Symbolic Forest

The world turns, things change, and another week is over.

Wee Dave seems to be settling in well at the office. We seem to agree on a frightening number of things, many more than I did with Big Dave. The office still hasn’t been blown to bits by the wind, although it came fairly close. The office toilets are jammed up in the attic, spread out across creaking roof-beams, and sitting up there in a heavy gale sounds, I imagine, like riding in a hard-pushed galleon sailing across the Atlantic.

The storm seems to have been blowing everyone’s heads about, upsetting people, breaking things up, putting people on edge. I blame it for all that fraught Big Brother stuff that I’m steadfastly refusing to watch.

…but insomnia.*

I laid in bed last night listening to the rain on the window, the wind howling under the eaves, and the grumbling of our ancient heating system, wondering what mistake I’d made, if there was one, and if I’m falling into too much of a pattern.

There is a cycle, going round and round, which I seem doomed to repeat, and which I can’t learn how to break out of. And I sometimes wonder if I’m ever going to break out of it at all.

* and if you know where I stole that line from, you get Extra Geekpoints

So, Big Dave has left, in a cloud of adulation and office stationary, getting ready to move house over the break. Everything is booked, and everything is ready to go, and when I get back after Christmas I will have someone new to share the office with.

Things have been a little strange lately, and not just because of Dave. Work has been very stressful, and other things have been very stressful too. I see someone and I want to try to help them, to save them from themself and from dangerous people, but I know they would not accept my help. The stress of all this, and all the work that has been piling on me at the office, makes me want to curl up for a thousand years, not sleeping, just dormant. A bit like King Arthur, maybe.

Talking of King Arthur, here’s more Susan Cooper:

For Drake is no longer sleeping in his hammock, children, nor is Arthur somewhere sleeping, and you may not lie idly expecting the second coming of anybody now, because the world is yours and it is up to you. Now especially since man has the strength to destroy this world, it is the responsibility of man to keep it alive, it all its beauty and marvellous joy.

Maybe that should be my epigram for the coming year. In the meantime, I’m going to occupy myself with the King William’s College General Knowledge Paper. I might only get a handful of answers,* but it will keep me busy for a while.

* which may or may not include “Copernicus”, “Theodore Roosevelt”, and “The Waterloo and City Line”. That’s how random they are. Feel free to guess what questions I think those are the answers to.

Keyword Noise: King Williams College Quiz

Well, in addition to not being able to find any of the christmas presents I want to buy in the shops; the computer has started misbehaving. It crashed in the middle of an update, and hasn’t been working right ever since. For those of you who have been on the internet since the early 90s: I’m posting this using the text-only browser Lynx. because it was the only one I could get working quickly whilst getting the rest of the machine back on its feet.

So if anything in this post looks a bit strange, that’s because I can’t really see what I’m doing, because the text-entry widget in Lynx is a bit…

The Plain People Of The Internet: So what was the explanation for all those other posts looking a bit strange, then?

Me: Har har.

More whining posts tomorrow; or if I’m in a good mood, I’ll tell you about the pantomime I went to see.

Update: Although Lynx lets you create posts in Wordpress, it doesn’t seem to like you editing them. Grrr, again.

Samhain is coming up, so here are two vows for the next year.

Avoid getting close to people you don’t trust utterly. If you’re wary about somebody, you’re wary for a reason. The closer you let yourself get to somebody, the more you’re risking being hurt, even if neither of you realise it at the time.

Let people make their own mistakes. Some things can’t be taught; they have to be learned. Even if you can see they’re going to hurt themselves, sometimes you have to stand back and let them. If you try to stop them, they’re not going to listen, and you’re only going to make things worse.

This isn’t about you.*

Sometimes, when I post here, all I’m doing is talking to myself.

* yes, you! I mean you. Of course I mean you, who else could I mean? Whoever is reading this, I’m definitely talking about you specifically. Even if I’ve never met you and have no idea who you are.

Keyword noise: introspection

Well, yes. It’s been a strange week, and it’s over now. Roll on the next week and the next weekend.

Big Dave was annoying me a lot this week. I was tempted to post a long list of all his annoying Tourette’s-style tics. They include:

• Tuneless humming
• Calling me “Susan”
• Calling me “Captain”
• Making robot noises whenever he moves his chair
• Tuneful humming, of 80s TV themes
• Singing “I want to break free” - with “free” replaced by “wind”

What makes it more annoying is: him breaking off to tell you how much work we both have, how it’s all urgent, how we need to get it done because of all the managers that are pressuring him about it. Especially when a lot of things he could have delegated to me a long time before, but only has at the last minute. Especially when he then goes straight back to the annoying tics.

Worrying recent search requests:

• back to abusive ex
• nsfw
• inbreeding erotica
• see you soon! flirting
• when do clocks change goole
• you have been watching hi de hi
• biscuit crumbs health attitude
• i hate grimsby

This is the internet. Warning: May Contain Nuts. Well, the last one makes sense, at least. Maybe this week coming will be better than the last.

And, all of a sudden, everything is back to normal again. I knew life was going too well.

I’m back in the Singleness Desert. Every so often, you find what you think might be the edge of the desert, but it turns out to be nothing but a small oasis. I’ve been thrown out of my last oasis, and I’m back in the desert again.

I wish we could turn back our memories of this weekend, so I could have all the happy memories of our time together, without the ones of the way we fell apart.

Next thing to do: remember how to fall asleep again. It’s gone 3, and I need to work out how to switch my head off.

This week has mostly consisted of: coughing fits. Coughing until bent double, sometimes. It’s not fun, but it seems to be fading now.

The worst part is, I didn’t even take any time off work. My sinuses and ears were all aching, and due to the earache I was wobbly on my feet, and having trouble moving my jaw. At one point, I even fell down the stairs.* Why the hell I didn’t take any time off work, I don’t know. I might have had plenty of important work to do, but I sure as hell wasn’t up to doing it properly - I’d spend half an hour at a time changing the wrong file, and making Big Dave think I was about to cough up a lung. I’m unlikely to get any respect or kudos from the management for trying to get my work finished despite feeling shit, so why did I bother to do it?

* Why is it that I never lost my balance and fell over on flat ground? The one place I lose my balance has to be at the top of a flight of stairs, so I go thunk thunk thunk thunk thunk on my arse all the way down to the bottom.

Keyword noise: illness, coughing

My throat feels like someone has been rubbing it with sandpaper. I’m sure that hasn’t actually happened. I’d remember.

Nevertheless, I have dragged myself into the office. Given that it’s Monday, everyone would get somewhat suspicious if I stayed at home and croaked down the phone at the office secretary. I’ve come in, and I’m medicating myself by sucking on jelly babies.* They’re definitely soothing my throat more than cough sweets would.

* the secret sort that are actually made from real babies, of course

Things that would make my life better:

A better job*
Living away from the parents
A social life that is closer to home
A partner who, also, was reasonably close to home
The self-belief to always do what I want to do.
The wisdom to know what I need to do.
And the self-confidence to be content with what I can do, rather than being disappointed at not doing what other people can.

This post was brought to you by Self-Reflective Lunchtime Breaks, Ltd - purveyors of angst to twentysomethings everywhere. Feel free to add further suggestions.

* but “better” is such a nebulous term there.

Keyword noise: angst