Psychological musings

English girls are pretty when they play guitar
Crazy like a day just a-breaking I ain't sure what for
Ryan Adams says that "English Girls Are Mean Sometimes" - do we think he's had a bad experience with one?

Resolutions of the day (to be done sometime in the near future):
1. Buy computer speakers to listen to music with (this was prompted by the fact that my favourite song ever, The La's - There She Goes, doesn't get done justice on a laptop)
2. Get rid of crap songs on computer that are clogging the hard drive
3. Remember birthdays before the actual day
4. Do some damn exercise
5. Buy healthy food - no Cheetos!

So today was a day of not very much again - strange how one can become so proficient at wasting time so quickly. I wasn't really wasting it as wishing it away, but it boiled down to the same thing. Some more work, a lot more tv, music, messenger.....and the strange experience of having the house-sitter for our landlady knock on the door at 10pm to say she couldn't find the key to actually get in the house (her competency already in doubt it seems) and having a canary/lovebird hybrid on her shoulder.

Whilst talking to Greg earlier, I realised that my psychologist days seem to be leaving me. Not that I was ever a professional, but there was a time when I was the unofficially appointed counsellor for whatever halls I happened to be in at Uni, and regularly had friends turning up to confess to evil deeds, update me on their tumultous love life, or find a shoulder to cry on. Indeed, a few times during Uni it seemed that there was a constant stream of people coming to my room to tell me their problems; hopefully leaving with a bit of weight relieved, only for the next person in the queue to come in and unload some emotional baggage.

Now whilst saying that I "liked" this would be to use the wrong word, there was some sort of pride taken in the fact that I was of some use to people, and that people would thank me for helping them in some way, even though it felt like all I was doing was listening. I have always thought that people who do psychology (and Maria, feel free to disagree with me here!) do so because they are on a continuum at which there are two ends; those who feel real empathy for people who are screwed up, or those who are screwed up themselves. I have met psychologists at one end of this extreme, and at the other, and a good few who are a combination of both (can I include myself in this category?), but never a psychologist who does not fall onto this line. I suppose someone could be amazingly well balanced and clinically interested in people who have problems, but feel no empathy with them; that is to say they could show a purely detached and scientific interest in their nature and behaviour only, but maybe I have just not yet met psychologists like this.

Anyway, I digress. My very badly made and perhaps inaccurate point is, that I am drawn to people who seem to be in distress, who are vulnerable, in whom I can see signs of suffering, or whom I care deeply for and whose problems I wish to try and solve. And by being over here, away from my friends and those people who know that they can come to me for advice, a tissue and a cup of tea (though maybe not, since I don't drink it), I feel strangely unemployed. Not depressed, just slightly lost. Although the written word can convey a great deal of emotion, and e-mails, letters etc can express some of the obstacles in your life and how you think you should overcome them, there is just no substitute for being in the same room as someone and talking to them about how they feel. You need to see their expressions, their movements, their tone of voice and ultimately their eyes when they talk to you. Which just doesn't happen via the internet. And whilst Greg made the valid, and perhaps realistic, point that maybe none of my friends have any problems worth telling me about at the moment, and that's why I feel slightly under-utilised, you just can't help but wonder......... who else is there making the tea and providing the kleenex?