I crave certainty in an uncertain world

Suffering from anxiety as I do, I often crave certainty. I don’t just crave it, I demand it. I want to feel safe, safe from the terrors of the unknown, for the unknown promises uncertainty, foreboding, darkness and potential misery.

If I am certain, then I am safe. If I am certain, then all will be well.

That is all I ask.

Not everyone is a fan of certainty, the physicist Carlo Rovelli believed that a complete lack of doubt was undesirable, and that certainty about everything had the potential to be damaging. 

Will I only acheive certainty by doing nothing?

But not to the anxious.

“Certainty is the death of wisdom, thought, creativity.”

Shekhar Kapur

Strangely, I have done things in my life that have brought me no certainty - single parenthood and self-employment, instead of the security of Mr Nice, a white picket fence and a secure job.

Perhaps deep down, I want risk and excitement but with the promise of a happy ending.

Sadly it doesn’t work that way.

“There is no certainty, there is only adventure.”

Roberto Assagioli

I want adventure but with a promise of certainty, but adventure cannot bring certainty, only risk.

But what is it David Bowie said in Law, Earthlings on Fire, “I don’t want knowledge, I want certainty.”

Except I would like both.

Perhaps I should follow Bertrand Russell’s advice and study philosophy.

“To teach how to live without certainty and yet without being paralysed by hesitation is perhaps the chief thing that philosophy, in our age, can do for those who study it.”

Bertrand Russell

To live without certainty and yet not be paralysed by hesitation.

So it is to finally accept uncertainty in my life and not be crippled by doubt or;

To have certainty in my life, but without the joy of risk and adventure.

It is a difficult choice.

Why are women expected to grow old quicker than men?

In writing this post, I’m going to reveal that yes, I’ve been watching a reality show, for those of you who look down on such things, look away now. It may be a little low brow for you, but there we are, we can’t always have our head in a volume of Marcel Proust.

Yes, I managed to boycott The X Factor this year and Celebrity Big Brother, but I didn’t manage to ban all reality TV from my viewing list. Shoot me, I’m human.

So the programme I’m going to talk about is ‘I’m A Celebrity, Get me Out of Here,” which has highlighted for me how women are viewed as they get older. In a small jungle camp in the middle of Australia we have a microcosm of the kind of ageism women are up against all the time.

I’ve been on Google and tried to see if anyone else has picked up on it, but no, all I read about are the arguments and endless disagreements, which I guess is all people really want to hear about.

 So the two protagonists are Duncan Bannatyne and Lady C. Yes, there’s been a lot of disagreements and a few insults thrown with regards to those two, but let’s put that aside for a moment and just look at them as two distinct individuals.  

We have Duncan Bannatyne, a millionaire entrepreneur who is described by Vicky, our Geordie reality star from Geordie Shore, as a “sort” which is a Geordie way of saying he’s fit. There are comments about how attractive he is, and we are given the impression that he has sex appeal as far as the ladies are concerned. He is seen as being quite capable and physically fit enough to take part in any trials, and is treated in the same way as any other campmate. Duncan Bannatyne has not taken part in any bush tucker trials as yet.

Lady C is a colourful character who married aristocracy and is from a distinguished Jamaican family. She is quite ballsy and has fallen out with a few of the other campmates. She has taken part in numerous trials after being voted to do them by the British public. She has won several stars for at least two of what’s known as “bush tucker trials.”

She is treated by the other campmates as being someone who needs to be taken care of as an older person. She can’t be left alone because of her age, and this is commented upon more than once. Her age and her supposed fragility is referred to in more than one conversation, not just by the men, but the other women as well.

You would be forgiven for thinking that Duncan Bannatyne is considerably younger than Lady C. But he’s not – because they are both EXACTLY the same age. They are both 66.

So why are they both treated as if one is a sex god, and the other one is ready for a nursing home? Could it explain, perhaps why Lady C is always is in such a bad mood?

For me, it just reminds me of how deeply entrenched such views are, not just by men, but by women as well. Men can pick up younger women as they get older, they can reinvent themselves, and they can run around like a teenager well into their 60s and 70s.

Women on the other hand are meant be quiet and shut up as they enter their 40s, 50s and 60s. Don’t express your views, don’t disagree, don’t have colourful opinions and just disappear.

Personally, I really hope Lady C wins “I’m A Celebrity…..” and sticks it out till the bitter end, putting her fingers up to the lot of them, although I think she’s done that once or twice already……

I'm also going to take a leaf out of Lady C's book and behave disgracefully as I get older -  and I'll be wearing purple.

In Passing By Brian Harris (1967)

To be born in Wales,
Not with a silver spoon in your mouth,
But, with music in your blood
And with poetry in your soul,
Is a privilege indeed. 

Your inheritance is a land of Legend,
Of love and contrast.
A land of beauty so bright it burns the eyes.
Of ugliness that scars the Spirit
As the Earth. 

Wales is an old land with wounds
That weep in hills.
They wept before in the bodies of men
And in the hearts of women
And time will never heal them. 

The stigmata of sorrow, 
Of pain and poverty,
Of lonely crucifixion in the dark,
Remain our lives to feed. 

This Land of our Fathers was built on coal.
Its rivers of mingled blood and sweat
Have forever darkened it,
Relieved only by death. 

We are a sad people.
Our sadness being wrapped in harps and music
And praise to God,
For the lovely, yearning light
That feeds the Spirit as well as the eyes. 

Apogee and Perigee moons

A perigee moon - when it's closer to the earth. Large and round and glowing bright. 

An apogee moon - when it is furthest away from the earth. 

Apogee and perigee 

Close or far away

Bright or dull

Round or crescent

Half or full

High and preposterous and separate—   

Lozenge of love! Medallion of art!

O wolves of memory! Immensements! No,

One shivers slightly, looking up there.

The hardness and the brightness and the plain   

Far-reaching singleness of that wide stare

Is a reminder of the strength and pain   

Of being young; that it can’t come again,   

But is for others undiminished somewhere. (excerpt from Philip Larkin's Sad Steps)

I love the moon.

I love the words Apogee and Perigee in equal measures

A Monday afternoon's musings on non-specific things while eating a chocolate brownie

After feeling particularly cheesed off, I eventually took off for a walk in the hope that some fresh air and different surroundings might help to shake off my low mood.

My brain feels like it's flatlined, I feel strangely irritated and easily roused into a bad temper. I'm tearful, fed up and I don't think I can simply put that down to Friday's general election results. It's just a temporary, passing mood, one that will go as quickly as it came.

I'm now sitting at a table in Blue Skies, waiting for a large coffee and a gluten free chocolate brownie. I have no particular allergy to gluten, but always err on the side of caution seen as my stomach is so sensitive these days. I have a large cookie in a brown paper bag - a purchase to take me over the £5 limit and avoid the 45p surcharge. 

It's bright and airy in here and the sound of voices, mostly children and young women, serve as a calming influence to my agitated state. They're probably students, out on a break from the drudgery of lectures. When I'm like this, it's good to sit on the sidelines, not quite part of anything and yet strangely still part of the milieu. I'm sat smack bang in the middle of the room, on a four seater rustic wooden table. Some children have come in and sat in front of me with, I'm guessing, their grandmother.

The boy is now swinging on his chair. I can remember doing that at school. We were absolutely forbidden from doing it, but I did it anyway. I think someone must have fallen off the back of a chair once and gone flying. The thing to do was to push your chair back while you were sitting on it, and push it back so you were balanced on the 2 back legs. A precarious balancing act that could end in disaster.

Those long, hot summer days when the future was so far away you could only imagine it into something exaggerated and fantastic, and create possible scenarios that you knew could never really happen.

But there we are...fast forward to today and here we are, musing on the past, the present and everything else in between.

Today has been an escape, a short one which I'm hoping will help to give my brain enough time to recuperate from my irritated mood. A trip out which might inspire me to come up with new ideas or refresh already existing ones. 

We can live in hope.

And anyway, it was an excellent excuse to eat a chocolate brownie.......and a moment like that is never wasted.

I think Winnnie the Pooh makes a valid point when he says that sometimes listening, doing nothing and not bothering can have its own value. And I always agree with whatever Pooh says.

Part I: A woman gradually and inexplicably becomes a computer geek.....the beginning

I spent the last hour of my working day messing around with my desktop, a refurbished PC with Windows 7. I already have a laptop with Windows 8.1 and after endless crashes and bug fixes, plus the age of my laptop, I bought a new one. Thing is I really thought that Windows 7 would be the answer to all my prayers, because apparently everyone is sick of Windows 8 and can't wait for Windows 10, me included, that's if they haven't already downgraded to 7.

Roll on Windows 10.

Actually, you can't downgrade to Windows 7, hence the new PC. I bought a refurbished PC because I can't afford a brand spanking new one, and I also really like the idea of buying a basic desktop and customizing it myself. Adding things and taking things away. I must admit I'm really starting to enjoy this.

I had problems with Google Chrome and I couldn't upgrade, I ended up with some mishmash of Bing and internet explorer that basically couldn't even play the odd video without crashing, and for some inexplicable reason wouldn't even let me open up FB. I've now spent the best part of an hour tinkering around with it and I've done the following:-

• Upgraded Google Chrome (thank god, couldn't even open my Google + account)
• Uploaded Windows 8.1 upgrade assistant to see if I can upgrade on here, (having Win 7 not a good idea - you can never go back) 
• I can't upgrade on Windows 8.1 on here unless I pay £99 even though I have it already on my laptop - so poo to that
• I downloaded Microsoft Silverlight (at one point stone age Microsoft Security Essentials wouldn't let me download anything).

I then spent an hour hunched over Netflix watching episode 4 of DareDevil, with no interruptions, no crashes. Bliss 

I'm having a few ups and downs with this pc at the moment, these are the ones I've sorted:-

• Google Chrome wouldn't upgrade and this morning wouldn't even load (sorted)
• System Restore wouldn't' work so I could restore Microsoft Security Essentials back to full working capacity, because it was telling me that the virus software part of it was out of date. 

System Restore wasn't working, then I got it to work, then it wasn't working again this morning. Anyway, I don't need it right now anyway, and if I do, then I'll do whatever it was I did last time to get it to work again (whatever that was). 

Microsoft Security Essentials is as up to date as it'll ever be and most importantly now, it's working.

As we speak I'm working on the latest Google Chrome and that means I can perhaps successfully download stuff I need in the future e.g. I prefer AVG to M.Security Essentials. 

Anyway, I think I deserve a drink and something to eat now. I really feel that I could really get into this.....big time. 

I've already learned how to remove and install a hard drive. I can upgrade stuff, and basically I'm getting hold of the basics I need to progress. 

Gamer Girl by Mashi by SRSobotka ...

My ambition -

To turn my computer into one mother-of all-computers with a massive screen and a powerful hard drive. 

I'd love to learn gaming and start designing, but that is WAY into the future right now.

I have 300GB of space and 4GB of RAM. It's a start. 

A personalised, fully customized PC that's got me stamped all over it, and full of tricks and games (some I even created myself). It's something to aim for and it's an ambition.

Apart from another ambition which is to study art history with the OU, and I've already registered for that, just need to find £850. 

Oh, and go caving or mountain climbing before I'm REALLY old.

Thing is, as sad as it sounds, I could quite happily stay on my computer all day and all night, when it's doing exactly what I want. Sad but true.

When I'm not obsessing about my computer, I work as a freelance copywriter, so do feel free to get in touch if you'd like me to write for you. 

pandora.77@hotmail.co.uk  

www.taith.net