Finding God's Will

God is not a micro-manager. In fact, I would not call God a manager at all. God is in all things, just being. Possibly He is also singing, and if we listen, we might hear Him. But maybe not.

There are many, many documents in which we can read about the Will of God. There are the Scriptures. There are the mystical testimonies of the saints. There are even private revelations. But there are no personal horoscopes for you, Suzy Q, 142 Dreaming Lane, Dreamsborough, CT, in which God says, "And on May 23, 2016, I want you to..."

If you don't read the Scriptures or even what Saint Augustine or some other great saint has to say about what he or she has discovered about the Will of God for his or her own life, then you can get pretty messed up worrying about the Will of God all the time. 

Meanwhile, if you don't even know what YOU want to do with your life, how are you supposed figure out the Will of an Omnipotent Being for your life? Do you know what the will of your parents is for your life? Have you ever even asked them? They, too, are the authors of your life, so asking them might be worth a shot.  

Naturally, you may already know. I spent my childhood doing a lot of things my mother was not allowed/able to do as a child and very much would have liked to have done. She made real financial sacrifices to make sure I did them. Her idea was that I should be "well-rounded." 

I did not actually trust in my mother's insistence that I be well-rounded, which is too bad. Had I been less resentful of my lot and more trusting of my mother's goal, I would have started saying "No" to the activities I really, really hated and proposed alternatives. If the goal was "well-rounded" than there must have been other ways to round me off. I am absolutely sure that my mother did not want me to look back on my childhood as almost unalloyed misery, divided between the horrors of elementary school and the horrors of planned activities I hated. Thank God for Brownies and Girl Guides, say I. 

When you are a child, your parents might as well be God, for they have all the money and all the power they don't give over to teachers, and if you say no to them, you are punished. But as obedient as they may have liked their children to be, they would have been disturbed if you spent your life waiting for them to tell you what to do. Of course, asking their opinions in important matters would be a different story. They like that although, depending on their generation, they might not like the feeling that you will hold them responsible for their advice, should it turn out to be bad. 

Still, since God put you under the authority of these people and their teachers, you might just hear His voice in the things they say. Either something will fill you full of joy and relief--which will be a big YES, LISTEN TO THEM--or it will make you feel rotten and hopeless--which will be a big NO, THAT'S NOT WHAT I ASK. God may allow others to make you feel rotten and hopeless--He gave them Free Will, after all--but that does not mean He wants you to go through life feeling rotten and hopeless. What a waste of a life that would be. 

God also put you under the authority of the state--says B.A., who is not an anarchist and says I should read what the Catholic Church actually teaches about the legitimate authority of the state--so it might be helpful to see what the state would like you to do, too.  If the state is crying out for doctors, and you are crazy about biology, then perhaps you should consider training as a doctor. And again, joy and relief versus rotten and hopeless are good clues as to what you should be doing. 

And then there is the authority of the Christian Church, which has a lot to say to young people, so it might be worth reading it. Maybe I should actually get around to reading this. It came out when I was fourteen, and sadly I simply didn't understand it. It made me feel rotten and hopeless, actually. But what this meant was that I needed catechetical materials for a fourteen year old, not diving into papal encyclicals without help. 

In our day and in our western civilizations, marriage is seen primarily as companionate, and it takes place after a falling in love.  Things "feel" right when we have fallen in love with them.  My brother fell in love with the piano when he was six, and with the computer when he was about thirteen. Piano and computer have shaped his successful and rather enviable life. Nobody had to force him to practice the piano; he didn't practice the piano to ward off punishment. He practiced because he loved it. He also learned computer programming because he loved that, too. And despite my mother's worries that my brother not be well-rounded (and grounding him off the computer if he fell behind in schoolwork), nobody ever thought God's will for my brother did NOT involve piano and computer. 

As God is Love, your  most loved activities should most definitely be taken into consideration when determining God's will for your life.  And I mean rational, absorbing love, not carnal itching or painkilling distractions. How you feel about Reese's peanut butter cups, Ryan Gosling (unless you are Mrs Gosling) and Doctor Who (unless you are a scriptwriter/costume designer) is pretty trivial.  He gave you the real loves, after all.

***

A word about Older Women Who Love to Give Advice. There are two kinds of older women in the world: older women who like younger women and older women who resent younger women and hate them like fire. Some older women are frank about their love or hate. Others are sneaky. Sneaky, sneaky, sneaky. If you've ever been stabbed in the back by a woman mentor, you will know exactly what I mean. 

And because older women can be sneaky, they will sometimes give you very bad advice, on purpose. They will counsel you to have sexual relations with someone before you are ready, or despite your religious beliefs that such a thing is seriously wrong, because (A) they know just how devastating such a thing can be and (B) they want to take you down a peg. There are women who don't want you to make their mistakes, and there are women who most DEFINITELY hope that you do. 

This is yet another reason, by the way, why you should not talk about such personal matters at work. Yes, women in woman-dominated offices do love talking about such personal matters and will pressure you to do it too. That said, I have learned a lot of good things from women in woman-dominated offices. I have even been challenged to be a better Christian by a most unlikely source, and in a totally unoffensive (if surprising) way. My advice for offices like that is to be a good sport about the recipes, the horoscopes and the internet memes, but to graciously sidestep the sex talk. Note other women who refrain from sex talk and make a point of befriending them.

Racial Incident on the Rough Bus

At last I went outdoors. It was sunny but not really warm. There was a cold wind, so I wore my green-blue tam, scarf and mittens with my green-blue coat. And, not to put a fine point on it, three days of virus had left me the colour of mould, so I had put some make-up on. Off I went in the direction of the train station, thinking of curry.

I terribly wanted curry. Curry would taste like something. Food has not really been tasting like much lately. Proper food, I mean. Doritos, yesterday's craving, taste like Doritos, no matter what. 

I ran out of energy before I got to the train station, so I took refuge from the wind in a bus shelter and panted a bit and blew my nose. The Rough Bus appeared over the bridge, so I got on the Rough Bus and took a seat near the front. 

Eventually and surprisingly, a very tall, clean-shaven, western-clothed South Asian youth got on. It was surprising because I don't see a lot of South Asians on the Rough Bus and never at that bus stop. And this one was extremely tall, had neither bag nor baggage, and looked a bit crazy. He folded himself into a seat, looked around with huge empty eyes and then stared at the ceiling.  After observing him nervously, I decided that he was probably simple rather than crazy and also completely harmless. 

One or two stops later, a Typical Rough Bus Young Couple got on, by which I mean he was skinny and violent-looking, and she was almost as round as a ball. They were, naturally, Scottish (or, to give the word its Rough Bus pronunciation, Scaw'ish), and he had red, which is to say, orange hair. Orange hair, orange eyebrows, orange eyelashes, insofar as he had eyelashes, rather like me. If I had had a son, he would have looked like Carrot Top. He was the same dead white colour as my coughing self. He could have been my second cousin.

However,  he was not one of our beautiful redheads. No. In fact, when I saw him, I was very tempted to move farther back down the bus. Had the bus been an elevator I would have got off at once. He horsed around with his giggling girlfriend until he spotted the tall South Asian chap, and then his dead white face creased with hatred and contempt.

"Aw," he said to the clean-shaven South Asian chap. "Whut are you daein' here? You're disgustin'."

"Oh mah goad shu'up," murmured his round dark-haired girlfriend. "Oh mah goad shu'up."

She shook with silent giggles. 

"Disgustin'," repeated Carrot Top.

"Oh yeah, and you're a member of the Master Race," I thought sourly, as he made nasty remarks about the "benefits" (welfare) he assumed the thin giant was on. But what could I do? I was as weak as a kitten, and I knew from long experience that Edinburgh bus drivers do not leave their protective booths for anything. If I told Carrot Top to shut his racist face, the Incident would escalate and involve little me, who probably shouldn't have been out of bed. 

Eventually Carrots lost interest in his victim, but I wondered what I could have done, if anything. Maybe I could have got up pointedly and sat beside the South Asian guy. At very least that might have cheered him up. When I glanced at him, he was looking out the window. Although a head or more taller than Carrots, he hadn't said boo. 

I am not exactly a saint of political correctness. I have been contemplating the powerlessness of founding peoples in the face of mass migration since "the Italian girls" were mean to me in elementary school.* But one thing that gets up my nose more than anything else in Scotland is Scots racially bullying others on public transport. 

I realize that these bullies are usually Scots of the "socially excluded class" and that British post-war history has handed them a raw deal. I understand that there are fewer than 5 million Scots resident in Scotland whereas there are 38 million Poles resident in Poland and a billion Indians in India. When you're talking world minorities, the blue-eyed, red-haired, Scotland-born Scottish one is mighty small, and if such Scots go south for work they run the risk of being called "Ging-er" and "Jock" and given a hard time about the SNP. Heck, when my red-haired great-grandfather George emigrated to English-speaking Canada in 1900 he was called "Scotty" for the rest of his life, and his son was generally known as "Red." 

However, bullying people on the bus for their origins is lower than low, and it happens way too often for my liking. People can think whatever they like, and they can certainly say whatever they like in the privacy of their own homes, and if they are that exercised about migration, they can vote UKIP and give the other parties a good scare. But on public transport everyone can and should keep a civil tongue in their heads. 

Finally I decided that what I could do was get up when the South Asian guy got up and stand between him and my fellow ginger, so at very least Carrots couldn't hit him on the way out. And when we both got off the bus, I said, "I'm sorry you had to put up with that."

"Thank you," he said in a high, flute-like voice and eventually loped across the street.

*And, yes, that most certainly includes the various tribes of 16th-19th century North America trying to cope with the sudden and overwhelming influx of Europeans.

Hope in the Face of Acute Disappointments

It's Seraphic Singles Saturday, and I am well enough to blog again. What a week it's been. I don't remember ever having a head cold that bad. Normally I just wander about blowing my nose miserably for a week, not lying flat on my back breathing shallowly while mainlining lemon-flavoured drugs.

Today I think I will actually go for a walk and maybe even go to my favourite hipster café to see if I can still read any Polish. But first I will address two very sad emails I have received on the subject of loss in one's late 20s.

The first one was by a postulant who was happily living with a religious community when they told her she didn't have a vocation and she had to leave within hours.

The second one was by a slightly younger woman whose on-off boyfriend of X or Y years is on the verge of getting engaged to someone else. He had begged her to stay with him, but she felt it was God's will that she not be with him, and so a year later he's with someone else (naturally) and she is alone. She is also quite obviously cheesed off with "God's will."

Fortunately I got these emails before B.A.'s nasty virus lost interest in B.A. and started eyeing me, so I was able to give decent responses, geared to the 20-something women themselves. But now I will reflect that there is just something so green and fresh and hopeful about the phrase "20-something."

The funny thing is, I didn't think that when I was 20-something. I didn't think "Oh well, I'm only twenty-four (-seven, -eight). I have lots of time to recover and get on with life and meet thousands of nice men and try all kinds of jobs. The women of my family live to see 86, so I probably will too. Heigh ho!" No. Generally I lived in dread of misfortune. I danced strangely often on the edge of despair.

What women in their forties can tell women in their twenties is that there is a lot of hope and that time really does heal all wounds. This may sound trite, but by the time you are forty, you have discovered through experience that this is actually true. Your boyfriend dumps you, and within two years, another man comes along. The same qualities you have that attracted one man will attract another, and you may have learned something in the past two years that will help you have a better relationship with this new one. Although I was probably more charming at 20, I was a lot nicer to men when I was 40, and not because I had to be. I just liked them more and had gotten over thinking they were all potential rapists.

In the case of the banished postulant, I told her that I thought her order had behaved badly but that there were many other orders out there who would love to meet her. Benedictine orders, for example, are like buses. You miss one, there are dozens of others to choose from. Naturally, I am not sure it is time for her to make an active search. It seems to me that the normal thing to do, for a bit, is to live with her parents and cry and write in her journal every day about how much she misses Order A and how much they hurt her and what their founder/foundress would say to them for kicking her out.

In the case of the ex-girlfriend, I reflected on new beginnings. When I was younger, I enjoyed the drama of a good old break up and get back together, but honestly. What a way to have carried on. I think a quick rule of thumb is that if you break up with a man, or he breaks up with you, it is for a very good reason or reasons, and you should (A)  write them down and pin them to your bedroom wall as a reminder and (B) stay far apart so that you don't get back together just because you're lonely/miss the attention.

I also cannot imagine carrying on a X year romantic relationship without getting married. I mean, how SERIOUSLY boring.  Being attached to the same man for X years and no sex (or no sex you can admit to or feel great about), and no solid plans for the future, no babies or at least being an uncle and aunt together, no finding a Victorian desk in Goodwill and debating if it worth the price. Just an extended teenage schedule of social entertainments and "hanging out." Like a forced diet of dessert, never allowed to eat meat, fish, dairy or veg. Ick.

In such a circumstance, I personally would be heartily relieved to get  rid of my high school sweetheart and start meeting new men in freedom. And if I began this while I was still a twenty-something, with lovely twenty-something skin and young blood running through my veins, so much the better. Because there are millions upon millions of men, and many of them are very interesting indeed. These are the ones that actually leave their caves and DO things. Yet another reason to give internet dating a miss and go looking for men in the real live social world of dancing, sports, outdoor chess, language class, etc.

But I also want to say something about the "will of God." It's a little amusing how sure people are that they can interpret the "will of God" when they think God's will is something nasty, like destroying a beautiful 19th century altar and replacing it with a concrete slab, but not when it might be something lovely, like a seminarian spending all his Christmas money on a gold chasuble. I am a bit worried about Catholic girls getting over-anxious about the "will of God" for their own lives, as if the "will of God" were opposed to your interests and wants, over which you think you have no real say. Is it God's will that you marry Charlie? Well, if you want to marry Charlie, maybe. But if you don't, definitely not.

If you honestly want to marry Charlie, and yet not so much that you think God may be opposed (a thought that never haunted me for a single second regarding B.A.), you can go through a discernment process, perhaps with the help of a priest. But always remember that it is OKAY if deep down you really don't want to marry Charlie. It is not mean to think that Charlie is boring*, if indeed Charlie seems boring to you. It is mean to break up and get together and break up and get together to alleviate the boredom of dating a guy you find boring. Some other girl might think he is fascinating, so it would be much kinder to let him find her. And if you find all men boring, you have my sympathy, but cheer up, for you will probably think differently when you are older.

Finally, anyone who can afford it should always consider taking a holiday abroad to help mend a broken heart. You could go on a young people's tour of Italy, for example. Just don't have a dumb holiday fling. Go to Florence and drink in how beautiful it all is.

Update: Another way to think of a crushing loss is as a very bad cold. You go to bed and stay there for two or three days with a pot of tea and easy-to-read books, and treat yourself kindly and very gingerly and then totter out into the sunshine. If the symptoms still persist, you get professional advice. You may be told to take some holiday time and sit in the sun for a week or two, or a year.

*Or feckless. Or have a seriously annoying whinnying laugh. Or tells a lot of lies about what he reads. Charlie could have all kinds of faults that annoy the stuffing out of you, but some other woman--probably one you could never be friends with--would not mind at all, or won't until it's too late.

Calling in Sick

Sorry, daily readers. Thanks to a very bad cold, I can barely breathe. I'm tucked up on the sofa in my office under the laundry I fortunately hung up yesterday when I suspected I would soon be too incapacitated for housework. The sad sad irony is that the weather is absolutely beautiful and May-like, but I don't have the strength to go downstairs and outside.

Feel free to post links to interesting blogs and things in the combox. There is nothing I can do but wait it out and so interesting internet items will help to pass the time. Until then, I am utterly grateful for this huge volume of Agatha Christie.


Update: Oh dear. My head, especially my face, is so wretched and I have read so many Agatha Christie novels that I found myself thinking of my Will. Naturally I made a new Will after I got married because I believe one must be very tidy and up-to-date about legal things. It did take me a long time to get around finding out what marriage actually means in Scotland. Just think: in Scotland B.A can chuck me out of the house and not support me even though we are married. So communist and mean. I have a sneaking suspicion legal marriage in Scotland is just two people living together after a party without any responsibilities whatsoever.

At any rate I keep adding and tearing up bits of my Will depending on how mad I am at my friends that day. My American grandmother banged it into my head from infancy who got what important jewellery when she died, which proved quite useful to my father when she did die. Goodness, how trusting. Although I suppose being a very religious child there was really no way I was going to bump off my gran for a dinner ring.

Last night I felt so deathly that I said an Act of Contrition before I lost consciousness, just in case.

I wish I were a very famous novelist for then people would send me flowers and new books and put straw outside the window to muffle the sound of the shrieking bairns. However, I believe B.A. has gone out to fetch prawn toasties (Scotland's fake Chinese delicacy), so that is something.

What I think I need here are Pet Theories. Naturally my readership decimated itself when I closed up the old shop, but surely there are readers with entertaining and insightful theories about men, romance, dating. makeovers, etc.  Christie's are super but I fear they are a teeny bit out of date.

By the way, do you enjoy makeovers in books and films? I love them. I wonder why.

Well, Now I'm Depressed/Now I'm Cured

I came across a hideous article trashing women writers on the manosphere. I would never have discovered it, but a woman writer I know (not Hilary White) actually linked to it approvingly on her Facebook page. Since I am going to scream about it, here it is. Caveat clicker. And please don't spend too much time in the combox. The manosphere is angrier than a Jansenist on crack at the idea of any woman on earth ever having had sex with more than one man in her life, and needs to talk about it ad nauseum. The language will depress you.

Anyway I hit the ceiling when I read this post because a famous British journalist into whose hands-- after some begging and pleading with the sales team --I got a copy of my novel remarked to a mutual friend that he doesn't usually read "women writers."

The mutual friend thought this very funny. I felt as if I'd been slapped. I had recently read in myslexia, that although women write most of the novels that are published, most of the novels reviewed are by men. And you'll have noticed J.K. Rowling is J.K., not Joanna. Why would that be? Hmm.... Meanwhile, no review, and I still languish in British virtual obscurity.

The irony? I just found out he actually really liked it. But perhaps I had been told that earlier, and all I could hear was "woman writer, woman writer, woman writer." I couldn't say for sure, but that might be like being told you can't play football because you're black.

Meanwhile: Alcott. Austen. Bronte. Bronte. Brookner. Byatt. Christie. Drabble.  Du Maurier. Ellis. Fitzgerald. Godden.  Gowdy. Heyer. James. Lee. Mantel. Montgomery. Murdoch. Sayers. Shriver. Smith. Spark. Woolf.

But let us get down to the stupid arguments of Manosphere Matt.

1.Their (i.e. our) sex lets them (us) get a pass for bad writing.

Ah ha ha ha ha. Don't bother clicking on the links, for all but the first one direct you right back to Mister I Haven't Been Published in the New Statesman Myself, Boo Hoo. The one article by a woman he does link to is actually about breastfeeding in public. The gross bodily functions part is just by the way.

The whole question of why men feel free to urinate on a tree or spit on the ground whereas women usually don't is actually rather interesting. It's the sort of thing women occasionally think about--especially in an emergency--but rarely question. Writing about it, when female, is actually very brave. Graham Greene had his hero Fowler cry his guts out in a toilet, but where did I send Catriona? Oh, yes. She throws up in the kitchen sink. I had to have a kitchen sink in my novel. You know how it is.

Meanwhile, my sex lets me get a pass for ... let me see. There is no military service required of men in Canada. I competed with only other girls for grades and therefore university places. My editor spikes my columns whenever he wants to.  He doesn't say, "Aww. Let's give Woman Writer a pass." He says, "Not up to your usual standard." So, I don't know--- Oh! My sex lets me get a pass--among decent men-- for saying what I want to or about them without getting punched in the nose. So there's that.

2. They (we) won't shut up about themselves (ourselves).

Ah ha ha ha! Hemingway, your honour. No more questions.

What a great time to mention that Ceremony of Innocence is NOT autobiographical. I did not live in sin with a Cardinal's nephew in Frankfurt. Male readers ask if I am Catriona. I am NOT Catriona. Catriona is a voice in my head who occasionally calls me "Mother" in a really condescending way.

The reason women so often write about our own experiences is because our own experiences are so often passed over. The first time I ever, EVER, read a very good, accurate and frank description of teenage female sexual attraction to boys was in 1989 or 1990 when I read Naomi Wolff's The Beauty Myth. Up until then I was vaguely aware that the male literary giants, including and especially the homosexual ones, were kind of getting that wrong. And women writers didn't seem to want to talk about it.  (Nota Bene: I had read neither Colette nor Duras.)

Meanwhile, back to Hemingway. I mean, I love him, but after a steady diet of male novelists, I do want to read something by and about a woman. I get so tired of men talking about themselves all the time and assuming, if they are homosexual, that this gives them magical insight into the female mind. No.

Amusingly, all Matt's links here go straight back to Matt.

3. They  (we) don't take risks.

Women don't take risks, he says, yet just publishing a piece about breastfeeding in light of  other bodily functions in the New Statesman while female gets guys like Matt buzzing around to say women don't write, they type. As far as I can make out, the "not writing but typing" insult has been around for as long as the typewriter, so so much for risks.  (The link here, incidentally, is also right back to Matt.)

The rest is barely disguised whining that he is writing for the manosphere instead of for the New Statesman. Where is the female version of "Return of Kings" he wonders. I don't know. Where do women who really hate women hang out and write drivel?

I am not sure what risk-taking means, anymore, especially to an audience that (see its combox, but only very briefly) is obsessed with women sleeping with too many men. If I told them that occasionally (not always, but  occasionally) some women sleep with dozens of men without ill effect, grow up, get married to younger, richer men who adore them and buy them little presents, they would collectively burst a blood vessel. (How is Victoria anyway, I wonder. Haven't seen her in yonks.)

Speaking as a woman (see 2), I know I damn well take a risk every time I write exactly what I think and sent it off to Toronto to be published in the CR. I also take a risk every time I write a piece of fiction and offer it up to readers to be judged. I took several risks with Ceremony of Innocence. let me tell you. And every time I mention Polish Pretend Son on my blog I fear a rumpus in my in-box beginning, "If you were a man..." (See 1.)

And now I don't feel depressed anymore. But please don't announce in the RoK combox that I wrote this post because I do not want a flock of readers from the manosphere. Seriously.

Manosphere readers are obsessed with how many men women allow access to ourselves, as if our ontological net worth--which, incidentally, comes directly from our having been made in the image and likeness of God--could ever be subtracted by, er, visitors. (I see they loathe the Eat, Pray, Love lady who, if I remember correctly, slept with only one guy in the course of the book.) Well, let me tell you, I do not want to consort with habitual fans of the manosphere. Insofar as a writer can be a lady, I try to be one, and I don't want those guys around.

Update: Check this out. At least in the USA, more women then men read books. And most women buy more of every type of fiction than men do. So Americans go from Johnny Can't Read to Johnny Doesn't Read Books. I wonder why that is.

Update 2: To come clean, I have a really bad cold now and hence the attention of a sparrow anyway, so I am having a great old time on the internet. I have been scrapping it up with men on the woman writer's Facebook page, and they have departed wailing, in short, "You're a meanie." A senior woman journo has made the error of telling me she covers "female effluvia" for a living, and I asked her if she was sure she wanted to phrase it that way. This has no doubt cemented my meanie reputation among the writer's fans and won me enemies for life. Ha ha ha! Risk-taking, people.

Update 3: I'll tell you what is really scary though. Last night I dreamed I had a hen night and somehow wracked up a bill for $1000. I was drunkenly trying to find my credit card, having already chucked $700 on the table, and I had just seen it so where was it...? And then BENEDICT AMBROSE arrived and REACHED FOR THE BILL. I was so horrified, I woke up.  As Count Floyd would say, "Oooh, SCARY!"

Moderation on, just in case.

An Exercise in Freedom

During Holy Week, I did my best not to read, watch television or use the internet. As it happened, I had to use the internet to pay for my next Polish course and to check recipes. And during Holy Week services, I thought I had better read the missal or hymn sheet. Staying away from television entirely was much easier.

This media fast was inspired by Julia Cameron's The Artist's Way, a regimen I have been diligently following for weeks. I had come to a directive not to  watch television or read anything for a week, so I made Holy Week that week, being the easiest time in which to do it. I wrote my next CR column and sent it in a week early--an unprecedented move, I assure you.

So what was it like?

It was very nice, actually. It was peaceful. I got a lot done without feeling rushed and frantic. Instead of rushing to check my email as soon as I returned home from trips to church or the grocery store, I washed dishes or did some other household chore. I finished writing a short story. I cooked up a storm. I went with the Inner Child to the museum and then to the hipster café to sketch. I went to a ceilidh and danced with the SNP candidate for East Lothian.

I felt very focused on whatever task was at hand.

I was chagrined to discover, on Holy Saturday evening, how few real emails I had received in a week. Only three or four were of any importance; the rest were junk mail, announcements or alerts. And I didn't feel I had missed much by way of local or world news. Now I feel nauseated by "Yahoo News" which seems determined to fill my mind with trivial sensational junk whenever I wish to check my email.

The biggest problem of the regimen--for I got B.A. to look up train timetables--was what to do between 9 and 10 at night. Not being able to read, watch TV or surf the web after nine left my tired mind wondering what to do.

I did the household accounts or sketched or did some mindless household task and then simply went to bed early. And instead of reading myself to sleep, I said a rosary or barely got through praying for my family before I conked right out. It occurred to me that all that internet or even book-reading right before bed was actually bad for my sleep. Going to bed with a rosary was more conducive to sleep than going to bed with a book.

Meanwhile, I also realized how rarely I read a real, proper book, not just a paperback detective story before bed. This must change. Julia Cameron assumes that blocked writers put off writing by reading too many books, but this is most definitely not my problem. The world wide web is my problem.

B.A. and I agreed that Lent would end at 7 PM on Holy Saturday, and after we had a late supper of lamb pies, I went online. And before I knew it, it was past 11 PM, and I still had to wash my hair. (A time-consuming process for we 3Bs.) Very tired, I did all I had to do and went to bed very late and in a bad mood. I slept very badly, too.

My conclusions are that whereas the internet is incredibly useful in small doses, it interferes with paying real attention to whatever tasks one is going at the moment, even if that is just watching a show on television or taking a journey by bus.

It should not be indulged in before any kind of necessary work. In my case, all assignments and housework should be done before I hit that little Google chrome button.

Equally, the computer should be off by 10 PM, and even earlier if I want to go to bed early.

And, finally, it is insane behaviour to check for email umpteen times a day when I get only three or four interesting emails in an entire week.

Happy Easter!

Resurrexit sicut dixit! Alleluia!