House Musing

I am about a third of the way moved into my new house. So far, the IKEA furniture is in but not assembled. All the appliances are over but not unpacked. My suite, beds and washing machine are being delivered Friday and next Wednesday respectively. This afternoon I will pack up some more of my stuff, and maybe we can get the double wardrobe over tonight.

Despite the excitement of moving in, I can't help but feel very frustrated sometimes. My mother, bless her, is going full pelt with this and I wish that she would back off, just a little. Washing my tea towels in advance, suggesting sheet and duvet combos from off the TV and really just being a little too involved for my liking. Don't get me wrong, I love the fact that she's helping but I want the room to make my own decisions. Hopefully, once we're in, Stu and I can do it our way. Up until now, I feel like I'm holding back because I don't want to offend my mother. Whenever you criticise my mother, she becomes very melodramatic. Yesterday I said something trivial and she replied that "Oh, you'll miss me when I'm gone. One day you'll say that my mother would have done it for me, now no-one else will." That is what I'm trying to avoid.

Be Prepared!

Whenever I go out somewhere I always feel underprepared. Tonight is a classic example. Stu and I headed up to Andrew's place for Jack's 12th birthday party. As usual, Stuart's family congregated for a Chinese. It's how they celebrate every occasion and after three years, I'm so bored. Plus it didn't really feel like a 12 year old's birthday. We all sat around on the couch, all twelve of us, eating the takeaway off our laps while watching "Are You Smarter Than A Ten Year Old?" I could have stayed home and done that. For Jack's part, he remained casually uninterested and I don't blame him.

The point of the post is that I felt underprepared, despite wearing a nice top and a fair amount of make-up. I hadn't put handcream on and it made me feel like a failure. I knew that I'd be meeting up with Jo and Leah and I felt like I needed to be the skinniest and prettiest of us, the three girlfriends, as Leah and Jo have both just had babies. I don't have the social attributes, I know this, so I try and plug the gap by having the physical attributes. I just feel like I need to be perfect. I feel like I need to have perfectly coiffered hair and great clothes and a skinny waist before anyone will take me seriously.

Plus my "failure mood" was enhanced by the fact that I didn't really want to have a Chinese. It stemmed from me being invited to eat something I knew I shouldn't. I knew that I would feel, and still do feel, so guilty about eating it. I would have used the dieting excuse but since I have eaten two custard tarts, a fruit trifle and a full bowl of cheesy mash, it wouldn't really stand up to scrutiny. To be honest, much of the anti-Chinese was due to my own guilt about my lack of dieting.

I also feel like it needs mentioning: when Karen and Mark quizzed me about my career prospects, I couldn't really answer and said "Oh, I don't know what I'm doing." They both gave me a look of disbelief and I could have quite happily ripped a shred off my forearm. Moreover, I am quibbling over whether I should make myself sick before bedtime. Hmm.

Scrap that!

Well, I may as well have not written anything this morning. As of now, the medical dream is back on! UEA got back to me and said "top up your Biology, sit another AS and we'll take you on the A100". Score!

I feel awesome!

Life Update

Good morning!

A lot has happened in the last few weeks and I have not updated very consistently. Firstly, I failed my A Levels. OK, so I didn't fail but I got a D and an E and the dream of medicine is over. I am halfway to "at peace" with the decision. I am still uneasy with having to tell all everyone that my dream career is over. It's embarrassing and everyone is going to think that I am lazy and stupid. I happily embrace the former quality but not the latter. Now I have to find a new direction. It has sprung up at a nearby university that I once described as "for thickos". Oh, how ironic fate is! It's a foundation course that will lead to a BSc in Health Sciences. I have to e-mail the course advisor and ask his advice. If he says yes, hooray! If he says no, it's back to the drawing board with my two A Levels and find something else. If the science career fails to come off, I will chance becoming an English teacher.

Regret and hindsight are powerful but useless right about now. It's totally pointless to wish for a time machine to travel back to 2002, shake my younger self and whisper "become a doctor and work fricking hard" into my own ear. Hmm, that's a very strange image. But daydreams aside, while I know that this situation is mainly my own fault, I lay a percentage of the blame at the foot of my school. They, the teachers, failed to recognise and support my potential and my train wreck life would be so much better had one of them stopped and said "hey, you know you're good enough for science A Levels, don't you?" I know I was anti-establishment and a bit difficult but I couldn't have been any worse than many of my classmates. *sigh*

In better news though, the mortgage is hopefully coming though. The house valuation is happening later today, on what would have been my grandfather's 83rd birthday. I should really be making a move. The guy will phone about half an hour before he's due to arrive at the house. Knowing my luck, as soon as I step in the shower, he'll phone and I'll go whizzing around the house like a ping pong ball trying to get myself sorted. Ho hum.

EDIT: He's been and gone and I stupidly gave him a lower amount than the one we want the house valued for. I am so in the shit.

Over at thedailymind.com he's written a post about technology making us depressed. I agree with the observations he's made, but then I'm a simplify-my-life kinda girl so I would. I wrote about when I gave up Facebook. Thinking about it, I've never been one to use social networking that much. I used and quit Facebook, MySpace, Bebo and a few blogs up until now. The most successful blog I held was for over two years at LiveJournal, where I had one of the first one million accounts. Back then, it was by invite only. *sigh* Those were the days...

The more I think about it, the more I like the isolation from the social networks. Everyone at work is raving about a farm game on Facebook and although I sometimes feel left out, ultimately I feel better because I'm not one of the herd.

Anywho, the bin smells a bit off and the sink is full of dishes, so I need to get my chores done and then head out to run a few errands.

Exercise #1: Fear of Failure

I've been asked to talk about my fear of failure for a new self-discipline book I'm reading. Today I need to recall three past experiences that I perceive as failures, mistakes or just dumb behaviour:

#1 - my main recent failure is in these exams. I know that when the exam results come out on Thursday I won't have done very well. I haven't done very well because I work full-time, and it is a valid reason. However I also didn't try as hard as I should. I didn't have the motivation and the self-discipline to work because there were always more important or fun things to do (Escapism and Delayism). End of story. I also end up fighting against my perfectionism when I do get down to study. I don't understand why but I feel like it needs to be perfect. (Cynicism?)

#2 - One of my early failures/embarrassments/humiliations was the whole experience of boys during my early teenage years. Twice I was asked out by boys (to be the girlfriend in name only, as you are at that age) only for it to be a joke. A year later, I asked out a guy who I really liked, Finlay, only for him to turn me down. I think it fuelled an already existing fear of not being liked or being good enough. I know that, although outwardly confident, I have low self-esteem. I think that this low self-esteem comes, unintentionally, from my mother. I have never made my own decisions or done things to please myself because she has always been the stamp of approval on me and my life.

#3 - A further failure is actually regret that I don't get involved in things, and I feel that I missed out on a lot in school because of this. I didn't get involved in the school play, I didn't play in the school orchestra etc. etc. etc. because I was scared of people laughing at me. I hid it as anti-establishmentism but it was fear of being judged as not good enough. And there were plenty of people better at things than me. So I don't think I bothered because I wouldn't be the best. (Negativism & Defeatism)

Although I didn't expect it, it turns out everything listed in the "Self-Discipline Poisons" section applies to me. Additionally, I realise that I need to work on my self-esteem a lot more. This has been very enlightening...

Import from Spark People 5/8/2009

Well, I have had a far better day than I thought I was going to have. Just goes to show what a bit of navel gazing can do for you.

Today's objectives have all been attained. I didn't put off buying the anniversary gifts and card for my parents and I wrapped them early, not leaving them until before bed. I studied for an hour and I just looked up the dates of the January exams. I'll just jot down how many weeks and days until the beginning of January and then I'll go to bed. All in all, I am exceptionally proud of myself and am currently indulging myself on Spotify with a few of my favourite songs.

It's been a good day.

Import from Spark People 4/8/2009

I’ve felt better since I had my monumental vent the other night but I still feel antsy. It's probably the way I should be feeling, given that I am waiting on so much to happen: college, medical school, the house. How can I fix it though? I know if I were more proactive that I would feel better, so I'm going to try and write down what I can do to ease my anxiety.

College: I still believe I can achieve the end goal of 2 A*s next summer; I believe that I have the potential to pull that out of the bag. What stands between me and glory is the shedload of work I have inflicted on myself by not working hard enough last year. And believe me, I'm scared of that work. I'm scared that I won't be able to learn it all in order to get my grades...read into that the deep but entirely reasonable fear of failure. It chases me but doesn't hit me around the head hard enough to make me work. Plus I work stupidly. My stupid perfectionism demands it of me. I end up knowing the first few pages of a book amazingly well...and the rest gets rushed through in the last few days before the exam. I have to get over that. Perfectionists set themselves up for failure, after all.

Plan: I have to start: tomorrow. Work out how long I have between now and the January exams but also just pick up the damn books and start writing, start getting through those bloody past papers, start learning what I should already know.

Medical school: I have two months before the medical school applications are in. Again, my procrastination stems from fear: the fear of making such an enormous decision, the fear of having to deal with my mother's inevitable disapproval, the fear that the money will run out and that I won't be able to go and that I'll look stupid to everyone...

Plan: I need to get all the prospectuses ordered, get to all the open days I can, sit the UKCAT, get my personal statement written, get my references sorted and speak nicely to Nick. Also I need to get college work sorted because if I fail again, I won't be going in the first place.

The house: urgh...my main worry is all my finances at the moment, so I need to get the account sorted. I also need to organise the current mortgage paperwork and send off the life insurance forms. I don't think there's much else I can do after that, until we start actually moving and then I'll need to research the bills etc.

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In the spirit of this post, I thought I would share something. I figured something out about myself the other day: I am passive and now that I know that about myself, I hate it. You see, I will wait until the very last moment before I get things done. I always left my homework until the night before school, I never do my filing until the box is overflowing, I never stock up at work until I really, really have to. I also recently realised that I am not consistent. I have never worked at something consistently all my life. My studies are a great example. Combine it with the perfectionism and you have trouble: I have to do everything perfectly in one sitting to consider myself a success. Recipe for failure or what? Maybe it's because my memory is terrible: I can't remember what I did the last time I studied so how can I be sure that I didn’t miss something. In that sense, I don't trust myself. I need to pay more attention to everything, but how do you do that?

Whose fault is the above? It's mine, sure. But I'd like to pose a question: at what point is my brain not my brain? You know what I mean: you make your to-do list in the morning. Good intentions make you think that you'll finish the list BUT when it comes to doing it, your brain talks you out of it. "You'll do it later, come and watch TV," it says. Surely, if I am as well-intentioned as I think I am my brain won't put up a fight with me? Then why does it? Why am I fighting with myself? I wish I had the frickin' answer, that's a cert.

So with all my ramblings etc. out of the way for the night and a good list of personal objectives scribbled down in the new BFF, El Moleskine, I am off to bed. Tomorrow will not yield fun because I will be working (sort of) but tomorrow afternoon I might get an inch closer to who I want to be.