Here we go again

I always seem to come back here when I’m having a crisis in my life and here we go again.

So it’s 2020, worst year ever, and I had somehow told myself that I would be free of the ravages of this year, but no such luck. I’m having a hard time in almost every single area and the stress of it is giving me nearly daily panic attacks.

1. pretty sure I’m going to fail out of my masters.
2. if i don’t fail out, i don’t know if I’m going to be able to afford it next year anyway.
3. My mother’s health is failing and I’m scared I’ll never see her again.
4. if i do go home I don’t know if I’ll be able to come back. So I’ll lose my job and have no money and no prospects and never see my boyfriend again.
5. Squirrel is a cunt. More generally i can’t believe the state of world politics and how many people believe so many wrong things, even when they have the information right there at their finger tips. They make me so angry and like i just want to give up.
6. i hate the way everyone lies on youtube. ugh. I’ll save this one for later.

OKay, that was enough of a catchup. Hopefully I’ll keep up with this a little better in the future.

Blog twice in 2 weeks? Wow!

I’m doing really well. I said I would come back here every Sunday and i’ve managed it. Go me.

So looking at last weeks to do list, I only managed one of the things on my list, but the other two things will get done tonight or tomorrow.

Okay so this week’s to do list is:

1. Assessed Assignment 202 outline
2. Formative assignment #1 105 outline
3. Assessed assignment 201 outline

Okay. So we know what we have to do this week. What else is there to talk about?

I’ve been making a conscious effort to keep in touch with my friends and relatives better for the last few weeks and it’s been going really well. I have been speaking to my siblings and best friends almost everyday. It’s very gratifying and I’m happy to have started on this journey. I just hope I can keep it up.

On other news, I’ve also decided I need to take better control of my financial future and have a pretty decent budget set up. I’m happy with my progress so far, but I need to keep learning and spending less and being a little more conscious and disciplined about how I spend money.

I suppose I have other things to say, but I’ll stop there. Next week I will write about Alex and Bone. (I think… Well we’ll see…)

Procrastination is ruining my life

I’m not kidding. I make these lists. I mean to do things and somehow they never seem to get done. I need to kick my ass into gear.

I will make an effort to get on here at least once a week from now on, even if it’s just to say that I suck and need to get on here.

Some things I need to get done this week (just so the entire internet can keep me accountable)

• Formative assignment (valentines day)
• Outline of assessed assignment
• Outline of formative assignment #2

I will check in next week to see if this actually happened. Wish me luck!

NaNoWriMo is upon us

So it’s November 2018 – Where has the time gone? – so it’s time for Nanowrimo. I don’t write novels anymore but I do like using this month to accomplish something. Last year I wasted the month because the wheels came off my life because of the American Election. I don’t see anything like that happening this year, but you never know. My aim for this month is to have at least one draft of my Formative Assignment done. so that I can turn my focus to the Assessed Assignment in the next month. This shouldn’t be too hard. In fact, I’ve been going very slowly. I should have done it in October. But no matter. We all know I’m a slow starter.

Having just had a glance at the module page on moodle, the assignment will only be available in January, so that will give me time in December to plow through the module materials and read my textbooks. If I can get through all the coursework by then that would be amazing. Then when exams come around I can focus on old exam papers.

Okay, I made a nice list of all the things I need to accomplish and we’ll see how far I get with it. Hopefully, pretty far. I’ve sort of made a decision not to drink at all this month so that I can focus on work, but I’m not going to be too strict. The occasional glass of wine is okay. But really only in company or to loosen me up to start working. I’m also not going to tell him this explicitly, but I need to spend less time with Roman. He’s eating up all of my free time and I really need to focus up right now.

Speaking of which. I am in a relationship with a man. He’s younger than me. Younger than I would normally be comfortable with but I didn’t know that when I met him. I don’t know where this can go, but I like him so I’m willing to take a chance and see. He’s a lot more stable and together than a lot of the older guys I know. He’s also more mature and more open and honest than the last person I was involved with so that’s good.

I haven’t been in an exclusive relationship in about 4 years and this is early days yet so I feel a bit like I’m flailing and not sure what to do with myself. I also have a lot of hang ups. I’m going to do my best not to screw it up and really do my best not to let my paranoia end the relationship prematurely. It did have kind of a strange start which I will discuss here NEVER. But I’m not going to let that put a dampener on it. There’s nothing wrong with having casual exclusive relationships. We can not see other people and still not be super serious. Anyway, it’s too soon for thinking like that. Cheers!

Selfishness as radical praxis

I found out today that one of my good friends (well former good friends, if we’re being perfectly honest) has quit her job to stay home with her little son permanently. My first reaction was to despair for her. I immediately thought that her husband must have somehow strong armed her into it. He decided that his precious son needs this woman there permanently at his beck and call and so he guilted his lovely wife into giving up her career and sacrificing herself at the altar of motherhood.

When I pointed out that she had left (we got the news in a staff news letter) to some of my other colleagues, my single co worker looked a little crest fallen (“I know. I think she left ages ago though” *sigh*), but my other colleague, who has two kids said something that actually brought bile to my throat. She said “Yeah I feel kind of guilty. Maybe I should quit and stay home with my kids too.” This is a woman who is half way through her PhD, has a number of research projects going at work currently and made us start a podcast. The idea that she could decide that staying home and being a permanent nanny and leave all of that behind is just so galling to me.

I considered saying this to her but held my tongue and came to bitch about it here instead. This is in large part because every time I bring up feminism someone will say the dreaded “c” word – Choice. I hate it. It’s like they’re completely incapable of critical thinking skills. Just because you choose to do something doesn’t make it right or good and it certainly doesn’t make it feminist.

Now I can hear what you’re about to say: “But Natalie, we can’t all live our lives by very strict radical feminist principles. You make non-feminist decisions everyday. Those shoes you wore today for instance, which hurt your feet. There’s make up on your face. None of these are feminist choices, and yet you made them and you suffer the consequences” and i would agree with you. 100%. Not everything I do is feminist. and not every decision i make is feminist. But I would argue that wearing heels and make up is a hell of a lot  less serious than giving up your career.

She has given up her career and her independence so that she can become the embodiment of everything I hate about being a woman: someone subordinate to her husband and children. Now you can argue that being a homemaker is not subordinate, but i see your argument and I raise you a: We live in a capitalist society and money really is power. If you live in a house and you don’t pay the rent, and you don’t buy the groceries, and you have no disposable income of your own, then you have given up your power. You are at the mercy of whoever is paying the rent and keeping you in house and home.

More on this later. I’ve reached my 500 word limit. Damn.

Sitting on the dock of the bay…

So I’m at work. For what reason, I don’t know. I don’t have anything to do today, so I’m basically here waiting for someone to tell me what to do for next semester. I suppose I could start planning lessons and that, but what if they decide to change the syllabus and I’ve spent all that time working for nothing? I looked at the overview for the semester and it all looks quite interesting. I’m not super worried about it. But here I am, at work with nothing to do.

I’ve been reading American Gods. I want to read it before I watch the show. I don’t want to go in and then read the book. I prefer it the other way around. The main character is a man who spent three years in prison and was about to go back to his life with his wife whom he loves very much, when she died in a car crash and he got sucked into some supernatural drama featuring Odin and some other old gods.

The whole book is very surreal so far and a lot of strange things have happened, but the parts that are actually the most moving and difficult for me to read are the parts featuring his dead wife, who shows up every now and then to save him from danger. Before she died she had cheated on him with his friend and then the two of them had died in the accident together. And I get the impression I’m supposed to feel sorry for him because the love of his life has died and his life is in chaos.

But honestly, the only thing I feel is jealous. I miss that feeling. That safe loved feeling of being with someone and being absolutely sure that they love you and you love them and you’re just together. And that’s just the truth. It must be nice to have someone who’s just there for you and just loves you no matter what. I don’t think I’ll ever have that feeling again. All my exes have moved on and gotten married and had children, or at the very least gotten into serious relationships.

And here I am. Alone and in Suzhou. And honestly, when I think about it, I probably prefer it this way. I don’t think I do well in relationships. But it still kind of hurts you know? Why doesn’t anyone love me? Why doesn’t anyone want me? Someone once said that the un-examined life isn’t worth living, but I would argue that the unwitnessed life is even less worth living. With no one there to just pay attention to things you do and encourage you and wish you luck and listen to you bitch about a bad day at work, what’s the point?

This is the total antithesis of everything I really believe, but I’m feeling lonely. Also this went in a totally different direction from where I started out meaning to go. But maybe I can write that blog tomorrow.

Goodbye for now, sportsfans!

The road to hell

…is paved with good intentions. Is a saying I never really understood but it seems apt at this juncture. This was supposed to be a blog for my writing, but it’s turned into yet another whiny personal blog. As though we didn’t already have enough of those. 

I just finished writing exams for this ill conceived master degree I decided to do last year. And I have to tell you,sports fans, I am not feeling good about them.  To be fair, I think I did well on the stats yesterday. But I’ve been wrong about this kind of thing before. Today’s Practical epidemiology was a nightmare of epic proportions. I totally fucked up at least three questions and it was purely because I had no fucking idea what they were even asking. 

This is because I somehow let six months go by without picking up a book and then crammed two entire shyly uses into 6 weeks. I’m a fucking idiot. If I fail it will be just desserts. I don’t deserve to pass. I didn’t do the work. I mean I did a lot of work in the last six weeks, but I should have been a good student all year and been much more familiar with the material . But I didn’t. 

I did what I always do. Which is to wait until it’s almost too late and then cram and then obviously I can blame the inevitable bad marks on that and not face the fact that perhaps I’m just not cut out for this path I’ve chosen for myself .

This is all very dramatic and when I get my results in a couple of months and they’re fine I’m going to forget feeling of abject failure on this beautiful summer afternoon in Shanghai.

But for now, I’m exhausted. I need a break. I should go back to Suzhou. 

On being a bad person…

About once a year or so, around the turning of the seasons from winter to spring, I have an existential crisis. What is it about this year that makes me hate myself and question everything? I don’t know for sure, in a macro sense. Maybe I’m just a bad person.

What does that mean though, to be a bad person?and if, indeed, I am one, then how to proceed?

Surely there’s some protocol. Do I just have to keep going to work and reading and seeing my friends and taking photographs and petting my cat knowing that I’m deceiving all of them all the while? Or do you suppose they know? I’m not sure. I think I need a minute…

It’s been a year…

Well more than  year now. I can’t believe it. Actually I totally can.

So here’s a quick catch up. In this last year I have:

1. taken part in nanowrimo again. I’ve actually written 50000 words of two different novels now. Neither of them are finished but we won’t talk about that. I’ll revisit them one day in the future when I have time.
2. started another masters. This is the third. Hopefully this one will stick. I’m really enjoying it so far.

I’m kind of worried that I’m too old to be trying to start a whole new career but I saw a quote the other day that said “Don’t be concerned about the time it takes to pursue your dreams. The time will pass anyway”. So I’m just going to keep going and do as much as I can with the 24 hours I have at my disposal every day.

I might even start creative writing again. Who knows.

Glad this blog still exists though. I might try to do a once a month thing or something.

Authenticity

This is going to be extremely unfocused and it’s really just about various things I’ve been thinking about lately. Not sure of the point of it yet, i just have a lot of feelings and want to write about them.

One thing I’ve always liked about myself is my enthusiasm for things, and my ability to get enthusiastic about things, and like things unapologetically even if they weren’t cool or they were too “mainstream” or unintellectual. I’ve always unabashedly liked the things that I liked and critics be damned. This includes music and books and movies and everything. I can’t stand people who are snobs about media.

If someone likes something and it makes them happy and you come along and the only thing you have to say about it is how it’s rubbish and they should be consuming this other, better thing, then I don’t have time for you and you need to find better things to do with your time. You need to gain your self esteem in places other than lording your superior taste in entertainment over people.

I’ve drawn this conclusion purely because I grew up in a very conservative home with extremely right wing, extremely homophobic parents. i was convinced i was asexual for the longest time because I never had any interest in boys. It dawned on me when I was about 15 or 16 that it might be because I actually like girls and in my little teenaged heart I was a lesbian. (I’m not. I’m bisexual. But I did identify as lesbian for a few years). When you’re a young lesbian at school and you can’t come out to anyone, you tend to form these really intense relationships with other (usually straight) girls. Which I did. With one girl in particular. You always hope they’ll like you the way you like them, but they never do. They like boys. They talk about boys, and you can’t understand why because teenaged boys are the absolute dregs of humanity. They are crude and rude and stupid and it baffles you why your lovely, sweet, interesting friends want anything to do with them.

Anyway, when you’re always rejected and no one you want ever wants you back and you have to watch people love things and people that you don’t, you learn very quickly, that there is no point in trying to make people like things they don’t. And that it’s stupid to try, because you wouldn’t want them trying to change you either.

And it happens so often with the things that young women love. The things that are popular with young women are so often devalued and seen as inferior. There is a simple reason for this: young women and girls are not valued in society. So the things that they love are not valued.

no no. That’s not the point. ugh. This went in a different direction to where I wanted it to go, but I promised myself that this blog was not about perfection, it was only about writing and I’ve written it now so now you have to deal with it. Later when I have a message more clearly formulated I’ll try to write another thing.