2326: Purpose

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In response to the WordPress Daily Post prompt for June 2, 2016.

Purpose is, I am told, that little thing that lights a fire under your arse. Trouble is, finding one’s purpose and then being able to actually, you know, follow it somewhere constructive is a bit harder than just lighting a match beneath your hairy, sweaty ringpiece and hoping for the best.

I don’t think I’ve found my purpose yet. This is probably self-evident to those of you who have either been following this blog for a while or who know me in real life. It’s not through lack of trying, mind you — I’ve tried all manner of different things, but none of them seem to have quite worked out in a way that is any way satisfactory. I’ve either found myself realising that no, I don’t really want to do that thing after all — or in the few cases where I’ve found myself actually enjoying something that I’m doing, I find the opportunity snatched away from me through circumstances entirely beyond my control.

The closest thing I feel I have to any sort of purpose is to write. About what? I don’t know. Games obviously spring to mind, as I do a lot of writing about those from various perspectives, and indeed one of the writing projects I’m finding most enjoyable at the moment is the production of in-depth studies of games over on the sister site to this blog, MoeGamer. I’m currently into my third month of producing work of this type, and I’ve even managed to attract a few people to my Patreon to support me financially in appreciation for my writing, which is nice. Not enough to live on, by any means, but a bit of pocket money each month, if nothing else.

What else do I feel qualified to write about? Music is another thing; music may not be as much of a focus in my life as it was when I was at school, but it will always be a big part of who I am, and I feel pretty confident both talking and writing about music — and indeed teaching it.

On the subject of music, I have a curious (and probably not all that interesting) anecdote to share. I tend to find that my subconscious often reflects things that are at the back of my mind or causing me anxiety through my dreams, and one recurring dream I seem to have is that I’m back at my old school, I know that there are orchestra and concert band rehearsals going on — these are both groups that I was a member of throughout my entire time at school — but I deliberately choose not to attend them, nor to participate in the regular school concerts. In the dreams, I often run into my old music teacher Mr Murrall, one of my absolute favourite teachers in the whole school, and he’s extremely disappointed in me for not attending. Perhaps this is some sort of subconscious signal that I should try and do more with my music once again — question is, what?

That annoying question “what?” is the thing that I feel holds me back most from finding a purpose. Whenever I look for a job, I get hung up on what I should be looking for. Whenever I consider offering private services such as music teaching, I wonder what I should be charging and offering. Whenever I consider training myself up in a new field to try and find a new career, I stall on what I should be studying. What, what, what.

What should I do? I don’t know. But hopefully the answer will come to me at some point, otherwise I’ll just find myself staggering into middle- and old age feeling like I’ve not really accomplished anything along the way. And that’s not a prospect I’m particularly happy about.

2104: Adult Content

From a Plinky prompt:

“When did you realise you were an adult?”

I’ll be frank with you, dear reader; despite being 34 years of age, despite being married, despite being a homeowner, despite having a new(ish) car… I don’t feel like I’m an adult.

I mean, obviously I know I am an adult, because I have to worry about things like council tax, credit cards and putting the rubbish out. But I don’t feel like an adult. I’m not particularly houseproud (except when I know people are coming to visit), I’m not the sort of person who enjoys DIY “projects” — I doubt the day when I really want to “do the bathroom” or similar will ever come, whereas for some friends of mine it came practically the moment they left university — and I don’t really know how insurance works.

These are things that people never teach you, you see — or at least, they didn’t when I was in education. During my few years as a teacher, I did deliver a few “Key Skills” classes that, among other things, involved a whole lesson on how to work a washing machine — yes, really — but I must confess to feeling a little hypocritical educating the youths of the day on things that, in some cases, I wasn’t hugely familiar with myself.

Regular readers will, of course, know that my brain is riddled with hangups and anxieties over all sorts of things, ranging from simple communication with other people to how, exactly, you go about calculating your tax code. These anxieties, at times, build into what feels like outright fear, and I find myself worrying that I’ll get everything “wrong” and mess it up; this feeling, when it grows big enough, is enough to completely paralyse me from doing something I need to do, putting it off and putting it off until it becomes a considerably bigger problem than it would have been if I’d just done it when I first became aware of it.

I probably shouldn’t do that. One of these days I’ll end up putting off something really important and getting myself into a disastrous situation. Fortunately, I’m not alone; I have people who look out for me, and while I don’t want to become dependent on them or anything, knowing that sets me a little more at ease with my life than I would be if I was trying to struggle through all by myself.

So, in answer to the original question… when did I realise I was an adult? I don’t think I ever have realised that I was an adult; I don’t feel like I am an adult, I feel like I still have a hell of a lot to learn about the world, and I don’t have the first clue how to go about doing it. And, more to the point, I’m not sure I particularly want to.

That’s probably not a very grown-up attitude to take. But, well… you know.

1077: New Year’s Honours

I know it’s December 30, but I’m out for New Year’s Eve tomorrow night (just at a friend’s house — I don’t really do obnoxiously loud, drunken parties any more) and probably won’t feel particularly inclined to write a lot tomorrow evening. So I thought I’d look back on the year that was, as is traditional for regular bloggers to do around this time of year.

Actually, looking back, I didn’t really do that at this time last year. Instead I apparently wrote a bit about the board game Pandemic, The Old Republic (was it really a year ago I was playing that and actually enjoying it before the move to suffocating free-to-play pretty much removed everyone’s desire to ever play it ever again?), Minecraft and insomnia. (The above subjects may be somewhat related.) This leads me to believe that the year that was in that instance (being 2011) was not something especially worth looking back on.

And is this year? As I’ve been writing these first few paragraphs, I’ve been pausing occasionally to consider this question. Was 2012 in any way notable or interesting? It certainly wasn’t a “bad” year as such — no, 2010 had that pretty much covered and thankfully I haven’t had a year that bad since — but neither was it a particularly exciting year. I guess that’s sort of good, though — if the most you can say about a year as it is ending is that it just sort of passed by relatively without incident, then I suppose that’s a good thing.

There were good things, of course. The fact that I’m sitting in a flat/apartment/whateverthefuckyouwanttocallit in Southampton — a place I’ve been trying to get back to ever since 2010 went and fucked everything up — is testament to the fact that Things Are Going Sort of All Right, Really, and I’ll certainly take Things Are Going Sort of All Right, Really over Things Are Going Really Fucking Terribly and I Just Want to Cry All Day and All Night. I’ve done both, and I don’t recommend the latter.

But yes. The move back “home” to Southampton is a big positive step. I am now within walking, biking or short driving distance from the vast majority of my friends that I would like to see much more often, which makes me feel good. Okay, none of them have come to visit me yet, but I think I can excuse that, what with it being a rather busy and chaotic time of year and all. Also, delaying their arrival a little increases the chances that we will have got rid of the hundreds and thousands of massive cardboard boxes that are seemingly breeding in this place as we unpack stuff and assemble new pieces of furniture. (We now own a new wardrobe. It’s a bit bigger than we initially thought, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing, as the rooms in this place are pleasingly large.)

What else happened in the last year? I did jury service for the first (and hopefully last) time, in which I got to see how the court system worked for a relatively major case which had to be subsequently abandoned and restarted at some indefinite point in the future. It was an interesting experience, though I would have enjoyed it more if I had a regular job in this country I could just easily take time off from, was not suffering with some sort of hideous plague and was not in the process of moving house (and consequently spending several nights sleeping on the floor of a house with no furniture in it). As I predicted it might do, jury service prompted an immediate re-examination of my life and consideration of whether or not law would be Something Interesting to Look Into.

Regarding Something Interesting to Look Into: this is an occasional crisis of confidence I have at various points in my life where I wonder whether or not I’m on the “right” path career-wise. I’ve been back and forth over a few careers, after all — classroom teacher, private music teacher (though that was never enough to support myself on), retail store employee, software trainer, regular contributor on a mainstream video games site, regular contributor on a specialist social/mobile games site — and frequently find myself pondering what next steps might be. Where do I go? Do I want to go there? Should I stay doing what I’m doing — which is comfortable, fun, relatively challenging and something that I’m good at — or should I do some sort of complete (early) mid-life crisis turnaround, retrain as something that I’m not currently and make a career out of that? I honestly don’t know. But now’s not really the time to be thinking about that.

It’s funny. When I titled this post “New Years Honours” I anticipated that I was going to be able to make a list of Specific Happenings in 2012 that were particularly noteworthy, but this has turned into something of a ramble, really. I apologise. Still, it’s something to think about.

All right, let’s make a list of a few things just to round things out.

Best Video Games I Played: School Days HQ, Katawa Shoujo, Trails in the Sky, Pandora’s Tower, Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed, The Walking Dead

Best Wee I Did: Friday morning this week, it was well over a minute long.

Favourite Technology Purchase: My Novatech laptop, which runs everything from visual novels to TrackMania 2 in relatively portable form without a hitch.

Most Pleasing Restaurant Chain Discovery: Yo! Sushi — I don’t care how authentic it is/isn’t, it’s delicious.

Medium I Abandoned Completely and Don’t Feel Any Regrets About: Movies.

Medium I Embraced Wholeheartedly and Don’t Feel Any Regrets About: Anime. Also visual novels.

Amount I Earned by Emptying my Small Change into the Coinstar Machine in Sainsburys: About £80

Amount I Earned by Music Magpie-ing Almost my Entire CD Collection (Except for the Stuff They Wouldn’t Take Like Spice Girls and Other Stuff That Escapes Me Right Now): About £80

Amount I Anticipate I Will Probably Get for Selling My Knackered Old Car Next Year: About £80

Most Expensive Purchase: New sofa

Most Expensive Purchase That is Probably Impossible to Get Into Our New Flat: New sofa

Meme I’m Most Sick Of: Grumpy Cat

Number of People I’ve Blocked on Twitter for Arguing Too Aggressively or Unreasonably (Not Necessarily Towards Me): Too many to count

Number of Completely Unnecessary Mobile Social Networking Apps I Have Encountered in the Course of my Job This Year: Too many to count

What I Can Smell Right Now: Smoked mackerel

What I am Going to Do After This Blog Post: Make a warm milk, go to bed, play Trails in the Sky.

Why I am Still Thinking of Things to Put in This List When I’ve Clearly Run Out of Ideas: I don’t know.

Good night.

#oneaday, Day 106: Crystallised Memories

It’s funny how certain objects come to have memories attached to them. Inanimate, unremarkable objects. They could be an item of furniture. They could be a book. They could be a piece of technology. They could be a stuffed toy.

Look around the room you’re in right now. Look at some of the things that are sitting in it. And not just the big things, or things which are specifically designed to evoke a memory, like photographs.

What memories are attached to, say, the lamp by the side of your bed? Or the clock radio? Or the bookcase? Or the books which lay discarded on the floor? Or that mark on the wall? If you think about it, you can probably attach a memory to every tiny little thing that you can see in any room – assuming you’ve had the time to “get to know” that room, of course.

When you move on to a new place, sometimes other peoples’ memories are left behind. They may take away the things that can be carried, packed into boxes or loaded into a van, but some things can’t be taken away. A whole room can hold memories, both good and bad. And it doesn’t have to be just one memory at a time. In the room where I am right now I can see things which represent good times, things which represent bad times, and things which represent the very worst of times. Some objects in this room represent more than one thing. Some things hold conflicting emotions. Those things are confusing, but the important thing to remember is that the object holds all of those memories, not just the bad ones.

It’s easy to let bad memories and bad experiences colour everything that you do. They say bad experiences and bad memories help to make you stronger. It may well be true, but it doesn’t make them any easier to live through, or to relive. But, as received wisdom has it, it’s the sum of our experiences that make us who we are. And it’s by examining the sum of those experiences that we, ourselves, can learn to understand who we are.

I’m not sure I really know who I am. I’ve drifted along for so long, wondering if I’m doing the right thing for myself and for other people. I don’t feel like I’ve found it yet, and recent events (which I won’t be going into detail about here) have made me think that no, clearly I’m not doing the right thing – for myself, more than anything else. It’s a selfish attitude to take, but when it comes down to it, the only person’s destiny that you have any control over is your own. You can’t always live your life for the approval of other people, least of all if you’re not happy yourself.

So that’s why when some of these crystallised memories disappear, when some are left behind and some are taken with me to wherever life takes me next, I know that’s just another step. There have been missteps, and there have been backwards steps, but they’re all steps nonetheless; steps on that long, arduous, exhausting and frankly irritating journey that they call life.

I’m kind of ready to get where I’m supposed to be going now, thanks. I thought I was already there for a while, but there actually seem to be some significant engineering works in the way. Where’s the nearest replacement bus service?