My sleep pattern is sometimes disturbingly regular. I go to bed shortly after midnight, sleep uneventfully until 5.30Am when I'll get up to get a glass of water then go back to sleep until a nightmare wakes me up at 7.20AM when I will lie still until my alarm goes off ten minutes later at 7.30 and then ten minutes later at 7.40 when I either get up or set up my computer so I can at least be doing something. Exactly that has happened for 3 or 4 nights in a row quite a few times, I welcome things that break that schedule like the folk night at Corks where just the fact that I've been socialising and probably drinking later into the evening means that the pattern is broken and my sleep will probably be deep enough that nightmares wont hit.

Hopefully, when term starts, I will spend less time feeling sorry for myself during the day and more time getting tired, so that I can actually sleep properly and not have a fucked up - if disturbingly regular - sleep pattern.

In other news, Internet friendships are confusing. It looks like a big chunk of IRL friendships will just be forgotten and new ones welcomed, which is okay I guess.

Blog is an awful word.

I'm subscribed to an awful lot of blogs on Google Reader. I try to read them all as much as I can. Some are blogs owned by friends, some by celebrities (y'know, our type of celebrity, not the boring type) and some by people who I don't know anything about but who write interesting blogs.

Blog is an awful word for something that people spill thier hearts and thier brains over. Vlog is an worse word. The sound just has no romance to it. Diary sounds better but it isn't the same thing.

Anyway, one of the blogs that I read regulary is is Hayley's (from 5AGirls) which she regulary fills with epic quotes from pieces of great literature. Her other posts are fairly personal ones which bare no relevance to me, having met her once and never really spoken to her. It bugs me like hell that someone significantly younger than me has read so much more than me and has a proper appreciation for literature.

I have an A-Level in English (lit&lang) so I think it's fair to say that I can read - I just don't do so as much as I used to or as much as I'd like to. A lot of my friends study English actually, and what I'm coming to realise is that I really miss it. Don't get me wrong, I love what I'm studying at the moment but I am getting really nostalgic for discussing books with people who know them well and can explain all the bits that I don't get.

I have a whole lot of homework to be getting on with, some of which I am motivated to do and some of which just gets me angry at myself every time I start to stuggle with it. I am more or less optimistic about this term - I'm having regular meetings with the senior tutor which is helping me keep on top of things and not get lost in my own apathy and fustration. I think if I were studying something that involved more conversation that maths then I'd be able to keep engaged closer to 100% of the time.

Again, I am doing to degree that I want to do and that isn't going to change.

I really want to start asking tutors for help more often, which isn't practically difficult but I'm still sort of afraid to do it. Fears of failure or of looking stupid seem to be self fufiling profecies.

My social life is sort of all over the place - I'm closer to people that are further away and I'm feeling aliented when I'm with people I see every day. Nothing is wrong, at all, not with anything. Or at least nothing that I can't handle. But I still find myself moping and not bothering to work or to talk to people. I'm acting like a bloody teenager.

That Skype Meme

This has been going around a lot, people are writing a message to each of their Skype contacts, like so.

- I'm not good at making friends that quickly, try not to expect too much of me.

- I love that you bothered to start talking to me.

- The first time we met was weird, but my opinion of you has steadily risen ever since.

- We hardly ever talk, but whatever.

- I don't think I should spend every conversation I ever have with you in competition.

- You are very smart, don't waste it.

- My efforts to make friends with you are continuously stymied by your efforts to make friends with everyone.

- I don't get you in the slightest.

- You're fucking weird, good on you.

- We have nothing in common at all and we shouldn't work as friends, but what should be never really happens.

- I am fucking fed up of having to justify the fact that I like you. You know that you're awesome and it would be swell if you could show some other people.

- I'm nostalgic for our friendship, which is weird because it was at it's peak less than a year ago.

- You being nice to me has had a bigger effect that I could really describe.

- You know full well that you upset me and you think it's okay because I still say that I love you, I hate that.

- I guess you'll live your life and I'll live mine, we'll meet up occasionally and exchange notes.

- I don't think this is your real account.

- However little we talk, I still sort of feel that we grew up together, I think you've had a pretty big influence on me.

- I'll never stop learning while you're around.

- You've got a lot to say but not the voice to say it, you remind me of myself and it scares me.

- I don't any more feel like I need to justify myself to you, I don't ever feel the need to impress you and when I'm around you there is no way that I have to act. I love that.

- I'm sorry but I can't trust you and I wont ever confide anything in you. You remind me too much of people who have bullied me or taken advantage of me in the past. It's worse because you'll never understand this.

- You're a friend on two completely separate levels, one of which really shouldn't exist because it is going to destroy the other.

- Everyone loves you and with good reason. You're a case study for the fact that awesome people do exist.

- I wish I could show you a way out of the labyrinth.

Obviously not everyone is included.

I've started this blog a few times, the truth is that I didn't really want to write it, I want to talk to someone but not the whole Internet right now.

I love you guys. So much. But right now I need to properly talk to someone and get my life sorted out post haste. I've been hanging out online less because the mountain of other things that I've been hiding from has grown enough that it's shaddow covers basically my whole day no matter what I do (fucking hell that was a horridly mixed metaphor). 

It's not all terrible, and honestly I think I am going to survive, but I've really been forgetting to be awesome recently. And on a day such as this I'm more a fan of awesome than I am of Christmas.

Fine, just fucking fine. I'll jump on your bandwagon.

Is that what you wanted, Peer Pressure?

1. What’s your name?
If you don't my name already and you're reading this then you're an idiot.

2. What is your favorite thing to wear?
Jeans and a torn up t-shirt.

3. Last thing you ate?
A triangle sandwhich.

4. One place you will NEVER eat at?
A sewer, maybe? This is an odd question.

5. I say Shotgun, you say:
Okay, whatever, I'll call it on the way back though.

6. Last person you hugged?
Some 'tuber, I'm not sure exactly whom.

7. Does anyone you know wanna date you?
Not to the best of my knowlege.

8. Would you date anyone you met online?
Don't see why not.

9. Name something you like physically about yourself:
I'm not hidiously ugly, I guess, well, at mirrors don't spontaniously smash when I walk past.

10. The last place you went out to dinner to?
The last time I actually sat down in a resturant was after the UnCliche gathering in Cha Cha Moon with Jazza and Jaydee and someone who's name I'm terribly sorry but I've forgotten.

11. Who is your best friend?
Best friends are a strange concept, I don't think I ever really had one.

12. What time of the day is it?
Nearing the end of Charlie-time, which I'm not partaking in, shortly before dinner-time.

13. Who/What made you angry today?
The human condition, and my phone giving out right when I can't afford a new one.

14. Baseball or Football?
I really don't care either way. I guess kicking a ball is less stupid than buying a stick specifically to hit a ball with.

15. Ever gone skinny dipping?
No.

16. Favorite type of Food?
Kebab - but only if I strictly had to chose a favourite.

17. Favorite holiday:
Holidays are boring. If I'm not doing stuff then I just get depressed.

18. Do you download music:
There are other ways to buy music, now?

19. Do you care if your socks are dirty?
Urm... well, I care to the extent that I will throw them in the laundry, but I wont get upset about it.

20. Opinion of Chinese symbol tattoos?
I consider myself far too interesting a person to have an opinion on this matter.

21. Would you date the person that posted this?

Shitloads of people have posted this. I'm pretty sure John started it off, but he's married. Actually, I'm pretty sure I wouldn't date any of the people that have posted this.

22. Has anyone ever sang or played for you personally?
Urm, people have fufilled my requests for songs and stuff.

23. Do you love anyone?
I don't see how you can manage not loving anyone when there are so many utterly lovable people in the world.

24. Are colored contact lenses sexy?
Like John, I prefer real-eyed sexy.

25. Have you ever bungee jumped?
No.

26. Have you ever gone white-water rafting?
No. I don't know how to get involved in doing interesting things, also I don't care.

27. Has anyone ten years older than you ever hit on you?
Yes, everyone in the fucking world is attracted to me, what do you expect.

27. How many pets do you have?
None, I don't see the point in pets.

29. Have you met a real redneck?
I don't think rednecks are wont to turn up in England.

30. How is the weather right now?
Cold and wet and dark.

31. What are you listening to right now?
My typing.

32. What is your current favorite song?
I live on global shuffle.

33. What was the last movie you watched?
Zack And Miri Make A Porno, which is even more hilarious than it sounds.

 
34. Do you wear contacts?
No, nor glasses, nor a monacle.

35. Where was the last place you went besides your house?
University, obviously.

36. What are you afraid of?

Failure.

37. How many piercings have you had?
None.

38. What piercings do you want?
None right now.

39. What’s one thing you’ve learned this year?
People are aproximately 462948736321 times more awesome than I thought was possible.

40. What do you usually order from Starbucks?
Americano is more or less the only esspresso based coffee that I regularly drink.

41. What Magazines are you reading?
Magazines? WTF is this? The 20th Century?

42. Have you ever fired a gun:
Yes, at one of those crappy things that you go on school trips on to make sure that your life is miserable 24/7 for one week to give you a break from the standard combination of miserable and boring that makes up the rest of your school days.

43. Are you missing someone?
Terribly.

44. Favorite TV show?
At the moment, it's probably Spooks.

45. Do you have an obession with WoW?
No, it's a video game. Things to get obsessed about are political causes, practical skils, self improvement around a solitary factor, pretty girls and shiny things. Not video games. Fucking weirdo wowfag gamer freaks *grumble* *grumble*

47. Has anyone said you look like a celebrity?
Yes, lots of celebrities.

47. What celeb do you look like?
Myself.

48. Who would you like to see right now?
Anyone.

49. Favorite movie of all time?
Hell I don't know, movies are boring (see John's explination of this)

50. Do you find yourself loved?
I guess.

51. Have you ever been caught doing something you weren’t suppose to?
Well, "weren't supposed to" is fairly subjective, I'm going to say no.

52. Favorite smell?
ozone.

53. Butter, plain, or salted popcorn?
You know what's wonderful, zebra popcorn.

54. What’s something that really bugs you?
Stupid people.

55. Do you like Michael Jackson?
Never met the guy.

56. Taco Bell or Burger King?
Never been to a Taco Bell. They sound kind of okay I guess.

57. What’s your favorite perfume?
ewww... perfume is for girls.

58. Favorite baseball team?
Baseball has teams?

59. Ever call a 1-900 phone number?
I'm guess that means premium rate, in which case yes I voted for something on one telly thing once.

60. What’s the longest time you’ve gone without sleep?
Probably less than 30 hours, I like to sleep reguarly.

61. Last time you went bowling?
When Mhazz was in London for a while and some other people hung out and it was lovely and wonderful.

62. Where is the weirdest place you have slept?
Worchester. inowtfrite.

63. Who was your last phone call?
My mum.

64. Last time you were at work?
Fucking ages ago.

64. What is the closest orange object near you?

A textbook.

On hate and friends

Sometimes I glad no-one reads this.

Alex Day's diary really irritates me sometimes, it's perhaps the most annoying facet of Alex, which is okay I guess since everyone needs a place to rant pointlessly.

Here's the thing. He says that all the hate and cliquely exclusiveyness happens all the time and that everyone else ignores it: that is bullshit, everyone else doesn't ignore it they don't fucking involved.

It really is that simple, you don't have to gossip and bitch and hate, it's not compulsory and niether is being on the recieving end of it. Noone is forcing you to suffer at the hands of people who don't live anywhere near you.

Okay, teenagers are going to be teenagey, but if it pisses you off then you can just detach yourself from it, it's pretty fucking easy.

Today

7 years and fifty five days ago (I maybe wrong, that's completely not the point) I walked home slowly, I stopped by a newsagent and got something to eat before walking the rest of the way and I really didn't give a fuck about anything at that time. As far as I was concerned the world was a little bit crap and I was having a particularly crap time but that was all there was to it. Then I got into the house and my mother told me 'oh Paul, something terrible has happened'. Around that point I woke up to the world around me. Before then politics and ethics and culture were all things that were there to make me look clever but from the moment my mother said those words the whole world began to matter.

Of course I didn't understand fuck all about what was going on, but watching people die on television repeatedly for the whole afternoon had an impact on me, enough so that I can feel my eyes welling right now.

Back then I had ideas about good and evil that seem stupid to me now but the truth was dawning on me. People, and not just a few but in fact most of the world, are scared.

People are scared that they are going to loose control of their own lives and cultures and jobs and that everything they've ever known will be stripped from them. Years ago I would not have been able to comprehend that kind of fear. It's that kind of fear that drives people to take automatic weapons into schools and aeroplanes into skyscrapers.

I have, one more than one occasion in the past, feared for my own life. That's nothing. There is a worse fear than that: there is fearing for everything. That is the kind of fear that plagues the world and spreads itself so thickly that no one can recall where it came from. I felt a small dose of fearing for everything a matter of hours ago when I saw McCain holding an 18-3 lead, when the light of hope is dwindling and you can see so much less than before it feels like the whole world is getting smaller. For a while as far as I was concerned the student bar was the only room in the whole wide world because if I left it I would not have known what kind of a world I would be walking into.

It's the difference between that feeling and the feeling that maybe things are going to be on the rise that marks how I'm feeling at the moment. I am more relived that excited. Even if Obama is only the lesser of two evils, the idea that the most powerful country in the world thinks that is a good thing makes me feel amazing.

To all my American friends, I love you.
To everyone else, I love you.

This evening or morning or whatever the hell it is, it is history and I love it. We can start thinking about tomorrow now, yes?

Terrified

On Monday I'm going to go into a school to do work experience for two weeks and then straight afterwards I have a weekend to move back into Canterbury and start learning my stuff for this year.

I have Linear Algebra followed by Probability and Inference on my first day back, neither of which I'm particularly looking forward to. If I were sensible then I'd be doing some reading up on them before I get back.

Today I'm going to make myself feel prepared by buying a fully stocked pencil case.

Do you have the time?

*doorbell rings*
Mother: could you get the door?
*three 13y/olds at the door*
Me: yeah?
Kids: Hi Urm, do you have the time?
Me: Lul, wut?
Kids: Do you have the time?
Me: It's urm, about twenty past six.
Kids: oh fuck, well thanks anyway, bai.
*close door and return to living room*
Mother: wtf?
Me: inorite.

Also, today I guilted Mhari into subscribing to me, lulz.

Greatest e-mail ever?

It's my understanding that Obama automatically follows back everyone who follows him on Twitter, hence this brilliant e-mail.

Obviously here you are looking at my social networking folder, I do really get e-mails that aren't from facebook.

I seem to have stopped writing

I tend to write a lot, but I haven't written anything for ages. I'm not happy about this.

Yootooberz

On Saturday I met a load of awesome people from the Internet.

The funny thing about meeting awesome people from the Internet is that you already know they're awesome before meeting them so that aspect isn't all that surprising.

I don't really want to give a detailed account, because other people will do it better. (protip: if you comment, then people will be able to find your detailed account on your blog easier like.)

I think I was a bit too untalkative, which isn't a word, and I couldn't really help being a bit of an outsider, oh well.

What the fuck is a 'PASS'?

So in an idle moment before my head hit the pillow I checked around the Student Data System which is where I get things like timetables and coursework marks.

What I stumble across is

You have been awarded a PASS in Mathematics

Full information will be contained in a detailed transcript which will be forwarded to you as soon as possible.

Which bugs me because I don't know if that means I've actually passed the first year or if that's just their way of putting things. I've been on this earth long enough to release that clarity is not exactly anyone's strong point, at all.

I don't have any more information to go on, I checked my university e-mails and I rifled around in the post to see if anything had been sent to me but got missed. There's nothing. This has set me off panicking like hell and there's no-one on-line let alone IRL that I can moan at about this because well, it's more or less exactly the middle of the night when I'm writing this.

I'd like to explain the implications of a 'pass' in more detail (it doesn't mean anything as damning as what it means in college, for instance) but I really don't know myself.

You might want to tell me that I should be happy about this because a pass probably is a pass but I really don't want to get my hopes up lest it results in me really fucking myself over. Also this has brought my exam results to the front of my mind again.

These are, odly, the first exam results that I've got really emotional about. I wasn't one of those people who said 'oh, I don't care', but I did stand by the 'there's nothing you can do about it now' maxim. The thing is, if I've fucked up this time, then I might loose something that I actually want. That's why, like I perhaps should have been before my GCSEs and ALevels, I'm scared.

In other news, nothing is definite or confirmed or certain or verifiable. I have no idea what next week has in store for me.

I think I need to be more proactive with my life now.

Ce message n'est pas du Spam.

I am waiting to finish my exams. I am waiting for my exams to be finished. It's not like it's me doing them any more, I've got just one left and I feel completely distanced from it, I don't care about doing it or not just so long as the exams period can be over soon.

In a very strange way I miss Essex or at least I really want to be back there now, last time I was there it didn't feel completely like home but right now I don't think Darwin college is my home either. (I'm existentially homeless, how pretentious can you get?) Right now I'm bored, stressed and apathetic towards everything, I'd much rather be feeling all of that in my parent's house.

The title of this blog is taken from some spam that I got today, I found it kind of amusing.

Today...

• It is so hot that car alarms are going off spontaneously. Does anyone know why this happens?
• I am honestly planning to go the library until three in the morning, partially because I can.
• I still smell of barbecue a bit.
• I don't really feel that I'm getting enough sleep, or more that I haven't been for at least a month, my neck is starting to ache and I hope that get some proper sleep before exams so that I have my wits about me enough to remember what the fuck a Bernoulli equation is.
• I still haven't left the flat and it's gone midday, so I've broken my new term resolution already.
• I have no idea what I'm planning to eat or when I'm planning to go shopping.
• Things are basically all okay.
• I will have updated my blog.

I think that list was probably as long as anyone could reasonably pretend to be interested in. I'm going to have a Gatorade for breakfast now, and a coffee for lunch in a few minutes, 'cos y'know, I'm a student.

I'm not that clever, yeah?

This one's a vlog, because it is. Okay.

A commitment to creative output

At some point I really am going to write a book, it'll probably be maths related or something. But that is A Long Term Plan. Before then I plan to get some other writing done (including but by no means limited getting on with current essays).

I'm going to make something, create something, do something sufficiently brilliant that I'll enjoy doing and sharing with the outside world. I want to make something amazing, I want to display something incredible and take credit for it.

There are often ideas that I have that never grow or amount to anything tangible. Henceforth I shall make something of my ideas, I shall learn to be really creative and I'll have something to show for it.

Now that it's in writing, I have no choice.

Funerals

Going to the funeral of someone you never really knew is strange but, as a Friend I was talking to said, it's probably advisable.

I was supposedly door-keeping, but that seemed to be forgotten by the people who would rather they did it, so overall I didn't do much. I set out chairs and put chairs away but for the few hours in between that, that's all I was doing: for lack of room I wasn't even in the Meeting.

Family members cried, friends ministered and it was all very much like you would expect a funeral to be like. I stood just outside of the room without a chair, wondering if Geoff would really have cared about me being there. Since I hadn't even been door-keeping I don't think I was serving much purpose there. I knew I wouldn't be led to speak and I can't but think I shouldn't really have been there in the first place.

I was thinking about what Advice and Queries had to say about funerals:

(30) Are you able to contemplate your death and the death of those closest to you? Accepting the fact of death, we are freed to live more fully. In bereavement, give yourself time to grieve. When others mourn, let your love embrace them.

Honestly only the last bit seemed relevant yesterday, and I don't think I was able to do even that. I'm not in a position to be comforting anyone, let alone healing any wounds. Maybe I'm too young to have to worry about that for now, maybe I should just hang around anyway until I'm needed.

Stuff I'm not saying

We (update: may have) lost the house, no-one's fault I guess but we need a new house now. I don't have much to say about that.

There are things I'd like to blog about but one of them involves individuals whose privacy should be respected and another involves groups who I don't want to misrepresent.

All in all there's a lot of stuff I've got to say, but that I can't or just really shouldn't. The Internet, whilst a fantastic conduit for free speech, doesn't really make self expression any easier.

Abstract philosophical musings or whatever, I can do, but I don't want to because they are boring and I don't want to write them any more than anyone wants to read them. Next time I have something real to talk about that I actually can talk about then I'll do that. For now, go amuse yourself with some free music or just stop reading altogether.

Friends and friends.

Today T-Block had a Christmas roast, which was pretty nice, we all worked together and it didn't turn out to bad, even if the sprouts were completely raw.

Obviously it was as secular as Christmas can get, which I supposed was how I'd like it. There's no reason I see to focus on the mythology side and everyone knows the whole Jesus thing isn't why we have winter celebrations anyway. No moments silence before we tucked in either.

Well in fact, there were quite a few silences, but with a "little s" where the conversation just died down. What I didn't expect was how incredibly awkward it made people, and how they had to say that it was making them feel awkward just to get rid of the silence.

Without really realising it, I've been brought up to tolerate silence, not just tolerate it but to actually enjoy it or at least feel comfortable in it. I doubt somehow that it's a skill unique to Quaker children but somehow my sheltered upbringing or something left me ignorant to how much people suck at just sitting around.

It's around this point that I'm supposed to go into some beautifully versed ministry about what silence means to me, to talk about different types of silence and how the inner light is bound to shine through all them, even the noisiest. But I'm not going to and to be honest anyone that really cares has heard it before by someone smarter than me anyway. Today didn't make me think about silence, no matter how important it is: today made me really think about who I am friends with.

There's quite a few people who I'm fairly fond of with whom I don't share that much in common beyond an ability to sit together in silence for an hour. There's quite a few people without any of the above who I'm fond of anyway, most of my flatmates for a start; it's not like silence is a necessary criterion for friendship. It maybe that what's bugging me is really all me, I can't understand how people can't do silence, I completely fail to empathise.

For the three months since I've been at Uni I haven't really spoken about myself as a Quaker, or myself at all really. The fact is, I'm really bad at it. If someone were to ask me about silence or integrity or pacifism then I would become bumbling and awkward and generally useless. People may suck at silence, but more importantly, I really suck at talking.

The people who I'm really close to, seem quite often to be Quakers, I think part of the reason for that isn't what we have in common, but what we don't have to bother explaining to each other: it makes things easier when you can gloss over the religion bit and get down to the nitty gritty of drinking habits and musical tastes. That sounds awful doesn't it? That it'd be so much easier to be friends with someone of the same religion, I feel a lousy Quaker for just thinking it.

At Quaker youth events there's always some conversation or debate about how friendship works alongside with Friendship. I always ignored those, it sounded to much like hippies moaning that the man was out the get them (armed with peer-pressure and conformity no doubt) which to be fair, it was. There's always a lot of bother about how someone can only find their true family amongst other Quaker children and that their relationships with school friends were shallow and meaningless in comparison. I always though, how fucking ignorant it was to assume that the rest of the world can't do close and meaningful friendship. Of course in retrospect my peers at the time weren't saying that at all, they really did find it easier to make friends with kids who'd been brought up in kind of the same way as them and, as much as it pains me to say so, I do to.

Whiny little teenybopper hippies are a lot more insightful than I ever gave them credit for.