A Domino Effect

One unintended consequence of just how fast this year is going is that I hadn’t taken a trip home to visit my family since the Christmas holidays.  So this weekend, with it being Easter and all, I packed a train picnic, a stack of library books and some thermals to wear at Aberdeen train station (the coldest place on earth, in my opinion)…

My family lives in a tiny village on Scotland’s north-east coast.  We moved there when I was 10.  At the time, I was devasted and it took me months to accept that my parents weren’t upping sticks from our previous life just to make mine difficult (they really weren’t!).  Over the years, however, I’ve come to appreciate growing up in a small town miles from “anywhere” as one of the biggest blessings in my life.  My friends and I had boundless freedom compared to some kids growing up in the city, and because we couldn’t just hop on a bus and go to the cinema without serious advance planning, we had to fashion our own entertainment from what was available to us.  So we rode our bikes, we played tennis, we camped in each others’ back gardens and we built huts out of twigs.  These days, when I visit, I can’t swing my overnight bag without a wave of childhood memories flooding my field of vision.  And while 2012 finds me a bona fide city girl, there’s definitely still a lot of small town love in my heart.

But that’s enough of a ramble down memory lane for a Monday morning!  Here’s some of what I got up to this weekend:

• Baking an “oh my but that’s sweet” mint aero traybake with my sister on Friday.  After seeing Zoe’s recipe the other day the thought of white chocolate slathered upon minty green fondant filling layered upon chunky, biscuity base just would not leave my head.  The result?  There’s none left for me to photograph.  My Dad took to calling it Death by Chocolate, which I would say is pretty accurate.  Cut into very, very small squares unless you’re up for an impromptu trip to the moon.
• Playing with four of the tiniest kittens I’ve ever seen (and consequently pondering getting a cat of my own, only to quickly conclude that I’m in no way responsible enough).  But seriously, these little guys were adorable.  They had tiny fluffy heads and the cutest splashes of black, white and ginger marking.  I could have cooed over them all day.
• Reading Wuthering Heights on two long train journeys.  I’ve tried to think of a reasonably eloquent way to describe this book but I can’t.  All I will say is that THIS is how love should be written.  Authors of trashy chick lit should please take note.
• Walking along the beach (above) in the wind and the rain.  The beach at home is one of my favourite places in the world, and it’s particularly special when the weather is bleak and there’s no one else around.  It kind of feels like it’s all mine then.
• Crocheting like a crazy M-F-er.  Remember the wool I wrote about here?  I’ve almost completed its transformation into a blanket.  I had so many wide open windows of time to make it grow over the weekend and my but it’s satisfying to see your own handiwork expand before your very eyes!  My Mum is a die-hard crochet fan these days as well, and we sat for hours this weekend “projecting” together.  Lots of fun.
• Mountain biking around some cliffs with my Dad and brother.  I thought my thirst for cycling was already unquenchable.  It seems not.  This was the most exhilirating fun I’ve had perhaps even since I did this (which I still feel sick looking back at).

What have you been doing this Easter?

Images of Cullen above from Flickr – here and here.

When I was broke and studying last year I found a plethora of different ways to make a little cash on the side in order to furnish my many addictions (coffee, hummus, second-hand china, coral pink carnations).  I wrote about them here.  One of the things I did was to take part in paid psychology experiments.  The nature and complexity of these oscillated wildly.  One week I’d be playing video games, the next I’d be learning an alien language, the next I’d be wearing a metal headbrace and having the movements of my eyes recorded. 

By and large, this sort of stuff was a lot of fun.  The tasks were entertaining, the people were nice and you could sometimes make a fiver for 20 minutes of playing with children’s toys. 

That said, there was one particular type of experiment that I really, really hated:

Any questionnaire requiring a yes or no answer  

 I know!  It sounds hilariously easy, doesn’t it?  You are presented with a series of questions, you pick answers, you go home, right?  WRONG!  My experience of these types of quiz was always: Rebecca is presented with a series of questions, Rebecca faffs around endlessly debating with herself over the answer, Rebecca ends up taking two hours to complete what should be achievable in fifteen minutes, Rebecca completely wastes the time she could have spent in the coffee shop reading. 

Now in my defence, I did spend five years at law school being programmed to believe that there’s rarely a black or white answer to anything.  There’s also my chronic inability to choose anything, ever.  Nevertheless, these were not happy occasions, and the upshot now is that I’m deeply, deeply reluctant to participate in any kind of form filling exercise that doesn’t come with a handy “other, please give details”-type box where I can vent with abandon about the imprecision of the question and the abundance of variables poised to push my answer in all directions.  Nevertheless, when a colleague forwarded the Myers Briggs personality type indicator to me the other day, curiosity, as well as a shamefully secret love of {cough} horoscopes, prevailed. 
 
The way Myers Briggs works is that you provide yes/no or true/false answers to a series of questions or propositions.  The result is a four-letter code, destined to reveal to you, through the immeasurably powerful medium of the unpronounceable acronym, what your personality is all about.  And as much as I feel I should object in principle to the idea that anyone, anywhere, is capable of being summed up using only four words, it’s actually kind of fun to have a go.
 
My result?  INFJ.  Introverted, iNtuitive, feeling and judging.  That’s right, I’m secretly judging you from within the comfort of my shell, wrapped in a cashmere shawl as I write this.  But working out the acronym isn’t the fun part.  The fun part is Googling your result afterwards and reading all the stuff it throws up about your new-found personality.  What was surprising about this for me, after I’d got over the torment of actually taking the quiz, was just how accurate some of the things I read were.  The highlights, you say?
 
1.  “Can be hard to get to know, since they tend not to share their innermost thoughts or their powerful emotional reactions except with their loved ones”.  Despite the great length at which I write about my own life on this blog, I’m a compulsive asker of questions in person.  This can be fatal when I find myself in conversation with someone who loves nothing more than to talk about themselves (and can we just pause for a moment to appreciate JUST HOW MANY people there are like this in the world?).  The frequent result of these interactions is that I walk away knowing everything and the kitchen sink about my partner, and they walk away knowing absolutely nothing about me.  Depending on how self-aware they are, this could be either a good or a bad thing from their perspective.  It’s definitely a bad thing from mine.  I need to learn to be more open with the details of my life, and to fight my corner just a little when confronted with self-absorption.
 
2.  “Although they are happy working at jobs (such as writing) that require solitude and close attention, [INFJs] do quite well with individuals or groups of people, provided that the personal interactions are not superficial, and that they find some quiet, private time every now and then to recharge their batteries.”  Uh, hello?  I have (gracefully, gently) ended friendships because the interactions have been too superficial.  I get anxious if I have to spend anything more than a weekend in the constant company of other people without opportunity to escape into a book or any activity that doesn’t require me to talk.  I love to write!
 
3.  “INFJs place great importance on having things orderly and systematic in their outer world. They put a lot of energy into identifying the best system for getting things done, and constantly define and re-define the priorities in their lives.” What can I say, other than this is me in all my list-making, systems-adoring, geek your heart out over stationery glory.  Love. 

4.  “Friends or colleagues who have known them for years may find sides emerging which come as a surprise.”  I guess it stands to reason that someone who doesn’t talk about herself much will, when eventually prompted, reveal a few surprises.  Lots of people in my day to day life have no idea that I write this blog, for example.  And I’ve often wondered why it is that I don’t talk about it more.  Am I ashamed of it?  No.  Is it embarrassing?  Not unduly.  Do I not want people to see?  Hello, it’s on the internet! 

My overall assessment of my Myers Briggs result is that there’s at least some meaning behind the fact that I spend so much time asking questions, or that I sometimes avoid people I know in the street, or that I can’t bear to have a social engagement lined up for every night in a given week because it means I can never be alone.  I’m an introvert, guys, and I’m actually fairly proud to admit it.  Who knew?!

Image above from here.

Outside of work, I spend at least some small part of each day on the internet.  Sometimes it’s to read, sometimes it’s to write, sometimes it’s simply to check my bank balance, my eBay and the news headlines.  Whatever I’m doing, however, I’m always online to do it.  And while I don’t happen to think that the internet is quite the vortex of eternal time wasting that lots of people see it as (it’s all in the tab management, people), I do sometimes wonder just how much I would get done if, instead of flipping open my laptop in my spare seconds, I ploughed my energies into my projects, or my books or even, heaven forbid, my household chores.

It was with these thoughts in mind that I decided, in packing for caravanning at the weekend, to leave my laptop at home and do just that: other stuff.

As a result, I went through two balls of wool on my latest crochet project (crochet ladies back me up please – that takes a while!), I read upwards of 100 pages to finish one book, and I also got stuck into another.  I found time to drink gallons of coffee in front of the caravan fire, to walk, to eat chilli and ice lollies, to watch Avatar and to take a rather cursory paddle in the (blimmin’ freezing) sea.  I’m not saying that I would have achieved none of this stuff if I’d also been blogging, or thinking about blogging, or reading other peoples’ blogs, but I certainly wouldn’t have done it all.  And it was nice to do it all.  It felt productive, satisfying, like a real achievement.  Someone asked me this morning what I did with my weekend, and for once I didn’t feel flummoxed by the number of hours that had escaped through my finger tips and straight into my Google Reader.  I think the internet is an awesome, adventurous, inspiring place, full of interesting people, great writing and thought-provoking ideas.  Just once in every while, however, I want to make a conscious effort to remind myself 0f just how much life exists in the vast swathes of space outside of the four corners of my screen.

What about you?  Do you ever force yourself to take time offline?

Image above from here.

A list of things I love you say?  Well OK then, but only because it’s Thursday…

Edinburgh sunsets. Tonight’s was a bluey pinky haze that set off all those church spires to perfection.  When Edinburgh looks like this there really is nowhere else in the world I’d rather be.  Of course when it looks like this there are plenty of places I’d rather be.  Swings and roundabouts, chaps, swings and roundabouts.

Swimming. After what feels like an eternity, the Royal Commonwealth Pool is back in business.  When browsing the opening times earlier in the week I came across this page.  It’s a timeline of peoples’ memories about the pool, going right back to the 60s when it opened.  It’s actually quite touching reading about peoples’ memories of school holidays and “chips on the way home”.  I had only been to the pool once prior to it closing for its mammoth refurbishment, as part of a school trip when I was 11.  I went back this evening and was mightily impressed all round, especially with the lane spacing (what? it matters!).  Wide enough to allow me to pass another swimmer without accidentally punching them in the face, not so wide that the lane divider was so far out of my reach that I should worry about drowning.  Such is the standard by which ALL swimming pool lanes should be measured, I think.

The return of The Apprentice. And here I was wondering what would fill the void left by Masterchef.  Disgustingly compelling viewing.

Kit Kat Chunky. Belgian Waffle was talking about these recently, and as soon as the idea had lodged itself in my mind I was all but powerless to say no.  I’m glad I didn’t: these things are lip smackingly delicious.  I think it’s the thickness of the chocolate: a good 5mm either side of the crunchy wafery bit.  No messing around.

Storytime. This week has been all about getting to bed by 10pm and opening up a book.  I’m currently reading A Week in December, and have plans to move onto Shalimar The Clown followed by Wuthering Heights (I’ve bored you all before with tales of my apathy towards “the classics” but given my undying love for Jane Eyre I’m considering making a standing exception for the Brontë sisters.  Considering).

Manning up.  It’s no secret that I hate using the phone.  I wish I loved it, but I don’t.  I wish I could pick up the receiver with abandon, be awesome at the small talk and instinctively just know how to fill all those awkward pauses where neither participant in the conversation actually knows what’s going on.  But I can’t.  Sometimes in life, however, we don’t get the luxury of a choice.  So today, faced with an absolutely unavoidable phone call I decided that I could either freak the eff out or man the eff up.  In the end I managed it, albeit with a small measure of internal bribery (you’re not drinking a SINGLE DROP of coffee until you pick up that piece of plastic and DO THIS THING.  This turned out to be a winning strategy: my feeble phone phobia is small fry compared to my wanton caffeine addiction).  I might have run to the bathroom and fist-pumped the air afterwards.  Might have.

Anyway, more than enough about me.  What’s happening in your world today?

Image above from here.

I have recently read two posts on the same blog (that shall remain nameless – you’ll find it if you look hard enough), both consisting of not much more than the blogger asking her readers for money to fund a trip she’s taking.  That’s right.  Not for a charitable cause, not so she could go and volunteer her time at a soup kitchen, not because she doesn’t have enough cash to buy a tin of baked beans for dinner.  The plea was simply for money to support her in quitting her job and swanning off to more exotic parts of the globe, presumably while the rest of us remain in our jobs and feel jealous.

But before you drop your cups of tea in astonishment, as I very nearly did, one of these posts did actually offer something in return.  A postcard, to be precise.  That’s right, the blogger was offering to send readers a postcard from her holiday (which sounds properly epic by the way; it’s no weekend in a tent in Bognor for which I might well have sympathy enough to award something, if not money then perhaps some wet wipes or a pair of thick socks) in return for a donation of around £6.  Wow, thanks for that.  I get to lose money AND have you rub the awesomeness of your holiday into my face via air mail?  Gosh, you shouldn’t have.

No, really. YOU SHOULDN’T HAVE.

I’ll say no more about the blog in question because I’ve seen this happen elsewhere before and my sense of indignant disgust has been just as searing.  Am I alone in finding the idea of bloggers asking their readers for money in this way to be almost unique in its ability to simultaneously depress and enrage?  I don’t come across it a lot, perhaps because once a blogger I love starts asking for reader cash injections on the regular I usually unsubscribe faster than I can do a Liz Lemon-style “What the WHAT?”.  Nevertheless, when I do come across it I’m always flabbergasted by how brazen people can be.  I especially hate it when the plea for cash is wrapped up in a silky pink ribbon and sold to the reader on the basis that it’s actually for his or her benefit.  That the blogger going off to sunnier climes to “find themselves” is somehow being done for and in the name of the readership, as opposed to the blogger him or herself.  If you want to be upfront about it, fine.  I’ll still think you’re crass to be asking but at least you get points for honesty.  Whatever you do though, don’t try and sell your appeal for money as something that will benefit anyone but yourself.  I could use many adjectives to describe my thoughts on that practice but for the purposes of brevity I’ll limit myself to INSULTING.

Before you all start thinking I’m some kind of uncharitable moron who doesn’t realise that everyone needs to have some cash in their back pocket to get by, let me say that I’m not against people making money from blogging per se.  I get that some people blog for a living, and no, I’m not silly enough to think that those who do pay for their teabags using a currency of eloquent words and sophisticated ideas.  If a readership is ready and willing to hand over cash to someone who is working bloody hard for it by writing an amazing blog then I think that’s absolutely fair enough.  My objection only really begins when I’m asked as a reader to hand over the money that I myself work bloody hard for to a blogger who has done or who proposes to do very little to earn it.

What about our own stuff?  Our own pipe dreams, our own travel ambitions?  I have a list of places in the world I’d like to visit that’s as long as both of my arms.  If I spend my money paying for other people to live out their travel fantasies, will I ever get round to fulfilling my own?  And that’s not even to take notice of the elephant in the room, which is the fact that it’s 2012, the economy is dying in a ditch and you now get far fewer loaves of bread for your £10 than you did a few years ago (FYI this is my go-to analogy when discussing or reading about inflation.  Inflation up = less loaves of bread for a tenner.  Inflation down = more loaves of…you get the picture.  I’ve not yet worked out how this applies to people who bake their own bread.  Less yeast, perhaps?).  To cut a long story short, heaps of people are feeling the pinch right now, and heaps of people are doing all they can to eke their pennies into pounds.  Bloggers asking their readers for money to fund exotic holidays against this backdrop to me comes across not just as wildly unrealistic but also as embarrassingly crass and insensitive.

Put simply, if a blogger really wants to make me reach for my debit card, he or she needs to offer me something I either really, really want, or absolutely can’t refuse.  They need to create something amazing, like a tutorial that I can’t already find on YouTube, or a wall-planner that kicks the ass of anything I could make with an empty cereal box and a glue stick.  They need to write something I really, really want to read, like an awesome short story or a no-fails allowed guide to getting up early in the morning.  What they absolutely must never, ever do, as far as I’m concerned, is whine at me for money solely so that they can then go off on amazing trips that I want to take myself/write in coffee shops during the middle of the day while I’m at work/DO ABSOLUTELY ANYTHING FUN WHILE I’M AT WORK.

Is that unreasonable?

Image above from here.