Category: self-analysis

Posted on

Alternative Offices

Everything seems to be conspiring against me writing this morning – well, maybe not everything, but certainly Microsoft, which resents my determination not to pay for Office 365, but continue to use the version of Office which I bought in good faith ten years ago, and which I have always found perfectly adequate for my needs. In revenge, it periodically tells me it has to reconfigure Office, and this morning I sat in front of the screen for ages getting more and more irritated, and rapidly losing the will to live, let alone write – so much so that I’ve come downstairs and am using the laptop instead.
This isn’t an ideal solution, partly because it requires me to sit on the armchair with the laptop on (surprise, surprise) my lap, which is not healthy in terms of either my posture or my eyesight – both of which cause me problems at this stage in my life. The other issue is that I don’t have any version of MS Office on my laptop any more, because the free trial version of 365 has now expired, and I can’t install my old version because it’s on a CD and there is no CD drive (besides which, no doubt I would get the same ‘configuration’ problems, though it might be quicker because at least the wifi in the front room is better than the study).
So I’m trying to get to grips with Open Office, which I’m sure I’ll get my head around eventually, but at the moment I find myself missing some of the features I’m used to with the MS version – though this is more of an issue with Excel/Calc than it is with Word. This morning I’ve found out how to insert the current date, but I’ve just noticed that I can’t see the wordcount without using the tool bar. That’s going to be annoying.
I was going to say more about the Madwoman in the Attic this morning, but I’ve been distracted by all these irritations and now may just fill in the rest of this post with moaning.
My poor cat joined me in the study just as I’d decided to give up on waiting for Office to configure and come downstairs. I explained to her what I was doing, but she hasn’t come down yet, even though I’ve been here for half an hour. Probably curled up asleep on her special chair. If she was here, of course, she would be trying to sit on my lap – which is currently occupied by… yes that’s correct. And, in another non-surprising surprise move, she has now just walked into the room – when I’m thinking of winding this up and going back upstairs, because that’s where the scanner is, and I’ve just remembered about a photograph I found among the stuff in the study, which I took on Cape Cod in June 1996, almost a quarter of a century ago. Does the message still apply?

Posted on

On Purpose

Am I, as was recently suggested, ‘looking for a purpose’?

First, let me freely acknowledge that I don’t feel I have ‘…a purpose…’ in any profound sense. But how much does that matter?  

This is a time of year when there can be a lot of pressure to set goals, make resolutions, plan new habits and behaviours, and generally beat yourself up and set yourself up for failure and disappointment. Well, that’s how I’ve always found it. I don’t want to detract from anyone else’s desire to do those things, but for me – hey, I’m retired, I live alone, and the joy of both those states is the peace not to feel obliged to follow anyone’s expectations but your own.

That said… my purpose last week was to complete and submit my tax return, which I did on Saturday. Now it’s to bring my accounts up to date, which I haven’t touched for the last two months, even though it’s a task I quite enjoy. Moving data between spreadsheets, checking totals and hunting for errors when things don’t tally – to me, it’s fun, it’s satisfying, there’s always a ‘right’ answer, and if it doesn’t work out, there’s always a reason which can be found – it’s like a puzzle, a more complicated version of killer su doku, but one which has a ‘purpose’ beyond just filling the time. Sometimes I think: I could have been happier as a book-keeper rather than as a failed book-writer, and maybe that’s a path I should have chosen years ago, but too late now, I don’t have the right qualifications – (and no, I have no intention of studying for the qualifications now – given my experiences of retraining in new skills during my fifties – creative writing, web design, graphic design, TEFL etc – and knowing where that got me).

Another potential ‘purpose’ would be to put together the book case which I bought from Argos in the Black Friday sales and which has now spent almost two months in two large cardboard boxes in my narrow hall. At one time I considered making it a post-Christmas project, but I decided to start knitting myself a jumper instead (which is coming along nicely, by the way). I’ve been walking past the boxes for long enough now, I don’t notice them any more, and a further disincentive from putting together the bookcase is that I might then feel obliged to put something on it, which might lead me to think about sorting out the stuff in the study, which could very well precipitate a complete emotional breakdown, so probably best not to go there.

So my plan for the day after I’ve posted this is: brush teeth; dry hair; get dressed; eat breakfast; mess around with my spreadsheets for a couple of hours (depending how much time is left after I’ve finished the aforementioned); spend the afternoon in my chair knitting and listening to the radio; get dinner; do bins (mustn’t forget); watch telly. ‘Purpose’ settled – job done.

Posted on

Blogging about Blogging

I do this every morning, supposedly first thing, but in fact I’ve usually already been awake for two or three hours, lain in bed thinking, listened to the radio, fed the cat, exercised, showered, prepared porridge, loaded the dishwasher…

This morning I answered a comment and made a comment on a friend’s post on our group blog, changed my profile picture, then noticed that the second comment wasn’t appearing, realised I hadn’t saved it anywhere else and didn’t want to have to retype it from scratch; thought maybe it was there but needed to be approved by an admin. Tried logging into the email account for the group blog; couldn’t get the password right; tried hunting for the bit of paper with the password on, which I was sure I’d seen in the last few days; decided to go downstairs and use the laptop because I was sure the email and password were saved on there; they weren’t, but the admin account was the saved login, so I managed to get into the group blog and confirm that the comment had never been saved; came back up here, typed it again (as best I could remember), posted the comment.

I could change the password for the group blog – no, it’s not the blog password I need but the gmail account – I can change the password for that, because I think I’m the only person who ever uses it, but it’s annoying me now and I don’t want to. That bit of paper must be around here somewhere.

I have a thing about not wanting to retype something I’ve already written – which is why I always do blog posts in Word first and save them, so I don’t have to do it again. Even a three sentence comment, I want to be sure I’m doing it the same way as I did the first time (or maybe even better, but I can’t know that if I don’t have a record of the original). It’s a foible of mine.

None of which is what I was intending to write about before I sat down at the computer (well, maybe the first paragraph was). My friend’s comment and his post had got me thinking about how and why I write this blog, because he said ‘Your words often make me wonder if you are searching for direction and whether or not I should be following a dream again.’ Then in his own post (referring to himself or a generic ‘you’, I presume, not me specifically) :

‘But really, the question means: what have you done with your life so far? And what are you going to do with what’s left of it?’

Well, what I write is just what comes into my head at the time, and some of that leads to thoughts of my life so far. As for what’s left of it – which is kind of what I thought I would write about, before I got distracted – I’ll start that tomorrow.

Posted on

Leaving the Attic

I found a picture the other day of the attic room the last time I saw it, empty of furniture and with the cat sitting on the shelf in the alcove peeping out – I suspect I was hoovering , and that was why she’d climbed up out of the way. I was to be the last to leave the house – to go out of the front door and close it firmly behind me, with the cat in her basket and all her paraphernalia (food bowl, water bowl, litter tray) and drive her to Ex Hubby’s new house. She’d been shut in the empty attic room while the removal men took everything from the rest of the house and loaded the van. E-H (let’s call him that for short) had been waiting for the call from the solicitors to say the money had been transferred and he could go into the office to drop off the keys and pick up the ones for the new house. Weirdly, in our previous house move I’d also been the one left behind to close up while he and the children went to collect the keys. So I was last to enter and last to leave this place, though I’d first left it over seven years earlier. I had to give him time to get to the office, exchange the keys and then drive to the new place – I may even have been waiting for him to call me to confirm he was in there, I can’t remember, in fact I’d forgotten about that day until I saw the photo.

I used to joke that my mid-life crisis started when I began my PhD at 38, and never finished. But looking back from this perspective, I think it ended sometime in the year following that last day in the attic, after the final upheaval of moving the last of my stuff deposited that day in E-H’s new garage down to this house, somewhere in the trauma of chemo, maybe the dawning of the year after that – a quarter of a century of crises, depositing me at last on the shores of the third age, the Age (supposedly) of Wisdom.

Through my forties, I had the sense that my life-path was not going in the way I would have chosen, but that time was running out to find anything different. I’d pinned my hopes on being able to continue with an academic career, but that ground into the sand of endless, fruitless job applications, a succession of part-time, temporary admin jobs and a failing marriage. My fifties ultimately brought a new sense of hope, of the potential for doing things differently – it would take courage and persistence that I’d previously dismissed as impossible, and a willingness to walk away from a tarnished dream in search of a shiny new one.

I miss that hope now, as I sit here, on my captain’s chair at my leather-topped desk, watching the gulls fly calling past my window.

Posted on

In My Dreams

This morning, I remembered enough of a dream to make some sense of it. I was with a group of people (dream people) who were preparing and rehearsing a play. I didn’t get on with one woman in particular, who was constantly making snide remarks and putting me down (may I say, there have been many such people in my life, both men and women, but this wasn’t anyone I knew). I don’t know if this was supposed to be a professional or an amateur production, but I wasn’t being paid, I’d just been asked to do it as a favour, on the understanding that I wasn’t any good but I would do my best. I got angry with the snide woman and pointed this out to her, sticking up for myself, but I woke up before I heard her reply, woke up with a sense of anger and resentment towards this non-existent person, and lay there thinking: ‘wow, I was really pissed off, and now I’ve woken up!’

Once or twice in my life I have got really pissed off with people like that, and told them so, but it rarely improves matters, in fact it usually ends up with me in tears feeling even more resentful and humiliated. Actually, more than ‘once or twice’, a lot more, but it always makes me cringe to remember them. Mostly I just swallow it down and try not to cry, and try to avoid those situations in the future, mostly by keeping away from people. We’ll never know what might have happened with the woman in the dream, whether she would have developed a new respect for me, and I for myself – possibly, as I do seem to be much better at putting my point across and convincing people in my dreams than I am in real life.

I didn’t post yesterday because the previous evening I watched the Trump supporters marching around the Capitol in Washington on CNN, and though I wasn’t late going to bed (half past eleven, fairly normal) I did keep watching telly till that time (waiting for the police to take charge or the National Guard to show up or SOMEBDOY to take control of the situation), and then I couldn’t get to sleep and lay awake for hours. The result was that, when I finally got back to sleep, I slept in till nine, waking up feeling crap, as I always do after a really bad night, and didn’t bother with either the exercise or the writing part of my routine.

By the way, the motion sensitive light on the landing started working again after I put it back on the wall. And I unravelled the bit of my jumper I was taking about a few days ago and did it again. I showed it to my therapist yesterday but also said I will probably never wear it. I’m going to count all the things I’ve made over the last few years and don’t wear.

Posted on

Not Thinking of an Elephant

If I start typing, what will come out of my fingers? What have I been thinking about in the two hours since I woke up? I don’t want to remember, and you don’t want to know. I tried to fix the motion-sensitive, darkness sensitive light on my landing by replacing the batteries and it still doesn’t work. Last time this happened, I took it down and left it on my dressing table for a couple of years, then picked it up one day and changed the batteries again, and it miraculously came on, and has been working ever since until yesterday. I don’t know if I can be bothered to leave it on my dressing table again for another couple of years.

I once tried a blog thing (I think it was a group set up by someone else) where you wrote fifty words about something positive and uplifting. I did it a few times, then gave up, and I think everyone else in the group did pretty much the same. If I have to think happy thoughts before I write, I can’t write anything at all. Don’t have that sort of imagination. It’s like the inverse of that thing the pop-psychologists say about ‘…try not to think of an elephant…’ I have heard that so many times that these days, it doesn’t immediately conjure up an image of a pachyderm so much as an infuriatingly chirpy self-help guru whose face needs a good slapping.

Wow, look at that, 250 words, half way already.

The days when I wake up without this dark cloud of gloom over my head are vanishingly rare – I think there might have been one I wrote about a couple of months ago when I’d been reading in bed and actually felt good by the time I started writing? Not sure, it was probably more recently than it feels. I do, admittedly, often feel better by the time I’ve finished writing. I really noticed this in the summer, when most days I could take my breakfast out into the garden and eat in the sunshine. Won’t be doing that today, however.

Bin day today, which means I will get as far as the front gate this evening. I actually can’t remember the last time I left the house (and garden and forecourt) – I think I had a couple of visits to the shops between Christmas and New Year, but don’t think there have been any since. All this is my choice, of course, there isn’t really anything to stop me walking to the sea front except apathy and general can’t-be-arsedness.

Yesterday I had a go at trying on my jumper, and concluded that I had separated the sleeves from the body too soon, as I suspected, so I undid all the work I’d done on it the previous day. I’m happy with that decision.

Just read a tweet which says: ‘Freedom is nothing but only a chance to be better.’ Better in what way? I wonder.

Posted on

Cloudy

I decided this morning that if I ever publish another book, on the back cover, under the blurb, where real books have glowing reviews, I will place the following:

‘A tale told by an idiot, signifying nothing.’ W. Shakespeare.

Do I have plans to publish another book, maybe this year? Well, I might – at some indeterminate date between now and my final gasp – but I don’t have plans. Anything’s possible.

I do plan on finishing this jumper I started knitting on Christmas Day – though I’m a bit concerned at the moment about the size. Did I separate off the sleeves from the body too soon? I was aiming for the same number of stitches as the Christmas one I did for my daughter (it’s the same yarn) but stopped when the sleeves hit sixty, when the front and back for some reason were only at 112, although on the other one it was 120. I can’t really tell by looking, because of it being on circular needles, and that also makes it a pain to try on – and I’ve lost my spare circular needle, which is what I used last time (front on one and back on the other). Bigger better than smaller, surely?  Should I undo what I did yesterday, to be safe? Yesterday I undid two squares’ worth of weather-blanket backing that I’d done the day before, because I wasn’t happy with the way it was working out.

I’m thinking now about Penelope, at the end of ‘The Odyssey’, weaving by day, and in the night unravelling what she’d done the day before, waiting for her husband, Odysseus, to return from the Trojan War (spoiler alert: it took ten years, on top of another ten years for the duration of the war). The process matters more than the outcome, the journey is more significant than the destination (evidently so in Odysseus’s case, I’m not aware of any stories about what happened after he and P were reunited). The process of unravelling is a bit frustrating, and as it’s knitting, picking up the stitches is a lot more of a pain than the crochet equivalent, but as long as there is no deadline, it’s surely preferable to a finished garment that’s too small? (Or maybe not, given that I’ll probably never wear it?)

Incidentally, that last sentence was just highlighted by Word, presumably because it thought it was a double negative – not so clever, eh?

This isn’t what I was going to write about. No resolutions, no plans, no expectations – not that I was intending to write about any of those – on the contrary.

Gazing out of the window, I watch the slow procession of clouds drifting across the gap between the end terraced house across the road and the pub on the corner. A woman in black leggings, a lime green top and head phones runs past my line of sight. Will I be like the running woman or like the clouds this year? What do you think?

Cloudy’, Simon and Garfunkel

Posted on

First Sunday in January

Every morning, I wake up feeling myself to be at the bottom of a dark and muddy pit, and I have to drag myself out of it and face the day. That’s the meaning of the routine I described yesterday, because it gives me a sequence of things to do and ensures that I don’t have to make any choices until late morning (apart from deciding what to write on here, of course).

Last night I must have had quite a vivid dream, because I distinctly remember thinking: ‘this is really good, I know I’m dreaming but I can remember all that’s happened quite clearly and it all makes sense!’ I can remember that much, but not the content of the dream I felt I was living through at the time.

I keep seeing friends’ pictures on Facebook of their morning walks, but don’t feel the urge to go myself, even though this is the easiest time of year to see the sunrise. One set of pictures of the boating lake and beach on Friday morning just brought back a memory of walking by the Thames and going up in the London Eye on New Year’s Day morning in 2010 – the first anniversary of the post I shared a couple of days ago. Circles and spirals. On my own for a year, and looking down on a new world and a new decade (I personally think that, as the calendar is a cultural construct anyway, it makes sense for a decade to be defined by its third digit). Anyway, one year into my new life, I felt that the year ahead was going to be the one when things would really start to take off for me.

People (by which I guess I mean, ‘myself, but I don’t want to admit whatever it is I’m about to say’) always seem to put too much stress on that mark on the calendar (which reminds me, I haven’t even got one, because I still haven’t got round to organising it, probably too late now, and I haven’t taken the old one down from the wall).

I’ve observed it with a minimum of fuss this year, I suppose that’s largely down to being home alone. In the past I’ve been criticised for having expectations ‘…through the roof…’, though these days I have very few expectations of myself, or of the world. All those years of trying to change the external conditions of my life, then trying to change myself into a ‘better’ (in some nebulous way: More organised? More productive? Less selfish? More altruistic?) person, and finally trying to change how I felt about myself: (More accepting? More fulfilled? Happier? More at peace?) have not freed me from the early morning dark and muddy pit that I scrabble out of every day.

In my yoga session this morning, this question popped up: ‘Do you love me?’ and back came the reply: ‘of course I love you, now, bugger off and leave me alone’.

Posted on

Five Hundred Words

What can I say today that I haven’t said a million times before?

Every day: get up at seven (or thereabouts), feed cat and open the door for her to go out; half an hour of yoga, tai chi and meditation; shower; make coffee; come up here and write 500 words; brush teeth; get dressed; have breakfast while doing su doku. That gets me to any time between 10:30 and 12:00. At one o’clock on weekdays, there’s an hour of crime-and-thrillers drama on Radio 4 extra, so I sit in my armchair in the bay window overlooking the street (but behind the hedge) and listen to that, while crocheting the previous day’s weather blanket square. At two, I may get lunch (if I haven’t had it before one), or stay where I am and listen to whatever’s on next, then at three there’s another hour of a drama serial, and at four, some days I switch over to Radio 4 and listen to what’s on there, until PM comes on at five, which I usually listen to also. At weekends the routine is slightly different, as the drama on the radio doesn’t start till three, and then there’s an hour on Radio 4 followed by another hour and a half (Saturday) or hour (Sunday, followed by Poetry Extra, which I also listen to). At six I go into the kitchen and prepare, cook and eat dinner, then around seven I usually go back in the front room, switch the telly on, and knit or crochet till around ten, when I make hot chocolate, listen to music, and carry on either knitting/crocheting or reading until bedtime (between eleven and eleven thirty).

There are variations, of course, usually involving going out to the shops in the morning. Otherwise, that’s pretty much it – but I don’t want you to think that I’m saying my life is boring, not a bit of it. I like this routine. The ‘activities’ (if you can call them that) are all – well, mostly – things I enjoy doing. It’s an undemanding life. Nobody needs me for anything, I’m not required to interact or communicate with any other human being (mostly), I can just trundle along letting each day go by, like I used to when I was travelling.

But a comment on Facebook yesterday raised the question: What is the point of any of this? The comment was made about something specific (posting pictures daily on FB) but it applies to everything, and it throws a stark light on the fact THAT MY LIFE, THE THINGS THAT I DO, ARE ALL COMPLETELY POINTLESS.

I didn’t deliberately make that phrase upper-case – I was just typing away as I usually do, looking at the keyboard instead of the screen, then looked up (because I wanted to delete something I’d written after that) and realised I must have accidentally pressed caps lock. So I’m not trying to emphasise that sentence, it just emphasised itself, which seems appropriate.

And now – oh look – 500.

Posted on

Ghosts of New Years Past

The last post from ‘Husband or Cat’, posted twelve years ago today. I created a new blog immediately afterwards, under the name Melinda Solo.

I’ll be honest, I’m sharing it as an excuse not to write anything new today. Which, now I’m here, doesn’t seem like such a good idea. Some days it just feels like that.

New Year’s Day is quite a potent day for blogging. I feel as though I’ve left a mark on this day several times. The one for 2009 was obviously highly significant, and I’ve referred back to it a few times since.

The Spare Room

The Buddhist New Year party. An evening of reflection, meditation, poetry reading, sharing, wine, food, laughter, friendship. When Chris tentatively mentioned the idea a month ago, I leapt at it.

‘I’ll come, even if it’s only you me and Clare’ I said. ‘I won’t be doing anything else that night.’

It was a good evening, a positive evening, an unconventional evening. What more could you ask for? Better sober with good friends than drinking here alone… I wasn’t clear whether the invitation extended to sleeping over or not, so I took an overnight bag in case, but at around 1:30 the party broke up…

I got back around 2, the house in darkness. Hubby hadn’t left the light on for me, but at least he hadn’t bolted the door. I took my overnight bag into the second bathroom and unpacked my night things. And then I thought…

I went into the bedroom in the dark, got my dressing gown and hot water bottle. I could hear his breathing, soft and regular. This is it, the voice told me, now is the time. It makes perfect sense. Why bother climbing in beside him, one more night? There’s nothing there for either of you, is there?

So I took my things into the spare room. Laid the bag on the floor. Switched the radiator on – the heating was off, but it would be ready for morning. Looked around me.

Checked the wardrobe: full of rubbish, I can sort that out, give myself some storage space in here. I need a bedside cabinet, but for now the clock can sit on the floor.

This is my room now. Why put it off any longer?

Lying in the bed, stretching out, luxuriating. The feather duvet, I will have to swap them over, this is bad for my asthma, but I can survive one night. And I’ll bring my own pillow from the other room tomorrow. But for now, it will be OK.

I woke just after 6, the cat had found her way in and was walking over me and purring. Outside the window, I could hear the fountain in the fish pond. A transit place. I won’t be here forever. But it will do for now.

It was gone 7 before I got up, even though I knew there would be no more sleep. So I did the usual things, fed the cats, put the coffee on. I went back upstairs to meditate, but the mp3 player wouldn’t switch on. Must have left it on all night, I’ll have to recharge it. Then I heard him in the kitchen.

‘I slept in the spare room. Thought that was easier than disturbing you.’

‘OK. I didn’t know what was happening so I didn’t leave the light on.’

‘That’s fine, no problem.’

So polite. We are always so civil with one another. Never any animosity.

The coffee machine gave its sudden final burst of noise and steam. I lifted the lid. Still some filtering through.

He was sitting at the table eating Shredded Wheat.

‘Do you want your coffee pouring now?’

‘Yes please.’

I looked at the chair opposite him. Should I pull it out, sit down?

‘I need to talk to you today’.

‘OK.’ No curiosity, no reaction.

‘Do you want to do it now, or later?’

‘Later.’

OK then. Later it is.

by husbandorcat @ 2009-01-01 – 08:09:45

In the first post of the new blog, I described the actual conversation which I sprung on my husband. It was pointless asking him if he wanted to talk ‘now or later’, I knew that, just procrastination on both our parts. I’d been procrastinating long enough – I suppose we both had, but I couldn’t help but take all the blame onto myself. Also, of course, for me it was exciting, because I was about to embark on a new adventure – running away again. Whatever happened next in my life, I was sure, something good would come out of it.

The spooky thing is that I feel now as though I’m not completely alone, as though there’s someone else in this house who’s still asleep but will get up soon and need to be interacted with. And of course, the same old cat just came and rubbed against my legs.

Ghosts of New Years past. But it’s just an arbitrary mark on the calendar, and I haven’t even got one this year – the last few years I’ve had a Vistaprint one made of my own photos, but didn’t get round to it this time. I’ve honed that old procrastination thing to a fine art, over the years.

Don’t Think Twice, It’s Alright