Obsessed Much?

Some of my obsessions

Why yes, now that you come to mention it, I believe I am.  Why do I sound so surprised by that?  After all, obsession is my brain’s default mode.  It’s not as if I discovered this only recently.  But there you have it: Lisa + obsession = surprised.

So it’s been just over a week since I had The Talk with my friend about my blogging, and decided to alter the way I approach it.  Since then I have posted four times in the last week - a bloody miracle!!  It usually takes me a lot more than a week to write one thing.  Last year I only managed to post four times in total - FOUR TIMES IN FIFTY-TWO WEEKS! - so I’ve already equalled that amount, and am about to surpass it in one month.  I must have had a REALLY bad year last year, ‘cos I also only managed to paint one picture, so I can’t blame it on the fact that I was doing more painting.  Bugger.

But it’s not only that I’ve posted more, there are also the photographs.  I can’t believe I’ve not tried that before!  It’s so much fun.  What is wrong with me that I’ve not thought to do it until now?  It’s not as if I haven’t seen other people doing it on their blogs.  It seems that nearly everyone does it.  And I like it.  It brightens the place up, makes it look more interesting than just a lot of words on a page.  

But no, for some reason to do with my one-track brain, I decided that I was going to stick to one form of illustration, and that was with my painting.  Keep it all uniform; boring; rigid.  Makes it a bit difficult as well when I’m not actually doing any painting.  I think I thought that this would serve as some kind of motivation for me to do more.  Yeah, that went well.

So yes, I’m obsessed with blogging.  It only took me ’til a week later to realise it.  But I got there.  And then I started worrying about it ‘cos obsessing is bad, right?  And what would happen if/when I lost interest (as I usually do), and then reverted to how it was?  How could I stop that from happening?  Blog more.  Panic blog.  Obsessively blog!  Hello?  Wasn’t that the thing I was worried that I was already doing?  Are there any brain cells at all inside my head not running around deliriously without a clue, like little people with their arms flailing about in the air?  Is anyone in charge up there??

I have a problem with the word ‘obsession’.  I will talk about being excited or enthused, but not obsessed - unless it relates to something negative, and then I will happily whip it out to beat myself around the head with.

Another obsession

I have come to associate it with negative connotations (due to a great extent to my time around the AA community), so I assume that it is a bad thing, which needs correcting.  To admit that I am obsessed is to admit that I am somehow at fault; that I am doing something wrong; that I have ‘allowed’ myself to get distracted by something that invokes the obsessive gene in me; that I am not using or applying my 12 step programme correctly.  

And what also confuses me, and makes this worse, is the fact that neurotypicals of all descriptions (even alcoholics, and suchlike) use the word arbitrarily, usually to describe something they’re really into - which sounds like what I’m experiencing, but isn’t quite.  But I just can’t explain what it is that’s different, so it sounds like I’m making a distinction based on a false technicality, in order to excuse myself for something which I think I should, actually, be able to get over if I really wanted to.

You have no idea how much I’ve really wanted to get over the way my brain works (or maybe you do, especially if you’re autistic or have adhd).  Except that the way that I stop obsessing about one thing is to move on to the next: there’s no break from it, no interim period of ‘normal’ thinking.  Just one thing after another.  

Now to a non-autistic this might sound really awful, or sad, or limited, or any number of things.  But the fact is that, unless I’m obsessing about the fact that I obsess, I don’t actually notice it because it is just the way I think: it’s as natural to me as breathing.  There is no ‘obsessive gene’, as such, which only gets triggered by certain things.  It’s not the things that cause the problem, but the brain.  I just think this way about everything.  

Nor is it always a problem to me, unless the thing I get obsessed with is negative, or leads to something negative (like internet trawling), or someone points it out (to basically let me know that I’m boring the arse off of them).  And then I start worrying about it: obsessively.  Endless fucking cycle. 

So, I have a pattern.  Lock onto something (yoga, for instance); get consumed by it (read, think, talk, possibly do if it’s action-based); either lose interest and move onto the next thing; or integrate it into my life, and gradually (hopefully) lose some of the initial intensity of the obsession.  This is what happened with yoga, and I now mostly just do it, and don’t talk or read about it because that just serves to fire up my obsession.

Much as I hate to admit it, I haven’t got a fucking clue how to manage this thing.  My go-to solution is always to follow a plan (another bloody obsession of mine - plans!), and the one thing guaranteed to fail is a plan.  I have yet to find a satisfactory method for dealing with this, other than the vague notion that I should be turning it over to God; but then I have no clear idea how that translates into practical action.  I’m not even certain that what I’ve just written about it in this post is correct.  What appeared to be a perfectly logical explanation seems to get all wobbly once it’s outside of my head.  Ho hum.

But apart from the whole issue of obsession, I have enjoyed my new-found enthusiasm for blogging this week.  I just would like for it to continue, and not to burn out from being so hyped-up.  I fear that the word with which I have but a fleeting acquaintance, in both understanding and practice (‘balance’), is going to make an appearance somewhere as part of the solution.  

I wish you peace and joy (and balance!) in your life.

Namaste

The Meaning Of Life

“You must be the change you wish to see in the world.”  Mahatma Gandhi

If it’s the case that everyone on the planet is different, a distinct entity, each with their own unique combination of characteristics, interests, and skills (not to mention physiological make-up), then why is it that “the world” insists on treating us all alike, trying to enforce on us a generic, societal norm to which we are expected to conform?

I have often noted how there appears to be a pattern to life that we are expected to comply with - it’s subtle, for the most part, but it’s there.  No-one states it outright - the government doesn’t announce that we’re being herded and penned in like sheep where they want us to be, but that’s what seems to be happening.  

Think about it - we’re born, and for a little while at the beginning we’re free.  But then we’re expected to be sent to school, and suddenly our lives are no longer our own anymore, ‘cos here is where we will be both ‘socialised’ and ‘formally’ educated in the topics and manner that someone else far removed from us dictates is appropriate (our parents have very little say in this, once they agree to turn us over to the education system), with the end goal being that we shall, hopefully, be moulded into useful citizens who will conform and contribute to society.  

Which basically means that our main objective in life will be expected to be working and making money - who gives a shit if you’re happy while you’re doing it?  Hell, everybody knows that having money makes you happy.  Don’t they?  Well, that’s what ‘the world’ would expect us to believe anyway, it seems.  Must be, since there’s so much emphasis placed on it.  

Along with making money goes the expectation that we shall want to find a romantic partner in order that we may settle down some day (kind of like sediment) and have a family, for whom we will have to provide, thus keeping alive the incentive for working, and directing our focus on the continued need to make money.  And, of course, since we have the equipment for making babies, then it’s assumed that we will naturally want to use it for that purpose at some point.  If not, then there’s something obviously ‘wrong’ with us (as if there weren’t already enough things ‘wrong’ with me already!)

Then we head into retirement, the time that we expect to be able to finally take it easy, stop chasing the money, and hopefully be able to do all those things that we weren’t able to do previously because we were too busy having to focus on making a living in order to live.  And, hopefully, of course, by now we’ve made enough to do those things.  

Except that we might well find that by this time we’ve lost the energy, enthusiasm, motivation, and physical ability to do a lot of what we dreamed of doing, having been sucked dry by the stress and general wear and tear of daily life.  Plus, of course, some of us may well have dropped down dead before then, which kind of puts the kibosh on any such plans.  So retirement literally becomes a time when we’re put out to pasture, like an old horse, for whom there’s very little use any more.  Gee, sounds great.  I can’t wait.

I understand now why, for almost the whole of the first thirty years of my life, I felt a deep sense of melancholy and gloom, having this as my invisible blueprint for what was expected of me in order to be considered a success in life, and to achieve happiness.  

One aspect in particular to which I have been giving a lot of thought  (that means obsessing) in recent weeks is school.  Do you realise that you don’t actually have to go to school; that you can legally opt out?  I didn’t know that, until now.  All those years I laboured under the illusion that I had no choice: it was either attend school, or get into trouble for truancy.  God, was I pissed off when I found out!

Sure, I’d vaguely heard about homeschooling, where, if you’re lucky, you get to be taught at home by either your parents or a private tutor.  But still, you follow the curriculum set by the education department, and you take exams.

I also recently found out that there are ‘alternative’ schools (like the Steiner Waldorf system), which place their emphasis on the needs of the individual pupil, rather than the institution, and which follow their own curriculum, giving equal importance to creative endeavours (like art, drama, dance, etc) as well as to the academic; as well as to the needs of the whole person.  Where were these people when I needed them?!

And from there I discovered unschooling, a movement dedicated to not forcing education on your child at all, but to allowing the natural process of learning to take place.  In unschooling parents don’t dictate what ‘should’ be learnt, but rather allow their children to decide what they would like to learn, based on their interests and abilities.  Nor are they expected to prove their understanding by jumping through the hoop of exams, being tested like a bloody piece of machinery before it’s allowed off the factory line and sent off to be sold.

I was astonished.  I was dumbfounded.  I was envious.  God, I wish my parents had known about that stuff when I was a child.  Instead of which I had to endure the agony, the monotony and tedium, not to mention the chronic anxiety directly related to being shoved through an average, non-creative education system, which did a grand job of sucking the soul (both creative and otherwise) out of me and my artistic aspirations.  

I went in there with a mind and body bursting with energy and ideas, but a lack of direction (mainly courtesy of having unrecognised ADHD).  I came out subdued, lifeless, full of anxiety and fear about the future, and with hardly a thought to call my own, so well-indoctrinated had I been.  But hey!, I’d got the qualifications to get myself a job as some kind of clerical worker/typist.  Wow!  Dizzy heights, I know.  What a lot to look forward to, a lifetime of being trapped in an office, with people.

I’d had all of my dreams of being a writer, an artist, an athlete dismantled.  All gone by the wayside, all considered to be simply unrealistic daydreams, fantasies, the luxury of people with the money and time to indulge in them.  Childish.  Unattainable.  Out of my league.     Considered back then to be ‘hobbies’, and not something you could make a living from: not ‘real’ work.  

No, real work is the stuff that you do to make money; that makes you miserable; that isn’t supposed to be enjoyable; that you’re glad is over by the end of the day (like school).  If you’re enjoying it then you must be doing something wrong.

And because I couldn’t use them as a means to make a living, they quickly fell by the wayside, and I stopped doing them altogether once I left education (an autistic trait, I believe - seeing no reason to do something unless it has an end purpose: mere enjoyment is not enough).

So why would God make us all uniquely individual, bestow on us widely differing gifts and talents, and then expect us to cast them aside in favour of having to learn and master the same things (egs maths, science, computers/IT, languages), thus turning us into mass-produced automatons?  I guess the answer to that is that S/He doesn’t - man does that.

Imagine all those remarkable people who have lived unique and highly creative lives, not conforming to the ‘norm’, who have produced so much incredible stuff.  How would our world look now if they’d all been forced to go through an education system designed to make them conform, and to remove their individuality?  If they’d been forced to live an ‘average’ life, making worldly goods and achievements their goals?  Doesn’t bear thinking about really, does it?  We’d still be living in the dark ages - literally, ‘cos no-one would have had the foresight to use their imagination to come up with the concept of electricity.  

We’d all still be relying on the sun, living in caves, chasing wild animals, and procreating.  Mind you, sounds preferable to the life of an ‘average’ person now - living in a shoebox-sized home, with paper-thin walls, and crammed like sardines in a tin; and working in a shoebox-sized office, with paper-thin or no walls at all, crammed in like sardines.  And people wonder why we have so many health problems when we live such an unnatural existence.  Are they mad?

Twitter Ye Not

I fear I may have inadvertently become an internet stalker. 

I’ll try to keep this short and tweet. 

What began as a bit of loitering, has gradually progressed into lurking, only to finally evolve  into stalking.  I am talking here about having discovered the world of social networking – Twitter, in particular.

 As I may have mentioned before, I have this ‘thing’ with the internet.  ‘Thing’ being a mild way to describe the driving desire I experience when I come on here without strict guidelines and a specific goal in mind.  Otherwise it’s akin to sending a lone child off into a sweet shop, with a credit card – don’t expect me back any time soon, or without having bought or eaten everything in sight.   

Apart from my insatiable desire for seeking out information on any topic which randomly distracts my mind, I have a particular ‘interest’ in reading ebooks – an extension of my love of reading the real thing.  This unfortunate turn of events came about as the result of acquiring an iPod Touch a while ago, when I was suddenly catapulted into the world of apps. And, being of limited imagination when it comes to using technology, my attention was drawn to the familiar and comforting world of books – available instantaneously on my iPod.  Oh joy!  I thought I’d died and gone to heaven.    

Then, oh double joy, I found that they were also accessible to me on my computer.  All this time and I hadn’t known I’d got an instant library at my fingertips.  Out of my mind went the tiny detail about why I had given up going to the real library (because it’s full of books, and I would bring as many of them home as possible, and promptly get lost in reading them all, whilst neglecting other areas of my life – like sleeping, eating properly, getting dressed, and suchlike.  You know, the trivial details). 

So I failed to make the obvious connection between an internet library and the real thing, but instead made up for what I’d been missing out on, promptly going berserk, reading round the clock, and probably doing untold damage to my eyesight, and my brain, in the process.  All attempts at controlling it didn’t work, due in part to the fact that I couldn’t think of anything else to use the iPod for, other than to listen to music (which was the original purpose for buying it).

In the end I did the only sensible thing – I got rid of it.  However, a monster had been unleashed, and now demanded to be kept fed - the love of on-line reading.  I’ve always been a voracious reader, and here I’d found another way of doing it, with access to a whole world of literature I’d never have otherwise encountered, or wanted to pay for.  Or wanted to be seen in the company of.  This way I could have access to books which I would not consider checking out of a library, or buying from a bookshop, because of the embarrassment.  I have my image to maintain, don’t you know.

In the process I discovered a particular author whose books I found I liked.  That would not have been so bad had I not also discovered that she has a blog, which I proceeded to follow.  And then I found ‘THE LINKS’ – yes, there they were, sitting innocently on the page, under the heading ‘Want to get social?’  And, of course, the social butterfly in me (yeah, right – she sits alongside the maths genius, the computer geek, and the musical maestro), she piped up and insisted that yes, she did, that she’d like to stretch her wings a little, and that it would be okay just to have a little look.  Really, it would only be a peek.

And the rest, as is so often the case, is history: meaning a repetition of the same old thing, with the inevitable conclusion - I am now a Twitter obsessive.

However, this does not mean that I have joined the ranks of the Twitterers, and am now gaily interacting with the inhabitants of that strange on-line world.  On the contrary, I merely sit on the sidelines, reading tweets, feeling a familiar sense of detachment, whilst being fascinated with the conversations taking place.  It actually feels like I’m reading a book, or watching television (another medium which I had to rid myself of, ‘cos it was sucking the life out of me).  I begin to live vicariously, whilst my own life gradually fades into the background, eventually almost ceasing to exist. 

I have gone so far as to calculate the time difference between the countries of said author and myself, in order to be able to work out when I can next expect new tweets to appear.  This is on account of the fact that I initially spent a great deal of time checking and re-checking every few minutes, only to be frustrated to find there was nothing new to read: until I realised that it was the middle of the night in America when I was doing most of my twalking (a new word for tweet stalking).  Yes, it’s got that bad.  If I carry on like this, I’ll be plotting out her day!

I feel a bit like a voyeur, which is faintly disturbing, even though there’s nothing sexual in what I’m doing.  But then our world has become quite voyeuristic, the way we are able to read about or watch what’s happening in other peoples’ lives, via the news or reality television, newspapers and magazines, and the internet.  Me, I find myself strangely fascinated and enthralled by the way people discourse with each other.  I imagine this is how an alien would feel, peering through a microscope at an entirely different species, studying how it works.  

Or perhaps it’s ‘cos it’s a bloody effective way of avoiding my daily routine!

Whatever the reason, the fact is that Tweeting is bad for my health, and I think I should leave it to the people who can do it without abandoning the rest of their lives.  And to the birds.  Tweet tweet.

A Bee In My Bonnet

  A Pooh song from “Winnie The Pooh”, by AA Milne:

“Isn’t it funny

How a bear likes honey?

Buzz! Buzz! Buzz!

I wonder why he does?”

Probably because someone told him that it’s really good for him!  Alas, they neglected to take into consideration the fact that Pooh bear is rather a sugar addict and compulsive overeater, so the last thing he needs is pure sugar – no matter how healthy it’s supposed to be.  I guess they weren’t into labels (please read ‘Lamb To The Slaughter’ for amplification – if you’re interested, that is; and if you don’t know to what I’m referring, of course).

So, what have I got against honey, you may be asking?  Actually, absolutely nothing.  In fact, my only gripe is that I can’t eat it.  At least, not without doing a Pooh.  Put sugar in my system – nay, you only have to put it in my mouth – and I turn into something akin to a rabid dog, foaming at the mouth and ready to tear out the throat of anyone dumb enough to try to get between me and my supply.  And then there’s what it does to my body and my mind ... 

Which is why I don’t eat it any more: but it doesn’t stop me wanting to sometimes when I hear about the phenomenal health benefits to be had from doing so.  And honey – that’s MANUKA honey, ‘cos your bog-standard variety won’t do anymore – is one such thing that is high on the list of wonderness in the world of wonder foods.  You can tell just how wonderful it is because of the price you have to pay for it – a bit like buying a designer dress.  And its popularity is not guaranteed, this being the health industry, which is almost as fickle as the fashion world – one minute you’re in, the next you’ve been relegated to the second division (designing clothes for Tesco’s), and replaced by the next big thing.  Just look at soya. 

But it was the brief mention of Manuka honey that led me to make the rash decision based on a rash of self-will, which resulted in a most delightful reaction – a rash.  Yes, it appears that I am allergic to bee products – not just honey, because of the sugar allergy, but anything digestible which those furry little insects produce.  Having tried to find a loophole in the whole “honey is pure sugar and therefore bad for a sugar addict” argument (and failed), I came up with the brilliant idea of buying some Royal Jelly capsules, figuring I’d be safe with those.  I would get the same kind of health benefits that the Manuka honey eaters get, and I could stop feeling as if I was being deprived of some magical cure. 

And I’d just have to be content with wearing Manuka yoga clothing.  (No, they are not clothes made out of honey: it just happens to be the name of the company who makes them.  And yes, I finally caved in to my obsession with having to have ‘proper’ yoga clothes for my practise, having made do for the last eight years without.  Hey ho!  Strangely enough, it hasn’t made any difference to my practise either: I still can’t do Shoulderstand without having to hoick up my top so that I can get a grip on my back because my hands slip on the material.  And there I was, seriously believing that they were made with some special non-slip material, and that that’s why none of the pictures of Katy Appleton, or any other yogis I’ve gawped at on the web, show them with their t-shirts half-way up their backs!) 

So, Royal Jelly, for those of you not in the know, is NOT the wobbly stuff made from water and what appear to be coloured cubes of rubber, which happens to have been given the Queen’s royal approval (Americans call it jello, I believe, in case there’s some confusion).  It’s the stuff that is fed to bee larvae and, in particular, is continued to be fed to those chosen to be queen bees, thus producing bigger, stronger, fertile bees, with apparently lovely skin.  I’m deducing that this last point must be the case, as one of its supposed benefits is for the skin, and it is also used in beauty products.  Of course, I can’t actually say for certain whether this is true about the queen, since I’ve never got up close enough to notice whether she has any skin.  I’ve always been under the impression that bees were simply furry little blobs who ambled around flowers, buzzing about amicably enough as long as you didn’t do anything rash (cue ironic laughter) - like try to kill them.  Or steal their honey.

As it turned out, I didn’t get the chance to take it for long enough to experience any of the numerous health benefits attributed to it, nor even to notice whether it had any impact on my skin.  Or, should I say, any beneficial impact.  It certainly impacted - like a comet searing the Earth.  I still have a residual trail of rash marks, nearly a month after it appeared.  Fortunately the extreme pain and itchiness have gone, along with the band of tightness around my chest which made me feel as if I were being squeezed to death by a Boa Constrictor.  I had great difficulty in getting comfortable for a few days, and for three nights I was in such agony I was kept awake by it, unable to find a restful position in which to lay.  I have since discovered that it could have been worse – I could have died (seriously, no kidding).  It puts a whole new slant on the words ‘health food’.  And perhaps there’s some symbolism in the fact that bees live in hives?!  God willing I’ll remember that next time I get another bee in my bonnet.  

Pulp Fiction

I think there’s a conspiracy to get people to eat crap – and I don’t mean junk food.  Nope, this is a whole new, wonderful world of crap: a bizarre twist on the old, familiar version.  This involves eating what’s left over after you’ve made milk.

Okay, just to clarify – I’m not talking about cows here.  I mean, obviously, you don’t actually make the milk, the cow does: it just requires you to go and milk the cow.  And the only thing that would be left over to eat from that particular venture would be the cow.  Which would mean you’d be killing your source of milk.  Not a good idea, really.  Nor does it actually qualify as vegetarian (which I am).  So, no - cows are out.

No, I’m talking about having discovered the wondrous universe of homemade nut milk.  In fact, as I’ve recently discovered, you can make milk from lots of things (rice, oats, soya beans, seeds): which is kind of logical, really, considering you can buy all these different varieties – at a price.  If you ever consider going vegetarian/vegan, and becoming a health food nut, make sure you have a healthy bank balance first.  And for what you pay for a litre of milk, you’d expect that you’d be getting something exceptional: or, at the least, something which resembled the thing from which it was supposed to be made.  Instead of which, the predominant ingredients in most of them is water and some kind of sweetener: and you get approximately 7% almonds (or soya beans, etc).  So paying £3 for a litre of almond milk means that you’re buying a very expensive, flavoured water.

What I didn’t realise was just how easy it is to make the stuff, and how much nicer it tastes (well, some of them, anyway: oat milk is rather slimey).  But I do now.  And my new obsession is with making milk.  I even bought a blender, especially for the task.  It’s great.  I’m in love with my blender.  It also makes wonderfully smooth soup.

But I digress.  So, I have been making almond milk.  I did my research first, and acquired about a hundred different versions of the same recipe.  And, in the process, I discovered that you could also use the pulp that is left over from the almonds.  There’s even a whole web site dedicated to the care and use of almond pulp – almondpulp.com.  Seriously!  Not to mention all the individuals out there who have also come up with their own ideas.

Of course I figured it must be good, if so many people were saying it was – which they were.  And there was the whole question of it being an environmentally good thing to do, with regard to not wasting anything.  So, on my first attempt at making milk, I decided to keep said pulp, and then stick it in one of my own recipes.  It has to be said that it doesn’t actually look particularly appetising – kind of like damp, mashed-up, crumbly cardboard.  And hey! that’s how it tasted.  Perhaps “tasted” is too strong a word for something that actually had no flavour to it, and which was so dry it felt like I was eating a portion of the Sahara desert.

However, true to my persistent nature (when it comes to obsessions), I decided that perhaps the problem lay with my recipe, and that I should give it another go, this time following a ‘proper’ recipe off the web.  I found loads – interestingly enough, none of them suggestions for using it in papier mache.  And, on my next milk venture, I duly saved the pulp (much like Save the Whale), and proceeded to follow two suggestions – one for crackers (which I have been considered to be on numerous occasions), and the other for an alternative version of houmous.

How can I best describe the taste experience which followed?  It truly is difficult to impart the full impact of eating something which, even with added to it a whole host of ingredients meant to give flavour and moisture, is still able to resolutely retain its full character in the face of a head-on assault by people trying to make it into something it isn’t – edible.  Let’s face it, it’s pulp!  I mean, even the name gives away the truth.  It’s dry and it’s bland, and it’s literally the crap left over after you’ve soaked, blended, and squeezed out from it all of the goodness.  I nearly choked on the crackers, and had to throw half the houmous away, thereby wasting not only the pulp itself but the ingredients added to it in order to save it from being wasted in the first place!

Its blandness reminded me of that other inedible disaster of the health gourmet world – tofu.  And the hype for this stuff is phenomenal – they have been able to turn its lack of flavour into one of its biggest selling points, describing it as being versatile and great for soaking up other flavours.  Funnily enough, despite persisting at great length with it (having believed the hype, and convinced myself that I really did like it, and it was really good for my health), I never did discover any way to mask the blandness (except, perhaps, when I mashed it with tinned sardines.  Yes, I said sardines – in tomato sauce).  Fresh, it was like a solid block of taste-free blancmange: frozen and defrosted it took on the texture, and probable taste, of a sponge.  Perhaps someone should come up with a recipe that combines the two, see if they cancel each other out.  It could be the taste sensation of the decade.

Call me fickle, but I gave up on it in the end.  I realised that life’s too short to be eating foods you don’t enjoy, just because you’re told it’s good for your health.  Of course, I have to keep reapplying this maxim because I will keep on forgetting, and insist on trying to include in my diet every new food I’m told has the potential to cure all known ailments and combat ageing.  I swear I’d eat elephant poo if it was marketed correctly.  Who cares about taste, just tell me the health benefits – my favourite words on the web.

You know the real irony of this attempt to avoid waste, though, is the fact that some of the recipes which require the nutritious, delicious pulp to be cooked actually necessitate that it be put in the oven on the lowest setting for twenty hours.  No, you didn’t read that wrongly.  No, that isn’t a typing error.  Yes, I said twenty HOURS!  This is in order that the enzymes left over from it having been blended to death (so, surely, there can’t be that many remaining?) are kept intact, thereby assuring its continued nutritional benefit.  Can you imagine how much energy is being wasted all over the world by all the people following these recipes, in an attempt to avoid wasting a bit of left-over rubbish?

 And now here’s the really ironic bit: you’re not actually cooking, but dehydrating it.  This stuff, which is already as parched as the bleached remains of a dead camel in the desert, is then going to be sucked dry of the tiny bit of moisture that couldn’t be squeezed out of it for milk.  Are these people vampires?  And I’m told I’m bonkers!  Well, hey, I must be ‘cos I tried the recipe – though the version I followed required the crackers to be left in the oven for twenty minutes, rather than hours.  Perhaps that’s why it didn’t taste so good?  Perhaps I should give the longer version a try ... and join the rest of the dehydrating world in wasting energy, and time, trying to come up with useful things to do with pulp.   

So, the moral of this story?  You really can’t believe everything you read on the web, no matter how great a majority of people appear to be saying the same thing.  My friend keeps telling me this (me being the gullible, literal-minded soul that I am), and she also informs me that people are out there trying to sell me stuff.  That’s why they have web-sites.  And it’s not always obvious what it is that they are trying to sell.  But I usually come off there having been sold some idea or other, so they’re doing a grand job.  As for pulp?  I’ll just put it where it belongs - in the bin – and trust that the waste recycling police don’t come and arrest me! 

        

Lamb To The Slaughter

Gullible – easily deceived or tricked, credulous. 

Credulous – apt to believe without sufficient evidence; unsuspecting. 

Absorbent – something that absorbs; retentive. 

Absorb – to suck in; to swallow up; to imbibe; to take in; to assimilate; to take up and transform instead of transmitting or reflecting (this last definition is actually related to physics, but it describes perfectly what I’m talking about). 

Naive – overtrusting and unworldly.

This is me.  At least, this is a part of me.  And, if you ask me, it’s a most annoying part which I could well do without, since it appears to be nothing more than one ginormous liability, and to achieve little other than to frequently drop me in a deep pile of poo.  But no-one asked my permission when they were dishing out personality traits, so I’m basically lumbered with them.

So here’s an example to illustrate.

I had a brainwave recently.  At least, I thought that’s what it was at the time.  And when I got it out in the open and shared it with my friend, she agreed that it seemed like a good idea.  Except it transpired that it wasn’t.  A lot of which was to do with the fact that we were, once again, talking at cross-purposes.  And that the third party involved in this comedy of errors turned out to be wholly inappropriate for an autistic with a history of eating disorders, the absorbency of a toilet roll, and the passivity of a new-born lamb.  Lead me on to the slaughter, baaaa ...

This great idea?  I finally decided to go and see an ayurvedic practitioner to check whether my diet really is as healthy as my friend insists it is.  And ‘cos I love yoga, to which ayurveda is generally attached – so I just have to go the whole hog, trotters and all.  Plus, it’s ancient, eastern, and holistic, so it’s got to be good: well, that’s the message I’ve absorbed anyway, and who am I to argue with a bunch of three thousand year old wise men and their collected words of wisdom, not to mention the force of nature that is today’s media hype?  I even had my friend phone the aforementioned practitioner beforehand (sounds like something akin to Magic and the Dark Arts), to pave the way.  So, on that note, what could possibly go wrong? 

Well, let’s see what happens when we approach this from a more realistic perspective, starting with the not-so-insignificant detail of my autism – you know, the thing that sets me apart from my fellow man, and impairs my ability to communicate with, and understand, the world at large?  Ooops!  It seems I’d forgotten about that.  Or I’d decided that this was not going to be a problem because she’s ayurvedic, so we must speak the same language – yogi.  It transcends all communication barriers.  Yeah, right.  I really must stop snorting turmeric. 

Then there’s the equally-inconsequential item which is my ADHD.  Ah yes, that’s that thing which affects my ability to sit still for nigh on a nanosecond, and influences the length of time I can focus on anything before my brain disengages and my mind drifts off into inner space (of which there appears to be an infinite amount, given the number of times I get lost in there).  But of course that’s not going to be a problem when I’m going to be expected to sit still and concentrate for an hour and a half, in the company of a complete stranger, a feat I can only manage for thirty minutes at a time at home, where I’m by myself.  No, not going to be a problem at all – not when she’s got ayurveda on her side.  Makes perfect sense – to a deranged lunatic, high on the combined effects of numerous eastern mystical philosophies.

And furthermore, we have the negligible factor that is my anxiety.  That’s my Social anxiety.  You know, where a person suffers anxiety when out in society – that thing that involves people.  And where I get extremely anxious about going anywhere unfamiliar, in case I get lost and end up having to ask one of those people-things for directions.  But again this is not going to be a problem because this person is an Ayurvedic Practitioner – she doesn’t count as part of that societal thing.  She was going to have a magical effect on me.  Sheeesh!  I really should give up mainlining coriander as well.

Ergo, the question should really be, “What could possibly go right?”

As it turned out, not a lot, really.  First off, she sent me a booklet to read before my visit.  Bad sign.  I was supposed to be avoiding any more reading because my mind is already addled from attempting to understand what is, basically, another foreign language.  That’s why I was paying to see her, so that she could demystify and simplify it all.  Obviously we were already having difficulty communicating, and we hadn’t even spoken yet.

Then, two days before, I had a blinding flash of insight – what the hell was I doing, going to see someone I didn’t know, with everything I’ve got going on with me?  Really augured well.

The experience itself was underwhelming, to say the least.  The person who recommended her to me (whose dietary advice I have frequently followed like an over-enthusiastic lemming leaping repeatedly from a cliff-top) had said that she had an aura about her.  Well, all I can say is that her aura must have taken a sabbatical that day to get recharged. 

The only aura visible to me was that of wealth, and a carefully controlled and contrived environment of calm and spirituality.  You know, where everything is in its place, she’s got all the right accoutrements (yoga magazines carefully arranged on the dining room table, incense burning, the occasional Hindu statue dotted discreetly around the place), the decor consists of thirty different shades of beige (my idea of decorating hell), and her first words are: “Just be yourself”, followed by, “Could you please take your shoes off as we don’t allow outdoor footwear inside.”  Yep, two phrases guaranteed to make me feel welcome and at ease.  There is something not quite right about a person who has to tell you to be yourself in their company.  “House of correction” is what sprang to mind.

So, what did I gain from my visit?  A headache and a feeling that my mind had reached way beyond saturation-point in its absorbency quota for the day.  Were it actually a toilet roll, then it would have had the composition of one that had been dropped down the loo.

Apparently they don’t do labels in ayurveda – which  confused me somewhat when she labelled me a pitta person (it’s my dosha type.  Don’t ask.)  It also made it rather difficult for me to fulfil her earlier wish for me to just be myself.  By the very nature of being autistic I find it difficult to know who my self is (hence the copying), and labels help me in piecing together a picture of who I am, and how I want to develop.  I don’t use them to restrict my growth but to enable it: after all, if you don’t know where you are then you can’t know where you’re going, or whether you even need to go.  Unfortunately this is not how she saw it, so she completely disregarded all my ‘labels’, which I had diligently listed, when diagnosing me and formulating her idea of my food plan.  I felt so valued.

What I did get was the knowledge that the quality of my diet is excellent – BUT...

I also came away with a great sense of disappointment, and my illusions about ayurveda rather dismantled somewhat.  I’d gone with the expectation of it being something great, mystical, magical, fail-proof, totally non-generic, and tailored completely to the needs of the individual: and come out of there feeling like I’d been put in a box marked ‘Pitta Person’. 

This, as it turns out, is not a bad thing (seeing the truth, I mean, not the part about being put in a box), because I finally have a realistic view of what I have been so gullibly enamoured with. 

Of course, how long this view of reality lasts is anyone’s guess, given my propensity for forgetting the truth at the speed with which it takes someone to mention that Manuka honey is the new wonder food, and is highly valued in ayurvedic medicine ...  The wonder of it all is that anyone bothers to eat any of the bog-standard foods any more, when you can apparently gain everything you need from a few specially selected ‘superfoods’.  It’s also a bloody wonder that I haven’t gone bankrupt or killed myself from my dabblings.  Yep, it definitely starts to sound like I’ve been dallying in the Dark Arts: and me the ultimate sacrificial lamb.  God knows the results are just as terrifying ...

Unfortunately, though, there’s been a high price to pay for the knowledge (and I’m not just talking about the expensive consultation fee).  She has planted seeds in my mind - seeds of doubt, which will now take root and grow, no matter how much I take a spade to them to dig them up and discard them.  And I’ll have to keep doing that for a very long time, to make sure I don’t end up with a bloody forest in there, blocking out the light of truth (not to mention sanity!), otherwise I’ll suddenly find myself surreptitiously changing the bits of my diet she said were not ayurvedic, and altering my daily plan.  My mind, it seems, is nothing more than a manure pile just waiting for any random person to come along and cast indiscriminate information my way, to take root in my fertile noggin.  I should have a sign painted on my forehead: “Plant your seed here, free!”   

Art Failure!

Oh dear, I’ve discovered something which gives me a justifiable reason for hoarding rubbish – it’s called ART! More precisely, it’s crafts. And, to be even more specific, at the moment it’s actually papier mache. Prior to this it was decoupage – I was going to decoupage everything in sight: I still might do so once this obsession has worn off. In fact I can even combine the two things and decoupage my papier mached creations – how great is that?! Well, it would be if I could ever take the plunge and make a start on the bloody thing!

I love making things, but what I seem to love even more is collecting stuff with which to be creative, and obsessively thinking and reading about the activity. I’ve already come up with half a dozen ideas for what to make with this particular craft form, not to mention having rescued numerous materials which would normally get thrown in the recycling bin. I’ve even bought the additional necessary items required to get going (the flour for making the paste, and balloons for the first easy project). All this, plus having deluged myself with research on-line about how to make paste, how to make pulp (how many different recipes for making the same paste and pulp does one person need?!), what techniques to use, and numerous inspirational guidelines for what to make. Noah’s flood was a light shower compared to this!

And yet I continue to look and, in the process, manage to avoid taking the BIG LEAP of having a go myself. It also has the contrary effect of dampening my enthusiasm for the whole idea, as it starts to get more and more complicated - whose advice is the best?; which instructions should I follow?; how am I ever going to be able to make anything like the things I’ve seen created by other people on some of these sites?; what if it doesn’t work?; should I even bother?!

Ah yes, it’s the Cycle Of Doom! It’s the way I approach everything new (and not-so-new) in life, especially when it’s something that’s meant to be enjoyable. It seems to go like this:-

 First we have a spark (or conflagration!) of interest in a new idea or activity;

 Then the fire gets fuelled by plenty of petrol (meaning I start thinking, reading, talking, and dreaming about it all the time – commonly known as obsessing!);

 I “plan” to do it (this is my version of a plan, which means a kind of vague wandering in my mind going over the instructions again and again, and, if required for chosen activity, start buying or hoarding things for it – one of my favourite parts of the whole process!);

 And then I procrastinate about making a start, as I worry about how and where to begin, what the end result will be like, whether I can actually do it, whether I’ve understood the instructions properly, what a waste of materials it will be if I get it wrong, what will I do with it if I get it right, where will I house all my creative efforts (having, as I do, very little space to spare, and visualising being snowed under in an avalanche of solidified paper!), what will I do instead of this if I discover that I either don’t enjoy it or am useless at it, and what will I do for my next project if I ever get this one finished! As you may have noticed from my list of worries there’s no logical progression from one to another, and they generally all descend on me together – it’s like being mugged by a bunch of dufflepuds! (For amplification please read ‘The Voyage Of The Dawntreader’ by C S Lewis.);

 By this time I’m almost in a state of meltdown, my whole happiness has become dependent upon the success (or otherwise) of my ability to make a bowl out of a few bits of newspaper stuck onto a balloon: everything else in the world has paled into insignificance, to the point that if I don’t manage to prevail then all the meaning to my life will be lost and, basically, there will remain no reason to go on.
You think I jest? You think I exaggerate? If you’re non-autistic you probably do: if you’re autistic you’ll likely know what I’m talking about and know that I don’t, that it’s no laughing matter .... at least, not while it’s happening!;

 Then finally, after reaching a crescendo of anticipatory dread and anxiety (with, if I’m lucky, possibly a smidgeon of excitement lurking guiltily in the background!), the magic moment materialises and I take the plunge. Well, actually, it’s more like dipping a toe timorously in the water, in case something hideous is hiding ready to leap out and get me – like, perhaps, an unforeseen bout of enthusiasm!

So, there’s the Cycle: and here’s the really thrilling thing – I get to go through it with every single project I undertake! Yes, every time I come to the end of making one article I have the great good fortune to have to endure the exact same process, with no omissions, for the next creation. There’s no “once you’ve taken the plunge the first time, the next will be easier” for me. No: I’m always wary of sticking my toe in the water, even when it’s the same water and I’ve been keeping a check on it to make sure that no-one changes it or introduces something untoward during a moment when I might have been off my guard – people are like that, you know, always wanting to tweak things!


BREAKING NEWS!!! AUTISTIC WOMAN TAKES PLUNGE INTO PAPIER MACHE!!!

Not literally, of course, but yes I have made a start and, in the attempt, braved the Cycle of Doom 2 – The Revenge! Yes, this is where, having survived the first, I’m hit by the Second Wave of Doom – very similar to the original, with just slight modifications to take into account the fact that I’m now doing, rather than just thinking about doing, whichever activity it is that I’m trying to avoid!

I’ve also discovered that I can’t blow up a balloon! Seriously: I have seemingly forgotten how to do it. The instructions, simple as they are, just don’t compute. I know I used to be able to do it, but it seems that, as with all things connected with being an Asperger, if I don’t keep up a consistent practise then, for some bizarre reason, I forget how to do it (I swear I’d forget how to breathe properly if I didn’t have to think about it for yoga!). And since balloon-blowing hasn’t played much part in my life, not really being a necessary skill for living (unless you have children, are one of those balloon artists who make strange shapes out of them for a living, or do papier bloody mache!), the technique has deserted me. Which is a bit of a bugger considering that it now appears to be a requisite for my newly-acquired interest in the paper mashing arts. I’ll just have to buy a balloon pump – it’s either that or go around asking people if they can blow up a balloon for me; and then I’d have to explain to them that I don’t mean that I want them to use an explosive to blast the thing to smithereens – just in case they’re literal too!

So I’ve ended up having to use a bowl to make, of all things, a bowl! And I’ve also ended up having to dispense with most of the ‘rubbish’ that I’d managed to accumulate in the space of a week because it turns out to be not very useful. This should come as no surprise, really, as I also have an innate ability for being incapable of knowing what’s important and what isn’t, which translates as being able to dispense with what matters whilst holding on like a limpet to what doesn’t! So I think that, in an attempt to copy the Egyptians, I shall have all of my most treasured worldly goods buried with me to take into the afterlife – which means that I’ll be surrounded by papier mache sculptures and, rather than bury me, someone will just need to strike a match and I’ll go up in flames. Performance art!

What Katy Did

I haven’t yet mentioned my favourite obsession, have I? Bloody hell, that’s very remiss of me! It’s what my friend calls my “special interest”. Apparently lots of autistics have one, something which takes precedence over everything else, including all other obsessions. Well mine is yoga. And ‘Katy’ is Katy Appleton, the yoga teacher whose books I follow, and whose web-site, words, personality, and life in general I have varyingly tried to emulate – which is not such a good idea ‘cos she’s not autistic, and her life is nothing like mine. But try impressing that upon me when I’m in the middle of an obsession.

For one thing she was a ballet dancer before she became a yoga teacher. I’m neither, but I decided I’d like to be both when I discovered Katy and her book. Never one to let reality interfere with my obsessions, I pointed to the fact that, as an adolescent at secondary school, I’d done ballet and enjoyed it. Who cared that we’d only had about half a dozen lessons before the whole thing was abandoned (my school not exactly being a hotbed of artistic excellence), or that I am now in my forties? I concluded that this must mean that I would love it now, because Katy did, and I share with her the love of yoga. Stands to reason.

Well, actually, no it doesn’t. For example, my friend Dee and I have quite a number of things in common that we both like, but strangely enough she has absolutely no interest in yoga whatsoever, a fact which I find completely bewildering considering that she is a very spiritual person. I assume that every spiritual person will take to yoga the way that I did, and that it’s only on account of not having had the opportunity to try it yet that keeps them from doing so. And with that in mind I have taken it to be part of my duty to spread the word about the wonders of yoga - with over-zealous enthusiasm, and an obsessive desire to talk about it at every opportunity. I have probably bored people out of any interest in it that they may once have had, thus diminishing, rather than increasing, the number of possible convertees.

So back to Katy, whose own enthusiasm fortunately did not deter me. On the contrary, it served to re-kindle the fire which had waned somewhat after an inauspicious start to my yoga journey. I’d tried a couple of other books – one of them made it so difficult and boring I lost interest after about a month; the other neglected to include specific warnings with regard to possible dangers, and left me crippled with back pain. I took the motto, “No pain, no gain” rather literally – but then I would do, wouldn’t I? I’m autistic.

But then I found Katy. Well, not literally. She wasn’t standing there, in the library, just hanging about waiting for me to come across her and take her home with me. But her book was. ‘Introducing Yoga’ (in case you’re interested!) – a beginner’s guide to yoga. I’d seen it before and decided it wasn’t for me. I don’t do beginners’ anything: I like to launch myself straight in at the deep end, believing that I don’t really need a gentle introduction, plus I haven’t got the time to waste on it. It probably accounts for why I’ve spent most of my life feeling as if I’m drowning in a sea of confusing ideas and free-floating bits of information which are anchored to nothing in particular, but which have an annoying habit of clonking me in the head every so often. It also explains why I never seem to get very far very quickly, because in the end I have to go back to the beginning any way in order to make sense of it all!

I took it home, and so discovered what has turned out to be one of the greatest gifts I have been given in helping me to live with being autistic (and all my other attendant conditions), before I even knew I was one. I’ve learned lots of interesting and useful things – like discipline (my least favourite thing in the world), and how to breathe properly. It doesn’t half help, especially when you suffer from anxiety and a mind that’s prone to thinking at a rate faster than the speed of light, which can leave you feeling as if you’ve just been dragged across the cosmos by a comet.

But of course, as with everything that I latch onto, I have gone through the inevitable obsessional period, which involves submerging myself not only in the practice of yoga itself by simply following the book, but also in making everything in my life revolve around yoga, and trying to become more like Katy. So Katy loves ballet – I love ballet (I’ve had a fleeting interest in it at various times in my life, which could hardly be called love); Katy likes listening to Cafe del Mar – I like Cafe del Mar (no I don’t: it bored the arse off of me); Katy loves Shiva Rea – I love Shiva Rea (she’s another yogi, and I find her very annoying ‘cos she speaks in a kind of code that is total twaddle); Katy eats salads, soups, and raw fish – I decide that’s what I should eat (though fortunately I don’t like any of them so that scuppers that plan).

“Copying” is the only word I can think of to describe it, though it doesn’t really fit what it is that happens. It’s like I try to emulate people I admire but then, for some reason, I start to lose everything that is me and begin to take on, wholesale, their identity. All or nothing again. And, the thing is, it isn’t a conscious decision or action. I’m not setting out to copy, I just end up believing that they must be right about everything, so how they live must be the right way to live.

Plus, of course, I then decide I have to adopt everything connected with yoga; which means getting obsessed with following ayurvedic principles around food and health, reading the Bhagavad Gita and Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras, compulsively reading not only Katy’s web-site but any others to do with yoga, adopting the Hindu God Shiva as my higher power, buying a statue of Buddha to help with meditation, and deciding I really must have ‘proper’ yoga clothes in which to do my practice. In short I complicate it all, which is generally what I do with most things. I think it’s also known as ‘overkill’!

I am pleased, and relieved, to report that I have come through all of this unscathed, and with my love of yoga still intact – only now I have got it down to the essence of what works for me, which is the practice. I still follow Katy’s books, but not Katy any more. She’s very fortunate that I don’t live in London, where she is based, and that I suffer social anxiety, otherwise I might well have ended up literally following her - to see What Katy Did Next.