Not just for losers

I understand that many bloggers like to keep their blogs as their 'happy place'. They feel that the good memories are the ones worth recording and their blogs reflect that. I get it, sort of.

But in a lot of ways, I can get a big slap of 'happy place' from women's magazines, where newborns are all 'angels' and celebpretties wax lyrical about their tiny thighs and enormous meals. The same women's magazines that made me feel like a fat loser all through teenagedom and an even fatter loser after that.

A loser because I didn't have a boyfriend. A loser because I didn't have straight hair. A loser because I couldn't afford designer clothes, a personal trainer, a salon wax, frosted tips or, during the early nineties, Hammer pants. A loser because... well, I was me.

Easy solution: I stopped buying those stupid mags in my late twenties and never really looked back. Oh, okay, I swapped my addiction to women's mags for my addiction to house porn, but you've gotta start somewhere right? See, now I'm just a loser because of my house. It's not really about me any more.

Intellectually I'm aware that those house porn mags 'fake it' (loving the connotations attached to that sentence!). Intellectually I know that they back the truck up full of the latest and greatest and practically shove the featured family out of the way to create their 'styled casual' home for them. But emotionally, I'm attached to that idea of 'the perfect family home' that looks like that all the time. Emotionally I believe that there are families out there that live with all-white furnishings that stay white; that their children's toys are only made of wooden and recycled tyres. Families that exist in colour-coordinated clothes that don't clash with their smearless red Smeg fridge and matching crumbless toaster.

So, intellectually, we get it; emotionally we just plain want it. Marketing geeks (of which I am one) call it 'aspirational marketing' and, I'm telling you, they go out of their way to make you feel like what you've got right now isn't good enough. There's great stuff in the world and you're not it.

Fortunately my new 'happy place' is the land of the smoodgy, smudgy, smidgy world of beautiful blogs that are real and honest and true. The happy and the WTFHT*? As much as I love a styled 'occasion', I love even more the flaws, the mishaps, the madness and the muddy mess of life. I often wonder why I visit the over-styled blogs when I've got my house porn to keep me feeling sufficiently loserish (there is a book out there called 'The Perfectly Imperfect Home' - I kid you not! Get a life!). I just don't need the blog world to turn on me as well. So, keep letting it all hang out there, bloggers of the world. I embrace you and the wind you threw your caution to.

Do you let it all hang out? Or do you hang back a little? 

Is your blog your happy place?

* What The Fuck Happened There?


[Image by schorlemädchen]

It’s a ratio thing

I am not a mathematically minded person by any stretch of the imagination.

That is such an understatement that I can hardly type I am laughing so hard. What I meant to say is that my whole life I have loathed Maths with the passion of a thousand burning suns… or is it 1001? I’m not certain because there is a number involved.

Once I was introduced to excel in the early nineties, this numbers business picked up considerably. Excel was The Incredible Hulk blasting straight through my titanic Maths-Block. It seems that working out how to get something else to work out Maths seemed infinitely easier than doing the Maths myself. I never looked back, to the extent that for a brief, bizarre moment in my life, I actually worked in Trade Finance in London doing Bulgarian and Nigerian oil deals. Why yes, yes I did.

I think all along I was actually a much more logical thinker than I ever gave myself credit for. You see, I’ve been a slave to ratios my whole life.

Food requires a good ratio of X to Y to taste right. If the ratio of sauce to pasta isn’t exactly right, for example, eating pleasure is considerably diminished. Ratios become critical when you’re dealing with strong flavours like onions, chilli, honey or garlic. Get the balance out of whack and the whole dish needs rescuing.

In art and design, the whole success of a work depends on ratios. The ratio of X colour to Y. Between light and shade. Negative and positive space. And on and on.

I’m rabbiting on about all of this because lately I’ve been investigating why I ever had a Maths-Block in the first place. I think it’s important for me to know because I am in danger of thoughts such as ‘Cappers is a creative person’ and ‘Maybe Maxi-Taxi will be a numbers guy?’. There’s those pesky labels again!

I think I learned at an early age that you were either a Maths person or a Creative person and I wanted to be the latter. Nowadays, I don’t think it has to be an ‘either / or’ thing (more on the ‘Golden Ratio’ in a future post). I think you can be both and I’m doing everything I can to find the parallels between the two. I think if I can find out more about that, I can help my children to learn the ‘other’ way of thinking with a lot more ease than I managed at school.

Are you a ‘Creative’ person or a ‘Maths’ person? Do you think you can be both?

Did you also struggle with a particular subject at school?

[Image via weheartit - please let me know if this image is yours so I can correctly attribute it]

This week I'm grateful for... mundanity

When I was younger I used to shy away from routine and what I perceived to be a boring life. I would do anything to avoid conformity and frowned upon anything I considered to be 'establishment'. I'm a reckless, challenging person at the best of times but there was a patch in my life there where I felt out of control and I thought I loved it.

How wrong I was.

A quiet family life has brought me more happiness than I ever could have mustered as a young punk. My life is fun, funny, interesting, satisfying and rich. It's the same old me, but with a new level of maturity and an appreciation for what some people know from a much earlier age than I: being proud of your lot and content within it are two of the keys to great happiness.

So, this week I'm grateful for...

1. Mundanity - not the profanity I always expected it was. There is loud joy in quiet contentment.

2. Flowers - and the beautiful bearer of them.

3. Sparkle shoes - you make my youngest daughter dance.

So, what's making you smile today? Grab my I'm grateful for... button from my sidebar if you like, add your I'm Grateful For post below and please add a link back to me in your post. Then pop over to visit other bloggers who are spreading a little sunshine. Happy weekend to you!


[Image by thimble and violet]