Don't Talk About It

I’ve sat in front of this Google doc countless times over the last few weeks, motivation levels have been low to say the least and I’ve written at least 700 words now that will never see the light of day.

It started as some thoughts about the fact a friend of mine had told me that sometimes it was best not to talk about your future plans because ‘you never know the intentions people have for you’. It is solid advice and I want to be better at it because I’m an endless oversharer and that’s fine except for the bits of my life I really could be flattened by someone’s opinion on. I will not be passive aggressive but I will say this: your twenties are hard and not everyone finds it as easy to be on your team as you (or they) might hope. People have their own version of you and it is sometimes a nasty surprise to find that it may not fit a life in which you are happy and successful.

I have, I hope at least, started to identify who I should be having those conversations with and who will just leave me feeling like I’ve just told them I’m going to donate my money to a charity which protects grey squirrels. The problem was partially how they made me feel, but also the things I thought they wanted to hear, which meant I was conveying that information hoping they would approve.

If they don’t want the things I want does that mean I’m wrong? Maybe everyone else does know better, and yet we are not the same people and I continue to make choices based only on what I want. I said I was coming here to do something and if it doesn’t work, and I come home, and I do something else then I’ll have to tell everyone why.

The problem with not talking about what you’re doing is that you would basically have to avoid human contact because everyone will ask what you’re doing. Out of genuine interest largely, and not because they’re trying to establish some sort of ranking of your success. I have no desire to maintain a level of mystery about my life but I do have a desire to not wrap myself in knots trying to pretend I have a master plan for my life.

The truth is I just don’t know. I just don’t know what I’m going to do or what I want. I don’t know where I’ll be in six months time and I don’t find any of this especially exciting as much as it feels like a lot of decisions I’d rather not make. I should find this exciting because it is exciting, but I don’t always.

I joke about falling into things but in reality so little of this is an accident and if I wanted certain things I know exactly how I’d go about getting them. Would it be so awful to just give myself a break and admit I might be kind of content with how things are? I mean I just spent a long weekend in Beirut and worked on a project I care about and now I get to live here and learn Arabic. I don’t know what makes a good life, but I feel okay about mine.

What I do know is what I think is important and I know it’s never been my day job. I have some things I’d like to do eventually, and I’m hoping I always make time to work towards them. I know I want to be better and giving these things space to actually take place. I know I want to think of my current situation as more of an opportunity to do more of what I want than a failure to have success in the way I thought of it. I know I rarely feel like that.

I know that none of this would mean anything without the actual relationships I have with the actual human people who make up my life. It isn’t very #girlboss to say, but I really hope there is never a time where the people in my life don’t get to have a good portion of my time, they are what makes me really and truly happy after all. Typing is wonderful way to spend your time but I categorically do not make myself laugh with the frequency my friends do - or ever, actually.

In other news, I have working shutters in my room which is exciting news for absolutely no one apart from a) people who want to hear me stop complaining about it, b) people who care about the impact of natural light on general health and well-being. True to form this problem has been replaced by the slightly more concerning one of discovering a series of rusted screws littered around my room, so that natural light will no doubt be put to good use identifying if I have tetanus in my foot.

Spellings of my name have taken a turn for the worse (see below). As a result of this continued confusion I have told my dentist my name is Clara which is less difficult on the phone but then I received a text from them saying ‘Hello Flora’. Time will tell how problematic it is to try and claim treatment when it looks like you’ve stolen someone else’s health insurance documents. Bad news for the oncoming tetanus.

Also just to address the big reveal of this piece, yes, I do write everything in Google Docs and then just copy and paste it onto this platform. It’s the only way I found to make sure everything is formatted correctly but it is also the reason every week we’re using a different font and text size. I could claim it keeps the writing fresh but it’s actually just that I don’t go back and check until weeks later and by then it’s too late and many people just have struggled through the sometimes minuscule font (thank you). I can be a bastion of professionalism but this is so not the place for it, pals.

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I’m on Instagram - clairegillesp - which is photos of my trip to Lebanon from now until the foreseeable future.

I’m on Twitter - @clairegillesp - where I am seemingly constantly mad about something.

This week I’ve been listening to Corrine Bailey Rae because she’s from where I’m from and I miss home and if you don’t think Put Your Records On is a fab tune then please tell me what it’s like to be that wrong. I was inspired to revisit it by this piece on Dancing in the Moonlight which recently came on in a bar I was in and changed my life for 3 minutes.

xx

One Weekend in Amman

I pass the time in Athens the way I always do, wondering if they play this horrible elevator music in every airport and maybe I only notice on layovers, and cursing the fact that the largest airport in Greece still manages to only consist of two corridors and one coffee shop. The journey has gone as smoothly as it ever can, despite having to negotiate the issue of when I’m leaving Jordan (which of course, I’m not), and could I please present my outbound ticket. The answer this time luckily is that I’m going to Beirut in three weeks but I still can’t help but roll my eyes – living in Jordan without residency is a pretty straightforward set of circumstances, but getting on the plane continues to be an adventure every single time.

There’s a cracking sunset from Athens airport though, silver linings being a very important part of days where I’ve been awake since 6am.

The default question before I go away is always ‘are you nervous’, truth be told this is the easy one, nothing to be nervous about. I get to be reunited with all my friends, go back to my office, and do plenty else besides. Amman is not an easy place to live, but we have worked a working arrangement in which unburden myself to friends who do not live here and continue to give it my all no matter how exhausting I find it. I will not pretend that the next few days will not be a lot of remembering how to navigate everything from the journey to work to how to top up my phone but we will get there.

So, the nerves are replaced by a feeling that I’m ripping myself away from home again. Short visits are deceptive because they allow you to forget the reasons you booked the flight in the first place. I hope I can trust the person who decided to do all this because she had been home for a while, waiting and checking her emails, and I think she was right that she couldn’t sit there forever. Right now though, I hate leaving more than anything. I could be comforted I suppose by the fact that I feel like this no matter how long I’ve been home, whether it’s been six months or ten days. Very lucky I am too, to have something so difficult to leave.

This sadness isn’t helped of course, by the fact that there is something very uniquely depressing about travelling through the night and in fact, by the time I arrive, the early hours of the morning. I think it’s because I’m so aware of what I would be doing instead, and that when I get to Amman the city will be asleep and I won’t see or speak to anyone I know until the next day. Also, my blood sugar levels are low and anyone who knows me will know that not having eaten is the number one cause of emotional distress in my life.

Closely followed by Microsoft Word’s obsession with trying to make my writing more ‘concise’ with its brown dotted lines which I do not remember asking for and is not something I have any desire to do. If I wanted to be concise I just wouldn’t write these 700 word pieces every week now would I?

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‘You didn’t tell anyone you were coming, did you?’

Okay so yes, I did kind of forget in the madness of the last few months and I did just show up at my desk on Thursday morning (switching the lights and the AC off as I went).

And yes, my colleague did have to greet me for the first in in eight months by yelling ‘do you need any help?’ when he found me scrambling around under my desk to find an extension lead. I did pour water through a plastic cup and onto my feet. I’ll tell you something though, these things are a damn sight more enjoyable when they happen and I’m in an office full of people, than sat at my desk in my house on my own.

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It took the weekend to remember why I love being here, why sitting around in cafes eating and drinking tea all weekend is my favourite thing to do. How much Amman can give you if you just look for it and plan accordingly. How lucky I am to have such good friends here and how much I actually kinda dig the heat. There I said it, I don’t live in exclusively hot places by accident - it’s all intentional, kids.

So basically, don’t worry, I’m fine, work is going fine (intense though it appears it will be). I’m busy and planning lots of trips and events and generally being a nightmare to myself by leaving myself no time to do all the other things I need to do. But if that’s what I need to feel at home - then go figure I guess?

*****

I’m on Instagram - clairegillesp - be prepared for the desert landscapes that are yet to come.

I’m on Twitter - @clairegillesp - probably complaining about the patriarchy, so business as usual I guess.

I’m obsessed with Sorry Not Sorry by Demi Lovato and Prayin’ by Kesha - working well in my now well-known favourite genre of music of women who do not need you shit.

xx