Raw Veganism Day 1

1 x Black Coffee

Whilst I've been trying to cut down on coffee for months, getting rid of the first one of the day has proven impossible.  I know many raw foodists eschew hot drinks but I have no intentions of making something that I know will be hard completely impossible.

1 x White Silver Needle Tea

This is my super-sexy loose tea mug.  It means I can brew lovely cups of fresh tea, without destroying the brew.  Each serving makes 4-6 cups of tea.  I love it.  This may be a sign I have well and truly left my partying, wild days behind me.....

I've made myself a "Crunch" Box to munch throughout the day.  Today's contains celery and chopped peppers:

There's roughly 4 small celery stalks and half each of a red and yellow bell pepper in there.

1 x Banana

More Tea

It starts approaching lunch time and I feel like I've been eating all morning.  The problem with this sort of diet is that you need to eat rather a lot of food in order to get enough calories so that you don't start fainting all the time or looking like a twig.

1 x Orange

1 x Banana

More Tea

For dinner, I make this:

It consists of about 6 grated carrots, a celery stalk, an onion, a handful of cherry tomatoes, yellow bell pepper and a bit of grated celeriac (I found it in the bottom of my fridge and it looked lonely).  I add plenty of black pepper and a bit of sea salt as I have no idea if the balsamic vinegar or soy sauce in my cupboard are vegan or not *sad face*.

I eat about half of it, then put it down for a bit.  It's hard going eating this much food in one go- I would never have thought that a salad could be filling.  I do get to the bottom of it (eventually).

I finish my first day feeling slightly smug and looking forward to payday when I can buy some slightly more exciting food.

Adventures in Insane Diet Land

I've recently been experimenting with Raw Veganism (badly) and have kept a diary of my exploits, which I am going to start uploading on here (with sexy pictures of salad and everything!!).


I've always been a bit obsessed with food.  Growing up in a home where we were poor and didn't have things like crisps and fizzy drink meant that as soon as I was able to earn my own money, those were pretty much the first things that I invested my hard-earned cash in.


I tend to put on weight very easily.  I also find it fairly easy to lose weight if I can stand life without crisps and alcohol for longer than five minutes.  This has resulted in a number of crazy diets over the years.  One of my personal favourites was the "Spaghetti Hoops on Toast Diet", which wasn't technically a diet but that's more or less all I ate for about six months.  I did occasionally divert from my spaghetti hoops path and switch to beans (or even beans and those tiny sausages if I was feeling especially naughty) but after a whole six months, I'd lost about three stone in weight.  


A very good friend announced recently one evening that she was giving raw veganism a go but that she was worried that it would be very difficult.....I immediately challenged her and declared loudly that actually it would be REALLY easy.  She called my bluff and said if I thought it would be so easy, why didn't I give it a go too.  I agreed.  In front of a room full of people.  Which (due to my stubborn nature) meant that I now had to give it a try.


Needless to say, although the first week went fairly well, after that the path of righteous dieting suddenly became rather difficult to negotiate.  I am still struggling with it, and will be uploading my struggles here shortly........

The Ongoing Saga of Creepy Guitar Strap Man

I posted this on Facebook a while ago but as it follows on from my last post, I thought I would share it on here too.

I thought I would share this with everyone I know because it's (fairly) amusing and also highlights that when you're a performer EVEN if you aren't "successful" as such, you can still attract total freak stalkers.

I've had a YouTube page for a couple of years or so and thus far it's been a fairly useful tool for promoting myself and getting more people to hear me singing.  I've met some cool people on there, it's opened the door on some interesting projects and I'm really grateful for all the support and advice I've got as a direct result.

Last January, I started getting messages from a fellow YouTuber (I call him Creepy Guitar Strap Man)- all of which I initially ignored-

CGSM: "u wanna wear your strap more while sittin doin songs to u can do better ty"

Me: ...

CGSM: "i think u should try wearin your strap while sittin u can do real good bye"

Me: ...

CGSM: "u wanna sit with the strap on more then stand u can do good that way ty you"

Me: ...

He left me alone for a few months, and I thought that was the end of being harassed.....however, a little while later, he started messaging me again-

CGSM: "u wanna wear your strap while sittin doin songs u can do good that way ty"

Me: (at this point I thought it might be amusing to wind him up a bit and see if I could get him to admit why he was asking me) "So if I wear my strap will I sound better?"

CGSM: "ya u will play better with your guitar strap on sittin doin your songs trust me it will work i think it will ty"

Me: "So does it help with the singing or just the guitar playing?"

CGSM: "just the guitar playin u can hold guitar better with the strap on sittin doin your songs trust me it works ty"

For anyone that doesn't play guitar and doesn't know, what he's saying is utter rubbish and not even remotely true, so I knew for sure it was some sort of odd fetish thing.  At this point I uploaded a new video- without wearing a guitar strap.

CGSM: "i told ya to wear your strap while sittin doin songs on guitar does anyone listen to me must not be :(( bye"

Then I uploaded another video, standing up playing guitar (with strap)

CGSM: "u wanna listen to me and wear your strap while sittin to doin songs please i would be happy bye"

I now upload another song, sans strap

CGSM: "how many times do i ask ya to wear your strap while sittin on guitar i told ya that bye"

Me: "Ok the constant mails are getting a little weird now.....FYI I've talked to many of my guitarist friends about this and wearing a strap makes NO difference to guitar playing at all....If you're interested in the music I play then by all means keep watching, if not I suggest you go and bother someone else.  Don't mean to be harsh but you're getting kinda annoying........"

Funnily enough, he never responded to my last email.....the annoying thing is, the account he mailed from isn't subscribed or friended to my account which means that (as he tends to mail straight after uploads) that it's another of my subscribers using an alt account- which is more than likely because he's been barred from YouTube for sending creepy emails to women asking them to wear their guitar strap!!!  I don't want to remove and block innocent people who've subbed because they really like what I do so am a bit stuck :/

On the plus side, having a creepy stalker IS kinda rock n roll.....even if it is one with the weirdest fetish I've come across so far (and I've typed "wool fetish" into Google Images so I know what I'm talking about)!!

The Weird and Wonderful World of YouTube

So, last year (once again it has been a while since my last post) I set up a YouTube page so I could upload cool videos of me singing and playing the guitar.

This is because I am awesome, and I can't imagine why people wouldn't want to see that sort of thing on there.  It is also because I wanted to continue being creative and to have a forum for performance (of a sort) even though I wasn't brave enough at the time to play guitar live in front of real people.  Unless I was drunk.  And that never ended well.......

I have discovered TWO very important things since I started my little project.

Number 1:
I am indeed great.  However, there are many other people who are infinitely better than me at singing and playing the guitar. The guitar I knew about but my ego has certainly taken a good bashing after spending time checking out other people's pages and watching them all be marvellous.  There is a lot of crap on there too (Thank God) but I have found so many incredibly talented people, I am now even more confused about why the music industry insists on supporting "rock stars" who are so bad at singing they need to sing into a magic machine so that the fairies inside it can make all the necessary adjustments to their horrible voices so that they only sound awful rather than like a thousand tortured cats.  Surely having rock stars who actually rock and don't need magic machines would be cheaper.
Although then all the fairies would have nothing to do and have to go and sign-on at the Fairy Jobcentre Plus office, and we all know that good jobs for fairies are few and far between these days so maybe it is a good thing......I am still confused though.

Number 2:
The Internet is full of freaks.
I also knew this already HOWEVER, I was totally unaware that there is a genuine fetish for women wearing guitar straps....I have had a couple of messages from nutters pretending to be helpful asking me to ensure I wear my guitar strap as it will help me immensely.  Now I may be fairly rubbish at playing the guitar, but even I know this is total bollocks.  My female friends have also been approached my nutters asking the same thing.  When you check their pages (the nutters, not my friends'), they are full of subscriptions to pages where women play the guitar, wearing a guitar strap.
That's odd.
And it is also dishonest to say "Wear your guitar strap as this will help you play better" instead of saying "Wear your guitar strap so that I can gain meaning to my sad existence in my mother's basement by masturbating over your videos". 
Although maybe if they did that, more of the girls they subscribe to would block them instead of subscribing back (another strange aspect of YouTube politics I don't understand).
I save the messages in case I ever need to report the freaks, I might see if I can collect some from some of my fellow YouTubers and post them on here as they are, indeed, hilarious.

Nutters and bashed ego aside, it has been a rather successful venture for me.  It means I get to share something I love doing and most of the feedback from my nearest and dearest has been very positive.

Here is one of my first posts, Enjoy!! :D

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NIsDDYld1sw

Stomp Stomp Squish Squish

Yesterday I was thinking (never a good thing when you're me but I like to live dangerously).

I was having a particularly Stressful day at work. This happens to me a lot and is usually caused my other people being annoying.

Anyway, at around lunchtime, I found my thoughts drifting away from the seemingly endless spreadsheets and processing of paperwork and imagined what it would be like to be a dinosaur. I was thinking something pretty huge and destructive like a T-Rex. When I was little, I used to watch the Incredible Hulk (I wasn't supposed to watch it really as because of my scarily over-active imagination, and Hulk was the subject of many a childhood nightmare for me) and I remember how he would get all angry and then his eyes would go funny and then he'd TRANSFORM into this giant green man....

I would like to do that, but instead of being a large green man, I'd like to go the whole hog and become a T-Rex.

The first thing I would stamp on would be my laptop at work. This is because it is useless and makes me swear at least 400 time every day as it really doesn't like to do any of the things it was designed to, like opening files or allowing me to read my emails and every single interesting website in the entire universe is blocked on it so even if I had time to skive, I can't.

Then I would stamp the horrible Portakabin I work in into teeny tiny pieces about the size of an amoeba. I would stamp and stamp and stamp for hours until even dust particles would look huge next to the remains. I hate the Portakabin because it is-

a. Dirty
b. Too Cold
c. Too Hot
d. Ugly
e. Dirty
f. Smelly
g. Stuffy
h. Damp
i. Dirty
j. Unfit to be inhabited by Raccoons, let alone real Human Beings
k. Dirty

It is probably the most horrible building I have ever worked in and destroying it completely so nobody would ever again be forced to suffer inside it's walls would be very satisfying.

I would then stamp on all the stupid people. These would easily be identified as they would be the ones pointing going-

"Shit!! Look at the Dinosaur!!"

Sensible people would clearly be running away very fast from a T-Rex stamping on a Portakabin so anyone standing around pointing would be squished very quickly.

Then I would go and stamp on Barclays Bank, Argos (TOO many pointless hours standing in queues in that shop for my liking), Tescos (LOTS of those to stamp on), Starbucks, ANY store found guilty of selling velour, ALL Motorway service stations and finally BT Head Office.... I am sure there would be other places to destroy along the way but I think that would be enough to start with.

The funny thing was, my little fantasy actually cheered me up and made me less stressed for the remainder of the day. Now, whenever anyone annoys me (which is sadly still a frequent occurrence) I will just imagine squishing them with my large scaly foot whilst they cry "No", "Please" and "Don't Squash Me" (not necessarily in that order)...

Seriously, try it, it works!!

Blllleeeeuuuuuuurrrrrrggggghhhhhhh......

I am getting too old for heavy weekends....

I have just got back home after spending a weekend in Manchester with my little brother and have finally sobered up and been hit with the Hangover From Hell. I am very relieved that I have booked tomorrow off work as well as today because there is no way I would be able to face a day at my desk feeling like this.

I just want to crawl under my duvet and die quietly.

I can't work out whether I am suffering increasingly awful hangovers simply because I am getting too old, or whether it's actually that my tolerance for alcohol has now reached a point where for me to get properly drunk, I have to drink enough to put a small elephant in a coma, thus resulting in days of feeling sorry for myself, promising anyone with a pair of ears that I will "Never Drink That Much Again"......all my good intentions only ever last for the duration of said hangover, once it is gone it all starts over again until another Hangover of Death hits and I am forced to stop drinking until my kidneys stop screaming at me.

My problem is that I LOVE drinking and socialising and dancing and staying out until the sun rises.....it is very hard to stop doing something that provides me with so much happiness. Normally, these days, although I do get drunk, the nights of cuddling Armitage Shanks are (thankfully) now long gone and I do generally remember most of what happens when I go out.

Maybe I should get a new hobby, but the last time I tried to do anything healthy, I broke my foot so exercise is clearly out the window on that one.

Any ideas? I'll just pour myself another vodka while you come up with something.....

Tax the Stupid

I think there should be a Stupid Tax.

And a Lazy Tax.

Tax the Stupid, Lazy Ones!!!

Honestly, this week I have wasted so much of my time having to clear up the mess of both of the above, and seeing as I technically get paid by the Government I really think there is a case here. My time is being wasted because other people are stupid and lazy. Therefore they should pay more for existing.

Next week, taxing crisps, cakes and ice-cream to around the same rate as cigarettes. Thus making extra money for our (quite literally) straining NHS as our hospitals are forced to use our money on giant beds for PEOPLE WHO SIT ON THEIR FAT ASSES EATING ALL DAY.

You know it makes sense.

Turning Thirty.....

Last weekend I celebrated my thirtieth birthday.....or, should I say slightly more accurately, commiserated the passing of my twenties.

In the run-up to Doomsday, I have to admit to feeling decidedly crappy that I was leaving my youth officially behind me.

I know that thirty is hardly ancient, indeed, we are told every year that forty is the new thirty, fifty is the new forty etc etc...People are living longer and I can be fairly confident (tragic accident or fatal disease aside) that statistically at least, I'm not even half-way through my life.

It does, however, seem to me that there is something very sad about not being "young" anymore. I have already been fretting, on the few occasions that I do venture into pubs and clubs, that I could turn into one of the women I used to laugh at a decade ago. Strutting their stuff on the dance floor, with too much make-up and flirting shamelessly with men young enough to be their own sons. Theoretically, if I had had a more sexually adventurous time in my teenage years, I could have a 16 year-old child now. I am glad I don't, but it would be physically possible for someone my age to have a child in their late teens.

I still feel young. I fight the urge every weekend to don my Lycra club wear and hit the dance floor. I am not adverse to getting horribly, embarrassingly drunk or toppling over in my too-high high-heels. I don't have children, the idea of having small humans to take care of still terrifies me, although I have many friends who do. I have noticed, this year there have been more weddings, increasingly more of my friends are making commitments to their partners and taking that big step down the aisle.......

There is something awfully inevitable about getting older but I do really miss my early twenties. Thinking I would have plenty of time to do all the things I really wanted to do and confidently putting them off until tomorrow, being easily distracted by anything shiny or interesting that happened to float by. Now I am thirty, I still haven't really accomplished much, although I am trying really hard to accomplish something. Or, at least, parts of things I never got around to already.

There is just so much on the list I really don't know where to start.

I just still feel, several years after I started writing this Blog, because I needed somewhere to vent all the frustrations that I felt for not ever getting around to doing the things I wanted (needed?) to get done, that I haven't really moved much further forward.

I have a better job now. I am married. My Dad died. Many things have happened but I still feel like I spend nearly every day beating my head against a wall, trying desperately to make sense of how I got here, always wanting more, to feel like there was some sort of point or answer.

The older I get, the more confused I become. Even less makes sense to me now.

But the tick-tock of that clock is getting louder and louder. I can hear it all the time, and it's started to tick a little faster than it used to....

When the Axe Falls........

I am finding the current hysteria in the media regarding the recent cuts in public spending a little hard to deal with at the moment.

This is partly because I work in the Public Sector, and am getting to see first hand how these cuts are having a direct effect not just on services, but people and their families and lives.

Now, don't get me wrong. I am not a moron. Anybody with half a brain can understand that if you live on borrowed money for long enough, eventually you have to start paying back. And whilst we mere mortals may use a credit card to run up bills for holidays, some rather nice shoes and a shiny new car, governments tend to rack the debts up on those less glamorous things such as education, regeneration and welfare. The previous government (apparently) spent rather a lot of cash on headline-grabbing schemes and handouts, in order it would seem to keep their demographic voting for them and allowing them to clutch on to power. They spent money they didn't have on things we probably didn't really need.

They gave away pots of £50million (yes MILLION) quid to a number of estates across Britain and allowed the people who lived there to decide how it should be spent to improve their communities.......one of these projects was set up on an estate near me and they spent a decade "regenerating" it. As far as I could see, nobody was paying too much attention on how the money was spent. Over 7million of that particular pot went on shiny new kitchens and bathrooms for the local tower-block inhabitants.

SEVEN MILLION POUNDS of OUR tax money went on brand new kitchens and bathrooms for a handful of council tenants. They didn't just get a standard upgrade either, they got really sexy ones.

I haven't got a problem with the poor getting the things they need in order to stay alive, but I do have a problem with them having a better standard of living than I do, when they don't go out to work.

The Welfare State has trapped millions of people in this country. My jobless friends have nice houses and pay much, much lower rent than I do (although normally Housing Benefit covers this for them and they don't have to actually pay for it themselves). Most of them have better appliances in their kitchens, cupboards full of food and nicer televisions in their front rooms.

So Welfare needs an overhaul. The Government needs an overhaul. The whole country needs an overhaul and we will just have to get on with it.

However, one of the side-effects of this is that cuts are being made right the way through the Public Sector and I am tired of reading about what a good thing this is. Not everyone who works for the Government, and who isn't a teacher or a nurse does a pointless job. Lots of us are going to become unemployed. Even my position is under some threat, and I HELP unemployed people get back to work.

Oh the irony!

The thing is, although the cuts are necessary, it does not mean that they are not brutal. I don't see the point in people whining about it, but neither should they be celebrating. Real people, who have worked hard their entire adult lives are about to be made redundant. This is not a good thing.

Just GET ON WITH IT!!!!

It never ceases to amaze me how and why people in general don't seem to want to take responsibility for anything they do.

Throughout life, you will spend every single day making decisions. As a child, people will make decisions about the important stuff for you, but as anyone who has ever seen a toddler throw a tantrum knows well, even the youngest among us are making decisions from way before they can even spell the word or understand it's meaning.

As you get older, decisions move from the simple and necessary to the more complex and demanding. Particularly when it comes to your job....well for some of us anyway. Even fairly low-level and not-very-well-paid jobs will normally hold an element of decision making.

What confuses me is what when people make bad decisions (in either work or life circumstances), all too often they then don't want to have to responsibility or deal with the consequences of their actions. It confuses me because we spend out whole lives learning about making decisions and how to deal with it when we do the wrong thing. For me, the sooner I admit I am wrong and start working out how to fix my mistakes, the faster I can learn from the whole experience and move on.

All too often recently, I have found myself in situations where other people have made bad decisions, and instead of trying to correct the wrongs, they have then spent an inordinate amount of time and energy looking for someone or something else to blame. Once they have found somewhere to point the finger, they then do everything they can to avoid having to clean up the mess. The result is that, things take longer to sort out. A lot longer in many cases.

I don't know why people behave in this way. It is pretty alien to me and doesn't make any sense. It must be hugely stressful to have to spend your whole time worrying about who's fault anything that goes wrong is. And also, whether you can convince anyone who'll listen that it isn't you own fault. Surely it is easier to admit defeat, fix things quickly and move on....and also through the process of fixing your mistakes how not to make them again.

I am really starting to think I am some sort of alien, I just don't seem to think like most of the people I know.........

I Am Officially a Puny Little Weakling

And I don't just mean literally.

Well, it's not just that I'm not very strong because although that is true and I will not be winning any arm wrestling competitions any time soon I am a bit tougher than I look. However I am hampered my my tiny child-sized hands when it comes to any heavy lifting. I'm not even joking about that, I can buy gloves from the kid's department in any store and they will fit perfectly. Whereas the lady-sized ones always hang off the ends of my fingers. It is strange to me how someone with such a big arse could have such tiny hands and feet but there you go. Sometimes I wonder how it is that I don't topple over everywhere I go but I suppose I would have to understand Scientific Things for that, which is never going to happen.

The above state of being feeble is largely due to the fact that I caved in today and after two weeks of being Facebook-Free, I reverted to the dark side. Nothing has changed and I don't know if many people even noticed that I have been away. Within about ten minutes of being back, I was being poked so maybe some people did, I have no idea. What I do know is that I haven't really missed the rather more mundane aspects of it. Reading the updates of people who regularly feel the need to inform everyone they know what they are having for dinner does not make my life any more exciting. Which is a shame because if it did, I would be in a permanent state of excitement I think. I have thought of culling friends in the past, but that seems a little mean, simply because I don't have too much in common with them other than we sat in the same classroom for a couple of years over half a lifetime ago......

Which is the problem I have with it all I think.....

Facebook has opened up a whole new type of social etiquette. You make friends with people you are actually friends with, and who you see on a regular basis. There isn't a huge amount of point to your Facebook friendship with them because you see them all the time anyway and you have their phone numbers if you need to talk to them. You also make friends with people you know, that you aren't actually friends with. It always amazes me the amount of people who have friend requested me that I wasn't particularly pleasant to the last time I saw them. I'm not saying I was a bully or anything at school, but as all children are, I was mean to some people. I don't get why they would want to be "friends" with me again now? Unless it's because they are having a great time and want to show off their great lives to the people who poured scorn on them years ago but then if that is the case, why would they care enough to make the effort? Maybe I am just some sort of antisocial crazy person who thinks too much about these things but I do find other people and their motives totally confusing sometimes.

I have, I am pleased to say, used Facebook to catch up with some very old and dear friends who I now don't see very often if at all but the Interweb has brought us together again and it is these friends that keep me coming back in all honesty. I also use it to stay in touch with my family who live at the opposite end of the country, so it useful for that too. I also have friends who live in other countries, who managed to escape the shackles of Southampton. God, I am jealous of them sometimes.

The problem is, that really, I would like to only keep the people with whom I really want to stay in touch with on my friends list. But I can't remove everyone else because that would be just rude, and an admission that I only really accepted their friend request in the first place because I was curious to know what had happened to them, but beyond that, I'm not really interested. I actually feel pretty bad about it!

Am I a bad person?

Probably.

Hmmm.....

Once again it is past midnight and I find myself at my laptop trying to find something to do that will keep me occupied until I am finally sleepy enough to feel like it's time to go to bed.

I am currently on Facebook strike and I am not playing Evony at the moment so it has meant I have started exploring some old haunts and some new. Largely I seem to spend an inordinate amount of time playing puzzle games which I don't really enjoy playing but they are boring and make me sleepy, so they serve a purpose. I also still love YouTube, it never gets boring for me and there are still some nuggets of genius to be found deep within it's murky depths.

I just feel a bit lost. I needed to make some changes and adjust some habits as the amount of time I was devoting to to the two aforementioned sites was getting ridiculous.....I just haven't found anything concrete to replace them with so I am somewhat out in the Internet wilderness at the moment.

I just wish I knew what to fill my time with next........

Something Tells Me This Isn't Going to Work.....

So after a year of bending ears and being annoying, my employers have agreed to let me do the qualification that I should have to do the job I do.

Sounds slightly backwards I know, but although experience is very nice, having those bit of paper do matter sometimes......particularly when it comes to Ofsted inspectors apparently which is the real reason behind why I am being allowed to do a qualification.

When I first moved from the Private Sector into Education and the Wonderful World of the Public Sector (where according to the Daily Mail we all turn up for 3 hours a day, sit in gold-plated chairs and generally do very little until the day we can retire early with our amazing pensions that pay us all a huge sum of money so we spend our twilight years living up on the Costa-Del-Sol) one of the things I did think might be a perk of the job was that the training should be easily accessible and, indeed, very good. Now I have been assured by curriculum staff (and indeed many of the students I look after) that the training on offer is very good. I just haven't be allowed to do any of it myself.

It's not that I think these things should be handed out by employers like Smarties, but I do think good training is important. And if you can help your staff to get properly qualified the all the better. They will be better at their jobs, you get to have staff that tick all the boxes and (believe it or not) they will appreciate you for it.

The problem I am wrestling with today, is that although I am really grateful to have been given the opportunity to train, the NVQ they have enrolled me on is a Level 2, and I should be doing the Level 4.....not just because I am Great (although we already know this to be true) but because the Mandatory Units in the Level 2 do not match my job role in any way, shape or form because that qualification is designed for people who work on Reception desks, whereas I am the person to whom the people on the Reception desk send people for appointments.

The upshot of this whole debacle is that I am going to not only have to do big piles of homework to complete this qualification, I am going to have to create work so that I meet the Mandatory Units (and indeed the optional ones as these don't tie-in either). The qualification is not the right level, therefore I won't be able to put it on my CV or it will look like I'm lying about what my duties actually are to future prospective employers as to get the Level 2 you need to be doing different types of work to what I actually do, and employers in my industry will know this as they will be familiar with it. Add to that the fact that if I leave within 2 years, I will have to pay back the cost of my training (which is highly likely due to the fact that I am on a fixed-term contract and I can't risk staying right to the wire if they don't renew it, and in my game at the moment, you have to go where there is work as the Government are pulling funding left, right and centre) and it really doesn't seem like I will be getting a good deal out of this.

I will be left with a qualification I can't use, which will cause me huge amounts of extra work and stress over the next few months, which I will also have to pay for. I don't think I'm going to bother, although it will be interesting to see how they react to that. I am yet to really put my foot down with this employer and I have a feeling it will explode in my face........am I being ungrateful and unreasonable? Maybe I am........I just don't know any more......

The Bank

On a totally unrelated note, I REALLY hate my bank.

Evil, money grabbing, tight-fisted, moronic, twisted, thieving, fascist, satanic, nasty, egotistical, lying, hateful, backstabbing, monstrous BASTARDS!!!!!!!

There, now I feel better......

Work Work Work Work....

Recently I have felt like the weekends just aren't long enough....and neither are the evenings. It is odd because I have always had a full-time job and although the days of 60hr weeks are a long way behind me, at the moment it seems I am always there and just don't have enough hours left over for relaxing or a social life.

This may be because my job makes me really tired and I spend most of my time there being REALLY stressed so by the time I've got home and wound down, it is time for me to go to bed, get some sleep and then start the next day all over again....this is all well and good but by the time the weekend comes around, I have no energy (or indeed enough spare cash) left over for socialising with my family and friends.

I know I'm still a bit broken since the death of my father and that the aforementioned event left me feeling less like the party animal I once was. I also know that although I have joked about the impending doom of my thirtieth birthday (which is now less than a fortnight away) it is still true that I am perhaps a little old to be continuing to burn the candle at both ends, and in the middle....in fact I pretty much used to just take a blowtorch to the candle and melt it to nothing. When I look back at my really wild days, at the time I was working 10hr shifts 5-6 days a week and STILL managing to fit all-night clubbing sessions in so it's obviously possible, I just think that if I did it now I would be in a coma within a month.

It does make me sad that I'm always too tired to do half the things I want to do, and that time feels as if it's slipping away from me way too quickly. On the weekends that I push myself too hard or drink too much, I spend Monday morning wandering around the office looking like a George Romero extra.

I suppose that's just life and I will have to get used to it, however, it still makes me a little sad.

Why Do We Blog?

I've noticed that I generally come back to my blog when things in my life are generally going in a fairly crappy direction......I suppose it's almost like a form of counselling for me, I write the things that are in my head down and once they're out I feel slightly better for it. Most of the time it's just because I'm annoyed or angry about something, but I also write when I'm feeling sad. I don't always write the sad things down, because to open up to the interweb would be silly when you consider the fact that I struggle to talk to my closest friends but I do write something down. It's a very cathartic experience for me, and I like reading back over old posts, knowing that I'm the only person in the whole world who actually knows what each one was all about at the time. They bring back many memories, some happy, some not so happy but the actual act of writing is something I don't think I will ever tire of.


I like flicking through other people's blogs, as it interests me why other people write theirs. I'd imagine there are some who have the same reasoning that I do, and find writing a useful coping tool. After perusing a number, however, it did strike me that there are a HUGE amount of people out there who really do like to say:


"Check Out My GREAT Life! Neh neh neh neeeeh neh"


I think if I had to trawl through just one more selection of happy, smiling family photos, I may just launched my laptop out the window.


Now, I know that nobody really follows my blog. I get the odd visitor from time to time but this collection of scribblings really is for me. If people want to read it, great. But I don't really mind if they don't, I would still be here whiling away the small hours drivelling on about nonsense. I wouldn't know how to go about being creative for the benefit of others, for me art is all about the self-indulgent. I create things for me, to make me feel good. Even when I'm writing songs, or singing, it's still all about me. If you're watching, you may be fooled into thinking that I'm performing for an audience.



You would be wrong.



It's ALWAYS all about me.



Don't let anybody else fool you into thinking that ANYTHING they do that's remotely creative really is for the viewer, it never is. It's not just me being a self-indulgent, self-obsessed, attention seeking crazy person. There are millions of us, all out there, vying for your attention. It's really not about gathering opinions either. Anybody who is creative knows whether they are happy with their work or not. If they have made something and you don't like it, well you are just plain wrong, and that's all there is to it.



That's what annoys me about all those Happy Family/Happy Holiday/Happy Children/Happy Anything Blogs. They just don't feel honest to me, the people who write them always make out liek they're for someone else. But they aren't.



I don't get it.

Tattoo Me!!!!

What with all the things I've had to keep me distracted from my blog of late, I forgot to mention that I finally got one of the "Things to do Before I'm 30" items checked off the list.

This photo is from the first sitting of my shiny new tattoo....instead of going for something small, I went for a much larger back piece (although even though it is now "finished" I am sure more will be added to it.

As soon as I get a photo of the finished product, I shall be posting it on here as I'm super happy with it.

All the shading is done and I have vines and flowers twisted across the top and bottom.

Having a tattoo done on my back was a very strange experience, I have no idea what other parts of the body feel like to have tattooed as this is currently my one and only, however, there were parts that I could hardly feel at all whereas other parts hurt so badly, I felt like I was in serious danger of turning around and punching my tattooist in the face!

The one thing I would recommend to anybody thinking of getting a tattoo done is DON'T just go into the studio and flick through the books to find the one you want. Those are designs that lots of people have. If you want something different and original, start with an image and google it. I went through thousands of pictures of butterflies before I settled on some that I liked and then we took those and turned them into a design that worked on my back. Thus making my permanent (and it IS permanent, don't forget) slightly more personal. Although I didn't do the actual tattoo, it feels like something I have worked on.

Love it Love it Love it!!!!

The Wicked Game....?

So.

I have started singing again. On Monday, over 10 years since I last got up on a stage to sing, me and my friend got up and did a few songs at our local open mic night.

I had seriously forgotten how good it felt to be up in front of people, or how comfortable it would be. I was a bit nervous before we went on, but really I was more excited. I don't understand why I've left it so long as it felt more like home than any other job I've ever done.....

Back in my younger days, I think I honestly believed that fame and fortune would get dropped in my lap and when that didn't happen, I got despondent and stopped bothering. Now I know the ONLY way to do this and make it work is both hard work and shameless self-promotion.

I am just hoping we haven't left it too late, and that we're going to be able to get to a point with it where we don't have to actually work our day jobs. It was really hard on Tuesday, after the dizzying high of singing to a room full of people the night before, to go into work and just get on with things like spreadsheets........

WTF!!!

I am a compooter nerd and I only just noticed :-s

This is Very Bad Indeed.

God, what if I start LIKING Star Trek...???

I would like to state for the record, whilst I am still in control of my faculties, PLEASE if you EVER hear me say that Deep Space Nine "isn't all that bad" you have my complete permission to slap me as hard as you can in the face and then shake me until I come to my senses....!

And Another Thing....

I would just like to take a moment to share how annoying it is when you have insomnia and your partner doesn't.

I may have mentioned this particular source of irritation in previous posts, but it has been so very long since I last blogged that I figured I may as well go over it again.

At the moment, I am surviving on an average of FOUR HOURS of proper sleep a night (hence the return of my ramblings on here). It is frustrating as I am tired ALL OF THE TIME and spend the vast majority of my daytime hours wandering around like a lost extra from Dawn of the Dead...

If this wasn't bad enough, the Wifey still has the very unfair ability of being able to sleep both anywhere and anytime. She currently comatose on the other end of the sofa, every so often I have to dodge a flailing leg, but apart from that she is out for the count...

If I try and get her to go to bed without me, she will inevitably demand that I accompany her to bed where, despite the fact I am currently unable to sleep until around the 2am mark every night, I am apparently expected to TRY.

For people who don't suffer from sleepless nights, the WORST thing that somebody who can sleep at the drop of a hat can do to you, is insist that you deal with your aforementioned total lack of sleep, by watching them enjoy spending time in the Land of Nod...

Just to set the record straight,

THIS IS NOT HELPFUL.

You Bastards.

In Fact, It's VERY ANNOYING. If I want to do something like watch a film or play computer games, this will distract me from the fact that the thing I want more than anything else in the whole entire Universe is to go to sleep. Watching YOU sleep DOES NOT help with this (funnily enough).

*Sighs Loudly*