Tag: ramble

Lightsabers, ready?

~ Sue ~ 1 Comment

I haven’t seen the new Star Wars. I would like to see it in a cinema, but I’ll wait till I can see it in 2D (can’t distinguish 3D) in relative peace and quiet. The last movie I saw just after release ended up with lots of kids chattering away, totally ruined it. But I feel that to fully experience The Force Awakens, I’d like to see it in the cinema. 

Like almost every person I know, a new movie in a universe I grew up watching, makes me excited. Not as excited as The Lion Guard (series from Disney’s The Lion King), but still excited. Just the prospect of something new, makes me excited and happy. People around me always get excited about TV shows, books or music. These things can become a positive focus in a person’s life. It can give a person, living under the worst of circumstances, a bit of light. 

You then get a meme, a small joke that someone ‘is one of the 1% who has never seen Star Wars’. Good for them, right? I mean, anyone can watch or not watch, whatever they want. It really doesn’t matter. But by proclaiming that your are a special snowflake because you don’t watch a movie? What does that achieve? Nothing. Except that some of the people maybe use that movie as something positive that maybe happened in a crappy year? Or maybe, using the movie as a reward for getting through the last several months. It may feel like a bit of an attack. Like that one thing that helped them through the last few months is a joke. To someone insecure, that can start a horrible cycle. 

Everyone has something that makes them happy, be it a sport, TV show, or anything really. You never know what those around you are feeling, so think before you share something. Because it can say more about you than you really think. 

Feeling Festive

~ Sue ~ Leave a comment

It is that time of the year where we celebrate Christmas. Shops are busy, twinkly lights are everywhere, and everything just feels rather happy. Which is always nice.
But what does Christmas mean to me? 
I’m not particularly religious, although I grew up with Sunday Schools and the annual nativity. This causes issues with a few folk I know, why celebrate Christmas when you don’t follow the bible. Well, considering it is believed that Jesus was born in spring and not December 25th, that mutes that point. It appears that Christianity adopted the winter date because of a popular Pagan celebration, which was put in place by the Romans.
Not that it matters.
Christmas to me is about family. It is a celebration before the start of a new year, where we can show those around us, we are thinking of them. And that’s it. 
Obviously other people hold other meanings in the holiday, and that’s fine. Everyone is allowed to find a meaning that matters to them in anything. And that fact shouldn’t matter to anyone else. Let everyone celebrate moments that mean something to them, cause life is to short not to.

Disconnection Notice

~ Sue ~ Leave a comment

It has recently been made abundantly clear that my, once passionate, love affair with the internet is going through a rough patch. I am becoming frequently frustrated to the point of putting my phone’s internet off, so that people can call me if they need me, but I don’t get interrupted by the constant Facebook and Twitter updates.

Yes, I am at that stage where I am avoiding the other party of the ‘relationship’. Normally in that situation, you would change how you walk to work, or try and hang out with different people. Try and create some space between yourself and the other person. However, when your relationship is with such a thing as the internet, it isn’t that easy. Actually, it becomes so overly dramatic that a relationship with a real person would have probably been easier to deal with.

I mean, everyone has been in ‘that’ relationship, where despite loving that person, everything they do winds you up the wrong way. Where you just want smack them on the head, and you can’t really tell them why. So, you try and put some space between you both. However, saying you ‘have a sore head’ doesn’t stop the internet. It is everywhere. Everything from restaurants to tampon companies have their own twitter handles. If you liked one craft page 2 years ago on Facebook, the site recommends events near you every 2-3 days. Sometimes I feel smothered.

But that’s not even the worst bit. When I was at my lowest point, the internet came to the rescue. It showed me that I was not alone in feeling so rejected all the time, that I could voice how I feel, and all seemed awesome. But, obviously, fairy tales don’t actually exist, and reality happened. When I say reality, I mean people who like to spread hatred from behind vague avatars. This was a nasty streak in the internet that I never foresaw. It wouldn’t happen to me, we are so happy together. But it did.

Now, a person’s nasty streak is easy to deal with. You can utter sarky retorts to their insults, or you just walk away. Yes, what they say hurt may leave a mark, but you can leave that one person. The internet isn’t a singularity, so dealing with any negativity from it, is a bit harder. If someone has taken to ‘troll’ something you have created, it normally isn’t just one person. And you also may find these trolls are a bit braver than what they would be in the real world, which means more cutting comments. I did what any sane person would do, I decided I needed time apart from the internet. I stopped going onto forums and writing blogs as often, as these places are where the negativity came from. Good? Kind of. When I did log on, I saw a lot of hate and the spread of intolerance. This is not the internet I had loved and used so heavily.

Who are you these days, dear internet? You are no longer the place that I go when things get to stressful. After allowing me to feel free, after so long hating who I am, you are now lampooning me for being that same person. A normal person would at least be able to explain their actions. And, as an adult, I wouldn’t need to rely on a person for EVERYTHING. My job exists because of the internet. I get my music and TV over the internet. I contact friends around the world on the internet.

Maybe I just need to change my relationship with the internet? Or maybe get in a relationship with a real life actual person?

Or not.

 

Feeling Small (BEDA)

~ Sue ~ Leave a comment

I am still feeling very sorry for myself, with allergies combining with a cold. I am grumpy, tired and have very little time for the bad attitude of others. Two different people spoke to me, and the spoke to me in a manner which made me think of a child being scolding by it’s mother. I felt small and stupid, and both times I just wanted to find somewhere to cry. Which is what I want to do when I am sickly, anyway, so feeling attacked by people around me was never going to help.

Actually, it wasn’t like I was being attacked, it was how things were said to me. Like that certain tone a person gets in their voice when someone isn’t worth their time. That tone that tells you a person is irritated. Add to that, the eye rolling/ staring daggers, I felt super uncomfortable and just wanted the ground to swallow me up. I really should have spoke back, stood up for myself. But, considering I only got 2 hours sleep last night and I felt so ill, it took all my energy to simply not cry. It made me feel worse that one of these people was a manager, who is not even in my department. Like, I have been doing the same job for a while, and as usual, I am finding myself stressing about how I can do my own job. I get awful panicky, and do stupid things, like going in when I am sick. And when someone speaks down to you, as if you know nothing, anxiety levels start to rise.

I think part of the problems, that in companies where there are many different departments, the departments can be operating against one another. As if the working day is one big competition. But the thing is, all departments have the same goal. They are there to serve a customer. But nobody seems to see that in large companies, its all competition between different departments. Which could be good, in some ways, like competition in targets and things. But sometimes, people refuse to help people from other departments. And that can be anyone from general associates, up to department managers. It is a really awful way to work, and the bad attitude to people ‘outwith your team’, can also be applied outwith work. People hate those who come from different backgrounds, believe different things or look different to them.

By making people feel small and insignificant, it can make people feel taller and more powerful in comparison. It happens everywhere in life, really. The truth is, that if someone is doing something, who is anyone to tear them down. I got up today and I was sore, puffy and struggling to catch my breath, I went into work. Something I am glad I did, something I did because of willpower, because I don’t want to beaten. But when I used so much energy, just being able to function, I had nothing left for when I encountered a problematic person. But maybe being made to feel insignificant isn’t my problem, it’s the problem of the manager who feels he is better than me. I know, after thinking about it, that I have changed a lot over the years for me to even think about going into work today. I have a motivation that I never had, one that I had lost when I started getting problems with depression.

I am sitting here in a very different mood to what I was in when I started writing this blog. I was feeling very sorry for myself, because I feel like crap, physically. But, the more I rambled on, the less sorry for myself I felt. I feel like I have achieved something today, even if it was just a few hours at work. Though that might be helped by the fact that I am out of work, and don’t have to see that manager when I am feeling so bad. I guess, it is looking for your successes, rather than focusing on what others see as failures.

Working Life

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I always remember being told when I was younger that it was ‘better to work to live, rather than live to work’. As if to say that a job isn’t the ‘be all and end all’. And that working is just one small part of our lives. 

But in reality, I have never found it so straight forward. 

That job which takes up a ‘small part of our lives’ actually takes up a lot of hour time. In fact other than sleeping, I would say that work is what people spend most of their time doing. But that job is only there so that we can afford the life we want. Because you spend so much time at work, it is essential that you should find joy from it, or at least part of it. Whether it’s the actual job you do or the people you work with that makes you get up in the morning, it’s important that there is something. It helps work become more bearable. 

Everyone has had that one job they hated. Where there was no joy, and work seemed to be all that you could focus on. Sometimes it happens, whether it a crappy medial job, or your dream job.  Where work becomes stressful and your focus seems to be on what is making you stressed. And that makes things seem so much work. It’s times like this, that you need a bit of scope. You need to take a step back, and realise that work isn’t everything. Your life is not just work. And if it is, maybe you need to invest some time in you. Go out for a movie, or have a pamper session. Make you feel special.

For a long time, in a previous job, all I worried about was my work. It wasn’t that my job was hard, I just got real anxiety about it. And it brought me so far down, and at that point it seemed everything in my life was about work. I couldn’t switch off at the end of the day, and that made me so stressed. I work somewhere else now, and my attitude is so different. I work there, so that I can go out with friends and buy what I want. I finish work for the weekend, and I can just relax for a few days. And I am so much more relaxed and happy. 

Whether you love or hate your job, you have to be able to ‘switch off’ when you aren’t working. If you can’t relax a little, work could become a bigger issue than it really is. The most important thing to remember is to look after you. Make sure you see the benifits of all your hard work. Because you deserve it.

——-

**Sorry this is a ramble, again. I am still not 100%. I haven’t been sleeping and have an awful cough. Here’s hoping it goes away soon**

I Can Adult. Honest. (BEDA)

~ Sue ~ Leave a comment

Another birthday. 

Another year older.

And still I get over excited about TV shows, books and bands that I love. I still watch cartoons and make up cartoon characters. It sometimes feels like my body may get older, my brain refuses to. 

And i don’t think that is as bad a thing as it may seem. One of the worst things about growing up, is that people around you seem bored with life. The sense of fun they had as a child, to make everything a game. Where cracks seemed to be papered over so easily, and any issues were forgotten within a few days. 

So maybe being a childish adult isn’t too bad? 

Sold To

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I spend a lot of my money on nonsense. Mostly stationary. It’s never anything that I really need. Just stuff I seem to make up a need for. When I discuss this ‘impulsive purchasing’ with my friends, and it seems I am not alone. It has made me think, if this is more than simple habit. Surely if people walk around with money burning a hole in their pocket, it becomes very easy to spend.

Supermarkets have been widely known for placing products in their stores in strategic places, aiming at unaware shoppers. Sweets and popular brands at the end of isles or at shelving at eye level. Suggestions have been made that brands pay to be displayed at prime locations to influence buyers. Things catch the eye, things a person has no intentions to buy.

These tactics can be taken and used in any store. Book shops displaying cute notebooks, to attract someone into believing it has purpose. Phone shops display expensive headphones near the popular iPhones, convincing people that if you have an expensive device, you need expensive accessories.

The purchases we make, when we think about them, are ideas given to us by the companies that sell them. I wouldn’t have bought a new notebook today, if I didn’t see the new display showing them off. It made me think that I needed a new journal, although i had no intention of buying it when I set into Town. Perhaps it’s worth considering that people, like myself, are not impulsive as such, more easy influenced.

TechNOlogy Problems

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I used to always update this blog from my laptop. This was based on the thought that if I wanted to type something fairly substantial, I liked doing it on a physical keyboard, not a touch screen. Over the last few months, my laptop has become useless. It takes about 30 minutes to load up properly, and even then it goes so slow. I have removed all of the non-essential software, done too many security scans, but nothing helped it get better. I can only assume that after 5 years, the memory is fried, and the laptop has had enough.

Back to my original point, because my laptop is dying a slow painful death, I have to update this on my ipad. Now, I love my ipad for lots of things, but writing things, other than short emails and texts, is not one of them. I just seem to continuously press the wrong letters, and it gets on my nerves. This is why I have started a lot of blog entries recently, but they have been non-starters as my short temper has got the best of me. And because I have registered coming into the wordpress app and writing something, my brains seems to accept that is me updating this here blog. It obviously isn’t, and the blog gets a bit neglected. Oops.

Some excuse that, eh?

The good news is, that I should be getting a new laptop next week, and that means I will be able to do more again. Because it isn’t just my writing that has halted because of technical issues, I can’t run photoshop either. I have been uploading less pictures, and have completely fallen out of everything because my laptop refuses to run very much. So here is hoping that a multitude of my ‘productive’ problems can be resolved with my new laptop.

Can’t help thinking I’m pinning to much hope on a piece of technology, though.

Over Whelmed

~ Sue ~ Leave a comment

The world NEVER switches off. No matter what time of day it is where you are, it is ‘rush hour’ somewhere. 

It is something that used to amaze me when I was younger. That when I was asleep, people where at school, having meals and working away. When you get to that realisation, it opens you up to thinking about a world outside your own personal ‘bubble’. There is a whole new world full of different behaviours, thoughts and lifestyles out there that we can be completely oblivious happen to. 

Even as an adult, the idea that there are communities completely different to the one I grew up in, has the capacity to freak me out a little. It’s not that I am feeling weird about people having a different way of living than me, it is the sheer scale of the variety that is out there. It’s just that there are so many cultures in the world, that people spend their whole lives trying to learn about. And then, these cultures, they all have their own history, which is another lifetime worth of studies worth. 

I think it can seem a bit over whelming when you think that nobody knows everything about the world. It makes me feel rather insignificant. Which is not as negative as it seems. As well as making the successes in life seem immaterial in the grand scheme of things, it also makes the failures seem super-small. As a person who mostly focuses on the negative things in her life, the fact that it is so tiny and irrelevant in regards to global events, it sometimes makes me feel better. That people make it through worse than I do every day, so maybe I can do something about my life.

It staggers me sometimes, that I get overwhelmed with my life, and nothing of value really happens there. I couldn’t imagine if I had to control a country or something on a global scale, because I don’t know if my wee bubble will expand enough to let everything in that needs to be there. I stress out organising my own life, imagine organising life for thousands or even millions of people?

Conclusion: with my organisational skills, it is best that I stay single and shout at Paris Gellar on my ipad as I watch yet another episode of Gilmore Girls. That I can deal with. Not Paris, she annoys me in a way that I can only express as love to hate her. And, yes, I know that she is a fictional character. She provides my bubble world with a villain, where the hero is Yoshi who drives his stupid Kart slower than everyone else. No matter how much I press that ‘A’ button, he doesn’t go any faster. There is a metaphor for my life in there somewhere. 

Good or Bad

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Going on from my train of thought yesterday. I starting thinking about what says something is either good or bad. We get told there are bad words, bad actions, bad clothes, bad music. But really what does any of that mean?

The thing is, it’s our heads that decide what is good or bad. Its our thought process, which turns something good or bad. A word is just a word, it can’t stab someone. The thoughts and ideas the word conjures up, is what decides whether it is good or bad. And the thoughts and ideas change, depending on where you come from.

For instance, if I mention the word ‘fag’, I mean it as cigarette, and usually means I am going for a smoke. But to Americans, it is a negative word aimed at gay people. So whilst in the UK, that word is harmless, in the US it is a terrible word. But the word isn’t the bad thing, its what people connect to it. It happens everywhere.

I feel that is something that is a part of how people work. Like I said yesterday, people like to feel more superior, and they do that by having answer for everything. So rather than saying, ‘that song isn’t to my taste’, people are more likely to say ‘that song is bad’. Its maybe people just not wording things right, but I feel it is more than that. Its like giving it a solid answer, if you say that something is bad. That’s it, end of discussion.

But, fair enough, if people are taught and brought up to think that way. But, it becomes an issue, when someone opposes their opinion. People forget that opinion is never right or wrong. People refuse to except differing opinions, and refuse to discuss them. We call our selves the most superior race, but if we can’t accept and discuss even simple opinions, its no wonder society is crumbling.

You want someone to listen and respect what you say and think, maybe you should do the same. Try it.