I'm back. You know why. Good God it hurts. I thought I had it tamed but the beast has reared its head again, taking another savage swipe. The sad song playlist will be back out tonight for the first time in a couple of years and somewhere around 2am I'll start to wish, not for the first time, that I had a taste for alcohol so I can get thoroughly smashed. There's been highs and lows recently; life stuff, nothing huge, but once again there's one thing on the horizon, blotting the rest of it out like a huge life-blotting-out thing, draining the colour out of everything and putting a black hole in my stomach.
I guess the difference between won't and can't is huge, like the moon and the edge of the universe. Both distances are incomprehensible, insurmountable even, but you put something on the moon and at least you can see it, you always know it's there even if its existence is, in practical terms, little more than notional.
I've nothing left to say. Feelings won't form into sentences right now. Many more of these days to come now, I'm sure. Steeling myself to deal with them. Cat in Hell's chance.
Sunday, 14 September 2014
Friday, 9 May 2014
Goals of the NEET Twenty-Something
For nigh on two years now, the author has been unemployed (although I've only been a government statistic for a month or two, signing on for jobseeker's allowance in March of this year) and that has somewhat lessened the motivation to blog. Largely because, for all my daydreaming of writing an informed article on anything, I know the truth of the matter is that I talk about me in this space. Which is fine, sort of. When I was at university it seemed to work well, on my annual trawl back through my facebook timeline, I do read a fair few messages of support from friends who were readers. The assumption is, of course, that they were being kind but nonetheless, I feel like I was at least trying to say something back in the day, even if it was filtered through a quite ego-centric medium.
The problem here is obvious, really. A supportive reader base existed at university because while I was writing primarily about me, I at least had a subject who was relatable to the audience. My subject - me - was a university student, writing for other university students who had similar thoughts. Now what is my subject? Unemployed, with little prospect of finding a job that in any way feels better than unemployment, with no real skills and holding qualifications that he possibly doesn't deserve which in any case, employers don't care for. The readers are a) enjoying some measure of success, b) auto-scanning computer software designed to make advertising easier or c) non-English speakers looking to learn a little of the lingo. Whilst the first are largely friends and hopefully could forgive me lack of anything interesting to say, the second do not judge and the third probably don't care what's going on here (though they should: if they learn it from me, their English will sway wildly between slang from four or five different areas of the English-speaking world, polysyllabic nonsense and unnecessarily verbose parenthetic passages), still I've felt for a long time like the blogosphere is not the place for me anymore.
Tuesday night, however, I found myself composing a blog entry in my head on my walk back from my 5-a-side football session. I can't remember now what I was going to say but something, along with reading a couple of other blogs since then, seems to have got me back in the mood. How long this mood will last, that's another matter. Personally, I think I'll have done well if I get as far as publishing this piece.
Nevertheless, I'm here now and believe it or not, that was just the introduction to this piece (don't worry, the middle will be shorter and the conclusion non-existent).
So, what do I want to say? Do I want to talk about how someone who honestly does want to find work can feel persecuted by the system that's supposed to help while in every town around the country the crowd of unemployed who intend to stay that way are legion and seem not to have been impeded in this goal by the same system? No, if I think about that long enough to write about it I'm at risk of psychotic rage or inescapable depression. So how about a recap of the themes from the university era of this blog? Well, the plural there is extremely generous and there's not a lot to say. Largely just that the thing that made me want to write this blog in the first place is locked inside a little room in my mind and doesn't want to come out. It's comfortable in there, assimilated with similar though less intense experiences, just another part of the psyche of an individual who has reaped nothing but pain from that area of life. Gone? No. Forgotten? Never. Simply in a place where it can't hurt me any more and has no more bearing on life than does the rain on Jupiter.
Nope, I think I'll just end on the good news stories, there aren't many but they bring a little sunlight to my mental horizon so I'll write them down, see them physically and be glad that they are there.
First then, next week begins an (up to) eight-week stint of work experience which, while it might not lead directly to a job, at least gets me closer than I've been in a while.
Second, I continue to help run my local Church's youth football sessions. We've grown to a place I hoped we'd be and we show no signs of stopping, such that we now use our love of football to raise money for charity.
Third, it may be a good few years later than I dreamed of (and my God, did I dream) and I may be paying for it rather than getting paid for it but finally I get to do that thing that many like me dream of. Nine days from now I will step out to play my first game of football at a professional football team's stadium. Not for a pro team of course and as I mentioned, not on the extremely generous wages of the professional athlete but nonetheless, a dream will have come true. In a diffuse and unanticipated manner, but come true nonetheless. And then, a week later, I'll do the same thing again.
Fourth - and last - with the above three points and all my other regular football activities (which ramp up to nearly unprecedented levels this month) I'm going to spend a lot of May in an exhausted state, but a happy one. For the first time in God knows how long I can look at a calendar and think what an excellent time this is in my life.
The problem here is obvious, really. A supportive reader base existed at university because while I was writing primarily about me, I at least had a subject who was relatable to the audience. My subject - me - was a university student, writing for other university students who had similar thoughts. Now what is my subject? Unemployed, with little prospect of finding a job that in any way feels better than unemployment, with no real skills and holding qualifications that he possibly doesn't deserve which in any case, employers don't care for. The readers are a) enjoying some measure of success, b) auto-scanning computer software designed to make advertising easier or c) non-English speakers looking to learn a little of the lingo. Whilst the first are largely friends and hopefully could forgive me lack of anything interesting to say, the second do not judge and the third probably don't care what's going on here (though they should: if they learn it from me, their English will sway wildly between slang from four or five different areas of the English-speaking world, polysyllabic nonsense and unnecessarily verbose parenthetic passages), still I've felt for a long time like the blogosphere is not the place for me anymore.
Tuesday night, however, I found myself composing a blog entry in my head on my walk back from my 5-a-side football session. I can't remember now what I was going to say but something, along with reading a couple of other blogs since then, seems to have got me back in the mood. How long this mood will last, that's another matter. Personally, I think I'll have done well if I get as far as publishing this piece.
Nevertheless, I'm here now and believe it or not, that was just the introduction to this piece (don't worry, the middle will be shorter and the conclusion non-existent).
So, what do I want to say? Do I want to talk about how someone who honestly does want to find work can feel persecuted by the system that's supposed to help while in every town around the country the crowd of unemployed who intend to stay that way are legion and seem not to have been impeded in this goal by the same system? No, if I think about that long enough to write about it I'm at risk of psychotic rage or inescapable depression. So how about a recap of the themes from the university era of this blog? Well, the plural there is extremely generous and there's not a lot to say. Largely just that the thing that made me want to write this blog in the first place is locked inside a little room in my mind and doesn't want to come out. It's comfortable in there, assimilated with similar though less intense experiences, just another part of the psyche of an individual who has reaped nothing but pain from that area of life. Gone? No. Forgotten? Never. Simply in a place where it can't hurt me any more and has no more bearing on life than does the rain on Jupiter.
Nope, I think I'll just end on the good news stories, there aren't many but they bring a little sunlight to my mental horizon so I'll write them down, see them physically and be glad that they are there.
First then, next week begins an (up to) eight-week stint of work experience which, while it might not lead directly to a job, at least gets me closer than I've been in a while.
Second, I continue to help run my local Church's youth football sessions. We've grown to a place I hoped we'd be and we show no signs of stopping, such that we now use our love of football to raise money for charity.
Third, it may be a good few years later than I dreamed of (and my God, did I dream) and I may be paying for it rather than getting paid for it but finally I get to do that thing that many like me dream of. Nine days from now I will step out to play my first game of football at a professional football team's stadium. Not for a pro team of course and as I mentioned, not on the extremely generous wages of the professional athlete but nonetheless, a dream will have come true. In a diffuse and unanticipated manner, but come true nonetheless. And then, a week later, I'll do the same thing again.
Fourth - and last - with the above three points and all my other regular football activities (which ramp up to nearly unprecedented levels this month) I'm going to spend a lot of May in an exhausted state, but a happy one. For the first time in God knows how long I can look at a calendar and think what an excellent time this is in my life.
Wednesday, 8 January 2014
Ramblings, just standard blogged ramblings. And a 3-month Epilogue.
So, I'm back again. In and out like a pissing fiddler's elbow. For those unfamiliar with the expression, the "pissing" was for emphasis, rather than a actual part of the phrase, a pissing fiddler would have to have a pretty stationary elbow to avoid severe toilet inaccuracy.
This deliberately has no structure, much like my left knee currently, which seems to have been decimated by me making the rookie error of trying to put my foot on the floor, obviously a poor move.
Other poor moves include purchasing a cineworld unlimited card. Don't get me wrong, it's nice to be able to watch as many films as I like without having to pay, but the card only pays for itself if you watch two films a month. Now all of a sudden you're having to meet a quota. The flicks used to be a treat, now it's almost a chore and furthermore, they don't seem to make two good films per month, so now I've paid money to be forced to watch at least one sub-standard film a month, it seems a slightly rough deal, when you stop and think about it.
I was right earlier when I said this would have no structure, as it's been a draft for several months and I've no idea where I was going with it. I think the plan was to take the last idea, word, phrase or concept of each paragraph and use it write the next paragraph on an unrelated topic but with said idea, word, phrase or concept as a jumping-off point. An intriguing concept that I may revisit at some stage, but for now I'm just easing back in by going over my unpublished material and seeing what can and can not be salvaged as a good piece to publish. (They all come under can not be salvaged because they were written by me but as the shortest and most recent of my many many draft entries this was an obvious place to start and in truth, I'm somewhat proud of the pissing fiddler joke).
However, the reams of virtual paper filled with words unsaid seems a decent topic to finish on. I could enumerate the attempts at fiction, or make some survey of the opinion pieces or map the milestone musings, but I guess I'll just look at it overall and try and make some attempt to bring meaning to it.
It's symptomatic of me, of course. A lot of what is published in this blog is words I couldn't say out loud so I suppose it make sense that some of them end up left alone and not even posted on the web.
Some of them are left as drafts for months and then deleted entirely, how this compares to words in my heart I don't know, I don't think I've ever erased anything from there. I still harbour some feelings for my junior-school "crushes", in draft form rather than anything more concrete. In fact I met one on work experience from college and briefly fell in love all over again. Thankfully the ones who know who they were don't stop by here. As far as I know, anyway.
I'm struggling for a conclusion, but then again, this wasn't supposed to be structured. It would have been nice to say something meaningful about making our voices heard or not being closed off, but in truth it would be hollow because amongst the never-released dross there's a thing or two that deserves its place in the rubbish bin and which I will never allow to be seen or heard. As sincere as the unpublished and ultimately deleted "Telephonic Soliloquy" was, it was an attempt to bring together a passion for fiction and the facts of my passion, making the creative writing sloppy and the real-life portions insincere. It was a failure and while I remember it still, three years later, it was ultimately a product of a part of me I wish didn't exist, the part that is as truly me as any other part but never gets the memo from the rest of me and is not a team player, it seeks to turn every life experience into something I can write with the ultimate goal of finding something publishable, not on a blog, but in print. This part of me ignores the fact that some of my life has to be just for me and tries to get me to whore out my few experiences and my meagre talent in pursuit of the dream.
Anyway, this is getting perilously close to something else that won't see the light of day so I'll end here. Sorry to have wasted another five of your minutes.
This deliberately has no structure, much like my left knee currently, which seems to have been decimated by me making the rookie error of trying to put my foot on the floor, obviously a poor move.
Other poor moves include purchasing a cineworld unlimited card. Don't get me wrong, it's nice to be able to watch as many films as I like without having to pay, but the card only pays for itself if you watch two films a month. Now all of a sudden you're having to meet a quota. The flicks used to be a treat, now it's almost a chore and furthermore, they don't seem to make two good films per month, so now I've paid money to be forced to watch at least one sub-standard film a month, it seems a slightly rough deal, when you stop and think about it.
I was right earlier when I said this would have no structure, as it's been a draft for several months and I've no idea where I was going with it. I think the plan was to take the last idea, word, phrase or concept of each paragraph and use it write the next paragraph on an unrelated topic but with said idea, word, phrase or concept as a jumping-off point. An intriguing concept that I may revisit at some stage, but for now I'm just easing back in by going over my unpublished material and seeing what can and can not be salvaged as a good piece to publish. (They all come under can not be salvaged because they were written by me but as the shortest and most recent of my many many draft entries this was an obvious place to start and in truth, I'm somewhat proud of the pissing fiddler joke).
However, the reams of virtual paper filled with words unsaid seems a decent topic to finish on. I could enumerate the attempts at fiction, or make some survey of the opinion pieces or map the milestone musings, but I guess I'll just look at it overall and try and make some attempt to bring meaning to it.
It's symptomatic of me, of course. A lot of what is published in this blog is words I couldn't say out loud so I suppose it make sense that some of them end up left alone and not even posted on the web.
Some of them are left as drafts for months and then deleted entirely, how this compares to words in my heart I don't know, I don't think I've ever erased anything from there. I still harbour some feelings for my junior-school "crushes", in draft form rather than anything more concrete. In fact I met one on work experience from college and briefly fell in love all over again. Thankfully the ones who know who they were don't stop by here. As far as I know, anyway.
I'm struggling for a conclusion, but then again, this wasn't supposed to be structured. It would have been nice to say something meaningful about making our voices heard or not being closed off, but in truth it would be hollow because amongst the never-released dross there's a thing or two that deserves its place in the rubbish bin and which I will never allow to be seen or heard. As sincere as the unpublished and ultimately deleted "Telephonic Soliloquy" was, it was an attempt to bring together a passion for fiction and the facts of my passion, making the creative writing sloppy and the real-life portions insincere. It was a failure and while I remember it still, three years later, it was ultimately a product of a part of me I wish didn't exist, the part that is as truly me as any other part but never gets the memo from the rest of me and is not a team player, it seeks to turn every life experience into something I can write with the ultimate goal of finding something publishable, not on a blog, but in print. This part of me ignores the fact that some of my life has to be just for me and tries to get me to whore out my few experiences and my meagre talent in pursuit of the dream.
Anyway, this is getting perilously close to something else that won't see the light of day so I'll end here. Sorry to have wasted another five of your minutes.