Erratic

I love using overly flowery language. But it also makes me feel like a knob. (A knob is admittedly crass British terminology for the famous male appendage. They have many, many euphemisms for said appendage, which lends itself beautifully to expressing oneself.) It’s so pleasing to go over the top with language while writing, albeit self indulgent. (“Masturbatory” is an even less flattering descriptor.)

I’m feeling a bit sorry for myself in this moment. Sorry for myself as I eat a slice of school cake and drink a vanilla oat latte in a perfectly lovely establishment with no internet. (Those are all positive things.) But I just dropped my lil dude off at Nursery, and there were crying kids, and he became one of them. But the care worker reached her hands down to him and he lifted his straight up to hers, and they were off. I snuck out. I felt nauseous before I left him there and now I could cry into my absolutely-fine-and-enjoyable coffee and cake.

Y’know what I’m trying to practice? Being positive. It can be hard sometimes. It’s actually really easy to complain. And sometimes it’s good and necessary! Sometimes you just need to let it all out and acknowledge all the ways in which things or hard or people are annoying or things don’t seem to be going exactly your way. But it so easily stacks up into a complain-y lifestyle, where all you do is moan about everything that happens to you, be it good or bad or otherwise. You can complain about anything if you try hard enough. (Just apply yourself! But no, actually, there isn’t anything simpler than complaining about everything.) Being positive takes more effort, unless you’ve been doing it so much that it becomes automatic. Complaining turned on its head.

The rain, for instance. No one likes the rain. Somehow, here in England, one of the wettest places on the planet (surely), everyone grumbles about it as if the rain were a personal affront. And granted, I don’t love getting caught in the rain unexpectedly. But I don’t mind it, not really. There are even plenty of instances in which I enjoy it. Watching it through the window in the comfort of my own home, or from the inside of a car someone else is driving; walking through it under an umbrella when it isn’t too windy or cold; powering through it on a rush of adrenaline on my bicycle to get home from a gig; hmm. When else? Being on the beach when it’s that particular type of gauzy deluge that very, very slowly gets everything drenched.

I still have fifty minutes to kill before I pick up the babe. Perhaps I should find someplace with internet so I can buy flights home for Christmas and see about lodging in Portsmouth this weekend.

I really meant to get a decaf coffee. Whoops.