I had an idea a few years ago that I would like to see a TV show where someone would spend a year doing a different job every day. Obviously the person wouldn't be able to fill the role of a fully trained employee in each role, for example the presenter of the show would not be expected to perform heart surgery or solve a crime, but if they spent a year following people around in a new job every day it would give us a bit of perspective on what pressures and pleasures can be experienced in different careers. The person could follow an A and E doctor one day, a fireman the next, a waitress the next, a chambermaid the next - I thought that it would be a great way to see the experiences of so many different people in different roles. Perhaps it wouldn't be a new job every day, perhaps one job a week? I must admit that I didn't fine tune the details of the show and I have no idea if a show like this has ever been shown but if they did show this on tv I would definitely watch it.
Perhaps they could roll it out to schools and everyone could spend 6 months or a year sampling different roles to see in which they would best fit. It would have been fantastic to have a scheme like that when I was at school as I didn't have the faintest idea what I wanted to be when I grew up. I remember sitting with the careers officer at school and she asked me what I wanted to do when I left school and I remember just staring blankly at her for what seemed like an eternity before saying 'I want to be a fashion designer'. Now, this was funny for several reasons, one of which is that I have had pretty much the same hairstyle give or take a fringe/occasional perm/one hair colour change since I was about 14 and I often insist on wearing colours that clash alarmingly. One of my friends described one of my outfits as looking like I had 'just stepped out of a bondage catalogue' and another as 'the last time I saw a pair of trousers like that they were being worn by members of the band The Sweet on Top Of The Pops in the 70's'. Secondly, this was funny as I eventually ended up working in a pet shop for my work experience at school due to the school having no connections in the fashion industry. Don't get me wrong, I love animals but I am also scared of vast amounts of them after being pecked by birds, bitten by dogs and bitten by a particularly ungrateful hamster when I was a child (the hamster was climbing up some raised wallpaper and I tried to help it get down before it fell and the frightened animal bit me as I gently reached for him). Therefore, being sent for work experience in a pet shop, while I am sure was very worthwhile was also not something to which I what I wanted to dedicate my life.
I'm not sure that I really wanted to be a fashion designer either, I loved art and wasn't too shabby at drawing (however, I couldn't paint to save myself and every painting I ever produced looked like a three year old had painted it and I'm not sure that even my parents would have displayed them on their fridge). I loved designing clothes at home in the comfort of my bedroom but looking at the fashion trends between now and then - I wouldn't have stood a chance in the fashion industry, my designs would have been either too pedestrian or would have been so outlandish they would have made Lady Ga Ga seem positively prudish, I've never managed to find an appropriate balance when it comes to clothes.
I really didn't know what I wanted to do when I grew up, it took me until I was around 23 to really truly decide what career I wanted to pursue and that was after doing a hairdressing course, various A levels and a Computing degree. There were several careers that I wanted to pursue but never really believed that I would ever get close to achieving success in them.
I have always wanted to be a writer, I don't want the fame/celebrity part, I just always wanted to write. I have always loved writing, whether it be a novel or documentation at work, even as a child I always had a pen in my hand. I wrote so many short stories, novels and poems when I was a child - I'm not sure if any of them were in any way decent, I just loved writing. I would dream about storylines for novels and would often carry a notepad around to jot down ideas whenever they came to me. Even my blog posts are an extension of this desire to write. When I was around 14 years old, I started writing a murder mystery novel. Not having access to a computer at that time, yes I really am that old, I hand wrote every word, every line. I wrote and rewrote sections, changing the storyline where I thought it would be appropriate or more effective. I spoke to a policewoman to get her perspective on how it would be to be a female detective in the police force, I researched it and prepared so much for the novel. I hand wrote page after page after page in my neatest handwriting in double line spacing as I had read somewhere that that was the professional way to do it. It took four years give or take to finish the novel and even though I wasn't sure if it was any good, I was proud that I had achieved it.
While at university, I still had this novel and I was still just as proud that I managed to produce it and one of my friends suggested that he could give it to his sister to read as she was very skilled in creative writing and she would be able to give me her views on it. I was a bit reluctant to let it out of my sight to be honest as it was the only copy I had but eventually I agreed that he could take it to her. You can sort of see where this is going and you can probably tell dear reader that, as my novel remains unpublished and I am not a proud author giving you a link as to where to find my work, that this story does not end well.
I gave it to my friend, many loose leaf pages in a binder and he took it to his sister. She read it and happily gave me her thoughts, some good, some critical and I was pleased that she had read it as it gave me food for thought and a lot of directions in which I could take the story to make it better. Then my friend asked if he could read it too and I agreed, they lived in the same house so it wasn't too much of a risk...
Unfortunately, while tidying his room, his mum inadvertantly threw it away. That was that. No copy, handwritten, no way of getting it back, it was gone. Just like that. I can't begin to tell you how devastated I was to lose that novel - I can sort of imagine how Edmund Blackadder felt on finding that his 'magnificent optopus' Edmund: A Butlers Tale had been burnt by Baldrick...well, my novel wasn't 'crammed with sizzling gypsies' but it was still very dear to me - I felt bereft. It wasn't my friends fault or his mum's fault, she didn't realise what it was and he didn't realise that she would throw it away. I'm not bitter and I forgave him when he apologised but it did somewhat crush my writing spirit. This was approximately 12 years ago and even though I have several novels that I am writing at the moment and a few for which I have ideas - I don't think that I will ever achieve the dream that I have always had to see some of my work in print in a book.
I've been thinking a lot about my career recently as I have been ill these past few years and have spent quite a lot of that time unemployed. Sadly, as is the current job market, I have been made redundant from work three times in as many years as I'm sure that a lot of people have and during this time there have been very few jobs for me to apply for even if I had been completely healthy. My greatest desire at the moment, aside from calming down my OCD is to be working again. I love working, I enjoy the banter between my colleagues and the feeling of being a team. Software Testing has been my passion for almost ten years and while, probably not considered glamorous, I adore the challenges that every piece of software brings. Without working I feel lost and so I have spent a lot of time these past few months writing. I am fairly sure that I will never earn a living writing but I would love the opportunity.
When I hear children resolutely stating what they want to do when they grow up, I'm always so proud and simulataneously sad that it took me so long to work out what I wanted to do with my life. While attending an appointment with my psychiatrist recently I was watching 'Junior Masterchef' on the TV in the waiting room - the children in the show were creating meals that I could only dream about. I can barely make an omelette yet these children were creating family meals with panache. I couldn't believe it. The children were stating how much they wanted to be top chefs and I could feel tears of admiration welling up in my eyes that they had so much curiousity and ambition at such an early age, I would have loved to have had that level of drive when I was a kid. I'm not saying that I regret being a software tester, just that I would have done so much more to achieve my dream of being a writer too.
On a lighter note, and back to my tv show idea, I was wondering the other day what would happen if TV actors had to do the jobs that they portray on TV. For example, would David Jason be a good detective after working on 'A Touch Of Frost' for so long? Would Zach Braff or Hugh Laurie be able to diagnose a patient as they have in 'Scrubs' and 'House' respectively? Could Shane Richie really run a bar?
Perhaps I should forget about pitching TV ideas and just stick to being a software tester :)
Monday 10 January 2011
Thursday 6 January 2011
Miscalculation of Risk
I am a massive coward. The thing is, I don't think that I was always like this...well...at least I don't think I have been an enormous coward all my life, maybe a partial coward. OCD does bring with it a large amount of anxiety but I have really struggled to fully understand why I have been unable to perform even the simplest tasks over the past few years due to disabling fear of ab-so-lute-ly everything.
Several years ago I had the bravery (or sheer insanity I suppose depending on your point of view - I had torn ligaments in my ankle and was on crutches) to abseil down the Forth Rail Bridge - oh yes, there's pictures of it and everything somewhere - without having too much of a nervous breakdown. I remember being fairly worried but the fear was not debilitating and I did it with relative ease. In retrospect I am perhaps romanticising my descent, I believe that I yelled and screamed with fear most, if not all, of the way from the top to the bottom as one of my friends can definitely confirm as he shouted at me as he dangled above me on the other side of the bridge.
The point is that I did it, I faced my fears and won...well...for one day on one thing that is. I did chain smoke furiously pretty much the moment my feet touched the sand and I further embarrassed myself in a bar shortly afterwards asking for a Rum and Lemonade (Which is very nice, it doesn't have to go with Cola) at around 10am. The bemused barman pointed out the time, I had gotten up at about 5am to get psyched up for the abseil so to me it was afternoon.
When you compare this to the past few years where I haven't been able to do so much as put toothpaste on my toothbrush without having a panic attack and it does seem very confusing to me. There was no specific trigger for my OCD that overwhelmed me this time - I have been successfully, to a point, managing my OCD since I was around 8 years old so it does feel heartbreaking for me that it has managed to completely envelop me to such a degree that I have only actually socialised around about 5 times in the past year and only went out alone about once every two months on average.
When my OCD started to get worse it was at a point where I finally had a great life - a husband with whom I am very much in love, a great job that I thoroughly enjoyed, finally getting on top of my debts and being financially sensible for once in my life, great friends and all the gadgets I could listen/watch/play with.
Oddly, there is a possibility that this could have been the trigger for my anxiety - suddenly I had pretty much everything I had ever really wanted and, terrifyingly, so much to lose if I made the wrong decisions or did/said something wrong. I don't think I ever really considered it consciously but the fear of losing everything, being rejected, losing my friends, losing my job that I adored became so overwhelming that my anxiety was phenomenal and with this anxiety followed my old enemy OCD.
It's all about risk and my overestimation of danger is often completely off the scale - when it comes to everything. For example, the risk of being killed by a meteorite is tiny - I haven't exactly researched it but rationally as I have never heard or read of anyone being killed by a falling meteorite I can only assume that it happens extremely rarely. You see that's the thing, rationally I know that it is unlikely but there is a section of my brain that tells me that it is unlikely but still possible and so everytime I am outside I can 100% guarantee you that at some point I will look up at the sky and worry that a meteorite will fall and kill me. I also worry that it will happen to members of my friends and family so not only do I worry about my own well being regarding this, I worry about everyone elses too.
You see, for me the probability of anything bad occuring is 1. There is a completely rational part of my brain that tells me how silly I am being as the risks are low but there is conversely another part of my mind, another voice in a way, that says 'They say that the probability of winning large amounts of money on the lottery is mind-blowingly large but you still know people who have won large amounts on the lottery'. My mind is a constant battleground for the rational and the irrational.
I've tried to win the battle with my irrationality, I really have, I tell myself forcibly that it is ok to go outside and that nothing bad will happen but then I go outside and see someone almost get their bag snatched and I am right back to cowering in my bed. The odd thing is that when it comes to making a journey anywhere, if the bus is late or the train is cancelled I just shrug it off and I'm generally quite sanguine. Some things I can cope with completely, generally if there is a massive crisis I am usually brave enough to deal with it but when it comes to preparation for disaster I become so terrified that I can barely function as a human being.
When I am struggling to believe that a cup I have in my hand is the same cup I have been drinking from for half an hour and I ask someone, they look at me as if I am completely mad. The thing is that, I worry when I am drinking or eating anything that I will pick up the wrong thing and drink or eat something that will be dangerous to me (the risk) so I check the thing that I have in my hand - a cup for example. The more I check the cup is there, the more I start to think that maybe I am not seeing the cup correctly and that perhaps my eyes and mind are deceiving me and that what I actually have in my hand is something different. At that point, even though I am telling myself (sometimes loudly and often in public) that the item in my hand is a cup from which it is safe to drink there is an insidious part of me that is telling me that my brain and eyes are confused and that what I have in my hand will endanger my life. Sometimes it goes one step further than that and tells me that if I proceed and drink the liquid, if it is dangerous and I kiss my husband that he may get ill as well and it will be all my fault. These thoughts are often so pervasive that I can do nothing else but put the cup down on the table and not drink from it - the compulsion to give in to the irrational thoughts is so strong. It's so difficult to explain to people that when I am looking at something, even though I can see it and it looks real - the nagging thoughts at the back of my brain are telling me other things. It is extraordinarily difficult to explain it to people that haven't experienced it as telling someone that you are not sure what you have in your hand does tend to raise a few eyebrows. I usually end up in philosophical discussions about the nature of perception.
It's difficult to function when you think about all the risks of everything and what could happen. For absolutely everything and anything at any given time I can list a huge amount of possibilities of bad things happening. People say, if you never take a chance you will never do anything and unfortunately over the past year or so I have literally done pretty much nothing for fear of failure. My life has been very unrisky but ultimately my not being able to do anything for fear has led to me becoming obsese which in turn leaves me vulnerable for many more health risks. My anxiety has also caused me to lose touch with a lot of my friends and this has left me feeling often lonely and useless which in turn makes me more scared. My lack of activity seems to have also made me unfit and my joints are incredibly sore. The sheer amount of anxiety has caused lots of health problems for me and I have even found that my brain seems to be misinterpreting messages and sensations in my body that should generally be normal are misinterpreted by my brain as pain or discomfort.
What I am trying to say is that my fear of taking risks has led to me being at risk for a great many more problems. It's not something that I can fix immediately, even though I know what the problem is, but I am working on it. Taking little risks at first, edging forward until I will be back to my old self. I have been existing but not really living and I want to change that. As the great Kylie Minogue says in her new song "What's the point in living if you don't take a chance?", she also says "What's the point in living if you don't wanna dance" and so with that in mind I will be attempting to follow both bits of advice and as well as continuing with my Cognitive Behavioural Therapy I'm going to be using the XBox Kinect to dance myself back into shape :)
Wish me luck :)
Several years ago I had the bravery (or sheer insanity I suppose depending on your point of view - I had torn ligaments in my ankle and was on crutches) to abseil down the Forth Rail Bridge - oh yes, there's pictures of it and everything somewhere - without having too much of a nervous breakdown. I remember being fairly worried but the fear was not debilitating and I did it with relative ease. In retrospect I am perhaps romanticising my descent, I believe that I yelled and screamed with fear most, if not all, of the way from the top to the bottom as one of my friends can definitely confirm as he shouted at me as he dangled above me on the other side of the bridge.
The point is that I did it, I faced my fears and won...well...for one day on one thing that is. I did chain smoke furiously pretty much the moment my feet touched the sand and I further embarrassed myself in a bar shortly afterwards asking for a Rum and Lemonade (Which is very nice, it doesn't have to go with Cola) at around 10am. The bemused barman pointed out the time, I had gotten up at about 5am to get psyched up for the abseil so to me it was afternoon.
When you compare this to the past few years where I haven't been able to do so much as put toothpaste on my toothbrush without having a panic attack and it does seem very confusing to me. There was no specific trigger for my OCD that overwhelmed me this time - I have been successfully, to a point, managing my OCD since I was around 8 years old so it does feel heartbreaking for me that it has managed to completely envelop me to such a degree that I have only actually socialised around about 5 times in the past year and only went out alone about once every two months on average.
When my OCD started to get worse it was at a point where I finally had a great life - a husband with whom I am very much in love, a great job that I thoroughly enjoyed, finally getting on top of my debts and being financially sensible for once in my life, great friends and all the gadgets I could listen/watch/play with.
Oddly, there is a possibility that this could have been the trigger for my anxiety - suddenly I had pretty much everything I had ever really wanted and, terrifyingly, so much to lose if I made the wrong decisions or did/said something wrong. I don't think I ever really considered it consciously but the fear of losing everything, being rejected, losing my friends, losing my job that I adored became so overwhelming that my anxiety was phenomenal and with this anxiety followed my old enemy OCD.
It's all about risk and my overestimation of danger is often completely off the scale - when it comes to everything. For example, the risk of being killed by a meteorite is tiny - I haven't exactly researched it but rationally as I have never heard or read of anyone being killed by a falling meteorite I can only assume that it happens extremely rarely. You see that's the thing, rationally I know that it is unlikely but there is a section of my brain that tells me that it is unlikely but still possible and so everytime I am outside I can 100% guarantee you that at some point I will look up at the sky and worry that a meteorite will fall and kill me. I also worry that it will happen to members of my friends and family so not only do I worry about my own well being regarding this, I worry about everyone elses too.
You see, for me the probability of anything bad occuring is 1. There is a completely rational part of my brain that tells me how silly I am being as the risks are low but there is conversely another part of my mind, another voice in a way, that says 'They say that the probability of winning large amounts of money on the lottery is mind-blowingly large but you still know people who have won large amounts on the lottery'. My mind is a constant battleground for the rational and the irrational.
I've tried to win the battle with my irrationality, I really have, I tell myself forcibly that it is ok to go outside and that nothing bad will happen but then I go outside and see someone almost get their bag snatched and I am right back to cowering in my bed. The odd thing is that when it comes to making a journey anywhere, if the bus is late or the train is cancelled I just shrug it off and I'm generally quite sanguine. Some things I can cope with completely, generally if there is a massive crisis I am usually brave enough to deal with it but when it comes to preparation for disaster I become so terrified that I can barely function as a human being.
When I am struggling to believe that a cup I have in my hand is the same cup I have been drinking from for half an hour and I ask someone, they look at me as if I am completely mad. The thing is that, I worry when I am drinking or eating anything that I will pick up the wrong thing and drink or eat something that will be dangerous to me (the risk) so I check the thing that I have in my hand - a cup for example. The more I check the cup is there, the more I start to think that maybe I am not seeing the cup correctly and that perhaps my eyes and mind are deceiving me and that what I actually have in my hand is something different. At that point, even though I am telling myself (sometimes loudly and often in public) that the item in my hand is a cup from which it is safe to drink there is an insidious part of me that is telling me that my brain and eyes are confused and that what I have in my hand will endanger my life. Sometimes it goes one step further than that and tells me that if I proceed and drink the liquid, if it is dangerous and I kiss my husband that he may get ill as well and it will be all my fault. These thoughts are often so pervasive that I can do nothing else but put the cup down on the table and not drink from it - the compulsion to give in to the irrational thoughts is so strong. It's so difficult to explain to people that when I am looking at something, even though I can see it and it looks real - the nagging thoughts at the back of my brain are telling me other things. It is extraordinarily difficult to explain it to people that haven't experienced it as telling someone that you are not sure what you have in your hand does tend to raise a few eyebrows. I usually end up in philosophical discussions about the nature of perception.
It's difficult to function when you think about all the risks of everything and what could happen. For absolutely everything and anything at any given time I can list a huge amount of possibilities of bad things happening. People say, if you never take a chance you will never do anything and unfortunately over the past year or so I have literally done pretty much nothing for fear of failure. My life has been very unrisky but ultimately my not being able to do anything for fear has led to me becoming obsese which in turn leaves me vulnerable for many more health risks. My anxiety has also caused me to lose touch with a lot of my friends and this has left me feeling often lonely and useless which in turn makes me more scared. My lack of activity seems to have also made me unfit and my joints are incredibly sore. The sheer amount of anxiety has caused lots of health problems for me and I have even found that my brain seems to be misinterpreting messages and sensations in my body that should generally be normal are misinterpreted by my brain as pain or discomfort.
What I am trying to say is that my fear of taking risks has led to me being at risk for a great many more problems. It's not something that I can fix immediately, even though I know what the problem is, but I am working on it. Taking little risks at first, edging forward until I will be back to my old self. I have been existing but not really living and I want to change that. As the great Kylie Minogue says in her new song "What's the point in living if you don't take a chance?", she also says "What's the point in living if you don't wanna dance" and so with that in mind I will be attempting to follow both bits of advice and as well as continuing with my Cognitive Behavioural Therapy I'm going to be using the XBox Kinect to dance myself back into shape :)
Wish me luck :)
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