Finding the words

I had something very weird happen to me the other day, it even frightened me a little.  I have spent rather a large amount of time since returning from the United States reading and writing about culture, business and expanding knowledge base so these subjects have been looming pretty large in my mind.

Also, because business studies is something I have previously worked on for all of never, I have been stressing about it - to the extent that it has been popping up in my dreams.  Trust me, marketing managers preventing your superhero alterego from catching the villain with their dancing spreadsheets isn't something you want to happen, even in your sleep.

Dreams are dreams, though, and that wasn't the weird thing that happened to me.  No, the weird thing was when I realised I had forgotten how to talk to people. Weird right?

I was out with friends, doing everything I could to relax and put the whole assignments issue out of my mind for a few hours - which, of course, meant that I was thinking about it most of the night.  This in turn meant that I was only following the conversations in the absolute broadest sense of the term and not participating much.  For anyone out there who knows me, they will probably realise that this is fairly unusual behaviour for me and a couple of people decided to check if I was alright.

I'd like to stop for a moment to say good on them, they are awesome friends and I wish more people in the world could be awesome friends.

Anyways, they asked if things were ok and I sat there for about five seconds doing that disturbing fish thing of opening and closing my mouth while I tried to remember how to form a coherent sentence that didn't involve supply chains or market trends.  I eventually came up with "Yeah, just thinking about my assignments." and then managed to actually get into the swing of things.

This was the first time in my life that I have found myself completely unable to say anything, just forming the words was a gargantuan task for some reason.  And this freaked me out because words are so very important to me.

Moving can be fun

Today I helped a theatre company move their scenery store.  This is very much like moving house, but bigger and more unwieldy.  It has however taught me something pretty major, when you're helping a friend move and you're surrounded by people you get along with pretty well, it can be a fun activity.

I say when you're helping a friend move because I have personally moved house six times since I've been old enough to actually have a hand in the moving and none of these were enjoyable experiences.  There is a ridiculous amount of stress involved and I'm considering just setting everything on fire and starting from scratch next time.  But I digress.

When you take the stress of it being your life that is put in boxes and whisked to a brand new location out of the equation, however, it becomes a surprisingly enjoyable activity.  Although it is very physically active work (it feels like I won't need to exercise for the rest of the week) it doesn't take a huge amout of thinking and doesn't stop you from talking.  Spending a whole day doing this allows for much conversation and social goodness.

Seriously, because of my weird schedule with uni, like half the people there were friends I hadn't seen in almost six months and it was really good to have a chance to catch up without needing to feel bad for cancelling something important vital that I couldn't get out of anyway so why even bother trying.  And, as an added bonus, everyone had that great sense of achievement afterwards.