Loneliness, shyness, attention

In the world I have created for myself, I rarely have to suffer unwelcome attention. Like the child in sister’s underwear, certain s/he does not wish to be seen by others, in much of my life I do not want to be seen. I need to be able to bear being seen, to go out into the world, and want to understand why I crave attention and seek it out, yet hide away.

I seek attention. I stand before forty people at the HAI weekend and tell a story. I get a few laughs and applause at the end. I know some people are afraid of public speaking, but don’t get why. There can be a difficult audience, but generally people are wanting you to succeed, paying you all their attention, the room is focussed on you. I love it. And blogging, I like attention. On Friday 193 people from 27 countries on six continents looked at my blog, and that pleases me. One from Uganda has made twelve page-views on Saturday, showing sustained interest. It’s probably the same person as the four page views from there the day before. Likes, even follows, are cheap and attention seeking- I’ve looked at you, look at me.

Attention in real life is reciprocal. We need attention. We are a social species. Oddballs may set out to walk across Australia or the Arctic alone, but at University one summer I had three days in a row without a meaningful conversation and at the end I was climbing the walls. Now I have three days like that quite often. Next week I will see a friend for lunch whose company I enjoy, and I will make many spoken and body-language signals of my regard for her. She will do the same for me. It will be delightful. We will make each other think, and provoke feeling, and in a sophisticated, adult way, play together.

Getting over 250 upvotes on a comment in the Guardian- it has to be made early so that it is visible to anyone scrolling the article, and it has to be trenchantly stating a popular view- feels good. Not as good as attention in person but it is my best substitute. Or I shared on a facebook trans group, and people piled on me. I argued back, and would not give the last word, but it was exhausting. I do not like negative attention, but there I was arguing a point I thought was useful and truthful, against a negative and defeatist denial. The negative attention was wearing, but I was right to persist. Facebook is not just a parasite on the human need for attention, but our need to feel worthwhile too.

Work is the way people get to feel valuable, such that some cannot bear to retire. Meaning and purpose in lives needs to be affirmed by other people. At any time in the last five years I might have taken up voluntary work, and been clear that I was doing something worthwhile, generally affirmed by others, but I have not. I am gregarious. I like company. Voluntary work would give me company, and I have considered it but never applied to start.

Here’s Hayley Webster, or Scott, on shyness in the Guardian. She tried to be her perfect self, and hide her real self away. Yes, I get that. And watching herself on video she saw herself, apologetic, well-meaning, softly spoken… shrinking into myself to not inhabit space. I didn’t want to be too loud, too much or too anything. Yeah. Me too. My perfect self had to win all the tribunals, and if not then I was no good. And when I could not win, I could not face trying. Feeling I was not doing something worthwhile, and getting some unpleasant attention, in actual hostility, finally stopped me. I wrote this just before I stopped, and that condensating man in Cumbernauld has been a symbol of why I stopped for me ever since.

It has not made sense to me, so I wrote this. That’s the other reason why I blog. Why can I stand on a stage and yet not bear to go to work? Because of an audience rooting for me, and a man expressing contempt. But I have to! I have to!

People seek negative attention, says Leo Benedictus in the Guardian. It does not work for me. I would say those people are doing something they are particularly committed to, because they think it necessary for themselves, or vindication/revenge, or even the right thing, bolstered by much positive attention from their cell.

Men and women communicating

Men talk to men, and women talk to women, she said. She meant on facebook, but it is true IRL as well, with parties sometimes dividing between men’s groups and women’s groups. Of course it is not a hard and fast rule, but there are ways people communicate, illustrated there.

I tend to get far more Likes and comments from women than men. I asked for reassurance- “Am I charismatic?” The seven likes, and eight of the comments, were from women, all affirming. The man who commented challenged me: “Unusual Quaker enquiry,” he said, then changed the conversation- There used to be an Essex based religious movement called the Perculiar People. Maybe a case for revival. He refuses then blocks the reassurance I crave.

I shared, Too hot inside to sleep, so I went to recline outside and watch the stars come out. I think the two brightest were wandering stars. Then the Bear appeared. But I could not relax enough to sleep there, so came in. That got no response from men, seven likes and ten responses from women, including one tip- sleep in a wet sarong. Previously she had only had to do that in India.

I share on politics, and one on Brexit had more men commenting than women. Two men directly challenged me: You’ve just backed Brexit by campaigning and voting Labour; and, Does lack of seats, or more accurately your desire to be on a winning side interfere with your thinking in terms of right and wrong? I responded to this accusation of immoral behaviour circumspectly- I said I don’t think so, and have reasons for my decision. It might be masculine to just reject it as an insult. I find men more confrontational, women more co-operative.

I shared a puzzle: I want to make a three dimensional jigsaw of arrangements of 1cc cubes, which has two solutions: one solid cube, and one larger hollow cube with the faces each 1cm thick, with no 1cc cubes left over. Is this possible? This appealed more to men, following the stereotype: unusually, more men commented, though women got the answer. (I may reveal the answer and reason in the comments, if you attempt the puzzle.) They went quite deeply into the mathematics, and introduced me to Wolfram Alpha. Women got it right first, though.

One share on equal marriage had 24 cis folk liking, and only comments from trans women, but that might just mean that most of my queer fbfnds are trans.

A fbfnd from Texas shares a lot on US politics, from the Left. I am not doing research, this is mostly anecdotal, but she seems to have more female responses than male, and the confrontational responses are from men. A man from Corby who shares jokes and political stuff has both men and women commenting.

I feel you can tell the difference between men’s and women’s comments, though this could be because of nature or inculturation. Here is a test: I chose a way to find five comments from men on my posts and five from women, so that I did not choose any particular comment, as that might have biased the responses. I have randomised them. Can you identify which come from men, and which from women? I think you can tell the difference, even though some are quite difficult. What do you think? Comment below.

1. I like “who cares wins”!
2. this is us today, campaigning for Sophie Cook.
3. Was that through a letter box ?
4. Fantastic Abigail and thank you!!
5. Love it ( apart from hate tyrants…let’s learn to love everyone)….
6. Hate tyranny.
7. !
8. Yes, it will be very interesting to see what happens if Labour manages to win the majority. I can’t imagine that Corbyn wants to have anything to do with The Donald at all.
9. Dog must have seen red
10. Ouch xxx

Here am I, being charismatic. Three people hang on my every word. The exception is the radical feminist, who was alive to how men speak and women listen, and felt it still applied to me.

Getting by

Drink is a great anodyne- I had forgotten how boring people are. I’d forgotten how afraid people are. I’d forgotten how boring I am. Richard Burton shows how great self-hatred can be, when we temporarily let go of our safety-valves, or our escapes. Only drink is capable of killing the pain.

On facebook, I asked, Am I too nice? Rather than the journalist’s question “Why is this [person] lying to me?” I meet someone and think, “Seems like a reasonable sort”. And of course a friend came up with the answer: I think you are very nice. I also think it is possible to trust too much. Trust has to be built. Having to rely on untrustworthy primary carers tends to shut down the discernment in this area.

Not too nice, then. I am glad, I am pleased with being nice, and kind, even generous, and would not like to have to be less nice. Too trusting, though. It makes sense, actually. The helpless baby and the unmotivated mother, finding duty and convention not enough to drag her through all the effort, though practicality bridged a lot of the gap. My mother was in no way chaotic.

“Ask Machiavelli” said another. Possibly one can be too suspicious. If others connive as Niccolo advised, perhaps I am not suspicious enough. How could I know?

It seemed to me that I cried when I attempted to suppress awareness of my sadness, and another part of me needed to make my consciousness aware of it. If you break your leg the pain stops you trying to walk, and crying makes you deal with the matter now, or at least aware of it. That baby, not feeling my needs satisfied, tried not to be aware of need, and now sometimes I seem to be a monster of need and desperation.

I need human contact. I need sympathetic conversation, sharing feeling, and touch. I want hugged. Being kissed would be good too. And I have not been out three days of the last four, and on the one when I went out my encounter was only food shopping. It is a human need I bang on here about a great deal, and I get by with minimal contact, as the baby might, never satisfied but bearing the burden of her need, unable to do anything else, lying in the cot or pram.

So my need sits, under the level of consciousness, and I am more or less alright typing here or watching TV. Now, stressed by that ongoing confrontation, I am not doing the washing that I should do, but usually I do enough. Then my need erupts in a giddy feeling of groundlessness- I must talk through that with her, just to speak about it. I want to be told, there, there, it will be alright. I am all at sea, and my feeling of need overwhelms me, and then an hour later it is past. She cannot answer that question for me. Possibly, it will not be alright. The worst I might anticipate is X, the best hope for is Y, something not anticipated might happen. I would like the contact, and do without it. I can’t imagine explaining to anyone why I wanted it. I would sound too silly, too demanding, too much of a bother. I know this as the baby knew it. Yet I want time when my pain is not killed, time when I am conscious of it and not using the anodyne.

I had always thought of the gorgon as hideous, and the winged sandals as Perseus’. These heroes do not appear turned to statuary.

Gentleness

I matter. While happiness simply for its own sake may not be the best primary goal, all other things being equal I am better happy. My happiness matters. It is so good for me to be reminded of this today, because it is not my conscious understanding, a lot of the time.

I imagine there are some people who feel the opposite- pebbles rather than clods– for whom it would be salutary to be reminded to take consideration of the feelings of others, from time to time. I know which I am. Knowing I am a clod, and being Blake’s clod is what I wish to be, what I respect, whereas being a pebble I find repellent and hard to imagine, I approach this Dalai Lama quote which I found on Alaina Mabaso’s lovely blog. I don’t know whether the Dalai Lama said it, either, but bestdalailamaquotes alleges he did:

When you think everything is someone else’s fault, you will suffer a lot. When you realize that everything springs only from yourself, you will learn both peace and joy.

Perhaps from Buddhism I could learn enlightenment, but not from facebook memes even if they quote the wisest man in the world. Sometimes other people are thoughtless and careless, and put me out. Even if they should not have been so careless, it may be easier just to sort the situation than to persuade that person s/he is wrong and should make amends. This is part of accurately seeing what one can change and having the courage to change it. At the CAB, I dreaded hearing “It’s the principle of the thing” or that it was not for herself the client was concerned, but for all the others who might suffer similar injustice: because in both cases I thought the client was deluding themself. I was never as cynical as my lecturer who said “Principles are to be encouraged, because they make money for lawyers”.

I am not saying Alaina is wrong, merely riffing on the subject because I had nothing else to blog about, thinking as I type. On her second quote,

If you are willing to look at another person’s behavior toward you as a reflection of the state of their relationship with themselves rather than a statement about your value as a person, then you will, over a period of time cease to react at all.” ~ Yogi Bhajan

it may just be a semantic point that it is better to respond in conscious awareness rather than to react emotionally, especially in a potential conflict situation. Etty Hillesum- I keep thinking of this story– having no way of responding to the anger of the shouting man, pitied him. Sometimes there are “things we cannot change”, though temperamentally you may be more likely to think that, or more likely to hurl yourself against every immovable object, or chaotically to get it wrong both ways. While “Think it possible you may be mistaken” is good advice, some people do that too much too. Virtue is the golden mean.

And I matter. Oh Christ, thank God for the reminders of it!

Envy

Envy broke over me, terrifying me with its sudden force.  My mood went black, though I struggled against it. I knelt and wept. Perhaps I should avoid facebook-

Her post talked of terrible lows and wonderful highs, so close together, in 2014. Now they are on a journey which gets more and more wonderful. She writes of amazing friendships. “And thank you all for sharing your lives – it makes my life all the richer.”

“They”- two of them- that is something to envy. I love her Yes, her gratitude, her optimism; and they make me wretched. The word “richer” cuts into me. Of course she will have uncertainties and unresolved matters, and they will resolve to blessing.

I am looking for answers. All answers gratefully received.

This envy is my most painful emotion. I cannot see value in it at all. It disparages and disrespects my gifts and blessings. It says I am not good enough. It says my “soft, gentle, peaceful” is cursed weakness, and that is a lie, because “soft, gentle, peaceful” is beautiful, and inescapable for me. Seeing it as weak cuts me off from its strength.

All my fear for the future and pain at the past came out, and overwhelmed me, then got misdirected into resentment at a rose-tinted image of this other person. Something randomly set me off, and I attached the feelings to it, rather than to their real cause. This distances me from others and from reality.

Count your blessings, name them one by one, H would quote ironically.

Someone else wrote, Happy New year. May it be full of peace and love and light and laughter for us all xx and exciting challenges, of course 🙂 That strikes more the right note, for me. There is a certain wariness for the exciting challenges. I don’t want challenged at all.

Wishing all my friends the happiest of New Years – wishing you love, good health and much upward growth ❤ “I’m tall enough already” joked someone. We are wary.

My wariness is resistance. I have avoided rather than facing challenges, because I anticipated more pain. Possibly facing the challenge with all my feminine vulnerability-

More from facebook. When an inner situation is not made conscious, it appears outside of you as fate– C.G. Jung. Then this link on the New Year quotes this poem:

We look with uncertainty
by Anne Hillman

We look with uncertainty
beyond the old choices for
clear-cut answers
to a softer, more permeable aliveness
which is every moment
at the brink of death;
for something new is being born in us
if we but let it.
We stand at a new doorway,
awaiting that which comes…
daring to be human creatures,
vulnerable to the beauty of existence.
Learning to love.

After wrestling with this for hours, I posted,
At this moment
I am in the best place I could possibly be.
By this I mean that this is where my responses to my delights and challenges have got me; this is where I can move on from, this is what I need. It is right for me, in a way that no place in which any other finds herself could be. But I get far more likes for it expressed positively.

Added: 36 hours later I have it worked out. Envy distances me, breaks connection, and reduces my understanding and empathy. I start in liking, airbrush out my understanding of certain difficulties this person has, think “It’s alright for you” (which is unfair) compare her apparent facing challenge bravely with my feeling overwhelmed, and turn that negative: I make it a judgment on me, rather than an inspiration.

Through analysis, I turn my feeling back to goodwill and empathy, and separate out what I feel about myself- fear and grief. I separate the feelings from the immediate stimulus which precipitated but did not cause them.

With increased self-respect I find greater self-nurturing in small things, such as more meditation, a more regular cleansing and moisturising regime, and playing the piano.

Big data

Whether I should opt out from the NHS health data sharing scheme is an emotional not a rational decision. I opted out.

I see the point of it. GP and hospital records go to the Health and Social Care Information Centre in Leeds, where they may be analysed to see what health provision works best. “Free text”- what the GP notes about symptoms- would not be sent to HSCIC. Diagnoses, test results and prescriptions would be.

I thought the data would be used for research, but the “Clinical Practice Research Datalink” already gives information to researchers.

My email archive gives a complete record of me, in my real name. Someone has a record of all I have bought at the supermarket in the last three years, and is able to sell that information. My data is out there already. Then again, my GP said she wished they could opt out all their patients, rather than have us opt out individually. She has concerns about the data protection. I have concerns about large Government computer systems, which have made a mess of every new benefit for the last twenty years. But, mainly, I don’t trust them, so I opt out.

Mmm. Do Buzzfeed quizzes record your responses for advertising? What about personality tests?

——————–

I am lying in bed feeling powerlessness and terror, after two things on facebook which remind me of two separate-

I went to the GP to ask about counselling, as recommended by the psychiatrist, and my “while I’m here” was about breathlessness cycling. I have no crushing pain in the centre of my chest, I just get out of breath cycling where I had cycled quite happily last year. She said, well, exercise more, you have exercised less in the winter weather.

So, yesterday, this started a thought in me: my way is to withdraw. Cycling up that hill, get a bit breathless: stop cycling and moan about it. Then I thought, no, my way is to get the bit between my teeth and battle on despite multiple discouragements, to the end. Like then.
-But that was last century.
(Thoughts of reverting go through my mind. Don’t go there.)

One friend is dying of cancer, palliative care only, one will stay in hospital tonight for tests and fears cancer. Life is a slow tragedy with one end. So-

More exercise could do me good, spiritually: that moment minute or hour when I push on though I want to stop.

———————

-Too low for a racer, too high for a tourer, not much use to anyone really, said the man looking at my bicycle gears. In about 1988. I remembered it, and thought, I am the kind of person who remembers small slights for decades, and tortures herself with them. Then I thought, character revealed in one comment- why was he cycling Lands End to John O’Groats alone, again? Perfect memory for a writer. Being positive takes effort.

Am I the only one who sees others posting things like “stay away from drama and negativity” and worries it is all about me?

I have acquired a meditation stool. So I will still be uncomfortable, bored, distracted or confronted by bits of myself I don’t like in meditation, but my feet won’t go to sleep.

The geese form pairs and fly low, circling over the river, honking constantly, for the joys of Spring.

The power of Positive™ Thinking

Fbfnd asked, Do you think that just focussing on the positive in life is ok? What about the darkness?

Grist to my mill. I replied It is always worthwhile to focus on the positive in a situation, possibilities rather than what you can’t do because of what you don’t have. But that does not mean you should deny that real problems exist, so you may do something about them. And much positivity “wisdom” is problematic because of semantics, it is just that it is only part of the truth.

Um. Not entirely clear: that write-Post rather than write-read-Post thing. For clarity: you should admit problems exist, so you may do something about them.

But wait. Is that any more than The Serenity Prayer? It is beautifully expressed. Perhaps I am better to express truth allusively and poetically rather than as if in a statute- Niebuhr’s clarity is beyond me.

Barbara Ehrenreich is onto something- indeed, her cancer was not a “gift”. Here is Eve Ensler arguing the opposite, that it gives gifts of empathy and feeling one with other human beings and valuing the life we have and accepting the need to be cared for and accepting the care of others- but I would rather gain those gifts some other way.

Denial may be a gift. If there is a Threat, but I can do nothing about it, I might be better getting on with other things in life rather than stressing about that threat like a rabbit in the headlights. Serenity to accept the things I cannot change may be better, but I would settle for Denial if I can do no better.

On facebook, the argument moved on to the Law of Attraction, with long closely argued paragraphs flashing back and forth: if you look out for and notice what is good in your environment, you learn to be more aware of it, which increases your curiosity and engagement with the world. Seeing the bad reduces self-esteem and self-confidence, and produces a sense of hopelessness. “Quiet desperation is the English way” sang Pink Floyd, not an original observation.

And looking for the bright side in ones situation- even cancer- does no harm. That part of myself which I see as Bad, as Shadow, so flee- there is strength there, and it behoves me to explore my responses and possibilities. Finding the Good in it blesses me.

Going back to Ehrenreich’s example, telling people who have just been dismissed that this is a great opportunity, that all the great entrepreneurs have sat where they are sitting now, is a lie, and victim-blaming: yet we do all have to get on with it. I still don’t get what Jesus meant by “Ask and ye shall receive” and Christians have been wrestling with the meaning and power of prayer ever since- yet some of those fired employees will transcend their situation, just as some struck down with mental health issues will live more productively after learning to deal with their illness. But- not everyone.

The Unexplained

It begins with a photograph, of an attractive normal family, and a claim which is remarkable yet credible. A man “surfed” down fifteen floors of the North tower of the world trade centre, and survived with only a twisted ankle. I don’t like the source they cite, but believe it on this.

Then my friend’s facebook share makes six pages of A4, moving through less believable claims. Private weapons/defence/security corporations carried out the 9/11 “investigations”, but had a conflict of interest which led them to cover up the real story. Companies may have a conflict of interest, but one likes to believe in a human capacity to tell right from wrong, and that enough people would have enough integrity to bring out the truth.

It warns us to be cautious and sceptical, because the usual run of 9/11 conspiracy theorists are wrong. Of course explosives could not have brought down the WTC in that way. How silly. Instead, directed energy weapons, using the Hutchison Effect, brought down the building. A look at its website shows that in 1979 John Hutchison while attempting to duplicate the experiments of Nicola Tesla found a source of free energy with the effects of shattering metal and cancelling gravity.

Unfortunately, those bad people at Wikipedia, who seek to exclude such benefactors of humanity as John Hutchison from that website, have removed the article on him. See here and here for comparisons. The only reference to the Hutchison Effect is in an article on a TV programme. I deleted the link to that TV programme from the article on Mayor John Hutchison: no need to give it too much prominence.

Back to facebook. Only one researcher has meticulously analyzed ALL of the easily verifiable physical evidence from 9/11 …[and] has offered a scientific conclusion that explains ALL of this easily verifiable physical evidence from 9/11 but unfortunately she is the victim of a wide spread internet campaign to slander, criticize, marginalize, disrespect, discredit, and censor information about her… Several [Internet discussion] groups claim to be 9/11 “Truth” groups, but if you even mention Dr. Judy Wood or the important evidence she has discovered, they will often censor you, ban you from their group, or ridicule you for discussing her.

Wow. When the conspiracy theorists exclude you for being too nutty, you are in a bad way. The explanation is that they are part of the conspiracy.

Yet my fbfnd shares this stuff. I think it is a conspiracy. If the Big Corporations put out enough refutable conspiracy theories, sensible people like you and me will be jaded, and not spot the real conspiracies.

——————-

I am delighted to have penetrated the Great Firewall of China! I would really like Greenland, but the problem there is population, 56,000. Even in the UK I have not reached 0.01% of the population yet. Onwards and upwards!

Uses of friendship

My beautiful, talented and vibrant friend has emailed twice, and I have not responded. When we met last month, we hugged and I was delighted to see her, as well as reserved. She said, “Call me”, and I have not.

We met two years ago at a weekly drama improvisation. After, we went to the pub, and shared stuff, and said motivational positive-thinking wisdom stuff at each other. She came to see me at my stand-up gig, and we ate afterwards. Then we did not see each other again.

So her email in October was delightful, and yet I did not respond, by email or phone, and it occurred to me that I was ashamed to. I had been talking of performing, and all this wisdom, and I am in a cul-de-sac, not having given birth to a dancing star or whatever.

One gets the impression that Robert de Saint-Loup really cares for Marcel, and Marcel does not entirely reciprocate. Sometimes Marcel uses his friendship: he wants an invitation to the house of a woman; he wants a message conveyed to Albertine after she leaves him, and he wants to micro-manage how that is done, indicating a lack of trust in the messenger. He observes Robert’s love for Rachel as a writer might.

At one point I had two friends I saw weekly, and shared deeply. I have generally had one who would hear my woes, and now I have one who chunters on boringly about her issues, so that when I talked of my father’s funeral she moved onto another subject quickly, in great detail. Don’t worry, it isn’t you. She is pleasant enough when I have nothing better to do- most of the time.

So it seemed that I had been one particular aspect of myself with the Vivacious one (who is straight, unfortunately) and I would have to ease in to being other aspects of myself.

-How are you?
-Alright. You?

and deep conversation like that.

A friend could reassure me that one particular view of myself is correct. A friend could do many things. Perhaps I should explore.

Having finally got the idea of the Mega-me, I thought I might actually do it. The brain cannot tell the difference between doing something in fantasy and doing it in actuality- our mirror neurons fire off replicating others’ feelings, and if we can create feelings of achievement we can go out and do the thing in reality. So I thought I would ask Quakers to participate in an improvised drama, and imagined friends objecting because it was silly. Useful to have someone to project on.

By horrible coincidence, two people I knew through karate have also lost a parent in the last month. They announced it on facebook. I did not want to- but did, today. I have hardly been posting there for a month. Lots of loving, warming comments from people I rarely see, Likes because I said how wonderful he had been, and I walked in the park feeling Happy, perhaps because of the mild air and beauty of the place, perhaps because of facebook.

Comforting thoughts

Witches are extremely dangerous. Fortunately, one may protect oneself:

For mony a beast to deid she shot
and perished mony a bonny boat
and shook both meikle corn and bear
and kept the countryside in fear…

Now, do thy speedy utmost, Meg
And reach the keystane of the brig
There at them thou thy tail may toss
A runnin stream they darena cross

Witches have the power to blight a farming community completely, destroying crops and animals, but as they cannot cross a river, we can get away. If only that superstition had been used, two centuries before Burns, as proof of innocence! But the witchfinders only sought proof of guilt.

It is striking how much effort I put into retaining beliefs about myself which are not true, or not obviously true. I could, of course, prove them, or decide to prove them- at some unspecified point in the future, which never comes. Procrastination is only a particular type of this thought.

I have false negative beliefs too: at least, I hope they are false. Two Upworthy videos depress me. The dancers in the Amsterdam prostitutes’ windows- I cited it before– shows how awful the World can be; the junkyard orchestra, which should be uplifting, I find a judgment on me: they can overcome their appalling difficulties, why can’t I? Whereas if I use it as a spur to think of the Possible, are my dreams just dreams?