You can't help people who won't help themselves.

I originally thought the title when I was quite young and had just heard a story about some difficulties in some developing country in Africa. At the time it seemed quite profound and I was pretty happy with having said it. Recently I've noticed I can relate it to myself moreso than anything else.

I had heard a story about some community that was given help but basically whoever they chose to be in charge fucked their own people over. It's sadly a bit of a recurring theme in developing countries it seems. In Kenya over the summer I got the impression that  it was taken for granted the politicians would basically skim shit-tonnes of money off public funding for anything for themselves, even health or education.

So anyway, I decided when I was younger it wasn't very useful giving lots of money to these countries. The country needs people who are willing to live and die to make their country a better place to live before help can really be useful. In my eyes they needed some De Veleras and Michael Collinses of their own. Which I guess is true, presumably why so many people believe education is the key yada yada.

ANYWHU

So yeah, basically my point about all of this is, I'm so often one of these developing countries.

I was thinking about whether or not to go to this camp thing that I've applied for. I basically have been accepted and I need to pay and stuff really quickly, or so she said on Monday when she woke me up. I was meant to ring her on Tuesday after I had done this list of things. I still haven't paid yet though so I've not rang her :/ . It was funny actually, she was all like being energetic and stuff, and I was still in bed. She was saying things like "We were talking about it in the office and we reckon since you have awesome skills we could have you placed in a camp by Friday if you get it done this evening or tomorrow morning.", and I knew from the way she said it she was expecting me to be really excited about it, but she had literally just told me I'd need to pay 220 euro (which was more than I was expecting at this stage), and I was tired, and I was pretty sure they weren't actually talking about me in the office. 

So for the rest of that day and the next one I was thinking quite a bit about whether I would go or not. The alternative would be to stay in Ireland and hope anything fun comes up. Not much of an alternative, but I'm a bit of a commitment-phobe. 

Lets make a short list of times where I've failed to help myself and I really wish I had. 

• When I was 10 I had a chance to have my first kiss with this really pretty girl. She was actually way too pretty for me but I guess she was too young to know it. Her friends asked out of nowhere would I kiss her, so being a little 10 year old I panicked, figured if I said yes I'd either let them know I didn't know how to kiss (lol) or they were going to laugh because it was a joke maybe? So I said no, and then I heard them say to her I was a dick or whatever and I regretted it quite a lot afterwards because I really would have liked to have had the confidence to say yes. I regretted it even more when I went to an all boys secondary school a big fridge (until like 3rd year, so cool) and got shit loads of abuse at times for stupidly admitting to being one. 
• When I was hmm, 16 maybe? I was at a squash event and it turned out one of the guys on the Irish team was probably going to have to pull out of some junior competition in like Qatar or somewhere cool like that. The captain of the team had been asked to ask me to go to fill in for the guy who couldn't make it, at least I imagine he had been asked to ask. I told him I didn't want to go because I didn't think I was good enough and surely they could find someone better. He said something along the lines of  "You're next on the rankings, do you want to go or not?". So I said something daft like, "Eh I don't think so... The guy might not even have to pull out?", so he naturally quickly took that as a no and went to ask one of his good mates who was 1 below me on the rankings to go instead. 
• The first time I should have done the bold deed was with this really cute girl who I had been scoring for a while. I'm pretty sure she would have been game but I never took the initiative. Instead it was in a drunken mess with some wretched wench who's name could have been Orla or Ornaigh, or Laura, or possibly Francesca for all I really know (I remember asking during but don't really remember her answer). I was very tempted not to put that up here online for the world to see but fuck it, plenty of time to be embarrassed when I'm dead. Actually, I'll have to remember to delete this blog at some stage lest my children (god permitting) some day ever manage to find it. 

So going back to my camp decision (which has been altered since I started writing this), I really wanted to back out of it once I got offered it, just in case something better cropped up or it would turn out to be shit. My friend Andy has went to a camp the last 2 years and is going again this year. He highly recommends his camp, and if I went directly I'd earn a little bit more money. I'd also be guaranteed to go to a good camp. He said I probably wouldn't actually see him all that much since you can go days without seeing other counsellors but sure fuck it. I think not being able to help myself may have finally worked in my favour for once... Or I might end up not getting accepted to his camp and leave paying CampLeaders too late and losing my spot there! 

Who knows. 

Nobody does right now, but you will. 

In time, you will.

I was listening to this song in college today

It's really really nice, I don't think it's depressing at all but while I was listening to it I started noticing how cold the room I was in was, and I basically just suddenly really wanted to get the fuck out of there and head home but I couldn't because I had to finish some work. So I ended up not finishing my planned 1000 words for the day and headed home listening to the album "In The Aeroplane Over The Sea" by "Neutral Milk Hotel". 

Rob gave me the album a while back and I only put it on my phone last week. I hadn't really listened to the lyrics very well, but on my way home I did for a while and they're quite sad and pretty. Given that I was already feeling quite down I started feeling very very sad on the way home, but I had bought some chocolate in the shop and it literally made me feel better. Being bently honest I was feeling a little close to tears until I distracted myself with 50g of Daim Milka (remember when they were called Dime bars?). This sad mood was brought on by no reason that I can tell, maybe I was really sad I finally finished Wuthering Heights and had no book for the way home. 

When I got home I was planning on having a nap, then finishing my 1000 words for the day on the thesis, but when I got home I ended up talking shite with my little sister Moo for about 2 hours instead. At one point when she was telling me to stop being a mopey prick she said: 

"Your life is a story that you write yourself, make yours worth reading." 

I laughed when she said that and said something along the lines of, "Pfffft, bent.", feeling mildly happy with myself for being so humours to be childishly dismissive of it, but then she reminded me that I had actually written that in chalk on the wall of my room. I don't think it's actually still there, - just checked, nope it's not. For some reason I had thought that it was one of the quotes she has written on her whiteboard, I felt quite the fool for not remembering those were my words.

So now I need to finish those 1000 words (I definitely won't), apply for this new camp job, and go to sleepy town.

Bye.

p.s: I trendied my page up a bit, notice the cool vote down the bottom of the page?