I don't feel like I'm in control anymore. I can't define the feeling because it's not one I'm familiar with.

While things generally are going well, there at least a couple of the more persistent annoyances that remain. I don't know what it'll take to fix them, and I think that the longer I try to tell myself that I don't care the less likely I am to figure out what the solutions are. I genuinely don't care about one of them though. That solution can come to me for a change. I'm not looking for something in someone that clearly isn't and was never there.

 

Another of the things is the fact that no matter how much effort I put into it, I just can't convince myself that I'm happy being single. On the other hand, the last time I tried to get into a relationship, I was incapable of convincing myself that I was happy being attached to someone. Although it has to be said the main reason that didn't work was because of the second party, rather than my own insecurities and emotional baggage.

 

I realised that I've for some reason stopped drawing. This tends to happen every time I discover something that I can do reasonably well and enjoy doing. I impress myself for a little while, and then before long, I find myself completely without inspiration and that activity whatever it might be, seems empty. I look at or think about whatever it is at the time and hate both myself and the phrase "Jack of all trades, master of none" because it seems that while I have some talent in a fair variety of things, I never become anything more than mediocre. Skating, guitar, singing, drums, drawing, writing, computing, photography, relationships, friendships, everything I take any pride in is horribly short-lived and within a few months, I feel as though I'm just going through the motions and repeating myself like a monkey who only knows one trick, so it keeps doing it over and over and over again, simply because his primitive simian brain can't grasp anything more complex. He may discover a new rope or something, thus a new trick, and he'll get pretty good at that trick, but then he'll never be a proper circus chimp, y'know?

 

Ok, I'm getting a little abstract now, but you can see what I mean right?

 

Everywhere I turn basically, I hit a wall. The limit of my talent and abilities beyond which lies a wondrous nirvana of modest self-satisfaction and for once being able to have a real amount of pride in something. To be able to say "yes, I am GOOD at this!" instead of always "Meh, I'm ok I suppose."

 

This is far from just a self-esteem thing.

 

And the real thing that's been annoying me, more than anything else is my total phobia of women. I have had beautiful women around me left, right and centre recently, some of whom I'm attracted to more physically than personally, some more personally than physically, and one in whom both criteria are equal. Obviously the one to whom I am most attracted is the one who seems as intelligent and personable as she is beautiful.

 

But what am I doing to myself? Don't I do this every single time I feel this way about someone? Over-think it to death and then pussy out and/or get my heart broken again?

 

The main thing all these women have in common of course is that none of them are interested in me. Such women are far beyond my reach, and that's the torture that Woody (an online mate) doesn't seem to understand. I have recently had, as I say, a fair few beautiful girls at mine, even for the night a couple of times, but nothing ever happened because I never seem to become anything more that "friends" or worse "a distraction".

That's one that's been cropping up a lot recently when women have suggested meeting up. "Can we chat/meet up, I need a distraction for a while." – like I'm a babysitter or all I'm good for is a temporary diversion from the tedium of college or work or whatever it is people need distractions from. If you need a distraction, just wheel around a diesel cement mixer and start the fucker up every time you sit down somewhere. It would distract you while offering the added bonus of not making me feel quite so disposable.

 

For anyone reading that last paragraph who might feel that it applies to you in some way, if you want to hang out, that's fine, but please stop referring to me as a distraction. A yoyo is a distraction, and frankly, I've had enough of dangling on the end of this string. Someone pull me up.

 

Many of you won't understand why I feel this way or why I make these irrational demands like "don't call me a distraction" and honestly I don't think it would get to me as much if four different people hadn't approached me in the exact same way in the last week or so, some more than once. None of you were to know that it would bother me, so don't worry.

 

What I do worry about though is why things like that get to me in the first place. It shouldn't, and any normal person's mind would never have ventured down that track even if they say and thought about the situation till they were old and grey, but for some reason, sporadic and erratic (bordering on manic - look up true definition of "mania" as opposed to the common perception of mania on wikipedia.) emotions keep bubbling to the surface and I realise that I'm pretty much like every over-sensitive psycho I've ever dated. I over-think everything and read things into situations and draw conclusions that no sane person would even consider and as a result, I get depressed and write shitty blogs like this. It occurs to me once again that while I've been running around after everyone else trying to help them with their problems, I've been hiding from my own and in the process, lost the people that I used to go to and talk about them with.

 

If I didn't know I'd regret it a few seconds down the line, I'd get "PATHETIC" tattooed on my forehead.

I might just get "Mediocre" instead.

 

DrTazzle

This is the time where I should really be continuing to tidy this place and hoover the floor that has by now fashioned a rudimentary suit of armour from the dropped shards of crisps, the £3-something that's lying around the floor in copper coins and the odd 5p, as well as the cutlery and plastic bottles. The carpet will be completely impervious to any attempt at being cleaned if I don't do something soon.

 

With any luck, I won't have the rugs that comprise the "carpeting" in here, putting in its place, some real wall-to-wall carpet. Hopefully most of it will be the same colour as the rest. For a while at least.

 

Another thing I sure as hell won't miss is having to empty, rearrange or otherwise disturb the feng-shui of my room so that the next inept DIY fucker can come in, demand tea and fuck up everything he attempts in a PAID effort to make this place more habitable. So far, the first sparky fucked everything up and generally made a total hash of it, and the second one didn't do a much better job, although the lights did after all, work. Again, for a while. Four of them have stopped working for some reason. I mean four out of twelve not working is no catastrophe, but for a newly converted annex-type-thing, it sure as hell ruins the ambience and only helps to make the place look just as haphazardly thrown together and shoddily done as it is, or possibly even more so.

 

Not a lot of much interest has happened recently. I didn't get the full time position I was going for, because quite simply, it had already been more or less promised to someone else and it was only advertised (even internally) for diplomacy, and so it didn't look like such blatant favouritism. That may seem like jealousy there, but believe me, there is a back story, it's just not worth talking or writing about. Nevertheless, I have now been trained on a second company at work, so I can at least do some overtime now and hopefully start earning some proper money. I need that overtime, and I anticipate that there should be a fair amount to be available fairly soon since all the phone lines were down on Saturday and nobody could make any calls or do any work, so there'll be plenty of catching up to do… Fuck, I'm dreading hearing the targets for Tuesday evening…

 

I'm still drumming at least once a day, most of the time more frequently than that, and I'm really starting to get good now, though I say so myself. I can safely say that I've always felt comfortable and confident behind a drum kit, and I can also say now, that I am better at drumming than I have ever been. It has been simply years since I had a drum kit of my own that I had ready access to. Even when I was drumming in college, I only had the shitty college kits to play on, and obviously I couldn't play them outside of college hours. More often than not, I couldn't play them o

utside college hours either thanks to the hopelessly strangled music resources at that shit-hole of a college meaning that there was always someone using something in the practice rooms. 200 students, 8 practice rooms, 1 technician. It's pathetic. Nothing in the "Music Department/Block" is younger than I am, and it was all fucking horrible budget shit even in the stone age, when they were carved from great chunks of granite, held together with wood, dung and goats blood. From the sounds coming from your guitar, you couldn't often tell if you were plugged into an amp or a diesel powered Cat-& Sheet-Steel-Grinding Machine (CSSGM).

No. There was no point whatsoever in that acronym, but enjoy it. Isn't it nice?

 

Right, I've GOT to vacuum this room…

 

Well that was certainly not anything like worth the effort for the end result. It looks no tidier than it was, and as such I expended all that energy, both electric and my own physical energy for nothing. Damn it. Now I'm just bored and sitting at a desk with all the shit that was on the floor on and around my keyboard.

 

Shit. This sucks, and is the direct result of not having anywhere to put anything. I have no drawers or anything, I have a couple of containers on little wheels under my bed but they're filled to capacity with complete shit. I am a hoarder. It's true I'm not the worst of them, but I never like throwing anything away that I think I could have a use for sometime in the future. If I break a drumstick, instead of throwing it away, I'll mount both bits on the wall. There. I haven't had to throw anything away AND I've added to my decorative scheme, if you can call what I've done even remotely decorative by most people's standards. Hang on… I have a spliff around here somewhere… I know I do… I always know… I'm NEVER wrong about this! Where is it?? AHA!! Haha! Every single time. I ALWAYS know when I've left a spliff somewhere. Some people will just leave one in the ashtray and never think about it again, and that's fine, but I will never forget about it. If I put one down, I WILL find it. It may take minutes, it may take days, but I always find it.

 

On a totally different note, don't you hate how completely merciless Microsoft Word is when judging your spelling? It'll put a red line under the stuff you have to concede that you spelt wrong, but it'll also underline in Satan's Bollocks RED where you've been a bit inventive with your spelling in order to give a phonetic influence to your reader or used slang.

I wouldn't mind if it was underlined in green… For some reason I imagine an Irish accent going "Ah, are you sure you want to put that like that?" whereas the jagged red line of unforgiving disciplinarian-ism that is embodied by the accursed spellchecker.

 

And oh my god how arrogant is it that when you type Microsoft, as soon as you hit the space bar, Word automatically changes the lower case 'm' at the beginning to an upper case one! Jesus! If you go back and delete the upper-case 'M' and replace it with a lower case 'm' it underlines it with the jagged red line of fascism!!! What complete cunts! If I want to type microsoft with a lower case 'm' I fucking will you Nazi bastards, and nothing, not your fucking spellfuckingchecker nor your insistence that I glorify your bullshit soul-destroying company or even THE JAGGED RED LINE OF THE MIGHTY BILL GATES' DISAPPROVAL will stop me!! FUCK YOU.

 

I think I may have said enough on this subject by now. I have a habit of getting carried away. Sorry, but then you're the one reading this, and as I did nothing to force you to read it, any anguish or frustration caused by doing so is entirely self-inflicted, and not my responsibility. We're all entitled to free speech, so shut the fuck up.

 

So I continue on into my third month at DLPS and no mishaps so far. But then, there never are. Until three months is over. Then everything inevitably, as sure as the sun shall rise, goes wrong. Well, something goes wrong… I don't know what happened then, or what will happen, but I'm going to cling to this job with every tooth and nail I can sink into it. I need this job and it's the first job I've EVER had that I enjoy most of the time! Obviously you get some bastards on the phone every now and again. Sometimes they're rude cunts that won't let you finish a question before they butt in saying "No!", sometimes you get some unbelievably dense people who don't seem to understand English, foreign people who genuinely don't, old people who are so decrepit it's amazing they're capable of holding the phone to their heads without some kind of mechanical device to hold head and phone together.

Once a week you get a client(s)* who is so rude you want to put your face through your monitor, thick as a winter morning pig's shit, from Brazil, 197 years old and with so many diseases and ailments that you begin to wonder whether you're speaking to the person(s) whose names are on the screen in front of you, or the thousands of diseases that seem to be so engrained into them that they literally hold them together, so that in place of bones and sinew, their blood is thick, like pate and allows them to stay in more or less human shape. The bones are now there only to provide lumps to be investigated, the results of which, I will have to put on a fucking form… Christ.

 

Oh yeah. Every now and again, I remember that I downloaded the ten day trial version of World Of Warcraft last night. The memory plagues me and floats to the surface every now and again to hate me, like that of a messy as fuck night fucking the fattest most inebriated girl at the party the previous night. I feel dirty.

 

 

So the moral here is avoid like sandpaper underwear everything I do, and try your best not to emulate me in any way, and you should just get through till you're about 25. With any luck.

 

DrTazzle

Ok, the last couple of weeks have been kind enough. Deceptively kind, I'm tempted to say. I can get over the feeling that with all these things going right, something's just bound to go horribly, horribly wrong at some point in the not too distant future, but it lurks in the back of my head like a mugger down a dark alley waiting for his victim to walk past.

 

I've got to get over this pessimism, more than anything else, I'm pretty sure that it's deeply seated at the root of any unhappiness left within me.

 

Where my love life is concerned, I'm just not trying anymore. I think whatever happens was always going to happen and is therefore unavoidable, and not worth worrying about before the time has come. I've had enough of trying to impress people, in short. I don't want to be anything but myself if I'm ever to get into another relationship, which if I'm honest, and given the severe commitment and trust issues I never thought I'd have, seems unlikely.

 

I'm just repeating myself now. It's getting boring for me now as well. Nothing really significant has happened since I got the job at DLPS, certainly nothing I feel like mentioning here, or at all for that matter which is why my posts have been infrequent and sporadic at best. I rarely have anything interesting to write about, so I don't bother. It has to be said, that while I'm happier in many respects than I've been in a long, long time, where my writing's concerned, my creativity has been choked.

 

Oh yeah, there has been one development over recent weeks. The drum kit I now have in my garage. The double-kick pedals I bought on ebay have arrived and are in place. Suffice it to say that they are worth AT LEAST three times the amount I paid for them. They're simply stunning, and as a result, my drumming has come on in leaps and bounds, and I drum for at least half an hour a day. Every now and again, that annoying twat Simon comes over and plays his guitar through my amp and has a jam session with me on drums. Admittedly, he's not a bad guitarist and comes up with some pretty good riffs every now and again, but… *exasperated sigh* never mind…

 

Right, believe it or not, I've totally exhausted my entire resource of things to tell you about, so I'm off.

 

Until next time, my friends…

 

DrTazzle (aka: Cantankerous Vole)

I have become a much happier person recently. This new job has given me meaning, a purpose and something to work towards. A job at Tesco or similar has limited opportunities for advancement, considering that even if you manage Store Manager, you’ll still be a miserable fuck wearing a uniform and running around a shop after a bunch of brain-dead moron consumers affectionately known as The Great Unwashed.

 

But I have things to work for. I’m happier here on the bottom rung of Direct Life than I ever was at Tesco. I’m earning more, (per hour), the staff relations with the managerial and supervisory staff are relaxed and personal, nothing’s done in the hap-hazard, mass-produce, Tesco Value way that you find in big corporations.

 

I had a staff assessment meeting the other day, given the much less ominous title of ’Coaching’, which I found much less daunting from the beginning.

I was met at my desk by a familiar face, (ie: someone who didn’t have do check a clipboard to address me), who asked if I was ready for the coaching session, as opposed to that sarcastic "You ready yet?" that you generally get at the kind of jobs that employ people like me.

We went into an office, sat down, and was expecting the familiar face to get out a sheet of computer-generated figures of my productivity and go through them, one by one, discussing how I could be more productive, and maybe I could work even harder if there was a keyboard under my desk and I learned to type with my toes, but far from it. What she pulled from her folder was a hand-typed (ie: typed, but not from a template), half empty sheet with the only printed data on it being my average quality score. I got 92%, and none of the other trainees got above 85%.

It turned out that this meeting was just as much (if not more) about how I could be made happier or more comfortable in my working environment than berating me about performance figures. These people know that trainees need time to settle in at a reasonable pace, instead of given the most cursory of instructions and thrown in at the deep end and taught to tough the nerves out through some homemade brand of immersion therapy.

 

Haemorrhoids. There’s a word you never expect to have, or be able to jot down on a notepad and pass to the colleague next to you at a second’s notice, but it was nevertheless the discovery of a talent. I can apparently spell quite tough words at short notice… Go figure.

 

I just love how even though I’ve not been there long, I’m not treated as a noob, there are no pranks being played on the new guy, and if something goes awry, or I have a question, I know exactly who to ask and they will actually try to help!

 

For those of you who have been out of what I call "teenage employment" for a while, this is all new to me. I have had jobs in the past such as Burger King, KFC, Somerfield, all jobs that have a high turn-over of staff and all jobs that require you to sign away your soul to a huge corporation, dress up for the customers, and bend over and take the cock-shafting like a good little minion, having apologised for not being sufficiently lubricated. At the end of the week, you’re taken into the manager’s office and ways to stretch your arsehole further to make it easier to fuck you over are discussed.

 

This job, by comparison, is a matter of coming into work, having your boss baby-wipe and moisturise your arse before sitting you gently on a pristine velveteen cushion and waving a palm leaf to keep you cool while you read your latest edition of Nuts Magazine and your Team Leader caresses your balls with a warm lens-cloth, soaked in precious and aroma-therapeutic oils from remote and exotic regions of Asia.

 

I’m ok being single for now. I’m left with little choice considering the only person I would cut off my arms and staple them to my head to be with has other quite different plans, and no-one who has come along since has even stood a chance of holding a candle to her. It’s completely pathetic, and perhaps nothing more than the longing for the forbidden fruit, the unattainable dream that has drawn me to her for the last 10 months, but either way, it’s the only thing that gets me down nowadays, and as long as it’s not doing that, I’m happy, and that in itself cheers me up.

 

Don’t cry for me Argentina!

 

DrTazzle

Recently, I’ve been riding the most violent emotional rollercoaster I’ve been on in years. My depression has been something I’ve had to deal with for as long as I can remember, so sudden bouts of deep depression like the one of which I think I’m on the outer edge, having pummelled my way through are no strange occurrence, usually lasting a couple of weeks, leaving me exhausted at the end of it, but happy to be recovering.

 

The other night, it occurred to me that "depression", clinical or otherwise, seemed completely inadequate in its definition of how I felt and the psychological issues from which I clearly suffer.  I started reading up on things. I explored a number of possibilities, from Autism, Disphasia and other learning difficulties, to more severe and/or ominous mental and psychological illnesses like Manic Depression and borderline cases of Paranoid Schizophrenia.

 

On my travels through the vast land of Wikipedia, I stumbled upon something that really did strike a chord. Anyone who knows anything about me or the way my mind works knows how analytical I am of myself, and the few weeks during which I was unemployed I was presented with a great deal of time in which to think, which is not necessarily a good thing for someone who has a tendency to think themselves into the ground at the slightest provocation. My eyes fell upon the link reading "Bipolar Disorder" and straight away, synapses started firing, gathering what limited information I already knew about this condition, and having decided that as far as I knew, it seemed feasible, I clicked.

 

As I read what followed, my eyes widened and I felt a rush of what felt like miraculous clarification. Everything made sense, and as I continued to read, pieces continued to fall into place. Connections were made, notes were taken, and I kept reading…

 

"Bipolar disorder is not a single disorder, but a category of mood disorders defined by the presence of one or more episodes of abnormally elevated mood, clinically referred to as mania. Individuals who experience manic episodes also commonly experience depressive episodes or symptoms, or mixed episodes which present with features of both mania and depression. These episodes are normally separated by periods of normal mood, but in some patients, depression and mania may rapidly alternate, known as rapid cycling. The disorder has been subdivided into bipolar I, bipolar II and cyclothymia based on the type and severity of mood episodes experienced."

 

"Onset of symptoms generally occurs in young adulthood. Diagnosis is based on the person’s self-reported experiences, as well as observed behavior. Episodes of illness are associated with distress and disruption, and a relatively high risk of suicide."

"Bipolar disorder is often a cyclic illness where people periodically exhibit elevated (manic) and depressive episodes. Most people will experience a number of episodes, averaging 0.4 to 0.7 a year with each lasting three to six months, although some will experience only a single mood episode.^[7][8] Late adolescence and early adulthood are peak years for the onset of the illness.^[9][10] These are critical periods in a young adult’s social and vocational development, and they can be severely disrupted by disease onset.

Rapid cycling, defined as having four or more episodes per year, is found in a significant fraction of patients with bipolar disorder. It has been associated with greater disability or a worse prognosis, due to the confusing changeability and difficulty in establishing a stable state. Rapid cycling can be induced or made worse by antidepressants, unless there is adjunctive treatment with a mood stabilizer.^[11][12]

The definition of rapid cycling most frequently cited in the literature is that of Dunner and Fieve: at least four major depressive, manic, hypomanic or mixed episodes are required to have occurred during a 12-month period.^[13] There are references that describe very rapid (ultra-rapid) or extremely rapid^[14] (ultra-ultra or ultradian) cycling. One definition of ultra-ultra rapid cycling is defining distinct shifts in mood within a 24–48-hour period."

Signs and symptoms of the depressive phase of bipolar disorder include: persistent feelings of sadness, anxiety, guilt, anger, isolation and/or hopelessness, disturbances in sleep and appetite, fatigue and loss of interest in usually enjoyed activities, problems concentrating, loneliness, self-loathing, apathy or indifference, depersonalization, loss of interest in sexual activity, shyness or social anxiety, irritability, chronic pain (with or without a known cause), lack of motivation, and morbid/suicidal ideation.^[15] In severe cases, the individual may become psychotic, a condition also known as severe bipolar depression with psychotic features."

 

 

Please, if you want to know more, go to wikipedia.org and search Bipolar Disorder. The matches are stunningly accurate for me. I wouldn’t say it concerns me as much as it calms me. I’ve always known there was something not quite right about the way my mind works, but to be able to define it, to give it some kind of diagnostic form might be the key to furthering my own prognosis.

It all seems so obvious now.

I can’t help but wonder what life would have been like had my parents or I known a little more about this condition earlier on.

 

I’m just glad to have finally found some kind of clarity, and a small cache of information upon which to build.

 

Since starting work, I’ve been feeling a lot better within and about myself. Don’t go thinking I have any fondness for myself, because I still don’t, and a few hours a week at a bearable job isn’t going to change that. As I may have mentioned in previous entries, I can’t even properly look forward to getting paid on the 28^th because doing only 18 hours a week, even at £7ph doesn’t get you much at the end of the month. I get time and a half for overtime, (in case you can’t be arsed to do the maths, that’s over £10ph) so I’ve just got to get me some!

Wish me luck, and contact me if you actually want to meet up, because from most of the people saying "I must come and see you soon" and "we will have to meet up some time", I never actually hear anything further to these hypothetical arrangements.

 

DrTazzle (aka: Bipolar Bear)

 

This is fucking pointless.

I just wrote a big blog, then my fucking internet cuts out and I lose the whole fucking thing. THE ONE TIME I DIDN'T WRITE IT ON WORD FIRST!!!!!


FUCK YOU BT.

Taz

This is beginning to be more than I can handle. I just hate existing right now, and I can't put my finger on why.

 

Futility seems to be the word of the day. Everything I do is stamped with a big read mark reading "FUTILE" in my mind. I ask myself what's the point when everything is temporary, and most of the things we hope for in life never happen. Or maybe it's just most of the things I hope for.

 

It does seem that everything that makes me happy is being snatched away from me one at a time, and at this rate, I know that before long, there'll be nothing left, and when that point comes, I can't help but speculate that there'll be considerably less left of me, which I'm sure many people will see as a blessing.

 

I pick up my guitar, and although it's the same guitar, same fretboard, same wood, even the same strings, and it looks back at me like a tramp who's just woken up to find a member of the public stroking his face. He wonders who you are and what the fuck you think you're doing. This is MY guitar. It has saved my life, as I have done for it. I was at probation in Brighton, and the fire alarm went off. On my way past the door to the room where my guitar and bags were while I was in my session, I smelled smoke, spun on my heel and charged through three employees at the Probation Service twice in getting my guitar out of the building. I didn't even grab my bags, which had my clothes, my toothbrush, everything in them. Because at the end of the day, the clothes, the paperwork, the food, everything in those bags, including the bags themselves, could be replaced if I busked for long enough, but without the guitar I was fucked. I love this guitar, but I look at it now and it seems hollow. Hollow in the sense that it doesn't seem to have the soul it once had. I feel the strings and I play the notes, but I don't feel the music.

I glance at it and tears well in my eyes.

I don't know where I've gone. I've fallen into this pit of depression, and I feel that if I don't get out of it soon I won't be able to. Despite what most people would consider a light at the imminent end of the tunnel, all I can feel is black clouds surrounding and suffocating me. I'm trapped in my own head and I'm scared.

 

I've never been so unhappy without having a clear idea as to what's made me this way. It's a terrible feeling. If nothing's wrong, then it must be me in some way. To feel the depression encompassing everything about you, every part, everything that makes you you is unbearable. I feel swathed in a thick, suffocating cloak.

 

Someone please help me. I don't know what to do anymore. I'm completely alone and I don't know what to do. I'm so lost. I'm typing through streams of tears because I know I can't pull myself out of this one. I've finally lost hope. All hope.

 

That too, is a feeling I have difficulty describing. It's like someone reaching inside of you, grabbing everything that makes you happy, and gently pulling it out, to leave you a shell. A joyless husk.

 

Don't leave me here. Please.

I have so much yet so little to say. I have so much to express, but no way to express it. I can't get it out. I cover my complete musical incompetence with bravado, and when I am alone and I try to play, I feel like a pull-toy with the string that makes it dance cut out of it's back.

 

 I just can't.

 

DrTazzle

Trait Snapshots:
craves attention, messy, open, rash, irritable, likes large parties, low self control, weird, fragile, does not like to be alone, emotionally sensitive, worrying, depressed, heart over mind, does not respect authority, dependent, not rule conscious, not good at saving money, more interested in relationships than intellectual pursuits, likes to fit in, very social, frequently second guesses self, phobic, suspicious, not careful, outgoing, vain, compassionate, aggressive, likes to make fun, hates to lose.

Worryingly accurate, i think.

My sleep patterns have become more and more erratic. It seems to go in a cycle of sorts. One night, maybe two, I'll sleep from like 5/6am till 2/3pm, then at some point there'll be a night that I won't sleep at all, then I'm shot to shit for the next two days at least. As soon as I get a 'decent night's sleep' (ie: 2/3am to about 12pm) I'm guaranteed not to be able to sleep the following night.
This will all have to change once I start at Direct Life.

Oh yeah, for those of you that don't know, I've accepted a position as Express Underwriter at Direct Life & Pensions Ltd. Having been forced to resign from tesco, I was unemployed for less than a week. I start in 5 days time and I'm really looking forward to it. It'll be an interesting experience. I've never worked in an office before, but have often thought that it might be just the kind of work environment in which I could thrive.
I enjoyed being a butcher, but working for Tesco was something I could never really wrestle my concience into ignoring. I felt dirty working there, dirty and insignificant. Expendable, as I indeed turned out to be. That job was a means to an end anyway, and was only so I had money coming in from somewhere. This new job could be the path to a career! Me! With a career! Who'd've thunk it?

I was offered (and accepted) the job a couple of weeks ago, and while being skint (thanks to Tesco's notorious tendancy to "forget" to pay employees their final paycheques) I've enjoyed having a couple of weeks off work. A gap-fortnight, as it were.

But I can see patterns emerging when they do so, and I realise straight away the recurring pattern to each job I get. I get the job, I rant about it, fantasise about what I'm going to spend my money on and where this job could get me in the long run, but it never ends up happening. Three months later, I lose the job, and the cycle prepares to repeat itself once again. But that does not mean that I'm approaching this opportunity with a pessimistic attitude. Like I said, I'm looking forward to this, and so far, can't think of anything that could fuck it up.

The main perks of this job (in contrast to my previous job at tesco) are:
No uniform,
Much higher pay (£7ph or thereabouts)
More comfortable and informal work environment,
Not quite so much of a tangible heirarchy,
Loads of people I know (including Rob [Callonious] work there,
Working on typing on a computer, at which I'm more than proficient,
And I'll only deal with customers on the phone, rather than face to face. I hate people face to face. The Great Unwashed is a vast and gruesome crowd.

So now I can walk into Tesco's with my head held high and a smug grin on my face knowing that leaving that company may well be the best thing (professionally) that has ever happened to me.

Another thing that has occupied a considerable amount of my thinking time recently has been my love life, or more accurately, my lack thereof, and whether it bothers me that in any way that really matters, I've been single since Ev left me. It's been a while now. In a couple of months it will have been a year. Which means... No. I'm not going to dwell on the implications of that. There is less than no point. I've learned what I can from that experience and despite what most people may have expected of me, I've moved on. It took a while and wasn't easy, but I did it. I'm over her.

Which still doesn't offer much consellation, since everyone I feel any interest for is either taken, not available for other reasons, or intelligent enough to know better.

I suppose the fact that everyone I've had more than a superficial interest in so far has blown me out of the water gets wearysome, but when all's said and done, it's just another one of those things I can never hope to have control over.

On a lighter note, I recently found and installed a copy of the first Sims and have relapsed in a big way. My name is Taz, and I'm a Sims addict.


DrTazzle (aka: Lonely Office Addict)

Ok, it's been a fair old while since I posted on here.

Shit has indeed, been happening...

I broke up with sarah, and a day or two later, she moved in with me and my family without any kind of concern for my feelings about it from anyone. All I got was a "You're okay with this, right?" AFTER she'd already moved in.
I responded by pointing out that it wouldn't make the slightest bit of difference if I wasn't ok with it, and that since this had all been done and decided without my knowledge, let alone my consent, I had no choice in the matter and that as such, even asking me that question was completely pointless.

Ever since, she's been driving me fucking crazy. I swear, if she tells me to smile one more time I'll kick a hole through a brick wall with a puppy tied to my shoe.

My temporary contract ran out at tesco, so I'm back on the 'ole job market again. Went for a scary as hell interview at Cafe Rouge the other day. Suffice to say, it wasn't for me, but there are other opportunities. Now that I'm old enough to be able to be taken seriously in an office job, I can start looking for comfortable work with advancement opportunities instead of the dead-end, stupid-hat-wearing jobs I've had all my life.

I'd love to get back behind a bar of some description. I loved being a bartender, and what's more, I was fuckin' good at it too.

The garage conversion is progressing at snail's pace, with a snag at every step of the way, be it incompetent plasterers, wiring problems, or simply running out of paint, and is now well over 2 months behind schedule. At this point, anyone would be forgiven for wondering if this job will ever be complete, but it is true, however that it is moving, even if only in tiny tiny increments.

I've grown to be a little concerned about a couple of my friends who have been hitting the Speed particularly hard in the last few months, and fair play, I hit it pretty hard for a few weeks with them, but they're getting out of control to the point where I'm worried about them and anyone who knows me knows that when I start worrying about someone's drug intake, there's really something wrong. But when I say 'hitting it hard' i mean like 10-14g gone per week, generally between thursday to sunday they won't sleep or eat at all.
Like I said, I did this with them for a few weeks, but they're keeping it up. I just hope that a stern word in their ears will be enough to bring them round, and at least have an eye on their own problem. It's all very well looking out for your friends and whatnot, but when one of them's a mother, and the other is her child, you have to start thinking "why am I looking after these two, instead of the mother at least looking out for her kid?".
I love them both to peices and I won't let them slip any further than they have.

I don't know what else to say really, so I'll end it here.

Good luck and congratulations to some, luvs and see-you-soons to others. ^_^

DrTazzle (aka: Stapler)