Computer game addiction and the love of lists. 19.04.14

I had a really good day last Sunday.  I was productive.  I went to town to get things I needed.  I got some computer games swapped at a second hand electronics shop that proved just how awesome they were by continuing to be awesome.  I came home and did my washing, cleaned up the house and did some work on an art project.  I accomplished all of this in a few short hours and was incredibly proud of myself.  I like to feel productive in and out of work.   Everyone needs some time to be lazy sometimes and do as little as possible.  Most of the time though, I feel like I haven’t done anything when I waste time like that, so my aim is always to do as much as I can.  I may have previously mentioned how much I love a good list.  I'm a huge fan of lists (mostly, because I have a terrible memory so if I make a shopping list – and look at it –then I come home with what I need or list what I need to do in a day, I get a huge positive-attitude-boost from ticking things off as I complete them.  It’s how I roll). 

Part of The Artists Way by Julia Cameron is to complete tasks within the week, write every day and complete a check-in each way to see how your week has gone.  Since completing the book and having no prescribed list of things to do in my free time for the next seven days, I had to start making my own.  I rewrote her check-in questions to reflect my New Year’s Resolutions for 2014 and included a goals and targets section for each week.  The idea of this was to make sure that I didn't sit around on my laurels doing nothing.  Despite knowing that one of the things I want to do most is write, if I don’t set it as my target for the week, I don’t get it done.  There are a great many things that I wasn't to do – little, silly things, like go through my clothes and towels and get rid of the shabby stuff - that because they've not occurred on my check-in goals, they haven’t been done.  It doesn't always work that way but, for the most part, without a list, I'm pretty much lost.

Just re-read what I did last weekend… Done?  Good.  Now re-read the title… Done?  Good!

Despite having a set, prescribed list of things to do this week, something went wrong.   Not “wrong” but not as planned.  Part of the reason I stopped playing computer games last year was because I realised, long before I discovered how much I love to make lists, was that they stop me getting as much done.   That said, I have been conflicted of late; there are so many things I want to do with my time, having a job stops me doing a lot of them, like back-to-backing the whole of Breaking Bad in a matter of days or watching the last few seasons of Dexter, or watching all the Harry Potter films again.  I have to make a choice about what I do with the time I have.  I’d started to find I was hardly watching anything any more.  I don’t do well any more with writing and having something to watch on in the background.  I used to be.  But not any more.  Such is life.  I was starting to make myself feel bad for watching my beloved Once Upon a Time; it wasn't working on my short stories or writing a blog or finishing a book and that was bad.

Wait a minute.

Is it wrong to enjoy doing things?  No, Michael, of course it isn't.  If I'm enjoying doing what I'm doing and not sat staring out of a window is that so bad?  No, don’t be daft!  Why are you making yourself feel bad then?  No answer came my reply.  The internal thought process didn't go exactly like that, but it wasn't far off.  Why should I feel bad for doing something I enjoy doing?  There isn't any hard there at all… Surely?

Wrong.

I have an issue in my life with balance.  Sometimes, I can be a bit – what phrase works best? – “all or nothing”.  That has been the problem in the last week.  Given the title and the paragraph I drew your attention to, I'm sure you can see where this is going.  I have been obsessed with Fable 2 for the last six days.  When I haven’t been at work, seeing my family or making tea, I've been playing Fable.  “Where’s the harm in that?” I hear you cry!  Is there anything particularly bad about completing a game between Sunday afternoon and Saturday morning?  No.  Course not.  The Devil is in the details.  I've been going to bed later and later all week.  Anyone who knows me at all knows I don’t do well with less than my needed amount of sleep.  Last night, I got home from a day out close to 10 pm. I loaded up my Xbox 360 and shut it down again six hours later at 4 am. 

It makes me a little sad at 27 I still haven’t managed to get the balance right in my life that allows me to watch movies, write my stories and blog, listen to music, make art and read books, along with anything else I might like to do.  This is relatively new to me though.  In the last six months, I've come to a big appreciation of what I enjoy doing with my time.  That in mind, I suppose it’s only natural that the balance between them all goes “wibbly” from time to time. 

Borrowed without permission from http://www.pinterest.com/pin/439452876112477645/

At this very moment, I can see Batman: Arkham City looking at me reproachfully, almost begging me to start it.  In light of everything I just said, I think it’s better for all concerned (mostly me) if I just move it out of my line of sight for a while.  After all, I really do want to finish reading that book and writing that short story… I don’t know when I turned on my TV… or when I turned on my Xbox… Oh, here we go again!

Authors Note:  After I finished this, I made a cup of tea, finished my short story I've been working on for far too long, edited another blog which I've posted today, finished the book I wanted to and edited this blog.  I can be productive when I put my mind to it!

Fiction writing and playing the What-if Game, started 29.03.14

One of the things I like most about writing fiction is the opportunities it affords you.  You can be anything you ever wanted to be.  You can be everything you never wanted to be. You can play in a world full of things that haven’t existed for centuries, or in the future with things that haven’t even been thought of yet, except by you.

In my last post I wrote about the lack of infinite possibilities.  In the world of fiction, you’re probably closer to infinity than anywhere else.  You can play with the world and make it another way.  You can take people and make them different.  You can be thinly veiled.  You can cast your most hated colleague blatantly in your story and be mean to them in ways you never could in the real world – should you be of that inclination. 

I've just started reading Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell.  The main protagonist, Cath, is really into writing Fan Fiction for a book series that sounds very similar to Harry Potter.  She found an idea she loved, characters and people and places that interested and intrigued her and she makes her own parallel world.  

I'm battling with a piece of my own fiction at the moment.  If any of you are old enough to remember Sliders the main characters spend the show lost in alternate realities, trying to find their way back home.  That’s what I'm battling with.  I'm re-running a real life event and I've picked the moment I want to change from my own life and run the rest of the events as fiction and see what happens.  It’s sort of life fan fiction… but no one has read the story because the story is my life.  I've never done it before.  To be frank, I don’t think I ever will again.

When I was in my late adolescence, I became consumed with the concept of “What if?”  It was an obsession.  I was studying philosophy at A-Level and discovered the idea of the Thought Experiment, and I was running these experiments in my head all the time.  The difference is, I wasn't Sartre attempting to explain the idea of shame proving the existence of other minds.  I was playing with my own life, wishing for things to be different and picking a point at which things had gone wrong, and making different choices.  I was deeply unhappy – probably depressed even – in my later teenage years and felt very out of place in my own life.   I turned meddling with my life into a game.  I referred to it as ‘The What-if? Game’ for a very long time and I was always playing.

Image borrowed without permission from http://www.thegnomonworkshop.com/news/2013/06/5-tricks-for-overcoming-writers-block-and-artists-block-too/

I think it was when I got to university and began to settle into a lifestyle I liked, found true friends and was enjoying my course that I began to realise that the life I had was the only one I was going to get.  This was before I even studied Sartre; he would agree with me later in my third year.  I can’t change the things that have happened to me.  Nor would I have had the fantastic experiences I was having then and have had since were it not for certain events that changed me and made me how I am.  I gave up playing the ‘What-if? Game’ back then and whenever the thought popped into my head, it was just in passing and I banished it, almost as quickly as it arrived.

But…

The problem is with fiction and writing it, you’re doing that over and over again.  You play the ‘what if game’ with people’s made-up lives and you make all the decisions.  If you don’t like the consequence of the game, you change it and make the characters play a different one.  If you like the conclusion but it doesn't fit, you rewrite the cause to give the effect.  The problem I have hit upon with this piece is that I have started playing the age old what if game with my life.   I'm making fiction happen on a keyboard based on life events of my own.  I've change the name.  That’s all.  He is me.  I can’t even think up names for the other players in the piece, so at present, they’re all as-per-the-real-world.  That’s a problem for editing. 

Why am I playing this game again?  Most specifically, I have been trying to figure out whilst I've been battling with this piece for over a month is this:

Why am I playing this game again when it’s so hard to give yourself the alternative you didn't choose?

I was sat at my keyboard trying to write an alternative life event for myself – its how I've come to write this post actually.  That was the question I had in my head as I walked away, annoyed at myself for not just letting me get through it.  I don’t like leaving things unfinished and I can’t move on to anything else until this project is complete, but I don’t want to finish it.  I had landed myself in a catch-22 and needed tea. 

As I was waiting for the kettle to boil, I was wondering how exactly I was going to make the alternative play out.  It was difficult to do and make it convincing to me – if I couldn't convince myself, I wouldn't ever be able to let anyone else read it.  How could I?  I knew they wouldn't believe the story.  No one picks a fiction book to read the truth but you do expect truth to be there.  Readers know when a story doesn't work; when the actions of the character stray from their motive, when the shark gets jumped and when the writer has just lost their own plot.  The kettle boiled and the answer to the question of why I was playing the game was answered. 

There seems to be a unilateral consensus amongst the writing and reading community that people should write what they know.  J.K. Rowling knew wizards?  George R.R. Martin got lost on his way to Tesco and landed in the Seven Kingdoms, characters posturing to take the Iron Throne?  Who knew!  Of course they didn't.  I picked fantasy to be awkward.  But what do these stories tell you about, really?  They’re both about family, friendship, betrayal, darkness in human hearts and what happens when people do the right and wrong thing.  All fiction is the what-if game. 

So, the answer to me of why I am playing the what-if game with one specific scenario?  I want to know what could have happened is the first answer.  The second, if I'm ever going to write something big, big enough to publish, how can I write a big enough what-if with people who aren't real, if I can’t even start with myself?

Self-discovery aside, doing it is another thing, and procrastination is calling my name – the washing machine is finished and I've just [picks up cup and drains it] finished my tea.

Possibilities 23.03.14

Through some emotional revelations in the last few months, I've learned a lot about how I really am.  I am not as easy going as I once like to think I was.  Truth be told, I am ok with that one.  I like things a certain way and I am a certain way.  I think it’s totally normal to have a mini-mental-freak-out if something isn't just so.  I don’t care what anyone says, even the easy going ones, everyone has a “thing” that sets them off when it isn't done right.  My to-be-brother in law is one of the most chilled out people in the world… until he told me I was doing the washing up wrong because I left the sharp part of the knives facing up instead of down.  Point taken.  I now always lay them flat or stand them pointy end down. 

Another of eureka moment about myself is that I'm somewhat of a control freak.  You can see the link.  I don’t like to be out of control in any situation.  It’s part of the reason I've given up drinking for a while.  I don’t enjoy the feeling of not quite knowing what I'm doing.  At work, it’s always a challenge because, by the nature of the work we do, it involves responding to unexpected and serious situations.  It’s a control freak’s nightmare.

Leading onwards (and yes, this is the order all of these mini-epiphanies came to me) I am only a mere mortal.  This is problematic considering I like things to be a certain way and I like to be in control.  The problem I have is that there is only so much I can do.  I can’t do everything, nor can I fix everything.  That one bothers me.  It’s a genetic gift that seems to have been passed down through my Gran to my Mum, and from her to me and my sister.  When things go wrong, we don’t like being unable to help or do something to put it right.  When faced with a mistake I've made, my dread is that I might have to get someone else to put it right, if it’s beyond my control to do something about it. 

I was reading back through my diary and I had this series of thoughts several times over in the course of a few weeks before I remember actually realising what I had been saying to myself over and over again; I can only do so much.  The section in the pages where it seems to have really clicked is where I go on a rant about possibilities. 

The optimists of the world would have us believe that there are an infinite number of possibilities in the universe and for every choice or action, there are an infinite number of responses or results.  Poppy-cock.  Utter bollocks.  No, just no!  We do not live an infinite universe.  We live in a world of boundaries.  You cannot jump off a building and float.  You fall to the ground and declare “Whoops! That hurt a lot.” or you die.  There are only so many “equal and opposite reactions” to events in the world.  There is only so much that can actually happen in our world.  The issue with this philosophical thought stream I was on led me to another conclusion as well…  I am not infinite in my capabilities.  I have a fixed amount of time in a day at work, or at home, in which to get done everything I might want to.  Other people have an impact on this too.  People want me to do things or to see me or require my services in some fashion.  It limits the possibilities for what I can do.

http://www.studentnoodles.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/possibilities.jpg

So why do I keep beating myself up for only being able to do so much?  There is the question.  I guess years of self-hard-wiring predisposes me to aim for the opposite, but it isn't possible for me to do everything.  Nor am I advocating apathy; to sit around on my arse and do sod all because I wouldn't be able to do anything anyway.  Sartre called that “bad faith”.  The epiphanies I have had and the realisation there are only so many possibilities has led me to this…

I should always aim to do as much as I can in a day.  If I don’t get it all done, there are other days in which to do it, so I can do it then.   None of that means I shouldn't try, but it does mean, if I'm not successful because I didn't get to do whatever it was I wanted, that doesn't mean I won’t or can’t.  I just need to give it time, be more patient with the situation and with myself.

Again, despite knowing this, having realised it and accepted it to be true, this does not mean I don’t get stroppy when the paperwork mounts up around me on my desk.  It doesn't mean I don’t get irritable when people ask me to do things for them as I have things to do myself…  Nor does it give me more time to do everything I would like to do, either in work or out.  It does mean that I celebrate the little victories and successes of what I did manage to get done.  Added bonus of that is that it gives me more “umph” to actually want to do more and try harder.  Not a bad philosophy in the end.

Bibliophilia and sulking 15.03.14

Yesterday, I was in somewhat of a grump.  Plans that I’d made for my day off were not panning out as I anticipated.  In my previous blog I discussed how I’m growing up – or at least feel like I might be – so I did the mature and responsible thing… I got back in bed and sulked.  This was a few hours long sulk.  I didn’t do anything at all.  I just led there, sighing heavily.  I didn’t make myself tea.  I didn’t watch any YouTube videos.  I wallowed in self-pity.  Very mature, I’m sure you’ll agree.

One of the aspects I do despise about getting older, I have no conviction for my own sulking any more.  I can do a full on strop followed by sulk, but at best, it will last for a few hours before I get bored.  In my teenage years, I could sulk for days and weeks at a time.  These days, it just stops me from getting things done, so what’s the point?!  Around the point at which I decided I was getting bored of sulking, I got out of bed and proceeded with the day I had in mind.  No, I wouldn’t have the company I had intended for the little trip to town, but I would have me.  One of my goals for the week was to read at least 100 pages of my current book, A Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martin.  No, this is not a huge undertaking, but I’m making quite long work of it, so off I went to Costa and sat there with my book.  I wrote in my diary about how I had sulked, read for a while, enjoyed a pastry then ventured into Wilkos and bought an antiperspirant.  All was going so well… Until I clocked Waterstones. 

                Just in case these ramblings have reached outside of the UK, Waterstones is one of the last surviving high street book stores.  Borders went down the drain a few years ago, WH Smiths sells more magazines and stationary than it does real reading material, Bookland went bust before Borders.  A man hunting for books anywhere other than the Internet will struggle if it was not for Waterstones. 

When I moved to Preston in June last year, one of the things that excited me most was to live in a town that had an actual bookshop.  Blackburn hasn’t had a dedicated book stockist since Bookland closed and was replaced by a pound shop.  Reading that sentence breaks my heart somewhat.  But now, not far away from my house was going to be one of my most favourite book shops in the whole wide world.  It smells exactly how a book shop ought to smell.  It’s got friendly staff and the walls are just lined with worlds and people and possibilities.  I love that place.  It feels like home.

Moving out of my old flat in September 2012, I was stunned at how many books I owned.  So many I had never read and some of them, I didn’t even know why I’d bought.  I had no intention of reading them so why did I own them.  At the time, I did what I considered to be logical and sensible and gave them away.  I needed less stuff to pack for putting in to storage.  I couldn’t have any near as much stuff in my new room and I needed to not take over the garage where most of my belongings would be living.  This seemed like a good plan. 

I was wrong.

Not long after I moved to Preston, I bought a Kindle.  More than my coming out, I think my Mother was incredibly disappointed in me.  She had raised her children to love and appreciate the magic of books.  I think it comes as part and parcel of her dyslexia; she yearned for the ability to read for so many years and as soon as she could, she bought and devoured books.  Whilst at University as a mature student she read War and Peace in one 8ish hour sitting.  The woman is nothing, if not conscientious.   And she isn’t an old fuddy-duddy either; she’s quite tech-savvy and recently invested in a smart phone and a tablet, but she will not forgo the experience of thumbing a book.  I, however, am a child of the new technology generation.  We have smart phones and apps and DVD’s and BlueRay and FaceTime.  Surely I would love a Kindle.  And I did.  Briefly.  The moment I truly fell out with it was when the battery died.  Now, I know I ought to have charged it regularly, but in my head, Kindle = Book = Do not need batteries.  Fatal error in logic, I know, but still true.  I will always hold the Kindle to be an amazing piece of technology (when charged) and the convenience for holidaying folks and students is unparalleled.  For me, it wasn’t cutting the mustard.

Part of my New Year’s Resolution for 2014 was to read more.  I had no intention of making this work with my Kindle.  I wanted books.  Real books with paper and smelled like ink and glue.  It’s not just a mental experience when you sit down with a book.  It’s one that stimulates all the senses, not just the as well as the imagination.  It makes me happy. 

If we add in my discovery of Carrie Fletcher – YouTuber ItsWayPastMyBedTime - and her adoration of Disney and the printed media format, I felt this compulsion to read again.  I read a book to help me with my creativity and one of the weekly activities was to look over the week and find any “synchronicity” and discuss it.  The synchronicity of finding Carrie, whilst rediscovering my love of reading and books… It was nothing if not good timing (Boys in Books are Better – never a truer word spoken.  Fan girls, go laugh and giggle and surrender your love of non-fictional men at the door.  They aren’t worth it).

Back to Waterstones yesterday.  I have a very bad tendency of self-pity-purchasing when I’m out and about and feeling bad.  I think this is probably quite a normal thing.  Is it?  Let me know!  But the love of owning books and the possibilities inside gets me giddy.  I looked it up.  I qualify as a bibliophile.  So I came home with my 4 new books and a notebook, which I also did not need, and put them on my book shelf. 

 

My book-shaped accident from Waterstones (14.03.14)

Today, I walked past the shelf and got mad with the disorganisation.  There were too many piles on top of the rows and I couldn’t really see what was there.  Being a normal person… don’t look at me like that… I had to sort it out.  All the books I have yet to read are now neat and organised … But I just had to go and count the buggers.  It turns out I have 54 books on my shelf that I haven’t even read yet!  Do I have an addiction to buying books?  Is this normal?  Moreover, do I even care?   I love reading and am reading more now than I have in years.  Perhaps it is going to take me years to get through this lot, but at least I have plenty to go at.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to carry on with my reading…

Being a Grown up 07.03.14

Part of the problem with keeping a diary is that the thoughts that run untamed in your brain take up permanent residence on paper; somehow it makes them more final.  A thought can come and go through your consciousness without leaving much of a footprint.  Even if it does, the tide-of-time washes over it and it can be gone again, without anyone ever knowing it was there.  A pen and paper, or a keyboard has some sense of permanence.  It reinforces the links together in to a chain that becomes much more difficult to break; you can push thoughts to one side, but when they’re written down, you lose most – if not all – of the pushing power.

I don’t mean to say that thoughts we may harbour in our hearts or in a diary cannot later change or be found to be untrue; time changes many things and opinions are incredibly flexible. 

Over the last few years, living my life as an adult post-university-pre-mid-life-crisis, I've wondered on many occasions what it actually means to be a grown up.  How should a grown up act?  How do they behave?  Is maturity the same thing as being grown up?  People said I was a mature teenager; does that mean I've done all my growing up?  Is growing up the same thing as getting old?  That last question in particular is plaguing me of late.  Having made the mistake of immortalising it on the page, it now won’t let me alone.

When I was 19 I had a kitchen accident that left me with a rather unsightly scar on my right hand.  I broke a glass that sliced across my fifth digit gifting me with a lovely talking point (should conversation die at a party, I can always whip out the conversational ice-breaker of “Do you have any interesting scars?” and delight a crowd with how I tore my hand up trying to do house work.  This opportunity has yet to be afforded to me, but I live for that day!).  Given the way I chose to hold my phone – sort of balancing against that finger, fingers curved around – or in the cold weather, I have noticed this winter how much it aches.  I've noticed how old people talk about the cold setting in to their joints, giving them troubles.  It set in my finger this winter.

Scar on my right finger.  Even my hands are looking old today... Where is my moisturiser?

It’s not just an aching finger, along with a question of what it means to get old that makes me feel that way.

Since the passing of my Grandmother in November last year, I've been forced to think about my own life.  Where am I going?  What am I doing?  No, I'm not suffering from a case of sleepwalking or intense amnesia.  I've had a rolling set of realisations that have led me to a point where I have to accept the way things truly are.   This life I'm living is not what I want.

I was gifted a full time job when I left university.  I walked into it through coincidence.  I needed a full time job and where I was already working part time needed a person.  Ding-ding.  After that, I reacted constantly to situations at work, never really thinking about what I truly wanted to do with my life.  I toyed with the thought of teacher training (a thought which continues to dart around in my brain from time to time) but never really planning what I really wanted to do.  The universe gave me a kick in the ass when I lost my job and one of the most horrid periods of my life was being without one.  Character building is the more poetic way of describing a situation that nearly broke my spirit but somehow I muddled through. 

A friend happened to be a team leader for a place that was hiring, the place I ended up working.  He let me know of a vacancy in his department and I interviewed.  Despite the impression some people may have given, I wasn't handed the job through a convenient connection and I've stood my ground there since.  Despite a lot of moaning I do about my work, I do like my job.  I get to talk to vast variety of people on a daily basis who I wouldn't get to speak to any other way and, naively perhaps, I like to think I help people.  That’s the thought I like to carry through after a bad day.

I've had various living situations.  I've flat shared with friends, house shared with family and friends, each time through a necessity of theirs or mine and I've reacted to the situations as they unfolded in front of me.  Like with my job history, my habitat has been a knock-on effect due to factors beyond my control.

Relationships and my utterly abysmal choice in men is another example.  In my adult life, I've rolled from one bad relationship to another with inappropriate people (they weren't axe murders or criminals, just not the right guys for me) for the sake of being with someone because that’s what grown-ups do, isn't it?

All of these situations have something in common.  First of all, they’re all aspects of being a grown-up; looking for a good living situation, finding the right job and looking for the perfect partner are all things grown-up people want.   Whilst all of them are grown-up pursuits, my realisation this week is that my attitude towards them has not been.

The PS2 game Kingdom Heats II is far superior to its predecessor in my opinion and the chief reason for this would be the huge improvements made to the fighting aspects of the game play.  The most useful introduction was the ‘Reaction Command’; during specific fight scenarios, certain activities were available to you in order to better blat the enemy.  The problem is that my life has been a constant series of ‘reaction commands’ under duress.  Not a physical fight against minions of darkness, no, but still, adverse circumstances presented themselves to me and I was forced to react to them.  I may have mentioned in my blog before that I have a tendency to ignore my instincts and make bad choices. 

I may have also mentioned before that I love making lists.  Part of how I get through stressful periods at work is through making lists of what I need to do and complete in order to ensure I don’t forget anything.  I love a good list.  It allows me to plan ahead and prioritise.  It dawned on me last year that the fulfilment I get from ticking items off my list at work could easily apply at home if I needed to get things done; I have a weekly list of things to do now to make sure I don’t waste my time and it’s working for me (Item 2 for this week is to write an entry for my blog; just saying…).

There was a fluttering of the “light bulb moment” in the autumn, that never fully materialised and it was in relation to looking for a relationship.  I date the wrong men.  Fact.  Why do I keep dating the wrong men?  Not a clue.  This led me to the inevitable thought that I ought to stop dating (period) until I had concluded what I want from myself and, in turn, from a partner, before going to find one, idealising him, later to realise what a waste of time that had all been.

The real eureka moment I have been having has only really started in the last few weeks; I haven’t been planning for what I want.  I haven’t given it any time or consideration.  I have brief moments of lovely ideas of how life might be in the next few years.  That’s day dreaming, not planning.  Similarly to work, to ensure that amongst the many other things that might be going on, I get the work done I need to do, I set myself some goals for what I want to achieve; some of them are time bound, some of them are not; some of them are creatively orientated, some of them are financial.  I realised that if I was going to get the life I wanted, I wasn't ever going to be able to do that if I kept reacting to life instead of making the things I truly want a reality.

I'm in a house-share and I want to live alone.  I'm planning and organising to ensure that becomes a reality.  I love to write, but I wasn't giving myself the time I needed to do it, so I made changes to ensure I didn't have that excuse.  I love to read but I wasn't and the books on my shelf gathered dust; I'm now trying hard to get through Game of Thrones even if the print is tiny and the pages are huge.  I want to go on holiday somewhere abroad because I've never been but I don’t have a passport; the application pack is now in the post so that I can get one.  I want to learn to drive for the freedom and job opportunities it will afford me.  That one has to go on the back burner because the desire to live alone is more fulfilling to me.  It is on the list though! 

For some reason it’s incredibly hard to list what we really want, particularly in a forum where other people can read it – anyone that reads this might think I'm really selfish or silly for wanting these things.  So what?  It’s my life and no one else has to want these things… but I do.

The final moment of realisation I had was to know that planning is what being a grown up is; feeling confident and comfortable in myself (perhaps with a little support) to be able to admit what I really want and the balls to try.  I can’t live with people for the rest of my life because I made a hash of living alone the first time.  If it is what I want, I’ll find a way to make it work.  If I want to write and draw, I’ll make time to do it.  If I want to read about the Mother of Dragons instead of just watching it, I’ll get my book out on the train and before bed.  For me, being a grown up and an adult is the choice to stop giving yourself excuses to not do the things we really want and make the changes we want to see.

Am I scared?  Course I am.  I love a good rut – they’re comfy to sit in when you shape out your butt groove.  They’re also consistent and lined with excuses.  Sitting and staying in my rut won’t get me what I want though.  And I don’t want to spend the rest of my adult life complaining that I don’t have the things I really want.

What does being a grown up feel like?  Terrifying.  I love it.

Decisions Decisions 23.02.14

When I sit down with my flat mates to decide what we are having for dinner (Oh, who am I kidding?  When we sit down to decide which takeaway we are going to order) there is an inevitable moment where I have to make a decision about the type of food we are getting or what I want to have.  In most normal, rational people, this would not create any sort of major existential crisis; I am not most normal people.  Unless I know exactly what I fancy on that evening, I usually have the exact same thing as I had the time before, just so I don’t have to make a conscious decision.  Mostly, it’s because I’m a bit of a pig and everything on the menu sounds really nice.  The ensuing crisis about choosing the wrong thing or if I would have preferred something else is not a normal thing to do, so I stick with a decision I made years before and have the same thing again. 

The same applies when I am deciding what to buy in a supermarket.  I end up eating the same meal time and time again because I am so terrible at making choices and the neurosis that accompanies any decision I make.  What if I don’t fancy what I’ve decided to buy tonight for my dinner tomorrow?  It’s an impossible deadlock to release yourself from, yet I keep on putting myself in to it.

My diverse taste in films and music are yet more pitfalls for coming to a decision.  I have (by a lot of people’s standards) a large DVD collection.  Unless a thought occurs to me about what I want to watch, it can take me anywhere from 5 minutes to, on one shameful occasion, an hour to decide what to stick on.  If we venture into the horrible land of Netflix and the ridiculous amount of choices that has to offer, you can see how this could take a while.  When I lived with a girl just after I left university, to avoid this paralysis –like me, she was an invalid when it came to making any manner of decision – we ended up making a list of things we both wanted to watch and worked through them in the pre-set order we had agreed on so that no decision had to be made, unless one of us had a burning desire to watch something in particular.  Music, I have a similar paralysis, hence the amazing use of Spotify, the playlist function it offers and my instantaneous stabbing at the “shuffle play” on screen.  I know instantly if I don’t want to listen to that song, so can skip to the next. 

I do the same when deciding what book to read.  As a certified bibliophile, I have a grand array of books I haven’t got round to reading yet.  The issue doesn’t come in the shop of choosing what to buy – that is never a problem I’ve had.  However, when you see them lined up in a row (Ok then, two rows… with some stacked on top) of choices to be made, I find it impossible.  Reading is more time consuming than people give it credit, and if you get to the end of a book to discover the ending sucked, you have just wasted the last however-many-days you’ve spend reading it.  It can be immensely disappointing.  It’s a big decision.  At least for me it is.

My name is Michael and I am a 27 year old male who has decision paralysis.  “Hi Michael!”  No, this isn’t an Indecision Anonymous meeting but it might as well be.  It’s an aspect of my personality I am far from fond of.  Guys in movies who dither about inevitably end up losing the guy or girl of their dreams; their ideal job sneaks away from them; their arch enemy gets away with the murder.  It doesn’t tend to end well for guys like me. 

At work all day long, I am forced to make decisions – who goes where, when they go there, what to do, who to speak to, how quick something needs to be done.  Unfortunately, all the decision paralysis scenarios I posed above do not make a tremendous amount of difference to anyone except myself; when it comes to the work I do, it has a huge impact, either negative or positive, on my colleagues or the customer.  It isn’t a very good position to be in sometimes. 

The key element here is choice.  Sometimes having choices is nowhere near as good a thing as people would like us to believe.  Sometimes selecting a default action is not a cowardly choice; it’s a necessary one.  When people are pushing on you for a decision for their work or for ordering their dinner, my inability to make my mind up has a knock on effect on them. 

It isn’t all bad though! Being forced to make any sort of decision in a stressful situation can be a mixed blessing.  No, you don’t have time to way up the pros and cons but the spontaneity can have fantastic repercussions and, should the situation arise again, you have a new path to take.  But having the balls to make that decision is not an easy thing to do for a neurotic like me.  I came to the conclusion many years ago that I am not a man intended for management roles at work purely for this reason.  Staff members look to their manager for decisions to be made and directions to be set and courses of action to be applied.  I know what I’m doing well enough, but when it comes to telling someone else “This is what you ought to be doing”, I rarely feel competent to do that.  I have a trusting nature and often trust that people older than me know better about most situations and I look to their experience rather than my own inner compass.  This is not always the best way to operate.

When it comes to the bigger decisions in my life, I find it very hard to do.  Be it a career choice or financial or property, the last thing I want to do is have the decision made for me, but it doesn’t mean I want to make it in a vacuum.  Plenty of people are fine with that and god love them for it.  I just don’t operate that way.  I trust that the people who love me and know me best will have a very good take on scenarios I put to them and will give me an insight… Hopefully before I go blundering into something daft and have to come crying to them to help me fix it.

As I get older, I don’t have the stamina for making as many mistakes as I used to.  I suppose it’s seeing the long term impact that can roll on for years.  Some bad decisions in my 20’s about how to spend my money are going to have a knock on effect for me until I’m almost 30.  10 years of digging through a bad decision.  It’s sort of like deciding to commit murder and serving the associated prison sentence… only the view is better and I don’t have to panic about dropping the soap.

One of my favourite movies is Bound- a not very-well-known little film about two lesbians who decide to take down the mob.  When Jennifer Tilly’s character turns to her lesbian lover, Gina Gershon and tells her “We make our own choices, we pay our own prices” she’s talking about her loveless marriage.  Those are the sort of decisions and choices I don’t want to spend the rest of my life paying for. 

I’m currently trying to decide certain things in my life I don’t want to debate on a public blog.  The comfort of checking in my two people I love the most in the world for their honest opinion and not only getting it, but their accompanying support was so uplifting to me.  When I’ve decided to do things in the past, many people are so quick to point out the negatives from their own perspective and not take the time to consider my perspective, my motivations and to say if they thing it will be a good move for me or not.  When you’re giving feedback on anything – decisions, art, writing or work – it’s an important thing never to leave the person feeling demotivated by what you’ve said.  No matter what decisions I make in the coming months, the support that has been given to me by my loved ones this week has proved invaluable.  More than anything else, it has reminded me I am not alone in anything I do and there will always be people there to love and care for me, if it goes well… or if it all goes pear shaped and I end having to start all over again.

Hamlet, making a decision surrounded by "action choices" - borrowed from https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvWFGryzZj0LlKlXi2ZX6ci_UjO_9kFC7YxyfkE1Rd9ubhddIp2AjBgUe6UHBd-3JnJ0_pxFt91zJh9qJGGHivbHb8B2ARASTLG-CFExbTDaKyMO7GMZcsSacN0MK1Bs6gl1nINcqjAMM/s1600/Picture+1.png

The Contextual Framework of Priorities, avoiding conflict and making time for reading 21.01.14

A long time, in fact, *goes back to original notebook to check* on the 3^rd December 2012, I was living with my sister and her fiancé.  We lived in the next town from Blackburn, where I was and continue to work.  This involved a bus ride to get home, followed by a very strenuous half an hour walk entirely uphill.

One windy and dreary day, the bus began the descent down one of many hills towards my stop.  That day, I remember quite distinctly how frustrated I had been that a colleague had implied that I didn't know how to prioritise.  Just to compound the issue, the chap I had been dating – that didn't last long at all and least said, soonest mended – had implied that I didn't know how to prioritise our new and fledgling relationship within my life.

As a person, I am comfortable in admitting one of my biggest flaws is being defensive.  I can’t help it.  In nature, the fight or flight response manifests itself in me as follows: 

1. I feel criticised 
2.  I get defensive
3. I runaway and stop speaking to people until the situation goes away.

It is, by far, not one of my more attractive qualities and one that I am working on improving as I grow up – It is definitely not a mature response to any sort of confrontation, but having ear marked it as evolution and survival instinct, I've given myself the “Get out of Jail Free” card on it for a little too long. 

The bus hit traffic and my stop remained out of reach for a little while longer.  When I travel, unless the god of technology should forsake me, I listen to music.  Particularly after a bad day, which this had been, it helps me not to mull it over too much.  Let’s be honest, something we all need to accept more readily is that when the day is done, there is nothing more you could have done or anything you might have done better.  Plugging myself In to the wonderful world of music helps with this enormously.  On this occasion, it hadn't stopped the dwelling process entirely.  One question sprung into my mind, quite abruptly and with no warming.  The question proved to give quite a violent response and I had a little sob in my lonely  seat at the back of the bus:

Who decides what matters?

It can be people, places, possessions, a sentimental attachment to a shoe lace, but we attach priorities to all manner of things, no matter what they might be.  The problem with that question is the answer because its so glaringly obvious.  We all do.  Every single one of us has a stake in the world we share.  Consequently and unfortunately, we are going to clash periodically when we encounter someone who has a different agenda and set of priorities to ourselves. Overall, it means we can’t win. 

Most workplaces will generate such conflicts. I used to work in management for retail.  I hope never again in my working life will I fall victim to such a huge clash of different priorities that become the way you work.  The customer thinks they’re most important, you have a store visit from your area manager any minute to inspect your visual merchandising and you haven’t finished the tidy up because you've taken £300 more than your target in the last hour, and a staff member is waiting to be given their return to work interview after a period of absence.  Plus, atop all that, you haven’t finished your rota revision because three people have decided they can’t work their set shifts.  The delivery arrives, as the area manager walks in and someone asks “Do these shoes come in half sizes?”  None of us can please everyone all the time.

On the walk home, in the rain, I had to walk down one hill before I could climb the next, where home was.  On the second leg of the journey, another thought popped into my head; an answer to the question of how can anyone ever get their priorities right, when everyone has their own agenda.  The simple answer was still that you never can.  The reason why was the epiphany, and it really did make me feel better: I called the Contextual Framework of Priorities.

The basic principle off the framework is accepting that in our work or personal lives, our priorities are not always going to match up with everyone else’s.  As soon as you accept that, you are ready for step 2:  Your agenda and responsibilities might be lesser than someone else’s.  Step 3 is by far the hardest to come to terms with: everyone’s priorities are always in a constant state of flux. If you have a loved one in hospital, ensuring you get to their visiting time is an entirely different prospect to getting to say your final goodbye.  At anytime where something more important comes to your attention, which becomes your top priority.  And that happens for everyone else too.  Our own goal posts are moving and everyone else is moving theirs.

Image found: http://mdcoastdispatch.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/Thngs-to-do2.jpg

Naturally, that is going to generate a certain amount of conflict.  The attitude adjustment that we all need to make is to make sure the conflict of interests that we all experience doesn't end up being a confrontation. We all need to work on communicating the urgency of what we are asking for and compromise where we can.  From personal experience, I know that creative problem solving can come from these situations.

The reason all of this came into my head at all was my realisation that I waste a lot of my own private time.  I’m not writing the things I want to write.  I’m not reading the books I want to read.  Computer games, art projects, the list could go on for a while, but the fact remains, I’m not getting this stuff done.  And part of my 2014 aim is to make sure I’m prioritising the things I REALLY want against my willingness to be lazy.  I’m putting myself into a conflict that means I actually get to do things I want – I finished a book this Sunday: Joyland by Stephen King.  Exceptional book.  Read it! 

I have had lazy days, don’t get me wrong.  The thing is, if I want this year to be a better one, all I have to do is look at my priorities and keep in mind what they really are.  As soon as I start to slip, confront myself with them and resolve to do better.  I think that this year all of us could do with remembering our priorities and making sure we achieve them and help whoever we can achieve theirs.