so i am moving back to dundee after the unhappiest year of my recent life, cooped up in a miserable flat in glasgow. i’ve had a great job with great colleagues but work’s only one third of the day’s hours. it ain’t enough, man. i’ve been really unwell, most unwell in a long time. i’ve just exhausted my body to a point where it seems all pretty pointless and desperate and every time i look in the mirror i see some grey-colored, probably could use a hot supper – type deeply stressed and unhappy mess. it’s such a paradox how anxious being with people and in social situations makes me and how i stress about upcoming events and occasions, yet i am so unhappy when i can’t see my best-loved people. being lonely makes you ill. i’ve felt emotionally deprived, which i guess makes me feel guilty because i have a roof on my head and a job and money for nice dinners. i guess i understand i really ought to aim for the whole picture – work, social relationships, finance, family all being good or at least reasonable. i look forward to meeting new people, hanging out with my old buddies, being with the man i love when i want to. as an idea, it seems ace.
the discontented workforce
you can always tell when i’m not feeling well, i go off the radar and forget myself and stress out and get back problems and lung problems and stomach knots for weeks on end. i have decided now is the time to rise phoenix-like from the darkness black void lump of doom that is perhaps the winter, or perhaps me not taking care of myself properly or whatever it was. rejoice, it is finally spring!
i have decided on a couple of work philosophies. ‘positive regard’ is the buzzword pairing i am going to start applying every day i possibly can in meeting people and working with people. and to believe that others have the same for me. today i worked overtime on a public holiday surrounded by wonderful people who think i am good and valuable and ohemgee the energy and happiness that day gave me and i was so happy to be at work. i need to pass that experience on, to others. and i feel i am slowly becoming more confident at work, that i have skills, and understanding, and tools, and that i can contribute things and i have place.
apparently good things happen to good people and i have a wonderful holiday to look forward to with my 3 best loved persons and so perhaps i am a little bit good, or at least passable.
that monty python song
i am at home. only on holidays do i ever have time to: sleep after considering for several minutes which pair of pyjamas to wear for the weather, read books not required by profession/studies, play the piano, make clothes and or knit, read trash mags, watch finnish soaps, play with dog.
this is nice, my designated holiday space. i feel like a proper grown up. i have designated work times; weeks of 9 to 5 and after work activities a plenty, weekends of catching up with friends and my lovest of loves and climbing hills and holidaying to places i can pay for with my newly found full-time wealth. am i going to get bored of this life or will i accustom to it and consider starting a household, making children, interior decorating. ach, i do not know.
i finally found the quote that i had been looking for for years, an e e cummings poem my home ec teacher wrote in a note for me on my last day of 3rd year. it has a lot of importance to me, she knew where i was at the time and she gave me a poem that hit a chord, i wish i could thank her.
To be nobody-but-yourself — in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else — means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting.
of unsuccessful excursions
i went to the mitchell mega library at charing cross today, in search of books on addiction, which i found, and also to find some poetry to enjoy. i had a specific poet in mind, one of my alltime alltime favorites, e.e. cummings, a fan of lower case like myself. the library as however so profoundly confusing (on six floors!) that i could not find any of his works. it was however a nice trip, it’s good to be reminded of literary lives, plenty of people buried in their books at 6.30pm on a tuesday.
i have now googled some poems by cummings. my heart sings and my eyes get all watery when i read this one:
i carry your heart with me(i carry it in
my heart)i am never without it(anywhere
i go you go,my dear; and whatever is done
by only me is your doing,my darling)
i fear
no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want
no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)
and it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you
here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows
higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that’s keeping the stars apart
i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)
the people across are having a party
so i went to see some art at GOMA at the weekend. i was particularly impressed by an artist called rob churm, apart from his art, i also enjoyed his thoughts about being an artist and making art. i feel my thoughts about making art would go along the same lines, well they do already even if i don’t make anything.
this quote from rob churm:
in terms of the actual construction of the drawings it’s like a reverse game of kerplunk…i like the idea that there is some kind of justice that can be attained in the work. a successful drawing reveals itself. it is as if the idea somehow existed beforehand and is then found. any errors made in the execution must be treated as essential aspects of the work and should be built upon, not erased. mistakes are part and parcel of the excercise.
i feel he is rightly putting importance in the process, it’s like peeling back the layers to discover what was previously muddled up in one’s brain, contained in the ink and paper and the movement of the hand and eye. it’s like a special process of something quite inexplicable, an appreciation of how our mind can guide us to create something which may look like a series of random of accidents but might actually be an intricate dance if you will.
my thoughts are few today, i am listening to malcolm middleton’s first and superior record and enjoying the quiet silence of mine flat
six hours of interesting reading
i was reading this book called the unquiet mind, about a psychiatrist who suffers from manic depression (well, you’re not supposed to call it that anymore). i’d gone to woodside library through the many many concrete blocks of maryhill buildings to search for topical reading of professional relevance. it was a really pleasant search on a day off, i got lost somewhere in between st. george’s cross and maryhill road, which is ultimately a tiny tiny space and getting lost there is quite the feat. i started the book on the megabus journey to dundee on friday the 17th of july, i read for almost two hours. it was fascinating reading, my mind wandered exploring the subject matter, trying to connect my own experiences of life and moods and toil with what the author was writing about. i found many quotable paragraphs, had i had a highlighter pen and had the book been mine, not the council’s, i would have highlighted a plenty! on sunday the bus smelled of pee really painfully, i was sitting next to a lady sipping from a can of strongbow and furiously filling in a crossword with her false teeth (well not exactly, but she had false teeth, like a cariture of a woman when she smiled ‘excuse me’ to me). i read for an hour and a half. the author sailed from psychosis to wellness to illness again. i had a day off today. on the couch on the living room i read again. the book is almost finished. it’s given me many things to contemplate. to read more books. to live a more vivid existence. to work harder. to release my brain to imagine more and create more. a book is like a thick and consoling bowl of broth. blocks of different kinds of nourishment, for different holes in the soul, that’s my everyday tasks.
so much better
is how it’s been
being an island has been fine, i don’t need no boys in my life, i cradle myself to sleep just fine
that was a rhyme by accident. yo!
i got a job with the glasgow association for mental health as a project worker. i will dedicate my life to inclusive practice! no, i will dedicate my life to making some people’s lives in glasgow a bit better. i can’t think of many things i’d rather do
uni finished, i remain nonchalant
i must find a flat and a flatmate in the beautiful west end of glasgow
watch this space, this space is small but infinite!
listen to: experience by prodigy
it’s just unfortunate
the way i see it, the age i am just now is a very dividing time. time to relocate yourself to a coffee table near you with a bottle of sauvignon b, falling asleep early because you’re in a carb coma from your really nice tea. it’s just unfortunate that i would like to be at the club, getting on with dancing to lots of bangin choons. my peers will be 21. i am less affected by the division than some because i always thought i should do what i enjoy doing instead of harnessing my age designated role in life. it’s strange. i have been thinking a lot about age and aging recently. i do not feel i have a particularly young outlook to life; i am interested in my career and its development, i am responsible and polite and can hold a conversation about ‘adult topics’ (no, i do not refer to anything blue here). yet i guess in everyday my inability to take the bullshit that seems to come with age, the way you start speaking in professional jargon and developing interests in profoundly mundane and uninteresting things makes me …young?
where do people go when they hit my age? does everyone just find a partner and reproduce in their respective houses? i just want to live, and have fun and not have to fake it in some beige housewarming party.
i’m listening to fol chen and i will go and play the piano shortly.
brave-ty, strong-ity
these are made up words but i think they describe what i need most in my life at the moment, times are of change, challenge. i need to proper start growing up and aw. i need to put my inability to handle a life less than complicated behind me, oh this is hard! this is hard! how will i occupy my brain with now? how will i detach myself from myself and my life, how will i muddle my brain and make the water cloudy.
life is hard, easy.
i wish my band made a song like the national.
i wish i was happy.
i wish i wasn’t tired.
at least 85% of the time.
i wish i was appreciated by many and understood by some.
this is like poor haiku.
i wish i wasn’t such a romantic.
i wish i wouldn’t bore of running so quickly.
i wish kind of many things.
i am listening to ‘honey’
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