Solitude

The face reflected in the computer screen is my own.  It’s me.  Thirty years of collected experiences and annoyance.  Thirty years of being uncomfortable in my own skin, and never quite working out what my place in the universe.  Although the outer shell of epidermis, atrophied muscle and bone cells has replaced itself many times over the last three decades, the brain and heart are pretty much the same collections of DNA and cytoplasm that I started with.  Warped, twisted and scarred by the passage of time and the hormonal shit-storm of teenage life, but still lurking behind my eyelids, shuffling the sections of life like a Rubik’s cube and only ever getting one side to the same colour at a time.

I still find it weird looking at the man in the mirror.  Most of the time I grin at him, and hope that distracts him enough to leave me alone.  Sometimes I’ll watch him pretend to sing, posing flawlessly while imprisoned in a cell of glass that prevents him from uttering a note.  Very rarely do we look at each other.  We don’t deal well without distractions, me and the man in the mirror.  Even when we’re left to ourselves, we try to find ways of filling the time that take us away from ourselves.

Secretly, the man in the mirror and I would like to spend a month living on a mountain, getting to know each other.  Cold air promotes clarity and isolation more than anything except silence, which just so happens to be available at the top of a mountain.

I don’t have a mountain, nor is it cold enough.  But I do have a week of living on my own, due to university field trips taking the lady of the house off to foreign parts.  So far I’ve managed to get a great many items off the to do list.  Admittedly they’re the more mundane cleaning based ones, but at least I don’t have to worry about them any more.

Next up if looking at the man in the mirror.

Sitrep

So not smoking, bar a New Year’s cigar, seems to have worked surprisingly well.  Not saying I’ve beaten the beast, but at least I’ve kicked it into a kennel.  Just have to kick it in the face every time it pokes its head out.

Ran a fitness assessment today.  VERY humbling.

Bleep test – 9.3

Press ups – 40

Chin ups – 8

Well that sucks.  Best get on with fixing that methinks.

Looking for people to listen to

Here’s one.  And they were nice enough to follow my ramblings, so they might even read this.  So hi.  How are you?  How’d you find me?

Shrinking spheres of attention

Way back in the mists of time, I started blogging.  The original blog still exists out there, as I’ve forgotten the passwords.  Assuming that civilisation itself doesn’t crash and fall into the pit of oblivion, then long after I’m wormfood, that blog will still be there, exposing the rather disturbing psyche of my 20 year old self to future generations.  Sorry….

When I started blogging I also used my blog to essentially keep all of the URLs I regularly used in one place.  It’s a habit that stayed with me through various other blogs, posting pages, my own personal website, even this place.  However, the advent of the google reader slapped everything around the face and dumped it in the trash, and I haven’t used the links here for a while now.  In fact, I don’t think I’ve even looked at my actual blog for the best part of a year (before today).  I’ve just posted every so often.  So I’ve seen the dashboard pages, but not much else.

The point I’m failing to get around to is this.  Over the last decade, the number of web things I routinely look at has got smaller and smaller and smaller.  Out of the whole internet, about 6 websites regularly get visited by me.

How the fuck has everything got that boring and predictable!?  Dammit!  7 billion people exist in this world (roughly).  Take out the 6 billion who are too old, too young, too poor, too busy or too stupid to bother listening to, that still leaves a billion or so souls with their wit and wisdom wafting through cyberspace.  Yet I pay attention to maybe 10 of you.  Something is not right here.

Where the hell are ya?  I’m looking for you lot now, you interesting bastards you.  I’m gonna find ya, then I’m gonna value and respect your opinions and add them to my own life.  Just you bloody watch me.  I’ll use all the time I usually spend reading about football.

Feels like I just woke up.  All the words up there don’t fit together very well.  More like a childs attempt at lego than a written version of the Sistine Chapel.  But you know what?  I don’t care.  I’m back, I’m angry, and I’m awesome.  Boo ya

P.S. 6 days without smoking.  In your face lack of willpower.  I will own your ass.  Ha.

Slow suicide

So, many many days ago Brian did something awesome.  As far as I’m aware, he’s still being awesome.  Which is… pretty fucking awesome, as a matter of fact.

I have not been awesome.  I have frequently slipped on my quest to be awesome.  So I’ve been doing some deep thinking.  Or what passes for deep thinking for me.

You see, I’m a pretender.  An atheist at the altar of greatness.  A collective organisation of misplaced potential and good beginnings.  None of which means anything when it comes to what Brian aptly named ‘Stomping the Elephant’.  (You can get a badge for that:)

Stomp The Elephant

My elephant has reared up and kicked me repeatedly in the balls.  Or perhaps that should be the lungs.  I don’t know.  At any rate the elephant is winning.  Rationalising the decision to smoke is something I’ve got very good at doing of late.  I do it because I’m bored.  I do it because I’m annoyed.  It helps break the actual mediocre seconds of my existence go by a little faster.  Nikki Sixx once described drugs as ‘something more fun to put up my nose than air’.  I think I may well be adopting a similar approach to smoking.  It’s just something to do.

Over the last few days I haven’t smoked at all.  Giving me a big fancy caption, like so:

Days Without A Cigarette ~ 3

What’s been different?  No idea.  But the lack of carcinogen wafting through my bronchial tubes gives me a vague feeling of accomplishment, which isn’t to be sneered at, and I started to think new smoking related thoughts.

I know smoking will kill me.  Rationally, I mean.  I know that the toxins, tar, addictive gunk and other chemical nastiness contained within those little cardboard tubes will make me smell bad, reduce my lung capacity, narrow the blood vessels in some of my favourite body parts and eventually lead to me breathing through a hole in my throat as the meat machine becomes crippled and destroyed by cancer.  I know all this.  Yet I still smoke.  Ergo I must want to die.

Is this just a very slow form of suicide?  Or am I literally terminally bored on occasion?

Questions I really can’t answer without going very deep into the polluted cesspool that houses my psyche.  A study for another time and not one to be displayed on the internet.  These are my mental bugbears thank you very much.  Still, let’s end on a positive:

Days Without A Cigarette ~ 3

Oh, and Brian.  Quitting is truly awesome.  You wrote today, that you haven’t given him that much for his birthday.

You’ve taken, and continue to take, a step that means they won’t have to watch you breathe through a hole in your windpipe.  That’s a pretty cool present.