Year: 2014

blocked

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Okay so, my gosh. I’m extremely exasperated and ferociously frustrated.

I’ve had an outer ear infection for about a month now. When it didn’t get better I saw my doctor and was prescribed ear drops.

I am changing doctors! These drops have made my life sheer misery. From the very start they made a point of getting trapped inside my eardrums… where they have smugly sat ever since, swishing about like my head’s their own personal roller-coaster. Like they don’t think hearing is anything I actually need to do things like, you know, provide people with therapy.

Well today I got sick of it and googled methods to get water out of one’s ears. I’d already tried jumping about like a loon with my head on its side, hanging my head upside down and swivelling it, and tugging on my lobes like they were newly grown head-labia that just didn’t belong. Well, as of this moment, I’ve also tried:

  • Headbanging with my head pointing towards the ground. This sent fluid rushing into my sinuses and gave me an instant piercing headache. Ear still blocked. Also I did this right before Josh and Kylie turned up at my house to collect Josh’s phone, which he’d left here the night before. I was a bit disoriented and distracted by shooting spasms of agony, so that was a bit awkward.
  • Blocking my nose and blowing. For some reason I hadn’t realised that this worked for water as well as air pressure. This created some encouraging shiftings and creakings from my ears, but to no avail.
  • Blowing my hair dryer, on low heat, across my ear holes. Nothing.
  • Creating a vacuum with my palm/finger/that little sticky out from the front bit of the ear in the hope that this would suck it out like a plunger would. Still blocked.
  • And finally, mixing up a solution of 50% rubbing alcohol and 50% vinegar and dripping this into my ear. The internet told me that the water in my ear would mix with the alcohol and evaporate along with it. Well, the internet LIED. MALICIOUSLY. It burned like the fire of a thousand of hells, I CRIED, and my ears are still. blocked.

In fact, I’m pretty sure they are worse now. WHY IS THIS HAPPENING TO ME.

too many adverbs

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I’m feeling accomplished. I didn’t even do that much today! but what happened was significant out of proportion to the effort required. Which is only fair for once! Generally my effort feels far too out of proportion to the outcome.

First thing’s first: I had supervision with Sue. Of course she was very affirming, positive, glowingly positively reinforcing my strengths and marvellousness. That’s how she is.

We talked about my sense of gratitude towards my employer, “I don’t think I would be where I am if it weren’t for them,” and how it motivates me to do more than is reasonable; to agree to more than should be expected; to uncomplainingly accept conditions that are untenable. We talked then of my sense of greater meaning, value and efficacy when doing private work. These two topics, naturally, fed eventually into the idea of Brenton and I beginning our own business. Seeing clients, but also providing consultation and training. Flexibility, cost effectiveness, all that jazz. I can’t help but feel it is something that will absolutely happen, it being merely a matter of time.

What about Merely as a surname? I kind of like it better than the uncompromising, hesitantly-ended “Mere.” Merely. I actually really do like that. It may be a viable alternative to the current online persona.

Merely sat at her hectically cluttered desk in her underwear, spiderfeet of sweatdrops creeping down the staircase of her spinal bumps. “Tomorrow a supercell is due,” she typed. She paused for a second to privately acknowledge that the only reason such a tidbit was remarkable was that she very much adored the term “supercell,” despite the fact that, she was sure, it was a term of far superior technical definition than she had awareness of.

Her partner was sitting on the rug in his own underwear, only just within her peripheral awareness, gazing intently into the screen of his phone, until suddenly she realised he was speaking. She looked over as he patted their fluffpot of a kittencat, Gupster. “Do you think her eyes are a bit milky?” he asked.

“Idownknow,” she mumbled incoherently, turning immediately back to her pointless typings. “Guppy is attacking the wrapping paper,” he pointed out a few moments later, clearly attempting, yet again, to obtain her far too elusive attention.

Once she had completed exploiting this event for the purposes of her daily writing word-count and, suddenly realising she had run out of material, she looked over to see what he was up to now. She noticed that at some point during the last sentence or two he had moved into the lounge room armchair, and was again focused upon his phone.

“Hey!” She said indignantly.

He jerked his eyeballs toward her, surprised out of his technologically stimulated reverie. “What?!”

At this stage she was already laughing, realising that the fairly preposterous reason for her offence was that: “You stopped subtly demanding my negligent attention!”

brainjunk vs skull-pocket

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I’ve been watching a documentary on dinosaurs: The discovery of Utahraptor nearby Gastonia and what their relationship might have been. Apparently Utahraptor would not ordinarily have preyed upon Gastonia, which was pretty heavily armoured and defended, however they are theorising that it was times of drought and Utahraptor was desperate… Much like a lone lion who is driven by starvation to prey upon a buffalo.

Meanwhile Gastonia is an awesome name for a dinosaur; way cooler than Utahraptor, which is quite an uninspired title for a top predator. Twice the size of Deinonychus!

Watching the cycle of deduction was pretty enlightening. Being a paleontologist is one of the many careers I could easily have chosen. If dinosaurs are what resides in our imaginations when we read of them and look upon their bones, based upon what those before us had concluded thus far, then they were very different creatures when I was reading my illustrated books about dinosaurs as a seven year old obsessesante. As I recall, my childhood Tyrannosaurus Rex stood proudly vertical — like Godzilla — her tail dragging in the dust behind her. My Brontosaurus (as he was known at the time) lifted his head many stories high, as a giraffe, his tail (again) dragging behind him. Often he was to be found in swamps, where the water could buoy his massive bulk, which his puny skeletal system could not handle.

If you visit the Queensland Museum today, you can see their likenesses in the front children’s play area. I think there may now be a sign defensively declaring that these particular monuments had been constructed in a time when those designing them had no fucking clue what they were on about.

Guesses and assumptions. Slow moving, cold blooded, unintelligent (why else would they be extinct) monsters. Seriously?

I’ve a pretty advantageous viewpoint up here on the shoulders of these giants, I know. It makes me wonder… What will those whose perspective is ever so much higher again think of me and us, one day?

Given the political atmosphere in my country of residence, I rather dread to think. Subject change, post haste!

I’ve begun a private journal, with a minimum word count per day. When I was typing furiously away in it today Brenton wondered what I was up to. Why would I not allow him to peek over my shoulder? Well, because allowing anyone else to read the contents of my private thought-dump defeats the entire purpose! of doing it for one’s only self. The idea is that the content and style of one’s writing is very different when in a private Vs public sphere.

Which I suppose are both different again to words which are never to be read by anyone, ever, once they are out of the skull-pocket. Such as are typed in said private journal. Seeking a quiet space, just for me, dismantling my thoughts, et cetera. So. That is why I don’t want Brenton to read it. For the first time, I am not writing with a mask on. I don’t want that mask to come sneaking in to that space… for it to become an issue; for it is always, always an issue. Moreso for me than most, I imagine (but then again, don’t we all. I should just entitled my self-published journals “Moreso for me”).

I must admit, I am not entirely sure I have ever written anything, EVER, for one’s only ever self. For all of my journals I am certain I have had the idea, nestled quietly in the very back of my brainjunk, that of course someone would one day cast their curious gaze upon these gory innards… if only my own children, on finding the decaying remnants of such in the dankest depths of my cat infested, penetrated by none (bar myself) unintentional tomb. Because who else would want to read my journal, haha, ha, … . private joke.

750 words

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I can mostly only type with one arm; my right has developed a strange strainedness. You know how, when you use a mouse for a very extended length of time, your arm muscles feel strained? Repetitive strain injury, I think it’s called. It isn’t quite a cramp. It is a very discomforting chronic ache. It creeps down from my neck, through my shoulder and to my wrist. Currently there are not many positions that don’t cause pain.

It’s so bad that I was quite close to leaving work early and just lying down for the rest of the day, only I don’t think I can really afford any more sick time right now. Also, now that I’m stuck here anyway, I’m finding that it’s not too terrible. I’m reading Treating Self-Destructive Behaviours in Trauma Survivors. I doubt I would have read such a useful book if it weren’t the only thing I could really do. I just hope I have the discipline to actually finish it. So far the most useful thing I have taken away from it is: Don’t use safety contracts. A contract just encourages deceit.

Someone who has experienced abuse and trauma probably already has extensive training in seeking approval from authority figures. Self harming is going to be one of their only (effective) coping strategies. You can’t simply ask them not to do it and expect that just because this unhelpful behaviour has been extinguished (even if it has) then everything is going to be alright. It isn’t. People use these strategies only because nothing else works. How is it helping this client to just ask him or her not to use them anymore?

So just don’t. Don’t make them commit to promises they can’t possibly keep. That is only ever going to result in them lying to you, and then feeling even more shame about engaging in behaviours they can’t help engaging in.

I was just interrupted by my boss raving about funding we might be getting that he is quite excited about.

Following conversations with him I often come away thinking it must be nice to be so excitable. Such passion and such meaning derived from these passions. That, right there, is what I want so much.

Of course, I do have passions… don’t I? Perhaps I just don’t follow them through. It is actual engagement with your passions that make them grow, surely. I think my problem is not that I am not passionate, just that I do not engage with anything.

Laziness. It always comes back to laziness. Surely being the person that I want to be is reason enough to do things, despite not necessarily feeling like doing them. Pushing myself. Just sucking it up, just getting on with it!

Seriously, there is nothing worse for depression than doing nothing. There is nothing worse for a sense of meaninglessness than doing nothing. If you’re not engaging with anything (of any meaning) then of course nothing is going to HAVE any meaning.

At the end of the day, what is more important: Being indulgently lazy, or feeling a sense of meaning, of accomplishment, of passion? Like, seriously. If I was watching my life from the outside I would be shouting at my self-character in such outrage. WHAT DO YOU EXPECT UGH YOU KNOW BETTER THAN THIS WHY ARE YOU SO FUCKING LAZY GET IT TOGETHER!

It gets worse from there.

I can’t believe anyone even likes you. You can’t expect anyone to continue to like you once they realise what a hopeless case you are. You need to get on this before everyone leaves you. If you don’t, you can’t say you didn’t know. It will be your own stupid fault entirely. You’ll deserve it. You do deserve it. You deserve to be alone and miserable. You’re pathetic. Hideous through and through. There is just no redeeming that. No hope. Why even bother? Everything you do will be barely concealed shit anyway. Only just good enough. Just scraping through. At some point none of it is going to fool anyone anymore. You think you haven’t already done all the best you ever could? It’s all going to be downhill from here.

So yeah. I mean, really, who can blame you for not even trying any more? Trying is just another reminder of how you’ll never ever be good enough ever. So go on. Just go back to bed. Just go.

Well I had to stop there as my boss was telling me to go home. So now I’m home. I’ve eaten pesto cheese toast and tried to nap and now am watching Julie and Julia.

I wasn’t expecting that voice to be so loud that it actually came out. It is only a tiny part of me, as it is of everyone. I’m not as shocked as I imagine anyone I know would be, reading this. Though we all have it, we don’t own this part of us… not out loud. We indulge it in secret. When anyone voices any of it they are shouted down by those they love, who are only trying to help… they don’t want us to feel this way, and so unintentionally invalidate us. Unintentionally make us feel alone and pathetic for having these thoughts.

Seriously. We all have them. Neither of us is alone in that.

Flagrant Frippery

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Let’s just see. Someone asked me how I was today and my response was “It’s Monday morning.”

When you slide open the sliding glass door to disembark from this office you are slammed in the face by a hot wall of aggressive humidity. A hail storm is on its way; I’ve received warnings. It is 4pm but it feels like about a million pm.

Last weekend we drove six hours to Wytaliba to attend Deliverance. It was at this party that I came to two realisations. Realisation the first: It is not my ever-increasing age that is the cause of my much worse hangovers come Sunday morning. It is the fact that I have been drinking wine.

WINE. That devil juice. A younger me would be all up in my grill with fiercely scathing scorn. SHE knew this, and only ever drank vodka. Along the way it was somehow forgotten since I mostly hang around snobby wine-douches now.

So I am forgoing wine. I will miss it, but I shan’t mind. My mind is made.

I don’t feel like publishing the second realisation.

Deliverance was lovelie, though, despite the drive to get there, which involved an hour-long climb over a mountain range shrouded in such deep fog we couldn’t see the cliffs bordering the crazily winding, unlit single lane road until we were almost driving off them.

Last night we watched The Agony of Ecstasy, a half hour “documentary” by/about a woman who took MDMA every weekend for two years and wanted to know if that’s why she experienced anxiety and depression.

Only instead of asking “Did this one person trigger her own mental illness by ignorantly indulging risk-seeking tendencies, lack of impulse control and reliance upon hyper-avoidant coping strategies in the form of repeatedly taking mood-altering chemicals over a long-term period?” the show asked “Does MDMA cause anxiety and depression?” and then answered this poorly informed and biased question with enough misinformation that I was shouting at the TV within the first 5 minutes.

In conclusion, don’t watch TV for your entertainment. Instead, just take drugs. In an informed and moderate manner, of course, because we’re not big old dummies. Some of us. P.S. Do what I say and not what I do, obvs.

Drugs and mental health

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I know I said in my last entry that I was doing better, but I’m not sure any more.

I am really struggling to go to work. It’s not the work itself that is stalling me… once I am actually doing it, I am often fine. Once I am writing the report, or the email, or sitting with the client, or typing up my notes, I am okay. I can handle it. I have thoughts like “What was I so worried about, I should have started this two hours ago.”

But leading up to it, waking up in the morning knowing I have to shower and dress and drive and sign in and say good morning to my colleagues and turn on my computer and DO THE WORK… the thought of it drags me down and fills me with dread and makes me want to be a homeless bum with no responsibilities or mortgage or pets or wardrobe choices or values or dreams or loved ones or life.

THE THOUGHT makes me depressed.

I mean, I’m not the same once I’m AT work either. Once I do start writing, or talking, or whatever, my attention is all over the fucking place, my focus is shit, I can’t make connections, I don’t. do. good. work. I mean, I’m not saying it’s simply all in my head (ha) and if I just get over it I’ll be fine.

But I’m pretty sure that’s a big part of it.

I haven’t taken my meds the past two days. I don’t feel it’s helping, really, and Brenton is really adamant that it’s bad for me. But at the same time I’m like.. it’s not hurting, is it? Maybe it will help, if I just keep taking it. Maybe it hasn’t been long enough.

Do I think Brenton is overstating the potential damage? Yes. He thinks SSRIs are like taking a low dose of MDMA every day. I’m pretty sure it works completely differently.

So why am I having this aversion to continuing my dosage? How can I get frustrated with my clients when they don’t maintain theirs?

Because a big part of why I don’t want to take mine is that I take recreational drugs, and SSRIs interfere with that. It is not safe or advisable to indulge while on Prozac.

I don’t have much pleasure lately, surely I shouldn’t be asked to give up recreational drugs as WELL?

Well. Jess. Come on. You are a professional. What would you tell a client?

It is not advisable to take recreational drugs right now. MDMA will deplete much needed serotonin. Opioids and amphetamines will have very low-mood after-effects (your mood is low enough) and possibly result in serotonin syndrome.

My advice to you, as a mental health professional, is to take your fucking Prozac, and lay off the rest.

Except LSD. LSD can only help right now. and maybe mushrooms.

OK?

paisley dazely

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I’m feeling a bit better. I started taking Prozac not long after that post and I’ve been on it a month now. It’s about the time you should start noticing improvement. I’m mostly noticing side effects so far, however. Decreased appetite, decreased dreaming, decreased sex drive. I am feeling better, but it goes up and down. Today I feel happy, but tired, really sleepy. I just took 2.5 mgs of dexamphetamine.

I’m halfway through cleaning the fish tank. I would like to get the skirting boards painted in the back bedroom but it is really hot today already. 29 degrees. ugh summer why you do dis 🙁

Since logging my food intake and going to the gym I’ve lost 3kg and am now my absolute ideal weight. I can tell because whenever I see my family they complain about me being too skinny. aw yiss. Like, it wasn’t my intention, but I’m still pleased. I’m happy with my body. I do have this little pot belly, though, that kinda drives me crazy.

Okay so I just tried to take a photo with my webcam and realised what I’m complaining about is laughable so forget I said anything.

This dex is making me feel a bit lightheaded and dazed. I thought it was supposed to help you focus? Focussing is the last thing I feel like doing. I feel like staring at a wall while shaking almost imperceptibly with tension.

Anyway this is a journal entry. What do I have to write about?

Last weekend we went with Josh, Stuart and Tom to Stanthorpe to the Australian Small Winemaker’s show. We paid $60 to try all the wines we wanted. There were a lot of wines.

asws

I’ll take one of each plz

We may have all gotten a bit tipsy and had hilarious fun. I think I much prefer hanging out with boys than with girls, but I’m often frustrated that they seem to think they have to be more careful what they say around me. Then again, I do get all up in their grill if they make sexist jokes, so I guess it’s fair enough.

After the wine show, and after I’d become far too drunk and caught a taxi back to the hotel, leaving the boys at the Indian restaurant we’d walked through literal clouds of flying ants to get to (apparently I was a real brat because I wanted to walk and was arguing I’d be perfectly safe but the boys absolutely refused to let me leading to a half hour long debate before I finally let Brenton walk me to a taxi), the boys went out drinking some more, and Stuart and Tom both picked up women they took back to the hotel room (THAT THEY WERE SHARING WITH JOSH like seriously poor Josh).

Do you realise that paragraph was only one sentence? I’ve always been good at run-on sentences.

Anyway, the boys went out with dey game own. The thing is, I have to wonder if this would have happened if I’d been present. My theory is the fact that Stuart and Tom both “picked up” had more to do with each other than it did the women. I think it’s the competition. Proving to each other that they can do it; that they are desirable and can win all the wimmens and so they have more man-points. This theory is partially fed by an anecdote I’ve heard Brenton tell two or three times now: Tom at an early point in the evening said to Brenton, “I don’t think much of Stuart’s game, hey.” Then, later on in the night, when Stuart had clearly won access to the vagina of a worthy prize, Tom followed up with, “well I simply must eat my hat to that.”

I wonder if Brenton and Josh were more relieved that they were not expected to participate because they had girlfriends, or more put out that they couldn’t prove their absolute manhoodz with the others, and had to justify in their own minds “she would totes have chosen me over him if I’d been available.”

The weekend before that we had Brenton’s birthday partie. We went out for drinks, all Brenton’s friends invited. I was pretty drunk already when someone suggested tequila. Yeah! Great idea! Special occasion! I went and ordered ten shots. Thing was, not everyone wanted tequila… so, for some (stupid, stupid!) reason, I felt obliged to drink all the remaining shots. I’m unsure exactly how many that constituted but I know it was at least four. Yeah. Quite soon after I weaved my unsteady way to the disabled toilets and hung out on the floor for a while, various sympathetic friends assisting me. I don’t recall anything else from that night, but I shudder to think. Apparently I confided all my secrets to Marie, spent an hour on the phone to Storm, took everyone on a “where Brenton and I have had sex” tour of my house, and told Stu he was superficial.

Sooooo I never learn, and Brenton’s birthdays seem to bring out the worst in me.

This weekend we are going to [secret location] for two nights, one of my birthday gifts to him. I’m looking forward to it. I need more holidaze.

Brenton suggested this post’s title.

this mind intentionally left blank

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i’m pretty sure, have been since the last few days, that i’m depressed.

i just want everyone to leave me alone, just want to be alone. it’s all far too much right now, too far gone. i’m dreaming of leaving. i can’t really deal with anyone. even when brenton comes home and asks me how i am, with some kind of expectation, upward inflection

carefully inattentive, nothing really mattress.

and work, demanding i do new things in new places with new people. why right now? why now? i can’t handle it and hid most of today, mind running away

tiny room resounding with impossibly loud echoings, what am i doing

every tendon and muscle, slack. every eye blank.

newly tricious

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At this ACT training that Brenton and I went to a couple months ago we were asked to set one goal that would move us closer towards being kind to ourselves. Something that demonstrates caring for ourselves as much as we would if we were someone we truly loved. Mine was to keep a food log, because I know how much simply being aware of your habits motivates you to change them. Far more so than if you were to simply say, “I am going to change my eating habits.” My goal is to have good nutrition. To feed my body so that it has energy and I am not suicidally tired and lazy all the time any more. I have been eating far better since I started this log. About ten thousand percent more fruits and vegetables. Imagine my dismay when I look at my average nutrition information to find I’m still nowhere near meeting my RDI targets:
intimate with my insides

my nutrition averaged over the past month

I think this is based on a 2000 calorie a day diet and I don’t eat that much, which I think is partly the issue. The rest of the issue is that I’m an abject failure. So I simply dread to think what my averages were before I started keeping this log. When I went to a nutritionist years ago, she informed me that my body was probably leeching nutrients from my bones. Well, that’s been going on a while now, so I’m clearly doomed anyway. So OK gonna marshmallows for dinner.

frustration intolerance

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My tolerance is down. I just don’t know how I ever got the idea that things should be a certain way. I’m wondering if I should give up driving for a while, since I’m of late becoming so irritated with red lights and slow traffic and every single car that doesn’t defer to mine. Either that or I become distracted by interesting or pretty things I’m passing and drift up onto the side-walk, ruining my tyres and terrorising non-existent (thank goodness) pedestrians. This wouldn’t be an issue were I on buses and trains. Oh look, there’s the council truck! Hooray, it’s kerbside collection day. I’m unsure how often it happens, maybe once every year. The council brings these giant trucks around to take large unwanted items.. furniture, timber, mattresses… that you just pile up out the front of your house. Well you know we’re renovating, and even though we hired a skip a month ago to take most of it (now I know roughly how much 12 tons is), we still had some house parts left over; a laundry trough, some wall pieces, door frames, a large window we replaced. These are the things we put on the kerb. There are a silly number of people who drive around in their own trucks, prior to council day, rummaging through peoples’ piles, looking for redeemables. It’s always made me feel a bit pleased, since it means those things they take are being recycled. Only yesterday… ugh! When I arrived home I noticed they’d taken our window frame, but had first smashed out the glass… all over our nature strip. They’d taken the biggest shards, say the length of your arm, and hidden it under some cardboard. O how mad I got! It struck me as so dangerous, and meant the council workers wouldn’t touch our pile of stuff, of course, for safety reasons. Now I glare at everyone in a truck who does one of those slow drive bys meaning they’re scoping out my pile. I want to run out there with a rake to chase them off. Animals. Sigh. I guess I’ll go prepare the bedroom for painting. You know… the higher being who’s controlling my sim gives me far too much license to waste time.

different diffidence

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I was reading Crystal Singer by Anne McCaffrey yesterday when a sentence kinda stood out as incongruent. The protagonist has an altercation in the hallway with a supercilious, condescending, rude and sardonic man. These are all words she uses to describe him, before going on to say, “She’d been furious with him, and yet her anger had been partially fed by his diffidence…” Diffidence? I thought. I don’t think she’s used the correct word there. I mean, nothing in his described manner had seemed diffident in the slightest. Then, just to check, I tapped the word to look at the definition.
diffidence dɪfɪd(ə)ns noun modesty or shyness resulting from a lack of self-confidence. “I say this with some diffidence” synonyms: shyness, bashfulness, unassertiveness, modesty, modestness, self-effacement, humility, humbleness, meekness, timidity, timidness, timorousness, reserve, reticence, introversion.
Um, what? That is not what I expected. Is this dictionary insane, or have I just been wrong all these years? For that matter, hasn’t Anne McCaffrey also got it wrong? I mean, that character was the exact opposite of modest or shy or lacking self confidence. The literal opposite. But that’s why I looked it up in the dictionary: because I was sure she had gotten it wrong. I was right, only, I also had it wrong. All this time I thought diffident meant nonchalant, unconcerned, apathetic. I’d never looked it up before obviously, just kind of picked up a meaning from reading it in context. Unfortunately that meaning was way off. All those people I thought were being indifferent were actually being timid. wtf my mind is blown what is with this evil word.

neverending website

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I love Facebook and everything, but it killed personal websites. That sucks man; I miss personal websites. They were gorgeous & righteous & cacophonous. From what my mind gathers, picking bunches of thoughts like cotton, I have three types of visitors to this, my personal website.
  1. People who are in my life now. There aren’t many of them. I mean, there are many people in my life, but not many who know of my blog, or would particularly care to know, because they are quite healthily really only interested in their own lives.
  2. People who used to be in my life and aren’t any more. Of these there are two varieties:
    1. Those who are not on social media (so aren’t sick of my shiz yet) so maybe every now and then want to see that I’m still alive.
    2. Those whom, whether they were on social media or not, wouldn’t be permitted access to my shiz because they terrify me in various ways.
  3. People who don’t know me and never have but are still interested in my shiz for whatever reason.
I don’t check my @unpuppet.com email address very regularly any more, because anyone who would possibly care to email me for valid reasons has my gmail address. I was trying to reset a password for an internet service so long unused that it was registered to my old email. When I loaded it up, I found my #1 creepy random fan had somehow escaped the psych ward in March and resumed sending me multiple rants a day, accumulating to around 60 emails since that time. I mean I guess that’s what I get for maintaining a website on which I used to sell locks of my hair for $250 and used pantyhose for $1000. Anyway in honour of personal websites, particularly mine, of which all is gone, the exception being this blog, here is a page from my old site in which people could add to a neverending storie. ps the linx on it will be broke becuz I can’t be bothered editing it right now to remove them.

I’m willing to be wrong

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I just realised that sometimes I suffer from an unwillingness to be wrong. It seems silly on multiple levels. I mean anyone, when asked, would say, “Well of course I can admit when I’m wrong. I do it all the time.” Certain scenarios flit through my mind. Apologising to Brenton for something or other, conceding defeat in an intellectual dispute, those kinds of things. But then there are situations where no one is completely right, or wrong, and lack of perspective and the resulting frustration and impatience all bubble away together in a self righteous, indignant, obstinately blind mire. What is silly about it is that it’s the small stuff that counts the most, because it’s so small it doesn’t seem to be worth too much analysis, so it is never acknowledged. It’s simply “Man everyone but me is a real jerk,” and moving ignorantly on to the next relatively insignificant problem.
Like say you’re driving home from grocery shopping one day and you pull up at a T-intersection and a car is coming along towards you indicating left so you assume this car is going to turn into your street and you pull out to turn right, only it turns out this car was indicating just a bit too early and was actually going to be taking the next left, and the driver honks furiously, glaring, waving fists because YOU pulled out in front of it. You glare back, thinking “well indicate properly then you pompous nut socket,” and both you and the other driver drive off muttering incredulously and swerving dangerously before your heart rates return to baseline. In the under-layers you both know you were both wrong, but you don’t allow that to come up to the over-layers.
Which reminds me, Brenton doesn’t believe there are layers of thought, but I think that’s a topic for another entry. My point is that it is so much preferable to be angry and right than ashamed and wrong. And that’s enough sermonising hypotheticals I guess. I’ll tell you what actually prompted my epiphany. So you know I’m a mental health superstar. At one of my jobs, when a potential client signs up for counselling, they are assigned first to a case worker. The case worker assesses whether my service is right for the client, and then refers the client either to me or to a more appropriate service. A client came through to me whom I determined was not right for my service. I sent the information back to the case worker, asking her to re-assess and refer to the service that I thought the client was clearly looking for. A week later a different case worker referred the client back to me, advising me that, based on the information provided, I couldn’t possibly make the call that the client wasn’t right for me, and that I should perform the assessment with the client and refer if needed. Upon receiving this communication I became quite irate with the second case worker. I compressed my resentment into a bitter little pellet in my belly and just emailed the client for clarification. Lo, it turns out I was right. I referred the client to the right service. Today (another week later) the counsellor who provides that service has emailed me saying he has reservations about taking on this client and it is OK if he refers her elsewhere. I rather energetically tapped out a response fuelled by righteous frustration that the client has already been screwed around by us for a period of three weeks due to case worker incompetence. It was as I was composing this reply that I realised it wasn’t all the case workers’ fault. Yeah, it was mine. I was too eager to insist that assessment was the responsibility of the case workers. When I received the referral I had options. I could have explained to the case worker why I felt the client wasn’t right for me. Or, I could simply have emailed the client first thing to confirm which service she required. It would have taken me twenty minutes tops, and would have been sorted out weeks ago without bouncing back and forth between various staff. My own smug “It’s not my job to deal with these merely administrative details” attitude was the start of it. My willingness to place all the blame with the case worker rather than accept any responsibility was what resulted in that automatic email response being so bitter. I’m just glad I realised it before I sent it. If I’d sent the email I would have come across as that obstinate, self righteous, pettily muttering driver who couldn’t admit the part they had to play in the resulting almost-collision. I want to be a person who does more than the bare minimum required, who is flexible and easy going, and who admits when she has made a mistake. And that’s what else I meant when I said it seemed silly. Such an insignificant issue to have an epiphany over.

What’s new

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I reflexively expel 30 simultaneous groans when people ask me, “So, what’s new?” Such questions automatically clean-slate my mind. I need more to go on! Something that actually triggers thoughts, rather than putting me on the spot to conjure them from nothing, and also that prompts me as to what you’d be interested to hear. For example:
  • What did you get up to last weekend?
  • What are you reading at the moment?
  • Do you have any projects on the go?
  • What do you wish you had more time for lately?
  • What are you looking forward to?
Yeah, I can answer those! Answers immediately leap up my throat. I got answers all up in this shiz. But a vague and general “What have you been up to?” shuts me down. I dither and haw with “Uh, not much”s and “Well, I’ve been working a lot?”s. To answer my own questions: Last weekend I attended the Ladyfest artshow opening on Friday (I’m in two of those photos and, before you say anything, yes. I know my outfit is amazing. Thank you). On Saturday, Josh and Marie came over (TO OUR HAUS) and we drank quite a lot of wine and beer, but eating cheese literally throughout the entire night shielded our brains from hangovers. I figure that after consumption cheese acts somewhat like a temporary myelin sheath, but for alcohol. I’m reading Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, because I haven’t read it since uni and it came up on my e-reader when I rage quit The Luminaries. To expand on the question, I’m watching Game of Thrones season 3 and 30 Rock season 4, and right this minute am listening to Bodaronda – Mystic Beats vs Lubdub (and it’s sublime). In terms of projects, I haven’t progressed past a sketch on canvas done several months ago (I do intend to actually start painting it someday). I’m working on four websites, only one of which is my own. I’m enjoying it, but realising more and more how much an issue pedantic perfectionism can be. I wish I had more time for getting out of the house with Brenton. We have one simultaneous day off and lately it has been spent on renovations. I’m feeling like we don’t do much, experience much, together. When we do go out to something (like dinner, or the planetarium recently) it is with a group of friends.. or to a friend’s house. I’m looking forward to having the house finished, obviously, so that we can do other things. We have just about completed downstairs, and last week began upstairs — the kitchen came out on Monday. I’m looking forward to September, when I will attend the Ekka for the tenth consecutive year, and to October, which is kitten season, and I might be able to get a Norwegian Forest kitten (Brenton still needs some convincing). YEAH. FEEL THOSE ANSWERS. GET THEM IN YOUR GULLET. Jerks. Also my Great Nanna Cutts died today, age 100.