Billygean.co.uk

Benny for your thoughts: Benny’s mum

by billygean

Benny’s favourite spot is on the top of our sofa. So much so that he has turned the cushion orange. Our sofa cost us a lot of money and so we have been experimenting, trying to find a throw that covers the cushion and that Benny will actually sit on.

There have been several attempts, including a lovely fleecy fawn-coloured throw that I would LOVE to have as my bedsheet, but as soon as we put a throw on the cushion, Benny stops going up there.

“No luck with the throw?” I said to MindReader today when he called me at lunch. We were trialling a new grey throw, which we found in our conservatory, from our city-centre flat days (they seem so long ago, and kind of like it happened to two very much younger, more immature people, but boy would I love to walk to work).

“Actually, he got on it as I was ironing my shirt this morning,” MindReader said.

“Oh!”

“But, he got on it and he was kneading it and purring. I think he thinks it’s… Someone else.”

Benny was in the background to a picture I took of MindReader eaely in the morning. I just find it hilarious. He's clearly half asleep.

Benny for your thoughts MindReader

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Maybe that it would do me good it I believed there were a God out in the starry firmament. As it is that’s just a lie and I’m here eating up the boredom on an island of cement

by billygean

I grew up believing in God. I went to a primary school that was quite Christian (I remember two Jevoah’s Witnesses having to leave the assembly while we said the Lord’s Prayer and sang a weird hymn called Jubilate).

At this school, I was taught that coal, oil and natural gas are fossil fuels. I was taught that iodine is used to detect the acidity of something. And I was taught that God created the Universe.

When I was about ten, I asked our local vicar who created God and he said he didn’t know. During my teenage years, I stopped paying attention to God and stopped going to church because it was cold and boring. I did, however, pick up on paganism, and spent many emo nights in my room lighting candles, thinking about nature, casting fake spells and celebrating the 12 pagan festivals. Even though it wasn’t christinaity, it was still a faith, really.

At university, I didn’t really think about religion, but most of my friends and housemates were religious. I also read a lot of religious texts, including the frighteningly boring Pilgrim’s Progress. However, it was only really when I studied the law, and realised how logical I actually am, that I accidentally became an atheist.

Maybe atheist is too strong a term. A lot of agnostic people bemoan atheists because nobody can know either way if a god exists. But my argument is that I don’t believe anything exists without proof. If you told me there was a big cat who lives on Mars, I wouldn’t believe you, even though I might want to. And millions of people believing it doesn’t make it any different, for me. Justin Bieber taught me that.

I have, over the years, developed a kind of list of my problems with religion. And this isn’t a “this is why I’m an atheist and you should be, too” post. In fact, quite the opposite, I don’t want you to think what I think, because I am cold and logical and I miss even the idea of faith, if not faithitself. I rather miss the presence of that: a knowledge that things will turn out alright, and there’s something looking out for me. I’d like it back. And if someone could answer these questions satisfactorily, maybe that would happen.

All that said, if you don’t want to read difficult and/or ranty questions about religion, stop reading, and certainly don’t send me an aggressive email. It’s my blog, and humans should debate important things.

If a Christian was born in another country, they would likely believe something different (similar, but crucially different). It’s hard for me not to feel that every religion therefore has an element of indoctrination.
If god created the universe (in a Creationist sense or because he started the big bang and designed evolution or whatever), he is all-powerful. If he is all-powerful, why doesn’t he help people? I immediately reject people who think god does answer their prayers about getting promoted and not the child born with AIDs in Africa who dies when they are five. I, for the same reason, reject people who assert that we have to experience the bad to appreciate the good, or that everything happens for a reason. I find these to be offensively first world views: for some people, there is no good and there is no reason. Somewhere along the line, I started to view God as one of the worst characters in fiction. Worse, even, than Kevin Khatchadourian. To either create suffering, or to stand by cruelly and do nothing about it, when you love somebody, seems immesurably wrong.
How can we believe a text that was written hundreds of years after the event? Why should we? Imagine if we experienced some sort of spiritual happening (in the form of Benny, if you will), and it fell to our great-great-great-great grandchildren to write it down. Would it be remotely accurate? Would we believe someone telling us 4th hand about a miracle today? If not, why believe something then?
It feels very convenient to me that believing all the people you love go on to an afterlife is also pretty much what we want, as humans, to believe. I find I prefer to separate things into: what I want to happen, and what is likely. I want nothing more than for there to be an afterlife, to see people who have died again. But my brain will die. And that is where my thoughts and feelings are; we know that. So how can I possibly go to heaven (not that I will…) and be thinking and feeling and being wonderful, without my BRAIN?! And isn’t this just what some people wanted to happen, and wrote it down? And isn’t that why there are so many religions with a father-figure at their centre: because humans like to believe this thing – to feel protected, like humans are hardwired to feel, by their parents? That the reason the main religions are similar is because humans have this need to feel meaning and, anyway, that something is created is quite a human concept?
Even if we all do go on to live happily ever after in heaven (even so, what is that? And what will I do with all my time?), isn’t it pretty cruel planting us on earth knowing that we are all going to die and there being no evidence of this after life? And why is our entrance to heaven dependant on believe? Why the emphasis on faith? Why is that more important than anything – believing, in the absence of evidence? Why not reason? Why not compassion? And the whole death thing generally – someone you love most in the world dying thirty years before you? Some famous atheist or other said something like: even if it were all true, the afterlife and God loving us, that wouldn’t make up for all the very real things suffered on earth.
I don’t agree with a religion that gets people to live their life in fear. I don’t understand it. It essentially says, “do X, or something awful will happen”. Like, believe in me, or you will go to hell. A form of disciplining – just like our parents did. The whole thing is so human, so ingrained, that it makes it difficult for me to comprehend that a non-human, a god created it.
It also seems quite disproportionate to say, here are ten rules, one of them being you have to worship me, and if you don’t do it, and you don’t confess on your death bed, I am going to send you to hell FOREVER. Is this not a disproportionate sentence for the crime? And, also, quite egotistical?
Evolution is enough. It is beautiful.
Is there not ample evidence that somebody is not looking out for us? That shite happens for no reason and then we all die? Just like there is ample evidence that there are no ghosts (i.e. no evidence?)? Or that horoscopes aren’t accurate?

Answers on a postcard.

Religion

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Twenty five past eternity

by billygean

When I was at university, I spent a lot of time by myself. A lot. I was a workaholic, and you can’t really read books about Foucault’s theories with your housemates in your room, so, by the time I got serious about studying, I was almost always on my own. Some of my friends treated university as a nine to five; I wasn’t very good at making boundaries and I was also extremely unproductive, so I used to study for twelve hours a day and probably only actually do about five hours’ work.

I didn’t think about time spent alone – or really time at all – then. Perhaps this was because I filled alone time with work, but I don’t think so. I wasn’t very anxious or neurotic, then. I would have episodes – one notable one where I thought I had alopoecia and threw out all of my shampoo – but most of the time I was none-mad. My housemates all moved home for various parts of the summer of 2005 and I spent most of that summer working full time in an office and living on my own. I didn’t really give this a lot of thought. I worked. I peed with the door open. I stayed up late doing blogging things. It was great.

In 2007, I moved in with some horrible housemates, and I think that I was so unhappy in my own skin, in my own house, with my own thoughts, that I actually forgot how to spend time on my own. Or, Time Alone became a stressful thing, because I would worry about my housemates.

And then when I became ill, time spent alone became even more stressful – because I had too much of it, and because I couldn’t do anything productive or enjoyable with it.

Even when I started getting better, I had become over-reliant on MindReader. Even his evenings out had to be scheduled around me and my plans. I would wander around our flat, eating the ingredients of meals instead of the meals themselves, turning all the lights on and leaving televisions on when I went to read in other rooms. Entire nights alone were even worse. More often than not, I simply wouldn’t go to sleep. I would have feelings close to panic. I would feel like if I died no one would know (it pains me to write this, such was the drama). A small, emotional part of my brain says that perhaps I felt that if I became ill again – and it did used to happen very suddenly, sometimes – there would be no one there to physically care for me, but a larger part of me knows it was just that I had forgotten how to be me. And such a large part of being me is what I do. I have baths. I light candles. I melt chocolate and eat it with a spoon. I devour books. I sing to myself. I ponder the seasons. But I had stopped doing all of this.

I used to hate being alone so much that I wouldn’t take into account some of the compromises you have to make when you spend all your time with someone else. I wouldn’t care what we watched on TV, so long as I wasn’t alone. Now, I still spend a signifcant amount of my free time with football on the television, but I take myself off into the bedroom to watch other things, or read books, or watch Benny (something I can do for an alarming amount of time, for I am simple).

I only really realised today how things have changed. They have changed gradually, of course, but some things helped to speed up those changes. Like being so busy that a Saturday in the house while it pours outside is so welcome. Feeling like I’m worth something and not just a sad girl with no job who waits for her boyfriend to come home is another. Having a cat helps with falling asleep alone more than I would like to admit. Having limited amount of time on the internet during the week does, too. Last year, I started to make lists of things I enjoyed and then did them. Now, I do them without thinking.

This morning, I woke up at nine (I went to sleep at ten pm. I know!). I got a coffee, my phone from downstairs, and collected Benny from the spare room where he’s taken to spending his mornings, and went back to bed and reacquainted myself with the internet. I took a pot of tea and a book into the bath. Then I got dressed and let Benny out, and read some blogs to the sountrack of My Head Is An Animal, a fabulous album by Of Monsters And Men. I had some lunch, watched Neighbours. And it is only now – 6pm – that I realised – hey. I’m actually 100% okay with this. I’m happy on my own. I’m comfortable on my own. I’m good company. MindReader is coming back in a few hours, and I’m looking forward to it, but I’m happy alone, too.

I just thought you should know.

Uncategorized

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I’m in debt

by billygean

Internet. I am in debt.

I have to tell you because I have to make myself accountable.

Firstly though, a minor digression. Over the past couple of days, I have become lost in this lady’s blog. While I am probably considered a prolific blogger, I actually don’t read that many blogs anymore. I used to – in the heady days of Petite Anglaise and Belle Du Jour and of course Dooce – but I’m phenomenally choosy and it’s pretty rare I come across a blog whose posts I always read and whose archives I delve into on self-indulgent Thursday evenings.

Anyway, Ashley at the above blog writes very candidly about her personal development (in a non naff way – no inspirational quotes here) – her emotional development, writing, career, diet/exercise. She wrote very honestly about her debt here.

I read almost the whole thing this evening. It rather helps that she is quite a lot like me – a writer, a thinker, an angsty-music-lover,an all-or-nothing-er – and I was completely gripped. Her writing made me realise these things:

Debt does not go away if you do nothing about it
It is possible to live within one’s means AND THIS INCLUDES REPAYING DEBT
If you want to change, you actually have to do the changing (now).
It isn’t ACTUALLY fun to spend beyond what you have, and the spending always feels slightly guilty. It might be MORE fun to work towards being debt-free.

And so I have spent some of the evening while MindReader made some delicious chicken/new potato/feta concoction in the kitchen reading, stroking Benny, looking out of the window, and thinking. Ashley set out her debt as it stood (some $20,000) and made a committment to be debt free.

The thought of being debt free excites me more than I can probably express. And, while I’m not a very good long-term thinker (indeed, I read somewhere that procrastinators never are – something to do with non-procrastinators being able to see that if they get their work done it will have good long-term effects and procrastinators only being able to see the joy of spending just ten more minutes watching teenage girls apply eyeliner on YouTube), I know that being debt free will make me happier than mint green pastel nail varnish. I know. I know. I will be able to be more reckless, in a funny kind of way, with travelling, and able to save, for anything I like really. I currently can’t do that. Because I’m in debt.

So, what is the debt?

HSBC overdraft: £2,000 (interest is £30pcm)
Student loan: c£14,000 (interest is negligible) (I am not particularly aiming to pay this off. As a friend said to me today, she views her student loan repayments as more like a tax).
My purchases on MindReader’s credit card: c£500
Loan from DoctorSister and her husband: £2000

I also used to owe another £2,000 on another overdraft, but I did actually pay that off during an incredible tedious 18 months when I was hardly earning any money.

It gets worse, though. I have actually been given £5,000 three times. In my defence, not that I should be defending myself, all three were advances to live on (like a student loan, but not a loan) by my future employers, but the third was actually more of a one off payment than a maintenance grant. And I have spent it all.

I try not to be too hard on myself about this. The first two grants were when I was studying full time, and I managed to live on that £5,000 and whatever else I earnt during the University holidays, for an entire year. The final grant I made last me the three years I effectively didn’t work or was working sporadically or not being paid very much because I was housebound. But the problem was that I told myself lies, like, “I’ll just use this £200 to make up this shortfall”, etc, until it was all gone.

I’ve been paying more attention to my mind recently. Not quite in a zen meditative sense, but in being aware of my thoughts and being able to dismiss them for being false, or aggressive, or based in fear.

Most of my readers will have gleaned that I at least have a small problem with shopping, and recently I’ve noticed that, when I shop, I’m buying into the idea of a product. The idea of a bath oil that smells like the plains of Africa or will provide dreamless sleep. Not the reality – yet another nice-smelling bath product. I know this isn’t rocket science.

I have earnt an alarming amount since September last year, and I am just looking at my bank statement for the past month as I type, and I have written below all my purchases which weren’t necessary (all food on this list is unnecessary as MindReader and I pay for enough food on the joint account. Anything I buy in Tesco is likely to be nail varnish, a book or a croissant as I forgot breakfast before work).

Pret a Manger: £7
Starbucks: £4.95
Brunch: £7.45
Tesco: £5
Dinner out: £13
Overdraft interest: £30
Sainsbury’s: £5.04
Waitrose: £2
iTunes: 79p
Takeaway: £16
Tesco: £19
House Tree, candles, storage boxes: £25
Drinks: £6
Curry out: £19

Withdrawn cash which went on nothing useful that I can work out: £80

= £240.23

I also managed to save £130 this month. So in total, that’s £340 of debt that I could have paid off (minus the £30 overdraft interest because I can’t avoid paying them right now). I wouldn’t have even had to go without. The above list is just things. Not commuting or the odd coffee or petrol or food. Just – nail polishes. And really extravagant meals out. And the Hunger Games books. And a house tree.

Okay, so now that I’m thoroughly depressed I have decided to change. My brain says “but I don’t want to spend no money!” but my overdraft is never going to pay itself off. If I want to get rid of it and be on my way to being debt free, I have to pay it off. I have to do the thing I don’t want to do to get the result I want. So that’s what I’ve got to do. Now.

So I thought that if I wrote here about it I would be accountable. I am kind of an all-or-nothing person, but I also know that this won’t work if I never do anything. I did, however, used to justify purchases by saying “life’s too short!” or, worse, “I’ve been ill and I deserve things.” Regardless, I am allowed one holiday (a small one), because I do deserve that and I will set a small budget per month which I can either fritter away on after-work drinks or coffees in the week, or save up and buy something big.

But I should be able to pay off at least £270 of debt every month. Minus £500 for a holiday and I make this overdraft paid off in January 2013.

And I have to. I am in debt. I want so much for my pay to go in and for my balance to reflect what my wage is, not what £2000 minus my wage is. I will not go shopping, because I am in debt.

Internet, I am in debt, and I am going to get out of it.

If 2011 was the year of finally figuring things out and giving my illness and various sleep problems the finger, 2012 will be the year of Sorting My Shit Out.

budget Sorting Shit Out

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Actually it was Bright Eyes

by billygean

“Ah, Automatic For The People,” I say. “One of the best albums of all time.”

For some reason, when we’re driving, I like to attempt to educate MindReader about music. Not that he isn’t educated, but, well: my taste in music is better, obviously.

It’s Sunday night. MindReader drove us, I drove us back, such is our arrangement. It’s night and rain and music.

“Left up here,” MindReader says, as I negotiate Sparkbrook’s busy high street. People step out in front us, taxis indicate and then pull out without warning. I yank the wheel left, pleased to get off the high street, and career around the corner in third gear.

“What’s next?” I say, gesturing to the iPod.

“A car crash?” MindReader says.

I can't drive MindReader music

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The sad state of a BA English Graduate

by billygean

“I have no book to read,” I say to MindReader while he fixates on the football.

“You were greedy!” he says with a brief smile. Indeed, it’s an in-joke of ours that I should savour Books That I Get Really Into. But of course, I lose all control, take them on the train, into the bath with me, read them late at night, even downloading audio versions that read to me as I drive.

“I miss Katniss,” I say. That’s right, I’m a cliché. This week, I’ve devoured The Hunger Games Trilogy, marking the third series of children’s books I’ve got far too involved with. Indeed, Internet, Twilight was awful, but I did read those books very fast.

“You can read that John Grisham one I just read,” MindReader says.

“Ooh, will I like it?”

“Well,” he says. “It’s not for kids, if that’s what you mean.”

MindReader reading

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Leave our boyfriends behind / Leave our girlfriends behind

by billygean

When I was a teenager, one of my cousins described their twenties as diverse. I, a fifteen year-old geek with a dial-up modem which perfectly suited my MSN addiction, had no idea what she meant. And, right up until I was about twenty two (so erm, five years ago, how did this happen?), life stayed small. I had Birmingham Boyfriends (indeed, Mike’s moving to Leeds was cited as, apparently, the MAIN AND ONLY reason I broke up with him), I had University friends I saw most days – and housemates I saw every day – and home friends I saw every day of the holidays.

And then, when I was 22, things started to drift. For a long time I thought it was down to becoming ill: people moved on with their lives and were content to only visit The Sofa Dweller every few months.

But now, I am well, and I am living a very normal life for a twenty-something. I live near the City. I commute into the City. I cohabit with a boyfriend and a couple of times a week I do something City-ish – drinks or meals or shopping. And so now I am sociable and non-hermity and, actually, I still see some of my friends only ever few months.

And, *whispers* I don’t really have as many friends as I would like.

And one of the refreshing things about rejoining the real world last autumn was having colleagues who I see a lot of, both in and outside of work. We make weekly plans. A bottle of wine in a bar. Venturing out to find so-and-so a top of such-and-such. Birthdays are celebrated in clubs and ridiculous cocktails are consumed. And, a small, ashamed part of me thinks, these are my friends, because I see them a lot. And, while I know that’s not true now, I sometimes pine for a life where Tuesday evenings are spent sampling different pubs, drinking real ale in beer gardens or mulled wine in tight, candlelit corners or answering quiz questions incorrectly over a coke. Where phones are picked up once, twice a week. Where houses aren’t tidied in antitipcation of dinner parties but friends come over in sweat pants; drop by, unannounced. Where errands are run together. Sweaters left in cars, dropped off the next week, not month. Movies seen. Spontaneous takeaways eaten. Inside jokes multiplied. Shoes taken off and danced around in clubs (we are in our twenties, after all, not forties).

I am certainly not blameless in this, and I don’t want any real-life friends reading to think that I’m ranting (besides, I’d like to think, the sentiment of “I’d love to see more of you!” is sweet and not crazy). While I am more available than most, and do not plan four weekends ahead like many (indeed, I am queen of free weekends), I can also still be quite sedentary and solitary, and work long and quite unpredictable hours at times. I will sit down with some friends in April, and we will end up with a date in the diary for June, which any one of us might bail on. It’s a range of things: some of my closest friends live in London, not Birmingham, and whole weekends have to be freed up. Some of my friends just don’t really do weekday-evening pub visits. Some live in Birmingham, but not near me. Some eat dinner every night with their partners. Some work too hard. Some are tied down by buses and trains and driving. Some have children or big jobs that take them overseas. Often, it’s my fault. I’m busy, or tired, or MindReader’s busy, or we’re at a Christening. Etc. It’s my fault, too.

But, as someone who grew up not only watching Friends repeats, but spent her early twenties living five doors down from her best friends, and across a hallway from her best housemates, sometimes, I just don’t know why this is.

Does this happen to anyone else?

City life Twenties are confusing

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Benny for your thoughts: other people react to Benny

by billygean

One of my friends is dropping me at home following after-work dinner in town.

“Do you want to come in and meet Benny?” I say.

“Oh Billygean. I thought you’d never ask!”

I push open the front door and call out to MindReader, mostly so he does not greet me in one of our private, silly voices. Benny, on hearing my voice, of course, comes running out of the hall and I scoop him up and pass him to my friend.

He dutifully drapes his arms around her neck and cuddles up to her, like he has no plans to leave (which I am sure he doesn’t).

“Oh, ohhhh!” My friend is saying, just like when I first met Benny. MindReader, who is ironing, glances at us and rolls his eyes. “Billygean,” she says, as Benny nuzzles her neck. “He is tremendous.”

Benny for your thoughts

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Benny for your thoughts: King Benny

by billygean

Life rumbles on with Benny/Benny Bear/King Benny/The Pharoh/Your Honour. He goes out almost every day, if only for a quick nose around after work. He still beats up shoelaces, phones, remote controls, and also other cats, sometimes. He still hides when playing gets too much and he becomes fearful of everything. We all go to bed together at around 10pm, and at about 10.30pm when I stop reading and turn the light out, he goes and lies down at the end of the bed. He still wakes us up at 5 but only about half of the time. He now sits on command but doesn’t understand lie down at all. At best, he thinks it means “get under the table” because that is how I taught him that I wanted him to lie down. He still takes himself off to unusual places; in the corner behind the laundry basket, amongst my jumpers in the wardrobe, occasionally tries to go in the cupboard in the living room which he remains obsessed with. I stripped the beds the other day and he clearly felt the pile of duvet and pillows was another room and spent a good ten minutes exploring. We buy industrial-sized, pink, scented litter and he only eats gluten-free food.

During a lazy Friday night when the toggles on my pyjamas were irritating him

Benny for your thoughts

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Unacceptable behaviour

by billygean

MindReader, BestFriend and I are out to dinner. It’s been a fun Easter weekend replete with behaving like tourists at a castle, shopping in Leamington Spa, and eating a fry up brunch at a trendy place in King’s Heath.

BestFriend has been challenged to give me her best whale noise. MindReader is smiling indulgently at us over too-posh food. I am cackling uproariously.

“I need the toilet,” I say, standing up. And this restaurant, Internet, is one of those too-cool places which sits people on benches, kind of like Wagamamas, but full of people who regularly buy gorgonzola and stuffed vine leaves rather than cheddar and sausage rolls like Normal People.

The couple next to us – a 40ish man and woman, soon-to-be-separated, I’d guess, given they said about five words to each other all evening – were already a touch sour faced at our laughter.

But then, Internet, as I am standing up, I lose my balance (I am in stupid heels), and there IS balance required, because there isn’t much of a gap between the table and the bench and, oh! here I am, flamingo-like, on one leg, with one leg tucked up, the toe of my shoe caught between the table and the bench, and I PUT MY HAND ON THEIR TABLE TO STEADY MYSELF.

ABOUT AN INCH FROM A STRANGER’S DINNER.

Me and BestFriend (and MindReader, in the mirror)

Inappropriate behaviour MindReader

1 Comment »

Billygean.co.uk

Compulsive Reading

Benny for your thoughts: Benny’s mum

Maybe that it would do me good it I believed there were a God out in the starry firmament. As it is that’s just a lie and I’m here eating up the boredom on an island of cement

Twenty five past eternity

I’m in debt

Actually it was Bright Eyes

The sad state of a BA English Graduate

Leave our boyfriends behind / Leave our girlfriends behind

Benny for your thoughts: other people react to Benny

Benny for your thoughts: King Benny

Unacceptable behaviour

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