#oneaday Day 913: Funny Bone

Nothing highlights the passage of time more than switching on a comedy show and see who is standing on stage, clutching a microphone in their hand and talking bollocks to an audience.

Also, nothing makes you sound more like you're getting old than bemoaning the fact that "modern comedians" aren't a patch on the standups you used to enjoy.

I've never been a particularly hardcore follower of comedy, but I do enjoy a good standup show, and over the years I've appreciated the work of a wide variety of comics. I've never quite got the reason that comics rise and fall in popularity like fashion trends — surely if something's funny, it's timeless and funny forever?

Well, actually, no. That's not quite true. I recall vividly seeing a show about Tommy Cooper a while back and finding it utterly cringeworthy from start to finish. I couldn't quite put my finger on why, but it simply wasn't funny. Perhaps it's because I wasn't "of that time" that I couldn't appreciate it — but then I look back at some of the stuff that Kenny Everett and Les Dawson did, and that's still hilarious despite being a little out of what I'd describe as "my time".

The earliest real standup I was aware of was a Lenny Henry video my parents had and which I decided to watch one day when they were out. (It was "15" rated and I was not 15 at the time.) While I didn't understand everything that he was talking about — some of the stuff about marijuana went right over my head — I found it very entertaining. It's not fashionable to admit that nowadays, of course, because Lenny Henry is now the guy who did Chef! and the man who advertises Travelodges, but I still find him pretty watchable when he appears on Comic Relief and the like.

The two standups I have the fondest memories of, however, are Eddie Izzard and Bill Bailey. I could watch these guys' shows repeatedly forever. (Perhaps not forever.) Their comedy is distinctive, clever and rewarding — both in different ways. Izzard's work rewards paying close attention to how he weaves the various chaotic threads of the things he is talking about together, while Bailey's alternation between slightly-surreal standup and genuinely excellent musical numbers is just a pure delight to watch.

Going to Edinburgh a couple of times with the university theatre group was an eye-opening experience, as we got the opportunity to see a whole swathe of comedy acts — some great, some not so great. Some of the highlights included Daniel Kitson — aka the terrible DJ from Phoenix Nights — and Marcus Brigstocke, who now makes semi-regular appearances on various TV and radio panel shows. I can't remember the names of any of the lowlights because in most cases it was just embarrassing to watch them fall apart in front of an increasingly-restless audience.

I will always have a soft-spot for improvisation. At university, we played improvisation games as warm-ups for rehearsals, had a weekly "Improv Night" and hosted an occasional "showcase" event known as Count Rompula, which tended to be largely improvised. (The Web of Dan still leaves me with shivers.) At Edinburgh, one of my favourite memories is seeing improv troupe Boom Chicago (or Boom Shit Cock, as one of our number who was constantly forgetting their name kept calling them) and marvelling at how quickly they picked up on suggestions from the audience and ran with them.

One of the things I like about Eddie Izzard's comedy, in fact, is that it has an air of improvisation about it — though it becomes clear when he successfully weaves all his threads together that there actually is a significant degree of planning that goes into one of his shows.

I did have a point to all this somewhere. And that is that — yes, I'm an old man now — modern comics seem to be a bit rubbish, although I am using BBC Three as my yardstick here, which may not be particularly wise. (BBC Three, for those outside the UK or simply unfamiliar with the channel, is the dustbin of television, incorporating some of the most asinine documentaries you'll ever see, a show called Snog Marry Avoid — which is exactly what you think it is — and what they call "experimental comedy". I call it "shite".) In recent weeks, I've seen a guy whose entire shtick seems to be just shouting at the audience (to be fair, Rhod Gilbert does this too and I find him hilarious — the difference being that Gilbert shouts with passion and righteous fury, while this other guy whose name I can't remember simply seems to blurt out obscenities), a sketch in rather bad taste regarding death, and a guy who sang a song about a fridge. (All right, that last one actually was quite funny.)

Perhaps I'm just looking in the wrong place for my comedy kicks these days. As I noted, BBC 3 is a big steaming pile of poo at the best of times, so I should probably start by not using that as a means of judging modern comedy. Suggestions for fun and entertaining stand-up shows to catch would be most welcome, then, so please feel free to share!

#oneaday Day 912: Blood from a Stone

I'm pleased to confirm that, after several days of wrangling, arguing and repeating myself over and over and over again, CeX finally relented and gave me a full refund. (Context.)

I hate complaining. I feel like an asshole. Normally because in order to complain effectively, you have to be a bit of an asshole. I hate it because I've been on the other side of things, receiving those complaints. It's frustrating for both parties in the whole situation, because in many cases the person receiving the complaint really does want to help but their hands are tied, and the person complaining just wants things to be resolved as quickly as possible.

Such was the case with this whole debacle. It took two days of talking to someone on CeX's Twitter account and subsequently emailing their customer service team, then going in to the store where I bought the item in the first place to actually claim the refund. It would have been easy to just give up, but that would have left me £70 down and, while I don't like complaining, it was the whole principle of the thing here.

The thing that infuriated me most about the whole experience was the blindingly obvious things CeX could have done along the way to help me out. As I said in the original post, it would have cost them literally nothing to help me out and just issue me a refund. The item was already second-hand and open, so it was in the same condition as when it was sold when I returned it. It was also returned within about an hour of me having purchased it, so it's not as if I could have been using the shop as a quasi-rental service, which is — presumably, anyway — what this policy is designed to discourage.

I grant that, since there was nothing technically wrong with the item, I wasn't entitled to a refund under the various laws and regulations that govern this sort of thing. But when making an honest mistake — as I did — I don't expect to be punished for it to the tune of nearly a hundred quid.

So I complained. And I persisted. I remained polite — though clearly frustrated — throughout the entire experience. I didn't swear, I didn't insult anyone, I didn't cast aspersions on the sexual preferences of anyone's mother. I simply repeated the things that were upsetting and frustrating me in the hope that it would sink in. And I kept a close eye on the people around me on Twitter who were taking an interest in the case. There was the potential for some serious damage to CeX's brand here, and while I had no particular desire to cause trouble in that manner, the longer it went on the more it looked like being a potential PR disaster for the company — which is why I was so confused that CeX appeared to be in no hurry whatsoever to help me.

Customer service is actually relatively simple. Follow your business' policies as appropriate, but when a customer complains, review the situation carefully and determine how you can help them. If bending the "rules" slightly doesn't impact your company and does help the customer, then doing so builds considerable goodwill because it makes it look as if you've gone out of your way to help them. Apple stores are really good at this. Very often a customer will enter the store frustrated and angry that something or other isn't working, and leave with a smile on their face because they've been pleasantly surprised by an employee apparently going out of their way to do something nice. (In actual fact, said employee more likely than not knows exactly the situations in which is is appropriate to bend the rules and simply set the customer's expectations accordingly.)

This is what CeX wasn't willing to do for me. I was repeatedly quoted store policy and made to feel like an idiot for not knowing it before purchasing the item. But how was I to know? It wasn't explained to me at purchase, I've never returned anything to them before and the only place in the entire shop their return policy is mentioned is in a single sentence of roughly 10-point text on a small mat near their cash till — a mat which, I might add, is more often than not covered up by items that are being bought and sold at the time. The fact is, I wasn't aware of the policy, otherwise I wouldn't have taken the risk on the item in the first place. Repeatedly quoting it at me after the fact was just making me more and more angry, and the people who were doing so just didn't appear to notice this — or care. It became something of a battle of attrition — me repeating how annoyed I was and what I wanted out of the whole situation, them repeating their policies over and over. Something had to give.

It was them. I certainly wasn't going to back down, and the situation was looking worse and worse for them as they continually refused to acknowledge my concerns and upset. I can imagine I was probably called some fairly unpleasant names behind the scenes. But I prevailed in the end. For fairness' sake, I should say thank you to Raj on CeX's email support team and Jackie, the store manager of the Chippenham store, for making it happen.

Complaining works. It's not a pleasant thing to do, and it often takes time, but it works. We've seen plenty of examples of it Getting Things Done recently — whether or not they're "important" is neither here nor there — and people should know when it's appropriate to step up and say "wait, hang on a minute, that's not right." It's all too easy to just allow yourself to get screwed over and then feel completely powerless. So don't be afraid to complain, and remember it's different from whining.

If you can't remember the difference, perhaps this will help you out:

#oneaday Day 909: The Internet Is As Big As You Make It

Over the years, my Internet habits have changed significantly. This has been at least partly due to changes in technology over the years, but I still find it an interesting observation to think back on how times have changed since I first "got online."

My earliest experiences were with CompuServe which, for the unfamiliar, was somewhat like an online "walled garden". It included much of the things we take for granted on the Internet today — email, topic-specific forums, places to download stuff, real-time chat and probably, if you looked hard enough, something which could be used by someone as porn. Initially, you were limited to talking only to other CompuServe subscribers, but over time access opened up: firstly to allow emailing to Internet email addresses, and eventually to access the Web proper. I remember vividly trying (and failing) to get the browser Mosaic to work with CompuServe.

At this time, since I was just a kid and living at home, my Internet (or equivalent) access was severely limited. I had to plan out what it was I was going to look at (usually the Gamers' Forum and occasional delves into the "CB Simulator" — aka real-time chat rooms — to try (and fail) to pick up girls. (a/s/l?)

Over time, the Internet opened up to all, and we were all able to gain access to the information we wanted and some we didn't. The best free porn sites were (apparently) passed around in the schoolyard; the best sites to download shareware games were common knowledge; little communities started to spring up as people figured out things like "forums", "personal homepages" and "search engines".

Fast forward to today and, with an Internet that is growing at a frightening rate, I find myself limiting what I'm doing to a very small number of sites. Despite becoming increasingly irritated with it, I check Facebook. I check my GMail. I check in on the Squadron of Shame Squawkbox if there's been a new post. I write this blog. Occasionally I might check a gaming site for news of something I'm interested in, but that's really about it. I tweet from my phone and everything else that I really want to do is covered by those sites — and Google if I can't find the information I'm looking for straight away. I find myself going around and around and around the same sites over and over, hoping that something new and interesting has come up in the five minutes since I last looked. (It never does.)

One thing I've found myself not using anywhere near as much as I used to is dedicated, specific communities. Every time I find a forum that looks vaguely interesting, I might check it out and post there for a few days and then promptly forget all about it — even if it's a community I have little doubt that I'd really enjoy being a part of. This is kind of sad, since it limits my contact with people who are specifically in to the exact same things as me, but it's primarily a result of the fact that forum software tends to not play overly-nice with mobile devices — which, nine times out of ten, is the place where I want to be casually browsing. (Okay, a lot of forums bring up that annoying popup about Tapatalk, which I've never tried and might be the best thing ever, but still.)

It's mostly a time issue. I have lots of things I want to do every day, and I rarely (no, make that never) get to do all of them. So far as "priorities" go, checking forums, posting things and getting to know yet another online community is not particularly high up the list.

Perhaps it should be. There are a lot of things I am into that I would like to talk more about with others. Without thinking very hard, I can immediately point to both My Little Pony and The Secret World as communities I would like to be more involved with. And there are doubtless more out there. When I think about how vapid and pointless 95% of the conversations on Facebook are, I do sometimes wonder if my "social" time online could be better spent in a more focused community rather than browsing creepy baby photos posted by people I haven't seen since school.

Perhaps I should leave my own prejudices at the door and jump in to one of these communities to see what will happen. You never know where new friends are lurking, after all.

#oneaday Day 908: Customer Disservice

I wanted to share a customer service experience I had today as I found it immensely disappointing. It was partly my fault, I accept that, but the way in which it was handled left me with a very sour taste in my mouth and a feeling of disillusionment in a company for whom I had previously had nothing but good things to say.

After purchasing a copy of Super Street Fighter IV Arcade Edition in the currently-running Steam Summer Sale, I decided that the time had come for me to get an arcade stick and see if I could actually improve my generally-dreadful fighting game skills. I took a trip into town to my local CEX — they'd opened recently so I wanted to support them — and was pleased to see that a Street Fighter IV Tournament Edition FightStick was in the window for half its usual "new" price. A bit of preliminary research online had revealed that this stick from MadCatz was one of the best ones out there, and to see it for half its usual price was a deal too good to pass up.

The stick in question was designed for PlayStation 3, but uses a USB connection. I looked online and consensus said it worked with some PCs, though the chipset the computer in question was built on determined whether or not it would actually work. Intel chipsets were fine, apparently, but nVidia or AMD ones were not. Having been poking around inside my computer recently to fit a new power supply, I was pretty confident I had an Intel chipset.

Unfortunately, I was wrong. I brought the stick home, connected it up to the computer, Windows recognized it and then… nothing. No response from the stick in Control Panel, no response in game, no means to get it to register any inputs whatsoever. I tested it in the PS3 to make sure the device wasn't actually faulty, and sure enough, the PS3 had no issues with it whatsoever. Unfortunately, I don't have any fighting games (or even "arcade-style" titles) for PS3 that would necessitate the use of an arcade stick, so I had essentially wasted £70.

Or had I? No, I thought, if I head straight back to town now I'll have time to return it, get my money back and be home in time for dinner. So off I went, back to CEX, and queued up in an attempt to return it.

"I'd like to return this," I said, explaining the situation. Being an honest sort of guy — curse that particular character trait — I said that the stick wasn't faulty, but that it didn't work with my computer. (To be fair, lying and saying it was broken wouldn't have achieved much — CEX has a rigorous policy of testing things to prevent shysters trading in broken crap.)

"This isn't the selling till," said the woman behind the counter. "You need to join that queue."

I was taken aback by the bluntness for a moment after she had been helpful earlier in the day when I had purchased the thing. Fortunately, her colleague jumped in and pointed out that I wasn't trying to sell something to the shop, I was simply trying to get a refund.

She took the stick and scanned it, then explained to me that CEX's policy was that since it wasn't faulty, all she could do was give me store credit.

"Well, do you have an Xbox 360 stick available?" I asked. (Xbox 360 sticks work with Windows no problem.)

"No," she said.

"Okay," I said. "Then that's no help to me, really, is it? I've spent £70 on something I can't use. I would like my money back, please."

It was at this point that the cashier in question — Emily, her name was — decided that she couldn't handle this and called her supervisor who then launched into an obviously-rehearsed speech.

"I'm sorry it didn't work for you," she said with an incredibly patronising tone of faux-understanding. "I appreciate that it's frustrating, but unfortunately we're only able to give a refund as store credit."

I was really not in the mood for argument — I hate confrontation at the best of times — so after asking whether or not the voucher could be used online — apparently it can, but only through an unnecessarily convoluted process that involves paying the full price for the item then claiming a rebate — I grudgingly accepted and was on my way. I left immensely disappointed with the poor service I had received from CEX, and thinking that I would be considering things very carefully before making use of their services again.

Here's the thing that annoyed me most about the whole thing: there was no sense of the staff wanting to help me. I was quoted policy and simply shut down without any discussion. No consideration was given for the fact that I had bought the item that same day and had returned it in the exact same condition in which it had been sold to me. No consideration was given for the fact that I had wasted £70 and was being offered store credit in exchange when there was nothing I wanted to spend it on in said store. No effort was made to make me feel better about what I freely admit is my own mistake. Rather than doing something that would have built goodwill and allowed me to leave satisfied and happy while leaving them no worse off than they had been before I bought the thing in the first place, I was simply the recipient of a speech that had obviously been given many times before.

Customer service is a fine art, and CEX in Chippenham is clearly sorely lacking. CEX's return policy as a rule is unnecessarily harsh on those who make honest mistakes, and leaves no room for employees to "surprise and delight" a customer. I don't think this case is actually in breach of the Sale of Goods Act as the goods do work as described — the stick worked fine on PlayStation 3 and the people at the shop didn't explicitly tell me it worked on PC — but the fact is from a customer service perspective, CEX let me down. Store policies shouldn't be so inflexible that they leave a customer walking out of the store dissatisfied, disappointed and upset. Apple are good at this, often exchanging items for free simply as a means to, as said above, "surprise and delight" their customers. Head into an Apple store with a pair of dodgy iPod headphones, for example, and the store team will usually swap them straight out for you, no questions asked. Go in there with a broken iPhone/MacBook/whatever that's just out of warranty, and if you ask nicely they'll often help you out as if you were still covered. And on those occasions when they do turn you down, there's usually a good reason for them not being able to help you.

It would have cost nothing for CEX to help me out today. Had they refunded me and taken the stick back, they would have been no worse off than they had been this morning, and I would have left satisfied and confident in purchasing from them again. Instead, I am left with a piece of paper worth £70 and, currently, nothing to spend it on, as the Xbox 360 version of the stick is not available online. I am also writing about my poor experience on the public forum that is the Internet rather than praising them or simply keeping quiet.

So basically, CEX Chippenham, I'm exceedingly disappointed in the service (or lack thereof) I received today and will be thinking very carefully before I buy anything expensive from you again. You had the chance to surprise and delight me; instead you stonewalled me and flipped the bird. THANKS A LOT.

#oneaday Day 904: Furry

We've had our pet rats for a little while now and they're both starting to get a bit more confident. Willow, the shy one, has grown significantly more than her sister Lara, making it quite an amusing sight when they play-fight in the evenings.

One thing I find with all animals is that I can't help but anthropomorphise them. They are little people to me, even though I know they can't understand the things I'm saying and that the cute little nibbling thing they do on your finger isn't necessarily a sign of affection — it's more likely them determining whether or not I'm something they can eat.

This means I do silly things like talk to animals. I talk to cats. I talk to dogs. And I talk to our rats, even though they probably find those freakishly huge giants who keep dropping treats into their home utterly terrifying.

I can't help it. I don't know why I talk to them when I know they can't understand me. But I do. I say their names, hoping that they'll learn them. I hope that they'll come when I call them. When they do do something, it's easy to assume that it's because I did something to encourage them. If I say their name and they jump on the side of the cage to climb up and see me, it feels like "I did that" even though it's probably just coincidence. (I know that you can train a lot of animals to respond to their names and to come when you call them, and that rats are surprisingly intelligent little furballs, so it's not beyond the realm of possibility that they are responding to me and coming to see what I'm doing.)

I guess this sense of attachment I feel to pets, and the assumption that they are somehow "little people" rather than "not particularly intelligent bundles of fluff", is what makes them good companions and nice things to have around. And animals certainly do have their own personalities — our two rats have clearly defined character traits, and the two cats who have been a part of my family in the past both also acted in their own unique ways. The two cats who live next door to Andie and I now, too, are both their own "people", though they are both united in their desire to get into our house as often as possible. (They haven't succeeded since we got our new sofa, and are being kept well away now we have the rats, too!)

The downside of seeing pets as "little people", of course — and I apologise for getting maudlin here — is that it makes it hard to deal with when they pass on. I recall feeling genuine grief — like, the sort of grief you feel when an actual person dies — when both our family cats died. One such outpouring of said grief can be found here, from the early days of this blog.

But let's not focus on sad things. We have pets now, and they are great. They are becoming much more confident, too, so soon we might even be able to actually take them out of the cage, pet them and play with them. They're still a bit too jumpy for that just yet — Andie's had a couple of bites just from trying to pick them up — but they seem to be learning that the Big Scary Things who keep opening their cage are actually sources of Treats rather than things to be feared.

We have thus far resisted the urge to fill Facebook with rat pictures in the same way people with new babies incessantly fill Facebook with baby pictures (please don't change your profile pic to your baby, it's creepy) but I'm sure that will change as they get happier and more at ease with us. So you can look forward to that.

#oneaday Day 903: Running Review

I've been running through the Couch to 5K programme again, no pun intended. If you're unfamiliar with this well-paced running programme, check out the image at the end of this post for more information. Also, play through Emi's path on Katawa Shoujo and you'll really want to do it.

Ahem. Anyway. Tonight was the first day of my fourth week on the programme. I've done it through to completion once previously, but that was quite a while ago now and my fitness has lapsed somewhat, so I decided to start again. Week 4 is where the pace starts to step up a bit and the jumps in difficulty begin to become more noticeable. For example, tonight I did two three-minute runs and two five-minute runs; on the previous trip out, I did two minute-and-a-half runs and two three-minute runs.

I got on pretty well. I didn't have to stop at all, and I paced myself well. Said pace is still fairly glacial compared to people who aren't carrying around as much weight as I am, but I'm satisfied so far.

One thing I remember noticing last time I did all this and am noticing again now is the fact that running is good stress relief. It's actually probably exercise in general, but I'm finding it particularly apparent while running.

When I say "stress relief" I don't necessarily mean "making the stress go away". If it was possible to just make stress dissipate… well, then the world would be a much nicer place. (I also don't mean "stress relief" in the same way that J-List refers to "stress relief toys". If you don't know what I'm talking about, don't worry.)

No, what I mean, in fact, is that running seems to "shake things loose" in my head. Stressful thoughts which have been clogging up my head all day come to the fore, particularly when reaching the end of a session. This isn't always a massively pleasant experience, but it can be helpful and cathartic in the long run. It's easy for stressful thoughts to get "backed up" and simply cause you to "feel stressed" all day for no specific reason — releasing these thoughts helps dissipate that vague "meh" feeling, though naturally you still have the specific thoughts themselves to deal with.

The human brain is weird.

Anyway, I'm happy with my progress on Couch to 5K so far. I remember being impressed with myself when I made it through the last time I did so, and being even more impressed when I successfully made it through an entire 10K race in London. (Okay, again I wasn't especially quick, but at least I didn't come in last place!) I'm contemplating setting myself some sort of target such as another race somewhere so I have something to aim for — the end of the programme is all very well and good, but where do you go from there?

Well, I'll cross that bridge when I come to it. For now I shall enjoy the small victory of successfully running for 3 minutes, 5 minutes, 3 minutes and 5 minutes without stopping.

#oneaday Day 899: I'll Be There For You

I have social anxiety. I may have mentioned this before once or twice.

What that means is that sometimes I get tongue-tied and don't know what to say. Sometimes I let conversations run inside my head but worry about what the possible outcome of them will be, and end up saying nothing. Sometimes I quite literally have nothing to say whatsoever. And sometimes I do say something and don't get the reaction I expected and consequently feel weird.

As you might expect, this makes the prospect of "making friends" a fairly terrifying one. Obviously I have made friends over the years, otherwise I wouldn't have any right now, but I can never quite remember how it happened. In some cases, it was a simple matter of being thrown together in some context — living together, studying together, working together — but in others, it's not quite so clear.

While I am more than happy with the friends I do have, I do sometimes wish I could have more. That may sound greedy, but the fact is that I don't get to actually see the friends I have all that often. The vast majority of them live in the States (thank you, Internet) and the others live just far enough away for it to be A Big Effort to go and see them. And, you know, sometimes I just want people to play board games with. I bought a copy of Legend of Drizzt, one of the cooperative Dungeons & Dragons adventure games, this week and I'm hoping I get the chance to play it more than once or twice. If I had more friends (who liked board gaming) then I'd be able to play it more often — at the moment, however, it's determined largely by mutual availability and whether at least one of us can be bothered to drive about 50 miles. I'm more than happy to for the prospect of board game fun, but it's the former bit that can be tricky sometimes. Hopefully if and when Andie and I manage to move a bit closer to Southampton it'll be a bit easier to be more spontaneous — as it stands, however, it's a relatively rare treat to see people.

This is all rather self-pitying I know, but I direct you back to the first line of this post. Social anxiety makes the act of making new friends — even the prospect of just talking to strangers — a terrifying and difficult prospect. Even in an environment that should be "friendly" — I know there's a local board game shop in Bristol that does games evenings, for example, but I don't even feel especially confident about that. My mind gets caught in a cycle of "what ifs" and I just end up deciding not to go.

Perhaps one day I'll get over this social anxiety and be more confident about making new friends and considering that people might actually want to spend time with me if they don't have to. That day is not today, however, which means that I'm all the more grateful for the friends I do have and the time I do get to spend with them.

Anyone fancy a game of Legend of Drizzt?

#oneaday Day 898: Contemplating the Darkness

I'd like to share a couple of posts with you. First of all, this piece by Jeff Green, published today. (If you don't know who Jeff Green is, he's currently PopCap's director of editorial and social media and used to work on U.S. games magazine Computer Gaming World, later Games for Windows Magazine.) Many people expressed surprise at Jeff posting this, because, to quote several commenters, "you wouldn't know he had depression." I've only met Jeff maybe once or twice, but it's true; he "hides it well," as it were. That doesn't diminish his suffering in any way, of course — it simply means that he's found ways (and help) to deal with it in a way that doesn't affect his public persona.

Second of all, and related, this post from January of last year by me. I shan't talk about that post too specifically right now since you can just go and read it, but I did want to contemplate the subject a little further today, as reading Jeff's post shortly after he published it (and undoubtedly went back and forth on whether or not he should share it with the world) got me thinking.

I am a lot better than I was. I hit my lowest ebb just over two years ago when my wife and I decided to split. I won't go into the specific details of that right now, but suffice to say that it was a mutual decision by the pair of us that was partly a consequence of, ironically, my own depression. I had left a job I hated, gone to PAX East for the first time (and had an amazing time) and then came back home to no job, no prospects and a thoroughly bleak outlook for the future. Depression at my situation (which was at least partially self-inflicted, I will freely admit — I could have stuck at the job I left, but it probably wouldn't have been good for me at all) sapped my motivation and just made me want to curl up into my own private little world and not talk to anyone. It wasn't the first time it had happened to me. It was a recurring pattern. And, realistically, there are times when it will likely happen again in the future.

The one thing that people don't seem to mention about depression is that it can be addictive. Sometimes, when given the choice between 1) getting up to do something positive that you know will make yourself feel better and 2) slumping on the sofa staring at an interesting spot on the wall for several hours, all your brain wants to do is 2). It gets into the habit of doing 2) and it becomes a natural, conditioned response to anything that upsets you or frustrates you. Over time, it gets harder and harder to not do 2) even though there's usually at least a small rational part of your brain saying "STOP IT! STOP IT! STOP IT!" That rational part gets drowned out by the bit going "staring at the wall is comforting, safe, and you won't have to talk to any people."

Getting over that stage is the difficult part. Fighting against the desire to do nothing and wallow in your own self-pity is one of the hardest things anyone suffering from depression has to do. Only then can you figure out exactly what to do when you pull yourself up off the floor/bed/sofa and make a conscious decision to do… something. Whether that's simply trying to "get on with your life" or actively seeking help to if not "cure" your condition then at least improve it.

Sometimes even the most straightforward tasks can be made to feel like insurmountable obstacles to those suffering a depressive episode. That in itself can cause people to feel ashamed of their condition and not want to talk about it. Thankfully, I've seen a heartening trend recently: people overcoming the stigma attached to talking about mental health issues and publicly baring their souls about these important topics. Jeff Green's post is just the latest example of people with higher profiles than me publicly "coming out", as it were, and talking about this aspect of themselves that, however unpleasant it may be, helps define the person that they are.

Feeling able to write about it publicly and talk about it face-to-face are two very different things, however. I know that personally speaking, I still find it difficult to talk about depression with anyone except my very closest friends, but I'll happily (perhaps the wrong word, there) post things like this to an (admittedly small) audience the world over.

The important thing to remember if you have ever suffered from depression, though, is that you most certainly are not alone and that there is nothing to be ashamed of. You may hate the condition and what it does to you, but that doesn't mean you should hate yourself or feel you should lock yourself away in isolation. On the contrary, you should seek out people you feel able to talk about it with and then get some things off your chest. And you should seek help if you need it.

#oneaday Day 895: Clip Show, Part 2

That's right. Not only am I doing my own personal "clip show" (which actually proved a surprising amount of effort to compile yesterday), I am also making it a two-parter. Oh yes. Today's look back looks at some posts from my first forays into daily posting and beyond.

For the uninitiated, the whole One A Day thing came about towards the beginning of 2010. A number of writers from diverse corners of the Internet decided to try their hand at posting something on their blog every single day. I came to the whole thing a little late — my first post was on January 19 — but have kept it up ever since, which, it has to be said, is more than can be said for the vast majority of participants in the 2010 experiment. (The only other one I'm aware of who is still going is Play Magazine's Ian Dransfield, who remains consistently ahead of me in terms of "number of posts", though has resorted to the "miss a few days and catch up later" strategy a few times.)

Anyhow, the guiding principle of One A Day was very simple: just write. No rules, no minimum length, no set topics, just write. For you. If other people happened to enjoy it, so much the better, but it was primarily an exercise in churning out content on a regular basis and keeping those "writing muscles" well and truly exercised.

It's been an interesting experiment for me, as the things I've talked about on here have grown and changed over time according to my life situation and my own mental state. In the early days, for example, I was very much of the opinion that my career in the teaching profession was probably going to kill me, but I was also excited by the fact that I was going to escape my (temporary) position in time to go to PAX East. PAX East, as it turned out, was an amazing experience and remains, to this day, my Favourite Thing I've Ever Done.

It was around this time that I found myself with a lot of free time on my hands. I'd left my job and didn't have anything else to go to, and I was (foolishly, as it turned out) hoping that I'd be able to support myself with freelance writing and private music teaching. I got a bit of income coming in thanks to the fine folks at Kombo.com (most of whom I now count among my most beloved online friends) but that, unfortunately, didn't last forever.

Neither, to use a hideous segue that I don't particularly like thinking about, did my marriage. I was an absolute fucking wreck as a result of the events which came to a head in May of 2010, though in retrospect it helped me produce some fine, emotional work such as — bear with me — this rather personal ode to a bacon sandwich. It also encouraged me to unscrew my head and put it on a different way just to try and stop myself thinking about Bad Things. Or just to get really, really pissed and then take stock of the disastrous attempts at texting and social media I'd made while inebriated. Let's do itcagsin sometime.

Fortunately, I had Stick-Pete to keep my mind off things. (His first appearance was here.) Stick-Pete was a conscious decision to try and give my blog a distinctive aesthetic, and I make no secret of the fact that my decision to incorporate poorly-drawn visuals rather than the stock photography I'd been using previously was entirely due to my discovery of Allie Brosh's rather wonderful blog Hyperbole and a Half, which I extolled the virtues of here. I was initially worried that people might think I was ripping off Brosh's work, but I developed my own distinctive look over time which has, itself, changed and adapted as time goes on.

Stick-Pete and a series of characters I plucked out of my imagination seemingly at random were excellent ways to clumsily illustrate the things I was writing about, and a number of posts were designed with illustration in mind, such as this guide on How To Laugh on the Internet. Certain characters were, I noticed, making appearances more regularly than others, so I thought it would be an interesting experiment to start drawing a comic to illustrate my posts. Here's the first post in which that appeared. I kept that up for a surprisingly long time, though eventually guilt at not being able to post if I went away for a weekend (my comic-making tools of choice were on my non-portable Mac) got the better of me and I eventually stopped. Now I just feel guilty that Alex, Lucy and Phillipe aren't getting regular outings and opportunities to insult me, so it's entirely possible they may return at some point in the near future. (If you have no idea what I'm talking about, this post from the start of 2011 helpfully reintroduced them all.)

As time went on, the years passed and my life situation started to gradually improve once again, so I tried a couple of things, some of which you'll find linked to in the sidebar. Wasteland Diaries was a 30-day "improvised narrative" experiment, for example, in which I attempted to write a coherent(ish) story over the course of a month, similar to what those NaNoWriMo people do. (I had wanted to participate in NaNoWriMo for a while, but various circumstances had always made it impractical. This was my less-structured, less-disciplined approach — but I saw it through.)

I also cemented my view that writing on this 'ere blog was a good personal outlet. Obviously I don't mean that in the sense that I use it to badmouth people (I don't! You can look back and check!) but rather that it was a good place to get things out of my head and onto "paper" — things that other people might feel somehow "ashamed" to talk about. One such subject was the visual novel Katawa Shoujo which is, for those of you who don't know, a rather wonderful interactive love story set in a Japanese school for the disabled. It was a fascinating, well-written game worthy of some deep analysis and criticism, so not only did the Squadron of Shame take it on for a lengthy podcast, but I also felt inspired to write about it a great deal. It touched me deeply, and the subjects explored therein resonated hugely with me. I'm not disabled, but a lot of the underlying themes in the game's various narrative branches were actually nothing to do with the characters' disabilities, and really got me thinking.

As you can see, I've been busy. And somehow there's been something to write about every day, even if it hasn't been very interesting. (For that I make no apologies. Although I seem to have picked up a small but dedicated readership over time, I'm still writing this primarily for my own benefit.) There's plenty more interesting times in the future — good and bad, no doubt — so I'll look forward to sharing them (or avoiding thinking about them) via this page for a long time to come yet, I hope.

Now, to just resist the temptation not to post tomorrow and make everyone believe I'm dead…

Hah. Just kidding. Writing this blog is so entrenched in my daily routine now that I'm not convinced I could give it up, even if I wanted to. So like it or not, you're stuck with me. (And thanks for sticking around this long. Incidentally, if you want some more links to past material, here's another "clip show"-type post. Enjoy.)

#oneaday Day 894: Clip Show

Clip episodes are TV shows' way of making a low-budget episode and not having to worry about being the slightest bit creative.

After 893 previous daily blog posts and having just been on my Couch to 5K run for the evening, I'm knackered and can't think of much to write about, so I'm going to do my very own clip show. In the process, I will highlight some posts from the past that you may have missed. There are likely to be a lot of these, as this blog currently has 953 posts on it (893 of which are, as previously mentioned, posted at daily intervals) so you would be forgiven for having not seen some of them in the past. (If, on the other hand, you have seen each and every one of these posts because you're good enough to read them daily, first of all, God bless you, and second of all… uh… thanks.)

I started blogging on this site back in July of 2008. I'd tried keeping a blog on a couple of other sites in the past — here's one from 2005 (composed almost entirely on a Nokia N-Gage, believe it or not) and here's another from the year prior on the subject of my experiences as a secondary school teacher. (The latter was a spinoff from a series of emails I used to send family and friends while I was training to be a teacher.) I did used to have a self-hosted blog on my own personal domain, too, but that is long since defunct. This ol' WordPress site here is probably my most long-standing web presence that is still actually updated. Which is nice.

Prior to starting posting things daily… well, things were pretty much the same as they are now. I'd post on a range of topics from video game-related business to board games, the death of a beloved family pet and even trying my hand at music review blogging. (The linked post there actually led to me being specifically invited along to another band's performance a short while later — the "review" in question is here.)

I've spent some time in curious virtual world Second Life over the years, and in February of 2009 I wrote a couple of posts on the subject — firstly, on the subject of virtual worlds in general, and secondly on the subject of how your on-screen persona can affect your own self-perception. You'll doubtless notice some parallels with my recent post on why I play as women in video games. I still find Second Life fascinating, sleazy elements and all, though I haven't paid it a visit for a very long time. Some of the people in that crazy world provided great comfort to me in lonely periods and just writing this is making me feel a bit bad that, to them, I must have just upped and vanished one day. Perhaps I'll return sometime — though whether it's as my male "real me" or female "total escapism" avatar I couldn't say! I certainly used to enjoy the whole "CG artwork" aspect of it, where I'd take pictures of things in the virtual world and then mangle them beyond recognition in Photoshop. (A great way to learn how to do crazy things in Photoshop, incidentally.)

In April of 2009, I revisited a game I used to play on the Atari 8-bit: Alternate Reality: The City. When I originally played it, I had no idea what a role-playing game was or what I was supposed to be doing. In 2009, I was armed with The Internet and a map I'd printed out, so was much better-equipped to go on some adventures. This post chronicled one character's ill-fated expedition into the cheerily-named city of Xebec's Demise, and I like to think it gives the reader a good feel for what this unusual game is all about.

A month later, I remembered that the "pictorial story" idea I'd done with Alternate Reality was rather fun (if time-consuming), and decided to give it another shot, this time with The Sims 3. Remembering my previous post on evil in games, I figured it would be interesting to see how messed-up it was possible to make a Sim. Very, as it happens; the many and varied mundane adventures of Lars the Bastard will attest to this fact.

You may remember the spammers' craze for sending bizarre narrative emails with unsubtly-embedded pornographic exhortations within from around September 2009. I took it upon myself to compile some of them and see if anything coherent came out. Nothing did, as you can see.

In December of 2009, I discovered Warhammer Quest. I also discovered the joy of writing down the emergent narrative which comes about during a game session of a theme-heavy board game such as Warhammer Quest. The result of this initial experiment was The Adventures of Count Kurt von Hellstrom and Company, a saga which hopefully will continue someday — though I haven't had the chance to play Warhammer Quest since writing that post, I don't think.

And in January of 2010, I started posting entries daily. But that's another story. And I'll compile a selection of my favourite One A Day posts for tomorrow's entry. I bet you can't wait.