Merry? Christmas

Ok, it’s been over a week.

“So, why haven’t you posted for so long?”

Frankly, the momentum ground to a halt, the idea fountain dried up and the motivation fucked off somewhere sunny. It’s not been a very good week.

(At the risk of sounding slightly melodramatic.) My flu escalated into a life threatening super bug or something of the like (yeh, I HAD MAN FLU) and I consequently spent a lot of the past week in bed with a sore throat, high temperature and distinct lack of sympathy. It’s hard to be me, lol

Pretty much every activity regarding communication was put to one side. I, unintentionally, stopped talking to people online, stopped talking to people at home and wallowed in my misery. It seems that at (and in the majority of) times I can be rather pathetic with regards to my outlook. And man flu really doesn’t help.

So Christmas cards didn’t get written, neither did various letters. Revision wasn’t done to the planned degree, pre-Christmas tidying was forgotten, good will was postponed and festive cheer was shoved straight back up the backsides of any and all carol singers within a five mile radius.

I had (have?) become a scrooge, and I am deeply ashamed to admit it. This Christmas, for me, has seemed like the end product of years of downward spiraling at Christmas. I seem to have lost sight of the Christmas magic and cannot, for the life of me, enjoy it as much as I did when I was young.

Christmas used to be such a magical time. The month before-hand would effectively be a free month at school with nothing more grueling than sticking a Christmas tree to a card (which always annoys me – I have no artistic ability whatsoever) labeled “Hapy chrismas mumy and dadddy” (my spelling’s still dodgy) in scrawny handwriting (most probably the same handwriting I use today – it’s appalling!) And of course Christmas cards were still novelties at this point, writing them was fun and exhilarating (I perhaps exaggerate.) Christmas presents for your dearest friends were paid for by your parents and a present costing more than £5 was unheard of. Santa still existed and Mummy and Daddy sent off your letters to him yearly.

And then eventually the decline begins. Now the following could happen in any order but here’s how it went for me;

1. The evil epiphany – Santa does not exist. Now my personal reaction to this was both ridiculous and pathetic. I cried and told my parents they were lying. I proceeded to phone my grandparents who I established were also lying. Eventually the evidence became overwhelming, I accepted the truth. But for me it wasn’t just about Santa. The issue was that my parents, those who I should trust and love above all others (except god if you’re a bible-basher) had not only lied to me, but indoctrinated me into a false belief. If they had lied about Santa then what else had they lied to me about? Paranoia is a horrible thing.
2. Christmas loses its sparkle. There’s still magic (kind of) but Christmas just isn’t the same. Suddenly you noticed how stressed your parents are and eventually it wears off on you. At this point I also became quite angry. Angry with my parents for telling me the truth – because the fantasy was so much better. Angry with my parents for lying to me. Angry with my parents for lying to my younger brothers (both of whom were still believers.) Angry with my parents for not telling my younger brothers the truth (“If I had to know, why shouldn’t they?“) A five year age gap is insignificant in a ten-year-old’s mind. And even at times angry with my younger brothers for still finding Christmas magical. Now, surely you can see the beginnings of a very miserable bastard.
3. Christmas films/plays/carols start to bore you shitless. “It’s all a charade so what does it matter anyway?“
4. Christmas shortens. Now, this is a mixed blessing. Usually (I think) this comes around on entry to secondary school. Teachers, oddly enough, are no longer willing to give you December off and you don’t finish school until the 21st , if you’re lucky you may get a civvies day on the last. The flip side to the shortened coin is that you no longer have to endure the Christmas spirit for as long. However with so little break before the 25th it’s often far too easy to let Christmas pass you by without ever really reveling in it. The event you’ve been planning (or more importantly paying!) for since November has just passed and you didn’t particularly enjoy it. Bugger!
5. You stop planning and paying. This is the stage which I very nearly set foot onto this year. This year I left everything until the last minute. I bought essential presents for when they had to be bought and I wrapped them the night before they were to be given. (I wrapped all of my presents for the family at about 3am on Christmas morning!) No pre-meditation on how they were to be wrapped, no significance in the colour of ribbon, just cold, precise, effective wrapping.

And then it struck me – could it be that the thinking of such details is what gives us Christmas spirit? (along with adequate amounts of stress.) And is Christmas spirit (for adults) therefore simply relief? Relief, but in the context of a wintry gift-giving, song-singing, sherry-drinking festival. For children “Christmas spirit” is a mix between excitement and anticipation, but at any other time of the year we’d called that excitement and anticipation.

And there we have it – the essence of Christmas,

marketing!

I apologise for my scrooge-like ways. I shall endeavor to write again soon and attempt to redeem myself my writing something which portrays me in a relatively human light!

A donkey in a horse’s stable

Today I went to a Christmas fair with my young enterprise company. The fair was held at an all girls grammar school about an hour from our college. Only an hour away, yet worlds apart.

The grammar school bit didn’t phase me, I’ve spent the past 5 years of my life in one and visited countless others. Yes there was the usual “refined” atmosphere, with a sufficient suggestion of elitism and yes there were the usual generously filled cupboards of trophies. But what threw us was the lack of males. Ok, It seems pretty obvious that in an all girls school there will be no boys, we knew that and didn’t expect any others but nothing actually prepares you for the shock. It seems that male company is something we guys take very much for granted. Of the three guys that went today all of us said that at the start we felt very uncomfortable. We were suddenly in an environment in which we were not just a minority, but a prohibited faction.

I can’t really say I’ve ever experienced this before. At times I’ve felt out of place – recently a close friend described a trip to Japan in which the way she was treated by others made her feel uncomfortable in a similar way. At the time I found it hard to relate, but now it makes more sense. Although this wasn’t a sense of misplacement (so far as I didn’t feel that i was just a visitor,) but actually the type of situation where shades of guilt formulated for being in a place where I genuinely had no place whatsoever.

And this made me feel extremely naïve. All my life I’ve been used to being accepted (sometimes more than others) in the environment I was in. And so, to this extent, I’ve never been able to empathise with people who say they feel totally out of place. For (another) example, when I started secondary school I knew that it was the right school for me. I knew that it was the right option and that I would thrive there. So when people joined for the 6th form college and said that they felt out of place I never really understood how they were feeling. Well now, thanks to a relatively trivial (yet hugely important – in my opinion) event I seem to have egg on my face.

We live in a society that is fantastically efficient at alienating groups of people and suppressing them into submission. A society in which minorities can be persecuted and marginalised without the “moral” majority raising so much as a query. And it is this that worries me. Yes, the marginalisation of minorities is a horrific tort of our society but for me another, perhaps equally pressing, issue is that the majority of us stand by, oblivious, and let this happen.

The aforementioned majority, however, may in fact be non-existent. I am quite willing to admit that it is just I who am naïve enough to have not truly considered such issues, and that my relatively sheltered life has infact resulted in unrealism and naïvity which borders on stupidity. Are we all ignorant to the problems our marginalising society faces or am I just one hell of an ignorant pillock? Strangely, I would actually prefer the latter to be true.

And so yet again I end up questioning whether or not I’m the person I want to be. And yet again the answer is of course that I don’t know. I previously thought that I was relatively worldly and somewhat mature, but perhaps this is less true than I would have had myself believe.

It seems that we can all be blind to what stares us straight in the face.

I have no idea whatsoever.

“How are you?” Yes it’s a simple question, and I expect we all get asked it at least 5 times a day. My usual answer is either “I’m fine” (or “I’m well”) “thank you.” But today I was asked that very question and for some bizarre reason was unable to formulate a comprehensible answer.

“Hey! How are you?” Usually I answer without thinking about it or even sometimes, if I’m really preoccupied, without letting the person finish the question. But this morning not only did I listen to the question, I considered what it was actually asking. How am I?

Well, physically I’m well – I’m alive, suffering from sporadic bouts of (man) flu, but none the worse for it. Not particularly (or remotely) fit and not at all in shape, but that’s the norm. So yeh, I’m fine.

But then there’s the flip side. Mentally I’m exhausted. Not worn down, or under the weather, but exhausted. Ok, so now I sound melodramatic and I guess I probably am being, I’m in one of those ridiculously apathetic stupors that tend to tryannise adolescence, and then spill into later life. But at the moment I’m in a tunnel where there is no light at the end. Just random air vents allowing momentary glimmers of hope in an otherwise mono-directional batch process life.

By which I’m referring mainly to school (well it’s college but it still feels like school.) I’m two terms into my A-levels and don’t mind admitting that I’m finding it pretty hard going. My subject choices, although they are based on my interests, were perhaps too ambitious and in such respects even naïve. Quite how I expected to prosper I have no idea. Although, in some courses at least, the first terms are apparently the hardest so there’s an air vent.

And another factor of late is that (in case you missed it) it’s coming up to Christmas. Now usually I’d be the big kid and be mega excited usw. But this year I’m dreading it. Unfortunately my father is the personification of sordid and in the past couple of months has left my mother, and the family to swan off and do as he pleases. All very well and dandy, I can’t say we ever got on anyway. But unfortunately (perhaps unfortunately is the wrong word) my mum still loves him etc. So Christmas, a time for all the family, is gonna constitute of awkward silences and generic words of thanks. Lovely!

And I know that I’m lucky to have what I have, and I know that [Oh for fuck sake! - If i get another bastard e-mail from ipoints I'm going to kill something!] there are millions of people who are infinitely worse off than I am, but that doesn’t make me feel any better. And I’m sorry that I’m taking such a selfish, self-centered and bigoted view of the situation but I’m still looking for a light.

So I can’t really call this a post can I. (Was deliberating a ! or a ? for the end of that sentence, couldn’t decide so ended with a .) So I shall class this as a rant post. Not made for good reading, not particularly insightful and definately not uplifting!

Allow me to apologise (again) for the languishing nature of the past couple of posts. I shall keep trying to think happy thoughts!

Oh, and the picture (by the way) is just something I found online which doesn’t have particular relevance to any of the aforementioned but I thought it went well with the clueless theme. Being as I have no idea what to make of it!

Procrastination does not make a good friend.

Well, firstly allow me to apologise for the 2 days in between this and the previous post. Now, I could say that I’ve been mightily busy or over-worked etc. Whereas, the truth is that I hadn’t a clue what I was going to write in my next post so I put it off. Convincing myself that this would just be a week-nights weblog and that nobody would read it regardless of when I wrote the next entry. To a certain extent I was right.

Procrastination: the deferment or avoidance of an action or task to a later time and is often linked to perfectionism.
(I must state at this point that procrastination in my case is more due to laziness than perfectionism! And also that finding relevant images for procrastination is near impossible.)

There are times in our lives when the inevitable and the desirable are worlds apart. Times when we would give anything to be somewhere else, doing something different. And occasionally during these times we manage to get our own way. We fake illness, we run away, or (more commonly) we simply put off the undesirable until later.

This, unfortunately, is common in my life. I tend to lack motivation for anything that does not enthrall me or benefit me directly and instantly. I am, in this respect, very much like a chinchilla. I lack foresight and have excess cheek space. I find it hard to sit down and do something, for example, if the deadline is weeks, or even days, away. With college work I guess that some putting-off is inevitable and normal. But In my case the things I do instead of work are frankly pathetic.

History essay on the topic of “The Role Of The Girondins In The French Revolution” vs. Gears Of War on Xbox 360. Now, if I were a committed student there would be no choice, but alas I am not. Not only am I lacking motivation, but my choice of replacement activity has absolutely no utility whatsoever! So is there a difference between putting-off work do do something worthwhile (by which I am not referring to Xbox) and putting off work for the simple reason of not wanting to do work?

Yes. Procrastination for procrastination’s sake (or for the sake of anything less worthwhile than the original task) is laziness. Putting off a history assignment to save the lives of orphans in a developing country, for example, is less procrastinating, and more prioritising for the greater good. So I have now found my excuse to put off doing things I don’t want (or am simply too idle) to do. I’m doing something for the greater good.

Unfortunately this is the heart of my problem. Instead of cracking on with the task in hand I spend more thinking up excuses and justifying it to myself. It wasn’t uncommon for me in my earlier years of high school to not do a piece of homework, but then spend hours that evening thinking of a waterproof excuse to give the teacher for not having done it. Estimated time doing work would take – 30 minutes. Time taken thinking about work having not done it – 2 hours. And even though the numbers didn’t add up eventually this became routine. I’m now so practiced at convincing myself that things can wait that I, at times, find it impossible to motivate myself.

And would you look at that, I’ve entered a loop! The more I procrastinate the more it becomes acceptable. The more acceptable it becomes the more I procrastinate! So how do I break the loop? That’s not a rhetorical question, I genuinely don’t know.

Having read all of that through I’ve realised that I haven’t really made a point, and I haven’t even made it interesting. I guess for me the fact that I actually wrote anything is significant. I tend to set up this sort of account, write one post then leave it alone for…well, forever.

So I’m sorry this is a crap post. I shall endeavor to have some interesting thoughts tomorrow. And I shall try to write every evening this week! Possibly with the exception of Thursday which will be the last day of school. (ok, that was added on Thursday evening – really not in a writing frame of mind. Sorry!)

Sorry again!

And the list goes on…

List (noun): a series of names or other items written or printed together in a meaningful grouping or sequence so as to constitute a record.

Perhaps it is the OCD within me, but I love lists. Lists are the very basis of my everyday life. Whether they be written or mental, my daily routine would not function without them;

1. Get up
2. Shower
3. Breakfast
4. Brush teeth & hair
5. Get dressed
6. Pack bag
7. Check E-mails
8. Leave house

Voilà! My weekday morning in clear, concise and memorable form. That’s the routine, that’s what I stick to. No room for deviation, no room for hidden surprises. If something desperate crops up then it can be inserted where appropriate but other than in emergencies this list is to be obeyed at all times.

I’m the sort of person that (despite my views on infinite looping lives) thrives upon routine. I find my way of doing things and I stick to it. I stay within my loop because I know that I’m safe within it. Yes, occasionally I’ll breach the loop – but only if I’ve considered every eventuality and have planned for all outcomes. Whether it be conversations, movements or actions I’ll consider and provisionally plan them all. Therefore my (at times) apparent spontaneity is in fact only calculated, risk assessed and deliberated (delayed) impulsiveness.

I plan meticulously for all eventualities, I live in the future, and dwell on the past. The present is just something to think about tomorrow. Tomorrow needs to be planned for today! So, understandably I sometimes lose focus and all sense of reality. In which cases, karma (or life) tends to bring me back down to earth with a suitably heavy bump.

Yet when I don’t plan for something, am not in control or don’t know the itinerary I find it hard to revel in the moment, because my thoughts are always dominated by the near future and past. I dwell not on what it being said in the moment, but the conversation 20 minutes ago. I therefore seem socially and conversationally retarded, or just quiet.

Cliché tag line number two; “Live life in the moment”

I genuinely envy those who can truly do this, though I find it hard to believe that any body can. Fair enough, at times I become caught in a moment and for that time my attention is far less spread than normal – but could I envisage living like this all of the time? I don’t think so. Even as a child I would plan ahead – conversations normally – and eventually I became able to predict accurately peoples’ responses. Starting high school I used this mainly to get out of not handing in homework. Then it turned to making friends, a process which is considerably harder than planning excuses and mitigating ones failures.

Which leads me to believe that living in the moment is a tongue-rolling quality. You either can, or you can’t. I can’t (but I can roll my tongue ) Whether it’s something you can learn to do or not I couldn’t even speculate, but it’s possible. Perhaps I should try some genuine spontaneity once in a while.

So now I shall go and ponder tomorrow’s entry. Strange, just had déjà vu. Now that’s definately a subject for a later post.

Couldn’t leave that as an ending, sounded far too planned, not that this isn’t!

The grass is always greener on the other side

Many would argue that one of the defining sociological differences between humans and any other species is the human ability to desire and implement constant improvement. It can be argued that this desire for productive evolution of our habitats and selves has resulted in our being as we know it. As a species, we strive to improve – to improve our lives, our surroundings and, to improve ourselves. We rarely settle for what we have – we search, constantly, for more. Perhaps it is now part of the human psyche that if we do not constantly augment ourselves then we will stagnate. If we never try to make things better then we will succumb to the infinite loop of human apathy.

Now, the human attitude to improvement is a subject far too vast for one page. So I shall (simply because I feel it is relatively topical to myself) concentrate, for the time being, on self-improvement. I’m quite a socially dependent person, so what people think of me matters a lot. Yet I hide this behind a facade of bravado and humour, I take the “I don’t care what people think” approach to life, hoping that if I say it enough eventually I’ll believe it. To a certain degree it works. But because of the type of person I am I often doubt myself and so turn to anywhere or anybody who offers any sort of sanctuary. Welcome, everybody, to the world of self improvement.

” Don’t like the way you act around people? Dislike the amount of time you spend wasting away on your sofa? Then get up and do something about it! Everybody dog is here to help you. All you need to do is follow a few simple thought plans.” Hoorah! I think not.

The startling majority of self improvement programme tag lines involve some form of connotation of the phrase “Becoming a better version of yourself.” But in my opinion this is almost entirely unattainable. Every now and again I’ll resovle to do something amazing and change the way I am. I strive to become a “better version” of myself, but unfortunately some of us are simply incapable of recognising our strengths. Whether this be due to pessimism, lack of confidence or pure stupidity it often ends in the situation I find myself in. Because I have so very many (self-perceived) faults it is impossible for me to rectify them all and still remain the same person. Alas, much as I hate them, many of my faults also happen to be defining aspects of my character. Whether it be my temperamental moods, my shoddy appearance or my inability to maintain cheerful conversation, or whether it be smaller things like over-analysing conversations, or meticulously planning my entire life – all of these thing, much as I hate them, if all were removed would leave me no longer the person I am. This means that my eventual destiny on the road of self improvement to become a totally different person to the one who took the first step. I will therefore not have improved myself, but reinvented myself as somebody/something totally different. Less of a phoenix reborn from its own ashes, but more of zebra who has rubbed off his stripes and taken up show jumping. I am therefore the ass of the human race.

We cannot ever truly improve ourselves, because improving ourselves to the degree we believe we need to would in fact change who we are. Nobody is perfect, yet everybody desires to be so. So what if we find happiness in not being perfect? Can we ever find such peace in a “non-complete” state? I very much hope so! And if not, I shall keep trying to improve myself. If at first you don’t succeed, try and try again.

What makes a human being into a person?

Person: a human being regarded as an individual.

Are human beings really individuals? Or are we simply blind to the harsh realities of the human race?

There comes a point it one’s life when the seeds of doubt begin to germinate. For some, this comes with the hormonal bombardment of adolescence, for others the dreaded mid-life crisis. For some people, it is only in the closing hours of life that the creeping shades of contemplation cast a shadow over the already worn pavement of life. This is the point at which you realise that your life has become a groundhog day (referring to the film, not the 2nd February.) It seems that we all reach a point where we essentially live the same day, week or month over and over and over again, with only negligible differences. You take the same bus to work, you use the same elevator, you meaninglessly greet the same people and you sit at the same desk every day. Sure, you may choose a mocha one day and a latte the next, and you may even walk once in a while but essentially you have entered the infinite loop of human existence.

We humans live in routines, we abide by the same protocols and precedents every day. We do not vary our daily activities because doing so would throw us into the unknown, an unknown where we do not control all of the variables. In this sense we are no different from any other species at all. Once we find a routine that suits us, we abide by it, we gain security from it and eventually it becomes part of who we are. We therefore are no longer our own people, but our routines’ people. We are not defined by who we are, but what we do. It seems that being individual is no longer part of the human mind-set. Individuality cannot breed familiarity, and without familiarity we seem to be unable to gain security. And humans thrive on security. Why plunge into the dangers of unknown when we can live a looped-life in which we know that there will be no perilous dangers waiting around the corner?

It takes a special type of person (and i believe they are true people) to do something about this. Most of us simply revel in our routine. We try to improve our lives slightly by taking that overtime and paying for an extra holiday, or cutting out the mocha and slimming down. By doing this we convince ourselves that we have broken the monotony and we therefore convince ourselves (perhaps subliminally) that we are our own masters.

Yet in doing this, we simply join another majority. Because we have done what every other person would do, we have shown that we are part of the loop. We conform to the human psyche and in doing so, simply prove that we are incapable of being individual. If we are not individual then are we really people? Can we truly class ourselves as “people” if we essentially live by the same principles of apes? Stay safe, look after ourselves, make ourselves comfortable.

Only when we leave our comfort zones can we appreciate what it is to be a real person. When we visit the other side of the world and help those who are truly in need, when we complete the impossible, when we overcome the overwhelming. It is in the strangest places that we find true human nature. Often it is where people have nothing and no opportunity to establish routine that it becomes clear what it is to be a person. For example, recently I took a trip to Kenya. Some of the locals there live in absolute poverty, yet their passion and willingness to live is unparalleled by anything I have ever encountered. In the face of sheer adversity these people forge a life in which there are no certainties, in which every day is a blessing and every meal could well be their last. Yet their appreciation for life, and for each other, shows that regardless of our environment we all have the ability to be great.

So can we really ever break the loop? Those within the loop often want to break it. Yet those outside of the loop pray that they could be in it. Alas we reach the epitome of the human thought process – The grass is always greener on the other side.

Generic Disclaimer

Ok, so first of all allow me to apologise in advance for the (at times) horrific standard of my written English. Also,I feel obliged to warn you that a lot of the time my writing turns into a stream of thoughts and so often lacks direction and any point whatsoever. I’ve decided with this blog to try and address thoughts that crop up in my (pathetically boring) everyday life. So don’t go expecting clear progressing themes.

Quite why you chose to read this blog I have no idea, and I’m very sorry if it disappoints.

You have been warned!