(Oh look, a "sneaky" allusion to the famous Judith Butler book of the same name! How many people would have got this reference without me pointing it out? It's too late now, your time to shine is over, yes my blog post is using the name of a book published four years before I was born. Think of it as inter-textuality. So post-modern!)
Gender sucks. This is an opinion but also kind of a fact. As my non-binary squeeze asked me a few days ago, "what is gender?" And I kind of floundered and offered a few responses - it's a set of social behaviours, it's to do with human conditioning, it's innate, it's learned, it's a spectrum, it's all performative actions - but none of them seemed to really work in the face of their gaze, their cool almond-shaped eyes looking up at me, ringed with delicate eyelashes and deep thought.
I have to have some notion of gender, right? It's something we all have, but not something that gets critically considered unless you or someone you know isn't cisgender - that is, having your gender identity and your physical sex match up. I am not cisgender. I am a demi-girl, which is one of those "tumblr genders" that people seem to think doesn't exist. But also being pansexual, I'm used to erasure.
Being a demi-girl, to me, means I have some level of detachment from being feminine or female. As much as I am female, I am also not-female. This element of not-female isn't male, either: it's just not really anything, maybe agender or genderqueer (i.e. having no gender, or being somewhere in the middle of the indiscrete mass of gender identities) but not specific. Being a demi-girl, for me, means some kind of disconnect between my XX-chromosone, supposedly 'female' body and the expectations placed upon me for being a girl.
For all my behaviours - my empathy, my need to please but also challenge authority figures, my rebellious streak, my wanderlust, the Maths papers I bailed on - I worry whether they were truly my choices or made by the environment I grew up in, which necessarily includes the patriarchy. I am good at remembering names, but is that because of the burden of femaleness impacting my thought processes and others' expectations of me since I was a kid to the extent that it's become part of my personality?
I have too many unanswered questions about this, so identifying as not-a-cis-girl helps me with it. Being demi- helps me feel more secure in my skin, helps me challenge notions, helps remind me that acting typically feminine does not make me a stereotype, that girly is not synonymous with weak, that internalised misogyny is not my fault but that of the system I was born into. (It's like one of my agender friends commenting how accepting her gender identity as agender helped her be more comfortable wearing dresses and skirts: to paraphrase, once she accepted she had no gender and thus nothing to lose from not being 'feminine enough', the act wearing feminine clothing didn't carry the same problems and was liberating.) I have no problems with the undeniable womanly curves of my body, as a binder would probably damage me too much without doing anything to sort out my hip-to-waist ratio that proves I endured female puberty - but being unhappy in your body is not a prerequisite of any gender identity whatsoever. Dysphoria is not essential to the trans or non-binary experience.
You may feel this exact way and yet still identify as cisgender, but guess what? That's your prerogative. Like not every person who is attracted to people of more than one gender has to identify as anything other than how they feel, nobody's going to try and make you have a gender that's not what you identify as. (Shout-out to all the straight guys in the back I've slept with! Guess what? You've fucked a non-binary person! If that makes you feel uncomfortable then that's your problem.) At the same time, there are options.
Gender isn't a fixed construct. We get to make up our minds ourselves. There are more words than there used to be, but there's also much more awareness and discussion of feeling like this. Feeling confused over my gender isn't a new phenomenon for humanity, and not for me - I've been a conflicted tomboy all my life, stealing my brother's girls but pretending not to like pink to keep my brand consistent - but I have the language now to express it. Technically I am trans, in that I am not-cis, but I don't see myself in that umbrella. Rather I am in the non-binary camp, of people whose gender is not either girl or boy, yes or no, pink or blue. How is increased language and awareness a bad thing?
And because of all this, and because of understanding gender as a spectrum before I even worked out where I was on it, I define as pansexual. I am attracted to people, and their gender is irrelevant. Call me bisexual and prepare for a long discussion about this.
I still don't know what gender is. For my enbie beauty (whose non-binary label they wear as a hesitant badge of pride), it's freedom to dress as they feel on any given day without giving a fuck. It's not worrying about not being served in Betty's for wearing a skirt and not having their identity questioned on the days they wear combats. It's something that makes them happy in a world full of insecurity and uncertainty: the knowledge that they are not boy or girl, and that it's okay and really most people don't care other than to compliment them on their banging Hello Kitty dress.
Dating my enbie (non-binary person) brings its own string of challenges: it's made me aware of how I use language so much more, the arbitrariness of gendered clothing, the constant weighing up of whether to confront catcallers or not, and the total shittiness of men in women's clothing being a "joke", like femininity is funny and shameful.
Wearing female clothing brings you into a female space regardless of biology, and on the streets that can mean harassment and danger as others feel entitled to look at you and make comments. My enbie happens to be 6'2" and wear stubble with their flowing red and brown locks, which raises even more confusion from passers-by. There's not been much actual street harassment, but there's so much whispering and confusion, comments to friends, wolf-whistling. I ignore it, burning to confront harassers and educate them about gender; I can't imagine how it makes my other half feel.
Neither of us are out to our parents, and there's something depressing about that. If we can't be who we really are round our families for fear of them not understanding - or worse, laughing about it, or reacting badly, or cutting us off - then living authentically gets that much harder,
Maybe we all have gender trouble. But if you learn anything from this, it's that your cheap laugh at the expense of a muscled dude in a red dress in the Fallout 4 E3 previews is a bullet shot to the hearts and souls of gender non-conformers around the world. Laughing at a man wearing a dress says you think women's clothing is embarrassing, and any feminist worth their salt can see why that's problematic. So, I will fight tooth and nail to keep my non-binary friends and kin safe, even if that sometimes means the best way to fight is through stony glares and silence as we walk on in our swishy blue skirts.
Showing posts with label forgottenpostcards. Show all posts
Showing posts with label forgottenpostcards. Show all posts
Monday, 22 June 2015
Friday, 29 August 2014
Summer is ending.
Some days, when I think about how vast and hopeless the world is, I get stuck. Stuck in my own brain, as I consider the huge expanse of people trembling in fear and madness. Stuck in the horrors that permeate people's psyches, lurking just below the surface in day to day life. Stuck considering the multitude of ways life conspires to fuck people over based on no sound reasoning whatsoever.
It's been a long summer, where an early spike of heat has faded away into rain and grey cloud and cool breezes on days when it's already a little cold.
It's been a summer full of death. At the individual level, celebrities seem to be dying like never before (possibly a side-effect of our aging global population and the ability of the internet to extend stars' lifespans beyond their decade of fame; funny how we only remember people when they die). We've seen James Foley executed in front of the whole world, who watched his beheading through their fingers on computer screens and smartphones. He was trying to elucidate us about the dark corners of the world; the darkness got to him.
On a larger level, we've learned so much more about the hundreds of violations going on around the world. The Gaza strip has seen fighting that's killed 2000 civilians - and over what? Two groups of people, locked up safe in boardrooms, disputing who owns some land without sparing any thoughts for the people who live there and call it their home.
We've seen spates of cops abusing the black community in the USA, from Ferguson to New York and even further. I get so angry about it - but I am white, I am privileged, I am English. I am not on the streets holding candlelit vigils for Michael Brown, and being tear-gassed for my efforts. But I wasn't there either in London, when Mark Duggan was shot in 2011. Then, the country turned on itself as anger flared up all over the nation, and we rioted across the country. In Ferguson, there are no riots. There are peaceful protests, misreported by the white media wrongly representing something calm as violent - due to the cops' reaction, which wasn't even precipitated by anything.
One and a half thousand children were sexually abused in Rotheram in an industrial, organised fashion over the course of decades, and the authorities did nothing. Too concerned with protecting themselves than the children they were supposed to be caring for.
This is the state of the world, right now. Ebola ravages Africa but we only care when a British citizen is infected. There's so much bleakness and suffering that we have to depersonalise, only view a few select groups as people and the rest as merely faceless masses - because, if we really truly considered every person who was hurting, and empathised that fiercely with every sore soul, I think our hearts would burst.
I get stuck thinking about all this - and I feel bad, because I'm happy. There's nothing I can do to help, and my impotent thoughts of action wither and die into indolence and satisfaction with my own personal status quo.
My job pays me £117 each week for three days of my time, where I mainly dick around and waste time by writing cloying, overwrought blog posts like this. My friends see me most days, a dancer cooks me dinner on a semi-regular basis, and I've managed to avoid dumping a bucket of water over my head. I've gained weight but the media's insistence that I should now experience crushing body dysmorphia hasn't materialised. My body is still my body. I'm happy.
Just like other people having it worse doesn't invalidate your own sadness - and other people having it better doesn't invalidate your own happiness - the suffering of the world doesn't seem to have much impact on my own feelings. Not today.
Summer is ending. The pain is still everywhere I look, except in my own personal bubble. Maybe this is the only way we can combat the blackness though. Maybe happiness is the most subversive thing we can project. The world is made up of awful moments of anguish and crying when nobody can hear you, but it's also beautiful. Life is harsh, but it's sharpest when in relief. Among the brutality are shining shards of joy: laughing until you collapse, cycling through hayfevery fields, hot showers and Netflix marathons and singing karaoke with strangers. Hold them close.
One day, I'll be struggling with my own demons, be they personal or systematically oppressive. I'll be holding onto past days of happiness then: in a world where death is random and impersonal, it'll come for me eventually. Be joyous. Dare to be happy. We have to find some frivolous way to beat the severity of real life.
It's been a long summer, where an early spike of heat has faded away into rain and grey cloud and cool breezes on days when it's already a little cold.
It's been a summer full of death. At the individual level, celebrities seem to be dying like never before (possibly a side-effect of our aging global population and the ability of the internet to extend stars' lifespans beyond their decade of fame; funny how we only remember people when they die). We've seen James Foley executed in front of the whole world, who watched his beheading through their fingers on computer screens and smartphones. He was trying to elucidate us about the dark corners of the world; the darkness got to him.
On a larger level, we've learned so much more about the hundreds of violations going on around the world. The Gaza strip has seen fighting that's killed 2000 civilians - and over what? Two groups of people, locked up safe in boardrooms, disputing who owns some land without sparing any thoughts for the people who live there and call it their home.
We've seen spates of cops abusing the black community in the USA, from Ferguson to New York and even further. I get so angry about it - but I am white, I am privileged, I am English. I am not on the streets holding candlelit vigils for Michael Brown, and being tear-gassed for my efforts. But I wasn't there either in London, when Mark Duggan was shot in 2011. Then, the country turned on itself as anger flared up all over the nation, and we rioted across the country. In Ferguson, there are no riots. There are peaceful protests, misreported by the white media wrongly representing something calm as violent - due to the cops' reaction, which wasn't even precipitated by anything.
One and a half thousand children were sexually abused in Rotheram in an industrial, organised fashion over the course of decades, and the authorities did nothing. Too concerned with protecting themselves than the children they were supposed to be caring for.
This is the state of the world, right now. Ebola ravages Africa but we only care when a British citizen is infected. There's so much bleakness and suffering that we have to depersonalise, only view a few select groups as people and the rest as merely faceless masses - because, if we really truly considered every person who was hurting, and empathised that fiercely with every sore soul, I think our hearts would burst.
I get stuck thinking about all this - and I feel bad, because I'm happy. There's nothing I can do to help, and my impotent thoughts of action wither and die into indolence and satisfaction with my own personal status quo.
My job pays me £117 each week for three days of my time, where I mainly dick around and waste time by writing cloying, overwrought blog posts like this. My friends see me most days, a dancer cooks me dinner on a semi-regular basis, and I've managed to avoid dumping a bucket of water over my head. I've gained weight but the media's insistence that I should now experience crushing body dysmorphia hasn't materialised. My body is still my body. I'm happy.
Just like other people having it worse doesn't invalidate your own sadness - and other people having it better doesn't invalidate your own happiness - the suffering of the world doesn't seem to have much impact on my own feelings. Not today.
Summer is ending. The pain is still everywhere I look, except in my own personal bubble. Maybe this is the only way we can combat the blackness though. Maybe happiness is the most subversive thing we can project. The world is made up of awful moments of anguish and crying when nobody can hear you, but it's also beautiful. Life is harsh, but it's sharpest when in relief. Among the brutality are shining shards of joy: laughing until you collapse, cycling through hayfevery fields, hot showers and Netflix marathons and singing karaoke with strangers. Hold them close.
One day, I'll be struggling with my own demons, be they personal or systematically oppressive. I'll be holding onto past days of happiness then: in a world where death is random and impersonal, it'll come for me eventually. Be joyous. Dare to be happy. We have to find some frivolous way to beat the severity of real life.
Monday, 30 June 2014
My feminism muscles ache.
Being a feminist is tiring.
Believing anything to the core of your being is tiring: it has to be, or it wouldn't be integral. It's like a muscle, a part of you, and when you exercise it, it aches the same way as any other part of you does. On a day to day basis, my feminism muscles flex way more than my legs do.
The past week, since starting my internship, I've found myself in a far more tense situation than usual. It's taken a good few years of my life to properly learn how to identify sexism in everyday life, and how to call it out and make a ruckus about it. I was a shy little thing as a kid, you see. I'm quite confrontational in my life now, as I've become more confident, but it's always tempered with the voice inside my head telling me I'm making a big deal out of nothing. I should sit down, shut up, carry on with a smile and be a good girl, a nice girl, try my hardest to be the pretty girl people expect me to be.
In what I assume is a fairly typical office environment - slightly more women than men, everyone dressed in similar clothes, and people working on computers for seven or eight hours a day - I've lost all my spark. I have become passive. Waking up early every day, and commuting to and from my work daily, has drained me. Trying to fit in with a new crowd of people has led me to just want to fit in. So I've been keeping my head down and staying quiet. I'm not calling out the comments that rankle me, but I'm not laughing at them either.
And it's making me like myself even less. A few days ago, some of the staff were disparaging a woman's appearance by suggesting she was transgender - and it made me angry. There's a dying orchid plant on the desk in front of me, which drops its flowers onto my laptop almost daily. I was sat there, listening, ripping the petals off the dead flower and wanting to stand up and explain the many, many levels on which they were being offensive. But I didn't. I had my earphones in, so I carried on like I hadn't heard it.
Educating people is such hard work, isn't it? I have to work at this place for twelve weeks. I didn't want my first week to be characterised by me explaining and analysing every offhand remark. I've grown up in a pretty privileged bubble, at a liberal university surrounded by other bleeding heart liberals who privately admit to each other that the University of York FemSoc page can get way too jargon-heavy, and we never actually finished reading bell hooks. The people are work are from a range of backgrounds, sectors, degrees - and it reflects on them, sometimes.
Mostly, I feel how badly it reflects on me. I'm ashamed of myself, but I am also too goddamned tired to fight it every single time at the moment. It happens every time I see feminism, or racism, or homophobia, and I don't call it out. When I read a review that uses the word "rape" when a hundred others would do. When a documentary misgenders someone. When I find myself somehow priding myself on "not being like other girls" like it's something I ought to be proud of.
We're better than this. And I know, collectively, we're fighting stronger than ever. But reading the Everyday Sexism project, or Laurie Penny's dramatic, decisive calls to action, can be just as tiring as the problems we face - because they are eloquent reminders of an entrenched plight. Even now, I'm writing this blog instead of having a shower or an early night, because I feel like it's important. Somehow. If only a little bit.
But nothing kills resolve faster than tiredness.
Believing anything to the core of your being is tiring: it has to be, or it wouldn't be integral. It's like a muscle, a part of you, and when you exercise it, it aches the same way as any other part of you does. On a day to day basis, my feminism muscles flex way more than my legs do.
The past week, since starting my internship, I've found myself in a far more tense situation than usual. It's taken a good few years of my life to properly learn how to identify sexism in everyday life, and how to call it out and make a ruckus about it. I was a shy little thing as a kid, you see. I'm quite confrontational in my life now, as I've become more confident, but it's always tempered with the voice inside my head telling me I'm making a big deal out of nothing. I should sit down, shut up, carry on with a smile and be a good girl, a nice girl, try my hardest to be the pretty girl people expect me to be.
In what I assume is a fairly typical office environment - slightly more women than men, everyone dressed in similar clothes, and people working on computers for seven or eight hours a day - I've lost all my spark. I have become passive. Waking up early every day, and commuting to and from my work daily, has drained me. Trying to fit in with a new crowd of people has led me to just want to fit in. So I've been keeping my head down and staying quiet. I'm not calling out the comments that rankle me, but I'm not laughing at them either.
And it's making me like myself even less. A few days ago, some of the staff were disparaging a woman's appearance by suggesting she was transgender - and it made me angry. There's a dying orchid plant on the desk in front of me, which drops its flowers onto my laptop almost daily. I was sat there, listening, ripping the petals off the dead flower and wanting to stand up and explain the many, many levels on which they were being offensive. But I didn't. I had my earphones in, so I carried on like I hadn't heard it.
Educating people is such hard work, isn't it? I have to work at this place for twelve weeks. I didn't want my first week to be characterised by me explaining and analysing every offhand remark. I've grown up in a pretty privileged bubble, at a liberal university surrounded by other bleeding heart liberals who privately admit to each other that the University of York FemSoc page can get way too jargon-heavy, and we never actually finished reading bell hooks. The people are work are from a range of backgrounds, sectors, degrees - and it reflects on them, sometimes.
Mostly, I feel how badly it reflects on me. I'm ashamed of myself, but I am also too goddamned tired to fight it every single time at the moment. It happens every time I see feminism, or racism, or homophobia, and I don't call it out. When I read a review that uses the word "rape" when a hundred others would do. When a documentary misgenders someone. When I find myself somehow priding myself on "not being like other girls" like it's something I ought to be proud of.
We're better than this. And I know, collectively, we're fighting stronger than ever. But reading the Everyday Sexism project, or Laurie Penny's dramatic, decisive calls to action, can be just as tiring as the problems we face - because they are eloquent reminders of an entrenched plight. Even now, I'm writing this blog instead of having a shower or an early night, because I feel like it's important. Somehow. If only a little bit.
But nothing kills resolve faster than tiredness.
Monday, 23 June 2014
Remembered Postcards: Newton's laws of travel.
First law: A body remains at rest only as long as is necessary to recharge batteries; or continues to move at a constant velocity so long as that velocity is enjoyable; and will only start or stop moving when acted on by a force, which is often the internal desire to go see something new.
Second law: The net desire to travel is equal to the rate of change of the passing scenery.The more scenery you see, the more you want to see.
Third law: When one body exerts a force which compels the body to travel, there is an equal and opposite force which compels the body to stay put. Luckily this force tends to only act up early in the mornings, and it easily overcome with coffee.
Wanderlust is like any other burning desire: it is a lawless, endless want that defies science, a thirst that demands to be slaked. Sometimes it is sated, and sometimes no matter what you do, you're still filled with an endless temptation to see more, do more, be more places and breathe more air. I don't get itchy feet: I get itchy legs, itchy lungs, itchy eyes and nose and ears.
Right now I am in an office job, tied to a 12-week internship I value hugely for the experience and yet cannot stand because of its restrictiveness. I'm spending my spare time learning Spanish, Japanese and French so I can get by in more countries the next time I have a chance to go.
Next summer, I have 12 weeks: I will spend them as far away as possible.
Second law: The net desire to travel is equal to the rate of change of the passing scenery.The more scenery you see, the more you want to see.
Third law: When one body exerts a force which compels the body to travel, there is an equal and opposite force which compels the body to stay put. Luckily this force tends to only act up early in the mornings, and it easily overcome with coffee.
Wanderlust is like any other burning desire: it is a lawless, endless want that defies science, a thirst that demands to be slaked. Sometimes it is sated, and sometimes no matter what you do, you're still filled with an endless temptation to see more, do more, be more places and breathe more air. I don't get itchy feet: I get itchy legs, itchy lungs, itchy eyes and nose and ears.
Right now I am in an office job, tied to a 12-week internship I value hugely for the experience and yet cannot stand because of its restrictiveness. I'm spending my spare time learning Spanish, Japanese and French so I can get by in more countries the next time I have a chance to go.
Next summer, I have 12 weeks: I will spend them as far away as possible.
Tuesday, 13 May 2014
The first existential crisis of exam season.
Ah, if only I had the same focus in revision as I do in writing rambling blog posts.
There are many problems with the exam culture that has permeated education, and the most pernicious issue we face is that they are nothing like the real world. Yes, in keeping with the idea that young people know nothing about the real world, exams are structured in a manner that has no realistic semblance of anything which occurs beyond education.
Exams are like machines. You put the Right Thing in, and Good Marks come out. You are obedient and compliant and you spend your days sat in front of books and computers instead of going out getting high on life and other noxious substances - because that is the Right Thing To Do. And we all know if you do the Right Thing, you get Good Marks.
It's not right. It is so not right. Admittedly I am writing this as a form of procrastination, but right now I'm finding it hard to visualise what use literary theories will have in the rest of my life, unless I devote myself to the pursuit of academia. Post-modernism itself is dull as dishwater: it is only useful when considered as part of a grand narrative (which it, itself, so scrupulously rejects). Is our world postmodern or post-post-modern? Can we actually tell? And, most pressingly: does it matter?
I think that's what all exam questions should boil down to. X: Does It Matter?
Examples:
The Feinmann Diagram: Does It Matter?
Freud's Theory of Dreams: Does It Matter?
What Caused World War 2: Does It Matter?
You can argue - yes or no, or maybe or somewhat - but it shouldn't matter, so long as you can back up our arguments with opinions and evidence and feeling. You can relate it to the wider world, and talk about the importance or lack thereof. Ideas that followed from it, ideas it influenced, ideas it completely destroyed. In the grand scheme of things, maybe it doesn't matter much how to do a basic titration experiment - but you could argue its technique can be applied to times when it does matter, or that it is a waste of time invented to keep children busy at GCSE.
Education should be about teaching people to think, not to fall into line with what is expected. I want university to tell me to rail against the system. Examine the questions we are asked, and ask why it's important. Ask what is important. Have passion and conviction.
A lot of the time, I feel like I have no conviction left. It has been sucked out of me. I know how to pass my English exam, but I don't particularly want to: I would rather be out agitating for fairer wages and having torrid flings with widely unsuitable people, because that's really how we learn. By making mistakes and having experiences, not writing set things within an allotted space of time.
Maybe this should all be boiled down to Exams: Do They Matter?
Yes, I suppose they do. They are why I am at university, fundamentally - to get that piece of paper which says I passed exams and know what I am doing well enough to be considered for jobs. But it seems like a terrible waste of youth, to spend it revising.
Once exams are over, my real education of dancing till dawn in strange cities will resume.
There are many problems with the exam culture that has permeated education, and the most pernicious issue we face is that they are nothing like the real world. Yes, in keeping with the idea that young people know nothing about the real world, exams are structured in a manner that has no realistic semblance of anything which occurs beyond education.
Exams are like machines. You put the Right Thing in, and Good Marks come out. You are obedient and compliant and you spend your days sat in front of books and computers instead of going out getting high on life and other noxious substances - because that is the Right Thing To Do. And we all know if you do the Right Thing, you get Good Marks.
It's not right. It is so not right. Admittedly I am writing this as a form of procrastination, but right now I'm finding it hard to visualise what use literary theories will have in the rest of my life, unless I devote myself to the pursuit of academia. Post-modernism itself is dull as dishwater: it is only useful when considered as part of a grand narrative (which it, itself, so scrupulously rejects). Is our world postmodern or post-post-modern? Can we actually tell? And, most pressingly: does it matter?
I think that's what all exam questions should boil down to. X: Does It Matter?
Examples:
The Feinmann Diagram: Does It Matter?
Freud's Theory of Dreams: Does It Matter?
What Caused World War 2: Does It Matter?
You can argue - yes or no, or maybe or somewhat - but it shouldn't matter, so long as you can back up our arguments with opinions and evidence and feeling. You can relate it to the wider world, and talk about the importance or lack thereof. Ideas that followed from it, ideas it influenced, ideas it completely destroyed. In the grand scheme of things, maybe it doesn't matter much how to do a basic titration experiment - but you could argue its technique can be applied to times when it does matter, or that it is a waste of time invented to keep children busy at GCSE.
Education should be about teaching people to think, not to fall into line with what is expected. I want university to tell me to rail against the system. Examine the questions we are asked, and ask why it's important. Ask what is important. Have passion and conviction.
A lot of the time, I feel like I have no conviction left. It has been sucked out of me. I know how to pass my English exam, but I don't particularly want to: I would rather be out agitating for fairer wages and having torrid flings with widely unsuitable people, because that's really how we learn. By making mistakes and having experiences, not writing set things within an allotted space of time.
Maybe this should all be boiled down to Exams: Do They Matter?
Yes, I suppose they do. They are why I am at university, fundamentally - to get that piece of paper which says I passed exams and know what I am doing well enough to be considered for jobs. But it seems like a terrible waste of youth, to spend it revising.
Once exams are over, my real education of dancing till dawn in strange cities will resume.
Tuesday, 6 May 2014
The worst case scenario.
I live a life a melodrama, of sharply contrasting emotions, which bump against each other angrily and repeatedly. I praise the things that make me joyous and make me laugh, eternally retelling stories of perfect moments until they are almost myths. They are on a pedestal: I look at them and wonder, sometimes, if they actually happened at all, or if I spoke their names too many times, and poof! They disappeared. I cry easily, complain about everything unjust, and live my life in a generally over-the-top manner. This is colour, this is texture, this is how I live.
And so, for me, this is the worst case scenario.
It is 2024 and I am thirty. Well. I am just shy of my thirtieth birthday, and have been adamantly avoiding it for so long that I have prematurely aged. My face looks thirty-three already. People have started making subtle comments that my looks will go soon. The pervasive sexism of young middle-age is yet to be perfectly eradicated.
Since graduating, I have had a couple of jobs but my itchy feet got in the way of my young ones. I spent sixth months as a magazine freelancer until they let me go, but the market was tough and I was getting desperate. In the end, I just took what I could get, grabbing with both hands for something I didn't really want. It was just a stop-gap, I told myself: something to get me by, until I could quit and go travelling and then start anew in a year.
A year passed. Then two, then three, and I still had not left my job. It is in an office in a respectable part of London and I work in marketing or publicity or as a sort-of job that crosses the two, and involves coming up with dynamic Twitter solutions. I have a 45-minute commute on the tubes every morning from my flat, but it's an okay place. It's not as shabby as my last two were. Once a week I go on dates, watching foreign language movies and strolling through the park and telling myself this isn't a bad life, really. I find myself lusting after the interns. They are so young, so full of potential. I want to devour them.
I don't write, really. Not any more. I'm too tired after working all day in things I couldn't care less about. I try to leave, sometimes, but it's so hard. Somehow I am stuck, and responsible. The last place I went on holiday was Venice, with my then-lover. We argued the whole weekend, and I came home with only a handful of photos and a brooding sense of resentment. I look at the tattoos I got while young with a sense of detachment. They feel like someone else's. That can't have been me. I would never spend £200 on ink and pain; that could get me a nice pair of shoes, or earrings.
It's not a bad life, this corporate drudgery and complete obedience to the status quo, with nothing unexpected and no adventures. There is no melodrama, and I watch as my friends from university get pregnant and married and divorced, fired and evicted and transatlantically job-shifted, and I tell myself the stability is everything I need. It's not ideal, but it's... not bad.
But it is the worst case scenario.
And so, for me, this is the worst case scenario.
It is 2024 and I am thirty. Well. I am just shy of my thirtieth birthday, and have been adamantly avoiding it for so long that I have prematurely aged. My face looks thirty-three already. People have started making subtle comments that my looks will go soon. The pervasive sexism of young middle-age is yet to be perfectly eradicated.
Since graduating, I have had a couple of jobs but my itchy feet got in the way of my young ones. I spent sixth months as a magazine freelancer until they let me go, but the market was tough and I was getting desperate. In the end, I just took what I could get, grabbing with both hands for something I didn't really want. It was just a stop-gap, I told myself: something to get me by, until I could quit and go travelling and then start anew in a year.
A year passed. Then two, then three, and I still had not left my job. It is in an office in a respectable part of London and I work in marketing or publicity or as a sort-of job that crosses the two, and involves coming up with dynamic Twitter solutions. I have a 45-minute commute on the tubes every morning from my flat, but it's an okay place. It's not as shabby as my last two were. Once a week I go on dates, watching foreign language movies and strolling through the park and telling myself this isn't a bad life, really. I find myself lusting after the interns. They are so young, so full of potential. I want to devour them.
I don't write, really. Not any more. I'm too tired after working all day in things I couldn't care less about. I try to leave, sometimes, but it's so hard. Somehow I am stuck, and responsible. The last place I went on holiday was Venice, with my then-lover. We argued the whole weekend, and I came home with only a handful of photos and a brooding sense of resentment. I look at the tattoos I got while young with a sense of detachment. They feel like someone else's. That can't have been me. I would never spend £200 on ink and pain; that could get me a nice pair of shoes, or earrings.
It's not a bad life, this corporate drudgery and complete obedience to the status quo, with nothing unexpected and no adventures. There is no melodrama, and I watch as my friends from university get pregnant and married and divorced, fired and evicted and transatlantically job-shifted, and I tell myself the stability is everything I need. It's not ideal, but it's... not bad.
But it is the worst case scenario.
Wednesday, 30 April 2014
And now for something completely different... Haiku.
If you expected my normal brand of snarky self-depreciative musings today, then you're in for a shock. Instead, I went and got creative. I was having fun with my Japanese revision, so... I decided to write some haiku!
You know what a haiku is, right? Or, at least, you know a vague approximation of what counts as a haiku. See, upon deciding to write some haiku in Japanese, I realised there was a load of practices and concepts I didn't actually know about. This only took a cursory Wikipedia search to pull up, and yet we all consider haiku to be a cool, hip poetry form while knowing nothing of its origins and original rules. There are a few main things I found out...
1. In Japanese poetry, haiku are counted in on - which are not quite the same as syllables. So, while the 5-7-5 pattern is how they operate, a Japanese 7-on line may not be a 7-syllable line. For instance:
それがかわいいです
sore ga kawaii desu
(That is cute.)
In English, you'd say that "so-ray ga ka-wa-i des", so it appears to fit as a middle line of haiku.
But in Japanese - even though you'd say it the same way - it contains 9 on. Conveniently, on seem to correspond pretty well to hiragana characters.
2. Traditionally, Japanese haiku have a kigo - a seasonal reference. There are long lists of motifs which are shorthand for various seasons in ways which may not immediately make sense to Westerners. Frogs mean spring, the moon means autumn, and these aren't used nearly as often in modern works apparently. Still, it's interesting to think about.
3. Kiru, or "cutting". This is the essence of haiku, often brought about through use of a kireji (cutting word). It sort of relies on juxtaposition with a word in between them to act as a verbal punctuation mark and indicate some sort of relation. I'll admit, I didn't manage to use many kireji in my compositions as I'm still too concerned with getting Japanese grammar passably correct, but maybe if I write more I'll work on it.
TL;DR: There are seasonal references, a cutting word, and 14 on in a 5-7-5 configuration. Here's some stuff I wrote, complete with syllable-accurate translations (that took a few liberties with my original Japanese). Knock yourself out.
-
You know what a haiku is, right? Or, at least, you know a vague approximation of what counts as a haiku. See, upon deciding to write some haiku in Japanese, I realised there was a load of practices and concepts I didn't actually know about. This only took a cursory Wikipedia search to pull up, and yet we all consider haiku to be a cool, hip poetry form while knowing nothing of its origins and original rules. There are a few main things I found out...
1. In Japanese poetry, haiku are counted in on - which are not quite the same as syllables. So, while the 5-7-5 pattern is how they operate, a Japanese 7-on line may not be a 7-syllable line. For instance:
それがかわいいです
sore ga kawaii desu
(That is cute.)
In English, you'd say that "so-ray ga ka-wa-i des", so it appears to fit as a middle line of haiku.
But in Japanese - even though you'd say it the same way - it contains 9 on. Conveniently, on seem to correspond pretty well to hiragana characters.
2. Traditionally, Japanese haiku have a kigo - a seasonal reference. There are long lists of motifs which are shorthand for various seasons in ways which may not immediately make sense to Westerners. Frogs mean spring, the moon means autumn, and these aren't used nearly as often in modern works apparently. Still, it's interesting to think about.
3. Kiru, or "cutting". This is the essence of haiku, often brought about through use of a kireji (cutting word). It sort of relies on juxtaposition with a word in between them to act as a verbal punctuation mark and indicate some sort of relation. I'll admit, I didn't manage to use many kireji in my compositions as I'm still too concerned with getting Japanese grammar passably correct, but maybe if I write more I'll work on it.
TL;DR: There are seasonal references, a cutting word, and 14 on in a 5-7-5 configuration. Here's some stuff I wrote, complete with syllable-accurate translations (that took a few liberties with my original Japanese). Knock yourself out.
-
多い 人
の 世界 です や
君 に あった 。
Ooi hito
no sekai desu ya
kimi ni atta.
There are so many
People in the world - and yet
I (somehow) met you.
の 世界 です や
君 に あった 。
Ooi hito
no sekai desu ya
kimi ni atta.
There are so many
People in the world - and yet
I (somehow) met you.
-
この 言葉
をかきます。けど
見る かしら。
kono kotoba
o kakimasu, kedo
miru kashira.
I write these words now
But I still wonder whether
You ever see them.
-
花びらを
落ちる。あなたも
失うか。
hanabira o
ochiru. anata mo
ushinau ka?
The cherry blossoms
All fall to the ground. Do I
Have to lose you too?
-
こっちと一緒
に月に多分
飛びますか。
kocchi to issho
ni tsuki ni tabun
tobimasu ka?
Eventually
Will you come and fly away
To the moon with me?
Sunday, 27 April 2014
"If things were different..."
If things were different, then...
Well. I don't know. Lots of things would have to be different - but then again, I can't be sure that the differences I imagine would result in the scenario I presume.
If things were different, maybe I would be in Japan. I would have ignored my flight home, burnt through the money on my card and be in my overdraft. I would be skipping lectures and seminars and staying in a cheap hostel in Tokyo, drinking and laughing and ignoring my degree. All semblance of caring would have disappeared. Maybe I would be thinking about coming home now, an extra two weeks after I intended. It's one way things might be different.
If things were different, and I had got on a train ten minutes earlier, I'd have been out drinking in Shinjuku with the rest of the people in the hostel.
If things were different - if I were different - then I'd be dating the person I love, and we wouldn't be ambiguously flirtatious best friends.
But things aren't different, and wishing they were otherwise is to sell my own life short. I care about my studies, even though it can be hard to motivate myself sometimes; with a degree I can get a better job, save up money and see the world, not just wish I could. I am not drinking in a park in Japan; I am in bed in England, recovering from a night of drinking in someone's house.
I didn't get the earlier train, and I missed having a wild night on my last day in Japan.
And I have accepted that I can't be with my best friend, because I would hurt him too much. I philander, I flirt, I lack empathy; I would be a terrible girlfriend, so I am saving him from heartbreak. I would get bored of dating him. I get bored of most things, sooner or later.
Things aren't different, so I have to deal with them as they are. The ramifications of any of these changes might have created an entirely different world. I can't change the past, no matter how hard I wish. The future is malleable, and I entirely support railing against injustice to change the things that suck. Though mostly, I feel like we should accept things as they are. Make the most of it. Make the most of now.
If things were different, I wouldn't be writing this blog post. Meta.
Well. I don't know. Lots of things would have to be different - but then again, I can't be sure that the differences I imagine would result in the scenario I presume.
If things were different, maybe I would be in Japan. I would have ignored my flight home, burnt through the money on my card and be in my overdraft. I would be skipping lectures and seminars and staying in a cheap hostel in Tokyo, drinking and laughing and ignoring my degree. All semblance of caring would have disappeared. Maybe I would be thinking about coming home now, an extra two weeks after I intended. It's one way things might be different.
If things were different, and I had got on a train ten minutes earlier, I'd have been out drinking in Shinjuku with the rest of the people in the hostel.
If things were different - if I were different - then I'd be dating the person I love, and we wouldn't be ambiguously flirtatious best friends.
But things aren't different, and wishing they were otherwise is to sell my own life short. I care about my studies, even though it can be hard to motivate myself sometimes; with a degree I can get a better job, save up money and see the world, not just wish I could. I am not drinking in a park in Japan; I am in bed in England, recovering from a night of drinking in someone's house.
I didn't get the earlier train, and I missed having a wild night on my last day in Japan.
And I have accepted that I can't be with my best friend, because I would hurt him too much. I philander, I flirt, I lack empathy; I would be a terrible girlfriend, so I am saving him from heartbreak. I would get bored of dating him. I get bored of most things, sooner or later.
Things aren't different, so I have to deal with them as they are. The ramifications of any of these changes might have created an entirely different world. I can't change the past, no matter how hard I wish. The future is malleable, and I entirely support railing against injustice to change the things that suck. Though mostly, I feel like we should accept things as they are. Make the most of it. Make the most of now.
If things were different, I wouldn't be writing this blog post. Meta.
Saturday, 22 March 2014
The panic rising.
I always feel worst when I'm on the brink of doing something wonderful. Anticipation, nerves, fear - they all turn up like unwanted strays, scratching at the door for scraps. You open up and let one in, just for a moment, and suddenly your house is full of wild cats, yowling and making noise at all hours when you just want a bit of piece and quiet. The house being me in this case.
In round about 36 hours, I will be on a plane to South Korea. I have no idea what we're going to do in South Korea, except that we are staying in a hostel in Gangnam purely for the "Gangnam Style" jokes, two years too late to be funny (and also because it looks lovely). We are going to the De-Militarised Zone, because it looks interesting, and hopefully going to see some temples - but really, we have no idea what's going on.
That's what I'm looking forward to. The endless, non-linear nature of exploring. It's a real-life sandbox game, with all the exhilaration of having no rules to follow. At the same time, it's downright terrifying. We have no set itineraries or things to do.
My only rule is "come back with stories".
It was what my friend wrote to me. He sent me a card, bless him: he posted it to me at home, and informed me that I had to come back with stories to tell him. He said the best words came from the heart, and that was what he wanted to tell me. Funny, how people always compare our relationship to something romantic. We have a deep platonic friendship with lots of cuddling, and somehow people always assume we must be dating. Only our minds are dating.
So, I have 36 hours to my flight. I haven't packed, and right now I feel like any attempts to be witty and gracious and charming to the people I meet in hostels will inevitably end with me being laughed at. I can't wait for the new people, the new friends, the new ways to waste my nights under foreign skies, but I'm so so scared I'm going to balls it up.
What if it's not worth it?
What if I don't get any new stories?
Deep breaths, I tell myself. Breathe this world deep. Everything will be fine. The panic will pass, and soon you will be flying.
After all, you have too much to do to be worried.
In round about 36 hours, I will be on a plane to South Korea. I have no idea what we're going to do in South Korea, except that we are staying in a hostel in Gangnam purely for the "Gangnam Style" jokes, two years too late to be funny (and also because it looks lovely). We are going to the De-Militarised Zone, because it looks interesting, and hopefully going to see some temples - but really, we have no idea what's going on.
That's what I'm looking forward to. The endless, non-linear nature of exploring. It's a real-life sandbox game, with all the exhilaration of having no rules to follow. At the same time, it's downright terrifying. We have no set itineraries or things to do.
My only rule is "come back with stories".
It was what my friend wrote to me. He sent me a card, bless him: he posted it to me at home, and informed me that I had to come back with stories to tell him. He said the best words came from the heart, and that was what he wanted to tell me. Funny, how people always compare our relationship to something romantic. We have a deep platonic friendship with lots of cuddling, and somehow people always assume we must be dating. Only our minds are dating.
So, I have 36 hours to my flight. I haven't packed, and right now I feel like any attempts to be witty and gracious and charming to the people I meet in hostels will inevitably end with me being laughed at. I can't wait for the new people, the new friends, the new ways to waste my nights under foreign skies, but I'm so so scared I'm going to balls it up.
What if it's not worth it?
What if I don't get any new stories?
Deep breaths, I tell myself. Breathe this world deep. Everything will be fine. The panic will pass, and soon you will be flying.
After all, you have too much to do to be worried.
Sunday, 2 March 2014
Nerds with Nerf guns taught me stuff.
Presented without context.*
- If you find a potato on the street at 5am, you should always always pick it up.
- If you are drinking wine at 5am at your friend's house, you should probably not have anything too important planned for the next day.
- It is perfectly acceptable to send drunk Snapchats on trains at eight in the morning.
- It is also perfectly acceptable to spoon on the floor of trains. Especially if you are still drunk from the night before.
- Apparently study drugs are "fantastic but taste like balls".
- Taking no spare clothes to a field full of mud is a really bad idea.
- Trying to run around on less than five hours' sleep in the last forty-eight hours is really hard.
- Running around while sleep-deprived is easier when drunk and harder when hungover.
- Nerf gun bullets are capable of doing actual damage, judging by the bruises on my arms.
- Sheffield is a demon hill surrounded by demon hill spawn and no matter which way you walk, it will be uphill.
- TEAM SPUD.
- Trams are great.
- Sexist tram conductors are not great.
- Friends who stand up to sexism in its insidious day-to-day forms are great.
- Taking an oversized hammer on the tram is great.
- Oversized hammers are great.
- Unexpected punchlines to hammer jokes are great. "Stop! ... Collaborate, and listen!"
- Blue hair will not always help you get spotted in a crowd.
- You should bond with people over your suspiciously similar hair colour.
- Dexterity beats brute force in any fencing match.
- People actually want to be your friend and sometimes they go out of their way to help you.
- Sometimes people you have only known for twelve hours will lend you their pyjamas while they wash your jeans and socks and let you borrow shirts when you have no change of clothes. These sorts of people are to be treasured.
- Furries are not what the media want you to think they are.
- Frozen is still amazing.
- It IS possible to order £700-worth of Domino's.
- There is nothing wrong with playing Cards Against Humanity over breakfast.
- Mentioning Prince Albert piercings in a group of guys will cause much confusion and squeamishness. This is doubly so if one of the guys in the group has one. And it has a fairly large gauge ring in it.
- Twitch Plays Pokemon has made the leap from weird internet phenomenon to something that spawns intense esoteric debates about religion, community, free will, and the power of technology.
- Running around a park with fake blue and orange guns is cooler than whatever you did with your weekend.
- Everything is awesome.
*This weekend was Assassins Varsity in Sheffield, for student Assassins Guilds across the country. About eight different universities were represented. That's all you're getting.
- If you find a potato on the street at 5am, you should always always pick it up.
- If you are drinking wine at 5am at your friend's house, you should probably not have anything too important planned for the next day.
- It is perfectly acceptable to send drunk Snapchats on trains at eight in the morning.
- It is also perfectly acceptable to spoon on the floor of trains. Especially if you are still drunk from the night before.
- Apparently study drugs are "fantastic but taste like balls".
- Taking no spare clothes to a field full of mud is a really bad idea.
- Trying to run around on less than five hours' sleep in the last forty-eight hours is really hard.
- Running around while sleep-deprived is easier when drunk and harder when hungover.
- Nerf gun bullets are capable of doing actual damage, judging by the bruises on my arms.
- Sheffield is a demon hill surrounded by demon hill spawn and no matter which way you walk, it will be uphill.
- TEAM SPUD.
- Trams are great.
- Sexist tram conductors are not great.
- Friends who stand up to sexism in its insidious day-to-day forms are great.
- Taking an oversized hammer on the tram is great.
- Oversized hammers are great.
- Unexpected punchlines to hammer jokes are great. "Stop! ... Collaborate, and listen!"
- Blue hair will not always help you get spotted in a crowd.
- You should bond with people over your suspiciously similar hair colour.
- Dexterity beats brute force in any fencing match.
- People actually want to be your friend and sometimes they go out of their way to help you.
- Sometimes people you have only known for twelve hours will lend you their pyjamas while they wash your jeans and socks and let you borrow shirts when you have no change of clothes. These sorts of people are to be treasured.
- Furries are not what the media want you to think they are.
- Frozen is still amazing.
- It IS possible to order £700-worth of Domino's.
- There is nothing wrong with playing Cards Against Humanity over breakfast.
- Mentioning Prince Albert piercings in a group of guys will cause much confusion and squeamishness. This is doubly so if one of the guys in the group has one. And it has a fairly large gauge ring in it.
- Twitch Plays Pokemon has made the leap from weird internet phenomenon to something that spawns intense esoteric debates about religion, community, free will, and the power of technology.
- Running around a park with fake blue and orange guns is cooler than whatever you did with your weekend.
- Everything is awesome.
*This weekend was Assassins Varsity in Sheffield, for student Assassins Guilds across the country. About eight different universities were represented. That's all you're getting.
Saturday, 22 February 2014
A year in the life.
A year ago today, I published my first blog post on here.
A lot has happened in a year.
I've had 6,393 views on my blog from 6 continents and 60 countries. I've written 45 posts on this site, but I've also written for Autostraddle, Thought Catalog, Bloomsbury, Total Film and of course Nouse. I've become Deputy News Editor for the campus newspaper! That's pretty groovy.
I've been on more dates this year than in the rest of my life put together. I'm yet to fall in love with a person, but I've fallen in love with some places - with Japan and its gentility and culture, but also with York and its winding streets and perpetually smoke-grey sky.
I've seen a little bit more of the world than I had before: there are now 10 more countries I've set foot in compared to this time last year, and I'm working on seeing even more countries by this time next year.
I've started university, made new friends and maybe lost a few too - but that's okay, because life is all about gaining and losing things.
I've shared my bed with many bodies and even my head with one or two people. I'm slightly officially insane, and the hyperbole makes me feel better - but so does one of my friends holding me in the middle of the night.
I've learned I'm not as smart as I think, but perhaps a bit kinder than I give myself credit for.
Am I a better person than I was a year ago? Probably. I still have a lot to work on though. I'm not as confident as I was, and I'm still self-centred and insecure and liable to flail uncontrollably when tickled. I still wear my bleeding heart on my sleeve and hold onto old grudges like scars and keep raking over the same old wounds, despite knowing how much it'll hurt, but I'm trying to be better.
That's it, I suppose. I'm trying.
Here's to another year of trying.
A lot has happened in a year.
I've had 6,393 views on my blog from 6 continents and 60 countries. I've written 45 posts on this site, but I've also written for Autostraddle, Thought Catalog, Bloomsbury, Total Film and of course Nouse. I've become Deputy News Editor for the campus newspaper! That's pretty groovy.
I've been on more dates this year than in the rest of my life put together. I'm yet to fall in love with a person, but I've fallen in love with some places - with Japan and its gentility and culture, but also with York and its winding streets and perpetually smoke-grey sky.
I've seen a little bit more of the world than I had before: there are now 10 more countries I've set foot in compared to this time last year, and I'm working on seeing even more countries by this time next year.
I've started university, made new friends and maybe lost a few too - but that's okay, because life is all about gaining and losing things.
I've shared my bed with many bodies and even my head with one or two people. I'm slightly officially insane, and the hyperbole makes me feel better - but so does one of my friends holding me in the middle of the night.
I've learned I'm not as smart as I think, but perhaps a bit kinder than I give myself credit for.
Am I a better person than I was a year ago? Probably. I still have a lot to work on though. I'm not as confident as I was, and I'm still self-centred and insecure and liable to flail uncontrollably when tickled. I still wear my bleeding heart on my sleeve and hold onto old grudges like scars and keep raking over the same old wounds, despite knowing how much it'll hurt, but I'm trying to be better.
That's it, I suppose. I'm trying.
Here's to another year of trying.
Thursday, 20 February 2014
Will we stand for this?
Sometimes I find myself distracted from doing the things I should be doing - like reading George Eliot books and going to lectures on David Hume - by things that are marginally less important. I spend a lot of my life trawling the internet for places to try and do work experience, and it never goes particularly well.
I end up in rabbit-warrens of despair that all media work experience seems to fall into one of three categories:
1. Unpaid hovering
This is what all my work experience placements have technically been so far - turn up for a couple of weeks, watch people do things, try and be useful. I've managed to get a fair amount out of these though, from pretty much single-handedly generating a week's content for a magazine's website to interviewing a pop star. The problem is you don't get much hands-on experience, and usually expenses aren't paid. Even if I'm only commuting to London for a week, that still costs me about £80 in train fares.
2. Slave labour
The type where you get a job for three months with no pay and expenses only, and are expected to be grateful for the opportunity to do real work - and basically be a short-contract full-time employee - without any promise of further work, or actual help breaking into the sector. These are the sorts that annoy me the most. Science students seem easily able to get themselves paid internships over the summer, even with only a year's academic experience under their belts; but arts demand that you grovel for the chance to make a mediocre writer's tea for twelve weeks.
3. Misadvertised jobs
The final sort are the ones which advertise themselves as "internships". They are not internships. They are year-long schemes for graduate students which will probably end up with permanent employment. They are actual jobs, operating on a year-long contract, which eternally succeed in getting my hopes up, before dashing them - because I'm not eligible to apply to them for at least another two years.
All of these are kinda shitty in their own ways, but type 2 is the worst. Not only is it elitist, by shouldering out of the sector anyone who can't afford three months of unpaid work, but it also devalues the contribution of the interns.
As a kid, growing up, I was taught that if I worked hard in school then I would go to a good university, and if I worked hard at university then I would get a good job and be able to make money doing what I love, and that would be that. I realised at 16 that life doesn't work like that and I couldn't just walk into a job after graduating the same way my dad did. If I want to make my money writing, I have to do it for free, and for a long time. It's one of the only jobs I know of where that's true.
Honestly, I will probably be a better writer by the end of my degree than I am currently, but it will have less to do with what I studied and more to do with the fact I've had an extra two years to hone my skills. As it is, I am probably a better writer than some graduates, because it is the thing I am good at - and there are going to be some high school students who are better writers than me, if that's the thing they are really good at.
I think we should just ban unpaid internships. Flat-out outlaw them. I'm sure I would be a valued member of your team, but why should I contribute as much as the snotty-nosed 24-year-old next to me when he's on £17,000 a year and I'm on £100 a week expenses?
The sad thing is, I know I'm going to do them. I want to challenge of working on real projects and getting my name in print beyond my brilliant student newspaper - but I also know I'm going to resent having a job and not being paid for it. Will we stand for this? No. But I might well sit at a computer all summer and type for it.
I end up in rabbit-warrens of despair that all media work experience seems to fall into one of three categories:
1. Unpaid hovering
This is what all my work experience placements have technically been so far - turn up for a couple of weeks, watch people do things, try and be useful. I've managed to get a fair amount out of these though, from pretty much single-handedly generating a week's content for a magazine's website to interviewing a pop star. The problem is you don't get much hands-on experience, and usually expenses aren't paid. Even if I'm only commuting to London for a week, that still costs me about £80 in train fares.
2. Slave labour
The type where you get a job for three months with no pay and expenses only, and are expected to be grateful for the opportunity to do real work - and basically be a short-contract full-time employee - without any promise of further work, or actual help breaking into the sector. These are the sorts that annoy me the most. Science students seem easily able to get themselves paid internships over the summer, even with only a year's academic experience under their belts; but arts demand that you grovel for the chance to make a mediocre writer's tea for twelve weeks.
3. Misadvertised jobs
The final sort are the ones which advertise themselves as "internships". They are not internships. They are year-long schemes for graduate students which will probably end up with permanent employment. They are actual jobs, operating on a year-long contract, which eternally succeed in getting my hopes up, before dashing them - because I'm not eligible to apply to them for at least another two years.
All of these are kinda shitty in their own ways, but type 2 is the worst. Not only is it elitist, by shouldering out of the sector anyone who can't afford three months of unpaid work, but it also devalues the contribution of the interns.
As a kid, growing up, I was taught that if I worked hard in school then I would go to a good university, and if I worked hard at university then I would get a good job and be able to make money doing what I love, and that would be that. I realised at 16 that life doesn't work like that and I couldn't just walk into a job after graduating the same way my dad did. If I want to make my money writing, I have to do it for free, and for a long time. It's one of the only jobs I know of where that's true.
Honestly, I will probably be a better writer by the end of my degree than I am currently, but it will have less to do with what I studied and more to do with the fact I've had an extra two years to hone my skills. As it is, I am probably a better writer than some graduates, because it is the thing I am good at - and there are going to be some high school students who are better writers than me, if that's the thing they are really good at.
I think we should just ban unpaid internships. Flat-out outlaw them. I'm sure I would be a valued member of your team, but why should I contribute as much as the snotty-nosed 24-year-old next to me when he's on £17,000 a year and I'm on £100 a week expenses?
The sad thing is, I know I'm going to do them. I want to challenge of working on real projects and getting my name in print beyond my brilliant student newspaper - but I also know I'm going to resent having a job and not being paid for it. Will we stand for this? No. But I might well sit at a computer all summer and type for it.
Friday, 14 February 2014
Adventure time.
I want to see the world.
I want to put into words everything there is.
I want to gaze at the northern lights in Iceland and dance under falling leaves in a New England autumn. I want to see the clouds from the other side at the top of a mountain and come face to face with whales in the sea.
I want it all - all the cultures, all the tongues I don't understand, all the new places and experiences. I can't understand why anyone wouldn't.
I've got itchy feet just thinking about it. There is so much of the world to see that we can't ever see all of it. But it feels like we ought to at least try.
I want to feel my heart thudding against my ribs as I abseil down a building. I want to drive across deserts of sand in straight lines for hours. Catch a train across Russia. Backpack through Italian countryside. Headbang at festivals. Gaze in wonder at the same stars in the same sky in all the different countries I can.
In the book he gave me for my birthday, my then-boyfriend wrote: "To settle down is to admit you've seen all the world has. Never stop travelling." He spelled traveling wrong - because what does spelling matter, compared to the jungle islands of Micronesia or temples in Jordan?
What's the world for if we don't try and see it?
That is why I don't have the money to go out this week. It's all in my bank account, saving up for posing in front of signs in Gangnam and visting the hells of Beppu over Easter. I can't wait.
There isn't much of a point to this, except that mostly I love how my university loan is going to be spent on going new places and having new adventures. There's no education better than trying to see the world, is there?
I want to put into words everything there is.
I want to gaze at the northern lights in Iceland and dance under falling leaves in a New England autumn. I want to see the clouds from the other side at the top of a mountain and come face to face with whales in the sea.
I want it all - all the cultures, all the tongues I don't understand, all the new places and experiences. I can't understand why anyone wouldn't.
I've got itchy feet just thinking about it. There is so much of the world to see that we can't ever see all of it. But it feels like we ought to at least try.
I want to feel my heart thudding against my ribs as I abseil down a building. I want to drive across deserts of sand in straight lines for hours. Catch a train across Russia. Backpack through Italian countryside. Headbang at festivals. Gaze in wonder at the same stars in the same sky in all the different countries I can.
In the book he gave me for my birthday, my then-boyfriend wrote: "To settle down is to admit you've seen all the world has. Never stop travelling." He spelled traveling wrong - because what does spelling matter, compared to the jungle islands of Micronesia or temples in Jordan?
What's the world for if we don't try and see it?
That is why I don't have the money to go out this week. It's all in my bank account, saving up for posing in front of signs in Gangnam and visting the hells of Beppu over Easter. I can't wait.
There isn't much of a point to this, except that mostly I love how my university loan is going to be spent on going new places and having new adventures. There's no education better than trying to see the world, is there?
Monday, 10 February 2014
The meaning of life...
This is post #42 on my blog. Really, if I hadn't gone into radio silence between July and December, this day would have come a lot sooner: but, alas, the past is in the past. Unless Dr Who kindly lets me borrow his TARDIS - which, I should point out, has far better uses than being appropriated to retroactively update a blog - there is no way to change that. Anyway, the fateful day has arrived.
Forty-two.
The meaning of life, the universe and everything.
Pretty big, huh.
And who am I, to speak on such a broad topic, you may ask?
Well, honestly, nobody. I'm just a person. But we all are, in the end. It doesn't matter if you're the CEO of a multinational corporation or a toddler drooling over a sticky spoon - we're all just people in the end. Made up of our relationships, experiences and memories. Some people have more of these than others. That doesn't necessarily mean they are more wise, interesting or kind, or any of those other lovely things we should all endeavour to be.
I don't know much. I've never been in love, never had a best friendship so strong it could shipwreck everything else, never achieved anything huge and miraculous that people look up to, never found anywhere I can definitely say I belong. I sort of muddle along, scared of everything and pretending not to be, laughing the loudest to cover up my insecurities... just like everyone else.
But I do know one thing. Well, really, I know many things, like Pythagoras' theorem and how to change a tyre and who Rihanna shared a cab with last night. But I know one really important thing:
Nobody can tell you the meaning of life.
It's not a piece of information that gets passed to you like a dictionary definition or instruction manual. The nearest thing I can work out is that we find our own meaning of life through our actions and interactions. We work on what we want and do what we must to try and forge meaningful moments. The worst thing I can imagine is being on my deathbed, looking back on my life and feeling like it was worthless. It's got to be worth something, doesn't it? The problem is, the only way life can be made meaningful is if you do it. Nobody else will do it for you.
I've written 42 posts on this blog now. Most of them are mediocre. A few are awful. A few might be good. Maybe one of them is brilliant. I suppose I'll just have to keep writing until I can consistently create things with meaning - and, even better, that maybe hold some meaning for the people reading them too.
Forty-two.
The meaning of life, the universe and everything.
Pretty big, huh.
And who am I, to speak on such a broad topic, you may ask?
Well, honestly, nobody. I'm just a person. But we all are, in the end. It doesn't matter if you're the CEO of a multinational corporation or a toddler drooling over a sticky spoon - we're all just people in the end. Made up of our relationships, experiences and memories. Some people have more of these than others. That doesn't necessarily mean they are more wise, interesting or kind, or any of those other lovely things we should all endeavour to be.
I don't know much. I've never been in love, never had a best friendship so strong it could shipwreck everything else, never achieved anything huge and miraculous that people look up to, never found anywhere I can definitely say I belong. I sort of muddle along, scared of everything and pretending not to be, laughing the loudest to cover up my insecurities... just like everyone else.
But I do know one thing. Well, really, I know many things, like Pythagoras' theorem and how to change a tyre and who Rihanna shared a cab with last night. But I know one really important thing:
Nobody can tell you the meaning of life.
It's not a piece of information that gets passed to you like a dictionary definition or instruction manual. The nearest thing I can work out is that we find our own meaning of life through our actions and interactions. We work on what we want and do what we must to try and forge meaningful moments. The worst thing I can imagine is being on my deathbed, looking back on my life and feeling like it was worthless. It's got to be worth something, doesn't it? The problem is, the only way life can be made meaningful is if you do it. Nobody else will do it for you.
I've written 42 posts on this blog now. Most of them are mediocre. A few are awful. A few might be good. Maybe one of them is brilliant. I suppose I'll just have to keep writing until I can consistently create things with meaning - and, even better, that maybe hold some meaning for the people reading them too.
Wednesday, 5 February 2014
Bruised.
Natasha Beddingfield can fuck right off: if anyone can talk about getting bruised, then it's me. And no, I'm not talking in the metaphorical sense. I mean literally, physically, black-and-green actual bruises. If there are bruises to be had, I probably have them.
At the moment, I am quite impressively bruised. My bruise catalogue is as follows:
1x hickey, on my neck, from a night of necking in Willow. Reddish and almost invisible.
1x bruise on my left leg, circumstances unknown, but presumed to be from the infamous Party Harty. For reference, Party Harty was almost two weeks ago. This bruise on the outside on my thigh is roughly the size of my fist, presently brown, but has faded full the full spectrum of colours.
4x bruises on my right leg, circumstances also unknown. From their uniform colour (green) and similar locations (in horizontal bands up my shin and to the knee), I presume these are from walking into things - but again, I can't tell you for sure.
1x bruise on my right outer forearm, from either tree-climbing or my habit of shrugging a tote bag off my shoulder and catching it on my arm. Only perceptible because the skin still feels slightly tender, otherwise gone.
Admittedly, alcohol may have featured in a lot of these stories, but I have always attracted bruises, far more than scrapes or burns or cuts.
At ten I fell over constantly, laddering my tights and getting away with no bloodloss but impressive contusions.
At twelve I was so clumsy that the school nurse, seeing my multi-coloured arms, asked if "everything was alright at home."
At fifteen I would come out of gigs looking like I'd been beaten up without ever going near the moshpits.
At eighteen a playful bite from a beau turned into a line of angry red marks on my tricep, which relegated me to wearing long sleeves for a week lest I explain it to my mother.
On Hallowe'en I was accidentally hit in the face, and wore an impressive black eye for two weeks until it faded into obscurity. My friends might have forgotten, but I haven't: there's still a small bump on my cheekbone where it healed funny, a permanent lump under my right eye.
I sort of like it, the way I sort of like all my bruises.
They remind me that things really happened, that I was really there, anchored in the material world. This is not to say I would ever put up with someone trying to hurt me - ain't nobody got time for that - but more that I understand accidents and incidents. Most are my own fault, from wandering around with my head in the clouds rather than staying grounded. On my more ephemerally dualist days, my bruises remind me my body is real and active and perfect. There is no good reason for me to bruise like this either: I have no blood disorders, and even my chronically-pale family members seem to have more resilient capillaries than I do.
Bruised emotions are another matter, and a story for another time. But, Ms Beddingfield, until you've managed to bruise yourself sliding downstairs to see your friend on New Year's Eve, or carelessly dropping an empty tin on your leg, or sneezing a bit too violently too close to a wall - don't talk to me about bruising easily. I'm like a fucking peach, and I might as well be proud of it.
At the moment, I am quite impressively bruised. My bruise catalogue is as follows:
1x hickey, on my neck, from a night of necking in Willow. Reddish and almost invisible.
1x bruise on my left leg, circumstances unknown, but presumed to be from the infamous Party Harty. For reference, Party Harty was almost two weeks ago. This bruise on the outside on my thigh is roughly the size of my fist, presently brown, but has faded full the full spectrum of colours.
4x bruises on my right leg, circumstances also unknown. From their uniform colour (green) and similar locations (in horizontal bands up my shin and to the knee), I presume these are from walking into things - but again, I can't tell you for sure.
1x bruise on my right outer forearm, from either tree-climbing or my habit of shrugging a tote bag off my shoulder and catching it on my arm. Only perceptible because the skin still feels slightly tender, otherwise gone.
Admittedly, alcohol may have featured in a lot of these stories, but I have always attracted bruises, far more than scrapes or burns or cuts.
At ten I fell over constantly, laddering my tights and getting away with no bloodloss but impressive contusions.
At twelve I was so clumsy that the school nurse, seeing my multi-coloured arms, asked if "everything was alright at home."
At fifteen I would come out of gigs looking like I'd been beaten up without ever going near the moshpits.
At eighteen a playful bite from a beau turned into a line of angry red marks on my tricep, which relegated me to wearing long sleeves for a week lest I explain it to my mother.
On Hallowe'en I was accidentally hit in the face, and wore an impressive black eye for two weeks until it faded into obscurity. My friends might have forgotten, but I haven't: there's still a small bump on my cheekbone where it healed funny, a permanent lump under my right eye.
I sort of like it, the way I sort of like all my bruises.
They remind me that things really happened, that I was really there, anchored in the material world. This is not to say I would ever put up with someone trying to hurt me - ain't nobody got time for that - but more that I understand accidents and incidents. Most are my own fault, from wandering around with my head in the clouds rather than staying grounded. On my more ephemerally dualist days, my bruises remind me my body is real and active and perfect. There is no good reason for me to bruise like this either: I have no blood disorders, and even my chronically-pale family members seem to have more resilient capillaries than I do.
Bruised emotions are another matter, and a story for another time. But, Ms Beddingfield, until you've managed to bruise yourself sliding downstairs to see your friend on New Year's Eve, or carelessly dropping an empty tin on your leg, or sneezing a bit too violently too close to a wall - don't talk to me about bruising easily. I'm like a fucking peach, and I might as well be proud of it.
Thursday, 30 January 2014
Beating the blues with green.
Everyone has mood swings. Everyone has days when they feel awful, and getting out of bed takes as much effort and willpower as running a marathon. But these mostly only last a day or two, and then life goes back to normal.
Over the past three or four years, I've noticed a persistent change in my moods around December through to March. I feel much less ebullient, more reserved and cranky. I crave isolation, and company, but want to withdraw from social interaction. The last time I asked a doctor about it, I got told to fill in a questionnaire and come back in six weeks - by which time, it was the spring. Therefore, although it is not confirmed - and honestly, there are very few ways to treat it - the working hypothesis between me and my ex-nurse mother is that might I have some mild form of Seasonal Affective Disorder. (The best thing about SAD is its highly appropriate acronym.)
Anyway, that is the backstory. Take it with all the salt you want, but take away from it the fact that I was feeling fairly down today. Spending time outside is supposed to help, even on miserable overcast days when the whole sky is the same shade of pigeon grey: and so, I was outside, walking home from coffee, when I came across The Tree.
The Tree is opposite the Philosophy department on a fairly busy commuter stretch of the York University campus. There are other trees of a similar height around it, but this one is my favourite. Some way up there is a conglomeration of flat branches which look perfect to sit on; around the tree as a whole, the branches are close together and roughly form a spiral, so by moving clockwise around the main trunk of the tree it's possible to get thirty, maybe thirty-five feet up. The only way up for someone of my height is to grasp a branch about six feet off the ground, and jump your legs in a most inelegant fashion onto a second, slightly lower branch a few feet away. It's the same way I got up my favourite climbing tree as a kid.
So there I was, tote bag slung over one shoulder, making my way up this tree. I stopped to read some philosophy at a nice little flat branch maybe twelve feet up, the same place where I'd watched the sun rise from one day last term. It was peaceful, and easy to people-watch.
You never realise how much people miss until you're in a position to notice for them.
I got bored and numb after a while, and climbed higher to warm up. I tied my bag to a branch and scrabbled haphazardly up the tree, precariously balancing my feet in weird crevices and wondering why I'd never taken my grandad up on his offer of tree-climbing lessons as a child. I stood still for a while; I turned up my iPod and climbed higher; eventually I reached the perfectly horizontal branches I saw from the ground.
From them, I could see the lake in the centre of campus, and the Eric Milner buildings across it; I could make out buses cresting the hill of University Road, and hear hurried snatches of conversation as students and staff rushed past, caught up in their little worlds. In ancient Japan, ninjas were taught to hide in plain sight, which they often did by clinging to the ceiling: it's easy to see why they never got spotted. Nobody looks up.
I'd been sat up the tree for maybe an hour and a bit when the Security Services arrived. Some of the passers-by had reported me, clearly unnerved by my presence. Because if I wanted to commit suicide, apparently a moderately-high tree on a busy part of campus is a far better bet than throwing myself into Ouse or jumping off the top of the Physics building. Either way, the authorities were here: while they had no problem with me being up a tree, they politely implied that people would keep reporting me if I stayed, and really I had better come down.
I did so, slowly, collecting my bag on the way - because like hell was I going to rush and fall out a tree while being watched by two middle-aged, faintly bored security guards. I got back to base level and presented my Student ID for scrutiny, and wondered why it made so much difference.
Up the tree, reading my dry-as-pirates'-tack Philosophy notes on Natural Law, I had been... not happy, but certainly less down. Maybe it was just prolonged exposure to the cold, but my mind felt clearer. With my feet firmly on solid ground, instead of awkwardly wedged against twigs or dangling into oblivion, my mood had plummeted again.
It was only a couple of hours ago, but it sort of feels like it never happened. Only the photos and the green powder on my coat exist as proof. I'm not sure what helped more: the change in perspective, or the low-level rebellion and the evident nervousness it instilled in the general public. Either way, for at least a little while today, I got the winter blues to go away.
Over the past three or four years, I've noticed a persistent change in my moods around December through to March. I feel much less ebullient, more reserved and cranky. I crave isolation, and company, but want to withdraw from social interaction. The last time I asked a doctor about it, I got told to fill in a questionnaire and come back in six weeks - by which time, it was the spring. Therefore, although it is not confirmed - and honestly, there are very few ways to treat it - the working hypothesis between me and my ex-nurse mother is that might I have some mild form of Seasonal Affective Disorder. (The best thing about SAD is its highly appropriate acronym.)
Anyway, that is the backstory. Take it with all the salt you want, but take away from it the fact that I was feeling fairly down today. Spending time outside is supposed to help, even on miserable overcast days when the whole sky is the same shade of pigeon grey: and so, I was outside, walking home from coffee, when I came across The Tree.
The Tree is opposite the Philosophy department on a fairly busy commuter stretch of the York University campus. There are other trees of a similar height around it, but this one is my favourite. Some way up there is a conglomeration of flat branches which look perfect to sit on; around the tree as a whole, the branches are close together and roughly form a spiral, so by moving clockwise around the main trunk of the tree it's possible to get thirty, maybe thirty-five feet up. The only way up for someone of my height is to grasp a branch about six feet off the ground, and jump your legs in a most inelegant fashion onto a second, slightly lower branch a few feet away. It's the same way I got up my favourite climbing tree as a kid.
So there I was, tote bag slung over one shoulder, making my way up this tree. I stopped to read some philosophy at a nice little flat branch maybe twelve feet up, the same place where I'd watched the sun rise from one day last term. It was peaceful, and easy to people-watch.
You never realise how much people miss until you're in a position to notice for them.
I got bored and numb after a while, and climbed higher to warm up. I tied my bag to a branch and scrabbled haphazardly up the tree, precariously balancing my feet in weird crevices and wondering why I'd never taken my grandad up on his offer of tree-climbing lessons as a child. I stood still for a while; I turned up my iPod and climbed higher; eventually I reached the perfectly horizontal branches I saw from the ground.
From them, I could see the lake in the centre of campus, and the Eric Milner buildings across it; I could make out buses cresting the hill of University Road, and hear hurried snatches of conversation as students and staff rushed past, caught up in their little worlds. In ancient Japan, ninjas were taught to hide in plain sight, which they often did by clinging to the ceiling: it's easy to see why they never got spotted. Nobody looks up.
I'd been sat up the tree for maybe an hour and a bit when the Security Services arrived. Some of the passers-by had reported me, clearly unnerved by my presence. Because if I wanted to commit suicide, apparently a moderately-high tree on a busy part of campus is a far better bet than throwing myself into Ouse or jumping off the top of the Physics building. Either way, the authorities were here: while they had no problem with me being up a tree, they politely implied that people would keep reporting me if I stayed, and really I had better come down.
I did so, slowly, collecting my bag on the way - because like hell was I going to rush and fall out a tree while being watched by two middle-aged, faintly bored security guards. I got back to base level and presented my Student ID for scrutiny, and wondered why it made so much difference.
Up the tree, reading my dry-as-pirates'-tack Philosophy notes on Natural Law, I had been... not happy, but certainly less down. Maybe it was just prolonged exposure to the cold, but my mind felt clearer. With my feet firmly on solid ground, instead of awkwardly wedged against twigs or dangling into oblivion, my mood had plummeted again.
It was only a couple of hours ago, but it sort of feels like it never happened. Only the photos and the green powder on my coat exist as proof. I'm not sure what helped more: the change in perspective, or the low-level rebellion and the evident nervousness it instilled in the general public. Either way, for at least a little while today, I got the winter blues to go away.
Friday, 17 January 2014
I am not your manic pixie dream girl.
Nobody wants to date me.
Yes, I say this, despite having turned down the painfully sweet advances of a guy I love as a friend but do not want to date. Despite the few-month relationships that characterised my 2013. Nobody wants to date me, as an actual living breathing crying bodily-function-having person. People want to date the person they think I am: a manic pixie dream girl.
I kind of can't blame them, to be honest. I have inadvertently stumbled into MPDG territory. I have short, brightly coloured hair. I'm a creative sort. I'm spontaneous and scatter-brained and clumsy and have a habit of grabbing people and dragging them with me on madcap adventures (or, more likely, to pub quizzes and Willow).
But the manic pixie dream girl trope reduces women down into merely these cartoon versions of themselves, who laugh and smile and exist to help direct the eternally-puzzled man puzzle out his eternally directionless life. I've been guilty of it, too (for a boy); thought how nice it would be to date the Welsh guy who I had a crush on for two years based purely on our mutual love for Fire Emblem games. What did I know about him? Not much. But he was attractive, and he represented a break from the ordinary.
And that's the problem. When someone dates you under MPDG assumptions, they are with you because they feel you will bring sparkle and impulse into their otherwise-lacking world. Like you will turn up and suddenly paint the trees a brighter shade of green, and open their eyes to the hitherto unnoticed beauty of Milan Kundera novels and fake glasses. Obviously, people can't do that: we're not magic, not one of us. We cannot force you to alter perceptions unless that capacity to change exists within yourself already.
Once people realise you exist as more than this human-shaped life-brightener, that is when I find the attraction wanes. I am not a manic pixie dream girl. I am not going to support you through every facet of your life. I have my own emotions to chart, my own existential crises to ponder. I get moody and vent about my feelings at inappropriate times; I talk about myself a lot, and I talk far too much when I'm nervous. I can be manic to the point of reckless, and I don't think about consequences enough, unless I'm thinking about them too much. I'm a perfectionist and spend tens of minutes wondering whether I can start this many sentences with "I" (answer: yes, because it's anaphora for rhetorical effect). I do things purely for the stories they will create, and steadfastly stand by principles even when my opponent is a friend.
I will not make your life better.
This is something my dear friend does not understand. Since I've turned down his advances - gently, and then more firmly to drive the message home - he has turned into the person I vent my woes to. He makes sure I know he's never more than a text away and knows just how to make me smile. It's sort of brilliant. He has manic pixie dream boyed himself. (But I'm still not going to date him.)
The thing is, you do not want to date me, V. S. Wells, semi-professional self-pitier and chronic complainer. You want to date Vee, the Facebook profile I present as my best version of me, the girl who dyes her hair monthly and bakes cookies in her knickers at 2am.
I'm not waiting for The One who loves me just as I am - because, honestly, I am a terrible girlfriend and do not want to inflict that upon anyone. This is not a plea for love. It is a request for the stereotyping to end. Just because Nicholas Sparks and Stephen Moffat can reduce women to personality quirks and value-added tits doesn't mean it works in real life.
I might be shiny on the surface, but - to quote the inimitable Andrea Gibson - "I know all of us are scratched, even if you can't hear it when we speak". I'm scratched. Stop thinking the record's perfect, and don't be disappointed when it starts to skip.
Yes, I say this, despite having turned down the painfully sweet advances of a guy I love as a friend but do not want to date. Despite the few-month relationships that characterised my 2013. Nobody wants to date me, as an actual living breathing crying bodily-function-having person. People want to date the person they think I am: a manic pixie dream girl.
I kind of can't blame them, to be honest. I have inadvertently stumbled into MPDG territory. I have short, brightly coloured hair. I'm a creative sort. I'm spontaneous and scatter-brained and clumsy and have a habit of grabbing people and dragging them with me on madcap adventures (or, more likely, to pub quizzes and Willow).
But the manic pixie dream girl trope reduces women down into merely these cartoon versions of themselves, who laugh and smile and exist to help direct the eternally-puzzled man puzzle out his eternally directionless life. I've been guilty of it, too (for a boy); thought how nice it would be to date the Welsh guy who I had a crush on for two years based purely on our mutual love for Fire Emblem games. What did I know about him? Not much. But he was attractive, and he represented a break from the ordinary.
And that's the problem. When someone dates you under MPDG assumptions, they are with you because they feel you will bring sparkle and impulse into their otherwise-lacking world. Like you will turn up and suddenly paint the trees a brighter shade of green, and open their eyes to the hitherto unnoticed beauty of Milan Kundera novels and fake glasses. Obviously, people can't do that: we're not magic, not one of us. We cannot force you to alter perceptions unless that capacity to change exists within yourself already.
Once people realise you exist as more than this human-shaped life-brightener, that is when I find the attraction wanes. I am not a manic pixie dream girl. I am not going to support you through every facet of your life. I have my own emotions to chart, my own existential crises to ponder. I get moody and vent about my feelings at inappropriate times; I talk about myself a lot, and I talk far too much when I'm nervous. I can be manic to the point of reckless, and I don't think about consequences enough, unless I'm thinking about them too much. I'm a perfectionist and spend tens of minutes wondering whether I can start this many sentences with "I" (answer: yes, because it's anaphora for rhetorical effect). I do things purely for the stories they will create, and steadfastly stand by principles even when my opponent is a friend.
I will not make your life better.
This is something my dear friend does not understand. Since I've turned down his advances - gently, and then more firmly to drive the message home - he has turned into the person I vent my woes to. He makes sure I know he's never more than a text away and knows just how to make me smile. It's sort of brilliant. He has manic pixie dream boyed himself. (But I'm still not going to date him.)
The thing is, you do not want to date me, V. S. Wells, semi-professional self-pitier and chronic complainer. You want to date Vee, the Facebook profile I present as my best version of me, the girl who dyes her hair monthly and bakes cookies in her knickers at 2am.
I'm not waiting for The One who loves me just as I am - because, honestly, I am a terrible girlfriend and do not want to inflict that upon anyone. This is not a plea for love. It is a request for the stereotyping to end. Just because Nicholas Sparks and Stephen Moffat can reduce women to personality quirks and value-added tits doesn't mean it works in real life.
I might be shiny on the surface, but - to quote the inimitable Andrea Gibson - "I know all of us are scratched, even if you can't hear it when we speak". I'm scratched. Stop thinking the record's perfect, and don't be disappointed when it starts to skip.
Sunday, 5 January 2014
"Good enough" is good enough for me.
When I say "that's good enough", it implies I have reached one of two stages.
The first is the point of frustration. When I have been toiling away at something for hours, or sometimes just minutes. This is often something I don't care about as much as I ought to, be it a blogpost or an essay or icing a cake. This is the version where I throw in the towel and accept that I cannot be bothered to work any more: it is the "fuck it, that's good enough" mentality.
The other arises more rarely. It applies to the things I really care about, more often the things I write out of an obligation to my own sense of artistry than the things I write out of academic necessity. It's an acceptance that I will never be as good as I want to be, unless I work hard. And that's okay: I can't just jump into being perfect. I have to work. For now, this is good enough.
Good enough.
Sometimes it's hard to remember that we are our own person, isn't it? It seems like we're surrounded by people telling us we are not pretty enough, our skin not smooth enough, our conversation not sparkling enough, our rooms not tidy enough. Admittedly yes, my room isn't tidy, but it's tidy enough for me! I can find anything I want on this desk, if I spend some time wading through the salmagundi of papers on it and remember to move my biscuit tins.
"Fuck it, that's good enough" is what I say after ten minutes of half-hearted tidying up, or two days of staring blankly at the third chapter of Plato's Republic. It's also what I'll say about the prologues I draft and re-draft. And it's the fear of it - of not being good enough - which means those prologues are left as forewords to stories that never get written.
I am tired of not thinking myself good enough, and I am tired of my own lazy standards.
So that is my new year's resolution, in the broadest possible sense: to never settle for being less than enough. And to remind myself that things do not need to be perfect. Strive for better, but recognise when "good" means "good enough".
This blog post isn't great, but it's something - and something that has provided a temporary portal away from the stress of my exam revision. It'll do. Fuck it. For now, it's good enough.
The first is the point of frustration. When I have been toiling away at something for hours, or sometimes just minutes. This is often something I don't care about as much as I ought to, be it a blogpost or an essay or icing a cake. This is the version where I throw in the towel and accept that I cannot be bothered to work any more: it is the "fuck it, that's good enough" mentality.
The other arises more rarely. It applies to the things I really care about, more often the things I write out of an obligation to my own sense of artistry than the things I write out of academic necessity. It's an acceptance that I will never be as good as I want to be, unless I work hard. And that's okay: I can't just jump into being perfect. I have to work. For now, this is good enough.
Good enough.
Sometimes it's hard to remember that we are our own person, isn't it? It seems like we're surrounded by people telling us we are not pretty enough, our skin not smooth enough, our conversation not sparkling enough, our rooms not tidy enough. Admittedly yes, my room isn't tidy, but it's tidy enough for me! I can find anything I want on this desk, if I spend some time wading through the salmagundi of papers on it and remember to move my biscuit tins.
"Fuck it, that's good enough" is what I say after ten minutes of half-hearted tidying up, or two days of staring blankly at the third chapter of Plato's Republic. It's also what I'll say about the prologues I draft and re-draft. And it's the fear of it - of not being good enough - which means those prologues are left as forewords to stories that never get written.
I am tired of not thinking myself good enough, and I am tired of my own lazy standards.
So that is my new year's resolution, in the broadest possible sense: to never settle for being less than enough. And to remind myself that things do not need to be perfect. Strive for better, but recognise when "good" means "good enough".
This blog post isn't great, but it's something - and something that has provided a temporary portal away from the stress of my exam revision. It'll do. Fuck it. For now, it's good enough.
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