1479: Moneybags

Andie and I have bought a house. (Or possibly, "Andie and I are buying a house" — I'm not entirely sure which tense is appropriate at this stage.) Thus far the process has been significantly less stressful than I have been led to believe, but I'm sure there's still scope for something to go horribly wrong along the way. Until that time, however, I'm going to enjoy what has, so far, been a fairly painless process.

One thing that has struck me during this process, however, is how much your perception of money can change in such a short space of time. Or, indeed, how much the quantities of money you deal with on a regular basis can change in a short period.

When you're young, getting a couple of quid pocket money is a lot. Getting an expensive present — something that costs £20 or more — is pretty awesome, and getting a really expensive present — a games console, say — is really awesome. At the same time, if you're not dealing with a lot of money at once, it can be easy to disregard it completely. I recall when I was very young — like, early primary school young — thinking that cashpoint machines simply gave you money if you put in the right number. It didn't even occur to me that you had to have that money to your name in order to be able to receive it in physical form.

Then you move into your teenage years, and start having a bit more money of your own. It's still not in huge quantities, though that said there's plenty of teenagers wandering around sporting the latest iPhones, so modern teens are certainly getting money from somewhere. Some even save up and get their own car, although admittedly said car tends to be a rustbucket monstrosity that will fall apart the second you look at it.

Then on to university, where, in many cases, you'll have early encounters with both crippling debt and seemingly more money than you know what to do with. You'll start paying rent, which costs hundreds of pounds a month, and you'll have expenses to consider. You'll get thousands of pounds through a student loan, then blow it on booze and whatever else students spend money.

Despite university being a whole bunch of years ago now, I must confess that I still find myself in that mindset sometimes. I feel like I don't have much money coming in — even though I'm drawing a respectable wage and can live comfortably — and even a hundred pounds feels like a lot of money.

Until now. We're buying a house, which costs six figures. This involves being saddled with a six-figure debt, and spending five figures up front. The most I've ever spent on something in one go up until now was four figures on a computer, so the prospect of spending five figures at once is… well, it's a little mind-boggling, if I'm honest. I'm not sure the idea has sunk in yet.

Still, at least once all the house stuff is sorted we can hopefully both go back to thinking about much smaller numbers on a regular basis. At least until we decide we want to move and buy another one somewhere else…

1477: Nondescript

It's been one of those days that just sort of… happened today. I wrote about EA's horrendous molestation of the Dungeon Keeper series, gave Flappy Bird a well-deserved drubbing in a review and a few other things, then played an interesting horror game called Serena which I'm going to write a review of tomorrow, then capped the evening off with some Final Fantasy XIV. That was my day. That was it.

Much as we might like to always have interesting things to talk about and tall tales to tell, the fact is that most days we go through our existence are pretty humdrum, boring and nondescript, with almost nothing of note happening whatsoever.

This isn't necessarily a bad thing, of course, because having humdrum, boring and nondescript days suggests that things are going all right — it's better than having days that are crushing disappointments, or that make you want to punch walls, or that make you want to sit in the shower and cry, for example, but it's also not quite as good as days that make you want to explode in happiness or play a pair of tea tongs like castanets. (Actually, I must confess to doing the latter earlier while waiting for a cup of tea to brew, but it was more through boredom than happiness. Tea tongs actually make a surprisingly convincing castanets substitute, FYI.)

Perhaps this is why social media has risen to such prominence in recent years. Everything from the humble status update to a "selfie" has the potential to make the mundane seem so much more fascinating than it really is — at least it does to the people posting these things. Yes! they'll think. Here's my dinner! It's amazing! Maybe people will be jealous of what I'm having! I have beans with sausages! Joke's on you, losers! Oh God I'm so lonely.

It's sort of baffling if you take a step back from it all, really. Take photography in particular — the rise of digital photography and phone cameras have devalued the humble photograph from cultural artifact to disposable, throwaway thing. Photos used to be a precious commodity — you'd go on holiday with a couple of 36-exposure rolls of film in your bag, and you'd try to make every shot count. Now, you can afford to take pictures of every course of every meal you have and share them to the world as if they give a shit. And Silicon Valley types who enjoy making new social media apps for no other reason than to say they attracted several million in seed funding, whatever that is, can take advantage of people like this by offering them apps that allow them to "turn your photographs into beautiful memories" and the like. Ugh.

Of course, the Internet belongs to everyone so it is your choice how you choose to go about using it. Just remember that the things you're posting might not be as interesting to other people as they might be to you. Heaven knows I know that after writing 1,477 days of nonsense on these very pages.

There you go. I even have something to say on a humdrum, boring and nondescript day such as today. And now I'm going to bed. Good night.

1472: New Friends

After Lara died, Lucy rat was very lonely. She seemed reasonably all right for a few days, but took a turn for the worse over the next couple. She'd spend most of the day hiding in her box and not being very sociable — she'd come out for a bit if you made a fuss of her, but before long she'd go back into hiding.

It's strange and fascinating to see, in a morbid sort of way. Watch an animal who is suddenly left all alone after having become accustomed to the company of another, and it's very clear that they do "feel" things — whether that's true "emotions" as we know them or simply more of a survival instinct "oh shit, I'm not as safe as I was before" isn't entirely clear, but they definitely feel something.

And it was heartbreaking to see in Lucy rat's case. She was normally such an energetic, silly little thing, so to see her so lethargic and unenthusiastic about everything was difficult to deal with. And so, after confirming via a bit of online research that yes, rats really do prefer to live with others of their own kind, we went to the pet store and picked up a couple of young playmates for Lucy. (We got two because, practically speaking, Lucy is getting older, too, and we didn't want a new playmate to be left in the same situation when Lucy does eventually leave us.)

They're a lot younger than her — they're literally half her size — but so far they appear to have been getting on well with one another. One in particular has been following Lucy around, snuggling up with her in the little hideaway and generally being very friendly. The other doesn't appear to object to the presence of either Lucy or her young friend — whom she previously lived with in the pet store, so was at least accustomed to the presence of — but is still very shy, preferring to sit very still in the corner and hope no-one notices her.

The two of them are very distinct both from one another and from Lara and Lucy. Lucy is all white with a few light grey splotches here and there, while Lara was mostly white with a dark grey head and grey patterning on her back. Socks, as one of the newcomers has been christened, is all dark grey except for her belly, which has a white stripe down it. Clover, as the other one has become known, has more of a splotchy pattern all over her, plus a noticeably more fluffy, slightly messy-looking coat.

It's very early days for us to get to know them yet, but they're very cute and Lucy seemed immediately happier as soon as she had some company. It's always a slightly nailbiting moment when you introduce new rats to one another, especially when one has been living somewhere for a while. We had the same moment after Willow died and we got Lucy to keep Lara company — Lucy spent her first few days hiding in the corner and, on one memorably terrifying occasion, even decided to "play dead" worryingly convincingly for a while. Before long, though, the two of them at least appeared to be friends with one another, even if Lucy was always a cheeky little shit towards Lara.

I'm looking forward to seeing how the three of them get along with one another, and I'm sure there will be further updates as they start to come out of their shells a bit.

1470: Move

Well, I did it; a little later than intended due to an all-round shitty week last week, but did it nonetheless: I got up early and battled through my own sense of inadequacy to have a very slow run, kicking off yet another attempt at the Couch to 5K program.

My trouble with getting up, out and exercising at the moment is the fear that it's going to be difficult and painful. The rational response to this is "well, of course it is" but the irrational side of me uses that as a reason to want to put it off. I'm not sure why, though, because putting it off for longer is just going to make it more difficult and painful in the long run, which will just make me feel worse, which is ultimately somewhat counter-productive, to say the least.

What I've found I need to do in the past is try not to worry about what other people think of me, and try not to compare myself to others. I am woefully unfit and rather overweight, so of course I'm not going to be able to run as well as that guy with the frighteningly muscular legs who just overtook me. It's hard not to compare and want to push yourself, though — but in my current physical condition, pushing myself too hard just makes me want to stop completely which, again, is ultimately somewhat counter-productive.

What I generally try to do is to blot out the outside world as much as possible. When it's crappy weather like this, I put on my hoodie and put the hood up, and put some loud music on to encourage me to give it my best. Today I had on my "Gym Battles" playlist from the last time I had a half-hearted fitness drive, which includes a selection of anime themes plus battle music from a variety of RPGs — all of which make fantastic exercise music, I might add. The soundtrack to Split/Second also makes for brilliant running music, so I can highly recommend that if you have a copy.

Now I'm back and about to have breakfast, and my legs are aching. I'm sure they're going to hurt even more later and tomorrow, but that's an oddly satisfying feeling — it's physical evidence that you've worked hard and done something positive. So long as it doesn't continue aching for too long, that is!

I'm going to try and support the occasional running with some Wii Fit. I don't want to set myself too ambitious goals so I get disheartened and don't stick to them, but at the same time I also don't want to waste my time. I'll have to experiment a bit and see what works for me in the long run.

For now let's hope I can keep this up for a while at least.

1469: Read Before Posting

I'd like to try a little exercise with you, oh fellow denizens of the Internet.

Find the last thing you posted online, be it chat message, tweet, Facebook status update or, if you've got more time than sense, blog post. Then what I would like you to do is read that post out loud — but with a twist. I'd like you to make all the faces you typed emoticons for, and any acronym you used, I'd like you to actually do the thing you said you were doing. (For example, if you typed "lol", I would like you to laugh out loud; if you typed "lmao" I would like you to laugh until your arse falls off. Yes, literally.)

Did you look like a complete dingbat and/or a creep? Exactly. Herein lies part of the problem with online communication: while emoticons and acronyms were originally intended to allow for some semblance of "tone" to be indicated in the necessarily dry nature of text, they don't really work all that well in the way that they tend to be used today.

Take the humble "lol". Depending on your literacy level, you may actually put "lol" in a sentence where you really would laugh out loud. But more often than not, it seems, it's used as a substitute for punctuation, and it doesn't really matter what punctuation mark should have gone in there if we were going to be all persnickety about Standard English. No, many's the time when I've seen people type a message ending with a redundant (and, frankly, somewhat disquieting) "lol" or even joining two completely largely unrelated sentences to one another. I recall one former Facebook "friend" (actually someone I went to school with but barely spoke to when I was there, let alone since) posting some epic rant about how she had had a difficult week lol but was looking forward to putting her feet up with a glass of wine lol xxx. That's… no. That just doesn't make any sense.

I think more infuriating to me than inappropriate lolling is the use of the tongueface smiley, however. I associate sticking your tongue out with a distinctly 1950s expression of rebellion — something an Enid Blyton character would do while running away from someone they didn't like very much. It's not something I generally think to do… well, at all really, as a 32 year old man, and so I tend not to pepper my online utterances with tongueface smileys at any time other than when I am clearly mocking someone and need to make it abundantly clear that I'm not actually being mean. I will confess to making a fair amount of use of the good old-fashioned smiley face emoticon, but that's about it. (I don't even use "XD", whose usage annoys me for much the same reasons as "lol" does.)

I am sure I am overthinking this, and that the tongueface smiley has somewhat transcended its associations with Enid Blyton characters, but I still find it oddly jarring when I see it somewhere that it just doesn't seem to belong. So again, I urge you, before you send that message, just read it out loud and make all the facial expressions you said you were making. If it feels weird to stick your tongue out… maybe take that particular colon-P out, hmm?

1467: Broken

Lara's death hit me pretty hard. Or, to be more accurate, it was the tipping point; the straw that broke the camel's back and other such cliches: the bad thing happening that caused all the other bad things in my head to overflow, boil over and spill out like some sort of pitch-black overcooked soup of eternal despair.

To clarify: today has not been a good day. After spending yesterday rather upset at our dear little furry friend's passing, I woke up this morning not feeling any better. In fact, feeling significantly worse. It was that kind of bleak feeling where it's nearly impossible to move, speak or function at anything more than the most basic level. I cried for no apparent reason on two separate occasions; it helped a little.

Right now? I'm at least functioning somewhat better than I was earlier, but I still feel like my brain is broken (and I have a headache, too, which isn't helping matters). I've had a good day at work — got an article shared by TotalBiscuit, yo — to distract me from the bad things rattling around in my head, but they've still been there lurking on the periphery, waiting to lay me low once again.

I haven't felt this bad for quite some time, and it sucks. It's not entirely due to Lara's passing, either; while that did indeed make me very sad and it still makes me tear up a bit to see Lucy by herself in her cage, as I say that was little more than the stimulus; the additional pressure that caused everything to come gushing out.

It's hard to know how to keep feelings like this under control. For the most part, I'd been feeling reasonably positive recently, but apparently I'd been repressing more emotions than I'd thought. The silly thing — and one that will be familiar to anyone with depressive tendencies — is that with all the confusion and chaos these emotions bring, it's impossible to come to some sort of rational explanation as to what is making you feel so bad. This, of course, makes the answer "what's wrong?" extremely difficult to answer with anything other than a non-committal "I don't know", but it's true; more often than not, when I feel like this, I really don't know what it is that's making me feel so bad.

Today should be a positive day, though, for a couple of reasons: Andie and I went to find out how much the bank would lend us for a mortgage earlier today and it turned out to be more than we were expecting; and I wrote an article that's been pretty widely shared and attracted a ton of potentially new eyes to USgamer, which is great. So I should focus on those positive things and less on the negative, and use the rest of the evening to do things that cheer me up and make me happy. Then hopefully, eventually, the dark edges will fade and I can get back to some semblance of normality again.

1466: Lara Laid to Rest

A day I had a feeling that was coming, but didn't want to think about happened today: our pet rat Lara passed away, from the looks of things during the night or the early hours. We came into the lounge for breakfast and she was just lying there, sleeping peacefully underneath the little log cabin in her cage. She didn't look as if she had suffered; she had just obviously thought it was time to pass on, so fell asleep and didn't wake up.

While I had maybe been expecting and worrying about this for a lot longer than was strictly necessary — she was a pretty old lady, as rats go, and she'd obviously been developing a few health problems over time — that doesn't stop it being any less upsetting and sad to see it come to pass, however peacefully she passed away.

Lara was part of our family. She was not only the first pet I've ever owned myself — along with her cagemate Willow, who was taken from us well before her time — but an important part of the home Andie and I have built for ourselves. She was a presence I had grown accustomed to; I enjoyed seeing her face peeking out of a Pop-Tarts box — she loved hiding in boxes — and to see how she'd scurry frantically to the cage door at the prospect of treats. Especially yogurt. She loved yogurt.

She had her own distinct personality that developed over time. We initially called her Lara because in the original pairing of her and Willow, she was the one who came out of her box first and started exploring the cage, climbing all around it like the Tomb Raider heroine. (Willow, conversely, was shy and meek, much like her namesake in Buffy the Vampire Slayer.) As she grew older, she became a little chubby and discovered the concept of "comfort". We'd put a hammock with a furry lining in the cage and she'd often be found reclining in there; we gave her some pieces of an old towel, and she'd always find wherever she thought was the best possible place to put them, then sit and relax on them as her newer, slightly younger cagemate Lucy would buzz around her excitedly.

Seeing Lucy today is making me feel a bit sad. As I type this, I can see her climbing around the cage, sneezing and inxeplicably digging in the food bowl as she always does, but she seems to be a little down from her usual energy levels. I couldn't tell you for sure whether or not rats actually "feel" anything emotionally, but my gut tells me that Lucy is lonely, and that she misses Lara; she has spent much of the day tucked up in the Pop-Tarts box her cagemate loved so, and would only come out with a bit of encouragement. I certainly know that Lara felt very attached to Lucy: any time we'd take Lucy out of the cage for whatever reason — to take her to the vets, for example — Lara would panic and begin frantically searching around for her uncharacteristically energetically, so I can't help but feel Lucy probably feels something similar. Only for her, Lara isn't coming back. I feel sorry for the poor little thing, so I have little doubt she's probably going to get quite spoiled over the next few days.

This is always the saddest, worst part of owning pets. They offer such warmth, happiness and companionship when they're alive that it's difficult not to feel like a member of your family has passed on when their time is eventually up. I still find death quite difficult to deal with, to be honest, though I don't think that's necessarily a particularly bad trait to have in the grand scheme of things.

So it was that we said goodbye to Lara earlier. Living in a third-floor flat, we don't have a garden of our own, but fortunately the border of our building's car park has some soily flower beds. We laid her to rest in a fresh Pop-Tarts box, dug her a grave and planted some flowers above her.

I hope that wherever she's going next that she is happy, and that she thinks back fondly on the time she spent with us, and with Lucy.

Goodbye, Lara. We love you.

1464: In One's Own Skin

Self-indulgent, self-pitying ahead. Feel free to skip on by.

Whoever started (and perpetuated) the rumour that fat people are "jolly" is a cock.

I am feeling decidedly uncomfortable in my own skin today, and, as usual, it's largely to do with my weight. I'm conscious of the fact that I have put on weight recently, and I know it's due to my largely sedentary lifestyle coupled with the fact that past exercise programmes I followed have fallen by the wayside.

It's something of a self-perpetuating problem, though. I get anxious about my weight, which frequently stops me from sleeping well at night, which means I find it difficult to get up in a timely fashion in the morning, which means I get up feeling tired and shitty and having to immediately start work, which means that when I'm finished in the evening all I want to do is just zonk out and relax, which means I feel guilty and anxious about not doing anything about my weight, which means… you get the idea.

It also doesn't help that if I get upset or depressed, I tend to want to eat something, too. Even knowing how counter-productive it is to want to eat something because I'm depressed about my weight, I still do it. Justifications vary, but I still do it, sometimes when I'm not even really feeling hungry.

I know I should do something about it. The anxiety I feel about my weight at night-time frequently escalates from "you're fat and disgusting" to "you're probably going to die if you don't do something about it." This is how irrational anxiety works. But, as I say, said anxiety often stops me from sleeping and makes me feel too exhausted in the morning to want to get up and exercise or do anything, really.

I hate it. I hate the feelings it gives me, and I hate the disgust I feel when I see myself in the mirror. I hate worrying when I sit down on a chair and wondering if I'll break it. I hate feeling physically uncomfortable because of my weight. I hate none of my clothes quite fitting properly, and I hate worrying that people look at me negatively as I walk past them in the street. I hate being afraid to fly in case I'm finally too fat to fit in a seat or to get the seatbelt around myself, and I hate sitting down in a restaurant where the tables and chairs are too close together and I find it difficult to fit in. And I hate not seeing people for a long time and wondering if they'll judge me harshly for being bigger than I used to be. I see photos of myself from years gone past when I felt like I was fat, and I look skinny in comparison to how I am now, and it makes me sad when I think that's what other people are probably thinking when they see me, too.

There are two ways out of this, as I see it: one, to accept who I am, to understand that I'm probably always going to be a little bigger and thus be unable to do certain things — something which I'm not altogether comfortable with; or two, to try and do something about it, something which has frustrated and upset me in the past. Both of them are difficult prospects to contemplate, and I'd rather see success with the latter if at all possible. I don't enjoy being the person I am, but I don't know if I have the willpower or motivation to be able to combat it effectively.

I'm going to try, though. I'm going to make an effort to get up in the morning and perhaps start the Couch to 5K program again, since I had some success with that in the past when I was in a similar combination of physical and mental disrepair. I mean, I never got slim or anything, but I got to a state where I made it through a 10K race, albeit with walking part of it. That's something, and I'd at least like to get back to a state where walking up some stairs doesn't leave me out of breath. Wii Fit U will probably help, too. I'm going to try my best to start all that tomorrow, though I'm making no promises at this juncture.

I have to fight my way through these feelings and dispatch the Shadows that infest my mind, because they're doing me no good whatsoever and I don't like the person they make me become. I don't know if I can do it, but I don't really have any option other than to try.

1463: Losing Face

I've been off Facebook for some time now — a cursory search through these pages suggests I closed my account in October of last year — and for the most part I haven't missed it.

I certainly haven't missed the endlessly inane reshares of content from George Takei('s PR intern) which in turn was stuff that already did the rounds on Reddit and subsequently Twitter several days earlier.

I also haven't missed the few people who seem to think that Facebook is an appropriate platform for standing atop their soapbox and bellowing the most ill-informed political and/or sociological opinions they can possibly think of.

I also haven't missed having shit games and advertising jammed forcibly down my throat every time I log in. I spent a considerable amount of time reviewing Facebook games professionally and all it left me with was a bitterly passionate desire to never play one ever again.

And yet…

Over the weekend I went out. This is nothing unusual in itself, but this was something of a special occasion — it was a reunion of sorts for those of us who studied music at the University of Southampton between 1999 and 2002. We were a pretty close-knit bunch while we were there — though I must confess, being a joint-honours English and Music student, that I always felt somewhat on the periphery of this particular social group — and most people have kept in touch pretty well ever since. A number of us are still in Southampton, too, though a distressingly small number of us are actually doing anything with our music studies professionally. (Note to kids planning their future: when someone tells you that a particular degree is a "good, general choice that will get you into most careers," they are talking bollocks.)

Anyway, yeah. We went out to a pub near Newbury and ate our respective body weights in roast dinners and custard-covered desserts. It was thoroughly pleasant, particularly as I hadn't seen some of these people for a while.

It's partly my fault, of course — I could have very easily picked up the phone and invited them over for dinner, or coffee, or whatever, but I haven't. But then they haven't either. I don't say this with bitterness — it's just the way that the rapid pace of modern 21st century life makes people think. Real-life friendships often fall by the wayside somewhat, and people whom you once spent every day with become people that you see a couple of times a year — albeit on those occasions, you'll start singing improvised offensive German barbershop a cappella as if no time whatsoever had passed between the last couple of times you saw one another. (At least you will if you are me and my friends.)

The thing is, though, for many people, Facebook fills that gap between in-person interactions — or "face time" as obnoxious wankers like to call it. It allows you to remind each other of your existence, and to likewise acknowledge one another's existence with a Like or a Comment.

At least, that's the intention. One might argue that said intention has been somewhat diluted over the last few years as Facebook has become less and less about meaningful social interactions and more and more about sharing viral content in an attempt to amass as many Likes, comments and shares as possible.

Having almost missed out on this reunion due to my non-presence on Facebook, I find myself questioning my decision to leave the network. It also makes me ponder whether or not it might be possible to use it in a different way — specifically, to have a substantial cull of my friends list to just those who are local and whom I am likely to want to see again at some point. I'd cut out any Pages that I was following — not that I think I was following many in the first place — and keep my friends list down in the double-digits if at all possible. I'd be ruthless in the culling of people who didn't post anything interesting or useful and consequently cluttered up my news feed with bullshit, and I'd lock down my account so I'd be in complete control of who could find me. I'd also minimise overlap between Facebook and Twitter, because what's the point?

I'm tempted to try this, though with all the changes I've seen Facebook make regarding how it decides what it wants to show to you, I have my doubts as to how useful the service is even with these attempts to take ownership of the experience. It certainly can't hurt to give it a go, anyway, and if it does turn out to be useless nonsense as I suspect, it's little bother to simply hit the "deactivate" button again.

I'll leave you with this, which is a big part of my hesitance to return:

1461: Day After Day

Every so often when I sit down to write this blog thing every day, I look at the number before the post title and think "bloody hell, that's a lot of posts." Then I think "bloody hell, that's quite a long time I've been doing this."

Of course, given that my day job involves writing lots of things every day, it's perhaps arguable whether or not having written a single post on here every day for the last 1,461 days is as impressive as it once was, but I like to think it still shows a certain degree of dedication and commitment on my part. And, given that I'm not the sort of person who spends a lot of time thinking particularly good things about themselves, that's one thing with concrete evidence that I can specifically point to and say "yes, that's good; that's something I can be pleased with."

I feel doubly pleased when I think back to how this all started. For those who have joined me recently, the basic gist was this: a few UK-based writers got together and decided to write something every day, initially for a year. I joined quite late in January in that first year, and haven't stopped since. Interestingly, a significant number of the people who started that first year also gave up very quickly — the person I regard as the "founder" simply bowed out with a tweet that said "fuck #oneaday" one day and never picked it up again — but others stuck it out for most or even all of that first year.

Following that, I managed to organise a ragtag group of bloggers into a group who helped motivate each other somewhat, and in the process we raised a bit of money for charity. Again, though, relatively few people made it through the whole year, but I stood firm. Now, to my knowledge, I'm the only one of the original participants from either of those first couple of years to still be blogging on a daily basis and while I may not always have a lot of meaningful things to say, I still sit down and write every day, regardless.

Because it wasn't necessarily about writing something meaningful or useful. It was just about writing. As with any creative endeavour, regardless of how ambitious it is, the only way to get better and refine your craft is to continue doing it as often as possible. You might just discover a few things about yourself in the process.

For my part, I've discovered — well, confirmed, really — that writing is a good outlet for me. If stress and anxiety is starting to build up in my head, as it often does, writing this post each day is a good means of venting some of that steam. I don't even necessarily have to write specifically about what I'm stressed or anxious about; if you look back to the period on this blog where my marriage was falling apart and I was in a seriously bad place mental health-wise, you'll notice that a lot of the posts are considerably more creative than they perhaps are now. I don't think this is coincidental at all; misery appears to beget creativity, which may account for the whole "tortured artist" stereotype.

Note: I do not advocate the seeking out of misery purely to get your own creative juices flowing, but if, for whatever reason, you're not in a good place, use that negative energy to make something. It doesn't have to be good. But it can help.

Anyway. I think that's enough blabbering on for now. Just another day in the increasingly long list.