I'm broke...

But not destitute.

I bought a house. Exchanged contracts today, complete a week on Wednesday.

Job done.

Today is one of those days

As soon as I woke up this morning I knew. I knew today was not going to be a good day.

My mind got stuck in certain loops of thought, ones I would rather not visit right now - or indeed ever. This has been followed up by everything I try to do failing, and technology failing and my thought spiral getting worse not better.

Today is not supposed to be like this. I had a pre-exchange meeting with my financial advisor yesterday, to dot the i and cross the t of my mortgage offer. All of which means that tomorrow, when I go to see my solicitor, I should be able to sign contracts and arrange transfer of funds to get to the point of exchange. The putative completion date is 22 December - I should feel excited, looking forward but from the very first moment of wakefulness that has been ruined.

Fuck.

I feel as though life has kicked me in the nuts...

Repeatedly. And then punched me in the gut for good measure.

I might be getting better - no, really - but hope is a bitch, or in the words of Nick Hornby, sung by Ben Folds:

"You know what hope is?
Hope is a bastard;
Hope is a liar, a cheat, and a tease.
Hope comes near you; kick its backside.
Got no place in days like these." - Picture Window

Hope is fled now, but it leaves a vacuum that only time can fill. And a sense of loss, that something broke that may be irretrievable.

I'm on the verge of buying a house. It's a nice place, not too far from work, not much needing doing and nearer friends. It'll be my own space, I can spread out, dedicate rooms to functions of living and generally improve my home life. It's exciting, almost exhilarating - I'm truly looking forward to it. With any luck, by this time next week I will have exchanged contracts and everything, all set for a completion date before Christmas.

Yet the excitement, whilst there, is distant. Instead I have the same old worries rattling around my brain - the ones I have never managed to banish, despite trying to accept them, despite trying to deny them, despite willing them away.

OK, its only natural to be disappointed at rejection. I know that I am better for it, for having taken the chance, than had I cowered from it and watched it go sailing by. It's less natural that one such incident should plunge me headlong back into the self doubt that has me convinced that this lovely new house (or any other) will never be filled by anyone but me. I'd like to say it's less convincing this time, but for all that I keep a kernel of hope inside me that prevents the blackest of nights, I also possess the pessimism of of a true cynic, so it is just as bad as ever.

More temporary though, I hope. Counselling is on the horizon; an opportunity perhaps to address this self doubt, self deprecation and self delusion. A chance, maybe, to build some confidence, to find things that work for me, to learn how to express myself in person like I am able to in text. A moment, perchance, to be able to say things myself rather than relying on other people's music and lyrics as above.

But right now? It seems awfully fitting that the snippet posted above comes from an album entitled "Lonely Avenue" - as I'm living there, new house or no. I'm at my lowest ebb for a long time. I keep landing on my feet, but the ground beneath them is about to give way and the worst thing is I did most of the undermining myself.

Adrift on a raft in the river of life

Whilst life passes by on the banks.

So something has happened that prompted me to write again, however briefly. Yesterday I broke a long duck - and it broke me back, albeit in a nice and polite way and overall much more.... pleasantly than expected. However it was expected.

I'm no good with life, I'm no good with people, and occasions that make me interested in other people are few and far between. Yesterday I grasped for a branch to maybe pull myself a little closer to the shore where everyone else seems to hang out and have fun, knowing full well it would likely pull out of my hands as the current swept me by. This may not sound significant but even two months ago I would have foregone that slight chance at rescue, accepting my fate and preserving the skin on my hands.

However the whole situation put me in mind of Bryan Lee O'Malley's excellent Lost at Sea - a comic about an 18 year old girl that sums up this 30 year old man far, far better than it should. I have a sudden burning desire to read it again, but my copy is back in the UK and I won't be able to lay hands on it for another 5 days. The title alone rather sums up life in my head - I can't see land or anyone else, let alone make contact, and previous attempts have been so disastrous I have more or less forgotten how to try. You should read it too, it really is excellent. Everyone has been there at one time or another. Cogent criticism escapes me now, but as someone who has, by a certain way of thinking, been 18 for 12 years that is only to be expected.

So titling at yesterday's windmill was a success of sorts, despite the inevitable failure. Rebuilding takes time - time I may not have, but time I have to try to find - the isolation alone is killing me, an acute pain with chronic duration and one I have never managed to overcome, despite building some pretty formindable walls.

Rambling now, not making sense - much like the thoughts in my mind and the inevitable self-destruction that comes with my innate over-analysis. I'm trying to do, not think; to not regret and to be better for it. I'm failing at first, but practice makes perfect, right?

Right?

I am a ball of conflicting emotions...

My life is so dull that nothing ever happens, yet this leaves me all turned about: rarely do truly bad things happen, but equally neither does anything genuinely good (everything, it seems, has complications).

I want to run and correct my mistakes, yet also to cringe and hide from them until they are finally forgotten. I want to be elsewhere and yet never go there again. I want to pack up and move on but want, too, to cling on to the last vestiges of memory.

I hate my weekends yet want them to last forever. I lack for things to do but need the dead time to recover. Most of all, I want to be able to sleep - on the basis that if I were more rested then things would look brighter. Two incredibly disturbed nights sleep on and I'm a wreck - angry, sad, tearful, apathetic and hopeless.

I'm back in the rut, and sinking into the soft mud of the tread so any view over the side is fading fast.

And a shitty election result doesn't help.

What the hell is wrong with me?

I have never believed in love at first sight, yet somehow I appear to have left my heart a continent away with a girl I hardly know, and who is far too young for me, a month ago and it still burns to my core.

I fluffed my lines at the time, and I accepted that - my bad, typical and expected, annoying but live-able with. I did not expect the desire to persist over 2 weeks after I left, knowing that I will not hear from her or see her... for a long while at least, if ever.

The wrong idea can go a long way, and this flame deosn't feel ready to die, however convenient that would be. I'm hostage to my own fallability here, my own weaknesses. On the one hand I want to let it go, pragmatically sensible and prudent, especially given the hopelessness of the situation. On the other I dearly want to cling to the one thing of late that has made me feel alive until the impossibility is confimred (as opposed to sitting at 99.99% recurring).

I need help.

Cute girl was cute, is gone

Just got back from a weekend at a music festival, the first one of them I've been to in 11 years. Much good about the experience, some bad too - mostly related to my state of being, my mind, and prinicpally the weather.

These things happen - glorious warm sun one day, pissing rain and biting wind the next. Just as the bands on show varied from fun to fabulous, to "fuck-I-want-to-deafen-myself-just-to-not-hear-you". All to be expected.

I should also have expected to feel lots of "alone in the crowd" moments; I don't know why I don't engage. It may have something to do with how I appreciate music - a very individual and powerful sensation - but I suspect it is more wide ranging than that as I've had such moments in crowds for other things too. And it isn't indicative, necessarily, of being there on my own; nor is it a slight on people I might actually be with.

I can't explain it, though I reckon its all tied in with my not being outgoing and finding reaching out to people - or accepting them in, though that is easier - difficult. As such I end up spending a lot of time beating myself up internally and this weekend was no different, especially when the folks I was with are able to just approach anyone and everyone, even to mug band members for hairy coo photies.

And so people pass me by. Cute girl was cute, is gone.

It's 21.00 on Saturday...

I'm 28, and all I feel like doing is going to bed - and there's no-one else involved (as if!). What the hell is up with that?

I've been feeling more and more useless in the evenings for a while, utterly wiped out and uninterested in anything that might be considered fun, instead longing for bed, even in the knowledge that sleep is unlikely. Then again, if I'm out and with others, I'm happy and active until all hours - my lonely existence within my place of residence is sucking every ounce of energy. Getting out more seems the obvious answer, but over the last month or so as this home-apathy effect has multiplied, that's exactly what I have been doing happened; it all makes no sense.

Ah well, I suppose this weekend was always going to drag after the fun had over the last two...

A fantastic weekend all round...

It's rare I have truly great weekends. Rarer still that two really good ones back to back as they have. First, over the bank holiday, a chance to see members of the extended (though still small) family, some of whom I had not seen for up to 7 years, and an extended chance to spend time with some of them which made for a really relaxing (if somewhat alcoholic) long weekend.

Then, the weekend just gone, half days on Friday and Monday bookended a weekend of gaming geekery in the New Forest which did not disappoint - playing at Robin Hood when out in the midst of an atmospheric woodland on a smashingly good day was tops. Maybe more on that at a later date. Even the pain/irritation of receiving far too many insect bites than anyone should ever suffer was more than blown away by the amazement of getting home to find that by some unbelievable swing in fortune, England have been stuffing the Saafers at the cricket (albeit in a format I care little for, having lost abjectly at the true form, which I follow nigh-on religiously).

Then the crowning moment - which set the perfection preceding it in focus: coming home and opening my slight extravagance of a self-given birthday present. The special edition of James Yorkston's When The Haar Rolls In was worth every penny - not for the absent golden ticket, but for the whole package, which tantalisingly arrived just before I set off on Friday but lay untouched until my return. The album is grand, the covers CD containing real gems, and the remixes disc has its moments too. Now I just need to make sure I get around to securing tickets to his Oxford show, even if I end up attending alone...

Time Off

There are two or three main reasons why I rarely take time off, and ultimately they can be traced back to the same root cause.

The first is that I don't have people to travel with, so taking time off to go away is a non-issue (I'm also a bad solo traveler). The second is that when I do have days off I tend to spend them as I do my weekends - wondering what the hell to do with myself; because they are both almost entirely solo affairs.

The third, a minor player, is also related: I'm shit at planning or organizing things.

It's not that I pine for work when I'm off - I don't by a long shot - just that there seem so few interesting or fun things to do (there are always things that have to be done for other reasons) when all ones spare time is essentially spent alone that I end up almost as tired, as bored and as frustrated as I would were I working.

Of course chronic lack of sleep doesn't help, meaning that it is all too easy to lie-in too long given the opportunity and miss the window for certain activities (shopping in the centre of Oxford, for example, is unbearable on weekends or in the summer with tourist-derived population bloat unless one gets there first thing). Nor does the fact I find the acts involved with keeping in contact with people rank as chores (especially when many of those I wish to maintain contact with are less forthcoming than I am - and that's saying something).

But all in all time off so often ends up being time wasted, and my feeling no better for it. And half way through this long weekend, that's precisely how I feel about yesterday.

Ah well.

Stress, impotence and mistakes

I have spent the entire weekend trapped in the tiniest corner of my tiny mind, rattling the bars of the cage with no sign of their loosening nor any way to release the lock.

I have no idea what has kicked off this feeling of constant stress, these reactions and the utter impotence I feel with regards to breaking out have meant that everything I have touched over the two days has inevitably ended with some kind of mistake - no matter how small - that has provoked over-the-top anguish and self-defeating anger or despair.

All of which is in stark contrast to Friday when, despite waking up with a mild hangover from the night before, and despite the howling gale and sleety rain, despite a day of interminable boredom at work, and with no rationale behind it, from the moment I woke I felt obscenely serene, as if something was going to (or had) just drop(ed) into place. It didn't and hadn't of course; nothing ever does.

I think I may have enjoyed a Comic/Graphic Novel for the first time...

... and I can't put my finger on why.

I'm confused a little, not by the enjoyment - though it did surprise me, and I'm still not sure if enjoyed is quite the right term - but because I can't place what it was that kept me reading, or appreciating or... well, stopped me dismissing it as I have dismissed all other (sparse, and few though they may be) such works I've happened to browse. (As an aside I've never grokked or enjoyed superheroes much since - or before? - that either though cause/effect breakdown is not so clear).

I'm just not a particularly visually-minded person, never have been, and long ago I wrote off comics as "not for me" as a result. Not as childish (though I'm sure that figured somewhere at the time), nor as lesser art forms, but as not for me. I've never been shy of admitting this in conversation so to be honest I was a little surprised when Paul passed me the 4 Scott Pilgrim strips to borrow after the last game session I made, but thought I'd take a look since the offer was there.

So I packed 'em with my stuff at the end of the night. And I then forgot about them for a week, until the moment when I couldn't make it to that week's session for fear of spreading my lurgy (manflu!) ahead of people's holidays (and the Dark Heresy game I was attending over Easter). So that evening instead of gaming (the end of the current game and last session for a while) I curled up in bed far later than planned, and read book 1 cover to cover - despite being conscious of thinking "what the hell is the appeal supposed to be?" at every moment along the way and being aware of a general feeling of meh building in my mind.

Book 2 I read a couple of days later, again in one sitting, again far too late at night. I remember the overwhelming feeling was not meh, not cool!, not amusement, but rather "Oh, that's where that forum handle comes from".

But it was last night's reading of books 3 and 4, back to back, that... somehow left me feeling I actually want to know what happens next; I'm both interested and engaged. The humour grew on me, I can pinpoint that, but it wasn't laugh-out-loud funny to a degree that explains the interest alone.

Enh, it'll wear off and I suspect I'll have forgotten about it as/when the 5th volume is published or the optioned film comes out. I'm not likely to buy, go see, or even think about them, nor any other comic not offered to me on a platter. That said, it is never a bad thing to find doors not as shut as you thought if the other side is not perilous, eh?

But I just have this nagging "why?" y'know? I like to know, or perhaps more accurately be able to articulate, why something appeals to me - basically so I can find similar stuff. Call it a quirk. And for the moment the take-home sensation for me is a big ol' ... WTF?

Oh well.

Other people are here for my entertainment!

I don’t mean this in an arrogant, egotistical, “I am centre of the universe” kind of way – I’d need to think a lot more of myself for that – but to a certain extent I do seem to carry around with me the attitude that other people exist to for my entertainment. This means that in the rare moments when I am a happy bunny and have interesting and friendly people around me I feel as if they are to be engaged with, or not, on a whim (as I intimated when I mentioned the difference between loneliness and being alone). It has also surfaced into my conscious mind that a similar but subtly different principle informs my gaming habits and practices, and ultimately probably encapsulates why I prefer to GM rather than play.

That is to say: I get a large slice of my gaming enjoyment from sitting back and watching things unfold, and this is heightened if I have had a hand in setting up the situation concerned, as opposed to playing an integral part in the unfolding. This has been to the forefront of my thinking as I reflected on last weekend’s TROS game and why the final scenes of that weekender worked so well for me. Whilst this threw it up as a conscious consideration, the fact I enjoy watching the creativity of others is something I have long been aware of – it first came to my attention back when I was regularly playing Neverwinter Nights online 5 years ago. It was, in hindsight, the primary driving force behind the changes that I made in the summer of 2003 to the way I ran the campaign I was GMing in NWN. Yes, the discussions with others (most notably Ian O’Rourke) are what made me aware of different priorities, approaches and so forth with specific reference to RPGs and helped me pinpoint exactly what principles most appealed to me – and these extend past gaming, most notably into preferences in TV and film – but looking back now it is the desire to set things up that makes this tick, with me resting on the full knowledge of the situation, if not exactly how events will resolve.

The priorities I straightened out back in 2003 before I began to get back into tabletop RPGs again still stand: and I value a narrative focussed on pushing the PCs into personally resonant choices and individually defining moments, salient revelations and lasting effect over action, self-betterment or wandering through events untouched on a personal level beyond the physical scars of a fight or two. I have never, as a player, been very good at ensuring I get this kind of play; in the past I have put this down to my lack of dominance at the table, a reticence to impose myself in order to get what I want but I suspect now that the real reason is perhaps that I don’t want it so much for myself – I am, and have always been, quite happy playing in the style served up. Instead, I want to see others experience this type of drama and create entertainment for me out of the in game events.

Why is this? I don’t know. I am continually astounded by how creative others can be if given the opportunity, though I have to concede that I may just have been very luck with whom I have gamed in this respect. Certainly not every gamer has it in them to provide the sort of entertainment I value most – hell, I doubt I do; like in life, in games the strength of each gamer will be different. It may just be my talent for self-deprecation speaking, but I do not consider myself particularly creative or inventive when it comes to gaming, so perhaps I value the creativity of others more highly as a result?

I function well when bouncing ideas off people, or when picking up on key phrases from someone else and turning them on their origin – I do minimal world-building, but what is done is almost always a strict reflection of information given to me in character pitches. The same goes for plotting, where unless I am directly building something around a PC I do not feel confident in what I am putting together. When playing I feel that I am spectacularly bad at anything that equates to problem solving or requires on-the-spot thinking - why I have a penchant for playing socially gifted characters given this, and my dislike for using social conflict mechanics I don’t know, it’s not exactly playing to my strengths! – but feel I’m much better at identifying and focussing on how I can get interplay going with other PCs, be that one showing another up, encouraging intrigue or just personal moments of connection, realisation, respect or understanding between two equally fictitious personalities. I have always been wordy, but tend not to see my use of words in the same way I see others’ usage; consciously intentional or not there was a session in my recently completed game (summarised in two parts here and here) where almost everything that was said struck me as perfect, but I said next to nothing that session, instead getting my wish – I was able to sit back and enjoy as the players ran away with the situation creatively hitting high point after high point.

I feel my GMing style does play to my strengths, and thus I actually believe in my ability as a GM (whereas I don’t about almost anything else). It also plays heavily to this desire to sit back and watch others. I nudge, nurdle and tweak, setting up opportunities for PCs to hit their straps and players to get their teeth into issues and aspects of play that they have indicated (either openly, or by my inferring from interactions) are desirable in the context of the current game. Flags, in technical terms, are raised to be seen and engaged with and generally speaking I have found if I manage to nail that engagement players will run away with it and I can often take a step back and just enjoy the ride as they interact with each other. Worst case is that that player wants to run away with the idea with an NPC, which involves me doing something more, but really only insofar as I need to act as a springboard to magnify their input, before looking for a way to turn its focus toward the rest of the group. Actually, no – worst case is that the player doesn’t spot it, or react, the chances of both reduced if I’m not the player.

The bonus is that when it comes off, this adds to everyone’s enjoyment – the player gets what they wanted brought into focus, and I, as GM, get to play audience. In the best cases players will react to each others flags, and I can observe without ever having to interject. Like being the parent nudging their kid on a sled over the lip of the slope, I know they may well not have got there without the work I did to set it up, but their enjoyment and involvement in the runaway descent is plain and the experience of knowing I facilitated that gives the warmest glow.

When playing I take care to set up the kinds of characters riddled with hooks, flaws and foibles that would act as flags if I were a GM, but because I’m not (however nominally) “in control” I have the tendency to ignore them in actual play unless given a gaping opportunity, such as towards the end of last weekend’s game, where it all opened up too invitingly to ignore. More than that, it opened up in a way that promised some form of sitting back and enjoying: the manipulations I made even as a player had direct consequences, at least as they were being planned, for the other PCs. It was, in short, not a million miles away from GMing that scene, especially given the knowledge of motivations as the resultant mini-scenes played out. Perhaps not as personally resonant or as thought out as my tweaks and nudges as a GM would have been, these little manipulations nevertheless were going to throw the spotlight onto other players and their contribution to the climactic moments of the game. Maybe this is why I take to playing social manipulators even when I do not have the range of social manipulation in life – it provides a mechanically supported way of throwing other people into focus and assuring I get a show to watch.

Hence the conclusion that I’m seeing other people as a form of entertainment.

It is not that I do not enjoy being an active part of proceedings: I do. Engineering situations to spotlight other people can actually takes some work to pull off, not least because some people (like me, perhaps?) do not want to be engaged. I would posit it is more down to different requirements to meet, or at least to maximise, the pay-off for the time put into a leisure activity.

The point? I may not have been looking hard enough or in the right places, but I have not come across any place for this “audience”-like motivation in gaming theory or discussion (or if I have do not remember). It is not a desire that can simply be sated by reading a book or watching film or TV as these are much more fundamentally passive entertainments and the (inter)active nature of gaming is a huge part of its appeal, and it is the interplay between a game being something you are a part of and yet also something you can sit back from and experience as an observer that is of key interest to me here.

Does anyone else have this desire to set things up for others to knock them down, preferably with a minimum of interference once it is underway? Does anyone else thrive in a game where they can just watch most of the time, or am I alone in finding this sort of pleasure in gaming when others would look to movies or novels? Does anyone else approach gaming – consciously or unconsciously – with an eye on the expectation that the other participants are there to entertain them?

Frustration, Finance and a Night of Lost Gaming

Should be gaming now, in fact.

Except the car wouldn't start; the oil pressure warning light came on. So within a week of my costly new insurance policy starting, within a week of the documents arriving from the DVLA to confirm the car is mine, and within 2 weeks of the annual service and MOT, I have a serious problem, and a potential need to invoke the home assist clause in the breakdown cover.

Joy.

The worst part is that it has happened on a Wednesday so I miss a week's gaming (but then it would; I don't use the car much - or indeed at all - on other days of the week), and a Wednesday before a weekend which might also (otherwise?*) have been chock full of gaming goodness. Not fun, and more aggravation and Stuff To Think About (tm) to add to career (hah!) ideas and financial decisions.

Still, things should prove solvable, if at a price.

And now I need to think about something positive to post to boot!

* It may still, regardless of whether or not the issue is fixed in time, but the potential loss gets my goat right now!

No matter how many times I told myself...

This week I have repeated a mantra: "this will not be a bad week."

Unfortunately said repetition and attempt at positive thought had all the effect of an auto-cue on George W. Bush's oratory powers and a litany of bad stuff has happened and negative thoughts have filled my mind. There have been positives, too, but they mainly involve retail therapy, the Conchords, drinking Guinness, and music (to be discussed later).

Whine? Yes. Meekly poking fun at self? Check. All doom and gloom? Hope not.

What I had felt determined (as much as I ever do, anyway) was going to be at least "above average" as weeks go has turned out to be a mixed bag, with more bad than good thus far (and since it's Thursday night, barring a miraculous Friday its as good as condemned). Bad points of note include failing, by virtue of losing the plot, to grasp opportunities fashioned; the loss of the freedom that came with having the house to myself; managing to injure each of my hands in unrelated incidents - minor scrapes (one splinter, one blister) but annoying all the same; and the overriding one is the sheer mind numbing tediousness and resultant tiredness stemming from work.

I have most definitely reached the point where I cannot bear to continue where I am work-wise any more, but the reason for this is in part why I am finding it so hard to look for anything else - virtual brain death during evenings and weekends (the other factor being not knowing what to do). There are other frustrating reasons for this aside from the menial and soul-destroying nature of the work itself. Notable here is that the one person whom I really liked has left (and I really need to open a line of communication there again...); those still there are pleasant enough, but I don't feel an awful lot of affinity with any of those I know. Then there are those I don't which is a different sort of frustration - one that I will get anywhere, certainly, though perhaps amplified in situ by the demographic of the office. I was all set to attempt to talk to new people, broaden horizons and so forth, but timings, situations and my own reticence to open myself up to the possibility of making a fool of myself (aka stepping out of my comfort zone, or other such psychobabble) all got in the way as ever, and at times the place seems so cliquey as to not be worth it anyway. Again, probably no different anywhere else but it is the here and now open to analysis, not some etheric other.

Reading between the lines: I'm a lonely single bloke with little or no self-confidence in an office full of attractive women (that's the socio-phobic geek in publishing for you; there's a tragi-comic novel in it somewhere). The eye candy is nice and all, but it throws my frustration needle off the scale as my mind goes into overdrive as I berate myself for my social failings.

Anyhow, outside of work I thought it might be a decent week, but between the return from holiday of my mother ending my having full run of the house, the acquisition of splinters helping my brother move furniture into the van he hired (for moving house, which he did on Tuesday; another source of self-beration - my younger sibling has a career path and has just bought his second rung house on the ladder that is property ownership, in London no less), and a serious lack of sleep, life has managed to keep throwing minor little annoyances at me. These wouldn't rank of note at all except for going against the planned grain; little things whittling me down, and doing so whilst I have been ineffective in encouraging good thoughts. My mind has been constantly trying to drag me down further, but the positive thinking mantra may have helped curtail some of these thought patterns though - its hard to think about anything much if you're mentally screaming at yourself over and over!

But despite nothing going to plan and the bad outweighing the good in many ways, I grin as I type because it's impossible not to with such good, happy, music playing, and I know I'll get to dip into a new Pratchett before I drift off to sleep tonight.

This life, it is enigma.

Life is teasing me...

Title says it all; draw your own conclusions.

Add "or so it seems" for accuracy.

The Difference Between Loneliness and Being Alone

My Better Judgment (that part of me not on the beers) caught up with me and demanded some self-censoring edits. Oh well. Up it goes again.

First the blindingly obvious - I am both, but they are far from the same thing. That out of the way, what is the point of this? Well, the biggest problem I have is loneliness, so it may go some way to answering "what is the problem."

As much as I will grumble to myself about how I hate "being me" this hyperbolic mental ranting disguises a fundamental flaw in that thinking: I enjoy my own company. I like being on my tod. There is, of course, a kicker here, and in this case it is that the above is only true when it is a meaningful choice to be alone. When I start hating myself - and inevitably I do - is when I end up spending a lot of time on my own as a default position, without feeling that I have a choice. In other words: when I get lonely.

I have been lonely now since the summer of 2003, the last time I was sharing a house with someone I was genuinely happy to be living with, which not coincidentally was the last time I had easy and regular contact with (a) friend(s) living in the same town. What I am coming to see as a self-defining trait is that I don't generally like to spend all my time with other people, but I damn well feel the need to have it as an option. Yes, this will sound selfish; it has a whiff of "other people are there for my enjoyment" about it. Nonetheless, once I am shorn of the (perceived?) option of spending time with people I like, I quickly become a withdrawn, moody, self-hating ball of despair. I miss massively the days when I was at uni in Bristol - not because they were always better (I had a torrid time in my final year, living alone for 6 months of it and that really didn't agree with me), but because there were always people about that I could just phone up and go out to meet. It is that accessibility of friends, and the ease of arrangements that I miss, possibly more-so than the actual people if I'm honest (though I do miss folks, too). Yes, as we age and days fill up with other things such pick-me-up arrangements do get harder to maintain, but mine vanished altogether after that first year in Bath, and have never returned.

Currently what I most hate is walking back to an empty house every night, knowing that - the one night a week I game aside - there is no hope in hell of me seeing (or most likely even speaking to/receiving email from) anyone but my co-habitant. And lets face it: as much as we may love our mothers dearly, they are not first choice for company. Thus my being alone is not perceived as a meaningful choice, and hence my loneliness.

One could argue to that I could do more to keep in contact with the friends I have. There is truth to that, however there is also truth to the fact that, even counting the gaming group, I have no friends living within 10 miles of me and thus not available off the cuff. It is also true that most are a lot further - many not even visitable for a weekend without taking time off work to travel (or at least couldn't before I got the car) - and whilst I admit culpability in being crap at keeping regular contact, I feel the need to stress that many of those I'm talking about are, by their own admission, worse at it than me!

So, I need new friends - local friends. However there is a snag: I don't make friends easily at all. Sure, I can get on well with people, generally speaking, but somehow it never seems to click from that getting along to actual friendship and the associated doing of things, contacts and so forth that one associates with the term. I do not meet a lot of people, which compounds the issue, and I have always been terrible at initiating any kind of contact with people I don't know, limiting this further - I only meet those who introduce themselves, or are introduced to me. There are not very many of them - the latter constrained by my lack of local friends, and the former... well that is out of my hands.

So a large part of the problem is that I cannot fathom how, unless I can build some serious self-belief, I could ever approach other people and introduce myself - it just scares the crap out of me for some reason, and that's before encompassing not knowing what to say. Confidence and self-belief are two attributes that have been sorely lacking for a long while. I could also use some hope. But most of all I need an idea of how to make change stick. How to face my fear of failure and win, rather than resigning myself to not trying, on the basis that by doing so I'll never have to face a loss I didn't chose to take.

All I want is for the loneliness to end, so I can go back to enjoying my time alone (and time spent with others, too, naturally). Something big needs to change - within me, and without (location, probably) - for that to happen. The without I cannot see happening until I get insight on a longer-term job or career move: financial constraints and the "where am I going" niggle impede me.

Perhaps the biggest thing I need to do is sort that out, to make a decision on where, what and how I am going to work. Maybe if I can somehow force that issue, everything else will look up again. Lord knows I cannot stay where I am, feeling my brain atrophy with each passing moment and wearing out my (already tired) eyes by staring at XML all day!

There must be something that can spark interest in me, beyond playing games where one pretends to be someone else entirely; or maybe I do hate myself that much after all! (that was a joke).

To end on more positive notes - now that I own the car, once I've sorted out all the attendant guff (insurance, MOT and Tax all up for renewal in October), it should give me the freedom to try and address some of the dropped contacts. Of course, the effort of arranging things will fall on my head (as ever it did; as I said before I'm better at contact than those concerned!), and I'll have to get over the hump that periodically strikes me with this situation, but day trips would be possible, as might weekends in places where, if reliant on the trains, options were previously curtailed. I think I'm probably due a change of primary email address now too, which is as good an excuse as any to get back in communication with those who I wish to retain as contacts.

Also to point out that I've written this whilst feeling motivated to write, not whilst feeling particularly trapped in my own mind. Hopefully I'll feel more of the former if the latter stays away. Whilst there is a lot to be said for Rosa's advice for me to "STOP THINKING!!!", short of an on/off switch for my brain it is not something I am oft able to do. I know how frustrating this can be for those around me, so thank you for putting up with it, and I do wonder whether my overthinking would be an interesting and positive side to me, or source of potential mirth, if my mind were to lighten up some...

Wedding Reflections

Well, I've been back in Oxford for over a week now following Garry and Rosa's wedding. Prior to this I didn't know it was possible to have a hangover from smiling too much. The return home certainly plunged me back into the mediocrity of everyday life which the long weekend away was completely lacking, and left me wallowing in the loneliness of my life down here.

What struck me most - apart from the sheer volume of alcohol consumed - was how thoroughly great all the people were, no matter whether they were Garry's workmates from Dundee itself, or Rosa's friends and family who jetted in from around the globe. Everyone I had the pleasure of speaking to was great fun, got on with everyone else, and most importantly at least appeared to enjoy themselves thoroughly.

The example that perfectly encapsulates the friendly atmosphere for me though was when Rosa's brother and sister-in-law, Ed and Marika, offered to spare me the horrors of the return trip on the train (I had been delayed by 95 minutes on the way up because some inconsiderate person threw themselves in front of a train south of Birmingham, causing me to miss my connection) by ferrying me down to Oxford (essentially door to door) in the car they had hired to get to London on the same day I was due to leave. I had only met them on the Friday evening, although I believe I chatted at (rather than to, I blame the booze!) them some at the reception on the Saturday and Sunday's adventures in beach cricket and pubbage offered plenty of further chance to chat and get along.

Basically it felt like I was smiling all day every day from the moment I stepped off the train on Thursday evening until sometime during the lift back on Monday (which I was grateful to receive) when tiredness kicked in and overwhelmed my sense of well-being. Credit must go to all those I met, those I'd met before and those I met for the first (and likely last) time alike. Garry and Rosa somehow manage something that not many people I have ever met can do: they make me feel at ease, such that the real me can shine through; such that I can relax and enjoy myself; such that I don't feel the need to whinge (all the time, anyway) or curse existence and such that I can come out of my shell and talk to the fine people they surround themselves with; in truth there was more than just the alcohol to that.

For that I owe them a debt of thanks: a thanks for being good friends, a thanks for inviting me to attend their wedding and share in the joy that the event brought them, and their guests. A thanks for putting a smile on my face, even if it was just for a long weekend.

Congratulations!

I just want to quickly put up a congrats to Garry and Rosa on their wedding. My reflections on the weekend away, the plethora of people and the event can wait, but whilst I was too busy drinking to take many pictures (let alone good ones) I thought I'd throw up these few (none of that posed stuff, either - I was always too late for that):

The happy couple with the Bride's parents and brother, and the bridesmaid.

This one captures the joy of it for me; Rosa's smile was reflected in all the guests.

And here... embarrassment(?) as Garry starts the "skanking"

Oh, and...

I aged yesterday. Woop-de-do.