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Extroversianity
Tonight my housemate Liz and I talked for 7 hours. We hadn't made an appointment to do so, we just did. And because we're both extroverts, there were tears and thoughts-aloud, and it was good.
All over the place my friends are just bursting out in reality. With some people it seems to have been augmented by blogging - interesting... I'm finding that a lot of the key conversations I'm having are the unscheduled ones. When there's no pressure to talk, well I guess honesty comes more naturally. I think that's why housemates are great. Because there's freedom to come and go, it's not scary. So tonight, I nipped downstairs to get a glass of water, caught up with Liz for five minutes, sat down to quickly read the paper, and then we got chatting. No plan, and none of that 'we don't have another diary window for 7 months, so this had better be good'.
The thing I love about being an extrovert is that I am always energised by talking with someone else. Even if initially I'm not in the zone, even if I'm intending to do something else, even if I feel sick and grumpy, within half an hour at the most I'm feeling animated and alive. On the other hand, there was a moment this morning that made me massively appreciate silence. Anna Jones, up from Guildford, sat reading the paper. I was curled up in my dressing gown halfway through a good novel, and Liz was iBooking on the other sofa. And we sat like that for quite a while, together, but together in silence. If there were more moments like that, I don't think I'd ever need to be actually alone again, apart from when I'm drawing, which I can't do properly with other people, mainly because of the facial contortions. I have tried drawing with people, but unless I'm drawing them, they keep me from reaching the zone.
So anyway, in an effort to combat the perceived 'introverts are better' snobbery in our church, Liz and I have come up with some great things about being extroverts. It's not better or worse, just different, so play nicely:
1) Extroverts are naturals at job interviews. This is because we are highly practised in the art of bullshitting, except that it's not bullshitting, it's thinking, out loud.
2) Sick extroverts can feel loads better just from people-time.
3) Extroverts are expansive, we share our thought processes with everyone. We allow you to be with us in the thought, we let you into our minds, before things are fully-formed and ossified.
4) We can process in real-time, and in public.
5) We can start a sentence about one thing, and end up somewhere else, and are fine with other people doing it too.
6) We give great supervisions in arts subjects. In my first year I got predicted a first in one paper, and the guy wrote "Becky has obvously studied the text in great depth" - I hadn't read the thing, I was just building on what the introvert next to me had said, and Derren-Browning my supervisor.
7) We can hopefully make people feel valued, because we are nearly always pleased to see them.
Of course sometimes it's hard, like when you have a suddent thought, and there's no-one around to think off. I had one just now, but I'm all alone...
Learning Curve
Curve is such a nice word, but the one I'm on at the minute doesn't feel particularly nice. I am learning to say no, but for so many things in my life it's far too late to say no, so I'm having to say 'I quit' instead. I'm realising that my time for voluntary stuff isn't merely week-work-sleep. There's rest, and there's the unexpected, and there's the stuff you have to do to keep things ticking over. There's cleaning, and tax stuff, and cooking. So I've got to the point where I have to admit that I do too much, and that something's go to give. And the sad thing is that everything I'm committed to seems really good, really worthwhile. I feel quite dejected as I write this, though also full of hope, because I know that what i'm going to carry forward is the knowledge that to say 'no' initially can be far kinder and more helpful than having to bail on people midway.
I have to admit 'I have made myself ill with *small voice* stress'. I thought I could push myself. I thought I could live with one free evening a fortnight. I thought I could work on 6 hours sleep every night, like I did when I was a child of 17. But I can't. How shameful, and yet freeing. Part of the reason I'm sick might be that I'm worried about the hospital on Monday, so perhaps after that I'll bounce back. But even if it's partly that, it's not the whole story, so I gotta larn me.
I'm really sorry - but there's no one person to say it to.
I have discovered one new restful thing though - the folksy, bluegrassy soundtrack to 'O Brother Where Art Thou'. So while I deal with my gnawing guilt about having to begin to let go of other things, I'll let the sounds of the South wash over me. I'm still quite insomniac at the moment, so if I wake up too early even for work tomorrow I think I'll stroll along the Cam with 'Down in the River to Pray'.
Twinkle twinkle David Cameron
This morning I had a shower in strobe lighting. At first it was irritating, but then it got to the point where it was better than a full-lit shower. Today my morning-insomnia awoke me at 6:30, which is the time lots of people get up anyway, so I guess I don't have much to complain about. I was glad to get out of bed, as I'd just had a nasty dream in which Jerry and I planned to go to Paris, and then he pulled out an hour before the flight because he was going to play golf with Bill Gates and his other friends. This was very hurtful. Please don't ever do that, Jerry... It was also a bit of a nightmare because just as I was coming downstairs to tell my housemates I wasn't going, my singing housemate from 2nd year turned up with a huge suitcase. She had come to stay.
So last night I nearly blogged twice, so overcome was I with thoughts of David Cameron. And on this festival of democracy (local council elections), I'll share with you some of those thoughts. This weekend the lovely Independent published an article that made me simultaneously love DC and hate conservatism. The reason they made me love DC was that he revealed his Tory naivete, evaded all the really juicy political questions, and said that Thatcher is one of his three political heroes. He likes Thatcher - that means we're allowed to not like him, even though he does look a bit like an oversized baby, and even if he plays with huskies, and has a severely disabled child. I will say this for Eton, they do bring them up 'nice'. I have one friend and one aquaintance from Eton, and both have 'nice' manners - and I mean that in the best possible sense. So DC seems personable, even if politically he's a joker. This is in contrast to Labour, whose ministers seems to lack integrity, even if politically I like some of what they're doing.
Right, I think I'll head into work an hour early and do some reading and brainstorming.
And also...
Read this. It explains why Rooney's injury is Maggie Thatcher's fault. No really. Along with Franz Ferdinand, Indian Independence, and the Bloody Sunday Massacre in Russia in 1905.
Buzz
The other day, while talking to my friend Joe, I realised why I am afraid
of wasps. This is particularly pertinent at the moment, as there are
some nasty wasps who have taken up residence in our backyard, and me
and the girls and the ducks don't like it. I had thought that my phobia was purely irrational, but here we find the rationale for the panic. So here is the story. It's a
sad tale, full of woe, so if you've come here for a warm, fuzzy feeling
navigate away now!
So... When I was between 6 and 8, the school
I was attending at the time hired a double decker bus to take us to the
seaside. I secured the prime seat, top front left, by the window -
maximum viewing pleasure! I sat there next to some friend whose name,
face and indeed gender is lost to the mists of time (and probably
repression). Suddenly a speculative young wasp flew in the bus window,
and here the horror began.
I should explain at this juncture
that until I was about 17 my hair was red, and quite shiny. In primary
school this was a source of much teasing, though by secondary school it
had become a quality to be envied, and by University was something I
sorely missed. Anyway, this wasp was attracted to the brightness, the
shininess, the copperiness, who knows, anyway, it landed on my head and
proceeded to burrow around merrily in my mane.
At this the
other denizens of the bus shrieked as one, and fled to the back of the
bus, some even running downstairs. Now I was a sociable little tyke,
still am, but in this moment this wasp had robbed me of the right to
society. I was an outcast, and this was connected to my gingerness,
which in turn had attracted the wasp. I spent the rest of the journey
to Margate sat on my own, scared of the buzzing heavy thing entangled
in my tresses, and filled with shame that I had attracted this insect,
and thus rendered myself an untouchable. By the time we got to the sea,
my contortions had killed the wasp, and most of my classmates had
forgotten the incident, but clearly it is burned deep in my neurones,
for somewhere in the intervening years I have developed an extreme
phbia of wasps. I'm not scared of being stung, I just find them
hideous. Their heavy, solid bodies sicken me. Their malevolent drone
makes me feel at risk, and despite myself I flee them. For a while I
did consider the possibility that I was attention-seeking, but
following an incident yesterday, I can confirm that my reaction is in
fact even stronger when there're no-one there but me and waspy.
So
I dont' really know how to move forward in this. Probably I need to
recreate some bus-top incident where my friends gather round me as I
sit with a dead wasp on my head... Anyone have any better suggestions?
Tower Hamlets
Here are the local council election results for Tower Hamlets, where I grew up. Thankfully TH has not seen anything similar to the rise of the BNP in neighbouring Barking. Instead we have the rise of Respect, the party, not the quality. Freaking yuppies moving into Blackwall and Millwall have turned the area from red to blue, but the creative types trying to carve out a niche in the ghetto have obviously buggered off back to Hoxton, because the 3 wards in the Bow are have gone from yellow to red. But let's talk a minute about Respect, leaving George Galloway out of it. Here's my twopence worth on why the rise of Respect in the area is a bad thing. When I've been to local Labour events with my Dad, the thing I've been struck by is that in Tower Hamlets, the Labour party brings together immigrants and white working class people. My fear is that as many Muslim immigrants are attracted to Respect, for good reasons in many cases, that mixing pot that was Old Labour will lose its potency in the East End, and perhaps give the BNP back a foothold in Tower Hamlets. As much as I detest New Labour, I think that the Labour party in Tower Hamlets really needs to be strong. I don't mind a few wussy Lib Dems, and even a few incongrous, harmless Tories, but splitting the working class vote is dangerous.
But other than the cabinet, and the weather, something else has changed since Thursday - I am a teeny bit less terrified of wasps. 3 were buzzing round trying to get into my bedroom this morning, an adult and two smaller ones, and I didn't shudder. I watched them for a while, safe behind the glass. I think sourcing my fear is diminishing it. I am now starting to see wasps as they should be seen by a rational, non-allergic adult - i.e. as harmless, if a bit irritating. Even their insistent heaviness has lost some of its power. It's kind of cool the way they hover. Everything is changing at the moment in my world.
Me vs. Insomnia
Last night I kicked insomnia's arse. Not even the builders next door, who have hammers and therefore hammer in the morning (but not all over this land), could wake me up. Only the dream I had where I slept so long I missed my appointment could make me wake up. And when I did wake up - I felt groggy. Oh grog - how I have missed you! Over the past 10 days I have awoken with a start at around 6 every morning, including the weekends, and have been instantly alert (and pissed off). This morning I feel like a sleepy young mole.
So... over the weekend I dressed up as the seventh seal, and in the course of my extensive research discovered the synopses of several Ingmar Bergman films. It is thus announced that May 2006 is hence forth to be known as Ingmay, as this month I am going to immerse myself in black and white Swedish films. Oh yes, it will be good. If anyone wishes to join me for any of Ingmay, let me know.