I'm Not Wrong - But I'm Not Convinced I'm Right Either

There was a brief pause after the Cycle of Despair thing, while I meditated on my attitudes to people, and how I was in a Cycle over people. Which I dropped, because it didn't feel right. In the meantime, I carried on with this line of thought.

Every now and then I used to like, or at least get a perverse kick from, rubbishing myself. How bad a person I was, how my life was a waste, how I couldn't have fun, or live in loveful trustingness with the world, or experience joy and happiness, and all that stuff. I used to be able to get a week's self-pity out of that, but the last couple of tries haven't gone past twelve hours. I just don't have the energy to keep it going and it isn't any fun anymore.

It's taken me a while to understand why. Stay with me for a while.

There's a very wide range of tolerated variation in intellectual and physical skills: you can lack the ability to make an omelette with a clear conscience, as you can be incapable of running a marathon in under four hours or rattling off the proof of the Downward Lowenheim-Skolem theorem, and no-one is going to call you out on it. By contrast, there is a very narrow range of tolerated variation in social, inter-personal and emotional "skills". People who don't behave close to the norm are marginalised with varying degrees of pity and politeness, and because most people like hanging out with some group or other of bros and hos, that marginalisation hurts. Literally hurts, as in nasty-hormones-in-the-bloodstream-hurts. It's that hurt which people take into the therapist's office or seek to get rid of through self-help and mood-altering substances. 

The official line is that those people hurt because there is something wrong with them. They need to (insert psychobabble nostrum here) and then they will be able to experience (insert psychobabble benefits here). Employers, partner-hunting women, and ordinary blokes get upset because hurt people aren't available as pliable subordinates, uncomplaining workers, partners, meal tickets,good-natured mates for Saturday football, Friday night drinks, and generally good company at weddings, bar-mitzvahs and funerals.Even in the post-modern economy and society of the 2010's in the UK, if I don't want to marry and have children, I have a choice of being diagnosed or disgraced. Even the diagnosis is only a temporary respite from the disgrace, because I should have "got over it", "moved on", "manned up" and "got on with my life".

So I would rubbish myself because I was "wrong". The proof I was wrong was that I hurt, felt empty, my career was was a mis-managed mess and I couldn't get girls when I wanted them. (Real Men can get another woman and another job tomorrow.) But, uh, like Normal People^TM don't have problems with any of those things?

There's supposed to be something good, desirable, pleasant and otherwise attractive about the way Normal People^TM live. But you know something? I can't see it. Forty per cent of them can't even choose their marriage partner very well, as they wind up divorced. Divorce is so good for the children, the husband's net wealth and income, and the wife's state of mind - everyone's a winner really (irony alert). Most of them are overweight and unfit - I've never seen a Normal Person stick with the gym - and some of them scarf junk food on the train home in the evening. They feel the need to drive a BMW X5 through the mean streets of Twickenham. They watch junk TV and barely read, can't play a musical instrument, don't like to try new types of food, get into debt buying crap they don't need, can't budget, dress badly and can't take their drink. They cook with microwaves and buy crisps for the kids. Or they are sickeningly smug, have chicken-wing triceps and vegetarian. Their emotional lives seem to me either bland beyond belief, or squalid and chaotic, or again, so smugly perfect that I want to leave before I barf. 

One of the marks of an alkie in early recovery is the perfection of their siblings. The alkie has the problem, but their brothers and sisters are just fine. Later they discover that, in fact, their siblings were as messed-up as them, maybe have the "-ism" or maybe don't. The whole Normal People^TM thing is the same: to messed-up people in pain, the Normals look like they are leading wonderful, if understated, lives. It's only a lot later, as the pain recedes and the empty feelings go away, that Normal People^TM take on a realistic appearance. And it doesn't look like a pretty sight to me. But if I'm "wrong" because I have the same problems Normal People^TM do, then they are "wrong" as well. That can't, by definition, be correct (much as the therapy community would appreciate the extra business).

So, guess what? There's nothing "wrong" with me. "Wrong" is when you need the psychiatric drugs. "Wrong" is when you think it's acceptable to make loans to people with no income, jobs or assets. "Wrong" is when you leave people to die on trolleys in hospitals, and when you put paperwork before people. "Wrong" is when you break your child's bones, and the social worker can't see past their religious beliefs to recognise child abuse. "Wrong" is when you hide medical test data, or ship a thousand jobs to Mumbai. "Wrong" is when you accept a job you are not qualified to do. To do any of those things, or a zillion others like them, argues a systematic flaw in a person's morals and understanding of their duties of care as a citizen. I could no more sell you crap you don't need than I could take a razor to myself - but there millions of people who can excuse themselves as they foist shite on you that you don't need.

And you might think that was a happy, constructive ending, but it wasn't. It was just another step on the journey. Just because I'm not "wrong" doesn't mean I'm "right". I'm clearly not. So what's going on?

The Cycle of Despair

So the day after I understood the vicious cycle of compulsive saving, I started to write the entry on it. Half-way through the first draft I felt that it wasn't the whole story and there was something else going on. The next day I wound up working out the diagram below on Visio (oh the ways we can blow off work hiding behind a screen!). I called it the Cycle of Despair. It works like this:

Start out green, approaching and interviewing and generally offering yourself to the world (girls, employers, galleries, theatres, whoever). They say YES or NO. Mostly, they say NO, because there isn't enough to go round and there are a lot of people asking. If you have enough denial (aka 'optimism') or resiliance, you keep going round the green cycle. If you are lucky, the world says YES and you're set. For now.

If your denial or resilience flags, as it can for a hundred reasons, you turn red and enter the Cycle of Despair. Your hopes drop and you may not bother trying again, entering into a loop of self-justifying bitterness and cynicism that further lowers your hopes, motivation and resilience. You may try again, but if you do so with lower levels of all-round gung-ho-ness, you will follow the red path through the right-hand loop, exiting back to the Cycle via a NO from the Real World. The key to staying in the fight is keeping up your resilience and denial (sorry, 'hopes'). That is not easy, faced with enough experience of the Real World. That's why I call it 'denial' rather than 'optimism' or 'hope'. 

First interview rejections, failed relationships, "not suitable for our list", rejected grant applications, blown out day game approaches, rejected new product proposals, returned book proposals, grey mornings and dismal evenings, Saturday nights out that go nowhere, entries to shows and competitions that don't make the cut, let alone win a prize... eventually it piles up and even the hardiest soul loses hope. A few get lucky - and it is just luck - and hear YES. Then they don't have to apply, approach or compete for perhaps a long time. And everyone gets their ideas rejected, no matter how famous and money-spinning they are. Track records count for nothing: the gatekeepers' opinions count for everything.

Too many bad experiences and my resilience drops, or I get a cold and don't have the energy to keep up the denial, and into the Cycle of Despair I go. There are two big mistakes when first visiting it: first, try to justify your position there as an inevitable consequence of the small number of opportunities in the world (aka "it's the economy"); second, trying to deny that, for now, you're exhausted and beat. Neither ever got me out. The first because I was convincing myself there was no way out, and the second because I couldn't see what I was doing wrong. Neither of those are the worst that can happen.

The worst that can happen is when I did nothing wrong and still didn't get any results. This was back in the mid-Ougties. There was always another more suitable candidate, or they changed their mind about appointing anyone. The numbers and the zeitgiest really were just against me. It was horrible: carrying on required neither fortitude nor heroism nor optimism, which I ran out of after six months, but sheer freaking day-by-day slogging. And when it was all over, I was the man dragging himself onto the beach exhausted, surrounded by blithe holidaymakers who don't get that he had just swum five miles, and each hundred yards was the last he could do.

I got out of the unemployment, but it took a lot longer to get any resilience back. I was in poor physical health, overweight and with higher-than-recommended blood-sugar (I didn't know that at the time). I was in a decaying LTR and was about to work for an insecure and over-promoted manager. Oh yes. The hits just kept on coming.

Anyway. I finished this, and it still felt like there was something missing. So onwards we go...

How Compulsive Saving Works

(This is the first of a series of posts recording some very convoluted thinking about my circumstances.)

...or why money hoarders are always talking about how they spend too much on food.

There's nothing wrong with saving. £100 a month into an instant access savings account so you can pay large bills without going into overdraft is good money management. As long as you actually use that money to pay the bills. Paying in a monthly amount to a Cash ISA is a good move, though not very rewarding at current interest rates. That's the sort of saving you do. 

But when I put money into a Designated Savings Account, it vanishes. It ceases to be money. I can see the balance, but I can't spend it. No more than I can cross my legs at my knees (long story), spit into the wind or take a drink. These things are possible, of course, but none are actually going to happen. I could say that I have had too many long periods of looking for work: I live in fear of being made redundant, or passing retirement age and not being able to work a reasonably-well paid job. That fear makes me save, and while sad, it is slightly rational. It is not the whole truth.

My measurement of the successful management of my life is and always has been how much I have left over at the end of the month. It tells me how much out of control I have been, how many unforeseen things have happened to me, how wasteful I have been. If I have money over, none of those things are true, and my life is in control. I don't aim to have money left over, I use it as an indicator.

However, I can't achieve that control by being a miser. That would not look good. So Deception Tactic One is to spend a carefully-controlled-by-sheer-force-of-habit amount of money on "me". I spend it on books, music, movies and dance - when I'm allowed to eat out as well. I'm "allowed" a binge at the Sadlers Wells Falmenco season, and one dance event a month - if there is one. I can buy four or so £20 books a month, see a movie a week... you get the idea. It looks like I'm being nice to me, but it's all careful habit guaranteed not to cost much more than £1,200 a year.

(Yes. I know you would love to have £1,200 a year to spend on consumable culture. Bear in mind I don't drink, and you do; I don't smoke, and some of you do. I don't have terrestrial television, let alone a £65/month subscription to Sky, so you're probably racking up £1,200 one way or another. Also, you have children and you are not supposed to be spending your time consuming culture, you are supposed to be spending time with your children.)

So that just proves I'm not a miser. Now I have to prove that I'm not a control-freak. So Deception Tactic Two is very carefully controlled overspending on something cheap. Like food. I have a mid-morning sandwich from City Corner on Bishopsgate and lunch in a one or other of the many caffs in Hoxton, possibly with a chocolate in the mid-afternoon. I could, of course, make my own sandwiches and have lunch in the break-out area (Jesus! 'Break-out areas' Shakes head in despair.) So that caff lunch is just un-necessary out-of-control spending. Especially if I throw in the odd fish-and-chips in Jamies or a burger up at The Diner. Hey, look, rock-and-roll excess! I'm not a control freak either.

Which is why money-hoarders talk about how they spend too much on food. They do not mean they are having breakfast at the Criterion every morning: they mean they are buying an extra bar of chocolate, or maybe having a nice burger when egg-and-chips would do the trick. 

That's the disguise. Here's the disease.  First, notice that the measurement of a well-managed life is not how much money you have left over at the end of the month - however much that may sound like a good proxy. Second notice that putting money into a savings account and then not being able to spend it is downright weird behaviour. If I was saving it for my old age, that would be okay, but I'm not. Didn't I mention I already do that? This is just money I'm getting rid of into a hole so I don't have to... what?

Take the responsibility of spending it wisely. Actually doing something with what I bought with it. Instead of leaving it on the shelf as I did a perfectly good DLSR all this year. (I bought that to take sharper pictures on holiday. So I didn't take any holidays this year.) Actually I don't really know where the hell I would begin to spend the money. There's a gazillion things I want, or none. None is by far the lower-energy option.

You may at this stage think that there's nothing wrong: all I'm doing is being "sensible" with my money. I'm not wasting it on extravagances and pointless toys, such as iPads, fancy cars, designer suits and fancy espresso makers. In the same way, people who find out that I haven't had a drink for eighteen-plus years say "that's really good" as if they too would like to do that. We've had this discussion: you would not be able to go a year without a drink and you wouldn't want to either. Why do you say it's a good thing that I do? 

Compulsive saving means I don't make an effort to earn more. Why should I when I barely spend what I do earn? And of course, I could always cut back on that reckless food spending I do. What I tell myself is that the extra I could earn would not make that much of a difference to my life, and I would probably just wind up saving most of it. 

Compulsive saving means I have habits that are all about avoiding: avoiding spending, avoiding bad stuff, avoiding risks. This is not virtuous self-control, but non-virtuous risk minimisation. My habits aren't about doing, meeting, going, joining, taking part, exploring, or generally living. All those verbs expose me to the risk of serious temptation and loss, the regret of spending and wondering what, exactly, I got out of it.

Compulsive saving means I overstate the the price, and underestimate the value, of everything. I invent reasons why this and that and everything you love is actually only a hype, or not as great as you think it is. I reduce my expectation of the enjoyment of anything and increase my expectation it will be disappointing. That way I minimise the regret of never buying and enjoying it. I drain the value and fun from the world - or I would if I didn't think that was a load of psycho-babble bullshit brought to you by the same bunch of liars who brought you fulfilling intimate relationships^TM. 

Compulsive saving means I can take pleasure in the simple things. I bet you think that's a Good Thing. Very Spiritual. Horseshit. Taking pleasure in the simple things means I don't have to spend money. It's a financial management strategy, not a spiritual practice. And like long-term sobriety and living in the day, it's not something you would want to do for a whole year. Or could.

Now the bit you can't guess at. To stop myself spending money (notice the description.... spending money. not buying things), I need to establish a bunch of habits that keep me away from the temptation of, oh, you know, taking holidays, buying a nice coat, throwing a decent birthday party, having a nice car (as opposed to a functional supermini), splashing out on a MacBook Air (instead of the workhorse Asus I'm writing this on), buying a nice comfortable armchair to read in, paying a cleaner to come once a fortnight, and so on and so forth. Before we even get to the whole affording-a-girlfriend bit. I need a bunch of thoughts and attitudes that makes all that denial feel right and worthwhile and justified. And all that justification and saying NO and coming up with reasons for doing so is a huge strain. It needs to be maintained. It means my buying decisions are incredibly lengthy, as I find reasons for not buying the nice stuff and finding something cheap, functional and not too horrible to look at. It means that whenever I look at anything I have, I'm always reminded that it isn't what I really wanted, but a compromise. Often a perfectly good compromise, but nonetheless that. I have to tell myself that the experiences money provides are not actually good value.

Here's the thing: it doesn't matter what the reasons are. I could get all spiritual on my ass, about living a simple life and not needing toys and material things to prove I lead a good life, or I could convince myself that many of the things just aren't worth the cost, and sometimes this is true (women, saloon cars, short haul business class, lunch at Browns, Royal Ballet Christmas shows) and sometimes it's false (Macbook Air, long-haul First Class, supper at Cibrio in Florence, Pina Bausch  performances).  I choose to go the value-comparison route. Either take a lot of energy. It's a hamster-wheel that has to spin fast. I've lost count of the number of times I've reminded myself of how draining and un-relaxing those holidays I took in 2011 were, which is why I am never going to take holidays anywhere ever again. (I just pay a bunch of money on airfare and hotels and meals and get stuck with the last person I want to spend time with - me - all frigging day.) Catch is, we all still need to get away: even if it isn't much fun or relaxation at the time, it has long-term beneficial effects.

Anyway, compulsive saving isn't the problem. In may case, it's a symptom. Next time, we'll get to the problem.

Resolutions for 2013

I am not going to review my 2012 resolutions. 2012 was awful in so many ways, and I don't want to re-live it here. Let's just move on.

Apparently making a list of resolutions is a set-up for failure: we make too many and can't find the time or energy to do them all. Instead we should set a single objective and then just carry on with the rest of our life. We tend to forget that our employers make us do New Year's Resolutions in the form of "Objectives" for the year and that soaks up a lot of our energy.

Which leads me to this thought: maybe we're not supposed to run our personal lives like our work lives. I can remember how cool I thought it was back in my junior executive days to apply time management and management-by-objectives to my life. It didn't work, but it made me feel like I was making some kind of progress, even though what I was really doing was waiting for the dice to roll my way.

I've made a better fist of my life than I give myself credit for. It is, however, an utilitarian life that gets the bills paid, puts savings in the bank, keeps me employed, washed, fed, exercised and cultured. I've let myself fall into a fairly minimal routine  - and anyone who wants to exercise regularly has to have a fairly minimal routine - that is dominated by the need to get to bed by around 21:30 so I can get a decent night's sleep to wake up at 05:45. Or, as a couple of people shared back to me after a short chair at the DA/UA meeting I'm attending at the moment, it's just monotonous and tedious. It is lacking in sparkle, pixie dust, glamour, illumination, fairy-lights and all-round magic. You may think that a man with my vast experience of life and all-round sophistication would regard twinkle and sparkle as beneath his vast dignity, but actually, those things are important. If I was very rich, I would collect art and visit biennales, and that would be the sparkle, but I'm not, so it can't be. So there's a thing about sparkle and magic. It kinda fits in with what's really on my mind.

I keep thinking that I want to do is change where I work and the company I work for. I want to do that because working in Bishopsgate and for The Bank leaves me feeling lifeless an hour after I arrive. By midday, never mind by the time I leave work, I just want to crawl back home, maybe via the gym. I have no zip let for anything. If I could keep the job and location, and get the zip back, I would be just fine with it. So that's a thing: I'm going to keep changing stuff around until the zip comes back. 

I have a Gym Target - but then you should always have one of those: one unsupported pull-up / chin-up. Hey, I weigh 92 kilos. That's a serious heft. Check out the guys knocking out pull-ups in your gym: I'm guessing none are six-footers much over 80 kilos.

My culture target is to read Musil's The Man Without Qualities. That would make the Big Three: Proust, Joyce and Musil. I have my tickets for Sadlers Wells' Flamenco season in March already and I'm marching through Ezra Pound's Cantos right now.

There are things I think I should do (catch up with distant friends, go to the beach one weekend, take a Street Art tour, decorate the house, see all the new art movies and art shows) and I'm not going to do those. Every year I tell myself I should do those and every year I don't. This year I'm going to assume there's a good reason that I'm not aware of why I don't. Instead I'll do the things that occur to me out of nowhere. Unless it threatens the waistline, of course.

1. One unsupported pull-up by the year end

2. Read Robert Musil's The Man Without Qualities

3. Experiment with changes to the daily/weekly routine, diet, entertainment and whatever else until the zip, twinkle and sparkle comes back

4. Do stuff that just occurs to me

A Prosperous New Year To You!

Back To Work In The Between-Days

And you can bet I would rather be here...

If I had a favourite place in the world, this would come joint first.

Happy Christmas 2012

Though I would rather be here...

... and in summer.

Bah! Humbug! Office Christmas Decorations

I have no idea what overcame the otherwise sensible, conservative people who work around me, but last week one of the senior managers decorated her sections with a few tinsels, a small tree and this gingerbread house...

and after a day, all hell broke loose.