Thnking both ways

I have so much work to do on this model but I keep reading things that aren't work and filling my brain with interesting opinions  that other people are writing and conversations people are having and I just have to get this out so I can stop thinking about it.

I find that if I listen to podcasts while I work, or music, it stops me from going to read something on the internet when the thing I'm working on gets hard. So this morning I was listening to this episode of Marc Maron's WTF podcast because I love Louis CK and  I read in an article in the Kill Your Darlings magazine that this particular episode was voted the best podcast of all time.

And I can see why. Although it is about Louis CK and how he works, because he is such an amazing guy, it is also about friendship, because he and marc maron were best friends and had lost that and they discuss their memories and friendship and how it works and there were just so many gold nuggets of perspective in it, I just love it and want to keep talking about it. I already talked about it with two friends today, and now I'm going to write about it in here.

So one of the really interesting things they talked about was how Louis CK had done this bad fruit cinema version of apocalypse now and he got to meet Francis Ford Coppola who said to him "unless you've had children you can't be a real man. You don't know what it's like to work. Unless you have children... if you don't have a responsibility to other people, how do you really know what it's like to be an adult?" Louis didn't even remember this, Maron had remembered Louis telling him this and  re-told it to Louis, who said that friends often store stories in them that you told them or things that happened to you that you forgot about and it's great when they tell them to you after you've forgotten, it's like a gift.

That was some major paraphrasing up there, just listen to the podcast. But just then I was reading an article in lennyletter titled "Stop Telling Me I Should Have Kids." And I really appreciate the fact that some people choose not to have kids, it's a really valid life choice and they are not missing out on some great revelation of life, but at the same time, I feel that since I've had kids I've changed in ways that are good and I have a perspective on life that I would never have without having had kids, but you never know how you are going to change until you have kids, but that doesn't mean that you need to have kids to get this different perspective on your life.

It's a weird feeling. I'm in this people who've had kids club, that the people who've not had kids will never understand, but I also feel that they are not missing out on anything by not having kids. There is no need to have kids to validate your existence but somehow there is a smug satisfaction in having had them that I just can't explain.

Having kids is a paradox. You can never go back afterwards, and you don't want to, but you don't have to have them in the first place.

I don't think that makes sense but it's what is in my head and it's hard to articulate the feeling of it.

Which brings me to my next thing I wanted to talk about which is also related.

My tummy sticks out. Sometimes I wear dresses that seem to accentuate my sticking out tummy. I have a fat tummy. There is a heap of fat accumulating on the tummy area. That seems to be where it lives now, as well as the hips and butt.

A few weeks ago, maybe more, someone at work asked if I was pregnant. Like "Hang on, have I missed something here, are you pregnant?" Like I'd announced it already and she'd missed it. At the bank with Jason the other day, the teller asked if I was having another baby, but looking at my tummy, like you look pregnant way. No, I'm not. EVERY TIME I take public transport now, someone gets up and offers me their seat. I've only taken public transport 2 or 3 times in the past few months. Even Olivia asked if there was a baby in my tummy one time.

I don't act offended at the time, but then I get thinking about it afterward and every time I think about it, I come to the same conclusion:

It's none of your fucking business if I'm pregnant. Don't ask me if I'm pregnant. If that was some information I wanted to share with you, I would. Otherwise it is just rude to ask. And it goes on from there, it is nobody's fucking business if anyone is pregnant. Every time I feel nauseous and tell someone there is a mention of pregnancy. No! Stop it! Why are you even talking about it?

JUST STOP.

I wanted to write a facebook post to that effect but I also didn't want to offend anyone, so I didn't write it there. Only a few people read this blog and I feel like you will appreciate this and not be offended and even though it's way more public than facebook, I still feel way more comfortable sharing stuff here. Blogging is so last decade, no one seems to be interested in it anymore. But I like it.

Speaking of writing, I haven't done much of my book writing at all the last couple of weeks. I have been prioritising other things, quite consciously. it's a busy time when a model is due and it makes housework seem more urgent, probably because it's a procrastination technique. I was thinking about the whole idea of getting the thing down (down draft), then fixing it up (up draft) and thinking about how I write in this blog and I really just spew out the words then publish without editing and when I wrote the last post and read over it I realised I had missed out a lot of stuff I wanted to say and it wasn't very polished sounding or even thoughtful. This time I read over what I wrote above but didn't want to change a word.