What Ive Learned About How My Brain Works:

What I’ve learned about how my brain works:

About 2 weeks ago I finalised plans with my father to help me put a new fence post in my garden. The old one had rotted at the bottom, it was leaning, he said it would be the work of an afternoon to dig out the base, secure and concrete a new one and attach it to the existing fence. Date and plans confirmed, I ordered all the supplies to be collected on the day of the build.

This little bit of ‘DIY prep’ clearly activated an area of my brain which had been dormant through the winter.

That night I decided I would also like more green in my dining room: I’d seen and saved something on Pinterest several months before, so now was clearly the perfect time to make it. I ordered plastic hedge panels, cut them to size, wove them together using spare twine, wired the whole thing with spare string lights, and used green zip ties to attach fake succulents all over. I then drilled 5 large bolt holes in my wall to hang this art, ordered enough 2x4 wood to make a frame, measured and cut to size, stained it, attached corner brackets and TaDa…. 5ftx5ft wall art where 3 days before there was nothing.

So main DIY day comes and we do the thing, the new fence post is up and it’s all secure and great. Job jobed. My father leaves.

Once again my brain wakes up and goes ‘we like this accomplished feeling, more please’.

In the 5 days since the fence post was fixed I have:

Bought 2 more bags of white gravel (my front garden has needed this for almost 5 months), Put weed killer down on the existing gravel, in a garden shop sale I’ve bought 4 more large terracotta plant pots, bought 9 new summer/autumn heathers to go in them, sourced enough wood mulch, peat moss, and ericious soil to fill them all, reorganised and styled these new pots alongside my existing plant pots filled with winter/spring heathers, and weeded the rest of my front garden; ordered gravel boards to support and provide a level base for my small area of decking, sealed them and secured them to one another; researched and chosen the rose bush I will be planting in the spring; chosen and ordered enough fence paint to cover my garden (and ordered fence paint brushes), decided on the colour of my kitchen tile paint and bought foam rollers so I can start next weekend.

What I HAVE NOT DONE in the last 5 days, or the 5 before that when I first felt this dormant DIY urge:

Called my local plumber/handyman to fix the crack in my bathroom sink, which has been there since September, and means I can’t properly use said sink and have had to have a plastic bowl placed inside so I can wash my hands and/or face.

This weekend I plan to do more DIY and probably mine-sweep my local store for cheap plants to take home and ‘rescue’. Despite my best internal efforts, I will likely not call the plumber.

I don’t know why I’m like this.

*One Day Netflix Spoilers*

You can interpret it however works for you, and I don’t know how it played out in the book, but I loved the scene where Em and Dex got together.

Because Emma *chose* Dexter. When she didn’t have to, when she had other options, knowing all of his baggage, and knowing that they would probably be able to stay friends if she didn’t. And she still chose to start something romantic with him.

Emma was at the highest point of her success: a published author, signed for a second book, sent to live abroad in an exciting new city. And she’d started seeing someone who (from the little we see) is kind, charming, and cares for her. Emma is winning in every sense!

And she initially rejects Dexter. Her reasons make sense; she doesn’t feel he truly *wants* to be with her, just that she’s there and he’s lonely. She is sure of herself and her place in the world, and turns down the man she used to crush on because she wants it to be real. When given this opportunity were not shown a knee jerk, desperate, ‘oh my god, finally, yes!’ moment when he says he wants to be with her. She was NOT waiting on this, and she’s not PINING for him. It actually shows huge strength that when the man she used to like finally wants to be with her, she has the inner strength to say no and stick to what she deserves; a proper relationship with someone who truly wants her, not a placeholder.

Dexter lays his heart on the line, leaves himself competent venerable, and Em says no.

You could interpret Em coming back as unsatisfactory: a woman in her prime, going back to the man she’s been pining over most of her adult life. But it can also be seen as an empowering moment.

Emma knows all of Dexters issues and chooses him anyway. Dexter has literally just laid out his current headspace and issues, and it’s clear she was supporting him as the divorce was announced and agreed upon. And previous episodes show they’ve been close throughout Dexters marriage and fatherhood, with Em stopping in at his job and answering his late night calls. She’s been his best friend again for several years and knows his struggles, so she is going in to any romantic relationship with her eyes open.

Reducing Emma’s choice to being a silly or naive one I think misses huge parts of who she is, things which are key to her characterisation. Throughout the series she’s shown as intelligent, savvy, switched on and determined. Even when she’s unhappy or trying different things, she is sure in her conviction to do *something*. When she’s unhappy at the restaurant and Dex suggests teaching she makes a career change and trains. When she’s at her lowest (post headteacher affair and loosing Dex) she turns rock bottom into a spring board and tries once again to write her novel.

Emma is the embodiment of conviction. Whether it’s knowing what she wants or just knowing what she doesn’t, she is decisive and commits to her path. She’s the perfect foil for Dex who’s lesson across the series is to stop running from difficult feelings, and learn to process unpleasant emotions.

So she didn’t choose Dexter on a whim, and I love that they showed that. Em leaves Dex, turns him down, and goes to dinner with her lover in the city she’s loving living in, while doing the job she always wanted.

And she could have left it like that and they would have likely remaking friends. They did after that kiss at Tilly’s wedding, and after they slept together. So she has nothing to loose by rejecting him.

But Emma *chooses* Dex. She knows herself and what she wants, she knows who she is and what she is now capable of. What she wants, if it’s on the table, is to be with Dexter. So she commits to it.

They could have made her jump at the option to be with Dex. The writer could have had them get together when Dex was at the height of his fame or Em at the lowest point of her life. And either of those could have easily had a sense of fear on Em’s part: to be equal to Dex, to be good enough for him (in her head), to finally make it. But doing it this way gives her all the power, all the agency. And I *love* that.

From comments later it’s clear their relationship was good, they do work well together and they make one another happy. We’ll never know how Emma’s life could have gone if she stayed with Jean-Pierre. But the life she chose with Dex *was* happy. As Ian said ‘[Dex] made her so so happy’: wether you think she could have done better or deserved more, a life with someone who makes you happy… isn’t an insignificant thing.

We’ll never know if it was *the right* choice to be with Dex. But seeing how happy she was it’s clear it was a *good* choice. And that’s all we can ever hope for.

It’s almost like the Usher children *knew* they weren’t going to live long and so they intentially left no marks upon the world.

Camille’s speech about how none of the kids actually makes or does anything is so startling: here is a group of people given all the opportunities and access money can buy, all of whom have had this their entire adult life, and they haven’t used it to create or build anything.

You can almost sense Roderiks disappointment in them, in his speech to Perry. He has this hyper focus on what his ‘investment’ money will fund, and says that ‘Ushers change the world’. But outside of himself and Madeline, not one of them has.

Frederick took the money, if he ever got any, and probably funnelled it back into his house or the company. By the looks of it he doesn’t have anything other than his family and his job, so there’s nothing for Roderick to invest in.

Tammy funnelled the money into a lifestyle brand, but one that wouldn’t have her at the front and centre. She scathingly reveals to Bill that she selected him to be her husband based upon his brand and marketability, showing she was ready to create this new empire but with her pulling strings in the shadows. From the outside it probably looks like she hasn’t created anything at all and that it’s all Bill, using his wife’s money. On top of this, the running gag of her storyline is that her brand and ideas aren’t even original, but are ripped off of Goop. So she hasn’t made anything new, and if Goldbug has any impact at all it will be no different to another more successful, more well know product. Hardly ‘changing the world’.

Victorine has some medial training but she looks to be a supporting role to her partner within their clinic, in which Al is the talented surgeon who people come to see and Victorine is a kind of silent partner. So she decided to go into medical devices or smart medical tech, but she relies upon the ideas and skills of others. As Camille said ‘the mesh is the surgeons, that’s why she’s fucking the surgeon’. And her medical knowledge seems to be limited if she thinks just her word and some money will move their experiments into human trials. So she also hasn’t ‘changed the world’ she’s just found someone else who was trying to and co-op-ed their ideas. You could even argue she poisoned those ideas, as Al mentions that the pain medication Victorine has been supplying looks like street drugs and wouldn’t stand up in any medical paper or research study.

Camille is, like she said, spinning furiously and going nowhere. She looks skilled in her field (from the analysis scenes we get, and Madeleine’s signing off on her PR analysis post Perry’s death) but she works from the shadows and hasn’t ‘created’ anything that wasn’t there before. There have been PR spin doctors before and there will be more to come; Camille offers nothing new ans hasn’t ‘changed the world’ in any measurable way. From what little we see of her work she hasn’t recreated a PR agency, hasn’t trained up other spin doctors under her, hasn’t created a brand or company which will outlast her. She leaves nothing behind to show what her skills or talents were.

Leo is shot down quickly when he claims he makes games: he doesn’t, he gives money to people who do. So he too will leave little to nothing behind when he’s gone. His references to past boyfriends show no long lasting relationships in his life and he has no other hobbies or pursuits we know of. Like Camille he hasn’t created a company to help with game design, hasn’t trained up others within this field he claims as his own. Even with the gaming ‘world’ it sounds like he changed very little. Fredrick’s throw away comments about Leo’s flat reveal that Leo hadn’t even had input in the decoration or style of his own home: he just latches onto the styles, ideas, aesthetic of his current boyfriend and goes with their ideas and plans. It’s such a small tiny thing but he truly has no original ideas in any aspect of his life.

And finally Perry, who’s desperate for that start up money but clearly has no plans or ideas on how to use it. He’s had a year and his main idea is an exclusive whisky bar. Even this idea, for all its crude intentions, shows his lack of vision: he doesn’t understand that to get the reputation he claims his bars would have will take time. You don’t just ‘create’ a consequent free bar celebrating decadence and privilege overnight. Reputations take time and as Madeline asks ‘what will be different about this one’ to draw people in to begin with? Studio 54 (which he compares his club to). only operated for 3 years before closing: not the smartest inclusion in an investment pitch.

To be fair to Perry though, looking at what the other siblings did or didn’t do with their loan money it seems a bit unfair that his ‘Blow job whiskey bar’ was shot down so decisively and cruelty. Assuredly Leo’s ‘video game studio for just myself’, Camille’s ‘PR agency just for me with my two assistants’, Victorines ‘medical training and clinic where I help out other surgeons’, Tammys ‘subscription lifestyle brand ripped off from a celebrity’ and Fredrick’s ‘I’d just like to work with you Dad’ were all clearly given the green light. But Perry apparently wasn’t good enough. Maybe this was a reaction to Roderick getting the news he was dying as so he wanted Perrys investment at least to actually change something, but still. He might as well give him the money either way at that point.

And I think it’s probably intended as a commentary on the ultra wealthy. Like of course people with more money than most counties have no plans to leave anything for the next generation. They have achieved their high levels of success by being solely focused upon themselves and so are honestly incapable of considering others. They are solely interested in enjoying the life they are currently living and why strain themselves to fight and build something when they don’t have to?

But it also works so well as a supernatural legacy and ironic conclusion to Roderick’s deal: he agreed that none of his bloodline would outlive him, and so none of them built anything that would.

I’m only two episodes into Hospital Playlist and I would die for this found family group of dumbass’s. Everyone’s almost 40, with 20 years for friendship together, they speak to each others mothers as if they are their own, they’re constantly being annoyed by one or more members of the group, all piling into one tiny car to all get take out, they have a band together… ❤️

*spoilers for One Day*

For people saying ‘it’s tragic, Dex and Em only got 3 years together’ no. They got 15 years together.

Glossing over the span of their life together to sum it up as ‘only 3 years together’ misses all the love and time they had together that wasn’t solely romantic.

Why is their relationship only ‘important’ or ‘counts’ when it’s a romantic one? Maybe there was always romantic love buried in there or growing steadily but there was a whole lot of platonic love there too.

For 15 years they were the most important person in the world to one another, they described each other as their ‘best friend’ and the person they reached out to at every high and low moment. And for the last 3 of those years they were also a couple.

There are loads of examples of Dex reaching out to Em when he’s at his lowest: the last birthday with his mum, then he’s reeling from his divorce, when he’s scared people will hate him on TV. And you *could* read that as pathetic and Em being his emotional crutch, with Dex latching into her. But you could *also* see that as when you’re struggling and low, you just want your best friend. Because they *get* you. And part of being a best friend is being there in those low moments.

And Em has done the same with Dex, just in different ways. That first year out of uni Em had no idea what she was doing; in a job she couldn’t wait to leave, a relationship that didn’t make her happy, not sure where she was going in life or what she was doing. Em writes to Dex often, and doesn’t need him to reply to her, just to read her letters and be *her* emotional crutch and person to vent to.

Even at that breakup-dinner, Em has things she ‘needs to talk about’ and she’s reached out to Dex to do it. We don’t see her discussing it with Tilly, we see her trying to talk about it with Dex. She’s at arguably her lowest moment (hates her job, hates her partner, hates her home) and she wants her best friend to listen to her. Just like he did when she was 24 and thinking about giving up and leaving London, and Dex convinced her to stay and keep going.

So they are emotional crutches *to one another*. That’s also part of being someone’s best friend.

And for all the low moments Dex also wanted to share his best moments with her too: when he’s excited about the TV pilot he calls Em to say ‘the only person I want to share this with is you’, and begs Em to find a way to be there. Yes this is also him dismissing and ignoring her achievements, yes this is self absorbed and rude and at the height of his egomania, but in that moment of triumph he only wants his best friend there with him.

When they see one another again at Tilly’s wedding Em is brave and self assured when she reveals she’s ‘thought of you every day, missed you every day’, and that even though they are friends again now the fact that Dex will have a wife and child ‘feels a bit like loosing you all over again. Because people with families have different priorities…’ That’s how close they were before.

The sentiment that ‘we grew up together’ is really true, for the both of them. They were very different people throughout their lives, and if they had tried to be a romantic couple earlier there is no guarantee that version of them would have lasted the course.

Would Emma have stayed with a peak-of-his-tv-fame Dex, partying and living life ‘to the full’? Or would they have explosively ended and decided they were too different for one another for it to ever work?

Would Dex have even tried for a career in TV or a full year of travelling if he’d become a couple with Emma after Uni? Or would he have done something else but grown resentful of what-could-have-been?

If they had sorted out their issues and apologised after their fight and Em had left Ian, would Em have found the strength to turn rock bottom into a spring board and finally write her book? Would she have even hit that bottom at all? Or would the hook have remained a pipe dream while she continued as a teacher, happy with Dex but professionally unfulfilled?

We will never know what could have been, and that doesn’t necessarily make those alternatives the ‘better’ option that they ‘missed out on’.

Maybe they would only ever have had 3 years together as a couple and getting it in their mid 30’s the way they did was their most mature and peaceful version.

So yes at times their relationship feels like it’s moving toward the inevitable conclusion of a romantic partnership. But the time before they get there wasn’t wasted or unimportant or unnecessary. And they were always together.

Random thought spawned by TikTok: Successful multigenerational parenting should take notes from Star Trek.

The captain and first officer are the command team: they decide (within reason) where the ships going, how fast it moves, how it gets there etc. They call the shots and the buck stops with them. They are ultimately responsible for the ship. And they may switch roles as the situation calls for it, with first officer becoming captain as needed, but at the end of the day they operate as a team.

These are the parents.

But if you’ve set up your village correctly, they can be the bridge crew. Experts in their field, ready with advice, options and to provide support. Sometimes the captain shouldn’t make a decision before checking in with one of them for their knowledge or advice. But no matter what advice they get, the command crew should be confident in making their decisions because it’s what they think is best. They’ll have to justify it later if the admiralty have questions, so they need to be sure of their choices regardless of who gave what advice.

And if you’re a member of the bridge crew (looking at you Grandparents) you need to accept that you’re not in the command chair. You might give your expert opinion and advice on a situation, but the captain is likely getting advice from multiple people and their decision probably takes all that advice into consideration. You (the navigation officer) might think the course forward is obvious, but another expert (the communications officer) has more information for the captain which you’re not privy to which informs the command teams decision.

And once the captain has made a decision, you can’t contest it. Like the ref in any sports game, their call is final.

For the ship to sail smoothly, the bridge crew needs to work as one, and support the command teams decision. And yeah, sometimes the captain is going to make a bad call. But then you debrief afterwards and learn where you went wrong. What should the command team do differently next time? How should they weigh or value different peoples expertise or advice?

As the bridge crew, you’re there to support command. Advise and inform yes, but ultimately to aid command so they can make the hard calls.

And giving them honest advice, to the best of your knowledge, and then aiding them once they’ve made a decision? That makes them more likely to turn to you again in the future.

And we can take it a step further - sometimes the command crew will be away from the helm, maybe injury or personal reasons. And they’ll need to appoint someone else (‘Sulu, you have the con’). They’re only going to pass that command to someone they trust can handle the responsibility. If you’re constantly questioning or overriding their decisions, how likely are they to trust you in the captains chair?

The ship works best when the whole bridge crew work as one. Every person is a valued member of the team, and at the end of the day the ship is the priority.

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Don’t know how well I articulated this but the analogy wouldn’t leave my mind…