(dis) connected

amazing paper dolls from this website here

It seems that I have become so dependent on my ability to instantly communicate with people that those moments when I am not afforded this connection I start to find myself lost, caught in a tailspin of disconnection and suddenly second guessing not only my ability to communicate, but my existence in a world so intrinsically interconnected with each other.

And this is not to say that there is anything actually wrong in my life, that I would need the contact and connection in order to feel validated, alive; rather, my simple efforts at reaching out, asking questions that become unanswered, sending words that are left unresponded to, are trivial, simple reminders and thoughts that are otherwise immaterial and not really worth articulating.

However, in the absence of any kind of response, the idea that someone may be unavailable to me, that something may actually be wrong, begins to ebb and etch its way in to my psyche... why hasn't she replied? What have I done to offend her? Is she busy? Is she okay? Is she upset with me? Did I say something upsetting? Am I being too much?...Most definitely, yes. Yes, much too much... why did I send the second message? Why did I say that? Why didn't I say that? What?! Why? Why? Why?

And then... the phone trills. A reply! A simple, appropriately non-committal response deserving of the simple, appropriately non-committal text message that I sent her hours earlier.

And all is well within the world.

please bear with me while I open my mouth and spew forth a pile of unintelligable gibberish

I really loathe those days when I feel I swing a pendulum between talking too much (and saying very little) and not talking (and still, saying very little). There is no middle ground here, simply a dire case of foot-in-mouth, and uncomfortable silences.
Case in point - today, when, during a meeting with other Honours students and their supervisors, I felt I either babbled incessantly, or stared at the table intensely, hoping someone else would say anything so that I wouldn't feel the need to continue to blather on about nothing in particular. Fortunately, my supervisor appears to be quite empathetic to this unfortunate condition, as she rescued me on more than one occasion. She's like me, I think, in a short, intense personality kind of way.

Now, because I'm terribly vain, I like to think I'm intense in a Peaches kind of way. Of course, Peaches is brilliant and intense and a musical god, but still, I'd like to think there were parallels between the the more abrasive and challenging aspects of her public persona (she makes no apologies for who she is, indeed, she challenges people to question their presumptions and preconceptions) and myself.
I wish.
Ha!

Picture courtesy of The Scenestar

Oops, ergh

It occured to me I was going to blog about 'eating and other important stuff'. Suffice to say, this was really just the arbitrary inclusion of words in to the title of my blog to increase its audience appeal (ha!) and thus readability by the masses (double ha!).

I was, however, contemplating adding that I feel I have become an eating machine lately, and that writing this blog (for all its previously discussed self-serving egocentricity) is encroaching on my terribly-important-exercise-time.

Because any excuse will do, right?

Episode IV: a new blog

Wow!

After much deliberation I have deleted my old blog account. The reasons for this were numerous; I was not able to merge the old blog with my current google account (and logging out and in with different user names really doesn't suit my incredibly lazy style) but also, and quite fundamentally, I felt it was important to close the door on that particular episode of my life. Certainly an episode best left behind a closed door, or at least not some readily accessible point (metaphorically speaking, of course).

So then, here I am. Older, and with any luck, wiser. Or even wizened, as the case may be.

That being said, I was feeling somewhat stumped for a topic to blog on. Or rather, a topic to blog passionately and extensively on. Many spring to mind, however: the inexplicable non-acceptance of moves towards a more socialised model of health care amongst Americans (specifically, residents of the USA), and following on from that, the lack of acceptance of scientific evidence from otherwise educated and informed people on issues such as evolution/creationism, and the "vaccination debate"... issues that present as complete no-brainers to me, and, ironically, I suppose no-brainers to others, but I mean this in a much more vindictive manner (there! I said it! People that believe these ridiculous ideas ARE stupid! You must be to abandon all sense of reason and logic - "hey, if we ignore all the facts and evidence, those funny looking kids were right!" etc).

Ergh.

Apart from this... I taught my daughters how to play uno this evening. They took to the game with gusto, and... beat me. G played her cards close to her chest (figuratively and literally) and Y sought advice for the first couple of games, then went on to deal me several vicious plays in the subsequent game. Funny little things -clearly too clever for their own good! I shall have to perpetuate some kind of facade that I have been deliberately losing in order to maintain my god-like parental status (look! I made a people!), a status on which my grasp has become increasingly tenuous as the girls get older.

And so, here it is. My new blog. I wanted to retain the name of my old blog, simply because I like it, but blogger would not allow me to do so. So I figure I can retain the title, if nothing else. While it is a tad more egocentric than I would like, it also I suppose accurately captures the necessarily egocentricity of a blog of this nature. But... just to satisfy my own vanity, I am going to squint at the word egocentricity so that the letters blur and it reads more like eccentricity. Because carefree eccentricity has such lovely, serene appeal to it.