I have decided to put together another book of poems, this last year and a half has seen my need for finding reason even greater than before and it’s how I capture my mood with words. And I seem to lack the ability to present it in any form other than rhyming, so Rhyme and Reason 2 is coming soon. They all follow a theme and might be nice to have them in one place, even if just for posterity. Someone on twitter commented that they would like to see one of them taught as a lesson, when all this is over. It’s a nice idea, but I prefer the concept of ‘when this is over’.
I may change the title as it turns out there are a number of poetry books named so, which I didn’t check before naming my first! But this time I am taking more time and have a different cover design lined up compared to the usual black and white I like. I have updated my non fiction cover as well so need to get a new copy of that for new photos.
This last year has been a strange one to say the least and being able to be creative and write fiction has been difficult. Especially since some of that faction was based around a totalitarian regime being rolled out with the medi being used against us. It stopped being fiction and being honest, I didn’t want to write it anymore. I am trying to find my writing again, with a number of half finished projects lingering and waiting for their slot. Hopefully the poetry book will get me going again, and the book of short stories that needs only a couple more can materialise. I am considering a follow up book to Meeting in the Middle of Nowhere, but am not sure from what angle yet. And the novella which was so rudely halted by reality, maybe that will even find itself again.
There have been little things over the years that made me think there was something wrong with the bigger picture. I thought they will go for money, heat/power, health and food. Control those and you control people. What they want to control us for? That is yet to be seen.
Small at first, but they all added themselves to what I shall now name as the ‘Portfolio of Doom’. Sufficiently dramatic I think for where we are now, but at least I know I was not crazy, or a doomsayer. How can you be when what you thought and said would happen began to roll out.
Cashless – that one is obvious I think and my article Cash covers my view on that.
Smart meters. They just seem like a more efficient way to bill people on the face of it. But in my head, it made it easier to monitor how much you use. And also gives them more access to switch it off at the source. I also thought it odd that fireplaces were being closed off and thought if we ever need them as back up, they won’t be there. And now they are starting to take away gas boilers, it doesn’t look good.
They have already been interfering with our health, well before this last year I already had suspicions that much of the mainstream information and advice is not from a place of good. It is from a place of profit. Through personal experience and observations, it seems obvious the motive is not to prevent, but to attempt to cure. Like the old industry saying goes
~ A patient cured is a customer lost ~
There is also now much talk of scaling back agriculture, stop eating what we tell you, come down on the people who could sustain us outside of government run facilities. Farmers. Replacing Farmer with Pharma.
When the adverts started for a certain home exercise bike and now full exercise routine, where you are part of an online workout or something, I thought then – one day they will have each house hooked up with one. You’ll have to cycle to ‘earn’ your daily quota of electricity and food and to prove you are exercising as expected. They’ll be able to monitor your heartbeat (fitbit) what you eat (calorie apps) to decide if you have earned rewards. And in the last two weeks, we have indeed had articles starting on rewarding people for exercise and good diet, how are they going to monitor that I wonder.
If people welcome this kind of influence over their lives, then I can only presume they want parenting. With the controls coming in on spending through cashless and digital currency, they are targeting choice. As if they have decided that people can’t be trusted with their own health, choices and future. But who are they to decide that? But what is worse, is that it seems they overloaded us all with more choices than we could ever need, then blamed us for not being able to deal with it. So then they have to take away choices to dictate everything. To them it makes it easier to control us. To us it takes away something that gives us freedom. Over our bodies, our minds and our lives. What to wear, to eat, where to go, who to hang out with. It seems it would be a very predictable and sterile world without choice, but maybe not everyone liked having it in the first place.
When you look at the bigger picture, lots of it doesn’t feel right. All the institutions are made to control us, not to protect us, but it is under the guise of protection, For your own good, for your health, for your safety. For the greater good. And other things that should set alarm bells going in your mind. They are not our caregiver; they are not our parent. So it disturbs me to see grown adults treat them as if they are, and wait for further ‘instructions’ on how to live. It wasn’t meant to be like this.
My view on the passport debacle is very clear. They are not needed and they are definitely NOT about health. In fact, everything they do proves it is not about health, but what they say – people believe. And I cannot be clearer when I say to people, by all mean listen and give what someone says the time of day, but when it comes to trust, trust what they do, not what they say. If the two match up, then you are all good, if not, then steer well clear and possibly don’t not base your life decisions on what they say.
I’m very concerned that many people do not appear to have realised that they are being used and manipulated for the purpose of control. It’s not for safety and it is certainly not about health. Whether they will understand that fully remains to be seen.
I shall tell you a story of when I was a much younger and see if you can see any similarities or parallels as I do.
Just before I became teenager, my mother was quite paranoid. On the face of it she seemed very relaxed, everyone else thought she was really chilled and laid back. And so did I, because most of the time that is the image she conveyed. But when I think back and review the things that I had issues with at the time, it dawned on me into adulthood what had actually occurred psychologically.
She seemed rather fixated on me being murdered and being found ‘dead in a ditch’ as she put it. Got funny when I started having friends and wanting to go out, and was definitely uncomfortable with the idea of boyfriends looming. I used to spend a lot of time out playing, weekends were the best because you could get up to all sorts. Not worrying about stuff other than what time your dinner would be ready, and even then, that wasn’t a priority until you got hungry.
So, when I was 12, one Saturday, my little group of friends and I decided to go up to the ‘fourth woods’ and make a day of it. (named as such because we lived on a military camp and all the surrounding woodland was MOD property, not sure if that was the official name, but that’s what we called it). We stole some food from our kitchens, and went off to build a fire and try and make a shelter and ‘survive’ in the woods for the day. We were army brats keeping ourselves busy for the day. I had a great time. When I got home however, there was fallout.
Because I had been out all day, despite being with about 5 or 6 other people, she said I had gone off on my own. Still, I didn’t see the problem. She had been worried for hours because she didn’t know where I was and if I was safe. (that’s where the dead in a ditch comment started and continued). Fair enough I thought, that seems fair. But it didn’t end at that, no no. I got lectured for quite some time about how it made her feel and how out of order it was for me to make her feel like that. After the lecture, I got grounded. For six weeks. And not just any six weeks. She took my entire summer holidays away from me. I was allowed to go the shops, and I think cadets a couple of times, but no going out in the day with my friends.
Extreme is what I decided it was, even at the age of 12 I knew it was over the top. I was being punished because someone else was afraid. But as I was the object of the fear, I would also be a pawn to it. I was told I would lose 6 weeks of my freedom.
This is where I drew parallels when our current scenario began.
Because it didn’t end there. What happened in that 6 weeks was that she continued to drum into me how many dangers there were for me, a child soon to be young woman, the dangers were many. And she kept repeating them. It took a while for it to really do its job, but gradually over a couple of years, I did become more fearful, more suspicious and concerned. Not for me, but of her. I started to question why a parent would want their child to be so scared of people and the world. I understand about wanting someone to be safe and fearing the worst. We live in an unpredictable world where many things can kill you and ultimately something will. But to take your own worry and concern and impose it on others is damaging, and in my view, wrong.
And I didn’t just get my freedom back after 6 weeks as promised. Indeed not. The goalposts changed at the last minute. I would be allowed out again, but only for one-hour slots. Not just one at a time. Oh no, something far more elaborate and designed to stop any fun. I was given check in times, I had to check in every hour on the hour, thereby ensuring I had a maximum radius and had to be constantly aware of the time and consequences. And had to tell her where I would be and who with. Being monitored and reviewed to make sure I was complying. Taking most of the freedom and fun out of things after that and limiting enjoyment.
It is no surprise to me that now as an adult, I developed having a maximum radius I like to be away from home before I start to feel anxiety, and it is no surprise that I have a job where I constantly run to deadlines, but serious ones which cost people time, money and stress if you don’t stick to them. I was conditioned by various influences including my mother, I am not ashamed of it, but I do not like it. And have tried as best I can to undo some of these weird things that were imposed on me by adults when I was a child, but which have then gone on to form part of me through to my own adult life. I reflect on these things to understand them and people’s motivations, I know in some buckled way, what she did was meant to be from a place a love, and some people may say she was just trying to keep me safe…
To be honest, reality has never been completely normal for me. Once I was aware of the world, time, mortality, people, ideas and so on, I didn’t know how to be ‘normal’ – although I kept trying for quite some time. Everything is constantly changing, there is no stopping, standing still and taking stock of it all. To me it’s like trying to review what it was like being on a rollercoaster while you are still on it.
Reality has been really thrown out of shape this last year and a half for many. When we started to hear whispers of this ‘pandemic’ in January last year, my brain adjusted and adapted without me even trying. You see, for the past two decades, maybe longer, I have been fixated and focused on the idea of a virus. A virus outbreak to be more specific. My interest was actually first piqued in the early 90’s at school when we learnt about HIV/AIDS in PSE (Personal and Social Education – i think), I became quite interested in the science of it all and concerned by the risk fed to me by the media. Then came foot and mouth, and bird flu, and swine flu and the rest of the more recent ‘outbreaks’ which did the rounds, leading to the culling of many animals and overall made very little impact to peoples general day to day lives. But each time, I would be on alert. Watching and monitoring for any evidence or paper that would show it has crossed over, it had mutated, the risk has increased. But it never happened. No evidence ever did materialize and I did not see what I had decided were the next stages of a real outbreak with a viable threat to humans.
Along the way, I also happened to get into Zombie films. They used to freak me out, and played on what I decided was a natural fear of unseen disease, but in zombie films they made it seen, and it looked like you and me, it was the grotesque exaggeration of it all really impacted me (I think having Hyperphantasia did not help here at all!). But eventually it made me question the reality of their scenarios and setting for it. Picking it apart so I could understand it and know when to have appropriate fear. It can easily be misplaced and does not usually go well when it is present but not necessary. Fear really can control you.
Around 2018 I got quite into a game on my phone, I believe it was called Pandemic, so no guesses needed what it was about. The player is to start the virus in their preferred country and then gather ‘points’ as you infect more and more people, adapting the virus and working out how to make it supreme and deadly. It seemed just like a biological weapon skill game, how to fuck up as many people as you could and kill the world. While you are doing this, the world fights back by trying to find a cure, and if you aren’t good enough with your mutations and variants, then they cure it and the world recovers. Now in this, other things occur – even though it is just one screen of the world with flashing blobs to pop, and seeing small blue planes fly around to sort out the cure. After a number of attempts, I won. I created the one that took out the world. And it didn’t feel like a win, in any way. In fact, something else happened. I ran through all the data in my mind, all the scenarios and variants being played out in a ‘simulated’ setting, but I realised all that data goes somewhere. Yes, it could be paranoia, I considered that and thought you know what, whether it is or isn’t, I’m not playing anymore. It felt uncomfortable and I am only usually faced with that kind of discomfort when my spidey senses activate. I stopped playing it a year before the wheels were set in motion with Event201 in Oct 2019. Once that started, it was inevitable what was going to follow.
So, last January 2020, whispers from abroad started to happen. A co-ordinated effort to get the patchy information out and start reacting – they did a good job at first. It was substantial enough to take notice, more than just an article here and there, top medical people were discussing it. But there was something I couldn’t quite put my finger on that didn’t add up. All the stories and pictures seemed very set up, not natural at all. They were so specific with giving us a ‘heads up’ on everything and doing things so illogically, it gave it away to me. And the fact that all the governments (mostly) gave a co-ordinated response – that does not happen and I don’t believe we are that organised to do it if we were indeed ‘taken by surprise’ by a virus out of the blue. But where it was heading didn’t look good to me, real virus or not. I decided to start ordering a few more packets of things for the cupboard and organised to use some of our savings to send my husband on his dream trip, to Egypt to see the pyramids. I had a feeling the way they were telling it, travel would not be something we should be planning too far ahead for. I worried he wouldn’t be able to go, so we booked it and he went, in the first week of March and was back before lockdown. By this time however, my view of it all had changed. Not on him going away, I still think that was the right thing to do and the right time. The overview of my personal thought had changed.
In all my wondering and thinking of viruses and pandemics, something occurred I did not foresee. All the makings of an outbreak but without there being a virus. With this new scenario playing out, so came a new state of thought, I call it Schrödinger’s virus. I now simultaneously live in a world where the virus both exists and doesn’t exist. Part of me is ready to accept that there could be a virus that has the ability to cause untold mortality as they say, but with no evidence to back that up, that idea is put into my theory category. And in day to day life and from what I see it doesn’t exist. Death rates and figures, funeral directors and all parties who should be able to make it obvious but they are saying the opposite, so believe both, or neither, or one? We are also being pummelled by high level propaganda every day from every media outlet and social media side, it’s difficult to not be consumed by it. I wrote a fictional book a few years ago about a virus outbreak, not a zombie one surprisingly, just one that changes humanity. I worried though that there may be too many plot holes or that it didn’t quite hold up – having seen what was rolled out and used to convince the masses to be under the spell of pushers peddling their wares, I really shouldn’t have worried. I feel like I am now living a badly scripted, badly acted plot hole. It has taken a twist though with recent increases in infection, but not unexpected. I have been theorizing on all this since last March/April time and following the articles as best I can, which only a few months ago predicted that the roll out of the miracle cure, is in fact causing unintended (as far as we know) consequences. Only time and data can tell on that one – I want to be wrong. I really do hope I am.
It’s no secret that people see things differently to each other, think differently and react differently. It’s pointed out to us often, within men and women hugely – a classic book I never got round to reading springs to mind – Men Are from Mars and Women Are from Venus. I have heard this book mentioned and referred to by title on many ocassions (never an actual quote). But almost possibly to deflect from the fact those differences can cause issues and it’s easier to breeze over them and wave them away as ‘they just are’ rather than address them. It can be hard to get along with, communicate effectively with and have a balanced relationship with someone if you are unaware of why or how you are different. Just acknowledging it exists isn’t really enough in my opinion if it’s a fundamental one. We give people many excuses for their behaviour often without delving into the reason for it. Or think that by giving it reasoning can go someway to excusing it. Not in my mind. I like to know the why, it usually helps me to determine any possible conslusion, judgment or result that may need to occur.
There are many reasons why people don’t get along, and with some people you never will. But I find it interesting to understand why, even if the fault lies with me, it’s still good to know that. There are lots of important lessons around this I think, helping to form how we see the world, how we think the world see us, if people have that concept. But understanding why you are different can actually help you to fit in. Not in the tradiontional sense of adapting to others ways and fitting into their pattern – but finding your own fit. To a point, we all have to get along; living side by side and weaving our way through life together (unless you have removed yourself from having to). But finding out who are can be a tough one and coming up against others opinions, ideals or wills can be a challenge when they clash with your own. In this modern time of instant and sometimes public ommunication, being aware of the impact of influences is important.
But it should also be factored in that ideals, thoughts and perpsectives can change with time and experience. Your own and other peoples. It would be odd to expect to be the same person at 40 that you were at 20, impossible in my view. So it shouldn’t be a suprise that you may ‘outgrow’ people as they say, or ‘drift apart’ or simply just change. All of those can be correct, and are ok. But if poth parties aren’t aware or mature enough to really understand that, then there can be difficluties and I guess, arguments and fall outs. It’s not easy when you may have outgrown someone, but they haven’t you.
On top of personality and general interest differences, there are the fundamental ones that can affect things. For that I will reference one that can go completely undetected, for decades and even life, but is a really important one in my recent experience. The ability to visualise in mind. Some people can’t. Most people can apparently, and there is a percentage who over visualise. Although they don’t actually know, they have presumed that only 2% can’t visualise – calling this Aphantasia, the small percentage, maybe 10% they say over visualise – called Hyperphantasia. And everyone else they say is on a varying scale of being able to visualise between not at all and all the time. That is what they used as the base ‘normal’ level.
I didn’t know this was a thing, until well into my 30’s. All my life I have visualised, over visualised and remembered much, places, dates, times, people, events, amounts, information. Usually relevant to my life, some of it outside events and extremely useless trivia that seems to hang around of it’s own accord. I naively presumed that everyone did this. So, the applecart in my mind was well and truly tipped over, when through various discussions and disagreements between myself and my husband, I discovered through continued questioning and reasoning what I consider to be a fundamental difference, and one that was actually the root of many of the issues. He did not visualise. At all. It sounds small doesn’t it? He doesn’t ‘see’ pictures in his head, and I do, what’s the big deal? I wish it weren’t one, and that it was just as easy as he is left handed and I am right handed. But the nature of what unfolded from that was more complex – there were different areas it affected firstly between us, and then indivdually. We also both had to content with understanding we really aren’t like each other or everyone else. And being honest, it can throw you sideways a bit when you just thought you were average and like everyone else. Then also realising that no-one else is really who you thought they were either. It can bring a whole lot of questions, and did. Opening a few more strange doors into self knowledge that I couldn’t help but venture into.
I then tried to work through it all and address which areas I felt it affected and why, trying to help my husband adjust to this new knowledge and explain to him as best I could, what is going on in peoples minds. While at the same time trying to integrate this new aspect of thought into my own assessments, of myself and others. It was a game changer for me and has given me an entirely different perspective on my past, present and future, and how I view and try to understand other people.
If you would be interested to read more about this experience, my book Meeting in the Middle of Nowhere is available on Amazon.
I see lots of talk about cashless, the people for and the people against. I’ll put my two pence worth in.
I find it a strange concept, but work well with it, money. Cash has been the norm for a very long time, and in principle, theory and practice it works. You earn it, you spend it, you live. It seems simple. And it is. But somewhere along the line, someone decided to shoehorn themselves between the simple transaction of one person giving it and one person receiving it. The banks are the middle man between you and your money. They hold it for you and in turn get paid for that privilege. In fact banks only get to make huge amounts of money, because we have money. They also then get to see what you do with your money, there is then a financial record for you. It’s a win win for them.
Then someone else decided that there needed to be another middle man between the seller, the bank and the purchaser. They introduced the merchant fees via card payments, so now there are two middle men making money from the seller/buyer transaction. So now you have two outside parties essentially making money from the fact that you have it, and that you decide to spend it. Seems ridiculous to me, but what do I know.
Now, with the looming threat of cashless, I felt there is a need to review cash again and how it actually affords a number of freedoms many seem to overlook. That is my assumption, and it could be that people may just not care, but either way the outcome doesn’t change because you may feel differently about it. It is not the idea in principle of having a cashless society that bothers me, on the face of it, it sounds practical and efficient. All your monetary transactions recorded and monitored, reviewed and analysed. Doesn’t sound weird at all. Much. Have to say, despite the fact that I lead a very boring ‘record’, I don’t really want there being a central point showing what I watch, eat, read, wear, like, don’t like, who I talk to, what I say. Why should that be recorded anywhere – back in the day you would have had to pull together an awful lot of receipts for that, and follow someone for a really long time. Now most people share all that on public forums, which is fine if they don’t mind. I personally still believe that I wouldn’t want anyone finding my personal diary if i had one. And that is what it would contain. Your hopes, dreams and fears. Who you like and hate that week. But now it is all online, shared on a daily basis, freely. Another thing that I don’t understand, and think maybe I am just wrong about people and they really don’t mind what I see as an intrusion.
Back to the issue of cash – the problem I instantly think off with that idea, is all the areas of life it will affect. Firstly though, I’ll put the plus sides forward and you see if you think you personally will benefit from any of these. They will be able to make sure you pay all your taxes on earnings because they will know about all your income. They can stop drug dealers and money laundering (but fail to mention the amount of it that happens online). And as far as I know criminals have bank accounts and crypto currency is being used in all sorts of enterprises, so it might not minimise that after all. That’s the advertised benefits for the system creators.
So, what are the upsides to us the user of this digital credit system, the ones whose money is being taken from us or will simply bypass us, to be given back at somebody else’s whim, because from where I’m sitting, all the benefits are with the controller of your money. As we are pushed into a society where social credit scores are becoming the norm, reward based games and point scoring being inducted into people’s psyche, I can’t help but worry that access to your finances will be dictated in the future as they try to have more control generally over people’s decisions in life. Like a parent who decides if you are ‘allowed’ to spend that much, or are ‘allowed’ to take part in an activity. We know these systems already exist in other countries, so it is not unreasonable to think it’s a blueprint to be tried on others.
Maybe I am wrong to think people should be outraged and horrified at the idea of someone telling you where to go, what to buy and who not to talk to. As a grown up the idea of being treated like a child again is awful and one I won’t be going along with. But to my surprise I have witnessed multiple examples of people handing over responsibility for themselves and their lives to the state. I can only imagine they think it is there to help you, or look after you, or to wrap an arm around you and tell you it will be alright. Once I looked into it further, I could see this was not by accident. I enjoy reading social history to try and work out how we got to where we are. And I suspect the concept was born after WWII when the ‘cradle to grave’ ran alongside the NHS being created. Giving the people the impression the government was here to look after you from birth to death.
Weirdly though, I read a lot about the Victorian era growing up and had no idea there would be government handouts and benefits when you got older. I believed that if you didn’t work, you didn’t eat, therefore you would die or end up in the workhouse/poor house. So thought I had better be resourceful and employable. From around 10 years old I thought this was how would be. I always thought at a minimum I could be a chamber maid or cleaner and was frustrated I wasn’t able to work until I was 16. It was quite a surprise to learn about benefits for unemployed people as well as disability benefit which made sense, and child benefit (which I couldn’t get my head around why we had that at all). I also thought it seemed like a way to control people, restrict how much they have and tarnish them. It used to have a bit of a stigma attached to say you were on benefits, not so much now. But on the face of it they were a ‘helping hand’ whereas I saw it as an apron string being tied around you, and it felt as such for the short time I had to claim unemployment in my late teens.
I kind of see the same thing with only cashless. The only way they can monitor, dictate, control and decide things for you is through your ability to live – money. It can all tie back to that. If you have to ‘scan’ in anywhere to buy food, what if you are rejected? What if the system crashes? What if they freeze your account? What if you don’t have enough to buy what you need? You can’t borrow any money because you aren’t ‘allowed’. It used to sound like crazy talk, and now it’s a potential reality. Sugar tax, another one that raises alarm bells (trust me, it’s all tied in), they decide you are too fat for whatever scale someone somewhere decided, so you are put on a diet by the state (because you know, got to save the NHS). You try to but a treat. Denied. You want to have a drink, water only. And if anyone else buys you something, they will know because of all the cameras and because you had to ‘log in’. That person will either be denied too, or deducted social credit points.
The odd thing about that is, some people do genuinely seem to like the idea, they have admitted they cannot control their own lives or finances, and they would feel safer and happier if someone else took responsibility. Or, they openly admit they want to see people ‘punished’ for lack of will power or habits. I can’t see any other reason for it, why else would people be okay with that idea becoming part of their lives or inflicting it on others, of having an overseer or surrogate parent setting all the rules and enforcing them.
Words and their real meaning seem to have been terribly lost of late, and the concepts that accompany those words are being overlooked or not given the time they deserve. I like to use words to describe exactly what I mean, but now know that not everyone has the same meaning for things. Not everyone can imagine with pictures in mind, but however you do, please try and imagine where this all goes. And if you do not see a problem with where we are or how we got here, then good for you. I however, am keeping a keen eye on what is currently unfolding at an alarming pace. These are strange times upon us.
A further piece on Monitoring if you need some help with vision of how far they might take it for the next step.
I guess I have given this subject thought many times over the years, being born at the beginning of the 1980’s meant I grew up before the internet, before mobile phones, before the ‘world wide web’ donned it’s net over us all. Bringing us together, they said, in fact, I don’t think we’ve ever felt so far apart. It was something I could see would change the face of society and have speculated about it much. This piece is about the impact of it all and how I theorise it may have possibly affected others.
I’m from the time of there being no computer, and one phone in the house, the landline. I hated it. It was an awful sound that cut through what was previously quiet in comparison. I always saw it as an intrusion. So moving to mobile phones was a whole new level of intrusion, and one I undertook for work purposes, but have had to have rules around that, maybe that will be another post. This one is meant to cover general changes.
Back then as kids, we also had to physically go and knock on a friends door to see if they were available to go out, possibly having to then talk to their parent first! Or you could use the dreaded landline, but then it was a definite you would talk to an adult, that was even worse. And you had to ask permission. As an adult, friends were rarely at home, so you just had vague designated meeting places. On Saturday’s you bumped into people at the market, or in the pub, the cafe or in the park. Because otherwise there was no way to know where they were. And that was ok, we didn’t need to.
As it all changed though, I paid attention, possibly having a unique position to view it from. My mother was a technophobe, she did not like the changing technology moving in and struggled with anything up from a typewriter. She bought a word processor with built in printer, and then proceeded to get me to always type her letters on it. On the other hand, my grandpa (on my fathers side), was very tech savvy. He wrote basic computer programs, taught me how to access the games through MS Dos, and he had a video phone to my great grandparents in Bournemouth. This was in 1989. The house I grew up in was very different to the house I visited once a month or so.
I have taken to technology well, incorporated it into my life like everyone else. I very quickly saw the advantage to moving onto online systems and made the speed and efficiency of my work improve. I was able to do a home learning course, set up and run my business from home and barely interact with people at all on a physical level within a few years.
And that’s where I saw a potential problem. But on the whole it was minimal, people chose to work from home. And most of those still had a social life, external activities and things to engage with. All of that keeps the brain social, functioning and gives you an outside perspective to your own thoughts. Because if we all just stayed in ‘our own little bubble’ then we wouldn’t have much to go on would we? If I had never asked many of the questions I had, I wouldn’t know, I would only be able to assume. And you know what they say about people who assume!
I sometimes give thought to if children of today had grown up in my time, they would understand where we were coming from. That’s why I can relate to people of my age group well, despite not growing up around many or having closely aged friends. But I also give thought to what I think it would be like to grow up in the ‘after time’, without the things above that had such a large impact on my development, how I gained confidence in things, learnt about social boundaries. All face to face, having to be there, feeling the fear and doing it anyway. Character building stuff they say, and afterwards I agree. But at the time it felt like a trial, and I realised that’s because it was and is meant to be. But no-one knew what I thought all the time, it was easy to hide things and yourself without really trying and I realise now what the purpose of that was. It was self-preservation. It bought me time to try and work out who I was going to be without allowing others to try and mold me into what they wanted me to be. I had a parent trying to influence me, grandparents, school, friends, society, media. It was too much to be fair. I had to work out how you filter all that crap while still taking part in society, and manage to find out who you really are. It wasn’t easy. But factor into that social media (and this is where I theorise). If I had been able to ‘create’ an online identity of my alter ego, the persona you present to others would possibly confuse or override your true identity, thus creating two personalities (at a minimum), and splitting the sense of self. Helping to create an internal discord which wouldn’t be easily reconciled and would make it harder to function in the ‘normal’ physical world. This is why I thought maybe people get ‘addicted’ to the internet and various things under that banner. Internal conflict occurs when the online self has to function in the real world which inevitably at some point, has to, but doesn’t want to. Feeler safer and more like ‘themselves’ when engaging online.
I have had my privacy invaded a few times in the before time as a young person, so I was careful as soon as online began. Knowing already that things you say and think, and certainly things you write down can be used against you, knowing people can turn on you in a second and loyalty means very little to many. They were valuable lessons and ones which I understood well before the internet came round. I was also not reminded of them constantly (other than family reminding you and people you might chose to tell), and was able to leave them behind as is normal. To move on, let go. That isn’t as easy these days. Social media appears to be geared up to keep reminding you of yesterday, last week, last year. Living in the past means you are not living in the present, and now more than ever people can dwell on things meant to be left behind.
Although I don’t do it much outside of my household now, I believe that interacting with other people is incredibly important. For many reasons, but firstly reading people and their intentions or motives. Facial expressions, tone of voice and body language had always been big ones for me, it’s taken me years to understand the subtleties and glaringly obvious of what information is being presented to me by the other person. But only through personally interacting with that person or situation. Online is a different thing altogether and am quite good at that too now, but only because I had so much experience of people in real life and learning to ‘read between the lines’ as they say. Inside that, there have been difficulties, because I didn’t know how to socialize properly for years. I was neglected as a child, kept off school at a crucial stage of development, had a dysfunctional and unpredictable home environment and was moved around a lot, without the chance to have a consistent friendship base. All of that can make for a rather strange outcome, and took years to sort out and make up for.
This is why I particularly feel for children at the moment in this continuing situation. Not being able to have friends, socialise, have anything to look forward to, and to have the rug pulled out from under you constantly, as well as have fear pumped into your life at every turn, must be quite shocking. And I know they won’t be able to assimilate it properly for quite some time. But it also forces them to engage online for an extended period during their development. Also meaning it can all be monitored, and reviewed, and recorded. Information is power as the saying goes.
Also happening at a time when they are meant to be finding themselves and discovering what it is to have your own identity, not one you superficially developed or quickly threw together and changed repeatedly because of all the messages you were given. Those types of identities don’t usually hold up to the test of time. Leading then to general identity disorders, personality disorders and anxiety and depression. But no-one really talks about that anymore because it would mean addressing the incredibly strange and strict parameters of society we now find ourselves in. Living in a parallel world of real life and online, the line of which they are always trying to blur.
This is now a concept that more people are familiar with, but not by choice. As everyone knows, the last year has changed working conditions for many in the UK, and one of those changes for lots of people was to work from home. I have given thought to how this may have affected people having worked from home for nearly 15 years now myself. Over the years I have questioned folk on their working habits, asking them why they didn’t want to work from home or for themselves. I find it interesting why people chose different careers and environments and couldn’t help asking them. Keeping in mind most people work to live, they have to find a way to make ends meet, so not everyone is in a job they enjoy, but yet still try to make the best of it.
The main reasons why people didn’t want to work from home, even given the choice were as follows
Loneliness – they felt they would feel lonely, they enjoyed the social aspect
Demotivation – they didn’t feel like they would be able to make themselves do the work
Not enough space or resources – not everyone has a home office or room to allocate for use as one
Now, as soon as the directive was rolled for people to work from home if they could, these thoughts crossed my mind. I know some people would have got over these things and adapted, or found a way round them, with zoom meetings and finding ways to communicate with others through the various forms of media we have at our disposal. But for that to happen you have to have a certain level of motivation to begin with, to be enthusiastic about the changes and make the best of them.
That’s best case scenario. The other side of that is some people don’t benefit from only seeing faces on a screen, from not hearing and seeing the human context for things, only the 2D filtered version to go by is limiting. It must be very odd for children as well having to try and engage and learn via this method. But for a personal example of other factors that can affect this – lets throw anxiety into the mix as it’s relevant to this scenario. I used to have anxiety and depression, well, being honest I still have anxiety but manage it and have developed various coping mechanisms over the years to deal with it. But one of the things I really struggled with, was meetings and answering the telephone, I had to do them, I worked in an office, but it filled me with dread. Every day. And those days turned into months, went into years, into other jobs and never really diminished, I just hid them better and ploughed on through regardless.
It dawned on me one day, after years of trying to fit in and ‘get over it’, to realise maybe this is just how I am. Maybe I don’t need to change myself and be different, maybe I just need to change my environment and accept what it is that unsettles or unbalances me. And after delving a bit further, I worked it out (or at least think I did), I can’t handle being around people for long periods of time because they are so draining to me. The amount of energy and attention it takes to deal with people face to face got too much in the end. I couldn’t just whittle away time talking about nonsense, I didn’t want to hear what they had for dinner last night, and I sure as shit didn’t want to hear about their constant life drama they were imposing on themselves, and by extension everyone else when they wouldn’t stop talking about it. You know the ones, they don’t actually want any advice, just someone to moan at. After putting up with it from my mother for an age, I didn’t feel I had it in me to put up with it for the rest of my life at work, and certainly not from people I barely knew. So the idea of working of home was set in my mind early on.
Secondly, I get so focused on my work and what I am engaged in, I don’t like constant disruptions or interruptions. But I didn’t know any of this really at the time, I just got agitated a lot and annoyed with people. So I took steps. By 27 I went self-employed. My work ethic seemed to fit it and I finally found an outlet for my motivation and ideas. I did employ people too in the first 5 years and had to do client visits, meetings (networking meetings as well which were the worst) and didn’t quite get to work as much from home as I wanted. It doesn’t just happen straight away, I had to find my industry, get qualified along the way studying at home as well, get clients and build their confidence. I had a busy household going on too, band practices happening a few nights a weeks, staff coming and going, two dogs…
And it had happened without me even noticing it. I had my own hectic distracting environment at home that had crept up on me. It had happened so gradually that I hadn’t really noticed until I went from thinking I was ok, to all of a sudden realising I was not. I was dreading every day again, but I loved my job, loved my house, loved my dogs. I just didn’t love the people coming and going all the time, bringing different energies and sad to say again, drama. Which in turn, made me bring it. Big time. I got so stressed by having family, friends and employees demanding my attention, I couldn’t do it anymore. I identified the problems and one by one, got rid of them.
I scaled back the employees first. Managing people is a full time job and one I didn’t want in my home. I disowned the family member who was a massive contributing cause to my anxiety at the time. I had a public outburst on FB at the band people who kept taking the piss in my house, and eventually stopped them happening. I stopped socialising and told people they had to text first and not just turn up. I then got divorced. The only consistent to remain was my business. Then I married again just over a year later, sold my house and moved abroad for a couple of years and then back to the UK. I don’t do bits of drama, I do it all at once. (that is very much the speed version of that story) But became a much calmer person after that. It was quite shocking to me to realise how affected I really am by people and their expectations or demands of you – sometimes without really knowing it. I didn’t and don’t blame anyone else other than myself for me getting like that, I ignored the warning signs and thought I could change myself to fit the requirement that others seem so comfortable with.
I know I have digressed slightly, but the point of that meander does come back round. I am much happier and more stable as a person when I am not around lots of people, so working from home with just my husband suits me perfectly. But this is not what I have observed of others. People mostly seem to thrive and flourish in the direct company of others, they like having family and friends and can get inspired to face the world through people. I came to the conclusion that my dysfunctional upbringing and life is what has made me this way and a bit weird. I have all these coping mechanisms because I needed them to cope with life, and the fact that I have now set up my life to be very strictly within the parameters of those mechanisms isn’t necessarily a good thing. It excludes everything else and I wouldn’t wish or want to impose that on anyone. I also worry that by forcing those conditions on some will create a disconnection between people that does not benefit anyone in the long-run. Not everyone has the space, resources, motivation or desire to be separated and alone. Maybe I’m wrong?
A funny but slightly weird moment from my past (there are many). My grandpas 80th birthday just over a decade ago and I was 28 at the time. A party of about 20-30 or so people were invited, mostly people I didn’t know apart from a few relatives. The seating was all prepared, Grandma had decided to put me next to an old friend who worked in recruitment, because I had too. I guess she thought it would give us something to talk about. That friend of theirs however, went straight in with a different line of questioning I was not expecting. He asked about my parent, thinking it was my uncle but obviously realised it possibly wasn’t to ask about it, when I confirmed he wasn’t, he was shocked and slightly confused. I had to say that my father was the youngest son. None of these friends knew about the second son it turns out. The conversation didn’t get noticed round the table, but I suspect it was probably talked about after when he went home! It was an odd feeling to have to explain myself and where I fit in the family, but it was also strange to know their friends didn’t know they had a second son. If you just don’t tell people, they don’t know, and by this right, they had removed the rogue element in their story.
MKW Publishing 