Oops, I did it again...

Hm. I am going to indulge in a spot of moaning. Please don’t read if you can’t abide someone wallowing in their own sludgy pool of self-pity – I am feeling very sorry for myself indeed.

I have just started in my new job, been here a week and 2 days so far.

Last week, my colleagues asked me if I knew anyone who might like some casual work, simple admin, inputting some names, postcodes and phone numbers onto an excel spreadsheet as they come through via fax from outside of our office – part of a Market Research project. Money was ok, £7.50 per hour, and the person would need to be flexible as although the project is on-going, some weeks would have less work than other. It would only be a few hours a week all told.

I know the perfect person for this! My sister! Long term unemployed and looking to gently ease back into work. Wants something really simple that might eventually lead to more work and eventually possibly a full time job.

Gave her a call and yes! YES! Thank you, yes! She says. Cool! Come in on Monday and I will brief you and away you go. Fab! I feel like I have done good. My sister is ultra grateful and excited and pleased. The company I work for breathe a sigh of relief as they now have the person in place to do this particular piece of work. Someone reliable…cos I told them she was.

Busy weekend, don’t speak to sis at all, although she does send me a flower over Facebook and a message in my Ebay messages. Nothing about the work, just a ‘hi, how are sales?’ type message.

Come Monday, get to work, call my sis to find out what sort of time she will be arriving. No answer. Odd. No answer on either land line nor mobile. Odder. Start to sweat and feel a bit panicky. BUT it’s not the end of the world, the faxes with the details won’t start to come through till the afternoon although would have liked to have briefed her properly prior.

Call again at lunch time and really odd. STILL no answer.

Oh come on. Who am I kidding? I already know that I am so not going to hear from her at all today. She has, once again, blown me out. You see, this happens a lot. I find out about work and immediately think of her. She immediately accepts and then immediately lets me down.

So why do I keep doing it? She is my sister and I love her, but why do I put MYSELF and my job into jeopardy because of her? I desperately want her to do good, to get better, to grow up. I desperately want her to rise up to her full potential. I know she has it in her somewhere, she is bright, intelligent, smart…BUT I can’t change people, and who the eff am I to have the cheek and audacity to want to even try. How arrogant of me.

So I will NEVER offer her any work again.

Till the next time…sigh…

Why did I DO that!!!!

Ok, I did a strange thing today and I don't know why I did it. Please do comment with your analysis if you ever get to read this!

I travelled by public transport today into London (from Enfield, still in London but some like to say Middlesex...it sounds posher apparently. Although anything with the word sex in it can't be posh in my view...just snigger-making.) by train to visit a particular shop I go to around once a month. I always take a large bag, it has wheels on it and used to carry a tent. It is perfect to take as you can fold it in half and carry it like a shopping bag while empty and it holds a hell of a lot when full.

So, ANYWAY, I take a bus from Liverpool Street Station towards the shop I want to visit, standing there looking out the window and wishing the rain would stop (it was raining, hence I was wishing that) and then ring the bell to alert the driver that I want to get off at the next stop.

I am standing at the bus doors when this older man, must've been in his early sixties, taps my arm and in a very strong foreign accent says 'Market, Market. Stay, stay'. I think he is asking me if we are near the market, so I smile and say yes, Market and wave vaguely in the direction of said market.

Older guy says 'no, you stay on bus one more stop. This bus goes down market road'. Now, here is where I do something that is really strange. Instead of simply saying, 'oh, no, I am not actually going to the market, I am going somewhere else and this IS in fact my stop', no. I say, 'oh, thanks!' AND I THEN STAY ON THE BUS!!!

WTF!

Thank goodness, the bus stop the older guy has FORCED me to stay on the bus for (I know, I know...he didn't hold a gun to my head - but even so!) is actually slightly closer to the shop anyway. Will get off at that stop in future - thanks, Older Guy!

The strangeness hasn't stopped here, though. Oh no. I am stranger still than that.

I get off the bus and notice Older Guy (note how he now has Capital Letters) gets off too. So I now HAVE to (remember, Older Guy is very very forceful, even without a gun) turn right towards the blasted market instead of left towards my shop.

Why? Why am I doing this? I am asking this to myself even as I DO do this. I find myself to be one heck of a strange person. I won't ever see Older Guy again, he will never hold up the non-existant gun to my head in that highly threatening manner he doesn't have, so why have I done what he expects me to do instead of what I actually should have done - gone my merry way to the shop I want to visit.

So there I am walking towards a very bedraggled market (my wish that it stops raining has totally been ignored by whoever it is that grants wishes - thanks a bloody lot, Wish Fairy!) and there are very few stalls left and those that did brave the rain have already half packed and ready to go. BUT I don't want to disappoint Older Guy. He is, after all, still not holding a gun to my head. I walk up and look at the miserable wares that are sitting in their rain-filled plastic containers, ink smudged prices that tell me this market is really a giant £1 pound open air shop, I even pick up something - God knows what - and turn it over and nod as though I have found the bargain of the year.

At the same time, I am twisting my eyes in my head, straining to see out of the back of it, to see if Older Guy has crept up behind me ready to pull the trigger and shoot me with 'you are free to do what you like' missile.

Of course, Older Guy has actually long gone his own way, probably forgotten me the moment I stepped of the bus. Couldn't give a monkeys what I do or who I am.

So there I am in a market, a fair bit away from where I wanted to be, looking at things that I so don't want or need, feeling, to be honest, like a complete idiot.

I wonder what people would think if they KNEW they had this sort of power over others.

I wonder how I would be if I could live my life without being forced to do things I don't want to do....

I won't suffer from Writers Blog

Just a brief outline of who I am, where I am from, what I have done. Which I will eventually expand on. I am being highly self-indulgent with my blog – it’s for ME and me alone, however I am quite quite happy to share it with the world. But must warn you, you may be bored as it will be self centred, all about me, mine, for me, by me, selfish, self-absorbed, self-opinionated and opinionated etc.

I also want to try to trigger memories. I have a terrible memory and want to try out some exercises to release all those bits of information that are stuck within my mind, but that are coated with something that causes them to stay in the darkest parts of my memory.

I am hoping that by writing and getting my creative juices flowing, that those juices will wash away and clean up the sticky suppressant that I have coated my memories with and allow them to rise up and free themselves from me and allow me to feel them and see them and be them. I just might end up being someone a bit different to who I currently am.

Don’t get me wrong, I quite like myself! However I am highly aware of my faults and I want to work on those. I think that will take time, effort and some self discipline. What better way to start forming self discipline into a habit than to start to write a daily or weekly piece? Allowing my mind to flow and to move and to de-stagnate?

I am just about to become 45 years of age. I have lived probably at least half if not more of my life and it is high time that I took charge of myself. Not going to be easy, because taking charge of something that has 45 years of learned and self-learned behaviour is like trying to take charge of a moving ship and trying to turn it around with a piece of string. Or is that too negative an analogy? Possibly.

Now, should I force myself to write X amount of words a day? Or a week? Should I structure this is that sort of way? Or should I really go with the flow? I don’t think so. I think a combo of the two. I know what I am like and going with the flow without a bit of discipline just ain’t gonna work. I have to set myself a task. So, I must write and post at least once a week on this here McFangus Blog. That is my promise to me. Once a week. It can be more but never less.

And I can write what I like and how I like. I just want the juice to start flowing. One day, I might be able to post some blog entries that make sense – even good sense! But at the moment I am not going to give myself a hard time about any of that. Just write, just flow, just get it all out.

So, here goes….