Husband or cat?

I didn’t set the alarm again, today I woke at 5:40 and it only took me half an hour to get out of bed. Tomorrow I will have to get up early to call Australia again, but I have been spared that over the weekend.
How did I spend yesterday? Oh, in front of the computer as usual. Sorting out the correspondence for the week, and trying to write the agenda for Thursday’s meeting. I don’t understand how that can have taken me so long, what else was I doing? I tidied up a bit, not everything, I filed away everything for the magazine that I’ve been working on, oh, and I created a spreadsheet so I can track progress on my international project, which interviews I’ve done and which ones are arranged and which ones I have to go back to, and which ones are written up. I have got some planned for tomorrow. How everything else will fit around it and the rest of the week will pan out, I don’t have a clue. I will get by, I will get through it, there will be a time when it’s not like this. There will, surely there will?
So today’s plan is: driving over to the other village to drop something off with one of the councillors and put stuff on the noticeboards; writing this agenda and circulating it; making Christmas pudding; cooking dinner; maybe calling my sister; maybe doing the housework; and writing up the rest of the reports on the interviews I’ve already done and sending them to Yves. I’ve done 7 out of 19 so far.
Oh, and think about my presentation for my interview. Yes, I need to start that, I haven’t even thought about that yet. I was going to set aside some time to do that today because I’m rapidly running out of time. So, I guess that has to be a priority. But the agenda is a priority too, that has to go today. Shit, what DID I do yesterday, how come I got so little done? I sit around and piss about and do nothing, nothing nothing, just think about how miserable I am and try to find someone to talk to, but everyone else is busy with their real lives and no one has time for me. No, that’s not fair, that’s just me whingeing, other people have shit in their lives too.
I want to stop, take a breath, cry. I want to find a place where I can leave this behind and just be me, but it’s going to get worse, much, much worse before it ever gets better again and I’m scared and I’m tired and I’m so bloody lonely.
I checked my bank account online yesterday and my expenses from Berlin has been paid in, this is good for two reasons, one because, obviously, I now have the money and they haven’t forgotten about it and I don’t have to hassle them, but more importantly because it shows that the process works, I know the numbers and codes that I have to put on my invoice to get the money paid in which I will need to get paid for this work for Yves. And financially I am very well off, for me, I have just had my school governors money paid in too, money is coming to me just it’s not enough and regular enough to pay for rent and my own bills.
I’ll buy a laptop and a dongle and just go and write in cafes and write on trains and run away from all this.

I've decided to change it back again.
Let's see if it makes a difference.

I was late to bed last night, so decided not to set the alarm, and woke up at 20 past 6. I should have got up then, but lay there thinking, as I do, not resolving anything, just thinking and when I looked at the clock again it was 10 past 7. Almost a whole hour, just lying there. I disappear off into thoughts about this, that and everything, and that is why I never have any time to do anything and why I always feel stressed.
I went out yesterday evening with my friend J, one of my strong, single women friends, I haven’t seen her since the Mikado, a couple of years ago (actually, almost three).It was only a quiz night and fish and chip supper in aid of our next production, 'Carousel', but it was good to get out and do something different. Because we didn’t have a team we were put with six other people we didn’t know, two young married couples and two young women, all friends. They were nice though, and we came third in the quiz with 74, not bad given that the winners only got 81.
I did my meditation of loving kindness as usual. I have changed my attitude towards it. I used to focus on trying to feel loved, which was difficult, then on trying to feel the love I was sending, which wasn’t much easier. But recently I’ve realised that ‘the focus is on the intention to feel loving kindness’, and to have a better grasp on what that means. The mere act of saying I WANT to feel loving kindness towards myself and others is something worth acknowledging in itself, a step along the way.
I’m struggling to find words this morning, they don’t want to come. I was looking down at my fingers and caught sight of my wedding ring and eternity ring. I started to slide them down my finger, covered them with my thumb, and wondered how it would feel to be free of them. How it will feel.
I sent an email to Himself yesterday, suggesting another possible meeting, but haven’t had a reply. How do I play this? I’m not used to this game. At the moment, I’m telling myself that probably he just hasn’t seen it (I don’t know if that’s his main email address or not, I have lots of addresses and they don’t all get checked as regularly as others). Or maybe he needs to check his diary or something before he can reply. There could be lots of reasons why he can’t reply straight away. Though he didn’t answer my text about my interview either.
I want to hold myself back, I don’t want to care because I don’t want this to matter to me. I’m sick of all that. I don’t want another repeat of the Crazy Frog (or his many predecessors), where I am lost in longing and longing and never knowing where I stand. Though the difference is at least in this case I have had a couple of nights of shagging to look back on.

It’s 6:36, I’ve been up for almost two hours, and I’ve made three phone calls to Australia – one of which was actually successful in that I got an interview, even though the person at the other end pointed out that it was almost 5 o’clock on a Friday afternoon.
That SHOULD have been the last of the Australian ones, except that I got an email yesterday from Yves about the additional bit of the project that they wanted me to do that they wanted the initial scan report back for last Thursday – which I did, though I didn’t get any response/acknowledgement/feedback – with a list of three that they wanted me to follow up further, two of which are in Australia. And they want the report for next Tuesday.
It has really been a horrible week. The magazine has to go to the printers on Tuesday, yesterday I was on and off the phone with the editor, then she said ‘You’re going to send it to Doreen for proof reading aren’t you’, well I sent as much as I had to Doreen on Saturday, I thought, OK (this was about half past two) I could get it done and get to the post office, then I remembered that I had a governors meeting at 3:30 and there was no way I could get it done before then, thought it would have to be posted today which would mean she wouldn’t get it till tomorrow so she wouldn’t be able to do it and get it back to the ed for Monday, everything is falling apart, anyway, the meeting only lasted forty minutes and I was home again by 4:35, managed to get it done and printed out, stuck a first class stamp on it and walked across to the box, when I got back in the house I saw the post man going to empty it so it has gone.
And I had evening meetings on Monday and Wednesday and the minutes are all stacking up there are still some from a fortnight ago which I haven’t finished yet but I also haven’t typed up my phone interviews from today and yesterday and I need to do at least one more today. And write a report on the 6 I’ve done.
Oh yes, I’ve not done very well getting the interviews this week, seem to have spent a lot of time on Skype trying to get hold of people, last week I did 4, this week so far I’ve only got two, one to Melbourne yesterday and one to Adelaide today – I think – as far as I can remember. I was supposed to call someone in Manchester yesterday, but forgot, thought she was gong to call me. So far I’ve done 6 of the 16 (well 19 if you count the three extra ones), they wanted it done by the end of the month (ie November, ie Sunday).
Going out this evening to a Quiz Night, seeing an old friend I haven’t seen for a couple of years that should be fun anyway.

‘You’re a miserable cow’ someone told me yesterday. ‘you need to lighten up, loosen up and get a shag’.
Well hell, tell me something I don’t know.
If I keep staring into the black hole, will there ever be a way I can make sense of it, start to fill it or heal it or whatever it is I need to do with it? Or is it better to ignore it and hope that one day it will decide to go away of its own accord?
I don’t expect you to like me. I’ve told you that. I don’t like myself. There doesn’t seem to be much I can do about that, I try and I try and I try but it never quite happens, it never works out, not really. I know myself too well, I see through the layers, the surface of shyness and reserve and self sufficiency then through that, when you get to know me and I get to know you, to the smile, the sense of humour, the sense of fun, the wit and the intelligence. But get deeper still and you find you’re staring into the abyss, and that’s when people back off and don’t want to know. And that’s how it grows because it says, ‘Look, you did it again, there goes another one, you do this every time’ and I fold in on myself, everything is drawn inwards, I don’t need them, I don’t need anybody, nobody wants me anyway, I’ll run away and hide.
Here I sit and wonder whether there can ever be any escape. No, how can I escape from myself? Wherever I go, I’ll always be there hounding myself, punishing myself, hating myself.
Every day I sit and try and love myself, try to fill the hole try try try. I hear a voice saying: ‘don’t try, just do it!’ who said that? A counsellor, I think, one of the many. Even counsellors don’t really want to talk about the black hole, we never really get on to discussing that, they want to sort out the top layer and encourage the second layer, look, you can do this, you can be happy and attractive and draw people to you, there you are then, why don’t you just do that? Lighten up, loosen up, get a shag? Better not to disturb all that other stuff, bury it, leave it alone, there’s nothing you can do about it, if you pretend it’s not there you can get on with your life.
But it doesn’t stay buried, it rumbles and grumbles away and picks off little bits of this and that, it stops me from picking up the phone or going to see someone, or speaking up at a meeting because, what if you open your mouth and all that comes out is garbage? You know that’s true, don’t you, you know that’s what’s likely to happen because it’s happened before, and don’t you feel like a fool when it does? Why bother trying to make a friend, you know they’ll hurt you or you’ll hurt them and it’ll never work will it? So don’t even try.

I still have to call Melbourne and Adelaide. I decided last night that if I was awake, I would do it this morning, but that after the last two nights I wouldn’t set the alarm early, and I slept through till about quarter to 6. So tomorrow I will set the alarm and do it, though I haven’t had answers to my emails from either of them.
I had a frustrating time yesterday afternoon, trying to get hold of people and getting voicemails, or ‘Send me an email…’ So I’ve still only done 4 out of the 16 interviews I’m supposed to do. The work was wanted for the end of this month (ie this week), I haven’t yet properly written up the ones I have done. All the other work is bouncing around in my head, I haven’t done the actions from the two PC meetings I had a couple of weeks ago, writing letters to residents, etc, and for one of them the next meeting is next week. And the magazine editor is back from her holiday – we got our wires crossed, I thought she wasn’t back till this weekend and she thought the artwork had to go to the printers yesterday – because I told her it was the Tuesday after she got back. In one respect it’s good to have her there because she can edit things as she wants them and there’s a lot to do because all the reports on the speakers from last Tuesday are far too long, but the downside is that she goes in for hour long phone calls that disrupt my concentration and eat up time. So everything bounces around, and I have my interview in two weeks and I’ve been sent a questionnaire to fill in for it and I have to write a 10 minute presentation on how my career so far will contribute to the post and how I see it progressing further…
And as for the emotional side of things – well.
Marian tells me not to give in. If I gave in, I wouldn’t be here. Seriously. When the blackness takes over it is completely absorbing and all-enveloping, it blocks out everything else. And it is almost irresistible, which is why I call it a black hole. It is hard to show it because, I think, it both frightens people and makes them angry. Or maybe that’s just me being egotistical again, and they actually just don’t care. Or if they do care, they feel helpless. Anyway, I’m very, very grateful to the people who dared and cared enough to respond.
It’s hard to explain or justify what brings it on, but I think that quite often it’s simple envy, the thought that other people are more loved, more lovable, have something I don’t and can never find. Which is often nonsense, I know, everyone has their dragons to fight, it’s just that, as Lady Lucy one told me: ‘most of us just tell them to piss off’. The question, as she put it, is: who is going to rule your life, you or it? And she had the biggest dragon of all to fight.
So I hate and despise myself for having these feelings, for admitting them, I try to hide them and when the barriers break down I feel so ashamed of myself and angry with myself. And this is what fuels the vortex.

I lay in bed for three quarters of an hour after the alarm went off, unable to force myself to venture out into the cold. I was awake from 3:30 till gone 5. Then I dreamt about job hunting, and about that exam again, the reading list, all the work I hadn’t done for it, the terror of knowing that I wasn’t prepared and never would be.
Yesterday evening, before the parish council meeting, I was a mess of tears, loneliness and hurt and envy eating away at me, I couldn’t stop myself, I wiped and wiped at my eyes hoping it wouldn’t show, driving to the meeting I started again, but luckily when I got there no one noticed, and I managed to survive through the meeting, though once or twice I felt myself starting again.
I got home and went to bed full of bitterness and bile and loneliness and despair, woke at half past three, my body wracked with sobs. I had never noticed that before, in my silent crying, how the tension starts deep in the stomach and rolls up my torso like a great wave till it hits my throat and stops my breath then comes out in a great crash (but not out loud, never out loud, I mustn’t disturb anybody)and starts again.
What can I do? I try to breathe calmly, to hear the words in my head, ‘May I be happy, May I be well’. It’s nothing, nothing, empty, meaningless sounds, not even sounds because I don’t say them out loud, just impulses in my brain that have no reality and no effect.
There is a great black hole that sucks in kindness and caring and swallows it down, losing it in unfathomable depths. It would suck in love, too, if it could find it, but there is never any to be had. Would love, if it existed, go some way towards filling the hole, to healing it, or would that just be swallowed up too and lost forever?
I know that that hole can never be filled, I’ll never find anyone who can fill it, and how can I fill it for myself? The best I can do is skate around the edges, try to ignore it, put up orange tapes and ‘Danger: Keep away’ signs. Distract myself with sex and friendship and try to stop myself from getting too close, peering into the depths, though it’s hard to resist at times.
‘Lots of men would want you’ I’ve been told more than once, well, maybe they might think they did, maybe they would want my breasts and my mouth and my bodily holes for a while, there are websites you can go to to advertise your wares, no doubt I could find one or two who would oblige me.
But no one would want to look into my black hole, would even attempt to fill that for me.
Which is why I should be grateful that I found one who will ignore it, not shout at me and get angry and tell me what a fool I am what a pathetic, self-obsessed, egomaniacal fool.

I’ve been castigated yet again for my lack of self esteem. People tell me about it as though it’s something I’m not already aware of, as though I’ve just been waiting for them to tell me so and then I will be able to change it. But my feelings about myself are mostly rooted in my experience. I’ve been told that I’m attractive, maybe even beautiful or sexy, and sometimes I feel it to be true, but in general (as I’ve said many times) my experience with men contradicts this. Similarly, my experience with job hunting suggests that employers are rarely impressed by what I have to offer. Maybe I’m just too weird, spiky, strange, who knows for either men or employers to want to take me on.
I was awake last night from 3 till 5, then I dreamt I was on a training course of some kind, it was getting to the end, probably this is related to the fact that I have the last of my writing classes today, but it was much more serious than that. Then at the end I realised that there was an exam and it was really important and that I hadn’t taken anything in or allowed any time for revision. Quite a familiar panic dream.
I’ve got an extra PC meeting tonight, some developers are coming to talk about their plans for an old MOD site on the edge of the village. Actually, I’m going out every evening this week: meeting tonight, college tomorrow, governors meeting on Wed, pilates/meditation on Thurs, and on Friday, a quiz night for my singing/theatre group. I decided to go to the quiz night even though I don’t usually go out on Fridays, and I fixed up to go with a friend I haven’t seen for ages. Hope it will be fun.
I can’t think of much to write about today, you can tell. I’m tired and not feeling very upbeat. I will have to try and do some more phone interviews this afternoon. The work is supposed to be finished by the end of this week, so is the magazine. There are still a couple of reports to come in from last Tuesday’s meeting (the one in London that I missed), and I need a photo of the Royal Institution for the front cover, I was supposed to take one but of course couldn’t. People airily say, ‘Take one from the website’, but of course there is such a thing a copyright. Apparently quite a few people were taking photos, but I don’t know who or how to get hold of them. I’ve put the word out, maybe some kind person will think to send me something.
There are places on the web that have non-copyright photos available, I got one of the Bank of England a couple of years ago. I might have to resort to that.
Another exciting week ahead then. Meanwhile, Christmas is getting closer and I don’t have a clue what I want for myself or what to get for anyone else – apart for my daughter, we have got a Wii Fit for her.

I've had a couple of nice comments (which are much appreciated) about the profile photos I put up on Friday. And they are nice photos, but I've been wondering why it is that they are so at odds with my image of myself.
And the answer, of course, is that a photo is literally a 'snap', it catches what is in front of it in one particular instant, and freezes that. So, those photos were taken under very specific circumstances, and capture the way I was in those split-second moments.
So, for the sake of honesty and clarity, I thought I should post a picture which is more typical of the Linda I know.

Snow on the ground and on the cars. Not much, not enough to leave a complete covering, not even a very thin one, but snow nonetheless. I saw some yesterday in town, I had to go to the sorting office to make sure something got the last post, and there were little patches of snow on the pavement outside the sorting office. But today it’s here.
‘The focus of this meditation is the intention to wish yourself and others well’. The intention, not the achievement of feeling loving towards yourself, that’s too much to expect. I feel lost here. I feel myself pushing away everyone who tries to be kind to me, does this loneliness become a self-fulfilling prophecy? I become unlovable because I feel unloved. I have detached myself, I look around at the house and garden that used to give me such joy and it means nothing to me, or rather, what it means is hateful.
I can hear my Dad’s voice.
‘Why are you always so hateful all the time?’ he said, I can still hear it very clearly. I don’t know what brought it on, I had just said I hated my brother, probably he had been teasing me as usual, making me feel hurt and lonely and humiliated. That’s no reason to hate somebody, is it? It’s only a bit of fun. You don’t hate someone just for teasing you, not even if you’re 10, or 12 or 14 or however old I was then. If you start hating them for it, you’re the one doing the hating, the fault lies in you, you are a hateful person. So you turn the hate onto yourself. And then you get ‘why are you always so hard on yourself?’ and you think, I mustn’t be hard on myself, that’s something else I do wrong, that’s something else to hate myself for and you feel guilty because whatever you do you can’t get it right and then you get: ‘don’t get on the guilt trip’ and you think Christ, it gets worse and worse and you feel guilty for feeling guilty and you can’t see how to stop it all you get into this cycle. And then you think ‘Look, lots of people have it much harder than you do, so what makes you think you’re so important why is what happens to you so bad as to make you entitled to feel this way?’ and you go down and down and down.
So don’t even think about trying to be happy in the middle of all that mess.
I can feel the tension in my body, I’m hunched and closed in, all the pain held inside, all the silent tears that won’t stop coming however tightly I squeeze my eyes to hold them back.
Last night, half in my sleep and half awake I felt someone get into the bed beside me and for I moment I didn’t know who it was, and then I realised, I remembered and moved away. If I reached out and held him, would that make things better again, resolve all these feelings? No, I know it wouldn’t make them go away, not for good. We’ve been down that road too many times. I can imagine his voice saying: ‘What’s wrong?’ but how could I tell him, how could I make him see and understand, when he never has before.

I did something very stupid last night… staying up far too late, till gone 1 o’clock, in fact. Then of course I woke up at the normal time – 5:15 – so I probably got less than 4 hours’ sleep.
I was trying to do (or play, or whatever it is that you call it) ‘Second Life’, but I just got thoroughly confused by the whole thing and gave up. I think it’s time to reinvent myself, to create a new persona. But having said that, were any of the others ‘invented’, or did they invent themselves? They are just aspects of me. I wanted to create someone who would be completely new, to escape from the tyranny of myself. But I found myself struggling to work out how to do even the simplest things. Not so different from First Life, then.
So if ever you find yourself on Avatar Island and see a woman wandering around in circles or stuck to the ceiling wearing half a dress, giver her a hand, will you?
In the end, there is no escape from our selves. They follow us and haunt us. Only Peter Pan was ever fortunate enough to escape from his shadow, and he wasn’t happy until he got it back again.
Ahhhh, happy. Again and again, coming back to that word. How do we find happiness? Internal or external changes? External changes don’t come with any guarantee. Maybe they will make things better, maybe they won’t. How do you know when you’ve reached that point of no return, when you will never be able to change things back to the way they were before, never run back into shelter and security, but be forced to step out into terra incognita? And what will you find? Is it naïve to hope for something better?
If I listen to the voices (and they are legion, but the most powerful one is the Voice of Reason, or Common Sense), it’s all too clear what I should do. ‘The grass is always greener on the other side’ they say, (they are not much given to originality and wit), and ‘you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone. In times like these, you can’t be too careful, hold on to what you’ve got, don’t throw it all away for… what?’
I’ve listened to them too long. But that doesn’t necessarily make them wrong, does it?
My mother would want me to be happy, of course she would. But would she say: ‘Look at what you’ve got, and be happy for that. Be happy that you’ve got a good man who looks after you and will never let you down’. But I saw her climb onto Dad’s hospital bed and cover his face with kisses, I saw the light come back into his eyes for one last time, even though the stroke had left him incapable of speaking or moving, his eyes could still smile with love for her. To have that love for over 60 years of your life. How could she understand how I feel?

'Hello!' said Hubby, pulling out his chair for dinner.
'Oh, she's sitting on yours, is she?' I asked. 'Usually it's mine!'
Then I realised that it WAS mine. Since we've been in this house, we've always sat side by side at the kitchen table, and the children used to sit opposite us - when they were here.
'That's because you're Mummy's girl, aren't you?' he said, as she stepped delicately from chair to chair then down to the floor.
'No, she's definitely Daddy's girl' I said.
Some couples stay together for the sake of the children.
But staying for the sake of the cats???

The moon is just a sliver now through the landing window, shining through a cloudy halo. I haven’t seen it for a few days, it was almost full the last time it watched me on my way up the stairs. Time passes.
I dreamt last night that Hubby was holding me and asking what was wrong. And I felt, no I don’t want this, what can I do, what can I say, how am I going to tell him?
In the study, the makeshift secondary double glazing, secured (or not) by thick brown sticky tape, creaks back and forth in the draught. I heard the wind screeching last night. When I settled myself for meditation, orange light flickered through the window, as though the street lamp were faulty, but it was the branches of the chestnut tree blowing past it alternately shutting out and letting through the light.
Meditation merged into just sitting and thinking, words passing through my head, the inescapable tyranny of the words, thinking planning, what am I going to write about? What was said yesterday? How am I feeling? ‘I wish I was dead’. No, no you can’t say that, you can’t wish that, that's not allowed. ‘May I be happy, May I be well’.
The window is getting livelier, more active. I turn to look, wondering if it is about to blow down completely, but it settles back into its grooves. The lights of a car coming up the hill reflect into the room.
L came round to see me yesterday, only for an hour or two. The first time I’ve seen her since last Friday, she is so busy at work again, the landlady hasn’t done the rotas for next week yet, so she doesn’t know when she’ll have another day off, but she knows she’ll be working all weekend, that she’ll have to stay at the pub again, because the landlord’s son is getting married on Saturday and they will be away. She loves the job, the staff, the locals, but she hates the way they take advantage of her.
She hugs me and I hold on to her for so long, squeezing myself into her, trying to absorb the love. It shouldn’t be this way round. ‘How have you been?’
‘Not great’.
We sit on the floor in front of the Aga, both stroking the cat, who isn’t sure whether or not she wants this attention.
At meditation last night, I gave Mary her glasses back. We told Clare the saga of how I’d picked them up when she left them behind last week how I’d arranged to take them round after writing on Monday and then I forgot to take them.
‘She rang and asked if I still wanted her to come round!’ Mary told Clare laughing.
Put like that, I suppose it did sound a bit silly.
‘Put like that, I suppose you couldn’t have said no, that would have been too rude’ I said.
She looked at me.
‘That’s what the voices in my head say’ I continued, ‘you’re a nice person, so you wouldn’t want to say no, so I don’t know whether you really wanted to see me or not’.
‘Then you need to change the voices in your head, don’t you? You can change them, you know’.
‘But I have to put other people’s feelings before my own, because if I put mine first that would be selfish and selfish people are bad people. That’s what my mother taught me’.
‘But would your mother want you to be unhappy?’
‘No, but...’
‘Well then.’
It’s not till this morning that I realise the answer to this puzzle.
My mother would tell me I should be happy, I have to be happy, to look at what I have and be happy for that.

I just had two attempts to call Australia via Skype. The first time I could hear something but just noises, not any kind of proper speech, then it went dead. The second time I got an engaged tone. What do I do now?
What I did was try the test call, which worked OK, then try calling here, which was very iffy. I crawled under the book case and made sure the head set was pushed in properly. Tried again. It was engaged. Left it on redial. Eventually it got through.
Talked to Australia for 15minutes and it cost 22p. Not bad.
So that is now two down and 14 to go. This one really wasn’t very relevant, but I have got some answers to the generic questions I have been asked to use. I can write up another little report.
I’ve had an email reply from Calgary saying someone will call me in the next two working days. I need to check the time difference – they will be calling afternoon or evening, I hope they’ll be sufficiently aware to make it afternoon. I’ll be out this evening from 6. Tomorrow we would normally have wine for dinner, but if they haven’t called by then maybe I shouldn’t have any.
Walking back up the stairs with my cup of coffee, it occurred to me that this is all very surreal.
I woke at 4:15, which was good, I’d set the alarm for 4:40 anyway, but it was good to be awake and ready. I was a while getting off to sleep last night, possibly because I was thinking about having to make this call. I really don’t like having to do it. I have definitely ‘stepped outside of my comfort zone’, to use the horrible jargon.
It’s so long since I’ve done anything like this, since I’ve felt myself being really stretched in this way. It’s good that I’ve got this, because it is preparing me in a way for if I get the job (or at least for the interview), because if I do, I won’t necessarily be doing things like this exactly, but I will have to do other unfamiliar and probably even more scary things. Am I ready, at my age, to stretch and grow some more?
Last night at dinner, Hubby asked if I was OK. I’d been pushing the last bit of chicken around my plate, I really wasn’t hungry, but that was because I’d binged on oatcakes while I was cooking. Stupid thing to do. I just asked him if he wanted my last bit of chicken, which he took.
I move through life in this strange kind of limbo. I don’t understand how I got here or where I go next, I just live from day to day. I don’t know how I manage to keep functioning, to get things done, but somehow I do. I want Himself, but I never hear from him and I don’t know when/if I’ll see him again. What I will do I have to do alone. And before then, there’s Christmas.

I never know what the title is going to be for this until after I’ve written it, which is why the titles often refer to something near the end. I was going to call this ‘procrastination’, but I thought that might suggest it was about something else. Not that it matters what I call it, I suppose.
A strange morning today, a day for doing things in the wrong order. First, I poured out a glass of grapefruit juice when I got into the kitchen this morning, when it should have been water – grapefruit juice is breakfast. I put it in the fridge, but then I drank it after meditation, when it should have been coffee. And I just opened Yahoo when I always go straight to Word and start typing this before I check my emails – though there were no new ones, so it didn’t matter.
I slept through till the alarm, but I found it took quite a while to get to sleep last night. Strange, given that I’d been awake from 3:40. Maybe it was the two mochachinos I had at college, or maybe it was because I was on the computer too late. Who knows?
Some of the work I’m doing for Yves came on much better yesterday, and some of it was harder and I made less progress than I thought. But on balance I was pleased with it, though I still have to make those phone calls.
I need to get on with the magazine as well because the deadline for that is looming. I wonder what is happening about the follow up to the Berlin meeting as well, I thought Alexander was going to send me some questions but they haven’t come yet, am I supposed to act on my own initiative and prepare something anyway? I haven’t even thought about it.
It is strange doing something that actually challenges me, that I really have to think about, rather than it being semi-mechanical, like the clerking work, or even the dtp. I’ve been experiencing that sense of vertigo/panic, what if I can’t actually do this, what if what I do is not what they want, what if I let them down? Research is always a bit like that though, even if you’re applying recognised techniques, you’re never too sure what is going to come out of it, and researching on the net is terribly ad hoc; what if you don’t find anything, what if you miss something vital, when do you stop looking, and how do you keep looking if you don’t find what you needed the first time? How do you know whether there’s nothing there or whether you were just looking in the wrong place, or gave up too soon? Actually, that’s not so different from researching from documents, and it’s a lot quicker.
I’ve been trying to send out emails to the people I need to talk to, just so they don’t feel I’ve cold called them, but it’s not always easy to tell who it should go to. Maybe it’s a way of procrastinating because I don’t want to make these phone calls. But I must start today. It will be better once I’ve got started.
I think I should try to get as much information from the websites as possible before I call. Or is that another form of procrastination?

PS I just checked my Outlook, and I have had the first answer to one of my emails - from a lady in Sydney. She sounds very nice. She doesn't have Skype, but will be available to chat on the 20th after 4:00pm Sydney time. when the hell is that? I suspect that's 4:00AM tomorrow here. I'd better check.

It was 3:40 this morning, I didn’t get back to sleep, and I (stupidly) didn’t get up till 5:20. If I crash half way through the day, so be it.
Yesterday morning, by the time I left for writing, I had a plan.
I will have the talk with Hubby, after Christmas, but before S goes back to university. I will move into the spare room. I will give Hubby the choice of whether we continue to have meals together – which mainly only happens at weekends these days anyway – or separately. Maybe he will retreat into the attic again, in a way that would suit me, but I will let him decide. If I get a job before then, I can start looking for a place to live. If I don’t, well, I still have my current jobs and a reasonable cushion of savings. So, I can still look for somewhere, possibly lodgings rather than renting a place of my own. Not too far away, because this will still have to be my office for a while at least, removing everything will be a major upheaval. I can carry on job hunting, and if worse comes to worst I can fall back on the JK Rowling option – finish the bloody novel, who knows, maybe it will turn out to be a best seller?
This idea cheered me up immensely, and I went to writing with a light heart, full of my usual dazzling wit and repartee, very unlike the last couple of sessions.
Afterwards I popped in to see Mary, who lives round the corner from the study centre, although some of the sparkle had worn off by then. I told her about the interview, and the job, and how stressful it will be.
‘So you’re already talking yourself out of it?’
‘No, I’m just trying to be realistic’.
‘Well why don’t you envisage yourself getting that job and doing it and doing it well?’
I bridled at all that Noel Edmonds guff.
‘I’m not saying there’s some miraculous force, but if it changes your attitude, it can only help. It does work, you know. Sometimes. We make our own karma. Already you’re here with the “buts”’.
‘But… if I do get it it will be mega-stressful and I get stressed enough about the silly little jobs I do already’.
‘So, at the moment you’re stressed and badly paid, and you could be stressed and well paid. Which do you think you should go for?’
Fair point.
When I got home I got on with the parish magazine articles. There were a couple of emails from Yves. The clients are putting pressure on, and they’ve come up with something else. When can I have it done by?
‘I’ll be in London all day Tuesday…’
I shouldn’t have gone to Mary’s, I should have come home to work – but she would say: ‘Spending time with a friend, that’s important too’.
I keep working till 7. Maybe I shouldn’t go to pilates, maybe I should just stay here and keep working all evening. There’s the magazine too, remember, I haven’t touched that for days. Was supposed to do it at the weekend, but ended up blogging instead Just because I enjoy it doesn’t mean it’s going to do itself and I don’t have to think about fitting it in.
On the way to pilates, I think – I won’t go to London. I’ve already found out that I would be too late for the morning tour of the Royal Institution, because they’ve changed the rules for the cheap train tickets and I can’t leave before 9:40. And in the afternoon, the seminar in Westminster ends at 4, so I won’t get back to St P in time for the 4:18 and will have to wait till 7 before I can get the train home. Which means I‘d have to miss college. And it’s not as if I was going to see Himself – or anyone else I particularly care about seeing.
Cancel it, and for the sake of missing a 2 hour seminar, I will gain a whole day to get on with this work.
Sorted.

I had a terrible night last night, the worst I remember for a while, I was awake from 2:30 till gone 5. I’ve had a letter from the sleep clinic asking me to take part in trials of a new drug, and my first reaction was to say yes, I’d do it, but when I started to think about it I’m not sure. For one thing, my sleeping is nowhere near as bad as it used to be, so I’m not sure I’d make such a good subject. Would I have to stop listening to the tapes to make it more of a fair test, and what would that do to me? Also, what if there were side effects of the drugs themselves, what if they made my sleep worse, or I found that my body became used to them and at the end of the trials I had to keep taking them? I’m glad that I’ve been able to control (or at least learn to live with) my insomnia without taking drugs, I don’t really want to start now.
I’m nervous about this work for Yves, and about the interview – or, worse, about how it might be if I got the job. I realise it’s a long time since I’ve had to face up to something I really don’t want to do, or, rather, that I’m really not sure whether I can do . The spectre of failure, of finding myself out of my depth, is looming over me. I try to think of past achievements, but because they’re done, they’re done, because I’ve done them, they don’t seem very special, even if they were intimidating at the time.
I’ve said I don’t want to fall in love again. Well, I would like to have the feeling of being in love, I suppose, but I don’t want the inevitable consequences: rejection, pain, disillusionment, disappointment, frustration, humiliation… the list goes on. I’m sure I had more words than that in my head, they pushed their way in there when I was trying to sleep, when I was trying to meditate (a more realistic mantra than ‘may I be happy, may I be well…’).
Have I never had any positive experiences of love? Well, my most enduring relationship has been my marriage, and, when I think about it, most of those words apply pretty well. Other than that, every single experience of love I’ve had has been unrequited, mostly on my side, very rarely the other way round, which is also painful. Why should I want to put myself through that again, even if the opportunity arose?
I have no idea how Himself feels about me – other than that he likes having sex with me – although our meeting and first night together were the most ‘romantic’ experience of my life. Still, it’s nice to have been told how much he enjoyed making love to me. At least I’ll be able to go to my grave knowing that I wasn’t a total dead loss in the bedroom department, which I couldn’t have done otherwise.
Friendship and occasional sex (if I’m lucky) and the love of my children. I can’t hope for anything more than that.

Dark night of the soul again yesterday evening. Why does that so often happen on Saturdays? Is it the gin? Or is it that ‘everyone else’ feeling, that Saturday is the night when ‘everyone else’ is having a good time, going out and enjoying themselves, a weekly version of the New Year’s Eve ‘everyone else’ feeling? Even though I know that, logically, that is ridiculous, I’m not the only one washed up by the tide and stranded on the abandoned beach of the weekend (something not quite right in that metaphor, but it’ll do for here and now), logic is powerless when set against such feelings.
Two feelings were uppermost last night: jealousy/envy (I will conflate the two, although really they have very distinct meanings) and rejection. Why can’t I resist the temptation to compare myself with others? Temptation is too mild a word. Maybe drive, urge, imperative would be more appropriate. She is more beautiful than me, he is stronger than me. Love me, please? Please? Ignore them. I want to be the centre of your attention, of your universe, whoever you are. Push them aside and take me instead. The most primitive of demands, like a nestful of baby birds, beaks agape, demanding more and more Yes, yes, they’re my brothers and sisters, but I’ll push them out of the nest if that will give me a bigger share of you.
I see this in myself and I despise it, I loathe myself for my lack of beauty and strength and for my spiteful selfishness and I pull myself down, down into the quicksand and away from the light till I cannot see any more.
I find myself distracted by the toolbar, there are icons down here that I never noticed before, toggle buttons and list boxes, what are they for? Perhaps they relate to form design, And why am I thinking about them and not about whatever it was I was talking about before? Could it be that I’m getting too close to something too painful?
I am wary of love. I will not let myself fall in love, I can’t bear to be so vulnerable. I want to learn how to live without love, or the expectation or hope of love. I won’t be demanding, I won’t expect anything. I should be used to that, I have had thirty years of tailoring my expectations: ‘It’s just the way he is, I know he loves me really, he just can’t show it, but it’s there, I mustn’t ask for more’. I texted Himself on Friday when I found out about the interview, (I told him about the job over dinner that night), but he hasn’t replied, maybe he doesn’t have his phone switched on at the weekends, maybe he hasn’t had an opportunity, maybe he doesn’t know what to say. He’s not one for texting or emails, I’ve noticed that, but it doesn’t make it any less wonderful when I’m with him, I know how much he wants me, and I hear those excuses again in my head, it’s the way he is, I have to accept that, and I think, here we go again.
So, I will not love, I will not make myself vulnerable again, I’ll learn not to.

Two things have come up in the last couple of days. On Thursday I had an email from Yves in Brussels about the project I did some preliminary work on for him. Because I was a bit late doing it, and I hadn’t heard anything back from him, I thought it wasn’t good enough and he was disappointed with it. I knew there was supposed to be some follow up, but I wasn’t sure if he was going to ask me to do it and I was wondering whether I would get paid for what I did do and how to negotiate it with him.
Anyway, I got an email on Thursday asking me to carry on, the next stage being to call the people involved with a short list of the projects I identified through my initial web search. When I say ‘call’, I’m talking about organisations in the US, Canada and Australia as well as UK.
I sat and looked at the email on Thursday morning and thought: ‘This is going to be very stressful for me, I hate talking to people on the phone, doing phone interviews is going to be a bit of a nightmare, and I have so much else on’ – he was asking for it to be done by the end of the month. And what about the cost of the phone calls? Well, I tried out the headset I bought a month ago and got that working, then checked out what the costs would be to do it via Skype – some of them might have Skype, in which case it would be free, but for the ones who don’t I would need to call from Skype to their landline. But that way it would be separate from our phone bill, and I wouldn’t have to wait for the quarterly phone bill to come through to work out what the costs were. So, I thought, I should do this, and then include it in my invoice. L turned up while I was still thinking about this, and I talked to her about it. I decided I would email him and say, I’d be happy to do the work, but I’m very busy, and I don’t want to let him down, so at least I was honest, and also to ask him about the Skype. And he came back and was absolutely fine about it all and wants me to go ahead.
Then yesterday, I got an email inviting me for an interview for the Research Fellowship job I applied for at my old university. When I’d more or less given up on it, because I applied before I went to Berlin, and I hadn’t heard a dickie bird since.
So that’s something else I have to worry about. They said they would follow up references before the interview because I’d said that was OK. And Yves is one of my referees. So I’m glad I agreed to do his work.
I spent yesterday trying to get some of my other crap out of the way, sat down and made myself type up minutes, two PC meetings one after the other, pretty mind numbing. I didn’t quite finish the second set, so there’s that, my writing assignment which needs to be finished by Monday, two parish magazine articles which have to be sent in by Tuesday (and need to be checked by the councillors before I submit them), proof read my son’s project report, and do some more on the magazine. Oh, and there are quite a few action items form the PC minutes, letters to write, etc. So I need to get all that lot out of the way asap, go to London for the day on Tuesday, and get on with Yves’ work. Oh, and there’s the minutes to do for Thursday’s governors’ meeting and the agenda to do for the next one… and I just realised I didn’t circulate the agenda for the other school that should have gone out on Wednesday, I just cleared it with the Chair and the Head but then never sent it out generally. Shoot, better do that today.

The full moon is watching me through the window again.
Yesterday was the Crazy Frog’s birthday. I sent him a drink on Facebook. He’s 42 – same age as Himself (and somebody else, come to think of it!) Prime age for male mid-life crises, I wonder?
I think it’s a good sign that I’d forgotten – well, I knew it was November but I actually thought it was next week, the 19th, if I hadn’t noticed it on Facebook I wouldn’t have known. It got me thinking too that it must be about a year since the last time I saw him, in fact it was a year last Monday, but I only worked that out because I remembered being in Brussels on Remembrance Day, which was the Sunday, and he left on the Saturday, so that was the 10th.
Well, a lot has happened in that year.
I got a phone call yesterday morning from my daughter. I hadn’t seen her since she took me to the station two weeks ago, she has been in charge of the pub again because the landlord and landlady went away last weekend so she has not had much time off, this was her first day off since last Thursday, which was spent going to her boyfriend's gran's funeral. She rang and said she was coming round, then when she got here she suggested we went to the village pub for lunch, We had a long chat with her old employers and a lovely meal.
On the way back, walking up the hill, I told her about my feelings, about wanting to move out (though not about Himself). Her reaction was as I’d hoped it would be. She wasn’t surprised, she knew I was unhappy, she understood why, she agrees that I have to go. If anyone knows what he’s like to live with and has seen at close quarters what it does to me, I guess it’s her. We both found ourselves having to wipe our eyes, but we didn’t burst out and have a really good cry, it was quite weird, I suppose, we just talked about it
So now she knows and all I have to do is find a job. And somewhere to live. And… but I can’t even think about any of that.
Afterwards, I felt good and strong and positive. But then I got into a conversation later with a group of friends and was telling them about my job hunting. And we got onto – now’s a bad time to be job hunting, there are going to be a lot of people doing that, and then a general discussion about the state of the economy and the world. So my nice positive mood evaporated again as the sheer impossibility of it all hit me.
So, what happens now? I look back at my life again and I wonder how I’m going to resolve this mess. At least talking to L has reminded me that there really is something here that needs to be sorted out, it’s not just a passing fancy, an idea I’ve cooked up through spending too much time blogging, something that I will get over if I give myself time, and life will go back to normal again. Well, maybe it would, but as Joebangles pointed out to me some time ago, the way we are living isn’t ‘normal’. It’s not what I want from my life. But I have to do something soon if I’m going to change that.

I saw the full moon outside the window, pushing its light through a veil of clouds. When I finished my meditation the clouds were winning, a lozenge of light peered out from underneath them. Now it has gone, or rather, this part of the earth has pulled away from it, rolling around to face the sun.
I have got a pain in my head, at the top of the skull, just to the left of centre, as though I have hit it against something, but I don’t remember hitting it in ages. When I touch it it feels warm, warmer than elsewhere, or is that my imagination, or just because I’m touching it?
My right foot went to sleep yesterday when I was sitting at the computer, when I stood up and put my weight on it it gave way and I fell to the floor, the miracle is that although I was carrying a tea pot and a mug half-filled with tea, I didn’t drop either of them, I hardly even spilt any tea, I just put the cup down on the desk in passing and the pot on the floor when I got there. My ankle still hurts, although it will bear my weight now, so there’s nothing seriously wrong, and so does my knee. I don’t think I hit my head, though.
I haven’t heard anything back from the recruitment agency, not even acknowledgement that they got my CV. I don’t know what the chances are of them finding me something, not very high, I expect. And I didn’t hear anything about the research fellowship, so I guess that’s not going to happen. Hardly surprising, really. At least they didn’t put me through the stress of an interview before they turned me down.
So, I get up and I start again, get on with whatever it is I have to do today, no shortage of that. If I’m staying where I am, the money I get from all these jobs is more than enough for what I need, I just keep adding it to my savings. But it will never be enough to live off independently.
I had that tea bag again yesterday: ‘Happiness is taking things as they are’. Well, there’s only 15 in a packet, they come round again pretty quickly. Take things as they are. Why keep fighting against the inevitability of your circumstances? OK, so some people do that and win through, but I’m not sure I’m one of them.
Had an email form my son last night asking me to proof read the report for his final project. No pressure, he says, it doesn’t have to be handed in for two weeks. Two weeks. And I have to give him time to make any changes..
The editor of the magazine rang up last night, she is going to the Galapagos today, in fact she should have taken off by now. It has to be at the printers by 2nd December, a couple of days after she gets back. Oh and the president - the one who came up with loads of changes last time two days before the bloody thing had to go to the printers - is in Fiji, and away from email access till the 20th. So I’m pretty much on my own with it now – apart from the two proof readers – and not everything has come in yet. But I’ve done a lot of it. I thought she was going on Saturday and I had till the end of this week to sort things out with her, but never mind, it will get done.

Yesterday I went back and looked at some of my early posts from three yeas ago. It’s always a worthwhile experience when I do that, although it’s also a time-waster, I started when I came on after lunch and suddenly realised that 45 minutes had gone and I’d missed the Archers.
I read the early posts about the identification of ‘Belinda’ and ‘Melinda’, the one after I came back from Brussels for what I thought would be the last time, the sense of Melinda being put to one side, the list of things Belinda finds pleasure in: reading, gardening, cross stitch. Withdrawing into that small, domestic place.
One thing that I’d forgotten was that I was job hunting at that time. I said I’d applied for four jobs, which was a surprise, I could only remember two, and then only when I consciously thought about it. I remembered about the sense of rejection and hopelessness though, it was very vivid. The reasons why I had to be grateful for the way things had turned out, to retreat into the arms of daily life.
I thought back over the last three years. The first two, I would say, until October 2007 when I went to Cyprus, were spent in trying to reconcile myself to that life, trying to draw from it as much happiness as I could, trying to shut out the part of myself for whom it wasn’t enough. That sense, not of acceptance, but of resignation.
It was going to Cyprus, really, that reawoke Melinda, although she had pushed her way to the surface a few times over the eighteen months/two years in between, never disappearing completely. And now? Now she seems to have taken over completely.
I feel very detached from Belinda’s pleasures: working in the garden, curling up in front of the fire with a good book or cross stitch, etc etc. I’ve no doubt I could find pleasure in them again if I tried, but they don’t compare with strolling through the Latin Quarter, sipping champagne on the Eurostar, or illicit love-making in a darkened hotel room. (And yes, I know no one’s life is made up entirely of those things).
But the main thing that struck me about them yesterday evening, that I wanted to try and capture, was that they were things I’d done on my own, I’d made them happen. OK, the last one involved somebody else, but – how can I explain this? – I had found him for myself. Granted, our meeting was fluke, accident, fate, coincidence, synchronicity, whatever you want to call it, but I took an active role in making what followed happen, in exploiting that opportunity. And my trips to Paris and Brussels came from a lucky chance, but I was the one who decided to spend some time alone, to go early, and to upgrade my ticket, they were all my choices.
So I think I’m saying I have a greater sense of control, of confidence, of taking what I want from life, and of taking it on my own terms and through my own actions, not only being driven by circumstances. And of doing things on my own initiative.

Late today (comparatively), I didn’t wake up until just before the alarm. By the time I blew out the candle after meditation it was light enough to find my way across the room to the door. I remembered to switch the coffee on, then when I went to pour it I found I had forgotten to put water in it so I’ll have to wait a few more minutes before I can drink it.
The Parish Council meeting last night wasn’t too bad, it finished at 9:35, as Sarah (one of the councillors) said, it must have been a record. The Vice Chairman, Martin, wasn’t there which probably helped as he is one of the most long-winded. I haven’t got many pages of notes again, I hope I didn’t miss anything – well, I’m sure I did, but I hope it wasn’t anything important.
Haven’t got much idea what I want to say again. I went to writing yesterday morning - sad to think I’ve only got a couple of weeks to go. But maybe it’s time to bring that phase of my life to a close anyway. I started going in September 2005, just before I started blogging. That autumn was a real watershed time, the start of the European project, the start of my clerking work and the cat incident as well. After three years, I am still working my way through the consequences. Well, consequences isn’t quite the right word – or rather, it isn’t a complete description – because the consequences of what happened then are the triggers for other events and changes which are still going on. That is how life works.
Yesterday I emailed Himself and got a reply. He isn’t one for emails and texts, it’s just the way he is, I have to accept that. Probably just as well, as otherwise I would probably be thinking about him all the time, waiting for his next message, and I don’t want to be like that. I have to keep a distance, particularly in my current circumstances. I sent him an email last week about ‘Black Dogs’, the book crossing book which he asked me to give to him rather than leave at the airport as planned, and he claimed he didn’t know anything about it. Which I found quite hurtful. Maybe it’s just me who remembers silly details like that, maybe he had something else on his mind that evening He has my blog addresses, but I don’t think he ever reads them, so he doesn’t know what I say about him. But yesterday I asked what he’d done with Black Dogs, if he’d left it in the restaurant, and he said it is still in his bag, he just hasn’t had a chance to read it yet.
I sent my revised CV to the recruitment agency yesterday. One of the ladies at writing asked if I’d seen a job advert in the local Sunday free paper (I don’t know how I’d missed it), for another clerking job, to a school trust, not a board of governors, but the same sort of arrangement, except that they are offering £75 a meeting (50% more than I get), for approximately 15 meetings a year. So that would be £1125/year, not exactly a lot but a significant proportion of my current income, if I could fit it in as well. Not even enough to compensate if I dropped one of the parish councils. There are always clerking jobs going, but the number I would need to take on to earn enough to live off would squeeze my life even more than now. Better if I can get a normal job. But maybe I should apply anyway.

I forgot to switch the coffee on before I started meditation this morning. I remembered half way through, but didn’t think it was worth disturbing myself for, so I’ve put it on now and will have to go down in a few minutes to pour it out.
Snatches of song lyrics are always popping into my head, sometimes I don’t have a clue where they’re from, could be anything from the last forty years, or even longer, although to be honest they’re unlikely to be from the last ten, unless it’s from an album I’ve actually been given as a present, like the REM one I had for my birthday or the Eagles double I had for Christmas last year. The only music radio I ever listen to is Planet Rock, or very rarely 6 Music, so I don’t really know anything about what’s happening in music.
The reason for saying all that is that I have a line in my head this morning: ‘It’ll soon be here’, and although I can hear it quite clearly I have no idea at all where it’s from or who sings it or how the song goes next. I also should say that they’re not even necessarily songs that I actually like, they can be the sort of songs my parents listened to, or that were on the radio when I was a child. They just stick in my head. When I’m doing a show, learning lyrics is never a problem for me, it’s just a strange quirk in the way my memory works, although my short term memory for practical things is appalling, like remembering what I should be doing next or what I need to take with me when I leave the house or where I just put something down.
Or switch the coffee pot on. Except that things like that, that are part of a regular routine, I’m normally very good about. For example, I can’t remember the last time I forgot the coffee. And I would remember.
Anyway, I’ve poured it now. And I seem to have written quite a lot of words without saying anything at all. As usual.
Well, ‘It’ll soon be here’ is, I think, sung by a man, and probably from about 30 years ago. Other than that, I don’t have a clue. But the reason I was thinking about it, I guess, is because of the Big C, which is looming on the horizon.
Like most adults, I suppose, I have a very ambivalent attitude towards Christmas. I loathe the commercialism, and all the extra effort that goes into the shopping, preparations etc. But there’s a part of me that really wants to find some kind of peace and happiness in it, that wants it to be a joyful time. And the loneliness kicks in, the thought that ‘other people’ are looking forward to parties and celebrations, especially on New Years Eve, but that I know I won’t be going anywhere or doing anything, and that if I do it won’t really be enjoyable, because the people I’d like to be with are mostly people I’m not going to see.
This was all leading somewhere, but I’m not sure where. Just to say, I think, that I’ve been conscious of feeling lonely lately, but I’m trying to deal with it better than in the past.
And that Christmas has become another reason for procrastination – I guess it always does, a reason for putting things off – ‘wait till Christmas is out of the way’ – in the bright new year, everything will become clear.
Except for what happened 32 years ago. Which I’m sure I’ve written about elsewhere. And I don’t have time to write about now. Maybe that’s for another day.

I dreamt last night that I was trying to catch a train. I was doing my packing and a friend was going to give me a lift to the station, only it was getting late and I didn’t know what was happening and at the last minute I realised I didn’t have my coat and shoes. I have no idea where I was going or what it was all about, just a sense that it was important and that time was running out. I think that all says something about my state of mind.
But then, my state of mind is always in a state.
I did my writing homework yesterday afternoon, just enough to give me something to read out tomorrow, though it was a struggle. I have to finish a 1500 word short story for next week, this is the end of term assignment, and though I have had the plot pretty well worked out for about a month, I have had a big resistance to getting on and writing it. The first 400 or so words were written because they were some homework I did, which gave me the idea for the whole thing, and the 250 or so I wrote yesterday afternoon were the next bit. While I was cooking dinner yesterday I was running through ideas for the next bit in my head, and after dinner I made myself sit and write some more, which got me to about 1200 words altogether, although last night’s was written after a g&t and half a bottle of wine. Well, now at least I feel I should be able to finish it off and have something to hand in next week.
Three more sessions, and then that will be it. It’s strange to think of it coming to an end. It was only 20 weeks a year anyway, so it’s not as if it was every Monday, it won’t be hard to adjust to not going, but it feels like a shame that I can’t quite make it to the end. It made a difference to my confidence and attitude to writing for a while, but without that stimulus I don’t suppose I will keep up the momentum, things will go back as they were.
Maybe it’s time to let go of blogging as well, I don’t know. I will keep going till the end of the year, it is getting close now, I might as well do that at least. But I don’t know if the effort is worthwhile, it has just become a habit, and as with so many things it doesn’t seem to take me anywhere. I have written up some posts about my trip to Berlin on Melinda, but I don’t think anyone has read them, I write things which seem to me good and I feel pleased with them, but then they disappear into a black hole of indifference, and I wonder why I bother. I just typed ‘hole’ with a ‘w’ at the beginning, ‘Black whole’, I’m sure that’s significant of something.
I don’t know what to say or do about this strange relationship with writing. I thought I was ‘a writer’, but what does that mean, why just spew out these words for the sake of it if they are never going to be read or published? That has just reminded me of a conversation with the estate agent when we were selling our last house, he came to look round the house and in the study he saw my PhD certificate on the wall and said ‘What is that leading to?’ and I thought, well, it’s led to here, it hasn’t ‘led’ anywhere in that sense, and that is how I feel about my writing too, it doesn’t lead me anywhere, I just find myself living in this empty place, and I guess that is a fault in me.

I went to register with the recruitment agency yesterday afternoon, a strange and new experience. I had to fill in a form to begin with, it was embarrassing filling in all the details of my education, there wasn’t even a box for ‘higher education’, so all my degrees had to go in the box marked ‘Further education’. Apparently a subtle distinction, perhaps, but not to anyone who has ever been involved in academia. I had to explain my situation to the young woman I spoke to. Actually I warmed to her, at least I felt I could be more honest than I could with an actual prospective employer. She seemed upbeat, though probably that is her job. She has now given me an idea of how I should revise my CV. She has one job in mind for me, there were two others which have now been filled, typical, she said they had struggled to fill them but that’s life. I stressed my IT skills, I guess that is really my most saleable asset.
I came away feeling quite pleased with myself, at least I have done something, taken a positive step. Now I feel I have done my bit, it’s back to fate or luck to lend a hand. If something comes of it, fine, if it doesn’t, it doesn’t.
I’ve been quite lazy this morning. I had a late night last night, I don’t really know why. I typed up the last bit of my Berlin blog, and uploaded my photos onto Facebook. Then I had a wander and looked at other people’s photos, messed about on Facebook for a while, it is very easy to waste time. I was late getting ready for bed then dozed off on the sofa. Got to bed about 11:30, woke at 5:15 but lay in bed till gone 6, drifted through my meditation. I almost feel I could go back to sleep now, though that would not be a good idea.
One of the Parish Councillors came round yesterday to talk about the budget for next year. ‘At least it’s Friday’, he said. Hmmm, that’s OK for people who have relaxing or enjoyable weekends, I guess. I now have to have another go at my CV, do my writing assignment (still not done), do the finance report for Monday’s meeting, and make a start on the magazine.
But that’s my life, I’m not going to start moaning about it again. If I worked harder in the week, I wouldn’t have so much to do at weekends.
I want to go to sleep. It’s not often I feel like this. I didn’t have a bad night, 5 and a half hours unbroken is a good as it ever gets. I haven’t had a really bad night for ages (dangerous thing to say). So why do I feel so tired? I always feel tired, but today is worse than usual.
I guess I could go and get back into bed, I’m not dressed yet. What would Hubby think? I assume he’s still there, haven’t heard him moving yet. Oh, what does it matter what he thinks?

Himself hasn’t answered my emails or texts. Maybe twice wasn’t such a big deal, after all, maybe the second time was just enough to make him realise that the first was a one-off that wasn’t going to be repeated and not worth pursuing. Or maybe there’s a perfectly simple explanation for why he hasn’t contacted me. Maybe he has too many other things on his mind or he’s just forgotten. I don’t really know anything about the rest of his life, about what might be going on. He’s not one for emails or texts or chatting. And anyway, I mustn’t let it matter, I mustn’t start to care.
Parish Council meeting last night, I got home at 11. I got frustrated as always. I mustn’t let myself care about that either, I must detach myself from it all.
I rang up the recruitment agency yesterday, they want me to go into their office to ‘register’, I don’t really know what that means. Are they going to put me forward for this job I’ve applied for, or do they just want me on their books, do they think they can find me something else, or what? I have no idea how these things work. But I have to go in and see them at 3 this afternoon.
I went to the hairdresser’s yesterday then I went into town to get the memorial wreath for the PC. When I’d parked the car I realised I was quite close to where my friend Mary lives so I gave her a call and asked if I could drop in for coffee, which turned into a quick lunch. She left her partner about a year ago, she is happy on her own. We talked about life, she has gone through a lot of the same feelings I am having. Just because it worked out right for her doesn’t mean it would for me. I am trying to find a practical solution to all this. I also bumped into Sue, who is younger than me with children still at home, she has just changed jobs, from part time to slightly more full time, I told her I was looking but not why, she was saying how hard it is at ‘our’ age with messy and disrupted CVs to get anyone to take us seriously.
And so it is.
I still haven’t done my writing homework for this week or any more on the assignment, maybe I’ll sit down with it on Sunday and see what I can do, I can’t see myself having any time tomorrow. I am going to have to work on the magazine because the editor goes on holiday next Friday and we need to get as much as possible sorted out before she goes away. And of course I have the minutes and actions from last night and preparation for the meeting of the other PC on Monday. One of the councillors is coming round this morning to talk about setting the budget for next year, and I need to fill in an application form for a grant from the Borough Council before Monday’s meeting. I only have one week left to get my writing assignment in, but I am seriously considering just not doing it as I won’t be going back next term anyway.
I shouldn’t really have gone round to Mary’s yesterday, she said you need to get away from the stress but actually that is not the way it works, when there is so much to do, spending time and not getting things done actually makes it more stressful because there is less time to do the things that have to be done.

Running late today. I woke just before 6, lay waiting for the alarm to go off, then it was ten past. I distinctly remember setting it, but I must have messed it up somehow.
I can’t think what to say today, unusual. I’ve written to Lufthansa, seeing if I can get some compensation for the delay. And I’ve sent a claim for expenses to Alexander in Germany. Should be a Euro deposit into my bank account. I’ve never done that before, up to now we’ve always been given cash Euros for our expenses, which is a bit of a pain in the bum. I have had 500 Euros in my desk most of the summer, but I spent some of them this trip. Anyway the way the exchange rates have gone they’ve actually increased in value in pounds. I didn’t bother paying them in because I always hope I’ll go somewhere to spend them.
Funnily enough, despite my moans recently, I’m financially pretty well off at the moment. Money is rolling in regularly from all my various jobs, only a couple of hundred here and there, but more than I need. As long as I stay where I am, I’m quite comfortable in that respect.
On Tuesday, I looked at some job ads online. There were so many that I knew I could do, or could pick up reasonably easily – book keeping, data analysis, help desks – but that I didn’t have the requisite ‘two years experience in a relative area’. Look, I can write, I’m good at maths, I can find my way round a computer, I can pick up any kind of software you throw at me, I can talk to people, I can turn up on time and work for 8 hours, what more do you want from me? Tell me what you want me to do and I’ll get on with it.
I was out yesterday afternoon, and when I got back there was a phone message from the recruitment agency I sent my details to, about the copywriter’s job. It was too late to call them back then, so I’ll call this morning. Who knows?
What is it I’m trying to escape from? Is it myself? I guess that’s the challenge. If it’s myself I need to face up to, I guess I could do it here as well as anywhere else, from this place where I am. Except that I have tried for so long.
What is it that he stops me from doing? I go places and do stuff, a lot of the time, as though I were a single person. There isn’t much left in our relationship, but most of the things I would expect to get from it I have found elsewhere, even sex. Why have I become fixated on this idea of being single, alone, independent?
On the one hand, if I look at this as a relationship, it clearly doesn’t satisfy what I want. But if I look at it as a living arrangement, it’s Ok, sharing a nice house, living here rent free, sharing the space and the occasional meal, not interfering with each other too much. He makes a good house-mate/landlord.
And what about the two great elephants in the room, the unfinished novel and the unfinished research? How about if I just took advantage of financial security to focus on them?

I thought I just started typing, but when I glanced at the screen, nothing there. I wonder where it went?
What is it that I want that I’m not getting in my present situation? I’ve been puzzling over this. Why do I feel so driven to find something else? What is it that’s so lacking from my life?
There are two issues which seem to have got conflated in my head. One is the fantasy of travelling, of taking off, moving from place to place, finding another way of being. And writing about it. Meeting people, seeing places, being alone, writing, surviving, finding another way of being. The dream that has haunted me all my life, but that I will never bring into reality.
The other is more mundane, just to find a place to be on my own, but not too far away, to stay close to my daughter and friends. To be self-sufficient, in charge of my own space and time, not answerable to anybody.
What is it that stops me from having that here and now, in comfort and security, in my grade 2 listed house? I’m not happy with our relationship, it doesn’t bring me the things a marriage is supposed to bring, but is it better than nothing? He doesn’t interfere too much with my life, he doesn’t stop me from doing lots of things I want to do, he has never made any objections to me travelling or going places or doing things without him. It’s not a satisfactory relationship, so am I saying that what I want is the chance of finding a better one elsewhere? Meeting my soulmate at last? Well, I’ve said that whatever happens, I’m never going to marry again. I don’t want to tie myself to anyone. I want to be free to meet other people, to laugh and flirt and enjoy the company of other men.
So am I saying that what I really want is sex? That doesn’t seem like a very laudable aim. But I guess that’s what’s at the back of all these feelings. I would like to be able to stay with Himself in London occasionally without having to lie, to have a place where he could come and visit me and stay with me, and perhaps not only him. To play the field the way I never did when I was in my twenties.
Looked at like that, I have never been able to make this seem like a justification for walking away from all that holds me here. It would be crazy, wouldn’t it? So I stick with it, give in to the inertia, I can’t see a realistic way out. I know I will never be happy in this relationship any more, but how can I walk away when I don’t know where I’m going to? It would be idiotic, irrational. I have to make the most of life as it is, stop wanting what I can’t have. It is the wanting that makes me miserable. Just stop wanting, that is all I have to do.

Went to sign up for next term’s creative writing yesterday, and found out it was full. I’m number 4 on the waiting list. That’s life.
I haven’t done my assignment for this term yet, either, and it has to be in in a fortnight. I have an idea what I’m going to do, but I need to sit down and do it. Need to get my head in the right place. And as usual, I just can’t seem to motivate myself to do it.
She has set us homework this week as well, so I should really try and do that too. If I don’t, it will be the first time in seven terms of doing her classes that I’ll have failed.
Life is drifting away from me again, I try to grasp the threads but they are floating off somewhere and I can’t keep up. At writing yesterday, I couldn’t stop yawning. ‘You look tired’, my friend L said.
‘I’m always tired. I’ve been awake since half four.’
‘Is that hormonal?’
‘I don’t know, it’s just normal.’
‘You seem depressed, everything’s down, your voice, your posture, everything’.
‘That’s how I feel’.
I drag myself through the days. At least I got a bit more sleep last night, waking at 5:30.
I have lots of odds and ends of jobs to do, two PC meetings in the next seven days, lots of prep work to do, then by next week the copy should be coming in for the mag. The editor is going away and I am going to be stuck with doing most of it on my own.
I need to claim my expenses for the Berlin trip. I spent a lot of the Euros I had from the previous work, which is good, because this time I am going to be paid sensibly, by bank transfer, not by cash which was a pain in the bum. Who knows when I will be going to the Euro zone again? Afroditi has suggested that we have a reunion in Brussels some time, but who knows when?
I went into town after writing yesterday, to buy a memorial wreath for the PC, every year the British Legion camps out in a charity shop and sells them, the last two years they have been in the British Heart foundation on the Bus Station, but when I went yesterday it wasn’t there. When I got home I rang the lady who sells poppies door to door, she didn’t know either but gave me the number of someone else who might, I rang her and she told me, but she only knew because she’d happened to walk past the shop. So now I have to go back into town again.
I walked past Brook Street Bureau on my way back to the car, I looked at the ads in the window, very depressing. I saw one for a copywriter in St Neots, looks like the same one I applied for, though I saw it in a different agency at first. I haven’t heard anything about it, or about the research fellowship I applied for, though the closing date for that was only the 31st. So maybe, you never know.
Maybe I should forget the whole idea, stay where I am, and just write.
Oh, and I worked out my payrise yesterday. The clerks’ scale should have been increased in April, but they have been wrangling over it, they’ve come up with an interim agreement but they’re still negotiating. As I have to write my own pay cheque, I worked out yesterday what it should be, and it appears I will get a pay rise of £4.20 a month. Well, at least the back pay is £25. Should cover the penalty charge for forgetting to pay the old credit card which I never use but still has one direct debit payment of £9.98 which I suddenly remembered about in the middle of the night.

Start of another day, start of another week.
I fell asleep in front of the fire last night and woke about 10:30. Too much gin. Must have been Usky’s fault, he made them too strong.
Woke again at 4:30, stayed in bed for an hour, thinking as usual. Then I did quite a long meditation. The headphones have broken again, that is the fourth pair I’ve got through since I got this mp3 player, I don’t know what I do with them, I think it must be falling asleep with them in that causes the problems. Fortunately I can use it with the little built in speaker.
Last night I must have fallen asleep with it on and then at some point the head phones must have pulled out and it switched to speaker, because I was woken by a voice chanting ‘Om’, one of the tracks from the sleep CDs that I don’t usually play, it must have gone through the others, that is the one that wakes me, that’s happened before. Went straight back to sleep though.
Yesterday evening I got an email from Himself saying he won’t be able to meet on the 18th after all, unavoidable meeting, under any other circumstances etc etc, we will have to find another time. Ho hum. Then I read a friends-only post from a man who is in the process of splitting from his wife and trying to move out but struggling with economic reality – and this is someone who is in full time employment. Not much hope for me, then. I might as well just give up and forget the whole thing, take life as it is, stop wanting anything different, just accept the inevitable. Someone said to me lately that I am tearing myself apart. What is the alternative? I don’t know. Maybe I haven’t suffered enough, maybe I need something really dreadful to happen before I can realise how lucky I am and be grateful for the things I have got.
I keep thinking there is a key, an answer, and that it’s staring me right in the face but I can’t recognise it, I can’t grasp it, I can’t act on it. Maybe writing is the answer, but I can’t write any more, I don’t write anything worthwhile, just endless pointless blogs, day after day, more and more garbage spilling out of me, this is where it all goes, take it away I am just spewing it out to get it out of my head but more and more comes to take its place.
Writing class today, for the first time in a fortnight, it was half term last week, but half term was late and there are only four classes left. Should I sign up for next term? I haven’t done that yet. Maybe I should, if I get a job before then I will be able to afford the £50 I will waste if I can’t go. But maybe it’s full already, I haven’t checked. I’ll do that this morning.
Now I am going to write my report on ‘Black dogs’ for the book crossing website, http://www.bookcrossing.com/ the number is 348 5324913, if you want to check it out.

I woke at 5:30, why did I lie in bed in the warm thinking until ten to 6, instead of getting up? And since then, I took longer than usual over feeding the cats, sat over my glass of water, went to start meditation and found that the mp3 player needed recharging, looked for the CD thinking I could just play that, couldn’t find it, went and got the charger, plugged it in…
While I meditated I was still caught up in thoughts and memories, sifting and sorting them, rearranging them, repeating them over and over, the words in my head, like a constantly rotating message passing over the screen of my mind.
Once again I did the meditation of loving kindness, taking the time, trying to do it properly, though I spent longer than I should on myself and missed out the neutral person. But words like ‘properly’ and ‘should’ do not apply, you do what you need to do, no one will judge you for it. I chose my daughter as the ‘good friend’, and hubby as the ‘difficult person’, wishing him well, wishing him happiness, may he be free from suffering, may he make progress.
I remember the first time I ever did the loving kindness meditation, the revelation when I realised that it wasn’t about being Pollyanna and telling yourself that everything is wonderful and you have to look on the bright side, but accepting the shitness of life without judgement, accepting yourself without judgement, you don’t have to be a ‘good’ person, you don’t have to deserve this love, just feel it. I think I have come quite a long way since then, almost four years ago now. I think I am not so hard on myself as I used to be.
If I could spend the time and energy which I spend on thinking through my life and my feelings on work or writing, I could achieve so much. Instead I am always here in my head.
I wrote up some of my notes from Berlin yesterday. When I say ‘notes’, it sounds like something unformed which has to be shaped, but actually those kind of notes form themselves in my head and very little editing is needed, they just have to be captured and written down, and then later transcribed onto the blog.
These morning thoughts, however, are as they come out, there may be a little preforming in my head beforehand, but usually I just sit down here and write them. Which is why they are so fuzzy and unfocussed and repetitive.
I was thinking about this when I was picking litter yesterday morning. Two classic items of advice for writers are to write every day, and to free write, let it all come out without editing. And I do both of those things, but I don’t know whether it gets me any further forward in terms of being able to write what I want to/need to write. Or maybe the stuff I post here and on Melinda IS what I need to write, who knows? Except that it doesn’t get me any further forward with finishing my novel, making a living, even doing the assignment for my course, which has to be done in the next fortnight.
I haven’t signed up for yet term yet. Maybe there won’t be any places left. Maybe I’ll have a job by then.
Stranger things have happened.

In amongst the mountain of mail and emails waiting for me when I got back yesterday was an email from a guy in the village about dog turds, with attached photos including a ruler to show the size of the turds, and details of the legal stuff about dog fouling, though I have looked into this before and it is very difficult to enforce because you actually have to observe somebody letting their dog pooh and then failing to pick it up.
I know dog fouling is nasty and upsets a lot of people, but I looked at this and thought do I need this? Is this what my life revolves around? Well, yes it is what my life revolves around, that and stuff like it.
The meeting in Berlin went OK, they have told me exactly what they want me to do, it’s not as much as I though or as high powered or interesting as I thought and it’s clear there isn’t going to be any more work from that quarter. Is that my fault? Have I let them down, disappointed them, not been dynamic and proactive enough? Am I just not good enough?
I look around me at the four walls and I can’t see an exit door anywhere.
Here I am and it’s the community litter pick today so I will be out with my orange gloves and litter grabbers and when I get back I’d better sort out all that mail and there is other stuff I need tog t done before Monday.
Maybe this is all I’m capable of, maybe this is all I deserve, I should just shut up and stop moaning
I am so, so sick of looking for the bright side and never finding it.
I am so, so sick of being me I just wish I was someone else, someone who is capable of finding happiness and hanging on to it. I go away and it seems like, yes, it’s obvious what I must do but I come back and look again and think, well, what I have to do is I have to come up with an answer for this guy about his dog turds, and I have to do the litter pick and sort out the mail and all that shit and I have to get it done today and tomorrow because I’ve been away. And I don’t even make enough from it to live on and I don’t know what I can do about anything it’s all just a mess.
Nothing adds up in my life, nothing makes sense. I can’t see any way of sorting it all out. I argue myself into a corner and I am trapped.
I woke up at 5:25, I know I should have got up by I stayed there till 6:15 which was really stupid because all I was doing was just thinking about this shit and not getting any further forward and not helping myself at all.
I wrote loads of stuff in my notebooks when I was away, but whether it is worth the effort of typing it all in I don’t know, right now it all seems a bit pointless.