Day 0602

How do you celebrate yourself? I don’t know how. I always feel like I’m not just being happy, but that I’m forcing myself onto someone and being selfish if I ask them to celebrate with me. And by ‘celebrate’ I mean share my good news with them.

Three nights ago, I got some great news – and some high praise – from someone I respect and which will lead to something great. It was an achievement, I guess. And a personal one.

So I went and spent the evening drinking a bit of sparkling wine with my farting dog. At least I didn’t have to share any of the bubbles. But I would have preferred to. As tired out as I was by the process that led to the good news, I could have used some reflected happiness around me.

If only so I didn’t hit the: ‘but will I actually be able to do this thing they think I can do?’ stage quite so quickly.

And then I started thinking.

I always did really well in school — not because I was excessively smart but because I worked hard and found it interesting. I’d come home with report cards that noted zero absences and where my lowest mark was an 89. My parents would lovingly praise me. And then ask me not to talk about it ‘too much’ because it would make my sister (whose absences were higher than her percentages) feel bad.

And of course I did that. Because I didn’t want to make her feel bad. And I didn’t want to be selfish.

One of the moments I remember most from the blossoming of my time with He Who Shall Not Be Named was how he would tell people when I achieved something and congratulate me.

That ended eventually, of course. Every achievement (and there were less and less of them) became something I did to him. Something selfish and thoughtless.

But in the beginning it wasn’t like that. And it was new and different for me.

To be celebrated.

So. Do I just take the plunge and make it happen in future? Do I invite friends out for a drink when there is good news?

Or do I sit at home looking at my beautiful view of the river, letting the dog’s farts mix with the scent of the sparkling?

Days 0596, 0597 & 0598

Honestly. Is there anything more unnatural and nerve wracking than a job interview?

Much like written exams, I’m not sure job interviews are a great way to choose someone for a job, or for a political candidacy either for that matter.

What would be a fairer way to do things?

Choose a name out of a hat?

Ask the shortlist candidates to come and do a day’s work with you?

Walk into the room with a piece of spinach between your front teeth and the candidate who tells you it’s there gets the job?

That one might work, actually?

But are employees who tell you what you need to hear the best ones?

They’re certainly My Type.

If you can’t trust the person you’re working with to tell you the Things You Need To Hear, it probably isn’t going to last long.

And is there anything more humiliating than sailing along thinking you’re doing a Great Job, only to discover that everyone was laughing at you behind your back?

Which takes me to an unrelated, tangential story.

I once worked in a six-person office for nearly six years. We all spent a lot of time together, but they weren’t My People. Near the end, I attended a trivia night with all of them. I was good at it because I pay attention to the news and retain it for whatever reason.

When we got back to the office on Monday, my boss — a kindly, fatherly man led astray sometimes by his very nasty wife — told me that he had been really impressed with my performance at the trivia night. I was 28 and felt like I didn’t fit in so that was nice to hear.

And then he added:

You’re actually really smart. I hadn’t realised before.

Meaning he hadn’t realised I paid attention to the news for SIX YEARS. And that to him ‘smart’ meant able to remember cricket stats.

I so did not fit into that place. I so had to leave. I am so glad I did.

Day 0453 & 0454

My previously acknowledged inability to take a compliment is at the root of all my male partners saying ‘You make me feel like a better person’.
It makes blindingly obvious sense now that I’ve connected the two things.
They meet me, think I’m great (as you do), give me compliments that I deny and minimize and eventually whack away so they disappear.
And then what’s left?
My enthusiasm and compliments to them.
It’s all either of us hear by that stage in one of my relationships.
And I pretty
Much cease to exist: erased from existence (other than servitude) by my disbelief that I should be pleased with myself once in a while.
I am such a dick.
At least I know I’m sick of hearing men tell me how I make them feel like better people.
At least that’s like a buzzing, flashing WARNING SIGN to me now.
I was so utterly disappointed when Halfman finally said that to me after we’d been together for six months and I had begun to think it wasn’t coming … But no.
And of all of those penis-wielding paramours if mine he was the one for whom the contrast must have been greatest. From utter scumbag to admired lover simply through my presence.
Argh! The gifts I unknowingly bestowed. Such a waste.

Day 0348

What is it with men thinking that telling a woman they’re ‘really bright’ is a compliment? I mean, I suppose it is, but every time I’ve been told it, it’s presented to me as something surprising or comparative. Neither of which comprises much of a compliment in the end.

“You really are as bright as your friend said!’

‘You do actually know your stuff!’

‘You can hold your own during intelligent conversation!’

Why thank you, you condescending shit.

And, you know, the men who have felt  this was a big enough issue to raise with me multiple times, have given me the impression of being well-read, intelligent and interesting, but have turned out to be … not so much.

It’s one thing to have been exposed to good learning, to have read ‘important’ books and learned Latin. It’s quite another to be intelligent and a ‘thinking person’ who can play with ideas and make connections between things.

So perhaps in the end, intelligence is like some of those other qualities: beauty, integrity, decisiveness … in that the more one speaks about them, and the more one makes a point of recognising them, the more one is desperately wishing someone would tell them they possess those qualities.

In journalism school we were taught to: show not tell

In PR I learned quickly this is true. I can tell you I’m honest all I want; it doesn’t mean much until you can see me being honest.

Day 0199

I remember the first time a boy ever told me I was pretty. It redeemed ever romantic dream I had ever had.
I was probably 20 at the time and we’d wandered through chilled, early spring fog and gloom from the university campus to a big, sprawling, seaside park.
We went and sat on Black Rock.
My nose was red and drippy in the cold.
We were rugged up.
He was listening to a tape on a Walkman, which I thought was rude but now sounds quaintly retro. He kept fast forwarding and rewinding some small bit.
Finally he stopped ignoring me as my bum froze on the rock. He stopped fiddling with the tape, shifted the headphones – those old foam ones they now give you on airplanes – onto my ears and pressed play.
It wasn’t music I liked. It was dark and gloomy and I’ve got enough of that inside my head without putting more in there.
But it was loud.

And the voice was saying over and over again:
‘Come here I think you’re beautiful
I think you’re beautiful
Some kind of angel come inside’

I looked at him and he stared down at my fingers.
I love that moment still.

Day 0157

Sometimes I think my son is a little Yoda – with less hairy ears and of greater stature – who has been given to me to drop pearls of great wisdom into the path in front of me.

Take this exchange for example:

Lil Yoda: My friend X says you’re a cool mum.
Me: How on earth would he know if I’m cool, he has hardly seen me.
Yodalini: Take a compliment, mum. You don’t get many.
Me: *silence as I take that one in*
Yodite: If you don’t take a compliment when someone gives you one, it’s like you’re saying that they’re lying. And that’s rude.
Me: *silence and maybe even a wee teardrop in my left eye*

Why does an 8 year old know so much more than me? Or have I just twisted my brain around simple truths until they can no longer be seen?

Day 0091

I am nearly incapable of taking a compliment. I constantly hear myself doing ‘that thing’ women do where they greet a compliment by putting themselves down: Person: I like your dress. Me: Oh, this old thing? It cost $4. I found it in the gutter. Doesn’t my tummy stick out so much? Etc.
Last night I made a conscious decision not to greet a compliment this way. And I managed it. But instead of putting myself down I waas thinking: What’s wrong with his eyesight? Why is he saying I look nice? What’s the real reason because I know it’s not because he thinks I look nice.
Does everyone do this?
I am not a suspicious person. At all. Otherwise how would I get taken in by the likes of Halfman? I believe in people. But apparently not where positive opinions of me are concerned,
How do I unlearn this! I want compliments. I want to be admired! I am only human after all.