I got some mail asking questions about the last month or so of posts, so I am going to answer them in this post, which is by coincidence, the 400th post.

In reference to the IBM – “Are you stupid?  Why are you apologising for a compliment?”

It is not appropriate in this situation for me to be complimenting this person, and I heard myself do it rather than thinking about it.  Some people it would not matter but it upset him, upset me and it should not have happened.  If I acted like it didn’t matter then I would not be the very serious and slightly geeky chick that I actually am.

Why would you be leaving over it?

I have had people get annoyed with me for not being what they expected before – despite my having been very driven in the course of my career, I do resemble a slightly upmarket hippy that has just left an orgy most of the time and people do get the wrong idea.  I wish I could be bothered conforming in order to get on with being a work nazi, but I am afraid I am no longer neurotic enough to be as universally good at everything as I used to be.  I do not think that this is a bad thing, to be honest as I was not a happy camper, nor was I much fun to work with.

Are you in love or what?

I’m not likely to be around long enough to find out, but at no point have I made such a claim.  The dude has my every sympathy for the issues relating to nerves and ambition, and I want him to have the career I didn’t get to have.

Why didn’t you get annoyed?

I’m very annoyed – with myself.

What is going to happen to you?

Nothing pleasant, but that isn’t new.

Why is it such a big deal?

I am a person, not a robot, and if I do not treat myself as if I matter, nobody else will.  They like to try to make me feel bad anyway, so I don’t see why I should stand there and take it.  It hasn’t served me well in the past, and it won’t now.

Aren’t you just procrastinating rather than getting on with your project?

A bit, but there are a lot of other issues affecting the project at the moment.  The car is in the garage, Twisty is on the way to hospital, and my family is being unpleasant, so I have to prioritise.  The timing has to be right for Boris anyway.

When are you going to stop worrying about other people and take care of yourself?

As soon as I am not upsetting anybody, which is probably never.

Thank you for reading the blog for the last 3 years or so, and I hope to be more progressive shortly.

We have just reached the user level I was at before the website crashed at the end of 2016.  We have never reached post Brexit referendum figures, which I am glad about, because I like to be able to keep track of at least two of my daily visitors.  I am very grateful for their continuing support.

Blog readers seem to be mainly separate from readers of the books or viewers of the other pages, which is a shame because I like to veer between different skillsets.  I am almost over my uniform rage following my mother’s death (see posts from August to December 2017 for why that would be)

I have been pretty lazy about pushing some things forward of late.  This job, which I fought to get because I wanted to get back into this particular arena, is quite intensive in terms of mind space use, mainly because the shifts are very long and the job relies on your ability to follow complex documents.  I am not as great at that as I used to be.  I am better at some things, and worse at others.  I need to work on that, but I think I am better at deciding on alone time than I used to be.

Nevertheless, I am now at the point where I need to sew, which is good, although I would like to also work on Lucifer Ogilvie, as it is more cheerful than real life.  I cannot think about Boris for long without feeling a bit happier about life in general.

So, given that I will inevitably need a new laptop soon, I will need to push on with the stuff I can do.

Hopefully I should be able to make some progress on the Toby Jugs and Wolfe’s cameo before I make serious headway on the chair.  Call me Al needs some finishing work, which will take a few days, and I have some resin to go ahead and complete Darius Guppy and Iain Duncan Smith at last.

Otherwise, I am feeling a bit sad, as the car is seriously ill again and I do not want to let it die.  This is not a good time of year for that, but I have a couple of interviews for additional work on the go, so hopefully that will make life a bit easier pending my probable change of job.

It is tiresome, doing the right thing, but then so is the predictability of humans.

I have removed a lot of posts, not because I am denying that I lost my cool over this situation, but because my being miserable helps nobody.

You can decide, if you are fortunate, not to be miserable and negative about almost anything.

In this case, I am not genuinely upset that the dude is with somebody.  She is a much steadier kind of person, and she is lovely.  She shook her lovely hair at me the other day and I noted that it had taken a great amount of care.

It is unfortunate that I cannot currently get away and leave them to it. That is the part that really bothers me at the moment.  A lady gets the fuck out the way at this point. I feel very nervous about the potential disaster of this combined with the dude’s nerves.  I have a book on CPTSD which I may pass on which will help with part of this.  I think I will give it to her rather than him.

Being messed with at work?  Well I guess that makes life less dull.  Who knew that my nuclear hormones cannot allow my brain to work properly?  I had certainly forgotten.

Unexpectedly writing an extra book and starting a new collection ought to be a good thing, particularly with the apparently interminable delays in the Boris project.

Anyway, should they stop by, I have removed my personal response to the situation and left up only useful bits in terms of storyline.  I am sorry, but there was no other way of communicating and I do not do silent forbearance any more.  I learned from the Wolfe episode that it does not matter how loudly you shout about things, nobody is listening anyway and even when they are, they only hear the bits they want to hear.

So today it is back to my real job, which is taking care of this place and being Ina.

I am thinking about taking on some extra work, with a view to doing one of my usual crab like sidesteps, since this garbage has taught me that 1.  Half my week is now wiped out with emotional crap and sleeping, and 2. I’m very lonely despite the best efforts of my friends.  The impending three months of ovulation is not going to help with either of those things.

The car was damaged last week and is away.  I will feel more positive once my horizons are a little bigger.

I think I will fast for a month or two and maybe get corsetted for the good of my poor spine.

This is a difficult general topic to approach, as everyone is different and you change in the course of your career.

In the case of Ina, the person behind this website was, I think it is fair to say, repressed.  My mother in particular, who latterly admitted that I was ‘a bit too sexy’ wanted to dissuade me from getting into terrible trouble.  I managed to get into some anyway, but probably not enough.

So, my artistic process usually arises from emotion.  I don’t really have a normal way of dealing with lust, love in a romantic sense, so my approach is to find a way of intellectualising or analysing it with a view to killing it dead as being undesirable.

Feelings are very inconvenient things really, especially when they are unrequited so I have often been glad of the outlet, but I see from the difference between my work and the work emerging from art schools that I have an unusually childlike and robust approach.

The pieces are very rarely designed, as such.  It is more of a process of gathering some random bits in a pile and then something emerges.  The writing is very similar.  I have a bundle of ideas which I reassemble into something coherent.

Some things, like my mother’s children, render me incoherent, so the quality tends to be more erratic.  Romance, however, seems to benefit from delays, problems and distance, so it is ideal for this emotional form of creativity.  The motion of making a carpet or sewing also emulates penetration, so it is quite a barbaric way of expressing myself.

Hence, it does not matter what happens, it is all useful. I can see from the last two posts, for example, that despite my fury I am extremely fond of the IBM, to the point that I don’t really want to touch him in case he breaks.

Creativity does give you a method of stepping back from things.  Things that upset you directly are often funny or extremely helpful in the bigger picture.  I had no idea I was so seasoned in people management until very recently.  I knew I was a decent boss, but I had no idea how finely tuned that is.

I also understand the safety of the Glass Wall, which is what my current project for Boris is all about.  It is not useful safety however, and I will not be retreating to suit anybody.  It is, sadly, a no compromise situation.

Fairly good day in terms of progress.  I still have a lot of paperwork to finish, but in terms of the physical work things are going fairly well I think.  Bit of sanding and stuff to do tomorrow, but looking good so far.

So, as we painted my new window today, we got to considering whether I am a good catch?

My inclination was first to look at my track record.  I am not great at relationships really.  I have been very lazy.  The relationships with new people did not go particularly well, usually because I was obsessed with work, and so I tended to rely on the very oldest ones long term.  I had the same three relationships at 40 that I had at 16.  Then I met Wolfe and despite being utterly horrible to him, all bets were off in terms of the old ones because there was no longer any point to them at all. This is seven years later, he is married anyway and our potential future together does not really involve romance.

Obviously, this issue is more cloudy because I have been here for 22 years, taking care of the property and my parents and over-working during the times when their issues were less pressing.  Therefore I just didn’t prioritise anyone.  So, I would conclude on the basis of the quality of my attention, probably not so great in the past.

I also have a tendency to chase people away at random times, and this is not so great either.  Sometimes this is just intolerance, and sometimes it is lack of space.  I seem to need a lot of space, which doesn’t suit everyone.

I’m very faithful on the plus side, as I am usually too interested in other things to be bothered with more than one relationship at a time unless everybody knows about it.  So I think I can give myself a point for honesty.

I’m not very easy to entertain, since I am, when not being Ina Disguise, very shy and I do not normally watch a lot of TV unless I am sewing, I do not care about movies, I rarely eat out and I do not drink.  This makes things kind of awkward, although if I were to be offered coffee and backgammon I would probably be delighted.  My exs fully expect to be painting, gardening or taken out on mammoth drives to nowhere when they visit, so again on the plus side you get to see interesting places and do a lot of chatting, but it is probably not everyone’s cup of tea.

Sometimes when I am at home, I will wander off and vanish into different parts of the house for an hour or so.  This can be quite alarming if you don’t know it’s going to happen.  I guess I am quite spoilt and anti-social in this respect.

I’m also very scruffy most of the time, although I have got slightly better lately because of my return to work.  The scruffiness is because I sometimes start painting, sculpting or otherwise absent-mindedly making something so if I do not make sure I am wearing something I can damage, I end up having to buy a lot of clothes.

I am really good at cooking though.  I am also fully capable of doing my own gardening and repairs, so I never really have to ask anyone to do anything apart from help me lift heavy things now and again. There is usually at least one masterplan, so there is nearly always plenty of random weird stuff to do.

I live in an amazing house and have devoted cats, so I am doing something right.  I am also very good at taking care of people.  I can be quite funny, and quite grumpy, sometimes at the same time.  When I am interested in something, I tend to focus quite well although I do like breaking things to see how they work.

I think that just about covers it.  I will be writing story four for the Indescribably Beautiful Man this evening. (he has no name now, sorry)  The base for his chair arrived today, as I had ordered it before discovering that he has no name.  I have no idea what I am going to call it or how to deal with the no name thing, but I am sure I can figure something out in the next six months or so.

A great amount of the last ten years has been taken up by considering one statement, which was originally from Twisty.  I used it in Best Scandal Ever, when Kira teases Aldous by announcing her intention to marry Sam Redwood, despite not knowing him or even particularly liking him at the time.  This conversation, in common with many others in the books, actually happened.  The real Aldous is a depressed and underconfident person who frequently needs to be shocked into forgetting how miserable he is for a few hours.

Anyway the quote from Twisty is:

“Famous people are just normal people minus the sense of shame.”

As pearls of wisdom go, this is one of his better ones.  It is perfectly true.  All the stuff you tell yourself about what you can and cannot do is largely about shame.

Likewise, as I was saying the other day about major religions determining which emotions you should focus on, such religions rely heavily on shame to keep you in your place.

Whilst pondering the enormous quantity of negative information that had been disseminated about Wolfe, buried now but very easy to find nine years ago or so, I considered how much of this information was useful, and how much was simply envy.  Shame and envy pair nicely together if you want to keep people in their place.

TV and other media like to focus on these, as buying products and paying for them uses up a great deal of people’s time, rather than thinking for themselves or other equally dangerous pursuits.

As a repressive artist, who has habitually used shame, amongst other emotions,  as a source of energy to create objects, shame is kind of useful to me, although it certainly isn’t useful when considering how to see a return for my work.  It is my best friend and my worst enemy.

I was obviously horrified by recent events, but only some of it is my fault, and even then I am a victim of evident physical issues and a lack of boundaries because of a variety of other factors.  It is much easier to deal with if it is all your fault, because then you have the option of taking action.

I’m a lot calmer than I was a few days ago, and I don’t really think I should beat myself up over it any more.  It is very sad that my first impression was wrong, but I shouldn’t really be surprised or angry about it. Shit happens.  It’s very sad.

Overall, I think I have seen massive improvement in some areas from dealing with my Wolfe issues.  Now I need to focus on physical confidence and the shamelessness of disseminating information, both of which are a step forward in terms of ridding myself of shame.  Once I have dealt with this, then I will have to focus on becoming more arrogant in order to return to the work I was doing when I met him.

I definitely feel more inclined to say what I have to say and to hell with it than I used to.  I don’t feel as smart or as serious as I used to, but perhaps that is a good thing as it actually gets the words onto the paper, as opposed to feeling like one of my friends, who despite being an international political journalist, cannot bring herself to publish a book, even under another name, in case anyone finds out.

Shame is not useful, and it is there to keep you in your place.  It is probably a good idea to work on that.

https://youtu.be/clPSf8MLQho