Today Has Sucked, Too,

Without trying to sound like a moaning Minnie, I have written a few things recently about how things keep going wrong, but I've also not posted all of them because it can feel like I'm being overly self-indulgent, however today has been one of those days where what has gone wrong has been more mildly annoying than some of the things over the last few weeks.

I've had a hell of a lot on at work these last few weeks and what I really needed today was some time out, being a water baby and going for a paddle on a paddle board. I was supposed to be driving to Wales to join an activity session which was half paddle board lesson and half litter pick, so having fun, doing something somewhat daft, but also doing something cool in terms of environment clean up. Honestly, from the second I read about it, it seemed very much something I would love and something I really wanted to be involved in. Last week it was cancelled the morning of the session, then this week, I was in the car on the way to the motorway and got a call to say the session was again cancelled although this time they were able to share that it was due to one of the instructors being ill and there not being enough instructors to go with the group, so I had to turn around and not go. The good thing is that it gave me time to get a bulb changed on my car's headlights, then go to Lidl to try and get a life jacket for Chai, so that when I get to the stage I'm not knocking the board over a lot (I don't know how quickly that will happen) Chai can come with me, and she can have a go at swimming, but without the risk that she is going to panic and not be able to swim. They weren't in yet, but I was able to get a shorty wetsuit and a camp shower, then went to Aldi and got a changing coat, so as much as it was not a good day for getting the thing I wanted to do done, it did mean that I got a few other things crossed off of my to do list. 

I'm disappointed because as much as I panic around water - particularly very deep water - I have a really good buoyancy aid and I can actually swim. Once I'm in the water I stop panicking and become quite calm, and it's something that just makes me feel better. I am really excited about eventually getting to go paddle boarding, but it just seems like it won't be any time soon which really disappoints me. I am glad that I have most of the things I need for being able to go by myself, once I have gained a bit of confidence and once I have got a license, but I could still have done without the session being cancelled today. I'm sick of taking time off of work and not getting to do the thing I have taken the time off of work for.

Okay, So That's What That Sign Means,

Very often, when I am on the motorway, I see those really annoying signs that say reduce your speed to sixty, and it's because of xxxxx. Sometimes it's because of reports of pedestrians on the road, animals loose on the road or other reasons, but more often than not it's a report of debris. The amount of times it happens and then there is literally nothing on the road is a nightmare, partly because I like driving at seventy on the motorway, sixty annoys me, so driving at sixty for no reason is just irritating. 

Driving back from work today, there were a number of signs that said slow down, sixty and debris on the road, and whilst most people slowed down (I also slowed down) I was rolling my eyes at the whole thing because I've never known it be anything. Well, except that time my ex and I were driving to Dover and there as a full on tree across one lane, but there weren't any smart signs up then and I wasn't driving so I don't really count that!

In the stretch that was sixty, a lorry had pulled into my lane to get past a slower moving vehicle and then he slammed on his brakes, because everyone was slamming on their brakes and I felt like I pretty much had to do an emergency stop from sixty miles an hour, which was not comfortable at all. My left shoulder and elbow have been twinging since, though not enough to worry about. When the lorry started moving again, there as a huge flexible pipe like thing on the floor and it was so far into the lane that I was driving in that I practically had to swerve into the next lane to avoid it, which I didn't want to do because that lane was still going at sixty (and my car takes six months to go from naught to sixty). I was kind of struck by the fact that, hey, there was actually a reason for the sign this time around! I ended up driving over part of it which probably wasn't advisable and wasn't comfortable and made a noise that didn't sound great and then I looked in my rear view mirror and saw everyone behind was thankfully keeping their hazard lights on (I had hit mine when I was stopping, but then turned it off when I was stopped and the car behind me had managed to stop as well, and not uncomfortably close to me.) 

I realise that this isn't the scariest thing anyone has ever been through and honestly, it's not even up there with the worst things that have happened within the last week, but it was the scary sort of thing that made me think, okay, I should really pay a little bit more attention to those signs, and also maybe I should listen to the sat nav when it tells me to take the dual carriage way all the way home instead of going on the motorway, even though I like motorways and I can't stand all of the roundabouts on the dual carriage way because of the aforementioned problems with the car accelerating. Though, even with that said, if the Prime Minister revived Liz Truss's ridiculous idea of making the seventy mile an hour speed limit on motorways advisory (I know it's never going to happen, I know) instead of mandatory, I would definitely be driving faster than seventy on the motorways, even in my ridiculous little car.

What a F***ing Day,

 I am going to admit that I have been kind of checked out of politics and the news for a while because honestly, it is so overwhelming, but today BBC News notifications have been going off a lot and I've seen more than I usually would of what is going on in Westminster.

Firstly, the idea of a resignation Honours List sounds bonkers to me, especially when that person has effectively had to resign in disgrace, especially after they clung to power for as long as possible despite it being clear that their hands were not clean. All political appointments to the Honours list are somewhat baffling to me to be perfectly honest, particularly when it's to stack the House of Lords with people who think one way or another. Although I stick to my view that having the Upper House be the UK system rather than the American system (voting for a second house just doesn't make sense to me, sorry) having an outgoing Prime Minister, or in this case a Prime Minister who has already gone and has been that way for months (and two new PMs) appointing people to that house seems crazy to me. 

Putting all of this aside, how on Earth can we - the UK in general, I mean - justify allowing such a person, who has also now stepped down because of the report into one of the things he had to step down from the PM roles for, to appoint people to the Upper House? Whilst the list came out first and then he stepped down, and it's highly possible that he held out stepping down for the reasons he stepped down until the moment that the list was out, I don't see how there is any justification for giving someone who is no longer an MP because of poor judgement and worse behaviour carte blanche to install new people into the Upper House where they have the attendance allowance, the expenses accounts and all of those sorts of perks of retaining a role in Westminster. Whilst several were 'stepping down at the next election' I would genuinely take a guess that at least a few of them have made the calculations that actually they are likely to suffer a crippling defeat at that election and rather than having a political career which ended in failure, they choose to jump before being pushed, and were more than happy to be put forward for a role that they can't easily be pushed out of, even if all they do is take a nap during debates. 

House of Lords reform is something that no one has real appetite for - or no one with any power to do it - so these people who are appointed there will likely be there for the rest of their lives, and many of them can only claim to be good at one thing: being a career politician, and personally, one of the reasons I prefer the Upper House of the UK to the US is that the appointments based system is, mostly, more of a meritocracy, and is far more diverse than the Lower House. Politicising that environment, which does happen on occasions like this, isn't good for anyone. Having experts in different fields, whether you know their names or not, has far, far more value than having household name politicians who have given up on the idea of becoming the PM.

I've Been Spending a Lot of Time on Reddit,

 Okay, so don't judge me, but... I kind of love reading the AITA (Am I The A**hole) thread of Reddit, even when I'm just lurking and not commenting. It's been something of a guilty pleasure for a while, like a version of Post Secret, but somehow far more fun, even if it's a bit obvious sometimes that some of the stories are utter fiction. It's probably the interactive element and the thought that suddenly everyone can be an agony aunt. I love seeing the different perceptions of a situation that people chime in with, although I do hate that it sometimes seems to highlight how many a**holes are in the world. 

One of the things I did to try and get back to being okay with people reading things I had been writing was writing comments on these threads and others, because it's interaction with people, but it's easier than writing something personal to me. Giving my opinion on someone else's situation is definitely a lot easier than putting something of my own out into the world, though I'm thankfully getting past that fear, it seems. 

Now, I don't want this blog to become one of those places that recycles AITA content into videos, blogs, articles and the like, listing the comments, or speaking through situations, and I'm certainly not going to use it as a springboard for everything I ever write which is a piece about having an opinion - Lord only knows that if you've come across me on a day where I feel 'awake' and 'normal' (caveat: normal, for me) that I have enough of my own - but I do think that periodically it might creep in, because sometimes talking about current events or celebrities is just too much and I would rather discuss something that an anonymous internet stranger posted, because at least it was their choice to put it out there, in their own words.

And here's the point I was coming to in a round about way...

On AITA, it can be clear that there is at least a bit of fibby going on even when it's not clear that the story is an out and out lie, but it's also clear that each story is the Original Poster's perception of events, and it's possible to advise them on where they've gone wrong, or where their interpretation of a situation might be a bit faulty, even if they don't want to hear it. In the media, you get a second, third or fourth hand story often cooked up to sell newspapers or gain clicks on the article. Very often there is a vague quote from a source and in order to understand what is actually going on from the whole article you have to read between the lines and accept that the headline is probably a mile or so from the truth with only a vague relationship betwixt the two. People will think what they think anyway, because there is too much that is said that's not believed, too much that isn't said or isn't answered and, the worst part of it for me, there is absolutely no understanding of the fact that there is very often a person or a few people behind the article, and they are people with family, friends and people that care about that person who are going to be hurt in the process. At the end of the day there is more than one truth, because everyone is going to have a different version of events, and there is the truth that people believe, and then there is the more elusive truth. There is a truth of what happened and why people did certain things and sometimes they might not even know why they did something themselves, but this is the sort of truth that can never really be found, much less read online or in a newspaper.

Just Do It,

A few years ago my ex partner - can't remember if he was the ex at the time or not, and I'm not sure that it really matters - showed me a video that Shia LaBeouf made that was the phrase, Just Do It, and a couple of other little gems like, if you want to stop starting over, stop giving up. Periodically, it pops into my head clear as day, because I get sick of the doubts in my head that stand in the way of the things I want to do or the things I intend to do. Today is one of those days. 

When I bought the new laptop, I managed to pull myself out of a pretty major writing funk that had made me feel as though I had lost a significant part of myself. I've been writing since I was a small person, or a smaller person, and I've been a part of NaNoWriMo since I was sixteen, so thinking that it was a part of my life I was going to walk away from and that I thought I was closing the door on completely and I didn't realise how awful that felt. I have it written everywhere that what I am is a writer, a dreamer and a fairies believer, so walking away from that completely should have felt disgusting, but at the time I just wasn't feeling the decision and it's only when I've walked it back that I've realised how much of an impact that it had on me. 

Saying that though, the whole, I walked that decision back, I recommitted to writing and I knew what I was doing with it more than I had for a while - don't take that as I have any idea of a direction or destination for what I want in terms of writing, because I definitely don't - I knew what I wanted to do, I knew more what I wanted to write about and I knew that I actually wanted to write which was something pretty new - well, old, missing for a while and then new - but the problem has come in the space in between writing something - whether it be blogs, short stories or sometimes emails - and putting it into a space where someone else can read it. 

I've taken a few knocks recently, and honestly there have been points where I have felt like it was everything that was going wrong, and when it comes to my writing it's something that is often so personal that the idea of being kicked from another direction when I was already feeling more than bruised was just completely overwhelming and completely paralysing. I'm starting to feel like things are turning a corner, or at least I'm hoping that they are, because I'm trying to refuse to feel worse than I have over the last few weeks, and if that is the case one of the things which needs to happen is I need to be okay with sharing things I have written with the world again. I need to actually click 'Publish' on the blog posts I have written, 'Send' on the emails I have left in Drafts and I need to kick my ass into finishing a couple of drafts of things that I want to think about what I want to do with, but I have been putting it off. 

Anyway, this is the first thing I have pressed 'Publish' on. Long may it continue.