On the Dark Recesses of My Mind

Surprise! I'm not actually dead, despite my lack of posting.

In the last month or two I've been living life to the full. Inspiration on things to write about, however, has been thin on the ground.

The one noteworthy realisation I was struck with during my prolonged absence was that my brain is actually quite big. Bigger than I ever really give it credit for. Fear not; I am not boasting about my IQ or my ability to remember obscure Eastenders characters from ten years ago. Let me explain.

As you may or may not know, I lived in Italy a while ago. It was a special time that has given me a wealth of happy and not so happy memories to look back on and cherish. And, as it turns out, it gave me more memories than I realised. When I went to Italy at the beginning of March, I was taken aback by the number of forgotten memories that came flooding back. Sights, sounds and smells all triggered recollections that I didn't realise I had.

And that's what I'm impressed with; the huge, unfathomable depth somewhere in my head that holds memories I don't actually remember. God knows how many situations I've been in or conversations I've had are sitting there, somewhere, waiting to be woken up and set free by a trigger it's impossible to predict.

This in turn reminded me of studying Proust in my first year of university. He talks about eating a certain type of biscuit that his grandmother gave him when he was but a petit garçon. Eating the same type of biscuit years later evoked a wealth of feelings and memories of his childhood. They all came back, in glorious 3D technicolour, from a biscuit. For the first time, I think I understand where he's coming from.

I just think it's a shame there's not some cerebral filing system that I can dip into when I'm at a loose end. A talking computer system that I can turn on and say, "I'm bored. Show me something I've forgotten." I want to see all the things I don't remember, the things filed under 'Insignificant' and 'Not Worth Remembering' that my brain backed up nonetheless.

Good on you, Brain. I applaud your hard - and unappreciated - work. You grafter you. And your next mission, if you choose to accept it, is to find me some inspiration for my blog, because I miss that even more than the things I don't remember.

On Signs

There are roads that I cross everyday, literally minutes from my house, whose names escape me. I have literally no idea what they're called. This makes it incredibly difficult to give people directions; any instructions I give are usually something like the following:

"Go straight on until you get to the pub, turn right onto the road with all the hairdressers then turn left at the second phone box. If you reach a tree that looks a bit drunk, you've gone too far."

Pretty unhelpful, I'm sure you'll agree. It would seem that I've unwittingly developed the ability to completely disregard any signs or symbols that are displayed to make my life easier. Where others see road names, I see a blank space.

I blame this problem fully on the immense amount of information that my tiny brain is expected to handle on a daily basis.

The streets are littered with to let, to rent, for sale signs. Each sign has its own logo, a website and phone number. Double yellow lines indicate no parking, on train platforms they say stay away from the edge. Pound signs, percentages and price tags clutter shop windows that display one of a million possible brands. No smoking, no access, CCTV in constant use. Rallying points, health & safety notifications, planned tube delays.

It's no wonder that, when faced with such a barrage of information, my brain has decided to block it out rather than embark on the troublesome task of working out what I need to know and what's irrelevant.

No; I do not need to know the name of the company maintaining the scaffolding I walk past in the morning. At least not at the moment - if it falls on my head then rest assured that I will track you down.

I don't even want to know which local authority manages the road I'm walking down, what the soup of the day is in a restaurant I can't afford, or what percentage APR a certain bank's best new credit card offers.

I accept that this information is important for somebody else, and that there could come a time in which I need to know something that I've previously ignored, but at the moment my head is too full of stuff to filter the visual assault I'm faced with. It's almost like I'm sleep-walking; I take absolutely nothing in.

At least that's how it was, until three weeks ago when my job took me on a brief trip to Paris. The leafy boulevards of the French capital were littered with just as many signs and symbols as its less pretty British counterpart, but they seemed so much more interesting. Different phrases, different logos and a different language. It forced me to look, to open my eyes, and since I've been back I've found myself looking around again, taking things in.

It's what I needed, I think. A chance to step back and see something new and exciting (including a chance to meet a real live blogger in her natural habitat). It dragged me out of the daze I've been walking around in for so long, and made my days that little bit more interesting. Sometimes it takes being dragged kicking and screaming out of your comfort zone to make you realise how comfy it is.

On Vocation

I feel like I'm on a train, I don't know where it's going and I don't really remember getting on. And I'm not really sure whether I want to get off or not.

As 'Flubberbean' (or a poorly disguised N) pointed out in the comments to my last post, the all-singing, all-dancing return to the Blogosphere I had planned has failed quite spectacularly.

The thing is, to bring an oft-repeated and increasingly tired excuse out of the bag, work has been taking over my life, again. I think I understand what stress is now. Not stress as in a medically diagnosed condition, work-type stress, you know. The kind that finds you while you're sitting on the train on your way to the office and fills you with dread. That wakes you up in the early hours of the morning with a chilling reminder of all the things you simply must do first thing and absolutely mustn't forget. The kind of stress that's not content to just wake you up, but also leaves you lying in the dark composing emails and studying reports in your head.

My job has started to take a previously unheard of toll on my real life. I suppose it's par for the course as you get older. And I accept that this is something I need to learn to handle, if I'm to climb the career ladder.

The thing is, while I'm grateful that increased responsibility is being thrust into my questionably capable hands, I find myself wondering whether I'm on the right ladder. Is this definitely what I want to do? Is this really for me? Or did I just fall into it?

Many of these questions stem from panic I think - when you take new things on there's a period of transition where everything feels up in the air. But it's also sparked some serious soul-searching.

At work I'm surrounded by creative types. Designers born with an urge to draw, editors with an innate love of words. Looking at them, I can't help but feel jealous. Then there's N, or Flubberbean as he's taken to calling himself, who was born with a mind that works like a computer. I'm sure he sees the world as a sequence of 1s and 0s, of if statements and hidden code.

Could it be that everyone is born with a set of talents perfect for a certain role? Perhaps everyone has something they're good at that, if nurtured in the correct way, will make them perfectly suited to a particular function. But how do you find out what your talent is? How do you know what you're naturally good at unless circumstance lets you find it?

One of my biggest selling points, that I plaster over CVs and cover letters, is that I speak French and Italian. But this isn't something I was born with: I liked it at school, so studied it at university, so feel duty bound to use it professionally so as to justify the horrible amount of money spent on developing it. Circumstance, coupled with choices I made when I was too young to understand the consequences has led me to where I am today, and I find that frightening.

If there were a magic test that could dig out one's hidden skills, where would I be instead? I wish I knew whether I am taking the right road. Then again, I very much doubt that I was born with any useful talents, and chatting, slouching and simming won't get me far at all. Damn shame that, I'd be King of the World if they were sought after skills.