Words

Words keep coming up… in conversations.

Some of those conversations are ones I have with myself.

I do use images, visuals, sound, music, films, video games, and other ways of communicating when talking with myself… sometimes words are a part of those too, like below:

That’s a post-it note I wrote this morning to remind myself to remind my partner of a to-do he has to do which he keeps forgetting to do because of other things he’s doing.

Usually I leave him to remember his own to-do’s because I’m not a fan of the role of nag. But he asked me to remember to remind him… so I’ve stuck a bunch of post-it notes like the one above in various places around the house, the rest is up to him. Am I wasting trees?

I’m not good at being a nag as it requires skills which I don’t have, or at least it needs a certain level of dedication to the cause and… I give up easily which is why I can’t play many video games. I can play them until you have to do the same thing over and over again without giving up… then I pass the controller to my partner and say: “It’s your turn!”

If you’re one of those people who views me as an enemy you’d like to defeat, and you’re squirreling that little weakness tidbit about me away to be used against me to bring me to my knees in front of you to beg for mercy or whatever… that weakness is also works as a strength for me, and may backfire on you. I might cough when you punch me in the gut, but I often fart when I cough and my farts can be “exceedingly” noxious.

I’ll come back to that (and why I did “that” with that word) later, but now…

As I was contemplating what to do today, which included the option of writing a post – which in that moment was represented by the word “Words” in my conversation with self, I spotted that post-it and I suddenly saw it, read it, differently.

Mot = word in French.

In the UK it means – shit, those bastards, not again… hope it passes but they’ll probably fail it to squeeze me for more doubloons or just to let me know who really has the power and who must kowtow! (see what I did there… I didn’t see it at first so it wasn’t deliberate = I’m accidentally quite smart when I don’t interfere by stupidly trying to be deliberately smart).

Words keep coming up… in conversations.

Some of those conversations are comment-chats on WordPress.

I’ve been having quite a few comment-chats with The Reverist, both on his blog and on mine, about words.

He’s fluent in English, but English is not his mother tongue.

English sort of is and isn’t my mother tongue. It is my mother’s mother tongue, but it wasn’t my father’s mother tongue, and it wasn’t the mother tongue of the place I lived in when I was a child.

And then there’s things like… the first songs I learned to sing were in Japanese because of my Japanese nanny.

So in my head you’ll hear – Omocha no cha cha cha… cha cha cha omocha no cha cha cha… maramao perche sei morto pan e vin non ti mancava… mon pere ma donne un mari mon dieu quel homme quel petit homme… apusski dusky apusskidu… oh I don’t know why she swallowed a fly, perhaps she’ll die!

Lots of words…

Which sometimes attract more words, such as – I do know why she swallowed a fly, her mouth was open and instead of words coming out of it a fly flew into it… or maybe she she took a glug from her glass of wine and it happened to have a fruit fly having a swim in it. It’s easy to swallow a fly, and you don’t always know you’ve done it but if you happen to be being mindful because you’re keeping up with the Joneses and “mindful” is the thing to be right now but soon it won’t be but while it is… then of course you’d want to fix the problem, especially if you’re a veganista and this isn’t allowed in your diet, even breathing in the particles of cooked meat is hazardous to your system, so you swallow a spider… but spiders are lazy fuckers – have you ever observed all the spiders who have set up their homes in your home and your home is swarming with flies and what do the spiders do – fuck all! If you complain to them: “Hey, Spider, I let you live here, I don’t disturb your webs when I clean, because you’re supposed to catch flies”… do you know what they have the nerve to say? They laugh at you because you’re using that as an excuse not to clean properly, but still…

Harrumph!

I’m a bit of an Harrumpher… what about you?

But I give up easily on the harrumphs, don’t keep them going for longer than it takes for the ripples of the sound to die out, unless… whatever I harrumphed about ties in with a wound, especially an old wound which I’m still in the process of untangling because it’s tied and tangled up with other things – the structure of the inner knot of knots is complex.

It’s later now…

The other day I wrote a post – Why Do Comedians Hate Bloggers? – which I abbreviated for a someone who commented upon it as – If you want to say what you want on your blog study stand-up comedians.

The someone who commented was Rory from A Guy Called Bloke, and he said: “An exceedingly long post that l am going to return to later today and re-read properly.”

When I first read his comment, I thought: Why did he say that?

Before I go any further, please note: This isn’t about Rory. Rory is one of those really nice people who go out of their way to be nice to others and do nice things for people, and end up getting hurt because they can’t figure out why their good deed didn’t please but instead upset or offended someone (a reference to my previous post).

I know from reading Rory’s posts that he goes out of his way to read the posts of all the bloggers he follows – he’s got a system for it which he’s shared, it’s sort of a to-do list.

When he was getting stressed out both by his offline life and his online to-do’s, worrying about getting behind on his dutiful reading of other bloggers’ posts, I told him to take me off his list.

But I think it’s a matter of pride for him, and I would guess that his comment was simply to prove to me that Rory is fine, I’m still on the list… but fuck me, Ursula, can’t you write short posts so I don’t have to slog through a long one just to do a nice thing for you.

Rory, like me, won’t “Like” posts he hasn’t read… but I only read what I feel like reading.

I’m an older blogger than he is in blog years, and luckily it took me less time than it did in RL to reach the fuck it phase – there are several of those for different things in the blogosphere. I’ve only just now reached the fuck it I’m unfollowing you because I don’t read your posts anymore phase. Brutal? But you don’t read mine either so why are we doing this!?

If you’re one of those bloggers who “Like” my posts just because I “Liked” one of yours…

well, there’s no point in me saying this, now is there…

but I’ll say it anyway for myself (which is the reason I write posts) – Don’t do that, your “Like” is worthless to me, I can’t trust it, it feels inauthentic, manipulative. I get it you’re saying “thank you” for me “Liking” you.

It’s a “Like” for a “Like”.

But to me it’s more of a “Thanks for Liking me please keep Liking me, I Like being Liked, I’ll keep giving you Like biscuits for it, but frankly I only Like you because you Like me… I can’t be bothered to find out if I actually really genuinely like you. I don’t care about you. Your stuff bores me. Except for your Likes for me.

She has issues – if that’s what you’re thinking, you’re right…

Reminds me of that guy who commented a long time ago on one of my posts, he was trolling but sometimes trolls hit the nail on the head, point out the bleeding obvious. He said I had mommy and daddy issues on a post where I had written about my narcissist mommy and narcissist daddy issues.

I didn’t approve his comment because I didn’t want him to have free reign to say stupid shit all over the place – get your own blog, on my blog I’m the one who gets to say stupid shit all over the place!

But I used his comment as a prompt for a post because… I’m a friggin’ blogger and that’s what we do!

That’s what I’m doing now, using Rory’s comment as a prompt to say stupid shit… somewhere in that stupid shit is a diamond (also a reference to my previous post – see post-it below).

When someone says something to me and it inspires a question to rise up, I pay attention even if the question it inspires is lackadaisical at first… because it might be an answer to another question I’ve asked, perhaps decades ago.

My question to Rory’s comment was at first a very lackadaisical whatever – Why did he bother to tell me that?

That’s because when I see a post which I want to read but I think – It’s too long to read all of it right now – I don’t bother telling the author of the post about it.

They don’t need to know that, do they?

Am I doing it wrong?

Me doing it wrong… it’s a surprise if I don’t!

Am I supposed to share with bloggers in a comment on their post everything I think about their post even if…

What I say is just me talking to myself – an inner post-it note to self.

Maybe it becomes an outer post-it note to self (like the one below), but I wouldn’t put a post-it note to self in someone else’s house (which is sort of what a person’s blog is – their online home/house… and their posts are them talking to themselves while at home/in their house) because that would be illogical since I don’t live there and won’t see it.

Even when the notes are in my house I might not see them…

Fairly certain my partner hasn’t noticed any of the “mot” post-it notes to him which I’ve sprinkled around the place (he has, I asked)… because he usually comments about it when I do that kind of stupid shit. Maybe he’s deliberately ignoring me to drive me crazy… nah, he’s too caught up in his creative project which is why he hasn’t done that to-do list thingy, and keeps forgetting it.

Anyway…

If I come across a long post which I want to read but haven’t got time at the time to do so, I just bookmark the post and go back to it later when I have the time to read it, like I did with this one – Longreads: Cut From The Same Cloth by Myfanwy Tristram – which I came across while clicking on those “Recommended Posts” you get in the WordPress reader from blogs you don’t follow.

It’s great fun to do that, I’ve had the pleasure of reading some superb posts that way:

When the Cat’s Away – Girls, Goals and Gong Shows

At 50 – Moss Island Sounds

Song in My Head – Betsy Dudak

Disorders and Vulnerability – Black and Bipolar

thanksRon320 – Don’t Call Me Gemma

What the world wants to know about Britain, part seventeenish – Notes from the U.K.

All of which are long posts, similar in length to my posts… old style blogging is awesome and still alive!

That particular long read post I found reblogged in its entirety on someone else’s blog first, I read part of it, loved it, decided to “Like” the original on the author’s blog which had the link to Longreads so that Myfanwy Tristram of MYF Draws Apparently would get the “Like” (and “Like” is also a way to bookmark) – your “Like” on a reblog doesn’t carry over to the original, so the author doesn’t get it, only the reblogger does.

Compared to my post which Rory found to be “exceedingly” long… why did he feel the need to say that and use that word – “exceedingly”?

At some point (probably when I found myself coming back to it even though I thought it was stupid and illogical) I realised that my question had shifted from a very lackadaisical whatever – Why did he bother to tell me that? – to a something else…

Rory accidentally did something which my parents used to do.

My narcissists were parents… I mean my parents were narcissists…

Rory’s not a narcissist by a long shot… but sometimes people who aren’t narcissists accidentally do things which remind those of us who have had narcissists in our life of the narcissists in our life and the things they did which scarred us forever, make us see narcissists everywhere in everything and everyone.

Narcissists get a lot of bad press.

My father enjoyed the benefits of bad press, it made things easier and more fun for him… he was an overt narcissist, they’re with Dali on the whole smash a store window to get noticed, get attention and become famous.

My mother found it all upsetting and offensive, how very dare everyone else, tried to squash the bad press and plaster it over with chintz of the – I’m the victim here, the martyr… when do I get sainted!?! pattern.

Narcissists are known for being terrible listeners, even narcissists will tell you that narcissists are terrible listeners – except narcissists don’t think they’re talking about themselves when they talk about narcissists – especially if you’re talking about yourself – UGH how boring!!!! Who in their right mind would listen to that!?!

However… they rely on you thinking they’re not listening to you, that they find you boring, when you’re talking about yourself.

There’s a moment when they reveal to you just what very good listeners they are… and what very good actors they are… because you were convinced by their act of not listening to boring old you… so much so that you shared some things and now those things are coming back to haunt you and punch you in the gut until you cough up blood (and if you’re me you fart blood too when you cough).

That moment of revelation at how good narcissists are at listening happens in those moments when you’ve made the mistake of feeling good about your self or about something and you let it show, you shared it…

ruh roh…

Should have covered that feel good up with a veneer of I feel like the shit that I am and then the narcissist would have kept quiet about how good a listener they are.

Here’s a not so secret secret – Narcissists rarely if ever feel good about themselves.

They are very adept at putting on a show of appearing as though they think-feel they’re super duper good… when they’re in ultra positive mode, they’re usually climbing their way up crash mountain. Tik tok tik tok until the facade explodes… humpty dumpty is down, repeat HD is down and still falling, and down deeper down they go dragging anyone around them with them in their attempt not to fall.

We’re all lifebuoy rings they’re grabbing onto.

When they see you feeling good about yourself or something… they’re grabbing onto you to save themselves, but that’s not how things pan out because their way of grabbing onto you is to burst whatever is keeping you afloat and so you both end up sinking into deep misery.

Because they think your positive is as fake as their positive is when they do it.

So they test yours by jabbing it with a that’s not a knife this is a knife knife.

How does all of that tie in with Rory’s comment which is totally innocuous?

Well, I know that I’ve mentioned quite a few times over the years in posts that I worry about the length of my posts.

They’re too long… if only they were shorter – was the issue.

That could be interpreted, if a narcissist was listening, as a weakness, a heel of Achilles, a vulnerable spot, as something I’ve said about myself which could be used against me if and when I get all think-feel-good about my self, my blog and my posts.

I don’t recall when it became a “thing”… because when I started blogging long wordy posts was what bloggers wrote. It was the norm.

At some point it shifted over to short posts being the norm and long posts being seen as not the norm – what is fucking wrong with you too many words!!!

It was before all the defectors from Facebook decided to WordPress blog themselves as a fuck you to FB, and turn WP into FB, spamming the reader with short post after short post, memes, quotes, gifs with a few words attached like – I love this quote! So true about me or others depending on whether it was talking about positive or negative people.

It was before Instagram became Instagram and suddenly it was all about images telling the story and not words.

It seems to be shifting again… words, lots of them, are becoming welcome again as we search for substance, a deeper more meaningful conversation, more than a sound bite, to take a journey in thought not just a quick trip to the shops to buy something we don’t want but are told that we need to have, must have or you’re a nobody and who cares about you.

That reminds me of:

there are two versions of this quote, this is one, the other is – books are cool but knowledge without mileage doesn’t mean anything to me.

Which I came across the other day while looking for quote-images of stand-ups whose stand-up routines I’ve enjoyed because what they said taught me something… all the images I use in my posts mean something to me, I’m not just decorating my words with pretty pictures which I dgaf about.

How many people, bloggers, have I upset or offended by saying that, and that, and that?

[hahaha! As I was re-reading and editing – yes, I do that stupid shit… and usually end up adding more words rather than taking words out – an almighty thunder-lightning-rain storm broke out… love it! and yes, for those who remember, I have fixed-replaced the broken roof tile, got my slate ripper and ripped away – the how-to video made it seem easy, it was not easy and my neighbour is still traumatised by what he overheard, as is my itty-bitty which got bashed luckily it was a rubber-headed hammer but at least I didn’t fall off the ladder… the tile tag isn’t perfect… that bugs me but life is like that]

None, because they don’t read posts like mine.

Sometimes they “Like” them without reading them because I’m following them or “Liked” one of their posts.

What are posts like mine?

Well… according to at least one blogger they’re “exceedingly” long posts, and reading them may take up too much of their time and they’re very busy you know, they have all those other posts which their followers whom they’ve followed back post, those who got with the program and do short posts, to read and “Like” to keep the “Likes” coming… too petty? I can get so much pettier than that… I won’t but I can.

If you’re digging a hole, keep going because when you get to a certain depth…

There is a consolation prize for putting up with my stupid shit…

If I “Like” what you wrote it means I genuinely “Liked” it, I read it and I’m authentically applauding you for saying it, sharing it, even if I didn’t read it all (I will read it all later… shit, shouldn’t have prematurely “Liked” it! 😉 )

And if I comment on it… I’m going to tell you exactly what I think – if you could read my mind it’s thinking what I said to you in the comment.

So if I say it’s great brilliant genius that’s exactly what I think-feel, I’m not saying that just to get you to “Like” me.

Here’s a not so secret secret about me – I don’t expect anyone to like me, in fact it freaks me out when people do that but only when it’s genuine, real, authentic think-feel-io.

Are you wondering how I can tell the difference between a fake “Like” and a real “Like”…?

I don’t think you’re wondering that… why… because I know you know how to do that too…

It’s just that sometimes we lie to ourselves about what we know and don’t know and stuff… sometimes because others make us feel like we’re shit for knowing the shit we know.

I know I’m going to waste a lot of trees next year when the mowing the lawn season starts again… those two squirrels have done the trees proud, I’m exhausted just watching them work their cute furry butts off hiding tree seeds in the garden (no, I wasn’t looking, didn’t see you dig, plant and cover up – or was that a fake out because you don’t trust me). I try to let the seedlings grow – there are at least three baby oaks I’ve managed to let get further than oops, killed it, sorry nature… but my lawn and short and stupid shit stuff!

I know that I’ve mentioned my struggle with the whole “my posts are too long, I should write shorter posts” issue in posts which Rory has read.

Recently I finally solved that issue… I mentioned that in a post (nope, no idea which one, so no link sorry not sorry), but I don’t think Rory read that one… maybe he did.

And since in my last previous post, the one he commented on, I was a bit all think-feel-good about things…

So… if he was a narcissist… he’s not… but if he was… what better way to burst my think-feel-good bubble and have me crash land in feel like the shit that you are than to remind me of my sensitive spot, poke the bruise, jab the wound.

That’s not what he was doing, but it reminded me of my parents and other narcissists I have known who love to do that because they’re misery and misery loves company.

Luckily that’s not a wound for me anymore, it’s something else… dare I say that weakness has become a strength?

For those who like astrology and are wondering… transiting Mars in Virgo (the god of war and daring devil in the details) is humping my natal Pluto – woof woof! Natal Pluto is in the 1st house of self, trines natal ego-Sun in the 5th house of creativity (which atm is in a tight transiting Saturn/Pluto sandwich) and opposes natal Chiron (the wounded-healer… be careful once he finds the healing in his wound if you’ve been using his wound against him) in the 7th house of other fucking people and friggin’ relationships (it’s okay, transiting Neptune is in there saying – calm down, calm done).

Did a quick tarot reading about my Q as it evolved and got this:

via Aeclectic Tarot free readings

That’s it…

I’ve run out of words…

Is that possible?

Well, yes, everything is possible unless it isn’t…

Your turn with words – go – tik tok tik tok