Estranged

Nostalgia

2009-09-19T01:56:53+02:00

I don't know why I do it.

There are times when I find myself trawling YouTube for old songs I used to hear in the clubs back in the mid-nineties. Usually when it's late at night and I really should have gone to bed, like tonight really.

It always makes me nostalgic and the yearning is something else. Like a pang in the stomach.

I guess most of us leave a part of ourselves in that point in our lives when going out, drinking and dancing is what the weekends were for.

Nowadays I can't be bothered or at least thats what I tell myself, the truth is likely somewhere in between and blended with anxiety and self-image issues in a cocktail I'll christen 'too old for all that shit'. I can't hack the hangovers, can't be done with over-crowded bars filled with fresh-faced tossers and mostly, by comparison, the music of the noughties has been a steaming pile.

But when you get the right DJ playing the old stuff... It still gets under my skin. I'm not saying I was a devout clubber, a pulling machine or even a good dancer for that matter. Far from all of that, but still you couldn't beat a good night out and an alcohol-driven wiggle. Anything else was just a bonus.

How do you reconcile what you enjoyed immensely back then and the face in the mirror that greets you every morning? The one you can't quite believe is yours because it belongs to some adult and theres more wrinkles than you want and less of a hairline than you need.

Its true; youth is wasted on the young. My observation was that by the time you realized how narrow the actual window of true youth was, it was gone. In your twenties you're still young by anyone's gauge but twenty-five is not twenty-one and twenty-one isn't eighteen. The silly thing is I'll probably look back in ten years time and think how young I was now.

And perhaps I think too much, write too little of any merit and should have gone to bed already!

Comments

Odibil - Like Libido, Only Backwards!

2009-09-11T17:39:11+02:00

I am in a long-term live-in (all but married officially) relationship and have been for many years.

My girlfriend's Christmas party in December 2007 stands out in my memory for three reasons - two days later we discovered she was pregnant, from my perspective the party was cronically dull and finally, we had sex when we got home. It may seem odd that the sex stands out, the event itself I have no recollection of but because of the following fact it does stick in my memory (and my girlfriend did point out the fact, and date, once on this very subject), since then and until this very day, we've only had sex once since and that was pretty recently. Theres been very little contact in that sense between us at the last (nearly) two years.

Pregnancy I accept can get in the way and if we're being honest I would say it was me, not her, who switched off at that point. Then we have the newborn phase where people are generally too busy and too knackered to bother, which for us has been and passed.

While being honest, on the one occasion recently I think I only succumbed to the notion in the end because I'd passed what seemed like a milestone at eighteen months and the idea seemed to be with us both that day. Its like my approach to quitting smoking, as much as the notion appeals to me from time to time even now years later, I won't even smoke a single cigarette because that will ruin my record and I'll have to start again. Somehow I decided it was close enough, i'd make it a nice round abstainance!

Since then, the flood gates haven't opened and theres been no rumpy-pumpy renaissance. The question is why?

Shortstuff comments that I never try it on with her and my stock reply is just to repeat the same back to her. I don't say it spitefully, it is just a statement of fact. These two comments occur isolation and never result in either discussion or action; Shortstuff could choose her times better, if I'm trying to get to sleep I'm never going to engage on that one. In some respects this celibacy has started me thinking about sex and its place in my life, its obvious that I'm not particularly bothered at this point; the question now is not "why am I not having sex?" but more worryingly, "why am I not bothered that I'm not having sex?'

The physical mechanics still work and I have a young family but there is still plenty of time.

I could say I know her too well to sleep with her and that you need a little bit of unfamiliarity to give it that edge, sometimes thats the real exhilaration but the other arguement is that its better when you know your partner and I'd subscribe to both ideologies equally.

I find myself wondering if the opportunity did arise to sleep with someone else what would happen. I'm not the cheating kind, its more that I'm curious to know whether that adrenaline-pumping animalistic urge would suddenly switch back on even if it was just to be subdued in order to remain faithful.

I believe its more a mental thing than a physical attraction thing. Pregnancy can be hard on a woman's body, its taken some time for bit to snap back into place but Shortstuff is almost there now and overall hasn't really changed. Unlike the next door neighboor who we bitch about and is quite a different shape altogether after her recent family addition. Fat-arse *snigger*

I think I've just got to face it head on - we don't really communicate, we talk but its the perfunctory talk that comes with a child and running a household mainly. Its the connecting thats utterly devoid from our relationship.

Admitting the fact and doing something about it are two different matters however.

I think I've locked her out now and just do an impression of being here. I can do that all to easily with people and can find it difficult to backtrack and re-engage again. Not a helpful trait when theres this invisiable line that won't be crossed, the big elephant in the corner that needs addressing and neither of us is have attempted to bluntly confront it head on.

I don't want to leave, I've no particular desire to be anywhere else. Space would be great but we're not a couple anymore, we're a family and as such thats going to be in short supply. We don't argue, we co-exist quite nicely and its not an affectionless situation its just not an intimate one. We adore our child and we both want more children however now I think about it, it did take about a year to conceive last time which wasn't to do with any biological constraint, but through a lack of effort on our part. So, basically, the sex issue had started even before Shortstuff fell pregnant, based on ratio of attempts to pregnancies I'd say fertility wasn't an issue but if you're only trying once a month the chances of hitting the right days were going to be slimmer.

Perhaps we've just hit that spot that all long relationships stumble across but I'd say its less of a case of it getting a bit stale and more a case of being disatisifed is tolerable in the short-term but over time...?

If it wasn't for this lack of emotional intimacy I could just talk to her about it... Egg, Chicken, Chicken, Egg...

We used to have a lot of fun. Living together can really spoil sex can't it? The humdrum just ends up replacing that 'I haven't seen you all week' urgency.

Gah, maybe its just a phase.

Comments

Crap foreign religon anyway...

2008-08-28T21:10:04+02:00

I watched a film today and the subject matter of the film although totally light-hearted made me come to this point. It's smiliar to points I've expressed during office conversation but from a more defensible stance.

There all these people who go around espousing that they believe in God, praying to God, worshiping him ...But the moment you turn around and say God told you to do something they automatically assume you're a nut-job.

Hang-on.

If he's so real and he listens to everyone of us [sic] then surely it is not inconceivable that he might also talk to us? And indeed if his motives are so unfathomable to us mere mortals that his priests defend them with the explanation that his designs are beyond our knowledge... Then how come no one listens to David Ike?

Ol' Ike is certainly beyond most peoples rational comprehension but we've been told for the past two millenia that we're not to question and we're not privy to the levels of existential understanding required. But it does raise the point that anyone who did claim to be the son of God now would just be ridiculed and chastised.

It does strike me as odd that when we [the ubiquitous human race] were worshiping false idols such as statues of golden cows and being a little less civilised than we are now, which in itself is an arguable point I'm not willing to defend myself, God allegedly sent his only son (lets just gloss over the fact we're all his children and Jesus, God and the Holy spirit are one and the same because that just muddies the waters) down to Earth to redeem us by talking whoopie and getting himself strung up for being a wee bit fruitier than your average smoothie.

Since those heady days of cosmopolitan enlightenment, we've proceeded to deface ourselves, commit genocide on scales that only statistics can describe and the human mind can only fail to comprehend, we've used nuclear weapons against each other and partaken of countless other unspeakable crimes against the spirit of existence.

And what came of Jesus' supposed return? Not a lot.

Unless of course, things haven't yet gotten as bad as worshiping gold plated effigies to the spirit of Moo yet...

My personal favourite hypocrisy is the 're-interpretation' of the Bible whenever it suits the Church's needs to be trendier and more Nu-Liturgy. Now each to their own and their happiness, its of no consequence to me but to press my point does it not say “man shall not lie with man” somewhere in that big waste of tree pulp?

Errmmm. Now Bishop Kiddiefiddler, exactly how DO you come to a new understanding of that statement where it means homosexuality is okay and lets bag a few of our new friends for ordainment while we're at it?

And why is it that the God squad can blather on about resisting evil and renouncing the Devil but the moment someone declares themselves as a worshipper of Satan its just someone being a bit silly, or different for the sake of being different? If he existed as the juxtapose in the sermon, he must exist and therefore be an equally valid choice for those inclined?

What about the bit about clothing? This one gets my goat especially. My limited understanding of all things Biblical leads me to believe that to be ashamed of God's image is against the grain of the tome, but the moment you're naked, believers have a tendency to denounce you as wicked and debased. Oh the irony of the long skirts and high necklines amongst the congregation...

And then there's the depiction of Jesus as a middle-class white man with a neatly trimmed beard... Please, spare me.

The whole premise of that tale is borked from the outset really. Either Joseph didn't know what it was for, or was what we educated modern types would term; a retard. There is the 100,000:1 outsider that Mary was an impossibly rare fertile hermaphrodite but I'd prefer to stick with the assumption that she was a bit clever than that carpenter she'd shacked up with. Wink!

'm going to Hell now aren't I?

I was intending that maybe this post would progress into a productive piece that would have endeavored to make some sense of my limited spirituality but mostly is just been a total flame. Perhaps, I'll get on to that subject another day.

Its still shorter though than anything I would have written about America or world politics...

Comments

Rotating Fish

2008-08-12T21:44:29+02:00

In a rare break of form, I've decided to go against my usual habit of posting and disappearing again for months at a time.

Maybe perhaps that says something about how I am feeling of late? I seem to have plenty of things on my mind and not without justificationr. I'm just not certain that despite my willingness to sit here armed with the power of qwerty, that even a fraction of it will ever make the page – it never does, and thats despite the fact I can go on a bit at times!

What I leave out could fill chapters, not pages. But if I was working under the assumption that no one else would ever read it, then I wouldn't be writing it here for anyone to see would I? And with that in mind, I generally opt to steer clear of gratuitously excessive naval-gazing. That, and it does me no good either - the plaster may have cracks in it but if you cross your eyes and squint a bit...

Another truth is, I'm enjoying a lot of what I'm reading from other people's pages. While it may be that I am taciturn for months at a time, it is rare that I'm ever truly absent for long. And seeing as am I here anyway...

My mother.

Ugh.

I was almost tempted to start there but no, I'll let that one stew for a while longer and head to happier pastures.

Cot Mobiles!

We have a mobile for the cot of the little one. Purchased, constructed, attached and tested, all ready and waiting for her when she chooses to arrive. And I am in love with it.

It has little plush fishes hanging from it, it projects fishes and stars across the ceiling and plays harmonious tunes that I find soothing and compelling myself.

Coming home from a less than joyous day at work on Monday, I went and sat listening to the mobile for a short while to perk my spirits up a bit.

I think it reaches to a part of me that I keep very closely protected, the part of me that treasures the total innocence of the thing and the world that it represents.

I suspect that is one of the scariest aspects for me of becoming a parent is coming face-to-face with such utterly unspoilt, untainted life. If only life were as simple and as beautiful as such an object as a child's mobile eh?

Its almost, kind of heartbreaking(?) in a sense to know that those moments of total innocence and happiness will be fleeting and that soon enough life will intrude. I suppose, that one day life will shape my as yet unborn little one too and the glimpse of pure innocence will be gone there with time.

I guess I should be thankful for the 99% of me that can be cold and project a solid persona because the other 1% really isn't hard enough to cope with the realities of the world.

It is scary isn't it? Knowing that this little person whose feet I chase across the skin of Shortstuff's stomach will reach right through and find a heart I keep so closely defended.

I could go on, but perhaps this is enough.

Having tried to finish up neatly countless times and just erasing my words I'm just going to give up. It is indeed, enough for one day! The brain has stalled!

Comments

Too Silly

2008-08-06T22:11:34+02:00

Seriously now, I have to say I have no patience for the world any more.

I don't agree with 95% of the western world and its ways and as for those nut-jobs in the middle east... well, lets just say although they do have a point occasionally, a good old medieval crusade to thin their numbers wouldn't go amiss either!

Is there anywhere on this forsaken mudball where a little common sense and perspective still reign?

It must be an age thing, the more you understand of the world around you the less you accept of it. And I accept very little of it as relating to me in any way. The standards and accepted norms of todays society aren't of my choosing lets put it that way.

I'm still waiting for the death of political correctness and have been since the 90's passed by. I'm sorry but between 'defered successes', personal protective equipment for playing conkers, civic insurance for egg and spoon races and all the other multitude of things we can't do, or can't say out loud I think I've reached the conclusion that *drum roll* that global warming IS the best thing to happen to the Earth in thousands of years!

Thats right! The answer to all the world's problems is the one we simple little organisms believe to be the greatest peril it faces. How ironic.

All we need to do is carry on with the pollution and eventually the world will become so inhospitable we will suffer and eventually become extinct. The Earth however, will still be here and will still continue to orbit the Sun.
Without us meddling buffoons turning the glorious wonder of nature into one giant excuse to work rather than live, the Earth will recover and prosper without us quite merrily!

It would be interesting to see if you stood a politician between the train tracks how long it would be before he reached to conclusion that the train would, indeed hit him and wouldn't veer aside at the last moment. Ignorance like that over making positive, not lip-service, policy to combat pollution is yet more damning evidence that as a species, we frankly deserve to go extinct.

Whoever coined the phrase 'Save the Earth' needs a spanking too, global warming is just humanity's brush with celestial Cillit Bang... now if folks had come up with the more correct terminology of 'Save the Humans' people might actually sit up and pay attention.

Anyway, I rant on...

Maybe the next generation will do something more imperative about it... but then again by all accounts they'll be obese, diabetic and dying of heart failure before they're 50 anyways so they won't give a shit either.

Is it just me, or is anyone else waiting for a new breed of politician to arrive?

The one who stands up and says 'with all due respect, the right honourable gentleman is an inbreed fuckwit and wouldn't know his arse from his elbow!?'

The one who looks at the education system and says 'defered success??? Bollocks, its called failure. Some of them are good, some are crap - thats life, get used to it!'

The one who says to all the asylum seekers, 'If you're so scared of persecution I'd have thought you'd have been happy to settle in the first country you came to that was safe - rather than continuing on to the one with free healthcare, free housing and cash handouts'

I await the arrival of the Common Bloody Sense party.

PS.I'm not holding my breath.

PPS. Yes, I NEED a holiday... BADLY!

Comments

The uninspiringly, uningeniously entitled post named simply, Back

2008-03-29T15:20:00+01:00

Its a commonly accepted observation that the longer you leave something the harder it is to deal with it. So true on so many levels, the first of which is my blog.

The longer I left returning here, the more daunting the contemplation of where to start became. Its now a case of not what to write, but what to leave out. I like to use these pages more to document the thoughts in my head in reaction to things around me rather than the events themselves and to say that my headspace is getting all over the place and very disorganized of late is probably and understatement. Which could explain why I'm here; I always come crawling back sooner or later.

Although I can't quite comprehend the distance its been over three years now since I returned to work after the events that caused my couple of months off. Three years, already? In someways it barely feels more than a few months and in others, well its unfortunate to say it, but I doubt I'd recognize myself before that time when viewed from the perspective of the here and now.

Thats probably a bit of a lie to be truthful. The truth is more likely that I'd look at myself and hate myself when compared to the care free and untroubled person I like to think of myself as having been. I also like to think, in a reasuring manner, that its not been all bad, I suppose you could say I've developed self-awareness as a result of my troubles but that in itself is a double-edged blessing - knowing you're fucked up only means you're fucked up and you know it.

So if three years have passed, it must be about two years(?) or so since I gave up on counseling. It had reached a point where to go any further would have required me giving a lot more to the process and that meant dealing with thoughts and feelings I didn't want to approach. No, even here in the anonymity of blogdom I still keep my secrets, there are some thoughts and feelings that even here I struggle with admitting. ~~Did someone say emotional retard???~~
The next step suggested was to be intensive psychotherapy, whether it would have benefited me I don't know or whether it was introduced as a junction point by my counselor to coerce me into a position where I either open up or make my own way back in the world alone I don't know. The fact that I think like that is either insightful of me or unwarranted paranoia - I lean toward paranoia because I'm not known for giving myself credit that often.

Anyway, a lot of those feelings that I don't want to explore are towards my parents. Suffice to say that what I try to leave visible on the surface is very black and white. The pictures held from inside the maximum security vault that is my skull are painted in billions of shades. Some vibrant, others dull and bleeding through into each other. Most of them though are distinctly grey.

I know I'm screwed and the more I experience life with this knowledge the more I'm able to see how my reactions whether expressed or not are coloured by the truth that I'm pretty messed up on some levels and it has shaped me whether I buried the feelings or not.

A though has just occurred to me, I'm generally paranoid that people might see me as 'flaky' or perhaps inconsistent (or would unfathomable be the correct description?) because my reasonings and opinions are my own and can be subject to which ever element of my personality is closer to the surface on any given day... If people were allowed to see beyond the withdrawn shell I show to others, would they understand better or truly see how deep the cracks run?

Its a thought, nothing more. Like I would ever be that, 'open'.

Anyway, what did I learn from my counseling? All manner of things, possibly the most prolific of which were the fact that, looking at the bigger picture that my footprint in the world was getting smaller and smaller as I was withdrawing from life and just how long this process had been occurring.

I would like to say things have changed, but on reflection for a while I might have been a little more talkative but now I keep myself to myself and thats that. I've always kept my family at arms length and this holds true even now, even with the pitiful few I will still talk to.

I talk to the people at work but do I connect with them? No. I have to admit I probably keep them at a distance so deliberately that it likely shows.

Anyway, back on track... The reason for a lot of my recent inner turmoils? A lot of questions I find myself wondering for the future and how to approach it.

I found last December that I'm going to be a father. Wonderful news for Shortstuff and I after a year of trying and lets be honest, its no small an event! Which is probably where a lot of my uncertainty and axieties of late have been coming from. Stress is stress, whether for good reasons or bad and as a person I can be very blind to the effects that it has until I do something random and compulsive and wonder why I was so vulnerable to the suggestion.

As great as the fact is though, it obviously plays a lot on my own experiences and I find myself wondering how I am going to answer certain questions and approach some situations in the future. Very, very tough questions I have to ask myself about how I'm going to handle certain scenarios.

Bean, which is the pet-name Shortstuff and I have for our unborn, will come into the world surrounded by a family that received the news with joy and he/she will be loved. Bean will have two parents, two uncles, an auntie and a cousin, two grandmothers and grandfathers, even two great-grandmothers (sadly his/her great-grandfather passed away a month or so after we broke the news) and there are plenty of other well-wishing friends and extended family in the mix too.

Its not a bad start in life is it? Better than a great many others get I'm sure and despite what I write here, on the surface in everyday life I do a bloody good impression 99% of the time of being normal. I'm determined that no matter how I see myself from the inside and no matter how utterly dead I am to some people, that Bean will get my love and care. Personally its probably the task I am best suited to; making silly noises is one of my specialties. I can't wait for the Lego phase either!

I just have to bear in mind a few potential landmines for the coming years ahead like what I do when Bean is old enough to realise and to ask questions - awkward ones like why he/she has two grandfathers and his/her cousin has three. Mercifully I have a good few years to think about that one!

I'm also not entirely keen on being called 'Dad' either, but Shortstuff doesn't seem too keen on the idea of just using my name. That said though, we only tend to use our names when talking about each other to other people, so she herself isn't used to calling me by my name! Not sure I like papa either... Suggestions on the back of the proverbial please.

I am looking forward to being viewed as someone special though. Its pretty pants when you reach that stage in life where you realise that the adults around you are just ordinary, flawed human beings like yourself; it'll be nice to exempt from that crushing revelation in someone eyes for a few years.

Comments

Dancing

2007-09-23T22:58:17+02:00

I hate this crap, not the dancing mind but somewhere, inside me, there is this doubt.

For the sake of a metaphoric description I'll call it the Anxiety virus and, like a computer virus, its running through my hard-drive looking desperately for the right files. It wants to find something to worry or feel guilty about and then use it to crash my system and slap up the blue screen of death just behind my eyeballs.

Its not a feeling I'm unfamiliar with. Unfortunately I know this only too well, but mercifully it is mild now. In the deepest part of my total wig-out at the end of 2004, this beast ruled supreme. The only way I could escape the torture of being totally consumed with angst and imagined guilt about something, was for the virus to unearth something else from the darkest corners of my mind to replace the previous issue. To continue the computer-based metaphor, I had that many pop-ups and error messages, eventually I just ground to a halt.

Like most things obsessive, it is likely to be a learnt behaviour that has become routine. A default state that part of my mind goes back to whenever I have left my immediate comfort zone and stretched my boundaries a bit more.
Its almost like I'm trying to find something to punish myself with for actually, heaven forbid, enjoying myself.

Shortstuff and I went on the lash Friday. Her friends had come around beforehand and asked me along too. Despite my feinted protestations, I had been hoping. Having lost touch with nearly every last person I ever really called a friend over the years, I wanted just to see what was out there I guess.

We went from pub to pub, I drank. We went to a club as you do, and instinct (and alcohol) just took over and I was on the dance floor in a flash. I couldn't help myself, it was music from the mid 90's, back when dance music was good and not this rehashed 80's pop-song drivel that you get lately...

And what do I feel now? I'm trying to make myself feel like a nob, thats what. Trying to tell myself I probably looked like a right twat on the dance floor. Sure, I wave my arms in the air and jig around; I probably looked like a twat when I used to go clubbing ten years ago, so now I'm pretty sure I look like an old, balding twat instead.
I don't know why I even care, I didn't at the time, I was just enjoying it. Its not like I stand there two-stepping with my arms welded to my sides like a lemon – if nothing else I should award myself points for enthusiasm! I should be objective about it, did anyone pay me any attention really? Probably not - just another person in the crowd. Besides I'm sure Shortstuff would have told me if I looked like a plank or was embarrassing her.

But thats never stopped the bit of me that doesn't seem to like me from having a good kick, and all the while the Anxiety virus is looking for something to feel guilty about.

That's what I hate about getting drunk, probably even more than any headaches the day after. Its the remorseful feeling that I might have let myself go and just gotten on with having fun; I think I'm scared that people will actually form the same opinion of me as I hold about myself should they see me without all the restraint.

Shortstuff didn't seem to mind. I think she appreciates her man keeping her company and dancing with her.

So if I put two and two together and look at the facts, why am I trying to find a reason to critique myself? I was out dancing with a fit, young girl... All things considered I should convince myself that's the bottom line and smile about it.

Still, I've stepped outside my comfort zone and now that bloody Anxiety virus is floating around at the back of my mind looking for a reason to reign me back into the tight confines of my usual existence. Oddly, though (and it was probably the calming effect of the alcohol) I didn't really feel like I was that far out of my comfort zone, it felt good if I was honest. Time was, many years ago when I'd go out nearly every weekend and get absolutely hammered and dance...

All this worry and concern just is a pointless reaction to nothing; so now I've come here, I've written it down maybe I can just let it ebb away without it gaining any credibility. Flush it down the Blog so to speak...

Twas quite a surprise to wake up the morning after on the sofa with me feet on the coffee table though. The getting home bit must have passed me by

Comments

Double standard

2007-09-11T21:42:27+02:00

I'm not a big follower of most reality television programmes, because frankly, I don't want to be cajoled into investing any emotion into caring about the contestants/celebrities. Reality television was interesting once, but so was Changing Rooms back in the day.

However somethings you can't help but learn about despite whether you were actively watching or not - and the latest one is the Jim Davidson exit on Hell's Kitchen.

Did he ask to leave? I doubt it, I wouldn't be surprised to discover his 'request' was all stage managed. Even in today's atmosphere of blasting a show for 'creating' its footage, that still pales in terms of severity when compared to the backlash from the Shilpa Shetty race debacle of celebrity big brother. "Faking it or discrimination? Hmmm, lets go with the lesser of two evils. Call Jim and tell him he's gone!"

Maybe he did decide to go, to save his own image from a dragged out bashing, whatever. What happens on the surface of this matter, I couldn't care less really - I just wanna have a bitch and I've got my target!

I just would like to ask everyone with an opinion to hold back on their vehemence for a moment and remember this one thing before they pat the production company on the back for their stance in defending personal choice and showing us all what a narrow minded bigot this Davidson is...

When was the last time you saw an openly lesbian presenter on television?

Indeed, few and far between aren't they! Thats the real discrimination going on here - "Is he gay? Sure, give him his own show!" But if you happen to be a woman who likes a bit of muff? ...Its doubtful you'll ever get close enough to a reality show to have the luxury of being discriminated against on national television. That discrimination happens way before the camera start rolling.

Its not about defending the peoples rights thats not the point of this post. I'm not saying I'm for or against homosexuality either way; this is just chance to rant about the faceless institutions of this world and point out the big flaw when they are trying so bloody hard to politically correct lately its getting painful to watch.

This post is just me saying I'm not buying it; I see the double-standard.

There, had my whinge. I'll shut up now.

Comments

The simply entitled: Question post

2007-09-10T17:10:55+02:00

Its rare I ever ask anything on my blog, but I'm going to break with form here and put something out there for those people who pass by.

Imagine if you will, that you are to be an ornament in the corner of a room. In the corner but clearly visible. An ornament that everyone in the room can see, but no one is allowed touch... You are also blindfolded.

In this scenario would it push your buttons more to be: a naked ornament, blindfolded in a room of clothed people? Or: a blindfolded, clothed ornament in a room of naked people?

I have no idea really why I felt inclined to put this thought out there, but there it is. The idea popped into my head recently and I think its an intriguing little query.

Comments

Silence is golden(?)

2007-09-03T22:06:06+02:00

This is an interesting one.

Shortstuff and I haven't really said anything to each other since about 0100am Sunday morning. Its a case of if I'm in the room, you're not and vice versa. As behaviour goes, this isn't entirely unheard of. We are both good sulkers and can play this game for days at a time. However, I'm actually a bit hazy on the reasons for it!
It wasn't that I was drunk and can't remember because I wasn't (being the designated driver and all) and I know that I am mad at her. I'm just not entirely sure why. I think it is because she is mad at me and I don't think she's got justifiable reason to be any more than a bit cheesed off. So I guess I'm mad at her for over-reacting.

I didn't want to dance. I don't care how many people we trying to drag me off my chair I wasn't going to slow dance with her because I didn't feel comfortable in the environment one bit. But, and I'm largely guessing to fill in the bits between the lines here, Shortstuff was hugely offended by my complete and utter refusal to indulge in a public show of affection with her. This would likely have not caused any incident and may have even gone entirely unnoticed as me just being a lazy grump, but for the fact there was an ex-girlfriend in the room. Not the one from my niece's christening, nope. The one I don't talk to, doesn't talk to me and you get the idea... Luckily we never cross paths apart from the at our mutuals friend's large family occasions.

Personally I don't feel the need to parade my current woman if front of her, but I guess from Shortstuff's perspective she needed to send a signal out to my Ex or the people in the room in general.
Admittedly, she did make some comment earlier in the night about never acting like we're together. Who is the one though who goes out with her friends and gets me to pick her up at three in the morning without even a whiff of an invite in my direction?

I think I should be excused a bit if Shortstuff gets a bit sidelined while I enjoy having a laugh when I get together with my best mate - she has friends at work who she also socialises with, my friend and his wife live two and a half hours drive away. The only person I ever really get to talk to day-in day-out, week after week IS shortstuff! Now I've written it down is it any wonder I'm not all that focused on her in such situations???

...Or was she pissed because I do flirt a bit with another girl at these get-togethers and then refused to dance with her? Throw in a little bit of would rather chuff off and talk to my best mate than pander to her insecurities and I think I've got her side of this stonewall silence.

Okay, so I flirt a bit, but it is playful and suggestive rather than out and out trying it on. I do it with Shortstuff right beside me, but I am literally playing; I'm not going anywhere with it and I'm not keeping it hidden from her. Shortstuff knows my sense of humour and that if it shouldn't be said, chances are I said it half an hour ago and that I'm now plumbing the depths beyond the lowest rung!
If the girl in question is liable to blush or be shocked by my forthrighteousness (is dat a wurd?) then it's like a red rag to me.

Anyway I've waffled a little away from the point.

So basically I think thats why she was/is mad, and I'm mad because she's mad and I don't think it warranted histrionics of that scale. And now we're not speaking and as per usual I can't be arsed to be mature and sensitive and be the first to break the ice. So guaranteed, we'll eventually start off with some silliness then make up a bit and nothing much will ever be said. That could be a day or two away yet (I forget what the record is...) so the question now is –

Is it wrong for me to enjoy the peace and quiet?

Lol. I shouldn't laugh, its bit cruel but it has to be recognised that I haven't had any bleating on about marriage and the fact I haven't got around to it or show any interest in it in over 24 hours now! (That could be a record!!!)

It's evil to say it, but perhaps I could drag this out peace until the end of the week!?

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Kerchiiiiiiiiiiiiiiing!!!

2007-08-28T21:03:38+02:00

My employers have decided to give me a new job, not offer... just give it. I guess they couldn't take the chance I'd tell them where to shove it.

I'm losing my shift allowance admittedly but on the upside they have given me 7,788 reasons not to tell them to swing. So the net result is quite considerably in my favour.

Bastards. That's the kind of crack that gets anyone's attention (unless your name's Nick Leeson of course).

Money can be a vulgar thing and discussions of intimate detail with anyone who isn't intimately known to you is pretty uncouth territory I find, but I hope I'll be forgiven because in the context of this long running gripe of mine, I think its relevant to my position in it all. That is of course, if anyone has been following it, you'd be forgiven because I too, got bored of it long ago!

Oddly, I'm not convinced this is all-in-all a good thing. I'm still lacking a considerable degree of enthusiasm for the whole thing, job, colleagues and employer combined.

...But I do have to admit that when I found out (last Friday) I spent most of the day smirking and cackling a most evil laugh to myself when no-one else was around.

And that raise will also run over into the quarterly bonuses which are percentage based... Mint

I would almost think myself shallow and mercenary but perhaps I'm just trying desperately to cling to the only silver-lining visible in the big blavk cloud that is my relationship with work. It took nearly a year for this whole situation to get to this stage so I guess in the final analysis it payed off digging my heels in and getting narc'ed about it all in the end!

Still, that is one f'ing big bung *snigger*

"Double or nothing thats why they call me Terry Tibbs, I thank you and goodnight" *click*

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Fed Up, Cheesed Off and Seething.

2007-08-11T00:13:17+02:00

Sometimes I come here, sometimes I don't. Sometimes I just end up blasting whatever I've written and sometimes I look in and then decide not to fan the embers. Whatever purpose or pleasure blogging holds for me, some days it is better to ignore the issues of life and not rake them up.

I'm in two minds again tonight, there is plenty going on in my life – not in an action packed whirlwind sense but in the shifting of little fragments here and there, both around me and in that blessed bubbling cauldron that is my head.

Work is top of the list again today. :-(" class="middle" border="0">

After waiting since January to be offered a new role at work to replace the one that was outsourced last December, and having been on 9 days of training courses in the last month to facilitate a new direction, I have finally been told what the plan is.

Whoopee.

I get to keep pretty much all of the job I have now (which is nearly all of what I used to do before a piece of it was outsourced anyway...) and then, endeavoring to minimise the drain on my time with those duties, take on a new function.

Stunning.

I hate my job, and I mean really hate. The kind of hate that sees me sitting there actively wanting to hurt my boss who has become the main target of my spite such is my frustration at this predicament. That sort of hate ruins lives, and I've already spent years wallowing in that particular colour of mud already.

I can't stay. I can't leave. I can't form the arguments to express myself and I can't lash out physically either (as much as I want to).

I also don't think I can take much more of it.

In normal circumstances I think most people would not see the little things as badly as I do, but I just don't want any of it, on any level. So even the smallest things are weighing me down.

I'm just eating myself up slowly.

They had better offer me a stupidly, ridiculous pay rise to continue on in this useless excuse for employment else I think I will tell them where to [quote] fucking [unquote] stick it.
I've waited long enough. I've jumped through the hoops for them. I think I'd be justified in tearing some fuckwits new ass holes.

It's getting to the stage where even though I would likely be slicing my salary in half and end up working a plebby factory job or stacking shelves in a supermarket, its becoming tempting just to escape.

Its killing me slowly, I know it. The anger and hate I have for work just bleeds across the whole canvas of my life. Maybe the salary figure I quoted to a supervisor today will find its way back up the chain perhaps? It might be enough of a bribe to keep me there until the boss retires because I'm sure that alone would alleviate a big chunk of my frustrations.

Despite the unusual predicament of being all but indisposable at work for the moment (and the secrets are staying in my head until I get what I want!) I really don't see them making an offer to match the figure I have in mind.

I believe they will offer thousands more than I'm being paid at present. And my figure is thousands more again than that.

I don't need it. Its an arbitrary figure really to aim at. The more I earn the more I save, the more I have saved the longer I can survive unemployed when I do finally throw all my toys out of the proverbial pram.

And I'm very nearly at the precipice where only a stupidly wild salary increase is about the only thing that could stop me committing free-fall employment suicide.

As defeatist as it sounds maybe I should just go to the Doctors and load myself up on the 'couldn't give a shit' pills again. The calm me down variety were okay a couple of years ago, maybe I need the pick me up ones to get me out of this damn hole...

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The Ex-Factor

2007-07-17T22:19:37+02:00

Well, I now know at least part of the impetus behind Shortstuff's advances on Sunday night. Okay, so she might have missed me while I was away in Derby but I think part of her efforts relate directly to having seen one of my Ex's for the first time. Perhaps she wanted to make sure she kept my attention focused in the right direction?

If I had to reason which of my Ex's, Shortstuff had to have been the most curious about it would have been the one present at my niece's christening. As it turns out she is a cousin of a cousin of the mother or something... its a big family in a small town and I've still not figured out all the connections of that clan!

Basically, I think Shortstuff is in a state of shock having discovered that my ex is nothing like the kind of girl she expected, or for that matter, would have expected me to have been involved with.

I will admit I'm finding the whole situation thoroughly hilarious and instead of making reassuring noises in her direction, I'm having a good laugh over the whole matter. Shortstuff is absolutely perplexed – I'm certain she thought my handful of prior companions were all escapees from the nutty wing or otherwise a bit further down the scale completely. Heaven forbid, that there could actually be a normal, good looking woman other than her in my past!

She has pretty much always given me the impression that there wasn't any conceivable chance that any of my ex's would come close to her – it isn't that she's up herself (quite the opposite) she just seemed to have been motoring under the idea the skeletons in my closet were hapless weirdos or summat. Whereas this particular girl was quite something else altogether ...And for Shortstuff to know that, can't be a bad thing. It certainly focused her attention a bit come bedtime

Me, I'm just as shocked to have laid eyes on her again myself.

Back then I wasn't half the screwed up case I am now with all my many over-analyzed woes real or perceived.

And the relationship this particular Ex and I had was barely deserving of that title, but for me at least, and I like to think there was some reciprocation on the other side, it wasn't entirely disposable.

We met in a nightclub (as you do), friend of a friend and such, and the introductory phase was somewhat err... short. Anyway having started the relationship on that kind of footing it never really got away from it. I would say we were 'together' for about a month-ish and although it wasn't totally baseless shagging and nothing else I decided to call it a day.

And that was basically that, apart from the odd times here and there, whenever a particular boyfriend wasn't up to the job that we would bump into each other. I suppose I could say I was being used in a way perhaps, but I seriously doubt the whichever the other guy was at the time(s) ever knew anything at all so if there was nothing to be jealous about, I wasn't being used for that purpose. Maybe she was using me for sex (which admittedly for a bloke is a decent confidence booster!), maybe there was something else there under the surface – it wasn't like we weren't exactly friendly but it was like two people with impenetrable defenses refusing to ever let anything go.

Like we could give our bodies with barely a thought, but actually risking an emotional connection? She will probably never know it but I wasn't entirely cold about it all, I still do have a fondness for the memories. It was just two people who couldn't stop it putting on a front for each other and where in some regards I don't regret sparing myself all the hassle and baggage that any relationship with her would have had, there is always that little bit of me that wonders if the glimpses of who we were when we talked could have ever been anything really special. I'm probably still in nostalgic fantasy land with that last sentence...

Anyway, back to the history bit - We bumped into each other like a that a few times over a period of about 5 years and the last time was a few months before Shortstuff and I got together. The next time we spoke I knocked her back because I had just started that new relationship and that was the last we ever spoke.

She knew I was there too (I don't camouflage easily in any social setting I've yet discovered!) and my curiosity would so love to know what she was thinking. Probably something like, he still looks like a twat or he's aged badly... Who knows? Could she have wanted to say hello too, just for old times sake?

Shortstuff even decided to tell me that I could go and speak to her, which was selfless of her because I expect she didn't really want me too, but with the situation and the people around, it just didn't seem right.

Maybe it's for the best.

Its wholly academic in the scheme of things now but it can't hurt to say that I quite liked the look with her hair dyed blonde as it is now...

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All stirred up.

2007-07-15T22:26:30+02:00

Interesting day. An interesting day indeed.

Today was my little niece's christening, and although I don't agree with such concepts myself I wasn't going to miss it just because I don't agree with it - I'm probably going to have to make that compromise myself sometime sooner or later.

She was gorgeous and very well behaved, slept and slumbered her way through just about the whole day and the many many friends and relatives she was passed around. Look out for my brother tonight, she won't need any more sleep today!

But why did I consider the day interesting? Well, first off perhaps interesting is the wrong word. Tumultuous is probably a better fit. I've finished my day with my head in a total spin and inside my emotions have taken a bit of a jolt.

The after-do was back in my home town, a mere 13 miles up the road from where I live now but a place I avoid to the extent it may as well be 130 miles up the road. Being back there with a few familiar faces (and a few jars of alcohol) has tripped a nerve and I actually ended up feeling that I missed the place.

Do I really miss it? After all, what was there to miss? Except, do I miss the familiar faces, friends or not? Or was I just a bit merry and (as you do) nostalgic?

And, there was also the small matter of an ex-something.

I say ex-something, ex-girlfriend maybe? Was it ever that serious, technically we could have called it that for about a month maybe but that was like 12 years ago. Ex-shagbuddy? Is that closer the mark? But even that was entirely over once I met Shortstuff, and to be precise I knocked her back just after Shortstuff and I started seeing eachother. We haven't spoken since and I think I've probably only seen her about in the street once in those last 7 years.

But, damnit, I so wanted to speak to her today.

Despite nothing serious ever coming of the times our paths crossed. Fuck it. I don't really know what to say here.

I just would have liked to chat and find out how she is, how she's been. But I didn't find the courage just to go ahead and do it. Hours passed by and thats it, it could be years again before an opportunity comes along.

Maybe, when I'm totally sober tomorrow I won't think anything of it, but I'm pretty certain I still feel a bit shaken inside.

Perhaps thats all my life is now, a joined up string of avoidances I engineer so that I never have to resolve anything or determine any truth in what I feel?

Meh, I'll just finish here. Enough has been stirred up inside today, without me looking closely at it all.

I got plenty of cuddles with my little niece and thats enough to make it a good day for me

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Many a true word spoken in jest

2007-07-15T00:58:58+02:00

Whilst pointing out something to Shortstuff earlier tonight I punctuated the cleverness of my reasoning by saying, 'I am as bright as I am insane'.

Like most comments of flippancy that come out of my mouth it was more truthful than anything I ever say with total seriousness.

Now this remark can be interpreted in one of two ways -

1. Either I am not as smart as I think I am (and as I am compulsively self-depreciating I could be smarter than I allow myself the temptation of believing sometimes).

2. The statement was disturbingly on the money and I should book myself a padded cell without delay!

I'm going with the latter.

The more and more I have time to think and consider my behavior and reactions to stimuli, even (and especially) the unseen reactions that occur only inside my thoughts, the more and more I begin to suspect that my preoccupations could one day become inescapable delusions.

I'm not saying that I've concluded there is only one destination on this journey, but rather that I could be completely screwed in the long run if I cannot work through my demons and actually 'change' the way I'm programmed.

One day soon I think I will have to sit down and make a decision on how I want to go forward in this life. It may have been over a year(?) since I last saw my counsellor but I've not yet shaken the feeling that there is some unfinished business that needs to be addressed.

That said though, I tend to think theres a lot of unfinished business in my life generally.

Comments

Overdue

2007-07-13T21:37:27+02:00

Monday 09-July-2007

If I said it had been too long, it would be an understatement. I would like to say its been for a lack of inner turmoil to express but it's closer to the truth to say that I just haven't made the effort.

Like a lot of things in life, my blog has become something its easier to not devote the time to than rather than get stuck in and work through my thoughts as I used to do. Some part of me would like to think I that by not writing, it equates to the same as having nothing to write about, but while I'm admitting to being lazy lets just agree that my issues haven't wafted off into the ether either.

But I'm working on the ignorance is bliss approach!

So, why the date at the top of this post? Quite simply, I've been dispatched on a training course to Derby and, what with sitting in my room this evening watching the television, I've finally got no excuse not to spare the time. I could read a book, watch a DVD or even go for an exploratory stroll outside but its time to finally itch the itch that has been bothering me and write again. When I get home, hopefully I'll just upload this and not scratch another potential post as I have done to a few in the past.

Where is my life at? In some ways, its not really evolved much from the last thing I wrote here but even if I have tried to fashion a bubble of protective constancy around myself, the world around me continues and inevitably some of that seeps through to affect me.

Its probably a bit too late to recount a lot of the past months and frankly I still remember that there was something I intended to write after my holiday to Fuerteventura last year that never got written. I've been again since and it's likely I will go again in a couple of months so, I guess, that means I've got procrastination down to a fine art. Ha!

But to recap in short (just to put a framework to my blathering) I am here training for a trainee position I have not yet been offered – so my employers are still assholes then! Nice to know that my secure little bubble has worked in some areas of my life. Thats too much bullshit for one barrel, so perhaps thats one story for another day

I'm still not married, I'm still getting my ear bent about it a lot and we're still not pregnant – something I really should get around to putting some effort into sometime! Its that old, been there, done that syndrome I think rather than something in my subconscious saying no on the sly. I've wanted children for a long time, biologically at least. It's like a craving that just wants to get my lineage out there, quite possibly thats a bit weird for a bloke but I'm now an uncle and meeting my niece for the first time was pretty cool.

Mentally I'm quite stable with the anxiety and the freaky compulsive behavior that it causes. I don't stretch my limits in that respect much, but I'm totally not paralyzed by them. The walls of the room are quite widely spaced of late.
If I was to consider it closely, I would hazard a guess that perhaps a lot of the way I am has been dictated in the past by hidden sets of rules that limit my exposure to situations liable to trigger such OCD reactions. Who knows? Perhaps as a defense mechanism it is so ingrained I wouldn't even recognize half of my behavior as being restrained between parameters.

Anyway, I've just been on a long phone call to Shortstuff and I've lost a bit impetus now, and well, I do rumble on a bit.

I'm still not smoking though!

That's seven months now, I still feel the urge to smoke but I can't face having to start from scratch again to beat this personal record!

Comments

Painting Over The Cracks... Yet Again.

2007-07-12T21:37:51+02:00

Thursday 12 July 2007

This is tragic.

Even in a relative vacuum of distractions I can't even seem to get my act together to get around to posting. Still that said, I was being sociable last night with a couple of other lads from the course I'm on. But tonight, no offense to them, I really didn't want to make conversation.

I don't know if I made the right decision. Maybe I should have made the effort, if only as a distraction to myself.

I'm so close to tears all the time of late. It's shocking but I barely made it through Home and Away today! The acting can't be that Oscar winning, so it has to be me.

I would say it is because of being here and the stress of being away somewhere alone for the first time in years. It was a stressful proposition for me I'll admit and I am really glad to be going home tomorrow before my behavior starts to show the strain. I'm getting anxious and I can see it, time to scurry back to my hole to recuperate before it begins to stick...

I would say it is being here... apart from the fact I've been feeling this way for some time. Something in the back of my head must be smoldering away and the notion of tears just sits behind my eyeballs a lot of the time.

The last seven months have been very stressful and I've never finished resolving all the err.. unresolved issues that counseling never cured either. But slowly, I am highlighting problems with the way I am and the way I act – almost like I'm starting to see the big picture. There aren't a lot of solutions yet, but I am waking up to a lot of the issues so that's at least something.

Anyway, I'm in danger of digressing...

Men cry, I know. But its a luxury I have rarely ever allowed myself. Yet again, I cling to the flaws that I treasure so greatly despite the fact that the very same flaws are often just the symptoms of my problems.

I can't even admit weakness to myself, it is so rare to even allow myself to acknowledge such weakness to myself in private. A fact, that considering it, is probably an even bigger weakness.

I'm a sad, messed-up case and by now I would have thought I would learned to have the bloody sense to allow myself to release the pressure. I would probably feel so much better for it but I do wonder though that if I break and cry I might not get back up again.

It has been said that I'm a strong person and that I've had to deal with a lot in my life; I wouldn't go that far. If ignoring my feelings and turning my heart to stone just to make it through the crap is being strong, then maybe I am. Its quite true that no-one can break me, I am impossible to grind down (until of course I turn on myself).

But in retrospect is being 'strong', my biggest weakness?

I know many people use their blogs just to vent, and the same is definitely true of me. For once though, I think that rather than just stirring up more matters in my mind, writing tonight seems to have distracted me and improved my mood.

Its good to talk um, write!

Comments

Who am I trying to kid?

2007-02-15T21:27:55+01:00

My behaviour is getting worse again. I’ve tried to manage and I think outwardly any behavioural compulsions are near invisible, but inside my head is a different story.

I could almost swear it is like sharing the inside of a skull with someone else but its hard to define – It feels like its always me in here, but equally it is alien in a way. It doesn’t fell like a different person but it is like having two of me inside the same head except one of us is seriously screwed up. A different persona sort of... kinda at the back to the left of the inside of my head if that makes any sense at all, someone who is me but isn't and talks just beside the inner vision of me.

I know its me in this inner monologue, its familiar and stuff - its just that if it really was me then surely I would have done away with it by now?

I have wondered in the past if something I’ve never spoken about here, or really in any detail to anyone, has given birth to two identities inside my mind – one at the forefront and one who didn’t exactly go away at the point in time where the path forked. I acknowledge that that does sound extremely vague and unfortunately I’m not going to openly clarify it. Try as I might, even in the anonymity of blogdom I’ve never managed to persuade myself to leave some of my most ferociously guarded secrets lying around on a page.

I guess what a psychiatrist might describe as my 'cognitive behaviour' is giving me grief of late and I’m heading back to that edgy state where a slanted perception of a non-existent issue is as much a cause for a bout of anxiety as having a real problem. More so, in many cases! You can ‘see’ a real problem and work through it – fighting an internal conflict is so much more distracting and clouded.

I can’t afford to succumb to these problems again, there’s no way I can end up signed off work again like I was a couple of years ago. As much as I hate this job and this situation, I know that if I was signed off I would never persuade myself to return here.

Besides, as much as I would probably admit I miss the discussions with my old counsellor, me and my recovery ain’t going back there without a fight!

I've got to try and keep a lid on the gremlins... And the morose moods. I'm such a bugger for wallowing in my own reflections and that only stirs the years (and years, and years) of festering questions and uncertainties.

Thank fook for computer games eh? Somewhere I can stick my head and generally forget the world for a couple of hours.

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Creeping doubt.

2007-01-30T21:53:07+01:00

It's both remarkable and quite boring to see how the content of my blog has changed over the last year or so. Just scanning back down the page I see that I have just filled it with gripe after gripe about work.

I think perhaps, that signifies progress in some way; that I am less introspective and that my life recovered enough not to be wholly transfixed by itself. Now, its just obsessed with relating work problems.

Problems that remarkably, I have not let overwhelm me. To have not been dragged down by the stresses so far has startled me – but I'll not get ahead of myself and declare victory because I have been watching and observing. When you catch them from the corner of your eye you can see them there again - the demons have begun to stir slowly.
They are clever little bastards I'll grant them that – they know I am more aware of myself now and know what to look for and so they bide their time and have taken to harassing my defenses when I'm most vulnerable.

Only the other morning I awoke plagued with guilt over something I had dreamt I'd done(!) It's unsettling but thats not an unknown occurance but that was a few days after waking and then being kept from a peaceful lie-in by the guilt and anxieties about something else I had fixated upon and had to endeavor to rationalise and contain.

Both key signals that maybe I'm slipping backward of late.

I had known I wasn't entirely free of, shall we say 'eccentricities', after the last outbreak but they had lessened and I knew where the boundaries lay and how far I could push myself within these parameters. Lately though my comfort zone seems to be shrinking back at the edges.

That's how it starts; slowly, like a tide coming in. A bit closer, a bit closer and then before I know it I'm being washed from shore. Perhaps the very fact I 'think' I've done well these past five months or so to keep the stress under control isn't a good sign – maybe that despite now being able to concede that I am human and can suffer from stress, I'm not fully appreciating the depth of what I'm in at present.

If only I could have just the one demon, just the fiery, furious one. The one that is just rage and very few words. He has his uses, he can be channeled with care and put to good endeavor as spirit or drive. The one I'm almost scared to wish away.
The other shadows, the sniveling cowardly ones who like to jump me when I'm half awake or half asleep I can really live without. I don't want to go back to that torture – I like to be able to go about my life, I like to be able to think without repeating the same thoughts over and over until something worse comes along.

Maybe just maybe, I should have stuck at counseling just that little bit longer and found a way to make the process more productive - maybe if I had been more open and honest? Even in blogdom I skirt around the edges and witter on in a vague fashion. Is that, here in this most anonymous of outlets, just another sign of avoidance?
Maybe the trick is to be honest with myself first and believe me - I'd rather the smokescreens, a delusion or two and the blatant denials than lay myself out bare and all because I can't cope with how I measure up to my own expectations. Measures set too high and gauges too unforgiving.
Why do I always wish to hone and refine the characteristics that in essence make me less of a human being? Why is it always colder, more precise, more staged and unflappable. More intimidating and aloof, why not more caring, more expressive, more heartfelt? I think it is because emotions aren't neat and tidy; they require trust and sharing, having weaknesses whereas bitterness, paranoia, hatred and anger are the colours I'm more suited to wearing openly.

When I think about it and start writing it, is it less a case of recovery and more a case of slap up some wallpaper and you won't see the cracks just as it always has been?

Hopefully what I learnt about the nature of the beast will save me this time and that this will prove to be just a storm to be weathered as part of the healing process.

I wasn't certain if I wanted to post this. As if doing so was admitting to weakness – have I learnt nothing in the final analysis???

All these questions that I find when I start to write - Ignorance is bliss, even if it is blatant denial of the issues.

Comments

Whats my motivation again?

2007-01-28T00:43:49+01:00

I would guess that I'm not alone here in thinking that the world has mad. Everyday the media in all its many guises paints the road map of our planet's future out in front of us and despite the tragic consequences that await us down that road, we all grumble and bemoan the situation and keep on heading that direction.
I also know that I'm not alone in feeling pretty damn powerless to prevent the outcomes of global warning and ecological destruction.

I'm not a tree hugging hippie or anything, in fact I realise I could do better and that sometimes I am part of the problem – I shouldn't drive to work every day but I do – but there is an enlightened part of me that really really wants to hurt politicians. Just keep fucking hitting them for their total lack of any sense of urgency – it's almost as if they acknowledge the problem will really become apparent in the next term of office, on someone else's shift and is therefore not their problem - They'll probably be quoted in sound bites blaming the present minister when they themselves have retired on the nice pension that the likes of my generation will never see.

It's like that saying 'never underestimate the stupidity of people in large numbers', all these educated people put into a huddle of reputation and media scrutiny and they become worthless sheep. Not one of them prepared to show a real spine and save the planet not their careers.

Anyway, I'll keep putting my cardboard and bottles out for the binmen and wondering what to do with the likes of ice-cream cartons until they overrun my kitchen and stop my ranting on that subject.

But back to me and the job discussions didn't go well in the end, that said, they didn't go badly either. In fact, who knows what happened there, because nothing much has happened since. Largely it was a non-event of sorts I guess.

I did manage to shit on the bosses' idea for my future role quite effectively. I did it more out of spite to my boss than any sense of strategic negotiation on my part and I've come to realise that most of my thoughts on the subject at mostly aimed against him rather than to benefit myself. Dangerous situation that, and I've often suspected I sabotage myself because perhaps I'm actually scared of being successful in any way.

I suggested programming as a way forward. I have since heard from someone else's conversation that the boss thought that would be a better place for me, so then why offer me a role in tech support? The man is a fucking halfwit and it really grates on me to suffer this imbecile when he's over sixty and could have retired and left us all in peace. He's already driven the department into the ground, is he just staying around to finish off the wounded because thats his orders from on high or because he's too stupid to realise that no one has any time or real respect for him???

Now, thanks to a few remarks in one of the meetings that wasted five hours(!) of my week for no reason, I've learned that they need someone ready to roll as a programmer, there aren't enough bodies left now to spare any time to train anyone else – which kind of rules me out I think. And me, I've heard nothing back from that job meeting yet.

I think I'll just have to back track and take the tech support job for whatever I can get and lump it – I just cannot find any enthusiasm for it. Then again, I cannot find any for a programming role or anything else that I could possibly wedge myself into. I do seem to have been utterly ruined for working at my company – nothing seems to appeal to me. The situation is near impossible and all the routes out of it lack appealing signposts.

I do wonder why I get out of bed. I think the answer is 'just because'. I could pay the bills on less money if I had to, but the comfort zone is too much security to just hand away. Even my future father-in-law has pointed out that you don't get that kind of money elsewhere around here, so I guess I only go to work for the money (and because I don't know any other way of being) which has kind of persuaded me to take anything the company offers and lump it.

There has to be something I'm missing here, has my life become so flat-lined and uneventful that its wearing me down or is it the job is so detestable that it has poisoned my entire life? I suspect its the latter, to the degree that I'm almost certain. I go to work where I do just because I know nothing else, I come home to a life that I could describe as contented but nothing else. There is nothing to my life of any consequence except my relationship with Shortstuff and I guess thats about all that keeps me going – without her for company I really would be adrift aimlessly.

I don't even have smoking to enjoy anymore! Its been fifty days I think and I'm managing although I've developed the kind of appetite that just won't quit. Even with these nicotine mints I'm nearly always lusting after eating something – it's going to drive me mad or back to smoking just to make it stop!

I think I need a direction.

Comments

What will tomorrow bring?

2007-01-07T22:34:02+01:00

The ongoing, and quite protracted saga of my predicament at work seems to be heading toward something that looks like a climax. I can only hope now that, metaphorically, the earth moves for me as a result of some truly extended foreplay.

The return to work this past week after the Christmas break got off to a raucous start, the boss and I had a falling out within a few minutes of him arriving at work – the kind where I finally grabbed my coat from the back of my chair and made for the door.

Anyway, cue immediate and extreme back-peddling by the half-wit that impersonates an IT manager and the remainder of my week was seen out with the minimum of contact between us and incredible politeness on his part. For my part, I think remaining monosyllabic is definitely the way to keep the situation deliberately frosty and on edge. It so much more of an advantage when people think you're volatile and need to tread carefully.

The laughable part of it is, the boss probably thinks my reaction is because of the stress of the situation at the moment – to be honest, I'm thriving on the workload – no, its because I could happily draw blood from his face.

I don't think, however, that I have done my position any harm at all...

It seems the predicament of the 'my job is redundant, but I'm not' situation has been accelerated by this bit of scare-mongering on my part (although I was actually walking out for real...) and the result is, I now have a meeting with both the IT and Personnel managers tomorrow to discuss my future role.

This is quite daunting a prospect because the Personnel manager is actually my boss' boss and a cunning shit to boot; not necessarily smart and intelligent in raw terms, but despite the near unanimous opinion that he's a piece of work, he has survived in his post for quite some years now.

Still, he's never had to deal with the wall of silence and eyeballing that I can present when needed so I do at least have that in my back pocket, that and the fact I'm holding all the Aces at the moment. I am the 'lynch pin' between our company and the out-sourcers who now do the job that my office used to do – and because of the hurried nature of the transfer of duties, the outsourcing folks don't know chuff all about actually running our systems without near constant help and tips - and neither does the boss or anyone else still employed at the company.

It has also filtered back to me (after the gossip about my near quitting disseminated outward) that others in the department fear that without me, the whole of the remaining operation could go to outsourcing. My comment to that was, 'its like a big red button marked do not push' – ooh, the temptation! Still, when all is said and done, whether I like them or not, work colleagues are just that 'work' colleagues and business is business: my final decision if it comes to leaving won't be swayed by any potential outcomes after the event.

...And I have at last, I believe, reached a decision on the idea of a future role that has so far been put out to me verbally and to which I've been deliberately very very careful not to pass any comment either way on. In short, my answer is no.

So, if my job role is no longer needed and I don't wish to accept the job so far muted, where to next? I think tomorrow could be a very interesting conversation – especially as I have been advised to perhaps suggest what I would like to do instead.

Personally, I think that advice was double-edged. Well intentioned on the part of the colleague who spoke with me in some respects but (and here's where my innate paranoia creeps in) not without some degree of self-interest or posturing in the grand scheme of office politics perhaps? Maybe he's concerned about the expansion of the outsourcing if I should pull the rug out from under everything..?

The only quibble I have now, is whether my employer can find some technicality to wriggle out of paying me redundancy if I chose not to accept a reasonable alternative role. And even if they can, do I really give a shit anymore?

I think I should best finish up here and go and type a letter of resignation to take with me to the meeting – if nothing else and the discussions begin to draw all advantage away from me, it couldn't hurt to have the Hiroshima of bargaining postures in my pocket ready for emergencies!

Comments

30

2006-12-17T23:40:08+01:00

How I am still sane I will never know.

By 'sane' insert what counts as the base-line for me personally; which unfortunately, isn't quite up to the par of your average non-headfucked individual. It's been a good few weeks since I last keyed a post into my blog and the time, it seems, has passed in somewhat of an overworked, pressure-cooked blur of stress.

Work has finally completed the hand-over to the outsourcers who are basically now doing my job and that of the two lucky gits who got made redundant by choice. Oddly though, since I am effectively out of a job I've never been so busy!

I am, still waiting for the official alternative job offer and took the liberty of nudging the boss about it last Friday making certain to mention the key points of “in writing” and “something I can say yes to”. Given the recent hand over to the outsourcers, he's had a lot on his mind and so, basically I think I'm in for a good months wait or so to see anything more.

But I did catch the look at the remark I made imply it should be “something I can say yes to”, with any luck that brazen swipe will stick in his head and if he's got half a clue at reading people (debatable, although it wouldn't be a long discourse) he'll realise the subtext to that remark and it will cause him some worry.

That hasn't stopped my new supervisor from trying to integrate me into his team – although, poor chap, I've been griping a lot and resisting his efforts – it's not his fault admittedly, but I'm not being drawn into any new roles without a new job actually being offered to me. I'm not risking walking into the job voluntarily as that is fundamentally acceptance by action; as so few opportunities ever arise to really screw an employer back I'm determined to ride this one out until either I get a satisfactory outcome or theres absolutely nothing left to attack with.

They are however, going to have to bribe me to take the new position - I'm not certain a reasonable offer of a couple of thousand quid would be incentive enough anymore. It might be fair to say that I am so far past jaded that we've run out of pretty coloured gemstones to describe my apathy toward my employment.

I've tried to be positive, I've tried to see the advantage in taking something I don't believe I want in view of the bigger picture and in the final analysis, it would seem that even I can't trick myself into mustering any enthusiasm at all; I am not interested in working there. Of course, should the boss suddenly decide that all this hassle isn't worth it and that he should have taken retirement years ago... that would help my will to stay persevere.

The man, frankly, is an embarrassment to us.

To make it worse I've realized that I don't think he is deliberately belittling me because he thinks I don't know my arse from my elbow; quite to opposite – its just a side-effect of his lack of understanding. There was an event the other day though where I was totally over-ruled despite having a second-opinion to back me up simply because the boss hadn't a clue what either of us were explaining – if I had any less self-restraint he would have had his head ripped off. If he had been a bloke in a pub making me feel that humiliated in front of others I would have threatened to fucking beat the shit out of him there and then. I'm not a pretty sight, nor entirely reasonable, when I feel persecuted; my demons are nasty, aggressive little bastards and they only live a milli-metre or two under the surface.

All in all, I'm sitting tight and I'm going to ride this wave of crap out into the new year, if push comes to shove, the run up to Christmas is hardly the best time to start looking at the job market. All-in-all though, the job offer had better be something I cannot with any credibility or sanity (ha!) refuse – otherwise I have a feeling I might tell him to stick it up his proverbial. I'm almost willing that moment to arrive!

This is one totally broken employee. I'm working my guts out dealing with the issues between us and the outsourcers but underneath it all I spend most of my time dreaming of not being there anymore.

In more happy news however, I was treated to a nice long weekend break in Prague by Shortstuff in honour (?!) of my thirtieth birthday. What an absolute feast for the eyes that city is; sure the outskirts are composed of bleak, communist style tower blocks (which in themselves are a spot of culture to behold from a western European perspective) but the heart of the city is stunning. Somehow it pretty much escaped being flattened during the world wars so the architecture remains intact. Totally gorgeous. A perfect way to remind yourself just what a total shit hole the U.K. is.

I have also reached the conclusion having read an article in the news, that the only thing stopping the news media from crying out about an emigration crisis is the immigration crisis! A staggering 10% of Britons don't live in the UK and during 2005 the rate of departure had reached 2,000 people a week. I'm sure the staggeringly bewildering increase in emigration during Labour's term in office won't form part of their next election campaign...

I could go on more but between my job, the usual commercially-based hassle of Christmas (which frankly neutralizes any sense of cheer of goodwill for the season) and giving up smoking – it really is quite remarkable I'm not making a bee-line to the nearest funny-farm. Or perhaps, I 'am' really near the edge and, true to form, have neglected to notice.

9 Days without smoking... Of course, now instead of booking a one way ticket to hell via lung cancer I'll probably have all my teeth rot out from the sheer volume of NiQuitin mints I'm consuming!

The bloody cravings are getting worse too! The first few days are never much of a problem, now the going gets tough.

Fundamentally I've smoked since I was fifteen or sixteen, my best record of quitting was about three months back when I was seventeen. Since then I've only managed a day or two and about 10 days once, so in a couple of days I will have beaten my second best record.

It's going to be weird from here on out, I've no concept of recognising myself as a non-smoker. No idea whats keeping me from temptation at the moment, I just seem to have said "30. Thats it, time to give up."

I think its a case of I can't face lapsing and having to start from day one again!!

Comments

Tempting, actually.

2006-11-10T22:08:15+01:00

Well I did it, in the end. I persuaded myself to be proactive and go see my Manager and have a good grumble about the total lack of consultation and information heading my way.

I wasn't entirely sure I could be bothered with the situation and was in two minds as to whether I really was destined to find somewhere else to work or see how the ground lay here. I have to admit I kind of enjoyed most of the conversation, especially the uncomfortable boss bit.

I try to take notice of body language a bit more than I used to because I have a habit of realizing the subtext of what is or isn't said long after the event. When I remember to watch people while they talk it alleviates a bit of that particular short-coming.

I enjoyed watching him fiddle with anything he could lay his hands on while my eyes just bored into him. To be honest, I learnt to look people in the eyes during job interviews and lets be totally honest... I do it to death in situations where I feel a bit of intimidation is required!

While he fiddled and babbled and looked around I just sat forward and eyeballed him.

It wasn't a short conversation and frankly, he babbled on for what must have been at least half an hour recounting things I already knew i.e. The bleeding obvious facts of the situation.

Anyway, long story short, my position as it stands is redundant. I did ask forthrightly “Why am I not redundant?” and the answer is they have a use for me.

This is actually looking pretty good... My job is history but they have another job for me. Which is exactly what I wanted to hear – I can have that all so important maneuverability I wanted, I have no job and an offer which if I refuse to take should leave me in a reasonably good position to argue that I am therefore redundant: 'Wheres my big cheque? And thank you very much!'

There is a precedent at my company to include a clause in the job description that states the job can include any other duties as may be assigned – therefore to know that my job is redundant kind of invalidates that clause should I choose not to take the new job that will be offered.

Had my position not been made redundant by the outsourcing move, that tiny little clause could have been used to remove 90% of my job and replace it with 90% of another. As it stands now, if I elect to do so my arguments for redundancy have a lot stronger footing.

But.

And its a big but! The job on offer is actually sounding pretty tempting. There's nothing on paper yet and I made a very big point of not speaking my mind in favour for or against the offer so as to leave my options widely open.

There's every chance the job title will involve the word trainee or junior bolted on the front which is a little demeaning unless your under 25 but it was mentioned that the boss would like to get some more money for me. I guess I could live with one of those words in my title for a year or two if it meant a pay rise. Plus once the offending word was removed from the title that would mean more money again! I didn't protest too much... He didn't need to know that I don't need anymore cash lol

And training, proper formal training courses... Which means lovely bits of paper that mean I can take the extra cash, the training and experience and get another job somewhere else for even more cash!

Money is nice, not having to scrimp and save and worry is nice and ever since leaving home I've not had to worry (I know that sounds like its a bit in reverse there!) so even more money I guess will help towards other things I want to achieve.

Most of my ambitions as a person aren't work related at all. I don't find myself sticking in extra hours on the off chance that someone will notice and reward me, I have personal ambitions rather than career aspirations and to have even more disposable pennies hanging around will be of great benefit in that respect. I have a fair idea that children cost a lot... Not to mention another jump up the housing ladder in a county with mental house prices and where the average wage is probably only just above half of the national average of about 24,000 pounds.

Back to the point however, I made damn clear that despite being the youngest in the department I've had a bellyful of being considered, rightly or wrongly by my suspicious mind, of being the office junior and I wouldn't stand for being used as the 'fetch and carry' for every one else.

Literally though, if I were a listed company, my stock would be on the verge of going through the roof! As the last remaining one of my team not being made redundant I will be a link between the company and the outsourcers in terms of hands-on experience and understanding. Which sounds to me like I'm in a very strong position generally and able to claim a lot more responsibility when it comes to 'considering' what any increase in salary on the new job will be. Plus my shifts, where I get the pleasure of getting up at 5am every other week, will be gone.

I can only hope that what I might gain in salary will not be negated in entirety by what I am likely to lose in shift allowance – that would be just so typical of my company to reward with one hand and slap with the other!

Toward the end of the conversation, I did start to show some flexibility in order to show willing and a more conscientious attitude to the situation and have begun to embrace the task of the hand over to the oursourcers willingly. It's a mammoth task with an incredulously short deadline and one that has eaten a week almost without stopping to catch breath.

But the future for Ksan has quite a rosy glint to it. It'll cost me in effort and stress no doubt over the coming months but perhaps I've finally persuaded myself to embrace the situation and taken the pain in order to see the best outcome in the longer view.

I don't need the extra money, but I could find use for it and the new role on offer could secure my future well past the time when other parts of the department are outsourced off from around me.

Oh, and in other news, Shortstuff has finally come off the pill so its Russian roulette from here on in!!! We had what seemed like a final chat on the matter (after it being brushed across over many months here and there) and I think she agreed with me when I said it'll happen when it happens. I want to start a family but I'm not going to go mental about trying to get her pregnant (although that could have been a good excuse for a lot of fun!) She's off the pill so its now just down to whenever it happens.

Shortstuff wants a girl. I want at least one boy, but I wouldn't say no to a girl. Theres something in me that desperately wants a boy to carry on my name (but the reasons behind the incredibly strong drive behind that I've never discussed on this blog) but I would love a girl too and actually wouldn't mind a girl as my first. Shortstuff wants two children and so do I, but I have warned her that if we have two girls, she's having a third! If it wasn't such a financially mercenary world and time wasn't such an incredibly scarce commodity, I think three children would be my number (two is just so common! lol)

My mum thinks I'm likely to be softer on a girl and I think perhaps she's right, maybe a girl first to take some of the sharp edges of me. After all, I wouldn't want to make such a mess of my own as my parents did me!!!

I'm sure though that time will reveal all, in so many things...

Comments

Fuming.

2006-10-29T01:07:55+02:00

A few months back there was a warning at work of impending redundancies and invitations were being accepted for consideration on a voluntary basis.

I work in an office of three and we all do the same job. Firstly, one of the chaps was due to retire next year anyway and secondly, the other was planning to emigrate in the not too distant.

Which leaves me. Little old, desperate to find something else to do with my life, me.

Needless to say the other two put in their applications for voluntary redundancy (and a big fat cheque to leave with), no surprises there. The boss wasn't prepared to accept the loss of one of them, until he discovered his intent to emigrate anyway, and so both applications were eventually accepted.

Leaving me. I had mused with the idea of taking the money and running if they would accept my redundancy – and, ho ho ho! How I wish with hindsight that I had ignored my better judgement now.

In light of losing two members of a three man team, the decision was taken to outsource our roles because finding replacements with the skills would be seriously expensive and training cost-effective replacements would take too long.

That's right – I'm redundant! Only, I'm not.

Some bugger apparently has decided to retain me anyway – bravo for the vote of confidence! If only I believed for a second that I had been kept on merit alone.

So that is part one of the explanation behind why I am and have been for a couple of months a walking ball of fury and hatred ...and after a couple of months it is not abating, more like intensifying.

However it continues... I am vaguely told what I will be doing in this new situation by my boss – who has his back to me and is telling the others in the office at the time. I am neither happy about the content of what he is saying, nor the fact that I am not even so much as told eyeball to eyeball.

It gets worse too... During the transition into outsourcing a lot of work and preparation is needed and it seems the boss is more than happy to discuss this with those who are actually being made redundant rather than the poor chump left to carry the can between the outsourcers off site and me with the kit, onsite!

The boss is an ignorant shit at the best of times – this near total blanking of my existence is just a more pronounced version of the status-quo. I.T. Manager my arse, to do that it would be advisable to know something about I.T. and maybe have some people skills?

Frankly, I don't know if I could rip his head off verbally without losing it and actually ripping his head off. The stress of the situation makes my blood boil and is pushing me back over the edge again – only this time it feels like all that pent up energy is not going to be contained and directed inward. It feels, well, its just total rage.

I don't really know how to direct it. If I keep it in, I could end up back where I was two years ago and I don't think I can express it without running the risk of just losing it and thrashing a man twice my age out of his spectacles. I can't quite put my finger on just what is cutting so deep here: its all of the shit plus something that's probably a bit off-centre with the way I am I guess.

Part of me is just saying leave it, find something else and just quit. The other part of me tries to muster some enthusiasm and sense opportunity – some way to benefit from this situation before my attitude screws up the potential to gain something from it.
And then I stump myself with the notion that that is what I've always tried to do, make the most of it and see where it gets me. In short, nowhere. And so I'm back to walking about with a thundercloud hanging over me and the burning desire just to walk out and damn the consequences – and it can be very hard some days persuading myself to stay rooted in my seat! And that's after convincing myself to go in in the first place, I came so close to making the decision not to the other morning that I'm almost disappointed that I didn't bite the bullet and say 'screw it'.

I want to drag the boss into a head to head and walk out of it with better hours and a bigger salary but I'm not sure I can do it without taking in the thundercloud too. To be frank I'm the youngest person in the department and to the boss, I get the impression that I'm just the office junior; I can't be trusted with anything important or be expected to know anything. Thanks a bundle – I've been here since 1994 and I turn thirty in a few weeks... and as for being talked down to by that halfwit of a boss... I think its about time he discovered just how fortunate I was in the IQ department when nature made me.

And then there's getting another job – I am so scared of making that jump its almost stupid. That and the fact, that I would have to take a pay cut to get anything else. Somewhere along the line I've been kicked in the teeth one too many times and have scarcely any self-belief left - this job has a lot to answer for.

I've barely even scratched the depths of anger I'm carrying with me at the moment but at least I've managed to write a brief account of it all at long last. Now all that remains is to find a solution that can bring some tranquillity back to my days – I have to think of some way to fuck them up the arse for a change! Something that plays out in a truly poetic and gratifying manner...

Comments

Beyond words.

2006-09-14T22:43:46+02:00

It has been a good while since I last posted anything. Usually at this point I would spend a paragraph blabbering on about how I feel the need to write but can't think of what to say or otherwise, how I simply don't know where to begin.

This time I think I have half an idea why I haven't written anything in the past six(?) weeks – I am, quite simply, past talking.

I'm trying tonight; I've got no real intention to write a full and rounded post and I think that is what is allowing me to even begin – no pressure.

Back to it however – yes, I think I'm past talking. I'm so utterly furious (I'm pretty certain thats the underlying emotion - and I do simmering fury so very, very well) that frankly, its gone beyond words.

I have trouble expressing myself verbally when I get to the point of meltdown and if I do chose to vent my frustrations it usually appears to all intents and purposes as if I have Tourette's syndrome. I shoot my own standpoint down by not being able to contain myself within the boundaries of acceptable language and all possibility of a constructive outcome goes out the proverbial.

At this time, were I in fact, bothering to speak my feelings, I would be spitting (fucking) bullets.

It's work; and as an establishment, it has not been on a sure enough footing with me for several years to be able to test my patience even a millimetre.

But enough about that for now, like I said I'm not talking about it yet. Experience with my foul-mouthed lack of eloquence when angered is leading me to keep my mouth shut in an attempt to leave me with some degree of maneuverability in the situation so that there are still eggs in the basket for when the time comes and I am forced to speak my opinions.

For once it seems I am putting my brain to good use and listening, taking stock and speculating on all the pathways events could lead.

It would be fair to say though, I am not a happy bunny.

If by chance anyone has drifted across my words and has wondered what an Earth the problem with work really is, sorry to make you read through it all without getting to the point – At this late hour, I think I'll save enraging myself in the hopes that I'll drift peacefully to sleep ready to face yet another day.

In other news my brother called to let me know I am going to be an Uncle, Yay! Which is great news on one hand, but another bone of contention on the other, this time with Shortstuff. That's yet another story again...

My postings here have gone from frequent to sparse to non-existent so someday I really must bring the blog up-to-date on my comings and goings, it is nicely familiar to be doing this again I'll admit. I'll have to try and break it down and go through my head in specific topics or something if I'm to ever stand a chance at getting it all down for posterity and personal consideration.

But the burning question at the end of it all is however – does my reduced need to write here indicate I am feeling better in myself and therefore have less need to express my feelings and thoughts? Or conversely, should I by wary that its a sign that I'm so pissed off I'm just shutting down the lines of communication with myself?

I have to watch these things – left unattended my problems have a way of making their own cries for attention...

Comments

They laughed (Thank fluff for that!)

2006-08-08T21:59:07+02:00

I survived... Just.

My best friend's wedding has been and gone and the dreaded, gawddamn awful business of a giving a speech has been done and dusted.

I shat myself for days before hand and I shudder at the thought of ever doing it ever again but for an almost blissful few minutes at the wedding meal, just before the speeches I entered what can only be described as a zen-like calm, almost nirvanic.

And then I stood up and the game went to shit. My hands shook like a bastard but hopefully, that wasn't too visible at range.

Still I got my laughs, stuck a few gags in there and managed to stumble through the words in some semblance of order.

What a day though...

There are formal weddings and there are Formal weddings and this was the latter. I'm not saying everyone had a stick up their arse, far from it, but it was a very traditional arrangement.

'Proper' religious wedding, gazillions of photos taken, then bride and groom arrive at the venue on horse-drawn cart.

Mincing about... socializing... more photos.

Then a meet and greet on the way into the meal or the 'Shaky hands' bit as it was referred. All the guests parading past the Bride's parents, Groom's parents, the Best man (moi!), then the happy couple. Meal taken, seated at the head table facing all the room of circular tables...

You get the idea...

Needless to say I was somewhat glad to get to my room and take a break before the evening do. Fuck me purple... the room was incredible.

A few weeks earlier when me and Shortstuff had been shown the venue, we heard that Kiera Knightly was staying there because she was filming in a town just up the road - No shit, if I was a celebrity, I'd have flipping stayed there too. Fan-fluffing-tastic!

Very expensive for the night, like £130 quid(!) but I don't begrudge paying that for a minute.

I've stayed in the occasional nice place on holiday but this was taking the piss... I have discovered that no matter how smart the place when it all comes down to it, an Englishman just wants some stone and some big-arse wooden beams – it must be some kind of ingrained historical preference!

You even got a teddy bear on your bed. (It was posh too)

...And there was the Evening do – and joy of joys my Ex was there – it was like 8-9 years ago and I've probably on caught glance of her once or twice in that time (not by choice either) and it's reassuring to know that we're still not prepared to speak to each other.

Shortstuff was complaining she was giving her evil eyes all night and even the Bride said so too, but I reassured her with the notion she was getting all the evils because I wasn't in the room to catch the flying daggers myself! My brother's explanation wasn't that she staring as such - more it was just the way her boggle eyes are! He had a point... lol

All in all, a cracking day really, the style of wedding is absolutely not for me too over-the-top, but it has been and now its gone. I've met loads of people and seen a few old school friends for the first time in years and now I can relax - safe in the knowledge that unless everyone my brother knows is killed off in some weird, random genetic plague (or drink themselves to death which wouldn't be totally inconceivable...) that I will never have to give a best-man's speech ever again!

'Twas nice also to see that a couple of the old school chums have got receding hairlines too!!! I'd have really hated to be the only one – that would pissed me off something chronic. Its strangely nice to see, along with those already graying, that I'm not the only one the years gone by have taken a bite out of!

Comments

The Contented Ignorance Of Drones

2006-08-07T17:38:09+02:00

The Contented Ignorance Of Drones

(or - the magic of televisual brainwashing by drip-fed osmosis)

In order for society to survive in the manner that someone, somewhere has dictated it should, it needs a steady constant supply of manpower to keep the eternal, unrelenting circle of its scheme spinning – Enter the Drone.

Now, the Drone as you might imagine from the very meaning of its title, is nothing special; where one Drone falls, another moves in to replace it almost instantaneously to ensure that the pool of manpower that powers society's endless march into the unknown future is never less than overflowing.

The loyalty and commitment of the Drone to the endeavours of society is ensured by the clever development of society's ideals - bigger, better, faster, now! From the moment of hatching a Drone is indoctrinated into society's womb and fed the mantra and knowledge required to ensure that a little Drone grows up to be a big obedient Drone.

Throughout their education Drones are conditioned to a way of thinking regards working and self-application and then to further reinforce the conditioning done through their schooling, sadistically preyed upon when at rest to further bend their minds to the will of society. Drip, drip, drip flows the poison that corrupts a little drone's mind until they eventually become immune and even addicted to the source of their own sedation.

By the time little Drones are fully grown and ready for utilisation, they are willing and even eager accomplices to the great illusion of life.

But what is a Drone?

Where do they live?

I expect you're already wondering if this is just fanciful nonsense because you've never seen or even heard of such a Drone?

So, tell me dear reader – why do you go to work?

The answer is simple - because you MUST!

Try and convince yourself otherwise... go on, I dare you. Use you mind and think your way out of the logic of working at all, after all working for workings sake is not a reason is it?

Think your way out of why you MUST work and tell me what you find.

Ohhhh, that old chestnut of a reason eh?

You need that don't you? So you can go off on your recharging days and get the little trinkets and toys that you saw on the television. Go on then, you've been a good Drone all week, go and get your rewards.

But wait, what would happen if you didn't buy those things you think you want? You think you need? I seriously doubt that you'll stop breathing or suddenly keel over and cease to be.
Ah, but that's it isn't it? Just as you somehow inexplicably know that you MUST go to work something tells you inside your head that you NEED this or you WANT that and that you MUST go to work so that you can have it.

While the school slowly instilled notions of working between a certain point in time and another with a few breaks in between to fool your mind into thinking it was still a free entity, the powers that be prepared a visual and audio assault to take your tired mind at its most vulnerable and force feed it the dogma of materialism – yes, my Drone compatriot when you sloped in from school ready to relax and let your guard down, on went the television... In came the NEED and the WANT to reinforce the I MUST.

Brainwashed Drones all convinced that they need to work to buy this or buy that or pay the bills... You are born, you got to school, you go to work, you have your own drones, they go to school, they go to work, they have their own drones, who then go to school, and in turn go to work, and inevitably spawn more drones to continue the cycle.
Welcome to the world Drone! Its owned your sorry ass from the moment you were born.

I mean, what would really happen if we all suddenly just decided not to go to work? Would the world suddenly stop spinning in space? Or whirl off into the Sun? Would the sky turn purple and the moon fall on Europe?

Wait, maybe this is too much to consider right away. After all, a good, successful Drone will still be grappling with the notion that he MUST go to work, like he actually had any real choice in the matter. The idea that perhaps there wasn't just MUST, but an alternative should have a good obedient little Drone on their knees by now and thinking of heading off to bed with whatever brand of paracetamol the television convinced them to buy.

So, what would happen every Drone just turned around and said fuck it to work?

Don't panic... I can feel you panicking from here; you're worried about paying the bills and the mortgage right?

Why? Who's going to come ask you for the money? Who's coming to repossess your house? Like I said, we're being hypothetical and imagining that all the Drones have decided not to be Drones any more.

The Drones at the electricity company aren't there any more and you don't have electricity now, but on the upside no one will ever bill you again – there's no electric and furthermore, there's no one printing the bills and no one delivering bills or in fact, any post at all.

Wait, I'm a looney right? Off my frikking tree... No electricity?

Why not? Think about it, if mankind can evolve from a monkey into man and survive ice ages, wars, famines and thousands of years of evolution without electric, why should the thought of just one day without electricity fill you with so much fear now?

Ah, all your little toys need electricity to run. You precious things, the things you cannot live without; the things the Television told you you needed to ensure that you were a good little Drone and went out to work to earn...

I'll have nowhere to live!!!! Nothing to eat!!!!

Like I said, thousands of years passed before homo-sapiens had electricity, now we can't survive a day without having ho-hoba enriched shampoos or driving our latest status symbol past other Drones who obviously don't work as hard because they don't have as many nice, shiny, buzzing and blinking things as we do.

Rejoice Drone, for you have lots of nice things that you go out and work hard to get!

...Lots of things you DON'T need to ensure you continue breathing, so I ask you again, why do you go to work?

Because you MUST, its firmly entrenched in your mind from day one. You, just as I, struggle to imagine society existing in any other way than it does, but that's a couple of thousand years of psychological conditioning for you. We need society now anyway, never having had the opportunity to experience anything else we cannot comprehend how we could exist in any other way. We cling to our sense of order because without it, well... who knows?

But examine these phrases and note the subtle difference that you should consider...

1.You go to work so you can buy things you want
2.You go to work and in return you can buy things you want.

One is reality, the other is but a comforting illusion of freedom. A platitude to keep you and other Drones contented when the real truth is you are so far from the absolute meaning of freedom as to not even realise that you have never known it, nor ever will.

In my mind the meaning behind such a pointless existence comes down to whatever constitutes an answer to one of these two queries - 'What could be so important a goal that those that are in charge want us to continue bumbling along unaware in this cycle of brainwashed happiness?', or even more disturbingly; 'If there is no underlying conspiracy directing this incessant, laborious march into tomorrow... How on Earth did we arrive at such a depressing and mundane way of spending our lives?'

Chin up, Drone. You can't fight it, but perhaps you've something to think about now to pass the time at work.

Comments

Doing the rounds

2006-07-29T22:07:15+02:00

Currently doing the rounds across blogdom (from someone named AJ)

I've been tempted to follow the herd before and this time I'm giving in to that whim.

WHATS YOUR CURRENT...

Mood: Indeifferent or lets call it, contented!
Outfit: Jeans and a T (oooo I'm just a style guru can't u tell!?)
Shoes: Trainers
Hair style: Sven-like

LAST THING YOU...
Ate: Chinese
Drank: Tea
Sang: Fluff knows, don't really sing...
Heard: rain?

RANDOM QUESTIONS...

Is your room forever messy?
Thats subjective... There is too much stuff but what there is, is kinda neatly piled up. Sorta...

What's one of your talents?
Cleaning (slowly but surely my other half is defering a lot of work to me because I seem to be doing a better job of it - I think I'm gonna have to start being more half-hearted a bit heehee)

Are you violent?
In thought and impulse - definately. In person? Very, very rare I usually I have to be struck first to lose it - then it gets a bit ugly.

How many pushups can you do?
Enough

Do you read for fun?
Yup, love them 'ickle words and the smell of new books.

Do you act your age?
Nope, I'm either moaning on like an old geezer or making silly noises like a kid.

Can you dance?
Again, subjective!

Comments

Flying Solo

2006-07-24T17:34:22+02:00

Quite often I find myself writing here after a session with my counselor. It's like a place to come scribble down some of the sense I've made from a session, or more often than not, just vent some of the nonsense that has developed out of the discussion.

This time it's a touch different. I've just returned from a session having said my goodbyes and my thank you's and called it a day.

It been a bit of an informal decision that has been growing on me for a few days and so, ready or not, I've made a choice to try and get on with life and iron out the wrinkles with the passing of time.

I've been getting the impression that she was running out of directions to take me or looking for a specific focus to speed up progress, to be honest I'm not sure where I needed to be or down which path to really head and so, I've called an end to it.

I'm not healed and maybe never will be completely immune to my compulsive behaviors when faced with certain high stress triggers – looking back objectively, I don't think I ever was 100% free – but I'm in control most of the time and what little is left is generally harmless and unobtrusive. Maybe thats why I was generally quite neat in the first place?

The point is I'm alright most of the time and even when I'm not, a lot of it is kept inside my thoughts and dealt with there before being acted upon. Sometimes even I don't notice what used to drive me up the wall anymore and I now know that rarely does the reaction correlate to the real underlying problem – it took a while to accept that I wasn't going to get concrete answers to the whys – but even if it can't point me at the problem, at least I know now that it signifies that there 'is' a problem and something is getting under my skin.

In so many ways I've become immune or 'unlearnt' some of my reactions and as for all the other issues that may have formed the unstable basis on which everything else infected, I could have sessions on them for years to come and maybe be still none the wiser.

I think I've come around to the notion of just accepting a lot of things and will just have to find ways for the sometimes contradictory sides to the parts of my personality to live together. In time, perhaps I'll find that I am more one than the other in my opinions and things will nestle side by side more consistently. Maybe I am destined forever to be flawed in some outlooks and behavior and mellowed and flexible in others.

At least, if I ever start to disappear back down the plughole again, I've got a much more heightened sense of self-awareness to keep guard and sound the warning sooner.

It's been interesting, and I've squirmed through some uncomfortable sessions, but overall I judge the time to have been positive even if I have hardened my outer shell again more recently – I know a lot more about how I work and perhaps even why. I think I've begun rounding off a few of the sharp edges; I'll probably always be knife-edged from some angles and it probably doesn't help that a few of my flaws are treasured as part of the screen between me and the outside world but who doesn't have their flaws?

I could spend session after session opening up one can of worms after another and continue on like that endlessly however feeding my head with thoughts to brood over isn't exactly pro-active. Most of it I've kept bottled up for too many years but now I think that I'm happy enough to put it back in the cupboard out of sight of others and just remember where I've left it rather than ignore its existence.

I'm just going to accept that I'm a complicated sort of person and mindful of that, try just to get on with life.

I think I'm going to miss my counsellor though even though its been hard work at times.

Comments

OMG Helpski! Gulp

2006-07-20T22:43:53+02:00

Ksan has a problem... So quite aside from my usual blog matter I'm running around metaphorically the places I frequent trying to find some golden nuggets of advice from my friends on the web. As blogdom is a friendly, little place I thought I'd put out a beacon here too.

I'm to be the best man at my best mate's wedding in just over two weeks time and I'm on the lookout for some really good advice and/or jokes to fill up what might otherwise be a couple of the most uncomfortable moments of my life!

I've got dirt on him, real secret stuff but its not the funny kind and more the blackmail sort - as its his wedding it wouldn't do to go mentioning it if you know what I mean!

I've got one possible gag in mind - a bit of waffle about being unaccustomed to public speaking and a short explanation about having jotted down a few notes to help myself *produces piece of paper and proceeds to read out that weeks shopping list "carrots, peas, baked-beans..."*
That 'might' (long shot?) work for a laugh, and then I can always try and shoe-horn in a bit about the two reasons we're all gathered there for - the food and the drink! But aside from that I'm gonna struggle I'm sure.

HEEEEEEEEEEEEELLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLPPPPPPPPPPPPPP!

So... I would really appreciate any words of experience and advice anyone has to offer. The speech bit is daunting enough, but I'm pretty certain I can put myself into the right mindset to cope with that, I'm just short on where to go with content.

If anyone can provide a few good pointers I'd appreciate it

Comments

Estranged

Nostalgia

Odibil - Like Libido, Only Backwards!

Crap foreign religon anyway...

Rotating Fish

Too Silly

The uninspiringly, uningeniously entitled post named simply, Back

Dancing

Double standard

The simply entitled: Question post

Silence is golden(?)

Kerchiiiiiiiiiiiiiiing!!!

Fed Up, Cheesed Off and Seething.

The Ex-Factor

All stirred up.

Many a true word spoken in jest

Overdue

Painting Over The Cracks... Yet Again.

Who am I trying to kid?

Creeping doubt.

Whats my motivation again?

What will tomorrow bring?

30

Tempting, actually.

Fuming.

Beyond words.

They laughed (Thank fluff for that!)

The Contented Ignorance Of Drones

Doing the rounds

Flying Solo

OMG Helpski! *Gulp*

OMG Helpski! Gulp