A soupçon of wibblyness and other nostalgic qualia from 2am

You do not know what you've got 'til it's gone. Not strictly true, I think, but it's weird how you can suddenly realise that someone/something was waaaay more important to you than you previously imagined, especially if you already thought it/they were pretty damn important and it turns out you still underestimated them.

   My last post on here was so pessimistic that had I been a reader rather than the writer I think I'd have been referring the author to the Samaritans. I believe it's crucial to point out that I always play a character online (quite often offline too, tbh) so while most of what I write is genuinely what I think, not all of it is of me and none of it is the whole of me. I play up certain characteristics to fit the tone of what I want to say. If I'm feeling shit and want catharsis I will tell you every reason why I feel shit and not mention any lingering optimism I may have (this example is the most frequent) and if I'm feeling good and want to celebrate it I'll probably not mention whatever bad thoughts are going on under the surface. Anyways, if you read that post and you read this one too soon after you'll probably notice such a fierce change of direction that you may get whiplash (the author takes no responsibility for injuries incurred while reading this piece; you have been warned and continue to read at your own risk but if you're so weak as to be genuinely injured by metaphorical events you've done well to get this far through life and I offer my congratulations) but that doesn't mean I'm so bi-polar that I genuinely went from depressed to ecstatic in half an hour (although that might be the case, despite my protestations, idk, I'm pretty fucked up, you know).
   See? Wistfulness to whimsy in bugger all time.
   Part of the turnaround was that having mentioned last time that blogging had lost its appeal I decided to go back and read stuff from when I used to find it more enjoyable. I occasionally do this. Going back to my old posts gives me a warm and fuzzy feeling, like I'm reaching out and touching that past life of mine, like I could almost inhabit that personality once again and enjoy life more fully than I have in some considerable while.
   Also, to get back to the point made in my first paragraph, I went to read blogs from other people I know who were writing at the same time as me and rediscovered a true gem. Liv, on the off-chance that you read this, I bloody love you. Not in like a kissy-face way, more kind of like we're cousins who don't see each other often but have had good times in the past when we were closer. I don't think I fully appreciated you back when we were closer acquaintances and I know I was distant, but that's just my personality, it wasn't a reaction to you in any way. I probably still wouldn't be able to say this sort of stuff face-to-face, tbh, but that doesn't make it less true. It's also true of my other blogging buddies, y'all know who you are.
   Soo... that was awkward. Moving on...
   I read those blogs of mine and others and couldn't stop smiling. Those friends I had were such a part of me and those blogs we wrote were - to me at least - like little letters between truly dear friends. The language, the people and places mentioned, heck just the being up at 1am reading blogs, it all took me right back to the happiest time in my life. I still don't feel good about tomorrow, but I've rediscovered some cracking yesterdays that I can look back on and smile.
   That happiness of nostalgia is so weird, it has all the ingredients of sadness, it even has a similar quale to sadness (for me at least) but it fills me with more joy than I can quite contain. I am genuinely getting slightly teary-eyed as I write. I miss those days so much it is a physical sensation; just above my stomach there is a soupçon of wibblyness (I know not how else to articulate the sensation), in my cheeks a slight quiver.
   I remember how I connected with the person I came to consider my best friend through this medium, at least partially, though also through real-world contact. Sadly we don't talk that much these days and I am the last one of my contemporaries on this particular coalface of the blogoshpere - still stolidly chipping letters away to form semi-coherent sentences, the lone typer - so this first and best mode of contact is pretty much obsolete.
   We - all of us - blogged the right way; we were honest, we talked about ourselves and our lives and we didn't give a fuck if it got read (though I did harbour hopes of having a bigger following, if I'm honest) but mostly we did it because we wanted to, not because we thought we were going to change the world or get rich (again, I wouldn't have objected to either of those things).
   I read through some of what remains of our little online community, some of it is lost I fear, taken down for one reason or another (I know a number of my posts were culled through sheer embarrassment and it seems other people's have gone the same way, or have been kidnapped by ghosts in the code) but some still stands and from it you can even imply some of what was there before the various removals. Like a digital stonehenge, declaring that HERE WE WERE and we lived and we loved and laughed and did everyday things and stupid things and amazing things and the odd extraordinary thing.
   We worked, you know, we clicked. As a group we fitted. While I despaired of just about everything (mostly I wrote of despair, despaired of my writing, wrote of writing, wrote of despairing at my despairing of my writing, despaired of my despair and wrote of my despair at writing about despair over despairing at writing about despair), others wrote the other side of the coin without making it an argument or contradiction, we agreed on most basic points and we just shared our points of view on each; some were angry, some were exasperated, some were optimistic. When we wrote posts that were on the same subject but totally antithetic in interpretation we still seemed to me to respect, empathise with and totally understand the other point of view. Some even wrote about how people who constantly despair are really bloody annoying and - though I despaired - I could not but nod in agreement.
   I was the only one, I think, who seriously wanted to do stuff like this for a living - in a totally different way to this, of course; a personal blog like this could not, would not and should not be a money maker. However, I was easily the least talented (about which I frequently despaired) and the weird thing about that is that I didn't care. Jealousy is probably my overriding trait (except despa- yeah you get it) and I know personally a few (semi-)professional writers who I have a lot of envy towards which has ruined our friendships, but in this little circle of firelight I genuinely revelled in these beautiful people writing their beautiful words.
   I needed a pick-me-up tonight and though in the morning I will regret staying up 'til 3am I have to thank those people whose words from the past reached out picked me up from my lowest ebb in a while. I know that if I touched your lives at all it was insignificant and fleeting but once again I have to say how deeply you all have touched mine and how grateful I am to know you. I could go on all night but that last sentence should be my conclusion, I feel. It's hackneyed, cheesy crap, but what did you expect from me?

A Review of my Ten-Year Plan; or, Welp, I think it's about time for a quarter-life crisis.

So, 26 today and how did I celebrate? I went to the job centre. Not because that's how I enjoy a special occasion, it's just something I have to do every couple of weeks. I've never been one for a big Birthday bash, but this was a whole other level of not celebrating.
   Anyways, Birthdays are always a time for looking back on the past, certainly for me anyway; it is a marking of the anniversary a past event, after all. So, as I sat in that office this morning I reflected for a period on the last few years of being me (they're never ready to see you when you walk in so you always have time to spend ruminating on something or other). I had been in the vicinity of my old school last night so leaving school ten years ago stuck out as a natural place to start my look back.
   The period between my 16th and the end of school was exam time and it was bloody awesome. I never revised but a lot of lessons were cancelled to make way for study sessions, which me and the boys translated to mean "go to the park down the road and kick a football around for four or five hours." (Still aced my exams, btw, at least the ones I cared about.)
   If you'd asked me then where I'd be in ten years time I'd have had no idea but I would never have said I'd end that decade sat in a near-deserted office preparing to defend my use of my time this week - they want you to be doing work-search related activity for 35 hours every week, more than some full time jobs for about a quarter of the money - and feeling like shit.
   I've said before I don't plan for the future. It's a mistake, I'm aware, but there you are. My somewhat nebulous ideas at that time revolved around working with kids in some capacity (an idea based mainly on my excellent rapport with my younger relatives) and doing something creative in my spare time, hoping for the latter to become professional at some point.
   It was five years later that my career "plans" (for desperate want of a better word) were dashed when I unhelpfully realised that I hate kids pretty much all people everywhere and it's only now, ten years on, that I'm beginning to force myself to admit that I lack any talent whatsoever.
   In those ten years I've changed a lot, though maybe not as much as I'd have liked and probably not always for the better.
   So, what's the solution?
   That's the right question to ask: identify the goal, identify what you need to do to get there, do the things, give no fucks if anyone or anything tries to stop you. That's what successful people do. Me on the other hand, I like to identify the goal, identify what I need to do, identify the failings in my character that will stop me doing the things, identify the reasons I can't escape these failings, identify my need for an alcoholic beverage of some kind, remember I don't like alcohol, die a little inside, write a blog post, get angry, suppress my emotions, buy something I don't need, act like a miserable bastard for 3 to 33 days, repeat from step one. Well, when I say I like to do that...
   It's worse this time. I've always joked about getting old on my birthday but increasingly I get the sense that time really is running out. Is there too much pressure on the young these days? Probably so. Look at those SATs for five-year-olds or whatever: if that isn't symptomatic of a system that seeks to put everyone on a path to something from as early as possible, I'm the Easter Bunny. But does the fact that our obsession with early achievement is possibly needless change the fact that at 26 I am pretty much beyond hope of ever achieving what I want? No matter how I cast around for any excuse to disbelieve that I have missed the boat on everything I have to conclude that no, it doesn't change it. There is no court of appeal on this stuff either, anyone who accomplishes anything in the modern world has that ten-year plan when they leave school and they may not get all the way through it but they have made plenty of progress by the time they reach my age. Anyone who failed to make plans is left by the wayside. All my competition is from people so much younger than me now that I genuinely look like an old man next to some of them, but without the benefits of age such as experience and wisdom.
   Regardless of whether I'm right in what I'm saying here, it has to be a sad state of affairs that a 26 year old can feel like life has passed him by. I take full responsibility for this; it's naught but my own stupidity and lack of foresight that led me here. It's naught but my own stupidity and lack of self-belief that stops me trying seriously to catch up with what I feel I've missed out on.
   I keep hoping that one day something inside me will snap and I'll suddenly feel like I can do what I need to do to get where I want to be, but I feel like - if it will ever give at all - whatever it is that has to snap requires weighting down with many more years of dispiritedness and despondency before it will finally yield, meaning I will have to be even further behind before I can start to get my run-up going. I'm terrified of not being able to move forward but it seems the only way I can see to do so is to fall further behind, which - of course - I'm terrified of.
   I laughed when I first read the term "quarter-life crisis," partially from the poor-sounding grammar, mostly from the feeling that it was all part of that joke we twenty-somethings do where we pretend to be old. But it is said that all jokes contain the kernel of truth and is there any more fitting term for what I'm going through now?
   I could go on like this all night. There's nothing stopping me, really. But what was supposed to be catharsis has only made me feel worse and honestly, I've barely found any joy in this. Secretly, or probably not-so-secretly, this blog has been my favourite thing for a while now. I may be here infrequently, I may be embarrassed about what I end up posting and I may wish I was a million times better at this but the pounding of the keys, the construction of the sentences and paragraphs - however clumsy - and possibly even the knowledge that I've made some contribution to the world, even if it is pointless and unworthy, never fails to lift my spirits. Except tonight.
   Tonight I may be finally admitting defeat in the quest to become a decent writer, because tonight I feel like it was early-twenties me who cherished that dream and though he had no better chance of realising it than I do, he had the license to dream that comes from youth. Late-twenties me has no such license, late-twenties me has to grow up and settle into the despair that is the true destiny of humanity, some future me may be able to harness the weight of that despair to some creative end but first I need to be crushed and battered by the world, probably need to actively seek out dejection and heavy-heartedness to break that dam and fire that furnace. Late-twenties me needs to go back to the job centre in two weeks (or preferably get a job, though that currently seems as fanciful as any other dream from my youth) and every week hence until something breaks; either me or that thing within me that is blocking my progress.