Yay!! It’s Monday. I’m pretty sure everyone in the world hates Monday, it is after all the day we return to work after the weekend.
Well see me, I love Monday, cos it’s the day of Steve’s Monday Music Challenge and this is week 3 already! For more information you can either click Steve’s funky Jukebox, above, or if you are lazy, click here instead!
Ok, here are the rules:
(1) Go to the music player of your choice and put it on shuffle
(2) Say the questions aloud and press play
(3) Use the song title as your answers
(4) NO CHEATING
Not that anyone every would (ahem NBI) remember that the ping back is to Steve’s page and not mine!
I’m beginning to think he is a bit of a music prophet as all the answers seem to kinda fit, in a weird way. Here are mine for this week:
What do you think about most often – Breaking the Law – Emile Sande – Ooo I’m a secret wannabe law breaker – Am I feck, I’m too much of a chicken! lol
What is your biggest secret – When I was in your heart – David Gray – Hmm pretty accurate, my longest relationship was my biggest secret.
What is your theme song – People should smile more – Newton Faulkner – Agreed!
Picture: Souther Salazar, Alejandro and the Idea Machine, 2010
I need a contraption that can suck the thoughts out of my head and e-mail them to me!
That’s strange I hear you mutter to yourself, and why yes, you are correct, it is indeed very strange, but it is also very much needed!
It’s been a busy couple of weeks what with people being off in work and things to be done at home. My free time was pretty much slashed to nothing. I usually blog on the train or at lunch time in work, but lunch times were few and far between, peaceful ones anyway, and tables were lacking on the trains. The blog gods were against me! The weekend was designated to housework. I started early so that I would have the rest of Saturday afternoon free to sort things out on here, but then the Father ship decided I needed to clean out his paperwork drawer and get stuff ready for the accountant. 3 hours later, oh yes, 3 hours, and it was time to make the tea!
Sunday I could have blogged, in fact I could have blogged for most of the day, but you know what, I was just too darn tired and my two remaining brain cells were rattling round the empty space between my ears road testing their Halloween costumes, which just happened to be Teflon frying pans, nothing was sticking!
In the midst of all this however I did have some ideas for posts, I would even go as far as to say some of them were great ideas for posts. But then I forgot them. I have this uncanny knack of coming up with ideas when I have nothing on which to write them down. I tell myself I won’t forget, I repeat them to myself in an effort to increase the likelihood, and then nothing, zilch, nada….all gone!
I come in at night when everything has been done, I’m showered, clothes are laid out and I am free to enjoy the little bit of time I have left before bed. I am like a master pianist, I flick out my pajama top tails and seat myself at my instrument, crick my neck from side to side, flex my fingers, limbering them up, preparing them, and then move them to hover above the keys, and there I sit.
To an outsider I probably look like I am in pain as I try to recall the ideas from the various nooks and crannies in my head, I guess it’s a little like brain constipation, I push but nothing happens. The ideas have all gone, they are lost somewhere in space and time, never to return.
Enter the idea machine. It would store all my little bits and bobs and then replay them to me whilst I limber up, allowing those beautiful and ‘Freshly (yeah right) Pressed’ deserving ideas to filter back into my consciousness, meaning I will no longer have to endure writers block!
I did start out tonight with the intention of writing my piece for this weeks Okay, What If? challenge, but after 30 minutes of screen staring, nothing was stirring so to speak, I can only apologise!
Happy Halloween my most favourite eejits in the whole wide world!
Give it a try – Just remember to add your answers to Steve’s blog, not my Re blog! and no before you protest I am NOT calling you all stupid, mentally challenged is much more appropriate :)
I am in awe of the people who look at the daily prompts everyday and can manage to string together legible pieces of writing.
I swore a couple of months back that I was going to try and participate more often, I even took heed of the words on a strangers blog, when they said, look at the prompt and then just write about the first thing that comes to mind.
I look at the Daily Prompt every day and the first thing that comes to mind is “Ah for f*ck sake” as the subject matter goes whizzing high above my head.
I am not an unintelligent person, that said, I am not the brightest pixie in the forest either. Sure my grammar and punctuation need work and I’d be scuppered without spell check, but sometimes I can manage to string a sentence together and if I am really lucky, it’s relatively sensible.
So what is this strange aversion (disinclination) I seem to have for the prompts? I’ve been giving it a lot of thought, and I’ve discovered what the problem is. It’s me!
After 6 – 7 months of blogging, I still don’t trust myself to write the things I want to and I still find it hard to open up. With regards to the prompts, I am scared to write the first thing that comes into my head, because lets face it, what I am making for tomorrow nights tea is not going to be to everyones taste and is probably going to be unrelated to the chosen subject matter as well.
So what’s the solution. Well firstly I need to serve myself a huge slice of ‘Get the feck over yourself’ and conquer my fears with regards to commenting and subject matter. I need to spend less time worrying about what others will think and just write. I did consider deactivating my Facebook page, and that may yet happen, because it’s easier to write when you don’t think people who actually know you are reading. In fact I am going to stop telling people in my real life that I even write, because I think to be honest my friends just humour me.
Secondly I am going to serve myself an equally proportioned slice of ‘you have to at least try’. I mean what’s the worst that can happen, it’s not like I am going to be burnt at the stake for crimes against the blogging community if I write a post that reminds me of the Prompt subject, but means bugger all to anyone else. Chances are they will read it and say “Ooo that’s a strange one” and to be fair to them I resemble that remark so I can hardly grumble about it.
Most challenges run Monday – Friday or days in between and few run at the weekend when I have more time. I may have to ask Mr Okay, What If? for a sneak peek on a Friday, because I like his challenges.
Tomorrow I have Steve’s Monday Music Quiz to look forward to, it’s nice and simple for an eejit like me :)
So here is a disclaimer, if you read a post from me on a Daily Prompt and you think it’s in no way related to the question they asked, just keep it to yourself! I already know I’m an eejit and I am appreciative of the fact you read it at all! :)
This morning when the train conductor told me my train was delayed and then followed it up with it’s now an express, you’ll have to wait for the next one, I just broke down and cried. I couldn’t help it, I even tried to stop it, but the tears they just kept falling!
The man looked at me in an ‘ah feck, hormonal woman alert’ kind of way! But he was wrong. I was crying out of sheer frustration.
My leg hurts, right now it hurts really bad, most likely something to do with the weather. It’s added pressure I just don’t need, I have so many things to do and my broken lower half just cannot keep up. My alleged ‘good’ leg is also now pitching a fit, probably because it’s sick and tired of taking the strain of it’s twin, I hear ya sister, I just can’t help ya!
Travel is a nightmare, a complete and utter nightmare and coupled with everything else it’s wearing me down.
Here’s the thing, life doesn’t stop just because you’re in pain, you still have to carry on with the tasks associated with the daily grind, suck up the extra physical pressure. I wasn’t however prepared for the extra mental pressure, the strain of coping with the day to day.
I’d been trying to stay so positive, reminding myself on a daily basis there are others in situations much worse than mine, and there are, but just lately it’s all started to crowd in around me just a little. I’m already in full on panic mode about the fast approaching Winter.
I have to say however that after a steady 15 minutes of free flowing waterworks I did feel somewhat better, that is until I reached work and someone made the mistake of asking if I was ok…ah feck here we go again with the leaking eyes and the hormonal stares!
I am currently sitting at my computer, typing this blog and munching on a brazil nut (apparantly they help to increase serotonin levels in the brain) whilst chanting positive mental attitude over and over again. I’m making progress, half an hour ago all I could get out was positively mental!!
It took Lee 30 seconds to make up a new cartoon for me!
I’m beginning to dislike Facebook. My use of the word ‘beginning’ would of course imply that I liked it in the first place, however that’s not strictly true.
I’ve tolerated it, it does after all have uses, like keeping in touch with friends and family overseas.
I’ve had many a fun post or three with my good friends Udders and Monkey, silliness that kept us laughing into the wee small hours. We have also shared many a photograph that has kept others laughing into the wee small hours. It hasn’t all been bad.
Perhaps it’s me, or the mood I have found myself in lately, but these days I find I have no inclination to check news feeds, unless it’s Udders showing us all her new chest and drawers, oops I mean chest of drawers!
My news feed is littered with game requests, farm animals, what the world and his wife are having for dinner, memes about wine and people whining!
I mean for feck sake give me a break, the world is full of enough doom and gloom without me having to read all about it on Facebook as well.
When I was off with alien leg, I used to put updates on regarding the current status of my recovery. What can I say, I’m lazy, and it was the easiest ways to reach a lot of people in one swift smack of the return key, but unbeknownst to me I turned into one of those people and all it took was an off the cuff, unintentional comment from someone to make me realise. I stopped posting publically about my leg and just answered personal messages instead. I know I should not let something someone says affect me or stop me from adding a status, but I don’t want to become one of the Facebook people I myself try to avoid.
In the few times since, when I have had a lapse and posted an ‘oh poor me post’, I’ve caught myself on, slapped myself repeatedly about the face and then deleted the comment. If I really need to vent, then I have a blog for that! If I need to talk about how crap my life is, then I’ll start a new blog for that too.
So why do people do it? Why do they feel that they need to inform their followers of every bad turn they ever take in their lives. Boredom, sympathy, support, help? I have no idea, but there are very few people in the world living the lives they wished for, or hoped for, but they seem to get by just fine without having to publish it for all and sundry to see.
So, this leaves me with a conundrum, do I leave Facebook again, for like the 9 millionth time, or do I just stop reading. There are pros and cons for both.
I’d miss Udders and the fun we have, even though neither of us are feeling too funny right now. I’d miss Monkey and the pictures of her niece who is a cute as a button. I’d miss updates from friends and family overseas as they journey forth in their new lives. I’d miss all Lee’s hilarious and geeky little memes, that do actually make me laugh. I’d also miss my Indecisive Eejit page on which I share all Lee’s hilarious and geeky little memes. See told you I was lazy!
I won’t however miss:
Join us in Farmville! You’ve got ginger hair, you can be a carrot!
Join us in Farmville 2! It’s better than Farmville 1.
Join us in Farmville 3! We know where you live!
Join us in Far……..ah just feck off Farmville.
30 second updates over the course of an hour regarding the preparation of your dinner, which then turns into a chew by chew account of your consumption of it. Seriously, I’ve just stood for an hour cooking my own. I’m at my dinner limit, get over it!
Updates on how crap your life is. I know it sucks, honest I do, sometimes mine does as well, but telling us about it and hash tagging it with FML is not going to miraculously make it better.
Competitions, share and like, blah blah blah! It’s all a con, they just want more likes for their page, although I did succumb once and enter a competition for the most amazing chair on the planet! If I win it, I will retract this statement. Prove me wrong Facebook, go on, I dare ya!
Miscellaneous game requests! Do you see my name on it, do I have a high score? No? Then take the feckin hint, I don’t want to play it.
I could go on, but I can’t be bothered, I’ve worn myself out!
I think for the sake of my sanity it’s time to disappear again for a little while and just use my Indecisive Eejit page, which you can feel free to like, if unlike me you are still feeling the love for Facebook!
Polly Carmichael had to face facts, she was lost. Unbelievably and hopelessly so!
The white corridor ahead seemed to stretch on for ever and ever, but was it an entrance or an exit, she had no idea.
From behind came the dull murmur of voices. Someone was crying, heartbreaking sobs, but she was no longer inclined to head that way, something, some force was nudging her forwards.
Unsteady, she placed her small hand against the cool walls, and gingerly took a step forward.
“There are only three things you need to remember Polly if you are to venture out, a compass, a torch and a coat. That is all you will ever need,” wasn’t that what her father had told her.
Looking down at her nightdress and fluffy slippers she sighed. “I am unprepared Papa,” she whispered into thin air. “I have no compass, and I am cold.”
Steadily, one foot in front of the other, she made her way along the corridor, hardly daring to breathe, certainly not looking down.
Just as she was starting to feel a little more sure of herself, Polly’s foot hit against something hairy. With a gasp and a squeak she stopped dead in her tracks.
“Ouch”, came a gruff little voice from below, “will you watch where you’re going!”
“Teddy? Teddy is that you?”
“Polly? What on earth are you doing here?” replied a bemused little voice.
“Oh Teddy, I am so glad to see you. I’m lost, which must mean you are lost, so we’re both lost, and Papa is going to be very cross because I have neither a coat nor a compass. What are we going to do?”
“Erm, not panic for starters.”
“But Teddy, don’t you see………”
Polly’s sentence was cut short because right at that very moment the sound of very loud footsteps could be heard, footsteps that seemed to be getting closer.
Polly paled, and looking down with frightened eyes addressed the equally as frightened bear, “Teddy, it’s a giant, we need to hide, NOW!!”
Bending down she scooped Teddy into her arms, “Hold on tight,” she whispered, preparing to run.
Turning on her heel, she was stopped dead in her tracks by a large booming voice in the distance, “Polly, are you lost in your daydreams again? For goodness sake girl, I asked you to put the kettle on half an hour ago!”
It got me thinking, and as I later said to him in my second comment (because his blog ate my first one), I have little scraps of paper everywhere with bits of my life on them, books of poetry, most of which makes me cringe when I read it now and many many half started and then discarded diaries.
Before The Indecisive Eejit was born my best attempt at a blog had been one called ‘The Trouble With Me’. I started it just over 10 years ago when I was going through a difficult time. It was an outlet, and very few people knew of it’s existence. At the time it helped, but as life changed and I got better I stopped updating it and eventually made the decision to close it altogether.
12th November 2002
~
As of right now things are not going to bad, I have just passed through a little phase in my life that I shall for ever after call my “episode”…….what that basically means is I lost myself for a few weeks…..I was smart enough to be able to realize though that something was not right and marched myself off to the doctor. My doctor is fantastic she has a very calming manner and just listens and regardless of her diagnosis at the end I left feeling better because I had shared some of my problems.
~
Basically I am fighting fit….but a little down in the dumps…..ok perhaps an easier way to describe it is mildly depressed…..my doctor applauds me because I am aware of what is happening and trying to rectify it….however should I not be able to pull myself out of the pit I am currently in……well then I have been advised to think about going on happy pills……or as I would rather not refer to them, anti depressants! Well I have to say it is amazing the difference being told you have to go on anti depressants makes, I got up at 6.30 am the next morning and scaled Ben Nevis with a smile on my face from bottom to top! NOT!!!!! Slight exaggeration on my part there but I did take my mates dog for a walk and grabbed some valuable me time and you know what it worked…I did feel better.
I never thought to keep a back up. All my poems were in books, or on scraps of paper. It was just the diary entries that were lost, or so I thought. Unbeknown to me Lee had kept copies on his computer as I had been using his hosting space and he was my chief web guru. A few years back he sent them all to me. I was delighted.
I went looking for them again the other night and located them on an old external drive which I had used to back up my previous PC.
It’s weird looking back 10 years and trying to remember why you wrote all the things you did. With my poetry I can still remember the reason behind every one, but with the writing it is not so easy. The saddest thing of all is reading the entries and realising very little has changed. It seemed that even then I suffered from anxiety, my worrying was a problem and I’ve been battling little bouts of depression ever since.
16th November 2002
~
I went and sat beside the sea today, it’s something I haven’t done, or maybe felt the need to do in a long time. I needed to try and clear my head of all the clutter that was inside it. I love the sea…especially in Winter, there is something calming about standing at the waters edge! You can scream as loud as you want but no one can hear you against the roar of the waves as they crash against the rocks. I must have looked a lonely figure standing there…..and that’s how I felt today, like I wanted to cut myself off from the rest of the world.
~
Sometimes I feel like I am 2 people, there is the Me I show to others…..the one who smiles and laughs and is game for anything. The one who is generally on an even keel but can sometimes be a right grumpy cow. Then there is the Me that only I know…..the quiet me, who thinks and worries about everything…analyzes everything and is totally paranoid. That’s the me who writes the poems and keeps the diaries….perhaps I feel a need to remind myself how I can be…and on really bad days remind myself how not to be.
~
Sometimes I wish I could get the two me’s together and sit them down with a nice cup of coffee, I would quiz them both on what they feel the trouble with me is….and ask them can they offer any solutions.
Given that I am now moving swiftly into middle age, pretty disgracefully it has to be said, it is unlikely that I will change now. I’ve been me for a long time. There are still be bits I don’t understand, and the chances are never will.
Would I change anything? Of course I would, because hindsight is a wonderful thing, but for the most part my friendships and relationships would remain the same. I’ve already established I can’t change me, so my thinking would have been the same, meaning that in all probability so would the outcome of each of them. One change I would make in this regard though, would be to not offer my heart so easily to be broken. I’m not sure it can be mended now, and besides if I can’t love myself, how will I ever allow anyone else to.
My Heart as an Apple
I have a heart,
it’s an open book,
show me affection,
I’ll give you a look.
~
Speak to me kindly,
treat me with care,
show me devotion,
and my heart I will share.
~
I was just like an apple,
with a shiny new skin,
you loved the feel of me,
but ignored the within.
~
Now I am wilting,
cause you want me no more,
the skin is still perfect,
but you devastated the core.
I’m not a lover of awards, I’m kinda boring, so I run out of random facts about myself way to easily!
However today, Life Confusions was given her very first award (well done you!) and saw fit to share it with me as well. Had she not, she would have been one of my chosen nominee’s. Drop on over to her blog and say Hi!
I don’t have to answer questions and I don’t have to give random facts either, and better than that, it’s about something very close to my heart, it’s about recognizing people who you feel are a part of your very own WordPress family.
See this is where I am really lucky, because I have the best WordPress family ever!! Sadly I can only nominate ten. There are a couple of people who I have nominated for awards before and despite the fact they might be missed this time, they are still very important to both myself and my blog. Especially Lee and Paul, two of my best friends, they would hate me if I mentioned them on something that would give them work to do.
Here are the rules:
1. Display the award logo on your blog.
2. Link back to the person who nominated you.
3. Nominate 10 others you see as having an impact on your wordpress experience and family
4. Let your 10 Family members know you have awarded them
5. That is it. Just please pick 10 people that have taken you as a friend, and spread the love.
I’ll do all of them except number 4, if you’ve been with me from the start you will know that when I get awards and pass them on by letting other people know, I usually get relegated to the trash area of the comment section by Akismet! Another fine example of why I don’t do awards. It took me weeks to climb back out and even longer to get the stale smell of food out of my hair!
I am pretty sure everyone I nominate will read this anyway, (see I told you they were awesome!) so it’ll be a nice surprise.
To each of the people nominated and the others I had to miss this time around, thank you so much for being here with me on my journey, for your words of encouragement and your faith in me that never waivers no matter how stupid or ridiculous I am. You are all the reason I keep updating and interacting. You’ve given me something to look forward to when the dishes are done and I sit down to enjoy what little time I get to myself before bed. On nights when things have been tough at home, someone has always been there to make me smile.
It means an awful lot, and I am extremely glad to have met each and every one of you!
I am proud to call you all members of my WordPress family!
In alphabetical oder (to avoid any fights, I know what you lot are like!!):
For a while now I have been reading ‘open letters’ penned by various people throughout the blogging community. I have to hold my hands up and say I was not entirely sure what an open letter was, as in how did it vary from an ordinary letter. So I did what I always do in times of crisis, I Googled it.
“An Open Letter is a letter that is intended to be read by a wide audience, or a letter intended for an individual, but that is nonetheless widely distributed intentionally.”
Oh. So that’s the difference. You learn something new everyday.
So here’s mine, cos I don’t have the balls to send it:
An Open Letter to Northern Ireland Railways
Dear Rulers of the Railways,
For almost 26 years now I have been availing of the use of your services to enable me to get back and forward to Technical College in the old days, and now work.
There have been many changes in this time, most recently the biggest being the change to the actual trains themselves. I have to say, being a seasoned traveller I do sort of miss the old ones with the pull down window doors, they were great fun in the 3 days of summer we had every year. It was like travelling in a convertible, the wind blowing through your hair. It was even better when the widows were open, cos then it was like a wind tunnel. It wasn’t however so funny when the train stopped and you couldn’t get the damn things open, missing your stop.
There is no doubt though that the new ones are by and large nothing short of brilliant. I have to give you credit where credit is due, you excelled yourselves on this occasion. Free WiFi, another stroke of genius, clever idea that to play the technology trump card, it wins every time.
I can’t even complain about your staff, they are usually friendly and helpful. A few of them even excel at Customer Service. You should be proud of them and not take them for granted. They do exceptional work in sometimes shitty circumstances. It takes a special kind of person to be able to absorb the abuse being hurled by angry and irate passengers when trains are delayed.
Train delays (and I’m touching wood here) are not so frequent these days. I hope I have not scudded myself because I need to get home on time tonight! I have spent many nights over the last 26 years standing on dark platforms waiting for trains that were over an hour late or in some instances never arrived at all.
The longest wait had to be one Winter night many many years back. It was very windy and stormy and a tree had ‘allegedly’ fallen somewhere on the Larne line. Our conductor put us off the train at Whitehead promising that a bus would soon arrive to collect us and facilitate the continuation of our journey, as they could only go so far due to the fallen tree. We waited for around 45 mins to an hour, there was no bus but eventually another train pulled into the station. We wandered over and asked the driver and conductor if we could board the train, but were again informed that due to the ‘fallen tree’ they were going to the next stop and then coming back. Another 45 mins to an hour later, same thing happens, still no bus and at this stage the 20 – 30 of us who have essentially been abandoned are wondering if the next stop is our equivalent of the Bermuda Triangle as three trains have gone in yet none have made it back. Eventually after about 3 hours you figured out there was a large group of missing people and attempted to rectify the situation. Fortunately around the same time relatives had also realised they were missing loved ones and came to rescue us themselves. As bad as that night was, you gave us compensation and I made some really good friends so every cloud has a silver lining and all that.
Most of my gripes these days are around scheduling and what I perceive to be the preferential treatment offered to travellers in some of the stations closer to the big smoke.
The two stations I will use as an example journey are Glynn and Jordanstown, although it serves the same purpose for any station between Whitehead to Larne and Clipperstown to Yorkgate.
I am at present (without having to bore you with the whole story) challenged with regards to walking, climbing stairs, boarding trains etc, in a nutshell I can’t do them very well and am in pain most days. The same difficulties would be faced by someone in a wheelchair whilst trying to make the same journey, so I am making the point for them also.
So assuming I work in a 9 to 5 job, any of the trains I need to catch are express trains. They run all stops to Carrickfergus (which seems to be the entire centre of your universe) at which point they turn into an express and race all the way to Belfast Central station. Anyone for the stops in between has to disembark, change platforms, which means 2 flights of stairs and a short subway walk, then climb aboard a second train and restart the journey. Bear in mind all of this has to be done within 3 minutes while fighting your way through hoards of school children and college students. It’s carnage I can tell you. I don’t even attempt it any more, I stay on the train to Belfast then double back on myself to get the station I require.
The return journey is pretty much the same, only if you are not careful it requires three changes. I would personally wait at either Carrickfergus or Downshire for the connecting train as crossing the level crossing at Whitehead proves problematic for someone with difficulty walking and even more so for someone in a wheelchair. With the introduction of the new 6 carriage trains, you also have to make sure you are in one of the first three as if not, you will end up changing again when the train actually reaches Whitehead.
I pay a lot of money to travel, but feel that compared to others I am getting a second class service. Carrickfergus and Belfast are not the only stops on that line you know!
If I’m on a train and it’s delayed, it’s unfair to turn it into an express solely to facilitate those travelling to Belfast, I’m going to be late for my work as well, but you don’t seem to care about that!
I need to bring this letter to a close because although I am running out of steam with regards to my writing, I am steaming up with regards to my annoyance levels.
It’s been nice to vent, however I don’t feel any better, but sure it was a great way to waste a lunchtime!
The Indecisive Eejit 