I don’t know how it is in your country, but before I jumped to my last 3 years in secondary school, we had a kind of a phsycologist about once a week, that would ask us questions, deliver tests on professional aptitude and personality and eventually, have a nice, long talk with us on the last month, to help us figure out what professional path to take next.

You see, on the last 3 years of secondary school you were suppose to have specific subjects that connected you with the course you were planning to have on university or tech. degree.

However, as you can imagine, at 14 we were too young to know exactly what we want to become, and everyone’s opinion – including parents – gets in the way, mixed with whatever you saw yesterday on TV that looked the coolest thing to do in the world! – and my BFF totally agrees with me!

Around this time, I was divided between doing something in Arts & Design, and what my father wanted me to do – something in Engineering or Architecture, but for the love of God not that bloody Design thing because you can’t make any living out of it!!  (ha-ha-ha!)

Anyways, the ‘kind-of-a-phsycologist’ lady was getting very frustrated with me, because I could never answer her very direct question of: but what do YOU want to do? – I know, it’s a simple question, but did you think I only became complicated after 30?

My tests turned out good in more than one thing (I know, I’m that good!) but mostly pointed towards areas where I would have to use my creativity. (Another bell?)

Wait! say you, Is this post really about aliens? – Yes. Turns out she was one.

Yes, really? – No, really.

So at one point she had enough of me and maybe had to get her fingernails done, so it went like this:

Vanessa, I have two hands here – see, this would be a good start if this was a post about aliens - this hand here symbolizes Engineering and the other one means Design. Now, when I lift my hands up in front of you, you have to speak immediately and say out loud which one of them you choose. It’s just a game, something we are trying here, you don’t have to take any degree on any of them after you finish secondary school, so don’t worry. Just say what comes to mind now, choose a hand – Engineering – and she lifted her right hand – or Design - and she raised her left hand – now!

Well you already know what I said, but the point I am trying to make is that is the same with some questions you ask people, and the funny thing is it gets even harder to get an answer if they are not 14 anymore, but full-grown adults.

‘Do you believe in aliens?’ is one of those questions. I can never get a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ answer, and even when that is the first thing someone answers me, I know that ‘I mean…’ will follow, or a long explanation that concludes they aren’t sure of their answer.

But no-one is asking you to prove aliens are real, so why this fear of looking like a fool? What I notice is that people see it as only too ways: whether their answer will make them look like a fool or they will look cold and old. There are some variations of the feelings people are trying to avoid, but basically it circles around that: the concern is never in the honesty of the answer in itself, but the answer that will make sure to represent them correctly converging all their beliefs together in that one answer.

So, I have two hands, and I am going to raise them quickly…

Heard that expression today, in some lyric by Lady Gaga. It made so much sense to me, that one particular person immediately prompt into my mind, I should say this to you, but you wouldn’t listen, just stay mad at me.

Some people just have that nasty habit of interpreting everything we say like a great thing or an attack. Some people need love every day at work. Yes, love. If I don’t reach my words out to the point of almost cuddling and bending, their immediate reaction is to ask me if everything’s okay or worst, say that I’m difficult.

Have you looked in the mirror lately?

I look in the mirror everyday. I measure every word, control every breath, used to time every task. Only because of these kind of people who need to control you in order to understand you.

Until, eventually, like a teenager in puberty, all the time you spend looking in the mirror is to try to figure out ways to rebel. But not so much that makes you be kicked out of daddy’s home to live out on the streets in the cold, or lose the weekly allowance, or lose all your TV and Internet privileges.

And that’s when other people’s poison becomes your poison. You can feel it sliding down from the centre of your brain, as you plot about all the ways you can still say ‘no’ politely, and how it stings when it reaches the tip of your tongue.

Control your poison. Flip the image you have of that person around, and see it as if they were better people. It doesn’t matter if it’s true, at the end of the day you both go home and sleep takes over to wash the poison away again. It only matters that there’s no trace of it in the morning and that other’s poison doesn’t become yours.

Have you looked in the mirror lately?

-  Don’t.

Robert Heinlein was my first favourite author, in a time when I couldn’t even pronounce his name correctly much less understand his insights about life and human kind. He’s the guy who said:

In the absence of clearly-defined goals, we become strangely loyal to performing daily trivia until ultimately we become enslaved by it.

… and you know what? I bet it’s not just me who can regrettable confess I’ve been enslaved all my life.

We fight it, yes, I’ve done it a million times, to only discover that another banality of my daily life, unimportant in its essence, has jump over to the other side of my TO DO’s list, and is now a MUST DO item.

Why do we do this to ourselves?

Do I need to read my personal email every day? Do I need to have a sound picking at my brains every time someone sends me a work email? It’s not like I’m going to suffer from severe amnesia at any moment and forget that I’m at work and email management is a part of it.

In don’t have time to write in the blog, I said to everyone in the last half-year, I’m working now and do extra time often. Well that work has been increasing every week, and is not like I can say to the boss, listen, I am sorry, but I just don’t have time to work any more – tough!

I’ve aways been a friend of goals, resolutions, lists, and the lot (!) – even writing just that, bores me to death now – so let me tell you from experience: none of it works. I never worked more because I had lists to follow, or long notes to carry me through it. When it comes to it, notes and lists, only waste the time I spend writing, thinking or over-thinking them.

So there are no resolutions now, no goals, no challenges – or maybe even more because everything is possible – the only thing I did towards this end was getting rid of all the trivia: because trivia had become my daily goal.

So lets be practical and take out the trash…

I’ve  removed any alarm related to email notifications – I only see emails when I’m on a short break for some reason already, like going to the ladies or re-filling my water bottle

I’ve removed the setting in my chat programs displaying I am Away after X minutes – I answer you when I can, not just because I happen to be seated at my desk when you message me

I don’t talk about work after I leave work at night or during weekends – because lets face it, it’s just a job! Who cares what happened, if we look back in two years time?… It’s been a relief and a fun game to play – no work talk! ; )

etc…

I’ve discovered my concentration at work has increased, I get what I am doing fully, instead of being with one eye on the code and another on the Inbox, and, after a break, I get back to focus faster.

There is also one thing that has been valuable to expand my humanity: I respect other people’s work time more too, which will lead to shorter interactions and more to-the-point emails, I hope!

(Once a writer, always a writer.)

There are words that immediately prompt a complete song in my head.
I was just reading the first book of Stieg Larsson’s Millennium collection, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, when in page 283 the main character and his daughter listen to “Sweet Dreams”.

I immediately started singing, and smiled.

Sweet dreams are made of this
Who am I to disagree?
Travel the world and the seven seas
Everybody’s looking for something
Some of them want to use you
Some of them want to get used by you
Some of them want to abuse you
Some of them want to be abused

- written by Annie Lennox and David A. Stewart, from Eurythmics, 1983.

Do some songs stay with you over the years because the lyrics rang truth? Or are you that kind of easy-going person who doesn’t care much about contents, but how a song boosts up your mood – regardless of how stupid it reads?

Maybe, actually, because it is stupid it gained some extra points along the way; it makes you feel young and foolish when you sing it; lifts your mind off heavy thoughts?…

It must be great to be able to switch off like that. However, I’m more of a heavy baggage person. Everything and everyplace can stay with me forever as long as it means something. And meaning is often so complex.

Many times a song reminds me of something so completely different from what the author really intended, that in a few months time my mind replaced a lot of the lyrics with its own words. There’s a mixture of foolishness and disappointment whenever I read the official words — usually when feeling nostalgic, I search lyrics on the web — but shortly after, my mind rediscovers a new baggage to attach to it; a new meaning, a new insight.

I guess this can represent a mirror of how my mind works day to day. If you looked at my days in a sequence and zoomed out the farthest you could, you’d probably see light bulbs flashing everywhere along the calendar. Those would be the days when I had some new idea; a new purpose to chase; an added meaning to why I am here, on Planet Earth. Without them it would be boring, lifeless, routine.

I’ve always liked “Sweet Dreams”, it states exactly what’s wrong with this world, the blunt truth… And yet it is true: I, too, am always looking for something — having dreams is what keeps me sane.

I went to the doctor last year to check my breasts for lumps. While at it, he asked me,
“Where are you from?”
“Portugal.”
He acted as if I’d suddenly stop understanding basic english.
“Yes, but where are you from?”
“Lisbon,” I specified.
He sighed and seemed unsatisfied, which looked odd giving where he had his hands. But, as the professional, intelligent gray-haired man he was, he found a way to keep his spirits up. Shifting his hands to my other breast, the good doctor tried again,
“Where are you from?”
Now, there’s a funny effect in the power of repetition: simple questions can become more disturbing than a total stranger squeezing your breasts for rocks.
“Portugal,” I said, feeling mentally abused.
This time he looked proud of himself, leaned closer and gave another helping hand to someone obviously limited in english,
“Spain, you mean.”
The doctor’s assistant, a beautiful blond woman who had been looking at us from the bottom of the hospital’s bed, took a step closer to him and whispered,
“Portugal and Spain are two different countries.”