2393: The Drugs Sometimes Work

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Early last year, shortly after I lost my job at raging shithole SSE for reasons at least partly linked to my depression and anxiety, I decided enough was enough and went to the doctor to seek some chemical help with my mental health issues. I was prescribed a drug called Sertraline, which I dutifully took for well over a year.

I can’t quite tell whether or not Sertraline had any effect; I think on the whole, it did improve my mental health somewhat — although this may well be a placebo effect — though it didn’t “cure” it. There is no such thing as a magic bullet that will “cure” depression and anxiety, unfortunately; if there were, whichever drug company was able to churn it out by the ton first would doubtless become the first “megacorporation” with all the proceeds, and we’d officially be living in even more of a futuristic dystopia than we do already.

One thing I found while on Sertraline though, and I don’t know if this was the drug causing the problem or my own overactively anxious imagination, was that I had great difficulty sleeping. I’d lie awake until 3, 4 in the morning most nights, unable to get to sleep until my body was so exhausted it simply shut down. Prior to that, my brain would be rapidly darting back and forth between all manner of different thoughts — some worries, some desires, some recollections, some pure fantasies — and be far too “alert” to allow me to properly switch myself off and get some much-needed rest.

I persevered with this for probably far longer than I should have, but eventually, once again, I decided that enough was enough, and I wanted to try something new. I’d seen some positive effects on someone (who shall remain nameless for the moment) who had exhibited similar symptoms to me at times when switching from Sertraline to another drug called Mirtazapine, so I went to my doctor armed with this knowledge and asked to switch to see how I got on.

Like the other person, the difference was night and day. While Mirtazapine is also no “magic bullet” to completely alleviate depression and anxiety, one of the things that was bothering me the most — the inability to sleep, and the anxiety this caused — is “fixed”. I can go to bed at a reasonable hour now and actually get to sleep when I choose to put my head down. Rather than constantly worrying that I don’t know “how” to get to sleep — which is something that continually bothered me while I was on Sertraline, and possibly beforehand, too — I can just, you know, sleep without thinking about it, like a normal human being.

This has made quite a difference to my overall outlook on life. Getting a decent night’s sleep is important, and as soon as you start getting it again having endured a period where you haven’t had it, you really appreciate it.

Plus Mirtazapine gave me about a week of feeling perpetually stoned and having some incredibly vivid, crazy dreams, too, so if nothing else it was worth it for that experience.

2384: Turbo Kid: The Best ’80s Movie That Wasn’t Made in the ’80s

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After repeated exhortations of extremely enthusiastic approval from my friend Tom, I decided to watch the movie Turbo Kid this evening on Netflix. I was not disappointed.

Turbo Kid is a study in contradictions. It’s a movie that is a perfect recreation of 1980s action flicks, but it was made in 2015. It’s not a comedy, but it’s hilarious. It is, at heart, simplistic and straightforward, but nonetheless compelling and thought-provoking. More than anything, though, it’s terrible, but it’s stunningly brilliant.

Turbo Kid is set in the apocalyptic far-off future wastelands of the year 1997, where some awful disaster that isn’t really explained (but was probably something to do with the Cold War and/or robots) has turned everything to shit. Our story centres around a nameless young boy, known only as The Kid, who was orphaned early in the post-apocalyptic period, but who has, against all odds, managed to survive in the wasteland through scavenging and keeping his childish hopes and dreams alive through vintage comics about his favourite superhero, Turbo Rider.

Early in the movie, The Kid meets Apple, who initially seems to be a charmingly dimwitted young girl, but subsequently is revealed to be a robot, because ’80s movie. Apple is dying thanks to getting hit in a skirmish, and The Kid, who after some initial reluctance to even be around her having been alone for so long, agrees to help her find some replacement parts before her “heart gauge” (rather beautifully depicted in Zelda-style pixel art on an embedded display in her wrist) runs out and she deactivates forever.

I’ll spare you the rest of the details, but suffice to say, The Kid finds himself taking on the role of Turbo Rider to the best of his capabilities, and there are plenty of ridiculous action scenes along the way, not to mention a particularly loathsome villain in the form of self-appointed wasteland baron “Zeus” — who of course has a connection with The Kid, because ’80s movie.

I was reading an article in a GamePro from a couple of years ago the other day, and someone — I forget who offhand, but I think it was someone like Tim Schafer or his ilk — made the very good point that the best comedy is made of juxtapositions, most commonly the juxtaposition of serious words with silly visuals, or vice-versa. Turbo Kid is pretty much entirely designed around this philosophy: it takes itself very seriously and never, at any point, winks knowingly at the audience to go “DIDYA SEE THAT?!”. Instead, it makes use of the exact same techniques ’80s action movies did to juxtapose the ridiculous with the deadly serious: terrible, extremely obvious special effects; excessive amounts of blood and gore; unnecessary swearing at the most bizarre moments; but, at heart, a rather touching story of a kid who realises he doesn’t want to be alone in the world any more.

Of particular note is the blood and gore, of which there is lots, but it’s so insanely exaggerated — again, like the best worst ’80s action flicks — that it’s impossible to feel grossed out by it. In one scene, a man gets his face thrust into the spinning blades of a blender. In another, someone gets his guts pulled out by them being attached to the back wheel of a bicycle (in this particular post-apocalyptic future, everyone rides pedal bikes — which sort of makes sense, when you think about it, as fuel would eventually run out). In the climactic battle scene, the dismembered torso and legs of two other enemy grunts become firmly lodged on the head of a third enemy. And, of course, Turbo Rider/Kid’s unique gadget is a device on his wrist that immediately causes anyone it is pointed at to explode into a fine red paste.

Turbo Kid really benefits from being written and constructed as an ’80s action flick, without any fourth wall-breaking self-awareness going on. In being designed this way, it provides commentary on how desensitised to violence we are these days — many of the more gory scenes in the film would likely have got the movie banned as a “video nasty” back in the ’80s — while at the same time pointing out how far popular culture has supposedly come in the last 30+ years. Or you can look at it another way: it can be interpreted as a fond look back at the ’80s, when not all entertainment was expected to have some sort of socially aware “message” behind it (with the possible exception of children’s cartoons, which tended to lampshade these messages extremely obviously) and it could sometimes just be about many boys’ childish fantasies: the ability to point at a bad guy and have them explode into goo.

If you have an hour and a half to spare, then, be sure to check out Turbo Kid on Netflix. If you grew up in the ’80s and/or you enjoyed Far Cry: Blood Dragon (which is a similarly hilarious but loving homage to the more ridiculous side of ’80s popular media), you will very much appreciate what it has to offer.

2381: Awareness is Half the Battle

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Remember a few days ago I wrote about my own particular take on “creative block”?

Turns out the simple act of explicitly acknowledging the fact I’m aware of this issue with my own attention span has helped me to do something about it.

In the times when I’ve been working on my RPG Maker MV project, I’ve been considerably more productive than I have been in the past, with far less staring into space and far more in the way of map-making. The current map count for the project now stands at 72, which means I’m well over halfway to assembling the first of the five “worlds” in the game, which is also likely to be the most complex and largest, and so a good idea to get out of the way first. (I know I’m well over halfway because I’ve mapped out what I want the final overall map to look like on paper, and numbered each of the individual “rooms”.)

I’ve also found this awareness to be very helpful when doing actual work rather than just pissing around with RPG Maker. I’ve finally had some freelance work start flowing in again, and I’ve been managing to sit down and concentrate on it enough to get it done efficiently and in plenty of time to submit for the deadline without having to do a last-minute rush on everything. (Even when I did a last-minute rush, I always got stuff in on time, mind you; it was just rather more stressful than it really needed to be.)

Whether this new way of thinking will stick around — and, for that matter, if it’s anything to do with the new anti-anxiety drugs I’m on, which have just about stopped making me feel perpetually stoned now, thankfully — remains to be seen, but I’m going to take full advantage of it while it’s here, and maybe even get a creative project or two actually finished. That’d be something, eh?

Incidentally, I’m not quite ready to reveal the full extent of my RPG Maker MV project as yet, since its very nature is something I’d like to keep as a bit of a surprise for some of my friends. Over the coming weeks as things start to come together, though, you can expect a few teasers of what I’ve been up to. I will, however, say up front that I’ve mostly been using RPG Maker MV’s stock art resources with it (albeit with some lovely lighting effects courtesy of a wonderful plugin), because that always seems to be something that people whinge about with RPG Maker projects, even those just done for “fun” like this one. I am hoping, however, that the story, the writing, the characters and the humour in it will more than make up for my own lack of artistic talent and consequent reliance on provided art resources.

There’s also going to be some great music in it; some of it stock RPG Maker tracks (RPG Maker MV’s provided music is seriously way too good not to include at least some of it!) and some provided by members of the RPG Maker community. If I’m feeling particularly adventurous, I might even compose some of my own work for it, but let’s take things one step at a time, shall we…?

2379: Two Cats

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After the sad departure of Clover a little while back, it wasn’t long before Andie and I decided that it was far too quiet in the house without a pet around. It was surprising quite how much “presence” Clover and her predecessors had had in the house, and indeed it felt rather empty without her.

So it was that we headed off to the Stubbington Ark, a local RSPCA-run animal shelter, where we went “just for a look” at the cats they had up for adoption.

Naturally, we immediately found not one but two cats that we wanted to take home with us, and so we decided to set things in motion sooner rather than later. A couple of days later, a representative from the RSPCA was sniffing around our house to make sure we weren’t some sort of cat-killing psychopaths, and thankfully we got the all-clear; then yesterday, we got to pick up our new friends and listen to them howling at us from inside the cat carrier while we drove them home.

This is Ruby:

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And this is Meg, which we’ve decided is actually short for Megatron. (If we were able to name our own cats, we were going to call them Patrick Stewart and Megatron, but Ruby and Meg both already had names, so Meg will just have to deal with being an effeminate Megatron on occasion.)

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They’ve both settled in very well, very quickly. The spare room is now “their” room, so far as they’re concerned, and they’re already finding the best places to sit and be in the way as much as possible.

We also had the inevitable “new pet scare” on the very first day we had them; Meg managed to jump out of a window that was only open a crack, and went for a little explore outside. Thankfully, she came back of her own accord after a few minutes, and we’re now sweltering in a house with no open windows while they get fully accustomed to their new home. It’s a rite of passage with every new pet that something like that has to happen, it seems; when we got Lucy rat she decided to pretend to be dead ten minutes after we got her home, which was mildly upsetting (though in retrospect it was probably to try and get Lara off her back, because Lara was fussing over her to a ridiculous degree); and pretty much all of the other rats managed to escape their cage quite early in their time with us and hide under various items of furniture.

So yes. We now have cats. Friendly cats. If you visit us, be prepared for that!

2377: Creative Block

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I don’t tend to suffer from creative block in the traditional sense: there’s never any shortage of interesting ideas rattling around inside my head (particularly while I adjust to my new anti-anxiety medication and consequently am wandering around in a perpetually stoned haze) — it’s just actually pushing forward and making them tangible in some form that I sometimes struggle with.

I’ll explain using RPG Maker as an example, but this applies to all manner of creative pursuits: music composition, writing, drawing and anything else I feel I might be able to turn my hand to on a particular day.

I’ll sit down to spend some time with RPG Maker, with something in mind that I want to achieve. In the case of my current project, I’ve even gone so far as to hand-draw some grid-based maps for the worlds in the game — pretty much essential for the structure I have in mind for at least two of the worlds players will be exploring, due to their open-ish nature. In other words, I have a clearly defined long-term goal to achieve: presently, it’s assembling all the necessary screen-size maps and ensuring all transitions are in place for the world of “Lucidia”, which is one of the four locales players will be exploring in the course of my game. I decided to assemble all the exterior maps before I even start thinking about putting obstacles, game structure, dungeons and events in place. Sensible, I think.

Anyway. When I sit down to do some mapping, I might put together a complete, nice looking map, then stare at it for a good ten minutes or so while I think about what the next screen will look like. Then I might playtest my game, even though I’ve already playtested it lots of times already, just to get the satisfaction of wandering back and forth between the new screen and existing screens. Then I’ll probably stare at it for a good few minutes, and only when I can break through this barrier of daydreaming what comes next will I actually produce the next map.

Having an awareness of this is somewhat infuriating, because it means it takes several times longer to achieve the things I want to do than it really “should” if I focus and knuckle down to it. That said, since becoming particularly aware of this trait over the last few days — I’ve always had a vague awareness of it, but over the last few days I’ve been noticing it particularly keenly for some reason — I’ve noticed my overall productivity on the project has increased quite a bit. I’ve so far assembled nearly a third of the overall map for Lucidia — a total of 53 separate screens so far, including the linear “prologue” chapter — and am feeling a lot more confident than I normally do with a creative project of this type that I might actually finish it, or at least the part I’m currently working on, at some point.

To put it another way, my own personal type of creative block is not for a want of inspiration; rather, it’s a matter of being overloaded with too much inspiration at once, and wanting to do everything all at the same time, eventually ending up doing nothing at all other than staring into space thinking “well, this should probably go like this…”

In this sense, this blog has proven to be an invaluable tool to help train myself in that I can normally churn out a whole post in one go without stopping or getting distracted in the middle. Normally. There may be a brief period of apparent brain-death while I decide on a particular topic for the day’s post, but generally speaking once I get going on a post, it flows pretty freely until I reach the end of it.

And here’s the end of it right now. I’m going to go and make some maps now. Honest.

2371: Bad Education

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My favourite thing about Netflix is the fact that it allows you to try out various series that you might not have thought to take a look at when they were on TV, nor do you feel inclined to go and pick up a DVD or Blu-Ray of them, but which nonetheless intrigued you for one reason or another. Because you’re not paying for the series itself — it’s just part of your Netflix subscription — you can try things out, and if they’re shit, well, you just stop watching them; and if they’re good, you can enjoy them to your heart’s content on your own terms.

Such was the case with Bad Education, a show originally broadcast on BBC Three. Something being broadcast on BBC Three is more often than not an immediate signal that it’s going to be shit, but since I’ve always had a certain affinity for media of any kind — books, games, films, TV series, anime, visual novels — set in a school environment, I was very much curious about it. And I’ve been pleased to discover that it’s actually not shit. It’s actually some pretty solid — and unabashedly offensive — situation comedy, albeit almost totally divorced from the reality of working in education.

Jack Whitehall stars as Alfie Wickers, an incompetent History teacher who seems rather more concerned with being friends with his (unrealistically small!) form group than actually doing his job properly. Nonetheless, he does care about the kids’ education in his own way, with many of his escapades concluding in some sort of life lesson being learned by them — or, more frequently, by him.

Alfie’s class is probably the highlight of the show, because it’s the most believable, realistic part of it, miniscule size aside. Speaking from the perspective of a former teacher, I can say with confidence that they’re the very picture of the class that every school has who are a bit shit at everything — apart from one extremely clever student, whose very presence at a school as shit as that seems completely out of place — but you can’t help but like. They remind me very much of class 9VN that I taught in the first school I worked in; for the first few weeks, I thought they were complete shitheads and would never get anything done with them, so appalling was their behaviour and attitude towards Music lessons… and then we discovered that they had a curious affinity for singing songs from musicals. So that’s what we did. Or rather, that’s what most of them did, while I set the few kids who were actually interested in studying music at GCSE and beyond to some other assignments. The class as a whole ended up being one of the few I actually look back on with a certain degree of fondness.

As for the show itself, it’s very much a comedy with a certain degree of surrealism to it. In the second season in particular, it reminds me very much of the gloriously bizarre Green Wing, especially due to the presence of Michelle Gomez, who was also in Green Wing and plays pretty much the exact same character in Bad Education. Its seeming homage to Green Wing is emphasised through chaotic, time-distorted interstitial scenes with heavy visual filters on them to denote the passing of time or the simple division between story beats in the episode — though this only really becomes a thing in the second series, where the show as a whole seems to have a much stronger sense of its identity and what it’s trying to do.

The supporting cast is solid, too. Matthew Horne’s woefully terrible (and “banter”-obsessed) headmaster Fra$er [sic] is cringeworthy in the extreme in a sort of David Brent manner, but somehow just manages to stay the right side of believable within the context of the show. Harry Enfield is excellent as Alfie’s father. And Sarah Solemani’s portrayal of Wickers’ love interest Rosie Gulliver brings a much-needed “straight man” to the proceedings, though her characterisation is a bit meandering — in particular, her short-lived dalliance with a lesbian side-plot doesn’t really go anywhere, and the show subsequently returns to the admittedly solid foundation of the “will they, won’t they” relationship between her and Alfie that has been the basis of many a successful sitcom over the years.

Bad Education isn’t the best show on television by a long shot, but it’s laugh out loud funny, well cast and snappily written. For a BBC Three show, it’s god-tier. For something you just want to whack on while you veg out in front of the television, it’s solid. As a scathing critique of the modern educational system in the UK, you may want to look elsewhere!

2369: Farewell to Clover, Last of the Rats

Hi Clover. You left us today, and that made me very sad. I’m sure it made you sad, too, but we both knew that it was time for you to go. I actually thought you were going to leave us yesterday, as you looked tired and miserable, but you hung on until today, because you’d always been a stubborn little thing. I’d like to think you clung on to life for a bit longer because you didn’t want to leave us, either — as the last of our rats, you’d be leaving us alone — but I guess I’ll never know how you really felt.

I can tell you how we felt, though, and how I felt. We loved you very much, and you will be sorely missed. Night-time won’t be the same without the sound of you scuffling around in your cage in the dark and eating things in the crunchiest way possible while we’re trying to sleep. And I’ll miss the way you’d always come up to the door of the cage when we came to see you — not just because we’d usually give you a treat, but because you liked our company, too.

I won’t speak for Andie, as I’m sure she has her own things she wants to say to you in private, but I’ll tell you how I felt. I’ll tell you a secret, in fact; out of the five rats we’ve had over the last few years, I loved each and every one of you to absolute pieces, but you were — don’t tell the others — my favourite. I fell in love with you the moment I saw you in the pet shop. You were patterned a bit like your predecessor Lara, who had passed away and left her cagemate Lucy all alone, but you had an adorable scruffiness to your fur; I could never quite tell if you were actually scruffy or if it was just that you had slightly longer, fluffier fur than other rats.

Whatever the reason, I knew I wanted you to be our friend, along with your friend Socks, whose own unique adorable feature was the fact her shiny grey-brown coat had an enticingly fluffy white bit on her belly. And while, like all rats, it took you a while to get out of that initial stage of seeming absolute terror at everything, you quickly became friendly, getting on well both with us and with Lucy, by now an old lady rat who had clearly been pining for some company ever since Lara left us.

Out of you and Socks, I could never quite tell if you were “the smart one” or not. Socks always seemed to get up to more mischief than you, but I’m pretty sure you did your own scheming on the sly when we weren’t looking. You certainly knew how to give us an irresistible, pleading look that would almost always result in you getting a treat of some description, but I like to think you thought of others too. You were always there for me when I needed you, and when I wanted to talk — when things were going badly, when I felt all alone, or when it was the middle of the night and I just couldn’t get to sleep — you’d always come and listen, never judging, never answering back (and, I choose to believe, not just because you couldn’t) and always making me feel better.

I’m sorry life became such hard work for you towards the end, but I’m grateful that you hung on for us as long as you did. You were well over two and a half years old when you left us, which is super-old in rat terms, and I’d like to think that you stuck around as long as you did, despite your declining health, because you knew how much you were loved, both by Andie and by me.

I’ll miss you, Clover, just as I miss Socks, Lucy, Lara and Willow every day. I love you all very much and I hope that wherever you go after you leave us, you have a happy time, free of fear and adversity, full of treats and bursting with eternal joy.

Goodbye, Clover. And thank you for being such a special part of my life. I’ll never forget you.

2365: If I Had a Million Quid

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An awful lot of my anxieties come down to money issues. I’ve always found financial matters to be inordinately stressful, largely because there haven’t been that many periods of my life where I’ve felt particularly “secure” in this regard.

There have been a few, admittedly. When I was teaching, the pay was great, whatever other teachers might say, but unfortunately it was not worth the life-crippling stress that the rest of the job gave me. So that was out.

One of the retail jobs I had actually paid very well, too, which is unusual for retail, but probably not surprising for the company in question, who I won’t name for the moment (at least partly because I wouldn’t mind them hiring me again, please) and also perhaps not surprising given that my role wasn’t exactly traditional “sales assistant” stuff.

Then there was my work for GamePro and USgamer, which to date have been my favourite jobs, not to mention the ones I think I’ve been best at. Unfortunately, neither of those were to last; GamePro because it folded, and USgamer because of general behind the scenes assholery.

Then there was SSE, which I will name because it was a health and safety-obsessed shithole staffed with some of the most odious people I’ve ever had the misfortune to work with. Again, pay good, but the working environment — very much a culture of fearmongering and whistleblowing — was horrible.

The freelance work I’m doing at the moment also pays pretty well, but unfortunately it’s very sporadic; at the time of writing I haven’t had any for a while, so pennies are running a bit short. Andie is at least back to work now so our household will have some income again, but I am very much in need of a regular source of income.

Money anxieties naturally lead me to fantasising about what I’d do if I won the lottery, because that would take away a considerable number of the things that stress me the fuck out each and every day. It’s almost certainly never going to happen, of course, but it’s nice to dream.

If I won the lottery, I wouldn’t do anything outrageously huge. I have a few things in mind that I’d definitely do immediately: I’d pay off the mortgage on our house, I’d pay off my car and I’d clear my credit card. Then I’d probably buy an HTC Vive VR headset. And from there? Well, I wouldn’t really do anything else. I’d just live my life in the house I’m in, safe in the knowledge that I won’t have to worry about money again. I’d do the things I want to do rather than feel like I have to do; I’d write, I’d make music, I’d make games, I’d play games. I wouldn’t feel that crushing sense of guilt any time I do any of those things now because I wouldn’t be under any sort of pressure to do something more “productive” and “useful” (i.e. something that pays money) with my time.

To be honest, the dream of just living normally, only without having to worry about money — that’s far more appealing and exciting to me than any grand designs to buy a country manor or a sports car or a holiday home in exotic climes that other people often claim will be their lottery dream. Perhaps it says something about me that the only real “ambition” I have is to be comfortable and secure; opulence would be fun, I’m sure, but security is what’s going to keep you happy in the long term.

2360: A Life Without Social Media is a Life Without Pointless Outrage and Guilt

I poked my head on to Twitter earlier — not to participate or engage, because I think I’ve well and truly broken my former addiction to it, but instead simply to share the article on Ys that I spent all day writing.

Literally immediately — and yes, I do mean literally — I saw someone indulging in one of the reasons I stopped wanting to use Twitter in the first place: pointless, unnecessary handwringing and guilt over things that were nothing to do with them.

The person in question, whom I had previously thought to be a fairly level-headed, rational sort of individual, went on an 8-tweet tirade about how awful the 4th of July was and how Americans enjoying and celebrating what has become nothing more than a holiday — regardless of its history — was somehow racist.

I closed the tab straight after I shared the link to my work, because frankly I don’t have time for that shit.

One might argue that it’s a good thing the Internet has supposedly made us all more socially responsible and aware of all the terrible things in the world — and perhaps it is. However, one thing the Internet very rarely does is actually do anything about these terrible things in the world. Whether it’s people changing their Facebook avatars to “raise awareness” for a charity (I think they’d rather have your bank details, thanks), someone painting their nails in protest against the amorphous concept of “toxic masculinity” or flaccid “protests” against whatever the issue du jour is, Internet activism achieves absolutely nothing whatsoever.

Actually, no, that’s not true — it does achieve something. But it’s not anything good.

The only thing Internet activism achieves is to drive wedges between people — alienating people from one another, and drawing very, very clear battle lines that you can only ever be on one side or the other of. Us and them. The “right side of history” and its respective “wrong side”. If you’re not with us, you’re against us. That sort of thing.

The inherently divisive nature of self-proclaimed activists’ behaviour online has had an overall enormously negative impact on online discourse as a whole. As I noted in my post where I decided to set Twitter aside, people who believe strongly in things (or at least consider themselves to believe strongly in things) have a tendency to take an “I’m right, you’re wrong” approach with no middle ground. And this is true for everyone who holds strong opinions on one thing or another, whether it’s “censorship” in games, the supposed epidemic of “misogyny” that the Internet is suffering, or who they think should win the Presidential election.

The general unwillingness to take other people’s perspectives into account has ruined all sense of rational discourse on social media. Okay, that might be a slight exaggeration, but it’s certainly soured the experience for me; social media of all types (with the exception of this blog, if that counts, which I don’t really feel it does) had just stopped being fun, and seeing that string of tweets today the moment I opened the Twitter page drove it home for me. There was a stark contrast between this and the private conversation I was having with my friend Chris at the time, whereby we disagreed on our opinions regarding the video game Limbo — he liked it, I hated it — and somehow, magically, managed to do so without feeling the need to convince the other person that they were wrong. We simply enjoy different things, and talking about those things you don’t have in common as much as the things you do makes for some of the most interesting conversations.

You can enjoy your life, or you can spend your time getting pointlessly angry about things and people on the Internet. I’ve got games to play and things to write, so I know which one I choose.

2352: Fuzzy Head

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I’ve had a horrible, fuzzy head today. I don’t mean physically — although after getting my hair cut yesterday, my head is a bit fuzzy — but rather a not terribly pleasant feeling of “detachment”; of being slightly “out of phase” with the rest of the world. And a slight headache.

I’ve felt this before, and it’s usually a symptom of depression and anxiety. In this instance, the fact I haven’t been sleeping well for the past few nights and am feeling especially worried about my future have been contributing particularly to the way I’m feeling. It’s not nice, so after writing this I’m going to go and sit in bed and relax with a bit of Ys: Memories of Celceta, then try and actually get off to sleep at a reasonable time if at all possible.

I actually have a job interview tomorrow. As usual when this happens, I’m being struck with anxiety over whether or not I’m actually suitable for the job and whether or not I’m going to make an idiot of myself in the interview. (Mind you, last time I thought I made an idiot of myself in the interview I ended up getting the job. Of course, that turned out to be the worst job I’d ever had, but that’s perhaps beside the point.) The thing I’ve been telling myself — and Andie said the same earlier — is that if I looked completely unqualified and unsuitable for this job, the company wouldn’t have got in touch and offered me an interview in the first place. This isn’t any guarantee that I’ll actually get the position, of course — given the geographical location, I’m not sure I’d want it, anyway, as it would mean a bit of a commute each day — but we’ll see.

All in all, I haven’t had a particularly good day. Not for any particular reason — nothing actually bad has happened, I just feel shitty.

Such is the way of things when your own mind likes to do its best to sabotage your life and happiness, though.

Oh well. All I can do, I guess, is take tomorrow as it comes and see how it goes. It’s not as if the interview I have tomorrow is the only iron I have in the fire at the moment, so it doesn’t really matter one way or the other as to whether I get it. But, you know, getting back into a routine and actually having an income would be nice.

One step at a time.