Why write this blog

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It is a way of giving my other self, my unconscious and perhaps artistic self, a way of expressing itself, and thereby helping me working things out. It is somewhat cathartic in a positive way. :)

25 August, 2012

A week running on empty

So I've had a week off, the best part of unemployment (the worst is to come in a couple of weeks when money runs out...) and I've kept busy enough.

I've applied for jobs (on Monday and Wednesday, a couple on Thursday).
I've socialised, went for lunch Monday then met up later again to watch the football. A friend came around to play FIFA Tuesday. I went to the quiz Thursday. Later today I'm going to Coventry to the triple wrestling.
I've watched TV, a lot, all day.
I even went for a run Thursday.
And I've played computer games, a lot, all day. Skyrim and Mass Effect 3 and Football Manager 2012 interspersed with watching Lewis and The Borgias and The Newsroom.

But as the sixth day works its way into my awareness I despair. More of the same again? Sigh. I love games and TV and all that, but as distractions not as full blown lifestyles. What awaits me today? More gaming and television? I daren't go for a walk into town because I haven't got the money to spend, or rather I do, but I cannot give in to the temptation of spending my dwindling resources.
Sigh
Such is the life of unemployment. It is great to have time off when you're at work because it compares favourably to not being at work and of course you have things to go that you have to catch up on.
When you have infinite or indefinite amount of timo off though...

13 August, 2012

Marasmo?

Disseram me que estou num marasmo, e que os amigos que tenho não me estão a ajudar a sair dele.
Talvez.
Mas estou me a sentir como qualquer marido que critica a esposa até outra pessoa a criticar e aí, ah aí defende-lá com unhas e dentes. Isto é verdade numa multimídia de situações e paralelos, o nosso país, filhos, família, criticar podemos nós que estamos "dentro" mas quem está de fora não "pode".
Talvez. Talvez esteja num marasmo. Mas é o Meu marasmo. São os Meus amigos. É a Minha vida. É a minha cidade.

Eu sei, sei que se não sair agora o mais certo é nunca mais sair. Mas não estou tão certo que sair é a melhor ideia. Racionalmente e logicamente parece o mais acertado. Uma mudança mas não completamente radical. Que talvez precise.

Talvez. Again. Talvez.

Mas não sei se quero. Se quero começar de novo. Se quero investir em novas amizades, que, quase de certeza, não temos nada em comum.

Para melhor ou pior eu gosto da minha vida. Talvez não tenha "crescido" ou "amadurecido" mas não tenho paciência ou motivação para mudar completamente.

Gosto de ver filmes, e jogar videojogos em casa e com amigos, de ir ao pub quiz com os meus amigos, de beber uma pint no pub com música rock aberto até tarde.

Gosto da familiaridade. Acho que é isso que torna tão difícil a mudança.

No entanto, apesar disso tudo, há meros 8 meses atrás estava completamente preparado para ir para Colchester, estava convencido que seria bom e estava certo que tudo iria correr bem.

No final vem tudo dar ao vil metal, o dinheiro rege-nos a vida. Uma coisa é um emprego como gerente de loja com um salário acima da média e boa experiência, outro é um salário mal pago numa cidade cara onde a experiência é restrita àquele ramo.

Sigh, suspiro. Estou indeciso. Indecidido no meu marasmo. Ultimamente estou absolutamente incapaz de tonar decisões e tenho-as relegado para outrém porque não me confio em mim mesmo.

Mas será que posso viver com uma decisão que não é minha?

Será que consigo tomar uma decisão sozinho, novamente??

Ás vezes, sinto falta da minha mãe, com todos os seus defeitos às vezes fazia um certo sentido, ela nunca foi parva, irresponsável decerto e talvez desligada da realidade mas inteligente.

Suspiro.

Marasmo? Será que é assim um marasmo tão grande e tão "pernicioso"?

06 August, 2012

Some sort of record...

I realised this morning as I was grudgingly driving to work that I would be speaking to people and realised that I hadn't spoken to anyone for the last three days.
In fact, I spoke to somebody on the phone three days ago but I don't know if that counts.
And in the last two days the only word I said was a brief "hello".
I've got a feeling this a sign of things to come.
In fact, if I wasn't living in a shared house I wouldn't have spoken to anyone at all in the last 96 hours.
I can see this being my future

04 August, 2012

Deciding Moments I

They say that happiness is made up of moments. That collectively they make up how good is your quality of life. I don't know who are "they". I must have heard it at some point in my life and I believed it. I still do, it seems to make sense.
And similarly, I have always believed in a strange kind of destiny, fate type thing, in which somehow there are these confluent points in time and one's life if you have to go through regardless of what choices you make.
Well, when I say "always believed" that's perhaps a bit strong, I think more appropriately I want to believe that in the way people are religious, because it would bring a sort of structure and meaning and in a way take away responsibility for certain actions.
But in reality, the universe and life at large doesn't care. People care not the abstract in the world around us. There is no hidden meaning and or structure although it is comforting to think there is.
What there is are moments in your life where your choices matter more than most. The choice to have coffee this morning or cereal probably does not have great significance of bearing in my future, unless if for some reason that milk was off and would cause me to get sick, or the prolonged drinking of coffee is somehow harmful, which is unproven, and could not be found out until long in the future.
Other choices are however momentous. Some you realise straight away and others you don't. Today I'm not going to extrapolate and analyse those decisions that are seemingly innocuous and prove the opposite.
No, I just want to remember and give examples of some that I can recall in my life. If I can't recall them they can't have been that important right?
I think I'll list them chronologically rather than as in terms of importance.
Hmm, how far back could one go for decisions that were life-altering?

I suppose deciding to take French instead of English for my fifth year could have had a big impact, given that I was one of only three that did so from my class but that has never been neither a hindrance nor a benefit. Obviously this was my first major decision and the impact it had was in terms of the people I met versus the ones that I didn't. Luckily in that decision meant I met my best Friend to this day.
Another decision that was almost life altering was this random day in the lost Summer of 1992 or 1993, when despite not much feeling like it I went out to play hide and seek with my friends and step on a big rusty nail that penetrated the bone in my left foot, which infected and weeks down the line I luckily didn't lose it for a question of hours.
This was important because in the last day of my physiotherapy and almost full recovery there was a teacher's strike at school and you never which teachers would adhere to or not, so you the choice of going and finding out if that particular teacher was on strike or risk that it was and not bother going at all. I had that choice, for a class of English or French, or go play football. I went to play football. Within that decision there was another decision. I played in goal because a) I was never very good and b) I had just been very ill and almost lost my foot. But I wanted to really play and I pleaded with my friends to let me out of goal, they eventually relented and in due course because I wasn't very good mistackled this pretty strong guy, leg on leg, but because my bones were so brittle they simply cracked. I was in excruciating pain which not all believed and some thought was funny, we were kids, but it meant I was back at home and my leg in a cast. I did go back to school and with the help of the famous five who carried me up the stairs I somehow managed to not fail that year. I now wonder if some of those people and friends I played football with ever felt guilty, for laughing, for not believing, for letting me out of goal and for letting me skip that class.
A momentous decision I can recall was when in the height of my adolescence, can't remember exactly if I was 16 or 17, when I realised that I was different from others, I was clumsier, shyer, poorer, cleverer about some things and clueless in others, thought about things and the world differently, and I decided that ultimately and above all others I was stupider than most. So much so that I recall with some clarity the moment when I wrote this down in a piece of paper, and the moment I shown it to a couple of friends and their reaction. But it's not those moments that are momentous. What is momentous was my decision then, at that heightened state of despair and possibly hormonal adolescence although I would dispute I was ever much affected by it, the decision that no matter how bad things were or got or how unsuitable I was it was cowardly to commit suicide and therefore I would tough it out and just carry on, one day at a time. Never really told anyone at the time, or since come to think of it, that that had been a choice in my head.
Another decision I remember clearly was when my grandparents decided to sell their house to help my mother (and by default my dad and me) and my uncle to buy their own. My parents relationship was troubled for some years and getting on to 18 years I could see the world as a grown up and I didn't think a new house would solve anything and in fact I had this distinct feeling things could only get worse and this would prove to be a big mistake. Because of issues to do with my mother it was decided that the new house was to be in my name as an only son it was assumed I would benefit eventually anyway and in this way my future was assured. I remember so clearly laying down on the floor of the kitchen of what had been thus far my home, listening to Metallica's Orion, trying to decide whether I should something about it, but I was too immature and too young to be able to anything of consequence or so I thought, I considered running away and leave my parents to it, confronting my parents about what we were doing and about their dysfunctional relationship or go tell my grandparents about it and let them decide. In the end I decided to do nothing, but that could have changed everything to a lot of people involved.
Just realised the last two deciding moments were of deciding not to act. One might think and say as you see in the movies that inaction is bad, I think in the event those two cancel each other out.

01 August, 2012

"Angry" Music

Oh Machine Head, I have missed you!

I have not listened to your music of late, indeed little have I listened of metal especially its more extreme loud and angry version of late, yet I remember why I do love it.

It was something I was missing, it's like I have been denying a part of myself and that cannot be good.

I want to be angry, and I want to be sullen and I want to be alone and I want to listen to extremely loud music.

It's who I am, it's not point pretending otherwise, because if I do I become something else and l am lessened.

It's not that I don't enjoy the company of others, it's the pc I don't enjoy and it wears me down. If I want to be moody I want to be fucking moody and I need to be around ppl that understand that.

But they only will if they know me. Or if I show the me that's myself rather than a construct.

Signing off to the sound of Bay of Pigs: "your lies despised by generations"