So, you’re probably wondering where the hell I’ve been. I’m not just sat playing games online, I swear, I’m actually making things.

Specifically, I’ve been preparing for a little Arts & Crafts market here in Bristol next Sunday, which will be followed by ThoughtBubble next week, and from then on all my weekends until the end of the year have something unusual going on. Craziness!

I’m thinking of opening a little webshop here on the site if my framed linocut prints (see picture) prove a success (although not too much of a success, because then I won’t have any left to sell, naturally. I’m also working on a pattern and make-your-own package for one of my crochet dinosaurs. Let me know if you’re interested in that, I’ll work a little harder. ^__^

So remember, even if you don’t hear from me, stuff is going on and I’m brewing up something cool. With dinosaurs. Of course.

Because my tagline is now “I make things” I thought I might as well tell you about some of the things I make.

End of Days is a new comic book that’s almost finished. It’s about dinosaurs and the end of the world, and I’m currently raising some funds to pay for the printing. If you contribute to the cause, you get a copy of the book and there are some bonus goodies like a personal drawing or one of my highly popular toy dinosaurs.

Check it out at indiegogo.com/dinos

Aside: what’s happening with this blog? Yeah, I know, right? I fell off the blogging wagon for a bit and have just been limping along since then. I hope to start putting some more thoughtful and interesting posts together, but I don’t want to bore you with half-baked stuff.

If you’re interested in what I’ve been thinking in the meantime, your best bet is to get the Dinosaur book actually, as that’s where all my clever thinking has gone. ^__^

“This is awful” is one of my magic phrases. it’s an unusual one; you wouldn’t think that saying “this is awful” could make anyone feel better. And it doesn’t. And that’s why it does.

A bit of history.

I was still working full time at the boring dayjob, for a boss that bullied me in that underhand, feminine way that makes you doubt your own judgement and makes it almost impossible to complain about it.

I spent a lot of time in the valley of not quite right, that tense place where anxiety attacks come from. The valley of not quite right is filled with the unprovoked sense that something is wrong, that something dreadful is about to happen or that you’ve made a mistake about something important and you’re about to be found out.

And then nothing happens.

And that doesn’t get your out of the valley. On the contraty, you just get deeper and deeper into it.

It was pretty awful.

So that’s how I came up with “this is awful” as a verbal talisman. I hung onto it for luck. I would say (quietly, of course) “this is awful” and try to breath normally.*

Saying, “this is awful” did not make things better. But id did calm some of the struggle within me.

If this are awful, it’s no surprise that I feel bad. I don’t have to wonder where this not quite right feeling comes from, or why I seem unable to get simple tasks right. Things are awful, that’s why.

“This are awful” holds inside the suggestion that maybe not everything is awful, just this. And maybe this will not always be awful, it just is, now.

At the same time “this is awful” doesn’t ask for a fix. It doesn’t ask you to do something, anything, to make the awful better or change the way you feel or come up with a clever solution.

It just takes a note: “this is awful”

And that’s why I like it.

I eventually got a transfer and a new boss, and things are now awful only from time to time, and for different reasons. I’m glad I brought my talisman with me.

Today we’re playing at being robots. But don’t worry, no dancing is required. Just a bit of programming.

I don’t actually know very much about programming, but I know it uses functions. You can use functions to program yourself, like this:

Example Function: WHEN (X occurs)
THEN (I do Y)

For instance,

Tidy Function: WHEN (I decide to go to bed) THEN (I will spend 5 minutes tidying first)

Biscuits Function: WHEN (I enter the biscuit isle in the supermarket) THEN (I'll take a moment to visualise my weight-loss coach and remember how proud she is of me)

Cee Lo Green Function: WHEN (I hear that really rude song on the radio) THEN (I'll make time to do my exercises that same day)

You use a cue from the environment or from a habit you already have (e.g. getting ready for be, making coffee, checking your e-mail) and tie something new to it, something you want to start doing (e.g. tidying, breathing exercises, drinking water).

It’s a simple principle, and can be very effective as a support for new habits. Here are some tips to make it work well, based on my experience with it.

1. Make sure it’s practicable. Taking 10 minutes to tidy every time you’ve been to the toilet could get annoying, but it’s doable. Going to the gym every time you encounter your gym bag is less practical. How would you ever wash your gym clothes?I tried to build a drawing habit by drawing something every time my brother took the dog for a walk when I was staying over. I hadn’t realised, however, that this was a multiple-times-a-day event, and happened at unsociable times (early in the morning and just when I was ready for bed).The programme never really worked right because the timing was so awkward. I also resolved to never get a dog.
2. Try to really do it every time, especially in the beginning. Every time you do y after x occurs, you strengthen the programming and the habit. Every time you don’t do y after x occurs, the programme is weakened.
3. Add conditions, get out of hell free cards or ELSE clauses to your hearts content, but don’t turn it into a game of Calvinball. You can tinker with programming that doesn’t work, but you need to give it time to settle into smooth working order, too.
4. When you first create a new function, imagine yourself doing it. Practice in your head. You can do this with hypnosis if you like, but that’s totally optional. Just take a moment to sit and imagine it a couple of times. Add details and different circumstances. Imagine it in first person, and also as someone watching you do it.
5. This kind of programming is a way to use your natural tendencies towards superstition and compulsive behaviour for good.Keep in mind the good.Be a well-behaved, useful robot, not an evil gone-insane robot who promises people cake but never delivers. You’re the programmer, any bits of code that are causing problems or messing things up can be discarded or rewritten. Keep an eye on how it’s working out.

Sometimes code causes side effects. After the failure with the dog, I decided to do some sketching practice every morning, before opening the curtains in the living room. Opening the curtains was my cue, I’d find myself at the windows and think, “oh, wait, I didn’t do my sketching practice yet.” Some days that means the curtains don’t open until about lunch time. I’ve decided that it’s worthwhile to have an almost perfectly daily hour of sketching time.

Being a robot is fun, try it!

How a folk-singer talked himself out of an embarrassing panic attack (in the style of Dr Seuss).

This is a guest post by Colin Beveridge.

Oh dear, oh dear, oh what have we here?
A singer, a six-string and four pounds of fear!
Four pounds of fear and a shortage of puff
When he say “HELLO, ENGLAND!” he sounds… sorta rough.

“This isn’t on telly,” he says in his mind,
As he futzes with tuning to help him unwind.
“It’s not like I’m going to get stuck in the stocks
“In the likely event that I don’t rock their socks!”

“And that’s why I’m up here, no if and no but!
“To get past my stuckness and cut through my rut.
“They might hate my music, but what would they say
“If I stormed off the stage after failing to play?”

“The worst that could happen, the Absolute Worst,
“Is they ask ‘who’s that loser who wouldn’t play first?’
“And maybe they’ll see me around the town after
“And point with their friends amid cruelty and laughter.”

“Is that what I want? No, it’s not, no it’s not,
“But I’d still survive, no matter how bad it got!
“And I don’t have to rock it! No, really, it’s fine,
“It’s ok to hit bum notes and miss the odd line.”

“It might be a shambles, it might be a flop
“But anything’s better than throwing a strop,
“And maybe they’ll like me? I mean, surely, they could?
“And if they could like me, then I could be good!”

“So maybe I’ll start off with something they’ll like,”
He says to himself as he strides to the mic:
“Hello? England?” he asks, to a laugh and applause
So he takes a deep breath and he rocks the first chord.

Colin Beveridge specialises in helping people find the confidence to work towards their goals, in math, music, art or anything else. He is the author of the Little Algebra Book, for anyone who need a booster in basic math and Folk – The Rules, an e-book on finding the nerve to put your stuff in front of people. He lives in Poole, England with an espresso pot and a mandolin he can’t play yet.

One day, I realised I was spending a lot of time being annoyed at stuff. I decided to investigate.

What’s up?

I want things to stop being so annoying.
That is, I want to stop being so annoyed.

Annoyed?

Annoyed. Aggravated. Eating of the face. Grargh.

OK, let’s look at examples of annoying things and see if there’s any patterns.

…
There seems to be a lot of annoyance at people who believe or value strange things. Other things than me. It feels like an attack.

Whoa, they attack me?

Well, it means that the things I think are important, aren’t, and that my way of looking at the world is naive or stupid. Even when they don’t actually say that, and sometimes they do, it’s implied.

Hm, OK. Let’s skip over the irony there and pretend this is a valid problem. It hurts when people imply I’m naive, stupid or wrong. What are the different ways of taking that hurt?

• Being arrogant in return: actually I’m better than them.
• Attacking them for being idiots.
• Seeking reassurance that I’m not the only one who thinks they’re idiots.

Aha: finding others who agree with me so I don’t feel alone in a sea of opposition. Being backed up in my feelings by others. External validation.

This is why I’m tempted to post on twitter about all the random crap that annoys me. It’s also why I’m arguing in my head about how right I am and why.

Right. Let’s take advice from some of your values.

Wait, what?

What does Sovereignty say about this?

Oh. She says it’s good to defend your borders, but natural borders might serve you better. Why let the vandals in in the first place? You don’t need your neighbouring countries to support your mode of government, what’s important is that your people support it.

That’s… nice in theory. I’m not sure Israel would see it that way.

What does Compassion say about this?

Compassion says the “idiots” have valid internal reasons to believe and act as they do. This might not be about you. If it’s not about you, how can you respond to them in a way that respects both you and them?

Oh, um, I could… ask people questions to help them understand their own position better, and the position they’re reacting to. Also, ask people questions to help me understand their position better. Actually, do that first.

What does Productivity say about this?

He says this is annoying and a distraction. Nothing is needed here, there is no problem.

Helpful as usual. What does Comfort say?

Do what Sovereignty suggests. Pull up mountains. Close the door, turn up the heating and pile up cushions so you don’t have to deal with this stuff in your head. If it does come in, just carefully sweep it up and bin it, it doesn’t belong here so you can just clear it up.

Just clear it up? How do I do that?

By not being quite so astonished at the fact that crazy people are crazy. By remembering that basically decent people sometimes believe strange things. That believing strange things generally does not make you dangerous. And that I value and treasure the weirdness of people.

Oh! Oh, yeah, I do do that. Thanks, that helps.

OK, one more. What does Zen say?

Who is annoyed? Who is annoying? Don’t know!

Thanks, Zen. That’s uh, a little high level for me at the moment, I think.
Hm, interesting stuff. Not about me, mountains against vandals and treasuring weirdness. Thanks, question-asking me, that’s given me some useful stuff to work with.

I’m welcome. Do I need to briefly touch on Irony here?

What, the fact that I’m whining about other people attacking my world view because I don’t agree with what they are saying amongst themselves?

No, I mean the fact I’m calling other people crazy while talking to myself.

Oh. Right. Yeah, that’s kinda humbling, I guess.

Next time, I’ll ask Irony for advice, too.

Sure thing.

Note: I thought I’d just show you this technique rather than try to explain it. I guess it’s like talking to monsters, but in reverse; you talk to the better parts of yourself instead of the troubled/scared/mean parts. If you’re willing to pretend that the multitude of thoughts and opinions inside you are separate creatures you can talk to, you can do all kinds of stuff. Of course, it might mean you’re crazy. It’s the price you pay for doing mad science. And/or listening to Havi, who totally inspired this post and ‘most everything I do here and I’m never sure how often to mention that so hereby.

Last week, I accidentally stepped into a hole in time and got left behind. Time rushed on, always in the present, as it is, making things happen and everyone doing things and running along. Not me.

I was stuck. Stationary. outside time, or perhaps just in a different kind of time. A dead bit of time that didn’t flow and nothing happened.

Like a still forest pool.

Lurking in my deep, black, forest-pool time, I was dimly aware that elsewhere, the river was still rushing along, laughing over the rocks and fish jumping. It filled me with deep, murky regret.

If only I wasn’t stuck here, sunk, motionless, cold, I could have rushed along with it, like everyone else.

Did they notice I’d gone missing? Would I ever catch up?

Somehow, I don’t know how, I found myself out of that pool, back in the river. I was amazed to find it was still there. I thought I’d missed it, like a bus. I hadn’t missed anything. I didn’t really get left behind. The stream was still there for me to step back into, slightly different, but also the same.

I didn’t even have any catching up to do, there were simply the things I wanted to do, still, and now that time was flowing again, I had time to do them.

I did miss a drawing class. Some things really do happen only once. But then, there will be another class next week. And the week after and after. And I can keep taking drawing classes over and over until I’m covered in charcoal and my arms are about to fall off.

There is so much time. Oceans of time, years and years and years, I hope, and yet I act as if missing a couple of days is the end of the world.

Dear me,

Because it is always this moment, you don’t have to worry about being left behind. There is always more time, right until the moment there isn’t anymore, and then you don’t have to worry about anything at all anymore, ever. So that’s OK too. Please chill.

Love, me.

You know, I get perfectionists. I don’t suffer from the affliction much myself (although this is the third time I’ve tried to start this paragraph so maybe that’s a lie), but I understand the impulse. Wanting to get it right. Dot the i’s and cross the t’s. Making it just so.

It’s a good impulse. It’s a noble impulse.

But it will mess up everything.

If perfectionism is all you have, if that’s you’re default mode of operation, you’re missing out on the really good stuff.

If you set out to make it perfect, you will only ever be as good as you are right now.

Yeah, that’s pretty serious, huh?

It’s because if you’re doing something perfectly, you clearly already know how to do the thing. You can’t learn from doing something you already know how to do perfectly. It’s impossible.

Of course perfection is a theoretical extreme. But even at the high end of reality this effect is felt. The more your execution of the thing approaches perfect, the less you’ll be learning from doing the thing.

Make it perfect, and be the best you are right now, or accept you’re going to make errors, and learn how to do stuff you weren’t capable of before, amazing friend and foe as well as yourself.

Those are your options. You cannot do both at the same time.

Are you a perfectionist? Defend yourself!

So, if you read my last post, you’ll know that I was going to have a bijoux mini ptit launchette last week, and that didn’t happen because I fell apart and had to stich myself back together using luxury hand-dyed yarn.

I have a new thing. It started out as a small thing, just a page with an order now button, but then it became a small site instead, and I realised it wasn’t going to be a small thing at all but a major thing because I have stuff to say on the topic.

So I sat down and wrote a punchy booklet full of all the most important stuff I know about setting goals (or making wishes or whatever phrase works for you) without beating yourself up afterwards. This fit with the general idea of the thing, which is about me drawing you mascots for your goals.

This booklet will be useful if you had any new year’s resolutions, because right around now you’ll be running into the first hurdles. If you haven’t fallen already. And if you don’t believe New Year’s Resolutions work, you’re absolutely right, and this booklet will give you something to do instead.

Look, I made it look like a little ringbound book even though it’s just a download! My cheesiness knows no bounds!

Anyway, this little book is the cake at the launchparty for my new mini site: Personal Mascots.com. I’ll be writing much about it, but for now, just have a look. It has good things for people with goals. Or wishes. Or something in betweens. Go on, go!

This is a true story. No trick ending, this is what happened. In it, I play the role of a super hero, and by telling the story, I’m sharing my super powers with you.

They’re in a steel, glass and grime waiting room in a train station in Belgium (the French-speaking part). Some of them are here waiting for a late train, and some of them are here because it’s well lit and warm and they have nowhere else to go. I honestly don’t remember which group I was in, but I’m there too, me and my backpack.

There’s a pale man in pale jeans talking to a young woman. He has a book and a string of beads. He points at the book, talking rapidly. She is reading a book of her own, ignoring him, even though he stands very close.

He leans in closer. He holds up the book and shakes it. It would be difficult to understand what he’s saying even if you did speak French, which I don’t. She shrinks deeper and deeper into the hard plastic chair, turning away from him, trying to get him to hear her silent message.

“Is he bothering you?” I say in English.

She needs a moment to understand my question, then nods. Yes.

“Hey,” I say in the kind of voice you use when your dog jumps on the bed, “she’s not interested.”

He points at his book, wide-eyed, talking in French. But I was only… But you don’t understand…

“No.” I say. “Go away. She’s not interested.”

He wanders off like a kicked puppy. Maybe he sat down, maybe he left, I don’t remember. I remember looking at her. I was struck by two things.

1. That was really easy.
2. There was no way on earth she could have done it.

I don’t want to give the impression that my behaviour here was typical. That I’m some square-jawed super chick who swans around going, “Excuse me madam, is this ruffian bothering you?” at any given opportunity.

I mean, I’d love to claim that, but it’s not true. That’s really not me.

In fact, I looked at her and understood exactly, from the inside, what had happened, how she came to sit, curled up, trying to crawl into her book while some slightly creepy, maybe crazy, much too skinny guy preached all over her. I lived like that for years. Shrinking. Taking a step back. Afraid to take up space. Giving all of myself away, hastily, before they could take it by force.
The woman I’d stood up for was me, even if she was a different person.

“Thank you,” she said in English.

I wanted to say, “Next time, stand up for yourself. It’s OK for you to be here. It’s OK for you to take up your own space. It’s OK for you to say, ‘Hey, I’m reading my book here, I want you to leave me alone,’ out loud.”

But I didn’t know how to say any of that without preaching all over her myself, so I just said, “Girl power.”

And she smiled and I smiled and I sat down and that was that. Superhero moment over.

And I thought about the space I was taking up, sitting there. And about the next time someone unwelcome would lean into that space. I wanted to make sure I’d remember this moment, this uncharacteristic pocket of bravery, so I could reach back in time for the strength to say, “No. I want you to leave me alone.”

And if I can reach back in time, maybe you can reach back and sideways, and borrow my super powers the next time you need them, and say, “No. Leave me alone.”