Miss me?

Wow, I've been gone for two whole(ish) weeks. Bet you thought I'd given up didn't you. Never.

Actually in a way I sort of did. I have some random, and often quite severe, mood changes. I was talking about that a little in my last blog entry. Well, things got a little worse before they got better. I'm not gong to go into detail here, but when I get in to these kind of moods I just can’t do anything. Then, when it all goes away, I find it hard to work out why I was so screwed up in the first place. I have absolutely no control over the moods either, and it's not like anything tangible sets them off. It seems to be totally random, like I have a dimmer switch in my brain that turns up the depression.

But I'm OK now. Well, not OK, but at lest I’m not on the dark side of the mood swing-o-meter.

Like I said, nothing in particular really sets me off, but there are certain signs that I’m headed in the wrong direction. I start doing things like checking out friends reunited to see how lacking in success I am compared to old and long since abandoned university acquaintances are, all so as I can remind myself of how comparatively crap I am. Then I’ll spend an inordinate amount of time thinking about ex-girlfriends, thin king about how they were probably right to dump me all along (I do this even when I dumped them, reality is meaningless when I’m in one of these moods, the only think that matters is making me feel worse). Then I start to hope that things will go wrong just so that I can feel that short moment of elation as my assertion that my life is crap is once more proven right, all because I managed to drop a glass or something equally inconsequential. That’s terribly masochistic isn’t it?

Sometimes, I do start feeling better if I’m doing something I enjoy. Watching an old favourite TV show often helps. This time I whacked my DVD boxset of “Firefly” into the DVD player (though not all at once, I expect it would break) which seems, thus far, to be working. I expect it will only stop working when I finish episode 14, commiserate the fact that there will be no more episodes since the idiots at Fox cancelled the show and subsequently fall into a catatonic depression (if such a thing exists). Either that or I’ll find something else to watch, or maybe even a job. Oh yes, finding a job. Having finished the application for the PC magazine I asked my little sister (the teacher) to have a look at it. Almost two weeks later I’ve finally got it back (I hope she's faster at marking the little kiddies work) with a very teacherly note on it saying “Very Good”. Still, at least no misspelled words are underlined with red ink, which possibly means that there aren’t any. Of course it could simply indicate that she never bothered to read it and therefore didn’t manage to pick up on my poor spelling/grammar. Either way, it’s probably best if I check it over myself before I send it off.

Those of you who know me will know that things have been pretty bad for me this year. All the crap that went on at my last job has left me, in my dark moments, lacking confidence and generally feeling a little less than adequate. When I’m ok, there’s just a general undertone, a background noise of inadequacy. Sort of like people whispering just a fraction too quietly to be heard. When someone flicks the switch it’s like they’re sitting right next to me shouting in my ear, impossible to ignore. Now that I think about it my mum almost literally does that to me a great deal. I say almost, because she tends to sit (or stand) away from me when she’s deriding me. I often wonder what I’d be like with a little encouragement, what I’d be able to achieve. I guess I could answer that by looking at where I got to before my dad (who a great deal more helpful) died. With things as they are it’s a wonder that I manage to get out of bed at all.

Actually it’s been pretty crap most years since I left university, which is why I’m really hoping 2007 is better. I’d kind of hoped to start it, as tradition dictates, by going to some kind of New Years Eve event. I haven’t managed to find somewhere to go as yet, but that may not actually matter. With the number of my friends willing to participate dwindling on a daily basis, it’s looking increasingly unlikely that there’ll be enough left to make anything worthwhile. A bad omen for the year ahead perhaps.

Maybe it doesn’t matter anyway. I haven’t been sleeping well of late, waking up frequently during the night not being able to get to sleep in the first place. Added to that, I feel like crap because I seem to have put on a ton (not quite literally though) of weight. So I look like crap too, meaning any chances of pulling have gone south. Not that pulling would be the only reason to go, but it would certainly be nice. After all, it’s been a while. Well, regardless there probably wasn’t much chance anyway.

Enough maudlin shit, as I said, I’m feeling better now, but still not great. Just mediocre (a word that sums me up to a certain extent, but at least I can joke about that without bursting into tears).

So, what’s happened to me in the last couple of weeks?

I’ll go chronologically backwards. But not today. For now I’ve a little more Firefly to watch before bedtime. And I really have to start going to sleep earlier especially if I’m going to make it to the Coal Hole for 12pm on Friday to meet up with friends.