These Lives I'm (Not) Living

Sometimes I wonder if there is some way I can pursue all the 'me's that are possible.

The musician me, who spends his life composing musical scores for non-paying films, honing his saxophone technique and taking the time to make a living of it.

The journalist me, who uproots himself as necessary, chasing everything in order to climb the journalistic ladder of any number of media organisations. Reaching the end of my life world-weary, alcoholic, obese and able to produce excellent dinner table conversation.

The public relations me, who meekly ekes out an existence in a government communications job, explaining policies until cynicism and disillusionment crushes me.

The politician me, who sets out to change things for the better, to ensure that governmental policies are founded on defensible research, fact and logic instead of the best-selling news hook or the easiest side of argument. Inevitably I emerge disappointed at the wasted years, possibly to become a journalist.

The English teacher me, who deviates from one of the above paths to teach. To go back to that institution that will forever be associated with dusty childhood, irrecoverable immaturity and a simple life.

The chef me, who decides that yes, he does really like pastries and yes, he will spend his life making delicious desserts. Buttery pastry lines the way to a jolly, early grave, even if at the moment of my death I suffocate on panic.

The doctor me, who made a choice late in high school that the pursuit of medicine was a path of such pure intention and integrity, that he would pursue it in spite of the fact that the sciences were not his strongest subject.

The pragmatic me, who scoffs at the idea of any of this, and instead forms himself as an entrepreneur, establishing his own public relations business, and looking up with surprise to find that thirty years have passed by his desk whilst his head has been buried in Gantt Charts and SWOT analyses.

The environmental advocate, who actively realises that an emissions intensive lifestyle is not natural, and is something that can be opted out of, and who proceeds to change his life with a small degree of neuroticism lest any argument about the future of the planet be derailed by secret plane trips or refrigerators or air conditioning.

There are so many of me that could come to pass.

How do I know which one is the right one? How can I hope to satisfy them all? When I die, will all these selves flash past me, sighing "well, you never knew, did you...I might've made you happier"?

And the relationships and friendships and me. The ones that slipped away, exploded with a bang or never realised full potential...what could they have been, and why do I think about them? The ones I was too scared to push - they possibly are the greatest thoughts. What could have existed between us, if I'd decided to keep dancing, or ring you, or chosen to stay at the New Year's Eve party for longer? If I'd decided to through every caution away and follow my gut?

It was so easy then, just a step away, and will probably never arise so freely again. And no organisation can bring back the magical malleability of those spontaneous moments. So instead I wallow in hypotheticals, which can be easily committed to and idolised.

And so I'll sleep on it.

Sleep and wake up tomorrow to find this mood has deserted me. I can no longer keenly feel the absence of potential life experiences, but instead am dragged into the minutiae of my life.

Night.

A Keynes to Remember

So I've just enjoyed a Semester studying economies, their communication and the theories underpinning that communication.

Interesting stuff.

And through it some central figures emerged: amongst them, John Maynard Keynes, a highly influential economist who has his own branch of economic theory - Keynesian economics - named after him.

It has recently come to the attention of me and some other students that there is a startling and wholly inexplicable absence of John Maynard Keynes fan fiction on the internet.

I set out to remedy this with a tasteful foray into the indulgently adjective-rich world that is the fanfiction genre...

Government Regulated Passion

"Penny, have you got those minutes done?"

Penny's head snapped up from the paperclip she had been working into different shapes over the last hour. It had become a horse, a poodle, a pineapple, and at one stage a giraffe.

"Yes Ms Moneybanks, they're right here," she replied meekly, handing the stack of impeccably typed meeting notes to the dour woman glaring at her from the other side of the desk.

"Good girl," Ms Moneybanks said blankly, taking the papers and walking off to another office somewhere where, Penny rather suspected, they would be placed on another desk, to be sorted by another person, and placed further and further into the bureaucratic jungle until it would be impossible to find, even in the unlikely event that someone wished to read them. But these were her secretarial duties in the economic policy department, and she did them well. The blonde, blue-eyed, young and ambitious Penny was not used to feeling anxious.

But she didn't suppose there was much else she could feel, not when she'd just been told that the century's most influential economist and policy advisor John Maynard Keynes had specifically requested her secretarial assistance with his latest policy initiative.

She had barely met him, yet she remembered each moment of that first gaze with an intensity that made her blush. She had been taking the water into the meeting - that was all - but as she placed the overflowing jug down she caught his eye. He had looked at her, his moustache quivering as he continued talking to the other meeting members. "The free market is not without faults," he was saying, but his dark, intensely intelligent brown eyes were locked into hers. His words (an objection to the privatisation of social projects) faded into the background and she feared she would lose herself in his chocolate button drop eyes. Finally she tore herself away...

...Penny exhaled slowly, picked up a leaflet explaining austerity measures and began to fan her bright pink face, shocked at the power of a casual recollection. She had just begun to settle back to work (though the phantom image of Keynes floated in her mind) when the office door opened. Even without looking, she knew it would be him. 3pm exactly. She raised her head as casually as she could manage, to find with a shock that the impeccably groomed economist was standing in front of her desk.

"Miss Farthing?" he said with a smile. His voice seemed to slide over her like melted butter, the rich tones warming her from head to toe.

"Yes Mr Keynes," she replied with a smile. "But please, just call me Penny."

"Very well...if you could come along to my office now we can discuss how we're going to work together on putting together this next policy proposal."

"Very well sir," replied Penny.

"Please...call me Keynes," he said, a cheeky grin spreading across his tastefully groomed face.

His room was, as she might have expected, practical but comfortable. There were no irresponsible excesses, save for a thick red rug in the centre, and a fireplace to one side, which was crackling merrily away.

"Now," he said once they were seated opposite one another at the desk. Penny noticed that the desk was not quite large enough to seat two opposite: their legs brushed against one another underneath. Neither of them commented or made any move to adjust their seating position, silently sharing the touching of limbs. "Just a few formatting things first. I like my policy documents typed up with a 3cm margin, the title of the document and chapter at the top of each page."

"Yes sir," she said with a small nod.

"...Are you going to write this down?" asked Keynes.

"Oh...if you please sir, I just remember it all myself," said Penny with a touch of pride.

"Ah, very well then," Keynes replied, his eyes sparkling with amusement or annoyance, she couldn't tell which. "Well, so overall the policy document..."

The meeting seemed to last for only half an hour, so it was with surprise that Penny glanced across at the clock on her way out and saw it was 5 o'clock. Keynes smiled at her from his desk as she left. "Very good, Penny. I shall see you tomorrow..."

As Penny caught the train home, her head was abuzz with all the ideas Keynes had shared with her. Infrastructure investment policies and lines about definancialisation buzzed through her mind, which seemed to be zipping about with more clarity and precision than she had ever believed possible from her job.

It was an unusually warm summer, and that night Penny slept with the window open, a balmy draught flowing into her room as she tried to get to sleep. Finally a dreamful slumber took her...

She was outside the office. Raising a trembling hand, she knocked a pathetic knock. She shook her head, steeled herself, and then knocked again.

"Enter," came the response from inside the room. She grasped a gold handle and opened the door. She was instantly struck by a wave of warmth, as the fire was roaring, and Keynes stood there watching her. "Well don't just stand there, come in, Penny!" he laughed - and it was a full laugh, full of energy, vitality and vigour. His moustache twitched into a smile as she stepped across the red rug, and she felt his analytical eyes roving over her crisp blue suit, the one that Mother said made her look like 'a real fancy lass'. Finally his eyes met hers again, and she felt that same giddiness seize her body.

"Penny..." he began, his considered tone reverberating through every fibre of her being, soothing her nerves like a cooling balm.

‎"What?" she replied breathlessly as he stepped closer.
"I believe that the financial sector is an irresponsible exchange of money which is fundamentally flawed, marked by greed and irrationality: an irrationality which is at odds with the dominant neoliberal economic governing regime."
She gazed at his sensible leather shoes as he stepped closer again. She could see his crooked tie, and as he reached out with one hand and brushed away a stray lock of her curly golden tresses she felt a blush steal into her already rosy cheeks.
"Maybe..." she began, looking across at the fireplace, which crackled and radiated heat. "Maybe we're all a little irrational...sometimes..." she brushed a hand across her feverish temple.
"Maybe we are...and maybe we need governments to regulate our behaviours so that human failures don't become market failures," he said, gazing into her clear blue eyes.

"But human failures can sometimes be so difficult to stop," she countered. "Greed is just one of our failings. There are other weaknesses...other sins...."

"True, there are other sins. But the selfishness of greed is amplified when extended to the level of financial markets. Other, smaller selfish deeds can go surprisingly unnoticed, and without ramifications...." He again deliberately stared into her eyes, and she felt her face magnetically drawn to his. Their cheeks were almost touching now, and Penny felt that if they did she should combust.

His stiff, quivering moustache brushed against her as he leaned in and gently murmured "but ultimately I believe that the government has a valid role to play in correcting market failures through the careful implementation of intelligently designed regulations and restrictions" into her ear, his hot breath tingling against her burning skin....

The next day the minutes dragged by. Penny could not wait for 3pm to arrive. Her fingers itched to type, and so she began to type furiously, as words flooded her mind, pouring out through her lightning-fast fingertips like an electrified river of passion:

Oh Keynes, oh Keynes,

You wanted government regulation of the market.

Oh Keynes, oh Keynes,

Your eye has fixed itself upon my heart as target.

Oh Keynes, oh Keynes,

You believe in the introduction of government policies to ameliorate the inequitable distribution of wealth,

Oh Keynes, oh Keynes,

I replay your words, replay your words in my heart, and I flourish as a daffodil into full health.

Oh Keynes, oh Keynes,

You reject the neoliberal assertion of the free market as flawless,

Oh Keynes, oh Keynes!!

Stop my pounding heart, afore it compel me to actions most lawless!

She supposed she was no poet, but she knew that already. She consoled herself by moving to her work, typing up notes penned by Keynes's capable, dextrous, powerful hands. As she typed up notes on the stimulus of economic activity through government spending, she felt a shiver pass through her fingertips. As she engaged in the intimately sensual act of transposing the marks Keynes had put to paper with his sturdy fountain pen into a neatly typed document, she entered another plane of existence. As she continued to type she lost herself further and further in the rough etchings made with his well-inked nib, and she began to lose track of time, and so it came to pass that 3'o clock arrived after a tolerable intermission of transcription.

Penny set off straight up to the fifth level without waiting for Keynes to come and get her. As it was they met on the carpeted stairwell between levels. He was looking down, and almost continued past her, but she put out a hand and brushed it against the navy blue sleeve of his suit.

"Penny!" he exclaimed with a chuckle, a chuckle that faded and was replaced with seriousness as they engaged in what had now become a ritualistic moment of eye-gazing. The intense bond they were forging as they stared directly into the consciousness of the other would have continued for much longer were they not interrupted by the backlog of people they had blocked from going up and down the stairs (such was their absorption in their moment of eyeball-mediated intimacy).

As he shut the door behind him, Penny noticed that the fireplace was not roaring this time: it was smouldering. The lights too, seemed dimmer than last time: the shadows were softer, and as Keynes turned to face her, the lines of fatigue which frequently creased his face were gone, and only his magnificent moustache commanded her attention.

"Capitalism is the astounding belief that the most wicked of men will do the most wicked of good of everyone," he sighed. "The very premise of economic man assumes we are selfish actors, it assumes we are rational actors. From this, a system is created where the selfishness of each individual maintains a balance." He sighed again, and she felt the weariness of a man who did not believe that the free market is the best instrument to deliver social equality.

"Well that's why it's important to continue to challenge the hegemony of the neoliberal economic doctrine, isn't it?" said Penny, striding forwards and taking his hand with a boldness she had not known before. He smiled at the recognition of his own words, spoken back to him by our bright-eyed and inquisitive heroine.

He squeezed her hand.

"Yes, Penny Farthing. That's why we must challenge the dominance of ideas...the difficulty lies not so much in developing new ideas as in escaping from old ones."

She took his other hand and took a step closer, barely daring to breathe as she whispered, "and perhaps the most pervasive of these is the idea that we are all rational actors...for I fear I am about to do something that is quite without reason of any kind..."

Keynes didn't say anything, and there was silence but for the patter of rain on the window. His brown eyes came closer towards her, and --

Out in the street, the rain began to intensify into furious torrents, and people began to run in different directions, holding newspapers over their heads to stay dry.

Whirl

How is it I find myself here,

In the suddenly quiet eye of the clutter.

Why is it I seem here alone,

Just me and a lonely mutter.

Why do I write shit poetry,

Not sure.

So I've returned to my blog, using it this time as a therapy tool, which perhaps is all I've ever used it for.

I'm just seeking to offload a feeling, only it's a feeling that doesn't weigh anything. It's a feeling that everyone else is moving, and I've ground to a halt. That I've become invisible, and everyone passes through me without looking.

It's a feeling that doesn't dissipate immediately after being articulated. It's also a feeling that doesn't make any sense: I'm not invisible. I spend entire days dealing with people, but at the end of it, I feel that none of them will follow me.

This kind of mood will inevitably be labelled 'self indulgent tripe' by a future, productive, energised Gelati Gecko. It may not survive the assessment, thrown into the deleted posts pile without a second thought.

But it's not self indulgent. It's just a mood, just a feeling, and like all of them it places me at the centre. Nothing really strange about that.

But it's not enlightening, new, inspiring, or particularly interesting. It is driftwood.

Night, strange mood.

Lord of Procrastination (for ever, and ever)

The most effective form of procrastination is that which artfully masquerades as 'preparation'.

For me, this will often take the form of:

- finding some appropriate study attire: I want a big warm jumper, thick socks: after all, I'm going to be effectively studying for quite some time!

- music: I can't just study in sterile silence! No, no, that would never do...so I'll find some..no, that's too noisy, it'll distract me, and I can't have that....yes, there we go, that's nice background...I'll turn it up a bit...there.

- should I have a cup of tea? I pretty much never drink tea but a lot of my learned friends who study lots speak of tea-filled study sessions. Yeah, better put the kettle on...

...and so much time is spent setting the scene for an idealised painting, perhaps titled "Sedulous Study 2: Autumn" or somesuch, so that I get very little done.

The worst thing is when I start to document my procrastination in blog form.

Fair Enough

It seems that there is no shortage of applications for this versatile phrase. Some of the ones I encounter commonly include:

Acquaintance with whom conversation is strictly bound by 'what're you doing, how's that going, uh huh' parameters: So, what're you doing at uni?

Me: Yeah, I'm doing Professional Communications, it's this course which is a combination of Journalism, Public Relations and Media

Acquaintance: Fair enough.

Here the acquaintance has used 'fair enough' to give their nod of approval to the direction in which I am governing my life. They accept and validate my choices the way that only someone who is entirely distant in my life can.

Customer: So how does the food...how... (trails off, looking hopefully at me, pleading with their eyes for me to explain the complex system of ordering, payment and collection that is required in order to gain life-giving sustenance)

Me: Well, all the hot food you order at the grill there, and they give you a docket, and then you go back and collect it in 10-15 minutes. With tea, coffee, milkshakes, scones, and all those things, it's just one trip through the tearoom.

Customer: Fair enough.

Here the person has offered their positive appraisal of a system which does not ask for any kind of external feedback.

Me: And so because I didn't back up the files, I had to go through and re-do it all, which took ages. So that was pretty annoying.

Person: Fair enough.

This particular brand assesses a logical chain of events which are beyond human control or influence, and attempts to give them the impotent tick of approval and semblance of control 'fair enough' can offer.

On the Loss of Teachers

It feels like I shouldn't name them like that in the title. It feels so uncovered. So I changed it.

It would have been fine to name them while they were alive. Or if not ok, something I could rationalise - but suddenly it feels like I'm trying to reanimate the dead by using their names.

But there they are.

Mr A - Year 7 History.

His classroom was a typical history classroom. His pointer of choice the 1 metre ruler, his medium: blackboard of course. He could've used whiteboard if he wanted it. But he didn't.

He loved the classic movies. Ben Hur, Cleopatra - he'd bring them up when we studied ancient societies, and tell us what was real, what was crap, how many horses were injured, how much they cost. And sometimes that would blend into a story about how he used to go to the school as a schoolboy. As if it were just a few weeks ago.

But that was near the start of his life. When he probably took those little satchel backpacks and had packed lunches and milk got delivered and teachers hit students and the school had a boarding house...but classrooms still got dusty on sunny afternoons. And he would've soaked it all up. Little Master A.

When I met him, he was in the last few years of his life, even if none of us knew it at the time.

He was quite large, and always had a cup of coffee. His voice was gravelly but very good to listen to. You'd never get bored listening to Mr A. He sometimes got angry, but that was probably because Year 7s are shits sometimes. Or maybe it was because he knew he was dying. I really don't know.

Ms M taught me what schadenfreude meant. I don't think it's because she had German heritage, that was just a coincidence. Ms M was very clever, and she always seemed very unwell too. (I wrote "but" in that sentence the first time I wrote it, and upon re-reading it seemed strange that her health should be some kind of negative qualifier to her ingelligence.)

She smoked lots, and was often away. As a Year 9 student who loved English I found it sad that she was so frequently absent and sick. I also found it sad that she didn't mark our assignments very quickly. I never got a poem I wrote about robotic train passengers back from her, and it disappointed me for a long while after.

I wanted to hear what she had to say about it. Because when she marked things (eventually), she actually commented on your work and said some things that made you realise that she was someone who really got language. And it made me sad, that she didn't mark that poem.

But you can't be sad about these things with friends, so we'd make jokes instead. She always used to say, when pressed for the return of work, "I've got your work, it's at home in a box somewhere". We would imagine impossible volumes of boxes, all stacked, teetering in her house, as she wades her way through a waist-deep pond of essays, short stories and ill-conceived acrostic poems.

I have the sudden image of my robotic passenger poem, sitting there somewhere in a mess in her house that nobody knows what to do with, marked and commented on by Mrs M, who is now dead. If that is the case, I will never know.

She retired before she died. Very shortly before. It must have been a strange moment - deciding to retire, because you know you will be dead soon. I find it hard to imagine being in that position.

And when she did retire, they ran a farewell section in the yearbook. It was the year I left, I guess. And I was struck by a moment of her, one of those marbles. It's a photo of her with a group of students from my school. She is maybe in her early thirties. She is slim, with frizzy hair, and is smiling in an open-mouthed laughing kind of way. The students around her are smiling too. The strangest part though, is that they are in casual clothes, in front of a curtain. I do not think it is at school. But I think they are her students. There's something I find very beautiful about the photo. Not just because everyone seems happy, but because the idea of the students having some kind of party (a bottle of Solo announces itself in the corner) with Ms M, and everyone there being happy, seems like a really great moment.

Ms M told the class once that when she first arrived at the school, there was a big problem with misogyny amongst the staff. She told us that it had caused her to have a nervous breakdown and triggered a bout of serious depression. I wonder if she felt that around the moments when that photo was taken. I wonder also when she started smoking.

The biography in the yearbook says that she worked at the Curriculum and Research Branch as the German Consultant for Victoria for a couple of years before becoming a teacher. I wonder when she last thought about the two years she worked there. I wonder if she thought about it before dying, and what kind of significance they played in her overall life.

I do not think she was married. I wonder whether she nearly was, and whether her life would have changed if things had worked out differently. She might be alive, teaching, or running an advertising firm in Berlin. Nobody knows.

Most of all, I feel sad that she died as an adult who should have been only a little past middle aged. I found an analysis of a text she wrote, looking at a piece of Australian gothic literature and the gender power relations described within it. It is about a lot of oppression and fear.

I think that Ms M felt this for some of her life. She told us she did. But I really hope that there were more moments like in that photo. Because that's the point of those moments. They're there, someone back however many years, and in whichever location. If you go there, you would find that moment when Ms M was happy. And so that's why I love the photo I have of her.

And why I'm determined to make sure that I have more of those moments in my life.

And finally, I reach this point.

I realise the things I knew and didn't know about Ms M. The things I will never know - what was her favourite dessert?

But I realise I knew more than I first thought, and in my way I did know Ms M. And so finally I can greet her death with more than the automatic sadness for a sickly English teacher. I can cry for her.

Marbles, Lost My

Clear glass marbles, with a dash of colour through the middle.

That's what it's like - when you see someone in one of their moments. One of the scenes with them that get frozen in your head, that you will revisit and polish in strange and pleasing colours until-

It's like a small marble, that moment - with the person at the centre, the bluish swirl that sits inside. It doesn't know it's inside a marble - everyone else can see the marble, but the swirl inside never can. It's too busy being a swirl.

Another marble.

There is a photo and a story, and I think about them both quite often. The photo is of a young New Zealand nurse who is now in her eighties. It is black and white, but her smile is so alive. It spreads across her whole face.

The story goes like this. This nurse, she is very intelligent, and she jumps over fences and laughs and makes people do spontaneous things. She is loved by everyone.

The brief story sometimes seems more vivid to me than when I see the woman in her eighties. She is quiet, and smiles at me with watery eyes. She rarely speaks. Sometimes she says "hello, darling," or "goodbye, my love". But mostly she sits and sleeps.

If I put the two marbles next to each other, it is sometimes difficult to see that the swirl in the centre is the same.

I feel like I spend lots of time collecting marbles.

They always seem so dusty when I pull them out years later, and I wonder why I keep them.

The Fashionability of Cynicism

People have had an awful lot to say about what Julia Gillard's been feeling and expressing lately.

She's been wooden, stiff, mechanical, and unfeeling we've been told. Everyone's been luxuriating in elaborate performance analogies, with images of over rehearsed lines and stale gestures flying across newspapers and the online world.

And following yesterday, when she made an emotional tribute to both victims and volunteers of the Queensland floods, she is under a new form of criticism. She has expressed emotion, and it seems that many are crying false.

And I believe that the main reason that this is happening is because of the earlier reports. Because of the assessments with all the vitriol of a film critic and the maturity of a child, claiming that a mechanical delivery represented an inability to feel. Suggestions that the Prime Minister is incapable of expressing emotion properly. All of these reports have been doing their job, hemming the public perception of Ms Gillard into a small box.

And suddenly when she breaks the box we thought we'd only just established, we are confused.

But rather than realise that human behaviour is incredibly complex, and not something which can be so easily read, predicted, and judged as the last few weeks' headlines would have us believe, people assume the opposite - this current behaviour is a charade.

And this is the problem I have with an obsession on how politicians 'perform', as everyone becomes an expert on what advice Ms Gillard is getting, and on when someone should express grief and how.

As "james from sydney" opined on a Herald Sun article: "the time for that emotion was at the time of the crisis, at that instant, at least that would have been a little bit more believeable."

It would be unthinkable to suggest to someone who has recently lost a loved one that there is a correct way to express emotion - that the crying must come first, and that mechanical shock is always wrong. Yet it feels to me that a similar standard is being applied by some people here.

I, like most Australians, have no way of knowing exactly what our Prime Minister is feeling at any given moment. Like any of us, her emotions can manifest themselves in different and sometimes uncontrollable ways - perhaps even more so, given the constant stress she is put under to behave in certain ways.

And so I do not believe any of us can really make smug, sweeping criticisms of her 'performances' without failing to consider what it is to be human.

As a teenager, I haven't been exposed to politics for long.

But I firmly believe, and will continue to believe, that a healthy political scene is one where policy will be the subject of discussion, not emotions, appearances, and performance.

Stupid, Misinformed Comment Repeated

A poorly-thought out and offensive comment made by somebody of little to no importance was amplified across news organisations today.

The comment, made by a model, irrelevant politician, or actor, is likely to inflame a social issue which is already difficult, and help spread misinformation, clouding key facts around the issue.

The inane quip, which has been pilloried in headlines around the web, was not corrected until the final two paragraphs of the story, when an expert who spends their whole life correcting the misconceptions voiced by the person maintained that "this kind of talk is damaging, and sets back the debate several years".

Ms Fitzwilliams, a social psychologist from the nearest university (located by the reporting journalist), however, suggested that "it's important for rubbish to be printed and validated, if only so that someone can quietly contradict them at the end of the article, once most people have stopped reading."

Ben Clarke, who read the story, had a different take. "Yeah, what they said was right, you know," he opined of the factually inaccurate and ill-informed comment-maker. "Everyone only jumps on them because they're talking some sense," he added, raising the owner of the widely reported words to a level of social martyrdom.

The journalist who broke the story and cobbled together some quotes congratulated themselves on finding a scoop and shedding insightful light into a complex and multi-faceted issue.

Some Stuff I Learnt Today

1. Some people are never happy, even when you get them a table on the verandah for 10 and they didn't have a booking.

2. Some people stop talking when you take their dishes. I often assume it's because they were in the process of unburdening childhood psychological scars to their fellow diners. Or maybe they think I'll judge them.

3. Some people are perfectly happy to pay quite a bit for a meal and then not eat it all.

4. Sometimes people set themselves dining challenges - like the "how great a surface area can I cover with this dip" or "I'll wedge some serviettes and rubbish into the table because that will be helpful" challenges.

5. When you put coffee and tea dregs, leftover lime spiders, lemon squash, water, and milkshakes into one bucket, it looks like this:

Yes, it was a very big bucket. And when you put your hand in that mixture to fish out solids, it will be cold.

6. Some people like to play little dining games - like "how precariously can I stack these dishes to 'help' the waiter" or "I am an adult and will drop food all over the floor" (a less arduous variant of its sister challenge).

7. Running an efficient dish cleaning system can be immensely satisfying.

8. Watching other people undo your system can be immensely unsatisfying.

9. Working in a team to clear dishes can be heart warming.

10. Some people do not want your help, but would rather be confused by themselves. Perhaps being confused in front of another person is stressful.

Dismantled

Every time I look at ads recently, I've been seeing much more than I used to.

Since working on ads and public relations projects in an organisation for the last few weeks, I've begun to understand how they work and are shaped.

And so I no longer see an ad telling me to buy something - instead I see images, drafts and drafts of them, worked on by someone in long hours between lunch breaks, of unproductive office hours spent checking emails or reading newspapers, of mental blocks. I see an ad and I see the person who worked on it, who was perhaps proud of it by the end, happy with the border colour change they made in the final copy, or the changing of "great" to "awesome" somewhere in the copy.

And it makes everything about ads feel more human and alive.

Ads written by people who wondered perhaps, during idle moments, whether they should change jobs, whether they were happy, if they would come up with something better.

And eventually they met their deadline or were satisfied, and the ad was produced. Then they went on to create more ads, and by the time they're laid in their grave there will be a trail of work left behind with their invisible mark on it.

Like empty rooms and houses once lived in, breathed in, swore in, hated in, loved in.

And in a way the ad becomes something beautiful.

Like a small piece of insignificant permanence left by someone who in 100 years will probably be forgotten. Perhaps it will be uncovered by someone studying cultural history. And they'll laugh at the misguided values or artistic direction, wonder at the person who made it, and pass over it.

But somehow this thought loses its impact once it is articulated as I've tried above. It becomes a tired thought, trotted out in many guises. Words fail it, and it disappears as either odd and incomprehensible, or commonplace and weak.

Words, words, words.

WAKE UP!!!

It has been brought to my attention very recently that this blog has been napping for an unacceptably long time, even for something which has recently returned to the taxing business of churning out the drivel dancing around in its head for other people's judgement-free enjoyment.

So if I am waking it up, then what sort of sleep has it had?

Was it a siesta, taken on a summer afternoon, as the Spanish sun beats overhead, high in the noon sky, and the village slumbers behind drawn blinds with ice packs on their eyes and glasses of water by their bed?

Or was it a coma? Doctors milling about the bed, frowning and shaking their head. 'It's not going to make it,' their stethoscopes sighed. 'It has been having respiratory problems almost every since it was born. It was never long for this world.'

Or was it just a natural, genuine sleep, the kind which comes at the end of a day?

And now as it awakes, I realise it was a nap. It sits up from its bed, not quite refreshed nor fully rested. It has a slight headache, and that dizziness that comes from short sleeps. But it was a sufficient nap. And as it rises from bed it feels stronger again. It will take on the world!

This blog is alive. And now it's awake.

But it doesn't want to fall into old habits.

Old habits of newspaper trawling, issue picking, sensibility, humourless attempts at analysis, a grab at 'serious writing'.

Not yet.

It's summer, and for the blog, as it stretches and stumbles down the stairwell to get something to snack on, that means lazy stories and narratives full of images incomprehensible to anyone outside its mind's eye. It means a complete and utter relinquishment to cognitive indulgence, without thought or care for the ride of the reader.

'And why shouldn't I enjoy a lazy summer?' thought the blog, as it stepped outside into the dreamy, hazy heat.

I've Been on Holidays?

Whilst holidays might be an inaccurate term, suggesting that this blog is something I work so hard on that a break is warranted, I'm going to go with it.

I've been on holidays.

Away from newspapers, headlines, blogs, staying-up-to-date-newsreading-online, away from feeling compelled to consume and produce content in order to pave the way for a career or future that is unshapen and blurry.

Whilst this is a great shame, not least because I've missed Christmas, one of my favourite times for writing and blogging, it does mean I'm going to try and come back with newfound energy, enthusiasm, and excitement.