Category Archives: Personal Development

Warning – Inner work taking place…

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“Your memory is a monster; you forget—it doesn’t. It simply files things away. It keeps things for you, or hides things from you—and summons them to your recall with will of its own. You think you have a memory; but it has you!” – John Irving, A Prayer for Owen Meany

A few weeks ago at Pritchard Towers we had the loft boarded out and a proper loft ladder installed. We’re now sorting the loft – and it’s contents – out, and we’re also sorting out cupboards, drawers, etc. in the rest of the house.

I wish I’d labelled stuff better. The loft is like a freakin’ emotional minefield. You open a box and see stuff that you’d forgotten about for a damn good reason, but that you tucked away because you couldn’t handle it at the time. Twenty year old tax demands are fun, despite looking scary. Other stuff that looks harmless takes your leg off when the emotional landmine is triggered.

Yesterday, after some loft sorting, I foolishly did some cupboard sorting and hit a motherload of 35 year old stuff.

I blubbed like a baby, openly. Previously I’d had the odd ‘lower lip wobble’ but yesterday was intense.

I’ve realised that the loft and some cupboards are my Jungian ‘shadow’; the bits of my life that I chose to ‘push down’ for whatever reason – good or bad – but that need acknowledgement as they have helped make me, me.

Stuff is now being chucked; stuff is being labelled; stuff’s being hung on walls; most of all, stuff and memory is being acknowledged and re-integrated in to me.

Inner work is fucking hard. 

As LP Hartley said ‘The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.’ – I sort of wish I had one of those old maps that said ‘Here there be dragons’. 

Today me, tomorrow you

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A few weeks ago I wrote this Blog Post around the theme of Today You, Tomorrow Me, a ‘pay it forward’ sentiment summed up in the attitude of someone doing a favour for someone on the ground of ‘Today you need help, tomorrow it could be me needing help’.

Well, me being me started thinking about this from the other perspective, that of ‘Today it’s me needing help, tomorrow it might be you’.

I appreciate that that sounds rather selfish; it’s the sort of thing that you might say when trying to emotionally blackmail someone in to doing you a favour – “Hey, give me a hand, you never know when you might need a hand yourself!”  Also, to be honest, it does sound a bit like a cross between a threat and a bribe!

But at the same time there is an honesty about it, and a forthrightness that we’re often reluctant to acknowledge.  Sometimes, we DO need help and find it hard to ask for it. Perhaps asking for it on a ‘tit for tat’ is not something you can do with a total stranger, but perhaps it’s the way we need to be with friends and family, rather than the “I need help, I hope folks offer it because I’ll feel terrible asking for it, and they might turn me down.”

In the last decade there have been times when I’ve been desperate enough to seek help from friends. A couple have helped me out (you know who you are, folks) and several haven’t (you also know who you are) and it has affected our relationship in various ways – strengthening it in some cases, weakening it in others, changing the power dynamic.

But what about total strangers? It’s one thing for someone offering you help when you need it, but would that same stranger have responded positively had YOU asked first? I’m not sure.

Asking for help from the stranger would at least take out the guesswork, but it also comes over as if you’re begging or pan-handling – which at one level I suppose I would be.  The argument of ‘you never know when you might need a hand yourself’ only really applies if you’re likely to cross path with the person again often enough to be around when they need you, OR if the stranger has a belief in some sort of Karma or ‘reward for good deeds’.

I guess it MIGHT work if the stranger is particularly kind, or has a religious belief that encourages selfless helping.  It might also help if the person was on the verge of offering assistance and needed a little push to get them over nervousness or shyness. It might also work if the stranger gets a kick out of helping folks, or if they feel that they can get something form you quite quickly if they help you out.

This is an experiment that I’m not sure I’d have the guts to try; I think that in many cases, rather than ask a total stranger for assistance I’d try and get things sorted myself or just ‘grin and bear’ the problem.

Maybe it’s a British thing….

Adulting….

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In recent years I’ve heard the word ‘adulting’ used to describe various types of behaviour.  I have to say that when I first heard it, I thought it was being used in a joking manner, but it appears that some folks use it seriously.

According to the ‘urban dictionary’ website, the verb ‘To Adult’ has the following meaning : “to do grown up things and hold responsibilities such as, a 9-5 job, a mortgage/rent, a car payment, or anything else that makes one think of grown ups.”

Of course, there were adults doing stuff before the last couple of years – we just got on with it rather than made up words to describe it.  Adulting is a concept that seems to be popular with Millennials – apparently 20 and 30 somethings are finding the whole business of life in the 21st Century a bit of a pain.  I can see that there are issues around these days that I didn’t have when I was in my 20s – the main one being that buying your own house these days is a harder proposition than when we bought ours – but for crying out loud, when you get someone in their 20s or 30s saying ‘I’m not good at adulting’ or being proud of their ‘adulting skills’ because they’ve cooked a meal, we have a major problem.

I have a ‘thing’ about how some people seem to be increasingly infantilised, particularly people in their 20s and 30s, and this sort of nonsense seems to fit the bill.  Again – I empathise with the challenges in life today, but come on folks – it’s always been hard and you’re not being asked to charge up a beach under machine gun fire. You’re being asked to cook food; I was 10 when I first cooked tea for myself, my mum and my dad.

I’ve previously written on the concept of ‘The Competent Man (or woman)‘ on this blog, and so was slightly hopeful when I came across this article in the Guardian recently, about an organisation called ‘The Adulting School’ based in the US.  I took a look at their ‘Adulting IQ’ and found that there were some interesting suggestions in there of what constitutes being an adult today – it’s here.

One has to say that it’s American and that it almost certainly isn’t aimed at soemone of my generation.  To put it in context I was born 15 years after the end of World War 2; it was less than a decade since the end of rationing in the UK, and my parents were of an older generation who’d lived through depressions and general strikes as well as WW2. I guess I learnt from the experts.

But it’s a very serious problem; many of these people who’re having problems with Adulting will have kids; the chances are, therefore, that the next generation will have fewer adulting skills of teh sort I learnt from my mum and dad by absorption – how to wire a plug, cook food, darn socks, plant stuff in the garden, basic plumbing, budgeting, etc.

I’d be the first to admit that there are new skills that the Millenials and more recent generations have that they acquire ‘osmotically’ – using technology…er….yes. That’s about it.

Maybe I need to start a UK branch of The Adulting School…..

When unfriending is the friendly thing to do

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I’m not a great social media junkie; I think I have a Tumblr account, somewhere.  I don’t have an Instagram account or use Reddit, and whilst Blackberry Messenger is (apparently) installed and available on my Blackberry I don’t have anyone to talk to on it except charming young ladies who seem to be short of friends and clothes.

I DO, however, use Facebook extensively, and to a lesser degree Twitter.

The rules of the game for me is that Twitter is for following companies, folks I do business with, magazines, websites, etc. Anyone or anything that I’m interested in but wouldn’t necessarily want to discuss my favorite films, the weird dream I had last night, politics or religion. I.e. – contacts, colleagues and comrades.

Now Facebook is rather different – that’s family and friends and some friends of friends – on the whole people that I care about in terms of their day to day lives – their ups, downs, successes and failures.  Folks who at some level or another I like or love, and who I’d happily spend time with in the pub or around the dinner table. Facebook is also where I am who I am – the unadulterated me. You’ll get me on bad days, good days, I’ll talk about cats, blog posts, state of the garden, food, my faith, and occasionally my politics. I’ll bitch about work, go ga-ga over a new TV show, share cat videos and generally project an online presence that, for better or worse, is similar to what folks get from me on a daily basis.

Facebook is, for me, the world of and according to, Joe.

Every now and again I do Facebook Purges.  These may sound quite Stalinist, and I guess at one level they are. I’m getting rid of folks who no longer belong in the filtered society of my Facebook friends list.  I’ve read all the articles about creating closed worlds of people that you agree with, and the problems that that can cause when interacting with wider society.

And I’m not bothered. The different view points I get from Twitter or trips to discussion boards.

Facebook is where I don’t mind my views being challenged, but I expect the challenging to be in a respectful way.  Facebook is my online living room; I don’t mind intense discussions around the dinner table at home; I would object if someone came in and started ranting at me for my politics or religious views.  In fact, I’d not expect such people to come and visit me at all if that was all they were going to do….they’d come over rather like the bods on the High Street with the placards proclaiming that the Second Coming is nigh and that Socialist Worker is the answer to everything.

Being a God-bothering man means that I will and I expect to get my faith questioned; I don’t proselytise too much on Facebook, and I think that most folks I know respect my views (though they may disagree with my belief in sky-pixies).  My political views are quite a hotch-potch, though, and this has caused increasing amounts of friction, especially with regard to Brexit.

The automatic response of some folks that everyone who voted to leave the EU was a racist bigot was quite hurtful – I’m a leaver and can walk and breathe at the same time, don’t drag my knuckles, and don’t believe that ‘they should all go home’.  I believe in giving home to genuine refugees. I also believe that we should have some degree of control of borders, and that international trade deals are not always good. And that building in a transnational super state in Europe may not be the best way to world peace.

Some folks I know have debated these issues with me and we’ve agreed to disagree. I may have moved closer to them, they may have moved closer to me. Others just called me names and I’m afraid I unfriended them.

And that was probably the kindest thing to do; unfriend on Facebook, keep on Twitter, keep contact to some degree in the ‘real world’ if necessary but avoid that risk of either person saying something that they will regret online in the heat of the moment.

At the moment another purge is in the offing; there are some folks who I rarely seem to engage with on Facebook and all I see from them are shared statements – often politics of one sort or another – or anti-faith posts of varying types.  Nothing ‘original’, lots of viral stuff.  It feels like having the folks with the ‘Jesus is nigh’ and ‘Socialist Worker’ placards simply turning up at your house and standing in the living room, waving the placards and shouting slogans.

No thanks.

Come and be my friend when you have something more to offer me than slogans.

 

Progress so far….

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A few weeks ago I decided to try and get back in to regularly writing. This came after a conversation with my wife in which we recollected that in the 1980s I was able to earn about 50% of my income through writing – mainly technical journalism and technical books. There was one period where all my income came form writing – a year spent living in Nottingham and it was awesome.

Now, the world’s changed big-time and I doubt that the days of me making a fair income from technical writing will ever come back unless something major happens, but I decided that I would like to return to doing some writing and gradually build up to the point where I can see if I still have it in me to write a couple of books on topics that I’ve been mulling over for a while.  In one case, 30 years, but that’s another story!

One piece of advice I have taken to heart in the past and that worked very well for me was to make an appointment for myself to be at my desk and writing at a certain time each day.  So, I went through my calendar in OneNote and wrote down as the first activity of each day (after praying, feeding the cats (naturally – can’t upset the house-gods), and writing up my dream journal ) would be to write for 30 minutes.  I chose 30 minutes because I knew I could probably do it without too much hassle each day, and had done it in the past.  I also felt that 30 minutes was a time in which I could get a reasonable amount done – certainly a few hundred words if I came to the party prepared.

So, on the 12th November I did this blog post : http://reader.joepritchard.me.uk/godincidence-strikes-again/ and on the 13th I did ‘The Girl with the Parasol’ on this blog. I’d decided to go with the Blog posts as the way forward, as they make me come up with different ideas each day.  I’ll no doubt break out to short stories and longer stuff soon, but right now it’s the discipline I’m looking for.

So, how’s the project gone?

Well, setting the time has worked rather well; having said that I bet over half the time I’ve sat down later than the time specified for writing!  I set it early morning because that’s when I’m likely to be most creative – I’ve always been more of a morning person than anything else. But it has ensured that each day there’s a slot of time that I’ve put aside for my creative work and I’ve delivered on it.

Mostly.

The 28th November was a missed day – I’d had a long weekend, got up late, and then other things happened and the morning just got lost.  29th November was picked up again the day, and here we are on the 30th at the right time writing the words!  I’m not going to beat myself up about it – I decided that if I missed a day for a good reason (general lifestyle chaos is pretty good as far as I’m concerned) then I’d just crack on with it the next day.

In terms of ‘deliverables’, not including today, and not counting stuff I’ve written as part of my day-job or dream journal, I’ve written something in the region of 11,500 words in 19 days (not including this blog post) and don’t feel that I’ve raised a sweat.  Admittedly, it’s not going to get me a Pulitzer or Nobel prize anytime soon, but it’s shown me a few things about myself:

  • I can be disciplined enough to write each day.
  • I can come up with ideas to write a separate piece each day.
  • I can come back to writing after skipping a day.
  • In theory I could probably write 15,000 words a month and not notice the inroads in to my time.
  • That 30 minutes each day came from reading the news and social media – writing probably does my blood pressure more good!!

So – I have to say that the experiment is going well. I haven’t yet got it to ‘habit’ status, but it’s getting there. The next milestone will be around the middle of December when I can say ‘Over a month’.

Watch this space!

 

Unhappy the land that needs heroes….??

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The line :

“Unhappy is the land that needs a hero.”

comes from Bertholt Brecht’s ‘Life of Gallileo’ and has stuck with me for many, many years.  I can’t remember when I first heard it, but it still rattles around my head and so I thought to myself – time for a think.

I don’t know whether I agree with it or disagree with it. When I first heard it I thought it to be so; these days I’m not so sure any more.  The way the world is today the characters of a Brecht play may not need heroes, but the rest of us probably do!

I’m a great believer in the quiet hero, as well as the more obvious heroes in our society.  I would add that there’s rarely anything truly heroic, in my opinion, about sports stars, actors, musicians and celebrities; as a society we seem to have slackened off our definition of hero over the years.  Having said that, there are a few heroic examples of these folks – just not the ones that appear on X-Factor….

I think it was George Orwell who commented something along the lines that so many works of critics regarded so many books as masterpieces written by geniuses, that when a REAL masterpiece came along written by a TRUE genius the critics would have to find new words with which to describe them!

Are there people that everyone can agree are heroes?

Here are a few definitions….

“A hero is someone who stays brave for 5 seconds longer than everyone else.” – Captain James T Kirk

“A hero is someone who has given their life over to something bigger than themselves.” – Joseph Campbell

“When your time comes to die, be not like those whose hearts are filled with fear of death, so that when their time comes they weep and pray for a little more time to live their lives over again in a different way. Sing your death song, and die like a hero going home. ” Tecumseh

“I think a hero is an ordinary individual who finds strength to persevere and endure in spite of overwhelming obstacles. ” – Christoper Reeve

“A hero is somebody who is selfless, who is generous in spirit, who just tries to give back as much as possible and help people. A hero to me is someone who saves people and who really deeply cares. ” – Debi Mazar

“My dad’s the one who’s always been there; he’s my hero, you could say. Even when he was working, he’d do anything for me. He’s been the biggest influence in my life. ” – Gareth Bale

“The thing about a hero, is even when it doesn’t look like there’s a light at the end of the tunnel, he’s going to keep digging, he’s going to keep trying to do right and make up for what’s gone before, just because that’s who he is.” – Joss Wheedon

“Neil Young is my hero, and such a great example. You know what that guy has been doing for the past 40 years? Making music. That’s what that guy does. Sometimes you pay attention, sometimes you don’t. Sometimes he hands it to you, sometimes he keeps it to himself. He’s a good man with a beautiful family and wonderful life. ” – Dave Grohl

I’m not sure what the common features are here, but I’ve known and still know people who these quotes describe.

I am surrounded by quiet heroes in my life; those folks who fit the descriptions given above by Joseph Campbell and Christopher Reeve. People who’ve given themselves to something bigger than themselves.  Their family, charitable works, their community. Folks who’re constantly fighting the odds. The ones who, as Wheedon says, keep digging even when there appears to be no light at the end of the tunnel.

I need people like this; they’re the folks I look to when the shit is hitting the fan and all seems dark. They’re the ones providing the light – the faint glimmer that, as John says in his Gospel, cannot be put out by the darkness.

They’re also the ones who make me want to be a better man, and perhaps be a hero to others.

 

Today you, tomorrow me

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The first thing I do when I get up in the morning is feed the cats, then make tea, then sit and allow some of my higher brain functions to come online, usually whilst browsing Facebook.  There then comes a point where abstract thought is possible and then I like to write.

The nice thing about the Facebook browse is that sometimes it gives me the idea for the day’s blog post.  That was the case today – I came across the phrase “Today you, tomorrow me” in a set of stories about people being given help by total strangers with nothing being wanted or expected – or even accepted – in return.

The phrase apparently comes from the Spanish; an entry on an ‘urban dictionary’ website tells us:

From the Spanish “hoy por tí, mañana por yo”, it is used to “justify”acts of kindness toward strangers.  For example:

“Thanks for helping me with my flat tire. Please accept this $50 as a token of my gratitude. ”
“No need. Today you, tomorrow me”

I guess it’s a more graceful response than my usual ‘Fuggedaboutit’!

I had to sit and think for a few minutes about it. Today you – today, you are the one needing help. Tomorrow me – tomorrow I may be the one needing help.  It’s ‘Pay it forward’ – I guess that it’s easy for us to think of such a gesture of kindness as a form of enlightened self interest, or spiritual insurance of some sort.  If that works for you, then go for it – help someone out because you never know when you yourself will need help.

As a Christian, I look at it slightly differently; for me, as a recipient of that help, I’m aware that I’ve done NOTHING to warrant it from the people giving it, except share the planet. That’s how we also look upon the love of God – we’ve done nothing to warrant it, but we get it.  And on giving help out, a Christian isn’t being helpful to get in to God’s good-books, but because the grace of God is working through them to  do good works.

However, you view it – it’s an excellent philosophy to live by.  I’ve benefited from the kindness of strangers over the years, and I hope that I have managed to give something back to other strangers.

I’ve also experienced incredible kindness from people who I do know – albeit slightly – when other people who I might have expected to offer help to me in difficult times have not been able or willing to do so.

Apart from the actual ‘getting me out of the mire’ gratitude I’m also grateful to all those who’ve helped me  in this way because they have added to my faith in human nature. They’ve also helped me to not be judgmental, and to remember the times when I was possibly not as helpful as I could have been.

Take a look at how you might be able to ‘pay something forward’ in your lives. You don’t have to have spare money, or even masses of time available. And it needn’t be a big thing. We have no idea how important the relatively trivial events of life may prove to be in the great scheme of things.

Today you, tomorrow me….

 

The JAMs

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A new set of initials entered the language of British politics this week – JAM.  They stand for ‘Just About Managing’ and refer to families or individuals who are just about getting by in the current financial climate, but who, by implication, might feel the pinch hard if the economic situation in the UK worsens.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-38049245

I realised that I’d been a JAM for about twenty years, – in fact, I was a JAM WELL before it was trendy and had it’s own set of initials. I think I entered JAMness in the late 1990s and have meandered around the edges of it since.

So, leaving the political commentaries aside, what has being a JAM meant to me and mine?  I should add that we’re a single income household,  don’t have children, and to be honest I chose a career path that whilst it’s given me flexibility, hasn’t given me a load of cash!

So…what might new JAMmies start to realise after being on the JAMline for a few months.

Financial planning is something of a joke.  The idea of putting a portion of my income away in to savings. I manage to contribute to a pension because it’s taken at source.

You reach the end of the money before the end of the month.  Having said that, I do have the option of doing a little more freelance work to take up the slack; at least I have something sellable.  Of course, time is an issue.

Socialising, holidays, buying folks you love nice gifts – forget it. These are things that require planning to generate the spare money. Christmas planning for us starts 2-3 months ahead of the start of shopping in order to work out how to get the money together.

Decisions as to whether to eat or heat. When you have ‘pay as you go’ electricity and gas it genuinely can boil down to feeding the meters before feeding yourself.  You realise how expensive energy is and end up running the house at a lower temperature and wearing more clothes.

One unexpected expenditure – dental work, unexpected vet’s bill, new shoes, etc. will knock the carefully planned weekly expenditure totally off kilter. You can try creating a ‘rainy day’ fund but trust me, unless you can top it up regularly, it soon runs dry.

Spur of the moment spending is not possible.

Having said that, what advice do I have for new JAMmies?  Of course, many of you are there already but now you have a name for yourselves.  For those who may become JAMmies in the near future….

Well, welcome to the club. It’s a bit of a pain in the arse, but these days it’s no longer the perceived refuge of the  the idle and feckless that it used to be.  After all, we’re here. 🙂

As soon as possible, work out your spending and income – do a budget and attempt wholeheartedly to stick to it.  In fact, most people don’t have a grip on where there money goes – if you can get a handle on that then you’re already ahead of the game.  Saving money on occasional, small things that you really enjoy is pointless – you don’t actually save that much and you make yourself miserable. Factor some ‘me money’ in to your budget.

If you feel JAMminess approaching, get to work on reducing credit card debt as soon as you can; that credit card may well be the thing that keeps you fed some months, assuming it’s not maxed out with computer games and handbags.

Prepare family and friends for the new regime. Explain that whilst you love them dearly, you can no longer afford the big presents, the frequent (and mainly expensive) nights out.  You may find that they too are approaching the JAM status and can see where you’re coming from.

Be prepared to swallow pride; if you need help from friends, food-banks, etc. go for it.  State help is, as you’ll be aware, a decreasingly common option (and of decreasing value) so don’t assume that ‘the Government’ will help you out.  They won’t; they only help you IN to the JAM Today club.

I don’t expect this situation to change; for me it’s so much a part of day to day life that I forget the shock to the system that it can be for people when they find their life changed in this way.

It will be tough; but you will survive. After 20 years at it, trust me; it’s possible. Just don’t expect your view of the world to stay the same!

It’s a dangerous world….

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The Advertising Standards Authority managed to drag a wry smile out of me this morning as I read the news that they’d banned an advert for Heinz Baked Beans because it might encourage children to hurt themselves.

The story is here : http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-38073866 and the advert is based around playing the rhythm of a song on full and empty bean tins. Now, apart from the risk of such tympanic efforts entering in to the nation’s psyche like the ‘Heinz Beanz Song’ from my childhood:

“A million housewives every day,

Pick up a tin of beans and say

Beanz meanz Heinz”

I was hard pressed to think what harm could come to kids from playing the Heinz Bongoes. OK, particularly hard pressed parents might throw the odd tin at their offspring to get them to stop, but that was it…but then it was made clear that the risks to kids were from possibly cutting their fingers on the open ends of a tin.

Now, at first glance I thought – fair enough.  Then I started thinking,

“No. Not fair enough. The world is a tough place. Kids need to learn that occasionally you’ll get cut, scratched, grazed, burned and bruised when you play and learn.  Don’t take dumb risks, but don’t live in a cotton wool world where folks try and stop everything happening to you.”

Because if you try and control the small stuff that gives a painful reminder of the dangers of the world, when the big, uncontrollable, nasty shit comes along out of nowhere on a Saturday afternoon the kids have no experience of what it’s like to get whacked. More importantly, they have no way to judge risk; a world in which you never get exposed to mild risk is not a healthy world.

There’s a lovely line from the god-like alien ‘Q’ in Star Trek: The Next Generation, where he is explaining something about the universe to Captain Picard who’s just had a VERY narrow squeak:

If you can’t take a little bloody nose, maybe you ought to go back home and crawl under your bed. It’s not safe out here. It’s wondrous, with treasures to satiate desires both subtle and gross; but it’s not for the timid.

He’s right. A world perfectly safe and with no risk couldn’t have generated the human race; and certainly won’t generate a healthy generation of children.  There’s a big difference between being safe and being timid; between taking stupid risks and entering for this year’s Darwin Awards and engaging in an activity that has a small amount of risk as a by-product

There was an interesting study done about the ‘range’ of children today and over the last 100 years – the maximum distance that a child was from home during their free time and play.  It was quite un-scientific and probably non-representative but suggested that a radius of 10 or more miles was not uncommon a hundred years ago; my personal radius in the 1960s/70s was down to about 5 miles or so; today in many cases it’s less than a mile, and little outside.

Activities are often now virtual; the biggest risk of harm is likely to be a pulled thumb muscle or repetitive strain injury.

So, here’s the start of a helpful guide for children of all ages to be used when adverts don’t contain the necessary health and safety small print.

  1. Sharp stuff can cut you. Really sharp stuff can cut deeply. So can paper. Watch those books.
  2. Hot things burn you.
  3. Anything electrical can potentially hurt you badly. Don’t screw around with anything bigger than a 9 volt PP3.
  4. Don’t eat anything that isn’t a recognised food.
  5. Jumping from heights has a risk of twisted ankles.

The list can go on and on….but you get the picture. It is a potentially risky world out there and play is one of the ways in which we get our abilities to function in the world honed to a fine point.

We never really finish learning; as Kipling said in ‘The God of the copy-book headings‘ “And the burnt Fool’s bandaged finger goes wabbling back to the Fire;”

May your day be full of small, manageable risks and may your bumps and bruises be safe ones.

WARNING – Nothing in this blog post should be taken as advocating risky activities. All safety guidelines should be read as humorous asides. (OK…legal guys…is that OK?)

 

To sleep, perchance to…

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…have weird people trying to eat you?

I’m pretty sure that the Shakespeare quote involved the word ‘dream’ but my latest nocturnal meanderings by my subconscious were not of the peaceful type!

I’m a great logger and journaler of dreams.  I can remember many dreams that I had when I was a child and a teenager – particularly the unpleasant ones – and since the late 1990s, when I suffered a mild nervous breakdown, I’ve recorded my dreams on waking whenever I am aware of having dreamt and am capable of remembering anything that happened.  When I started the journal, it was on pieces of paper or text files; I toyed with the idea of using a nice, hardback book to put everything in but that never really suited; nowadays I have a section of my OneNote notebook labelled ‘Dreams’ and that does the trick nicely.  It also allows me to easily search previous dream records, and has the additional advantage of allowing me to easily slot in stuff after the event.  Every now and again I come across a Word document or some scribbled notes recording a dream that I had years ago, and it’s easy for me to pop a note in OneNote in the right place and transcribe the contents of my previously lost records.

Why do I bother?

Well, it’s been interesting to see when I dream, to start with; I now realise that I’m more likely to dream when I’m slightly mentally agitated – ignoring those dreams that Ebeneezer Scrooge referred to:

“You may be an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a fragment of an underdone potato. There’s more of gravy than of grave about you….”

and the really ‘big’ dreams for me – those that either fit the pattern of deep and important dreams defined by Jung or those that have me waking up feeling strong emotions – tend to take place when my sub-concious is needing to get my attention.  I have to say that sometimes I wish that the message that it attempts to convey was more clearly expressed….

If I dream when I’m ill, over-heated, still digesting my supper, drunk or just having a ‘bad night’ I’ll record the dreams and ponder them; but if I have a dream that leaves me waking up with strong emotions, kicking the cats off the bed as I flail around like a lunatic or that is particularly vivid and coherent, then THEY are the dreams that I attempt to ‘read, mark and inwardly digest’.

I’m actually quite reticent to discuss my dreams with lots of people; like most people, I think whatever public standing I have (not much!) would go down the toilet were folks to know of my antics in some of my dreams, and over the years I’ve learnt a great deal about myself from studying my dreams and reading the more ‘serious’ books on the subject.

I’ve learnt to recognise certain things in my dream as having specific meanings; to you that workbench might be just a workbench; for me, I know that if I dream in detail about a workbench, there is some aspect of my creative life that’s currently lacking and I need to find a new outlet or kick a new project off.  There are also people who turn up repeatedly in my dream – that’s more intimate, and whilst I think know who and what they represent I’m not telling here!

And as for being eaten by weird people?

Well, without going in to too much detail, let me advise you never to allow yourself to be followed in to a perfectly dark room by a stranger who then proceeds to start eating your hand…..

the analysis of THAT little horror will start soon.