An introvert’s paradox

Social distancing is a phrase nobody had heard of a few weeks ago, but it’s the order of the day now.

You would think that these times would be ideal for a profound introvert like me. How wrong you’d be!

I use the Myers-Briggs definition of introversion, which means that social interactions take energy from me, rather than me being energized by them as an extrovert would. In other words, dealing with other people is tiring. I need quiet time to recharge before I become too drained to function.

But that does not mean dealing with other people is unpleasant. In fact, paradoxically, I find that being around others is essential to my mental health. I just need to manage the balance.

I liken it to exercise. A lot of people enjoy exercise, and it’s necessary for physical health. But you need to expend energy along the way and you can’t keep it up indefinitely. Other people’s company is my mental exercise.

And without it, without a certain level of ad-hoc in-person interaction and simply being around other people, I am starting to feel the effects.

How are you all doing out there? How is social distancing affecting your lives?

Why writer’s block?

Everyone has heard of writer’s block. And I don’t just mean other writers, I mean pretty much anyone you meet will likely have heard of the term.

A random thought occurred to me, though. Why writer’s block? Why do we never hear of painter’s block, or sculptor’s block, or trombonist’s block, or any of a number of other artistic blocks? Is this affliction unique to writers?

It seems it’s not. Looking into artistic blocks, creative people all over the place complain about dry spells, about lack of creativity, lack of inspiration. And there’s a lot of advice on how to deal with these ailments, and much of it has parallels with techniques I wrote about in Breaking the Block. So it seems it’s widespread, it just hasn’t got a name.

Except for writers.

So why writers, in particular?

I wonder if it has anything to do with another oddity about writing.

Least likely conversation to hear at a dinner party: “Oh, you’re a concert pianist! How interesting. I thought of doing that too, just haven’t got around to it yet.”

Substitute “writer” for “concert pianist” and it suddenly turns into a frequently-heard conversation. So many people admire the talent of painters and musicians because so many people happily profess to being useless at art, or tone deaf. And yet everyone seems to be a budding novelist, as if writing is the easiest thing in the world.

Now, all the creative arts acknowledge that practitioners go through rough patches, where output dries up. They acknowledge that creativity and capturing creativity in a tangible form is darned hard work, and it doesn’t always go smoothly. But along with that, in all the other arts learning the craft comes first. Claiming your musical creativity has dried up kinda lacks credibility if you’ve never played a note before in your life.

But writing is different. With so many people thinking it’s easy, that they can casually “give it a go”, they look for a reason when it turns out not to be so straightforward. So I wonder if writer’s block emerged as a fallback for people who tried, but got stuck. Because nobody can really admit to not being able to write, but they can say they are actually a writer, really, but the lack of output is because they are suffering from the dreaded writer’s block.

What do you think? Plausible? Or bunkum?

Federal elections

Every four years I spare a sympathetic thought for our southerly neighbors.

The US has been in campaign mode already for months, and there’s a whole year of it yet to come. Meanwhile, Canada goes to the polls tomorrow for its federal elections. The difference? Official campaigning here started just last month.

That’s right. The entire Canadian federal election process lasts only a few weeks, almost fitting in between two of the US primary debates and barely a blip in the exhausting - and expensive - calendar down south.

The question is, does our fleeting process sell voters short, or does all that effort in the US produce any better outcomes for democracy?

Husky Houdini

When we moved to Canada we got a husky. We installed a new fence all around the back yard to make it husky-proof. In all the years we had Gypsy, and later Ellie, our Australian Shepherd, we never had a dog escape unless someone left one of the side gates open.

Sadly we lost Gypsy in 2016, but now we’ve added Mishka to the family, a five-month old husky who gets along fabulously with Ellie.

Tuesday afternoon: Panicked call at work from Megan, who’d dropped by home to pick up some groceries. Mishka is missing. Ellie is still there, and the gates are secured, but no Mishka.

Immediate conclusion - someone’s taken her.

Luckily, a neighbor whose property backs on to one of our next-door neighbor’s, called Ali to say she had Mishka. She has two huskies herself, in a fenced yard, and noticed she had mysteriously acquired a third. So, we were glad to have Mishka back but instead of one mystery, we now had two. How did she get out of our yard, and how did she get into our neighbor’s - both supposedly husky-proof?

Tuesday evening: Check the fence all around the back yard. No signs of digging. No loose fencing anywhere. No obvious way for her to get out.

Wednesday morning: Feed dogs as usual and let them loose in the back yard. A little while later, spot Mishka roaming the front lawn.

Conclusion: Somehow, she can escape. So likelihood is that she got out on her own yesterday. No need to assume some stranger had let her out for some reason. From there, our favorite theory is that she found her way through the neighbor’s property to the road behind, and someone found her wandering. It’s possible someone mistakenly though they knew where she lived and let her in with the other huskies.

Wednesday evening: Take Ellie out the front and pretend to go for a walk, leaving Mishka on the deck under covert observation, hoping she’ll repeat her feat and let us see how she escaped. No such luck. A lot of plaintive whining and wandering around on the carport roof, but no jailbreak.

Wait ... what? She’s not supposed to be able to get onto the carport. We have a deck over the garage, with the carport alongside. The roof comes up level with the railing that runs around the deck. Very early on, to stop Gypsy climbing up there, I installed fence panels along the edge of the roof nearest the deck. It stopped Gypsy, but not, apparently, Mishka. She happily squeezed around the end of the fence in the few inches between that and the edge of the roof.

That’s the far end of the fence in this picture. The carport is behind the fence to the left.

More worrying, she then decided to jump into the hedge jutting out and shielding the carport entrance. She floundered in the greenery ten feet above a very hard driveway.

Luckily I was able to reach down from the deck and haul her out. She must have decided that was fun, because she repeated the performance later that evening and had to be rescued again. Not very comforting. What if she did that when we weren’t around?

Regardless, whenever we tried to tempt her to escape again, she went straight for the carport. Current theory is that she escaped previously by jumping down the far side, only a five or six foot drop into the neighbor’s yard because we’re on a hill. But clearly the carport has to be out of bounds.

Thursday morning: New lattice panel added to the deck to act as a deterrent.

Friday: No more escapes. Fingers crossed!

Brexit ... or not

This side of the pond, we have ringside seats to the surreal reality show that is American politics. While I’ve grown heartily sick of hearing about the Orange Toddler’s latest tantrums, the rest of my family back in Britain is equally sick of the even-longer-running drama of Brexit.

Some groups are pushing for a second referendum. “Let the people have their say,” they say. Opponents point to the fact that the people already had their say. Here’s where I think we get into slightly shady territory.

I remember reading about the shock when the result of the referendum was announced. There was disbelief across the whole political spectrum, and more than an unearthly hint of “What have we done?” I suspect a lot of people who voted to leave didn’t really want to leave at all. But they did want to send a message to the politicians that business as usual was not an option. It was a protest vote, something that many people felt was safe because there was no way it would actually pass ... until it did.

That’s the danger of protest votes, or of poorly-explained polls.

The time for a second referendum would have been right away, as in - this was so unexpected and has clearly taken everyone by surprise, let’s do the prudent thing and ask, “Are you sure?” That’s the common-sense response when you get an entirely unexpected answer to a question. Verify, to make sure the question was understood and the answer is genuine. Then move on.

But nearly three years have passed, we’ve passed the date when Britain should have by now been out, and we’re still no closer to having any clue how this will all shake out.

I wanna be like yoo-oo-oo

It's a sad day when the leader of the world's second largest democracy envies a brutal dictator

Democracy has spoken ...

... but the words make no sense.

:(

Music while you write?

The monthly round of the Insecure Writer’s Support Group, founded by the amazing Alex J. Cavanaugh, has been and gone. My blog feed is inundated this time of month by fellow bloggers sharing their insecurities, so I’m going to peek out cautiously from under my rock and whisper...
right now, I’m not feeling at all insecure.

In fact, things are going unusually well.

There. I’ve probably jinxed it now :)

Back in January I mentioned I’m dusting off my notes for The Ashes of Home, a sequel to Ghosts of Innocence. After some severe revamping of the overall plot and structure I’ve been writing steadily for about two weeks and keeping to schedule. I know there will be rough patches ahead, but right now, as long as I can picture a scene clearly in my mind, the words are flowing.

The really strange thing, though, is that I’ve been listening to music while I write. I’ve never done that before. Never been able to. Putting on music usually disrupts my thought processes as far as words go. Painting is different, I like music while I paint, but writing? It’s always been a no-go zone.

Until now.

What’s changed?

I don’t know if it’s because I’ve been wearing headphones to blot out sounds from elsewhere in the house. Ali says that listening to music through headphones engages the mind differently from hearing it played in the room. Maybe there’s something in that. All I know is that I hunt something down on YouTube, from Taylor Swift to The Stranglers to Tangerine Dream, put on the headphones, and away I go.

As long as it works, who cares?

How about you? Does music help or hinder your creative flow?

Things I've learned as a parent

To the question "have you done homework / chores / whatever I asked you to do," the answer "yes" is best regarded as a "no."

The more emphatic the "yes," the more likely it is to be "no."

The loudest shout from one room to the next will go unheard, but the muffled clink of a cookie jar lid can be heard clearly through three closed doors.

The words "just try it, you might like it" have never had any credibility. They didn't fool you, why would they fool your kids?

Today's "must have" absolute number one all time favourite cereal / snack / soft drink will languish, unconsumed, in the back of the cupboard for the next year.

This sometimes manifests itself as a stealth attack, wherein the item will be avidly consumed week after week right up to the point where you decide to buy it in bulk.

The best way to conceal an item is to leave it lying in the middle of the floor, preferably in a high-traffic area such as the top of the stairs, masquerading as something in need of being picked up and put away. This will render it entirely invisible.

Whenever you check the kitchen clock, leaving yourself just enough time to ferry child to music lesson / scouts / appointment with parole officer, the thirty seconds it takes to grab car keys and put on shoes will have mysteriously stretched to at least five minutes by the time you reach the car. I think Einstein's to blame. Somehow.

Singulars and plurals

I have a question to put to my erudite band of fellow bloggers. This is a problem I keep hitting, and which critiquers and work colleagues regularly take me to task over.

My problem is that I keep referring to certain collective nouns, specifically nouns that refer to groups of people, in the plural, rather than the singular.

For example...

Suppose at work there is a department called the Standards Office for Paperwork, or SOP (because we like acronyms at work. Yes we do.)

Now maybe I would say something like: SOP has a policy for the use of triplicate forms, which is causing us problems with streamlining our operation. SOP are working with us to find a solution.

I know this is wrong. The problem is that I keep using plurals like this without even thinking about it.

And I think I know why.

When I talk about something that can be seen as belonging to the collective, such as policy (which, after all, could never be the product of real people, only of a faceless machine) I'm perfectly fine with the singular.

But whenever I talk about something that implies real individuals, like solving a problem, I always see the people behind the collective name. I can't help it. And it's as if I mentally insert the words "members of" in front of the noun. So I envisage that last sentence as "Members of SOP are..."

Except that's not what I say. It's just implied. To me, anyway, but other folks don't see it that way.

So, I repeat, I know this is technically wrong, and that is not what I'm asking.


My question...OK, questions, 'cos I'm greedy like that...is

Do you have this same problem?

What do you do about it?

And, whether you are an incorrigible pluraliser or a knowledgeable grammarian, what do you think this says about how you see the world?

The floppiness of time

Is it only two weeks since I posted something about progress, and regaining some sort of control in my life?

It feels so much longer ago.

I get that a lot these days...thinking back to something that seems ages ago, and realising that it was only a matter of days.

So (before I get on with the point of this post) how's it going? Well, a cautious "so far so good". I do seem, by and large, to be getting on with things I choose to. I've certainly succeeded in limiting my online networking, as you can tell by the reduced frequency of posts and comments. Sometimes I don't even think about my blog for days on end. I do wonder, though, just how much of a good thing that is, because this is a great community to be part of.

But my thoughts two weeks ago seemed to have struck a chord, and many people are talking about how little time they have these days. Here we are, in the twenty-first century, all wired in and surrounded by labour-saving devices, and yet we seem to have less time than ever before.


These paradoxes (lack of time, and the mixed-up perception of time) prompted some thoughts about time itself. Here they are, utterly random and with no real structure...

Labour-saving devices aren't always labour-saving.

With all this technology around us, why do we seem to have so little time? Well, sometimes the technology is simply crap. We have dozens of computer systems at work. They can certainly speed up lots of tasks and convey vital information to where it needs to be, and keep track of things that would be laborious by hand. But we also have dozens of unconnected systems and invest huge amounts of time doing nothing more than keeping them fed, and passing information from one to another because they don't talk to each other gracefully.

And then, there are systems that are simply ill-conceived, that take more time to work than the work itself would have done. Grrr...

But sometimes you've just forgotten how it used to be.

Many years ago, in another life, bean-counting consultants were sniffing around my department on a mission to prove that we were an extravagant cost to the business.

Luckily, those were the days when there were still folks around who remembered life before computers, and were able to remind the bean counters of the armies of clerks who used to be needed to perform the most basic drudgery just to keep records straight. Now, a much slimmer and more expert workforce was delivering far superior customer service. If you only ever see the cost and effort of modern offices, you can easily forget the benefits that everyone now takes for granted. So a lot of systems have actually saved a lot of time, we just don't always recognise it.

Our expectations have changed, too. In the days when letters, reports, and essays had to be written out by hand, you spent all your time working out what you needed to say, and relatively little time actually saying it. Now, with all the glitzy tools available, you can easily spend ten times longer finding just the right font, tweaking the layout, adding graphics...

Then, there's the distractions of games and blogs and...focus!...where was I?

Do we really have less time than people elsewhen in history? In the rush of modern life, I ask myself how did they ever find the time to build the pyramids, or raise gothic cathedrals, all without the benefit of modern engineering? Well, I suggest that they worked long and hard and steadfastly. Bloody hard, in fact. The simple answer is that they didn't know what "free time" was.

So for us to complain about having no time these days is actually bunkum. We do have time, we just maybe don't always choose to use it wisely.

Then, of course, Parkinson's Law kicks in and soon finds new uses for all the time we manage to save.

Then we come to that other paradox...

why does a week never seem like a week?

Well, I think people like to think of time as some sort of absolute and unchanging flow. It's not.

No, I'm not going to go all Einstein on you with deep physics. This is simple psychology.

I've come to realise that, alongside the tick of the clock, the steady (ignoring relativity for now) objective time, there are several other kinds of time that are all in the mind.

First, there is our perceived time. How fast does time seem to pass as we experience it? That varies. You know how an hour of history class can drag on for a lifetime, while a fun-filled vacation passes all too quickly? I think we see the passage of time differently depending on how engaged we are with whatever's going on around us. There's no mystery. The more fun we're having, the faster we perceive time flying by. Ain't that a bitch!

But then there's our personal historical time. For me, this is affected by how many distinct memories we lay down between one moment and another. If you've been super-busy and done a lot of different things in a day, it will feel like a long day, no matter how quickly you perceived it passing at the time.

And here is the answer to that paradox, because these two times work independently of each other. So, if you are going through a fun and eventful day, it will seem to pass quickly (perceived time), but when you look back (historical time) the start of the day will seem a long time ago.

And, of course, the opposite is true. When your life is in a rut, time seems to drag. But all of a sudden you are wondering where the year has gone and it only feels like a blink of an eye.

And isn't that a sad thing to have happen to you? It's your life, after all. You only get one shot at it. So you owe it to yourself to be as engaged as you can be in your own life, before it's gone.

Cack-handedness

Now that it's full steam ahead on the pirate ship, I'm reminded time and again of something that has puzzled me ever since I took up DIY many, many years ago.

Every tape measure I've ever used has the measurements printed so that they are the right way up if you stretch it out left-to-right. i.e You hook the end of the tape over the left-hand edge of whatever you are trying to measure, hold the body of the tape in your right hand, and pull it out towards the right.

This works well until you want to mark a measurement.

I'm right handed. I want to hold the pencil in my right hand, which means I have to hold the tape in my left and cross my arms over each other. Awkward.

Also, the left-to-right thing is OK if you have a piece that you are simply trying to cut down to size, lopping off a few inches from the end, because the measured piece is to the left and the waste to the right. But I'm equally likely to be cutting several smaller pieces from a long piece of wood and therefore want to measure from the right.

I find it easier to measure nearly everything from the right, holding the tape in my left hand and not having to cross hands.

So I've got incredibly good at reading off measurements upside down.

We will remember...

Something that took us by surprise very early on in our time in Canada was the way in which Canadians mark Remembrance (or Armistice) Day.

Schools, government offices, and many businesses close. There are parades and services, and laying of wreaths at memorials even in little towns like Sidney. With the family heavily involved in both the Scouting and Guiding movements we all took part in the Sidney parade this morning. There was a great turnout of youngsters, and, more remarkably, hundreds of people of all generations lined the streets for the few blocks along the route.

Why is it that places so far from the trenches mark the occasion on the right day, with the whole community stopping to pay their respects, while Britain buries it on the nearest weekend, attended in comparison by only a dedicated few?