On the subject of hoarding....

For ten years we've been throwing things out... and buying more things, but mostly throwing things out. There has been some headway, but on the whole the other things just seem to expand and no extra space seems to get made. We have one room that is particularly bad and under the house is bad too. Goat track material, but not too horrible in that it's 'stuff' not 'rubbish', although some would disagree. I've gotten a bit more serious about it in the last year or so, joining online help groups and trying to change the way I do things, the way I think. This is my Pinterest Board on the subject -- http://pinterest.com/rosz_craig/hoarding/

bored with being boxed in by assumptions

Unthinkingly, you always answer those questions rather than avoiding them cleverly. You know, the ones that box you in. The questions about where you work, about what you do.

When you do answer, you feel the conversation enclosing like a boa constrictor. The more you say about ‘work’ the less likely some new and interesting topic will be introduced.

The information is used, innocently, to assume things about you. Where you work and what you do for a living – these indicate things about you. Not necessarily correct things, or things you would want people to construe.

I used to say ‘artist’ – that, for the most part, would stymie people and cause them to have to think of something interesting to ask. They could assume you were poor, but generally they didn’t really know what to assume without more input.

When I ask people what they do, I’m going through the motions. Of course I’ll be excited if you are an artist (generally because I think I will have a good conversation – equally happy with scientists) or have something else in common with me so I can extend the conversation and practise being human. I will make assumptions too, but I always make every assumption with a grain of salt.

Really though, I don’t care what you do for a living – I want to know what you think.

Have I read this? Would I remember it?

Reading Vittorio the vampire by Anne Rice. I picked it up at the markets and had to buy it to get away from the nice-but-too-chatty marketer. I don't think I've read it before, but perhaps I wouldn't remember because it has very little substance. It is the slightly flowery language and it is the tapestry of the historical world. It is well written, but seems to lack something. I wonder if I look on my bookshelf if there is another copy or was it so nebulous I wouldn't have kept it? I'd like to think that my memory would at least retain books, but alas, lately.... I do tend to remember covers, but this cover is remarkably bad so I might have wiped it from my mind. Will I ever know and does it matter? Hanging out for the next installment of Game of Thrones.