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.

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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.