"Fire!" "Nah, they're just messing with you."

I just had a very interesting (and entertaining) experience.  I was sitting in the Downtown Vancouver library, where I do my writing, and suddenly there's a loud series of what I can only call beeps followed by what sounded vaguely alarm like.  Needless to say, it got my attention.

 I wasn't quite sure what it was because it didn't sound like any fire alarm I'd ever heard before, and it wasn't only me that felt vaguely confused.  My favourite place to sit is the floor above the children's section which actually has a bit of a balcony seating area that looks over the kid's play area and through the big windows at the end of the building.  When the alarm went off I watched every single parent's head whip up and the expression on their faces was much what I think mine was.  "Fire?  Maybe?  Weird alarm.  Are they going to tell us?"

They did tell us.  Over the loudspeaker, a recorded voice comes.  "Fire alarm on the third floor" is all I can make out over the now repeating alarm.  That's the one riiiight above me.  Joy.  

The next part was the particularly interesting and entertaining one.  Once I had made out the words I started gathering up my things and packing them away.  Not in a tearing hurry, (Is it a drill?  They've done that before.  Not positive though, and floor right above?  better safe than sorry) but certainly faster than usual.  The people around me on the other hand?

Dude in front of me is still sitting, headphones in, laptop on.  Older gentleman right behind me is still sitting reading a book, entirely unconcerned.  A couple of people further along are doing what I'm doing, and one lady has just looked up like "Oh, maybe they mean it".  The parents on the floor below, while not panicking, are certainly moving faster than me!

The alarm has a funny sort of repeat sequence.  Noise for a minute or two, short break, more noise for a minute or two, short break.  I'm packed up and getting the bags slung over my shoulders by the beginning of the third repeat.  At this point the dude in front of leaps up very quickly and begins shoving things away in a hurried manner, and the unconcerned gentleman gives a slight sigh and slowly puts his book down.  There is now a steady stream of people moving past me through the bookshelves.  Everyone so far has been clever enough not to panic.

I head out to the front.  There's a few people coming up from below, one or two lugging baby carriers, and a solid flow coming down the escalators.  A bigger stream of people is going through the front doors, but this turns into a bit of a log jam because everyone seems to stop as soon as they're through even though there's plenty of space on either side.  People.  I move further along because I like having room to breath, thanks very much.  Everyone (including me) is still not feeling very worried.

Now I can see a few library staff members in bright vests and someone clever is clearing the entrance.  I'm well placed to look in all the front windows, and I can even see a bit through the ones on the sixth floor.  I'm feeling very amused now.  I end up calling my mother because have tell someone and I know she's free  Now this is entertaining!

I should perhaps explain about the floor numbers in the library.  The basement (kid's section) is the first floor.  Ground floor is second, and it proceeds accordingly.  So, the fire alarm was triggered on the third floor, which is the one above the ground floor.  Looking up through the windows, I can see at least eight people sitting at desks with their computers on the fourth and fifth floors.  Not moving, seemingly oblivious.  And on the ground floor straight in front of me there's two fellows sitting at the library computers obviously debating with each other about whether we're all silly, or whether they should get up and go too, and one guy sound asleep in a chair that no one's bothered to wake up.  Yep, this is entertaining!

By this point we've finished the fifth repeat of the alarm and we're part way through the sixth.  As the seventh starts about half the people on the upper floors spring into action and the two fellows on the computers decide maybe they should leave too.  There's still a few staff members inside but most are out now.  No one has woken up the sleeping fellow yet.

Eighth repeat now.  Finally the rest of the people sitting at desks move.  Took 'em long enough.  I look back down and the sleeping fellow has simply vanished.  I don't know if the alarm finally woke him up or if some nice person did.  I think it's been ten, maybe fifteen minutes since the alarm first went off.

There's a ton of people standing around now.  Out of the library proper, but still technically inside.  Huzzah for enclosed sidewalks!  Everyone who was at the coffee and tea shops is looking bemused at the sudden influx of people at the patio tables.  The alarm is still going, now on repeat ten or eleven.  there's a woman going up and down the stairs carrying workshop coffee station paraphernalia, and there's an ESL tutoring session behind me that's continuing as usual.  Then the alarm stops.

Now we're all just sitting around staring at the doors.  after a few minutes a bunch of people just decide to give up and leave.  Then a crowd of people come back in, a fair number have name tags so I assume they work here.  Most of them head downstairs back to what I assume was a workshop of some sort.  Maybe five minutes later there's a sudden surge of movement as everyone heads back in.  In all, I think it took half an hour, maybe forty minutes.

Aside from the entertainment in any situation that's outside the norm, this one was interesting because of the varied reactions.  The people who moved fastest and with the least amount of fuss were the parents with kids.  Some people, like me, started moving almost immediately but were a bit slower.  Most people didn't start moving until a few minutes later.  After that it was probably pretty steady, a few more waking up every minute.

 And I totally get that more often than not there's no fire, but the people on the upper floors who didn't move until halfway through?  If there had been a fire on the third floor they'd have been above it.  Which is never good.  I don't know if there would have been different reaction if there was an actual fire, and if that would have made much of a difference or not, but it's something to think about.

Brain babble

So normally these are supposed to be about something, and I generally have soapboxes aplenty ready to go, but this time I got zip.  Nothing.  

Today it's more a matter of knowing I'm too all over the place to get my head into the space it needs to be for work but desperately needing an outlet of some sort so I thought "Eh, what the hell.  Start a new blog, see where that takes you."  So right now I'm literally just writing whatever spews out of this brain of mine.  Heh.  Have fun with that.

But seriously, what are you supposed to do when nothing seems to be happening the way want it to or how you'd planned, and perhaps most of the time you just make adjustments accordingly , but today, for some reason, you just can't get your brain to do that?  

Sit like a lump and sulk?  It's certainly easier to do that.  

Make a concerted effort to force your mind to do what you think it should be doing?   I gotta admit, that's generally what I do, but it's not always the best idea in the world.  sometimes it works, and sometimes it was just stupid.

I suppose you could also whine and complain to a sympathetic (or not) listener but that can be less than helpful too.

So this time we're trying something new as a vent.   Who knows, maybe I'll say something wise or deep. (I doubt it.  This looks more like brain babbling than anything else.)  Maybe I'll finally pick a soapbox.  Or maybe this'll be just enough to get the juices flowing and the brain working.  That would be good.  

Still, it's an interesting thing to ponder.  How often do you end up sitting and stewing in your own nervous energy with no particular outlet for it?  How often does it interfere with what you should be doing, or what you'd prefer to be doing?  Why do you have that buzz in the first place?  Is there a root cause that can be dealt with?  

In this particular instance I may know what the problem is, but unfortunately I can't fix it.  And there is something I'd prefer to be doing which makes it worse.  But other times I haven't figured out what the problem was until well after the fact, and sometimes not at all.  The only thing I can say for sure is that ignoring it entirely only makes it worse.  And while it may be possible to do one's work through or around it, it's generally sub-par and you get half as much done as you would have otherwise.

Beating yourself up about it is silly too.  Sure, the things ticking you off may be irrational, silly, normally not a problem, but telling yourself you're being stupid and to stop it, while sometimes helpful and occasionally wise, can often just exacerbate it.  If you can't talk yourself down fairly quickly than finding ways to avoid venting on to other people is probably a better use of one's energies.

One thing that can be most useful in this is being aware of one's boundaries.  If you don't mind a piece of unsolicited advice, if you don't yet have a clear idea of your comfort zone or boundaries I would recommend you begin to start poking at them and experimenting with them.  Because more often than not, they lie somewhere at the edge of the discomfort.  

When I say boundaries I mean all of them.  Physical, moral, mental, emotional.  They're all important.  Sometimes it's good to know where they are so you can stretch them a little bit.  Sometimes so you know where your personal line in the sand is.  And exploring them can be interesting.  You can discover you're more conservative or liberal than you thought, which, depending on the person can be an uncomfortable discovery.  You may discover places where you'd like to stretch them a bit or widen your understanding of a matter.  And better knowledge of one's self can be invaluable.

A tricky part of all this is that many of us are very sure we do, in fact, know what our boundaries are when we actually don't.  Society teaches us where it thinks our boundaries should be, and then we play along and feel bad because we're uncomfortable with where they've been put.  A lot of us never move them from those socially acceptable placements, and a great many more take decades to realise that they don't really think that placement is right, thanks very much.

Finding out about yourself is incredibly scary and enlightening at one and the same time.  It can also be fun, but that tends to come in spurts and greatly depends on the person.  It takes a hell of a lot of work and it's probably never going to be over completely, but you can come out in the middle of it a much fuller person.  Sometimes it'll break you.  I've watched that happen.  But if the pieces are looked after and rearranged and put back where they maybe should have been in the first place, the end result can be stronger, more resilient, and in the grand scheme of things healthier.  It can also be beautiful.

Life isn't comfortable.  It was never meant to be.  Some of us have more to deal with in life than is fair, some less.  But we should still deal with it.   It's not often pretty, it's not always fun, but if we really want to live?  Change is life, stagnation death.  We should never be afraid to stretch our wings, and we should strive for the courage to face ourselves.