Limited range

I’ve been thinking today that I have something missing from my range of emotions; I have trouble both feeling and expressing or responding to good things. I can’t express joy or happiness. I don’t know how to. I don’t know sometimes how to feel them or in fact what they feel like.

It’s hard to explain. I’ve had a sick headache today but I didn’t realise quite how bad it was until I took some painkillers and it started to ease. Until that point I hadn’t realised how much it had been affecting me; oh, I’d known I couldn’t think straight no matter how hard I tried. But the difference between having the pain and not having it was quite profound; but I can’t say what the difference between say, feeling ill, not feeling ill and feeling actually well might be. I think it might be like this with my emotions: I know what it feels like to be depressed and to be NOT depressed but I have trouble with the state of being beyond NOT depressed. I can’t actually imagine it right now and in my memory, many of the days of my life that ought by rights to have been blissfully happy, I can’t recall any emotional state beyond feeling OK. I’ve gone through much of my life with a So what state of mind and I am ashamed of it. Occasions I can remember feeling something beyond OK, I can also remember not knowing how to express or to celebrate whatever it was. When I finally passed my driving test, all I did was punch the air and say, slightly loudly, “Yes!”

I’m not sure if I am capable of deep positive emotion or whether I am just so far down the emotional range that I simply don’t have a means of expressing the good stuff. I envy people who can go round with a big grin and so on. Maybe I’ve just had too many disappointments and disasters to really allow myself to hope for better.

I don’t know.

Anyway, I shall try. Next time something good happens i am going to try and explore what it feels like and will report back.

The Gateway to Summer

This is a picture I took a month or so back at Somerleyton Hall, a stately home and gardens about five miles from home. The gardens are especially lovely. Summer is about at an end and I thought this photo was a good reminder of the sunny days and flowers we’ve had.

I’m having trouble facing the darker days that are coming. I have to remind myself the light will return.

Not in my pyjamas yet….

But it won’t be long.

I’ve been busy much of today and I feel I have got various useful things done like the job application. Since there was only a very short time to get it done, I didn’t worry too much about getting it perfect; though himself did proof read it for idiocy.

I’m now feeling very tired. My disturbed night is catching up with me and so is the pain. I’ve got away without pain relief today and last night; I try and avoid using it as it has side effects.

My current plan is a hot bath and curl up in bed with a book. But I don’t have a book on the go right now that is curl-up-in-bed material. So maybe I shall just tell myself stories until I fall asleep.

Once upon a time….

Fizzy water

I had a difficult evening last night and didn’t expect to sleep well; indeed I didn’t but the amusing thing was that the only thing I remember from all the dreams I had is the phrase, Wasser mit Kohlensaure, which is German for fizzy water.

God alone knows why that phrase popped up in dreams and even stranger why it’s the only thing I remember.

I think I need a holiday.

Oh, I am on holiday. Yes, I remember now.

Hacked off (a midnight growl)

Yes, I am up and blogging at after midnight, but this is basically to let any of my contacts here know that the spam email I appear to have sent them was as a result of a security breach at Yahoo.

I spent a lot of time, along with poor J’s time talking me through various procedures, trying to find out if I’d ben virussed and if so, how bad and what to do. As far as I can now work out, it was down to the fact that since yahoo’s revamp, they have left gaping great holes in their security and some nasty little git got in and exploited it(and my email account) for all of about 3 minutes.

So profound apologies to anyone here who got the bogus mail. I confidently expect my email box to be crammed come morning with people letting me know or even snarling at me.

I shall now go back to bed and try to sleep; I’ve already tried and failed once and came back on to check nothing untoward had happened since I shut down a while ago. I sometimes do blog in my pyjamas but usually at the other end of the day.

zzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Bad form

I doubt I am alome in hating filling out application forms for jobs. Thankfully the one I am currently wrestling with is not too complex except for the fac that it asks for things like Reference numbers and department which the job specs and indeed the ad in the paper failed to give. Which means tomorrow I need to ring them up and ask them what they want me to put in those particualr boxes. My husband had remarked that NOT filling in that sort of thing can result in your application ending up in the bin, so even though I am fairly sure these are not important, I have to dot the i’s and cross the t’s.

The other thing that bothers me is that the job was advertised on Friday and the closing date is this Friday. I only got the specs this morning and have only just finished my first run through of the form. Himself is going to go through it tomorrow and proof read it and make suggestions. Less than a week for a job application and the specs also said, to start as soon as possible, makes me think they might just be a bit desperate. Desperate enough to take me on? I ought to get an interview at least!

A morning growl

I’m feeling grumpy this morning.

First reason: I got a text message a few minutes after I got up and was initially quite excited as it was from a friend who I don’t see very often even though she lives less than 3 miles away. When I read it, I was cross. It was one of those appalling chainletter style of texts that you have to send on to another 9 people for your day to be happy or some such rot. I was irritated because I am not complimented by being sent a mass text telling me I am beautiful, classy and strong nor am I likely to boost the coffers of my mobile provider by forwarding it to 9 more people. I was also disappointed in the friend, who has been very distant with me, and even deleted me on Facebook because I made comments that were not part of the sweet and nice universe she wants to live in. I never understood the whole chainletter thing and while I have sometimes forwarded email ones when they have been amusing, I’d never waste my money sending on text ones. I’m disappointed my friend has not bothered to think about it and realise it’s just another con. If she loves me, I’d far rather she just sent me an ordinary text saying hiya, how’s things.

The second thing that got my goat is that last night I unblocked my former boss on Facebook, on the principle that since she’s long since deleted me as a friend, it’s not important as none of my contacts are still in communication with her. Then this morning, I find another of my colleagues has added me as friend, and this one IS still in contact with the Goblin Queen. Other colleagues reckon she’s a spy but I’m not sure. If so, it’s an unwitting one. I did a quick check on my new “friend’s” page and sure enough, there was the Goblin Queen. So it was back to the settings page to reblock her. If my new friend then suddenly deletes me, then I shall know I was only added as a window into the company.

Both together it just makes me feel deeply disappointed in people. Surely we should be more advanced than the playground by now?

Tomorrow’s news

..today.

It appears that by a thousand twists and turns and about thirty generations, I am connected to Henry 2nd of England.

I’m waiting for my Dad to retrace his steps and give me the evidence.

In the meantime, there’s no need to curtsy.

I could(or Dad could) very easily be wrong. And even if we’re not, we’re talking royal by homeopathic dilution.

It would explain my temper though….

On that very silly note, I’m off to take some pain pills and go to bed!

Good night all!

Unblocked (well, maybe…)

I decided to follow my experiment through and see if I could just let myself write without having to think through everything first, and just work instinctively. I’d had a sketching/painting session at Burgh Castle and I’d been fine until a couple of dogwalkers decided that ten feet away from where I’d set up my stool and my materials was a great place to race their dogs and chat very loudly about nothing terribly much. OK, I’m not Rembrandt or Turner but it was clear I was concentrating and once my concentration was broken, the whole picture failed. I was mildly annoyed much as you are with people who whisper and rattle sweetie papers at the cinema. It’s not worth getting ANGRY about it.

So I shut myself up here and started a whole new chapter of the novel I’ve been picking at for ages and just let it shape itself. I’m quite pleased with it and having started with that thousand and two hundred words, I feel as though it’s begun various trains of thought and ideas that maybe enough to get the whole thing flowing again. The trouble is one tends to want to wait until a whole plot/characters/scenes etc are present and then begin, whereas in fact much of it only unfolds once you take the first steps. I’m reminded of the scene in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (one of my favourite movies) where he has to find an effectively invisible bridge; he must step out in faith that it IS there. I must write out in faith that the whole story is there and like an archaeologist I must uncover it a bit at a time.

Someone buy me a trowel and a brush please!!! Oh and the sexy leather hat and the bullwhip would be nice too!

Working instinctively

I like to draw and paint a bit; sketch this and that, dabble with clays and so on.  I’ve put a few things on here and also at cafe crem but I’m fully aware I’m not much good in the grand scheme of things. I’m often too aware of an image in my head of what I want the finished creation to look like to actually focus on what I am doing and just draw.

The last couple of days I have done a few drawings that have contained rather more than I expected. The first I was sitting in the garden, mostly alone but for the bees and for a short while with my daughter. I let myself work without much conscious thought at all, making instinctive decisions rather than logical ones. I was pretty stunned by the results. The picture drew itself. Then yesterday I was out on an excursion with students to a local stately home and while sitting outside the Maze, I started drawing the trees and shrubs I could see from where I sat. I worked differently; using logical though rather than instinct. I didn’t bother finishing the picture. A little later, I found a rather lovely bench in a kind of pergola affair and there I started again, this time using a charcoal pencil and letting the pencil have a life of its own. The results were again substantially better than when I took control. Looking at the picture now, I can see where my conscious mind woke up and took control and said, “hang on a minute, that’s a wall there; draw it like a wall. That’s a yew tree; make it look like a few tree,” and where my hand and my eye just got on with sketching.

I’ve learned something quite useful here; my conscious mind can be a bit of a fussbudget and a control freak.

I wonder if I can manage to find it something useful to do (like my tax returns) while I get back into some writing, or whether I need it fully alert and active when I write fiction.

This merits an experiment…