The Dog Ate My Underpants

I have had a little adventure. “Tell it to social media!” I hear you cry. Please rest assured I have. But I felt compelled to tell it here also, due to the timing. Timing, you see, is everything.

A week ago, I wrote my missive in response to the gauntlet Vocal laid down, the challenge to confront our own challenges. In response to this invitation to reflect, and from the springboard of reflection, to carve a trajectory of my choosing, I attempted to openly discuss some of my own challenges, as a writer, as a community member, and as a person - the context, of course, which encompasses all aspects of my Vocal presence.

I titled that piece “Reply All”, a deliberate choice, when so many of my titles are afterthoughts. I wanted to address the whole vocal community. The cool kids, the outsiders, the newcomers, the student council and the faculty. Obviously I did not imagine that several thousand people would be reading, but perhaps there WAS a representative from every subdivision in my mind’s eye, to each of whom I would be equally accountable as I reflected on how WE function as a community, and laid out my intentions for the coming year. In that piece, allowing my mind to swirl and eddy as it will, just as long as I kept flowing in the intended direction, I likened Vocal to my underpants. Firstly, my apologies. While a likening to an alluring pair of silken bloomers in an audacious print may be considered rather complimentary, this was not the analogy I made. But before any offense is taken, please consider which knickers you reach for most often. Comfortable nether regions, in whatever configuration yours happen to be, are fundamental to our freedom of expression! When one’s entry and exit points are impeded, creativity must surely be stifled, no?

As it transpired, however, this analogy proved to be partially prescient. I spoke also, you see, of my intention to rebalance my vocal use. To read a little less (I know, it’s not a winning proposition is it), but to read beyond the echo chamber. To allow myself more time for my own writing, even if that means writing less as I put the pen down and listen, for the first time, to someone purporting to have some expertise. To more willingly shrug off the call of this space to answer calls that are more important.

And then I disappeared.

I vanished from your comments sections, because I read nothing. I vanished from MY comment sections, because I saw nothing. I vanished from the feed, because I wrote nothing. You worried, I’m sure. I did not vanish from your mind, did I?

People, call off the search parties, I have been found. Ok, it was only four days. But I feel certain at least SOMEONE might have noticed. A bit certain. I feel it’s possible at least. Well, this is for you, if you are that person. You see, the dog ate my underpants.

It’s my birthday this Wednesday. Every year, I say (out loud, not just in my head) “This year, I want to DO something for my birthday.” Sometimes, I even say it when my family are present and looking in my direction. Yet every year, the children whine, or the flu takes hold, or the pressures of life send cover fire to allow the day to manoeuvre to the front page of the calendar and dance, naked of all adornment, in my face. This year, I took the bull by the horns (you may choose here to continue the preceding analogy, but I’m keeping it clean) and tied my own bow on. I booked a weekend break, and compelled the family to go.

It was lovely, but this was not the whole adventure. Never the less, it is part one of “reasons Hannah Moore vanished from Vocal”. I honoured my pledge. I spent time with my family, doing things that I love and ignoring every notification that pinged onto my phone whenever I was in range of Wi-Fi. Two days. No one will even notice. But then things went a little awry. It got a tad windy in the UK, where I was not. On Sunday evening, in part two of “reasons Hannah Moore vanished from Vocal”, and because the nameless budget airline I was using cares profoundly for its passengers and crew, I enjoyed one of the more stimulating flights I have been on. I am not, generally, a fearful flyer (claustrophobia notwithstanding), but I’m just going to confess I was crapping myself as the aircraft attempted a UK landing in some of the highest winds we have seen in a decade. Needless to say, the landing was aborted after a simultaneously tantalising and terrifying dalliance with the runway, and the flight redirected almost back where we had come from. I then spent 24 hours on an unexpected mini-break to Cologne airport. They have a surprisingly well stocked supermarket IN the terminal you know. You can get pasta sauce, alcohol, AND pet collars. And I took a photograph of the children next to a section of the Berlin wall. In it, the children look a little peaky, but it didn’t seem inappropriate, give the subject. They are, however, somewhat short on opportunities to charge devices or places to get cooked food.

Finally, part three. I lost a day, and I lost a night. Its not much, is it, one day’s work, one night’s sleep. But the loss has been detrimental to my workload and my coping capacity simultaneously.

This is where the timing comes in. “Ladies and gentlemen!” I proclaimed. “I am reappraising my relationship with you, and I intend on prioritising myself more from now on!” And then I walked out, turned my phone off and left no forwarding address, and even if I had only intended to nip to the loo, getting locked in the cubicle made it look awfully like a complete abandonment.

And you know what, I learned something from it. I learned that the world doesn’t crumble if I don’t read every notification, I learned that if I take a few days away from Vocal, I get to focus fully on other things, and I learned that I am totally paranoid about upsetting people. Seriously, I have no intention of going back and catching up on everything I missed, but please know I haven’t decided this is not worth my time, that YOU are not worth my time. I have, however, learned that my intuition that Vocal is worth less of my time was correct.

In the days immediately after I published Reply All, I wrestled with the idea of unsubscribing from everyone and starting afresh. However, my list of people I would want to keep reading was not short and I must acknowledge I am going to need a better strategy. Perhaps a daily time or story cap. I will get there, I will find the balance, it just may take a bit of trial and error. But here I am honouring the spirit. I am back on board, and the first thing I have done, without reading a word, is write. Tomorrow, I shall read a little and start working out how to approach that in a way that honours both you and me. Even if it makes me uncomfortable. After all, the dog really did eat my underpants. Ok, I left them on the floor, in a small pile of laundry, to take home after spending the night before our trip at my parents’ house, just a few miles from the airport. You could argue it was my fault, that I should have predicted that my mother would let the beast into their spare bedroom “because she seemed to be looking for you.” Regardless of blame, it remains the case that the comfortable underwear of which I spoke previously had been shredded over the course of my absence. Symbolic, don’t you think?

Perhaps it is time to get myself some audacious bloomers.