Macaroni art

I will return to my regularly-scheduled "Inca Trail" scribblings after this brief segue.

Things have been tough for the girl and I in recent months.

Losing my job to redundancy in July was unfortunate, but I immediately started claiming "job seeker's allowance" to try and keep the wolves from the door when it came to rent and bills. The fight to get housing benefit out of the local council has sometimes felt like an uphill struggle, however -- particularly when we were told the girl earned too much for us to claim benefits.

The girl had to return home to Western Australia several days earlier than she had planned, missing out on a trip to Paris with her Mum, when her grandfather died. Even at that time, we hoped that her work visa would come through in no time, and it would only be a short time before the girl would return to merry old England.

We hoped the setbacks would only be very temporary, but it's October and I haven't yet found gainful employment, and the girl's company still don't have their licence to sponsor her, so she is in unpaid limbo on the other side of the world.

Next month we don't know if we will be able to pay the rent. I have already borrowed sums of money from my parents to help make ends meet in previous months, but we are now getting the housing benefits we were previously denied so I hope to be able to hold the fort a little while longer.

On the positive side, the logic would follow that every day that passes without the girl hearing news on her company's licence we must also be one day closer to her joyful return. I also have some promising leads on jobs that I am interviewing for.

I don't spend a lot of time in the house I share with the girl now that she's not here. It makes sense to visit my parents more and take advantage of their hospitality to keep the running costs of our house down, but most of all it doesn't much feel like "our" house when I'm there alone.

I won't lie, emotionally I've had a bad time since I lost my job. Never having been the most stable of people in the past, losing the security and income of a job I (mostly) enjoyed set me adrift a little.

In a dramatic break with tradition, however, things have taken a turn for the better there -- and it might even seem in years to come that being made redundant was a good thing to happen. For a start, if you're out of work you can access government-funded training. And I'm not talking about basic maths or literacy, but more or less anything you want.

Granted, I am still trying to get someone to commit to the details, but in theory at least there are options open to me if I want to learn things like digital marketing, graphic design, web design because it will make me more employable -- those three could all help me make a move into roles like web content editor.

Not directly related to work, but sort of related to government funding, I have been in therapy, which was probably overdue. I think because of the recession, money has been freed up for what is being called "talk therapy", a combination of counselling and cognitive behavioural therapy. While it hasn't exactly set my world ablaze, it has helped me to recognise and address some errors in my thinking. Which neatly leads me onto the next point.

Personal Development. A local college is currently a 10 week personal development course for people a bit like me -- it's not solely for those out of work, but being held twice a week on weekdays probably means it's not very accessible for anyone in fulltime employment. The course is led by a certified Psychotherapist who also makes a decent living in areas like Hypnotherapy, as well as coaching and training.

It's all making for a good combination -- the course provides me with something to do other than look for work, I can tell employers about it when I go for interviews, and it is giving me useful tools for managing my own thoughts and behaviour. Mixing that with my cognitive behavioural therapy I have recently learned to treat myself better and be more objective, feel more positive, and have identified some goals and objectives. I won't go into details of the techniques I have learned today, but it's enough that it is doing me some good.

I visited the girl for a few weeks in August and September, which should have been longer if only we'd known there was not going to be work waiting for me on my return, and no firm return date for the girl in sight. But that's how these things go. I will be blogging about those adventures -- under the title of "Tales of Girls, Boys and Marsupials" (something I have considered renaming my blog on occasion) -- when I have exhausted my "I trekked Peru, yo" posts.

We aren't too clear where we go from here right now, except that today is one day closer to the girl's return and another day closer to finding a new, incredibly awesome job for me. And people will probably be getting macaroni pictures as Christmas presents this year.

I can hear them whisper and it makes me think there must be something wrong with me

I'm sitting here trying to think of something to write. You know that feeling when you want to write, want to update, but can think of nothing to say?

I have sort of unofficially dismissed my therapist. I turned up for our first session after Christmas and New Year the other week, and he wasn't home. He hadn't called me or anything, nor left any message to say what was happening -- his son just answered the door, and told me nicely that he was out for the evening, and he'd get him to call me. He never did call me. I thought, maybe he's lost my phone number -- which is almost as bad -- so I didn't turn up the next week. Technically not having seen him the week before, I could say we didn't have an appointment, but I thought he would call me to find out what was going on. He still didn't call. So I figure, screw it. Like so many times before, I'll go it alone for a while. I still do feel like I need therapy (I'm sure he would agree) and there's issues I still need to work on, but I'll go back to the old fashioned method of work hard, go to the gym, try to get out more... I'm not sure about the deeper issues.

My two and a half days in work last week passed entirely without drama. I smile a little to myself about it, because I think they were so desperate for someone to come in and do the job, and for someone to actually stay, that they might just need me more than I need them right now. I get the distinct feeling that they don't want to overwhelm me with everything right away, but I am quietly whispering to myself that I am confident, happy and capable -- and it sort of works. I don't think my job is ever going to involve anything too mentally taxing, and I don't think that it is ever going to reach the despairing levels of working in a call centre. Seriously, I should have been like Amy Winehouse with that shit and said no, no, no -- this would have been a much better job back then, if I was insistent on something office based, or else the bookshop was a much happier place.

Speaking of the bookshop, I gave Kelly as a reference to my recruiter last week -- it was a bit cheeky of the recruiter, as she was meant to have got references from me before she sent me for a job. Anyway, Kelly gave a glowing reference for me -- she apparently told them what a lovely young man I am, who is happy, reliable and how I was an assest to the bookshop over Christmas. Bless her, I can hardly recognise myself from that.

She's right though, most of the time I was pretty happy in that job -- and I'm glad her lasting impression of me is as a happy person. I don't think anyone realised what that job meant for me, it wasn't just minimum wage selling books, it showed me I was employable and likeable. Another staff member told me one day how she remembered when I came in for my interview, because when I left Kelly and Bev were both saying how much they liked me and wanted me to work for them. It's a shame it couldn't last, but it does look like things might be heading in the right direction with work in general.

In terms of all of that sort of thing, it's odd. I'm perhaps not as excited as I should be about the whole thing -- my celebratory bottle of champagne I got as a leaving gift after my PR contract last April still remains unopened. I've said I'm saving it to celebrate getting a proper job, and I thought that the medical college job I interviewed for before would have counted. I was actually quietly concerned if I was up to the task for that job, and I guess we'll never have to find out now.

A couple of weeks back I saw a bunch of my family, and of course had to field the question "what are you doing now?" all day. When I was asked by one aunt what I wanted to do, and struggled a bit with the question, she said almost pityingly "You're still looking for 'something interesting'". In the book What Should I Do With My Life? the author talks to various people from different walks of life who were looking for some sort of meaning in their lives -- and rejecting the assumption that it is trivial or even ungrateful to want to feel some sort of passion about their work.

It seems a more common idea that we shouldn't. My Dad always tells me that you're not supposed to enjoy work, otherwise they wouldn't pay you to turn up. Likewise, in one of her songs Ani DiFranco says "Maybe you don't like your job, maybe you didn't get enough sleep? Nobody likes their job, nobody gets enough sleep." And my favourite quote of all from Drew Carey: "Oh, you hate your job? Why didn't you say so? There's a support group for that. It's called EVERYBODY, and they meet at the bar." We seem bombarded with messages that work is something you have to put up with, we do it to have the money to afford to do things we do enjoy. It seems a shame that there isn't more of an emphasis on enjoying what we do.

Don't get me wrong, I don't even dislike my job, and I really hope things stay that way. But I also can't help but wonder if I sold out, if training as a journalist and working without pay for newspapers and in PR was all just a waste of my time. In many ways, I'd like to think not -- they've given me various transferable skills for work and for life, but part of me does still feels a little let down. If I was to meet the 18 year old me, how would I explain that working in the media never happened? Sorry kid, it was just a bit too competitive, and you were just a tiny bit too shy, or maybe a bit too unsure of yourself. But I hope in a not too distant future I will feel I can tell him it all worked out for the best -- but just look at how things worked out!

Bloggin' up tha riot

"Imagine trying to telephone your grandmother, and over the telephone explain to your grandmother how to set the video recorder if you knew that she didn't have a video recorder, but she did have a cake."

That was how Dave Gorman likened trying to explain to an elderly creationist in San Diego the concept of Googlewhacking -- and it was a similar experience trying to explain to my therapist was a blog is.

He encourages me to write, to write pretty much anything, although he likes to suggest compulsively writing letters to newspapers. It was only this week when he asked me directly if I have been writing that I told him I blog. He was very curious, naturally having heard a lot about blogs but not being able to understand in theory what one was. I explained the idea of journalling online, and how for me this is the main idea behind blogging.

But it's also more than that, it's a place where I try to employ my creative writing skills and sometimes techniques I learned as a journalist. I write primarily for own peace of mind, but also try to write for an audience -- I want what I write to be readable, engaging and interesting, at least some of the time. And moving forwards I try to write about the things I am passionate about, and not just moan that I don't know what I'm doing with my life, or complain about girls I've never met that wouldn't agree to marry me.

The trouble is, blogging isn't simply journalling and trying to explain about alternative news sources, industry-insider blogs and bloggers who want to be columnists/novelists -- or even bloggers who already are -- is all quite difficult when the person you are talking to has no real idea what a blog is to begin with.

Enduring Love

Unfortunately, this is not a post about the Ian McEwan novel -- nor of the quite lacklustre film adaptation.

Instead, while talking to my therapist last night we somehow got on to the topic of love -- in the round about ways our discussions tend to have. Wholly and entirely unrelated to any concepts of love specifically, I told him how I sometimes worry that my presence in other people's lives will be a negative one -- and especially so if they like me.

I told him of the feelings of discomfort I've had in previous relationships where I felt the other person liked me more than I liked them, and of other relationships where I've been let down gently because they just didn't care for me enough.

It seems like sometimes we have ideas or expectations for what we think we should be feeling in a situation, and it for me at least it can get in the way of just living in the moment.

I remember however-many hundreds of years ago when I was dating Fiona and sometimes feeling like a phony because I didn't think I felt as strongly about her as she did about me. Similarly, San and I broke up any number of times when one or other of us would decide we didn't feel strongly enough about the other person to be in a relationship.

My therapist made a very strange comment about how he didn't really believe in "love" -- I expect he meant the "chocolate boxes and roses" red lace cards sort of interpretation of love. He said something like how do you even define love anyway? Far from being stumped by this question, I'd actually given the whole subject a lot of thought in the past when I have loved, been loved, and thought I loved various people.

I define love as a passionate affection.

It sounds quite simple, but the words to me have a depth of meaning. For example, passionate can mean several different things all at once -- it can mean sexual as well as an intensity of emotion, and very subtle nuances all in between. This definition applies to the many different kinds of love I can feel -- I can say that I love my brother (despite our difficult relationship), that I love my parents. I also love my cat, love my friends and in the past have loved certain individuals. All of these I would say were passionate affections -- each in subtly different ways, but no less deserving of the title of love.

Years ago when San and I were going through some sort of difficult period, we broke up when she said she didn't love me, or wasn't sure if she did. That was when I went away and tried to define love, came across the "passionate affection" definition and suddenly had a revelation. I realised that through nobody's own fault, the passion had gone for her -- there was just affection, and that wasn't enough. On similar occasions I'd tried to argue that I thought she did love me, even if she didn't define it as such -- but not then. Other times, San would counter the argument with one consisting of didn't she deserve to feel love -- to find someone she loved. There are no counter arguments to this.

The last time we broke up it was again because she didn't love me, and although she had been telling me she did for a little while, she hadn't meant it for some time. It seems funny that some people would never dream of faking an orgasm would tell you they loved you when they didn't.

My therapist mentioned that he'd been married twice, approaching now his third marriage. I asked when you marry someone don't you promise to love them? Seems a little odd to marry -- three times, at that -- and not mean it when you say you love them. Which is why I think it's the romanticised, Valentines sort of love he was talking about.

Either way he helped me to get some of my previous relationships and friendships and everything in between into a better perspective. I think the general argument was stop over-thinking things and lighten up (even if it was never phrased as such). Getting hurt is perhaps the only guarantee you have -- but it doesn't negate the whole thing. You can't stop someone else from being hurt, you take responsibility for yourself and your own feelings -- and so should they. This responsibility also means you can't stop someone else being hurt, so don't sweat it.

He showed me that so long as you don't deliberately set out to mislead or hurt someone else, you can only be yourself.

And from there, just let the chips fall where they may.



I also had a discussion with my therapist about blogging, but I think that deserves a post all of its own.