Conversations with myself.

Rain or Shine, by Cathy Cullis

Ugh, what am I doing with my life?

Right now? You're walking the dog.

No, not right now. Overall, with my life. What am I for? What's is the point of me? What do I doooooo?

Well you walk the dog, you take care of your family, this morning you did some laundry and hoovered the hall and sometimes you get paid to answer other people's emails...'

Uh huh. That's not really helping.

What do you want to do with your life?

Write. And take pictures.

And what did you spend this morning doing?

Writing. And taking pictures.

Interesting...

But there was no point to it, no one paid me to do it, it didn't make any money...

Oh. So money is the point. You want to get paid?

It would be nice, yeah.

Do you need to get paid?

I don't understand the question. 

I mean do you need to get paid? Do you need more money?

It would be nice.

Yes, but do you, right now, need money? Are there things missing in your life that you need that you can only have if you get paid for what you do? 

Um.... Well... No, not really.

Interesting. 

But if I'm not getting paid then what's the point? 

Are you happy? Are you getting better at what you do?

Yes. 

Maybe that's the point?

Oh shut up. What do you know. 

I know that you want to write and take pictures. I know that you do write and take pictures. I know that you want to get paid but you don't financially need to get paid. Maybe you would like to get paid, maybe emotionally and mentally you need to get paid but right now, this week, you are not getting paid.Yet there is the potential, that in the future, once you have scrubbed your step, you might be in the position to get paid. Is that correct?

Yes. 

Okay good, glad we sorted that out. Now maybe we can get on with doing what we do and worry about getting paid later? When we need to?

Maybe. 

You know we're very lucky that we don't need to worry about getting paid right now?

I do. I also know you added that bit so the Internet wouldn't hate us and think we're a whiny ungrateful bitch. 

I did. 

Thanks for looking out for us. 

You're welcome. 

Seedlings, neuroses.

The interior monologue of a first-time gardener.

'Look at all the small green things! I planted those! Wait, I didn't plant all of those, which ones are weeds and which ones are the things I planted? Are these weeds? Or are they poppy seedlings? What about these ones, are they weeds or cosmos? Are these small purpley ones weeds? Or are the not weeds? WHICH ONES ARE WEEDS? WHY DIDN'T I SOW THINGS IN STRAIGHT LINES LIKE MONTY DON TOLD ME TO? I don't know which ones to pull out. Actually, I don't think I want to pull out any of them, they're green and the garden is brown and green is better than brown. But I'm sure I've heard that you're supposed to pull out weeds, so maybe I should pull out something? There, that one looked rubbish, I've pulled it out. Now I'm sad. Am I done now? What is a weed anyway? Isn't it just a free plant? Maybe I should just leave everything? But then it's going to end up a mess and all those pretty poppies and ammis and cosmos and larkspur and delphiniums I planted will be swamped by ugly plants and it will be tragic. But what if I pull them out, thinking that they're weeds? Oh balls, it's all going to be a disaster. I don't like gardening. It's too difficult. Cara, pull yourself together and stop being a pansy. Ohh, pansies, I forgot to plant pansies. FOCUS CARA. WEEDING. Okay, I'm just going to pull out all of these ones that look like they're probably not something I planted because they're everywhere and I didn't plant anything everywhere. But maybe I'll leave a few, in case they're pretty. Fuck, gardening is stressful. I need a drink.'

*sorry, I can't find a credit for the image. There's only so much good stuff that comes up when you google pictures of crazy women gardening and this one came from one of those lovely tumblrs that are all pretty, pretty, kittens, pretty, woman in garden, pretty pretty, anime porn, pretty, EXCUSE ME WHAT WAS THAT.' You know the ones. 

in Wigan.

As 'moving to London' becomes less something that we talk about doing in the future and more something that looks like it might actually happen, the urgency with which I feel like I'm going to vomit right into my lap increases drastically.

Don't get me wrong, we still haven't sold our flat and we haven't started looking for houses in London, and since that one day when we announced that we were planning on moving we have done absolutely nothing to try and secure work. But it's looking more like it's something that is going to happen, and within the next year, and ohmygod I'm going to throw up. The thing is, I feel sort of paralysed. Somewhere between the life I've spent 5 years building and the life we talk and dream about for our future and somewhere there, half way between Glasgow and London (Wigan?) there's me, curled in to the foetal position pretending it's all not happening while spectres of mortgage lenders and the frankly terrifying business competition in London delightedly jab me with their fingers and whisper gleeful promises of failure in my ear.

Call it fear or pessimism or denial but I feel exactly like I did when I was 37 weeks pregnant, that nothing is ever ever going to change, I'm going have two people inside me and need to pee six times a minute FOREVER. I can picture the future with our dog and our garden and our beautiful London clients and I'm more or less present in the life we live just now (which make no mistake, is pretty amazing) but when I try to picture actually making the change? Wigan.

I'm working on leaving, no one wants to spend too long in Wigan (joking, I've never been, it might be lovely.) but I'm also trying to accept that this huge chasm of uncertainty between making a decision and actually being able to make it happen is just a fact of life and one that I need to embrace, not fight. Maybe it's not the end of the world if I'm not certain all of the time?

* IMAGE BY JENNIFER TRAN www.jennifer-tran.com

an update on that whole anxiety thing.

I really suck at updating you guys on stuff, just ask anyone who's waiting for those posts I said I was going to write about IVF and childbirth (in brief, neither as bad as I was led to believe, one even positively joyful) but I'm trying to be less of a jerk so I thought I would let you know how I'm doing.  

I'm doing good. The anxiety is gone, I'm only mildly emotionally irrational and I'm functioning as normal again. I'm not entirely sure why, several things happened at once: my mum arrived with a selection of homoeopathic and herbal treatments, March ended and a couple of days later so did the anxiety. It turned into hopeless sobbing for a few days and then that passed too. I'm still not exactly exuberant but I'm good and that in itself is a blessed relief. I also let go of the house selling/moving thing and stopped looking at houses for sale in London. It will happen when it happens and in the meantime we have a really nice house to life in that doesn't need rewired or re-plumbed or re-anythinged. And more likely still, I took the PMS thing seriously. I mean, it's not exactly news that my hormones are insane and this is the first time in almost a decade that I haven't been on some sort of hormone suppressant to try and control my endometriosis, and so the chances that they're a bit out of whack and making me feel kind of crazy seems relatively high. Determined to try and treat it naturally before going back on any sort of medications I started taking the vitamins and minerals that I used to take before I got pregnant and that I've delighted in being lax about since then because I'm better now and don't need them (ha!)  

Anyway, that's where I am for now. I figure exuberance will come, in time.  

Oh, and the coffee thing. I'm back to one, weak, cup a day and you're right, I should give it up and see what happens. But I don't want to. 

*image by Anahata Katkin