Some jobs I’ve turned down…

Instead of telling you what I’ve been working on lately, I decided to mention some of the jobs I’ve been offered that I didn’t take:

A page in a coffee table book of black & white close-ups of anonymous vulvas. 

The plan was to donate the profits to a cervical cancer charity so I might have considered it, but the Animal didn’t like the idea and although the team were earnest well-meaning folk I agreed with him.  The anonymity struck me as sad, a shame, a waste, in a collection of  such personal images.  And the focus on external genitalia seemed misdirected, an arty not-very-unique selling point that left the cervix unconsidered.  A book of cervix photos with the subjects’ names, ages and such would have interested me more.

A girlie fight video for Catz Review.

After waching one of these topless catfights on DVD, I knew I wasn’t interested – the footage had low production values and was pretty low on entertainment value too.  If they got a ring/cage for the fights, an on-camera referee, and more audio content (like some music, some yelling and a bit more commentary), this could be an amusing project.   As it stands though, this is a poorly lit video clip of a couple of out-of-breath youngish women slapping each other and trying to pin each other down on a couple of thin gym mats in a corner of a room (apparently it’s a dance studio or something, but it has a low windowsill in the corner against which a head will probably one day get smacked).
They do pay well though, so if you’re female and interested in fighting for cash you can contact them at fightinggirls@live.co.uk.

A lingerie shoot for Stockings & Romance.

This was a job I really wanted to take because they have such pretty 1940s/50s pin-up style lingerie, but being pregnant means that I keep changing size and that’s deeply unhelpful when you need to plan a lingerie & corsetry shoot.  Even before I got pregnant I was a bit bigger in the bust than their usual models.  By the date they were shooting, I would have been about a GG cup and incapable of stuffing myself into their cute pointy bras.  Shame.

The loneliness of sharing

I’ve had a lot of time to think lately.  Voluntarily trapped in the cocoon of pregnancy, abstaining from alkiehol and long noisy nights out, not working much, spending long days and longer evenings alone at home, enjoying silence.  I’d forgotten how good it is to roam around inside my own mind.  I’d also forgotten who was in there.

When I was busy busy I longed for more time.  I thought I’d spend it curled around my mate, or meeting up with friends, or even writing extra work on spec.  What little spare time I had was spent talking, texting, posting, sharing for no reason but the act itself.  In each bite of small talk, each status update and every link followed, I saw a bridge to the world I didn’t have time for (ooh, grammar). 

Was I wrong to share the contents of my head/heart so freely with my outrageous Venn diagram of social circles? Misguided? To exchange pieces of my metaphysical self for the occasional LOLZ or a few minutes of conversation that ultimately meant little, because I’d still be insomniac and misanthropic in the grey light of morning…

The whole point of thoughts, of emotions, is that they’re on the inside.  One can poke at them, turn them over, sift and blend and do other cookery-type metaphors with them.  If they’re shared too soon, they will be raw and doughy and make people sick.  Unconsidered, adolescently fleeting stream-of-self-consciousness outpourings are unsatisfactory because whatever response they receive will seem insufficient.  Remember that feeling of No-One-Understands-And-I’m-Going-To-Scream-About-It teenage angst?  The screaming part is what we (mostly) grow out of. 
BTW for a much better commentary on this aspect of the subject, take a look at acatinatree’s post Growing up online: why the days of our digital adolescence are numbered.

This isn’t a sulk against social media – Facebook, Twitter et al aren’t responsible for the psychic incontinence of their users.  Neither do I have a grudge against my real-world societies for allowing me to vent my inconsequential thoughts upon them.  But I feel the shine has worn off my toys (um, that is, my friends) and now I’d rather spend time with books and tea.  They don’t need me to share.  Of course, nobody else actually *needed* me to share either – but I did anyway, and it left me empty and overexposed at times. 

I was, and still am, a cyberutopian at heart, sometimes straying too far into the minefield of the mind/meat dichotomy.  But the world online is the same as the world outside my window, with bullies and thieves and boredom in abundance despite the vastness and seeming freedom of existence.  Private peer networks spring up like gated communities.  Gossip leaves people feeling mistreated (mistweeted?).  Employers and lovers can analyse your past and present, finding reasons to doubt your suitability. 

I’m still sharing, of course.  This much is obvious (at least, if it isn’t obvious to you then I suggest you browse elsewhere – there are some nice pictures of cats you could be perusing at this very moment).  After everything I’ve just said, there are still reasons to make the occasional break Out There rather than just staying inside myself.  And if I feel the fear of oversharing, I’ll give it a bit more thought.  If it’s not worth sharing anymore after half an hour, or half a day, then it wasn’t important.

Every interaction involves a risk.  Maybe that’s part of the point.  But when you’ve spewed a bit too much personal information onto the hinterweb, at least you can reassure yourself that most of it really wasn’t paying attention to you anyway.  As I said, it’s not so different from the real world.

More lists

My favourite words this week:

• Pythagorean
• symphysis
• escrow
• furniture
• eyelet
• polarity
• oolith

Things of which I like the smell but not the taste, or vice versa:

• cherry
• banana
• rose
• marzipan
• rice pudding
• black molasses
• tequila