This is No Way to Sell a Listicle

But read it for yourself and decide

Alison Tennent’s listicle that she promised Genius Turner she’d never do, prompted me to do one of my own. Alison’s is laugh-out-loud hilarious.

CR Mandler MAT’s piece is an incredible life of fantastic achievements!

I’m afraid mine will be dull in comparison, but that’s no way to sell a list!

1. I’ve never thought of myself as interesting nor understood why other people find me of interest. However, one funny little man followed my Cape Verde Blog while I was living on the island of Sao Vincente. He actually travelled to the island and sought me out. Very uncomfortable and such a relief when he left.
2. My boyfriend at the time made me take my blog down. He was embarrassed. Didn’t stop him from pursuing a local girl and flaunting it in my face though.
3. I’ve been compelled to read fiction since I went to primary school. My mum is a prolific reader but she was forced to leave us when I was five. Fiction is my escape hatch into other people’s worlds.
4. All my English teachers were amazing men and women who encouraged imagination and story writing.
5. With most English grammar rules, there are exceptions. One teacher wrote at the end of one of my eight-year-old self’s stories that dead people couldn’t talk — hello, where was her imagination?
6. Sarcasm played a major role in my life for a very long time and then one day it just disappeared. I still very much appreciate it in others though. You ladies know who you are. Who knows, this supposed lowest form of wit might make a come back yet. House M.D. made it an art form. I reckon I realised taking the piss out of someone as entertainment is hurtful.
7. It could have been when I had my first Nokia mobile phone as an operations manager perk of the job — do you remember the sexy purple/blue one? — that I lost my sense of naughtiness. Who knew texts were being monitored and sexts were unacceptable on a company mobile? I still cringe.
8. The other exception to the amazing teachers was a poet/tutor for the level 2 screenwriting module on my creative writing course four years ago. She said it wasn’t possible to hear both sides of a phone conversation. The planet she was living on obviously didn’t include actually watching any TV shows or movies that involved mobile phones and conversations. I dropped out shortly after that episode.
9. Sensitivity is my middle name. I cry at pretty much everything. I cry for me, I cry for others. I cry when others are kind to me and others. Before my son was born twenty-eight years ago tears played no part in my life.
10. Walking away from relationships, situations, and instant coffee when I needed to has made me a selfish, resilient creature. Making me more of a snail with my house on my back than a cockroach.
11. I put all my possessions, accumulated from a lucrative two-decade career at British Telecom, on eBay in 2009. The profits paid for a sexy bronze Sony Vaio. My dad still has it.
12. Denial was my friend and protector for five years after the death of my step mum. I finally cracked not when I’d packaged up the various elements of the job I loved and handed them over to colleagues. Not when I did myself out of my job and then my manager disowned me (on reflection this seems fair). Not when the doctor put me on indefinite sick leave signed off with depression. But when the psychiatrist asked the right questions and identified what I’d been pretending.
13. Being performance assessed, minimum wage quality checks, and jumping through fucking hoops makes me angry and upset. I learnt techniques to batter back tears when they spring unbid.
14. Rude people bring out retaliatory rudeness in me. Usually to the dial tone after the fifth person in a row has hung up on me. Then the tears prick, my nose runs, I throw my head back and laugh. One of those insane laughs. Don’t knock it until you try it.
15. In my job, I have 30 seconds to copy and paste a telephone number from one fiddly screen into another, press return and wait to connect to someone or select voicemail. If I connect to someone, I have to be genuinely upbeat/fast/entertaining to secure the interview. I believe a market research interviewer coined the phrase ‘fake it until you make it’.
16. Nothing about this year is my choice. Nada, zilch, zero.
17. Oh, bullet 15 exception is ILLUMINATION. Despite not being involved as much as I long to be in my role as a senior editor, this publication is what makes me get up in the morning. The wonderful connections made with fellow editors, writers, and creatives have been my joie de vivre this year.
18. Writing this on-screen is just as well because if I’d been using one of my many notebooks, it would be rather soggy pulp by now. I know I must sound like such a softling. I choose to accept this is part of me and the tears are a release valve for when there are no words.
19. The Secret by Rhonda Byrne profoundly impacted me. It felt good to send positive messages out to the universe. I must reconnect to that positivity. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we all did?
20. Universal Basic Income is a long-held dream of mine. Scott Santens was one of the first writer’s whose work I read on this platform. You know that feeling you get when something is the answer to so many things that are wrong with the world? Scott’s work has been unwavering. His perseverance is making headlines. Five hundred MPs from all parties signed a letter calling on the government to pilot UBI in the UK.
21. I have a proclivity to fix things. It served me well as an operations and development manager. I fixed a lot of problems. Being someone who fixes things doesn’t stop being part of who I am when I decide it’s not my job anymore. One has to force quit and find something else to do.
22. Finding myself manless in 2010 was, even though it didn’t seem that way at the time, the second-best thing that ever happened to me. (The first is my son.)
23. I sold my flat in Essex, UK, and ran away to Argentina for three months on the small profit I made. This act was one of the headiest I’ve ever done. Adventuring to faraway places is a dream I intend to continue.
24. While living in another foreign country, I had the misfortune of tuning into a sad sack bully of a thirty-something man bellowing at his Czech girl-friend on a tram in Prague. His attitude forced me to intercede. The lovely young woman asked me about myself but the man attacked me with the sort of words only men think of, words involving older women who call them out on their bullshit.
25. “You obviously need sex,” he said.
26. True that may well be, but why that kind young woman would want to be with an arsehole like him baffles me to this day. Sex, lust, desire for someone, mere distractions for me.
27. Writing, learning, exploring these are my aphrodisiacs and cravings. One day the Universe will conspire to bring the man for me into my life. Looking for something rarely works. We have to make it happen. With our thoughts and words.
28. This is my stream of consciousness writing. The best way to start a story, I find. What’s yours?

Having reached this sentence, I do hope it was worth your time. I hope I undersold and entertained, rather than raised expectations and disappointed.

I’m looking forward to reading your listicle.

Thanks for reading.