What going on in there?

A generally depressing and somewhat boring insight into my head. This is more of a vent than a blog, so you are welcome to follow me, comment and ask questions, or tell me I'm a cunt; I'm unlikely to notice either way you go.

[myexposednerves]

Reaching out.

I made the decision that generally only has to outcomes, complete chaos or closure/relief of some description, and I messaged an ex of mine. Not THE ex, that I am so hung up on that I would happily kill just to see her again, but the ex that closely follows behind her in the "how much does thinking about this person make you regret your choices" scale. We had a thing many moons ago, and that failed. We talked about it years after and neither of us was too sure what the fuck actually happened there, and I managed to convince her to give it another go. So we dated for awhile; Long distance relationships can suck a dick. Inevitably it fell apart because of my own idiocy and her stubbornness. I have this horrible secret that I refuse to share with anyone (I didn't even share it with Max and she knew everything about me), it's that dark thing that sits at the back of mind, mostly dormant. Unfortunately I had a bad spell and it came flooding back to me and I had a massive breakdown, and went dark for a few days. I refused to tell her what it was about so she ended it. I get her reasons, although I fully disagree with them.

Bit reaching out to her now for some comfort was not a bad decision... Well, actually it was a terrible decision for many reasons, but it hasn't gone Pete Tong in anyway so I can only call it a success. We didn't even chat for long, it was just a fleeting conversation about certain struggles and choices we all face and I wanted her view on it. She gave me it, and while it was not exactly helpful or enlightening it was really nice to speak to someone who kind of gets me and my plethora of problems.

Just goes to show that sometimes stupid choices are actually useful in some manner. That is not to say I condone this sort of behaviour haha. It only works for select situations and with select people, I couldn't message Max about any of this (for painfully obvious reasons) or any other ex, this was specifically a success because of who I approached.

[myexposednerves]

Self fulfilling prophecies.

I'm good at these. Really good, infact. My week started so poorly that I said it would continue, well, big surprise I've had a fuck up today. For once though this one is ENTIRELY on me.

I did get to see a fair bit extra of the beautiful countryside down here. And got stuck in a place called Ivybridge for an hour and a half. It was very idyllic, the sort of place that only old people live, however, it had the most flies I've ever seen. Everywhere. Thousands of tiny winged bugs forever floating around you.

Back on track now though, Torquay here I come. Failing any further fuckery that is.

[myexposednerves]

A week of clusterfucks.

I'm making a prediction now, that this week will be just shit on shit on shit.

Yesterday I spent 4 hours on a journey that should have been about an hour and a half. Today Air BnB decided to blindside me with a policy that isn't mentioned stating I need ID. All well and good, but I don't have ID so I'm sleeping rough tonight it would seem.

I'm on the road til Saturday, so I foresee A LOT of fuckery and hiccups on this long ass week of quizzes. The Great British transport system is just fucked, top to bottom. I wish there were the ability to chose completion, but these arseholes have their stranglehold on each line.

Anyway... Yay for the week?

[myexposednerves]

Apparently I'm lucky.

Perspective is an odd thing, something that I might consider absolute truth might be exactly the opposite in someone elses eyes.

What got me onto this? Well, the other night a lovely group of folk started chatting to me after the quiz, asking me what I did and all that. They couldn't believe that my main job was being a quizmaster. "What a cool job" she exclaimed, as a lot of people do. And when you explain it to someone in its basest terms, yes my job is pretty cool: I work for 3 hours a night and get paid a fairly hearty hourly rate for it, all my travel and accomodation is paid for, I go from city to city and meet new people in a variety of different venues. She genuinely thought I was the luckiest person going. And it kind of bumped me up a bit, made me feel like that I did in fact have a great job. That lasted for all of a day before the fog of disdain settled again. Fundamentally, like I said, I do indeed have a pretty kushty job. Not until you break it down into the finer points do you see that I have a shit ass job, but even after I explained the things that made it crap she was still in awe of it.

I am quitting the job, so her words definitely didn't have any affect on me other than to make me realise that sometimes perspective does actually make a huge amount of difference. She's probably going to go on with her degree and get an interesting role in science (I think that was her general subject?) and forget all about how "awesome" my job is. I would rather have the real.world over whatever it is I'm living just now.

[myexposednerves]

I've adopted a new game.

And I say adopted as I don't believe I've created this game, just merely started playing. I don't think anyone has named it, but in my game it's called "FUCK YOU CUNT" and it is a brilliant game:

You start by deciding to travel across London by underground. This could work just as easily in any major city with a mass transit system.

You then get from point A to point B as fast as you can, this means walking at a high rate of speed (my normal walking speed), using the walking side of escalators, and generally trying to weave and shoot the gaps.

In addition, copious amounts of caffeine adds an extra edge to proceedings. My choice of stimulant is Monster but you can use whatever you want. You could try cocaine if you want to experience hard mode.

What's the point, I hear you ask... There are a couple of objectives;

1 is to survive without having a massive heart attack or stroke from stress as you are going to discover that no one wants to move at that speed and are forever in your way.

2 is to not stab anyone for the above mentioned reasons. The urge is a lot harder to repress than you'd think.

3, it's a great work out. Gets the blood flowing, gets those legs working, sharpens the senses (maybe?).

So next time you have to tackle the dreaded cross city struggle just remember "FUCK YOU CUNT" is guaranteed to add a little fun to your day*.

*I'm not liable for any bodily harm you inflict on others during this game, nor am I liable for any nervous breakdowns.

[myexposednerves]

Restart, reboot

Larry Sharpe, the NY state gubernatorial candidate, was on the Joe Rogan show a little while ago. I am a huge Joe Rogan fan so I watch as much as I can and he gets some great guests but Larry Sharpe really resonated with me. One of his main points is all about education and how the current system is a failure. Now, I don't like in NY state, or any of the States for that matter but his words ring true over here too. Most places in the world have a broken education system, for many different reasons but with the same results: An unhelpful, uninclussive process, and one that produces unhappy products (both students and teachers). Sure, sometimes things go right but that percentage is definitely not high enough. As Sharpe says, we now have people in their mid 20s restarting life because everything before was a waste of time or a fuck up of epic proportions. This struck me so much because it is exactly what I'm doing. I'm now 28 and I don't have any direction, I still don't particularly know what I want to do but I have a better idea now than I did then. If I was given some more direction from my educators and my school then I might have found my right track at that age. And even if the choices I made there weren't quite what I wanted from life, I would have been so much younger than now and in a better place for it.

None of this is to say that I wouldn't still be a fuck up, my mental health problems are gonna be a problem regardless. But maybe, just maybe, I might have been happier and healthier but that's a factor I can't really account for. Even if I wasn't happier I would definitely be on a track were I am at the very least professionally happy or content. Fuck, I'd love to be content.

So the next steps forward in my restart? Fuck knows, haha. I really don't know where I'm going to next, and that's pretty scary for someone fast approaching middle age. I have ideas, and I think at this point the only way I can go about it would be just tackle them head on and hope something sticks.

[myexposednerves]

"Oh sorry, didn't see you there"

I am an incredibly iterate and crabby person, let us clear that before I continue. This isn't to say that my reactions to certain annoyances aren't justified but it also doesn't go to say that they are over reactions.

So one of my major pet peeves (One of many) is people who lack spacial awareness, in any sense. Those people who dawdle along at snails pace right in the middle of a walkway, or those with their eyes so firmly fixed on their phone they don't notice they have walked directly into your path. This annoys me to a ridiculous degree, maybe because I like to try make sure I'm super aware of myself and my own movements in relation to those around me. I think this annoys most people, but most people also just accept it or give a quiet tut when some moron decides that in the middle of a busy pavement is the best place to stop dead. I however will make every effort to let that moron know that they are exactly that, a moron. For example, an hour ago I was walking to the station to get my train and it happened to be around break time for the college in the centre of town. The stupid flocked in droves up the hill, filling both pavements with one direction foot traffic. I ensured that I was on the curb, literally couldn't have been further across if I had tried. In this situation I will only make small movements to avoid contact with a person who is oblivious to me, especially when I am the only one moving in that direction, and those walking in the opposite direction are four wide and fill the remainder of the path. Most people will recognise this an make efforts to move, but one gent today decided that he wasn't going to move. I knew he wouldn't. I saw him and he saw me, but still he ploughed ahead. Now I am not a giant by any stretch of the imagination, I'm pretty slim but I am 6'4" so it is not easy to miss me so he had no reason not to shift in behind his wee chums and give me the space... But no, Captain Cunt decided he would try shoulder check me into the road. I was definitely expecting this, I saw him wind it up, so naturally I did the same. I'll take the prick down before I willingly step into the oncoming traffic. Contact: My shoulder hits him Square in the head, his hits my chest. He turned to me, obviously ready to say something, however, I had already stoped and was waiting for any comments or aggressive gestures. Nothing, I think he saw me waiting for it and thought better of getting his ass kicked in the middle of the street because he was too ignorant to move. Not much more satisfying that watching a plastic hardman turn soft when they realise they're wrong or beaten.

The overall moral of this story? Don't be a cunt and move yo' ass outta of the way if you're obstructing folk when you're very clearly in the wrong. If you don't, you might just get reality checked by someone who couldn't give a shit whether you're MMA specialist or just a cunt.

As a side note, I don't want you all thinking that I will start a fight with a stranger just because. No, I'm not just an arsehole (I mean, I am one but not just for the sake of being one). If we make contact in the street, you walk into me, you stand on my foot, whatever the situation is as long as you apologise and recognise that you were in the wrong in some form then I'm quite content. Manners maketh the man, as they say, and it most definitely applies to these situtions as well.

[myexposednerves]

A sinking ship sinking ships.

I am forever floundering. Sometimes I'm sinking faster than usual and sometimes the crashing waves give me a break, but I am incessantly bailing out the water to keep myself above the water. This is just normal, a daily task for a lot of people who have become accustomed to it.

The problem starts when someone tries to save you, throws you a rope and tries to pull you up and you accept that hand of help. Everything starts out great. You feel like you can slow down with your mad dash to save your ship because someone else is there with you, working hard to save you. This hero can be anyone: A family member, a stranger, the one you love... Neither of you notice at first that the water is starting to rise though. It might be complacency, ignorance, or a deep-seated "acceptance" that you can't be saved. But now there's two of you tethered together, and as your ship goes does you drag theirs down too. I see myself doing this, time and time again. And time and time again I allow it. Not because I'm vindictive, but because I want to actually be saved: But who wants to be saved when it means watching someone else go down at your expense. So I push, I try to get them away and free from my own downward spiral. I try claim that this is a selfless act but it far from it. This is the act of a coward, however, once again I find myself trying to push someone I love away because I'm drowning us both.

I'm not trying to say that every time someone puts out a helping hand that it ends in horror and catastrophe. A lot of people can be saved and you should do everything you can to help your fellow humans, but some of us aren't savable.

Some of us were born to flounder and the others born to flourish.

This is an open apology to anyone who I have dragged down, and opportunity for maybe someone to understand more in their own situations, and make better of it. Or to save themselves from it.

(Please excuse the sinking ship imigary, I just find it easier to explain things if I can picture it)

[myexposednerves]

That voice in particular!

So I am under the fair assumption that everyone has those infuriating voices in their head that do not shut up regardless of what you try. The ones that go along with your daily thoughts, that dredge up that horrifyingly embarrassing time that you got so drunk you pissed yourself on a futon while sleeping next to your then girlfriend then told her that you had just spilled a drink (Totally wasn't what happened to me) or that one who rings in to remind you that you have seven hundred bills to pay and about enough money to pay half. I have about seven "distinct voices" that populate my head. Technically they are all the same voice, mine, but in my head they all go at once and it is easier to label them as individuals. Each voice has a repeating thing that it plagues me with, but there is one in particular that hasn't stopped going for over three years... That one, great, endless train of thought is the one that screams about my ex. And when I say it hasn't stopped in three years, I mean it. I cannot recall a time that I was free of these thoughts about her, not when since she left anyway. This one voice is accountable for about 60% of the misery I experience daily. It's the main culprit for sleepless nights, it has caused more anxiety attacks than anything else has ever contributed towards them, and it is the biggest benefactor to my subconscious efforts to sabotage every relationship I get into. At least once a week I think I see her and that's when I goes HAM on me, dishes out about a gallon of adrenaline then screams at me from the side line "IT'S HER, IT'S FUCKING HER, WHAT ARE YOU GONNA DO?". As I write this I'm on the down slope of one of those exact situations. It has never been ok to suffer with the shit that goes on in my head but I've managed, but it is now affecting my current relationship. I'm fine with being broken a little more, however, I'm not ok with dragging her down too. I'm in a position where I have no idea what to do, and my go to reaction is "carry on like all is well". Not overly confident that this particular attitude will work this time.