Poker Face Required

The man from the Council delivered his presentation, which  if spoken without interruption would have lasted 5 minutes. There was no chance of that with this room. Edged toward the back, I hid myself as much as is possible with a square layout of tables. I watched as Mr Council stopped and started, answering the eagerly asked questions one by one, elaborating like he was paid by the word. The meeting was only mid way through. I knew because I frequently glanced at the wrist of the man next to Mr Council, and I could just about make out the watch hands to read 3pm.  Watch guy didn’t speak as much as the others, but when he did, he would reiterate his point as if you hadn’t heard it the first or second time.

 

‘Lots of the people in this room are bald,’ I thought and I started gazing around the room in a duck duck goose like fashion, tallying off the hair and non hair people one by one. ‘Focus Laila Jesus Christ!’ – I pulled myself back into the meeting and listened more as the next person asked Mr Council their pressing question. This time it was the Chair – a woman I watched with admiration. I loved that when she spoke; she spoke of examples. She spoke passionately and assertively but would add gems of kindness such as an ‘I sure as hell mean this’ thank you, or a ‘I would stick up for you if you ever needed me to’ smile. Yeah, I really liked her. I imagined her at the front of the protests if we ever found ourselves in a Arab Spring type revolution; the limitation of her wheelchair not stopping her. To her right was another guy – I’ll call him Mr one liner.  His disabilities meant it was hard for him to speak clearly, but I like to think his small use of words was also partly due to his wit. When Mr Council ended his long talk of major new changes planned Mr one liner delivered an apt “Good Luck” with a grin that said more than those words

 

‘Damn it I drifted off again’, I thought to myself. I was becoming increasingly worried that the minutes I was due to take for the next meeting would be impossible with my attention span. I looked to the woman who was taking the minutes now, and every time I did so she met my eyes back but promptly looked away. I wondered if she was taking this all in; if it was just me who wondered how these people all became so passionate about their field, and if I would ever be this passionate about any job? As I listened to what they said, I realised that this was so important – people together passionately talking about what they could do to help those most in need in society.

 

‘Oh – but wait there’s a daddy long legs in the room. Shit it’s a proper floppy one that’s swinging around like a way over the limit drink driver. Ahh has no one else seen it? It’s huge. It better not come near me. Shit, shit Laila listen. Look focused come on.’ Smiley Nelson, one of the guys who interviewed me, and who’s facial expressions really eased the process, edged his hand upwards like an extremely polite child desperate to tear open his Xmas gifts. I looked to him, and back to Mr Council speaking, and back to the revolutionary chair woman, and then around the square longing for someone to let Nelson ask his question. They finally did, and the truth is I can’t tell you what it was as I can’t remember, but I can tell you that the daddy long legs had made himself scarce and I suddenly missed him.

 

“Laila will you lead on that then?” I suddenly heard my manager, the final character to introduce you to, say.” Trying not to look wide eyed and dumb deer like I said “Sure”, and was grateful for the clarification that followed. I spent the rest of the meeting wearing my best smiles and attentive listening faces whilst limiting my glances toward Watch Guy’s timepiece. I even called the daddy long legs search off. I left feeling proud that I got through a grown up meeting, and felt like I had really taken a lot of it in.

 

“You are hilarious” – my minute taking colleague popped up and said while we walked towards the kitchen. “Huh? Why?” I replied. “You’re facial expressions!! They constantly spoke so much. Sometimes they said ‘what are they on about?’, sometimes they said ‘I am listening now’ and sometimes they just seemed to be lost in another place.’ As I placed my tea mug down I couldn’t help but laugh at the thought I may never suss this poker face thing. I will have to just hope people like me enough to not get offended. I fear I have a face that, like those finger trap toys.the more you try to pull one way the more it’ll do the opposite.  I went to wash my tea cup and there I saw it, the daddy long legs, a shadow of his former self. Cause of death: suspected drowning. Gulp. I left him where he was, smiled at my colleague, got ready to go into meeting number two and hoped I’d fair better than that daddy long legs.

A Life Of Perfect Nothings

Turning to my team leader 8 years ago, I listened as she belted out some interview prep advice. “Oh and if they ask you about what your weaknesses are, just say that you’re a perfectionist,” her eyes widened while her grin declared she’d sussed the system. “Say that you always make sure your work is just right, ‘cos it is a positive not a negative really”. She continued the advisory talk for a further few minutes, wiggling her enthusiastic bob, before the words conveniently – yet nonsensically – linked back to her most favoured topic of all – her little boy Ryan.

‘Perfectionism is a positive trait…..’, I find myself considering this statement today.

Learning something new to me involves trying a task repeatedly and usually alone, until either I get it right or abort the whole thing. If I can do it all by myself I take pride in the knowledge that nobody else helped me and I’ve not hassled a single soul.

 

As I attempt to grasp reams of new information in my new job I face the reality that my usual approach is flawed. There is no way that I will know it all on my own. And the truth is everything I’ve ever learnt has come from somebody else. I would be deluded to believe otherwise.  Every time I google, every book I read, documentary or TV show I watch, podcast I listen to – are all forms of somebody else’s sharing. I once scoffed at the genre of ‘self help’ yet regarded Psychology as more high brow – when really it all just involves people sharing knowledge with one another whether from experiences or research.

 

For me perfectionism also creates a chasm between self-pride and self-hatred, so that when things do not go so well it can feel disastrous. An internal dialogue of debilitating, venomous words ensues; leading only to wounding oneself as target and shooter are one. My aims now are to notice this talk before the battle begins, call a ceasefire, and let the thoughts drift on.

 

Perfectionism, not just laziness, is a reason I stopped updating this blog. I felt pride in the work I had previously written, and I put off writing more because I feared my posts would hold no value and not live up to what I had previously written. Obviously no posts whatsoever are the only type of writing that holds no value at all. For me, a quitting mentality is where I would rather not do something than do it badly. If things don’t fit my mould of expectations it can be uncomfortable, and again signal my hasty retreat away from potential failures.

 

Noticing these things in myself I am keen to watch when either my inner perfectionist or the f*** the whole thing saboteur show their heads, and tell them to take a sit down, not make any rash decisions and meet in the middle somewhere, because there is more value in a life of imperfections than in a life of perfect nothings.

The bigger picture and the messy scribbles

My absence from this blog has largely been due to one factor: laziness. I justified my reasoning to lie in my need to protect people’s anonymity, and inability to write meaningfully in the absence of a baring all truth. I began to feel these taps of the keyboard and thinking up new topics rather tiring, when I could just flick on a Netflix show and use far less of my brain staring at a screen.

 

I have had plenty to type about. Some of which is hard to share on a blog that can be read by many of those close to me, other parts I can share in full glory. Of the latter there is the fact that my days of joblessness have come to an end, and two weeks ago I stepped into a little office met by two smiley faces, a welcome gift and an amazing feeling in my soul that I was finally making a step in the right direction. Within my first 8 hours I had already had far much more enjoyment on the tasks I was given than I had had in 8 years of working in my council jobs.

 

Summer has been a journey of experiences, laughs, lessons and changes. The amazing times and words I have shared with those close to me I am extremely grateful for. As Autumn draws and I pull my duvet tighter around me I am making space for asking myself what will help me to continually grow? What things have I done which have served me well and which limit me? What will I keep? What should I see the return of? My absence from the outlet of drama classes and this writing again comes to mind. I somewhat neglected the growths I had made in confidence and self worth, forgetting that to maintain these feelings you must continually feed them and some may need to do this more than others. You cannot look to anyone to give you those boosts, for you will only be further teaching yourself that you have to continually source them externally rather than by nourishing and building upon areas of oneself that bring about feelings of accomplishment and self pride. Further, too much time spent looking inward, even if it is in a negative light to oneself can cause tunnel vision and a hyper vigilance for negative feedback, that can appear selfish. Anxieties, depression, and low self esteem are things we all deal with at times and to varying degrees and I feel a new pang of understanding of why in my readings of mindfulness they teach that in order to develop the self and love yourself more you must look upon others compassionately and help them too. With that in mind I am even happier my new job is one where I can help people and shape change. When I feel myself looking inwards this is more reason to turn my gaze outward and look at the people and world around me. Appreciate what I have, do what I can to make others feel positive for having interacted with me, and not get so swamped in my own fears and worries that the big picture is reduced to the small part where the colouring in has gone over the lines. After all, looking at the bigger picture got me out of a job I was not fulfilled within, and got me into more fulfilling life paths all around. The messy lines may be there, but they are only a small part of what is. And we would never tell a child to destroy their drawing if they went outside of the lines once in a while. We would place their picture on the fridge, embrace the lines and hug them and tell they did great anyway.