WhatsApping Lucy

Ya know James
Your blog is getting kind dull

:(

I thought you'd basically read it all?

Your poor followers must be bored of reading the same January entry over and over

Ha

The Idea is usually to read each one only once

Yeah
But when the blogger doesn't write frequently enough

I generally only blog when I've something on my mind, but I can just share that with you now :)

And you're thirsty for a slice of his unfiltered thoughts
Then you reread
Or
Good point
You become the blogger's girlfriend
Juuust looking out for your fans


So friends, I hope that little snippet of chat gives you some insight into whats happening in my life at the moment.

I thought I'd just post that with a short thought on and link to this song which I recorded when I was home before christmas.
I sat down at the piano, as one is want to do when you're home for a weekend and get to use a piano for bleedin' once in a long while. And as I sat down at the piano, and lifted up the cover thingy that covers the keys, you know that wooden thing on a hinge. I think covers a fitting word for it? It's obviously not important, but if anybody knows a better word I'm all ears. So I lifted up the cover (keyguard?), and noticed a spider about 2 octaves up from middle C who  quickly scurried down into a gap between the keys. So I decided right then I'd try to record a little song about this spider. The idea was to try capture his life.

Here's the link, please listen to it a bit (no need to listen to it all straight away, or ever for that matter) then read on. It will just make the next bit a little funnier if you have an idea of the song.
http://www.heuuuth.com/Content/Sounds/There_is_a_spider_in_my_piano.mp3

So, I'm hoping you'll agree that the song is pretty positive, it was supposed to capture the neverending web weaving and working life of a spider until it slowly, quietly, and samely stalls to a halt.
Which.
I've recently come to realise.
Probably wasn't the case for this spider.

I don't know how I didn't think about it at the time, I just figured the little guy ran into the inside of the piano and safely made a new home in that big space.
But the other day, I was listening to the song again after having linked it to Lucy who praised it, and I realised... There's a very good chance that Mr Spider was very swiftly crushed underneath one of the keys isn't there?
I don't know exactly what's under the keys, but they're basically lovely little wooden sticks perfect for squishing a spider.
So now when I hear the song, I have to tell myself that the spider survived it.
That he wasn't crushed 5 seconds in, and spent the following 2 minutes being repeatedly smashed into a pulp underneath the ivory.

Definitely not.

No way.

Mental development. It's mental.

I think I worry about my mental state more than most people, hard to tell though because I do most of that worrying inside my head so maybe most people do that.
I get quite worried sometimes about my happiness, I wouldn't consider myself depressive, but sometimes, usually following the days after a hangover, I freak out a little bit. I think I mentioned before the time I had a mild panic attack a few days after being incredibly hungover where I got huge deja vu and momentarily convinced myself I had died and felt the world come narrowing in all around me as I realised that I was only living the current months on repeat with the timeframe lessoning each time until it disappears. I snapped out of that after maybe 10 seconds, but it was a pretty terrifying 10 seconds. Had I ever mentioned that before?

Anyway, over Christmas I had a similar thing happen on Christmas eve. I just sort of for a few moments felt like I'd never be happy again and that I'd probably end up seriously harming myself some day. Then the moment passed and I just ended up feeling a bit down for a while. I was feeling quite hungover after having a few long nights, no crazy amount of drink drunk, but just an accumulation of hangover depression I guess. So what sparked this was I got to thinking as I lay in bed about my last blog post. On a college reunion night out a friend mentioned it to me and I hadn't realised he reads this still. I was split on what to do about it; I hadn't written it to be too negative, just an observation really from a slightly negative outlook, but the fact that someone had taken it to be a bit negative I guess got me to looking at it that way. I hadn't even stopped to think about what I was writing or it's possible effects before writing it. Like this, it was mostly just my stream of consciousness at the moment of writing.
I've read that you shouldn't dwell on negative thoughts, negative thoughts are self encouraging, I even saw a talk where a speaker encouraged to just literally cut off negative thoughts. If you find yourself thinking about something sad or depressing just CUT that line of thinking. I guess similar to that elastic band tactic. You Force yourself to think about something not negative. "What's the point in going to th- -- baby powder is good for drying dampness, you can even put it on your feet after you shower and putting on your socks is easier, hell that's probably even healthier for your feet than going into your socks damp, and then being in them all day". See, it's easy, and it works. But I'm not entirely convinced that it's a good idea to not think about things which are bothering you. It just sounds like it's a recipe for greater future sadness? I am in no way one have any opinion, but as psychology seems to be under-understood I don't know the correct answer for definite; So on Christmas eve I re-read it and started thinking about it.

On a side note, I debated whether to post this at all as I don't think it's a healthy way to think about things, and it made me feel depressed as shit thinking about this, so I don't want to inflict it on people, but I think it's probably a good thing to say what I've taken from it.

I started thinking again about how all we do is talk about past and future events, and at those events we spend a good deal of time talking about past and future events. Some people even watch entire tv shows which are people talking about things they're going to do and have done with people you'll never meet. People have people over for dinner parties to talk about other dinner parties they went to. So thinking about this obviously gives you a huge feeling of pointlessness. Where is the enjoyment in life? Every moment is spent in the search of a future moment. This is what I was thinking, which is an easy thing to mistakenly believe, especially in the world we live in today. But there is enjoyment in almost everything really if you let there be. And if you spend your whole time thinking about where is the enjoyment in this exact moment, it makes it almost impossible to enjoy. It's like when somebody says something you like is boring, and then they start imitating it with a really boring voice and it just seems shit. If you don't allow it to be fun, it won't be. If you think critically about WHY do I enjoy playing cards with my mum, you probably won't enjoy it very much. But if you don't think about it, you'll probably have fun. And there's nothing wrong with that; you don't need to understand why it's fun, or even understand why thinking about it makes it less fun. I can't expect myself to understand everything to do with my mind, or even be able to explain what I don't understand. Nobody should expect this. There's just so much going on in our minds that we can't quantify, sure it's probably something to do with natural instincts to play and whatnot, but because it's just a natural instinct, should that take any enjoyment out of it? Certainly not I reckon. Just because somethings explainable shouldn't make it any less enjoyable or amazing.

So that's the conclusion I've come to after a number of days thinking about it. My big conclusion using the brain that has spent however long us first world people spend in education, is that it's not even something worth thinking about. It's something so pointless yet made me feel sad. That's a little funny really isn't it? If all this has made you feel shitty please drop me a message because I maybe haven't explained why it's not all bad here very clearly!

What I realised from all this was really the importance of the whole healthy-body healthy-mind. I had been going a good few days with basically no time outside during the day. It's definitely just so important to our mental health to get some exercise and/or fresh air. Once I went for a cross-train (because we have one of those) and a walk I felt a lot better the next day.

And also what helped most was how much better it made me feel when other people were telling me they were feeling down too over the holidays. There's something about hearing that which just makes you think everythings going to be ok. Once you realise you'll be fine in a week or two it makes it easier to feel shit.

So do I regret not cutting it off? I'm not sure. Maybe I would have had a more enjoyable Christmas so it would have been better to think about it when I wasn't home for the holidays, but I do think it's helped me grow. Also feeling like that would have made work probably unbearable. I think I'm a stronger person mentally now for having thought about these things which were bothering me. It's mental development.

I also read this article which I can't find but will try to for the next day. It was about how learning skills is important and nobody really gives a shit that you're lovely unless you do lovely things. So with that in mind, I'm going to try make some mini resolutions over the next few months. Or goals I should really say.

1. I want to push myself to try go on at least 1 tinder date(or even better a not tinder date, but that's very unlikely)  by the end of January. 
2. I want to get EthicalToMe up and somewhat running by May. At least have something there.

And that's it for now.

I'll hopefully add something for Feb/March. I'm going skiing (can'tfuckingwaittttt) first week of February so that messes with a Feb goal. Other than to ski mad lines. Actually yeah, that can be number 3. Ski mad lines. 

Til next time friends.