Piano

We have a piano in our house. Not a tinny keyboard, not even a full heavy electric job with pedals and weightings and what have you – no an actual, proper piano which RF bought from a charity shop in second year and hence has followed her within Durham.

(I have two housemates, both of whose names begin with an ‘R’, rather inconveniently for the purposes of this blog. She will hence be called RF and he will be called RM.)

Anyhow, she has just been playing it, rather lovely-ly, and I have been listening with my door open. Listening to a live piano played musically has a wonderfully calming effect on me – particularly if it feels spontaneous – if somebody is just playing for their own pleasure. Some of my favourite moments at home-home are when, just very occasionally, my Dad sits down to play and he loses himself in the music and I creep in and curl up on a sofa at the other end of the room, and I can just focus on him and his playing and the music, and without having to say or do anything just feel a part of that.

I need that calm, I really do. I don’t know how to articulate my life at the minute, but I know that the piano helps.

Still At Home

I am ill. Not scary swine flu ill, but ill enough to feel pretty shit and not to have used the train ticket that I had booked for going up to Durham on Saturday. This sucks, although as lectures don’t start ’til Thursday and I was planning on avoiding all things Fresher-related anyway, I guess the timing could be worse.

My Dad is convinced that I have brought on the illness by anxiety, and as such the path to getting better is to leap out of bed, (wo)man up, and deal with it accordingly. I am yet trying to convince him that as much as there may possibly have been anxiety-related incidents involving crying and shaking and burying into duvets, a bug is a bug and the prospect of travelling again is even less inviting if I haven’t first got rid of it, which I can’t do by willpower alone. Grump. Parents. If he’s trying to persuade me that staying at home isn’t such a great option after all, he’s doing a bloody good job of it.

However the upside of one of the above incidents is that after yet another well-intentioned invitation to Talk About Things To Us, I am increasingly sure that I am going to take a gap year after university. Or a gap six months – whatever – because the wonderful freedom about leaving the educational system is that no longer will my life have to revolve around September starts and May exams. Maybe I’ll work, maybe I’ll travel, or maybe I’ll just stay at home and remember what bonfire smoke smells like in south Birmingham on November 5th, but what I will not do is refuse to give myself time and space to breathe. Maybe, just maybe, my ideal job will come up in the meantime and I’ll go straight to there.

But I won’t have to, because I will be free! I think that I need that light at the end of the tunnel.

Relaxation

How often do you relax? And I mean properly relax, not just nominally relax.

I’ve been considering this this evening, having spent the five days since I got back from Durham in a hub of frenzied activity. It must be self-inflicted hub, as well, since the rest of my family are away. I don’t even know exactly what I’ve been doing to end up so tired and stressed out. I mean sure, there’s been a bit of stuff to sort out from Durham, and some odds and ends which are inevitably involved in running the house at this end. J came to stay for a couple of days as well which was lovely, and we did get some relaxing time into that – but I’m afraid that I still inflicted quite a lot of my busy-ness on him, taking him on such romantic dates as the local tip, supermarket, and washing machine.

And it’s left me with the question of when and how I ever do relax. It’s not at home. I’m not sure why, but there’s always something going on. When my family are here, there are several high-octane agendas running all at once and it always feels like you’re waiting for the next thing to happen, the next crisis to occur. Even if things are running smoothly, somebody’s always out doing something and if they’re not, they’re worrying about what they haven’t been doing and could be doing. Life runs in the fast lane, and I find it very hard to distance myself from that perpetual stress even if I’m not directly part of it.

It’s at university that I have real autonomy over my personal space and agenda, then, and feel able to dictate my time in a way that I can’t at home. University is my quiet time, but of course university is stressful in a different way. It has deadlines, and degrees, and societies, and a social life. You mustn’t waste your time at university because as everyone keeps telling us, these are the best years of your life! An opportunity missed might never come again! It’s important to shut out the student bubble every so often, but it can be easier said than done when there’s that perpetual feeling of missing out.

Then at the third end of the scale*, there’s the pseudo-relaxation, when you stop and try to take some time out but it doesn’t quite work. I find that I fritter the time away, simultaneously bored and anxious about the fact that I’m bored when I should be doing something positive to relax. I can go on the internet, or read a book, or go for a walk, but all that time there’s a little voice in my head telling myself that this is relaxation time, so relax, now! Needless to say it doesn’t work like that, and I just end up more mentally tired than ever. Thing is on days like today, I feel like I have two choices – high-strung tension or ‘relaxing’ into the black hole.

It’s a very difficult cycle to break. So yes, I’d be curious to know how often you relax, and what you do to do so. I feel like something’s gone wrong here.

x

*Hey, who said it was one-dimensional? </geek>

Personal Definitions

How do you define yourself? I define myself as many things – a student, a Brummie (perhaps of the less stereotypical variety), a mathematician, a geek, a sewist, a Quaker, and so on and so forth. Essentially, though, I define me as me.

I was having this conversation with some friends the other day on the way back from a picnic. One of them has just got together with a new guy, and it’s looking serious already. We were talking about their future, in a loose hypothetical way, when something really struck me. H was talking about her career, her wants, and her life in general purely in terms of his. That’s all good, I suppose, from the point of view that by marrying someone you are tying your life into theirs and that somewhere along the way that is bound to involve a certain amount of compromise. But her aims in life seemed to revolve purely around her prospective husband’s – to quote, she would rather be the wife of a successful businessman than a successful businesswoman herself.

I’m sure that a lot of this stems from H’s rather traditional upbringing (; her mother will ‘allow’ her to leave home only in order to marry someone deemed suitable), and if that is what will make her happy then I wish her all the best. But at the same time, she is a highly intelligent postgrad, with strong views and ideals of her own, and is a lovely person to boot – and instinctively I don’t like the idea of H being transformed into ‘the wife of whoever’.

And for all I can see only too easily how it happens, I despair in the same way at those mothers (and yes, sorry guys, it does tend to be mothers) who find their personalities and lives absorbed into that of their children’s.  Whenever I come into contact with women pushing a pram or pushchair, I make a real effort to engage with them, to meet their eyes without simply going gooey over their children, however cute the children may be. There are many things that I dread about potential motherhood and that’s a whole long story for counsellors to get their teeth into, but one of those is losing my identity to my children. I find myself feeling guilty sometimes for that childhood perspective of my own mother – she was my Mum, not C, not a primary-school teacher  or an English/European Thought graduate or a keen walker. I guess that’s one of the things that I’m consciously trying to make up as I’ve grown older.

I’m quite pleased, for that reason, that J’s friends seem to know me as ‘Lucy’, not ‘J’s girlfriend’. I like having my own identity. It’s something I plan to hang on to.

Absurdity

I would like, ladies and gentlemen, to present you with an absurdity of the highest order. The background is thus:

After just over 18 months dedicated service, my trainers have fallen apart. As in, there’s rubber dangling off one of the heels and the entire inner sole came out when I tried to remove my insole. Oh, and they’ve had duct tape holding together the inside of the heels for a while. But they’ve been excellent, comfortable, supportive trainers which I have certainly got good mileage out of, and the uppers are absolutely fine still so it seems a shame to chuck them out. Unfortunately, though, today’s development (the rubber heel) means that I really can’t wear them any longer.

Mindful that this day was going to come sooner or later, I’ve been half keeping my eye out for some new ones. The problem, though is this: I need supportive, comfortable trainers in a narrow-fitting women’s size 9.

And they simply don’t exist. I’ve been into every shop I can think of. I’ve dealt with the normal rude reaction from customer service assistants who just don’t get why their paltry choice of ugly, ‘fashion’ trainers aren’t suitable for six miles a day on Durham’s hills and why I’m frankly insulted that that’s all they have to offer for long feet. I even bought a pair of ‘walking trainers’ from Millets which were fine in principle, but in practise their phenomenal depth meant that tying the laces tight enough to make them stay on seriously hurt my ankles after about half an hour – so they’re going back.

After the final blow was dealt this morning, then, I went net-searching in earnest, and came across a pair of hopefuls. They were on a manufacturer’s site so I called the number in order to find out where stocks them, particularly hopeful because the manufacturer in question had been identified by a shop assistant as producing women’s size 9s. Brilliant! I phoned them. Next (of all places) will be stocking some size 8s in a couple of weeks, hopefully. They don’t make size 9s in summer, only in winter.

Read that again.

This company doesn’t make women’s size 9 shoes in summer, only in winter.

What is wrong with these people??!!

( I have gone through this shoe-problem of mine many times in the past. Does wonders for your self-esteem, that your feet are too BIG to get shoes, particularly nice shoes. God, what would somebody with such BIG and UGLY feet want with nice shoes?)

Carelessness Continued

I’ve lost my memory stick. There has to be a certain irony in there somewhere, one feels…

Someone

‘appenings

Things what’s been ‘appening recently, in no particular order. It’s a bit of a long’un, I warn you:

- At about half twelve this lunchtime, I experienced a moment of real triumph when I finally got my basic GUI to work. No glitches, no incorrect syntax, no user-traps, and a beautiful, beautiful programme that does exactly what it’s meant to (and I even know why!). I had a bit of advice in the early parts from a CompSci friend who has a rather quicker grasp of object handling than I, but we both agreed that him pointing me in the direction was a much better approach than him actually doing the coding for me – and I designed and built the actual interface part myself from start to finish. Which I have to say I’m pretty proud of, considering that I’m by no means the fastest coder and that this is where I am only twelve hours after first sitting down and going, “So, MATLAB….”

I would post a picture, but unfortunately I only have access to the software on the university computers so it may have to wait for a future occasion. I know, I know!

It’s not the end of the road by any means, but what’s left to do simply involves modifying and titivating what I already have – all the code is essentially written. Oh, and then I have to make it into a 15-minute presentation for seven days’ time. And write a 4000-word essay… but hey, I’ll be in a much stronger position to do that with the programme there.

x

- In a related vein, I’ve come to a decision of sorts with regards to my degree. And I guess that the above paragraphs tell you that decision already – I’ve decided to carry on as best I can. The citalopram has by no means made things go away as such, but it does seem to have made me sufficiently stable to contemplate thinking about things again, even if to a slightly reduced capacity.

The fact is that the university have left me with no choice but to fight or accept failure. And I am going to be of the ones who fights their damn hardest.

When my parents came up ten days ago, my Mum and I discussed strategies – for working, and modules, and the like. As a result, I have now spoken to two lecturers about Stuff – about the fact that I’ve been struggling, about why I haven’t handed in any homeworks this year, and about the fact that it will take an absolute miracle for me to pass this year and that any help would be appreciated. In addition to the fact that my Maths Teaching lecturers already knew*, that covers half my modules. Well, two and a half, anyway, and that includes the second half of Number Theory which is the one that I really can’t do.

x

- As of a few weeks ago, I have two new housemates and a prospective house for next year, which is nice. I’ve met the second housemate twice (!) and have yet to see the house, but I’ve been very nicely guaranteed a bed in college should that all fall through, and it’s quite nice to have some security. Great as college was in my first year I really don’t want to move back in, and at one point I thought that I was going to have no choice – and the one thing worse than living in college would have been living with people who didn’t know me or my situation.

x

- I was sitting in one of the IT classrooms earlier, playing about with bits of code and trying to work out why I couldn’t assign a value to my global variable (I figured it out eventually**) and idly watching the screen of the lad just in front of me (yes, bad Lucy, I know). He was on Google Maps. He typed in somewhere in Cumbria, and zoomed in really close on to what looked like a school building. He paused there for a while, then scrolled the map along, following a series of roads along a particular route.

I know where he was scrolling. He was scrolling home. I had to look away because I was in danger of being overwhelmed by the homesickness that prompts me to do the same thing.

It’s funny how similar we all are :-)

x

*Reason 1: Summative coursework. Reason 2: I was in close contact with large numbers of school kids six days into fluoxetine. I mean, come on?!

**Two identical variable names, one global, one local. Yes, that was very stupid.

Key Of The Door

Yesterday was a good day :-)

Advent Advances…

Tempus fugit, time flies, tick-tock…

Not something I want to think about really, but in anticipation of Monday being 1st December I bought myself an advent calendar whilst in town today. This was perverse from several points of view, the obvious being that I have spent quite a lot of time over the past couple of years or so pronouncing my lack of Christian faith (in my head if not out loud). I also insisted upon buying a non-chocolate one despite the fact that they are really hard to find, it cost considerably more to do so (for the expensive luxury of having air behind the cardboard, presumably), and my chocolate consumption is such that an thin angel-shape more every day really wouldn’t make that much of a proportional difference.

But it was the principle of the thing, and the nostalgia, I guess, and I’m sure that the counsellor will tell me that it’s all to do with clinging on to my childhood. For a really authentic experience I should only open every third door, but there’s no-one to squabble with about who gets 3 so it loses the point somewhat…

Little things, eh?!