astronomy – Linda Rushby http://lindarushby.com Blogger, traveller, poet, indie publisher - 'I am the Cat who walks by herself, and all places are alike to me' Sat, 20 Jun 2020 08:50:53 +0000 en-GB hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.7.1 156461424 Happy Solstice http://lindarushby.com/2020/06/20/happy-solstice/ Sat, 20 Jun 2020 08:50:53 +0000 http://lindarushby.com/?p=695 Continue reading "Happy Solstice"

]]> The northern hemisphere summer solstice, as you probably know, is usually on the 21st June, but fluctuates because the convention that Earth’s orbit around the sun takes 365 times as long as each rotation is an approximation – the real figure is closer to 365.24, but with the addition of an extra day every four years, it’s a pretty good approximation to keep things consistent within the average human lifetime – though it does go adrift over the centuries, hence the introduction in the Gregorian calendar of another fix to remove a day from three centuries in four – an improvement adopted by the English less than three centuries ago, years after the rest of Europe, and then only with much grumbling, propagation of misinformation and conspiracy theories, and rioting in the streets. Plus ҫa change.

There I go again. Nobody likes a smart-arse. But the point is… when I’m doing the Cassandra smart-arse thing, it’s not that I’m trying to show off – well, maybe it is, but only because in the normal run of things, I feel there is so little I can show off about. In the normal run of life I am so chaotic, clumsy, awkward, forgetful, messy, slow, disorganised… dyspraxic. That’s who I am, it’s who I’ve been all my life, and (though I’m not a big fan of putting labels on people) it’s a relief to have a word for it.

When I started seeing my therapist, I told her all this and she began by trying to find a more positive word than ‘chaotic’ (though the one she came up with: ‘ditsy’ – didn’t strike me as an improvement). Like most people I’ve tried to speak to about this, she was making the assumption that it was just a story I was told as a child, and that I’ve been repeating to myself ever since, it’s not who I really am.

One day, after I’d been seeing her for a couple of months, she suddenly said: ‘What you’re saying reminds me of another client I used to see – I think you might be dyspraxic.’ So I looked it up and read the characteristics associated with dyspraxia – and saw myself laid out, even down to strange apparently random things like: not being able to read my own handwriting; lacking confidence in my appearance because I can’t do hair, make-up and have no dress-sense; took years to learn how to ride a bike…

I find it difficult to explain this to people. It sounds like excuses, doesn’t it? I think that’s probably been the problem all my life – I am so conscious of my shortcomings because surely, with a little more effort, I could find ways round them? So I try and fail and get frustrated and hate myself.

Maybe I should come back to this another day. Because what I started to write about was the Cassandra thing, because sometimes it feels as though a head full of useless knowledge is about the only thing that I’m good for.  

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