Good day, sunshine

Ok, I'll play

I’m writing and shipping this before I chicken out. I’m still being a bit of a chicken though, and posting it to my semi-secret-say-whatever-I-feel-like Substack, rather than my main one Lessons On Drugs.

Stop using rambling as a procrastination technique Lauren, get on with it.

This post is a response to being nominated by Francis F (one of the kindest, biggest hearted, funniest people I’ve met here) to participate in the Sunshine Blogger Award, a peer-to-peer recognition that celebrates bloggers who bring positivity and sunshine while strengthening the blogging community. This makes me intensely uncomfortable, which is kind of why I feel like I need to do it.

Ugh, living in alignment with your values sure is annoying sometimes.

Below, I’ve answered the 11 questions that were asked of me by Francis in her post. I’m supposed to come up with my own set of questions and nominate 11 other writers…I’m not sure about that bit yet. We’ll see how I feel by the end of it.

Welcome to the over-analysing multi-branched Escher world of my brain. You sure you want to enter?

Ok.

1. If you could have a superpower for one day, what would it be?

Watching The Boys kind of took the shine off a lot of super powers for me. Now I can’t fathom the idea of shrinking without it resulting in an exploding penis. Or moving like the flash without someone splattering on the footpath. I definitely couldn’t be trusted with laser eyes, that’s for sure. And invisibility feels too risky to me- I’m a sensitive soul, I don’t need to hear what people really think of me. So it’s got to be flying.

2. Which celebrity would you swap lives with for a week?

I think it’d be most fun to swap with someone going through some sort of drama- get the inside scoop. An offsider of the drama, maybe? Like Fergie- does she count as a celebrity? Ooh, or Winona Ryder so I can get a different side of the Lily Allen, David Harbour thing. Plus- Winona Ryder, I mean, I’ve loved her forever. Seeing her in Reality Bites was the reason I got my hair cut short.

3. What book do you wish you could read again for the first time?

It would have to be a book that I read after already seeing the movie. So I time travel back and read it before watching the movie. Like Atonement- amazing book, that I just wish I didn’t associate with Kiera Knightly and her clenched teeth. Beautiful green dress though, I’ll give them that.

4. If you could have dinner with an author, who would it be?

Hmmmm. Tricky. Because if I’m having dinner, I want a fun and interesting conversation, not some overly serious person who’s stuck in their head with no interpersonal skills. I mean, I like serious people and all, but if it’s a one off dinner you gotta make the moment count. And I’m not looking for romance and flirting. That’d just be awkward. So I’m going to go with Seth Godin. He’s always got an interesting perspective on things, whether I agree or not, and he’s got broad interests. I also feel like he’d challenge me on my thinking, which I like. And definitely not romantic.

5. Who would you like to be stuck in a lift with?

I think I’m going to cheat here and go with the qualities of someone I’d like to be stuck in a lift with. I’ll admit, this is a game that goes through my head when I am in a lift, as I size people up to decide if they’d be fun or make me want to climb out, Die Hard style.

Must smell nice. Or, rather, not smell bad. Any strong smells either way would be difficult in a confined space. Able to talk about interesting stuff, but not all the fucking time. Silence is important in these scenarios. I don’t want to stereotype based on gender, but I feel like a woman (especially a mum) is more likely to have decent supplies with her, which could be very useful. They do tend to want to pee more regularly than men though, which could be problematic. Unless the man has prostate issues. So, let’s take gender out of it and just go with someone who carries food and drink on their person and has good bladder control.

6. Who is your favourite author?

I should probably say someone that makes me sound all literary or smart or something, but I’m going to go with Liane Moriarty. I love character driven fiction, and her characters are always well rounded, and her books are always easy to read without being too easy. Even when the plot is a little ridiculous, the characters always feel real to me, and make me feel something, and so I’ll read whatever she writes. Happily.

7. If you could steal anything without ever getting caught, what would it be?

I’ve always wanted to be part of a rag tag bunch of misfits like in a heist movie - this is my dream. If I’m never going to get caught it’d have to be something big and audacious that I could look at and admire all the time. An artwork. Like Andy Warhol’s Elvis- people would see it in my house and assume it was a knock off…but little do they know.

8. If you could escape and live in the world of any book, which one would you choose?

I find this one the hardest to answer, as I find it hard to get past Alice in Wonderland for some reason, and then I think about heads being chopped off and get worried I’ve made a bad choice.

9. Do you have any regrets?

I don’t believe in having regrets about big life moments, as they’re all part of how I’ve arrived at where I am today. I do have many regrets about small moments. Particularly those that have involved me being an asshole and making someone else feel small. I have one work moment in particular that I deeply regret, where I made someone cry. Not happy with how I showed up there. I wish I showed more empathy, but alas, I did not. Sorry Carol.

10. Do you believe in karma?

While I very much believe in treating people as you want to be treated, I don’t believe they’ll get what’s coming to them if they choose the path of assholery. So, that’s a no.

11. If you could give your younger self one piece of advice, what would it be?

Don’t avoid stuff because you’re concerned with how you look. So much of my life I’ve avoided doing things because I was worried about this - like jogging, or swimming, or going to the gym. Which is just dumb. Maybe that’s a regret too, that it’s taken me so long to figure this out. Better late than never, I suppose.

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Ok, that’s me. I said I’d come back to thinking about the other part of the challenge once I’m done…I don’t want to be a party pooper, but I think this is where I’ll stop. Also, because I should probably stop procrastinating and do the work I need to do today. Ugh.

Thank you, Francis, for inviting me to do this. It’s been a lot of fun to think about.

And thank you for reading this. If you’ve got this far without think I’m a total lunatic, please check out my posts on Lessons on Drugs, where I have fun explaining how drugs work and a few other things.