The museum of procrastination

As I look around my place, all I see are unfinished projects, half-finished decorating, half-finished painting resting on the radiator, yellowing from the heat, the faint shape of the women seem to shrivel even her breasts are drooping

In the corner gathering dust sit a couple of musical instruments, staring at me, chords sticking out like guts spilling out of a discarded corpse, at least I mastered Frere Jacques and they make for interesting conversations like do you play? NOPE.

Book plots, blogs and essays squiggled on pieces of paper dispersed on my desk, gathering dust, the ink smudged in places and the paper yellowing from different beverages that were spilled on them. Some stories have never even left the confines of my imagination; they just sit there waiting for instructions that won’t come, I promised them …someday!

In the cupboard, half-finished treatments and courses of anti-biotic from my hypochondriac days…all half-finished and expired, even as I look down, I see only one of my legs is waxed because the last time I had to bare my thunder thighs, my skirt only had one opening and I frankly couldn’t be bothered to go on with this charade that is waxing!  But I stand by my choice, it’s both logical and economical and in no way lazy.

Come to think of it, even my dreams are cut-short, I always wake up before the “climax”, I never seem to stop running and get to where I am supposed to get, I always think I can get some amazing fantastica novel from my stupid dreams, if only they’d finish…

My procrastination list goes on, sadly my desire to finish anything doesn’t, but that doesn’t ever discourage me from starting other things again…I came to realise that it doesn’t matter when you get there, as long as you do eventually get there, procrastination is given a bad name, but perhaps it’s a good process for some people! I am sticking to it ya!

The end.

Ps: it took me 2 weeks to write this!! Ooof

Double Trouble!

What being single looks like to me

As a kid, like all the girls my age, I used to excitedly calculate how old I would be in the year 2000, that big year that represented the future, I used to daydream about what I would become, of course I was already aware of my potential and the fact that by the year 2000 I would probably be happily married with someone amazing, it  was simply a matter of time and that was only part of the dream. After all that’s what grownups seem to do, they get great jobs and get married.

Today in a grey day of the year 2015, I realise that not all grownups have to follow the norm, so like many out there, I too remain single, the years came and gone, love came and left my life and somehow I remain steadfastly certain that I would one day be reunited with that promised special person who gets me and doesn’t annoy me and if I wasn’t going to meet this rare person who doesn’t annoy me well then I will be OK and life will still have meaning and challenges! Of that; I am certain and have understood it very early on.

But it seems society hasn’t made its peace with it and doesn’t recognise my choice as valid or acceptable, to them I am a desperate damsel, a relationship reject or a potential home wrecker. I am often looked at with puzzlement, some friends pity my continuous single status otherwise referred to as “predicament” and constantly try setting me up with single men (that’s it, that’s the criteria), others secretly envy it (being single) whilst others have simply stopped inviting me to their parties because it proved difficult trying to box that single girl who turns up to kids parties with no kids and a bottle of booze! Especially when that said girl answers questions like “Where’s your little one?” with “I thought BYOB stood for bring your own booze not bring your own baby” .

But for the most part people seem to be outraged that I remain single yet don’t seem to suffer the consequences of it, I want to tell them to wait a few more years but there’s no fun in that!!

They want to see you suffer the dire consequences of your terrible ill-advised choice and suffer the harsh reality of being over 30 and single, after all that’s the only way they could justify their mistakes choices.

So instead of letting the married friends include me into their circles as a third or fifth wheel, I created my own circle, and believe me, the pass mark to get in is very high! Just recently I had to make it a bit higher based on the comments of some angry bitter unhappily married “friend” who asked if I ever did get marriage proposals, to which I said yes sure, last year I had 3 (poor sods).

“Three!!!” he said, “Isn’t that a too much??”

“Too much for whom exactly??” I said…

So he said “anyway, they’re just messing with you, you ARE over thirty remember!!”

POW! Double shamed, single-age-shamed with one sentence.

And this is the crux of the problem, people don’t seem to want to accept, or simply fathom, even in the 21st century, that a single woman might be quite happy not conforming to societal norms; that she might simply not want to be in a relationship or have a husband.

Singletons are not anomalies or glitches in the matrix of your sedated married minds; they are people with choices who simply took those choices. The End.

Dz-chick…happily single.

A few thoughts and a lot of Chocolate!

Every time you decide it’s time to attempt to lead a light, fun and worry-free life because what you have on your mind suffices as torture and you decide you have your share of grey hairs for your age, another tragedy hits, a bomb in Iraq, an ex-terrorist starts a political party in Algeria and threatens to Islamise us, famine in Yemen, a toddler’s little body drifts dead on a beach in Turkey and gathers far less attention than the last beached whale, or that last white person who needed stitches on his pinkie.

Several Syrian people peril at sea trying to flee their war torn land, more Ebola in Sierra Leon, more people die in police custody, all of them black, more violence against women, more cases of rape and FGM somewhere you don’t remember, more right wing policies and more anti-immigration noise made, more Anti-Islam this and more terrorist organisations now than ever, some have embassies others are just imbeciles.

You don’t know where to look anymore, you feel lost, wherever you look, there is despair and struggle, when once you felt you could help change things, today you feel useless and unimportant, so you eat chocolate and you try not to think about what would happen to the world in a few years, they say Gaza will be uninhabitable and the world will be drier than ever, death tolls will be higher, the planet will be warmer, well at least the reasons for war will be clearer!

Despondent, pessimistic, fat and possibly hormonal, you yearn for better times, when you try to remember the last time you were thin there was peace in the world, you can’t remember, so you eat more chocolate and try to maintain a shallow thought pattern, it’s for self-protection you understand, at least we can achieve that with chocolate, what does it take for the directly afflicted to feel safe again, to feel home again? Certainly not chocolate!

Dz-Chick…I'll aim for a more cheerful post next time!

August...Sort it out!

Image via Flickr user Jesus Leon

August is proving a challenging month this year lifetime; it’s like the Tuesday of the week, the middle of a book, the second year of college, the dry bit of a sandwich!

You wake up with no real purpose, you know you have to go to work but you hate your work and “activity” seems to have come to a standstill, hardly any shouting in the office these past couple of weeks, Thank god for Greece, it’s really keeping us busy this summer; in, out, in, out and no climax to show for it! (You’re welcome)

Trains are full of either single or barren people, you know, because all people with kids are on holiday ….it’s summer holidays or half term or whatever it’s called! YAY! Which means trains are mildly bearable, sometimes I even manage to get a seat if I stick out my belly enough and hold my hips. The weather likes to pretend it’s summer but really we all know summer has come and gone during those 5 days in July (during Ramadan).

Tube strikes and general disruption to your life seem to be finding a niche with August like it was the only month of the year where making your life miserable was ok, it’s like a punishment for not having kids and not going away on holiday like normal Homo sapiens!  Even the IS has gone quiet thankfully, perhaps their president is on holiday too, I hear Hell is cheap this time of year!  

As for me and I am sure you as well, no holidays to look forward to, apart from the ones my boss takes, I really look forward to those and he’s French so we know he’s gone for at least 5 weeks!

5 Sundays is a long time “must not waste time”, “must not waste time “(in a robot voice)! So I ogle my friend Cheraz’s DAILY holiday snaps! She seems to be living in a bikini this year, provides valuable entertainment to all my facebook friends who enjoy her toned ass every time I give her a like! (You’re welcome).

I will finish this article when my conclusion comes back from holidays, until then…don’t forget the sunscreen and always use a pseudo when commenting.

Dz-chick…Thank you for your comment, I am out of the office myself until September, I will however get back to you upon my return, Bestest regards, Me!

Confession: I am so bored, I played the lotto! Twice!

The Cautionary Tale

 

It’s probably time I announced to you if you care, that I am planning on moving back to Algeria. Many years and a thousand reasons later I thought it’s about time I returned home.

Reasons? Besides the fact that I miss my family, besides the fact I watch as my parents get visibly older and my nieces and nephews visibly and scarily less innocent.  I find myself missing out on so many things and finding myself alone here always trying to find a justification to it all, usually it’s of the type “What? It’s my life and I decide how to live it”, but more often than not I can find no real justification (to myself) for my lingering here on this island, where I am deeply happy and unhappy at the same time, where I am crowded and alone, lonely and lively, positive yet so gloomy, Always going but inevitably always staying.

So like every couple of years, I declare to all my friends and family that this was it, I am leaving! everybody shake their heads laughing and say “ah what you like!!” and I get a bit indignant but then give up on the whole idea and resume my life of miserable commuting to a shitty job working for a knobhead of a boss and get paid some dineros, half of which is spent on the miserable commute to the shitty job working for the knobhead of a boss.  BUT not this time, not anymore. This time I mean business; and LITERRALLY...well and a bit of fun!

So my mind starts to wonder about what my life would be like in Algeria, when I know I am there for the long haul and not a fleeting week where my mum makes my favourites dishes and my dad suggests to take me out to touristic sites and thinks it’s cute when “Je fais mon anglaise”.

What will I wear? I fear a wardrobe reshuffle would be in order? What do I speak? Algerian, French of English? What will I do? Can I get a job there? Will I be able to drive on the left hand side? Can I go to the cinema when the mood strikes? ; can I go out for dinner and stay out with friends? Will I get used to the infernal traffic, the driving antics of Algerians with their 7 lane motorways (actual lanes: 3) and their “Normaaals” and whatnots! I wonder about how long my grace period will last with my dad before he starts to scrutinise my everything and make me feel like I made a massive mistake!  

I think about how loud the local mosque call to prayer is but how comforting to hear the Adhan again, not so much for its religious meaning as for being one of the only things that never fails or changes, no matter what happens, there will always be that soft magical velvet voice singing, floating on the warm air making you feel home safe .

I think about how life seems so difficult yet so simple! I Think about constant stares in the street that often make me trip, I think about all the French speaking that seems to determine social class! I think about so many things, important and trivial that my head spins and I just want to take a big nap and throw it all to the wind and decide that what you were used to before, you will get used to again.  

But I decide that nobody should force exile on themselves just because there’s a lack of cinemas, first class gyms or Costa Cafés or even freedom, democracy and justice in their country! Not because of the level of corruption or nepotism or the number of things that will rub you the wrong away on a daily basis, or the fact you will hate everyone and want to throw in the towel after about a month.

Time only will tell…

Dz-chick... Announcement one of two!