Compact

I wanted inspiration, a word generator gave me compact.

What does this word mean for me today you ask? Well I have been living out of a suitcase for 8 days and with the reality that it might be two weeks in total before I am out of it, I guess compact for me means packing.

It means living with a limited amount of clothing, technology, equipment and so on. It means fitting the essentials into a suitcase and hoping to hell that you have everything you need.

Compact means small, it means limited, it means bite-size or pocket size or compressed. It means all the benefits of big but made small.

Compact is a mindset and a lifestyle. One I am not very good at.

A Document

I want to document a feeling I have today.

A feeling of uncertainty and panic.

A feeling of being lost and scared.

A feeling of being worried and nervous.

The future is coming and it’s not panning out how I thought.

The plans are changing and may evaporate all together.

And then what?

And then who will I be?

I am terrified I will fall back into a person who doesn’t serve me.

I am not her anymore and yet she is rearing her head and in times of precariousness she is appealing and safe.

I want to document what happens when a dream is being taken from you.

Because it changes who you are.

And worse yet, soon it will change how people view you as well.

Two Years Of Teaching

Here is what I have learned after two years of teaching.

The support you have at school is important, but even more the support you have outside of school will make the real difference.

There will always be one child who you have no reason to dislike but will annoy you beyond anything.

A challenging class or child is what makes your day go fast and gives your class character. If they were all angels you’d be seriously bored and not needed.

Wine. You will need wine.

Accidents happen, bring a spare pair of clothes to leave in your classroom. Nobody likes to sit next to the teacher with dried sick on her trousers during staff meetings.

If you think it won’t happen, it absolutely will. Plan for it.

Parents need you, just as much as you need them. It’s not a one way street, offer to help them and they will always help you and their child.

Trust yourself as a practitioner. You are much better than you think.

And lastly, you will acquire so much tat and you will not be able to let go of it.

25 Things I Learned In My 25th Year

The last time I posted on here I was newly 25 and what a year it has been, I am a week away from turning 26. And boy has it been a year.

So here are the 25 things I learned in my 25th year.

1. If it doesn’t serve you, or more importantly if they don’t serve you, let it go.

2. You can stay connected and together even when you can’t see anyone, you are the only thing standing in the way of that. Not space.

3. Age is not a dictator of friendship or relationships. It is an inconsequential number.

4. You will never get on with everyone but that doesn’t mean that you can’t work with them.

5. I am lazy, and it’s a problem that only I can solve.

6. Children will forever be disgusting but they will also bring every ounce of joy to a day, even when jumping off a cupboard into your face.

7. You are powerful, strong and can handle absolutely anything if you resolve yourself to.

8. Power isn’t about bossing anyone around, it’s about how you handle someone bossing you around.

9. The family you chose are just as important as the family you are born into.

10. That I have no idea what I want for my life. I have a million concepts and pressures that aren’t real and yet I still plan only a year ahead.

11. Exercise can be fun.

12. Having flat abs and a killer ass will not make you beautiful

13. If you love trashy tv and awful pop music and dressing with a bit too much flesh, be you. Screw everyone else’s opinions

14. Music in a classroom can be more effective and fun than any story and sometimes you just have to take a cue from the kids.

15. I am an excellent teacher, even if my school doesn’t always appreciate it.

16. You can fuck up the most you have ever, and if they are truly your friends they will forgive you.

17. It is not easy to learn to do the splits.

18. It is possible for fall for someone again.

19. It is just as important to have fun with someone as it is to be able to do nothing with someone and still be content and happy.

20. You hate rats. Truly hate them.

21. You will miss Coventry. You never though you would and yet somehow it has become a little home for you. And maybe, just maybe you don’t need to settle in London to feel home.

22. Russian is impossible.

23. You are messy. Nothing changes there.

24. Even in a global pandemic you fill your life with drama.

25. You still have everything to learn.

Date Diaries – The Wonderland Golf Course

I know what you are thinking, oh god here we go another dramatised 20 something with a disaster of a love life that is sharing it online to her own and everyone else’s horror. Well my friends, strap in it’s going to a long and bumpy ride.

So I have been seeing this guy sparingly over the last 4 months and everything has been going along swimmingly. And by that I mean he is lovely and kind and sensible and I am almost entirely bored at this point. So, as any sane person would do I arrange a date for a Wednesday night, hoping to the high heavens it gets cancelled. Much to my dismay it goes ahead and after a 5 minute strop I put on some concealer and walk out the door to meet him.

He arrives in a rental car, much better than the show off Aston Martin he had borrowed from work on a previous date that had horrified me to my core. So we are on for a better evening that I had first thought. I get in and we catch up on the journey into town, normal conversation, how was your weekend? how was your holiday? are you better now? The usual drab conversation that starts all dates and sets the tone of comfortable and uninspiring, the sweet spot to combat awkward and adventurous which leads to sex in bushes at 3 in the afternoon. Of which this date was certainly not going to become.

As we near town the conversation turns to what the plan for the date actually is, and here is it folks the classic fork in the road that decides how your night will end up. Are we going for drinks, the alternative name for getting drunk and sleeping with them and regretting the head banging in the morning. Are we getting dinner, also known as the middle aged relationship where sex will be a fortnightly activity that must be negotiated for. Or are we going to skip it all and just get to the inevitable have sex in the car and get on with our evenings separately. Or finally, the last frontier, shall we do an activity? The only option that doesn’t have a final outcome that is widely known, no, instead it is just a staller of time so that you can make a decision on the latter 3 at a later stage of the date, hopefully after a drink and when you care a little less.

So off we go and play two games of mini golf in what can only be described as a psychedelic trip. Once we had attained the balls and clubs we hurried off to get a drink to loosen up a bit and embrace the evening ahead. Having not previously drunk for the last two weeks due to a very horrific course of antibiotics, it can be said that the first pint went quite a way to loosening me up a bit quicker than planned. Now usually, this would be a great benefit, especially on a first date because I am most certainly a talker and when slightly inebriated the conversation flows a lot better. However in this case, as he was driving and drinking what looked like soda and lime, it may have been more of a hinderance as I got more competitive as the drink slipped down and my attention to him and anything he was wittering on about dwindled rapidly.

After two rather quick games I was declared the outright winner and scurried off to the bathroom. While in there I had a realisation that in all honesty maybe I was being too hard on him and that actually he was a perfectly nice guy and I was lucky to be out. Still unclear as to whether this was the alcohol talking. So off we go to spoons for a last drink before we head off. I order a triple and he orders a single gin and tonic. We sit and we chat and my face gets increasingly red as the alcohol takes over and I debate whether it’s appropriate to suggest a quickie in the loo. Before long it is made clear that it is probably time to leave as I have to get a train and he has an early morning flight. So that’s sex off the cards. Needless to say the lack of sexual encounter really affects the overall scoring of the success of the date. He drives me to the train station and we kiss goodbye, a perfectly appropriate all above board kind of kiss… I guess we should have just had dinner.

I board the train, call my friend to catch her up on the evening events as all 20 somethings with a mess of a love life do. To then receive this picture of what presumably is a cocktail shaker wrapped in tin foil, captioned : “forgot to give you this, it’s just a token for your birthday” . My birthday having been several weeks prior and not something that I openly celebrate. So then I ponder the rest of the journey home whether I have a drinking problem and regard the whole affair as a resounding failure.

Here’s to 25.

25 is friendship

25 is insecure

25 is illness

25 is love

25 is empty

25 is shallow

25 is scared

25 is angry

25 is crazy

25 is abuse

25 is an imposture

25 is growth

25 is static

25 is locked

25 is reality

25 is selfish

25 is hollow

25 is insufficient

25 is young

25 is old

25 is an adult

25 is a child

25 is lost

25 is contentment

25 is here

Commitment phob

When you have a realisation that you aren’t scared because you got hurt or it might happen again. You scared because what if it doesn’t? What if it works out and they aren’t everything you want them to be? What if your family hate him? What if your friends think he is boring? What if he is the reason a wedge forms between you and the people you love? How could you ever want to commit to something that scary?

A shock

Life is short,

It plays by its own rules,

We always knew that,

But you forget,

You continue living and never think of the consequence or the knife hiding round the corner.

The you hear some news,

You realise the length of life you have,

You realise that it could be 1 minute or 60 years,

You realise you don’t hold your fate in your hands,

You are the helpless at the hands of the almighty, and you can’t know what they don’t know themselves.

Enjoy every moment, even the shit ones, because they might be your last or they might be your first on the journey to something wonderful, but each one of them is precious and fleeting and it’s only yours for that second.

Generate

I have not picked up a book in over a week, I have not written for almost 2. My literary life is on hold, I am absorbed in nothing, the time is there, the mental space for it however is lacking.

I am still in an uncreative slump and so I got a random word generator to try and give me some motivation… it chose misery as the word.

How iconic to be left with misery. How accurate to solve the problem of mundane by forcing the reality of misery.

When all we ask for his hope, motivation, inspiration and the universe responds with rain, chaos and misery.

Uninspired

In a life where I feel so often inspired at present I am not inspired to write.

To read, yes, In fact I have finished two books this month. But to write it’s just lost to me.

I feel like my mind is clouded and I can’t hear my inner voice, the voice that usually comes out in these pages, she is missing. What does that mean for me? Am I lost to? Am I more than a voice in my head?

I guess I must be, because I am living, in fact maybe even thriving and yet the voice is gone and I feel distant from the sense of self I am used to. Is this why I don’t know what I want anymore? Is my voice changing? Does she want other things? Maybe she isn’t strong enough to show her face yet? Maybe it’s my older voice coming back?