How can you become as awesome as you are and still feel like a loser?

Despite my social skills normally hitting somewhere around the 'lame' to 'retarded' mark, I love interviews. You get to sit in a room and talk about how awesome you are for an hour or so. Normally you have to pay someone to provide a service like that, but with interviews it's free! And what's more, it's kind of expected you're going to big yourself up so you have free reign to really lay your awesomeness on thick. I like to pretend to be this dynamic young go-getter who drops corporate-speak into conversation as easily as Britney Spears drops babies. I'm cool, I'm calm, I'm collected. I'm the diametrically opposed version of myself in everyday life. It's like playing dress-up.

But then, THEN, I went and had an interview at a certain County Council today and all my joy at partaking in interviews has been sucked out. Maybe forever.

I arrived on the dot of 11.26. This is about 20 minutes later than I would normally turn up for an interview (I freak the fuck out if I'm not early for everything. It's called 'being a control freak' and will probably contribute to an old age plagued with heart problems... the smoking, all-round-chubbiness, and no exercise might help with that too). This is after having been blown to bits thanks to the ever-so-slightly breezy weather conditions and left with a hairstyle resembling Amy Winehouse on a bad day (relative to her). The signing in process went all quite smoothly although I started to wonder if I'd overdressed a tad as everyone else appeared to be in tee-shirts and mildly-jazzy neck scarfs and I was in my 'I look and feel like a goon but at least I'm wearing a suit' suit. I had been pre-warned in my letter that there would be a one hour exam. 'Oh snap, there's no way I won't rock the fuck out of that shit' I thought somewhat naively (and arrogantly). 'My mad exam skills will see me through anything', figuring that maybe I'd have to read through some examples of the sort of problems I might encounter in the job and then have to apply some super-badass mojo to fix it. Again, bullshitting is one of the few talents I possess that actually does come in handy once in a while (my other 'talents' of procrastinating and sitting down whilst judging people is less marketable in the current business climate). But, no. They wanted me to DO WORK. Like, actual work that I might be asked to do in the job. This is something I'm less able to cope with. Not that I'm a bad employee but I learn by asking questions and being all annoying to whoever is training me. Not by being stuck in a room on my lonesome and having to emerge 60 minutes later with a handful of graphs depicting fuck knows what and a flow chart all about the process of obtaining planning permission.

For the first five minutes I had trouble reading the words and was overwhelmed with an urge to run very far and very fast away from the building and go chain smoke on a park bench somewhere instead. I'm much more comfortable doing that than being shown up as having no right in being given an interview for a job which I obviously know I am no way near qualified for. However, I persevered and then (what felt like) ten minutes later the very lovely-and-obviously-bordering-on-having-a-mental-disorder lady that was tasked with showing me into the office popped her head round and said in a much too jolly way 'Time's Up!'.

I was about two-thirds of the way through the most impossible assignment I've ever been asked to do (to the point that I'm actually wondering if they were just trying to mind-fuck us before the interview to see how we cope under pressure... but then this is LOCAL government we're talking about and not MI5) and was this (*indicates tiny amount*) close to asking for more time but by this point I'd pretty much decided that, to paraphrase George McFly, this job was not my 'density' so figured I might as well get the treat of running through my 'seriously, I'm fucking awesome' speech in the actual interview. The only problem being of course that they now had physical proof that I am in fact a complete wastrel. 

At this point I feel I should point out that, even before all this, I probably should have been aware that the job wouldn't be a good fit for me when, well firstly, I didn't quite understand the job description one-hundred per cent. That might have been our first clue. Perhaps. But also, we were required to fill in a medical form which had the AUDACITY to ask 'Have you ever taken any drug for reasons other than medicinal?' I obviously ticked 'no' (as I'm not a complete imbecile) whilst smirking knowingly to myself (because I like to pretend I live inside a tv show at times and figured camera 4 would pick up on the irony). But COME ON! whose business is it of yours 'The Man'? I'm not a skag-hag or a crack-whore if that's what you want to know but other than that... Fuck off. Anyway, depends on what your definition of 'medicinal' is doesn't it? I won't start my soapboxing on the drug laws in this country but the idea that they even have the right to ask that makes me want to punch holes in walls. I even had to provide my average weekly intake of alcohol and tobacco. Am I going to coming into work drunk? No. Am I going to come into work hungover occasionally? Possibly. Am I going to reek of fags all day long? No. Am I giving myself a slow yet assured death due to my smoking addiction? Possibly. But, to be honest, it's got nowt to do with you (or you, or you, maybe you) so leave me alone to destroy myself if I so choose. As long as I guarantee to turn up for work and do the job your concern ends there mmmkay?

So there was all that running through the back of my mind anyway... and then I met the interviewer.

Good.
Grief.

Occasionally men around the 50 mark seem to get a bit 'familiar' with me. I have no idea why; I have Molly Ringwald hair, a nose stud, and I collect Moomin memorabilia. I have nothing in common with a white haired aging hipster (although I do really enjoy air-drumming to the first 3 minutes 24 seconds of 'Heart of the Sunrise' by Yes... but I also have generous-sized breasts and a fair amount of junk in the trunk which may have more to do with it). When I was planning on doing my masters in Guildford we were shown round a house by a man called 'Frank' who had no sense of humour, a cowboy-themed mobile ringtone, and a rather disturbing habit of staring at me incredibly intently when he spoke (even when it was Chloe asking the questions he would still direct his answers at me). Frank really really creeped me out.

The interviewer, almost immediately, reminded me of Frank.

I got up to shake his hand and we had this weird fumbly moment where our hands wouldn't quite get into the right 'handshaking' positions. I'm not entirely convinced Mr CreepyInterviewer wasn't just trying to find ways of holding my hand for longer than is comfortable.

I was then shown into a room where (thank Christ) there sat a pleasantly plump looking chap who must have been about 35. With introductions out of the way the interview FINALLY started. I was confident and relaxed and chatty (mostly because by this point I didn't care). The only moment I was thrown slightly when I caught Mr PleasantlyPlump smiling to himself as he looked upon Mr CreepyInterviewer giving me the eye (or 'sex look' to coin my latest phrase) whilst asking about my 'best attributes'. But I did manage to make them both laugh a bit (Creepy more than Plumpy admittedly) and think I made a good impression overall. But no, I don't know what SQL or GBT, or whatever bizarre acronyms they were asking me about actually mean. Yes, I did start to drift off when Mr Creepy was telling me more about the role (God damn my unable-to-concentrate-even-for-a-second-on-shit-that-I-have-no-practical-interest-in brain). These are probably more important in whether I will be considered for the role than whether Mr Creepy thinks I have a nice rack and Mr Plumpy finds me mildly amusing when I'm being all self-deprecating about my obsessive list-making tendencies. And thus endeth the interview. Although first I had to endure the most uncomfortable five seconds of my entire life and ride down in a lift with Mr Creepy:
'Shall we take the lift?'
['NO NO FOR THE LOVE OF GOD NO' ] 'I'm happy taking the stairs!' ['Forced cheerfulness makes me puke when other people do it Mr Creepy, don't make me be someone I hate']
'Oh, I'm feeling lazy today, let's get the lift'
['IT'S THREE FLIGHTS YOU POTENTIAL DATE RAPIST'] 'Ok!'

Needless to say, I emerged unharmed. Thankfully. (Although awkward social experiences do affect me more than most so we have yet to see if there has been any lasting psychological damage inflicted).

However, the best thing about it all? The fact that I was getting interview experience, or that I managed to overcome my very real and irresistible urge to run as fast as I could and stuck it out, or I didn't get raped? No. The best thing was that as I got out of the building my first thought was 'That'll make a really good blog post'. God, I'm cool.

Don't need no credit card to ride this train. Because we accept debit cards or cash too.

I used to have great swirling swathes of time . I could wrap myself up in it like a great big duvet and have enough spare to make a three piece suit. But when you have an overabundance of something you neglect to give it the respect it deserves; you spend hours looking at facebook profiles of people you don't really give a shit about, or follow myspace conversations for no other good reason than the fact it's nice to read about other people having lives when you seem to have 'misplaced' yours, or you lie around for days in your own filth watching hammy sci-fi shows you were obsessed with in your teens just to get to that one episode that made you cry so much you actually had an asthma attack and you kind of want to see if you're still that emotional these days (conclusion: no... but that's probably a good thing).

Then you get a full time job and all that glorious time spent saving up special memories of moments spent sitting down and lying down get swept away with such ferocity that you wonder if any of it really happened at all or if it was just a sublime dream.

Or maybe that's just me.

Still, having a job is doing me the world of good. Not 'good' as in 'I like it', 'good' as in 'I have less time to concentrate on what an awful human being I am and more time doing something productive' (like decorating CD's and DVD's I've downloaded and burned to disc, writing blogs, getting out of the house to have conversations with creatures that don't have more than two legs, etc). When you're busy you get so much more done. It's nice. It's nice except for the fact that you find yourself waking up on a Monday morning having had approximately 5 hours sleep the night before and 3 hours the night before that. That's when you forget to rip your sudoku out of the paper and manage to stumble into work bleary-eyed and spaced out and five minutes late. Spending the morning in a daze and unable to form words, much less sentences, is not really the best way to start a week. Especially if you work in a call centre and a lot of your 'work' involves having to do those very things. A call would come through and for the first five or six seconds every time I'd be going '...', desperately trying to think of my carefully worded spiel and coming up with nothing. When you're on a phone and no-one is talking it feels like five or six seconds of silence is the longest amount of time anyone has ever gone without saying anything, ever. The best thing about a day like that though, when you're feeling a bit 'delicate' and can't think properly (unless 'thinking properly' constitutes being daydreamy and distant... I'm not sure it does), the BESTEST best thing is to get a call from someone who threatens to come down to where you work and 'do something Lloyds will regret and I won't be held accountable for' unless you fix his (unfixable) problem there and then. Yeah, that's why the word 'awesome' was invented. To describe moments like that. But what I love to do, to top off day's like this, is to forget to switch my headlights off so that my car refuses to start when I want to go home. I fucking LOVE shit like that to happen. It's what makes life worth living really. If we're all honest.

However, if you want good stuff instead of woe (I know you don't. I don't care) it feels like my stuff is starting to come together more and more every day. This strand is meeting up with that strand and that thread is creeping ever-so-slowly towards that thread. I don't know that any of these crazy pieces of the world are going to end up molding into what I expected but that doesn't really matter at the moment. It's good they exist out there somewhere for me, even if it's all raw material right now. Yeah, alright, I'm shutting the fuck up.

Making Lists While the Sun Shine

I'm an ideas man. It's just what I do. I sit and I think, and I daydream and I scheme. I make plans and I write lists. I make lists in my head and then I write them down very neatly. Sometimes I'll underline the headings of these lists. I'll spend seven minutes looking for a ruler so I can make a straight line for a column I will label 'done' just so that when I have managed to complete the list items I can tick them off. Nothing makes me happier than getting to put a tick in that column. I would go as far as to say that the only reason I ever do anything at all, is to feel the sense of utter peace for that one moment in time when I know that I've fulfilled all of my tasks for that day. I love that feeling so much that I sometimes engineer it so that I add things to a list that I've already done just so I can tick them off.

Not only do I make to do lists for each day, I make lists for EVERYTHING. I write down what TV shows and albums and songs I need/want (delete as applicable) to download/buy (delete as applicable). When I'm feeling healthy I write down what meals I'm having for the week ahead so that I don't end up eating cheese sandwiches for lunch and pasta and sauce and cheese for tea seven days in a row (I love cheese but even for me, on the seventh day of insane cheese marathons like that, I get a little tired of it). I make lists for food shopping, clothes shopping, and odds'n'sods shopping. You get the general idea yeah? As tragic as it sounds, list-making is just an integral part of who I am.

However, last night I surprised even myself. I literally made the mother of all lists. All my list training finally came into play and I really pulled out the stops to go all in for Team Sazz (the membership of which amounts to one) and planned the next year or so of my life. It was liberating and scary and made me feel a million times better. See, since I relinquished my student status I haven't really thought about these things. I've done everything within my power to make schemes that allow me to put off thinking about these things, drinking wine and smoking weed and applying to do masters degrees. You know, the usual. Now I've been kicked into gear thanks to an evening in a beer garden in Old Portsmouth. An evening where I was stone-cold sober and the other two were drunk and I wasn't even the focus of the conversation (imagine!). What I wanted to do by the end of that evening was run away very far and very fast - not because of the company I was in you understand, more because we'd spent hours discussing what life is, what relationships mean, and what you would do if you could do anything in that moment. For reasons unclear to me, my overwhelming urge was to go get a bag of mushrooms and a bag of weed and find a hotel that screamed 'faded glamour' and stay up all night getting high.

But I didn't do that. I went home to bed and took off my make up and let the black dog onto my bed so she could curl into my legs and make those funny dream noises that dogs make all the while wondering to myself .. why didn't I run away and go and do something stupid and impetuous just for the fun of it? Why do I never take the least sensible option? You should be cultivating a drug addiction and living in some squalid squat and falling in love with traveling poets. That's the sort of thing people who live life with abandon do, that's the sort of thing the characters in the books you love do, why can't you be the sort of person that moves to Tijuana carrying nothing but a sketchpad and a hammock just for the sake of it?

Then, paradoxically, considering I had just spent an hour beating myself up for always being too cautious I found I had a heavy pain in my chest and an overwhelming sense of regret... why did you buy that ridiculous, impractical, difficult to drive car? It may look cool but you're never going to be certain of it starting in the mornings [you can't overestimate how much serenity you get from that knowledge]. I was so happy when I bought it not less than 10 hours before. Now I felt trapped by it... I have no money. I have no job. I can't afford petrol to put in a car let alone a car itself... what the fuck are you doing with yourself?

Times like these I need order and control.

This is where the lists come in.

Which is when I started thinking about the sort of life I want to live and who I want to be and how I'm going to achieve all that. And I meanreally thinking about it. Somewhere between exams finishing and moving back home I forgot all the things that I wanted to do. Well, less forgot and more ignored. It's too exhausting following your dreams. There are too many things that can go wrong. Plus, if you decide on a certain path then you feel obligated to tell people these dreams whenever they may inquire as to what it is you intend to do to stop wasting you look like a cunt. Again. (Trust me, having changed my mind approximately 17 times in the last six months about how I'm spending the next year, I know this feeling oh-so well).

Anyway. 'The List'. I'm feeling pretty confident about it. Once I've made my mind up about something I have a tendency to just get on with it (c.f: job, car, degree). It just has to be something I really really want to happen (rather than something I'm convincing myself I want to happen) and I just have to make sure I don't end up procrastinating or getting paralysed with fear that I'll never be able to get on and tick all those boxes.

I really don't hate you enough to intimately detail 'The List's' contents but I will, however, tell you this much...

• It is a full two-year plan sub-divided by:
  - ultimate aims
  - monthly goals
  - daily 'to do's'

• It requires three different A5 notebooks all of which tackle a different area of the 'Improving Sazz Plan'.
• Finally, the whole spirit of 'The List' enterprise is primarily very simple: Stop being a dick. (There's no tick box for this particular goal but that's what was motivating me at the back of my mind. 'Just, seriously, don't be such a dick to people anymore. It doesn't help anyone least of all yourself.')

However, maybe I should have put this on my daily 'to do's' as the warm rush of generosity towards humanity lasted all of one day. One day of being interested in, and interesting in front of, other people all so I could come home not despising myself... but then today we 'went live' at the call centre.

How did I react?

I became a dick. I found it physically impossible to make idle chit-chat with my new colleagues. Yesterday I was actually doing all right at it. Me! The person who has a deep seated fear of chatting rubbish with people I have nothing in common with! I spoke and I laughed and I was, you know, kind of an okay person.

Turns out I have have enough energy to do that for 7 hours, no more, no less (well, probably less). But I'm going to try 'not being a dick' again tomorrow. It feels nicer to be someone that's accepted by a group instead of the 'weird girl'. I should have learned that by now and yet I keep needing to get reminders. Such is the curse of the person who lives their life being a dick.

Protesting Airports

Apparently my new coat makes me look like an airport protester.

I say 'new', I stole it out of my brother's wardrobe (oh yeah, by the way, is it alright if I borrow your coat Kieran? Cheers) and it was bought from an army surplus store before that so 'new' it is not. 'Kind of stinky' it is.

Still though, it's perfect for this 'end-of-the-world-is-nigh' summer we've been enjoying. Long enough so I don't flash my gusset when I'm wearing mini's and bending over to pick up whatever item has fallen out of my bag this time* (I'm constantly dropping things of late, I'm not sure if it's because I'm getting clumsier or if my hands are getting slippy-ier - either way the signs for the sort of person I'm becoming ain't pointing any direction good. The worst was when I was in Marks and Spencer's the other day and managed to drop a two-pound coin down the side of the scanner. As Danny pointed out, I'm like those old people in Sainsburys who drop five pence change down the side of the till and make you spend three hours retrieving it because 'that might come in handy later'. We got it back in the end but having held up the busy lunchtime shoppers behind me for a good ten minutes I now have bad queue karma for the next six months)... back to coat... it's also got a hood which is great for those intermittent showers that keep trying (and winning) to make the world think Frizzease was never invented, and yet it's also light enough so I don't look like I've been showering at 12:36 in the afternoon when in fact I'm just drenched with sweat.

All with the added bonus that I end up looking like an airport protester (By the way, in case you didn't catch the memo, I'm bringing grunge back. We know this for certain now because more and more plaid keeps appearing in my wardrobe. Justin brought the sexy, I'm bringing the grunge. I like the keep the world in balance schee.)

However, today I couldn't find my coat. Despite being one of the tidiest people God ever created I have a habit of putting things down wherever I may (tidily of course) and then losing them at the critical moment, this meant I had to wear my 70's green carpet coat instead.

My 70's green carpet coat did NOT go with my outfit. Now my clothing mojo was thrown all out of whack. This is a turn of events that happens rarely (surprisingly) but when it does it seriously affects my ability to function in the world (as we all know I have enough trouble with this at the best of times anyway so anything that adds to my ineptness is something to be avoided at all costs). In times of yore I've been known to text Chloe because my trousers didn't go with my coat and I needed her to bring me a new pair onto campus. I have fashion OCD.

But anyway, point is, I wasn't in the best of moods as I entered the opticians (I was also fifteen minutes LATE, which is something my control freakish tendancies finds very hard to deal with, due to me desperately searching for airport protestor coat, failing, running out of the house when I realised how late I was making myself all for a dammed stinky Swampy coat, running BACK into the house when I realised I'd forgotten my passport application which was the other main reason for me summoning up enough energy to leave the house, running back out of the house already starting to work up a fairly impressive amount of sweat given that I was wearing a coat which was too heavy for the weather). Where was I? Ah yes, already the optician despises me (I've decided). Then, as she sits me down in the wacky in-and-out-of-focus-picture-of-an-air-balloon machine (WHAT DOES IT DO? WHY THE AIR BALLOON?) (Wait, I've just remembered I don't care) I ask if I'm supposed to be wearing my contacts...
'Erm.. No' [voice tone starting to play into my paranoia that she hates me and my wacky outfit]
We look at each other for a moment too long. The silence gets uncomfortable.
'Right. I have nothing to put them in to... I thought this was just a contact lens check-up'
'Well you need that and a proper eye test'
'Ok. No-one told me that on the phone. Can we do both now?'
'If you want to'
Please optician lady. Please don't ask me questions like that. I just want you to tell me what to do. Sit here. Look at this. Look up, look down. Now leave.
'Well, I guess so. If you think I should?'
'You are due to have a proper eye test'
'So that's a yes?'

We look at each other without saying anything again. I don't remember how the uncommunicative, passive, unable-to-make-a-decision duo managed to escape this conversational stalemate but we eventually did. The end result being that I had to come back in an hour for the second part of my test. But oh dear Lord. I haven't had one of those for a loooong time and I'd forgotten what they consist of...

We've already established that I can't make decisions or take control right? That's on the table.

What is the ONE thing you're supposed to be able to do in an eye test proper?

Make decisions.

'Is it better with one or with two?'
'It's... erm... one, NO! Two. Two, yes'
'Sure?'
[NO!] 'Well, they're both, I can't really tell the difference'
'Ok'
'Is it better with this or without'
[LADY I DON'T KNOW] 'With?' [Is it?? THIS IS GOING TO AFFECT YOU DIRECTLY SAZZ! CONCENTRATE. WHAT IS SHE WRITING DOWN? DID I GET THE ANSWER WRONG?]
'How about now? Better with one, or with two?'
[Oh. My. God. I have NO freaking idea but I can't keep saying it's the same or she'll think I'm nuts]
'Err... one?'
'Oh. Hmm...'
['Hmmm'? 'HMMM'? WHAT THE FUCK DOES THAT MEAN? THAT MEANS I GOT IT WRONG DOESN'T IT? Oh Jesus!]
Et cetera, et cetera, ad infinitum.

So, apparently, my eyes are worse, my prescription has changed. Has it actually changed? Or was I just getting so annoyed that I couldn't make a descion that I told her it was better with the wrong lenses and now I'm going to be straining me eyes so much that I get constant headaches and manage to convince myself that I have a brain tumour? Only time will tell.

*I'd like to point out that I don't actually exist purely within a Benny Hill sketch. The gusset I'm flashing ain't no gusset anyone wants to see.**
**Sweet Jesus, I can't believe I just wrote that. I'm sorry for making you be sick in your mouths.***
***I'm sort of not.

Living the Cliche

I'm going to be twenty-five in little over a month. Twenty-fucking-five y'all. That's... that's literally insane. I'm twenty-five and thanks to a series of hilarious misadventures over the last few months I'm 'Living The Dream (2007)*' by:

- Moving back in with my parents.
- Having no job.
- Having no car.
- Having no boyfriend.

This is it guys. I've ended up becoming the poster girl for 'how not to live your life when you leave university'.

According to the diary my sixteen year-old self kept** I was supposed to have escaped this one-horse town ages ago. I was supposed to be a 'singer' (erm... I must have written that particular life list for the two weeks I had an ear infection and couldn't hear well enough to realise singing was not a skill I was ever going to be able to rely on to provide me with an income, although I had added the caveat that if that hadn't worked out then being an educational psychologist was an acceptable runner up prize: Plan B's, reassuring the Sazz since 1998). I was supposed to have my own fabulous house which was filled with rather fabulous things (from the bits of magazines I'd cut out presumably that would include polka-dots and posters of Joel-off-of-Neighbours... sadly, looking around my room in it's current incarnation that's not a million miles from the truth - although that life-sized Joel-off-of-Neighbours cut out was a beeatch to find). I seem less bothered about the being married with kids although apparently it's only okay for the singer thing to have not worked out if I've managed to fall in love. Interesting. It's gratifying to know that even then I wasn't wholly enamored with the realities concerned with being in love, like setting up a home or whatever. I just prefer the general concept. Again, that's actually not that different to now.

To be fair I am working on at least two out of the four signifiers of loserdom and hope to have at least the job and the car sorted before I hit the big two-five. The 'not being part of the clichéd demographic of kids STILL draining their folks of money, food, and will to live'? Well, I need to sort my head out a bit first. As some of my readers may know the plan was to do a masters in Bristol. Actually the plan was to do a masters in Guildford. No, wait, the ORIGINAL plan was to be awesome. I should have just stuck with that. When you gona learn to trust those instincts Sazz? But, yeah, the masters thing, seemed like an expensive way of spending a year just to give myself a break from having to make any hard and fast decisions about the rest of my life. Call me crazy but I could probably go and become a barfly in Ibiza or something and achieve the same level of debt with just as many insights into how to get through the next few years of my existence. SO, instead, I'm going to do the sensible thing and take a step back rather than wildly push forward on a path that's taking me somewhere I don't really want to go. I mean, that path is perfectly lovely. There's trees on either side and cartoon woodland creatures who provide a nice line in witty repartee but it all comes out on an industrial estate in the middle of Slough. No-one wants to end up there. Even the poster girl for how not to live your life when you've finished university doesn't want to end up there. Especially because she forgot her jumper and it's quite chilly in winter.

Seriously though kids, giving myself space to think about the future with the added bonus of not having to eventually whore myself out to middle-aged guys that wear beige slacks and don't shower as often as they should seems like a good move.

The boyfriend bit? Hahahahahahahahahgfhdksfkdjb. Yeah. Trouble with that is, as Carlos pointed out when we were trying to figure out what the fuck I was going to be doing next year - I hate everyone and I'm rubbish at meeting new people. Now, he was saying this in the context of 'if you move in with a bunch of strangers you're going to have to make a stab at pretending to be someone nice [i.e. someone that isn't me] and converse with them occasionally for at least the first couple days of living there' but it works with explaining my single status too. See, there's not that many people in the world whose company I can stand for extended periods of time. There's even less people in the world who can stand MY company for extended periods of time. This somewhat lowers my success in the dating game. Added to this, I also have a gypsy curse on me that means I can never win at ANY games (for realz - be it a game of luck, skill, or dating... I will always inevitably lose. I don't know for sure that this is resultant of some gypsy curse but I can't think of any other explanations. Except that I'm just generally inept. At everything. I discard that option on the basis that I'd rather not make myself MORE suicidal). But anyway, as I said, boyfriend? Hahahahahahahahahgfhdksfkdjb.

In the meantime, in the absence of anything better to do downloadingWill Oldham's back catalogue and the much-adored televisual delightFist of Fun are keeping me reasonably distracted (for today at least). I have also started this online novel writing course and have received part one and two but have just realised (too late it would seem) that this is going to involve me sending off my 'novel' (if you can call it that. I'd rather you didn't else it'll start getting ideas above it's station) so that other people, PEOPLE WITH EYES, can READ it and give FEEDBACK *hyperventilates*. So I find myself here. Writing an extremely long and self-indulgent blog post (is there any other kind?) about my quarter-life crisis (which is a real phenomena apparently). This, my dear sweet friends, is what it is to be a cliché. To sum up, in a word... gah.

*© Plastictrayinc
**I think I may have discussed my enlightening-yet-disturbing bouts of nostalgia before - that would have been around the time I packed up all the shit at my folk's house, within the last week I've had the opportunity to go through all the same shit and UNpack it. That's how I roll. I think the worst of all the offending items is an art project entitled: 'The Worst Week of My Life: Summed up in Words, pictures, and lyrics' (gots to love the teenage hyperbole). If anyone ever sees this I will, literally, kill myself (and the person who's seen it) (I'll kill them first. Obviously. I'm not a mentalist). It was good in a sense as it gave me a startling reminder of why I ended up becoming an art school drop-out (oh yeah, I've been living the clichés for YEARS now baby. Keep up). It's because I ended up producing work like that, a person who produces work like that is not a person I want to be.

Happiness

Essay for my Social Psychology in my final year of university . I got a first for this.

Write a case study describing an experience you have had, witnessed, or were indirectly involved in, and analyzing that experience in the light of the knowledge acquired in this course

Happiness is something that everyone seems obsessed with. It is not a modern phenomena as poets, philosophers and writers have tackled the issue of ‘what makes us happy?’ throughout the ages. There never seems to be any definitive answer. When we look at the research there are two broad approaches used when studying the concept of happiness; the hedonic approach that views happiness as the pursuit of pleasure and the avoidance of pain, and the eudaimonic approach which views happiness as constantly striving to achieve the best of one’s self – whatever that may mean for you personally (Ryan & Deci, 2001).

Despite the wealth of research on the topic the questions that are yet to be answered satisfactorily are; why is it that happy people are considered ‘better’ than unhappy people in a lot of the literature (e.g. Diener and Lucus, 1999); and is true happiness ever really possible?

To attempt to answer these questions I will be looking at the case study of my life. I am now at a point where I believe I probably fit snugly into the scientific definition of a ‘happy person’ but I am not sure that I view myself in this way. I personally believe the most anyone can ever aim for is contentment but having accepted this fact, paradoxically, I am probably the ‘happiest’ I have ever been. I am comfortable with the way I look; with the way I interact with others; with the close relationships I have; and with where I am in life at present, as well as with my future goals and ambitions. These are all the general characteristics that are measured when looking at subjective well-being (Ryff, 1989). However, my mind set has never really been this way before – the way I am now is a relatively new phenomena for me. I will be looking at how the available literature fits with my personal experiences of how I reached this state of being. 

I was the first born of two children into two-parent household. I was always considered a very shy and quiet child and school was not something I actively enjoyed, but I was academically towards the top end of my class. When I was eight years old my father left the family home for his mistress and he has subsequently been remarried and divorced two times. As a child I would probably have told you I was happy when asked but, looking back, I do not believe myself to have been a particularly happy child. If anything I felt I did not fit into the world around me and found new experiences scary so tried to limit my exposure to new situations as much as possible.

Secondary school took me a while to settle into but once I made friends with the ‘right’ people I was regarded as funny, if a little weird and geeky by my classmates but was, crucially, accepted for who I was. At this point if asked ‘Are you happy?’ the answer would have been a resounding ‘Yes’.  When I was 13 I was forced to move schools as my mother had gotten remarried and the family had to relocate to accommodate the extra four children of my step-father. I did not get along with my step-siblings so home life became difficult to deal with. My new school was much more focused on academic results and had many more above-average students than my last school so I was now regarded more as ‘capable’ rather than ‘able’ and, once again, I felt like I did not fit in with the world around me. As a result I feel I missed out somewhat on a ‘normal’ teenage experience and did not go to parties or date any boys. I did my best to avoid any interaction with my environment at all costs. From the ages of 13 to 16 years if you had asked me ‘Are you happy?’ the answer would have been a resounding ‘No’. Yet I did not attempt to do anything to change this.     

My college years were slightly more encouraging. I found all my A-level tutors recognized my potential and offered me plenty of praise for my work which started to rebuild some of the confidence I had lost in my academic abilities. I finally started to date a few different people and subsequently embarked on the (thus far) most serious relationship of my life that lasted two years from the age of 17. At the end of my A-levels I felt a little lost at what direction my life should take next so I applied to university to do a degree in psychology as this had been my favourite lesson in college, but took a gap year first so I could save some money. During this time I embarked upon an evening class in Fine Art. My art tutor for this suggested that I had enough talent to do a degree in art. In the spirit of trying something new and doing something I was passionate about, I deferred the start of my psychology degree course in order to give art a try. Sadly, half way through the first year of the art degree I dropped out citing the fact that I was not motivated enough to succeed in the art world. However, it was mostly due to the fact that I had broken up with my, now long-distance boyfriend, and, pretty much hit ‘rock bottom’ and was the unhappiest I have ever been. I began drinking to excess three or four times a week, regularly taking drugs and having promiscuous sex. If you had asked me if I was happy at this point in my life I would have said ‘no, but at least I’m having fun’. Although I had not been planning to begin the psychology degree I had not bothered to decline the place and so two weeks before it started made the decision to give it a go with a view to becoming an Educational Psychologist.

After meeting a girl on the first day of this course that I now, only half-jokingly, refer to as my ‘emotionally co-dependent soul mate’ I came to the realisation over the first two years of my degree that, despite my upbringing not being particularly awful, I was actually quite an unhappy person. This is not something I had even really considered before, at least not in a conscious sense. By confronting this and talking extensively about all the aspects of my life with my new best friend I found I was growing in confidence in myself and my abilities. I am unsure exactly about why doing this had the effect it did but it may have been that just by talking about me and my problems to a like-minded person it meant I began to understand myself a lot better. This then had the knock-on effect of making me grow as a person and this  increased my confidence.

For my placement year I decided to get a job at a well paying I.T. firm. Although my original intention had been to try out Educational Psychology, my dwindling enthusiasm for this career path meant that I wasn’t particularly distraught that I wasn’t able to afford to take an unpaid job in this field. I decided instead to use the year to expand my other interests that I did not have time for whilst at university. I started a belly-dancing class, became an ‘appropriate adult’ volunteer for a mental health charity, and took up a creative writing class. All of this lasted almost exactly six months at which point I went in completely the opposite direction, decided I was bored with my office job so needed to pursue more exciting avenues and spent the remaining six months or so indulging in another round of partying, drinking, drug taking (including class A drugs I had sworn I would never touch), and promiscuous sex. The difference this time around was that the drinking and drugs were not being used to ‘forget’ about any unhappiness I might have been feeling. It was purely in response to a lot of the new social situations I kept finding myself in. Also, this time the sex I was having and the men I was dating were not being used as ‘confidence boosters’. I managed to learn something about myself and my behaviour from each of those men and found that, if someone mistreated or made me feel bad about myself in any way rather than ignore it, this time I was able to stand up for myself. I was forced through all this to confront a lot of the issues I had with my father. Although I have never had therapy I believe a lot of my present self-knowledge and self-belief comes from psychotherapeutic principles that I have learnt from my best friend. We subject ourselves to constant self-analysis and to all intents and purposes act almost as each others therapist.

This study presents the case of an individual who had always been seen as shy, quiet, passive, and not someone willing to engage in the world around her. Despite having had a ‘normal’ upbringing with relatively few traumatic events I was not a ‘happy’ person. Now I believe I am. The real question is; what changed and how does the changes that took place relate to what has been empirically found in research done on happiness?

Csikszentmihalyi (1999) has said that ‘happiness is not something that happens to people but something that they make happen’ (p824). Never having been a naturally happy person, I relate very strongly to that statement. My present mental state is one that I have only gained through self-reflection and self-analysis. All the changes I have made have ostensibly been internal and thus, effectively un-measurable. This is the crux of the matter where the study of happiness is concerned as most of the research, by its very nature, has to try and make happiness a quantifiable measure; when it fact most people will tell you that their mental state is not something they can reliably rate on a scale. It is clear to me and people that know me, that by becoming more outgoing, interacting with more people, and trying new things on a regular basis has meant I am now more comfortable with who I am. But it is only by being more and more comfortable with who I am that I was able to open myself up to all of these things in the first place, and I was only able to do that by analysing myself and my behaviour and therefore targeting the things that I felt needed to change.

Thus, I feel very strongly that the hedonic viewpoint is not particularly useful in the study of human happiness for reasons two fold; just pursuing the things that made me ‘happy’ did not make me happy above and beyond the time they were experienced, and all the mistakes I have made, all the things that made me unhappy in one way or another, I feel were invaluable for making me the person I am today - that is, someone I like and respect for who she is. I have no regrets for the things that I have done, only for the things I didn’t do. I feel very strongly that the only way to be content with yourself and the world you create for yourself is to follow a eudaimonic approach to happiness. This is much more flexible, and takes into account the fact that happiness and unhappiness are not at opposite ends of a spectrum. They are both vital emotions that are inexplicably linked and yet are, paradoxically, very distinct from one another.

At the start of this essay I asked why is it that happy people are considered ‘better’ than unhappy people, and is true happiness ever really possible? From examining my own life I have come to the conclusion that happy people are not quantifiably better than unhappy people. It is obviously a preferred way of being but I would class those who are ‘better’ as those who can use all the information from all their experiences –good and bad - to the best of their ability and make themselves into a self-aware and fully functioning individual; as the eudaimonic approach tends to preach. This might mean spending just as much time being sad as being happy in order to fully understand ones self. I also do not think that true happiness is possible. I think the only thing that works is to accept this and be more content with just being content. This appears to be a concept that is lost in today’s society that teaches us to always constantly be striving for something more. That is not to say that ambition to improve ones self or ones circumstances should be discouraged but the idea that happiness as a constant is an obtainable state of being is something that I think we all need to discard in order to really achieve our full potential.

Numb

Her therapist spent an awful lot of time trying to convince her that she wasn't magic.

The therapist was wrong.

Her mind was a constant whirr, looking at the people around her almost like an anthropologist would examine members of a new exotic tribe found in the Amazon. Picking up on unspoken signals between members of that tribe. Analysing what these signals meant. Interpreting them through her own cultural lenses.

This was all her mind focused on. That or planning what she was going to do for the rest of the day, the week, the year. Anything but focusing on the now. The present was as exotic to her as other people were.

She could not remember if it had always been this way or part of the new way of living she was becoming accustomed to.

The way it started was she fell in love, then the person she had fallen in love with had died. Suddenly and without warning. One day there, the next day not. One night she had been wrapped around him, the next night she had been in a bed with her best friend and had pretended to be asleep but hadn't been (she was trying to be as little nuisance as she could; aware of all the drama she had wrought on everyone's life from the 'being in love and then having him die' thing).

Time continued ticking on even though it felt liked everything should have stopped. She felt empty and numb. She felt worried because she wasn't feeling anything. The paradoxical nature of this fact made her spin around and around in her own head till she felt dizzy.

Three months after the event there was a birthday party that she was invited to. She put on make up and a dress that, now, fit her beautifully given her disinterest in the consumption of anything, including food. Later she would reflect that the best she had ever looked had been when she was the saddest she had ever been. She drove to the party so she wouldn't be forced to drink. She knew if she drank she would have to stop feeling worried about not feeling anything and start having to feel everything all at once. She wanted to remain composed. People spoke to her and she smiled and nodded and made appropriate noises back. Everyone said she looked different (but not 'better' even though she thought she looked better, not merely 'different'). The smiling and the nodding and the making appropriate noises: It made her exhausted.

'It's exhausting having to pretend and it's exhausting having a lot of feelings and you are doing both' said her therapist many months later.

She nodded in agreement and let that idea swirl around her for a while. It made a lot of sense. But she wasn't sure how to stop pretending and she wasn't sure how to let herself feel what she needed to feel.

The thoughts of analysing other people and thoughts of planning her time out were joined by new thoughts: how to hurt herself. Lying on her bed, for lying on her bed was all she could do in that moment given how exhausted she was, she knew that had she a gun in her hands at that moment she would shoot herself in her own head. She wanted the thoughts to stop. She wanted everything to stop. Nothing would stop. So she would have to stop everything herself.

Well, she would have done were she not so exhausted. She didn't have a gun but even if she did, getting up and walking and holding a gun: She was too exhausted for any of that. So instead she lay there and waited for that feeling to go away. Eventually she stood up even though the feeling had not gone away) and walked into the bit of the house where her parents were and she lay down on the sofa and she cried very quietly. When she was finished with that she started paying attention to the television that had been just a buzzing whirr in her peripheral vision up until now and laughed at a story a large lady on the television told about farting in her yoga class. She then regaled her parents with her own yoga class farting story ('it was like a whale's blowhole!') and they had all laughed. She felt the feeling go away but didn't know how that had happened as she hadn't even been trying and yet it still felt like a conscious choice: I want to be engaged with the world again.

And this was how it continued. She would be driving and thoughts of swerving her car into oncoming traffic would begin to plague her but then she would finish her car journey and there meet a child in the supermarket queue and be able to make him laugh with a silly face and the feeling of wanting to be turned into dust and sucked up off the planet would be replaced by thoughts of belonging, of engaging, of happiness.

Inch by inch she crawled to a place where she started to actually feel alive and not like one of the living dead. She felt sadness and anger and this was, in it's own way, good: it meant she was alive again. It meant she could feel the good things too. Soon she understood how not to pretend and how to feel. It was something that still required practice and, she suspected, would require practice until the day she did die properly. Mind, body, and soul die. Not just mind and soul die like before.

That's why her therapist was wrong. She was magic. She had transformed. Anyone can do it. Not everyone does. That was what made her magical.