I've upped my standards: now up yours

So Christmas came and went largely without incident. Christmas Eve night was spent in a pub with only a couple of friends watching a band play covers. I think my group of friends are more fragmented than they were this time last year, because some won't talk to Nick any more which isn't really any of my business but it means that any more nobody is ever all out at the same time. Last week if we hadn't met at the pub where I used to work I doubt so many of my friends would have turned out.

It was a good night though -- the band weren't entirely bad, and I spent mostly the entire night talking to Jon. We were even home before 12, which isn't exactly usual most nights.

I can't say that the novelty of being back home for Christmas has worn off, but I am desperately trying to think of something to do with my life that means I don't have to go back to my course. After the earthquake in Iran recently I remembered how for years I have been wanting to do relief work, been wanting to do something real with my life. Back in September when I was doing work experience I was saying as much -- I wanted to feel like I was making a difference.

The trouble is, you can't just do it. My idea of what relief work is seems to be largely voluntary work, when I start looking at jobs in the area all the seem to be is, well, jobs. Office, administration, accounts -- I'm not qualified, and I'm not interested. I want to be hands-on helping people. But it doesn't look like it's going to happen.

Anyhow. I refuse to jump on the "Christmas sucks" bandwagon, as I have enjoyed it this year and actually do enjoy it most years. I'm sorry for anyone who hasn't had a good time, but I'm not going to pretend I hate the holiday season.

-- Update: I have updated the comics section of the links page. Hardly earth-shattering news, but I am sure none of you actually ever look at that page unless I mention it.

It feels like somebody put something in my drink

I think I might be coming down with something.

Yesterday, I felt fine. I felt fine when I got up this morning. But now I am feeling increasingly strange, and I can't explain it. Either I am coming down with something, or I have reacted uncharacteristically badly to donating blood this morning.

Donating blood isn't normally a big deal for me. I don't enjoy the experience, but it doesn't take long and I feel I should do it. Today things just seemed wrong. First, there was it taking longer than normal. It seemed to hurt more and be generally more uncomfortable, too. Then there was an issue with the bleeding not stopping as quickly it should do afterwards. And then as I was about to leave, I began to feel strange as my vision started to be replaced with a bright haze, so they made me lie down with my feet raised.

Ever since then I've just been feeling wrong. My head feels fuzzy, and I just had to abandon my shorthand practice, not because I couldn't concentrate but more like it seemed something was getting lost between my brain and my hand. I do feel tired, so maybe I need a nap -- it could be simply not enough sleep. But I feel almost feverish.

Of course, all of this won't stop me from going out tonight -- I'm not going to be back home for very long, and I want to see my friends as much as I can.

--- and by the way, Happy Christmas to everyone I know here.

I can't tell you why

Last night I dreamed about Fiona. I don't think I wrote here about how I met up with her a few days before I came back home.

I'd said after my entry "Here it ends" that I wouldn't bother with her again, since she didn't appear to want to remain friends. Perhaps I haven't stuck to it as much as I should have done, since I asked her at the time why she was being cagey about meeting up with me, and have since answered any emails from her -- although not instigated any.

So I was of course surprised when I got an email of her asking if I wanted to meet up. I did want to see her, but tried to make my reply as casual as possible -- rather than "I would love to see you" I told her "I think I would like to meet up". The fact alone that I had to deliberately phrase my reply suggests that I have feelings still for her. So we met up, and she was just the same as ever. A few years older, a little wiser perhaps, and a little more grown up than the 15 year old I met one day in June, nearly 5 years ago.

We didn't spend long together, since a friend of hers had arranged for them to go to the cinema, but we had a few drinks and talked about everything. I learned my lesson last time around and didn't tell her I loved her or that I wanted her back, although we did talk a little about us. She mentioned how it has taken her three years to get over me -- although there was a slip where she said something like she was getting over, rather than was over me, but I choose not to jump on that. She told me that she had felt the same way about me, last time, although that annoyed me more than anything since she refused to consider me at the time, or since. Sure, it was probably the best decision -- but she could have been honest about how she felt. How she feels now I don't know, and don't care to ask. I don't much entertain my lingering feelings -- they obviously aren't the same feelings I once had, and even if they were there can be only heart ache for one or both of us to act on it.

I haven't heard anything from her since then. I've come to believe that I have the wrong telephone number for her, and she probably hasn't had the chance to read her email. I'm not reading too much into it, I can't see any reason why she would ignore me deliberately now.

All the same, last night I dreamed of her. As you might expect, the dream involved us sleeping together -- it wasn't a sex dream, it wasn't focused on or even actually feature the sex itself. Just that we had done. There was no great revelations, no extremes of emotion one way or the other. Most of the dream featured us wandering around her university campus -- not arm in arm, or hand in hand, in fact I can't remember how we were at all -- but remembering it now, the place clearly seemed more like a movie studio than her university.

I think I woke up from the dream with us in her bedroom. I had to leave to get something or find something at my own flat, and invited her to come with me. I don't know if I had an ulterior motive, or just hoped for something to happen. Either way, she said she wouldn't go. I asked her if she didn't trust me, or words to that effect, and she said that was true.

I don't know what to really make of the dream. I would blame the novel I'm reading at the moment, Don De Lillo's Americana, where the protagonist sleeps with his ex wife -- but I am sure that there was no hint this was going to happen in the story before I read it today. I don't know what the dream was trying to say at all.

I'm like a soldier with no cause to fight

So it's Sunday, I got back home early yesterday evening -- having had at least two phone calls from Laura on my way home wanting to know if I was back yet and when I would be back, since everyone was going out in honour of my return.

We ended up going out about an hour later than planned, since Jon was attempting to dye his hair blonde and was distraught at it going basically ginger. But we made it to the pub, if a little late, and although it was the first time in months everyone had apparently been out together, it felt no different to normal.

Perhaps it's just me. Maybe going out in honour of the return of an introvert means that the night really wasn't going to be a big deal. All the same, it didn't feel like I was the centre of attention -- which makes me an attention seeking introvert, if you follow.

It wasn't so bad though, it was just old times. I talked about Leicester to Austin who used to live there himself, and he asked me for relationship advice (I know, it makes little sense) since he and his girl had broken up this week after a year and a half together.

It's good being back home. It doesn't feel strange, like it has done before, it just feels good. I guess I really have been unhappy or lonely being away. But that troubles me -- I remember the feeling when I came home for the weekend before, the feeling of wanting to not go back. I remember when I'm away the feelings of wanting someone to just come and take me away. And everyone keeps saying to me "There's not long left" but that doesn't comfort me, my skills are still very rough and my confidence is still pretty shaky. Can I really be a professional journalist before the end of the year?

I keep hoping that someone will find my blog or my diary and like my writing and give me money to just write and not have to see anyone if I don't want to -- and certainly not walk the streets in the cold and the rain looking for a story. Nor write 110wpm shorthand. Or know about the role of elected mayors in local government.

How did this become my whining? I don't know. The cat says he doesn't know either, but if it's all the same he quite likes my writing and would pay me if he wasn't, y'know, a cat and all.

Dead letters

There is an explanation as to what is going on with the junk email. At first, things seemed to be getting even more strange. I would read an email on WAP, and as mentioned before it would contain what looked like an extract from an essay. However, I found that when I looked at these emails on a computer they had mysteriously changed to the junk email their subjects suggested they would be.

Apparently it's like this -- some of these emails can only be read in html, and rather than show up a blank page or an error message, they have these 'essays' embedded in the email. Who knows how many emails a day we are getting with this stuff hidden in them -- you can only see it by viewing the source, and laboriously searching through that -- or by viewing them in something that doesn't support html.

Of course, now I am going to be searching all of my junk mail for hidden messages. Who knows what is being sent -- among my dozens of junk emails every day there could be any number of secret messages.

What this all reminds me of is Clive Barker's The Great and Secret Show where the protagonist spends his days working in the dead letter room of a sorting office, opening endless reams of undeliverable mail and soon discovers, through a series of cryptic dead letters, an alternate reality.

What? It could happen.

(and, yes, I've taken off comments for the time being. Maybe for good, I don't know -- but if you really want to comment, you can email me)

Ever read your junk mail?

Every once in a while, junk email slips through the yahoo bulk mail filter and ends up in my inbox. Normally, I just tell them it's spam without opening it, and it's gone. Sometimes I open it, for the sake of it. I always check my mail in my bulk mail folder in case something I want has ended up in it. Sometimes I open mail in that, usually if I want to delete something but I am reading on WAP and don't have the link to just empty the folder.

Do you ever open your junk mail? Because something very strange is going on in mine,

There will be an email like "Jay! Rates fall for the third week running!" or "Slash your debt by 70%!", and nine times out of ten the email matches the subject. But every once in a while, it doesn't. I appear to be getting emailed what I can only describe as extracts of essays. In an email the other day with a subject about interest rates was part of an essay about the poet Alderman. Today in an email with a subject telling me I can slash my debt, I have an essay about what the deforestation of the Amazon is doing to indigenous tribes.

They aren't whole essays. They aren't public appeals for something to be done. They aren't mailings from charities. They can only be described as extracts. Someone is seriously trying to fuck with my head.

I was reading my Zen guide the other night, rather than working. It's difficult to get your head around -- but it could be the answer to why I get strange things like this going on, because none of it is actually real.

-- and own up -- who has been reading through the archives? I'm not complaining, I just like to know who is reading what...

Random and often strange things

ou kids choose to read the most random entries sometimes, I swear. I largely ignore now the number of readers my diary stats say that I have (even though it does say more people are reading than are leaving comments), but I know for certain what old entries in my archive I have or haven't been reading. And nearly every day when I check it, I see particular entries that aren't even in chronological order. I guess people must just like the titles, I don't know.

It's been an odd few days. Not least because something very stange is going on with my floppy disks -- they will disappear in the short journey to or from my house, or work I know that I saved on it will just not show up. If I get home and my disk isn't there, my disk with my only available copy of the news story I wrote for tomorrow on it, I will not be happy.

Other odd things include that Fiona, she who seemed so reluctant to keep in contact, temperamental about answering text messages and more than a little reluctant to even acknowledge the idea when I suggested something that might involve seeing me -- the very same Fiona emailed me. Not only this, but she emailed with the specific purpose of asking me if I wanted to meet up. Perhaps because after the last time I asked her why she was being weird about answering me on the meeting up idea she explained it was that her boyfriend wouldn't like it. I guess now she has decided he doesn't need to know, but I have to ask her why now? Why after over two years, and after however long I have lived in this city, why does she suddenly want to see me now? I don't know what to expect from her, but I'm feeling strong enough not to make an arse of myself by falling for her.

And I'm toying with ideas for a webcomic called The Amazing Adventures of Sandwich-Girl and Dork-Boy. It would be about a girl San lives with and her boyfriend, or the characters based on them, with the story just being some weird and outlandish crazy thing. Okay, yes -- I don't have any ideas for what the story would be, and I can't actually draw so that is a major setback. But I like the idea. Maybe I will stick "webcomic author" under my list of jobs I would like to do. Speaking of webcomics, I miss rts.

*Update-- I started a blog, for the mundane, day to day stuff in life. But I can't really work out what I am doing with it.

A wet news hound

Note the change of template. I don't know if made it clear before, but I am currently running with a dual template idea. I was originally going to use the dark template for my alternative diary, then I decided I'd just stick the darkness right in here and I could use the other template for my darker days. And so I have. It's a real quick way to judge my mood -- dark template means I am largely depressed, this one means things are good, or at least okay.

And things today are pretty much okay.

My feet are soaking wet, because the soles of my boots are coming off and it has been raining to beat the band all day. Why was I out in the rain? I've been looking for news. There was so much to being a journalist I didn't know about -- and making contacts and finding the news is one of them. I know that technically sounds like two things, but I say it's one. In small groups we are news gathering from various parts of the city, as I may have mentioned -- and my group has landed itself in the an area of urban redevelopment.

If I call it the ghetto you would probably get ideas of gang wars and drive by shootings -- and while this takes place in Leicester, I don't think it's there. But there are the houses with the steel barriers over the windows and doors, the vandalised security cameras, the broken traffic lights, the unsurfaced roads. There's the look people get when you tell them you are going to Beaumont, and the way they say "be careful...".

By Tuesday (I think) we all need to have two stories -- a main story, and a nib (news in brief). I might already have one or the other, from someone I was talking to the other day out there, but I need more contacts. So with one of classmates I headed out there today, in the pouring rain.

For one thing, the street signs that said it was three miles or however far were strange. They started off at three or so, and seemed to decrease gradually, until around one and a quarter miles when it went down to one, then back up to one and a quarter, before going back to one again. And then there was a sign that said the city centre was only one and three quarter miles back in the direction we had come -- it seems it was a shorter distance to travel back than to travel on. Maybe they just want to discourage people who aren't "local". All the same, some phone calls to the council will be made, asking if anyone has ever tried following these signs on foot.

Technically, I didn't really make any contacts. I pointed out to Dan a letter in the window of a neighbourhood centre, about localised flooding and the council's lack of action, so he talked to a contact of his about it and will be following it up. I've got some numbers for domestic violence groups and mediation services...but no real people. And did I mention I haven't eaten today and my feet are soaking wet?

All the same, I don't really mind. I need to go home, call a local paper or two and a news agency (still chasing work experience), and maybe call these groups I have numbers for. Oh, and eating would be a good idea.

I can't tell you why I am feeling better (if a little light headed, and tired), but I just am and it's probably best not to question it too closely.

and then, and then, and then

I wish that I could tell you that things are better, but if I'm still using this template then the answer is going to be that they aren't.

Right now I am confused more than anything. I am in a pretty thoroughly unhappy place with my course, and unlike perhaps when I was an under-grad I don't think it's as simple as just carrying on. I was told by the head of department that I wouldn't be here if I wasn't good enough or couldn't do it. They were ludicrously over-subscribed. She says they took me because I can do it, and they don't make mistakes. This was weeks ago, months maybe. But she also said that if I am that unhappy and if the last thing I want is a job in journalism then naturally that was another matter completely.

To be honest, I don't know what I want.

I call home or I talk to San and talk about how I feel and I'm always being told "but it's only 6 months" -- and I say but I'm unhappy now and I don't know if I even want in a journalism any more. But what else will you do? Always that question. And I don't know. Then you should probably just stick it out...it's only a few months... And around and around we go.

Looking at my drinking recently, I can't say it's a problem. I don't remember when I was last drunk, or even when I last drank a lot. I know my limit and know to stop even if I don't feel drunk. That has to be good, though I don't really feel one way or the other about it. The whole idea of using diet pills or just speed if I could get it was never really going to get off the ground for the important reason that I have no job and no money.

I haven't even cut myself in months. The desire is there right enough -- I barely even shaved for last week, but when San commented on it I told her it was just because I didn't feel I could trust myself with a razor. I think it made her sad. But I'm clean-shaved now. My clothes are mostly clean, at any rate they aren't noticably dirty and don't smell. I need a hair cut, but I guess I will get one when I go back home for Christmas.

I would consider getting pierced again. I was telling San how piercing is the best form of self harm, since because it is so obvious and in everyone's face nobody realises why. There's no need to lie about how I got the cuts on my arms, or cutting my legs where it can't be seen. And I don't think the excuses ever really fool anyone. Of course, I always liked how it looked and that would in turn -- along with the endorphins -- make me feel good. But right now I need a job and need more things in my favour, not less.

Things with [San] are good. It seems I only ever write about her when things aren't going well -- I guess there's more to say when there's drama. On Friday when she came over I hadn't seen her in a week. We spent the weekend together, which was mostly uneventful but largely pretty happy on the basic level. San gets moods like I do. She said she was feeling numb for a while on one day, and said she felt bad because I hadn't done anything wrong. I understand though, it's the same for what I feel. I just distract her and try to make her happy.

But like I say, this week I'm still unhappy. I don't feel welcome on my course by some of the people I have to work with although this could be all in my head, or could be rectified if I made myself more social. I can identify several inter-connected problems that come from me not liking people all that much, and I wonder if this is a problem for journalism.

I told San today that I wish I could see how things will turn out. If just being unhappy for the next six months will be it -- after that I will get a job, and I won't hate it, and things will get better. Or if things will get worse. I guess the answer is that what will happen is what I let happen. If I make the decision to be happy and to do well things will be different to if I keep telling myself I hate it here and want out.

It's just a vicious cycle.

I want...

In keeping with my whole fucked-up-ness recently, or perhaps a sign that I can at least watch how fucked up I am, I have started to watch my drinking. It's never been that big of a deal, but I noticed I was drinking almost every night. I can't say I was drunk every night, or that it was interfering with other aspects of my life, but I felt it needed watching. So I said on Sunday, that's it -- nothing else until Friday night.

I lasted until, I think, Tuesday. Of course, it's only been one drink each day, and my inability to actually get any work done has had nothing to do with that. But all the same. There was a thread in the forums about things we are addicted to -- but perhaps I took it too seriously when I said "I'm like a chocaholic -- but with alcohol".

I asked San to pick me up some St John's wort, since she offered to get me some ginseng to help with the work. I also told her to get me some "diet pills". None of this herbal crap, something that has a big fat warning that too much can give you a heart attack. Even if she gets around to picking up the other stuff I know that she won't get me that -- probably for the same reason that I want them.

She doesn't believe me that i could -- if so inclined -- buy prescription drugs online, without a prescription. I just checked, and I could get myself a batch of Ritalin without any prescription. Sure, it's at an extortionate price and probably illegal, but I could -- if so inclined.

I might just look up the symptoms of ADD online and go convince a doctor to write me a real prescription.

Better yet; on my course we are now into "district reporting", that is producing a kind of mini newspaper in groups from various areas of the city. Luckily for me, if I wanted to be buying speed, I think we are reporting from exactly the right kind of place.

So I am trying to watch my drinking, but at the same time wanting some kind of... speed, or near equivalent, just for the sake of it. I'm thinking ritalin might do me some good, but have no illusions about the rest. I just need some kind of release for all this negative energy.

(background)
{ip=146.227.1.9}
{datestamp=200312042135}

I want out.

I have had it.

I don't know why today, because as days go it wasn't so bad. But I just want off this fucking course -- and, most likely, career path.

I think it was perhaps a discussion with a friend on MSN earlier that made me realise. He asked how things were and I have very little positive things to say. I actually like the practical journalism classes, and expect that an actual job in journalism would be all right, but that's pretty much it.

I am hungry. I am broke. I am lonesome as hell, but because I have no money I can't go out more and all my old friends live back home. I hate learning shorthand. I hate issues in contemporary journalism. I hate local government.

Do I really give a shit about a job in journalism any more? No, not really.

Of course this now raises other questions like what the hell am I going to do instead.

I need to find a job. Maybe more than one. But that will only solve one or two problems -- if at all. I will be earning a wage now, but that doesn't mean I will have much more spare income. So I could remain broke and hungry.

I also still wouldn't know anyone.

And even if I manage to somehow solve the no money, no food, no friends problems with a job I most likely will be swapping hating my course for hating my job -- although persevering with the course could get me a job that I might not hate.

If I moved back home I would have money, food, friends and probably a job, too. But it would also mean having to admit defeat. It would mean seeing again all the people who I told I was leaving for good to be a journalist, and admitting I couldn't do it. It's a nasty little town with nothing positive to be said for it and I don't want to go back there.

It seems that all I have before me is a bunch of things I don't want and can see no way out.

Radarrocket

December begins tomorrow. That means there is just over two weeks before Christmas break starts, and I still don't have any work experience for the time we have off. Whenever I have told my head of department she hasn't seemed terribly concerned, and only this week did she offer to look over my CV and cover letter to see if there's a good reason that nobody answers my letters.

And apparently there is. It seems that editors will just throw away letters like mine that start "Dear Sir", because -- I am told -- it says I couldn't be bothered to find out their name. It also offends female editors, but it gets thrown away regardless. I am also told that the tone of the letter suggests I am only writing to them because I have to for the course, not because I want to. I thought they would be more likely to help if they knew it was something I had to do, and not just a whim -- but no.

So I have now drafted out yet another set of letters asking -- or begging -- for some work over the break, and also mentioning that I could do with some over Easter, too. One newspaper has already told me no to Easter, so the chances of getting any over Christmas is slim. I do not yet know what will happen if I don't do the work experience.

On one hand, it would be great. I would have four weeks off to just work and earn money -- though I can hardly remember what that was like any more. On the other hand, it is a course requirement and as such they might be seriously pissed off with me. We shall see.

Anyhow. Eating something today might be a good idea, though non-essential. San would not be impressed if she knew how little I eat if I'm left to my own devices -- especially since I am always telling her that I need to keep an eye on her eating habits. I argue that it's not the same with me because I've never had an eating disorder, just like I don't feel the need to watch her with sharp objects because she doesn't have the same history of self harm.

It's really fascinating the number of ways you can harm yourself without actually resorting to sharp objects -- simply not working, spending when I'm broke and, yeah, probably also not eating enough are all wonderfully subtle forms of self harm.

But yes -- I must go. I haven't done any work all weekend, I need to practice writing shorthand dictation at 50 wpm, and have just over a week to write a 3000 word essay on "the good, the bad, and the unacceptable" in news reporting.

You grow up and you calm down

The Clash once said “you grow up and you calm down”.

I guess when I am still quoting from punk bands to talk about your thoughts I ain’t quite there yet.

Once – years ago now – I started an internet diary called Superman’s Dead. To be honest with you, I don’t remember the day itself. It was the summer, that I remember. Whether it was a long, hot summer or a largely rainy one I couldn’t tell you.

I was troubled.

Yeah, I know – I’m not so very straight these days either. The moods come down on me like summer thunderstorms; the clouds build up, and just steadily lower on me. But I was worse then. Then again, who isn’t at that age?

I was in one of my love-struck funks. I don’t remember what was bugging me about my relationship with [Fiona], but like I say – I was troubled. On this particular day I got bored with my angst, and started my alternative diary.

To describe what I was like you only really had to read my first entry. The anti-hero wakes up in a strange bed next to a girl he doesn’t know, dresses, and leaves before she wakes up. It was a good fiction from my own life. I created a typically anti-social anti-hero who I intended to be largely dislikeable.

The thing with this diary was some days I would write some anti-social fiction, other days I would just rant on about things I didn’t like and didn’t feel comfortable putting my name to. Stuff like how I didn’t, and don’t believe, in such a thing as selfless behaviour...

A funny thing about that diary was that people liked it. Sometimes I used to go to chart rooms and pick fights. I had no interest in “chatting”, I just wanted arguments with people I thought weren’t as smart as me – I can be strangely conceited like that, sometimes. More often than not in these arguments I would end up with person after person sending me private messages, wanting to talk. The diary was a bit like that, I guess people liked the brutal honesty – because although I was sometimes writing fictional accounts of nights drinking vodka and playing pool, it was always honest in the feeling.

Some people were pretty pissed off when I told them I wasn’t who I appeared to be. Some of these people are still knocking about on Open Diary, I’m pretty sure, and I think they’re still bitter about it. I tried explaining once or twice I wasn’t the heel and the fraud they made me out to be, but the diary’s anti-hero would never have apologised for anything, so...

This is all a very long preamble.

A few weeks back, I started to register the same name here. I have periodically revived the diary over the years – but almost always quit it when I get uncomfortable splitting my mind in two the way I was doing. This time I quit one step earlier. I got the “please click here to confirm and register your diary” email, but had changed my mind it I didn’t register it.

I’ve been thinking recently.

I mentioned in a thread over in the forums that when I was a teenager I used to really identify with Holden Caulfield, but how in later years I have felt more irritated by him than anything else. Over the past few days I got the chance to catch the film Igby Goes Down, which I think I’m right in saying is a loose adaptation of The Catcher in the Rye – Igby’s style of speech reminded me a lot of Holden Caulfield, even though the plot had very little in common with Salinger’s novel.

The thing is this. It’s not me anymore.

I could argue it was never me, not really, not in practice – but emotionally, I always identified. And though I still have my... issues, and the occasional diary entry locked from the world, I’m not splitting my psyche into different diaries.

Yes, I still want to stay up all night, high on speed, painting – or probably, more likely, writing. And yes, there is a dark side to me and that cold spot in my head that is sharp and clear as a knife. And yes, I still don’t want to spend my life sitting on the couch night after night, stuffing fucking junk food into my mouth and watching spirit crushing soul destroying game shows…

But now I want to meditate in desert and get a feeling of the great oneness of the universe like that one time I did in Moab.

And, yeah, I get disaffected and sarcastic and, yeah, I distance myself from people almost as often as I get too close to them. But all the same, I’m not my own anti-hero. I may not have the necessary character traits to be the hero, but I’m something more now – I'm more than just the sum of my dysfunctional parts.

This is all.

No great insights, but I just wanted to share this moment of clarity.

Behind the scenes

I don't normally link to news stories I've found -- but this one I just have to share with everyone.

The Duke of York likes hiding his monkey around Buckingham Palace, the Queen feeds toast to the dogs underneath the breakfast table and, naturally, the servants are under-paid and abused... Behind the scenes

Word

I think it's been about two years since I last 'performed' any poetry, which makes sense since until recently it had been about that long since I wrote anything new. But oh, I had forgotten how great it is.

It started when I first arrived in Derby and joined a poetry group. It was everything I could have wanted from it -- a bunch of people who liked to drink a lot and read poetry and get feedback on their work.

Once a month we would go to an open mike poetry night held in the back room of a pub. This back room was without light, electricity or heating -- but sometimes they would have had the generator running for long enough for the heater to have warmed the place up. It had character. So we would go and drink and read our work and listen to other people from the area and it was good. The organiser was always looking for somewhere better to hold it though -- it was always "When we find a new venue...".

But when the new venue was found and we all moved it had lost its soul. It moved some sterile function rooms. It was heated. The lights were either on or off. There was a bar, but it was over-priced and the bartender always looked like it was the worst place in the world for him to be in. I think I lost my inspiration. One day I went along on my own -- where the poetry group were at this point I don't remember, maybe it was outside of term time. I remember reading one short, unhappy poem to a lukewarm reception. And I didn't go again.

Not until Matt and I returned from Utah years later. By this time the organiser had changed, and the venue was now a church hall. From bad to worse, if you ask me. There was no bar (I need a drink in me before I stand in front of a room full of people to read my work), but instead free soft drinks and an older, stuffier group of people. None of the people I used to know. We went once, and never bothered again.

Two years on and I'm living in a different city. I can't remember if I found the flier for the open mike night before I wrote the new poem -- I think maybe I did. I knew I would be going with [San], which meant that I wouldn't feel comfortable reading old poems written about Fiona. So one drink-fuelled night I wrote a poem about San.

This time the venue is a pub. Not an unlit, crypt-like back room -- but in the main bar itself. Maybe Thursdays are a quiet night, or maybe people have just learned to stay away if they aren't interested in the poetry, but the only people in the place were for the open mike.

It was a wet and dark night. San was late for meeting me as usual, and I was waiting around outside the pub in the rain, watching the traffic and trying to work out if any of the people walking my way were her. After about 20 minutes I saw her -- I could recogniser her even in the dark: a long black coat, an umbrella and she was walking quickly because she knew she was late.

I won't give a step by step account of the night. I liked nearly everyone who read (I found a few pieces that went on for pages and pages very hard to concentrate on for any length of time), and my own poems seemed well recieved.

I read Serial Killer, The Seductive Neon, and my untitled poem about San that I might call Hypothetically Speaking. I don't expect anyone -- other than one or two people -- to recognise any of those from just the title. All the same, I'm not comfortable with posting my poetry in here.

What? I can read my poems to rooms full of strangers, but won't show them to anyone here, who I don't consider friends? Maybe I would I will put them in special entries and only release the links to them on request.

All the same, you can bet I will be at the Castle Rock again next month. With hopefully something else new to read, because I feel like a phony reading old work.

All wrong

I have no idea why it is, but I am attracted to completely the wrong type of girl.

I don't mean girls from the "wrong side of the tracks" or just girls that are just wrong for me in terms of compatibility. I mean I seem to be inexplicably attracted to girls who aren't attracted to men.

I'm not sure where it's come from. I think all the girls I have slept with to date are bisexual, and there was a time I just said I preferred bisexual girls to straight ones, since they didn't mind bisexual boys. But they are starting to be less bisexual and more just gay.

It doesn't seem to have anything in common with the typical male fantasy of 'converting' a gay girl, or joining in with a lesbian couple. I just seem to be attracted to gay girls -- whether or not they start out that way when I first knew them or met them.

It might have started with Chloe, from the LGB in Derby. Chloe and I weren't ever what you would call friends, but sure, I fancied her like crazy -- and since she was doing the same course as me, but was a year younger, we had stuff in common. Most people in the LGB just assumed I was gay, so perhaps it was that she didn't feel she had to be on her guard talking to me. She moved to the US, I never saw her again, and almost never thought of her again.

And then there's naturally the on-going issue of my girlfriend being more attracted to women than to men. If you walked into her bedroom you might think it belonged to a boy, with the life-size poster of Christina Aguilera on the wall. And the almost complete absence of pictures of men. Although you might wonder about the boy who seems over-tidy and unhealthily hung-up on glitter.

We talked a little about it today -- I don't know where it came from, to be honest. But she asked me if I really felt that she was going to run off with another girl, and I said yeah, I kind of do. I've learned to stop worrying about it, though, otherwise I probably end up driving her away. She says she just doesn't trust men.

There's also Sonia. I swear, Sonia was straight when I used to know her. But then, she used to be a princess when I knew her. Somehow in the course of about three years, she has gone from being a princess to a stoner -- and switched allegiances.

We talked online yesterday for the first time in ages. I complained that she never answers my emails, she said she honestly means to -- but she's absent-minded and smokes too much pot. My patience with stoners is very limited. She was acting a little strangely -- a recurring theme recently with girls I like, in that she was cagey about giving me contact details. This is the girl who once almost begged me on msn to give her my phone number, then called me -- from Canada -- for an epic-length conversation. She's suggested more than once that I go to Canada to vist, and when I was in the states she invited me to a party at her house. Now suddenly she won't give me a mailing address so I could write her a letter. But then again, I seem to remember she never would.

All the same, she said she felt "silly" about it, since we've known each other so long and she doesn't talk to anyone else that she used to know online. Not even her ex boyfriend. I didn't recognise his name, so asked her who he was -- she explained how they met on Open Diary, got friendly, started dating, got engaged, then split because -- in her words she is now "pretty much gay".

I'm natually confused about this, since I remember her telling me about the break up in the past and it not involving her being pretty much gay at the time. Maybe she wasn't comfortable with telling me about that side of it at the time.

I can recognise that she is gay -- and maybe should have recognised it before in that she lives in a house with just boys and considers herself to be only one of the boys and nothing more. And naturally hates being reminded that she used to be a princess -- which is possibly reminding her that she used to be straight, or at least in the closet.

Who does that leave? Fiona is bisexual, but I have doubts if I will ever talk to her again since she seems unwilling to make the effort to see me. She has said she does want to see me but her boyfriend wouldn't like it. I've had enough, and frankly aren't too bothered by the idea of not having anything to do with her again.

There's more, too. There's Indigo, although exactly what I feel for her I can't explain. I guess it's as simple as just fancying her -- I have no burning desire to sleep with any of these girls (except San, mostly), but all the same at one time or another, I can't get one of them off my mind. And it won't stop -- the girls will keep coming. There's almost a 'b' list of girls who aren't gay yet, but who I fancy and can see going that way.

One idea to disregard completely could be a link between sexuality, and having been abused or assaulted. It doesn't apply to all of them -- but many have been assaulted or abused, and it is recognised this is a factor sometimes in determining a sexuality. Could it be that I am drawn to people with issues? I was never assaulted or abused, but I have issues right enough and there's nothing like it in the world for attracting others like you.

I would settle for a decent meal

I'm going to stop my complaining now, as I'm sure you kids will all be glad to hear. I am not even going to bother to comment on if things are improving, or how far they are going one way or the other. I'm bored with the subject now.

It's nearly 3pm and I haven't eaten yet today. I didn't have time for breakfast, but figured I'd have lunch without a hitch since my law class would be over by about 1. Even including a little extra time to my course leader how I am feeling, I didn't expect it to be so very late when I got round to eating something. That would actually involve turning off the computer and leaving the library, and I seem to be obsessed with checking my email at the moment. If I wake up in the night, I find my phone and use the 'mobile internet' to check my yahoo. First thing in the morning, I turn off the alarm and check my email. If I could check my diary I would probably never leave the thing alone.

Today is a grey day in Leicester. It seems to be that the rain has over the past few days have warmed up the city, which is always a good thing. Looking over at the window, it doesn't appear to be actually raining -- but it's certainly threatening it. I can't explain why exactly, but I love the patterns that rain makes on the window. Sometimes I lie on my bed (which is alongside the window) and stare up at the falling rain. The best thing is watching snow fall at night -- standing out in the middle of it, and staring up at the snow at all different heights. It can be very Zen -- which is something I need more of in my life. But first I need the discipline for it properly.

Today I would settle for a decent meal, some cold Mexican beer and knowing where the hell the swimming pool is. Because there isn't a pool in the city itself -- only in a suburb/town place that involves catching a bus.

Hardly the most life-changing of updates -- but it beats my incessant complaining.

Destructive can be beneficial

In case anyone is wondering, things aren't any better. I don't feel any better.

I went out Thursday night with people off my course, in the hope that getting out of the house and having my mind taken off things would help me get things in perspective. But they didn't. I forget for a little while, but deep down it feels like I have a rat inside me. Then I remember and the thought comes back to me; I can't carry on.

It's nice to see that people care, and don't want to see me hurt -- but this was never about if anyone cared about me. This is about not wanting to fail, and not feeling able to carry on.

I guess you should know the background. I've had my troubles with my course before, despite only being something like nine weeks into it so far. I contemplated quitting before, because I didn't want to fail. But things got better. The lecturer I went to see told me that he didn't think I was doing all that terribly at all, and I thought maybe I could turn it around.

But weeks later, and it hasn't turned around. I was told on Thursday by a lecturer that I am not improving, or that I have hit a plateau at a very low level -- at around 40%, if you are wondering. Add on to that still being truly terrible at shorthand, having more assignments set, and not having any work placement for over Christmas I don't think I can do it. And failing to my mind would be so much worse than quitting.

I'm looking online for energising supplements -- if maybe I could concentrate better, or stay awake for longer, I could get more done. I'm not particular bothered about what they contain, either -- since I'm not particular bothered about looking after myself. Being self destructive can be beneficial sometimes. If I could get more done then I could perhaps pull up and make all the difference, all for a little less sleep or a little more energy.

I find myself, perfectly calmly, sitting around and reasonably wondering how to make a suicide look like an accident. I said it was small stuff, and sounds trivial -- but I can't face failing, and who said this world is a place worth staying in to begin with?

Out of the blue and into the black

(taken from my paper journal)

#"When you're gone
you can't come back
When you're out of the blue
and into the black"#
Neil Young Hey hey, My my

For once, this has nothing to do with San. Things with her for the moment seem fine, at least for the short time that I saw her earlier today.

All the same; I'm not sure that I can -- or will -- carry on.

It's sort of funny, in a way. I've been down, I've been depressed. I have stood on motorway bridges in the freezing rain and looked at the traffic. I've been kept in hospital to stop me from cutting myself. But that's a whole different set of feelings to this -- this calm. Sad, but calm. A feeling of wanting to step out into the road. Just look the wrong way for a moment, and step out.

It would sound so very trivial for me to try and explain how I got from yesterday to today. They say "don't sweat the small stuff -- and it's all small stuff" but what they don't realise is that the small stuff can kill you.

There is really no use in bothering with reason. With logic. None has any real effect.

Like I say, it feels strange to feel this way -- none of the body-snatched estrangement, no burning desire to cut, pierce or mutilate.

All the same, there is a certain familiarity behind it all. A familiarity in not wanting to carry on any more, at least on the most basic level of getting out of bed.

This is all.

Catharsis.

I feel good today, and I think the word for the day would be "catharsis". Which is funny, because San used to keep a diary by that very name, which she claims she only chose because her first choice -- Cardiac -- was already taken.

I don't know what I expected to happen. I'd been thinking about it all day and although I know damn well I spend way too much time on my own and thinking, and that I think myself into knots, I decided something had to be done. So I first gave San my permission to sleep with the friend of a friend she thinks is hot, or thought was hot when she met her. How seriously she took me, I don't know -- since she gave me permission to shag a cowgirl the other night. It's not as weird as it sounds.

I then decided that I should tell San I'd been thinking it over, and that she was right all along and should be able to date other people. San didn't get what had brought on the change of heart, and actually didn't want to see other people any more. I called her, briefly, and tried to explain what I was feeling, or not feeling, or not knowing what I was feeling, but didn't do a very good job of it. So she agreed to come over.

And like I say, what I expected to happen I don't know. When your girlfriend has been thinking that everything is great and your relationship is the best it's been in a long time it would appear to be a bad idea to suggest that you might not have been feeling the same way.

Maybe she over-reacted, maybe she didn't. San took my talk of confusion and my feelings of estrangement from my life to mean that all the time when she has been thinking things were good, they were really not. She took from this that our whole relationship has been crap, and that I have effectively been deceiving her. Which was fun.

I tried to explain that if I seem to be happy then I am happy, and if I seem moody and detached then I am moody and detached. I also pointed out that I had nothing to gain from lying to her about that, if I was telling her how I felt to begin with. San decided she needed time away from me, indefinitely, and left.

Fortunately, she came back a short while later, a little calmer, but willing to talk and curious as to why I had let her walk away. I pointed that other than forcibly stopping her, I couldn't control what she did.

To try and summarise, we talked it through and I have managed to satisfy San that I was not looking to break up with her, was not telling her to date other people because I'm not really that bothered about our relationship, and basically have just been feeling confused and frustrated.

I don't know what has been going on in my head recently, but I do know that I want to be with her. Right now -- and even before the cathartic events of last night -- I really and positively and very actively want to be with her.

There is going to be a lot of work involved now, though -- because San no longer feels happy, safe or secure in our relationship. I don't know how long it will be before we get to a point where San is once again completely relaxed and comfortable with me, without wondering if I'm secretly thinking I don't want to be with her. I'm hoping things will return to normal pretty quickly.

I need to stop over-analysing things, need to get out more -- and yes, I do need more confidence.

It's sort of funny really -- yesterday, San thought everything was fine, and I felt bad. Today she is possibly thinking that I have been deceiving her any of the times when she thought I was happy, but I'm feeling pretty much okay.

Yeah, I know. It's not sane.

Making me sick

It amuses the hell out of me that between ten and 15 people have been here each day since my last entry, and nobody has a single thing to say about it.

San knows something is up. I'm distant and restless, and easily irritated. I sent her text messages apologising for being the way I am, and she says that she understands. She says I understand it when she's this way, and she understands how I am. I tried to explain the body-snatched feeling. The lack of feeling, or not knowing what I feel, except for engulfing frustration.

But I think it's making me sick. San probably thinks it's a physical illness that I'm keeping quiet. She will ask why I'm rubbing my head, or holding my head in my hands. I tell her that I'm okay, that I'm not sick. But I don't think she really buys it.

The thing is, I don't know what to do and I feel like it is driving me out of my mind. What do I feel for San? I don't know. Sometimes an affection, missing her when she isn't around -- and sometimes nothing at all. Sometimes I feel as if I am looking at her and not knowing who she is.

I don't know what I want. I don't want to be without her, but can't say that I want to be with her. I can't say I particularly want to see anyone else, but have little idea how I would feel about her seeing other people.

Ever get to the point where you wish that everyone you know would just disappear? When everything is so inter-connected and you don't know how to even begin getting it back to good? When one person leads to another who leads to another and you have hurt them all.

Well, maybe you're right

I just re-read my paper journal entry for Wednesday, that I was intending to post here yesterday -- but you know what happened with that. Incidentally, it turned out I did have the notebook with me after all -- it had just slipped inside my copy of Jack Kerouac's Desolation Angels. I love Kerouac, but wish he would use punctuation sometimes.

But yeah, the entry isn't worth repeating. It made sense at the time, it had its purpose, but that is lost back in Wednesday. It's now a grey and very cold Saturday afternoon.

I still don't know what I'm doing with San.
Yesterday we were talking about this girl she knew the last time she was at university, a friend of a friend more than anything. I remember clearly we were broken up at the time San met Anna, and remember how San wrote in her diary she wanted to kiss Anna more than the guy she was making out with that night. This week, Anna and some of San's other old university friends are coming to Leicester for a visit and staying in her room. San described it as "wall-to-wall-hotties".

We got from there to the idea of San sleeping with girls. I told her that the idea of sleeping with girls while we're dating doesn't bother me half as much as it would if she was sleeping with other guys. I guess you can't compare apples to oranges. We talked a little about how she had been curious about dating other guys a little while back. She said it wasn't about sex, she didn't want to sleep with other guys, she just wanted to see how she was around other people.

It could be that I'm feeling more detached from 'us' now, but the idea doesn't bother me too much. Not on the surface at least. Maybe it would be a good thing for us both to see other people, it could help me get my head straight on what I want. But it could also complicate things beyond all recognition.

I could probably have San agree that we should see other people, and have her think it was her idea to begin with and that I'm just being open minded. It makes me feel manipulative, though, and I should probably be honest about my thoughts and feelings.

The truth is, bang in the centre of my skull there's a strange coolness. A strange detachment. Sometimes I'm unsure to what extent I'm really me, and to what extent I just play a different parts to suit certain people.

Sometimes I write a fictional diary, about a guy with no feelings except self-interest and a certain rage. I started it way back when, when I was dating Fiona and got sick of my incessant whining. But the truth is, I think it's a little closer to me than I like to admit. Unlike the nameless protagonist of my fiction, I do have a conscience -- but sometimes I know what's wrong, and I do it anyway. This is drifting way off topic. The point is, I don't know if I care -- or how long I can care for. This sours me to the idea of seeing other people.

I'm ending here, before I go too far from the point.

Abating confusion

I have been carrying my moleskine journal around with me, as I said I would. And I wrote an entry in it the other night, that I was going to post here.

But today, as you might expect, I don't have it with me.

Somewhere between unpacking yesterday's stuff from my bag, packing today's stuff, and moving a pile of junk from one place to another, the notebook has disappeared. Not that it matters a whole lot.

My confusion over San as abated to a degree. I don't *have to* feel anything, I remind myself -- I just have to enjoy her company, and enjoy it more than anyone else's. Just like I told her when we got back together last time. And things have settled for me emotionally there.

Last night a quick drink with my class mates after a meeting of the city council turned into an all night drinking session, getting in at around 2. I was told by a guy on my course at one point that I looked "wonderfully dishevelled, like a romantic poet".

A couple of people made references to poetry to me, which makes me wonder who knew about my comments in my intake interview where I described myself as more of a frustrated poet than a frustrated novelist. Who knows.

Either way, I know there's an open mike poetry night towards the end of the month in a bar we like to go to, and have actually written my first new piece in about two years. It needs work, I expect, since I was drunk when I wrote it -- but it's about time I wrote something new.

Body-snatched

There's very little to say today, except that there is now a first-draft cast list available, and you should click the link (also now on the link menu): What do you really think of me?

The truth is, though, I'm confused about how I feel for San. It's bad, and it shouldn't be like this -- but recently I've just been feeling detached from our relationship. San herself, after being away from Friday until yesterday, is very affectionate, but the trouble is bang in the centre of my skull there's a strange coolness.

I can't quite describe what it is. I know that I am happier with her than I am without her. And yet I feel like I am somehow not quite connecting emotionally.

On one hand, what's the big deal? This is the girl who can't or won't ever say "I love you", who seems to have real issues with intimacy. But perhaps for the first time, or the first time in some time, I feel disconnected.

What this means exactly, I don't know. Sometimes I feel as if I am an alien invader just pretending to be me, and pretending to feel. But I do feel something, or some things, it's just hard to know what. I feel like carrying a notebook so I can jot a note like "2.00am: Wake up next to San, with one arm around her. Feel loved". It doesn't seem like such a bad idea, since I am having trouble remembering specifically feelings when I am not feeling them.

An obvious course of action -- and one that I do not even consider an option -- would be to tell San. "Say, baby-- have I told you lately that I have no idea what I feel any more?". That sounds like a great idea.

What I am going to do I don't know, and couldn't tell you. I wish there really was some way I could take notes of feelings, any feeling, when I am around her so I can look at it later and try and make some sense.

But there are deadlines to meet, copy to write on cases heard in last week's magistrates court, and a freezer that is beginning to look decidedly less-full. I've promised to make San dinner on Friday night.

Here it ends.

Her name was Fiona, and I hope this to be the last entry I write about her. Because, it is official now -- I have had it with her.

We have known each other for longer as just friends than we were together, but what I can't understand is why is still so cagey with me. It is time to just let it go.

She hasn't exactly done anything. We have been living in the same city since I moved here in September, and in previous conversations it seemed that she wasn't completely against the idea of us meeting up as friends. It has been two years since we last saw each other, and it was her that said it had been too long.

What I don't understand is her seemingly complete reluctance to stay in contact with me. She emailed me a few weeks back, which is to her credit since she initiated it. But my reply went unanswered, and I hadn't heard a word from her until last night. When I sent her a message.

I was just curious as to how she was, as friends do. She told me she had a cold and I expressed sympathy and said I hoped her boyfriend was looking after her, and to let me know if there was anything I could do for her. She didn't answer. I asked her if she would like to borrow a couple of poetry books, by a guy we both like. About an hour later she answered, with an aside comment about John Hegley and not answering the question on if she would like to borrow them. I replied to her message, and asked again if she would like the books. Absolutely no reply.

It seems that she can answer when she wants to, but won't answer a direct question. Just like she has ignored any past questions about the albums of mine I know that she still has, or the idea of just meeting up one day.

If there is one thing I hate, it is being ignored. I would prefer that she hated me and told me that she never wanted to see me again to her silence. I see no problem with telling someone "I don't think meeting up would be such a great idea" or making an excuse if you don't want to offend. Ignoring me completely -- and for weeks on end, until I make contact -- I find rude.

What is the issue with the books? I expect that it the problem is that to borrow them she would end up having to see me. But she can't even do me the courtesy of politely declining, whatever her reasons are.

As over the top as it sounds, I have now had enough. I loved that girl, and I was sorry that things ended the way that they did -- but it was nobody's fault. And god knows, I apologised enough for telling her when I came back that I still loved her. I thought we were past all of that, and could be just friends. Or at least honest enough to say what was going on.

But now she ignores messages that she doesn't want to have to answer, and she ignores my emails. Maybe she didn't get my email? It's a possibility. I don't have to carry on this way.

(funny thing -- I could still remember her email password, so logged in to her account to see if my mail was there. Before I remembered that I had sent it to her university account, I noticed that every single email I ever sent her had been deleted)

I can't say that I have feelings for her any more, and that's a damn good thing to my mind. I thought we could be friends, two people who just got along. It would seem that she has other ideas, but although I have done nothing wrong, she won't give me the time of day enough to tell me what's going on. So here it ends. I will not contact her again, and hopefully will have nothing to write about her in here again. Short of a definition in the cast list, when and if I ever get that written...

If it stops raining

One of my friends back home sent me a message yesterday, asking how things were going "in the multi-cultural wonderland of Leicester".

I only got around to replying a short while ago, about 24 hours later. Luckily -- for me, and certainly for him -- I'm not banging on today about hating my life right now. I looked out the window of the classroom at the rain and sent him a reply reading simply "Life is very entertaining, and I might just have some fun if it stops raining". He said that it sounds like Wales.

This week I was ready to quit. I figured if I quit before I paid my tuition fees, or before I had paid them all, I might not have to pay at all -- and then I could just say that it wasn't for me, that a job in the media isn't all it's cracked up to be. I would keep my flat here and just get some random job, I thought, maybe earning enough to to go snowboarding or something fun in my spare time. There'd be none of the pressures and I wouldn't be broke.

But for now, at least, here I stay. I don't think I was right about the tuition fees, and since I've paid I might as well stay here now. If I can pass the course then a job in the media would surely be no worse than random temporary work.

I'm still broke, and hungry. And because I have no money I don't go out, and because I don't go out I don't ever go out I don't make any friends. So I'm broke, hungry and lonely. At least this time last year I had money and my friends around me -- even if I did hate my menial job by the time I quit.

However, if I can just keep it together it will work out. I can't say everything will be wonderful when I graduate -- again -- but it has to be better than the alternative. And maybe then if I still feel that my life needs meaning I can do something about that, too. That's the idea, anyway.

I don't want to be buried in the Pet Semetary

It's been a busy few days, considering that a week ago I was relying on regular doses of painkillers to keep me sane while the flu raged through me.

Friday the parents came here and so me and San went home with them. As ever, it was a strange feeling being at home -- strangest because my parents have gone on a crazed redecorating trip and just seem to be plastering and painting everything. So Friday was spent in classes, then in traffic on the way home. Friday night was feeling weird being back and talking to the cat.

Then Saturday night San and I were going to a gig in central London, so decided to head into the city earlier in the day and catch a movie, like old times. And again it was weird, precisely because it was like old times -- and I wished we were back in our jobs and back at home, rather than broke and in Leicester. Not least because neither of us is happy with where we are right now.

San's Mum was on holiday while her sister is at university herself now, so we went back to her empty flat in the time between the movie and the gig. Of course we behaved ourselves, and I guess San felt much the same way I did being home -- suddenly lost, and desperate for someone to say that she didn't have to leave again.

Saturday night was the gig, Laika Dog, who are extremely good but it's anyone's guess if they will amount to anything. We watched, we cheered and applauded from a short distance in front of the stage, then we went home again -- only to come back to Leicester on Sunday.

And now it's Monday and I don't want to be here any more. I'm hungry and I'm completely broke. I am failing my shorthand class so badly it would be funny if it wasn't for the fact that I have to be writing at something like 110 words per minute by June, and over 50 by this Christmas -- considering that now I am probably writing quicker in longhand.

Why did I think that going back to school was ever a good idea? I am having real problems keeping my head straight right now, and I know that this is the cause of it all.

I'm out of bed, and made it to the keyboard

Winter is drawing in this week, as the mornings have become frosty and the days have become cold, grey and wet.

My flu is finally on its way out -- at least, I hope that it is. Yesterday it probably peaked, with my constant sneezing and fever, but that could also be related to being in class and not at home, dosed up on pain killers.

Today, on the other hand, the sneezing has stopped, I haven't touched any painkillers all day but despite this the fever seems to be keeping a distance (touch wood), and the only trouble is my coughing fits, and as a result often my throat is too sore to swallow. But I'm working on it.

And tonight, my landlord has told me, they are taking away my old oven and putting in a replacement. I hesitate to say they are replacing it with a new one, since it will most likely be old and decrepit like the old one -- but if it works then that's good enough for me.

Now, sadly, I need to pass on updating details of what's happening in my life and instead go home and try and write six paragraphs about a coroner's inquest I had the misfortune of sitting in on last week.

Sneak-attack

What started out as a headache the other night has quickly escalated into a fine dose of the 'flu. It has its benefits -- like when I'm feverish and my flat feels warm -- but for the most part? Yeah, it bites.

And now San who has spent the last few days looking after me has come down with it herself. There are few things in this life worse than a princess with the 'flu, but if I can just kick my own illness first I will look after her.

No reason

It's probably just as well that I didn't start asking San deep and meaningful questions about our relationship, since it seems that I was wrong.

I stayed in the library until about 8, I had nothing to go home for but in the end had nothing to stay here for -- and I needed to eat something. On way out of the library though I noticed the video library and thought I may as well rent something to watch. Eventually I found something, and figured I'd ask San if she would like to watch it with me.

Somehow, in inviting her over, we managed to talk about why it seemed she didn't want to see me. For once, it really isn't me, but her. She doesn't want to be isolated from other people from seeing me too much, for one reason or another, and most of all she doesn't want to be dependent on me. It's not right to rely on other people to make you happy, because that gives the power to make you unhappy, too.

I talked her into coming over to watch the video, but because my flat is so cold she climbed into bed to watch it and I talked her into staying the night so we wouldn't have to get up and walk her home.

Things are good. I like little more than sleeping with someone, to wake up in the middle of the night and talk about what I was dreaming about. But most of all I like the closeness.

This morning we woke up late and I went to my law class and she went back to her room -- hoping not to see any of her flatmates and avoid admitting being out all night. Her first class was starting when my class finished, so as I walked over to the union building with some guys from class I passed her in the street. She has classes for the rest of the day now, and I need to take a shower and do my jobs for the day.

Yesterday should stand as a good example of my insecurities, and luckily this time I was insecure for no reason at all. What I could do with now is the lecturer I emailed to tell me that I am being insecure for no reason over my work.

I don't want to be right.

As for cooking dinner for San last night; it didn't happen. I went shopping as planned and we even had a discussion in text about if she was coming to me, or me to her. But then she asked how long it was going to take, because she wanted to go out later. I felt there was little point in her coming over only for dinner, especially since I had work to do first.

Sure, she invited me along -- but since I had to go to a coroner's inquest today, I figured I would be better off getting to bed at a reasonable hour. Whether she was disappointed or if she had wanted to see me or not I couldn't get out of her. So we said I'd cook on Friday night and maybe see her today. But I'm not seeing her today. She asked earlier if it was tonight or Friday I was going to be cooking, when I told her Friday she just said she would see me then. I asked if she wanted to do anything tonight, but she just said she would see me Friday. What was she doing tonight? She had no plans, but thought "we shouldn't see each other every single day".

This annoyed me. We don't see each other every single day, and never have. I have seen her once this week, on Tuesday -- but when I ask her why she is against seeing me today she makes excuses. She asks if I'm mad at her. I tell her I'm not -- which is true, I'm more irritated and offended than I am mad at her, and ask why she seems mad at me and determined not to see me. She falls back on we shouldn't see too much of each other.

This feels familiar.

I think we might be heading back to where this diary began -- with the conflict between me being in love with her and wanting to see her, and her not being in love and not much caring one way or the other about seeing me. I'm fairly sure that if I was to ask her now like I did then the questions about if she misses me when I'm not around, or looks forward to just talking to me each day, if she tries to remember things that happen or are said to tell me about later, then what it would come back to -- like before -- is no.

I can't bring myself to ask her though. I don't want to put ideas in her head, I don't want to annoy her with my insecurities or make her feel bad. But most of all, I don't want to be right.

I suck, it's that simple.

It is beginning to appear to me that I might not make a journalist, let alone make a very good one. The reason for this is simple: I suck.

I'm not sure quite why I suck, since I know that I can write and I actually do enjoy journalism. Maybe I just can't get the writing style right, thinking back I can't recall anyone telling me at any point that I couldn't write. I just don't seem able to write news. I seem completely unable to write intros, or to be able to identify the outstanding element in a press release or list of facts. I end up writing about the 3-hour operation to reattach a postman's ear, rather than about how he was attacked by two Alsations to begin with.

I've sent one of my lecturers an epic-length email telling him that I'm beginning to wonder if I am just wasting everyone's time, since I seem incapable of learning anything. He might not get the email, since according to the staff lists he doesn't exist, but we shall see.

Spangly-new

Somewhere along the lines today -- in between my shorthand lecturer not turning up (I would have thought she would be desperate for any excuse to leave Birmingham every day, but it seems not) and finally getting this new diary template sorted out, I agreed to cook San dinner this evening.

To be honest, that's not quite true. I offered to cook her dinner. I'd sent her a few text messages today and yesterday and she was being temperamental about replying. I ask her if she has decided if she is going to her friends birthday in Leeds (I can't be bothered to link to there, if you are that interested look it up on google) or if she is coming to the gig I bought us tickets to in August. I ask her how her day was. She doesn't answer. I mention to her that a theatre in Leicester is showing "The Importance of Being Earnest" and she answers me.

I guess what it comes down to is I want to be a "good boyfriend" to her, but sometimes my insecurities just get in the way. I wanted to talk to her, and maybe see her, but didn't want to bug her too much. So I offered her dinner, and she accepted. I haven't yet decided if I will cook dinner at her place or mine. If I cook at hers we have an oven that works and a table to eat on, but if we cook at mine I don't have to go home at the end of the night.

But anyway, lookit my new layout, kids! I can't take any credit for making it myself, and I wasn't even looking for a new layout today, but somehow I started looking at some and I liked the simplicity of this one. Especially since I couldn't imagine what I wanted from a template of my own design to tell any of the incredibly nice people that have offered to help in the past.

So yeah. Up until this week we had to lectures on a Wednesday -- shorthand until 12, and then law from 1. But the university has a stupid rule that if even only one person on a course wants to play sport we aren't allowed lectures on Wednesday afternoon, so law got shifted to a Friday morning, ruining our day off. I just feel sorry for the people who commuted in this morning especially for shorthand, only to find it didn't happen. I should really practice some on my own -- I am still truly awful at it.

And that's today. Not a whole lot happening, but I wanted to comment on the new layout, and express my thanks to Comatised for the use of her template, and to Karen for helping me with substitutions when I was being retarded.

I don't get what this society wants

And so it goes.

Another weekend passes, another lesson of shorthand that prompts me to wonder if I should take some kind of test for learning difficulties, and so it goes.

Things aren't so bad. My flat is the same as ever, and I still need to call my landlord and ask him if he will ever actually replace my oven with one that works properly. San went home for a logn weekend, so I haven't seen her since Friday when she was grumpy, but refusing to admit anything was wrong, though she later apologised in a text message so I will probably see her tomorrow.

I spent the weekend in Derby, which was a very strange feeling. Having been away from there for about 18 months all sorts of things had changed, the indie record shop had moved to the high street, the streetwear shops that once were doing so well have vanished altogether -- which makes me wonder if there's a connection between them and the university's financial troubles -- and the appearance of subway sandwich. But it was still all so familiar I felt as if I was visiting the city in a dream.

The purpose of the visit was to see Rie, who I'm aware hasn't been given any real kind of space here before, and that reminds me I need to pull my finger out and complete the cast list entries. But don't bank on it. Very quickly, Rie was Matt's wife, Matt was a friend from Derby -- and still is a friend, from Derby. Their relationship has always been rocky and now it seems it is finally all over, but that also wouldn't be the first time -- so I can't say for certain. Either way, I saw Matt a couple of weeks back, and so I went to See Rie this weekend.

Rie is living the ghettos of Derby, an area of beautiful architecture and Britain's oldest park, but also full of drug addicts. She's staying with and dating this one guy, and together they seem to do little besides smoking a lot of pot. Of course, Rie is feeling lost in the world -- since she married Matt in Salt Lake City, when he was on an exchange from Derby, just like I was a year later. So she's trying to work out where she wants to be, and what she stands to lose by choosing one place over another. It's all very sad.

But the world keeps turning, and I have faith that things will work out for her, in the end -- it's just how long that will take is the question at hand.

And as for me I once again need to write an off-diary story, practice writing in shorthand, and maybe even go home and make something to eat.

Some day you will ache like I ache

It's 1.30 on a Saturday afternoon. I only came here to email my bank and yell at them because they didn't close my old bank's account and haven't taken my standing order payments over from my old bank and so some -- if not all -- are being paid by both accounts, but one account has no money in. Confused yet?

After writing a snotty letter to the cable supplier telling them I wanted nothing to do with them ever again I ended up signing on the dotted line online just so I can have a phone line. I doubt they will notice. But true to form for them an engineer turned up on Friday morning to connect my TV and phone line, like they were originally meant to be doing except half the time when I called nobody knew who I was. He wasn't impressed, but as I stood at the door in my long thermal underwear and an old Green Day t-shirt I didn't give a damn and sent him away. Wanna place bets on if it will be this same engineer that will turn up next month to connect my phone?

Anyhow. My neck has been stiff and hurting for months, it seems like forever. I saw a doctor back home about it, but in true doctor style I felt he was -- at best -- only half listening, and not very interested. He wrote me a prescription. And maybe if I had applied the stuff he gave me the 7 or 8 times a day it said to until it ran out, maybe then it would have worked. But I didn't, and it didn't work. I saw another doctor a week or so back, and for whatever reason this doctor seemed to actually care. He moved my head about and prodded me and even checked the reflexes in my arms. Sadly though he said he had absolutely no idea what's wrong with me, but at the end of the month I get to see a chiropractor. Today my neck hurts and my back hurts and even my shoulders ache, and I don't know why.

But life goes on. I've emailed the bank and entered a competition to win a snowboarding holiday and now I really should be leaving before I spend so long in the library that I'm tempted to do some work...

Baby come back maybe next week

It's 5.30pm on a Tuesday.

Last Tuesday night I went to the pub to meet the snowboarding group -- a strange idea, since there aren't any mountains in England, let alone in Leicester. I think I stayed for all of about an hour. I got some cheap drinks for being part of the group and tried to talk to a first year chick with a pierced eyebrow just because she was hot, and I don't know anyone in this city.

I think I left after about an hour, shortly after she left -- although her presence wasn't really what kept me there, I just noticed that I didn't have to feel obliged to stay. After all, the music on the jukebox had been turned up so loud that you couldn't really talk to anyone, or anyone you didn't already know. Small talk with strangers can be hard at the best of times, especially if you aren't already outgoing -- small talk with strangers when it requires shouting over the jukebox is nearly impossible.

I wanted to join the group, I really did. I love snowboarding, but for me it's a very solitary activity. I liked the idea of a week long holiday at a resort in France, but wasn't appealed by the crazy drinking and clubbing in the evenings that seemed to be as much part of it as the powder.

I even wanted to have more lessons -- after all, when I last went snowboarding it was nearly three years ago and even then I had only just managed to make it off the very basic slope and still couldn't figure out how to get off a ski lift without falling on my head.

I guess the only reason I'm not going to be joining is the cost of it all. It's something like £20 to join to begin with, then paying out for going to a dry slope each week, probably equipment hire too, and then more still if I want the crazy booze-fuelled trip away. They seem like good people, even on the most basic level I talked to anyone. I just don't have the money for it all right now.

I could turn up tonight anyway for the cheap drink and try harder to talk to people, make connections, even if I don't necessarily join or do anything else with them. It's an idea.

What I should do is not go, and instead go home and practice writing shorthand since I am a terrible human being and haven't practised at all yet, not even on the past couple of days when there was no official class and I was meant to be learning the alphabet perfectly.

Will I even do that? It's doubtful. But my mood's pretty good, even if I'm not seeing San today. We see each other most days, if only for lunch, but are very wary of "spending too much time together" and so I won't see her tonight. Things are pretty good there, I'm certainly very glad to have her around.

Adventures in telephone suppliers

You know, I've been living in my flat for nearly a month now, and I have yet to get the telephone connected.

I thought it was all going to be so much plain sailing. I signed up online for a digital tv and telephone package before I even moved in.

But then I waited and waited and nobody would contact me. I spoke to a representative from NTL in the university who was touting for business and he said he would get someone to call me, which didn't happen.

Eventually I called them and they denied all knowledge of my existence and told me I couldn't have digital tv in my area, even though the first thing you do on the website is put in your postcode before they offer you the specific services. They scheduled an engineer to visit and said they would send me a contract to sign.

To their credit, at least they stuck to their word -- I did get the contract.

But then a few days later someone else from the company called me, making excuses for their delay in contacting me. I told him I'd already arranged everything with someone else over the phone. Once again, they had no record of this happening and said they would send someone round to talk to me about their packages and whatever else.

This person never arrived, although they called me that afternoon to apologise and tell me there had been a hiccup with the computer and hadn't been able to retrieve my details. I told him as politely as possible to stick it and I would find someone else to do business with, but he grovelled and asked for another chance.

Over the weekend I changed my mind about giving them another chance and posted a letter telling NTL I wanted nothing further to do with them, I was fed up with their customer service, and would take my business to one of their rivals.

It seems I was a little hasty.

I gave up on getting digital television more or less when I found out how little money I had, but when I called BT to ask if they could just give me a phone line I was told it would be £75 to connect me. This is money I don't have.

So wouldn't you know it, I now have to go grovel to the company I told I wanted nothing further to do with, or else I can't have a telephone.

You'd think there would be hundreds of companies willing to supply my phone for me, but you will be surprised just how many require you to already have an active line.

I'm thinking that maybe if I give it a day or two they might contact me again trying to grovel, and I might be able to get them to cut me a deal or something. But that's probably less likely than them just ignoring me completely. So maybe if I just sign up online then they might not realise who I am...

Off-diary

I need to find an off-diary story for tomorrow afternoon's 'Practical Journalism' class. Yeah, I should have done it a week ago, when I was actually more clear on what off-diary actually was, but I figured what I would do was take a look at what famous authors would be coming to this fair -- if very rainy -- city. That would be an off diary story, author comes to Leicester. But it seems none are. I am now trawling through the what's on guide to local libraries to see if I can dredge up anything from there -- I figure there has to be something in that, since I had to write up copy from so many local library press releases when I was working in the news room a few weeks back.

I must apologise to you kids for not keeping this as updated as it could be recently, I'm going to be trying to update just as regularly as I was before I left home. It just might take a little while before normal service is resumed.

Things here aren't all that great, but then again things at home weren't either so I can't say I'm all nostalgic for tending bar and living at home. However, I am having my doubts about if journalism is really what I want -- the questions raised in the interview last Spring, about how someone creative like myself would be content in journalism are now troubling me. Back then I defended myself saying art imitates life and there was a place for creative writing in journalism. Now I'm wondering if I really won't be earning a pittance, just writing stories about flower shows and local libraries from press releases.

But what else is there? I guess that's why I'm here. I figure that I need some job, that I can't just be filling supermarket freezers, mopping floors, pumping gas or waiting tables...

Ranting

What's going on around here? I disappear for nearly a month and not one person emails me or leaves a comment to see where I am?

Okay, so I wasn't writing because I didn't have internet access, but I was reading any email I got via my mobile phone so it wasn't like I was completely unreachable.

There's much to say, but right now I will try and stick to the basic rants.

I hate my flat. My flat is freezing cold constantly because it has no central heating. I realise it would probably be impossible to centrally heat five or six or however-many individual bedsits, but -- dammit -- one small gas fire does not do the job. Especially not given the size of the gap around the kitchen door. Any other damn bedsit in the whole building wouldn't have this problem, because only my flat has the back door. A back door that may as well be bricked over, since you can't open it. Oh, to have the room in the loft...

My oven also doesn't work. I got the landlord to take a look at it and he agreed, it's broken, and he would get me a new one. There's no sign of that new one yet. Until then I can grill things, but it doesn't seem possible to get the grill tray close enough to the heat in order to cook anything in any kind of reasonable time. Alternatively, I can microwave things or heat them on the burners. It's not the end of the world, but it is very limiting.

What's more, although I have a TV I can't get a reception on it because the aerial cable runs down the opposite side of the room. I was originally going to get digital tv, but they don't cover my part of the city. I don't have a phone line yet either, because the provider is useless and don't return my calls or turn up when they say that they will.

I am cold, broke, hungry, without television or a telephone and my classes in writing shorthand are leaving me thinking that I have learning difficulties.

I'll try to write again later, but with classes more or less all day every day and internet access only available to me in the library, I can't say it will be today.

A little gunfire warms the soul

It's Thursday night. Tomorrow is my last day at the newspaper, and then Saturday morning I'm getting the hell out of Dodge City for a while.

It seems that whatever I might have been thinking recently about being more stable isn't exactly true, my moods seem to be as oddly erratic as ever.

What I don't understand right now is why working 40 hours a week behind a bar and working 40 hours a week in an office seem so drastically different. What I mean is, suddenly I feel like I don't have any time at home. When I worked in the pub I only had one day off a week, which must mean that I worked less hours per day than I do in an office when I have two days off. The social atmosphere of working in a pub may also have affected how I viewed it.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not suddenly thinking tending bar full time was a good job -- not for me, it wasn't, anyway. But all the same, it's really depresses me how suddenly my life seems to be only spent in an office. I guess what is needed is more variety, and perhaps more of a feeling that I am able to do the job.

All the same, I'm not happy. I'm not miserable when I'm at work. If I'm working on something I find interesting, or even if what I am working on feels like it is going well, my mood is generally pretty good. But as soon as I find myself at a dead-end, I feel I change dramatically. And somehow feeling I am barely at home for any length of time before I go back again really is not helping anything.

So what am I going to do? Right now, there's not much that I can do. I finish work experience tomorrow and I seem to remember that going to lectures is more varied than is going to work every day in the same place. When -- or if -- I find myself in a real newspaper job, I will have to see how I feel then and reassess things. Maybe it's procrastination, who can tell.

But at the back of my mind is a small, quiet voice that is telling me that maybe this isn't what I want at all. Not journalism, specifically, but this life. Work, rent, bills, all that sort of thing. Watching mind-numbing, spirit-crushing gameshows on TV. Pishing your last in a miserable home, nothing more than an embarassment to the selfish, fucked up brats you spawned you replace yourself.

There's got to be more to life. Journalism is important, I uphold this. Maybe local journalism is less important, but it's providing a service. Maybe I should aim higher if I want to feel like I make a difference? Or maybe I should find a job where I really do make a difference?

Maybe I should be doing relief work in war-torn countries, or the many disaster-ravaged parts of the world. Would I then feel resentful that more of my life is spent at work than it is actually living?

Or maybe there is more to life than just life. There's a lot of maybes, but maybe I really should take that time out to spend in a Buddhist monastery somewhere like I keep saying I want to.

There's a lot of thoughts to be going on with here. Which is just as well for you, kids, since I don't know when I will next have internet access to be able to update. It's technically feasible that I could update via email, using WAP on my mobile phone. But I imagine that typing a diary entry out on the keypad of a mobile phone could take some time...

People that fall apart

For your sins, I am going to update again, because I wanted to write this days ago, but didn't get the chance.

Before I start though, I want to say how amused I am. Years ago, before I discovered punk, and Hole, and Nirvana, and long before I knew who the Pixies were (and possibly now, are...), I liked rock, and metal. I liked bands like Guns N Roses, and Metallica, and Iron Maiden. I used to wear black jeans and a black leather jacket, and a Guns N Roses t shirt. Now I don't own any black jeans, never wear the t shirts and sold all my metal albums years ago, without looking back. But suddenly, it's fashionable. I saw, when out shopping, models in windows wearing what I used to. I think it's honour of the Darkness, they've given it a kind of irony now. And today, because I'm trying not to wear clothes I want to take to Leicester with me, I'm in one of my old Guns N Roses t shirts. I think it was probably large when I used to wear it, because now it feels snug. It just amuses me.

Anyway, what I wanted to write about was Fiona.

I was at the bus station the other day, and I saw a girl who reminded me of her. I don't think she exactly looked like her, but there was something about her -- maybe it was how Fi used to look, or possibly something in her eyes. Possibly I looked at her too often for a stranger, or looked at her in a certain way. But I'm sure she was looking at me, too. That was what really set me off, thinking about Fi, and how I just spoke to her out of the blue on that one day, and she always claimed that she had planned to talk to me. She must have, considering how willing to talk to me she was at the time.

Maybe that night, or the next night, I dreamed of her. I can't remember the details of the dream, except that in the spaces in-between dreaming in the night, I didn't want to be thinking of her. I tried to tell myself again I need her like I need a hole in the head, but it's been forever since I tried that and it didn't really work. I sent Fi a message the next day, mentioning I had dreamed of her, but it was nothing lewd, and I hoped she was well.

There was no reply, but that's not so unusual. Even Kath answers emails sometimes, so Fi not answering a text message wasn't strange. But I remembered another message sometime she didn't answer. It struck me that she is moving house, and if I don't keep contact with her I could lose touch with her altogether. We might be living in the same city from September, but a city can be a big place, and with no idea where she lives or of a phone number for her, it was feasible I could lose touch.

I quickly established she hadn't lost her phone by calling her, and in a very stalker-like way, pretending I didn't know I had called her. I then called her back a short while later to apologise for 'accidentally' calling her. We talked for a very short time, but she had just that day moved house and said she was busy cleaning, and cut the call short.

Now I can't remember if she seemed pleased to talk to me, or if she sounded stressed, or upset, perhaps by moving, or by other things, or if she sounded like she didn't want to talk to me. Which would be odd, since I haven't done anything -- but she might be wary of me. She might think that if she sees me again I could go off the rails again and tell her that I love her, like I did two years ago. Who knows. So I'm writing her a casual, chatty letter, and we will see from there.

What's that? Why do I care, you ask? Do I still love her? I need to actually see, or talk to, someone to love them, I think. Or have some contact. So, no. But I think I once cared for her so much, my first love, that a certain fire will always burn for her. We shall see.

People that come together

Yes, I do need to update more. However, I did say it before -- if you don't leave me any feedback I assume you haven't read what I wrote, and put off updating so you won't miss anything. I write, you feedback, I write more.

Except that I spend all day writing, more or less. And yeah, this is different, because I'm not presented with a press release of what I should say that I need to re-word, edit for irrelevant parts and rearrange so that it is in some kind of order of priority. I wonder how much harder this kind of thing would be without a computer, when you can't just cut, paste and move parts?

What I like about my job, or one of the things, is when people are genuinely grateful to me. I didn't really get that tending bar, even if it wasn't that different. But now, when i call someone up because the news editor has told me to book a picture assignment, and I explain to them that I'm calling from the newspaper and I'd like to send a photographer to their whatever-it-is that's happening, they so often sound really grateful. Or when I tell them I'm doing a follow-up piece on how the mad hatter's tea party in aid of Leukaemina research went.

It's an odd kind of gratitude. It isn't that you are giving them something exactly, not like I call them up and say hi, here's a donation or just a cheque for you. I'm having trouble finding a comparison, but these people so often just sound really pleased.

The job's good. It would be better if it was paid and not work experience, but I like the work. This is what I want to be doing. I do news during the day, and in my spare time I do creative stuff for the features editor -- like review bands. The only trouble is, yeah, I'm not getting paid, and now I have to pay £3k to the university to train me to do this job in a year's time.

All the same, if I can avoid the editor (news editors = good, editors = evil) the job's pretty good, and yeah, this is what I want to be doing.