You Are Not Alone

Not so long ago, I got up on a Saturday morning and I couldn’t see the point to carrying on any more. Not to the extent that I really wanted to hurt myself. Just to the extent that it went through my mind that I just wanted to disappear. Now, before I did this, I did have one rational thought. I tried to call my sister. Inevitably she didn’t answer. I left her a message, asking her to check on the kids for me. On that day, I think this was my last attempt to try to find someone to help me. With that, I turned off my phone and decided instead to roar off in the car as fast as I could.

I got precisely two minutes down the road before I realised that my plan to run away from home was never going to work. First, I found myself trying to go as fast as I could behind another car, who was clearly out for a gentle Saturday morning meander. As I sat in my car, doing 20 miles an hour, I thought to myself that this, as getaways went, was a very pitiful attempt. I also realised that I was running out of petrol. 

I pulled into a layby and sat by myself. The voice in my head berating me for not even being very successful at running away. What on earth was I going to do now? I couldn’t go home. There was no way to run off (due to lack of petrol and lack of money to buy it). I didn’t want to go and bother my friends. They all have problems of their own to deal with and exciting lives that involve doing fancy things on a Saturday morning. I sat there for ages. After a while, I decided I was going to do the only thing I could think of. Find somewhere for a cup of tea.

In the end, I ended up in Tesco car park. A whole 7 minutes away from home. I went and sat in the café. I was a miserable soggy mess, having sat and cried so much. By the time I had drunk my tea and calmed down a bit, I realised that I should switch my phone back on and speak to my sister. She would probably be hopeless at finding me solutions, but it was time to at least talk to someone.

When I did, I discovered that my daughter had sent the balloon up. I had voicemails and text messages from my sister, my children and my friends asking me to get in touch with them. My sister said she would come and find me and my daughter was telling me she loved me. And that is because of another curious quirk of human nature. When we know someone who is in trouble, we are always more likely to want to try and help them than not. It’s another reason why I am certain that if you need help and you ask for it, you are fairly likely to get it.

When Milla and I first began to talk about The Emergency Chicken, the Blog and the Podcasts, Milla gave me a very firm instruction: ‘It has to have a tagline. Something simple.’ I came up with “Life is never easy, but you are not alone”. This was no accident, nor is it just some glib statement designed to attract your attention. 

I picked this phrase because I believe that no matter how bad it is, no matter what trouble you assume you are in, and no matter how hard what is ahead, you are not friendless, or powerless and you are not alone. That may sound easy for me to say. I have family and I have friends. It’s not always been that way though. I know that loneliness is often described as at epidemic proportions in this country. But I really do believe that no one is without friends or help from somewhere. Sometimes it is difficult to find either of these things. But if you try hard enough, they will be there. 

Some days, life is easy. The days aren’t good or bad. We walk through the daily problems and irritations, finding solutions to the puzzles and having the odd little win. We get on with our regular work or chores, feeling that sense of being good to get that stuff done and out of the way. Often, we just tootle on through our routines and get to the end of each day and feel glad that we have made a reasonable job of it all.

Other days can be great. These are the times when you plan the things you dream of doing or work on the goals that you want to achieve. They are the times when you really enjoy yourself and have fun. You laugh, wonder at how the time has passed by in a flash, the sun has shone and the sky was blue. You’ve made happy memories.

Then there are the not so good days. The awful days; the days when nothing goes according to plan or things happen that were so unexpected or so big, that you simply couldn’t deal with them. ’I haven’t got the headspace to work this out’ I shout to anyone that may be listening. These are the times when I become afraid or overwhelmed. I don’t know what to do and even if I did, I wouldn’t know how to do it. Or they are the days when you realise that you have made silly decisions, that had serious consequences for other people, maybe that you should have foreseen but you didn’t. 

I’ve had all those bad days and I know people who have gone through all these things too. The days when you just cannot face what lies ahead. You cannot cope with fixing a situation that may not have been of your making or may have been a direct result of something you have done. That it is all so bad and so painful to manage that it physically hurts.

Feeling that you are alone with all of this is horrible. You might feel guilt, shame or embarrassment. It makes the problems that you have or the errors you might have made feel all the worse. I’ve learnt that when you have something to deal with, a problem shared is a problem halved. Yes, its’ really hard to get those words out and admit that it’s all gone wrong. But if you can find someone who you trust and who you know won’t judge you, it is better to talk about it.

Why? Often because once you have said it, it feels better. You are no longer alone with it all. That can be a relief. You might also find that the person you are talking to has also been through the same things. They may have had the same experiences. Suddenly, you can find that an answer to everything you were so worried about can be found.

None of this is easy (because life if never easy) but if you need help, ask for it. You are not alone.

Help! I’m a Perfectionist…

Confession: I’m not a perfectionist. Of course, there are some things I’m very picky about. We all have our own standards, ways of doing things that keeps us in our comfort zone.  That doesn’t make us right, though. If we try and be perfect in everything, we’re attempting the impossible. We burn out, make ourselves ill and constantly beat ourselves up for failing. We need to find a better way.

We’ve talked on the podcast about being good enough and Thomas Curran’s book, The Perfection Trap which rightly points the finger at the world we live in and calls for societal change. I promised Em that, even though I’m not a perfectionist, I would try to identify some ideas for practical action points an individual can take.

Acceptance

There are two things we need to accept: Firstly, ourselves. Whether you like or not, you’re a mere human who makes mistakes, gets ill, makes mistakes, forgets things… the list is endless.  We all do. To expect otherwise is setting yourself up for constant disappointment and failure. Why do that? I know this is easier said than done but we can’t be content unless we learn to accept ourselves for who we are. 

Secondly, the world we live in. I like the way Thomas Curran explains that much of what we see is a set of man-made ideas to grow the economy, designed to make you spend money to get the perfect home or face.  You can either reframe how you see the world  –  it’s an advert you don’t need to buy into, accept it for what it is – or you can withdraw from it some of the time to reset your sanity. I’d go for a bit of both.

Deficit Thinking

This means you are always focusing on the gap between what you have achieved and perfection (and probably an idealised, unrealistic view of perfection) rather than the awesome stuff you did do. This is a recipe for anxiety and lack of self esteem. 

Instead, make yourself notice what you did do. If you had ten tasks on your job list and you did nine, that’s 90%! That would get you an A* or distinction in any exam. I’d celebrate that.

What if you only do two of the tasks?  It’s still more than none Failing sometimes makes us human. It’s normal. Forgiving ourselves is part of acceptance. Try to look at it rationally. Was the plan too ambitious? Did you have to do something else? Were you unwell?  Examine the causes, learn form it and move on. Don’t dwell on it.

 Don’t tell yourself you’ve failed or should have done better. Tell yourself you did your best and be proud of what you did achieve. Keep going until you’ve retrained your brain.

Choose your thing

If being a perfectionist is in your nature, it may be too much to let it all go. How about choosing which areas of your life your will strive for high standards, and those where you allow yourself to ease up? This will give you time to let your perfectionism let rip, and hopefully you will learn that the earth doesn’t stop turning if you loosen your grip in other areas. 

Identify WGLL

One of the dangers of perfectionism is that we’re not rational about what is achievable, given that we’re mere mortals. WGLL means What Good Looks Like.  Instead of have ridiculously high standards, find out what is achievable given the time and resources you have available and stick to it.  I used to have a boss that would constantly say ‘You can’t build a Rolls Royce if you’re being funded for a Mini.’ She was right. We need to work within our means, whether that is time, energy or money. We need to be realistic.

Limit your triggers

What gives you the idea that everyone else has a perfect life, and you’re the only one that can’t balance books while feeding a child and arranging giant lilies effortlessly?  Insta? Facebook? TV?  Your own fertile imagination?  If a platform or place is making you feel inadequate, limit your consumption, and when you do visit, take it with a pinch of salt. Usually the posters are struggling as much as you underneath the shiny veneer. I’ll discuss these ideas with Em (she’s a self-confessed perfectionist) to get her thoughts and see if she’ll try them. We’ll report any successes. Watch this space!

You can read our Blogs ‘Be Good Enough‘ and ‘What’s Wrong With Good Enough‘, and listen to our podcast episodes where we talk more about perfectionism.

I’m Sorry. It Isn’t You. It’s Me.

There is a song called ‘What a Fool Believes”, by The Doobie Brothers, sung by Michael McDonald.  Here’s the YouTube link if you either can’t remember it or are too young to know about it:

It contains these immortal lyrics:

“As he rises to her apology

Anybody else would surely know

He’s watching her go”.

Whenever I hear this, it makes me grin (and sing along, very, very badly).  I imagine I can see a woman, totally at ease with herself. She is looking directly into the eyes of the man in front of her.  She’s half smiling, maybe she reaches out and touches his arm.  And she is telling that man, gently but confidently, that it’s over, but it isn’t him, it’s her.  She’s had fun, but she just isn’t ready.  She thinks its best if they just stay friends. Then she gets up and says goodbye. With grace and dignity she walks out, in her high heels, skirt flowing, completely assured that she knows what she is doing.  She has no guilt and knows that she has made the right decision.  With that, she walks off into the night.

That is how I would love to be able to deliver bad news. I want to be the woman that’s in my imagination.  I wish I could find the right words to say, so that there is no argument and no over-explaining necessary.  To be direct, unwavering and then to be able to walk away, head held up, knowing you are doing exactly the right thing.

In my real world, how do I deliver bad news?  I can tell you now it is nothing like the woman in my mind from The Doobie Brothers song. If I can, I avoid giving bad news, using all manner of evasive tactics to prevent a confrontation.  I will then agonise over whether I am making the right decision. When the words finally must come out, I stumble over them. I cannot find the right things to say. I generally just give up and agree to do whatever it is that I don’t want to do.  Once again, my over-developed people pleasing nature kicks in.  

Instead of being firm and sticking to a decision to say ‘no, this isn’t right for me’ I end up persuading myself, that I can find a way of doing this, it will be ok.  The voice in my head is telling me that, yet again, madness lies this way and this was not how it was supposed to be.  The words I am saying and can hear myself speaking are the complete opposite. I laugh and say “it’ll be fine”.  

But my heart is sinking as in my head I am replying to myself with ‘no it won’t and you know it.” As for the ‘confidently striding away with grace and dignity thing’, I have never been able to pull that one off.  When it’s me, it’s head down, trying to run out of the room. I trip over my feet and get my skirt caught in my heels. 

I don’t like giving bad news and I would rather not.  Normally, the only one who then suffers the consequences of this are me.  Once I’ve given in, I end up endlessly questioning why on earth I have ever agreed to do something else that I don’t want to do and how I ever got myself into that situation at all.

I’ve been working away all summer, in a temporary consultancy job.  I rather like these kind of jobs as I get paid quite a bit without getting involved in all the politics that employment sometimes brings with it.  I was then offered a permanent position.  This is something that does happen (I’m not too bad at what I do and I have quite a bit of experience of doing it).  I said I’d think about it. 

Over the weeks since the offer, I have veered from ‘well, maybe it is time I had something permanent’ to ‘why on earth would I want to be here, with this company, forever’.  I considered the important things (pay, holidays, responsibilities) and realised that they weren’t going to pay me enough, I wouldn’t get enough leave and frankly I wasn’t prepared to be responsible for the rubbish that I would end up having to deal with if I stayed.  Yet, I wanted to just be done with it and say no.  I like the people that are there and the person that I would be working with.  I’ve been worrying that I would be causing them disappointment and the hassle of recruiting if I were to say no.

What did I do?  I’ve put it off.  For as long as I possibly can.  I don’t know why. It’s work and it shouldn’t be personal.  Where work is concerned, you should do what is best for you, no one else.  Yet I can’t find a way to let them down gently, so I’ve said nothing at all.  I still haven’t done it and I don’t know how.

I asked around to find out how you can learn to give bad news.  The answers range from trying to be authentic, genuine and compassionate.  Treat the other person with respect and dignity.  Don’t lie, be honest and clear.  All of which sounds eminently sensible and absolutely the right thing to do.  And yet I still can’t seem to grasp the right way. I have a feeling that when it comes to it I will either blurt the whole thing out (which won’t get the message over that I want to) or I will end up doing something else that I don’t want to do (and torturing myself about it for many weeks afterwards).

I’m going to try the being ‘clear, honest and respectful’ route.  I cannot be stuck in a job I don’t want to do, so I am going to have to be brave. It’s going to be hard. I suspect that I will embarrass myself.  I will let you know how that goes.

Read more of our Blogs here.

What’s Wrong With Good Enough?

It’s Friday morning and I scroll through Twitter/X/whatever it’s called. I come across a tweet (do we still call them tweets now we are living in the new X world?) that began “I thought I was fine but…”

The poster said he had three kids, a full time job and a book coming out.  He felt as if his daughter hated him and he was doubting everything.  

I don’t normally comment on the tweets/posts/musings of people I don’t know or who I have no connection with. But I felt for him.  I knew that there he was, outwardly looking great, in control, capable.  What’s he got to complain about? He has a family, a job, a life.  Doesn’t he realise how grateful he should be? I recognised that, inside, he probably felt as if he was being crushed by guilt and anxiety, thinking nothing worked, his family didn’t care, his daughter didn’t even like him and wondering why nothing he did was good enough.  I left him a reply telling her I thought he was amazing and to stop doubting himself.  He was good enough.

I know all of this, because it is how I feel on a daily basis.  It’s the stab of guilt as the kids get out of the car and I wonder what more I could have done to help them with their homework; it’s the doubt I feel when I give advice to the people I work with, wondering if this time I might have got it wrong. It’s the feeling that I want to run off and hide when I stare down the barrel of yet another logistical problem I must find a way to solve, knowing that whatever I come up with will be yet another compromise that not everyone will be happy about.

We don’t all get it right every day.  Yet instead of accepting this, we continue to strive for perfection.  I don’t want to do this anymore.  Whilst striving for excellence in everything I do is a worthy thing, I am tired of beating myself up when I don’t make it.  

Not so long ago, I read the Professor Thomas Curran Book ‘The Perfection Trap’ and talked about the ability to ‘Be Good Enough’. Here’s the link to his website – thomascurran.co.uk.  I learnt that perfection is unattainable.  It’s a dream that became my nightmare.  Perfect wives, partners, mothers, professionals, human beings just don’t exist.  Whilst this is disappointing and what a lot of what I once believed to be true has turned out to be a load of old rubbish, it’s also come as a huge relief.  I don’t have to be that person anymore and I quite like that. Now I want to know more about why ‘Good Enough’ seems to be looked upon in such a derisory way. Why isn’t ‘Good Enough’ really good enough?

Let’s start with that phrase first – ‘good enough’.  For some reason, the idea of being good enough seems to have become the equivalent to being average.  And who wants to be average?  What’s great about that?  We live in a society now where being average isn’t fun or beautiful or amazing.  It’s just sort of, whatever, a nothingness, just getting on with it, nothing special.

For me this is where the problem begins.  We now seem to have an expectation that every day must be glorious.  It must sing with happiness.  There must be joy in everything you do.  We must find the laughter and be the best that we can be.  Why?  Because that is what the people on the TV say you must do. Or in the online media.  

This is the way everyone’s life looks on Facebook and Instagram.  When I scroll through my friend’s pages, I never see the days when the rain is coming down horizontally, I see the pictures of the bright sunshine and the smiles as they relax on distant beaches or far away places that I’ve always wanted to see.  When I talk to anyone, they never tell me that they are broke, tired, stressed out and have just had another row with their kids.  They tell me that life is great, full of wonderful events and love and exciting prospects.  We never discuss the daily grind, the torture of the Wi-Fi playing up, the fact that your mother is poorly and you are worried out of your mind.

Being average isn’t interesting.  The things that really happen to us every day are just plain dull.  No one wants that.  That’s muted, grey and boring.  And no one wants anyone else to know about it either. 

And yet.  If you look up what is great about being average – or right about good enough – you will find that there is a lot to be really positive about.  People who do not constantly strive for perfection are happier.  Their expectations are more realistic and so they cope better in the ‘real’ world (the world where things go wrong, the sun doesn’t always shine and coffee isn’t instantly available everywhere).  They are more flexible, they beat themselves up far less and have a far healthier take on life and how to live it.  These people are fitter, more successful and well-balanced.  They don’t feel overwhelmed so much and their anxiety and depression levels are far less than those that spend their days tirelessly striving to be the greatest.

So being average is surprisingly great! In fact, you can still strive for the great and be average – or good enough.  Every day that I have those thoughts where I worry that maybe I could have tried harder or done something better, I’m now working on stopping that argument in my head and telling myself that it doesn’t matter.  I am good enough at a time when I need to be.  Sometimes you will achieve what you thought you could not.  Those days will be fabulous and you will shine in the sun.  But it is also time to embrace the bad days and accept they exist too.  When they happen it is ok.  Those days are meant to be there.  They are meant to happen.  Unless they did, we would never understand just how wonderful life can be.

Are you a perfectionist and wish you weren’t? Milla has some helpful tips and action points. Read more here.

You can find more of our Spring Season Blogs here.

The Happiness Question

Confession: I am a secret iPad Scroller. I can sit  browsing for hours; Facebook, Twitter, news channels, online shops and just about anything on the internet generally.  Give me a spare hour (and I don’t have many) and they pass in a blur of moving through those pages, swiping down and up.  My favourite place for this is the sofa, whilst lying down. Normally with only one eye open.  It tends to take place on a Sunday afternoon, shortly before a small afternoon nap, though (subject to work levels) it can be any day of the week. Recently, my scrolling has focused on what I call ‘The Happiness Question’.

You might recall back in the Spring, Milla and I talked about how ‘Happiness Is an Inside Job’. In that Podcast episode and  blog, we talked about whether you choose to be happy, how you become happy and what happiness is.  ‘The Happiness Question’ for me is something that I have wanted to find out more about.  Some days I find it hard to find it and  I know that I want to find more.  And so I have been scrolling away to see if I can find the solution.

I’ve found out that I am not alone.  The words ‘how to be happy’ are googled by over 45 million people per month and the word ‘Happy’ is googled some 902 million times per day.  That’s a lot of times.  It’s a lot of people. There are a lot of people out there that are wondering, like me, what the answer to ‘The Happiness Question’ is.

The results have been interesting.  Firstly, I have discovered that there is a section of Psychology that really does study happiness.  It’s called happiness research (or positive psychology if you want to be a bit more formal).  The science of happiness is a big thing.  There are a load of Psychologists that exclusively work on this.  They are referred to as ‘a movement’. Over eight thousand studies have been carried out.  It’s massive.  It’s also a little worrying that although all this work has been done to find the answer to ‘The Happiness Question’, no one conclusion has been reached. Yet.

Back to me and my scrolling. I have come across a blog, called ‘Barking Up the Wrong Tree’.  It is written by Eric Barker (see what he did there?) and it is full of posts about resilience, being productive, making your memory smarter, dealing with pain.  It’s very good and really funny.  Take a look when you can. The link is here.

Two of the posts that really caught my eye are titled ‘5 Rituals to Keep You Happy All the Time’.  The first introduced to me to the work of Martin Seligman, a Professor of Psychology and one of the Happiness Research movement bunch who have been trying to work out what happiness and well-being is since the 70’s.  He came up with the acronym  PERMA:

• Positive Emotions
• Engagement
• Relationships
• Meaning
• Achievement

These are the five elements that make up well-being – and I assume, as a consequence, lead you to find happiness.

Eric Barker says that positive emotions are those that you create for yourself; memories that make you smile. Engagement is being involved, being present, taking notice of what you are doing and being wrapped up in whatever you are doing so that you forget the time.  The relationships you have are critical to your well-being.  We need to be with others and more importantly we need to be with others that we like and want to be with. The things you do should have meaning to you.  Whatever you do should matter and be important so that when you do it, you will  feel achievement. It doesn’t have to be something that you sweated blood over.  It just needs to be something that makes you feel good once you have done it and crossed it off your to do list.

The second of Eric’s posts talks about the things that you can do to feel happier.  They are: 

• getting off autopilot – it’s estimated that during your day only 5% of what you do is intentional. Now spin that on its head. It means that 95% of your day is spent on auto-pilot, going through the motions and not really paying attention.  You just react to what is happening (or over-react). I find that staggering, though also highly likely.  It’s what I do.  It’s time to stop it though and notice the negative emotions and thoughts as they pop up, rather than letting them engulf you.

• being open to the bad feelings (or unhappiness) that you have – this goes back to the way that the voice in your head operates and how you deal with it. Pay attention to what you say to yourself. Notice what is causing the negativity and the feelings it is creating.

• accepting that you have those feelings – you aren’t giving in to them, you are just saying ‘yes, I know you are there and I know this is happening’. 

• detach yourself from those feelings – after you accept that they are there you can then choose to say ‘I know you are there but I don’t agree with you’.  Or ‘I know I feel like this but I am going to choose to be another way’.   

• Finally, you then tell yourself how you want to be.  You make an active choice not to follow those emotions, you decide you want to do something different.

None of this is easy.  I think that being able to recognise when you know those bad feelings happen and the voice in your head is telling you that you are sad or angry it is really difficult to just stop, accept that this is there and choose not to let it overwhelm you.  The key seems to be practice and being kinder to yourself. 

So, what have a I learnt from my scrolling?  Happiness is a not just a choice; it needs mindfulness, kindness and learning.  More research is probably being carried out as I type this. This question will run and run.

What if…?

When I grew up, there were lots of ‘What if?’ questions in my house.  My sister and I were curious kids, and we were actively encouraged to find things out.  We’d have to consult a book due to the great Google not existing back then.  I used a library. I loved that it was full of so many books and so much information.  How times change; I haven’t set foot in one for years.  When my kids ask me questions these days, instead of suggesting that they look things up in books, I immediately tell them to do what they do best and ‘search it up’ online.

I also remember that a lot of those ‘What if?’ questions originated from my Mum.  They were generally related to the things that she was worried about on any given day:

What if it rains?

What if the shops are shut?

What is the traffic is really bad?

What if it is really busy?

Then there is the classic, the ‘What if?’ question to end all ‘What if?’ questions that my Mum used to ask all the time.

‘What if we can’t find a parking space?’

This ‘What if?’ was then always followed up with this statement made with complete conviction by my Mum:

“We’ll never find a parking space.  It’s a waste of time”.

For many years, Dad very patiently indulged Mum’s insistence upon a negative outcome.  He really didn’t mind if it was really busy, if it did rain, if the traffic was awful or if the shops had shut before he got there.  But it was the ‘What if we can’t find a parking space?’ question that finally drove him over the edge.  

At some point during my teens, Mum uttered those words one too many times.  It would have been around Christmas (always more stressful than usual) and a Saturday (always the worst day of the week for present shopping).  I suspect that the ‘What if we can’t find a parking space?’ question had come at the end of a long stream of declarations that nothing would go to plan/go right/the problems wouldn’t be solved/the presents wouldn’t get bought/she didn’t know why she was trying.

I remember Dad turning round and holding his head in his hands and yelling ‘For goodness sake, if you tell me one more time that we will never find a parking space, it will be the last time I ever take you shopping!’

This is now a family story, regaled at length, normally after we have all had too much to drink. I was reminded of it for completely unrelated reasons this week.

The kids had gone back to school after the holidays and within four days had caught Covid.  I went to wake my son up on Sunday morning and found that he couldn’t get out of bed.  To begin with, I thought this was due to an unwillingness to leave his comfortable, warm pit and play rugby.  Within five hours, his temperature was raging and he was throwing up.  Yet again, I felt like the bad mother for not believing her children.  The Covid test pinged positive immediately and my carefully constructed plans for the week crashed down around me. 

Inevitably, we all got it.  Within four days of my son’s positive test, I couldn’t get up.  Worryingly, my whole head and face burnt and I was in agony.  I lost count of the painkillers I took and gradually came to realise that this couldn’t be right.  After three days and no improvement (and beginning to lose the feeling in the left side of my face) it was time to get help.

Now you’d think that, feeling the way I did and being a relatively intelligent woman, I wouldn’t worry about ringing a doctor.  But no.  It took me at least four attempts to hang on the line and wait to talk to someone. Why? Well:

 ‘What if no one answered?’

‘What if they told me it was just Covid and they couldn’t do anything?’

‘What if they said I shouldn’t have called?’

‘What if I were told that there was nothing wrong with me?’

Oh yes, the ‘What if?’ questions started, and they came thick and fast.  The voice in my head had gone berserk, over-thinking everything one minute and assuming the worst the next.  In the end, torn between telling myself to stop being so ridiculous and convinced I was about to die, I held on the line until it was answered.

Despite all my anxiety and being certain it was a waste of time, I spoke to a doctor.  They needed to see me.  This caused further panic.  I was home alone.  This meant I would have to drive.  I had to go to the hospital and I’d never been to the building the clinic was in.  I didn’t know where to park the car.  What if I couldn’t find a parking space?

I forced myself to stop thinking about it and got in the car.  The voice in my head was telling me that this was going to be impossible.  It was also telling me to stop this as the pain was so bad nothing could really get much worse.

It did.  When I arrived, there was no parking. It was hell. People were driving around, waiting for spaces, parking on verges and abandoning their cars wherever they could.  With no idea what to do, I carried on through the grounds, searching for the clinic and asking out loud for someone to help me find a parking space.  I even bargained with God (if there is such a thing) about how I promised to be a really good person if they would just help me put the car somewhere safe.

In doing this, I managed to find the right building; at least then I knew where I needed to be. But time was ticking on and I was afraid of being late. What if they then wouldn’t see me?  I turned into the obviously full car park and told myself to just drive in, look around and then leave if nothing.  I was going to do this.  There were no spaces.  I didn’t know what to do. I slowly did my five point turn in a very small area and went to make my way out.

And then I saw it. There was a parking space. I don’t know where it came from.  It just opened up in front of me.  It hadn’t been there and then suddenly it was.  I stopped the car and just stared at it.  It felt like I was in a dream.  I looked for signs to say I couldn’t park there.  There weren’t any.  I drove into the space and stopped the car.  I looked around me and waited for someone to jump out and tell me I couldn’t park there. No one came. I checked to make sure I was within the lines.  I was. So, I went to pay for the cark park ticket.

There was a person in front of me trying to work the ticket machine.  She couldn’t do it and told me that there was a problem with it. I pressed some buttons put my money in and a ticket came out. It all worked perfectly.

I saw the doctor, who confirmed that I had a number of infections, probably brought on by the Covid. They could give me antibiotics for it all. In a week, I would be better.  So, no dying that day either.

I will remember this day forever. The day a parking space appeared to me when I needed it most.  I hope that the next time I ask myself ‘What if’ or that the voice in my head says that the outcome will definitely be a negative one, I remember that it doesn’t have to be. It might well not be. There really are always parking spaces out there and you can always find one.

You will find our Spring Season Blogs here. You will find our Summer Season Blogs here.

Virtual Insanity

Every now and again, during the course of my work, I need people to sign documents. I do not make this request lightly. I will need to meet with the person to ensure the signing process is correct. It’s to confirm that there is no fraud or undue influence). The documents are normally of a vital or essential nature. They require a ‘real’ signature. As in, you pick up a pen (in your choice of colour, though blue or black is preferred). Using their hand, they then write their name. I don’t think this is a difficult request.  We’ve signed documents for hundreds of years.  And yet….

You have no idea how many times, after such a simple request, I get some sort of big sigh. Or at least an exhalation of breath. “Do I have to meet up with you to do that”? or “Can’t it be signed electronically?” normally follows. The answers are first, yes. You do have to take the time to meet with me to sign this. It really is that important. Secondly, no, a real signature happens to be critical in this instance. Unless of course you want this thing that I have taken time to ensure is correct to become invalid in the future.

I always politely explain the reasons and joke that it may seem archaic but that is the way it is. Inside my head the little voice is questioning how on earth life has come to this. Why we all seem too busy to do the important stuff.  We have instead come to rely on technology (the digital signature or fingerprint, the meeting that isn’t in person and over a camera) to take away what we deem to be the trivialities of our life.

This week I met with a couple to sign some documents.  They were happy to see me and did not argue about taking time to meet and go through the information.  We sat in a meeting room with a smart conference table.  As we went through everything, the lady opposite me asked a question.  It had clearly been bothering her and she seemed confused: why were there holes in the middle of the table? In the centre of the large table were 4 circular holes.  Probably for cables and such, I replied.  For IT equipment, monitors and PC’s and printers.  Oh, she said. “I understand now.  I was trying to work out how you could fit a vase of flowers into them”.

Yesterday I read in the press an article all about AI – Artificial Intelligence.  Living in my little provincial world, I’m not sure how this affects me on a daily level, other than being able to ask Alexa to make my to do list for me.  However, to read the report in the paper, you’d think that it was something that should be at the forefront of my mind. Lots of billionaires (Elon Musk, Steve Wozniak and others that are thought to be highly influential but have very little relevance to my world) have been warning about the rise of using and developing AI and have signed a letter asking for a ‘pause’ in the development of this.  

I’ve also been finding out all about ChatGPT.  Described as a ‘natural language processing tool’ it can help with writing emails and essays.  My kids think this is great. Finally, they have found a way to get a machine to do their English homework.  However, they’ve decided not to use Google Bard just yet. It isn’t so good and that might mean that they would have to use their own creativity.

Life is becoming unbearably confusing.  Even doing the shopping is now giving me a headache.  My daughter objected to the idea of putting items onto a conveyor at the checkout to be scanned by a real person.  Why couldn’t we do Scan & Go, using the App and a QR code?  My husband (in a previously unseen fit of what I think was total panic) told her that under no circumstances was he going to try to do that. He was just going to do the shopping as he always had done. He didn’t care how much she argued with him. 

It seems though that there is becoming less need for human interaction and that over time the machines can just do it all for us. Sign papers, write stories, do the calculations. Everything I do is now on my phone; the banking, buying a train ticket, paying for car parking, finding a location.  You can’t pay for anything with cash; you need to use your phone, with your wallet on it, or by using Stripe (something else that I found out about this week).  

Earlier in the year, an emergency alert was sent to our phones.  It’s how in future we will be told that there might be a threat to life.  I can’t go anywhere without someone knowing where I am because of the tracker app on my phone.  Consequently, I live in perpetual fear that if I lose my phone half of my life might well be lost with it.

The days of speaking to a person, either in person or by phone seem to have also long gone. I’m referred to the ‘webchat’ function or the ‘chat bot’. Or I just can’t get through. This is great if you have something basic to do that won’t take long.  The trouble with this is that, normally, the whole reason for ringing someone is because you have a problem and problems (in my very small experience) tend to need a human to find a solution.

This of course is all good if you are able to keep up with it. But what about if you don’t want to or you can’t?  Either because you don’t have the money (technology costs) or because you are at an age where you just don’t want to have to learn about this or physically can’t?  My Mum is a good example of someone who is at that point in life.  This week, all she wanted to do was find a replacement for a cast iron Chicken door stop that had broken. Mum doesn’t have a smart phone and is wary of internet shopping. She won’t be get any emergency warnings about danger to life. Mum also wants to go out into a real shop and look at real things.  

I’ve got to find the said replacement door stop.  She won’t be the only person in this position.  I guess that the lady I met this week who wondered how to fit a vase into an oddly placed hole in the table that we were sat at, is much the same.

Carrying on like this is going to leave many people behind.  This is where we are headed. In the words of the great Jamiroquai, this future is made of virtual insanity. And I’m not sure that I like it.

You can read our Spring Season Blogs here and our Summer Season Blogs here.

Radiators & Drains

When Milla and I sat, and discussed our plans to make a Podcast, we talked quite a bit about content.  Being two women who can talk rather a lot with little encouragement, we didn’t find ourselves short of topics.  We made a very long list of things we wanted to chat about.  Some of them have already discussed, others are still to come and some are still on the back burner.

“Oh, of course we must add Radiators and Drains” said Milla.

“Well yes, obviously“ I replied, nodding along knowingly. And then I gave up trying to pretend to be all thoughtful and nonchalant. I said what I was really thinking – “What on earth is that about then?”  

Milla has touched on this in our Podcast before. Basically, the concept is that some people radiate warmth – the radiators – and you feel better for being around them.  Others drain us, and we feel depleted in some way from spending time with them.

Friendships are funny things.  One of the most often used quotes is ‘you can choose your friends but you can’t choose your family’ (Harper Lee). The meaning is that dealing with family is tough. It involves endless negotiation and compromise. You must develop the skills (and the thick skin) of an experienced diplomat.  I have lost count of the number of times I have had to referee one argument or another and considered that, I would be better off applying to the United Nations because navigating international disputes would be so much easier than having to resolve the endless conflicts between me and the kids or my parents or my husband, or all of them.  Putting on a blue helmet and wandering into a war zone might well be simpler.  But friendships are easy.  We get to make a choice over who we spend our time with.  Or are they?

I’ve been made to consider the concept of friendship a lot recently.  I have a friend who I’ve known a long time.  We share quite a bit of history.  Our friendship has gone through phases of seeing quite a bit of each other and then not seeing each other at all for months on end.  This changed when my friend’s long marriage broke up. She was alone and came to me for help. I didn’t mind but I admit relationship advice is not really my thing and whilst I can listen I’m not very good at this stuff. 

My friend told me that she didn’t want to have to tell anyone about what had happened to her.  She couldn’t talk about it (except to me) and she couldn’t face having to explain what had gone on.  After a few weeks, one Saturday morning, I decided it was time to suggest that she did confide in other people.  I said that I thought that it might help my friend if her other friends knew the truth.  They might be in a much better position to give her support and would be able to have a different perspective on things. And as I really am a rubbish agony aunt, they couldn’t be much worse than me to talk to.

It was then that my friend told me that she only had three friends and she didn’t want to talk to them because she couldn’t trust them.  One of them had been a connection of her husband’s and that friend had already blocked her; she didn’t want to talk to the other two because she was worried who they would tell and that they would merely gossip about it all.  She was very lonely and she didn’t know how to make any new friends.  How did you make new friends?  Where do you go and what do you do? How had I met my friends?  I answered that I really didn’t know. I felt terribly sad at that moment.  In my world, if you don’t have friends that you can’t trust, you don’t have friends at all.

You take it for granted that you have people to turn to in difficult times.  But what if you don’t?  Or what if the people you thought you could rely on turn out to be completely indifferent and disinterested? Or worse, betray your trust?

Who are my friends? Having thought about it, they are all people that I have either worked with or have met through work.  I don’t have anyone that I keep in touch with from school or college.  I never met friends (bar one) through my kids.  Chatting at the school gates was not my thing and I practically ran away if approached.  I always preferred not to get involved. 

Of the friends I have, over the years, I have (how can I put this) ended up gently having to ditch some of them. This was normally as I slowly discovered the ones who were only interested in themselves, put pressure on me to do things with them instead of my family, had far more drama than I needed to be involved with or I found them to constantly be rude to me and generally kick me when I was down.  Yep, I learned the hard way what a friend really is and it isn’t someone who calls you endlessly at 10pm at night either to moan about their husband or drunk and threatening to kill themselves. Or ask for money.  I could go on.  It still makes me shudder when I think about it all.

I now understand that these are known as ‘toxic friendships’.  There is a lot of them out there.  I stopped having contact (or drastically reduced it) when I realised that spending time with these people just made me stressed, worried and miserable.  Sometimes, I was even afraid.  These days I am fairly wary as to who I trust and who I turn to.

One of the definitions of ‘friendship’ is ‘ as state of mutual trust and support between people’.  If you feel that you are being taken advantage of, made to feel uncomfortable or like the relationship is completely one-sided, with you doing all the listening and supporting but with not much coming back, then don’t wonder if it is you.  It won’t be.  It’s definitely them.  Don’t worry about walking away. You can always choose who you allow your friends to be.  

I am going to leave you with one last story about Milla.  About a year ago, I needed help with something silly.  I needed to pick some carpet. I didn’t know what shop to go to, how to measure up or anything about buying carpet at all. So, I asked Milla.  Not only did she suggest where I could buy it from but (when I told her that I didn’t want to go to the shop on my own) she came along with me.  She gave up her time and stopped me panicking about measurements.  That’s friendship for you.  If you have a friend who will help you pick carpet, they are well worth keeping.

The Emergency Chicken – The Saga Continues

The Emergency Chicken – the habit of needing to have a chicken in my freezer for any and every eventuality – is not always a distant memory. I confess that I still have days when the thought that I haven’t got a chicken ready and waiting for the emergency that will demand that I run to the freezer, triumphantly pull out a frozen chicken that will feed 6-8 people and yell to anyone who will listen “see, told you we’d need this one day” still nudges me in my quieter moments.  I am resisting.  Sometimes though it is hard. And so with the emergency chicken – the saga continues.

Realising that I needed to control some of my more (let’s say) odd habits has made me look at my life in a different way.  I’ve realised that you cannot cling to old ways forever. By doing so, I really was stopping myself from daring to do the things that I really wanted to try. There are adventures for me to have out there.  There are surprises to find. For a long time though, I have felt far too afraid to go out there and try.

The Emergency Chicken, is, on one level a plan (if a poor one) to be prepared. But really it is a metaphor for the way I have lived for a long time.  My need to be prepared and ready for anything has stopped me from going out to try new things and generally have a lot more fun.  

For example, every year I say that I am going to the Chelsea Flower Show. And every year I do not go.  Why? Well, because I couldn’t find anyone to look after the kids. But the kids have got a bit bigger now and they don’t need quite so much supervision.  In my head though, I can’t go out for the day because the kids might need me, so I should probably wait a bit longer.  Then there is the travelling, the costs, the hundreds of people that might get in my way and stop me from being able to see anything properly. 

This year, as I was having yet another week of watching Chelsea on the TV, I had an epiphany. The kids are now teenagers. They have a father who can also look after them. If I plan to go, I can plan a day off. I can save the money, work out reasonable travel arrangements and find a friend to go with.  We could go and have fun. We might even get to have a giggle. I might forget everything and just enjoy myself. I realised that it was time to stop putting obstacles in my way. Instead of telling myself I couldn’t do it for one hundred and one of reasons, I could tell myself that I was going to do it instead. 

Whether I do or not, we shall see.  I have however informed Milla that we are going next year and to put it in the diary. It’s my little dream.  It’s time to stop pushing it to the back of my mind and saying, it’ll be ok, I’ll do it another time. Because what I should be afraid of is that that day may never come.

Something I also wanted to do is to write a blog.  And here it is. Every time I look at it, it amazes me that I have done it and that I continue to write it. I cannot tell you how much I’ve learnt about writing, blogs, websites and SEO.  These were all things that I thought were so beyond me.  I thought that I was far too old to be learning this kind of stuff and I shouldn’t try.

Then there is the Podcast. Again, I didn’t think we could make a Podcast about anything. I didn’t know how to do it. I thought it was the craziest idea I had ever had. When we began to plan it, I remember a day sat trying to work out how we record it, and how to upload it, how we added music and how you connect it to a website. My head hurt so much after two hours I wondered why on earth I would bother.  Suddenly the day job seemed so much easier.

Recently, Milla persuaded a friend to listen to our Podcast. I got a message to say the friend had broken down sobbing.  Fearing the worst but a little surprised. I messaged Milla back. I told her that I thought that may be something of an over-reaction.  We couldn’t be that bad at this, could we? No, said Milla, you don’t understand. The friend had cried because she understood how it feels to need to be so prepared all the time and to spend your days trying to anticipate everything that could/would/might go wrong. She understood how it feels to be so overwhelmed that you don’t know which way to turn.  Reading that, it made me want to cry too.

The Emergency Chicken and Other Stories is really a tale of how we are all getting through each day. How we are all trying to do our best one way or the other. How we fear that we can’t do it but we do it anyway. It’s about how I’ve been trying to be perfect because I’m scared or desperate or terrified of failure. It is a series of anecdotes about why none of it really matters. Most of all, I wanted to write it to tell anyone who feels like I do that it really is ok.  You are not alone.

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Be Good Enough

Driving to school one morning, Chris Evans announced on Virgin Radio that ‘perfection is the enemy of good enough’. It had been the usual chaotic start to the day. I ran around making breakfast, looking for lost shoes, answering emails, yelling the time to the kids every fifteen minutes and praying that they really were getting dressed. The traffic had presented its usual problems and as is routine, I found myself hurtling along the back roads, hoping that nothing would be coming in the opposite direction.

Just as I rounded a particularly sharp bend in the wrong gear, Chris’s words reached my ears. ‘You don’t need to be perfect; you just need to be good enough’. I slowed down, caught my breath and listened. He was talking about a book called ‘The Perfection Trap’ and the author that he was due to interview later on, Professor Thomas Curran. ‘There, listen to this kids’, I yelled (I have to shout because no one takes any notice otherwise). ‘This is what you have to remember today.  Just try to be good enough.’  Typically, they both just ignored me.

By the time I got home, I did manage to listen to some of the interview.  However, by then I was working and no longer able to pay attention. But that phrase ‘perfection is the enemy of good enough’ stayed with me. As the day wore on and I got irritated with the things I needed to do, I kept repeating it to myself. Keep on going; just get it done, it doesn’t need to be perfect.

I’ve spent all my life, from my time as a teenager until now, striving to be perfect. And I haven’t succeeded. So, I’ve considered this to be failure. The consequence of which is that I believe that I have failed and my life has been a waste. Sometimes I’ve got close to perfection. Other times, I’ve tried so hard and then, halfway to achieving what I want, I’ve realised that it is a pointless search. So, I’ve given up and not tried anymore.  Seeing this written down here, I can tell you that it makes me feel very, very sad.  I don’t believe that I have ever truly reached my potential and I wonder if I could have done more.

Intrigued by the parts of the interview I heard, I looked Professor Curran up. (thomascurran.co.uk) He’s a Professor of Behavioural Psychology and Perfectionism is his primary area of expertise. Intrigued at the idea that Perfectionism is a thing to be studied (and being a sucker for a psychology/self-help book), I bought The Perfection Trap.  I’ve now read it and it explains a lot.

Professor Curran describes Perfectionism as our favourite flaw. Think about it; how many times have you been asked in a job interview, what are your strengths and weaknesses and responded ‘oh, sometimes I’m a bit of a perfectionist’. It’s a cliché and a joke.  We laugh at it. Except it isn’t funny. Perfection is an impossible goal. Trying to reach it sends people mad. It is unattainable. It’s a malignant ideal. Yet we persist in believing in it.

According to the Prof, there are three types of Perfectionism:

1. Self-oriented Perfectionism – where you believe you must be perfect and nothing but being perfect will do.  This is the standard that you set yourself.  The voice in your head telling you that you must be perfect all the time or you are failing.

2. Socially Prescribed Perfectionism – where you believe that others expect you to be perfect.  Where you are sure that everybody thinks that you are perfect and so you cannot not be perfect for fear of what they might think about you or how you will be judged.

3. Other–oriented Perfectionism – the belief that all other people out there are perfect.  This is us watching the TV, or YouTube or TikTok or Instagram and believing the rest of the world is perfect and that everybody gets it right all the time.  And if they are all so perfect, why can’t you be the same?  It has to be possible.

Of course, those of us who struggle with perfectionist ideals don’t just suffer from one of the above.  Nope, we normally have issues with all three.  I know I do.  I made sure that I always had a chicken in the freezer for 15 years of my life so that (a) if I need to, I could be the perfect wife/mother/host and able to rustle up roast chicken at a moment’s notice; (b) so that I can reassure myself that if I need to rustle up a that dinner for other people they would believe I was able to deal with any emergency situation; and (c) so that I could compare myself with the rest of the world, who (if they were faced with an urgent food situation) would always be able to cope with aplomb because that’s the way it is on the TV.

How mad is that?

The book talks about how much damage living like this does to your mental health.  How believing that ‘what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger’ is the worst possible way to live your life.  Why do I think that being taught that to be the best and perfect means that I have to suffer to get there?  Which teacher decided that was a good idea? Worse still, why do we go along with this awful belief that to be the best we can be, means that you must turn into someone so tough, so uncompromising and so fearless that you inevitably become reclusive, tormented and mentally distressed?

The worst sort of perfectionism though is the Other-oriented Perfectionism.  It’s the Perfectionism where we spend hours looking at the amazing lives of others on Facebook and all of the other social media platforms and wonder why your own isn’t so fabulous.  Then you try to make it amazing but nothing ever lives up to your expectations.  But your expectations weren’t real to begin with.  This is because the person whose life you are so desperate to emulate has spent so much time creating a façade that isn’t really real either. This is most likely due to them suffering from extreme levels of Socially Prescribed Perfectionism.  They believe that they must present their perfect life to others or suffer criticism.  

So, the cycle continues.  We believe we must be perfect.  And then we look at others and believe them to be perfect.  I try to live up to this because I am afraid that I will be judged if I am not perfect.  In doing so, we are just driving ourselves slowly crazy. That is why mental health issues are at an all time high and why so many of us are anxious and depressed because our lives can never live up to what we think they should be.

I am about to start another week of work, whilst trying to juggle two kids, a husband and all the problems that we all have on a daily basis. It will be full of ‘did I send that email?’ ‘Have we got milk in the fridge?’ ‘How long will it take to get to that meeting?’ ‘Do we have anything for dinner’.  This week, I’m going to stop crippling myself with guilt and remember that I am doing good enough. I’m not going to beat myself up when the PE kits aren’t ready, the beds aren’t made and I didn’t prepare the document I promised I would finish. I’m going to think that I am good enough. I think it’s about time we all did.

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