Half woman, half biscuit

Just as a follow on to yesterday, I was set thinking about neurosis in general and how we carry these strange little beliefs all of our lives, probably without anyone but us taking them seriously. How do they take such root and stay that way? I think, for example, that women's weight issues go way beyond the 'Men are from Mars' school of thought. I genuinely get worked up and anxious if I eat a biscuit; punish myself, calculate calories for the next ten meals to compensate, check my reflection to see if the biscuit is showing itself in my figure... I am not, and have never been, an anorexic, but this kind of weight anxiety is an everyday fact of life for so many of us. I sure as hell don't have any answers, but it is an interesting thing to notice. Stu is baffled and annoyed by my insistence that I am 'fat' or 'bloated' some days and I think he assumes I say these things to annoy him; the truth is that I keep my feelings to myself most of the time as sometimes the depths of my neurosis worries me. He gets the tip of the iceberg, so to speak.

The reason I share this right now is that I just ate an Empire biscuit; the great fat sandwich of biscuits, which in an ideal world I would eat on at least a weekly basis. Stu bought me a pack of four, not in an act of sabotage, but because he thinks I will like this; what happens? It is like living with a drug stash in the kitchen drawer - half of me is thinking that I should just eat the lot and then starve for the rest of the day when no-one will notice, half trying to figure out rational patterns of biscuit eating for the week. Luckily the winner on this occasion was the voice of (relative) reason, but the checking of clothes tightness and searching out spots will continue, no shadow of a doubt. I sincerely hope I am not alone in this, but somehow I doubt it; this is one of the hidden female hypocrisies - we look at the perfect figures in the magazine, 'pooh pooh' it and then sneak off to secretly study the images in comparison to our own sorry bodies.

I am right behind fashion as a creative force and have always loved to follow it at least theoretically (I have no style) but I think it is undoubtedly also the creator of a thousand thousand neurotic females. And yes, this was all kicked off by my reaction to a biscuit, which even as I write is sitting in my stomach distributing its evil fat and processed sugars through my unsuspecting body...

To veer suddenly back to my creative life, I have spent the day in an uncharateristic mood of self confidence and self promotion; announcing to everyone and his dog that I am a painter with a new range of cards and prints about to be published. In my promotion frenzy I actually found myself worrying about the best way in which to promote this happening to colleagues in my cash-money job. It is a bit lengthy when you have worked alongside people for nine months and suddenly want them to be aware of your 'other life'. It takes a long, convoluted course along 'what do you paint' via the inevitable watercolour question, past 'landscapes, portraits?' to 'do you do weird stuff?'. Someone asked me that today. (Maybe he had secretly read yesterday's blog...)

By the time you have got to the bit about publication there are so many unanswered and swerved questions lying around that the whole thing becomes a bit of an anticlimax. Thinking of distributing a flyer detailing my basic achievements to date with F.A.Q.s to fill in the workforce before I hit them with the news of my coming publications and exhibition. I am joking.

Shall continue to stammer explantions and go red when 'outing' myself - but I shall continue to do it..

Outflow = Inflow

Back to the drawing board, bodyswerving the kitchen drawer on the way.