2189: Reflections on the Last Five Years, Or: Life After Games Journalism

I've had a whole lot of thoughts swirling around in my head for some time now about various matters, and I feel as a therapeutic exercise — not to mention an opportunity for some of you to get to know me a bit better — it's important that I express them somehow. I know all too well how frustrating, stressful and ultimately unhealthy it can be to have unresolved emotions and thoughts surrounding things that have happened to you — particularly bad things — and so this is my attempt to reboot my mind and try to move on a little.

Consequently, certain aspects of this post are more than likely to rub a few people up the wrong way. To those people whose jimmies are rustled I say simply: fuck you, I don't give a shit, and if you really cared you wouldn't have done the things you did in the first place.

In the interests of at least a facade of professionalism, I will not be naming individuals who have had a negative impact on my life in this post, though it will doubtless be extremely obvious to anyone who has been following me for a while who the people in question are. I will, however, be naming the companies involved, since that is less personal; everyone knows how unpleasant it is if you Google your own name and find something not terribly complimentary, whereas, unless you own a monolithic corporation, you probably care a little less about someone talking smack about your monolithic corporation. That's how I'm going to attempt to justify myself about this, anyway.

Also, this post is crazy long, so for the benefit of those who only read on my front page, here's a Read More tag.

Continue reading "2189: Reflections on the Last Five Years, Or: Life After Games Journalism" →

2171: Pain

There are many types of pain in the world. There's physical pain, which can range from mildly annoying to excruciating and debilitating. There's mental pain, which, likewise, can range from occasionally distracting to life-consuming. There's emotional pain, which ranges from feeling a bit blue to wanting to end your own existence.

Few things compare to the pain you feel when helpless to do anything to help someone you love, though. This pain cuts deep, right through your very soul, and threatens to rip out the very core of your being. It's as excruciating, life-consuming and debilitating as all of the very worst the other kinds of pain have to offer, with the added joy that there's absolutely no way whatsoever to treat it. If there were, you wouldn't be feeling it in the first place.

Mostly this pain stems from a position of impotence: a position of complete powerlessness to do anything to help resolve that which is causing your special person anguish. It's the frustration at not knowing what to do, and at the things you do try not being enough or not working. It's the realisation that there really is nothing you can do but watch as someone else suffers, and just hope that people who are better qualified to sort things out are able to sort things out — or, in the worst possible circumstances, that things will just resolve themselves somehow.

I do not know how to deal with that pain, and I am suffering dreadfully from it. And I feel bad bringing it up, because the pain I feel is something intangible that is a consequence of someone who is physically suffering. But it's there, nonetheless, and it probably needs "treatment" of some sort just as much as the physical pain does.

I don't even know where to begin, though. Let's hope that the old saying about time healing all wounds is really true.

2162: That Not-So-Wonderful Time of the Year

It seems to me that this holiday season has been, for many people, a period of inordinately, disproportionately Bad Times. I've had some shittiness to deal with myself, which I won't go into here, but just from browsing my Twitter feed each day it's clear that I'm not alone in having a tough time of it right now.

This post, then, is perhaps to reassure those who are feeling a similar way that they're not alone, that there are other people out there who understand the way they are feeling, and who would hang out with them, play video games with them, share lewd pictures of anime girls with them and/or hug them as appropriate. I say this as someone who would enjoy all of the above with the people I'm talking about.

This holiday season feels like a highly concentrated form of the tension that has permeated all of 2015. There's been a thoroughly unpleasant undercurrent of "walking on eggshells" with regard to political correctness, and it feels like it's been coming to a head recently.

Arguments over whether or not Hermione in the Harry Potter series is black erupted today, with both sides attempting to claim some sort of moral superiority in a frankly rather childish, stupid and utterly pointless conflict that didn't need to happen in the first place. But this is far from the only thing that's been highly charged; even the new Star Wars movie became politicised, with some commentators making more of the fact that its leads feature a black person and a woman than the fact that, by all accounts, The Force Awakens appears to be something of a return to form for the series.

Among it all, the ever-bubbling conflict between the so-called "Social Justice Warriors" — blowhards who want to look like they're saying the "right" things with regard to political correctness, but who are actually just seeking glory for themselves rather than having any real interest in changing society for the better — and people who just want to be left the fuck alone to enjoy whatever they want has continued, with the former group in particular continuing its trend of making wild accusations without any sort of proof, blaming all of society's ills on "GamerGate" and "the Men's Rights Activists" rather than taking the time to get to know any members of these groups and contemplate why they are at loggerheads.

This perpetual "culture war" makes me incredibly sad, because it has poisoned what used to be lively and interesting public discussion and debate over subjects such as video games. Anita Sarkeesian's appearance on the scene, with her oh-so-brave step of saying that sometimes common tropes in video games favour men over women — while conveniently ignoring the hundreds, even thousands, of excellent female characters in gaming — acted as a catalyst for all manner of nutjobs to come out of the woodwork, and this whole movement seems to have grown in prominence by a huge amount in the last year. Fans of Japanese games and anime on social media are particularly perturbed that there are no mainstream sites remaining that are willing to give niche Japanese titles the time of day, instead preferring to look at them on a superficial level, brand them "sexist" or "misogynist" and move on, when in fact, in many cases, these "otaku games" are far more progressive than any bullshit these loudmouths might come up with. Seeing these discussions makes me all the more sad that I was strongarmed out of my position at USgamer, where, as many of you know, I ran a weekly JPgamer column, celebrating the weird and wonderful entertainment that our friends in the East — and the intrepid localisation teams — brought us.

It's not so much the lack of media representation that saddens me in this instance, though; it's the sense of alienation I feel when I see people that I thought were friends starting to spout ill-informed nonsense in the name of being "progressive". Mockery, public shaming and similar behaviours are not progressive, and I cannot support them or anyone who condones them — speaking as someone who was bullied throughout school, and who suffered a horrendous targeted harassment campaign a couple of years back, I know what harm dogpiling can do to your wellbeing. It surprises and upsets me to see friends who once suffered the effects of being publicly humiliated by these assholes now joining their ranks and gleefully indulging in that sort of reprehensible behaviour. A case of "if you can't beat them, join them" perhaps — but whether or not that's the case, it still sucks to feel like you don't know someone any more.

This post has rambled and perhaps got a little off-topic somewhere along the way, but all these thoughts are swirling around my head right now, and this holiday season feels like something of a focal point for all the misery, tension and discomfort that 2015 has brought to numerous people I know, including myself. The world feels like it's getting worse, not better, and when you're someone who tries their best to be a good person and not hurt anyone, this is exceedingly frustrating and upsetting.

Hopefully 2016 will be a better time for everyone, but at this stage I'm not particularly confident. I hope I end up pleasantly surprised.

2150: My Beard Controls the Universe

I'm pretty sure most of us have behaviours and signals that things are going well or badly at any given time.

For me, it's the length of my beard and hair. Generally speaking, the more unkempt I look, the worse I am feeling; in other words, the length of my beard and hair are directly proportional (inversely proportional?) to my current state of mental health.

I trimmed my beard to a somewhat more manageable length this evening. It wasn't necessarily because I'm feeling any better about things than I have done, but it felt like something of a symbolic gesture if nothing else: the desire to see things change and get better. To put it another way, I trimmed my beard in anticipation of an improvement in my mental health. If it happens, great; if it doesn't, well, I have a somewhat neater beard than I had when I woke up this morning.

The length of various hairs growing out of my body isn't the only indicator of my mental state, though. The tidiness of the rooms in which I spend the most time is, too. Specifically, when we're talking about the lounge, which is where I'm writing this from right now, the amount of crap there is on the coffee table is generally directly proportional to how miserable I've been recently. There's a fair bit of crap on there at the moment, though at least part of that is down to the takeaway curry we had for dinner this evening.

I say all this, but it's entirely possible that it all works the other way around, of course. Perhaps my hair and beard being long is what causes my mental health to decline. Perhaps the messiness of my environment causes me to feel bad.

Or, perhaps, it's the more likely situation: both sides contribute to each other. I feel miserable, so I let things slide, then I see how much I've let things slide, and that makes me miserable, so I let things slide further because it doesn't feel "worth" doing anything about them, then I see how much worse things have gotten… you get the idea and see how this works, yes? This is, broadly speaking, how depression works, and how it can get you into an endless spiral, circling the Drain of Misery but never quite — in most cases, anyway — getting completely sucked down it.

I've been in worse situations in my life. Things could be much worse right now. Certain aspects of my life are fairly positive. But on the whole, there are a lot of influences making me a bit miserable at the moment. Not exactly how you want to be feeling going into the festive season, for sure, but all I can keep doing for now is looking forward and hoping for better days ahead, I guess.

2136: Dark World

I am having a rough time, I don't mind admitting. I was pretty open and honest about one of the things that was bothering me a few days ago, but it's just one of several things that have been mounting up and causing me a not-inconsiderable degree of grief and stress just recently.

I would like it all to stop, please.

The person I care most about in the world is suffering with pain that won't go away and that no-one seems to know how to fix. It's at a point where it's impacting both of our lives fairly significantly, but I don't know what to do about it. Well, I sort of do: there isn't really anything I can do about it myself, save for hanging in there and offering support when and how I can. I don't resent having to do that, of course, but it is exhausting.

Alongside that, I find myself worrying about doing the right thing with regard to working. I'm enjoying my current seasonal temp position in retail, but at the back of my mind is always the knowledge that I'm underpaid, overworked and overqualified; a little voice in the back of my mind reminding me that I am 34 years old and should probably have done something a little more with my life by now.

The thing is, I've tried doing more with my life. I've tried being a teacher, and failed. I've tried having a "normal" office job, and failed. I've tried being a games journalist, and failed. In each and every instance, I've been pushed out by some combination of me being unable to stand up to people being assholes, my own declining mental health, my own lack of self-confidence and, on several occasions, events that were completely beyond my control.

It really, really blows to feel like you've wasted so many years of your life, and that you're stuck on the "bottom rung" of the career ladder. It makes me feel guilty for enjoying the work I'm doing, because I "should" be doing more. But the thing is, I don't really feel like I want to be doing more, nor do I feel like I'm entirely capable of doing more. My experiences since leaving university have proven to be such repeated and violent blows to my own sense of belief in my own abilities that I just want to be able to get on with things and let progress happen naturally if it's warranted.

I really don't know what to do any more. I guess I just have to ride this particular mental storm out, just as I've ridden out all the previous ones I've suffered over the years. This one feels like quite a bad one, but I can't give up; I mustn't give up. Giving up will simply make everything worse.

Forgive the self-pity, but as you can probably tell, I'm not in a great place right now. You will, dear reader, hopefully understand if I am somewhat out of sorts and in need of venting a bit of steam over the next few days, weeks, months…

2126: One of Those Times

I've been having a rough few days, depression- and anxiety-wise. Things have been "getting to me" more than they have for a long time, and today felt particularly bad; earlier in the day I just needed a cry more than anything. I wasn't crying over anything in particular; it just happened. Everything was too much. I felt a little better afterwards, but there's still some residual bleakness lurking around inside my head.

I was interested to see on Twitter that a friend of mine had also been having a rough time with his mental health, in his case noting that his anger at something that might seem relatively "trivial" to an outside observer had actually led him to self-harm for the first time in quite a while. Like me, he noted that the incident itself wasn't a particular catalyst for his reaction; it was, presumably, just more a case of "the straw that broke the camel's back", and everything coming to a head leading to something mental snapping.

Times like this seem to come for a lot of people around the same sort of time. I don't really know what causes it, but it's interesting to ponder. In this particular instance, it's entirely possible that the horrible things that have been going on in Paris have subconsciously infiltrated our minds and have been influencing our thoughts in negative directions, but to be perfectly frank, it doesn't feel that way to me at all; I'd been feeling bleak and miserable before all that happened, so perhaps it's something else.

Maybe it's environmental? We're coming into winter now, and the evenings are getting darker earlier, making the whole world seem just a little bit more closed-in and oppressive to some people. I've always quite liked the night, but it being dark outside is very much a signal to the body that "the day is over, it's probably time to do relaxing things and/or sleep now" and as such isn't particularly conducive to being productive.

Maybe there's some sort of physical reason; a literal "something in the air", as it were. Air pressure can sometimes have an effect on the way you feel physically, so perhaps there's an effect on mental wellbeing too, or perhaps just the changing weather of the advancing seasons has an impact on how everyone's feeling.

Or maybe it's even some sort of metaphysical, spiritual thing; the balance between Light and Dark, Good and Evil being off or something. (It's probably not this. But you never really know, do you?)

Whatever it is, it's pretty crappy, and I know from today that I'm not the only one who is feeling a bit bleak and miserable about everything for no real reason at the moment. As such, I'd like to say to anyone out there who is feeling a bit low that I hope things look up for you soon, and remember that it's often really helpful to try and express the things you're feeling, even if you can't quite explain them. Talk to a friend; write them down in a journal; blog them as I have; tweet them to your followers. Looking at things from another perspective can sometimes be helpful, and even if it isn't, it can give you a much-needed sense of relief and release to just get all those stray, dark thoughts out of your head.

Be well, everyone!

2089: Connect the Dots

In response to The Daily Post's writing prompt: "Connect the Dots."

"Scour the news for an entirely uninteresting story. Consider how it connects to your life. Write about that."

When looking for "entirely uninteresting stories", your first port of call should almost certainly be your local newspaper. Sure enough, the Daily Echo didn't disappoint with this marvel:

BREAKING: City bridge closed due to 'police incident'

A SOUTHAMPTON bridge was closed this evening due to a 'police incident'.

The Itchen Bridge was shut at around 6.30pm but the exact nature of the incident is unknown.

And the bridge was quickly reopened at 6.40pm.

This is currently the top story on the Daily Echo website, which probably gives you an idea of the sorts of things that get posted on there. But let's ponder the actual question from the daily post: how this connects to my life in some way.

Well, okay. This is actually quite an easy one in many ways. The most obvious connection, of course, is that I live in Southampton, and consequently I know where the Itchen Bridge is. But the connection actually runs a little deeper than that: about five or six years ago, I used to live very near the Itchen Bridge in the town centre. The bridge itself was within walking distance, only about five minutes or so away. This didn't really have much of an impact on my life for the most part, as I tended to find other ways to cross the river owing to the toll gates at the other side of the Itchen Bridge. But during my oft-mentioned "difficult period" in my life — the time my first wife left and my life pretty much fell apart — the bridge became somewhere that I liked to occasionally head towards in order to just stand and reflect.

I don't think I ever seriously considered jumping off the bridge, though with my mental state at the time I won't lie to you: I certainly thought about it more than once or twice. Ultimately I knew that I'd never actually have the courage to do it, though, for all manner of reasons: firstly, part of me, despite being deeper in a pit of misery than I'd ever been in my whole life, I didn't really want to die; secondly, even contemplating that sort of thing made me feel guilty about the people I'd leave behind; thirdly, the idea of jumping off a bridge into horrible dirty water sounded both terrifying and unpleasant. And, I mean, I know killing yourself (or the contemplation thereof) isn't particularly pleasant anyway, but I kind of figured there were easier, less painful ways to do it.

That didn't stop me regularly going out to that bridge, though, noticing the Samaritans stickers on the railings every time I walked up to its highest point to look out over the water. I never called them — as I say, I knew that I didn't really want to jump — but they always gave me pause when I saw them. Perhaps they did help, in their own way.

Eventually I settled for getting these musings out of my system with a piece of creative writing. In the short first-person narrative — which was left a little open-ended in case I wanted to expand it into a full-on story at some point — the protagonist, who was very obviously me, walked out to a bridge that was very obviously the Itchen Bridge, tormented by his own despair, and jumped. At the last moment, he was saved from his seemingly inevitable demise by a character I'd created and had my own story in mind for; this particular little narrative was set after that other story, even though, to date, I still haven't written all of it. In other words, the character who saved me was the character as she was at what I had planned to be the conclusion of her original tale; as it happened, she fit nicely into this little fantasy scenario, though.

But I digress. How does this news story connect to my life? Well, my first thought upon reading the headline of the story on the Daily Echo website was "someone's probably jumped". Given that the bridge was re-opened after just ten minutes, though, I wonder whether that was really the case or not; at the moment, it looks pretty much like a non-story, despite its prominent billing on the Daily Echo website. I guess my thought process ran something along the lines of "I wonder if there would have been a story like that on the Daily Echo website if I'd actually given in to my despair and jumped back in those dark days?"

Bleak? Oh, absolutely and definitely. But, well, there you go. That's me.

2061: By Request: More About My Stint as a Teacher

Continuing with yesterday's little exercise of taking suggestions from my Twitter followers, today I come to a request from another Michael, in this case Michael J. Hughes, aka @mobilesworking. Michael wanted to hear more about my stint as a teacher, so that's what I'm going to write about today.

Longtime readers will, of course, be aware that when I started doing this whole oneaday thing, I was still employed in education, just coming to the end of a short-term maternity cover contract where I was looking after a Year 4 class while, at the same time, the school in question was gradually collapsing into Special Measures. This meant an inordinately stressful period of my life, although anyone who has ever worked in education will know that education in general is pretty stressful; throw in regular visits from government inspectors, though, and things get a bit too much to bear. If you really want to read my thoughts and feelings from the time itself, start here and go right ahead!

In the meantime, I will attempt to give a potted history of my time at the chalkface in this single post, since it's now a few years ago and I've subsequently had time to reflect on my experiences — which, while I look back on them in such a way as to know that I never, ever want to be a classroom teacher ever again, aren't entirely negative. Just mostly negative.

I kind of fell into teaching. While I was still at school, I took on a few piano pupils, since my mother and my teacher thought that I would do a decent job of teaching them. Turns out that I did; it was hugely nerve-wracking to begin with, but I gradually settled into it, noticing things like different pupils learning in different ways and the different tutor books handling things very differently from one another. As time went on, I developed my own unique style of teaching, as most teachers did, and I was enjoying myself. I was particularly enjoying it as piano tuition can be very lucrative indeed, and when you're a highschooler with no real "expenses" besides the latest video games, that money soon mounts up if you have a few pupils.

Anyway. A few years later, I was coming towards the end of my degree studies at Southampton University. I'd been studying English and Music, though the English component had proven to be somewhat disappointing, focusing rather too much on philosophy rather than actual English for my tastes, and the Music component had demonstrated to me that in terms of ability, I wasn't anything particularly "special" among the overall musician community. A little disheartened, the time came for me to ponder exactly what I'd do when my degree course came to a close; I was on track to receive a decent grade (it eventually turned out to be a 2:1, which I was more than happy with) but it was occurring to me a little too late that my original idea of taking a "good, general degree" and falling into a job straight afterwards due to the multi-purpose nature of my qualification wasn't really going to work; an awful lot of jobs that I might have been interesting were looking for specific degrees in things like management, computing and whatnot, and so I was finding myself a little despondent.

I'll add at this point that I certainly don't regret my time at university, as I'm aware all of the above may sound a little negative. On the contrary, I actually rather enjoyed the chance to have three years studying things that I found interesting, and I wish I could have that opportunity again in the future. I enjoy learning, even if I don't end up being amazing at the thing I'm learning, and for that reason alone — coupled with the very good friends I made while I was there — the experience was worthwile. But I digress.

The time came to make a decision, and I thought back to my time teaching piano. I knew that teaching in the classroom wouldn't be the same as teaching an individual pupil one-on-one, but I thought it was something potentially worth pursuing, anyway. Taking a teaching qualification, I thought, would give you a ready-made career path and hopefully sort you out for if not life then certainly the immediate future.

My PGCE (PostGraduate Certificate of Education) studies remain some of my fondest memories of university. Our tutor Rebecca Berkeley was one of the most charismatic, entertaining teachers I've ever had, and she set a fantastic example of how to engage and thrill people in the music classroom. Our small but dedicated cohort of trainee music teachers were enthusiastic and passionate, too, and we all had our own ideas and approaches to lessons.

Then we got into the classroom. The university had a whole bunch of partner schools in the nearby area, and I ended up at a place in Eastleigh, the next town over. This necessitated the catching of an early-morning train every day, at least until I made friends with the painfully gorgeous trainee Geography teacher Debbie, who started giving me a lift after seeing my sad figure trudging through the rain to the station one day. The school itself was an interesting structure, with its main concourse being all concrete and glass, looking to all intents and purposes like a small shopping centre rather than a school. The music department was, I recall, upstairs on the left as you went in; it consisted of a single, very wide room that always seemed much too big.

Following the suggestions and ideas we'd been given during our initial training — and after an initial period of observing the school's resident music teacher — I prepared to deliver a short series of four lessons that I'd planned out in advance. I was very pleased with them; they represented a gradual progression from simple, straightforward activities to a more freeform assessment-style activity to finish off with, and I'd made an effort to drop in some references to things that I knew the kids would relate to in my worksheets. Thought I knew, anyway; turns out my subtle references to Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, which was a recent release on PlayStation 2 at the time, were… well, too subtle for them, and no-one appeared to notice them. Disappointing.

My actual delivery of the lessons varied in quality somewhat, though I attribute this partly to the variation in the makeup of the different classes. Some classes are "better" than others; sometimes all it takes is a single unruly child — usually one with "special educational needs", it has to be said — to disrupt everything and spoil the flow of a lesson, and sometimes kids just have off days. (Sometimes teachers do, too.)

Anyway, to cut a very long story short, my teacher training proved to be a bit of a rollercoaster of emotions. When it went well, it was a fantastic feeling. When it went badly, it was the worst feeling in the world… actually, no, when I thought it had gone well but my mentor in the school told me he thought I was actually getting worse, that was the worst feeling in the world.

I passed my course comfortably in the end, and was ready to begin my career, though I already had a few misgivings based on my experiences as a student teacher. In particular, the one aspect which I had worried would prove to be the most difficult — behaviour management — did indeed turn out to be the most difficult, and more so than I'd expected. And the trouble with behaviour management is that you can fill your head with all the theories and strategies you like, sometimes they just simply don't work; sometimes you're just faced with a class of shitheads who don't want to do anything, don't like you and don't like school in general. In which case, you're pretty much fucked.

I encountered this position on a fairly regular basis in my first full-on teaching position, which was at a school in an army base town on the Hampshire-Surrey border. The school's population was made up of a melting-pot of Forces kids and local traveller children, and consequently clashes were frequent and often violent. The polite term for the school would be "challenging"; the area wasn't exactly impoverished as such, but it wasn't particularly well off, and the school wasn't especially well-equipped, either.

The school's approach to staffing was to recruit people into a main position, then encourage them to try out some other subjects, too, broadening the staff's expertise and making the whole workforce a little more flexible. It also gave the kids a bit more variety, too. I was recruited as the second music teacher at the school, but I was also presented with a few English, ICT and "Key Skills" classes. I didn't really know what Key Skills was, but being relatively bright-eyed and keen to make a good impression, I agreed to jump in and have a go at them.

Key Skills turned out to be the "get the naughty kids out of our fucking hair for an hour or so" subject. Each class was made up of no more than about ten or twelve kids, all of whom were either painfully stupid or behaved like psychopaths. There were a few instances of kids exhibiting both characteristics, but for the most part the stupid kids weren't the problem; they'd happily get on with doodling something in crayon while the psycho kids would kick off. Because they always fucking kicked off.

In a way, I don't really blame them; they almost certainly knew why they were in the Key Skills class, and the subject matter — which included, among other things, how to operate a washing machine — wasn't exactly the most inspiring stuff in the world. But the amount of rage, resentment and abuse directed at me as a result was almost intolerable. On one occasion, a kid threatened to knife me because I asked him to stop talking; on another, most of the class locked me in the classroom and broke the door; the couple of pupils who had remained behind then climbed out of the window.

On another memorable occasion — and this isn't exactly abuse, but it's a story I delight in telling — I had taken the Year 8 Key Skills group to the library for some innocuous activity, and noticed that two members of the class — Fat Barry and his friend Shane — had been gone for some time. I eventually found them behind some bookshelves, Fat Barry straddling a face-down Shane and… gyrating.

"What are you doing?" I asked, foolishly, kicking myself mentally for not simply being assertive and telling them to "get up".

"We're doing a bumsex, Sir," replied Fat Barry, with admirable politeness and deference.

Anyway. I digress. My stint at this first school lasted just a single year because the headteacher who was in charge when I first joined was seemingly Not Very Good With Money, and this meant that when the new head came on board partway through my first year as a qualified teacher, he was faced with the unenviable task of laying off a considerable proportion of the school's staff. As one of the last in, I was, of course, one of the first out, though thankfully it wasn't long before I managed to secure a new position in another nearby school that, this time, was in a slightly more affluent area.

I stayed at my second school for just under two years. During that time, I had some good experiences. I absolutely adored working with my GCSE group, for example, because they treated me like a human being rather than a teacher, and I reciprocated. Also it's a magical feeling to successfully convince an entire class to spend two hours writing arrangements of Battle on the Big Bridge from Final Fantasy V. They did a great job!

I also loved working with the drama department on the production of Blood Brothers, and on the 24-hour Music Marathon for charity. I enjoyed introducing a hitherto-unexplored aspect of music technology into the classrooms of the school, and I enjoyed running groups such as the choir and the jazz band. I even quite enjoyed being a group tutor; although I didn't teach my tutor group for any classes, we built up a reasonable rapport over the course of the two years I was with them just from registration and tutorial periods.

Unfortunately, this job nearly killed me. I had been aware of my stress levels rising for some time, but I thought I could handle it. I couldn't. The theft of an £80 microphone from out of my locked desk in my locked classroom flipped a switch in my head, and I knew I didn't want to do this any more, but intended to stick it out for as long as I could.

"As long as I could" turned out to not be very long at all. A particularly obnoxious year 9 class were outright refusing to sit down, be quiet and listen to the activities I had planned for them, and this turned out to be the tipping point. I ran out of the classroom, into the department's walk-in storage cupboard — which was a bombsite after the year 9 class had, once again, failed to treat anything with any respect whatsoever — and just started crying.

I couldn't stop. The tears kept flowing, the sobs made me gasp to a point where I could barely breathe. I collapsed to my knees, no longer caring if anyone saw or heard me. I don't remember who did see or hear me, but someone did, because before long I was finding myself ushered into the drama department's office — the drama room was presently vacant, and it was adjacent to my classroom. I found myself confronted with a couple concerned-looking faces; my head of department, whom I'd lashed out at over my frustration with the microphone theft a little while ago (and subsequently felt awful about) and the head of drama, a woman of considerable dry wit whom I'd always found a bit intimidating, but was now showing a softer side I hadn't expected.

"This isn't me," I wheezed, gasping and gulping for air as I continued to sob. "I can't do this. This isn't me. This isn't who I am."

I don't remember how the conversation went from there, but before long I was at home making an appointment with the doctor. I related my experiences to him and, without asking any further details or examining me, he signed me off work until the end of the term. I snuck into the school when I knew no-one would be around but it would still be open and left the doctor's note on the reception desk; it was one of the most terrifying experiences of my life. I didn't want to ever set foot in that school ever again; I felt like I had disgraced myself and that I would be mercilessly abused and mocked if I was ever seen again.

I ended up only going back in there once; after I went back to the doctors as my note was nearing its expiration, I explained that I didn't feel like I could go back, and again without hesitation, he signed me off until the end of the school year. Evidently I wasn't the first teacher to come to him in this state. My final visit to that school was on the last day of the year, after all the kids had gone home, and I had to pick up my things. The campus was deserted; I didn't even see any of my colleagues. I collected my things, walked out of the door and didn't look back, swearing never to return to teaching.

Except, of course, I did. As I was coming to the end of a period working in retail, I found myself with the opportunity to try my hand at primary school teaching; my previous experience had been with secondary school teaching, and too many people had said to me that they'd thought I'd be good at primary school teaching for me to ignore. So I spent some time with a friend of mine who taught in the local area, and found the experience both enjoyable and less stressful. So I pursued it, eventually netting the maternity cover position I had when I started writing this blog every day.

Primary school teaching was, without a doubt, a better experience than secondary school teaching for the most part, even in as shitty a school as I was working in. The lessons were varied and fun to teach, and they challenged me as well as the kids; I had to flex mathematical brain muscles I hadn't worked out in years, for example, and I enjoyed things like reading them stories and suchlike. It was also cool to be in education just at the time when new technologies like interactive whiteboards and suchlike were starting to be incorporated into classrooms, and it gave me a feeling of actually being somewhat worthwhile by being The Guy Who Knew About Computers, compared to my middle-aged female colleagues, most of whom knew how to log on to Facebook and little else.

I knew it wouldn't last, though. I still had difficulty with behaviour management, particularly with a couple of notorious kids in my class, one of whom had a somewhat turbulent homelife that manifested itself in some seriously unpleasant tendencies. Despite the support of my long-suffering teaching assistant in the classroom — whose help I will forever be grateful for, particularly as having support in the secondary school classroom was incredibly rare — I just didn't know what to do; I didn't know how to make this child do what I wanted him to do, and I didn't know how to get through to him.

I could feel the tell-tale signs of stress creeping up on me again, and I knew I didn't want to have another experience like the last time. So I got ahead of the game; I quit. I explained to the acting headteacher of the school what was happening with me and why I needed to get out, then I got out. Then I went to PAX in Boston to meet some friends who had previously only been usernames on the Internet. Then my then-wife left me and my life fell to pieces. But that's a story for another day — or, more specifically, one that I've already told on these pages if you know where to look, and one that I can't help but feel is still going on right now, and that is yet to reach a satisfactory conclusion.

2031: Delayed Contact

How would you get along with your sibling(s), parent(s), or any other person you’ve known for a long time — if you only met them for the first time today?

WordPress Daily Post, August 12, 2015

This is an interesting question! What it's really asking, I guess, is how I've changed over the years. And I'm certainly not going to deny that I've changed over the years — in some ways for the better, in other ways for the worse.

Let's consider the "big things" first. The first thing I'd want to address is my depression and anxiety. As anyone who has had a depressed or anxious friend will know, we can be a handful: prone to bouts of irrational emotion, having a tendency to back out of appointments and commitments because we're not feeling up to dealing with people, in some cases full of seething rage or unbearable grief at nothing in particular, which is difficult for anyone not living it to truly understand.

Now, I address this because I tend to think of my depression and anxiety as a "recent" thing, though on reflection it's something I've clearly been carrying around with me for a lot longer than I might have initially thought. It probably stretches all the way back to primary school, to be honest, when I was, yes, full of seething rage at nothing in particular and would often get into trouble at lunchtimes and breaktimes for the 10 year old equivalent of casting "Provoke" on a dinner lady or school bully.

Actually, to say said seething rage was at nothing in particular isn't quite accurate. It was something of a vicious cycle. I wasn't comfortable in who I was, and kids being kids would pick on me, sensing weakness. I'd then be upset — particularly when, as often happened, my friends abandoned me and sided with the "cool" kids (who were often also the bullies of the playground) rather than with me.

But this isn't specifically about my history with depression, it's about whether people I've known for a long time would get along with me — or if I'd get along with them — if we happened to meet for the first time today. And the depression and anxiety side of things is interesting to consider; these days, I'm a lot more open and honest about talking about it in most circumstances — sometimes needing a bit of a prompt or leading question — whereas in my childhood and adolescence, when, in retrospect, I was clearly suffering from both of these issues, I didn't recognise them for what they were and consequently didn't know how to deal with them. My first girlfriend even left me because she "couldn't take my moods" — though she did also cheat on me at the school prom, so fuck her, basically.

I digress, but the point, I guess, is that anyone I met for the first time now would have to be able to deal with someone who is aware of their own mental defects, be willing to support them when necessary and be willing to leave them the fuck alone when they need to be alone.

Now, onto other matters also worthy of consideration. Let's keep things self-deprecating and consider my personal appearance. At school I was fairly unremarkable-looking, though I had terrible hair (still do), bad skin (still do) and zits (thankfully long gone). I felt like I was a bit fat at school compared to some of my friends, but looking back at some old photographs, I really, really wasn't. I steadily gained weight over the course of my time at university and beyond until I got to the point where I was so uncomfortable I needed to do something about it — hence my joining Slimming World back in February. (As of tonight, I've lost 4.5 stone in total, incidentally.)

Let's be realistic: people judge each other on appearances, like it or not, and six months ago I was absolutely ashamed of my appearance. I didn't like going out because people would see me; I didn't like walking past windows because I could catch a glimpse of myself; I didn't like wearing any of my clothes because none of them really fit properly any more; and mirrors, well, no. Just no. I've always had something of a lack of self-confidence — again, this can be traced in part back to my school days; at primary school I was taunted on a daily basis for having "big ears", while at secondary school the aforementioned crap hair, bad skin and zits were picked on — but this was the absolute lowest point I've ever been.

Today, though, some 4.5 stone lighter, I know I still have some way to go, but I'm much more comfortable in myself and, when depression and anxiety aren't laying me low, I can actually notice myself being more open, confident and less embarrassed to be myself. Just yesterday I successfully made some small talk with the store clerk in Game when I was buying Splatoon and didn't come away from the experience thinking "they hate me" or "they think I'm disgusting", which are things I'd thought following a passing interaction in the past. And while this may not sound like much, with everything I deal with in my head, this felt like a noticeable and significant victory, and worth celebrating.

I'm conscious I'm talking generally while the question implies I should be thinking about specific people, but I feel these points are relevant; self-confidence is something that is important in your interactions with anyone, and while I'm certainly not in a position where I'd call myself "confident" or "outgoing" — I'm still an introvert at heart — I am in a position now where yes, I feel like I could meet someone new, have a conversation with them and not make them never want to see me ever again.

Finally, then, there's the matter of changing interests. My interests actually haven't changed all that significantly over the years; I've always been into video games, board games, computers, music, reading and writing. Perhaps the biggest change is in the "subgenres" of certain aspects, specifically my enjoyment of Japanese games, anime and other popular media. As many of you will know, a lot of this sort of thing is enormously polarising and very much an acquired taste, so if there's anywhere I think I'd struggle with if I were meeting an old friend for the first time today, it'd be with regard to these niche interests, and particularly a lot of the mainstream popular assumptions about what people who like that sort of thing are into. (That's a rant for another day, of course.)

There are people I've drifted away from due to diverging interests. There are also new friends I've made as a result of these diverging interests, that happen to converge in different places. That's how life goes; as much as we'd like to believe certain things last forever, sometimes we move on, we grow, we change, we become different people.

Ultimately I like to believe that I'm a decent person, and that anyone I've known for a long time I'd be able to at least get along with today. We became friends for a reason, after all, and in many cases friendships are struck up over that simple, indescribable "click" you get when you start interacting and realise that the person you're talking to is someone absolutely on your wavelength. It's difficult (though, sadly, not impossible) to get rid of that "click" once you've had it, and so, to finally answer the original question: I do think I'd get along with people I've known for a long time if I only met them for the first time today. Our relationship might develop differently to how it did in reality, but that's not necessarily a bad thing; true friendships allow you to get along regardless of circumstances and regardless of differences.

2028: Obstacle Course

In response to The Daily Post's writing prompt: "Obstacle Course."

In yesterday's look at the sad archive that Plinky.com has become, I stumbled across the fact that WordPress.com now has a "Daily Post" writing prompt. I'm not hugely involved with the overall WordPress community, really, but thought this might be an interesting means of finding some new people — or at the very least, providing myself with some inspiration on what to write day in, day out.

This is today's prompt, then:

Think about what you wanted to accomplish last week. Did you? What are the things that hold you back from doing everything you’d like to do?

Well, this is going to be a fairly bleak post as I'm in a fairly bleak mood today, but as regular readers will know, sometimes the act of getting those thoughts and feelings out onto the page can prove to be a form of "therapy" in their own right. So we'll see. Expect honesty.

No, I did not accomplish what I wanted to accomplish last week, though this is partly due to the fact that I didn't really have anything I wanted to accomplish last week. The trouble I have at the moment is that I'm just sort of "drifting" with occasional freelance work and nothing concrete to occupy my time and thoughts day after day.

In some ways, this is pleasant. Not having any "commitments" as such means that I can essentially do what I want to do, though it's not long before anxieties over things like money start creeping in and making me feel that I should be doing "more". More what, I'm not exactly sure, to be honest; the feeling that overtakes me at these times is always simply "you should be doing more" without any specifics attached.

Let's ponder the things I did achieve, at least: since the Slimming World job I mentioned a few posts back isn't going to happen for the moment (I need to be a bit closer to my target before I'll be considered, which is fair enough) I applied to another job. Just a part-time job in retail, so nothing particularly exciting, special or indeed well-paid, but if I'm successful it will be something that provides at least a bit of reasonably predictable income each month that I can use to support the sporadic freelancing I've been doing. From there I can decide if I want to pursue that in more depth and attempt to make a career out of it — probably not, but we'll see — or if I simply want to keep it as one of several things I have on the go at once. I'm inclined to think that the way I can be "happiest" (for want of a better term) is to have a number of different things to do rather than getting bored and frustrated with just one thing — or, worse, getting bored and frustrated with nothing.

One of the awkward things, though, is the fact that I've picked up some piano pupils and have been enjoying teaching them so far — and both they and their parents seem to like me, too. This in itself isn't awkward, of course, but with the current timing of the lessons I have with them, it would make a "regular" job on "normal" hours a little tricky on the day of the week when I teach them. This is proving to be a bit of a mental block for me, to be honest; the prospect of either having to tell a prospective employer that I can't work on a specific day after a specific time is anxiety-inducing, and at the other end of the spectrum, the prospect of having to juggle around commitments that I've already made is also anxiety-inducing. Still, it's a bridge I will no doubt cross if I ever reach it.

Other achievements? Well, I lost another pound. Slow and steady wins the race, as they say; some people in our Slimming World group aren't particularly satisfied if they "only" lose a pound in a week, but me? Having not been able to lose any weight for years and now consistently losing at least one pound every week, I'm happy with that. It's one of the very few things I feel that is going right at the moment, so I cling onto these small victories for all they're worth.

To answer the second part of the question, then, I think it's probably pretty clear from what I've already written above that the thing holding me back the most from achieving things is anxiety. I had been taking anti-anxiety meds for a little while, though I don't feel like they'd been having much effect. On reflection, though, now I've run out, it's quite possible that the way I'm feeling today is proof that they had been doing at least something; if not alleviating the anxiety altogether, then at least keeping it at bay somewhat. I'm going to attempt to make a doctor's appointment tomorrow morning and refresh my supply to see if that helps. I would look into proper therapy, too, but while I don't have a stable income the prospect of having to pay up for that, ironically, fills me with further anxiety.

So all in all, then, things are a bit fucked at the moment. My "obstacle course" doesn't feel like it's altogether fair; it feels like I'm surrounded on all sides by impassable objects, and the only way past them is to do something difficult, unpleasant or outright painful. It's a rubbish feeling and I sincerely hope it passes soon.

For now, though, it's an evening of stewing in my own bleakness, I guess; it's not the first time and it won't be the last. Thanks, as always, for giving ear to my problems, and I hope that one day — preferably soon — I have something a bit more positive to share with you all.