Month: February 2018

Repetition is not boring, not really

I often have weird thoughts while driving in the morning to the Wolverhampton School of Art. Perhaps I should rename this blog ‘Weird Thoughts I Have on the M54’. Today’s weird thought happened on the M54 and it was about how repetitious and dull life can seem, yet in fact it isn’t.

The M54

Driving to Wolverhampton earlier today I pondered my daily routine: wake up at 7am, eat a piece of orange chocolate, drink coffee while looking at my very nice kitchen. In addition, in case your interested about making your kitchen nice, Check out www.kitchenspraypainting.uk to help you. Then I pick up my phone, scroll through facebook for 10 minutes, read for 10 minutes, go to the toilet, get dressed, wake children up, make breakfast, listen to my favourite music of the month, make a packed lunch, sit and scroll through Facebook a bit more, put makeup on, brush teeth, read in my pink chair for 10 minutes, gather children, scroll through Facebook while they get ready, take them to school, scoot home, drive to Wolverhampton, park, get coffee, go to studio… I could go on, and this routine can be repeated, with small variations, for almost every week day. It feels as if it won’t change. It feels as if it will never end. It feels as if it is here to stay. I know I will do the same next week. I will also do the same next month, and even next year. However, if I transport myself 13 years ago, my routine was vastly different. It’s difficult even to see a gradual change from then to now. My routine then was as follows: Wake up at 5am with cranky baby, feed cranky baby, put cranky baby to bed, go back to sleep, wake up when cranky baby wakes up, feed cranky baby, take cranky baby to toddler group, feed cranky baby, return home, put cranky baby to bed, eat lunch, go out when cranky baby wakes up, feed cranky baby… As you can see, this routine is very different to my current one (and notice, no mention of Facebook).  The routine above, somehow, morphed into my current routine. Of course the obvious thing to point out are that the cranky baby grew. What’s more, he was joined by two more, who also grew. Then as they all gradually grew, I found a new purpose in life: art in Wolverhampton, and work. I moved house. I changed. I became different. I became the current me. I can’t quite imagine how my current routine will change into something new in 14 years from now, even though I know it will. It has to. Life does change, gradually. And I have to keep positive, for all the mundanity of my routine now, I do actually quite enjoy certain aspects of it and I know that I will look back in 14 years from now and miss the eight-year-old world view my eight year old has now, the jolly ride up and down the M54, the ladies in the Starbucks on campus who know my name and most of all my little studio space in room MK711 which is my ‘man cave’.

My man cave

So I should stop resenting routine, and embrace it, and capture it in my mind, if that is possible, before it has morphed and changed into something else, even if that something else is better.

Are you chaotic inside or outside?

This is a weird thought I’ve had over lunch. I’ve just read this book and it was brilliant. I recommend it to anyone who loves people watching and snooping around other people’s houses or places of work. It offers a fascinating insight into how much of ourselves can be seen through our ‘stuff’ and how we display or arrange the stuff in our lives.

My most recent book

One of the insights it offers is about how the way we arrange our stuff in our working environment may indicate how we feel insides our minds. I want to explore this idea. My Year 4 teacher (2nd year juniors in old money), Mrs Nichols used to say oh so frequently to class 2N the following: ‘An untidy desk means an untidy mind’. At my junior school, in the late 1970s, we had flip top desks with ink wells.

An example of an inkwell desk with storage and a flip-top lid

We kept our books and belongings in our desks. Every week Mrs Nichols conducted a desk inspection. I believe it was on a Friday. And during every desk inspection she repeated the same phrase: ‘An untidy desk means an untidy mind.’ This was one of her many mantras. Hearing this used to make me cringe in my seat. My desk was always untidy. I envied those well-behaved intelligent children with tidy desks. I hated them. How did they do it? I never really knew. I aspired to be like them. I never was like them. Subsequently, after failing desk inspection every week, in that way that children think teachers speak the word of truth, I grew up believing I had an untidy mind and that that was ‘a bad thing’. I resigned myself to being inferior to the army of tidy people.

Leasowes Junior School – can you spot me?

However, Sam Gosling in Snoop argues that this ‘untidy belongings equals untidy mind’ belief might not necessarily be the case, at least when it comes to working environment. It argues that an untidy desk might actually be the sign of a tidy mind and visa versa. A busy mind needs order, and a ordered mind can deal with  chaos.

Having said that, and I like his theory, I don’t entirely agree with it. I’m basing this on a scientific study of one person: me. At the age of 46 I know enough about myself to know that I do have a chaotic mind. It isn’t going to change. It is and always has been chaotic. It is what it is. But then I thought about my working environment. When I had a full-time job, a job which entailed huge piles of paper everywhere (piles of proofs, revisers, ozalids etc) and huge piles of books everywhere (that’s what publishers make), you might expect my desk to have been very messy. It wasn’t. Or at least, it got messy each day but at the end of the day, I would straighten all the piles up, wash my mug, and create a desk space for the next day. So although I am quite messy in many respects, I like to put things in order. There is a limit to how much mess I can deal with. Perhaps Mrs Nichol’s weekly desk inspections rubbed off on me. She encouraged me to at least give a semblance of tidy at the end of the day.

Now I work from home and my desk is the sofa. It is a little messy, but not excessively so. I need to be surrounded by books and sketch pads. But it is not hugely messy and I do straighten the piles up now and then. So perhaps my chaotic brain can cope with a little chaos but not a lot.

I have another desk now, it is my art studio in Wolverhampton. This is a place where I am expected to be messy. Yet, even here, at the end of each day, I find myself straightening the piles and tidying it up.

This is not the end of the day.

I have never considered myself as a tidy person in terms of my environment. The house is full of piles of books, odd socks, X-box games and the like in random places around the place. The mantelpiece is a mixture of cats in hats, which is hardly tidy and pleasing to the eye. But in my work environment, perhaps, although I allow mess to develop during the day, I need a sense of order (or at least a sense of order to me) to help calm my chaotic brain which is known to spill out with ideas and thoughts (like today – this is my second ‘weird thought’ of the day). If it gets too messy, I get jittery. On that note, I ought to tidy up my piles now.

Cats with hats are not tidy

So, Mrs Nichols, you were three quarters right. I do have a messy mind and mostly I do have a messy desk, but I have aspirations for a tidy desk and it is always tidy at the end of the day, at least it is now.

 

Why hearts and flowers in February fill me with rage

It is February, it is nearly Valentine’s Day and I feel the rage. I’ve just been to Waitrose in Newport. While at the till, waiting to take home my coffee, Sunday paper (both free) and a few essentials (not free) my eye caught a display of Valentine’s gifts and I felt a strange rage surge up in me. It was a passionate rage, ironically, but a rage nonetheless.

Why the rage? I hear you cry, dear reader. What can possibly be outrageous about hearts and flowers? I don’t dislike Valentine’s Day per se. I am a big fan of romance. It’s nice to spread the love now and then. The admirers from afar may need an excuse to show their love, hopeful perhaps, and if Valentine’s Day prompts that, then so be it. That can be very romantic and can end in joy (or tears perhaps). I approve. Even when love is requited, it can be nice to make the effort for a bit of romance. Romance, especially unexpected pockets of romance, is one of life’s little pleasures. We all love a bit of love.

However, despite my support for the day and what it stands for, every year I get cross at it too. I get cross at the forced nature of romance that comes along with Valentine’s Day, and I get even more cross at what ‘they’ think ‘we’ should be giving each other (our respective love interests) on this day: flowers, heart-shaped chocolate boxes, teddy bears and champagne. To me, that is not true romance. Flowers, chocolates and champagne are all nice but they are not what I consider the most romantic. As for teddy bears…

So on my scoot home I started to analyse why I felt such anger. After all, that’s quite a strong reaction and quite harsh. Why don’t I appreciate all the grand, traditional romantic gestures of  the day of St. Valentine? Is it the commercial aspect of the ‘chosen’ gifts? I think that is a big part of it. However, I think the rage goes deeper and to find out, I think I need to look back.

Blaaaaa

As I scooted past the second-hand book shop, a little reluctantly, I took myself back to my teenage years. Hitting puberty, I remember the coming of St. Valentine’s Day became a time of hopefulness and, naive optimism. Once I realised that boys were desirable in some way, I so very, very badly wanted a secret admirer to send me a card, put flowers in my locker, or leave some heart-shaped chocolates on my desk. From the age of around 11 onwards, I craved this and for some reason, thought it might actually happen. Each year, I woke up on February 14th hopeful, and went to bed disappointed. Sadly, it never happened. Not once. I didn’t get anything, not even a joke card, in the seven years from the age of 11 to 18. As each subsequent February 14th arrived, however, I hoped again, against the odds. I longed for there to be just one person, even someone I wouldn’t fancy back, to be walking along the corridors of Walton High School harbouring a secret crush on me. Sadly, as far as I am aware, and if the evidence of February 14th is anything to go  by, there never was such a person. How sad. Please don’t cry. It’s probably a good thing. I had other things to focus on and I was a bit of an ugly duckling at school. For 364 days of the year I accepted this duckling status and plodded on with life being geeky and arty. However, for one day a year, I became a total girl and craved that glimpse of romance. I would have been happy with heart-shaped chocolates, flowers or even, dare I say it now, a teddy bear. But it never happened. But it’s not all sad, as soon as I went to university things changed. My dream came true in the end. I got a card.

However, the memories of those seven years of pubescent disappointment still sting and I think that is the main reason why I feel such toxic rage at the profusion of red and pink, flowerly, soppy, vomity stuff in the shops at this time of year. I actually feel the urge to dive into it and have a toddler tantrum. Perhaps I should.

But perhaps I need to stop being so angry and just accept that the red and pink love does bring happiness to many, and it’s not so bad, with the exception of the teddy bears.