Now, we all have learned responses from various things. A song that makes you cry because it was 'your song' with that special someone. A smell that makes you think wistfully about a moment in time. Fewer cravings for cigarettes after electrodes are repeatedly applied to your gonads...

Ahem...

How weird is this? The smell or taste of peppermints or looking at black and pink felt tip markers give me motion sickness.

I know what you're thinking. How the hell can inanimate objects trigger a response that is essentially a disconnect between your inner ear and visual perception?

My stepfather.

Let me explain... I was plagued with motion sickness as a kid. My family was the sort to go on camping trips in the mountains that required three days driving just to get there. I spent a lot of time on my holidays feeling very, very ill.

At first, my folks thought they could distract me by giving me some coloured markers and a clipboard full of paper to draw on.

Yeah, what a GOOD idea that was...

Next, my stepfather became convinced that giving me peppermint candy to suck on would sort it out.

Clear plastic bag full of warm vomit: 1
Stepfather:0

The scary thing is, over 20 years later, I STILL can't look at black and pink markers or eat peppermints without feeling instantly nauseous.

Isn't it astonishing what your subconscious can do?

So, what odd Pavlovian responses do YOU have?

I've found many, many people put stuff in their blogs as if it were their diary, something intensely personal that allows them to express themselves as they choose. To be honest about feelings they may have previously kept hidden for whatever reason.

To publish and be damned.

And damned they are.

In my previous entry, I didn't say anything to the author of that particular blog about the entry that unsettled me. I figured that it was something the author needed off their chest and they had chosen to do it there. They had not sent me a link, I had stumbled across it. It was probably never intended for my eyes. I chose to read it.

If you choose to read the writings of someone close to you, be prepared to find thing about you or about them that you may not have realised. It's voyerism, pure and simple. You are taking a peek inside them. You have no right to criticise what you find in there. YOU decided to look.

You get what you deserve.

I spent a long time discussing this over much red wine last Friday. I used the example of a lovely young friend I have who unloads a lot of emotional baggage on her blog. She knows her friends read it. Her friends know what she uses the blog for. Yet they have the gall to criticise her.

One of the girls I was discussing this with mentioned that an ex of hers had gone through the files on her computer and come across some explicit fiction she had written. He decided that it meant that she was having an affair. Nothing she could say could convince him otherwise. Where the hell did he get off reading her stuff and then coming to that ridiculous conclusion? And who was he to accuse her of anything? He chose to read it. He should have understood that he may have found something unexpected.

For me, a blog is a bit like going through someone's underwear drawer and pulling out that notebook they have hidden at the bottom. If a person chooses to reveal intimate details in it, respect that fact and do not criticise the author for it.

You choose to read it. If you don't like what you find about yourself in it, then shut up and deal. And if people you know criticise you for what you say in there, tell them it was their choice. They can fuck off.

This one's for Shira.

I was responding to a STUPENDOUSLY tedious tender from some obscure government department. Glowing phrases about our talented people and our extensive experience poured from my fingers like fine wine. It was beautiful. It was poetic. It wasn't a proposal, it was art, dammit!

Then the server crashed.

Went down like the Titanic.

I lost the lot. Every shining word. I could have cried.

Once the server was back up, I started again. And do you think I could remember a single thing I had typed?

Nope. Nix, nada, bupkis.

This is what clued me in to how my brain works.

You see, my brain fills itself with brilliant words (not that you could tell at this point), ideas, concepts, designs, whatever. And as soon as I have committed them somehow--to pixels, paper or another ear--it all falls out of my brain. Completely and utterly. I remember none of it. My brain dumps everything as soon as it thinks the content is safe.

But what my brain thinks is safe and what Microsoft thinks is saved are two radically different things.

Sigh.

So there goes my opportunity to brighten the day of some poor government lackey (and possibly win some work).

But at least now I know how my brain works.

I will answer my door, probably in a Buffy t-shirt with bed-head and platform, faux leopardskin slippers. They will shake their heads and frowns will tighten their brows. Some of them will tut at me.

They will take me inside and put me in a nice cotton nightie and proper slippers.

They will come into my rented apartment and tut at the temporary Ikea furniture and Sandman art on the walls. They will take away my long boxes of comics, my PowerPuff dollies, my toy box and my Buffy and X-Files videos and DVDs.

While they are doing that, another troop will be clearing my desk at work, removing Spooky, the thing what squeaks and the Death and Dream figures and taking down the silly postcards.

Who are they?

The Grown-Up Police.

On Saturday, I can no longer officially get away with not being a grown-up. At the end of this week, I will be the sort of age that people figure (or even hope, in my mother's case) that you have settled down with a nice significant other, are looking at house repayments for the rest of your life and have 2.5 pets or picket fences or something.

I'm not a grown-up. I don't save, I don't want to buy a house. I have a lovely significant other, but we have an long distance relationship and I don't get to see him until July, let alone settle down with him. And while I'd love to have a kitty or a dog, my landlord won't let me and I certainly don't want 2.5 of them. And picket fences are high maintenance.

I'm not a grown-up.

I don't want to be a grown-up.

I don't want people to look at me and wonder why I don't have all the things people think you should at this age.

I think I'm going to turn 25 on Saturday and play with my toys instead.