Question #10

Exactly how big is your hole? Mine's enormous, so I'm told.

I won't tell you who asked me this question, but it was completely out of the blue and it left me puzzled

Answers on a postcard

The End of Morals

Leaving University and moving to The North has done nothing good for my morals.

Particularly environmental ones. In the last year, I have started eating more meat, started printing e-mails, flown all round the world (particularly on my trip to America and Barbados) and bought a car.

I really bought the car with good intentions. I was only going to use it when cycling, walking, trains and buses weren't good enough to get where I wanted to go. In the end though, I have been using the car a lot of the time and have hardly cycled to work at all this year, getting worse and worse. Now I have got my bike fixed, I need to use it. But I'm not sure if I have the willpower. I suppose I'll find out tomorrow motning...

Stan and Ollie

It turns out that my friends are very talented...

Have a look at this!

This is an original sketch inspired by Laurel and Hardy that they did. They also request that as many people as possible join the Laurel and Hardy Fan club on Facebook. There are apparently more episodes to come. I can't wait!

Well done Brandon and Paul!

Advice #43

Do not sit on a sharp spike

[Sarah gave me this advice, she is so helpful!]

Teasmade

My Dad had a brilliant morning schedule. The alarm went off on the Teasmade across the room. This forced him out of bed because it meant he could have an early morning cup of tea and because he had to turn off the alarm (carrot and stick). Then he went back to bed and drank the tea with a Kitkat. When I was little and my sister was littler we used to go into his room and sit in his bed and eat a stick of Kitkat each and we had some orange squash. It was a brilliant way to start the day.

When I grow up I am going to do something similar.

And don't you dare tell me that I can't have these plans or that I'm already a grown-up because I will always have plans for when I become a grown-up and there is lots of time to become a grown-up and for these things to happen

Question #9

When can you get this done by?
[A mean question without an easy answer]

You are unique and special

You are unique, you are an individual. That’s what we are told from very early in our lives. I had a book about how amazing the world was. It was a fun cartoon book and at the end was the most memorable page. It said that the most amazing thing in the world was... YOU! And there was a big mirror in the middle of the page so you could see yourself and feel special and unique. I always found that the concept that I was special and unique was a slightly odd concept. After all, there are lots of people and they are special by being unique, but how many special people can there be? If one person is special, every person is, but if everyone is special then it devalues the concept of “special”. But I was young and my parents told me it was true and I didn’t like disagreeing with them because they were big and clever.

Nowadays I feel like a mushy average of people I know, a product of my surroundings and situation, and of the people who I know. If I’m unique, it’s not in a very satisfying way! I change depending on my circumstances at any given moment. I’m possibly still unique at any given moment, but every moment is a unique point and by the definitions of my childhood, I was special and unique ten minutes ago, but I’m differently special and unique now. Now everyone is unique and special at every moment and there are an infinite number of different special people stretching round the world and back in time. The concept of “special” is getting less and less comforting.

As a child I was also told that as a person, I have a soul that lasts forever, and that is the essence of who I am that never changes. But I know I do change. The only solution is to change a small enough amount that I am still recognisable as myself. Even over a very long period, you have to stay constant because otherwise you get confused about your identity. If I remember back to what I did in the past and cannot understand the thought process behind making a decision then I have changed too much.

With all of these thoughts in mind, and being a product of my upbringing, I always aspire to be unique and constant. In the same way as an English student could read a book and tell you it’s a parable of women’s liberation or something, you could look at large chunks of my life and describe them as a conflict between trying to be unique and trying to be constant. To be unique you have to stay ahead of the game. You can’t be predictable, you have to build enough experiences and explore enough alleys that when you meet a new person, they will find you interesting, unique and special. But that doesn’t lend itself to constancy. Why do people give you such contradictions to live your life by?!

I am often told that I am fairly constant but when I was told before Christmas that I had turned into a different person, I saved the text message and it stuck in my head. It’s one of the most disturbing text messages I have ever received. I’m sure the sender had no idea how much it would affect me. To change enough to be a different person is a scary thought indeed.

Why do I desire these things so strongly? Is it a desire found only in me, in other people with the same class background and things, is it a social construct, or is it a natural instinct that has evolved for a purpose?

I want to be constant and I want to be an individual. Does anyone else, or am I unique in that?

Amusement leading into a rambling discussion of everything - if I'd done a post on each topic I could have spun it out for months

Strip pooh-sticks

Go to xkcd now! That's the amusement bit over with.

I'd almost forgotten how good it feels to be in this good a mood. I don't want to assume I'm over my bad patch because I was feeling pretty awful on Friday, but I feel good now, and that's splendid!

And the winners of the prize for cheering me up include but are not limited to: Jim & Gary from work, Lara, James, my sister Roz, Jen, and Jo; none of whom know each other except Jim & Gary

And I really don't think there is anyone who knows more than two or three of that list, how cool is that?! I feel special by being a unique cultural link between cool people. I've often thought that. The point where a person really grows up is when they have a unique group of friends that nobody else could possibly know. It's not the only definition of growing up, but it's one I like.

It's one of thoughts I have when I sit in a car at night, watching the world go by and the night sky dangle above us, over everyone. People tie each other together and we all look at the same stars blah blah blah you get the idea. I'll talk about night-driving in another post because it's wonderful and I want to take the time to write about it properly.

And the thing that cheered me up more than anything is compliments from people. One or two compliments can be passed off as someone just being nice but not truthful, and indeed you could keep going in blocking the compliments away and pretending that they didn't happen, but after a point you just let one soak in and you feel special. I make a resolution here and now to make compliments - really nice meaningful ones. Like Jim saying I'm doing a good job, or Lara saying I'm a role-model in positive thinking (I don't feel like one recently!), or Jen saying she was excited to see me, or James saying he wants to organise a night out and make sure I can come. They're all things that make me feel valued. So there we go, after all those resolutions at new year, I've got a new one. You should do it too.

Value other people, and tell them that you do

It needs doing. Like cleaning the bathroom. Well, it doesn't as much as it used to, when I was embarrassed to have guests because of the state of it (the bathroom that is). Jo would not have been impressed. I hope her boyfriend Chris didn't tell her when he came to visit a few months ago. It really is worth doing, I felt so much better for having a clean bathroom without hairs all over it and things.

Because hairs make a man more manly, and beards even more so, but they also make a man more disgusting and make everything around him disgusting too, because hairs don't stay fixed in your chest, they come out sometimes! I know. I know it well

And all the stress will go away when I go to visit my sister in France on Wednesday, which will be phenomenal (he says fumbling for words and settling on 'phenomenal', reading from the sticker on his Queens of the Stone Age album he bought online having lost it a few years ago and then forgot how good QOTSA are). Remind me and I'll do my best to report back on France in a way that I failed after my holiday in America back in October. I'm not good at reporting on holidays or events, it seems a bit formal and hard to make it interesting reading.

But then, judging from this post, interesting reading is a bit hit-and-miss with me anyway. It's a bit of a splurge, but it sums up my mood, as long as it makes sense [proviso]. It's like a rant for someone in a good mood rather than a bad mood. Is there a word for that? There should be. Why is there a word for a streaming verbal torrent of complaints and abuse, but not one (that I can think of), for a tirade of joy? Cor: "tirade of joy", that's a more extravagant phrase than I meant, but I won't take it back now. You know what I was trying to say...

Anyway, I'm so hungry it's mental. So I'll stop rambling.

Advice #42

Be keener to be cleaner

Cleaning my house a bit really cheered me up tonight, because living in squalor is horrible. Uk

Amusement

The biggest laugh I have laughed any time recently was heard when I was watching Gladiators on Saturday



In case you haven't seen it, I should explain that Gladiators is a TV programme in which "Contenders" win points by completing physical challenges and games against "Gladiators", who are the same every week. At the end, the challengers have to complete the "Eliminator", which is an assault course. The Contender who has done better in the preceding games gets a head-start in the Eliminator.

The Eliminator culminates in a run up a Travelator (like an escalator without steps that goes the wrong way) to reach the finish line. It is not guaranteed that Contenders will make it up the Travelator on the first attempt because it's very steep and they all try while they are very out of breath from the rest of the course. They often need to get their breath back before they get it right.

This time they were all doing so badly that they had to slow down the Travelator. Then the Contenders thought they might do better without shoes, so in the heat of the moment, where every second counts, both Contenders were fiddling with shoelaces and socks. But they still couldn't get up it. In the end they had to turn off the Travelator and crawl up it. Can it still be called the Travelator if it's not moving? These people are supposed to challenge the Gladiators and have incredible strength and endurance. Hilarious. It's not often I say this about TV (I dislike TV and a rant is bound to appear here at some point) but I really enjoyed it. If you have my sense of humour you'll love it too.

Moods again

A few people spoke to me about how bad my mood was in this post and to be quite honest, they had a right to be worried because I was worried myself.

Being in a bad mood for a long period makes you feel helpless. Being in such a bad mood that you can't enjoy anything and are crying several times in a day is scary. It's a complete loss of control. Perhaps it's my academic, thoughtful nature, but I am not used to being out of control of my emotions to such a large extent. I understand myself fairly well and if I'm in a bad mood I can say that I won't be in it forever and have a pretty good guess at what has upset me and what will cheer me up.

I'm scared of mental illness, perhaps more than physical disability, because it would knock my confidence entirely, exactly at the moment when I would need a bit of self-confidence to get me back on my feet. The idea that I could not reason properly is scary, and a change in personality is even scarier. A person whose personality changes may as well be a different person, and will certainly be treated as such. What I value in life is happiness, and mental health is a direct path to happiness, whereas physical health can only be an indirect path. After all, there are plenty of ill people who are happy, and healthy people who are unhappy.

After my little episode I feel like I am recovering. 2010 has been a reasonably good year for the first few weeks, but as you can guess, I have lost a bit of confidence and am not ready to put myself in difficult situations until I become more confident again. I'm happy but always looking around for signs that another metaphorical earthquake could hit and I could be unhappy again as I was before. I think I'm on the way out now and I'm feeling pretty good. Thanks for all y'all who got in contact and let me talk at you about my problems. It helped

New Year

I told Rachel at VerticalBlue that I would write about my New Year's resolutions. I only have to confess that I don't actually have any, because I didn't make any at New Year. I was too busy trying not to look into the past to look with any meaning into the future.

In any case, there's no point in writing New Year's resolutions, because it's a well-known fact that nobody ever keeps their New Year's resolutions. So I am making some now. Most resolutions get broken within the first week, so by skipping the first week I'm bound to succeed!

• End 2010 happier than I started it. My December was pretty shocking, I'll be very disappointed if December 2010 is as bad as December 2009.


• Learn to touch my toes. Try every day until I manage, and it'd better be in 2010 because this resolution thing is supposed to be yearly


• Cycle to work 3 days per week on average minimum


• Tidy your room and then keep it tidy by tidying it every day


• Somehow escape the habit of stopping half way through a sentence and forgetting my words. Remember that the end of a sentence is just as important as the first half and that even if it is clear where my sentence is going, the listener still wants me to finish it, so I have to make the effort to finish it off. I don't know when I started doing this a lot, but I have been annoying myself by doing it every sentence, and it needs to stop!

I hope these work out. I think I've chosen a manageable amount of measurable goals, rather than vague ones or a ridiculous amount of goals that will not give me any free time at all. Will thinking of goals and putting them on the internet help me to succeed in improving my life? Will fulfilling goals make my life happier? It might help me understand the questions I was asking here