I seem to just play guitar instead of writing blog posts like I expected. Not exactly the worst way to pass the time.
I used to get so much release from just posting crap here, but I think I honestly get all that release from just playing a few songs that fit my mood.
Or if I have something I really want to get out making up a song.
Sooo lately I've been playing plenty of squash, guitar, seeing family, and not nearly as much playing video games as I expected single life to involve.
I've recently re-watched basically all of Always Sunny in Philadelphia and caught up to speed with the latest Irish season. Read a book about longitude and how important the "chronometer" or The Watch was to solving it, it was actually really interesting and easy to read. Now dad has given me a book called Gallileo's Daughter which according to him is not as good, so my hopes are low....
I'm hoping to go on a sail for a weekend with dad soon if he's ever free, he's such a busy man.
I'm not sure how much I'm going to delve into my private life at the moment here... Lucy told me she's not going to read the blog as she finds it sad to hear my ramblings, so I think that means I'm free to talk about dates I go on, but at the same time I don't want to hurt her feelings if she does happen to read it...
If you're reading this Lucy, Hey! haha.
But anyway, I'll just say I've been on a few dates since Lucy and I broke up.
They were all nice enough girls, the first 3 dates were certainly way too soon after the breakup to actually feel comfortable, and not like I shouldn't be out with a girl..
I think I'm getting more comfortable now, and more hopeful as I seem to have matched with a few beautiful fembots who actually reply lately.
Anyway I haven't any juicy stories to report yet, and hopefully I won't because juicy stories basically means embarassing stories...
But if I do get any, I'll be sure to roast myself here for your enjoying.
P.S:
If anybody reading this has any nice guitar tabs they'd like to send my way I'm trying to spend at least 10 minutes of my daily 40-80 mins of guitar actually devoted to improving rather than just singing the easy stuff.
I'm going to keep the recap brief, but the past 5 years have been relationship filled. Moved to Bristol, then not long after moved to Dublin. We lived with my parents for 2 years saving, got engaged, bought an apartment at the start of lockdown 2 years ago, got a cat, got another cat, a cat died, got a dog, and then
Lucy and I just broke up recently.
Basically she wanted to move back to the UK and I didn't was the crux of it.
We still care an awful lot about each other so it's very weird, but it was a pretty mutual realisation that this is probably for the best.
So now I need someone to listen to me moan again and you my favourite friends, if any of you happen across this again, get the honour.
My first moan is what the fuck is up with the new blog creating page, it's like I'm writing a word document now.
I want my Morcheeba background back. Speaking of, I haven't listened to Morcheeba in yonks, time to stick on "Enjoy the Ride". I suggest you do the same so we're like, in sync, even if you're reading this months after I've written it. We'll basically be time travelling together, sharing a moment across different points in history. Let me set the scene. I'm in our apartment, that is now strangely not our apartment as much as it used to be, "my" apartment I should probably say to any potential fembots. The lights are soft yellow, it's dark outside, the dog is conked on the couch behind me, the cat has wandered off to the bedroom to snooze on the bed most likely. Morcheeba is playing on my speakers. The guitar is out of its case in the corner of the room looking at me. I'm having a beer after squash earlier. I guess you could say it is a peaceful moment.
I decided to blog because I actually am avoiding being productive. I've 2 big programming projects that I need to work on, I've put in a lot of hours already but there's a lot to do still on both, and I have 2 or 3 littler project ideas too.
But what I really should be doing is practicing guitar.
I've made a little soundcloud that you can find here https://soundcloud.com/thejamhead <- Don't have any expectations, I'm awful but it's fun.
So I'm trying to just keep making songs and I figure I'll gradually get better. I've been using this really nice little website called https://songcraft.io/ for making up the songs, but you only get 5 free spaces and I've used them all up, so I really need to record some so I can delete them and make space for new ideas... It's just so hard when you have an idea in your head for how you want it to sound, and you're just too shit to get it right.
Lucy happened to call (we haven't been chatting much on purpose) just after I wrote that paragraph for a check-in to see how I'm doing and I didn't get back to writing this, so I'll end this post here.
Ahoyyyyyy my long lost friends. I have not forgotten you. I love you all far too much to do that.
I gave in my notice at my job today. 2 months baby, then I'm outta that bitch.
Well. Maybe.
They asked whether I could - actually lemme backtrack.
So my uncle has an app/website for me to make and he's paying me and giving me equity, so I want to do that obviously as it'd be far more interesting than the work I get at regular work. And I have a huge amount of my own ideas I want to do. So it made sense that now, as I'm moving city (I'm moving city by the way) to quit my old job.
Ok none of this make sense unless I backtrack even more. Jesus not blogging in ages does not make this easy...
SO since the last post things have been going great with Lucy. I moved to Norwich where she was working since she was the only reason I was still in England, and we moved in together and have had a lovely 10 months in Norwich so far. In Norwich I stayed working for the same company, just remotely 4 days and commuting to London 1 day. Now Lucy has a new job in Bristol, so we're moving, and I can't be bothered to do the 4 days + 1 commute anymore on a project I'm no longer interested in.
So going back, when I gave in my notice work asked whether I could do maybe 2/3 days a week and 2/3 days off, or work freelance, or basically anything that wasn't a hard quit. Which is nice in that I could make some more money if I did that, but I'd quite like to just quit and move on. I think I can earn more contracting for other companies, although they haven't said what freelance rate they'd give me....
OK my train has arrived home so I'm going to leg it.
Be glad ye got anything at all ya scoundrels.
PS:
I've stopped the violin, and I've learnt to string squash rackets. Playing tonnes of squash.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I haven't been exercising lately and I think it's taking it's toll on my mind.
I keep thinking about all the pointless shit we do. I guess my question is what is enjoyment? Well, I guess enjoyment is a release of some crap in our brains, but what I mean is, why do we enjoy some things and not others? If we had the mindset that riding on a bus is really fun, and people paid large sums of money to ride the bus, would that then make riding the bus fun? I could imagine a lot of people getting on board with this.
Everything feels like we're going towards some greater point, but in reality we're not going anywhere. We only ever live in the moment, but so often is seems like the moment is spent planning future moments, or reminiscing on past moments. People go shopping to buy clothes, and they get enjoyment from buying them, but why? It's because they see themselves being regarded better by other people while wearing these nice clothes, or they know these clothes will give them comfort in weather or exercise, so we enjoy this process of buying clothes because in future it will give us enjoyment? It's hard to wrap my head around. And even then, let's say the future enjoyment is someone saying our clothes looks nice, why do we enjoy that? They validate our position in society, or make us feel attractive or worthwhile, and that makes us feel good. Again, why do we seek this? Because it makes us feel like we have a reason to live? Or because it means we think we'll get priority over other people for a mate, or for food, or some other form of enjoyment.
Really it seems like it breaks down to there are very few things which we do for direct enjoyment, and everything else comes from the promise, or prospect of that enjoyment, or the avoidance of displeasure. I'm sure some people have written books on this stuff and I could read that and it would all make sense and also not make sense after I've read it. It's crap I've spent so long trying not to think about since our little human brains are so ill fitted for really comprehending the world in which we live. I know I'll never understand the world, so should I not try? Or should I try in spite of that?
I went to a nature photography exhibition today, and while looking at the pictures I was thinking about how some photographer was sitting there waiting to take this picture, and because he took it it's now being shown to all these people, and we all get this enjoyment somehow from looking at it. This enjoyment of something we're not really observing, we got someone else to observe it.
Wait hang on.
Am I being a cynical prick? Is that what this way of thinking is? Cynical prick?
I just googled cynical, and no I'm not being cynical. I'm just being a confused prick I think.
So anyway, back to the photographer sitting in the field, or up a tree or whatever. Do we enjoy the pictures because we're imaging witnessing the event? I guess everybody enjoys the pictures for different reasons, and that's what makes us humans and interesting. A lot of the enjoyment definitely comes from the sense of wonder the pictures give us. Wonder is such a hard one to pin down. It's something we experience so strongly and frequently as a child, and now it's much more of a rarity. It's nothing specific, it's just a general feeling, but somehow it's a pleasant feeling. Why do we enjoy finding new things? Is it because in nature finding that new berries are edible is valuable information? Or just learning in general has helped us survive I guess. Not everything breaks down to berries. I would love some raspberry crumble.
Photography is a funny one since it's only been around in the recent enough history of humans. Watching a previous moment with real life quality is something that nature never really intended people to do. Unless you had a seriously amazing painter, it's only in very recent times people have been getting their heads around seeing a previous moment for a prolonged time.
I don't know what I'm talking about.
I've moved house by the way. Living near Notting Hill now, it's pretty nice, and 5 minute walk to work which is amazing. Works going fine bla bla. Violin is going pretty good too! Really enjoying it. Going to start on vibrato next lesson if that means anything to anybody. I can't wait to vibrato the shit outta me fiddle. And now I'm thinking, why will I enjoy doing vibrato, which makes me think because it will make my notes sound nicer, so because there's immediate pleasure in hearing music for some mad reason, and there's also pleasure in knowing people will think better of me if I'm better.
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blegh. fuck it.
I should go for a run.
I won't though. It's bloody freezing.
In short, new housemates are nice, I think I'll like it here. Need to get pictures for my walls in my room though.
Shane said something really funny the last day in his post. It was along the lines of, reading James' blog makes me realise how much people drone on about unimportant shite. Thanks Shane.
So... Let's drone.
I'm sitting here alone on a Saturday night, with my 2 friends, not my 2 housemates, they've gone out; I'm here with wine and netflix. Oh and you, laptop. Stealing my quality time with the TV to write this. And actually I should mention the huge presence of fruit flies, the fuckers just seem to be coming from everywhere. I'm a bit of a wanky cliche actually, drinking wine and blogging.
So about the title; I was never really told that as a child so far as I remember, I wasn't much of a needy young teen. Quite uncool, and definitely one to say the stupidest cringiest things just because not saying anything was harder, but not particularly needy, at least not nearly as I am now. I think I was 15 when I had my first actual kiss, and second, and then a few years again of nothing apart from a few awkward MSN conversations.
When I was about 11 I was asked to kiss this girl who I thought was unbelievably pretty, but I was too afraid that the girls were just making fun of me, and if they weren't they definitely would when they found out I didn't know how to kiss, so I nervously shook my head and said no. I then heard one of the girls say something along the lines of "he's a dickhead" or something which made me immediately realise I had made a huge mistake. A similar thing happened the following year too. It's pretty sad thinking about how low my confidence was.
When I'd be hanging out with people who were known to be cool people I'd sit there quiet for so long knowing that if I talk I'm just going to say something uncool and they would exclude me from the gang. Eventually the conversation would turn to me and it'd be incredibly difficult to know how to talk after having made an effort not to talk for so long. Actually even now sometimes I'm baffled by how quickly we say things. With friends I don't even think, I just speak, and sometimes it can actually be witty (right?!). When you're around new people you have to be more careful not to offend, and know what these new potential friends think is stupid or funny or annoying. I'm getting completely sidetracked here. Let's reverse this rambling back to ... the start of this paragraph. This paragraph was pointless.
I told myself I'd do better when I'm older though. I like to think most boys did the same. I thought, "I'll be rich, and girls love rich guys. And I'll be more confident because I'll have figured out people.". To some extent it's true, I have figured people out, I have gradually gotten more confidence with age. People do better as they get older, largely thanks to alcohol, and college. Which sadly wasn't the heaps of one night stands that I had hoped for. I had 1 of those throughout college, which although 1 isn't a very big number, it could have been worse. It actually made me feel a little bit cool, my first time also doubled up as a decent never have I ever. We attempted to get it on against a snow covered parked van on a ski resort street. A minute later we decided to complete the 10 minute walk back to the room as this wasn't turning out nearly as easy as movies made standing up sex look. Thinking back we were wearing so much ski clothes, hammered drunk, and it was freezing out; it was never going to work. I don't even remember her name. I would probably have a little bit of a shame about this whole incident if it weren't for the fact I just really really wanted to get my first time over with.
There's only really one relationship from college that I regret not pursuing, but even then at least I had a reason that time. It was halfway through first year and I was for once in my life kissing girls and drinking and having lots of fun. I didn't want to suddenly lose this and go into a relationship with this great girl. It wasn't until nearly 2 years later that I finally realised kissing girls who don't have names is pretty pointless. It's nice at the time, but it's better to actually make it go somewhere. I have a similar mindset on 1 night stands now. If you're going to take the ever so slightly small risk that this may result in you having to raise a child with this girl, you should at least make sure that she's someone who that wouldn't be a terrible thing to have to do that with.
It's easy to have that point of view when you never get any anyways. I haven't had a single sex in almost 2 years, and only kissed maybe 2 random girls in that time? If I was the type of guy who finds it easy to get girls I'm sure it'd be more tempting to think 'Fuck it, I'll take the odds on this one'.
You might be thinking, 2 years that's pretty bad Jimbo, how do you even manage that. Very very easily is the answer. Lets quickly check our situation here, it's Saturday night and I'm not out. Last night I wasn't out. During the week my only activities are the odd game of squash, generally with a man over 40, and a violin lesson conveniently on a Friday night so that I don't have to drink. Whenever I do head out I pretty much never fancy anybody. I find it hard to stay up much past 2am, and I don't want to take any drugs to help that. My dabbling days are over. Pills did make me love going out again for a while, but my little man brain has a fragile enough grasp on what's real, I can't afford to lose that.
Alzheimer's really scares me. I think I'm likely to get it, and not just because it's one of the scariest diseases and it's natural to worry about myself..
I woke up confused the other night, first time in a while. It's such a horrible feeling. Not knowing what's going on. I had just had a dream where some gangsters were going to kill my wife and child, and then I died and drifted through the air to become part of a huge evil tree made out of dead bodies, which then started moving as I completed the last missing piece it had been waiting for for so long so it could go about it's evil deeds. Then the movie ended and I was saying to my flatmates how I didn't understand the end with the tree just moving about (I think that's why I woke up confused). Then I woke up, and slowly managed to open my eyes and do my routine check of my hands to make sure I could count my fingers, otherwise I'm still dreaming. Then I had to spend a few minutes piecing together where exactly I was, when exactly I had went to sleep, and what we had been doing before that.
I don't want to dream about that fucking tree again.
I really don't want being confused to be a regular thing.
And I really really don't ever want alzheimer's.
