Thesis Writing and Hormones

Life, Rant

I have under a month before I submit my MAR thesis.

I also have three months until my contraceptive implant runs out, and my my, it is doing some tremendous things to my mood. I anticipate the next month to be a month of many things, including (but not limited to):

– a lot of anger
– a lot of crying
– a lot of wondering what I’m doing with my life and whether I’ve ever made any of the right choices EVER (spoiler, I have, it’s all fine)
– a fair amount of knowing that I’m acting a little bit nutty
– a fair amount of not really caring about the above and doing it anyway because I’m entitled to
– a lot of procrastination
– leading to a clean house, many clean clothes, many clean dishes, and probably lots of good food
– lots of walking

I don’t know if the next month will include very many blog posts, so if it doesn’t, I’m sorry (but also possibly not, because they’d probably just be angry and unrepresentative of my general life/mood).

In case it doesn’t involve a lot of blogging, you should all know that I’m currently raising money for Scope by trying to walk 10,000 steps a day – and currently doing very badly due to an inexplicably injured foot. You can donate towards our team goal by going to this link or by visiting https://event.steptember.org.uk/donate/ and searching for “LUU Steptember Team”. Scope are a fantastic charity so all donations would be very gratefully appreciated!

This is the end

Life, Work

Hold your breath and count to ten.

Skyfall is a great song, and it’s a real shame that it is such a disappointment of a film. Bring back Sean Connery.

In other news, this is the end of my first week of full-time work. Which as a 24 year old feels like it’s been a long time coming, and I don’t feel like any more of a real grown-up for having gotten to this point.

Yesterday a part of me wanted to insist on going out for drinks and making an issue of myself, but that fairly quickly translated into doing the laundry in my tracksuit bottoms, which was undoubtedly a far better use of the evening. We create these “turning point” moments in our lives, and I have to admit that I don’t think I’ve ever really felt any different for reaching one of them.

I remember my 18th birthday. I had my friends over, and we sat and ate pizza and watched films. I didn’t get drunk. When I passed my driving test I went into school right after, having missed half of my biology lesson (which is impressive given we only had 3 lessons a day and they were an hour and a half each. I was LATE) and made some excuses about my instructors car breaking down. When I turned 21 I dressed up as a pirate. Most of the people I invited to my party didn’t come.

I felt a bit more important when I graduated, but only a bit. I knew, of course, that I was going to stay in the same city, in the same house, and go to the same university and study for a Masters while doing the same part-time job. I almost had a “turning point” when I quit that job, except that then I didn’t actually stop working for the company, I just felt like I’d made the point that they didn’t need to keep employing me out of any kind of duty.

So this week wasn’t a big deal, despite the fact that I’m somehow two years (at least) behind the curve of having-a-real-job-and-being-a-real-grown-up. I did not feel the Earth move (nice callback to the Adele references I opened with, you’re welcome), and the sky did not fall.

I wonder what it’ll be like tomorrow.

Remote Access

Life, Travel

There’s this video. It’s been around for a couple of years, and the words are taken from a great TED talk by Sherry Turkle called “Connected, but alone?”

It’s a great video, and you can find the whole talk here, but I don’t totally entirely agree with it for one single reason, which is one of my best friends. She’s not nearby right now which is annoying because I can’t have gym whinging sessions or spontaneous cake or watch her bizarre life first-hand, but it’s fine because she’s an amazing long-distance friend.

We met because she needed a SIM card. Prodigious fate already intending to signpost that we’d likely spend the majority of our friendship on either ends of a smartphone. We didn’t exactly instantly click, which I think is probably good because by the time I realised we were best friends, it was because I actually felt I knew her enough to know that we are ridiculously alike, while being fantastically different. I think on the  surface no-one would match us up as friends, but who cares about those people anyway?

She’s at a distance now, as I say (a vastly varying difference. Somewhere between 200 and 4,500 miles at any given moment), but it doesn’t feel that way because even though I sometimes forget to go to her, she’s always on the other end of a phone. I think Sherry Turkle is right – we tailor our personality via text and social media to suit our audience, and we don’t share our real selves, and then we feel lonely because the person getting attention isn’t us – but that’s not the case with my friend. With her, I’m happy to be completely honest (even if that means calling her up in tears after storming out of the house during a fight over nothing) and I’m happy to do that because I completely believe that she doesn’t mind. I think if the world were falling down around her ears she still wouldn’t think I was a burden, and that’s a pretty huge thing.

We wouldn’t have the privilege of this friendship without technology. I couldn’t send her snapchats of my double chins, and she couldn’t share videos about nothing, and we couldn’t participate so fully in each others’ lives, be it from 4 miles or 4,000. So being part of the network probably does make me feel lonely – I definitely think about every single message, every tweet, and definitely every blog post, and I tailor them so that they may not really reflect a true image of me – but without the network I wouldn’t have the support of a wonderful best friend, and that’s just a compromise I’m willing to make every day.

I Want You to Want Me

Life

I’ve talked about situational control and personal control, but there’s one type of control that I struggle with possibly more than any other. Control over other people (but not in a FiftyShadesofGrey way, don’t worry)

I don’t actually know if the song is called “I want you to want me” but the second line is “I need you to need me” and between the two they articulate all of my interpersonal relationships. I went through school with a small but amazing group of friends who genuinely wanted my company. And a big group of “friends” who engaged in a codependent relationship where they made me feel needed and in return I’d help them seem smarter than they were.

And actually, that’s fine. That’s really how interpersonal relationships work. Everyone has something, and other people want it, and then it’s a wonderful exchange of thoughts and feelings and personality quirks and support and comedy and life. Which is great.

Until you realise how much you rely on it.

Because I consciously depend on my friends, and that’s an uncomfortable thing, because if there’s one thing you can’t control at all, it’s other people. They are unpredictable. They might love you one day and then find something which annoys them enough to abandon you the next. Humans are difficult things. As a person who likes knowing where they stand, the uneven ground of friendship is a minefield. That minefield is made insanely more complicated when you’re also an anxious person who over-analyses every response, every choice, every message response time. It’s unhealthy.

So that’s wanting people to want me. Let’s talk needing people to need me.

I’m really aware of my friends, and I actively try to please them and do nice things so they’ll still like me, and over-analyse every little detail. So it’s a jackpot when I find a situation where people like having me around because they needed me, and I fix things, and then they like having me around and asking my advice and making me feel valued. To the point where I need that validation, and it’s the only thing which really matters. I’m happy enough most of the time, but when I do something for someone and feel like I’m the only person in the world who could have achieved that outcome for them. That’s real happiness.

I’m fully aware it’s a problem. Don’t you worry your head.

Lose Yourself

Life

Recently (for the last 6 months) I’ve been playing Dungeons and Dragons. Because it’s cool. One of the personality traits of my character is a belief that “If you know yourself then there is nothing left to know”, which I picked because I utterly believe it. I think I’ve mentioned before that if I got lost anywhere, it would probably be inside my own head.

Last time on inside-my-brain-with-Sally, I talked about how important control is to me, and how much I dislike the feeling of not having it. I was talking about situational control rather than anything else, so now it’s time to talk about personal control (which incidentally has a strong crossover with situational control issues, bear with me here).

So I don’t like being in situations I can’t control, but a part of that is because I don’t know how I’ll react. It’s a funny thing to think about, but in the whole world I think the thing I have the least control over is myself. If I finally get that (see quote above), I don’t think anything will ever bother me again. That’s a huge step though because I’ll need to get out of my own head first, a place where I spend a lot of very unproductive time.

I’m a worrier, and it’s easiest to describe in terms of situations because I can’t describe the inside of my head – not with words which would make any sense anyway. This article is just about the perfect expression of what it’s like to be worried about situations you have no control over, but I think the image which speaks to me most is this one:

conversation

Here’s a control situation which breaks me, time after time. I’m not sure how an interaction went, and eventually I get so far into my own head about it that I’m convinced that the person I was engaging with hates me, thinks I’m crazy, thinks I’m stupid, thinks I’m evil (with context, obviously. Not all of this at once). I want to clarify with them whether this is the case, but that’s just not a conversation people really have. So eventually I just get more and more cagey around them in case they hate me, and then it’s very much a downward spiral.

The worst thing about the above? That’s me. That’s just my lack of control of my own emotions stopping me from doing friendship correctly. Other people have some kind of God-like capacity to take a situation which might have felt a bit awkward, look at it, put it down to the direction of the wind and then MOVE ON. But not so the brain of the anxietyist (it’s a word). The memory of that situation bubbles away and every now and then a new element of it comes floating to the surface until you convince yourself that when you thought you were talking about the weather you were doing it while killing that person’s pet. And now they hate you.

This is another level of control that I’m slowly trying to work on. When something happens I try and look at it objectively, decide if it’s something I should have a reaction to, and then actively forget it if it’s nothing. It’s made it easier to go out with friends (I used to have panic attacks in clubs), it’s made it easier to talk to strangers about my actual views, and it’s making it easier for me to share how I feel (hello all of this blogging in the world).

One day I think I’ll “get it” and I’ll work out why I think what I think about LITERALLY EVERYTHING BECAUSE MY BRAIN NEVER STOPS, and that’ll be cool, but actually if that day never comes I think that’s ok too. So long as you’re reconciled with the fact that you’re a bit crazy it gets easier to see that everyone is a little bit really.

Standing in the Way of Control

Life

I considered making a whole new category for this post, because I now spend so much time on here talking about things-I-think-are-wrong-with-my-life-and-how-I-should-probably-fix-them. But then that is a really long category title.

I’ve been thinking for a while that I should talk about my control “issue”. I’ve gone over my social anxieties and my general complexes and it’s been very therapeutic because everyone has problems but talking about them is difficult. Especially when you have a bit of a social anxiety thing going on. I find writing about them much easier and ultimately beneficial (even if I know my Mum reads this and it weirds me out a bit thinking that she’s inside my head. Hi Mum!)

I think a big part of why I like writing my thoughts down like this is because I really do want to engage with people – that’s why a journal that I hide under my pillow won’t cut it – but I need a level of control over what I’m saying and how I’m saying it. Which brings me on to my feature topic of the week.

CONTROL

When I was about 10, I refused to go to school for a couple of weeks because I was terrified that something would happen to my family while I was gone. When I did go back I had to have my Mum sit in the school library so I knew where she was. I don’t really know what happened just before the problems started, but I do know what the feeling was. It was my first real understanding that there were huge, life-changing things out there, which were just beyond my control.

I don’t worry so much about things beyond my control now, because part of being a grown-up is knowing that stuff happens and you can’t always do anything about it, and that’s fine.

But things within my control, or bordering on within my control? WELL.

I am a control freak. I’m dependent on a plan, I like to have it, stick to it, and make it the best it can be. 50% of the time that’s great, because stuff gets done at the right time, in the right way, and people have a positive response to it and it goes swimmingly. 50% of the time that’s terrible because sometimes plans change, or people let you down, and that shouldn’t be a big deal but for me it really is. I need that plan to stay sane.

I also don’t like being able to see someone else plan something badly. Friendly meet-ups with no real start time or location? My nightmare. It’s not that I don’t like the people doing the planning, or that I even think they are bad at it – they aren’t, they’re just normal. But normal amounts of planning leave space for doubts, worries and fears (which I’ll address at a later time). An airtight plan leaves none of that, and I like that. For someone who is incredibly unclear most of the time, I demand clarity above all else.

I’m slowly learning to let that all go though, and that’s good. I am accepting spontaneity (I have to in my new job, where things just happen in my general direction), and learning to quickly reset when something doesn’t quite go my way. It’s a game of peaks and troughs and I’ll never be any less of a control freak really, but that’s OK because sometimes it’s good to have a person around who gets things done, even if they are a bit picky with how they go about it.

 

PS – This is the first of a few posts about issues of control. I’m going to title them all with song titles because that’s what real bloggers do when they’re been cool and intense and deep. Which I obviously also am. Obviously.

Desk Space

Fun, Life

A couple of years ago, when I lived in Morocco, I wrote this post about my desk.

So I thought I’d do that again for comparative purposes, and also for purposes of having content, and also because I had a slight everybody-hates-me freakout today and what is more calming than taking pictures of furniture and then detailing bit by bit what is on them. Nothing, that’s what.

Desk

So I’ll start at the top. Firstly, there are my 4 posters, one for each OperaSoc opera I’ve been involved in – two directed, two produced. All great. They are signed by the cast and some of the messages are hilarious and make me smile (when I’m actually meant to be working but hey-ho).

Next is the top of my desk, occupied by laptop, thesis, library books relating to Arabic poetry, cake, tea, stationary, a masquerade ball mask, a thank-you card from the ex-president of LUU Backstage, two boxes of crazy tiny Japanese food, and a paper-maché pumpkin. All fairly standard, I’m sure.

Underneath and to the right I have bags and drawers packed to the brim with all of the nail polish in the world, and also various craft supplies. I have my workbox which contains even more craft supplies (because let it never be said that I am a woman without pipe-cleaners). On the left are various folders and books related to my undergrad which I’m nostalgically keeping for NO REASON AT ALL, my scrapbook which I’m nostalgically keeping for all of the reasons, and my record of achievement which mostly contains certificates explaining that I was a Girl Guide once.

On the floor are my underused hot water bottle (because who needs a hot water bottle when they have an electric blanket), a pair of violently luminous running shoes which I haven’t taken out of the box, some oil paints, and in the very bottom left-hand corner is the box full of all the tiny memories which don’t work in scrapbook form. Things like a foam die I won once in French class when I was 9, a very smooth rock I found on a beach in Morocco, and the burnt-out matches from the time I played the “Little Match-Girl” at school.

There you are. Now you know even more about me. You’re welcome.

Back On the Horse

Language, Life

Sometimes, life gives you lemons, and you have to take those lemons, put them in your basket of eggs, and then get on a horse.

I think.

Basically, my last post was all horrible and was about the trials of life and social anxiety and feminism and how some people are a bit awful. I’ve been struggling since then to think of a post to follow up with (I took a picture of my desk, which I’ll talk about sometime), and then today some stuff happened which made me think about the principle of “getting back on the horse”, and since it’s totally applicable to this blog situation, here we go.

Firstly, let’s think about the metaphor, because I’ve never really been on a horse, but I feel like if you fall off then getting back on is HARD. Maybe I’m biased because I’m 5’3″ and most horses are waaaay taller than that and I just think I’d struggle, and horses smell, and it’d probably be a bit distressed and let’s not even go into how I wouldn’t have wanted to be riding it anyway because I can just drive a car.

Metaphor aside then, picking yourself up after a negative experience is one of the most horrible things. It’s the total antithesis to what I ever want to do, because it’d be so much easier to curl up with gin and ice-cream and consign everything in the outside world to “rubbish” and just wallow in general self-pity. BUT, I’m a grown-up now, and that is not how grown-ups behave (except for the part about gin. Very grown-up). So instead, I pick myself up, try and look at the experience and say ‘right, I hated that. What have I learnt?’.

After the Rogue incident I learnt that I am not quite comfortable enough with my body yet to wear things that let people see very much of it. That’s not the most brilliant perspective, but what I’m going to do is not put myself in that position again, while learning to feel more confident. That is my legitimate, adult reaction to the situation. It hasn’t changed how I feel about the whole thing, but at least now I’ve got something I’m aiming for which is positive, and so whenever something recalls the experience I bring the positive to mind rather than dwelling on the thing that went wrong.

So I suppose the moral of the story is, stuff happens, but you have to take your basket of lemon eggs, dust yourself off, get on your horse, and race. Or something.

P.S. – I forgot to mention in all this why you have to get back on the horse. It’s because when you do then you get the wind in your hair and all the awesomeness of knowing you got yourself there.

Going Rogue

Life, Rant

It’s Saturday night. I’m sat in my front room, watching X-Men Origins: Wolverine. It’s a great film.

I was out and about with some friends, celebrating a birthday. The birthday-ee (that’s a thing, I think) chose to do the famed Otley Run, which is a pub crawl through Leeds. As a general rule, I’m not a fan, because I find it incredibly nerve-wracking being forced to drink pint after pint at breakneck speed, especially  if there are all kinds of other rules attached a lá drinking with your left hand, not saying the word table, and remembering that it’s definitely the birthday boy’s 21st birthday (and not actually his 30th).

The pub crawl was themed around superheroes and supervillains, and I dressed as one of my favourite characters, Rogue. I based my outfit on this picture, and honestly, I think it turned out quite well.

rogue

As it turns out, some other people thought I looked good too.

Except, unlike Boyfriend, who got lots of positive comments for his great Gambit outfit, my comments were very much directed at me. So let’s just talk about that.

A few years ago, when I lived in Morocco, I wrote a post about different ways I was propositioned. And it’s terrible to say, but I found it a bit funny, because it’s almost expected of men there. Because “they don’t know any better“, which by all accounts just shouldn’t be an excuse which works for anyone. But it does, and so I chugged along my merry way thinking that Moroccan men were a bit untoward but ultimately that was fine.

I somehow didn’t think it’d happen to me here. I’m sad to say that in Leeds in the last few years there have been enough incidents of harassment and assault that sometimes I don’t feel safe, but I didn’t expect today to be one of those times. I was apprehensive about today because I don’t really get on with social activity involving peer pressure and alcohol, but I can get past that for the sake of a friend wanting to have a good time.

The first comment I got was in between the first and second pubs on the pub crawl. It was just a sly “nice arse” from a passing man. Ok fine. You have no class. Move along.

The second and third comments were both in the second pub, both similar arse-centric comments under the breath. After that I very much stopped counting. Some guys shouted at me from the balcony of a bar, then stared at me the whole time I was in there. My skin crawled. A bouncer at another bar offered to “save me” from my friends (who were a little rowdy by this point) and then shouted my name after me. Two people shouted at me from their cars.

And here’s the thing right. This isn’t a mega-feminist rant. I’m not that person. This is just me being a human person and saying that you have a right to have any opinion you like about my body and how I display it. But you have absolutely no right to make me feel so uncomfortable that I decide not to carry on with my night.

And if you’re my neighbour, who from his open window shouted “go on honey, shake that ass” repeatedly as I walked home in broad daylight, then you probably should feel ashamed of the fact that for tonight, I don’t feel comfortable leaving the house and passing your window again.

There are hundreds upon thousands of beautiful men and women in the world. I’ve crossed paths with a great number of them. I’ve remarked on various aspects of their beauty to Boyfriend, or my friends. You know what I’ve never done? Said it so loudly that it might impact on their life. Because that’s not fair. They didn’t ask for that judgement, they didn’t ask what I think of them, so why would I feel the need to say it.

Congratulations to every person in the city of Leeds tonight who ruined my experience of just dressing up as one of my favourite fictional characters. Hope you’ve had a ball.

Normal Everyday Human Life

Life

So I’ve not been up to much. Quite novel really.

In that, I usually am either swamped with things, or going out of my mind with boredom, or just going out of my mind and ranting online about fears and doubts (and actual rants). Recently however, I’ve settled into a pattern of late, which involves going to the gym, going to work, watching good TV, making nice food, and generally being relaxed about life.

Not totally relaxed of course. There’s the trials and tribulations of the M(res) thesis (yes, it continues), which haven’t been made any better by watching hoards of undergraduates become graduates. There’s the stresses of making an appropriate superhero costume for a pub crawl on Saturday – though I’m now pretty happy with it, so there may even be pictures.

But all round, I’m just living nice normal everyday human life.

Boring, isn’t it.