Category Archives: Trying to be Hot (and desperately failing)

Jan 14 2013

A New Year’s Revelation

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It’s the start of a new year. There are lots of people jogging (everywhere, all the time), because it’s that time of year where we punish ourselves for our vices and decide that by this time next year, we will most definitely be a much better person.

I tell myself to be a much better person at the beginning of every week, never mind the beginning of every year. And every time I decide to go forth and become an infinitely better person, the whole thing quickly falls apart and I soon end up feeling much worse than I did to begin with.

This year, I’ve decided not to set myself up for failure and I haven’t made any  New Year’s resolutions. There are two reasons I always totally flunk at New Year’s resolutions:

1. I expect to see changes in myself almost immediately after deciding that I’m going to change.

Life changes 1 

2. My resolutions tend to be a bit vague and immeasurable like “Be healthy” or “Be less shit at everything”.

New year's resolutions

A while ago I wrote this post about how much I wanted to be someone totally different – someone who wakes up at dawn to do yoga, someone who is creative, productive and successful, someone who has deep philosophical conversations, someone who… (the list goes on). I have to be honest with myself: I AM NEVER going to be someone who wakes up bright and early, and does Yoga while reading… I dunno, Plato or whatever. What’s more, I’m actually okay with the fact I will never be this person.

Change shouldn’t about shoe-horning myself into a personality that doesn’t fit. My ideal version of myself – the clever, healthy, active creative with a mind that’s totally Zen – is not me. It’s never going to be me. If I became this person – the “perfect Me” – and I met perfect Me at a party, I would most probably want to punch perfect Me in the face. When I really think about it, perfect Me isn’t someone I would want to spend a lot of time with. I wouldn’t know what to talk to perfect Me about. In fact, perfect Me is probably someone I would bitch about behind their back. I would roll my eyes whenever perfect Me was talking. Perfect me probably wears Lycra and goes jogging. Perfect Me is probably a fussy eater… And that’s pretty much a deal breaker.

The more I thought about it, the more the perfect Me became less perfect and more smug and annoying. I realised that I don’t really like perfect Me at all. And if I don’t like the perfect version of myself, then why tell myself to become that person in the first place?

I started to wonder what was really so terrible about my imperfect life to make me feel like I had to become this Lycra-wearing object of perfection.

I decided to review what I’d achieved in 2012. While I realise that I didn’t make any particularly massive leaps forward with my life, in review, I think I achieved a fair amount. I completed the taught seminars on my MA, where I also made loads of new friends, I re-connected with old friends, I started writing for a couple of websites, I started writing a new novel and I (admittedly, in a totally random and seemingly impulsive manner) bought a dog.

And while none of my 2012 accomplishments have earned me an impressive salary, or landed me a publishing deal, or got me into some Lycra trousers, I’m safe in the knowledge that, in the very least, I’m heading in the right direction.

In the end, I decided to stop tormenting myself with thoughts of having a massive life overhaul and of becoming a person I don’t really want to be. And while there’s still a lot of room for change in my life, ultimately, I’m doing okay. Most people are doing okay. And that’s okay.

So while I’m still fully committed to trying new things and continuing with my 30 Before 30 list, I’m also not pretending that by the end of 2013, I will be a fit and healthy, intellectual, best-selling novelist with zero financial worries and a buzzing social life. All I want to get out of this year is to learn to be more appreciative of the things I have got and to just keep chipping away, slowly but surely, at the things I really want.

So here’s to 2013 – what I hope will be a slightly better year than 2012.

Apr 23 2012

How Compliments Make Me Feel Awkward (and how I keep thinking my brain operates like Windows)…

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This isn’t a real post, it’s half a post. It’s another one I redrafted several times, but I kept lapsing into serious rants about self-image. In short, this is really just a follow-up to the previous post, about getting a compliment during a note passing incident with a strange man, and feeling very anxious about a post I had written (about me feeling anxious about writing).

Firstly, I can’t cope with compliments. It makes me feel uncomfortable. I don’t really know how to react. My brain gets a Windows error. Then I freeze up. Then this happens:

It’s really hard being me. And having a brain that runs on Windows XP.

I also said, y’know, that no one had ever said… that  particular thing to me before. Which, wasn’t strictly true. My point was, it sounded completely alien. Seriously, like klingon or something. It’s not a word I would use to describe myself… I mean, not that many people would (except maybe narcissists. And Christina Aguilera), but in my case it really clashes with my haphazard personality. I spend my days sitting at my desk in joggers or lurking in coffee shops wearing ripped jeans and Chuck Taylors with gaping holes in them. This reality makes compliments like that hard to take. Also, I have an extensive catalogue of disparaging comments that stretches waaaaay back into those dark days of ‘high school’, which contribute to my general deflection of compliments.

I’m beginning to wonder if insults stock-pile in the psyche. Maybe they’re like a worm virus: one negative comment sinks in, replicates itself and then forwards itself to… everyone in your address book… (Okay, maybe I didn’t think this metaphor through properly). What I’m trying to say is, maybe the damage control of negative comments is difficult to manage – much like that of a worm virus. You think you’ve sorted the problem and then months later, it will reappear and wreak havoc all over again and you become super-infected by negativity. Unless, of course, your psyche runs on Mac OS X.

In which case, my psyche got infected during my teens. Puberty wasn’t kind to me. My nose went from being one of those cute-button-noses to looking like it was broken (but it wasn’t). In addition, I had goofy teeth and it was only when puberty hit that I got landed with the hellish years of orthodontic treatment. My skin mutated into hideousness and my eyebrows, for some reason, grew seriously out of control (they rivalled Madonna’s in the 80s). In a time before GHD straighteners, my hair transformed from long, blonde adorableness to a frizz-tastic, static nightmare, which seemed to take on a life of its own – reaching forth from my head and attaching itself to the polyester v-neck jumpers worn by everybody in the school. On top of this uncomfortable set of changes, I was at an age where suddenly fashion and style were important. And I didn’t have a clue about either (I still don’t).

Here’s a run-down of a few high school incidents that readily spring to mind:

  • One day, a popular girl marched up to me (popular entourage in tow) and asked me HOW ON EARTH I could wear blue socks with black shoes. I was stumped for a response, mainly because I hadn’t even realised the error of my ways. Looking down at my shoes,  I flushed with red trying to think of something to say. Eventually, I uttered: ‘It’s a free country…’ a popular response in the mid-nineties as it was applicable to almost anything. Sadly, its applicability did not stop it from being super-lame. The girl snarled and stomped away with a herd of her fashioncentric friends, as if my mismatching socks and shoes had somehow been a personal attack on her.

 

  • Once, during an English class, we had to play a description game, where someone had to guess which person in the class was being described to them. My classmates described me as: ‘She’s got blonde hair, and big teeth’. Bingo. The boy who was guessing (who I also happened to have a pretty big crush on, at the time) instantly pointed (that’s right pointed, without actually saying anything) at the girl in the back corner. Me. Blondie big teeth.

 

  • In a drama class, we had to improvise an argument with another person. My drama teacher reiterated (several times) that the argument was to be purely fictitious and we were not to make personal digs at each other. My partner shrugged at me and murmured: ‘You got a big nose’. AND THEN DIDN’T SAY ANYTHING ELSE.

 

  • A boy I was going out with, broke up with me because every time he saw me, it made him feel physically sick. (True story).

It’s a fact of life that high school is hell for the under-confident.  I think the fourteen-year-old me is the one who hears compliments, and they’re just so hard to believe in and amongst the hundreds of big nose/big hair/big teeth insults. I feel like I’m being lied to. This is partially due to my school days, but mainly down to watching way too many American high school movies in which the “unattractive” girl is dated by a cool jock in order to win a bet.

For the record, I still don’t understand fashion. And sometimes I still wear inappropriately coloured socks with black shoes. Sometimes I wear socks that don’t even match each other. With holes in them (take that, girl from high school!). Sometimes, I’ll get up and I won’t even change out of my pyjamas – which are fleecy and pink and covered in little cakes. Sure, you can call me beautiful but you haven’t seen me eat cold, leftover bolognaise direct from the fridge. At four in the afternoon. Wearing fleecy pink cake pyjamas. Using only my hands (take that, boy I used to go out with!).

This post doesn’t really have any sort of conclusion. Except that high school was hell, and compliments make me uncomfortable.  But I think I said that at the beginning.

So, moving on… Here’s a little follow up about my anxious feelings of writerliness (that’s totally a word). A few things have happened over this past week to settle the nerves. One of them was watching Elizabeth Gilbert talk about creativity, which I found kind of beautiful (take that, compliment guy with red biro!) and inspiring.

Anyway, next time, a proper post. Promise.

Mar 16 2012

Because I’m pretty sure Cavemen had their coffee with sugar…

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I’m on a diet. I’ve done diets before, in varying fits of I’M GOING TO GET HEALTHY DAMMIT and I always achieve the same outcome (fail). It’s not that I want to lose weight (although shedding a few pounds wouldn’t hurt), it’s more because I’m in a current state of floppiness which sees me wandering around in a depressive, apathetic funk (in fact, the ‘wandering around’ stretches the truth a bit, I’m more of a sit-down-and-mope type). I try to shake myself free of the funk – with daily ‘routines’ and new fitness regimes and hobbies and spread sheets organising my diminishing bank balance into graphs and charts which visually tell me I don’t have any money, but the funk stays, and I feel gloomy. The gloom has got easier to ignore over the years, because I know it’s just a phase (a two to three month phase off the back of Christmas, usually) what’s hard to ignore is the constant state of lethargy that comes with it. My mind is in a permanent fog of half-thought thoughts, and I’m physically drained.

Last night I slept for eleven hours. Eleven. It pains me to even admit to myself, never mind broadcast it on the internet. But that’s the reality, people. And sometimes you have to face reality, and admit to shameful sleep patterns (on the internet) in order to change. A post-Christmas mope sets everything in motion. Here’s a scientific diagram which illustrates the mope theory that I just made up:

Mope theory

When I’m at my worst I sleep for far too long, and spend the day eating left-over Bolognese out of the fridge. With a spoon. Or my hands.

Usually when I’m plagued with this (or any other) kind of problem, I call Ghostbusters  my SIL and whinge about said problems to her. So last week when I called her, before I’d even started whinging about my apathy, she told me she was doing a Primal diet. Intriguing, no?

SIL: I’m on a primal diet at the moment. And seriously, I FEEL AWESOME.

Me: Really?

SIL: Okay, maybe not awesome, but like I have more energy.

Me: That could work for me… What’s a primal diet?

SIL: You eat like a Caveman.

Me: So… like… you eat buffalo?

SIL: [Pause] Er, it’s more meat, fish, and vegetables. Lots of vegetables. And butter.

Me: Sounds like my kinda diet.

SIL: Exactly! You just have to stop eating carbs and sugar.

Me: Oh.

SIL: Yeah. But it’s not that hard.

Me: Yeah, but carbs and sugar are my life!! Without carbs and sugar, there would be no cake.

SIL: I know… But you can eat lots of other stuff… like… meat.

So I checked out some websites, and filled my tired little brain with lots of information about the primal diet. It seemed pretty straight forward. For someone who eats leftover Bolognese from the fridge as a snack (sometimes using only her hands) I figured the caveman diet is quite likely to actually work for me. And so, on Monday morning, I woke up ready to be a caveman…woman… (cavelady??) person.

I start my day with a cup of coffee. Nothing comes before coffee. Coffee with milk and a seriously large amount of…huh…sugar.*

*Anyone who’s ever met me for coffee will have looked on in horror as I load my coffee cup with packet after packet of sugar. Sometimes friends struggle to focus on what they’re talking about because watching the sugar emptying process is so long and distracting. People in Starbucks tut and sigh as they wait for me to finish preparing my drink at the milk and sugar stand. I also stir my coffee excessively, which a lot of people struggle to cope with too. But that’s not really relevant here.

I debated the options. But there weren’t any. I considered just having my coffee as normal – after all, what’s one cup of coffee with milk and sugar? Is it really going to make a difference? But then, should I really break the first rule** of the primal diet with the first thing I consume? That’s setting myself up for a failure…

**The first rule of the primal diet is you do not eat carbs or sugar. And the second rule of the primal diet is you DO NOT EAT CARBS OR SUGAR.

Needs sugar

So I had coffee without milk or sugar. And it tasted horrible. It was so horrible that I’m pretty convinced I’ve only ever been drinking coffee all these years purely for the sugar content. I’ve had coffee without milk or sugar for the subsequent mornings, promising myself I’d get used to the taste. I broke that promise to myself. Because it doesn’t get better.

Aside from the disappointing coffee (which I’m painfully drinking every morning) everything else seems okay. In fact, I don’t really miss carbs or sugar, and it feels pretty good to no longer consume meals made up of mountains of pasta, half a garlic bread and an (optional) side salad. Various primal diet websites warned me of withdrawal symptoms for the first couple of days. But I was obviously hardcore and embracing the change. Because in those first two days, I was doing fine, just fine. Meat and veg was the way of great meals. And maybe I’d just stop drinking coffee altogether, eventually.

I wasn’t really feeling any negative effects at all apart from maybe still feeling a little sleepy… and also a little forgetful. I mean, I totally forgot to go to my contact lens appointment despite the reminder text message from the Opticians. And the reminder in my diary. And this note on my desk:

contact lens

But I can’t really hold the diet responsible – as I’m so inept on a daily basis it’s difficult to tell whether such an incident is carbs and sugar withdrawal related or just the norm.

On the whole, I was settling in pretty well to being primal. (RAAARGH!)

Until I woke up Wednesday morning, angry, and craving Danish pastries. I also felt tired. I felt more tired than I had in months. I had classes all afternoon, so I promptly sacked off my plans to go to the gym – figuring that any type of exertion would take up what little energy I had and leave me a zombie for the rest of the day. Then I went downstairs and shouted at my sugarless coffee for being pointless. Then I bashed my head on a shelf. Then I worried I had concussion. Then I lost two hours (I have no idea if those last two points are related).

The day spiralled into a myriad of confusion and irritability. At lunch, I got stuck with a plastic fork and spoon to eat the world’s most boring salad (thanks, M&S Food). In a starvation-fuelled fury, I clawed open a bag of ‘nuts and seeds mix’ causing the bag to tear right down the middle (and nuts and seeds to pour all over my lap). I glared at someone for half an hour on the train for using their phone having not turned off the keypad tones. Then, before my class I (bizarrely) “treated” myself to another black coffee sans milk and sugar, which was as equally revolting as the one I’d had that morning.

By the time evening hit, I was in a foul mood. Having learned that some good quality dark chocolate (80% cocoa solids) can occasionally be eaten on the primal diet, I took the opportunity to buy some for the train journey home, to cheer myself up. Sadly, I scoffed a 100g bar of Green & Blacks in its entirety, between fits of sobbing. Despite knowing that every mouthful was un-doing the last three days of hard work, I didn’t stop eating it. And it was only after I’d licked the melted remains from my fingers, that the diet-guilt set in.

For years, I’ve accepted my coffee addiction. It’s the norm. I’m a writer. We’re supposed to have coffee all the time. What I never realised, however, is that I’m actually addicted to sugar and carbs. And (apparently) chocolate.

I only hope that after this week, I’ll be done withdrawing – and maybe next week, after I’ve stopped going mad and having epic, eleven hour sleeps, and bars of expensive bitter chocolate I can’t afford (according to my spreadsheet), I will start to feel more energetic. And maybe also look like this:

Wilma

Feb 21 2012

I have something in my eye…

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So, a couple of weeks ago I wrote a post about how much I hate having my eyes tested because I don’t believe the eye test is very thorough, I don’t like how close the optometrist gets to my face whilst looking in my eyes, and generally, all health professionals (and also, hairdressers) find some way to lecture me about my inability to look after myself properly.

My actual eye test, you’ll be pleased to hear, went the exact way I expected it to (in that I was unable to tell which circles looked darker – the red or the green, and most of the time it was neither clearer with or without the additional lens). Aside from the fact everyone at the Opticians kept referring to me as ‘we’ (e.g. we’re getting some headaches, so we think we might need a new prescription, we’re also thinking about contact lenses…) it generally went okay and I decided to give contact lenses ago.

This, admittedly, was a slightly odd choice for me because I absolutely cannot cope with the idea of someone poking around in their eye – it makes me feel both uncomfortable and sick. Furthermore, I don’t trust myself to poke around in my own eye with any degree of accuracy. With all this in mind, the logical conclusion would be to not get contact lenses. But… I don’t overly love wearing glasses. It’s not a vanity thing, because anything that masks some proportion of my face is a good thing, I just feel overly aware that there’s something on my face (i.e. a pair of glasses) when people talk to me. It’s not so much of a problem at the moment, seeing as I spend about 900% of my time sitting alone at a computer with only smoking guy* for company, but when I go to Uni or to meetings and other such stuff, I am constantly taking my glasses off to speak to people and then, feeling weird about not being able to see them, putting them on again.

*a neighbour who also spends 900% of his time at home, in pyjamas, who frequently stands outside (directly below my office window) to smoke, wearing  flip-flops (whatever the weather).

I also hate wearing my glasses to drive. I don’t have any prescription sunglasses, so when the sun is low in the sky, my weak eyes pretty much wither and die in the glare, and I cannot see a thing. To rectify this problem, I once attempted to wear sunglasses over the top of my regular glasses. This was every bit as disastrous as you might imagine.

Glasses2

So, this is why contact lenses seem like a viable option. I reasoned that the whole not-wanting-to-touch-my-eye, thing, was something I’ll just have to get over.

The contact lens appointment didn’t go well. It wasn’t something I was prepared for. I mean, the whole eye test scenario was a bit of a nightmare, but at least then I knew what to expect. The contact lens thing was a communicational debacle on a whole new scale. After the initial discussion over why I wanted to wear contact lenses,  another question followed, which I was completely unable to answer: What type of contact lenses do you want?

For a moment, I considered potential answers and came up with the following:

abc of contact lenses

After these had whirled through my mind a number of times, I realised that I couldn’t really use any of them to respond and found myself, instead, asking: What types of contact lenses are there?

She pretty much looked at me with disbelief, yet I couldn’t help but reassure myself that as I, the customer, knew nothing about contact lenses, and she, the contact lens specialist, knew everything there was to know about contact lenses, that frankly, she should be filling me in on all the options. Which she then did, and afterwards, I still didn’t know which contact lenses I wanted.

So, after a while, she decided on monthly lenses. I don’t know why, but they’re the most suitable. Apparently. According to the contact lens specialist. She disappeared, and returned with some lenses… Contact lenses… Ones that go in your eyes.

Specialist: Okay, so, just lie back and look to the right. I know this is weird having someone put something in your eye.

and then she pinned my eyelids apart and put a contact lens in my eye, and I tried very hard not to resist her, or scream, or seem like I was trying hard not to resist the thing going into my eye, and so I gripped very tightly onto the arms of the chair and shrieked THAT DOESN’T FEEL SO BAD! several times, just to make sure.

Once the other lens had been installed (and I had almost ripped the arms off the chair), the specialist returned to her desk, and I was thankful she was a good distance away from my eyes.

Specialist: Okay, so how does that feel?

Me: Like there’s something in my eye!

Admittedly, it was a fairly stupid thing to reply with, but what other answers are there?

abcd of contact lenses

Once my eyes got used to having something in them (namely, contact lenses) it actually felt pretty good that I could see clearly, and wasn’t peering through glasses with a wonky prescription. I then had a further awkward half hour interaction with a poor guy who had to show me how to put them in and take them out myself. I felt truly sorry for him as he watched my shaky, juddering fingers hover near my eyes without actually making any attempt to remove the lenses, time and time again. He patiently coaxed me through the process several times, each time thinking of something encouraging to say.

I left with smudgy mascara rings around my eyes, and instructions to wear my contact lenses for several hours a day.

Two days later, I went out for dinner and decided to wear the contact lenses – thus eliminating the whole glasses on/off problem. But I encountered a new problem, in that the right contact lens wasn’t sitting right. This meant that my right eye continued to water uncontrollably, throughout the evening and also that I had to put my hand over my right eye in order to read the specials board.

After two weeks, I am disillusioned with contact lenses.

Dec 6 2011

I Need Couch Potato Jeans…

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It’s impossible to buy jeans these days, all thanks to fashion – which ruins everything in my opinion. As someone who spends 95% of their time in pyjamas, I’m all about comfort. Due to recent life changes which have led to me spending an awful lot of time sitting down at a desk, I have ripped through the rear seam of one pair of jeans, and burst the top button off the other.

It’s worth adding that both pairs of jeans are about 5 years old, and have been deteriorating for some time now. I have a bit of a thing where I grow very attached to comfortable clothes – combine that with generally being a bit of a hoarder and you’ve essentially got someone who dresses in clothes that are barely holding themselves together. As an example, check out my “blue” Converse trainers…

Ex converse

 

When the ripped-up-the-butt jeans first ripped up the butt, I can’t say that I wasn’t disappointed. Nor can I say that I immediately threw them in the bin, or attempted some sort of a repair.

What I actually did was continue to wear them until the severity of the situation increased. I have, unfortunately, now reached that moment.

ripped jeans

It’s recently become very cold and windy, and according to someone who watches the news/weather forecast, it’s going to get even colder and probably start snowing soon. This means that when I now wear my ripped-up-the-butt jeans outside certain ‘places’ get a little drafty.

So I resorted to wearing the jeans without a button. This worked for a while – no wintery drafts tickling my inner thighs when I’m wandering around and such stuff. But it did present me with another problem whereby my jeans, every so often, slipped off my hips and hung precariously around my bottom prompting the inevitable worry that they will continue slipping until they fall down around my ankles.

It is possibly time for me to think about buying myself some new jeans. For most people, this would not be a problem. This is because most people have a) money to buy jeans and b) a sense of style. I am not one of those people. And also, I hate clothes shopping.

I like a pair of jeans that are the exact same weight, shape and consistency (?) of my pyjamas. I like baggy jeans. I like baggy, non figure-hugging jeans that I can slouch around in and eat pies without feeling like my thighs are going to burst out of the denim and I have to undo the top button to feel comfortable while I digest aforementioned pies. I need the kind of jeans that lend themselves to my ‘sitting down’ lifestyle. The kind of jeans I used to wear when I also used to listen to pop-punk. The kind of jeans that will prompt my Mum to ask me if I’m ‘a little old now to be wearing those kind of jeans’.

Sadly, current fashion dictates that there is only one pair of jeans available in shops: skinny.

Skinny jeans. Skinny, emo, hipster jeans. Skinny, uncomfortable, leave-nothing-to-the-imagination, have-to-catapult-yourself-into-them jeans.

Worse still, all shops seem to pretend that they sell different kind of jeans by calling them different (stupid) names: skinny, super-skinny, leggings, jeggings, regular, high-waist, flare, boot-cut and EVEN spray-on. Stylish folk will argue that there are differences between the styles, but those people are wrong. Because the only difference is the name. All these jeans are tight around the bum and thighs and stomach. I want all-round baggy jeans – baggy waist, baggy around the thighs and calves and ankles. A denim sack is essentially what I’m after.

I did discover, however, one style which might suit me: “boyfriend”.

I’m not sure what the name is trying to insinuate, I’d be happier if they were just called “lazy” or “not stylish” or “normally dresses like a hobo” or something. Anyway, despite the name, they’re impossible to find because apparently, no one but me wants to wear comfy, baggy, slouch-about-the-house jeans.

Last week, during my quest for comfy jeans, I found myself straying into the maternity section, casually perusing baggy jeans with elasticated waist-bands. I momentarily considered making the purchase, but couldn’t go through with it (probably because I’d feel like the assistant would know that I wasn’t actually pregnant – just buying maternity jeans so I could comfortably eat my way through the festive season).

As my quest continues, I’ve resolved to wear only pyjamas and jogging pants (which, in no way, will be used for the actual purpose of jogging) until the fabled jeans have been found. Essentially, what I’m saying is: I no longer own clothes that are suitable to wear outside the house.

Consequently, I’m not going outside until suitable jeans have been purchased.

Aug 3 2011

Just be better. Way better. At EVERYTHING.

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‘Why am I not a much better person?’

This has to be the most frequently asked question that my psyche asks. Why am I not better? Why am I not much better? Why am I not a million times better than I currently am? And I’m not just asking why I’m not better at one thing, I want to know why I’m not better at everything.

My head is overcrowded with variations of this question – a constant swarm of voices telling me to just. Be. Better.

Way better.

There are so many things that I need to not suck at doing, that I’m completely overwhelmed as to what I should stop sucking at first. As ever, please consult the scientific diagram below which fully illustrates my neuroses:

Be better at everything

I know that it’s bad to compare yourself with other people and not to quote Desiderata too much, (there will always be greater and lesser people than yourself) but I do. I still compare myself with other people because people are getting married, and promoted and having babies all over the place. And while I’m not jealous because I don’t really aspire to any of those things, I still feel as though I’m seriously lagging behind.

In my head, my life should be an all-round wholesome sphere of joy and harmony, and I should feel engaged with life rather than detached from it.

In the infinitely-better-version-of-me:

  • I get up at 6am everyday, do yoga while eating organic yogurt and homemade granola and reading The Guardian from cover to cover and tweeting  my every thought on Twitter to improve traffic to my blog.
  • I write 2000 words of a potentially best-selling literary masterpiece, before briskly walking to work feeling somewhat alert and spiritually Zen and wearing clothes that are sharp and stylish and make me look super-hot.
  • I have some cool job or other, which involves having a desk by the window, a cappuccino machine, pleasant telephone conversations and people asking me for my opinion.
  • At lunch I meet my agent or editor or whoever to discuss my latest creative  project, and afterwards I go to David Mitchell‘s house for a cup of tea and chat about all the stuff I’d read in The Guardian that day, as well as his recent article in The Observer and I’m all ‘David, today’s article was brilliant,’ and he’s all ‘Thanks Jo, would you like sugar in your tea?’ and I’m  all ‘David, you’re so funny – you KNOW I don’t take sugar because I’m so damn wholesome and well-rounded,’ Then we laugh and eat organic wholemeal scones.
  • I go to the gym and work out like a ninja before sprinting home to cook some kind of delicious culinary taste-fest for my friends (of which there are many), who later descend on my trendy city centre loft apartment for an evening of philosophical discussions, cocktails and Nintendo (not necessarily in that order) until the early hours of the morning when I snuggle up in my King size bed and have a restful sleep that doesn’t involve having troublesome nightmares about zombie-cat-vampires.

And that’s pretty much it. That’s all I want out of life. Oh, and maybe bigger boobs. And a smaller nose. But in my head this is the person I should try to be… A British, politically minded, Carrie Bradshaw who is big chums with David Mitchell. And is really good at Nintendo.

Actually, thinking about it, SJP has a big nose and small boobs and everyone freaking loved her as Carrie Bradshaw (except some people kind of hated her with a passion). So I guess, that technically, I don’t need to worry about the boobs and the nose for now.

Anyway, given the unlikeliness of any of this ever filtering into my petty existence, not to mention how worryingly idealistic I am, it’s little wonder that I give myself such a hard time for being the exact opposite:

The Reality of Jo

In and amongst the endless list of things to do to change and become an infinitely better person, there’s this list of startling reality points which I endlessly torture myself with.

Earlier this week, I read this blog post by the fantastic Hipstercrite, and I actually began to feel a little, sort of, maybe okay again. Because even though I shouldn’t constantly compare myself with other people, at least I can be safe in the knowledge that I’m not alone. There are other people stuck in the colossal nightmare that is their twenties, still bumbling around in a post-graduation haze wondering what it is they’re supposed to do with their life. And they’re all poor and in miserable admin jobs too. The twenties is a suckfest decade. And all I can say is that I hope I get this self-doubt confusion stuff out of my system now. If only to prevent myself from having a complete meltdown in the future – when I’m a forty-year old British, politically-minded ninja Carrie Bradshaw and regular tea and scone guest at David Mitchell’s house.

May 23 2011

How to become a hot, intelligent-looking novelist when writing in public…

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If you have any ideas about how to become a hot intelligent-looking novelist when writing in public, then please email me because I really need your advice.

There’s something very poetic about writing in coffee shops. I can envision myself staring off into the distance as I tap out the words of my novel on a slick laptop, drinking coffee, looking contemplative. In my head, that’s who I am when I go out to write in coffee shops.

The stark reality, however, is me hogging a table at Costa Coffee wearing broken jeans held together with a safety pin, torn Converse trainers with holes in them and a coffee stained shirt (a result of trying to write and drink coffee simultaneously). Clutching a flimsy, chewed Biro in my hand, I stare at my tatty notebook (also smothered in coffee stains) as I cram handfuls of chocolate muffin into my mouth, whimpering over my unfinished manuscript.

Some people (hipsters) attempt the contemplative intelligent look, but actually just look, well, like pretentious dickheads with too much time and money to know what else to do with themselves. The trouble is, there’s a fine line between looking contemplative and poetic and looking like a pretentious dickhead:

Fine line

Thanks to my lack of fashion sense or possession of a Macbook, I’m in the clear for looking pretentious. Similarly, thanks to my scruffy apparel (shirt with undignified coffee stains, and shoes with gaping holes in them) I’m also light years away from the romanticised intelligent novelist in my head:

No fine line

Look, I know that being a novelist isn’t about looking like a novelist. It’s about actually writing a novel. But sometimes I wish I looked the part. There are people who look poetic and contemplative and intelligent and creative and not pretentious. And I don’t know how they do it.

Sometimes, when I’m writing in a coffee shop, I see people who look a lot more like novelists than I do. I was going to take their pictures to illustrate this point further – but I thought that would be pretty awkward and weird. And I’m pretty sure the intelligent-looking hotties would find it a bit awkward and weird too.

So you’ll just have to take my word for it – there are people who sit in coffee shops with their notes and laptops and books and stuff, and they look awesome. They look like the coffee shop is their living room – they look like that table they’re sitting at, is their desk. They look like they’ve never had to struggle with fixing a chapter, or eliminating one of their main characters or spent an entire day trying to write a sentence. And what’s more, they aren’t scruffy. They’re kind of hot looking writer folk. They aren’t wearing clothes held together with safety pins, or shoes with gaping holes in them, or coffee stained shirts, nor are they pretentious hipsters with Macbooks and sunglasses. They’re these amazingly hot, intelligent, calm people just sitting there and writing novels and drinking coffee without spilling it all over themselves.

Who are they? Where did they come from? Why don’t they ever stop – not even to go to the toilet?

There isn’t really a point to today’s post. Other than: I’m jealous of hot, intellectual writery folk with laptops and their endless novel-writing* abilities.

*Admittedly, I don’t know that they’re writing novels. They could be writing anything. They could be writing an essay or they could be playing World of Warcraft. They still look like novelists. The bastards.