Gaaargh. Brain’s full.

Bristol was a larf. Next time I *may* take the whole week for it. Though if I had, GAK what state I would be in by now - as it is I am suffering my first glandular sore-throaty thing for about 2 years. Over the last week I have been making great progress in some internal transformations and renovations. Some ppl who have known me for a long time (~7 years) have told me I’m less nice than I used to be. Ppl who knew me longer than that don’t seem too bothered. The key is that the ppl who met me in 1995 met me when I was starting uni, when there were no deadlines, just a blank page and all the resources in the world to throw at it. I had a house of my own and could play at DIY, computers, wacky sculpture and costume making, was in a band, etc.etc. More importantly to this story is the fact I was also incredibly foolish then and neglectful of many sensible things like my finances, management of my time and looking forward to where I will be when I am too old to fend for myself in the big scary world. Part of the problem was my over-developed sense of Faith in my Fellow Man(TM). FIYFM is IMO one of the cornerstones of a functioning society, and absolutely crucial to close friendships and relationships. Well, the house I had was in a scummy neighborhood and representatives of the council and police misled me a merry dance, forcing me to the conclusion that I was very much Alone In This World. The one thing that I pulled out of this was my degree, which was kind of my escape pod. I decided that should I fail to get a good qualification then ‘they’ had won - so no matter what else was going on I would fight for that and hold onto it.

The following 2 years saw me gain strength, as my then-beloved Jenny helped me to get into a hitherto alien frame-of-mind, which I will call ‘judgemental’ - though not wishing to mean that in a negative sense itself. I had slipped into a trap: from the germ of wanting to be a non-judgemental person in the sense of judging others I had progressed to suppressing my common sense and even any regard for the material consequences of my actions. In short, I was making real decisions based on a purely emotional evaluation, with the result that I was extremely kind, pretty happy, very easy to rip off, permanently broke and surrounded by clutter, and late for everything that I didn’t forget to show up to entirely.

Part of the process of becoming a judgemental person led to an incompatibility with the very beloved Jenny who had taught me how. As I began drawing boundaries and learning to ‘focus’ - identifying new things as either beneficial or detrimental to what meagre goals I had - I was eventually forced to view Jenny as an opponent. I also judged my workplace to be on the whole detrimental to me, and eventually quit.

So by this point, I have sold my crappy house, quit my negative job and dumped my fiancee. And I’m feeling pretty positive about it all. I am finally in command of my destiny, and what is more, I’ve now far more of a clue about cause and effect and am freer than ever of the wooly-thinking passivism that had passed for my morality. This is not to say I am now an immoral person, just that I base my morality on judgements of the apparent facts, shunning self-denial based on facts that are not apparent.

This new approach has done undeniable good in some senses but has left me insecure in other ways (for reference, I was born insecure - the only time I was relaxed as a baby was when I was sleeping, so this is not such a melodramatic thing as it may read) the problems as best as I can presently identify them are:

1) When you start judging situations and people, you have to learn when not to speak your mind. This takes practice that I have not yet had.
2) Great, so I can ‘focus’ on goals. But what goals should I have? What will make me happy and how do you decide what is worthwhile? I dunno.
3) If you disregard all facts that are only guesses, won’t you get bitten on the arse sometimes?
4) Human error. I have a lot of this. In the old days I was simply too lethargic to act on my impulses, and everything went smoothly (the fact it went smoothly away from me and into someone else’s pocket is material here!) Nowadays I do quite a few things that I immediately regret. But I would rather regret things I have done than regret have done nothing.

On the upside, I am now flush with cash, work with people who seem to give a monkeys, have achieved satisfying results at work and online elsewhere, and can (nearly) run a home smoothly. For these reasons I do not want to revert to the ‘old’ me c.1995 because you project that one to the age of 55 and you see a lonely old man who is shunned by his neighbors and hasn’t got enough cash for clean undies. However, the current me is not properly adjusted for my own enjoyment. The next step has to be something along the following lines:

1) Shut Up
2) Slow Down
3) Quit Fretting

Just a small application of all three should lead to a smoother interface with the rest of my subjective universe. It’s tricky when your job (which you love) spends all day accellerating your head; but even there, with my last performance review we agreed that a slower, more methodical approach would be beneficial.

So in summary, if you fancy doing me a favour, and you see me doing any of the above, just give me a quiet reminder. I’ll probably appear not to notice at the time but it will sink in…

Well I had no idea what I was going to write when I fired up blogger, I was killing time while gcc failed to compile on an under-spec linux box in the office, but that turned out to be a bit of a deep one…