long time between posts

It's been a long time since I wrote my last blog, sorry to anyone who has been checking in regularly :)

It's only because I have been working a lot more than usual, and I've just been running out of hours in the day. I keep meaning to make myself a schedule - write down what I need to do as well as what I'd like to do, and organise each day so I get done the necessary and have time for the fun. But I never do and instead simply lurch through each day and lie in bed each night and curse myself because I didn't get done nearly enough. Because of course a bed is this magical place where you remember everything you forgot to do during the day.

I haven't written a word all week, and that's causing chaos inside my head , with the result that I am even more disorganised than usual. I just can't think clearly if I don't write often, every day preferably. I really don't understand why, except as I have explained I am sure before, if I get the words out of my head and onto a (virtual) page, I can organise the thoughts left much more efficiently.

A peek into my brain right now would confuse anybody, even the most efficient organiser! I have random, unfinished thoughts swirling around, and every few minutes one will shine like a beacon and I grab onto it and examine it briefly before another shining thought distracts me. So I am thinking I must clean the bathroom, remember to sort out that box of junk, the character in the werewolf book is definitely not a vampire but what is he?, maybe I should make the facebook novel partially a diary sort of thing with the messages between the main characters, I need panadol, I have to walk the dog, don't forget to wash the towels today, should weed that front garden and fertilise, should I change the cover on the published book, I need to cut my fringe today, is the werewolf a leader of a pack or a renegade or a plant by a bigger group in a bigger story, and so on. None of the thoughts stay long enough for me to get them into any kind of order. The only way to do it is to sit down and write a list and prioritise it which of course is the schedule that I keep meaning to make.

Instead I get frustrated that I can't think clearly and end up doing only a few of the things inside my head and generally the least important ones, and while I'm doing those other thoughts keep popping into my head and it's really quite exhausting! Then as I lie in bed at night it all seems to realign and I think more clearly and decide on a plan of action which vanishes with the morning mist as the random thoughts start swirling while I drink my morning tea. But when I write each day, it seems to calm these thoughts and I can think and plan and map out my day. Of course it never goes according to my plan, but at least I do achieve more than when my mind is like it is right now. We all think differently, and some of us are much more efficient in organising thoughts - I do not put myself into that category!

One of the random thoughts that keeps popping up is general musing about social media. That of course is most likely because the facebook novel is about the impact social media is having on the world. I've read plenty of times that we are all becoming more insular, with many online friends and not so many real life friends. Children are not playing real life games but virtual games with friends in far flung parts of the world. People are becoming dissatisfied with their lives because of this access to other lifestyles and cultures.

This is all true of course. But do we decry this change or go with it? The world has certainly changed, but it is not the first time. There have been many times throughout history that the world has changed. Maybe not as fast, but with exploration obviously there was exposure to different people, lifestyles, culture. The world did not adapt well to these changes, as it is well documented. I could do a little bit of research here and give a few examples, but really I think anyone reading this will easily be able to think of several instances in history where the world has changed and not easily.The world is a little bit like me in fact, resistant to change.
Here is where I am going to play devils advocate. Sure there are many drawbacks to the internet and social media. But there are many positives too. Social media is breaking down all the barriers that were themselves put in place by society. Social media is destroying the barriers of race, culture, appearance, religion, age - all the things that we usually take into account when we decide to get to know another person. Through social media the only thing that matters is who the person is and what that person's thoughts and views are. I know a lot of people are suspicious and of course there are a lot of trolls and con-people out there. But so too are there those same sorts of people living in the same neighbourhood. It is up to us, as it is in 'real life' to differentiate. Talking to people in different societies and cultures expands our knowledge of our planet and increases tolerance of the many and varied societies that live on it. A friendship with a person in another country is no less real than a friendship with the next door neighbour. People have long had penpals - essentially social media is a faster, more efficient and more immediate version of that.

Social media is also teaching us so much about the rest of this world we live in, and hopefully raises questions in enquiring minds, both young and old. Google is brilliant as a learning tool, you can learn so much more from Google and so much faster than you can searching through a reference book that was outdated before it was even printed. Of course to use Google properly you have to reference and cross reference, but still you can do it so fast and so efficiently. Truly, as a person who is endlessly curious, for whom one question answered always raises another, I consider Google to be a priceless gift!

My youngest son talks gamer/nerd talk to me frequently. I understand very little, and that's ok since I have no desire to be a gamer :) He was brought up in a world where computers are common place. There is a whole generation of people raised in this manner. Whether you believe this is wrong or right, what it is, is different. It is change, a world wide web of change in fact. This generation has access to far more knowledge, education, and entertainment than ever before. They can talk to someone on the other side of the world in real time and with a camera. The world has shrunk, boundaries are being breached and we are becoming more of a global society. Given the differences in cultures, environment, religion and education the global society of science fiction is a long way off, if it ever happens at all. But I believe that a world with more tolerance and less barriers and boundaries is a positive thing.

2am ramblings

Yes folks, it's 2am - actually it's 2.40am now, it's taken me a while to give up and write this instead of lying in bed telling myself I can do it in the morning.

2am, that time of the morning when the brain is down in the basement, sweeping out all the negative thoughts and emotions. This hour of the morning is the time when I go through all my conversations with people, second guessing what they said versus what they meant, and coming up with all sorts of hypotheses which are generally totally off the wall. But at 2am it all seems perfectly reasonable and I can convince myself of pretty much anything, so long as it's negative.

I have learnt to pay no attention to what I think at 2am, as I know it's all the negatives being cleared out of my mind. Problem is of course that I remember this at about 8am, and at 2am I'm like a dog with a particularly juicy bone, refusing to let go of it. I am so good at this, I can be absolutely 100% convinced of something that depresses me to the point of feeling absolutely 100% certain that my life is going down the drain at an astonishing rate and really I should just give up and go live as a hermit somewhere. Then in the morning after a pot of tea, I think again and realise that I was in fact thinking with 100% of my screwed up crazy self and nothing I had become convinced about was remotely correct. And I say firmly to myself, never going to do that again. Of course I do.

Tonight, or this morning, I decided to jettison the negative thoughts and write this blog instead. I'll sleep a lot better, albeit for a shorter time span, if I get this out of my head now. I had three distinct thoughts floating around in my mind. I've got one of them out and in the process I hope I've also chased out the negative thinking that initiated it all. The reason behind the change in my mindset is actually the fat siamese. She is lying on her pillow on the bed, snoring gently to herself. The other cat is stretched out beside my legs. She is much younger and thinner and she does not snore although she does pounce on my toes, and walk up my body to touch noses at an hour when I am guaranteed to be unappreciative.

Back to the fat siamese. I was lying awake indulging in my pity party, and she was lying beside me snoring on her pillow. So I reached out to touch her to stop the snoring. She woke and was so delighted to be patted (feline interpretation of any sort of touch) at such an unusual hour that she immediately started purring loudly and began cleaning my hand. This of course sent a little tide of good feelings along my nervous system that chased away enough of the sads for me to see that I was doing that 2am thing again. So here I am writing myself back into optimistic mode.

The fat siamese and I have had our moments. Possibly she was delighted to be patted at this hour because usually I am kicking her off the bed due to her lifelong habit of chewing her tail - loudly, for an hour or more at a time. It is as irritating to me as fingernails on a blackboard or a knife scraping on a plate. All her life, since she was small I have been saying in tones of extreme exasperation 'Taz, don't chew your tail!' and she has been ignoring me with supreme feline indifference. Until recently.

She was lying in her more customary position of across my legs, chewing away with volume and gusto and I said my catchphrase. She stopped, tail still in her mouth and gave me the death stare. Aha!! Our minds had a silent tussle. My mind was saying Aha! You do understand what I'm saying! The feline mind was saying Damn, busted, maybe if I stare hard enough I'll melt the human's mind and she will forget this ever happened. My mind was responding Na-uh, you understood me and I have won. She narrowed her eyes even more, she knew I knew she knew and she didn't know how to fix this error. So I said it again and I'm pretty sure she cursed me, but finally she dropped her tail - thunk! She's fat and so is her tail. Then with a final flourish, presumably to activate the curse, she dropped her head with an even louder thud beside her tail and went to sleep. So now, when she chews her tail I say my phrase and am rewarded each time with the exaggerated stare, drop, thud sleep reaction.

The third thing I was thinking about, and remember it's early early morning, so my mind is flicking about even more than usual, is the difference the way we feel makes to the attitude of people around us. Today I was at work, and I was feeling in a super good mood. I was painfully bright and cheerful (I am not usually obviously happy like this). I was full of optimism, a smile on my face all day, the world was bright and everything was good. I was one of those people I usually find really annoying. So everybody I met today was presented with super happy Sheryl. And they all reacted very positively. Now I usually present as a cheerful person, I am brilliant at wearing a mask in public. So I smile and chat and make all the right responses and give every indication of a happy person. And usually I am a happy person - just not generally a fizzy bubbly happy person. Today I was genuinely overflowing with happiness (maybe I'm going crazy, that could be it) and I got it back from everyone I came into contact with. Everyone I spoke to walked away smiling with their moods lifted. I was like the happy fairy today.

It was a slightly unnerving experience because as I said, I am not usually the happy shining fairy. There are people in this world who float along on the surface of life. They seem to be always happy, always smiling, content with their lives and never seeming to feel any sort of dissatisfaction. They live in the top of their minds, where it's light and bright and optimistic. Or maybe they don't have a basement. I have tended to be more at home in the basement of my mind, with the anxiety and worry. I second guess everything, worry about things I can't control, dive down into deep emotions and then struggle to get out again. I'd really like to live in the top of my mind, it seems a pretty nice place from my little trip there today.

So that's my 2am ramblings, they're just random segments from my brain - no point or anything, and not really even connected except they were the things spinning around at the forefront. Now I think I will be able to sleep!