100 days of Wonder – #25
I used my random day off to run at Bolton Abbey this morning and running is a great time to reflect. I never know where my brain will go but today it took me to something I overheard on the train a week or so ago (I have no idea what the actual conversation was about because it was a phone call and I only had one side of it). First the classic ‘Well everything happens for a reason’ which was quickly followed by ‘yeah but what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, right’ and then a little while into the conversation came my favourite ‘But all the things that have happened to you, they make you who you are, you wouldn’t be where you are now without all that’.
I have had a few comments on the picture for this post and others from the 2019 Disney trip. Apparently I look good and I look happy. I suspect the ‘good’ actually means ‘thinner than at almost any other point in your life’ but that’s a whole separate post. Anyway, when I look at the picture I definitely remember happy in that moment. I also remember the feeling of being marathon fit (I miss that). However, there is also real deep tiredness, there’s depression, there’s sky high anxiety, there’s doubt about work and next steps although it’s over 2 years before I eventually did make a move. So as I was running today, I was thinking about everything that led up to me in this photo and everything that has happened since and found myself furious at the sentiments I had overheard and actually have also been guilty of thinking if not actually saying. Everything happens for a reason? Fuck no. Even if we ignore current global horrors and just think about this in a really selfish ‘Jess’ little world’ way, I refuse to believe that the bad things that have happened to loved ones have a reason – in the sense that they lead to something more positive or meaningful in the future. They’re just bad things that happened to good people. As for what hasn’t killed me… well has it made me stronger. Doubt it. To be where I am in the photo and where I am now, happy in so many moments of my life, I must have been incredibly strong already. The career littered with toxic people and grade A narcissists didn’t make me stronger. I came through it because I was already strong. Those things made me more anxious, more cautious, more independent, more reluctant to ask for help and less trusting. They did not make me stronger. As for the ‘but they make you who you are and you wouldn’t be where you are now’… see previous sentence, we have a more anxious, cautious and suspicious me – that’s not a good thing. And yes, of course all of the things in my life make me who I am and without some of the experiences I wouldn’t be where I am now. To be clear, I like where I am now BUT it would have been lovely to, over the last say 12 years or so, not experience being off sick for months because I couldn’t actually get out of bed, not experience complete burnout and brain shutting down, not deal with almost daily micro aggressions and gaslighting. Think of all the joy and wonder that toxic workplaces can suck out of everything. So next time one of those meaningless platitudes pops into your head – whether you’re about to say it to someone else or to yourself, Stop. They’re just gaslighting. Being happy now doesn’t make past trauma ok. Being happy at some unspecified point in the future, doesn’t make something happening now worthwhile or ok. We can do better than that. As for the happy, good looking lass in the picture – I’m proud of her. She’s awesome.
100 Days of Wonder – #17
Special trainers deserve special retirements. It’s not every pair that carried me through a marathon… the memories, the sweat, the swearing. These trainers were there for all of it. And so they will forever roam the Magic Kingdom. Ok so obviously I know that’s not actually what happens to them but there is something really lovely about the thought and the ritual. I like little rituals and traditions. I like how they mark things, create moments of reflection, make me smile and mark the passage of time in a positive way. I like my ‘new academic year notebook’, usually supported by a ‘new calendar year notebook’ and a ‘Easter notebook’ because one is never going to be enough. I like the end of term email and file sorting to mark the end of one term and the start of the next. I like our own traditions that have developed over time that are ours, just things we do – like strolling across to the Magic Kingdom on our arrival evening, having dinner at the California Grill on our last night and lunch at the Crystal Palace before we fly home.
I like our traditional Christmas morning run, I like the pumpkin carving (coming up soon), mince pie baking, Christmas card writing and our 4 advent candles not in a circle but in a line. I like how our traditions have mixed and also how they have evolved. I remember our runs at Bolton Abbey followed by breakfast fondly, a lovely weekend ritual for a long time until the food options changed. I love our monthly cheese box and the way we curl up in front of the TV with our cheese board and fizzy apple juice once a month. I like our first coffee of the morning being one we have together often sitting in bed. I like our seasonal lego to build and rebuild year after year. Some of the rituals inspire a sense of possibility -new notebooks, candles to be lit, advent calendars to be opened (every other day because we share) – and others invite memories – do you remember last year when we build the Haunted Mansion… and others still, coffee in bed, cheese boards, are just about taking the time to be together.
While most trainers are either binned or passed on through various charities, depending on the state of them, the special ones started a new ritual, a runDisney ritual. It allows me to mentally close off that marathon, that training cycle and bank it. I can look forward to the next challenge and all the possibilities that might bring and I create memories – those rainbow laces could tell a story or two. I like it, I’ll keep it going: A shoe selfie in the Magic Kingdom and then the trainers are ‘retired’ at the Contemporary resort so they, and a little bit of me, will always be roaming the most magical place on earth.
100 Days of Wonder – #15
Yesterday I talked about fun. When I was at university in Leicester I would frequently visit my then girlfriend who was doing a degree in PE teaching in Chichester. The way my timetable fell I could often stay for a chunk during the week. I’d take work with me and while she was out in lectures and then playing cricket or rugby, I would wade through contract law cases and work out why, as a 19 year old, I should care about Administrative Law. I distinctly remember declining to join a game of rounders and not even joining the spectators sitting in the sun sipping something pink and alcoholic. Instead I opted for a book. My girlfriend’s comment was: Well you’re no fun. It was a theme that came up repeatedly and at the time I remember being defensive about it. I was fun. Of course I was fun. But was I?
I don’t know. I think it took me a long time to work out ‘fun’. I was bookish and serious and independent and ‘grown up’ as a kid. I continue to be fiercely independent but those moments of silliness and laughing so much that you (nearly -hm) pee yourself that I had always treated as rare and very private moments are now moments I embrace and I’m proud of. I no longer take myself or anything particularly seriously. Fun for me has never been about parties, big groups, playing sports or pranking each other which is I think what Rachel was referring to when she put me in the ‘not fun’ box. Fun for me has been about stories, about shared moments that touch the soul, about seeing others light up and mostly about seeing the ridiculousness of most things in life. Sometimes teaching and researching in law doesn’t lend itself to being fun. I bump up against inequality at best and atrocities at worst all the time in my work, some student stories a re heartbreaking and law is, after all a serious business… but finding your brand of silliness and fun seems to me to be crucial to making sure we look after ourselves when we’re doing work that can be emotional and hard. So if you think I’m mad as a hatter and a bit juvenile – you’d be right, I just don’t think that’s a bad thing.
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