The novelist's fear of bureaucracy

[desperance]

Everyone knows that filling in forms is a terrible thing to do. It's just natural, to put off the paperwork. Ja da.

However, that said, this is getting ridiculous. I need a new passport. In one sense, I have needed a new passport for two and a half years; but there has been small prospect of foreign travel throughout that time, so I haven't bothered and it hasn't mattered.

Now I really need a new passport. And I have the forms, and the photographs, and it's not at all complicated. And yet, I am almost paralysed with dread; and this sudden docuphobia is leaking over into other forms, that would actually bring me money if I only filled them in, and I'm not going near those either.

Eek.

Comments

[http://users.livejournal.com/la_marquise_de_/]

What scared me about my new passport was having to get a photo.... Not a nice experience ('I grow old, I grow old, I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled').
Meanwhile I am suffering an acute attack of fear of the blank page. I need another 650 words for today and I am stuck....

[timill]

Here - have a "this".

Only 649 to go now...

[http://users.livejournal.com/la_marquise_de_/]

Why, thank you kindly...

[mizkit.livejournal.com]

Go, go do it; think how much better you'll feel when it's done, and when it is not in fact dreadful at all, you'll be on a roll and can do the other forms that will bring you money.

And look, if it's some kind of objection to having the money, you can always send it to me when you get it. :)

[(Anonymous)]

I have that form too. My passport expired a year ago, and I really should get a new one before they get silly and encode my DNA on it. But have I filled it out yet? Have I cobblers...

Simon

[martyn44.livejournal.com]

If you leave the forms out with a pen, I'm sure one of the boys will fill it out for you.

[desperance.livejournal.com]

They would certainly deal with it - in that so-useful sense of tearing up the form and stealing the pen. And giggling. I'm not quite sure what the cat equivalent of giggling is, but I am damn sure they do it. Lots.

[martyn44.livejournal.com]

Stealing pens, and paper. Sitting on your lap while you're writing. Hmmm. Anything he can do, we can do better?

[irishkate.livejournal.com]

I am just back from a trip to the passport office - I had gotten my hair done and a nice photo taken a few weeks ago - however they claimed it wasn't perfect so I had to race to another place - get a new photo, and of course today my hair is a mess and I have a cold sore. I had to queue twice as a result and spent over 2 hours all told handing in the paperwork. I get to collect the passport on Thursday - I'm travelling Friday and my passport was out since february. I put it off this long cause the whole thing fills me with dread.

But at least it is done now for another 10 years right?

[shewhomust.livejournal.com]

I suspect that the rule with the photos is that anything which a) wasn't taken in the photobooth in the Passport Office and b) doesn't make you look like a startled rabbit will be rejected. Eventually, despairing of getting a photo in which the flash did not reflect off my glasses, I took my glasses off. This was acceptable. (How often am I seen without my glasses? Why, never. This doesn't seem to matter).

Thank goodness I live within walking distance of the Passport Office.

[irishkate.livejournal.com]

The photo booth at the passport office was broken -(though I did wonder if the photographers they sent me and several others to was paying them) but yes it was the flash in the wrong part of the glasses - remind me in 10 years time that I must pretend I don't wear glasses when it comes to photograph time.
I had to take time off from work to go there and pay for parking and will have to repeat on thursday.

[durham-rambler.livejournal.com]

Subsequently I noticed that Chas Eagles photography shop in the Milburngate Shopping Centre in Durham, within 200 metres of the Passport Office, offers to do passport photos. We should probably have gone there ...

[shewhomust.livejournal.com]

Should I know why you now need a new passport (and reveal myself as a bad, neglectful person by asking)? Or is it a secret (and rude to pry)?

[desperance.livejournal.com]

Yup. You should know, and it's a secret.

(Nah, it's just not settled or announced yet. There may be a little work, not very far away...)

[abserdman.livejournal.com]

I also need to do this. But I am one step ahead of you. I have the forms filled out, I have the photos signed but I am yet to post it all. It is not the filling of forms that terrifies me but the £72 they charge for the passport.

[the-magician.livejournal.com]

I put off doing my passport and my driving licence for ages. Then I finally got my act together, went to Staines Post Office, used my old driving licence (and old passport) as proof of ID, handed over the photos I had taken at a camera shop in Sunbury [1]

They did the ID check there and then, and as I hadn't changed *that* much from teh previous passport (yeah, right), agreed the photos were good enough and didn't need signing, and sent off the passport on the express service. They then took the driving licence form (going from a non-photo to a photocard licence at a new address) and processed that too ... and three days later I had my old passport back, and within a week of the application I had both my new passport and new driving licence ... and given I'd been putting both off for nearly a year, the fact it all went so smoothly and quickly was a total shock.

Just do it, get it over with, and worry about the next thing ... that's what I want to do!


[1] six photos for £3.50, actually cheaper per photo than the booth, and he used the digital camera several times until we were both happy with the shot and then hit the "print six of these on one piece of photo paper" button and used a special punch to pop out the six photos.

[athenais.livejournal.com]

I know the basic transaction of Livejournal is validation, but I actually don't understand your relationship with forms. Even if you are exaggerating for effect, I really don't understand people who don't get that sort of thing sorted out in a timely manner. It's just paperwork.

Well! And another thing! I don't understand people who don't like using the phone! No, I don't. I love the phone. I phone my friends regularly! It is a fantastic way to keep in touch as I don't yet have a pneumatic tube which will whisk me to New York and London and Ho Chi Minh City and so forth to visit my good friends!

I must have the heart of a drama queen and the soul of an accountant. Dear me.

[anef.livejournal.com]

I wish I had the soul of an accountant!

[desperance.livejournal.com]

I always say I have the soul of a copy-editor. I want to rewrite other people all the time, to make them better (or possibly just more like me...).

[athenais.livejournal.com]

*offers self for experiment*

[desperance.livejournal.com]

Mmm. Not sure I understand my relationship with forms, either. It's not always this bad: proportional to the significance of the form, I guess. Interreactions with government still tend to reduce me to this near-paralysis, despite more than thirty years of Nothing Awful Having Happened. Yet.

Telephone? Different thing entirely. Telephones are the worst thing. You do know that you're blatting your shrill way into someone else's life without the first idea of what they're doing else, what you're interrupting; you don't know who you'll be talking to, once that interruption has dragged them away from their other life, their life-outside-you. You can't see them, you can't read them. And vice versa, you have to explain yourself. All of this is anathema, at least to anyone with my variety of shyness: that combination of egotism and ignorance that phones force upon you, it's appalling.