Movement

Not talking bowels here, they're fine thank you. Talking life progress. Today I was offered a voluntary counselling placement in Wokingham, a short train ride from Reading. It's a lovely area and very easy to get to. I  have to do undertake a six-week induction there (effectively) and then I have a two-hour slot in Woodley every Wednesday evening. I am so happy. :-)

When they asked me about working in their Reading-based clinics I said that I used public transport and they immediately decided it would be impossible for me to work from those locations. Honestly, I think it would be about a half-hour cycle ride. They were shocked, not being used to anyone travelling anywhere other than by car. Well, perhaps there are some advantaged of having lived the last 10 years of my life in London - you get used to life without a car. Guess I'll have to buy a bike in January then.

So, I am starting to sort a few things out and it feels good. Now back down to work!

Slackness

Not talking slackness of jowls due to aging here, as you might think. I'm not that old thank you very much, though I did notice that when I hang my head upside down the flesh accumulates under my eyes and makes me look like I'm about 60 years old. That was rather depressing so I shan't be experimenting with that look again.

No, I'm talking about slackness of posting. I have been slack. I apologise. I'm not very exciting right now.

Well, I've been running once a week for the last month - one hour, covering 5-6 miles in the time, which I am fairly proud of. I've also been mountain biking the weekend just gone - two hours, covering just over 8 miles - and that was wicked fun. Scary and I didn't quite manage to making it up again from a steep downhill into a muddy ditch. I also got mud in my eyes and was wearing a mud goatee for a bit (unbeknown to me at the time). Topped off with a Berkshire Cornish pasty and I was well happy. :-)

I've also got back into the social circle and have actually started to make dates with friends again. I guess this must mean I am feeling more settled. Either that or a little stir crazy. I feel the need to start implementing. In the language of my therapy training, I have left the fertile void of nothingness and I am now ready for action.

If anyone knows of a non-dysfunctional easy-going flatshare in Reading, please let me know! I can't be doing with squabbles over bills or washing up. I want easy, cup of tea? thank you very much! night night then, type of flatshare. The odd bit of fun is fine, but to be honest, I'd rather boring over fun for my homelife. For me fun is cycling and running and watching funny stuff on the big black box from time to time. For me fun is chatting for hours or having the odd dinner party. For me, fun is being creative with buttons and dye. Goodness, bring on the slack jowls, I'm clearly ready for them...

Benoit Mandelbrot

The father of fractals has died age 85. An astonishingly intelligent man.

Something he said, which has somehow got under my skin is reported in a BBC article "Mandelbrot was also highly critical of the world banking system, arguing the economic model it used was unable to cope with its own complexity."

It makes me feel very uneasy and I have an intuitive sense that he predicted something significant. It somehow reinforces my belief that cash should be stored in gold under the bed and ploughed into property ownership and not invested into pensions and stocks. Anything that is essentially not 'real' worries me. Somewhat hypocritical of me, given I don't own many things and all my money is in banks - intending to all be spent this year however, I might add.

For further information read Mandelbrot's book 'The Fractal Geometry of Nature' published in 1982. I haven't yet read it in its entirety and plan to purchase it.

Something that also pops to mind, relating to the ridiculousness of money and finances, is the book 'Fooled by Randomness - the hidden role of chance and life in the markets.' Now forgive me if I am wrong, but what I took from this book is that the whole world seems to revolve around a financial illusion that is unsustainable.

Now I shall go away and ponder these two seemingly unrelated things and work out what I really think.

96 seems to be the going rate

I heard today than an old friend of the family died on Monday. Doris Beaver was 96, the same age as my Great Aunt Ailsa was when she died in January. It seems 96 is the going rate then. Well, at least 96 - I hope to make it past that.

My Dad told me that she'd had a stroke a couple of decades ago and lived independently since then, up until two years ago that is. He told me she was never cantankerous. When I think of her I feel warm and safe - I remember her being a kind, amusing and generous soul. I remember photos in her living room and patio doors...at least I think I do. I remember a garden with trees. I remember she lived in Croydon, or thereabouts. We used to pop in on the way to or from Croatia, when we were small. I remember it always being sunny, but the summers of my childhood were all sunny and hot, in my memory that is.

This blog post is in her memory and is to express gratitude and thanks for the wonderful person that she was. My challenge is to be as non-cantankerous as she was. There really is no need. So kindness and gentleness all round, please.

It's not black and white

I've been studying cultural perspectives within counselling and it's making me think. I am a little wary of writing a post about ethnicity because I know it is so easy to cause offence or to be insensitive. I want to state up front that this is not my intention and I am just trying to make sense of stuff I'm learning right now. Think of me as a child taking my first steps if you think I am being naive or insensitive. If you think I am blind to something, please tell me - if no-one points me in the right direction, I may never see and I really want to learn.
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I’ve never thought about what it meant to be white. It has never crossed my mind to think about it. It felt somehow insignificant. Apparently this is quite normal for white people. We don’t really associate with white ethnicity or ever think about its implications. Some studies say that we are ‘trained to be blind to the fact of our privileges’.

Now, for possibly the first time, I am thinking about my whiteness and the privilege it brings. I have always felt lucky, perhaps another term for privilege, that I am intelligent, that I am ‘good enough’ to always get a job. I recognise that I have been luckier than others in always having work, because I am bright, because I am attractive – I know this makes a difference in interviews – and because I am naturally sociable, outgoing and empathic. I have never thought about the fact of being white as helping me to get work, but now I do think about it, I wonder if perhaps I have been luckier than some because I am white. 

I wonder if despite being a ‘lovely person’ and actually being good at what I do, whether being attractive, white and unmarried has also helped me enormously. I wonder and I know for sure it’s true in some cases. I don’t feel guilty, I feel very lucky. Although I see that being white may have helped me, I also know that if I was shit at my work, I would not have been allowed to stay employed…but then I question that statement. Could I have got away with more, I wonder, because I am white?

Should I feel guilty then, I wonder? And I think, no. I used to feel terribly guilty (as a teenager) for being intelligent and having an easier time at school than others, but I know now that I shouldn’t have. I also know that it wasn’t always easy – there was being a foreigner with an odd name, there was not being rich or having attended one of the posh universities, there was having illness in the family, to cope with on top of ordinary daily stresses, on many occasions providing support that other people wouldn’t have had a clue about.

As long as I don’t boast or use my privileges unfairly to get one over on someone else, then surely I should be grateful for whatever I have been blessed with, and use it in a positive way to help me get on in life and to make a difference. Be grateful for what I have and accept the things I don’t have. Surely ingratitude would have the same outcome as feeling guilty. I would waste opportunities to make a difference and, for me, that would be a crime.

But then I come back to things that might change - I will always be white, intelligent and sociable, but I may one day be less attractive (as I age, perhaps) or I may not always be unmarried. I wonder how those changes would impact my chances of employment and I feel a tinge of anger that they may make things harder. I have, perhaps, taken for granted the things that make my life easier. I feel a tinge of what it must be like to have to fight that little bit harder for something you know you could do standing on your head, perhaps a million times better than the person who got the job, a little bit more attractive than me, a little bit more sociable, with money or connections I could never hope to have, or simply, a different skin colour.

Reality versus dream

Reality

I slept at my sister's house last night. I have just woken up and am about to cook some yummy homemade fishcakes for my breakfast.

Dream

I was in an odd place, not sure what it was, but I had a tiny poky little room with no windows and no light. It was stuffy and claustrophobic. I think we were all part Croatian in this place. Outside my door was a little landing and there was another tiny bedroom next door to mine. The person in it had a window. I was envious of the window. I couldn't work out if it was a he or a she. S/he spoke to me and apologised about the drunken behaviour the night before. I said to him/her "It's okay, you don't need to worry. I'm not really here. My body is actually sleeping in my sister's flat and I'm only here for a few hours. I wasn't here last night either, so I don't remember anything - I didn't hear anything, I wasn't here."

For him/her this was a life, s/he'd been living here. My room looked like I had been living there too, but I knew it had all been constructed for just those few hours of me being there, that I was really fast asleep in my sister's flat and that before my sleeping, I'd been awake and in Reading and London.

I then 'woke up' in my sister's flat and cooked some fishcakes for my breakfast. After I ate them I wiped the surfaces and put stuff in the fridge, then found these three homemade fishcakes and was gutted I'd eaten the shop-bought ones.


Reality

I was woken at 6am and then again at 7.30am (when my sister got up and then left the flat) and I guess that the combination of this left me confused. I heard sounds that didn't make sense. I saw bright lights that weren't daylight and my mind was so confused when I finally woke up into reality.

I woke up for real at 8.30am, relieved I still had nice fishcakes to cook. I felt I'd been asleep either four hours or 20 hours, but in reality I'd been asleep about 8.5 hours, but broken.

It's funny. The first time I 'woke up' I 'knew' I was awake. Now I am really awake I have no doubt that I am really awake. There is no fear that I am somehow still trapped in a dream.

What is it with this dream within a dream? I've always had them and always found them fascinating. Sometimes wonderful and sometimes irritating when I've lived a whole day and have to do it all over again, depending, of course, if it was a wonderful day or a difficult day.

The new thing for me, with this, was knowing where I was - asleep in my sister's flat. This hasn't happened before. I've always known I was dreaming before, but this had a different, kind of Matrix-esque quality.

Thoughts welcome. Please post. :-)

Bringing you sunshine

Today, for some inexplicable reason, I feel it's my purpose to bring you sunshine. I am not God, or a god, even, so I can't literally bring you sunshine, but I can make you feel warm and cosy inside, as if it was sunny. I'm not sure how to do this, I only know that I want to, so I am going to start with smiling. Can you imagine that? Me smiling. I am smiling at you. My eyes are looking at you, watching you carefully, to see how you're feeling. I think I see the corners of your eyes begin to crinkle. Now don't worry, it's not the sign of aging crinkle, it's the sign of a life well lived crinkle, a life full of laughter crinkle. These are good crinkles. I love them. I find them very attractive. The minute I see your eye crinkles, I know you laugh and this makes you attractive. I see the corner of your mouth start to turn up, you look a little bemused. You start to smile. The world begins to look brighter as if it was sunnier. You are aware of this and not sure how it has happened, but as you notice this, your heart begins to lift. You can feel a fuzzy warmth in your heart, kind of a like a cute little furry animal curled up in there...oh but stop, don't worry, not like furring of the arteries, not that kind of fur, no, more the fur that keeps you warm and cosy, the fur that is important for life and is there to be stroked and loved. That kind of fur. And if you don't like the idea of fur in your heart, scrap that idea. Go back to the sunshine idea. Imagine sunshine in your heart. Imagine it expanding to fill your world. Your world is now full of sunshine which will remain with you all day. So, throughout the day (and the weekend too if your memory is good enough), every time anything gets you down, just remember the sunshine in your heart and remember me sitting next to you, looking into your eyes and liking the smile I see.