6th November 2014

Woman’s hour

I failed to get out of bed in time to have breakfast with my flatmate today.  The-not-being-able-to-get-out-of-bed thing is a slippery slope.  I’ve definitely been getting up later the last few days.  In fairness, I was on the internet absurdly until 2 last night.  A cocktail of buzzfeeds and even lesser sites that I have little to show for.  Lesser than buzzfeed?  Jaysus. 

I almost got sucked into it again this morning… luckily I came downstairs in time for Woman’s Hour.  I cleaned the kitchen listening to Marion Keyes talking about depression.  She was very helpful.  I had previously written her off as a writer of chick lit – I maybe read Sushi For Beginners 10 years ago – she was in a mental pile marked ‘not someone with something I need to hear’.  Bad isn’t it?  She is just as complex as anyone.  I am ashamed at my arrogance for having judged her as shallow, particularly given my own vacuous feasting last night on unpalatable internet slop.  One ‘news’ article didn’t seem to know who Glenda Jackson was and bemoaned her lack of twitter.  Who gives a shit?!?

There is something peculiarly poisonous about internet on handheld devices.  It is a buffet where nothing is particularly satisfying, but it’s just stimulating enough to keep you at the trough.  There is basic enough psychology to it. 

BF Skinner, the daddy of rats in mazes, worked on conditioning.  In one set of experiments, rats in boxes would press a lever for food rewards.  If the number of presses before a reward is dispensed is predictable (always 1, always 10, always 200), then rats learn to only press the lever when they want food.  However, when the number of presses required is variable (sometimes 1, sometimes 10, sometimes 200), rats press the lever a whole lot more.  They also take longer to stop pressing the lever when rewards are over.  Rewards on the internet are similarly unpredictable – sometimes you’ll have a facebook like or an email, or if you’re cruising articles sometimes you’ll find one that is genuinely worth noting.  Most of the time you’re just pressing that lever waiting.  Maybe a declaration is in order.  I am not a fucking rat.  I am going to remind myself of this every time I reach for my phone unnecessarily, or get distracted when trying to do something worthwhile.  Fucking internet.

5th November 2014

I am still sad.   It is tiring. 

Some days you just don’t know what you’re doing with your life.  There is a fear it may be being wasted.  That you are surely not fulfilling some abstract potential.  Maybe you’re not where you should be because of some character flaw.  You are a bad person.  This shadowy concern is of course nonsense as it is completely paradoxical.  You cannot ‘fail to reach personal potential because of personal flaws’, because your personal potential is precisely limited by your flaws.  You have in fact already fulfilled your potential, completely.  Well done.  Now go back to bed and let the mould gather in unwashed mugs.  You’re welcome.

…

…

That was comforting for about 20 seconds, but once your back in bed a whole load of other questions tumble.  Chiefly, if you have indeed fulfilled your potential, if this really is the highest you can achieve, why did you think you were capable of more?  And is it so bad?  Let’s play with this.

Why did you think you were capable of more?  A handful of reasons.  You know what success looks like.  You see it all the time, both in fantasy and reality.  It doesn’t look that different to you.  You also tick a lot, maybe all of the boxes in privilege top trumps – gender, race, sexuality, class, education – so either you’re really bad at playing your hand, or there are other more invisible categories on the trump cards.

Is it so bad?  Well you’ve got your health (mostly).  You live better than most of the kings of history every time you have a hot shower.  You make your own living which is an achievement.  And there are countless people going through much more stressful situations.  Although, the misery of others is scarcely a source of comfort – “you should be happy, because somewhere, a stranger is being assaulted” don’t fly.

Yesterday you spoke to a neighbour, a mum whose 16 year old daughter had just had just had a baby.  The daughter had post natal depression and kept running away from home.  The mum was managing her social worker’s confusing bureaucracy, worrying about when to get police involved whilst also looking after the rest of her kids.  You have less to worry about than her.

Apart from the addition of a social worker and financial hardship, this situation is not dissimilar to that of a celebrity you once met.  Success as fame does not protect against all types of human difficulty.  Is it true success?  Ha.  Maybe you do not know after all what success looks like.  Maybe more of it is fantasy than you think.  Trinkets are scant insulation if you havn’t got to grips with the important stuff, whatever that is.  Whilst this may be enlightening in some ways, you still are not really closer to knowing what you’re doing with your life.  You do at least know a little more of what you don’t know.  Sweet.

4th November 2014

Sometimes we are just sad.

There is recent article on the guardian website called ’10 easy steps to happier living’.  It’s quite bouncy, nurturing and contains good advice like ‘exercise’, ‘look after others’ and ‘have goals’.  No shit.   Whilst I think all their points are sound advice and not that hard to do (you should do them), when it comes to happiness and sadness, one thing the tone of this self-help list is not making room for is the complexity of happiness and sadness.  Sometimes, we are just sad.  Really fucking sad.  There is so much sad stuff happening (poverty, broken dreams, human cruelty) it would be unnatural not to be affected by it.  But, we should be OK with that.

If you are drawn to read a list telling you ways to be happier, you are probably a little bit sad.  Whilst, I’d like to reiterate that I think it’s a positive list full of good advice, there is also a forced optimism to it that I usually associate with people trying to sell me shit.  It contributes to a culture that we should put a brave face on things, or that if we are sad there is something our life is missing.  I think just a little more nuance to it would allow those who are a sad a little more dignity.   Being able to admit that you are sad and having other people do the same might make you feel a bit less lonely and, oddly, is probably also an important step to happier living.  In fact, I might even put it at number 1. 

Step 1 to happiness is to be sad.  Really fucking sad.  Put on some sad music and look at a sad picture.  Sob until you make weird noises and the snot flows and then you can feel the sunshine and know that beside the tears on your cheeks there are tiny rainbows, you beautiful, sad freak.

The rough and tumble of twenty-something life

I recently visited my old university town.  Its coming up to 7 years since I left – it was nice, although full of a lot more children than I remember.  My girlfriend asked if I thought we could pass for students to the other students.  No.  We look like nearly-30 year olds looked to you when you were 19.  Like grown ups.

I’m sure grown ups when I was 19 had it a lot more sorted.  They had proper jobs with dull suits, they owned cars and were going giddy inflating property prices. Thanks guys.  At the end of the 90s houses only cost a fiver.  Now you can barely get a sandwich for that.  Still I’m happier now.  All this unemployment has given me time to think, to develop a sage like wisdom by 28.  You cannot put a price on that, although neither does it get you a sandwich.

I remember visiting uni a year after I left.  That time I was pretty sad.  It was like visiting an ex.  You thought it had been a mutual decision to split up, but a year later you realise you’re still in love with them.  By devastating contrast, they’ve completely moved on.  There is some new guy, a jock called Tim who thinks downing pints of sick is hilarious, wearing flip flops and tracksuit bottoms is acceptable and he uses the word ‘banter’ to thinly veil misogyny.  Tim is a dick.  Your ex seems to think this is fine though and has no idea who you are… Excuse me?

7 years is easier - you’ve met someone new too.  Someone with a career, savings, someone who has travelled.  Your uni however is still making the same mistakes. In fact uni’s problems get worse.  The recession has taken away most interesting shops in the centre, leaving surely more Sainsbury’s Locals than necessary. They’ve ‘regenerated’ the part of town that used to be cool too, opening a Costa, a Subway and now everywhere is doing deals for JaegerBombs.

Anyway.

Of course, just like meeting an ex, you’re only going to present your best bits – sure you rode a storm, but now you’re stronger than you ever were!  You’re classy too.  No JaegerBombs, you drink Martini Espressos. 

Late that evening, my sage like wisdom was unexpectedly holding court, and I was dispensing advice to these teenly undergraduates.   Their faces were so fresh and hopeful.  Maybe I had had a martini espresso too many (turns out they are just JaegerBombs for yuppies), so I couldn’t help delivering the harsh honesty.  In the first year after I finished my degree, I made 5000 cups of tea.  5000.  I worked it out once, probably whilst making tea.  I had a degree in philosophy – of course I made tea.  I didn’t just make tea though, I flyered too.  I filed.  I painted house boats.  I worked in bars.  I worked in night clubs.  I did all these things because… life gets hard… guys OK?!? (I really may have had too many martinis) But, you find a way *hiccup*, you know?  And there’s all this tax, which no one explained… And you live with people, and you cook nice dinners together… who wants another drink??... and people can actually cook now.  I had to fix a tap recently.  It’s nice, even when you find yourself sobbing over cereal thinking WHAT THE HELL AM I DOING, because people lookgfershemanOHMYGOD I LOVE THIS SONG…

And with that I got up dancing.  That was one thing I had definitely got getter at since I was at uni.  All that bar work.  No more of that ‘ironic dancing’, a decade of clubbing has made me snakehips McGhie. 

He moves like liquid silk.

He has all the moves.

He looks so great right now.

He has had too many martinis, and he slips and twists his ankle.  My ankles aren’t what they used to be.

I go from guru to crumpled uncle, decrepit and past it.  The one youth not too embarrassed to chat to me helps me up.  In my self loathing fantasy, she has a fashion-app-start up already because all kids are tech savvy business freaks, riding some social media wave that I just failed to catch.  Actually, no.  She has no idea what she wants to do, and is still wide eyed at the world that awaits her.  My girlfriends eyes are rolling however. 

Suddenly, I realise exactly how I’ve grown up.  I may still have no idea what I want, but as I limp to chair blabbing about making 2000 coffees too, in 7 years I have at least learnt a lot about what I don’t want to do.  Pow?

Rejected By Sunday Times Style

Tomorrow, I've somehow managed to get a piece in Sunday Times Style.  I know?  It's a piece about a man's perspective on whether attitudes towards courtship have changed.

This is what I first wrote, which was totally panned.  However, it was later picked up by this blog.

Nostalgia fest.  Get ready.
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Macy’s was a popular nightspot – frankly the place to be.  It was above a bowling alley every Friday on an edge of town trading estate in Nottingham.  They did foam parties and at the end of the night, you would stickily walk to your parent’s car.  Often by 9pm, the sun had not even started to go down.  We were 13 and the party was shamelessly referred to as a ‘nappy night’.

The ritual of courtship at these nights was not subtle.  On seeing someone you liked, you would tell a friend who’s job it was to see if they liked you back.  There was no discussion, instead they would immediately go over to ask the recipient of your affection “will you get off with my mate?”.  You were then inspected.  We later worked out that at this point a second friend was helpful so you could fake a conversation – otherwise you were left standing awkwardly, a mess of hair gel and lynx, as you awaited the verdict.  Like Tinder you would try and look your best, unlike Tinder you had to witness your rejection.  It builds character.

The goal of these nights was always to kiss as many people as possible.  On the drive home, we would compare notes and numbers – I think my PB was 5.  Nobody ever beat Lee Taylor’s 32.  He eventually contracted glandular fever. 

I do not recall there being a difference of approach between the genders.  Maybe girls were more selective, but certainly they were as likely to approach someone they liked, no stigma attached.  Hey – it was 1998, Geri hadn’t quit the band and ‘girl power’ was ringing loudly in our ears.

Friends just a few years older tell me that when they were at school, there were definitely more ‘traditionally’ defined gender roles to courting.  Julie who would have been 13 in 1989 tells me you were basically Madonna if a girl asked out a boy.   Raunchy.  However, she never went to a nappy night, being more a of a village hall sort of girl.  Perhaps I am just more cosmopolitan.

These days, I find people a little bit backward if they think women should wait to be chased.  I was recently performing at a speed-dating night and one of the other acts booked was an academic doing a talk on ‘The Psychology of Attraction’ (it was a science themed speed dating night).  He was awful.

After spending a long time clearing his throat, the lecturer began his talk by describing women as some sort of uncatalogued species, not yet fully understood and best approached with caution.  He certainly did not betray much field experience.  It then turned out he had not finished clearing his throat at all, and the rest of his talk to the aghast audience was almost endless phlegmy noises done unapologetically noisily down a mic, punctuated by what seemed to be tips from “The Game”.

“HARRUMPHHYAGUUAUAHSHSANANAHUH… Negging involves hurting women with back handed compliments so you can then build up their confidence e.g. “They’re nice nails, are they fake?”.”

No wonder women would stop ‘waiting to be chased’ with the creeps like this dropping clumsy insults to try and manipulate them into bed, instead of just talking to them.

My friend Polly (13 in 2001, early Britney Spears fan) tells me I am definitely wrong.  On the dating app Tinder she is definitely warey of being the first to initiate conversations as it is against the rules.   Although she does miss the fact that before you can speak to people, you’ve already ‘swiped right’ to say that you like them.  Tinder is a bit like that friend at Macy’s but only comes back with the good news.  Nevertheless, I have apparently been oblivious to this sexual etiquette, probably because I am more concerned with the ebb and flow of my own desirability, trying to look cool while I wait to see who likes me – can I afford dinner in that restaurant?  Is that person funnier?  Is this confident act working…  I am not really bothered about the rules, I just want to like someone who likes me back.