Because you’re worth it!

Do you remember a while ago I told you about the ‘Happiness Project’ they’re running at work?

http://msmuddles.blogspot.co.uk/2017/10/the-happiness-project.html

The most recent mini task is this:

Be kind to yourself

I’m sure you’ve seen this little phrase, floating around on mugs or on pastel-hued memes, in some form or other. Bit cheesy, bit wanky maybe but the idea behind it is sound. One of the ‘80s soul records my brother used to listen to would extort:

You can’t give love to no one else, until you learn to love yourself! (citation needed)

This is what we need to do, friends, in order to function well as a proper human being - love ourselves. Not easy though, is it.

I bore that in mind as I scooted around the supermarket yesterday (not literally, I have an unjust hatred towards adults on scooters). Usually the method I use to be ‘kind to myself’ is by eating copious amounts of chocolate (other sweet goods are welcome too, I’m not prejudiced) and indeed, Matchmakers were going half price so it seemed like kismet. But it led me to thinking, what other ways can you be kind to yourself? Some people; puritanical killjoys, health experts and ‘clean eaters’ would see excessive sugar consumption as an unhealthy way of looking after yourself, so what are the more esoteric, spiritual ways of feeling better?

Give yourself a break

Stop the negative self talk. Friends, I’ve had a cough and sore throat all week and am also suffering from a massive dose of existential angst. As I passed the mirror earlier it took a monumental effort to quieten my inner troll. After all, my jeans are tight and my hair is greasy and there’s only so much you can do with dry shampoo. I was about to launch into a full tirade of abuse then stopped; no, be kind to yourself. I said, inwardly and moved away from the mirror.

‘Step away from the mirror, ma'am, just put down the criticism and walk away!’

As women we’re supposed to be self-deprecating, it’s often perceived as a virtue. A friend of mine once defended right wing moron and uber troll, Katie Hopkins, by saying that Hopkins was quoted as saying ‘I know I look like a horse!’ So, in this person’s opinion, all can be forgiven because Hopkins puts herself down. She hates herself and thinks she’s ugly so she must be OK!  I reckon we’ve reached the crux of the problem here - the reason Hopkins is such a narrow-minded, heartless bully because she is so full of self-loathing. So, for goodness sake, let’s all not be like Katie Hopkins, let’s all give ourselves a massive pat on the back and if we can’t quite manage that, not slate ourselves. I’m just going to repeat the words of that ‘80s song:

You can’t give love to no one else, until you learn to love yourself! (citation needed)

Don’t expect perfection

Now that I’m a parent myself I can understand why my mum used to say that she wished that Christmas only came once every two years, because it’s bloody hard work. Organising costumes for Christmas plays*, remembering the money for the Christmas shop at school,  calls for volunteers at the Christmas bazaar, some kind of weird deal involving an orange (I’m a complete heathen), Secret Santa, cards, presents, food... (No wonder everyone gets pissed!)

*Children are often disappointed with things, it’s impossible to quite capture the strange, fairy tale image they have in their heads (or is that just my kids?). The Christmas costume that you've spent hours scouring the shops for, sewing sequins onto, washing and ironing at 3 in the morning, may never quite meet the bizarre image they have in their head of what a ‘funky’ star looks like, so you just have to rein in your ego,  train the little shits to say ‘thank you’ and teach them to sew, themselves!

So, I think we should take a collective vow not to expect the spoon-food, hazy advertiser’s concept of a perfect day and just - I don’t know, get shit-faced on Croft Original whilst enjoying Christmas dinner from a tin:

Postscript

Sometimes I look back on things I’ve posted and I think  - who am I to give advice? I’m frigging clueless. But I don’t see this as giving advice so much as - this is what I’m trying, I’ll let you know if it works...

Speaking Out

Every day a new face pops up, another name, a new allegation, or so it seems. A ghost train ride where more and more disturbing images pop out at you. And they don’t all look like malevolent sea slugs*, with some of them you think - Oh no, not you too, I liked you, (Or, I liked your work, anyway). You seemed like a nice guy (and they always seem to be guys) but how would I know, I never met you.

*I’ve just done an image search for sea slugs and they’re actually quite beautiful creatures, so I’m doing them a disservice by comparing Weinstein to one of them.

And then people say - why didn’t they come forward before? These women (and men), why didn’t they speak out years ago, when it first happened? Perhaps these people are lacking in empathy or the ability to formulate critical thought, or perhaps they’ve been duped by the patriarchy.

Why didn’t they come forward before? it’s because the perpetrators had power. Nobody will believe you, they would have said. ‘You’ll never work again’, the sea slug would have said. ‘Let’s not turn this into a witch hunt’, says the man who married his own (adopted) daughter.

Perhaps it’s because some forms of harassment have been masquerading as ‘banter’, harmless flirtation or just as something that happens, for all these years. Perhaps it’s because there’s a culture of victim blaming in the judiciary system and in the wider culture as a whole. What was s/he doing there? What did they expect to happen? What was she wearing? How much had she had to drink?

An open lie, and it’s so depressing because it feels like it’s everywhere - in politics (even on the side that you agree with), entertainment (where first it showed it’s ugly, un-glitzy face), at school and work and in the arts and sciences, seeping out from every crevice.

No escape, no safe place.

With the #Metoo thing - I applaud your bravery in speaking up. Not everyone is ready to share their stories and that’s understandable too.

I know fewer women it hasn’t happened to, than it has, to be honest.

Is there anything to be salvaged from all this? When it feels like it is everywhere.

Well, at least it is out in the open now, it’s better that people are coming forward because these crimes thrive on secrecy. It’s good that people are sharing their stories as it empowers others to do the same. And if not every villain is removed from post or taken to court and found guilty, at least some are; the wheels have been set in motion.

What the law defines as sexual harassment:
https://www.citizensadvice.org.uk/law-and-courts/discrimination/what-are-the-different-types-of-discrimination/sexual-harassment/

The ITV page of links to rape helplines:

https://www.itv.com/thismorning/rape-helplines

Comfort Zone

The landscape of my late teens is littered with unkept resolutions.

I was going to go travelling; the grape picking cliche, backpack around Europe; acquiring lots of cool friends, interesting anecdotes and, possibly, some dreadlocks along the way.  Aside from a couple of mini breaks, package holidays and (largely unsuccessful) camping trips, none of this happened.

I had resolved that I was going to go away to university, rather than live at home with my parents, and have a brilliant culture-infused, sex-drugs-music soaked, rollicking time - did this happen? Please see above.

I can’t remember all the things I’ve said I’m going to do, over the years, so I’ll just list some of them: I never learned to play an instrument, I never did the TEFL course I’d resolved to do, once I’d saved up enough money and I never ran a marathon. (Also it took me a long time and several false starts to finally quit smoking).

I’ve made my peace with this, after all, you can’t alter the past and how many of those things do I still want to do now? I can’t really drop everything and go backpacking (nor do I have any desire to, I hate roughing it) but there’s nothing stopping me from learning to play a musical instrument…

I don’t like leaving my comfort zone and when I say comfort zone, I mean zone 6!

I dislike going anywhere that requires getting more than one bus or train. (Unless I’m going on holiday). So, when I sign up to do courses and things, I usually choose places that I can get to by bus.

However, these days I am trying seize other opportunities as they come up, especially those that link into things that I’m really interested in. One on the consolations of getting older is that you can be selective about what you do; no more forcing yourself along to crappy Ann Summers parties or cheesy clubs (ones with a restrictive dress code as opposed to ones that play ironically cheesy music). But if something screams ‘possible writing/networking opportunity, I am trying to force myself to go for it.

So it was that I left my house at 6.50 on a flipping Saturday morning, to make my way to the city to attend a writing workshop, entitled Citizens of Everywhere. Said workshop had several things going for it:

1. It was being run by the editor/originator/contributor of The Good Immigrant, Nikesh Shukla.
2. It was free.
3. It was centred around something I’m passionately interested in; finding your way in the world, considering recent political shifts in Europe and the U.S.

However, I did feel pretty nervous about it.

Why?

1. I’ve said before that I feel unqualified to write about politics - would I feel totally out of my depth at the workshop? Surrounded by serious writers?
2. The location of the workshop was in a part of London I didn’t know, this may seem insignificant to a lot of people but to me it was a big deal, I have a track record for getting lost.*

So the maths indicates that there were more positives than negatives and I duly made my way to the University of Liverpool, London campus in Finsbury Square.

The competent traveller

I got my train at 7.11 am - it was pulling in as I was running down the stairs. Quick tap of the Oyster and a dramatic leap into the nearest carriage - not my usual modus operandi at all, where I try and get there early and go to the end of the platform to avoid the crowds. However, this was 7.11 am on a weekend morning, there were no crowds!

*When I couldn’t find my bus stop at Waterloo, I’m not proud to admit that I rang my husband - the ‘competent traveller’.

Maria Semple, in her latest novel Today Will be Different, talks about her theory of how one person in the relationship is always the ‘competent traveller’, the person who orders the tickets, looks up train times, makes sure that you get your train on time etc. This doesn't just refer to actual travelling, but to all practical areas of life.

I hate myself for this (a little) but, despite the fact I’m a feminist, my husband is the ‘competent traveller’ in our relationship.

My brain goes into lockdown when I try and read a map (look at google maps on my phone) this information will be immediately scrambled, it says in robot voice. Much like when a man was showing me how to load a gun, at a shooting range in America, my brain was saying - you won’t be able to understand this, so don’t even try!

I eventually found the bus stop. It was a filthy, rainy morning and everyone at the bus stop was smoking their filthy, disgusting fags (sanctimonious ex-smoker). The busses were on diversion and I worried that mine wouldn’t stop there. I was just about to ring my navigator again for advice (I’m so sorry, sisterhood) when it eventually turned up.

Plenty of time, plenty of time, I told myself.
“This bus is on diversion, please listen for further information.” The automatic announcement proclaimed.

No need to panic, I told myself.

I should really ask the bus driver if he was still stopping at Finsbury Square, I thought, and ask him where I should alight, if he wasn’t. The thing is, he was a typical central London bus driver - ie ferociously unfriendly and unapproachable, I tried to look up the diverted route on my phone. Then the announcement changed - it said the next stop - hurrah, we were back on track, however, when I googled the bus route I realised I’d actually gone way past my stop - fuck!

Google maps, rosary beads (those blue blobs that tell you where to go) more phone calls to the competent traveller. A couple of segways down wrong roads and finally, I was there, Finsbury Square! I recognised it from google maps (the function where the little yellow butter man walks the photos of the streets.)

I was fifteen minutes late but was feeling pretty fatalistic. Don’t worry, the friendly organisers told me, it hasn’t started yet - that group are going up now, go with them. I crammed myself in the lift, coat steaming and emerged into a rather pleasant suite of glass-walled seminar rooms.

We sat in a big circle, then Nikesh got us to stand up and do rock-paper-scissors ice-breakers. We moved around a lot in the workshop, which was great. In and out of different rooms and into the wide corridor, writing our contributions to written prompts on huge sheets of paper, group work on ‘found poems’ (which made me think of Dave Gorman: Modern life is Good-ish, give it a watch if you haven’t seen it) and then a bit of flash fiction, based on the concept of the ‘perfect city’ we’d created with post-it notes.

It was all good, I was glad I’d forced myself to go, glad I’d washed my hair the night before and glad I’d managed to find the place, in the end. I can see the value in forcing yourself to do things, taking different journeys, forming new neural pathways in your brain.  I no longer want to be the sort of person who always talks of doing things but never actually does them and who knows, next time I go somewhere new, maybe I’ll be able to manage it without ringing my husband!

Relax

I was going to go back to blogging about books because I’m a bit fed up of talking about myself and I’m sure you are too - blah, blah, blah, insecurity, blah, blah, blah, body issues, blah, blah, unsuccessful forays into veganism...etc.  But I’m going to expand on that by focusing on reading, amongst other things, as an aid to relaxation, instead.

Reading

So let’s talk about books first, yeah, ‘cause everybody loves books, don’t they? And if they don’t, they should do because reading is good for you, it’s a FACT:

https://www.realsimple.com/health/preventative-health/benefits-of-reading-real-books
If you can’t be bothered to click on the link - it’s a very short, snappy article, but that’s your business, and you’re already reading this so I thank you for that, I’ll paraphrase it for you: reading makes you more intelligent, empathetic and it’s very relaxing! Bosh!

I am currently reading: The Good Immigrant - Edited by Nikesh Shukla

I’ve been meaning to read this for quite some time, since the E.U referendum, in fact. Perhaps it doesn’t seem like the most gentle and calming bedtime read but I’m certainly experiencing all kinds of ‘Oh, my god - that’s me!’ points of recognition in the book, and I’m only four essays in. And there’s something very reassuring about seeing your experiences reflected in literature. Even if you don't have any experience of immigration, historical or otherwise, yourself, (What I've read so far of) The Good Immigrant is a highly entertaining and illuminating read.
P.S It's only when reading something so choc-full of diversity and representation, that you realise how lacking in diversity other things are: posters, adverts, the little picture of the journalist who has written the piece you are reading (not this piece - other pieces). The people who produced The Good Immigrant are crowdfunding to produce a periodical called The Good Journal. You can contribute here: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/thegoodjournal/the-good-journal-a-quarterly-literary-magazine?ref=email

I've just finished reading:  All Grown Up - by Jami Attenberg.

I can’t go into too much detail about this book as I read it for book club and we haven’t had the meeting yet. I have a feeling that this might be one that the others in my book club either
a) Read and hate and blame me for choosing it and hating it. Or
b) Don’t bother to read at all.

All I'll say about All Grown Up is that it’s an examination of the life of single woman in New York and that one of the reviews said it was more Fleabag than Sex and the City. To me this felt like a book about family. The main character, ANDREA, details her relationships with men, her mother and with her friends. It doesn’t pull any punches; is quite brutal in places, in it’s honesty, but it is witty and well written and it has a heart.

Moving on from books, the thing I keep meaning to go back to and, aside from the odd, impromptu, stress-busting downward-facing-dog, never quite ever doing it:

Yoga

Not only does it aid relaxation but this study claims that it helps with period pain too:

http://www.stylist.co.uk/life/yoga-can-ease-period-pain-and-pms-health-fitness-exercise-pain-relief-science
Someone give me a kick up the arse would you!

The thing I still do and which, despite my gleeful abandonment of My Fitness pal (you ain't no pal of mine!) is keeping me from becoming one of those poor folk who become so vast that the emergency services have to remove a wall in order to lift them onto a pallet and transport them to hospital:

Walking

Yes, I’ve already blogged about it:
http://msmuddles.blogspot.co.uk/2016/06/the-joy-of-walking.html

Being around animals

My brother and I used to take great pleasure in telling our pet-hating father that studies had shown that stroking a cat could bring you heart rate down and was shown to aid relaxation.

Years later, a fully grown adult, I don’t have any pets either (my partner is allergic to pet hair and I don’t want to pick up any creature’s poo - especially now my own children are out of nappies) but I do enjoy a visit to the local urban farm.

Most of these places allow you to feed and stroke some of the animals so you get some of the benefits of having a pet, without having to pick up animal faeces and put it in a bin!

Doing the crossword

Love it - thinking but not too deeply, problem solving without any consequences, a challenge without any losers. This is my favourite:

https://www.theguardian.com/crosswords/series/quick

So, it's the weekend, I hope you have a wonderfully relaxing break, find a book that you can't bear to put down, cuddle up with the cat and withstand the ravages of Storm Brian!

The Happiness Project

Yeah, yeah, I can see you sneering and curling your lip - it does sound cheesy.  The Happiness project - it’s not my title but the name of a project at work, where we get sent motivational quotes and mini ‘tasks’ to focus on each day, via email, for ten weeks. Tasks centred on living in the moment and trying not to complain, things like that. It's a work in progress...

Friends, it’s come at exactly the right time for me;  a time of post-summer doldrums, a load more responsibilities at work, new school starts for kids (all change) and a professional disappointment. (And, yes, I know that a lot of people, all over the world, have got it a lot worse, OK. Knowing it doesn't always make you feel better though, on a dreary Monday morning, does it?)

For this post I’m just going to focus on the last point - the professional disappointment.
I was going to write a piece with the rather melodramatic title of  

‘There’s more than one way to have your heart broken’!

I am prone to exaggeration, I’ll admit that, but I did feel particularly heart-sore, after this literary rejection, last week. The knock-backs are always difficult but this one felt especially bruising.

A few weeks ago I attended an 'insight day', along with 50 other writers, which had been put on by a well known publishing house. This publishing house wanted to support underrepresented writers - writers classified as BAME, LGBTQ, people with disabilities or economically disadvantaged people. To qualify for the day, you had to submit some of your work and say why you felt you met the criteria. Apparently over 1700 people applied and of those 1700 +, they chose 150 to attend one of the 3 days they were running, based on the quality of their writing.

I’d applied, not really expecting to get through, so I was surprised and delighted when I found out that I had been invited to attend one of the days. I duly booked my hotel room.

The insight day was to include a panel of authors, a panel of literary agents and, perhaps the most important part of the day,  a one to one editorial feedback session with an editor from the publishing house.

The morning of the day felt like my wedding day, the first day of university and going to sit an important exam, all rolled into one. I was numb with nerves.

What was the big deal?

1. A room full of strangers - argh! Difficult at the best of times, but when there was so much riding on the day - whoah!  
2. The aforementioned editorial one-to-one session with the editor from the publishing house. Definitely in my best interests, but what if he dismantled my writing piece by piece and I wasn't able to take the criticism? What if he hated my work and had trouble hiding it? It felt like there was an awful lot riding on this.

What a day it was - encouraging, informative, energising and really emotional! There were some inspirational speeches and some really useful advice.
However, I'd found out, a week or so before the event, that of the 150 who attended the events, 10 would be selected to join a mentoring scheme, where they would be assisted on their journey to publication. I went into the insight day with a very low expectation that I would be one of the 10 selected. I also resolved to put aside my fears and take on board all of the advice, criticism and suggested amendments, that the editor had to offer.

Do you know what? The editor loved my writing - he actually told me that! It was the first thing he said to me. I was not expecting that at all. He also said that it had made him laugh out loud. I felt elevated by his approval. Even when he suggested the improvements/amendments he felt the manuscript needed, he managed to make it sound like praise. I bathed in the glow of all this positivity. OMG - I thought, does this mean that I’ve got in the bag? Am I going to be one of the chosen few, to get onto the mentoring scheme??*

* Spoiler - I wasn’t.

So when I found out, two weeks later, that I hadn’t been selected, my first feeling was not disappointment but disbelief. But...but...the editor said...I thought. Hubris, my friends, hubris! Then, I don’t mind telling you, I cried my eyes out.

Back to the 'happiness project'. On the day that I got the bad news, the very first ‘happiness challenge of the day’, waiting for me in my inbox, was this:

Choose happiness.

For the next 24 hours, make a commitment to yourself to choose happiness. Consciously track these happiness choice points throughout the day and at each juncture, consider if your choice will make your future ‘self’ experience more or less freedom.

I could choose to view the fact that I didn’t get through to the mentoring scheme as part of this negative narrative, whereby I never quite achieve what I want. A barren landscape of missed opportunities. Or I could say that I had attended an incredibly helpful day, and that the feedback from the editor was the pinnacle of that - both valuable and encouraging! I also have a list of literary agents and their contact details, who, according to the rejection email, would 'love' to hear from me. By choosing to see it in these terms, it makes me more likely to keep trying.

It wasn’t heartbreak, just disappointment.

This is what I wrote, a few days after attending the writing event:

I felt safe, I felt included, I felt welcome!

Nothing can change that.

Incidentally, of the other people who didn't get selected for the mentoring scheme, one has gone on to be shortlisted for a prestigious short story prize, one has a publishing deal with an indie press and another has had some journalism published in a national, broadsheet newspaper.

Picking up the Pieces

So friends, it’s been a while. I hope that you’ve had a great Summer and are now infused with the enthusiasm and the keenness of a crisp Autumnal morning!

I thought that my first post after the break would be about writing but I’m actually going to talk mental health instead.

I feel compelled to revisit this topic because I’ve heard, via social media, that someone I went to school with has died. I don’t know for sure but I have a sense, reading between the lines, that she probably committed suicide. I haven’t seen this person for about 25 years, I wasn’t close to her, haven’t spoken to her, but her death has haunted me.  I feel stupidly, uselessly, that maybe I could have helped her if I’d known her better - talked to her or something. This is highly unlikely and possibly only expresses a tiny fraction of how the people closest to those who take their own lives feel.

A year ago I wrote a post about depression; it’s something that a lot of people suffer from but many people (myself included) are uncomfortable talking about. http://msmuddles.blogspot.co.uk/2016/02/the-missing-piece.html

It might sound inconsistent (to say that I’m uncomfortable discussing it) given that I blogged about it, but there is a vast difference between talking to someone in person and in writing it down. Although it can feel like a real exposure, when you blog, the immediacy of a conversation isn’t there.  You don’t get to see the reader’s reactions, and if they do respond, with a written comment, you have time to formulate your response.

I think that we worry how people will respond if we talk about internal struggles; will they tell us to pull ourselves together? A G.P said this to a friend of mine when she was suffering from depression, in her early twenties.

Do we worry that we’ll be boring or burdening the other person?  (Perhaps this is where counseling comes in)

Will people see it as a weakness and judge us for it? Might it endanger our job prospects?

If you haven’t read the original post, I wrote about suffering from a crippling bout of depression when I was sixteen, which lasted for about a year, during this time I had moments when I was suicidal.  

I just want to clarify that I’m not depressed now and haven’t been for some time. I’ve had periods of depression since that first terrifying time; once after I suffered an ectopic pregnancy, then, after the birth of my first child, but it’s never been quite as bad as that first instance, and, thankfully not lasted for as long.  

One thing I remember from all of those times though, a common theme, was that I didn’t feel comfortable admitting to the way I felt. At times (particularly the postnatal bout) I was deeply ashamed of it.

And, as I wrote in the original post, one of the hardest things about mental illness, is the acute isolation.

Because of my own experience, I tend to associate severe depression and suicide with the teenage years but the facts show that this isn’t the case at all.  It certainly wasn’t the case with the girl I went to school with who would have been in her early forties. These are the statistics from the Samaritans:

The highest suicide rate in the UK in 2014 was for men aged 45-49 at 26.5 per 100,000.

And:

The female suicide rate in the UK is at its highest since 2011.

So what can we do about this? Is there nothing we can do? Or, would it help to start a conversation, make it more acceptable to talk about mental health, make a vow never to tell a person with depression to ‘pull themselves together’?  What should society do? Subsidise long term therapy, stop telling boys that boys don’t cry, stop telling men to ‘man up’, talk about our own experiences?

I don’t know about you but when I walk into a room full of strangers, it almost always seems as if everyone else there is more confident than me - they seem be in control, be better at negotiating life and yet, statistically, this cannot be true!  It just just to show how powerful perception and viewpoint is. There are probably a lot of people out there who are suffering from a myriad of disorders and suffering in silence.

I’ve heard some people scorning the fact that people get signed off with stress nowadays; saying that their generation just ‘got on with things’ and I wonder, just how many suicides are people who were perceived to be ‘getting on with things’.  I also think about the men who came back from the First World War suffering from shell shock - mute with stress. Sometimes you can’t just ‘get on with it’ or move on without getting some help.

I stopped blogging for a while, partly because I felt that I was revealing too much about myself in the posts. I felt exposed. But perhaps, if no one talks about depression it perpetuates the notion that it’s something to be ashamed of.

So, once again here are some places to go to for help:

The Samaritans

https://www.samaritans.org/

The British association of counsellors and psychotherapists

https://www.bacp.co.uk/

A free service where you can text for help, as many people don’t like talking on the phone

https://www.dailydot.com/irl/crisis-text-line/

When I discussed the writing of this post with my partner, he said he’d listened to a podcast about suicide:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p05dlzld

In it someone likened suicide to jumping out of a burning building - the jumpers probably know that they are probably going to die, but anything is better than being burned alive.

I’ve never heard a more devastating or apt analogy - when life feels like hell - death is preferable.

I really want to end on a positive note so I'll share the fact that when I looked up the Samaritans, to find the link to their website, one of the facts on their homepage is this:

Suicide rates fall to six-year low

Take care!