On dialup modems, books and all-forgiving screens.

My good friend Mala send me this very interesting article. It’s about teenagers who gave up being online for a day and the results that followed. Read it.

It got me thinking. I was raised at the time when there was no internet and phones were as big as remote controls. I was a teenager when the idea of fast internet entered in our lives and the sound of the dialup modem still haunts my dreams.*Hell, I even tried to create ringtones by adding weird number/letter combos that would eventually create a beautiful monophonic symphony of ‘Baby One More Time’. Shitiest maestro ever.

Point is, as a child and a teenager I had to entertain myself. I had to find ways to make time pass, especially when my sibling couldn't be bothered to deal with me. I used to read. I remember I read the Three Musketeer when I was ten. I was so mesmerised, that when it finished I cried because of the cruelty of Dumas to end his tale. Luckily, as with any good blockbuster, sequels ensued.

I was the type of person whose life was over when a favourite character would die. I wouldn’t know what to do with myself when a book ended, life was pointless, I could not imagine feelling joy ever again, and so on and so forth. From ages 10-22 I read all the time**, wherever I could, whatever I could get my hands to. I remember I had finals, the type that determine whether or not you’d go to uni, and I can see myself, crouching over Jane Eyre, crying my eyes out because of all the drama. I have destroyed handbags because I carried too heavy books dammit! And you can’t tell me that’s not commitment!

I can absolutely pinpoint the moment I started having difficulties reading books. I was 22 and I bought a phone that could connect online. That was it.

 The End (pun intended).

It has become harder and harder to concentrate on productive and creative things on my free time. It seems I am stuck in front of the almighty, life-giving and all-forgiving screen. As I write this entry I keep stopping just to check social media or change a song. Like the douchebag I am, I can’t even give proper time and care to this post (she said, feeling no remorse whatsoever).

And then fast internet happened, and series came into my life (I will get back to the topic of series, they’re my crack, heroin, lover and mother at the same time). And somehow, I forgot how to be submerged into a book, how to be completely taken over by a character, a story or even the pretty pictures on the pages.

Maybe people reach their book limit at some point. Maybe this is it for me. I will have to go through life with teenage books, English classics and Harry Potter (what? I feel no shame, judge away!) as my sole literary references. 

Im afraid this post will give you no closure. But we'll get there.

Won't we?

______________

*Once, I counted how many seconds were needed in order to download a second of a Youtube video. 15. 15 seconds to download 1 second of video. The horror. The horror. The shame.

** And very inappropriate books, if I may say so. I read Kinflicks, by Lisa Athler, when I was 13. It was laying around my cousin’s house and I stole BOTH paperback volumes. Shamelessly. It’s about the story of Ginny through the 60’s and 70’s in the U.S. Reading about pointy bras, lesbianism and tantric sex confused me and excited me at the same time. Needless to say, I understood half of the book, and mostly the teenage years of Ginny who was in love with a badass, cause, you know, wishful thinking. 

On flat lines, furniture and high heels.

I think I was born in the right time to be nagging about being born the wrong time in history.

Think about it.

I often find myself daydreaming, over unfinished tasks, about living in a different era. I would love to have been born at, let’s say, the peak of the industrial revolution, to be a member of the elite, shamelessly gaining wealth from child labor. I would be parading in the salons of the intellectuals, amazing gentlemen with my wit and beauty, cheering 'To Indusrty!'.

Now, knowing my luck, chances are I would be one of these children, working my fingers off inside a Dickensian factory.

See, it’s all fine and dandy (what?) when I think about it while I’m sitting in my living room, playing Assassin’s Creed, sipping my soda and enjoying the (admittedly occasional, I’ll get back to this) central heating.

I think it’s a harmless form of escapism, this wishful thinking. When an aspect (or the whole thing) of my life sucks, it’s easy to imagine I’m somewhere else where I would thrive and life would be oh! so much easier and simpler.

Ha! Imagine being a woman back then. There was a book, Flatland, written by Edwin Abbot Abbot (seriously) in 1884. In this book the world, similar to ours, is occupied by 2D geometric figures. The narrator is a square named A Square, who has triangular servants (the butler is the biggest triangle and the footman are smaller) and sons who are smaller polygons. The shapes with the higher status are polygons (our hero is a square, his sons are smaller polygons etc). You’d expect women to be circles, or at least a rhombus, what with fertility and general roundness.

But no. Women are depicted as, wait for it, LINES. Yes.

Straight.

Flat.

Lines.

Awesome.

Lines that actually wiggle their end around when they move (think of swinging crinolines and whatnot). Fucking lines.

I’m not saying that the book is bad, I haven’t read it (although it’s currently burning a hole in my Amazon basket). All I’m saying is that, considering Flatland is a metaphor for that time, it would have sucked if I lived back then.

And don’t get me started on hygiene.

Escapism works with job aspirations as well. Another daydream of mine is that one day I will own a flower shop, or a small repurposed furniture shop (hipsters around the world are throwing up right now – are there any left anyways?). In this shop I will have a beefy assistant to swoon at while I ask him to do the heavy lifting. Needless to say, I have zero knowledge, practical or theoretical, on how to repurpose furniture, apart from throwing a coat of paint on ‘em. Oh, and while we're at it, in this daydream I am also wearing high heels without being in excruciating pain all day.

Of course, it's easy to escape.

On crippling self-doubt and espionage

 You know, the kind that cripples you.

That pushes you to the wall and forces you to watch the paint cracks for a couple of hours.

Crippling self-doubt has been a dear and loyal friend of mine since I was little. I remember going to parties and thinking, moments before ringing the bell, all dressed up in hideous ‘90s floral dresses, I’d always think ‘What if it’s for next week? Or worse, what if it’s for tomorrow?’ Within moments I’d envision the said family and friend answering the door dressed in their pajamas, probably baking the cake for tomorrow.

It never happened to me. But IT COULD. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the crippling factor.

This specific fear followed me well into my adult years. To be honest, I rarely double check things and appointments, and I always remember the information from the first time I glance at it. However, I have often found myself on my way to a scheduled appointment or meeting and, moments before I arrive, feverishly scrolling up on Facebook chats or texts, trying to check the time and location of said rendezvous.

And of course (of course!) this manifests into many, many aspects of my life, because if you have crippling self-doubt, hell, it sticks with you like an STD. 'Should I have said that? Did I turn the stove of (for that, I have found the solution. I take a picture of said appliance and check it to see that it is turned off. I do not doubt photographic evidence. Yet,)'?

Crippling self-doubt has made me think twice before posting this. Not that people care. I know for a fact that the people who read this are 5 dear friends that I shove the link down their throats, as if I was attempting to make digital foie gras. They are good people. If it wasn’t for all that self-doubt I’d share this more.

Maybe I’ll get there.

Crippling self-doubt, and its good friend paranoia, cause me to double check if anyone overheard me talking to the phone.

While I’m on the street.

Next to a busy highway.

Talking no louder than a whisper.

I swear, if I ever talked in code, that I invented, I would always worry that someone would break it.

Or that I would forget it and go to an appointment the wrong day.

What I’m trying to say is, I would be a shit spy.

On lists, organisation and deep sea creatures.

Ok, so, I was writing down a list of possible topics for my entries here. Cause I want to act like an adult and make an effort and at least try to insert a smidge of organisation here. My life is completely unorganised, my home is a mess, and I write down my to-do tasks either on my hand or on post-its that I proceed to loose with mathematical precision. It’s like a well-choreographed performance. I am one of those people who will write down a list for the groceries and then forget it on their kitchen table. Result: I end up buying too much pasta and no toilet paper.

A smudge of organisation. See, I know for a fact that I will never be completely organised. I have friends who write down their appointments in their agendas, or diaries, or e-calendars. It’s beyond me. If I wanted to do that I would have to go all Faust on myself and sign a deal with the devil-potentially the shittiest deal ever made. It would go like this: ‘I wish to be organised, structured, methodical and visit the dentist at least once a year’. Devil would be like ‘You cray?’. Me ‘No. Where do I sign my immortal soul to you, oh evilest one?’

One cannot abandon hope. Strangest things have happened. Or, as they say worse things happen at sea (who says that, honestly? What is the basis of this saying? People who have seen giants squids, and the creepy fish with the light attached on their foreheads, that’s who says these things. I bet people saw that and though – well, that shit ain’t happening on dry land).*

I got very distracted from my original point. Which was meant to be about lists and how I realised that my first thoughts of topics about this blog would reduce feminists to tears. I swear, no. 2 on my list (right below ‘pooping at work’ which was, ironically, no.1) was shoes. Fucking shoes. Does that mean that my initial and basic thoughts and aspirations revolve around poop and fashion?

I should hope not.

Does it?

 It is such a disturbing thought that I erased the word shoes from the list. I was in a bus while writing it on my notebook (because I can’t write it on my phone, like a normal person, I need to have the hard ends of my notebook jabbing someone’s ribcage) and there was a bump, so I half-erased my no. 3 on the list, which is my thoughts on the book ‘Little Women’, that I might do on my bookclub with my friends Mana and Jol. Because apparently I am 80 and I only care primarily about pooping and my bookclub.

Have I crossed to the other side of wisdom? Have I reached the part where you are so self-aware, you only care about the things that really make you happy?

God, no.

I will write a new list. Or at least, I will throw away the shoes. But, dammit, I’m keeping ‘Little Women’.

*As I reread this I can only assume that my train of thought is clearly driven by Ozzy Ozbourne. 

I never finish anyth..

No, seriously.
I never do.

I started this by trying to pick a font. I stopped, I checked my emails, resumed writing this, I decided again that the font was not to my liking, I tried to pick another one, I stopped to check Facebook and halfway through that I realised I did not like the things I wrote here (aka a sentence and a half), so I got back here, though 'My God, what a terrible font' and then proceeded to finally change it. And erase the poor poor sentence and a half.

So I never really finish anything.
Chances are, I won’t even stick to this blog.

But who the hell cares.

 See, I recently discovered the diary I kept when I was a teenager (that is, years 1999 to 2003). 

Actually, sometime before that I found, buried under a pile of old books, the diary I kept when I was a child. It was a hilarious discovery of spelling mistakes and early childhood anecdotes, a few attempts to write a novel (two siblings go on an adventure in a pirate island where trees provide you with the food you need aka the salad tree gives you salad, the chicken tree that grew grilled chicken and, last but not least, the sauce tree, which grew sauces – what a flimsy thing it must have been-) and some disturbing, disturbing drawings. Apparently I was very taken with the naked human body. I intend to get back to this in future entries.

However, when I discovered my old diary I was taken aback with a couple of things. For one, my spelling was impeccable. For a ten year old, I had the vocabulary and spelling abilities of a 15 year old. I was also surprised because I clearly saw a journey of a child blossoming into a very, very dramatic teenager.

And I also noticed a pattern.

A pattern of not finishing things. Ever.

I always started doings things. Very eagerly, if I may say so. I always started writing a short story or a novel (in my mind, an epic saga, but I shall dwell on that in another entry – hell, something to look for) and then I would never finish it. I didn’t even finish writing the diary (who ever does? When did people ever finish writing a diary? Maybe in Victorian times? What constitutes the ending of a diary? Death? From consumption? From childbirth?), and I distinctly remember struggling to put down entries as the years progressed.

Anyways, I will start this, very eagerly as per use, and my aim is to (I am writing down my aims, as if this is a business plan. It is not. It’s a memo) write down recipes I like, books I like, myself, and try, oh, really try to finish something.

How does one finish a blog anyways? Death from consumption?

Tips are always welcome.