I thought I'd be posting more frequently, I guess I'm not! - I'm doing just fine.

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 Still Exist

Well well well. 

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.

Heya Flipheads

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.

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.

This is for me.

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.

oiajdjfkasjdfkljas;df


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.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QR4Hjx7-QKw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yHV04eSGzAA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XybDZ9I9k4k

When you're older you'll get more girls.

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.

Watsup cutie; am I dreaming?

So this weird thing happened 2 weeks back or so.
I had this dream which I've forgotten half the details of, but there was this beautiful girl in it with blue hair.
And then when I got the tube that morning, this girl got on on the victoria line, and she was absolutely stunning. She had one of those bull-nose ring things which I normally wouldn't care too much for, but it looked very attractive. Importantly, she had blue hair. Mostly blue, but purple too, and blonde. In a movie it would have been a sign that I should talk to her and say some really charming shit that people in real life are for the most part incapable of doing. Sadly this was real life, and this was the tube in London at rush hour; looking at someone else is basically a no-no, hitting on someone (again, not something I'm capable of doing to any degree) would pretty much be reason enough to get you sectioned.

I kind of forgot about her until a few days later when I saw her on the tube again, and I thought maybe my dream had made me exaggerate her good looks but nope, she's a crazily beautiful punk. Remember in Freaks and Geeks when Daniel tells that punk girl he's a punker too? I'm going to do that. I'm going to dye my hair blue, and get leather trousers, and get a clothes pin nose piercing.

I also had another dream where one of my friends (think it was you Christine), was telling me how she had figured out the meaning of life. That it was actually really simple, and in the dream it made perfect sense and was very calming to know. It was something along the lines of we're all just energy. We're made of energy, and when we die our energy goes to other things. Which isn't a very comforting thing to hear awake because we basically already know that this happens but we like to think that we have a soul or something more than what's physically there, that we'll exist after we die, but for some reason in the dream it was comforting to know we won't.

I think a lot about "What if I'm already dead", which is a complete waste of time because there's no way of disproving it, and I think it's quite an unhealthy thing to think about. I've come to the conclusion: "so what if I am?". In fact, lots of these existential questions really don't matter. It's easy to come up with some crazy theory about our existence (see most religions).

I'm not going to post that stupid existential phone note I made. It's too wanky and embarassing, even for this blog.

In other news, my cousin is going to be moving to London instead of New York, which is quite cool. It will be fun having her around if I'm not moving home. I'm thinking I might just try move home for December. I'll be away for 3 weeks anyway so it'd be great not to have to pay rent for a month. Work might let me work from Ireland for a week or two, which would be really helpful for seeing if I do actually want to move home or not. Or at least if I want to leave London or not.

Violin is going well, my teacher seemed quite impressed after lesson #6 there on Friday. She's given me a piece outside the book to learn which she says is around grade 2 standard. Slightly above I think she said actually. Which is cool to know how roughly to rate myself, hopefully I'll have it down pretty well for my next lesson in 2 weeks. Funnily enough it's a Brahms piece which I did for my grade 7 on piano so I know the tune which helps.

I won't go into how depressingly void my love life is. If you just imagine somewhere out in space way out past Pluto. A lost comet in intergalactic space, hoping to find a solar system but no idea how to. Gravity doesn't exist for me.

Life is flying by.
I sort of feel like a tumbleweed.

I feel like typing

I've been doing a fair bit of thinking lately. You see, being a human being I tend to think about things going on in my life. What I really should say is, I have been thinking a fair bit lately about what I'm doing with my life and what I should be doing in the near future. So far in life I have tended not to worry about the far future, i.e >1year away as I think it's a waste since I don't know what I want so it's quite prone to change, I still mostly agree with this way of thinking.

So I've been thinking about November, and my job at the moment, and my life at the moment. I feel it will be good to write a few posts about this to help me make my mind up. No commitment though, I might not post again so don't expect nothing (I want to change that to don't expect anything but it just doesn't have the same ring to it). 

My job is going fine, it pays ok, the people are nice, the days go by quite quickly which is a good sign. The work itself isn't anything I'd call meaningful or worthwhile other than to make money. The programming is not modern technologies, it would be nice to use something better but that's not possible right now. It's hard to compare it to my other programming job as I've only been here 6 months, and its a totally different environment, I'm not sure which I preferred. I don't work as hard as the other people there to be honest. I would definitely expect to be the lowest paid there, as I'm the youngest and least experienced. I'm not saying I don't work hard, I do what I'm asked and I do put effort in, but I don't stress like some of the other people. And the reason for that is I don't mind if I get let go. I would like an excuse to move out of London.

Nothing against London, it's a cool city and the people in general are all very nice, but I have no social life here. I have nothing to do in my spare time if my housemates aren't around, and they're not around a lot. It's not like the way we were with my housemates in Dublin. I recently took up the violin so that I would have something to do, I have wanted to for a long time, but it's about the only thing going on in my life at the moment. I even re-downloaded happn hoping for a lil date or just someone new to talk to, and have literally liked over 100 girls and no match yet. I'd feel worse but they're mostly incredibly good looking so it's ok to be ignored by them.

So November. What's so special about November?
That's when our lease ends and we're not renewing it. Oisin may not even be here by the end if he doesn't get a phD in London, and James may move in with his girlfriend, or probably with his schoolfriends. I don't think either of them particularly want to live with me again anyway, and I definitely wouldn't want to live with such messy people again. It would be nice to be home for xmas. But I need to save some more money to afford to go skiing, and to survive being unemployed, and work pays better than not working even with the huge London rents/bills/cost of living. If I move in somewhere close to work and shitty and cheap I could save more money. I could potentially get a place for 150pounds a month less, and I could save another 140pounds by walking instead of tubing for an hour on 4 different tube lines. I did cycle to work for a while, but my brakes came flying off one day and I haven't been able to find new ones that fit my bike, apparently I need a really old style brake. Also I don't really enjoy cycling here as it's a bit intimidating and I'd rather not get crushed by a lorry. It's not a bad cycle, 45 minutes but half it nearly is through parks.
If I moved home I'd have nothing to do is the main problem. I want to move home because I miss my friends and my family and cousins, and the sea, but if I moved home and don't work on a personal project I'd end up getting a shit job for money like the one in Sandyford again. Ideally I'd like to have a friend who works on a project full time with me. That would be fun and we could make something meaningful, or at least the profits would go purely to us. But if I didn't have someone to work with and keep each other on track and not dossing and sleeping in I'm fairly sure I wouldn't be able to do it.
And I want a dog. Or perhaps I just want some affection that my life is so completely void of at the moment. I don't think I've ever felt so unloved as living over here. I don't mean hated, I just mean life lacking of love. Not romantic love, but the family love, or love you get from friends.
I've wanted a dog for so long but I've never been allowed one (I sound like such a child), or really had the right opportunity to get one. I can't get one here as it'd be alone all day which is totally unfair, and even if I moved home we just got a rabbit, so another animal would be a no-no I'm sure.

I'm kind of hoping I'll make some friends here somehow and start to enjoy it, but right now I'm thinking if things don't change by mid October I'll tell work I'm gonna head home in mid November. I could see if they'd let me work remotely for a while I suppose.

It's late.
Good night.
Thanks for listening.

[note to self for next time: existential phone note post, blue/blonde haired girl and my dream]

Ryan saw a dog today

It was amazing.

It was a small black dog.
I said those are the best kind, but I'm not really sure if I meant it. Although I do quite like the black lab puppies, those are up there as the best dogs and those are small black dogs.

Maybe I did mean it. It was fun talking to Ryan. Talking to my mates from home makes me want to move home. A lot of stuff makes me want to move home, but there's the overwhelming feeling of what if I do move home and don't find something good to do. I'd be quite bummed. I'll worry about all this shit later on, it could all sort itself out (if I get fired for example, or if, eh, nope. Can't think of how else).

As I'm want to do, here's a list of some music I've been listening to. Heavy on the female vocals.

happy:Alex Winston - Careless

sad: Alex Winston - Waiting around to die

very sad: Lera Lynn - Least favourite life

maybe sad:Lana Del Rey - Gramma

happy: First Aid Kit - Stay Gold
(I've been listening to a lot of these, mostly because they're most recently added on my music player)

chill: Winter Is All Over You (Bauuer Remix) - First Aid Kit
First Aid Kit - Winter is all over you

dreamy: EDDI FRONT // ELEVATOR OFFICIAL VIDEO

BEST SONG EVER NOSTALGIA TRIP WOOP

Baffled

I've been feeling a little bit "baffled" by computers lately. It's incredible that I can type some keys on this box which makes the machine parts inside the computer which are whizzing around do specific things, sending loads of signals all around the place inside it, reading and setting bits and sending them off to the internet. I don't even have to worry about that crap, but I can make use of it. It's really fucking amazing how well people can build upon existing knowledge.

People are so good at using things we don't understand. I'd imagine the majority of people don't have too much of a clue how an engine works, but they can still drive cars. It feels like the world completely revolves around computers, maybe too much so, but is that maybe just because I work with computers? I spend my WHOLE friggin' time on them. I'd love to play more music, draw more, spend more time playing with animals and doing sports, but I seem to just spend everyday working on a computer, then playing on a computer, then watching a movie on a computer and then maybe even writing a blog post on one before sleeping. It's pretty gross.

There was this weird thing I couldn't avoid on the internet today. Some bullshit about gold/white looking blue/black depending on the brightness you've been looking at. I didn't give a shit but I was bombarded by it unavoidably all day. It's crazy how easily media can be forced upon people. It gives me a very 1984 feeling. Especially for Russia. But then maybe that's only because that's how our governments want us to feel about them, which brings us back to being the ones living under propaganda. I think both sides are probably guilty a bit, but not so much as either side would have you believe of the other. One of my friends is Ukrainian though and he is quite insistent Russia is terrible and backwards and so corrupt, but he also says people from Eastern Ukraine are quite pro-Russia, so where does that leave things... It seems vaguely like there is a risk of a wider war, but then I think that also is bargaining power for trade deals, which could be the real reason underlying everything and there is no real risk of war.
It's worrying anyway.

Got sidetracked there reading an article on a Russian opposition leader who was assassinated tonight.

I should sleep.

I'm half thinking of writing a short story. A proper one that takes a while to read. I haven't fully thought it out yet though. I just sort of want something creative to be doing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kOL7aeIDruA

Job done

My job ended in quite a bad way. I got paid half what I thought I was due, the boss claimed it was my mistake. I'll never know I suppose. Anyway I left there, we'll see if he pays me for my last 2 days work.
At the moment I potentially have a few days work on a friends project, but I should probably really get applying to jobs again. I also signed up with an extra's agency. That'd be fun to try for a few days cash, but from what I hear it's actually really boring.

In other news, I made a tumblr and downloaded an extension for easily posting things to it, so I'm actually going to use it I think.
Check it out.

http://heuuuth.tumblr.com/

My online diary

We're all just functional drug addicts.
I was horribly hungover today. In a weird way.
Do you ever feel hungover and you don't quite feel as if you're yourself? My heads a big old mess.
I napped for about 5 hours probably today to fight off the hangover, so I'm now up past my bedtime. I think that's why I blog less now, I actually am good for going to bed on time usually.

I didn't take any drugs or anything bold like that, but I feel as if I took a shit load, which brings me to my point. Finally. Getting to the point. We're all bloody alcoholics. I drink too much, and as far as 25 year old males go I'd say I don't drink a huge amount. I need to start drinking less.
Huh.
Odd.
Could have sworn I would have more to say on that.
I have no train of thought today.

I had this dream earlier which was quite bizarre. I was listening to a song in it called Don't cry, and it was a beautiful song with plain female vocals which turned into some funky rap at end. I woke up a bit confused thinking I must have surely had earphones in because I could still hear the music, and then I realised I was still dreaming (or half dreaming maybe, you know that weird state), and woke up for real and realised there was no music. It's a pity that song doesn't exist.

Ugh I'm opening the gates here, I've too much shit that I want to blab on about. Gonna write them down real quickly so I don't forget. Questioning my sanity, the soul, Happn/relationships. These probably all deserve a post to themselves so I'll just briefly talk about the first one in case I don't get around to these topics as it's the most on my mind these days.

I just googled "Is it normal to question my sanity?" and came across this post which was comforting https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20091114200005AAesIxt. I so often think people think about me in certain negative ways which of course sometimes are true, but more often probably are just me being paranoid. I've been told once or twice before that I'm unhealthily paranoid, but I think I'm just afraid of being made a fool of. It's good a lot of the time to think people don't like you (if you have a reason) so you can act accordingly around them, i.e try be nicer to them/ don't rush to trust them fully / etc.. but it's probably not a great attitude in general. Growing up with sisters makes me terrified of being that creepy guy. Girls are so nasty about creepy guys, and fair enough, you definitely don't want to be one, but I think it makes guys afraid of pursuing girls in case they're unwittingly unsolicited. I don't think I'm a creepy guy, but maybe I am sometimes despite my best efforts?
I often think shit that I just don't agree with, or horrible shit that offends me and I have to think, "Christ why am I thinking that?". Here's a classic example of my insanity:
Basically everyday on the tube I'd think something really rude about a stranger, and then I'd think, god imagine if they could hear me, and then I think, shit what if I literally am crazy and everybody is ignoring me? And then I think about something else and stop worrying about it because I don't think it's healthy to think about shit like that. I'd love to know how people think about me from first impressions. I think in general I give bad first impressions these days. I'd also love to know what my friends REALLY think about me. I know the ones who read this blog are only my best mates really so I think I know exactly how they all think about me, I know I'm a bit quirky a lot of the time, but am I actually just weird or annoying to a lot of people? Or boring? I'm very quiet sometimes around people I don't know well. A lil wallflower that's me. Or maybe I'm not as quiet as I think I am.
Christ this is all too much thinking.
Anyway let me know what you all think about my ramblings please.

It's probably the lack of exercise lately leading to an unhealthy mind, I really need to get back into that squashin'.
I may sound quite glum here but I think as a whole I'm generally very happy these days so don't worry about me! I'm living short-term, not thinking about too far into the future. I'm realising just how young I still am. I'm 25. I thought that would make me feel old. It's not old. And who cares if it is. It doesn't matter. Think short-term.

Oh that was another part of my dream.
I was consoling some girl, which was a coincidence that I was listening to a song called don't cry at the time. (I know people say only boring people tell people about their dreams, but dreams are hugely related to what's going on in your life so I'm gonna harp on about it a bit and not care about what those silly people say). So I got her to listen to the song for a few seconds and she wasn't impressed by it, so I asked her to say what was wrong, and she said something or other and before she was finished talking I replied "Forget about it. Next problem". We did this a few more times until her problems were all gone. I should tie in my speel about the soul here but it's half 1 and I should try sleep soon. It basically is that I think I do believe in some sort of abstract soul, but mostly that we're all just living from one instant to another and anything that happened before or will happen doesn't actually matter to us for this one instant that we're living in. Right now, and this changes by the day as my whim of what I fancy to think changes, is as follows: The memories tied to our bodies are only tied to our bodies. Our soul lives forever and isn't atomic. By atomic I mean "indivisible". So in a roundabout way I'm saying it is some sort of divisible. We're part of people who lived before and will live in the future, tied by our souls. Multiples of different people. Parts of others were/will be made of parts of us. Everything alive has this "soul", in different amounts. Blah blah blah.

I just found this quite cute blog from some Brazillian teenager.
I read this post http://www.my-diary.org/read/e/544950105 and then the first few back from 2012. Seems he still writes to it.

I just realised that I haven't actually made 200 posts yet. Scarlet for me. Turns out I was including 6 posts which went unpublished.

I'm sorry for how poorly constructed this post was. It's bad English but it's my online diary so I guess it probably should in general be more like disjointed thoughts. I haven't read over this, so I'm sorry again if there's anything that just doesn't make any sense. God will this post ever end.
Good night.

201 posts

My last blog post was my 200th post, which is quite a landmark. I was thinking of having my 200th post my last one, a nice round number to finish it off on, but I don't want to finish this without saying goodbye, so I'm not gonna finish it yet. I definitely won't make 250 though :s

Throughout my blogs lifetime I've always watched the stats, and for a while I quite enjoyed getting more views. It made me feel like what I was writing was worth reading for reason.

So to anybody still checking up on my blog here's some stats on it that I'm going to share because I've nothing more interesting to say.

Right now my blog has had 11,755 views. Mostly Irish, and then the States ones are probably entirely Dave :P, my first blog post was most viewed, and March 2013 was my biggest month with 530 views. I know it's a pittance compared to what some other people I know were getting on their blogs, and I'm skeptical about whether these are all real people, but I'm still happy with it. It would have been fun to get more comments from strangers (I think I got 1, maybe 2).
I was hoping to find a list of all the tags/labels I've used for my posts, I never re-use one, but I couldn't find any list :(.

Anyway, here are the stats for anybody bored enough to care.

Next time I'll talk about something exciting. I promise.

A very short story: A Breath Before

Everything is bright in this palace of light where only souls reside.

We reluctantly express our goodbye before we embark on this next breath of life.
A breath which, much like a dream can last both an instant and an eternity at the same time.
And therein is what troubles me; if we spend a lifetime apart will we still remember what we had?

We recall the life we spent together, but was there not a life before that again?
If in life we forget what came before birth, in death does it still elude us or does it come rushing back?

I will find you in this life.
I will remember.
I can't forget you.

My turn has come.
I begin to breathe in.
And I try not to forget..

A very short story: My Last Breath

It's a short distance, but it may as well be an ocean.

My arms are the first thing to give up. Breaching the surface becomes impossible, as if someone is holding onto my arms, weighing me down.
I slowly turn onto my back again and kick desperately, hoping to float. A soft wave immediately flows over my half submerged face and I inhale more water.

My eyes are open and I'm suddenly aware of just how dark it is. The water doesn't feel cold anymore. I glance up through the water for one last look at the moon but the overcast sky denies me.
I wonder how she'll react when she hears the news. 
I feel sad as I know she doesn't care as much as I would like.
I give two last desperate kicks and manage to breach the surface; a pathetically futile gesture as I only manage a brief cough before going under yet again.

I cough and splurt and inhale water and feel my insides burn, and my head throbs but not as badly as I had expected.
I notice that I'm sinking as I drift off into unconsciousness. For the last split-second of my life I see her face.

Finally I shudder violently as my living body grinds to a dead stop.

Everything is dark now as my feet finally touch the seabed.

I wonder if she cried.

The grave I don't visit.

It's a cold place where in life she never was. A small plot of land in a field not particularly close to where she lived.

To me it has nothing to do with her, other than a reminder of those days when she was in hospital, and the days when she had just died. Her bones have rested there for nearly 10 years now, but there's more of her inside of me than inside her bones. Thinking about a lost loved one isn't something you do so much as something you live with. 

Why would I go to a place just to remind myself of the worst time of my life? I know it happened, every day her absence is there somewhere in your mind. It'd be impossible to say if I think about her every day, I don't know how often I think about her. What even constitutes thinking about someone? Is it just thinking their name? Is it remembering some event you shared? Is it recalling how you felt in their presence?

Death isn't hard on the person who dies. Dying may be if it's drawn out, but death isn't. 

For them it's over. 

Death is hardest on the people left behind. So does that make mourning a selfish act? I don't think so. You're sad that they're not with you for important events, or non-important events, but you're also sad that they no longer get to experience life, which for the most part can be pretty good.

Some day in the not very distant future I too will be dead. The only thing that remains of anybody is the impression they leave on other people. This is passed onto their children, and that again helps shape their children and so on. Every good and bad person you meet in your life leaves an impression on you that helps you to define yourself, and you leave an impression on them whether either of you realise it or not. 

In that way, nobody ever really dies. Everybody is survived in some aspect by leaving a mark on others. The only change is when you die your impression is no longer active. It has taken it's effect, like a forced bend in a growing tree. The tree will live it's entire life with that bend in it, even when you remove your (for want of a better term) "bending force". 

She's survived through everybody who ever met her. 

Especially those who loved her, and who she loved.

She's survived through me, and the biggest testament to her life that I can make is putting to the forefront the parts of me that she shaped.

I'm sitting at work writing to my friend who listens

I'm nearing 200 posts and I've been considering ending this blog.

More and more these days I find that I have less and less to say on this. 

The words don't come as easily, but the thoughts are still in there somewhere.

I feel as if I'm bursting with a creativity that I need to express, but when I try to I express it so poorly that I don't think I do myself justice.

I feel I can be great at anything but I'm good at nothing. Instinctively I want to do and to be everything, but I really want to be nothing that I can think of.

Having cleared my heart I've been trying to sort out my mind the last while. TV has me wanting a life that I can't have. Games have left me wanting a meaningfulness, a purpose, that I can't have. Books have left me confused as to what experiences are actually mine. All of these have left me dreaming of a love that might not exist for me. 

Our society pins love down as the most important thing you can have, but what if it's not? Most of us spend so much time chasing it for this promise of giving a meaning to ourselves, what if we chased something else instead? 

What would people think of you? 

Would you be happier? 

I don't want to talk about trivial events anymore; I don't want to try make them into anything more than what they were. 

I don't care about remembering every last detail of my life.

I've been tempted to end this blog and maybe start a new one which reflects more the direction I want to take my life in. End my "confused early 20s" blog and try to become a mid twenties man embracing life and giving myself goals. I still can't refer to myself as a man without finding it strange. 

I think I need to sort my life out before I can call myself a man.

I think I'll wait until I no longer actually am a confused (not so early) 20s male trying to figure out a world that doesn't make sense before I end this blog. I doubt I'll ever figure out an outlook that makes sense of the world for me to be honest. I think there comes a time when people just stop trying and live with everything the way it is.

This playlist is very nice:

http://8tracks.com/idril/electric-folklore

Respect the thin line eh?

I love this song. I've always liked it, but over the last agess I've had a real big crush on one particular girl and it made me feel like I could really relate to a lot of this song. 

Before I start I should probably say I was in Galway over the weekend and got terribly drunk, I think I may have told one of my friends that I like this girl but I don't remember, I was too drunk to remember much. I then had horrible hangover blues in work one of the days and was hating myself for not having the balls to say what I wanted. 

We're good friends but I knew she doesn't like me the way I like her, but I figured fuck it I have to tell her. So I did. For so long I'd felt there was no point saying anything because it only would mean nothing would probably ever happen then, so I thought I'd be better off just hoping she starts to like me some time. 

This was a terrible plan. 

When I was with the ex (who I really don't think reads this, but if you do eh, skip the next few lines), I used to think about how I have a lot more fun with this other girl, and that whenever we broke up I'd have to tell the crush before I start another relationship because if she likes me that'd be amazing, and if not, well at least then hopefully I'll stop comparing other girls to her; they all fall so short. So I finally plucked my vocal chords so I could sing to this butterfly, and sent my words via text because anything else would be too frightening. It was the most difficult text I've ever sent. Knowing that she wouldn't want anything, but still hoping for that 1% chance she did, and trying to make it obvious that it's totally okay for her to say feck off you're just me mate.. She sent a lovely text back 3 hours later (I had managed to fall asleep early because sleep was all I could do to take my mind off the waiting) saying very nice things and the standard things you'd expect in such a text. I woke up about 10 mins after getting her reply and saw the text. 

What really surprised me though was the fact that I felt pretty great afterwards. I thought I might feel crushed, I wasn't really sure, but I felt unbelievably relieved just to not have this secret anymore. I never knew if she knew I liked her or not, sometimes I thought maybe she could tell, and it made me feel awkward not knowing if she knew. Apparently she had absolutely no idea. That she knows and in future I can be more myself since I won't have to worry about the whole thing is such a relief. Maybe some day she'll come to like me in that way, or maybe not, but at least for now I know she doesn't and I can give other girls a proper chance without thinking I could be missing out on something better. It also felt nice to be able to tell her she's beautiful; I don't know why.

I found some amazing music too last night, and some more great stuff today. This Polish Ambassador guy is great.

Check this amazingness out.

I'm falling asleep here so I'll leave it at that for tonight! 

Goodnight my lovely friends.

Awaiting the postman

I have decided I'm not posting another blog post until this fantastic blog is resumed.

88dates.blogspot.ie