice thing that my self-loathing took over and twisted until it became a not-nice thing, or was it always a not-nice thing disguised as a reward because I’ve done enough work on the self-loathing that I can’t any longer sustain loathing for no reason and can only legitimately hate myself when I have failed, so I set myself up to fail in order to enact the hatred?

I woke up yesterday morning and every time I tried to become upright I felt so violently sick I had to lie down again. There was nothing ‘wrong’ with me, I was just so immensely exhausted that I physically couldn’t get out of bed. I went into work half way through the day after a few more hours’ sleep and I’m sure all my colleagues thought I’d just bunked the morning to do more work on my essay but I was just floored. I’ve never experienced anything quite like it before, and I didn’t think I was that tired really, although I have been feeling kind of like the world is going too fast and I can’t keep up. Work has been very stressful and I come home every day feeling wired, like I’ve had 10 coffees and no sleep and have been on fast-moving transport all day long. I feel like I’m burning out my motor or something, working at double-speed to get everything done, taking a day of leave to work for 14 hours on my essay then having twice as much to do at work the following day. I’ve been compiling data on aspects of my job that are quantifiable so I can take it in to my boss next week and show him how much I do and explain why I can’t actually sustain this level of productivity without crumpling in a heap and not being able to come to work because I can’t get out of bed. Of course it doesn’t help that I’m doing the MA as well, and to an extent it’s my own problem if I don’t have the energetic resources to do both, but the main problem in terms of work work is that the workload is unevenly shared between my team. Or I think it is, anyway. It’s not possible to quantify everything, but people from other sections have commented on the balance of work and I’m beginning to realise that maybe it isn’t just my Eeyore sense of being hard-done-by after all. My bosses have a very hands-off approach, which is great in some ways, but in others it’s frustrating as it means they have very little idea what’s actually going on or who’s doing what. In my more cynical moments I also suspect that part of this is feigned ignorance and they keep things the way they are because I get shit done and it makes their lives easier. It is problematic, though, because there are things that we as a section are behind on as it is so if some of my responsibilities are reallocated to other people in all likelihood they won’t get done, which is partly how I came to have such a heavy workload as it is – there are things that come into the email account that I could pass on to other people but because I know the query will always return to me if it isn’t done in a timely manner it’s easier to do it myself and know that it’s done. It’s like spinning plates, though, and it’s only a matter of time before I start dropping them so I plan to have a meeting next week in which I lay this out. It’s quite tricky because I don’t want to grass on my team – people have different working speeds and ethics and there’s no reason anyone should feel as dutybound as I do to do everything at capacity speed – but at the same time, the only way of articulating how much work I do is to show it in comparison to what other people do. My point is not ‘make everyone else work harder’, it’s ‘I have too much work to do’. It’s also ‘I have asked for reduced hours and you have said no so I am looking for another job – is that really what you want given the information I have just provided?’. Again, it’s problematic because it makes it seem like I’m blackmailing or something, and it’s really not about that, it’s about the fact that I don’t think it’s in their interests for me to leave any more than it is in mine – I’m not trying to get them over a barrel, I’m just attempting to work a compromise that would be better for both parties. Obviously, though, given that I’m asserting both that I have too much work personally and that we as a section have too much work, a flat-out reduction isn’t going to be practical as we can’t afford to lose the hours all together, but I’m still sure there must be a way to work something out that doesn’t mean me leaving entirely.

Having said that, of course, we are talking about a large public-sector institution here and therefore even if we do work something out it will inevitably take about a thousand years to come to fruition. As an example, about a year ago it was announced that my department were going to be made a new big office so we could all be in the same place (at the time my section shared an office with another section, and the other sections were scattered about; we all had different opening hours and it was a bit crap for the students). Further to this, the counter was going to be run by dedicated counter staff who could fulfil the basic roles of each section so that students wouldn’t have to see a bunch of different people and could enrol, pay, get an application form for a residential hardship bursary, register for a dyslexia test, and get a council tax exemption letter all at once without standing in four different queues. This magical land was going to be the Student Centre, and we had meetings about how it would work, feedback sessions, lots of generally ineffectual gatherings organised as a concession to us lowly monkey staff to make us feel involved and of course very few of our concerns were addressed. Anyway, the new all-singing, all-dancing counter staff jobs were supposed to be made available in April last year, with staff to be in place for the summer to train in the quiet period. We moved into our temporary office in June and remained there for three months. No jobs were advertised. We moved back into our shiny new office, set up specifically for this new arrangement of staff, and no jobs were advertised. Then in November an alternative plan was suggested and agreed, but still one requiring new positions. We were told the jobs were ready to go to advert and it was just a matter of HR putting them online. Nothing happened. Now, despite the fact that the proposal for the Student Centre was part and parcel with the new jobs so there would be people to staff it, SMT have said there is no money in the budget for the new staff (and this is despite the fact that the original plan had five new people whereas the new one only has two). How it is possible that a budget is drawn up for a large project that was carried out in haste so as to take advantage of the money while it was available (we were told it had to be done quickly because the money had to be spent in that academic financial year) can suddenly be found lacking in resources to cover one of the central reasons for building the sodding thing in the first place is beyond me. They built this new space so it could be a one-stop shop, but now it’s just one place where people come and are confused about who they need to see because there are different queues for different things (well, two different queues – one to my section, one to another, and if it’s someone to see one of the other sections we have to scurry back to the office and retrieve someone for them). In our previous office we each spent maybe maximum 30 minutes each day with students at the counter (other than between October and December, when it’s madness) and only got up to serve people when they came in and rang the bell. Now, because of the arrangement of the office, we each spend two hours solid sitting at the counter and struggle to get the rest of our work done.

It’s just painfully ridiculous to get anything done, and it’s no one person’s fault, it’s a systemic thing that’s impossible to surmount. I applied for accelerated progression in August because I was still on the bottom of the pay scale and despite being the newest and least experienced member of my team had been given several individual responsibilities. My boss supported it, the director of the department supported it, and then it got stuck. Last time I asked about it I was told there is now some doubt over whether the accelerated progression scheme even exists any more. Then the other day my boss said the HOD is still fighting for it and even pledged to continue doing so after she goes on maternity leave (which seems a bit unnecessary to me, although when you consider that she’s grown a new human being in the time it’s taken for one lowly form to pass through the departments…) but it’s stuck somewhere in HR, and knowing the vortex that is HR it will probably stay there and emerge some time in 2098 as a relic of past times. I know I complain a lot about everything in the universe, but I’m sure you can understand why I get frustrated. Working yourself into a nervous frenzy and resulting state of physical and mental exhaustion for a place that generally operates at a negative speed is fairly demoralising. Times like this I really miss The Bee’s Mouth – it was long and hot and cramped and hard work and no money, but at least B noticed when I worked hard and appreciated my efficiency and paid some fucking attention to what his staff were doing.

Anyway, this is all quite boring really. I should go and cook myself my celebration dinner. It’s not a food-treat to beat myself up with, it’s an event-treat that involves food. Because I’m single I miss out on having romantic meals cooked for me, or being taken out to the cinema, or for dinner, or any of those things, so sometimes I do them for myself. Tonight I am cooking myself a nice steak with some home-made chips. I will drink some wine and watch a film and congratulate myself on submitting my essay. In general I’m not very good at relaxing or switching off, but I’ve trained myself to do nice things n a guilt-free way every once in a while and when it works it’s amazing. Weirdly, it also makes me feel just as emotional when I really care for myself as it does when someone else shows me they care about me… it’s like I’m just as surprised to discover that I love me as I am to discover someone else does.

I have also formulated a new future plan. Well, it isn’t really very new but it’s a bit more concrete than ‘do a PhD, hopefully with funding’. In fact, it’s a less a plan and more a vision, because most of it isn’t really in my control. In 18 months I will have finished my MA and I would like to be starting a funded PhD at a London university (well, not necessarily London, but unless something unusual happens that’s most realistic). I would like to be in a relationship and either already living with or looking to move in with that person. We will not live in London but somewhere nearer the countryside and with easy access so I can get to university when necessary. We will have a dog and an open fire.

A funded PhD is quite unlikely, but without one I will have to have a job and this will be crap from both a PhD and a dog point of view. I really want a dog, but my current lifestyle won’t accommodate one. I had this issue with cats for several years, until I was settled enough to get Edith, and she has brought so much fulfilment to my life. I know this is the kind of sappy crap people say about kids, and I don’t want them ta very much, but it’s true. Being alone is far less lonely when there’s an Edith to come home to. I’d like to be in a relationship partly for dog purposes, too – I’m not sure I want the responibility all by myself. I also like being in relationships, despite the fact that none of mine thus far have been enormously successful or trauma-free, and they generally make things easier. When life gets really stressful and I have little in the way of time or energy I really notice how hard it is being alone and not having time to cook or wash up or clean the flat or even just hoover it or empty the bin or have anyone to just hand out a hug and tell me it will be okay really. At my lowest lowest ebbs I fall back into old needy patterns, which are clearly unhelpful, but I don’t think there’s anything wrong with just not wanting to do everything by oneself. At some point, with the right person, I would like to share life and share responsibility and share a DOG and be near the countryside but still have a reason to be connected to London because I need city stimulation and I don’t think that is too outlandish as a life to want. In 18 months perhaps I’ll desire something totally different. But as of right now that is my vision of the future, and until I change my mind and aim for something else, that is what I shall head towards.

Collapse

I had a bit of a meltdown today. (Sorry, this is going to be one of those serious posts again.) In the interests of making explicit a couple of things that I have referenced before but never properly explained – and which are relevant to today’s blog – I have two chronic health problems that will never go away, one mental and one physical. Sometimes the symptoms are better than others, learning to manage these conditions limits their impact on my life, and the mental health problem can have periods of remission in which I barely know it’s there (or so I am told…). Nonetheless, even when asymptomatic, I will never be ‘cured’. In general I try not to let these things define my identity – although of course they define my life in many ways because they affect my ability to carry out a ‘normal’ existence – or place too much emphasis on them because there’s no point creating a drama about it. These things are part of me, part of the way I live, and – at least in the case of my mental health – I have no frame of reference for it being any other way. I have no memory of a time in which I did not feel that my brain was being crushed under the weight of something that it could not resist and feel terrifyingly powerless to my emotional life. At this point I cannot extrapolate what parts of my thought and behaviour are due to my ‘illness’ and what are just part of me – and, really, when you think about it, chronic illness is not a separate thing that intrudes upon a person, it becomes a fundamental part of who they are. The diagnostic criteria for illnesses are created based on the symptoms people display, and people with similar symptoms that fall into a particular bracket are described as having this or that disease or disorder and therefore this externally imposed diagnosis breeds a kind of feeling that the disorder is therefore almost a separate part of the patient, some little demon to be exorcised. Of course it’s true that most conditions can be ‘treated’ in some way to make the sufferer more ‘normal’, but I don’t find it helpful, personally, to focus too closely on which aspects of my personality or identity are the ‘sick’ bits and which are the ‘healthy’ bits, or to try and separate them out, or to assume that all of my behaviours are the result of my diagnosed conditions.

For 22nd January 2012

As I write this title I realise that I have just incorrectly named all of my January photo albums ’2011′. Please, no, god, no, do not make me repeat that odious year.

I’m going to start using this ‘more’ code to condense the main blog page a bit more. If you followed a link directly to this entry you will have no idea what I’m talking about because you can already see everything like an omnipotent god of wondrousness. If you are on the front page its very self, please click the link to see the rest of this entry – there are photographs, the usual quantity of unnecessary complaining, and a song for the day all contained within its bounds…

Comment is Free?

A few days ago the Guardian asked for readers to write a short piece about their views on body image for the People’s Panel, in light of the recent protest against dieting. Having much to say about any topic, but especially as I’ve been talking quite a lot here about issues relating to body image, I thought I’d give it a bash and bookmarked the page. Of course I promptly forgot all about it and only remembered at 11.30 on Monday night (deadline Tuesday) but nonetheless decided to cobble something together. By the time I’d finished, 100 words over the upper limit of 300 (it’s very hard to say anything of actual substance in 300 words when dealing with a complex topic), it was very much past my bed time and I wondered why I’d even bothered.

So it was a nice surprise when I got an email back on Wednesday saying one sentence was unclear but otherwise they were interested in running my little bit of comment. I clarified the sentence and today was emailed the link to the article (as far as I’m aware it just goes online, so not quite ‘in print’). Having never written anything for publication by someone else it didn’t really occur to me that they might butcher it at will – although I had thought it was unlikely they would choose it in the first place due to my ‘colourful’ style. Of course newspapers edit things and it’s really just me being a bit thoughtless, forgetting that I have the latitude here to express myself any way I damn well choose and that therefore the only barrier to not saying what I mean to say is my own inability to express it. I’m sure that taking some of the more loaded terms and ‘frilly’ bits out is sensible in terms of both trimming the word count and making the piece a bit more neutral, but the problem that presents for me is that I think it changes the tone quite dramatically. Maybe I’m wrong, and I’ll give you a chance to compare for yourself in a minute, but whereas in my original I tried to keep a level of self-deprecating humour in there that was intended to both be entertaining and to mitigate the potentially arrogant attitude of what I was saying, the edited version just makes me sound like an up-myself dick. It felt risky to enter the piece in the first place, being as I know that I am a) very sensitive to being misunderstood and b) fundamentally unable to tolerate criticism, so it’s even more scary knowing that what eventually appeared doesn’t quite accurately reflect my point of view.

Such is the way these things are, though, and it’s helpful in its own way as several people have suggested journalism as a career but I’m not sure I could really feel comfortable with knowing that someone was always going to edit and change what I’d written in a manner that potentially alters the angle of what I’m saying. Not that I was previously unaware that this is how journalism works, just this is my first experience of it – and it’s not even a piece I wrote for (as in on behalf of) the Guardian, it’s just a thing I wrote as an experience/opinion piece that the Guardian used in their feature. I expect I’m blowing it out of proportion, I guess I just feel strange that I can write something and it can have bits taken out, words substituted, and without my knowledge or consent it will be published under my name when it’s not really even what I wrote any more.

Knowing how ridiculously over-sensitive I am, I have to keep reminding myself not to read the comments. I know, I know, it’s Comment is Free and the whole point of the People’s Panel is to initiate debate, but I’m just not strong enough for it I’m afraid. That said, I would be interested in knowing what other people think about the differences, if there are any, between the original and the edited version (I mean differences in meaning and tone, obviously, rather than literal differences).

(As a side-note, I can completely understand the practical reasons why the edits were made and was aware as I wrote it that certain words in particular were perhaps controversial, so I’m not saying it’s necessarily bad to edit, or that there aren’t very good justifications for why it’s done, I’m just saying that it’s quite weird when it actually happens. And that in this case I feel that those aspects of the piece were integral to its perspective and therefore think it would have made more sense if they simply hadn’t used it… but then I’m probably too close to see either version clearly so perhaps it’s not so drastic really.)

So, here is the article that was published today on the Guardian website.

And, in the extended blog under here, you can find the original text:

For 14th January 2012

As usual, frequency and length of blog posts has a strong relationship to the amount of other things I have to do. I.e. the more important and greater the amount of life tasks requiring attention, the more often I empty my brain onto the internet. Today I did actually manage to clean the flat, including taking out the pile of recycling that’s been multiplying in my hallway since well before Christmas (and if you’ve ever seen my hallway you’ll know that obstructions of any kind, like Ediths, let alone teetering constructions of cardboard Jenga, severely impede both getting to the bathroom and getting in and out of the front door), so I am not a complete failure. The recycling is still something of a phantom limb though, so every time I go to the loo I find myself walking around it unnecessarily; the absence of a bag of some type of rubbish or other is now more disorientating than the presence was inconvenient. I have not, however, completed the job application whose deadline is on Monday, or done any work on my essay, or done any reading for this week’s seminar (or, for that matter, finished last week’s text either), or done the ironing (what an odious task ironing is; I do wish my skin was not so fussy and would tolerate synthetic fibres more readily), or written to my aunt who has sent me another nice card to which I will always intend to but most likely won’t ever reply to, or sewn the fastening back onto my cape, or sorted out the cupboard under the sink that is only ever one tupperware away from exploding all over the kitchen, or made carrot soup for lunches next week even though I bought about twenty-thousand carrots from Abel and Cole last week for this specific purpose, or made a list of all the things I need to do (this is most alarming and suggests that I have gone into Extreme Avoidance Mode, which is one step on from Panicky Freak-Out Mode in which I make comprehensive lists of all the things I need to do and get so paralysed by anxiety about them that I can’t actually do anything).

I did clean the flat. I might feel a greater sense of accomplishment had I not intended to clean the flat every day since last Friday, and had I not troubled to eventually do so only because L is coming over tomorrow. I used to be so disciplined. I don’t know what happened. At work I’m highly productive and somehow manage to force myself to do things there and then even when I reeeeeeallly don’t want to (though having said that I’ve had a post-it on my monitor to call the Student Loans Company for over a week…), but I’m failing quite wonderfully at my actual life. I have a book waiting at the post office that was originally delivered two weeks ago, that I got them to redeliver today but I ignored the bell because I couldn’t be bothered to get out of bed. I have two hospital appointments that need rescheduling. I’m about to run out of medication and don’t seem to have booked a blood test so that I can get my next prescription. I’ve had four messages, dating from before Christmas, from a company who are supposed to be assessing me for an ergonomic work station. I used to be renowned for being this organised, on-the-ball person who did homework on the day it was set and always knew exactly what was going on. Now I feel like my brain has fractured into separate departments that don’t even talk to each other; I keep forgetting things, I keep losing things – which is very disturbing as I usually know where everything is, even if it’s somewhere really strange – and I don’t like it. I feel out of control and unproductive and like I’m losing the few positive attributes I have.

Anyway. Aside from cleaning I also managed a walk in the cemetery and dinner out with H. The cemetery was lovely, if chilly, although I probably alarmed any other inhabitants by spending most of my time there wriggling around on my stomach taking photos of the grass. I don’t advise this behaviour on cold January afternoons – you will end up soggy, earthy, and somewhat lacking in warmth. Dinner was also pleasant, although slightly marred by a matter of principle. I ask you: is, or is not, dessert a food? I know that was a horribly constructed sentence. Let that be evidence of my moral disturbance. You see, we went to La Luna (yes, I know it’s in Walworth, and I was skeptical too, but it’s actually rather nice if you like Italian food – to be honest I’d never choose to eat Italian out because it never seems worth spending money on but it’s fairly reasonably-priced and has a good atmosphere) and we used a Taste card, which promised 50% off food. And yet when the bill came they charged us regular price for the desserts, leaving me in a state of mystification. My tiramisu certainly felt like food. I put it in my mouth, I chewed, I swallowed, I’m feeling this is a fairly reliable description of what one does with food. Now before you point out that this made the difference of the vast sum of two whole English pounds and that just before this I had been extolling the virtues of said establishment, I will reiterate: it is a matter of principle. You should stipulate if you do not consider desserts to be food, because it might just be me but I rather think most people would make the assumption that in fact they very much do fall into the ‘food’ bracket. I do take note, however, that my anger about this is quite unreasonable. I’m afraid I’m irritatingly dogmatic about violations of my principles. I just don’t like it when people say one thing and do another and then treat you like you are the idiot for following ordinary logic when they are the ones being devious and confusing.

On a more positive note, last night I discovered The Cinematic Orchestra. Or rather was introduced to The Cinematic Orchestra. I’m not quite sure how but a text from B spiralled into a six-hour text/MSN Messenger marathon in which he sent many typically riddley and nebulous messages and I returned many which I’m sure for him were annoyingly serious-taking and prosaic: I am highly intolerant to vagueness when I interpret it to be veiling something that I therefore am unable to access. You don’t have to call a spade a spade, but if you’re talking about a spade it would definitely be helpful to construct your metaphor in the right semantic field or you could just be talking about absolutely anything. May just be me, but nothing is more infuriating than not having a bloody clue what someone’s on about, especially if it seems like they could be on about something important.

Anyway, endless elisions notwithstanding, it was not an unpleasant way to spend the evening and we had a listening party to Man With a Movie Camera at B’s suggestion. The Cinematic Orchestra is really a very apt name; as soon as I started the album all these images played in my head, and not just pictures but little films. Hearing Dawn I was by a beautifully still lake somewhere, in the very early morning just as it’s getting light, watching the mist rise off the water and the dusky pinky clouds getting brighter, the animals all starting to wake up. I was standing listening to the sounds of the birds and the trees creaking awake, chilly but knowing I would shortly go back to my log cabin and make coffee then sit on the porch in a rocking chair with a red blanket, just watching everything go about its business, watching everything exist. I ache to go there. If it only was really a place. When I expressed this to B he accused me of ‘being not normal’, which a) is rich coming from him, b) should not be much of a surprise given that our friendship is largely based on our mutual not-normalness, c) not even true. I’m reasonably certain that everyone goes to imaginary places in their brain and therefore it is very much normal. Perhaps less normal that I didn’t want to come back, but why would anyone want to return to dirty old London when they could be in a lakeside cabin surrounded by nature?

Right. Bed. This is short by my standards but it’s taken hours for some reason. Have to get up and cook L a pheasant tomorrow – thankfully remembered to remove it from the freezer – so sleep must be had before that horrible Monday comes round again.

The Cinematic Orchestra – Dawn