1739: Birthday Cake

It's my colleague's birthday tomorrow. She's bringing in cake — or, more likely, doughnuts, since most of our team is currently scattered far and wide (two of them on another site, one of them on holiday) — because That Is What's Done Now.

Both she and I discussed this today, and neither of us were sure where this strange tradition came from — but tradition it seemingly is: when it's your birthday, you are the one who has to bring cake in.

This seems completely counter-intuitive to me, particularly as birthdays are typically accompanied by people buying you a card and, if you're actually liked by your colleagues and peers, a present or two as well. Is it that unreasonable for the one mourning the passage of another year to expect to be treated to a cake as well?

Apparently so. This is one of those traditions that has sprung up over the last few years and seemingly hasn't been questioned by anyone. It's not difficult to understand why: say "no," you're not bringing in cake for everyone, and you're left looking like an asshole, even though, as previously mentioned, it should really be everyone else bringing in cake for you and you alone.

I'm just curious who the first person was to demand that someone celebrating a birthday should bring in cake for everyone. I wonder what response they got. I can only assume a positive one, leading to the situation we're in now.

Of course, there's probably another reason why this tradition keeps holding on: it's actually quite nice to share things, and your birthday is a good opportunity to do so. You get to keep the cool presents for yourself, but cake is an easy means of making people like you, particularly if it's some sort of awesome cake (or, indeed, box of doughnuts) and not, say, something boring like a fruit cake or a sponge without anything in or on it. (Not that there's anything wrong with either of those things per se; a birthday is simply a good opportunity to show off your immaculate/questionable taste in cakes, so Mr Kipling just isn't going to cut it here, Bucko.)

For the last few years, since I've been working from home, this hasn't been an issue for me. Now I'm working in an office, however, it seems I'll be expected to participate in this sort of silliness or risk being ostracised by my colleagues and peers. (That's an exaggeration, of course; from what I know of my colleagues and peers they probably wouldn't ostracise someone over something as petty as cake, though my immediate team does really like cake, so probably best to be safe anyway.)

Still, I won't complain, because that means when other people's birthdays roll around, I get free cake. And other people's birthdays happen more often than my birthday. Which means more cake for everyone.

Oh. Oh. I think I see why this happens now.

1737: Some Days You Just Can't Get Rid of a Bomb

I had the worst morning today. I say worst; at the time it was happening, it was already apparent to me that the unfortunate combination of mishaps that befell me were the stuff of farce, and looking back now it's just faintly amusing. But at the time it was spectacularly irritating, and put me in a rather grouchy mood for much of the day.

Things started badly when I woke up at the ungodly hour I need to wake up to go to work and I had a horrible pain in my back that made it difficult to bend over (to put my socks on, pervert) or indeed to operate in a normal manner. After downing a couple of painkillers, the pain subsided a bit, so after a quick breakfast I took to the road, carefully avoiding the bin lorry that had decided the time I was leaving the house was the optimum time to park almost across our driveway.

Five minutes down the road — thankfully no further — I realised that I'd left my work ID badge at home, and I need that to get in and out of the building. Now, I know full well that a little grovelling at the security office would have probably secured me a temporary visitor's badge to use for the day, but I'm still in that phase where I want to be seen to be doing things "right", and so back I went to pick up my badge (the lanyard for which also had the key to my desk drawers on it, plus a nice pen). By the time I got out the door again, it was getting on for half an hour later than I'd normally leave for work, and I just knew that this meant I was probably going to hit the pointless, meaningless, seemingly causeless traffic jams that are on the motorway every single day of the working week.

Sure enough, the dear old M27 didn't disappoint. Much of my journey was capped at about 40mph, often dipping below that, and I wasn't able to get up any sort of decent speed until the stretch of the motorway where I was almost at work. Time was ticking on by now, however; fortunately, I have fairly flexible hours, so the concept of being "late" is a little more fluid than in many other places, but I was still rather later than I intended to be.

I pulled up at the lorry park where I typically park my car at the start of each working day and prepared to hand over my cash for the week's parking — though I had noticed several huge containers blocking the small patch of concrete out the front where cars arriving a little later were typically shepherded. I had a sinking feeling.

"We're full, buddy," said Lorry Park Man — yes, there are people who really do say "buddy" out loud — and I knew there was no point arguing. Those who pay for weekly tickets were typically given priority over those paying on a daily basis, but I could see from a cursory glance around that there really wasn't any room to put any more cars — not without putting them at risk from the lorries that the park was actually built for, anyway. I nodded, and Lorry Park Man shrugged apologetically at me, so it was time to go on a small adventure to find somewhere to park.

I eventually found somewhere about a mile up the road from where I work — the lorry park is already about 15 minutes walk, and this was quite a way further — but there was nothing for it; my only other option was to park right in the town centre and have an even longer walk to contend with. No thank you.

I eventually made it to work — still before 9am, pleasingly — and tried to get in my usual door with my ID card. The door was, of course, broken, and I wasn't even surprised by this by this point, so I simply wandered down to the next one along and went in. Then I sat down at my desk, turned on my computer, fired up Outlook to check my email and was helpfully informed that the server was not responding.

The perfect start to a perfect day, I'm sure you'll agree.

Thankfully things picked up a little from that point onwards — though I did nearly forget to retrieve my desk keys and had to come back and get them — but man. That was one hell of a lot of bad luck in one go. Hopefully that'll be it for a little while now; let's have the rest of the week go a little more smoothly, hmm?

1734: Working Week

I am glad to reach the end of this week — it's been a long one, largely because of that overnighter I had to pull in the middle; an inconvenience which even having the whole day off yesterday hasn't quite allowed me to recover completely from. I'm not as young as I once was, I guess.

While I shan't talk about the job itself — it is generally inadvisable to talk too much about one's current employer if one wishes to stay employed — I did want to just contemplate how this new chapter in my life is going so far. After all, there's a significant number of changes here, and while many of my friends and peers have been living this sort of existence for years now — in many cases since the end of university — being in the position of having a "normal" job is still something that is relatively new to me.

I'm enjoying the experience, though. Sure, there are quiet and boring moments, but there's also a feeling that I'm doing something vaguely useful, and more than that, it's nice to be around actual real people, even if they're all busy doing their own things for most of the day.

That, I think, is the thing I missed the most. As something of a self-professed recluse at the best of times, a year or two back I never would have thought that I'd be craving human contact, but towards the end of my time working from home, I was really starting to go just that little bit crazy without having other people around. Sure, I could walk to the shop, but interactions there are fleeting at best, and those who try to strike up conversations with strangers in convenience stores are generally regarded as being somewhat on the fringes of polite society. (Not that my own social anxiety would ever permit me to strike up a conversation with a stranger in a convenience store, anyway; the thought of it is mortifying.)

At work, though, it's been a pleasure to slot in as part of an existing team. It feels like some people are still coming to realise that I exist, while others have accepted me immediately. I'm particularly grateful for the fact that my immediate team of peers are all extremely nice people that I enjoy spending time with; while our job certainly isn't miserable or horrendously difficult or anything like that, we form the sort of group that can share both positive and negative experiences together and feel like we have a "bond" of sorts; a sense of camaraderie.

This is, as previously noted, somewhat different to anything I've experienced before. In teaching, things varied from being cliquey to "us vs. them"; in retail, there was a sharp divide between the floor staff and management; in the online press, I rarely saw the people I worked with face to face. Here, I see the people I work with — at least those on my immediate team, anyway — every day, and as part of a large company we're just one part of a whole. It's an interesting experience, and one that I'm gradually getting used to as the weeks tick by.

I'm pretty sure that I made the right choice to get here. In some respects I'm wishing I'd made it a little sooner.

1732: The Overnighter

Just got back from an incredibly long day at work — effectively two days at work for the price of one, thanks to some overnight working as well as my normal shift. Consequently, I'm utterly knackered, so you'll forgive any incoherence and/or typos, I hope. (I do get tomorrow off, at least; I intend to do a lot of sleeping after I have finished typing this.)

I don't mind pulling late/all-nighters generally, because it allows me to indulge in one of my stranger pleasures: being in places that are normally full of people when they are deserted.

It's something that's always fascinated me, ever since I was a youngling and often got the opportunity to stay late at school to do various music activities. School concert night was always a particular highlight; not only did I tend to enjoy the concert itself, but there was something… I don't know, almost romantic about the atmosphere around the school campus when it was all but deserted aside from a few people.

In fact, I've always enjoyed the night generally. When out walking in the darkness, there's always the slight lingering fear that behind the next bush might be a knife-wielding maniac, of course, but for the most part I love the atmosphere of night-time: the peace and quiet; the way the air feels somehow different — probably because it's not being churned up and polluted by hundreds of cars; the way everything feels like it's going slightly faster than normal; the way bad weather, particularly snow, makes you feel like the place you're in is a private little world.

It's the peace and quiet part that gets me the most, I think, because it allows you to really drink in what is going on around you. You can listen to your footsteps as you walk; listen to your breathing; hear the birds start to sing to signal the beginning of the "morning" process (at least if you stay up as late as I have tonight); try to work out what the noises in the distance might be. Any sound near you feels almost infinitely louder, and hearing someone talking always feels like you're intruding on a private moment. (Perhaps you are.)

It's the contrast, too; I love comparing how a deserted place in the dead of night compares to how I know it is in the daytime. By day, it might be bustling hub of activity, with the constant noise of human interaction all around at all times. By night, it might be totally silent; you might be the only person there. There's a sense of being in the unknown; of being somewhere "forbidden", even if you have every right to be wherever you are.

In fact, were it possible to live one's life in a more nocturnal manner, I think I'd happily do so. Judging by my drive back from work tonight, it would certainly save on traffic frustrations, if nothing else!

1731: The Age of Loneliness

I read an interesting piece on The Guardian earlier regarding "the age of loneliness" killing us bit by bit. And while I feel the piece is, on the whole, doomsaying somewhat, there's also a lot of truth in there.

I've become a lot more conscious of all this since starting my "new life" a little while ago — working a "proper job" with three-dimensional people all around me, ditching most of social media for my own sanity and generally trying to "unplug" a little bit from my utter dependence on the digital realm.

The biggest change has been the opportunity to interact with real people on a daily basis. Sometimes those people are asking me to do things as part of my job, but at other times it's a simple social interaction where we share things with one another: the problems we had with a retailer; what we had for dinner last night; our pets having various illnesses; what we think of this weather we've been having, gosh, it's been really variable, hasn't it?

I hadn't realised how much I'd missed this, but being fully immersed in the digital realm for several years had proven an adequate substitute for human interaction at the time. It wasn't until towards the end of my time with USgamer that I was starting to feel a little dissatisfied with spending all day every day "on my own" (despite hundreds, possibly thousands of people being on the other end of an email or tweet) and, once I was made redundant, it truly dawned on me that I was indeed living through my own personal "age of loneliness".

It's often been said that social media ironically contributes to feelings of loneliness and isolation, and it's a difficult one to win. Without social media, it can be difficult to feel connected to other people — though there are alternative, more focused solutions for communication that rely less on shouting into the ether and more on more direct interactions. But with social media, despite all these connections to other people, it's equally easy to feel isolated, too; the constant races for oneupmanship on Facebook and Twitter — the race to be the first to post a pithy comment in response to a tragedy; the race to post the coolest photo of an event; the race to get the most Likes and comments on a passive-aggressive statement — all detract from meaningful social interaction, instead turning communication into a competition. That doesn't feel especially healthy to me.

Like I say, though, it's difficult to find that balance. At present, I feel like I'm having a reasonable time of it — I get along well with the people I work with during the day; I spend time with Andie in the evening and, on certain occasions such as tonight, get to spend time with friends — but I do often still find myself wondering if I'm "missing out" on anything by not checking in on Facebook or Twitter. (I actually closed the latter account altogether after the post the other day, which got shared more widely than I intended and consequently attracted ire I didn't really want to deal with at the time; I haven't felt the need to reopen it yet, and should I ever decide to return to Twitter I think it will be with a brand new "fresh start" account)

I am not, however, missing that urge to take a photograph of everything that happens in my day and then post it online as if anyone would give a shit about what the sunset looks like from where I'm standing right now (probably quite similar to the sunset from where you're standing right now) or what my lunch looks like (pretty much like lunch). I find myself longing for the days when things like photographs were more permanent and more meaningful; everything in the digital age feels so utterly disposable, and that's probably where a lot of the whole loneliness thing stems from: you can be the centre of attention one minute and utterly forgotten about the next. The modern world is fickle indeed.

Anyway. It's 1am and I'm doing that thing where I ramble only vaguely coherently as I try not to fall asleep in front of my screen. So I think it's probably time to go and get some sleep; I have a very long day ahead of me tomorrow, so plenty of rest beforehand would probably be a good idea!

1728: Junk Shop

It's always pleasant to find a new "weird shop" in which to spend some of your hard-earned money. We've all become so used to seeking out the chain stores to — in most cases, anyway — get the best deals that finding a legitimate local business that does something altogether unique is both a rarity and a pleasure.

The shop I "discovered" today is one I've walked past several times and always meant to have a look in, but never got around to it. If I'm honest, I can't remember its name at all, but it's in the Marlands shopping centre in Southampton (for those who don't know Southampton, this is the smaller of the two shopping centres in the city centre, populated by a peculiar combination of small local stores and profitable chains like CEX, Disney Store and, err, Poundland) and is on the left in the "plaza" area, just after you wander past places like F. Hinds and Claire's Accessories.

I believe it describes itself as an "Oriental goods" store, which essentially means, as you might expect, that it sells a variety of stuff from the Far East. Inside the store there's a very odd mix of things ranging from cosplay to bags (I bought a Hatsune Miku bag today, which should be a more appropriate receptacle for all my Stuff than the very nice but slightly impractical laptop bag I'm currently improvising with) via collectible figures, hand-painted rice bowls, kimonos and some random tourist tat like fridge magnets.

It is, in short, the sort of shop I can see myself spending a fair amount of money in. Whether or not I actually will spend any more money in there remains to be seen, but it's certainly a cool little place that I will probably now take any visitors who might enjoy that sort of thing to go and see.

It reminds me a little of a shop in the now-closed Bargate Shopping Centre here in Southampton, which was called something like Smells, Bells and Doo-Dahs. This, too, was a Far East-inspired store, though it didn't, as I recall, sell much in the way of anime bits and pieces. Instead, it stocked, once again, a bizarre combination of items, ranging from various different incense scents to an impressively intimidating collection of actual (albeit blunt) swords of both Eastern and Western origin. I don't think I ever bought anything there, but it was a landmark sort of place; I was comforted by its presence, and always enjoyed just having a browse, even if nothing ever convinced me that I really needed it.

The Bargate Centre in general was good for that, actually; I was sad to see it finally close after dying a very long and drawn-out death over the course of the last few years. Pop into Bargate in its prime (which was during my time at university, so between 1999 and 2002 or so) and you could check out an impressively stocked non-chain video games store, buy some unusual and stylish clothing, get a tattoo or piercing, purchase some bondage gear and dildos, start a sock collection actually worth bragging about and then cap off your visit with a trip to Sega World, an actual bona-fide coin-op arcade, boasting a selection of cool games both old and new. It was tragic to see these things disappear one by one, but either their relevance diminished over time, or they were simply destroyed by the cutthroat nature of modern high-street business.

I'm glad a few places like the shop I can't remember the name of still exist, though; it makes me happy to think of people eking out a living from selling the strangest things, and while places like that stock interesting and fun things I might want to buy, I'm more than happy to support them.

1723: Sword of the Mind

I'm really not looking forward to the day that my imagination doesn't work any more — if indeed such a day will ever come.

That day will be a dark one, in which I can no longer carry an umbrella and imagine it's the legendary sword Curtana, hacking and slashing my way through hordes of enemies (or, indeed, zombified shoppers who just want to get out of the rain but who are too cold and wet to actually exert themselves).

That day will be a dark one, in which I can no longer get on a piece of gym equipment accompanied by the Shadow of the Colossus music and imagine that, rather than simply engaging in the eminently pointless waste of time that is lifting a heavy thing then putting it down again lots of times, I am actually battling some monstrous foe that can only be defeated by lifting bits of it up, then putting them carefully down again.

That day will be a dark one, in which I can no longer imagine what it would be like if my car could actually take off and fly, rising high above the surprised, bewildered and frightened heads of the other occupants of the traffic jam I'm in before shooting off into the distance via a far more direct route than any road ever offered.

I do wonder to myself whether or not my imagination will ever stop working. I doubt it will; after all, many creative types continue being creative well into the twilight of their life, though the exact form of what the imagination conjures up doubtless varies and changes as the years pass by.

I'm conscious of the changes to my own imagination, though in some cases these are due in part to other mental changes rather than the imagination itself. Take that period between going to bed and going to sleep, for example; when I was young, I could happily conjure whole worlds up for myself, exploring them and having all sorts of strange and wonderful adventures, blurring the lines between conscious thought and dreaming until eventually I'd awaken the next morning to the rather unwelcome sound of the alarm clock.

These days, however, I haven't lost the ability to conjure up mental pictures, but the darkness that resides inside my head occasionally uses this time to show itself: instead of strange and fantastic worlds, my mind shows me far more mundane things, but often with the worst possible outcome; sometimes it's nothing but words as I think about a conversation I've had — or need to have but am afraid to — while others it's a mental picture I simply can't look away from, no matter where I turn.

This isn't a decline of the imagination at all, since my brain still conjures up very vivid pictures — and, I hasten to add, it's not every night that I'm wracked with dark and terrible images that if not terrify me to my very core at least make me a bit anxious — but it is a change. I feel like I have less conscious control over my imagination: I can't simply send myself to another world any more, at least not all the time; there are occasions where I have to let my mind take the lead and follow along after it. (I realise that makes no sense, but little to do with the strange inner workings of the human mind and consciousness does.)

There are other times when I can happily immerse myself in a world of my — or indeed someone else's — creation, however. Reading a good book still makes glorious technicolour mental images appear before my mind's eye. Writing something creative has an even more powerful impact on my imagination, stirring it into action. Closing my eyes and listening to pieces of music can either stir up imaginative scenes or conjure memories that I haven't thought about for a long time.

The inside of my head isn't perfect, and there is much about it I would probably change given the opportunity. But at the same time, it's become a strangely comfortable place to be, dark corners and all; it's a defining part of who I am, which is why I doubt that the door into that wonderful, terrifying place will ever truly be slammed shut.

1720: Jam

I've had a decent-length commute to work on several occasions throughout my life to date, and every time, I've found myself wondering how on Earth some of the road layouts I have to drive through got approved.

Take my daily journey to my current place of employment. The majority of this involves driving along a motorway that is a major route along the south coast. For starters, the road itself is in appalling condition — it's something of a bumpy ride as I leave Southampton, then smooths out a bit later, though is still a bit of a pothole-ridden mess in a few places.

It's some strange things it does with its layout that are the most baffling, though. My "favourite" — and I use this term loosely — is a short section of less than half a mile in length where the previously three-lane motorway turns into four lanes — the rightmost lane splits in two, with the new fourth lane becoming what it calls a "climbing lane". I am unsure of the exact purpose of this fourth lane, because 1) the road there isn't particularly hilly (either upwards in one direction or downwards in the other) and thus I question the need for a "climbing lane" if indeed it is for "climbing" a hill and 2) all it seems to get used for anyway is for BMW, Mercedes and Audi drivers to aggressively pull out into and then overtake the people they think are going too slowly. (Which, as I'm sure you know, can be summed up as "everyone".)

Splitting into four lanes isn't a terrible idea as it spreads the traffic out somewhat, and that particular stretch of the road tends to get very busy around rush hour. Which is why it's utterly bewildering that said four-lane stretch lasts for, as I mentioned above, less than half a mile, at which point the new fourth lane then merges back into the third, almost inevitably causing a traffic jam every single day.

Predictable traffic jams are a pain in the arse, but you can at least plan your journey around them if you know that it's 95% likely you will get stuck for at least 10 minutes in one particular spot. On my commute for another job much further back, the traffic jams around Winchester were so predictable — and so stationary — that I had the time to create a Gowalla (Foursquare precursor) check-in spot called Winchester Traffic Jam and write a description on my phone before anything moved again… then check into it every single day, because it was always in the exact same spot.

I guess the explanation for these dodgy stretches of road is simply that the amount of traffic has increased over the years, while the road capacity hasn't. But there are places where it's a clear and obvious problem; all you have to do is listen to the local radio's traffic report each day to hear exactly the same places coming up time and time again. (And the traffic report lady demonstrating her slightly annoying habit of saying "Your queue…" instead of "There is a queue…", as if queues are something desirable being handed out to everyone.)

Since you can't just shut a major road off completely — particularly while people are commuting on it — it's difficult to know how these situations could be resolved. I guess we just have to resign ourselves to the fact that yes, we are going to waste a considerable portion of our life creeping forwards at 10mph wondering if we should phone ahead to work and tell them that the traffic is, once again, quite bad.

At least it's quality time to listen to some music or podcasts — something which I missed while I was working at home.

1719: Album for the Young

I made myself a music playlist the other day. Contained therein was a selection of music from my teenage years, which is when I started actually buying CD albums and singles for myself — beginning, as I believe I've said before, with Oasis' Definitely Maybe just a day before (What's the Story) Morning Glory? came out.

Like most playlists I make, I was putting full albums rather than individual tracks in there, as I like to have a full selection of music from favourite artists available. Hitting the "Next Track" button is simple enough if you happen to be served up a stinker of an album track, so it is, for me, a case of better to have too much than too little.

Now, here's where I did things a little differently. Normally, when I put music on these days, as many people do, I believe, I choose a playlist, hit Play, then hit the Shuffle button so I get a random selection of tracks from those that I've picked. I could make the time or effort to curate playlists a little more carefully and not have to rely on Shuffle, of course, but I rarely do that these days; the only exceptions have been when I need a particular amount of music, or when I want to choose some very specific tracks to, say, take to the gym or something.

When I selected this playlist and started playing it in the car the other morning, though, I decided that I wasn't going to follow my usual pattern, and was instead going to listen to the tracks contained therein a full album at a time. If it was good enough for my fifteen year-old self, I'm sure it's still good enough for me now — and I don't like to think that the 21st century has given me such an attention span deficit that I can no longer deal with more than one track by the same artist in succession.

I used to enjoy listening to albums when I was younger. True, I rarely did it as an activity by itself — I would usually put an album on while doing homework, or reading, or something like that — but I would usually listen to a whole album once I put it on. This was at least partly due to the fact that the age of music on physical media meant that you had to get up and change a disc (or even cassette, a medium which even made it difficult to listen to a specific song) if you wanted to hear something by a different artist — but it was also due to the fact that even then, I was conscious of most albums — good albums, anyway — being designed as coherent works in and of themselves. Sure, it was the individual tracks you'd tend to hear played on the radio or the television, but a well-designed album had a beginning, middle and end: it took you on a musical journey, and sometimes even told a story.

Listening to these albums this way for the first time in a very long while has reminded me what a good experience it can be to settle down and immerse yourself in just one album; just one artist's work, the tracks presented in the order they believed that was best, rather than some arbitrary random picker thingy.

Particular highlights of drives this week have included the Manic Street Preachers' Everything Must Go, a favourite of my teenage years that I primarily picked up in the first place because a girl I fancied was totally into it; Propellerheads' decksanddrumsandrockandroll, an album I never actually owned but always enjoyed listening to; and Prodigy's The Fat of the Land, which remains, to date, a wonderfully "industrial"-sounding album filled with fire, energy and not a small degree of filth. (Not in a sexy way, either; I'm talking the kind of smoky, dusty, grimy filth that belches forth from a factory chimney.)

The latter in particular has been a pleasure to rediscover, at least in part because there's really nothing quite like it getting mainstream airplay these days; it remains a product uniquely of its time, and listening to it takes me back to the first time I heard Breathe on a school bus, courtesy of my classmate Peter Miles (a noteworthy acquaintance during my school life for being someone who challenged me to a fight that neither of us showed up for, and who was good enough to lend me a long leather coat so I could dress up as a Gestapo agent for a murder-mystery party just a couple of years ago), and discovered that an artist I'd previously written off on the grounds of the fact I didn't really like their previous single Firestarter was actually rather thrilling to listen to.

So while I'm not sure I'm going to start just sitting down and doing nothing but listening to an album — something that I've never really done, even back when iTunes was something we could only dream of — I'm certainly going to be making an effort to use the Shuffle facility a whole lot less when I'm listening to music in the future. There's an artistry in the construction of a good album, just as there is (arguably more obvious) artistry in the composition and production of an individual track; it's something that not many people take the time to appreciate these days, so it's something that I fully intend to (re-)explore a little more in the coming days.

1717: The Story of Your Mail Archive

During a quiet — and, I won't lie, somewhat bored — moment today, I decided to take a look back in my GMail archive and see exactly when I started using that account. I've had a number of different email accounts over the years, some of which have lasted longer than others, but I had a feeling that GMail had stuck with me longer than anything else. (Except perhaps for Hotmail, which I keep around to sign up for things I don't want to sign up my "real" email address for. And for my Xbox Live account, because in Microsoft's wisdom, they don't allow you to change the email address associated with your account, meaning I was forever stuck with it, not that email really matters to Xbox Live anyway.)

Sure enough, my GMail account has been with me for somewhere in the region of four or five years or so. Prior to that, I made use of a .mac/MobileMe/iCloud account (the name has changed several times since I opened the account in 2007 as part of my employment at the Apple Store), and before that, I was using Yahoo. Prior to that, I was using various different proprietary addresses that I got with Internet service providers, and since I moved every year while I was at university — and quite frequently thereafter, too — I changed email address a lot, much to, as I recall, the annoyance of my brother, who never knew which address to contact me on.

Anyway, I digress; my GMail account hails from 2009, and it was interesting to take a look back to what was going on in my life around then. I can use this blog for that too, of course — and often do, as narcissistic as that might sound — but looking back at past emails is a little different because it's not just a record of my thoughts spilling out on the page as I saw fit to express them; it's my thoughts spilling out on the page as I saw fit to express them to another specific person.

As those of you who have been reading this blog for a few years will recall, 2010 was Not A Good Year for Pete, and indeed the early pages of my email history reflect that to a certain degree.

Before that, however, was an email from a former colleague containing nothing but this image:

It still makes me giggle.

Anyway, the first few pages of my GMail are actually made up of messages imported from my .mac/MobileMe account, which I was running in parallel with GMail for some time (and indeed still am, though I don't really use it any more). In those early messages, I can see the first time I was hired as a professional games journalist — Joey Davidson and Brad Hilderbrand were good enough to take a chance on me and hire me for the now sadly defunct Kombo.com. The pay was crap, but it was something at a time when I had nothing else, and I got something far more valuable out of that experience: friends. People I still speak to today — indeed, just today I had a quick chat with Joey via instant message, which was nice.

Around that time, I was preparing for a trip to PAX East in Boston, at which I'd have the opportunity to meet a number of members of the Squadron of Shame for the first time — and to catch up with some I'd had the pleasure of meeting once or twice before. I was also looking forward to the opportunity to cover a big event as a journalist, though sadly I wasn't enough of a bigshot at this time to be able to score a proper press badge, and as such had to write about things at the show largely from a consumer perspective.

Shortly after my return from PAX East, you may recall that my life fell to pieces, and you can see almost the exact moment this happens, since there's a sudden flurry of sympathetic messages from friends and family alike. Thus began a very dark period in my life, and one that still, I must admit, brings tears to my eyes to relive, even when looking at it through the cold, clinical view of plain text.

So let's not do that.

Instead, fast forward a bunch of pages and I was very surprised to spot an email from a familiar name: Shahid Ahmad, who is now best known as Sony's most enthusiastic employee, and champion of the Vita. Shahid apparently commented on one of my posts somewhere — I can't quite tell where from the email exchange, but it was a post about the game Mr. Robot, which I recall enjoying a great deal — and we'd evidently had a discussion about Chimera, a game which he made back in the days of the Atari 8-bit and Commodore 64 home computers, and which he has trying to remake ever since. (He was talking about a remake a while back on Twitter; apparently, he's been trying to make this happen since at least 2010.)

Somewhere around the 37,000 email mark (still in 2010), I seemingly start using GMail a bit more for communicating with people and signing up for things. There's still a bunch of stuff coming in via MobileMe, but messages without that tag are starting to appear more and more.

Around the 35,000 email mark, I start working for GamePro. Of all the sites I've worked on over the years, I think GamePro is the one that I think of most fondly and am most proud of. I feel I struck a good balance with my news coverage, and there was tangible proof that I — specifically me — was responsible for bringing in a significant amount of new traffic with the work I was doing. Unfortunately, this seemingly wasn't enough to prevent the site from being unceremoniously wiped off the face of the planet some time later, but it was nice to know at least.

Aside from my own developments, it's also interesting to see what names I still know today have been up to over the years. It's nice to see Tom Ohle of Evolve PR's name crop up a bunch of times, for example — that man's one of the hardest-working PR folks in the business, and also someone who always put across the impression of genuinely believing in the games he was representing — as well as folks I've worked alongside moving from outlet to outlet.

And then, of course, there's the first appearance of Andie in my Twitter direct messages (Twitter's email notifications used to look a whole lot different!) and… well, we all know what happened there. (She's sleeping upstairs in the house we own together right now as I write this.)

So anyway. Having rambled on for over a thousand words about nothing more than my email archives, I think I'm ready to call that a night. It's been an interesting trip back along memory lane — not always pleasant or comfortable, but certainly interesting — but I think I've sated my curiosity for now, at least.

So what's the earliest email you still have, dear reader?