More than my background

For those of you that don't know, JD Salinger, the author best known for Catcher in the Rye, died recently. What does that have to do with you or me? I hear you ask. Well, I didn't pay much attention to it either until I read the comments about a blog expressing fondness for the book. Some agreed with the writer but others were more scathing about the central character. Holden Caulfield, calling him a whinging, spoiled, angsty white middle-class brat.

Now, it wasn't the accusation of him being spoilt that annoyed me; it was this assumption that white, middle-class kids (and those in their 20s, like me) have nothing legitimate to complain about. Which is bullshit. Even if home life is a relative paradise, there's still school to contend with and god help you if you're different in any way or shy. Now, I'll admit, it's been over ten years since I left school, but only now am I learning to leave behind the paranoia and insecurity fostered in me at that age. It took moving 12,000 miles away.

My brother applied the logic 'yeah you had it hard in school but that was years ago so you should just toughen up'. To me, this sounds suspiciously like the stiff upper lip approach so entrenched in the British stereotype.

I was discussing this with a friend of mine the other day, who comes from a similar background to me, and we came to the conclusion that part of it is because we're deep thinkers. But that's not even the whole of it: an old boyfriend of mine, a rational, scientific kind of guy, reasoned that I had everything I wanted so what did I have to complain about. However, you see, insecurities are tenacious things – they hold on like squid.

From both mine and my friend's experience, school was generally not a great experience. We were different, not particularly confident to begin with and just never fit in most of the time. We weren't into the right things or didn't have the right social graces that allow you to fit in. You'll know what I mean. Some of us have just learnt to put a mask on or push it down, but it colours everything from relationships to working life. For me, for the longest time, there was just this feeling that I was weird and that wasn't a positive thing.

To return to Holden Caulfield, as a parting shot, what I want to know is, why shouldn't he be disillusioned and have the right to complain about it just because he's a teenager. After all, adults do it all the time.

It's not easy being green - that's why it's important

As Kermit the frog once said, 'it's not easy being green' and he was right. Well, in one sense he was. You'd think with high fuel prices and a credit in full swing there'd be more incentive for being nice to the planet. Sadly, Brown's trips to see our friends the Saudis together with massive profits from oil-related industries kills any good intentions good and proper.
Mother Nature's fighting back: floods (even in Australia), earthquakes (even in Birmingham), typhoons, fires, you name it, it's happened. I'm not interested in preaching about the 'green issue', I don't wear wooly sweaters or corduroy but it still remains that the environment is important. When it comes to doing anything meaningful about it, the British government merely looks the other way, imposes another few 'green taxes' before discussing a third runway at Heathrow. Very green then.
There's no shortage of information – Annie Leonard's site www.storyofstuff.com is a great example – but it's pointless if not many people read it. Like him or loathe him, Al Gore at least got people interested and passionate about being green but he's fighting a battle against corporates who need people to believe global warming is a myth.
Everybody knows the Earth is overpopulated and this is not a popular view particularly with sentimentalists, but these natural disasters are necessary. Instead of the innocent poor that do suffer, it should be those responsible for it – mass industry that makes a lot of stuff that we don't even need. In a strange way, the current global credit crunch and mass waste are linked; countless cheap electrical items toxically mass-produced to be thrown away within a year.
Unfortunately, for the planet, being environmentally minded isn't as easy as simply switching off lights when you're not using them, or having a shower instead of a bath. There's no ten-point plan, but the mantra seems to be to get involved and hassle those responsible – big companies, the government, the oil industry – until change does happen. Recently, in countries around the world, Earth Hour, a project started by WWF, proved that it is possible to live without using energy. It attracted criticism from some people saying that grand, attention-seeking ‘stunts’ such as that are merely empty gestures, not going far enough but it sure as hell captured people’s attention and their imaginations.
You don't have to go green, I'm not demanding you to, but do you want to live in a world that resembles a wasteland? Admittedly, until Governments start cracking down on corporates there may not be much incentive, but hey, in the long term going green could save you money.

Enjoy your flaws, being perfect ain't all it's cracked up to be

Perfection: that most elusive and addictive of qualities. Do you lie awake at night worrying whether you were flawless at work whilst using the accounting system? (I know my flatmate does) Or is your quest more about searching for Mr/Miss Right? Whatever it is, there are few of us who don't suffer from the curse of perfectionism.
I know I'm a hopeless case. My own very high standards at work have left me feeling somewhat inadequate, with a sense that I should be doing something more. And it nags at me. My friends tell me that I shouldn't worry about it so much but that's easier said than done. For many, this phenomenon is closely tied to achievement and success but remains at the heart of being truly creative.
The strive for perfection is always there - there's never any right answer or incontrovertible fact. It's why creative people are always insecure, I should know. Besides, Van Gogh cut his ear off, most of our great writers were addicts of one kind or another, the list goes on. But let me tell you, it almost pales into insignificance in the light of sporting expectations.
‘England Expects'. It expects, when it comes to every major international football tournament the team qualifies for - proof that they're not just a bunch of overpaid nancy boys. Losing creates an intense backlash of loss and scorn - mostly scorn - whilst winning causes ecstatic jubilation and suddenly the team are perfect. Of course, merely not being the best can get you labelled as boring and dismissed as not being worth watching.
Perfection is personal, too; it's taken me 10 years of relationships to finally be happy with what I have, even though it's not all joy and laughter. There is no such thing as the perfect man or woman and it's usually the flaws that make a the person who they are. I used to be riddled with worries and fears that my boyfriend wasn't doing this right or wasn't doing enough of that, but it really doesn't matter.
All of this is without considering the multi-million pound industry of beauty perfection, a whole topic in itself. Flaws are just nature's way, it makes life interesting. As Agent Smith in the Matrix said:“The perfect world was a dream that your primitive cerebrum kept trying to wake up from.”

The Rise of the Blackberry: a workaholics dream

The Blackberry. A piece of technology so ubiquitous in large towns and cities that it's seen off the challenge of PDAs and the iPhone and it's hard not to see at least one person using them on the daily commute (providing you don't drive in). Madonna even sleeps with hers under her pillow. I understand that they are useful and this is a 24 hour working world but is it really that necessary to email Hong Kong or Sydney at 4 in the morning?
There's a term for this: nomophobia. OK, so it applies to a more general fear of not having a working mobile, but the point remains. It's an open invitation for trouble: there's already a blurring of the line between work and personal life. The phenomenon has got so bad, stories about people using them on a Saturday night out or under the table at dinner parties are circulating. Despite being a social tool, it's become the ultimate symbol of being anti-social, surpassing even the mobile.
Every morning I see at least one suited and booted guy (and, yes, it normally is a guy)intently staring at his Blackberry doubtless reading some highly important email). Last year, the company's own email service went down in the US and the reaction was like an addict being deprived of drugs. In fact, one woman said quitting smoking was easier than not having her Blackberry. In some ways given the ability for truly mobile email, it's gone beyond nomophobia.
There's a good reason that it's been named CrackBerry, and it's probably more addictive than crack. A study by MIT Sloan in the States has found that when in a room of with other people, users are more likely to check their Blackberrys. I know our IT manager is lost without his and a mate of mine reported back to me last week that his boss is rarely seen without his.
So what happened to time out, unplugged? What used to be a simple pleasure of spending time with friends and family has been taken over by a compulsion to keep in touch with work mates. And with it come a lot of reports of stress and burnout normally reserved for City traders.
Surely it can't be good for a piece of technology to be compared to a class A drug with as anti-social consequences. People, put down your Blackberries and join the rest of the world!

Let a little sadness in, too much happiness is bad for you

The Buddhists have a saying: to know great joy you must first know suffering (or words to that effect), balance to put it another way. So how the hell did we end up with a Prozac nation where being anything other than happy is seen as a mental disorder?
I’m not talking about people being depressed because that extreme is equally bad, but simply those who appear vaguely downcast or serious. A classic example of this attitude was my old workmates who always used to get concerned by the serious look of concentration on my face. As far as I’m concerned, we don’t go to work to be happy yet we all seem to expect it as a pre-requisite. Reed is currently marketing itself as the surefire way to week-long job satisfaction – no job can offer that.
Then there’s my personal favourite: relationships. Hollywood has a lot to answer for with its happy ever afters but I can tell you from experience that it’s the fastest way to becoming a bag of neuroses. There’s no chance of life resembling Disney or any number of chick flicks. Sorry girls, but that Mr Perfect doesn’t exist. All these romantic notions are all very well and good but don’t you think that being ecstatically happy would get rather wearing at times.
Music is trying its best to be an antidote despite the ssuspicion or mockery piled on most ‘serious’ bands (Radiohead and Nirvana to name but two). But nothing compares to the criticism piled on Emo, the grim music almost exclusively for teenagers. The Daily Mail attacked it with a gusto normally reserved for Muslim immigrants, accusing it of being responsible for making teenagers suicidal purely due to it’s less than happy nature. They can’t seem to deal with the fact that these same kids want something they can relate their daily lives to – lives which aren’t all roses and sunshine.
On my desk at work there’s a photo of a minibus bearing the slogan ‘chant Hare Krishna and be happy’ – if only life was that simple. The Buddhists have got it right; besides, I don’t want to be happy all the time – it’s not healthy and also tiring. If you want to be happy all the time, then that’s OK, but you’ll feel so much better if you let a little sadness in your life.