A humble but durable legacy

The previous two evenings I’ve come home from work with the intention of relaxing by getting to work on a new entry and then after writing for a couple hours I’d read a little and head to bed. Yet both evenings I came home and ended up just scrolling through the catalogue right up until it was time to get some sleep and finding maybe one or two interesting threads the entire time, staying up later than I planned yet achieving less. There’s this image I have in my head of myself sitting by the glowing heater otherwise in a dark room, with a warm cup of chamomile and my laptop in front of me. Crafting a new entry that cleverly weaves several ideas together in a way that is both intelligent and poetic. Yes, I know it’s rather silly. It keeps me going while I’m there though, dealing with the various characters that come through the shop. It’s fair to say I have a romanticised idea of what it is I’m doing here, in a weird way I’m kind of aware of it and see it as being not entirely “truthful” yet at the same time I can’t shake it off entirely either. It’s in my nature, I’ve always done this. It’s more than mere “cope” as well, because I did it back when life was good. When I was a small child, when the world was still mysterious.

It’s hard to give examples of this because it’s more than just how I describe things, although that is of course a huge aspect of it. Even if I were to force myself to use the most mundane language when talking, in my mind there would still be a certain beauty to all the more mediocre things in life. Well, until I actually get around to being personally involved in them that is. Take this other example, my job. I’ve described it as a shop, and that’s close but not entirely accurate. There’s two different locations and the office, I’ve mentioned this before. What I haven’t mentioned is that the smaller shop, the one I’m still sent to most of the time is really more of a box/ kiosk. Here’s a drawing of the layout, to give a better idea. It’s a simple sketch, of course it looks nothing like the actual place without the colour and things all over the walls and in the front, but it gives a good idea of the size and shape.

So, as much of a big deal as I made in that one post about why I was always being placed at the smaller shop I actually much prefer this place. I have a stool to sit on and a small heater, and I can listen to whatever I want to. Lately I’ve been listening to The History Of Rome podcast for a good couple hours at the start of my shift there before it gets busier later in the afternoon and then I’ll just put some music on. I think I mentioned I was restarting that in another post here, well I’ve just got past the point I got to last time which was the end of Marcus Aurelius’ reign and the transition of power to Commodus. I can have free hot drinks from the machine, coffee (which I only drink in the morning) or hot chocolate or a herbal tea. I’ve spent days in there when there were thunderstorms and heavy rain, or pretty dense snowing (not that it ever snows that heavily here), and in the middle of the summer when the sun was beating down, all while reasonably comfortable. I even had a conversation with one of the customers the other day about this. He said he saw me sitting there with a bored expression and that I should be glad boredom is the worst thing I have to worry about while working. He was right, I’m really glad I found this job honestly. The worst it gets, at least at this smaller place, is a period where not much happens and I’m just daydreaming. Amusingly enough also recently I saw a poster on a wall while walking to work advertising some kind of scheme or something and it said “Want to get paid to daydream?”. My immediate thought, given I had had that conversation the same day, was that I already do.

So I’m not saying I don’t enjoy the job, in fact after I’ve had a good few days not working (which happens often because the schedule changes weekly and I only do four days on average, so often I’ll get three or four days off in a row) I look forward to going in and not being stuck at home anymore. At the same time, when I’ve been working for five or more days in a row because I have days at the end of one week and the beginning of the next it does start to become a slog. My point anyway is that for wageslavery, it’s pretty fucking /comfy/. When I write about it it makes it seem even better, and that’s really my point. Because of course when I’m there while I am aware of how fortunate I am I still feel like a wageslave of course. As soon as I leave though, every time despite being there for over a year now, I can’t picture the place without the romantic lens distorting things.

In the podcast I’ve been listening to there’s an episode called A Day In The Life, where Mark Duncan (the narrator/ writer/ guy behind the whole thing) goes through an average day for a citizen of the eternal city itself during the Pax Romana. The height of the empire, the period you probably think of when talking about the glory and prosperity of Rome. Well the picture he paints in some ways resembles my own life. I sit there in what is essentially the modern equivalent of a market stall and receive coins for what I sell. It really hit me when I was counting up the coins at the end of the day, see when we finish we take the coins out of the till and separate them into various plastic pouches to bring back to the main office. I just realised that two thousand years ago, not just in Rome but in cities all over the world there would be plenty of people just like me counting up the coins for the day and putting them into pouches. Pouches of leather rather than clear plastic, of course. Whether I like it or not as well, the city I live in also has a very “international” character. It’s like those posts people will make, with the meme arrows. Ywn be X person at Y point in history living an easy but /comfy/ simple life. Except, I actually kind of am doing that. I’m still a fucking loser, but in this one regard life is pretty good. I suppose, and see this is me doing that thing again, I’m continuing a legacy that goes back millennia. A simple unskilled city worker, it may be an ignoble profession but it’s outlived many more prestigious ways of making a living.

I know this is a shorter post than usual, I just can’t really think where else to take this subject. I think I got across what I really wanted to already, and hey it’s still about as long as a usual post on most of the other similar style blogs I’ve seen around. Not that that means I intend to usually have shorter posts like this, I enjoy the longer ones. Again sticking to the whole idea of this post, I have this nice image in my head of someone spending an evening with my newest entry, getting /comfy/. I know I don’t have many people regularly coming back, but I like the idea that I’m giving someone something to look forward to. Not that any of my posts are quite long enough to take an entire evening, at most maybe the longer ones might take half an hour if you’re really taking your time. It could be a nice part of it though, and if you stop to think yourself and respond in your head (because no one ever actually responds with a comment unfortunately) to what I’m talking about it could last longer. Anyway I’m rambling, which I know is what I do here but it’s not really leading anywhere interesting. I suppose I could quickly talk about one thing, just because I got reminded when typing that out. I’ve been thinking more about the title of the blog, I’ve considered shortening it. Or, I’ve considered that perhaps one day I could. See I am admittedly rather neurotic and I don’t see that changing, and I do ramble a lot which I also don’t see changing, but I do believe that one day it will no longer be fair to refer to myself as “a mess”.

There have been some setbacks, the shrooms I was growing have been contaminated with mould for one (the photo I used for the main image is of what became of them) which is a real shame because I thought they could have given me some interesting insights and also inspiration for this new hobby of mine. I suppose I could try again, but if I do I’ll wait until the spring because the cold weather also caused a lot of problems. It was tricky keeping it both warm and well lit, and I think that also led to the failure. I’m also considering the peyote cactus, which is even easier and less tricky legally to get here. It will take much longer to grow and prepare though. I haven’t been reading as much as I wanted to be, I’m reading the book Travels In Nihilon at the moment. It’s a novel telling the tale of a group of travellers sent into the fictional country of Nihilon in order to write a travel guide and how they get caught up in an insurrection. The country is a kind of hypercapitalist/ libertarian fantasy, but of course unbelievably corrupt and spiritually desolate. It is bordering a heavily militarised and equally shitty socialist state called Cronacia, with whom it is locked in a seemingly unending war. When I finish, perhaps I’ll make a post regarding my thoughts on the book. I’m enjoying it though, it’s a nice easy read to get back into the swing of things with and fits well with the kind of things that have been interesting me lately. Oh, and I’ve been listening to Still by NIN a lot lately. I avoided it when going through the whole band/ project’s discography because I thought it was just another one of their many remix albums with more recycled material. The second half is all new, and pretty good too, though. Plus the redone songs are also quite a different experience this way. I’ve got some good ideas for a couple interesting posts too, so that’s something for us all to look forward to as well.

and a happy New Year

I spent New Year’s Eve alone, for the most part anyway. I did watch a film with my dad earlier in the afternoon/ evening, but he went to sleep several hours before midnight. So when the time came, I was in my room on my own. I had my “friends” on r9k to keep me company, and this isn’t the first time I’ve been alone to witness the year’s end, but it was nevertheless quite sad. Most years I’ve spent the evening with these family friends I think I may have very briefly mentioned in a post from a couple months back. After I went to dinner with them and then my co-workers the night after that. It was a pretty bad entry, but the original plan I had for it would have been quite good I think had I been able to pull it off. Oh well, not everything goes according to plan. Anyway while this is the third time for me (last year I just went to sleep before the clock struck 12 so maybe that doesn’t count), I think it was the most upsetting. I don’t mean to be melodramatic, it’s just another night people will say and they are half right. It wasn’t that bad, I’ve had far more upsetting moments just this year. Of course the most obvious being the whole situation around which my early posts revolved. I didn’t have an emotional break down, but as I was sitting there leaning against the forest green wall in my room listening to John Frusciante’s The Will To Death and waiting for the year to be over I did get a real sense of despair. Weirdly it hit me as I was reflecting on a feeling of hopefulness I’d had all day.

Going back a bit I mentioned how people will say “oh it’s just another day”, etc. Talk about how it doesn’t matter, there’s no significance. I remember speaking to my friend about the idea of having a New Year’s resolution last year (or two years ago I suppose, you know what I mean), and he dismissively just laughed at the idea. Because it is indeed just a day literally speaking, no divine being floated down to tell us otherwise, the decision to start anew here is arbitrary. Nevertheless this is where we start, and this starting point has a long history going back to republican Rome. So while maybe in January 153 BC when an uprising in the provinces led to new consuls being selected earlier than the usual date of March 1st, the day did indeed have no significance, now two thousand years and several calendars later I think it’s earned some.

People are lazy, me especially so, and people like order and ritual, again me especially so. If they need to make a change in their lives, however small, they often look for a significant point to both start on and also to track with. The day they can point to years down the line as the turning point. So, the first day of a new month, or just a new week even. Maybe a special date, their birthday perhaps, or the day following some significant event in their lives. Maybe something bad happened as a result of their bad habits, and the following day they decide to put it behind them once and for all. Or they choose an easily memorable date, and give themselves the time until then to indulge for the last time. So with all this understood, is it any surprise that the start of a new year is so commonly chosen as the time for such a change. So common is it in fact, that the idea of the “New Year’s resolution” is something we all are aware of, especially in the west but in some way all over the world. Something that has it’s own Wikipedia page, for what it’s worth. These people who dismiss the importance of this date are in a way being so cold and rational that they’ve taken an irrational position.

This is the first year that I’ve really seen things this way though, other than as a child I mean, I guess it’d be more accurate to say this is the first year after losing my teenage cynicism. It’s been a gradual process, every year I see my worldview as being different to the year before, but I mean in regard to this particular thing. So because of this I was thinking throughout the day about perhaps taking the opportunity to change some things in my own life. I should read more, maybe then I won’t be flailing around in the dark so much when I talk about complex issues and ideas. Reading used to be something very important to me, but I fell off as so many have. I should actually commit to doing exercise, even if I just do simple bodyweight exercises at home I should have an actual routine and goals rather then the irregular and unplanned sessions every few weeks I’ve been doing the last few years that have not really made me any stronger or well disciplined.

I should continue this blog, and try to have less shitty entries and more that are worth reading. I’ll try to get more regular readers, but other than outright shilling which I don’t feel comfortable with I’m not sure how best to do that. Not that I’m making any money from this, or ever intend to. It’s quite a shame really how unusual I seem to be in this regard, just wanting this as a small hobby. It seems once again I’ve fallen for a romanticised view of what blogging is. See as I never was a part of the “blogosphere”, until I started this I suppose (of course I’ve read blogs before, a certain post that I got a link to or found through a google search, etc.), I had this clearly completely false idea of what it was. Even that term, blogosphere, it’s just a relic of something that didn’t even really exist a decade ago but certainly doesn’t now. This image we have of hundreds of thousands if not millions of people with personal blogs where they share thoughts and ideas, just as a hobby maybe they work on a couple times a week, is not representative of reality. Sure there are probably plenty of those, but the overwhelming majority of “blogs” are just completely soulless attempts at making some extra cash. At least that’s been my experience since starting here, because the last half year or so I have been occasionally checking other blogs. Sometimes through the referrer thing, but also whenever I get a like or someone “following” me I will check their stuff.

In all but a few cases, they’re not even what I’d ever have called a “blog” a year ago. Of course, they are. They fit with the dictionary definition, but they don’t fit the cultural definition. I think it should be fairly clear what I mean by that term, given the context, but if you read my post about school shootings (it’s one of the first I ever wrote) you’ll get a better rundown of this idea of mine. I know that’s a bit cheeky of me, but I really don’t like saying the same thing over and over and I quite like the idea of there being a continuity or evolution in this blog, with my posts building on one another. Anyway as I was saying, this idea I had of the blog as art is a fantasy. I swear I’m not even sure if half of these are written by real people, they could just be using a bot to manufacture a new post every day and then putting an expertly crafted title on top to scrape as many people as possible off of search engines. There are also way more fucking daily recipe blogs than necessary too in my opinion. I don’t want to appear to be shitting on people, the people who make these aren’t really doing anything wrong, if there’s a gap in the market someone’s gonna fill it. What I’m saying is I suppose I have this sense of loss or longing for something that never existed, and you could also say that I’m trying to achieve it myself with this blog. I’m hoping for this blog to almost be an archetypal example of what I always thought blogs were.

I went on a complete tangent though, not that that’s a problem I was hoping for it, but I should try and finish what I started talking about at the beginning eventually. So, I was talking about what I could do to improve or make the blog more appealing to people. Not just anyone of course, I want the people who would appreciate what I’m doing now but might overlook it currently because it’s a little rough around the edges. Some pruning or polishing is fine, but I don’t want to lose the identity that I believe has developed. For example I don’t want to change what I was talking about just now about how the posts build on one another. I like the idea of “being there from the start” being rewarded, and also I think it gives a good reason to go back. There are a few things I could change that might make my stuff more digestible or easy to read, I could change the way I’ll type how I talk in some cases (how I talk when I’m comfortable that is) and then more like I would for an essay at other times. I can see how the inconsistent tone would make it annoying to read, even if people aren’t fully conscious of it specifically it will just “feel off” in a way. At the same time though I don’t want to lose the identity that I’ve developed for the blog, maybe the weird changing tone and style is appropriate because I myself (who this blog is supposed to reflect) often have quite sudden changes in mood and regularly experience feelings of awkwardness or things being not quite right. I don’t want to sound like an annoying pseud, this is just a crappy blog with only a couple of regular viewers at this point (back up from only one at least), I shouldn’t kid myself with this grandiose talk. Oh and of course I could have shorter paragraphs, I know these giant blocks of text are offputting and I am in fact already working on it a little in this post. It’s a weird idiosyncrasy of mine.

So this kind of stuff is what was going through my head, resolutions and new plans, things I should stop doing and things I should start. Then this scene in the film I was watching earlier in the evening came on, it was The Return Of The King and the scene in Mordor where Sam sees a star shining through the clouds. Light and beauty, hope, shining through in even the most desolate and evil places of the world. Tolkien’s world and stories are very dear to me, and perhaps I could write about that more in future, but I will say I think the LoTR films don’t deserve the shit they get from “purists”. Of course they’re not perfect, but I think one should view them as a love letter to the original book. There’s no major motion picture with a budget like that and a big studio backing it with anywhere close to the same passion and care put in to the project I can think of. I also think that the philosophy and depth of the original story isn’t lost like some people say, and even if it’s not expressed as beautifully or as well the films led to millions going on to read the books anyway who wouldn’t have otherwise. Getting to see the beauty of middle earth and experience the most touching moments of the story every year is something I’m glad for. I do plan to re-read the Lord of The Rings and some more Tolkien in future, but I wouldn’t want to every year.

So, that scene, I’ve always appreciated it but this year it really stuck out to me. Of course, I suppose because as I’ve explained I was feeling rather hopeful that day. Maybe hope is the wrong word, too strong, but I was feeling positive about the future. I often get carried away on a specific feeling, probably because there’s so little of anything good or bad in my life. I will seize upon any kind of change or potential change unthinkingly, and get wrapped up in a romantic daydream. So when in the cold light of day I realise this, it is always very unpleasant. Not only is there this disappointment or longing for something that never was (seeing a pattern) but I’m also ashamed to have fallen for it yet again. So after the film finishes I’m thinking about that scene, and I realise that while that star may be shining far above the clouds, down here I am still in the land of shadow.

Above the sea of lights

So one of the customers asked my age today and it fucking threw me for a second. I’m 21, but for a good short while there I wasn’t sure. It’s easy to work out because I was born in 1997 so it’s just le current year XD plus three. Still, it’s the first time I’ve not just been able to recount it without even thinking. I don’t know if it really tells me anything, but I just can’t help but feel quite sad. I’m so detached from everyone, I even live in a rather isolated place. I mean I still live in a busy part of a busy city, but to get up to my building you have to walk up off the street onto an elevated and most of the time almost completely desolate area of land. Just to get to street level takes a few minutes, it’s almost nothing when put like that but you’d be surprised by how such a minor inconvenience can change people’s behaviour. See, I moved a few times before finally coming here when I was nine. We lived at three different places, plus my dad lived separately from me for a long time and so lived at two more places. All of them were normal places, walk out and onto the street etc. So growing up it was normal for people to be visiting, family or friends of my parents or the people my dad lived with or friendly neighbours or my own little friends. People being around was normal, and then I moved here. I’ve sometimes jokingly referred to it as the wizard’s tower because that shit stopped after coming here. I remember a noticeable change, not immediately because people made an effort at first, but after a year or two they gradually all stopped visiting. My uncle and cousins and their mother/ his partner (who was actually a good friend of my mum before the two ever met actually) for example came here a day after we moved in for a housewarming and would visit fairly often. By the time my mum died though and my dad moved in we were seeing them a few times a year at most.

It’s interesting that this change in a way rhymes with a greater change in my life in many other regards. I can almost sort my life into pre and post 2008 with the actual year of 2008 as this weird transitional time where things were all going crazy. Of course, I’m not the only one who feels this. Not only did my life and perception change quite significantly, the world at large seems to have. This idea of 2007 as the last good year is quite popular on /r9k/ at least and anywhere on the internet inhabited by my demographic really. I’m not going to go into that though it’s been done to death, you know the basic idea, obongo, financial crisis, social media, smartphones, new console generation, etc. It’s the usual thing, new decade new trends and a couple years before the new decade starts is usually when you see the ripples in the water it seems to me. A good example being in music, which in the second half of the 20th century was a defining aspect of the various decades’ identity. So The Pixies debut album and their best work (in my opinion obviously) Doolittle which sound 90s as fuck were actually both released in ’88 and 89′ respectively. Pretty Hate Machine was also released in 1989, Kate Bush’s debut was 1978 and there were a bunch of pop singles in those eights and nines which defined the coming sounds. Baker Street, Heart of Glass, Fortunate Son (It ain’t me, meme song 2bh) etc. I don’t know what I should talk about though, I’m kind of just going for a stream of consciousness with this entry so there’s no real plan or idea in mind. Another entry I write in a couple of long sessions again and then maybe I’ll go back to my more drawn out routine after this.

Anyway it makes me wonder how much this physical separation from the rest of the people around me has affected my mind, and how my mind has developed. I think this weird romanticism I had in my early teens for the modern archetype of the hikkikomori or NEET is something I mentioned before so I’ll just assume you already know about it. Well it does seem to have come about around a year or so after moving to the wizard’s tower. See I of course get upset about being lonely, loneliness bothers me a great deal and yet at the same time I find it very nourishing. I have grown dependent on some loneliness and this job I have now has taught me that. If I have a busy few weeks where I’m doing 5 days of work in my days off I just want to get away from everyone, I need some time to be away from people. When I go outside into the real world, especially after a longer period of isolation, I feel very strange almost like a mild feeling of intoxication. My head sometimes feels like it’s spinning and I get shaky and I can’t speak to people properly. I literally can’t bee myself, it’s like I’m inside a cage and the cage is what is interacting with everyone in my stead. I grasp the bars and see the interaction take place, I know what I want to say and I feel like I could be normal and accepted by people but can do nothing. That’s all an aside though, as I was saying by being isolated I grew to not just enjoy or be comfortable in loneliness but view it in this romanticised way. Of course anyone who’s been following me here will be aware of my fascination with ascetics, that’s another expression of this. I of course took a long time to fully embrace such a lifestyle myself, but had I have never developed this outlook would it have happened at all? I’m really not sure, I always hesitate to say there’s one crucial reason for any complex situation. I know that the year between September 2013 and 2014 had a huge affect, because I finally really came to terms with my mother passing away around that time and also because the isolation drastically increased. I moved to a new school, which at the age of 16 everyone does here, and I didn’t get to bring friends.

That year wasn’t all bad, even the darkest clouds have a silver lining. See I stopped going to classes but my dad was often at home and I had to get to registration in the morning so I wasn’t missed. After that I’d go to the library and just wait there often the whole day until school was over. I’d go to a few classes a week just to keep up appearances but I never got any work done and by the end of the year I knew I was so totally fucked I didn’t even show up for most of the final exams. I didn’t make it into the second year, of course. I read a lot though, given that the library computers had 4chan blocked and I didn’t have a smartphone at the time. Speaking of that phone I had, I only got rid of about half a year ago. There was one teacher who would actually send me a text message every time I didn’t show up to his lesson and I kept all of them (seeing him slowly get more and more frustrated as the months pass is really funny) saved right until I got rid of the phone. It wasn’t all the best stuff to be reading, I read Heavier Than Heaven because I was still quite a big fan of Nirvana at the time. I read this absolute unit of a book, Stalin, which was another biography obviously. It was written by such a fucking blatant commie sympathiser looking back, but I guess so was I at the time (forgive me), could you even imagine an equivalent tome about Franco or Mussolini being left around for kids to read. I read The Republic by Plato which kind of went over my head, and I intend to go back to. I read The Prince by Machiavelli, The Female Eunuch by Germaine Greer (and jesus is she mentally ill, I’m not going to reveal my misogyny power level today maybe some other time, but this idea of ugliness as empowering is something I could go on about for a while). I also read the ASOIAF books, all that have been published so far anyway. I know it’s genre fiction and I’m a pleb for enjoying that stuff but I do enjoy it and I’m looking forward to The Winds of Winter. It’s a shame Elliot will never get to read it, he was quite a fan of the books too. The show Game Of Thrones is unfortunately not very good past series three, which is a shame because those first three seasons were admittedly fantastic and the reason I decided to read the books.

I think I read more in that year than any other, I just had nothing else to do. There’s probably some other books I forgot to mention as well. I don’t know how much of this blog should be me talking about other people’s art, because while I have of course in my years up here in the tower experienced a great deal and much of it has influenced me, I don’t just want to regurgitate other ideas. “Me like this film/ book/ etc.” isn’t anything worth your time, it’s hard to tell if I could do something worthwhile talking about art because I don’t know what anyone thought about the Cure posts which is the only time I’ve done something like that. I do wish I got more comments, I’ve only ever had one. I know I have very few regular visitors, although I think I’ve got a couple more since last time I complained about it, but it’d be nice to have some idea of what you people are enjoying about these. Of course I don’t want anyone to be uncomfortable, I hesitate to comment or write anything online that isn’t a 4chan post (because the total anonymity there makes me feel safe) so I get it, but if that’s not what’s stopping you but rather something else maybe you could reconsider. I do wonder why I don’t get any comments. At risk of sounding like a total self important dipshit, one reason I’ve considered is that because my posts can be quite thoughtful and in depth (for a short blogpost that is) and maybe people are thinking they need to have particularly lengthy or thoughtful comment but really that’s not necessary at all. Anyway I’m not sure what else to say here. I’m still finding it kind of difficult to write for some reason, even though I have a few ideas. I really find it relaxing to write though, this blog is becoming a nice little hobby for me so I just decided to start writing this evening and see how it goes. The shroom spores I think I must have mentioned before have been developing into a mycelium bed nicely. Perhaps in a few weeks or so some actual fungi will have grown as I get into the final part of the process and they’ll give me something to talk about.

23/10/2018

Another band who’s music I quite enjoy is Radiohead, in fact I first started listening to them after that night with my friend which I mentioned before where we started to speak more regularly again. Like I said we were just playing each other what stuff we’d been listening to and he put on Daydreaming at some point (a song from their most recent album which had just come out) and it made me give them a second try which I’m really glad about. See I was aware of them before that but I’d kinda just written them off as another generic 90s alt-rock group. This friend of mine had been a fan since the time we were 14/15 and we were both into similar stuff like that (Nirvana, Meat Puppets, etc) but I’d just found the Creep/ The Bends era Radiohead which was all I knew them for not my thing. So after hearing that track I ended up exploring the stuff they made after those first two albums and had a great time, in fact I even have come to appreciate The Bends a bit more as you can hear the early stages of their evolution in that record.

That’s what I’m going to talk about briefly, a song on that album called My Iron Lung. So of course almost everyone has heard the song Creep which was the lead single for Pablo Honey their debut album, and the overnight success of that single in the US made international stars out of the band. My Iron Lung is a song about that song, and about the effect it had on their lives. In one sense it was incredibly liberating, they were able to become full time musicians and easily make a living performing and yet it also kind of kept them in a creative box. Their record label of course was pushing them to manufacture another hit just like it and the screaming fans at performances seemed to want to hear nothing else. It almost certainly would have been very constricting, but yet they were “living the dream” in a way as well so it’s not something you want to complain about without appearing totally obnoxious. See the song is named after an old mechanical respiratory device which from what I understand is a sort of metal coffin you lie in and it allows you to remain alive after losing muscle control in your throat and chest, but you can’t leave. The machine saves your life while also taking away your freedom completely. I’m sure you can see the point they were trying to make, and it’s a really great way I think of expressing their feelings without seeming ungrateful. It’s this metaphor I’m really here to talk about today, not actually the band or even the specific song. Sure I’m doing that series on The Cure but generally speaking this isn’t a music blog and that’s not something I’d want to do or be capable of doing well.

Anyway I think I have a situation that is somewhat similar in spirit to the one that inspired My Iron Lung, and for a long time I was also unsure how to bring it up or talk about it for fear of seeming ungrateful. When me and my mother moved to the current place I live, she decided to agree to a shared ownership program. Essentially they’re a scheme wherein you purchase part of a property outright (in this case 40%) and then rent the rest with the option to buy more in future if you wish. So in late 2006 when we moved here that was probably a fantastic option, instead of buying a place outright that wasn’t as nice we got to live here and still have some savings left over as well as the at the time likely seeming option of buying the place completely one day. After she passed away I inherited the 40% of the flat (apartment), and of course people were quick to tell me how lucky I am to be on the property ladder at such a young age. This city is one of the most expensive places to live in the world and the value of the property has gone up significantly since I moved here, also I only have to pay rent for 60% which is a lot easier to manage. I am very fortunate I understand that, but just like the iron lung I am restricted also. In the most literal sense, I can’t ever really leave for more than a month or so because how will I pay the rent. I can’t just not pay and get kicked out like someone just renting normally because I’d lose the place. There are still rules that the housing association who own the other 60% make me stick to you see, and they can take it all away. This includes letting it out to other people, so it has to be me living here and paying the rent. I can’t just Airbnb it or something like that like some people do with their home when going on long trips away. Going back to the increase in the value, as well as the fact that I am earning of course far less as a 21 year old drop out than my mother was in her 40s and in a long term career, the idea of me ever buying the other 60% is laughable now. Right now I pay for all the food, and some of the rent while my dad pays the rest with his goverment gibsmedats. He hasn’t worked once since moving in with me, but before when I was still in education the benefits were enough to cover all the rent and food. I find it beyond humiliating having to survive on government handouts at all though, and if I were here alone I could afford to get by without them.

I don’t have much I want in life, but I do want to travel. I know it’s the most normie thing ever, you can just picture the legions of Eat Pray Love whores when anyone mentions how they’d just love to go travelling and see the world/ experience new cultures etc. but there are some places and things I’ve wanted to see since a young age and I’d be lying if I said I didn’t still. I could talk about that some more in another post perhaps, but the thing is it just seems quite unlikely. I have this admittedly unrealistic idea of a several months long trip covering the various places I’m most interested in visiting, but that’s basically impossible with my current living situation. It’s not a huge deal, the idea is kind of a pipe dream anyway, but it’s a good example of how this somewhat peculiar arrangement I find myself in restricts me. Of course I also would need to get my two friends to somehow agree to and find the time for such a trip, which seems very unlikely. I’m not sure what I’m doing, I felt like there would be more to talk about on this subject but I realise now how boring this all is. I’m just not sure what to write, but I want to try and stick to having a couple new entries a week and I did think this was something that was kind of important about my life but I see now it can pretty much be summed up in a couple paragraphs. It’s also been on my mind lately, because the idea of my dad leaving and me being here completely in charge of everything is becoming more and more real.

I suppose I said I was going to treat this blog like a diary/journal in part, so I guess this’ll be just a general entry. So what else has happened lately? I finished Space Dandy, which was a great show especially the last few episodes. I’ve started listening to the History of Rome podcast, I got about 100 episodes in just over a year ago but gave up. Listening to it at work in the quieter hours is pretty comfy, and even though I’ve heard all the stuff so far before I’m still enjoying it probably more so than last time. I ordered some spores and a grow kit in order to grow psilocybin mushrooms, and that arrived yesterday. Supposedly in a week or so the mycelium will be ready and I can start the main process, maybe when it’s all done and if I’m able to successfully complete the process I’ll do a whole post on that. See I’m trying to think of ideas now because I want to keep posting regularly, but I’m just not that interesting so I’m not sure what to do. I could slow down and maybe just have one scheduled entry a week, and if for whatever reason inspiration hits me occasionally more. I just don’t want to suddenly go from two or three a week to a huge gap, and lose the few of you who read these regularly. I know some days from the stats page that people will visit and see nothing new and eventually that’s going to get tiresome. I’ve been thinking the last few days and I really think that my second most recent post “Living up to my shitty blog title” is the best thing I’ve uploaded on here so far but the fevered mental state that inspired it isn’t something I go through that often. I think that a general rule of one post at the minimum a week is something I can hold myself to, I hope this isn’t disappointing. At least that way there’ll be more of that and less of the crappy ones like today. Is there anything else, I can talk about..? Music I guess, what I’ve been listening to lately. I really liked the album Tears Of Mortal Solitude by Forest Stream which was like gothic/ black metal, I’ll definitely give it another go and try their other album. Also I’ve been listening to Dead Meadow’s self titled debut a lot, which is really good. I actually first heard of them because a customer recommended I give them a try, and I really appreciate it. I listened to the rest of the Cure albums that I haven’t covered in my series yet as well, as a reminder. Disintegration is as fantastic as I remember, and Wild Mood Swings is actually growing on me surprisingly. I was recommended by the spotify algorithm this post punk band called All Your Sisters and both their records that are on there have been in my regular rotation while walking to and from work the last few weeks, they remind me of The Soft Moon who you should definitely listen to if you’re into that kind of thing. Speaking of Radiohead as well, Amnesiac is quickly becoming my favourite album of theirs which is funny because for a long while I really didn’t enjoy it. People say Kid A is a very wintery album, and I think Amnesiac in contrast has a very autumnal feel which might be why I’m enjoying it so much lately.

Finding my mind

I’m trying this for the third time because my mind is all over the place and I’m tired as shit. I think I’ll just try and say what’s bothering me/ been on my mind lately and not try to tie it all together anything tricky like that.

Firstly, yesterday (for me right now, but by the time I publish this probably not) was the first day I got no visitors. I mean technically I must have because I had someone “like” one of my posts but they must have come through the referrer thing which means they don’t show on my stats page as a unique visitor. It’s more of a symbolic thing, and I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t disheartening, because one of the main reasons I do this is so it will be seen and appreciated by people. I am fully aware of my own narcissism here, but it’s ok to be as long as you’re self aware right? I said either in my introductory post or the initial thread on /r9k/ that if no one was interested and I couldn’t get anyone to read I’d give up. It’s clear to me things are more complicated than that now. I do have a couple of you who are reading every upload and I really am glad you’ve stuck around and enjoy these, although it’d be nice if I knew your thoughts beyond that. Is it sick fascination, or do you find what I have to say relatable, or do I make you think? It’s such a huge drop though, because in those initial first few days I got a completely unexpected amount of people reading and by the end of that first week most were gone as I expected but there were still a good seven or eight who seemed to be interested and checking back. What I’m trying to say is I wouldn’t want to give up now that there is a very small group seemingly looking forward to what I post next, I don’t like leaving people hanging, but I am kind of disappointed that this group is so very small now. I know how I sound, but that is how I feel whether I like it or not. It’s just harder to find that initial enthusiasm I had in the first few weeks, because in the first few weeks I had three times as many regular visitors after that initial burst died down, or at least I thought and if they got bored everyone will inevitably. I was more than happy with that number, I want a pretty small audience but just large enough that if one or two get bored that’s not the end. Having only one or two (or maybe three right now, I can’t exactly tell) is a really precarious place because once you’re gone it’s a fucking wrap. This isn’t an attempt to emotionally blackmail anyone in to staying, I just realised how that sounded. The day this is no longer interesting you should stop visiting, and not feel bad about it at all.

It’s not a huge deal, I am getting people finding me from time to time thanks to that referrer thing and I think one of the current regulars was though there. So I’m probably not as close to oblivion as I convinced myself, if it hasn’t become clear yet I can get into these negative thought spirals really easily. It’s seeing the situation written down and being able to view it from a third person perspective that I’m finding really helpful for breaking out of them actually. Which is why I really don’t want to lose this, I really am finding it very therapeutic to have an outlet and know someone is hearing me out in full. I fully appreciate that if I want more of an audience I have to give people what they want (whatever that is, it ain’t this) but I just want people to love me unconditionally for who I am because I’m an entitled cunt so I will continue down this doomed path instead. Again, if you’re self aware it’s ok. Last thing on this subject, the “likes” system bugs the absolute shit out of me. It’s perhaps a benefit in some way I don’t understand right now, but they just feel completely meaningless. The option to “like” a post is (at least in the default layout) at the top so you don’t even need to scroll through what I wrote never mind actually read it. I know that’s happened as well because on a couple of occasions all my posts have been liked by one person in way less time than it’d take to read them all. Again maybe there’s some benefit and they’re doing me a favour like perhaps it’s more likely to be seen idk, but I don’t know that so it just cheapens all the other “likes” I’ve received. Did these people go on to read every post, or had they already? I’m not sure, the whole stats page is set up in a way that makes it difficult to tell because it doesn’t count all visitors. I can tell one thing though, the two people who I know keep coming back don’t ever feel the need to “like” my posts, and frankly their returning says far more than any “like” ever could. The only comment I ever got, which if it wasn’t from one of you was still from one of the original visitors who found me through the thread, again meant far more and encouraged me to continue far more than any “like” possibly could. Maybe it’s an imageboard/ chan background that’s the reason I feel this way and the reason my real niggas who I’m pretty sure are from that thread also don’t “like” things. There’s no upvote, thumbs up/ down or any other equally gay system on 4chan, the closest thing is maybe reaction images but even those convey far more than any of the usual generic positive symbols that are easily exploited. You know with a reaction image the guy read what you have to say.

Ok, second thing was more of a big deal when I started this two nights ago (I know I’m really getting lazy with this) and also now there’s some distance my thoughts have changed. There are two new people at work, I’m sure I’ve mentioned it. So, naturally given how I’m a completely desperate loner it took almost no time for me to start seeing one of them in “that way”, the female one of course I haven’t gone prison gay yet. I know, I really do know how unbelievable it is that I’ve been at this place for just under a year and this has happened three times, it’s beyond pathetic. What can I say, my standards are basically just be pretty and be nice to me so now I’m finally out of my NEET cave I’m coming into contact with plenty of people who fit that description. Anyway I decided to check her social media the other night while bored, something I’m worryingly becoming way more comfortable doing lately, and she has a boyfriend. My immediate reaction was surprising even to myself given how unsurprising the information was, I took it quite badly. I’m over it now, in fact I’m pretty relieved as this should hopefully prevent me from developing serious oneitis but I’ve mentioned before that there’s this hope you live with when you have oneitis and I think the real sting is always that being taken away. Because let’s be honest, anyone who’s been in a similar situation knows they’re never going to make a move or they already would have and the girl never will. So there’s only one way the thing ends, which is as it always does. That hope though, that fantasy you know is completely unfounded that she’ll just confess her love for you one day or something, is enough to work with. In fact, it’s actually quite nice in a way like waiting for a package from amazon. One day life will just sort itself out and all my problems will be fixed by other people. So, I think looking back I got so upset (I wasn’t yelling out loud or banging things like an autist, I just mean internally) because I was starting to get that feeling again and it was prematurely killed in the womb. I got over it pretty quickly though, the very next morning I woke up and felt pretty good and I’ve been in a generally good mood since even though I had to do an extra day at work. Not manic either, not all of the time anyway, just generally positive vibes. I think I’ve already said this somewhere but, I feel like I just got out of a prison sentence but it’s one of those comfy Scandinavian prisons where you can play videogames all day. I feel like there’s more I could say about this, but I’m trying to speed up a bit because I’ve been posting way less frequently the last couple weeks. I’ve just been working a lot more, when I started this it was way less busy and I had a couple of two day weeks. I can write more in an hour at home than I will in an entire day at work.

Third and final thing is less related to any event or ongoing issue and more just a general idea I’ve been having. I’m not sure what sparked it, actually that’s not true it’s these new co-workers. I find them a little easier to talk to and be comfortable around, not much easier I’m still incredibly awkward but it’s not like with the ones who were there when I first started. I’ve got more comfortable around them having to work with them for a year, it’s not like at the start where I was more timid than someone with AvPD (maybe I actually have that but I’m not going to self diagnose because people who do that are insufferable) but it’s still really bad sometimes. Whereas these new people I’m already as comfortable around if not slightly more so than with the original crew. So I was thinking about it, and it reminded me of something I was wondering months ago about how I am actually getting a little better with people, which was why I deliberately looked for a customer facing job, but it’s only new people. I’m way more confident now, well not way more but certainly more so than before I started, but not with people I have already gotten to know. Basically, and I’ve always known this really but these recent things made me very conscious of it, I strive to maintain the first impression I make with someone. I don’t know why, but I’d find it so much harder to speak louder or gesture more or just be open with one of the people who’ve already decided I’m shy or quiet etc. than with some stranger I was meeting for the first time. Realising this, I see myself constantly following it throughout my life. Once someone sees me in a certain way I find the idea of going away from that terrifying, and I don’t know why because it sounds so ridiculous reading it back. This is with people who in many cases don’t give a shit, or would prefer me to be more confident and talkative.

I wrote something down on the back of a receipt because I thought it sounded clever at the time “We embrace the assumptions people have about us, and become who we are”, I don’t remember how I made the jump from this being just a personal problem to something universally applicable but it made sense to me at the time. Maybe this is relatable, I really do wonder now if this is just a problem for me or if it’s more common. It’s not just a personal thing either, I have slowly embraced many of the stereotypes about shut ins/ hikikomori even if originally I wouldn’t have wanted to. I was never a weeb in school, or even a casual anime fan despite the opportunity being there. I mean there was an anime/ manga club, but it’s only the last couple years so since I’ve turned 19 that I really got into it at all. I just wasn’t interested, in fact I hated those kids and I thought it was faggy shit. I was quite into western comic books though back then, luckily I seemed to jump ship on that interest just as it totally went to shit. I listen to a lot of metal, I sometimes piss in bottles, I almost never actually go outside aside from work, I’m into weird nazi mysticism, I’m racist and honestly the term is overused but if you called me a misogynist it’d be fair. I could go on but you get the picture, I’ve very slowly crept closer and closer to the basement dweller NEET caricature. Luckily I’m not fat or ugly and I stopped being a NEET, but still in many other ways. I’ve always done this, I don’t know whether it’s fear of being considered a fraud or what it could be. So, there is something to the idea of beeing urself because I’m maintaining a bunch of slightly different selves with all the different people I know and none of them are quite me. Even in this blog it’s not a completely accurate representation of who I am, but more because of the limitations of the medium rather than me hiding or acting a certain way. Ah I remember now, I was thinking of the idea of “flanderization”, which is this weird phenomenon in television. Basically a character, usually a secondary or less important character but I can think of one example where it’s not (Bazinga!), is introduced as fairly well rounded with some odd traits and eventually those traits become more and more pronounced and after long enough the two are basically completely different people. So, I’ve gone through an irl flanderization almost. It’s not a perfect fit, it’s been much more natural and slow me becoming the person I am today, but television and film is always hyper real. I’ve been aware of the fedora wearing daki clutching stereotype for as long as it’s been going around, before I had even hit puberty or really got into video games. Yet I always kind of felt like something about that spoke to me, and while I avoided anime and some of the other more superficial trappings associated with such a person for a time I think I knew I’d end up like this. When I was a little kid, I idolised the loner and I had a romanticised view of shut ins/ omega males/ hikkis.

I feel like I have more to say, but I have to go to work again soon and I just want to get this out today it’s been long enough. I’m still here, still blasting Loveless erry day, still keeping it D R E, still not loving police etc etc. I’ve got plans, finishing that Cure project, and there’s this Wizchan screenshot I’ve been thinking about a lot I think I want to talk about.

Rambling as promised

I was at work today, I still am this was moments ago actually but by the time I re-type and publish this I won’t be, and from the window I could see a remarkably underweight woman. She was truly anorexic, not what americans and bitter middle aged women would call anorexic (that is, a healthy weight) but honestly so skinny it’s probably a health concern. She had one of those big puffy down jackets and a really short skirt or shorts with no tights or leg coverings whatsoever. Really doing everything to beat the cold, but seriously it was ridiculous she looked like one of the balder knights from dark souls with her knobbly knees and this huge jacket. Anyway after being unsure what to write about since finishing my last entry I’m seizing upon the first interesting thought I have and miss spooky skellington is the one who inspired that thought.

She got me thinking about anorexia more generally, not the slang use of the term which is just another word for skinny people but the actual medical condition. See from what I understand it’s considered a mental illness. The girl, and it is a girl you picture when talking about anorexia, claims she still looks fat no matter what. She can be stick thin and will claim she sees something entirely different in the mirror. Supposedly anyway, although I imagine this is just tween girl hyperbole and what she means but doesn’t know how to say (or feels uncomfortable saying so explicitly) is that she doesn’t look like the models who are on magazine covers, advertisements, in music videos, etc. You know, the “unrealistic body standards” that get a certain sometimes overlapping group of women to go completely hysterical every once in a while. The thing is though, and it’s something I’m fairly certain most little girls aren’t told about, the women who have that kind of look aren’t just skinny they’re fucking built too. That’s some of my own hyperbole, but they’re certainly doing serious muscle building exercises. Something almost every boy will learn growing up, but a shocking amount of females never did I’m realising, is that how you look at a low bodyfat percentage will change drastically with only a relatively slight increase in muscle mass. I’m far from a fit person, I try to do some bodyweight exercises when I can like push ups/ pull ups and sit ups though and after doing that irregularly for the last couple years I certainly look more slim now than I did then despite slightly increasing in weight. I was what is called skinnyfat, I still kind of am now but I was for sure then, and I looked ever so slightly chubby in my mind when looking in the mirror despite my BMI saying I was underweight at the time. So here you have all these girls being diagnosed as having hallucinations when maybe no one considered that perhaps it’s just an epidemic of skinnyfat-ism.. I’m only half serious, but I do think in some cases there is definitely something to what I’m saying. I mean think about it muscle/ strength training is widely seen as a male thing, maybe in this instance the feminists have a point about how gender roles can be harmful. I think for the most part I believe fairly rigid socially enforced gender roles are a good thing, but on this issue I suppose it is having an actual measurable negative affect. Most robots/ incels would ask why I give a shit, but remember a lot of these girls haven’t even hit puberty so they haven’t become evil yet. I hope it’s obvious that’s a joke.

I knew that once I found something to write about it would easily lead me into other topics. I just finished copying the previous paragraphs from my notebook onto here now I’m home from work and was thinking it gave off a kind of creepy vibe. I had to stop because it got a lot busier and customers kept making me stop, writing while at work was quite comfy though before that though. I had the Hibernaculum EP by Earth playing in the background which was really easy to write to. Anyway staying on topic, talking about kids like that, even ones around the age of puberty and well into their teens makes me uncomfortable. I know I’m not a creep or a paedophile so it doesn’t bother me really, but if I saw that written by someone else I imagine I’d get those kind of vibes while reading. Maybe not though, did you? I think the anti-paedophile feeling is especially powerful in contemporary western society. So much so that we get uncomfortable and this weird spidey sense kicks in over oftentimes completely innocuous things. Maybe it’s because of the Jimmy Saville case (maybe not such a big deal outside of Britain) and other high profile cases like the catholic priesthood stuff that was going on for who knows how long. Whatever the reason though, people are so incredibly oversensitive and on the lookout almost. Of course paedophilia is monstrous and the strong visceral reaction people have to even the thought of it is normal, and I mean specifically the sexual attraction to pre-pubescent children not hebephilia/ ephobephilia which is a separate and way more complicated thing. I just think that this collective feeling of so many things being kind of weird or “a bit pedo” was never a thing when I was a kid. Of course when you’re that age you miss so many little social cues and details about adult life, but still I think adults could talk about children and liking children or children’s issues without being seen as weird.

Think about this, one day I want to have children or at least one. I would hate to have one now, but when I’m a lot older and can more easily take care of one I think I would like to do so. I’m talking like a decade from now, though my feelings might completely change. I might decide I would make a terrible parent, I certainly would now why assume I’ll be any less unstable in future. As I’ve already talked about quite a bit and probably will continue to I’m a complete loser though. I’m incredibly awkward and can hardly manage a conversation with most people, it takes months for me to even get kind of comfortable around people and that’s when they’re making as much effort. Which will likely never happen to me again, as a kid there were some people like that (the friend I talked about before being one) but as an adult it’s unlikely. I may have spent too much time around incels and their ideology online but I’m starting to really believe that as a male the only people who will ever genuinely care about you are your immediate family and the friends you make in childhood, everyone outside of that is just making a value judgement. I’m not even able to bee myself around some of my own family. I’ve never had a girlfriend and seeing as I have no intention of making a real effort to if I’m honest with myself I don’t see why that will ever change. So if I want a child one day when I’m older and settled I’ll have to go the surrogacy route or adoption if either of them are even legal for single men in this future. Don’t tell me that the idea of a single man wanting to adopt or have a surrogate born child doesn’t at least make you a little uncomfortable.

Well, it’s the morning now I was pretty tired and had to cook and wash up the last few days dishes so I wasn’t able to write as much last night as I wanted to. I still want to add some more to this post though as it’s been a few days since the last one and probably will again until the next. I’ve got to get the shopping later and think of something to cook, but there’s not too much rush. I should be able to finish this up now, then later find a fitting picture and title and upload it. I’m listening to Kiss Me Kiss Me Kiss Me by The Cure, my favourite band probably for the last two years but I’ve recently started listening to them again quite a lot after taking a break for the last few months. I think I could write a whole post on why they’re so important to me. In fact I think what I’ll do to end this post is come up with a few ideas for future entries. If I have an idea in mind already I can work on them in my notebook while at work like yesterday which I enjoyed doing. So, I could definitely try and write about The Cure. Why they’re so important to me, how their (or more specifically Robert Smith because he’s the only member who’s been with every incarnation of the band) music affects me, some memories associated with them etc. I also have had this idea of writing about regret, specifically a select few major regrets of mine or potential turning points in my life that I fucked up. That could be a bit too self indulgent though, it’d just be talking about myself and nothing else, I don’t want to feel like a complete narcissist. I think the best posts I’ve made had a good balance of talking about myself and other people/ things I think about. I also would like to talk about death, specifically the death of my mother when I was 14. I’ve never really said much to anyone about it, but of course this is the biggest thing to ever happen to me and I have a lot to say. I know when I started this blog I said my parents were going away but it was just my dad who I’ve lived with since that age. He’s away right now, looking for somewhere else to live actually. The day where I really am living completely on my own isn’t that far off anymore. Speaking of my living situation, I think I could write about that too, again it’s all very self focused though fuck.. See because of my mum passing away and inheritance I’ve been living in a bureaucratic nightmare for years. Well, that fact combined with some decisions that were made years before too.

Ok, so ideas that aren’t about me. It’s tricky because usually they hit me quite spontaneously and then I’ll just sit there thinking for hours, I don’t really plan ahead what I’ll be thinking about. I could try and write something political, but I’ll need to think about what my politics are because I’m really not sure anymore. I’ve been a kid on the internet, so naturally I’ve spent a lot of time flirting with fringe political ideas both left and right but nowadays I’m not sure where I stand. I can’t shake this idea as well that a lot of what you believe is shaped or informed by things outside of your control. Our ideas and opinions don’t exist in a vacuum, we are genetically predisposed to a certain way of looking at things and also the attitudes of those around you in your formative years have a huge influence. There’s definitely something to the stereotype of the people attracted to extreme politics as losers and social rejects. Looking at the early lives of Hitler and Goebbels or just being aware of /pol9k/ really cements this. The leadership in these movements are fully aware of this too, so that means they target this demographic. George Lincoln Rockwell was quite explicit about this, shit even Hitler in Mein Kampf (not that I’ve read it but I’ve seen this passage posted online) talked about it. It kind of makes me second guess myself whenever I take a stance on something. I think the only thing I’m pretty confident in is the social conservatism I’ve slowly come around to. All the wacky esoteric crap about the eternal spiritual battle between aryans and semites, is a little silly if fun to get into at 3am in the morning when you should be asleep. Even more mundane things, I don’t know a thing about economics even after reading several genuinely quite tough an in-dpeth books on the subject in my “libertarian phase”. I basically have to treat all my political views with a kind of detachment, maybe I actually believe this maybe not kinda thing. I’m not sure, hopefully ideas will come to me. They always have, I just hope that now I’m actually anticipating them so I can write about what I think they don’t become less frequent. That would be just my luck.

Riding a train of thought

I don’t do interesting things, I don’t know interesting people. In fact, interesting people tend to resent me, which is what I want to talk about. I’m starting to feel that if people don’t either respect or like you, then they resent you. There isn’t a middle ground, people who are just tolerated or invisible, no I assumed this was the case my whole life but I’m really not seeing any actual examples of it. I could be completely wrong, I always hesitate to say any new opinion or insight of mine is categorically true because I so often will change my mind again, but it’s starting to feel like this is how things really are. The more I think about it, the more anecdotes I’m reminded of, the more it all seems to make sense to me.

I sent that message, saying “Why did you message me?” to phone girl, and of course there was no response. I don’t regret sending it, it was what I wanted to do and now I can move on I think. I’m thinking about other things, my mind is wandering again. The only real concern was it somehow affecting my job, but being realistic that isn’t going to happen. The situation is wrapped up in a box and put away again now, I can move on to being sad about something else. My feelings on the whole thing are of course way more negative now, but I’ve had relationships with other friends/ acquaintances that ended worse than this. I’ve been thinking though, over the last few days when obsessing over this I was constantly trying to read her mind. What mattered to me most was understanding the motivation, why would you just message someone so out of the blue and then ignore them? I had all these absurd ideas, and thinking back on it I realised I was ascribing to her attitudes and ways of thinking about people that I never have had myself. I do it all the time too, I’m probably not the only one I imagine it’s quite common. We think of all these reasons people might do something but such a reason would never motivate us. So I get to thinking, maybe it’s just disdain. You don’t ignore someone you’re indifferent to you ignore someone you have disdain for, someone you want to go away. Ignoring someone is, contrary to popular belief, not a cowardly way of not dealing with the situation but an active declaration. It means “leave me alone, I don’t even want to waste the effort of saying that to you properly”, it’s aggressive. I realised this when I stopped trying to think about why, and started thinking about when. When I’ve ignored people in the past, whether it be giving my parents the silent treatment as a little kid after not getting my way or more recently ignoring a customer still trying to talk to me after attempting to short change me moments before. There are plenty more examples, but ultimately they always meant “fuck you”. Of course that doesn’t necessarily mean you resent the person, I didn’t resent my parents as a little kid I was just throwing a tantrum. If there’s no history of warmth or empathy from someone though, well then I think it’s safe to assume they probably have no respect for you. After all, they’re actively disrespecting you.

So I then got to thinking why do so many people seem to resent me and losers, or whatever you want to call people like me, in general. Because I really have done nothing wrong, nothing to offend or harm anyone at all. I’m timid, meek even, around most people. I do honestly think I’m a truly nice person, I’ve gone into my reasoning slightly before on this blog but I have more to say about the subject like I do on everything. Last night there was a thread on r9k, somehow someone thought of another angle to take on the whole “nice guys finish last” meme. It said something along the lines of “why do women hate nice guys”. I don’t need to talk about this for too long, we’ve all heard everything this conversation has to offer in a hundred different ways. It’s clear to me that almost everyone on both sides of this issue, if you can even call it that, is painfully lacking any self awareness. The one side won’t accept that it’s not being nice that’s a turn off it’s the lack of confidence as there are plenty of “Chad” types who are pretty nice people, the other will lie that women don’t find thugs/ criminals and scum in general attractive. Do I need to bring up the old chestnut about rape being the most common female sexual fantasy? For some unknown reason though I picked up on something I never have before in a certain post, the post itself was pretty standard but it gave me this eureka moment.

See, it’s been staring me in the face for literally years through comments just like this one but I haven’t been able to put two and two together. I suppose it goes to show that the hardest truths really need to be beaten into you repeatedly. See, the implicit message behind this is that being meek and cowardly is deserving of scorn or hate, as the OP was asking why he is hated remember not why he can’t get laid. You can say I’m reading too much into a shitpost, but as far as I’m concerned you can’t read too much into anything someone says. The implication that being cowardly and meek is a reason people don’t respect you I can grasp, that’s not new to me I’ve understood it for a long time. People respect strength and confidence of course, both men and women. I’m not and haven’t ever been angry about women sleeping with assholes, because I understood this, unlike a lot of incels. It’s amusing to me when I see that narrative play out in real time if anything, there’s this one couple who sometimes come through the shop that fit this perfectly. The woman is maybe late 20s, always dressed modestly and is really polite. She’s pretty and thin and demure, the ideal partner for men the world over. She often comes in to the shop alone, with her baby in a pram. The boyfriend/ husband is sometimes there sometimes not, he’s often wearing a wife beater and ripped jeans and has greased back hair and a bunch of faggy tattoos. I wish I was kidding this guy is like a fucking cartoon character, he talks to her like shit and always has this pissed off expression on his face. I wonder why she’s always wearing long sleeves, even in the middle of summer. Anyway, I don’t care if people don’t respect me because I understand I haven’t done anything to earn it. What’s new though, is that if I’m not respected I’m resented. This is new, this really changes how I analyse everything the people around me say and do. Because I can tell when people don’t like me I’m not an idiot and like I said I know I don’t command respect. I thought I was invisible, you’ll hear people like me talk about it all the time. How they feel ignored, left out of life. Elliot talked about it in his final video. Did he understand that it was deliberate? I don’t think so because he said he felt it was unfair, like being ignored was some force of nature not an active decision made regarding him. Either I’m an idiot who’s just catching up to something blatantly obvious or I’ve hit on something life changing. I really had to think about this, so I went over all the regular customers we get at the shop. There isn’t one who I don’t think something about, sure most of them aren’t on my mind at all outside of when I have to interact with them but still I have an opinion. Every single one without exception I either like and am happy to see, or dislike and wish they wouldn’t be there. There’s no one I’m indifferent to, not one whose presence doesn’t affect me. So, why would I assume that other people are any different? Like I said earlier that never gets you anywhere.

Look at how people treat the homeless, a group of people who fascinate me in many ways. You see the way most people react to them when they ask for money, it’s not just no I haven’t got the time often people are outright rude to them. More often though, they will simply ignore them which as I’ve demonstrated I think is itself a purposefully offensive act. It’s true, look at how they ignore, they will often have this expression like they just walked past an open sewer. I’ve been with people, walking together in friendly conversation and seen their expression turn so suddenly when they get asked for some spare change by a homeless guy. It’s quite something, and you know what it reminds me of most. It reminds me of how women behave when approached by someone they find to be unsuitable or not “in their league”. Not that I’ve ever cold approached women myself, but I’ve seen it happen in person on a few rare occasions and the expression is almost the exact same. Also there are plenty of tales I’ve heard which follow a similar pattern, sure people go on the internet and tell lies all the time I probably shouldn’t use that as evidence for anything, but it does fit the description of what I’ve seen myself fairly accurately. Anyway, both cases show yet again this duality I’m talking about. It’s impossible not to see it everywhere really, if they don’t like you then they hate you. I actually try to be nice to homeless people, most of the ones I’ve interacted with were quite endearing characters, most days I’ll give my tips away to whichever one is outside the shop after I close up. There are a few regulars, and they’re always friendly with me other than one who I’ll admit I quite dislike. Not to beat a dead horse but this further goes along with my point, all the ones I like I actively try to help (in a small way admittedly but more than most people, I’ve probably given quite a significant sum away in total over the last year when you add it up) and then I find myself pocketing the money when the asshole one is around. I’m not sure why I find it so easy to like the homeless when so many people find them repulsive. It’s funny because I have this weird recurring daydream where I’m trying to kill them. Of course I’d never do something like that please, but I remember this post I saw years ago on 4chan somewhere, I don’t remember which board. The OP talked about how he tried to kill hobos in his local area. He said he would take cheap bottles of vodka and after drinking the contents he’d refill them with methanol and leave them around bins. You’d actually only need to half fill the bottles, because that would easily be enough to kill a person and a half empty bottle of vodka is way less suspicious. A drunk hobo stumbling around at night isn’t gonna care if someone already drank out of it a little. I don’t know why, but sometimes I think about myself doing something like that. I highly doubt the guy actually did anything like that either, it was just edgy humour but for whatever reason the imagery of the whole thing has stuck with me. If I told anyone about these thoughts maybe I’d be seen as a monster, but they’re the ones who actually despise these homeless people and they probably hate me too.

These kinds of thoughts aren’t going through my head most of the time, usually I’m fairly pensive or even timid, but then sometimes this feeling of misanthropy comes over me. Violent daydreams/ intrusive thoughts are common when in this state, but not always a feature. I am a lot more antagonistic but honestly the feeling is kind of liberating for me. It’s almost like I’m a different person, the music I want to listen to is different, and my opinions about people change. Not drastically, I don’t go from liking people to the reverse this doesn’t counter my earlier point. It’s more like I’ll go from not liking someone or what they did but being charitable and understanding and then if I’m reminded of it later I’m thinking I got taken for a fool and should have kicked the shit out of them. I never would assault someone just because I’ve only been in a few fights in my entire life and I’d probably get beaten up in most cases but I have made impulsive decisions while in this state before. Including a few times at work getting kind of angry at stupid customers and berating them. Nothing excessive, I’ve never sworn or shouted at a customer but sternly told them off (I sound like a schoolteacher..) or asked them why they did something stupid. They never say anything back either, that’s something I’ve began to notice over the last year and half or so. I’m a skinny soft boy, I haven’t even taken a punch since I was maybe 12 or 13, but when I get visibly angry people get intimidated now. Maybe it’s my height, or my dead eyed expression idk. When this feeling hits me in public, which is uncommon but since I’ve got the job and am around normalfags a lot more has started to be less so, I’m also more confident. People don’t need to ask me to repeat myself because I speak louder, I have less trouble with holding eye contact. I also get a different vibe from the people around me too, like usually I can tell people are uncomfortable when interacting with me. It’s like they’re forced to have a conversation with someone with Down’s Syndrome and are just desperate to end the encounter in a polite way. Then when I’m like this I feel like people actually enjoy being around me. I can’t control it though, I watched it fade out in real time on my most recent shift. I could feel my voice getting fainter as time wore on, I could feel the self doubt creeping back in. It was like when you’re in a dream and aware of it but you still just accept this crazy shit going on around you as normal, like climbing a treehouse to work. I’m consciously trying to reason with myself that nothing has changed but yet my entire world has changed.

I’ve been listening to Loveless several times a day since I first heard it, and I’m able to enjoy it whatever my mood. I said the music I listen to changes when I’m in this more alert and normie-ish state, which isn’t unusual a lot of music is mood specific for people, but with Loveless that isn’t the case. I listen to it before I have to go to work and deal with people like a pick me up, and yet put it on to help me wind down before going to sleep. Immediately after sending the message the other day I put it on, and somehow my racing thoughts were put to rest as I was whisked off to that warm and cosy place that’s already becoming very familiar. It’s like when people joke about going to a “happy place” in their mind to deal with trauma or something, now I’ve finally found mine. I wish I could understand and explain in more technical terms what’s so special about it. I have been watching a few videos about the making of the album and stuff like that but I know absolutely nothing about music theory so a lot of it goes over my head. I can only explain how it makes me feel. I wish I had studied music, I was never interested in making and performing music, or learning an instrument but it’s become so important to me that I wish I was able to discuss this art form that’s such a big part of my life properly. I could learn some of the basic stuff, but it’s rather dreary I feel like having to go to lessons on it for years would be one of those things I’d hate at the time and then really be glad for when looking back. I couldn’t possibly have known that I’d become much more interested in music almost a decade later though, but I do greatly regret the decisions I did make. I could write a whole entry on all my regrets, probably several actually, and how they all relate to one another and affect me today. I’m listening to other stuff as well, we’ve well and truly entered autumn here so I’ve been listening to Five Leaves Left this morning while watching the rain and wind shake the leaves off the trees. Someone recommended the album Fisherman’s Blues by The Waterboys recently too and I quite enjoyed that. Might give it another listen this afternoon if the weather stays like this, feels appropriate. I’m enjoying the lesser known NMH album too, On Avery Island, it’s got a real charm to it but I understand why it’s never had a response like ITAOTS had.

I wrote most of this yesterday, in my notebook while at work and then typed it up in the evening. That was pretty relaxing, kind of menial but it helped me relax. I have nothing to do today, it’s grey and raining out like I’ve said so there won’t be many people around. Perhaps I’ll go for another walk, or maybe I’ll just stay in all day in my comfy cave. I tried to follow a similar pattern with this post as I did with the first (not including my introduction) one, where I followed where my mind wandered as the day went on. People seemed to like that, and I like writing that way the most. That’s all for now anyway, I’m working after tomorrow for three days straight so perhaps that’ll get my mind going again.

Decisions decisions

Last night as I finished writing up the previous entry I realised I was sad. I didn’t have it when I started writing, but I took a break to cook something and after finishing eating I went back to write some more. As I was writing the last couple paragraphs it just hit me, I guess this means things are entirely back to normal at last. I went to sleep early again to get away from the feeling. I don’t remember my dream too well now, it’s been a while since I woke up but here’s what I can recall.

There were two distinct parts, perhaps I woke up and fell back into a different dream, it’s all a blur. I was in a shop, some kind of old second hand clothing store or a thrift store you might call it. All the clothes were wrapped in those plastic coverings they have in dry cleaning places, those bags they put to take them home in. Then, out of nowhere this old friend I knew from years ago showed up. I really mean years, I haven’t seen this person in real life since I finished primary school so I would have been 10 years old. He was acting as if we’d never lost contact, and he gave me an old playstation 1 and one game (some sonic game, which is funny because I looked it up out of curiosity after waking up and there were no sonic games at all on the original playstation) saying that would cheer me up. I wandered around the shop some more and eventually bumped into my second ever crush/ oneitis from my first year of secondary school. This girl left a huge mark, to this day she still occasionally shows up in my dreams for god’s sake that tells you everything. Although perhaps this will be the last time that happens, because things were different in this one. She was the same age as me, usually in other dreams she features in her and me are both kids again. So I see her looking through clothes, even though they’re all bagged up and look the same. I go to tap her on the back and get her attention but she turns around really fast and stares at me with this look of disdain. “You don’t care about me anymore Anon, stop wasting my time” she said or something to that effect, and then walked off deeper into the store. After some time that old school friend appears again, he tells me that he hopes I’ve been enjoying the sonic game over the last few days because his mother likes to play it and she’s been bored stuck at home. I lied, I said I had been even though I don’t remember ever leaving the store or several days passing. I decide to give it back and say I’ve had my fun and appreciate the thought but I can’t find it. So I say I’ll get it back to him some time soon, and I remember this feeling of guilt hitting me right away. It didn’t last long though, because the next thing I remember I’m somewhere completely different. I was heading to work, an early shift again but somehow the sun was high in the sky like at noon. I could see it from the staircase as I climbed up to the treehouse, not that I work in a treehouse usually but in a dream things like that seem to go by unnoticed. I don’t remember doing any work, I only know it was work because my brain felt like that was where I was going for some reason. I know that to get down I took a different route, and waiting at the bottom of this wooden scaffold structure I had to climb down was another one of the people who works with me. There’s a team of about 6 in total so not one I’ve mentioned before. I don’t remember what she said, honestly this whole second dream felt a lot less meaningful.

I woke up after that, and the sadness was still there, that exact same feeling and I hate to admit this because of how truly pathetic it makes me look but the only thing I can think about is phone message girl. I just don’t know what the fuck is wrong with me, last Monday I was completely miserable and losing it over some other girl who never gave a shit about me and now I’ve completely stopped caring about her and am back to obsessing over someone I had put out of my mind ages ago who also doesn’t and I guess never did give a shit about me. It’s all because of one stupid fucking message, I’m losing my mind over this shit. If it wasn’t for that message I’d likely never think about her again outside of an occasional fond memory popping into my head of the time when we were both working together. As sad as it was at the time to know that she’d no longer be in my life, I was really glad that things ended how they did. So this morning, while I was stuck at home waiting for it to be time to go in to work I decided to check her social media. Immediately there’s a bunch of posts in her native language from the last couple months, generic sad/ sappy shit so something obviously happened. Find out over the next 20 minutes lurking around like a fucking weirdo that she broke up with her boyfriend, who I’m pretty sure she moved here to this country with in the first place years ago. So, now I have reached yet another conclusion on what happened because I just can’t stop thinking about this stupid message. I think that, last Wednesday evening she was at home with nothing to do and still hadn’t got over this break up. So to get back some sense of self worth she messaged me, and because I replied within about 20 minutes that was all that was necessary. A potential orbiter was all the esteem boost she needed, so that’s why she didn’t respond after I sent my reply. I don’t know, seeing it typed up like this makes me think I’m being overly cynical. I don’t like thinking about someone like this, especially when I really do think she was a truly nice girl and above such behaviour. I can’t help it, my mind always goes to the worst possibility. I’ve been thinking about it, and maybe there’s only one option here if I want to put this behind me. I just have to ask “Why did you message me?”, I think if I don’t I’ll end up going mad but there’s no reason to believe that won’t also get ignored. I’ll decide tomorrow whether or not to do that. Part of me thinks it’s a terrible idea, maybe I’ll find out why and I’ll wish I didn’t, or I’ll get ignored.

I met the new guy today, he was really friendly which is nice because I had no idea what he was like. He’s a little odd, like me I guess, I’m glad to have him around and not being the only guy on the team is a nice change too. I’ll get to say hello properly to the other new addition on Saturday too, I met her on Monday as I’ve mentioned but I only had time to shake hands and then I was gone because she had to be shown around by the manager. You know, I already went over that. Also I’m slowly falling in love with Loveless, I listened to it 7 times today. If I’m being honest I don’t want to listen to anything else, there’s something incredibly comforting and warm about this album. I tried listening to other music but I just wasn’t feeling it at all. I’m going to listen to it now one more time before having an early night again. I’m not sure posting an entry every night is a great idea either, and the next two days I’m not working so I’m going to have nothing to do. I’ll probably leave it for a few days now.

Can’t be bothered to think of a title this time

Ok, I’ve had a little break now but I feel like I don’t want the gap between posts to be too long right now. It’s also quite therapeutic, and yesterday was another weird day although nothing like early last week so I can talk about that. Yesterday was the first day since starting this thing I haven’t posted or at least been writing something that I could post later on.

I had an early shift, which means waking at 5 in the morning. It’s not that difficult, but I’ve had mild insomnia since I was a little kid which comes in waves so I get several days or weeks in a row where I really struggle to sleep and then weeks or months where it’s fine. It’s easy to manage, but it will just come out of nowhere and if that’s the night before an early rise it can really fuck your day up. I can probably count the times it’s really fucked me on two hands though, due to being a NEET for a while and also just generally a useless cunt who never has plans I can usually just sleep in later, so again it isn’t the worst thing in the world. Anyway, after it happening to me on my second morning shift just after starting this job I found some sleeping pills to prevent this happening again. As always, recommended by an anon on r9k. They help, but you wake up in the morning feeling pretty groggy and they can also cause some pretty intense dreams although I’ve always had vivid dreams anyway. So I thought because this last week I’ve been sleeping better than I have in a long time, I don’t know what it is but since early last week I’ve just been falling asleep as soon as my head hits the pillow, I’ll skip the pill this time. Maybe writing my thoughts down clears my mind so I’m not thinking about things when I try to fall asleep. I didn’t fall asleep immediately, it took me a while so I probably got about six hours of sleep in the end roughly. Not ideal but I can work with it. I went in and did the work, and nothing of note really happened until about 15 minutes before I usually finish.

The shift was meh, nothing happened really. I got there and put on Klu Klux Glam, a collab album by Ariel Pink and R. Stevie Moore which I start every morning shift with. Not sure how that habit started, it’s one of the only “rituals” I really have other than my general morning routine on days I’m not working early or at all. The customers came, some were friendly some were cunts and most were just trying to get their shit and go. There was one 30 year old boomer type who said “at least this isn’t more bloody rap” about my music, which made me chuckle. Then just before it was time to go my manager arrived, along with one of the new workers. There’s two new people, one to replace someone who left a few weeks ago and the replacement for the girl who left last week. Speaking of her, I’m quite shocked about how quickly I’ve gotten over that whole situation given how I felt last week. I was seriously messed up for a couple days there, and every other time I’ve been in a similar situation it’s been rough for weeks and still might pop back into my thoughts months later. It could be that writing has helped me, in getting my thoughts out and having them heard like in a therapy session. It could be the distraction of writing and feeling of a new project or purpose (admittedly very small scale, but from literally nothing it’s still an improvement) that’s been helping. Maybe it’s getting that text from the other girl, I mentioned in my “first real post” that this powerful feeling of exhaustion came over me after the initial surprise and then internal freak out, but I didn’t elaborate on that at all. I think maybe I had what people call a moment of clarity. The whole thing was so out of left field, I was miserable and stuck inside pining for this girl who won’t even remember who I am soon I imagine and then this other thing I’d been upset about and thought was tied up in a neat little bow and left in the past was suddenly right back on my mind. It first completely took my mind off of oneitis girl being gone, after two days of trying and only making myself feel worse. Secondly it reminded me that I had been in almost the exact same situation only a few months earlier. When I woke up the next day, I saw still reeling from the previous couple days but it was different. I haven’t gone back to that video of the youtube cover, or checked any of her social media or even really thought about her once since the blogpost about that whole situation was finished.

Anyway my manager showed up yesterday with one of the new people. I’ll explain the situation at work to help understand things. There’s two different branches in the area of the city I live in both run by one manager. One is quite a bit smaller and gets a lot less customers, also the shifts are shorter. So when you do your training for the job you’re at the big place, then after you start properly you mostly work at the small shop or do weekends at the bigger place. At least that’s how it was for me, kinda, I’m gonna go deep on this shit be warned. When I had my first real shift, I had to go to the small shop and the person who had been doing the morning there was asked to quickly explain the slight differences between it and the main one. It was phone message girl who was there that day actually, if it was even her who sent that message which now I’m not even sure about. I know last time I said my main theory was it was an accidental message but now after realising it was the same number from before with the same local area code despite her leaving the country it might just be a completely different person. I’m very happy for this to be the case, it means things actually are still wrapped up neatly and the last exchange from when she left is where things were left after all. Or she never changed to a new number, I don’t fucking know. So she had to explain the slightly different till and a few other small things like that. I was expecting that I would be asked to do the same, and when I saw my manager show up with the new girl early I was surprised when instead I was just told I could go home early. I know I should be happy about getting to leave early but I’d be lying if I said this didn’t bother me. See this isn’t the first thing like it that’s happened at work, in fact it’s one more in a long list of things that have been really bugging me for a while now.

I’m going to try and hit everything, might forget some smaller things though. So the first thing that made this an issue I paid attention to was shortly after the last time I ever did a weeknight at the main shop, I didn’t stock up perfectly and I also spent like half an hour longer than normal closing the place. I haven’t been there on a week day since, except one time where I was asked really last minute because the person there left mid shift and I was around. Also after that point I stopped getting weekends there for months. I’ve also never had a weekday morning there once, other than when I was training and with someone else. The busiest the place ever gets is the mornings, or certain special occasions when the area is way more busy than normal. Even before that point I wasn’t there week nights very often, I only ever had a week I was there multiple evenings one time. So this bothered me a tiny bit, but I prefer the smaller place anyway so I didn’t really think about it much. I did get to thinking about some things though when the subject did pop into my head. I know I look young for my age, I’m 21 now but I still get people thinking I’m way younger. I had a customer, this old lady, say I looked about 15 not too long ago. If I ever try to buy alcohol I need ID, and even the people who know I’m a legal adult often assume I just turned 18. When I mentioned it was my birthday to oneitis girl she assumed I was about to turn 19. I think you can tell where I’m going with this, I’m fairly certain this leads people to think I’m less competent than I am. That fact combined with my criminally vulgar shyness anyway. I’m not saying I’m especially competent, but I think I could manage whatever the rest of my co-workers can. Anyway, after message girl (I guess that’s what I’m calling her now..) left and she was replaced the replacement was working weekday mornings at the main shop her first or maybe second week. I think she’s done very similar jobs before so had experience, but still after this I started feeling really insecure. The same thing is happening again with one of the new people, the guy who I haven’t met yet. Lastly, my manager seemed kind of annoyed at me too when she was there yesterday. More abrasive and in a rush than usual, usually she’s really friendly. I thought that maybe it was because she had to explain things to the new girl herself because I couldn’t do it (even though I could) but thinking about it now more clearly it’s probably just been stressful having to find new people and do interviews and all that crap. I have a tendency to make things that have nothing to do with me all about myself.

I’m not sure how to feel, I have enough reason to be insecure at this point but not to say for certain that the reason I’m being kept at the smaller shop is because I can’t handle more responsibility. After all, I have mentioned to some of my co-workers that I prefer the smaller place so maybe my manager is just trying to be nice, plus everyone else seems to feel the opposite so it does work out fairly well this way. There’s good reason to believe this too, because a similar thing happens with the evenings and mornings. That is, I prefer the evening shifts because I can wake up late and everyone else prefers the morning shifts because they’re normies who have crap to do during the day. I know everyone at the job knows this, and I just happen to be given mostly evenings. I work less than everyone else too, I only do part time so an average of three or four days a week whereas everyone else does five normally. Writing it out like this really does make me realise just how petty I’m being, how I’m worrying about nothing. Even if they do all think I’m a stupid child who can’t do anything why should I care, it’s literally making my life easier to be thought of in such a way. Anyway that’s what was bothering me all day yesterday, I feel like this post does a bad job of expressing how I felt but a good job of explaining what I was feeling.

I felt small and useless, I know it’s silly but I get into this negative spiral over the tiniest things. To try and relax and clear my head I thought I’d run a hot bath before going to sleep. I can’t even not fuck that up though because the bath ended up practically scalding hot. I wanted to wait for it to cool down for a few minutes so I thought I’d choose a new album to listen to while I had the bath, and I’ve been slowly going through /mu/core stuff for a while now so I thought Loveless would be a good pick. I know a lot of people think of /mu/core as pleb tier but I’ve said before I’m new to this as a real hobby and I have to start somewhere. It’s taking me a while too because I’m mostly using the chart as a jumping off point to find other things I like. I haven’t yet listened to the main 15 at the top even. I like to mention what I’m listening to, if I am listening to anything that is, at certain points in these blogposts because it’s kind of like giving it a soundtrack. I put Loveless on and get into the ridiculously hot bath that hasn’t cooled down a bit. I haven’t listened to much shoegaze but a few times when I have it’s given me this feeling like something pressing me down. It’s like being on an aeroplane or underground and that feeling of pressure you get. This was no exception, and combined with the heat I had to stand up after about ten minutes because I was going to faint. I stood against the wall, and I was hardly paying attention to the music it was like this whirring in the background. Then eventually I slid back into the water and it had cooled down some, I stayed there for a while just staring up at the ceiling until the record finished. I’m not retelling any of this for a reason, it’s just the only noteworthy thing that happened. It was a strange experience, I enjoyed the album a lot more on my second listen today sitting in my main room with the window open.

This post is a fucking mess, I did a bad job getting across the feeling I wanted to. I feel like that one about the nightwalk and surrounding events really conveyed the place I was in at the time well but I can’t do that tonight. That was also an unusual few days, I suppose I could try and make life more interesting so this online diary thing is worth reading. I’m not sure how I’d do that though, I’m all alone out here it’s difficult to even force myself out of the door for the necessities. Either way hopefully next time I upload it’ll be something I can be proud of like with the other entries, because I really am happy with those.

I coulda been somebody!

Well shit, I’m not sure what to write about. It’s not like I don’t have ideas, I’m overwhelmed by them but I have no clue where to start or how to elaborate on any one of them enough that it’ll make a worthwhile read so I’m just gonna put something down or I’ll work myself up into a frenzy and be unable to get to sleep tonight. Which can’t happen because it’s back to work in the morning. I have to say though, I actually quite like this feeling. You see, it reminds me of when I was still in school. Homework or any other kind of written assignment would always cause me to go blank. I’d get so worked up thinking about all the different routes I can go I would end up sitting there staring at the page for hours and not writing a word. Then I’d feel shitty and go play vidya or watch something and say I’d start the next day. It’s a pretty common experience this isn’t anything insightful, I just like having that feeling again. I have an assignment due in and now I’m even more free in my potential options than ever before.

That age was also the last time I was truly happy, not to say I haven’t experienced happiness since then of course but that was the last time I was truly happy and optimistic as a general rule. Nowadays to be happy is something I actually appreciate, at that age it was something I could take for granted. I had finally managed to get a small group of friends at school and one other boy in particular quickly became a very close friend. We were together so often the rest of our friends and people we associated with were constantly making gay jokes, a teacher of ours even made a similar quip although much less crudely. That teacher while I’m on the subject was hugely important to me, he was an English teacher and was one of the few I genuinely always wanted to impress with my work. He also said something to me once that left a huge impression, something that’s been back on my mind the last few days. In response to an assignment we had, a kind of mock review of a television show of our choice, he said he laughed out loud multiple times while marking it. He also said he could picture it in a genuine pop journalism publication, or something like that but I might be looking back with rose tinted glasses because this was a huge moment for me. I’m not sure I trust my memory completely in this case, but still it was certainly a very well received piece of work and one I never quite lived up to again. Naturally that one comment was enough to make someone as insecure as me feel indebted to him right until the last day of school. The reason it’s been back on my mind though, is because writing again in a longer form than just the occasional effortpost is reminding me how fun this is. I used to write for fun and that particular assignment I remember especially fondly. I remember laughing at my own attempts at humour the entire time I was writing the thing up. It was just a silly school assignment in the grand scheme of things though, only impressive to him because I was about 14. If someone my age were to write that it’d be laughable, but because I’ve dropped off in almost every single one of my interests and pursuits since not long after that age I haven’t progressed. Hopefully doing this will help me to catch up to where I could be if I never quit writing, one day.

Back to the what I was going over though, at that age I was still hopeful for the future. Not only did I finally have what you could call a best friend, and we really were incredibly close. We were together at all times outside of lessons, and also in lessons that we shared. We would hang out after school every day, on Fridays for hours and hours and most weeks one of us would stay the night at the other’s place. Weekends we’d hang out too, often with a few of the others from the group at school. He also first got me thinking about politics in a meaningful sense, my politics have changed drastically several times over since then but it started with him. Before him I was really uncritical, I don’t know how but he awoke this thoughtfulness in me that never went away. Not just in regard to politics, in how I looked at any kind of art or media and how I analysed the things people did. Maybe it’s all a coincidence, this was after all around the same time I went through puberty so maybe this was all latent. I don’t think so though, and at the time I definitely didn’t. At the time I felt this huge sense of gratitude, I felt like he’d saved me. To keep up with the current memes, it was like I was an NPC and he somehow made me into a player character. We were also actively looking forward to our futures, we spoke about what we’d study at uni and the places we’d travel to in our 20s. I was enjoying life and looking forward to every day, and excited for what the future would hold. I wasn’t even really bothered by not having a girlfriend, I would have liked one and I’d certainly already had crushes/oneitises at this point but it wasn’t something that I really thought about frequently. I just assumed I’d get around to that aspect of my adolescent development later on. There were girls who had expressed clear interest in me, but because I always dropped my spaghetti I ruined it, so naturally I’d just get better and things will work out like everything else had been doing I thought. Just not right now.

My music taste first started to develop around this time too, I was mostly listening to a few fairly well known alt-rock and indie bands so I had pleb tier taste but it was the first time I started paying attention to what I listened to and actively developing a certain taste rather than just seeing music as something that’s in the background. I wouldn’t say I saw music as a hobby or real interest of mine until about a year ago though. The album Velociraptor by Kasabian is basically the soundtrack for those three years, along with maybe Nevermind or In Utero. I don’t listen to any of them very often now, but the few times I have I get hit by a wave of memories from back then.

That’s why I like this feeling anyway, it puts me back in the headspace I was in when I was last truly a happy person. This was the last meandering post for a while now though. I have that idea about school shootings which I really want to talk about. I just hope it is as original as I think or I’ll feel like an idiot. I know I have an insight that most people don’t, and I’ve read and watched a lot about the subject and never seen someone put it quite like I would so far. Making a whole blogpost on the thing though is going to be difficult and might take longer than these last few did. Talking about myself is easy, but writing an intelligent (hopefully) and in depth (kinda) commentary on a modern phenomenon like school shootings isn’t. Also I’ll be working on and off again over the weekend and into next week. What I’m trying to say is I’m not done yet, and there will be more from me.