1) Something that you thought was going to turn out badly doesn't.
I have been trying for ages to meet up with various people and for one thing and another I was put off. I know I can be annoying in trying to organise these things.... possibly akin to a bloodhound with a scent up his nostril but there we are. Since finishing uni I still want to have a social life. I have realised that boyfriends do get put first, and maybe one day I will be exactly the same. I have realised that people will always be who they are and be flighty. That people do have things to do and it is hard to sort out a meeting time when work sometimes 6 days a week, rarely have a weekend off and can't drive. HOWEVER- going back to what I said- why I love today is- I am actually vacating my house in a social excursion whoop whoop!!
2) That I have two more working days before two days off!
This is better than a weekend sometimes because I can go into town and it is never as crowded as it is on a weekend! And it is, ok, one day working otuside in imminently cold weather and possibly rain but it is not a bad job. But I have another driving lesson booked for Wednesday morning and I am going to see High School Musical 3 (oh yes, have succumbed to the joys and cheesiness of HSM!!) with my brother, who it has to be said was possibly more depressed about being dumped by his girlfriend and now not having anyone to go and see HSM with. She was a really nice lass, but then men will never know what a good is when they have them.
3) I larked around today at work.
I do not take my work so seriously these days. I do a good job, but I have a sense of humour too. Something that is hard to maintain with some of the visitors we have. They can be rude, smelly, daft, stupid and often pretend you are invisible. The majority it has to be said are the complete reverse. So after a serious memo floating around work about distracting the coppers on the gate, which I thought I was possibly solely responsible for (I wasn't- the memo was a couple of days before the day of my duty on that post!) I was down and also a very rude old bag came through, anyways.... I am deviating... after a rough start it turned out alright. I had a lark around and a gossip with my work mates. Good day in total.
4) There are the beginnings of more reunions at university, a big one and a small one.
Woooo yay. I get to see people like the history gals and then some of the old crew I used to go out with. It is nice to know I have not been quite forgotten yet... and obviously I am not too much like a bloodhound then...
5) I have Mexican for dinner.
I love spicy food, and to be fair I do like staying in. Strictly Come Dancing is on, I sit down probably with a glass of Lambrini for it is a Saturday night after all and watch the dancing... then have some dinner and then chill out with the rents whilst my brother goes out. It is weird how things work out. My brother and I seem to have reversed roles!
So, yeah, a random Saturday in the life of a warden... in summary- friends, work, food and Strictly come dancing!! *jokes* I definitely feel much better after my purge yesterday on here! It is amazing what a bit of a rant and revealing some dee thoughts will do!! Wooo hooo...
Saturday 8 November 2008
Friday 7 November 2008
One need not be a Chamber-to be Haunted-
One need not be a House-
The Brain had Corridors- surpassing
Material Place-
Far safer, of a Midnight Meeting
External Ghost
Than its interior Confronting-
That Cooler Host.
Far safer, through an Abbey gallop,
The Stones a'chase-
Than Unarmed, one's a'self encounter-
In lonesome Place-
Ourself behind ourself, concealed-
Should startle most-
Assassin hid in our Apartment
Be Horror's least.
The Body- borrows a Revolver-
He bolts the Door-
O'erlooking a superior spectre-
Or More-
Why is it you read something once and then ages later it comes back to bear some meaning on your life at that particular moment when it occurs to you to remember it? I immediately took to this poem, one of the first ever Emily Dickinson poems I ever came across, but today it came back to me... I uttered the words under my breath and I thought.... where did that come from? WEIRD! heehee... Anyway, this poem makes me feel, slightly oddly, better... I guess on days like this I know how Emily Dickinson felt. However, no more dwelling... up and on as I have already said! Get the stone rolling...
One need not be a House-
The Brain had Corridors- surpassing
Material Place-
Far safer, of a Midnight Meeting
External Ghost
Than its interior Confronting-
That Cooler Host.
Far safer, through an Abbey gallop,
The Stones a'chase-
Than Unarmed, one's a'self encounter-
In lonesome Place-
Ourself behind ourself, concealed-
Should startle most-
Assassin hid in our Apartment
Be Horror's least.
The Body- borrows a Revolver-
He bolts the Door-
O'erlooking a superior spectre-
Or More-
Why is it you read something once and then ages later it comes back to bear some meaning on your life at that particular moment when it occurs to you to remember it? I immediately took to this poem, one of the first ever Emily Dickinson poems I ever came across, but today it came back to me... I uttered the words under my breath and I thought.... where did that come from? WEIRD! heehee... Anyway, this poem makes me feel, slightly oddly, better... I guess on days like this I know how Emily Dickinson felt. However, no more dwelling... up and on as I have already said! Get the stone rolling...
"Wine that turned to Vinegar"
To have loved, to have kissed
And- oh, God!- to have missed
The completion of Love!
To have turned to one
As the only sun
In one's sky above
And to find that his beams
Had merely in dreams
Their radiant light.
What so deep as the woe
Of those who did know
The joy of the height.
A more powerful thing
Than the broken wing
Of a bird that soared,
Is one driven by fate
To return with hate
Where she once adored.
Marie Stopes... of course! 1909
And- oh, God!- to have missed
The completion of Love!
To have turned to one
As the only sun
In one's sky above
And to find that his beams
Had merely in dreams
Their radiant light.
What so deep as the woe
Of those who did know
The joy of the height.
A more powerful thing
Than the broken wing
Of a bird that soared,
Is one driven by fate
To return with hate
Where she once adored.
Marie Stopes... of course! 1909
My Fear of Lethargy.
I have decided to concentrate a bit on framing what I am thinking. I am having a down day today, so I am going to frame my thoughts that have been rattling around in my mind.
I have literally just realised that I spend a lot of my time thinking, mostly subconsciously doing it, never forming any conclusions or helping me to progress from the same cycle, or perhaps it should be called a rut, of thinking. It is in fact worse if I subconsciously think, because it often bubbles to the surface, explodes and I end up saying something to myself replying to what I had been thinking about (I do have an irritating habit of talking to myself ALL the time!!) And the answer is rarely ever helpful. Another thing I do is go over and over and over until I almost go mad with things I should have done and not done. I again answer my thought with a sigh, exclamation, shout, groan, etc at these memories. I am a perfectionist, and of course nothing can ever be perfection and I constantly berate myself for not being perfect and simultaneously for striving to be perfect. Trust me, perfection is never perfect.
What has been really grating on me lately is that I am really lethargic at the moment. Well, it has been for longer than a moment. I know that I should be doing something but I procrastinate from doing anything. Then I feel bad for doing nothing, then I procrastinate further by doing nothing, well it is obviously something but nothing of worth like trawling the Internet and coming up with a million possibilities of perhaps what I should be doing, but thinking if only I could drive, I could get to that Pilate's class there, or if I had the courage to try that, perhaps I should do that job, maybe I should become that... what do I think of that career?... but I can't do that because of x, y and z.
I haven't felt this for a long time. Excusing myself from doing something by my inability to do it in some way. Feeling so capable and powered by achieving my degree (and yes we are back at this turning point of my relatively sort life- forgive my naivety to those older and wiser than me! I must be sounding like a broken record player!) so back to my degree and the feeling of fulfilment and something to strive for that drove me everyday to get up in the morning and go to my lecture, the library etc etc. In short, this has evaporated.
Now I know that university is not the be all and end all, and this is NOT what I am trying to convey to you. In fact, it was my degree that sustained me. I had fixated on something, but now it has gone, I have this vacancy of a part of me. I don't mean I am missing the degree, but the dedication towards something. At school, I made myself complete the work and not let myself down and to prove to the school I shouldn't be ignored (Gawd, I hated that place!) I was powered by the need to PROVE myself. It was lucky I could pull it off, otherwise I would have looked very foolish!!
Me and my mam had a conversation last night about my first year at university. It was awkward in places, and the worst skimmed over as per, but I stumbled over a few home truths over a shared bottle of wine with my mam. I was a wild child and my mam had despaired, but I came back to her, as she put it. Things culminated in the first year, particularly the first term. I had to look after myself for the first time, I had my independence, I was free to do what I wanted... and I did. I experienced the first joy of being 'naughty', of doing things I would never have done before! Silly things from wearing short skirts and staying out all night had been, up to this point, hitherto never participated in. In fact, I would perhaps consider it a rather libertine lifestyle I had in the first year. Drinking, smoking, drugs, sex... You name it, I would have given it a go. I used people and threw them aside as it suited me, as it had been done to me before. It is so easy to get on that slippery slope and slide all the way to the bottom, oh so easy with a bottle of vodka in one hand and a plethora of cheering mates in the other.
I thought I knew who I was before I stepped onto university soil. I thought I could withstand the rigours university posed. I thought, and I thought wrong. It resulted in a complete collapse. Total Destruction. I faced the abyss with no sense of self. Who was I? And genuinely I could not answer. Well, I can't answer now, but I have an innate feeling of who I am, and I know that if it is tested, I will not waver. I think it has been tested already and I am still around! I would say that this feeling has formed in the last year if truth be told. It has taken me two years, but in that time I never let go of striving to achieve what I went to university to do. The sense of proving myself, perhaps as an atonement for my behaviour in the first year. The third year saw me do it for a different reason thankfully. It can be exhausting continuously proving yourself.
It has always struck me as odd that I chose to do a subject at school that was not my best, that I was told in year seven that I just did not have a natural flair for or showed any interest in it... I think I should have known then that I perhaps chose history as a degree to be stubborn, to prove people wrong and to show that I could be good at anything I wanted. I was lucky that it worked out in my favour in the end. It doesn't work like that normally. You cannot be good at everything. I am not naturally good at history, but I have come to love history in a way that as propelled me to do well in it. It was not a chore to do the stacks of reading I had to do and the long essays I had to write. Had it not been for the love that formed, I doubt I would have done very well. I was not proving anything to anyone then. I was doing it now because I wanted to.
I have deceived people. I have hurt people. I have lied to myself. I have been a complete cow in summary. I have learnt the hard way. I found the bottom of my soul (and though it may seem cheesy, believe me there is not a speck of cheese in sight there). I have found who I am and who I can be, and now I am just facing up to these facts. Many of them are unfavourable and are, of course, taking time to come to terms with. It took no doctors, no prescription drugs and no therapy to sort me out. It just took me and my will to do it. I may be remarkable, but I doubt it. I think people can do more things than they think they can, if they only harnessed their self-destructive will for a strength that is employed for good. It is harder that way; it is easier by far to take the drugs, have a therapist tell you what you are, what you need etc, but I know what I am and if I ever find myself straying that way again, I know what I can do. I will always be my harshest critic and in this case it works to my favour. I will always over analyse everything I do and say, and then check myself back into order.
Now, I am lethargic at the moment, edging to a destructive state due to a vacancy in my life, but I know I am not as bad as I was and I know what I need to do. I know who I am now. I just need to muster up myself and get going again, pick up the momentum of life and enjoy it! Once the ball starts rolling, it is all plain sailing! After all, life is far too short to be languishing on bad thoughts... so I am expelling these thoughts (rather publicly) that have been mulling on in my mind for a few years, and as far as I am concerned that is a few years too many. So up and onwards... enough of this melancholic lethargy...
I will let you know how it goes :D Cathartic rant thus endeth...
I have literally just realised that I spend a lot of my time thinking, mostly subconsciously doing it, never forming any conclusions or helping me to progress from the same cycle, or perhaps it should be called a rut, of thinking. It is in fact worse if I subconsciously think, because it often bubbles to the surface, explodes and I end up saying something to myself replying to what I had been thinking about (I do have an irritating habit of talking to myself ALL the time!!) And the answer is rarely ever helpful. Another thing I do is go over and over and over until I almost go mad with things I should have done and not done. I again answer my thought with a sigh, exclamation, shout, groan, etc at these memories. I am a perfectionist, and of course nothing can ever be perfection and I constantly berate myself for not being perfect and simultaneously for striving to be perfect. Trust me, perfection is never perfect.
What has been really grating on me lately is that I am really lethargic at the moment. Well, it has been for longer than a moment. I know that I should be doing something but I procrastinate from doing anything. Then I feel bad for doing nothing, then I procrastinate further by doing nothing, well it is obviously something but nothing of worth like trawling the Internet and coming up with a million possibilities of perhaps what I should be doing, but thinking if only I could drive, I could get to that Pilate's class there, or if I had the courage to try that, perhaps I should do that job, maybe I should become that... what do I think of that career?... but I can't do that because of x, y and z.
I haven't felt this for a long time. Excusing myself from doing something by my inability to do it in some way. Feeling so capable and powered by achieving my degree (and yes we are back at this turning point of my relatively sort life- forgive my naivety to those older and wiser than me! I must be sounding like a broken record player!) so back to my degree and the feeling of fulfilment and something to strive for that drove me everyday to get up in the morning and go to my lecture, the library etc etc. In short, this has evaporated.
Now I know that university is not the be all and end all, and this is NOT what I am trying to convey to you. In fact, it was my degree that sustained me. I had fixated on something, but now it has gone, I have this vacancy of a part of me. I don't mean I am missing the degree, but the dedication towards something. At school, I made myself complete the work and not let myself down and to prove to the school I shouldn't be ignored (Gawd, I hated that place!) I was powered by the need to PROVE myself. It was lucky I could pull it off, otherwise I would have looked very foolish!!
Me and my mam had a conversation last night about my first year at university. It was awkward in places, and the worst skimmed over as per, but I stumbled over a few home truths over a shared bottle of wine with my mam. I was a wild child and my mam had despaired, but I came back to her, as she put it. Things culminated in the first year, particularly the first term. I had to look after myself for the first time, I had my independence, I was free to do what I wanted... and I did. I experienced the first joy of being 'naughty', of doing things I would never have done before! Silly things from wearing short skirts and staying out all night had been, up to this point, hitherto never participated in. In fact, I would perhaps consider it a rather libertine lifestyle I had in the first year. Drinking, smoking, drugs, sex... You name it, I would have given it a go. I used people and threw them aside as it suited me, as it had been done to me before. It is so easy to get on that slippery slope and slide all the way to the bottom, oh so easy with a bottle of vodka in one hand and a plethora of cheering mates in the other.
I thought I knew who I was before I stepped onto university soil. I thought I could withstand the rigours university posed. I thought, and I thought wrong. It resulted in a complete collapse. Total Destruction. I faced the abyss with no sense of self. Who was I? And genuinely I could not answer. Well, I can't answer now, but I have an innate feeling of who I am, and I know that if it is tested, I will not waver. I think it has been tested already and I am still around! I would say that this feeling has formed in the last year if truth be told. It has taken me two years, but in that time I never let go of striving to achieve what I went to university to do. The sense of proving myself, perhaps as an atonement for my behaviour in the first year. The third year saw me do it for a different reason thankfully. It can be exhausting continuously proving yourself.
It has always struck me as odd that I chose to do a subject at school that was not my best, that I was told in year seven that I just did not have a natural flair for or showed any interest in it... I think I should have known then that I perhaps chose history as a degree to be stubborn, to prove people wrong and to show that I could be good at anything I wanted. I was lucky that it worked out in my favour in the end. It doesn't work like that normally. You cannot be good at everything. I am not naturally good at history, but I have come to love history in a way that as propelled me to do well in it. It was not a chore to do the stacks of reading I had to do and the long essays I had to write. Had it not been for the love that formed, I doubt I would have done very well. I was not proving anything to anyone then. I was doing it now because I wanted to.
I have deceived people. I have hurt people. I have lied to myself. I have been a complete cow in summary. I have learnt the hard way. I found the bottom of my soul (and though it may seem cheesy, believe me there is not a speck of cheese in sight there). I have found who I am and who I can be, and now I am just facing up to these facts. Many of them are unfavourable and are, of course, taking time to come to terms with. It took no doctors, no prescription drugs and no therapy to sort me out. It just took me and my will to do it. I may be remarkable, but I doubt it. I think people can do more things than they think they can, if they only harnessed their self-destructive will for a strength that is employed for good. It is harder that way; it is easier by far to take the drugs, have a therapist tell you what you are, what you need etc, but I know what I am and if I ever find myself straying that way again, I know what I can do. I will always be my harshest critic and in this case it works to my favour. I will always over analyse everything I do and say, and then check myself back into order.
Now, I am lethargic at the moment, edging to a destructive state due to a vacancy in my life, but I know I am not as bad as I was and I know what I need to do. I know who I am now. I just need to muster up myself and get going again, pick up the momentum of life and enjoy it! Once the ball starts rolling, it is all plain sailing! After all, life is far too short to be languishing on bad thoughts... so I am expelling these thoughts (rather publicly) that have been mulling on in my mind for a few years, and as far as I am concerned that is a few years too many. So up and onwards... enough of this melancholic lethargy...
I will let you know how it goes :D Cathartic rant thus endeth...
Sunday 2 November 2008
Today, I am mostly these ten things...
1) Relaxed- I am currently chilling out, online obviously but have also been watching some good old rom coms, namely You've Got Mail, and period dramas of the A Room with a View variety. Also checked out Charlie Wilson's War today- ace stuff! Political and entertaining. Rarely those two words have been used in conjunction, sparing of course the part-time comedian-cum-politician Boris Johnson!
2) Happy- Surprisingly so. Been to uni this weekend, had a wicked weekend and realised that I have successfully detached myself from it. I do miss it, but I realise I miss the people and the lifestyle more than the actual place, which is good for me. I am continuously surprised by my natural emotional ability to work things out by themselves eventually.
3) Digging my cheap primark stretchy t-shirt! £2 and it is comfy and it is blue!
4) Enjoying roast dinners- something I definitely missed at uni! These are the epitome of English cuisine after fish and chips, curry and the fried breakfast... no wonder on reflection we have some the highest obesity rates! wooo hooo rock on my expanding waist line! More roast tatties please, Mam!
5) Tippling the Lambrini... For old times sake I have bought some and sipping it now. Slightly alcoholic lemonade really. Cheap and cheerful and very studenty!
6) Sad about Sharpe's Peril. Having been recommended it at work, I am slightly disappointed with it. Rock on Hornblower all the way... yum Ioan Gruffard... However, slightly shocked by the way to see him covorting on the screen along side Stephen Fry in Wilde as his gay fling! Very shocking stuff, however, I am sooo going to buy it! ... and some Oscar Wilde books too... I have long been a 'quote addict', that is someone who enjoys reading and gathering quotes, for quite a while and I shall have to put them up here eventually... and Wilde by far has my highest regard, so I have reckoned with myself that I really need to start reading his stuff. A wise man. Plus forever more I do believe I will picture Oscar Wilde as Stephen Fry (God I love that man- check out QI folks- tis the shiz!)
7) Loving the advert breaks today- I have days when I want to watch something on tv and simultaneously read. Advert breaks help me to do both without being mean to the book and not giving it my full attention and likewise with the tv programme! Plus also good time to fetch cheese and crackers with a cuppa tea for the next episode of Location, Location, Location or whatever it is called with my mam!
8) Too hot! This is hot as in the heating is on, half the house is well insulated due to strictly enforced government restrictions on new buildings so the extension part of the house is baking... no heat is going out, but the old part of the house is freezing due to 1933-ness of the house. Crazy shiz... Really need to relocate to shiny new decorated lounge where it is cool and obviously still smells like paint.... I love that smell...
9) Loving my bed... I have recognised the full greatness of my bed. It may be a single but I have had it forever and it is soooooo COMFY. It was my first bed and I have never had another and we are looking at replacing it and I am rather attached to it *sad face* I had a good, long lie in today and it was lovely. I have five pillows but I only ever sleep on two, maybe three, the rest just surround and make the bed uber comfy. I like my bed. I email from it, I watch movies, read, eat breakfast and of course sleep.
10) Concerned about the upcoming USA presidental elections... I am really worried. I am not entirely convinced who should win, who shouldn't win- you make think these are the same, but sometimes it is more about who you don't want to win an election than who you do. I am pretty sure I do not want Palin anywhere near the White House if it can be helped and if McCain coughs it, she will be president. How scary is that.... someone who thought it was the French President on the line... She'll never make it alive through the medianess! Still, media representations are often skewed, so i could be wrong, and to be fair, there is lttle I can do about it from England... good luck to us all...
That's all folks :D
2) Happy- Surprisingly so. Been to uni this weekend, had a wicked weekend and realised that I have successfully detached myself from it. I do miss it, but I realise I miss the people and the lifestyle more than the actual place, which is good for me. I am continuously surprised by my natural emotional ability to work things out by themselves eventually.
3) Digging my cheap primark stretchy t-shirt! £2 and it is comfy and it is blue!
4) Enjoying roast dinners- something I definitely missed at uni! These are the epitome of English cuisine after fish and chips, curry and the fried breakfast... no wonder on reflection we have some the highest obesity rates! wooo hooo rock on my expanding waist line! More roast tatties please, Mam!
5) Tippling the Lambrini... For old times sake I have bought some and sipping it now. Slightly alcoholic lemonade really. Cheap and cheerful and very studenty!
6) Sad about Sharpe's Peril. Having been recommended it at work, I am slightly disappointed with it. Rock on Hornblower all the way... yum Ioan Gruffard... However, slightly shocked by the way to see him covorting on the screen along side Stephen Fry in Wilde as his gay fling! Very shocking stuff, however, I am sooo going to buy it! ... and some Oscar Wilde books too... I have long been a 'quote addict', that is someone who enjoys reading and gathering quotes, for quite a while and I shall have to put them up here eventually... and Wilde by far has my highest regard, so I have reckoned with myself that I really need to start reading his stuff. A wise man. Plus forever more I do believe I will picture Oscar Wilde as Stephen Fry (God I love that man- check out QI folks- tis the shiz!)
7) Loving the advert breaks today- I have days when I want to watch something on tv and simultaneously read. Advert breaks help me to do both without being mean to the book and not giving it my full attention and likewise with the tv programme! Plus also good time to fetch cheese and crackers with a cuppa tea for the next episode of Location, Location, Location or whatever it is called with my mam!
8) Too hot! This is hot as in the heating is on, half the house is well insulated due to strictly enforced government restrictions on new buildings so the extension part of the house is baking... no heat is going out, but the old part of the house is freezing due to 1933-ness of the house. Crazy shiz... Really need to relocate to shiny new decorated lounge where it is cool and obviously still smells like paint.... I love that smell...
9) Loving my bed... I have recognised the full greatness of my bed. It may be a single but I have had it forever and it is soooooo COMFY. It was my first bed and I have never had another and we are looking at replacing it and I am rather attached to it *sad face* I had a good, long lie in today and it was lovely. I have five pillows but I only ever sleep on two, maybe three, the rest just surround and make the bed uber comfy. I like my bed. I email from it, I watch movies, read, eat breakfast and of course sleep.
10) Concerned about the upcoming USA presidental elections... I am really worried. I am not entirely convinced who should win, who shouldn't win- you make think these are the same, but sometimes it is more about who you don't want to win an election than who you do. I am pretty sure I do not want Palin anywhere near the White House if it can be helped and if McCain coughs it, she will be president. How scary is that.... someone who thought it was the French President on the line... She'll never make it alive through the medianess! Still, media representations are often skewed, so i could be wrong, and to be fair, there is lttle I can do about it from England... good luck to us all...
That's all folks :D
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