Some more history

It wasn't until the end of my first year of university that I learned what clinical depression was. At the time I wasn't coping, I had family worries, financial worries and I had just been betrayed by a friend in one of the most hurtful ways. (Maybe another day.) (Is betrayal anything but hurtful?)

I picked up the phone to talk to my father and he advised a trip to the doctor, my dad had been fighting depression for years, and it dawned on him that this might be a family trait.

Luckily I didn't have an arsehole for a doctor, I have had a few doctors over the years and you'd be surprised how many there are. He went through the usual checklist, appetite, sleep patterns, libido and so on, anyway clinical depression it was. So on the drugs I went, and in no time (well several months) I was as right as rain.

Of course being the kind of chap that I am, I then did a lot of research into the condition and realised several things in pretty short order. Most of them quite trivial, but I did learn to spot the signs of an imminent relapse.

The really horrible thing that I did learn, was that I had been chronically depressed for pretty much most of the last ten years.

As I mentioned yesterday, my lack of social skills wasn't the only reason I had a problems at school, one of the other ones was depression.

I managed to put a thin veneer of functioning personality on myself as a coping mechanism, I honestly though that everyone felt as shitty inside as me. I guess that was why my father had no inkling of the similarity of our problems. The end result was that I was miserable unnecessarily for the best part of a decade with an illness that could be easily have been treated with medication. Its not much fun fighting off thoughts of self harm for a decade I can assure you.

Cool huh? (Yeah for all values of "Cool" that intersect with "Fucking Tragic").

The end result was that my entire school career is littered with yearly reports where the main commentary, was not about the attainment, but about the attitude and effort. The teachers knew I was clever, they just thought I was an attitude case, all because I had no facility for generating enthusiasm or maintaining any motivation for doing the work.

I was the proverbial gifted kid with attitude, not one of the fuckers ever took the time to question why I was like that, so much for the child psychology part of their teaching various degrees! No it was far easier to make life harder for me by constantly giving me a hard time to perform to their expectations, while all the time that pressure added up till I was ready to hit the self-destruct button.

I never did press the button, I never tried to kill myself, I know people who did. I consider myself lucky in that regard, I coped until I got treatment, it wasn't nice but I managed to survive what a lot of people don't.

For those of you who were wondering, this is why work is hard work at the moment, and why my achievement levels are less than optimal. The enthusiasm is not here, and the motivation all but left some weeks ago. I think I know what has triggered this latest bout but we shall see how I cope.

Who's looking out for me now? Me.

Ah well you live and learn, C'est la vie.

A little history

I come from a provincial town in West Yorkshire, I lived there until I was 19, when I finally left for University.

There was nothing "wrong" with my home town, but nothing ever happened there, and I was never too comfortable living there.

I didn't have a hard childhood, in fact I have great parents, they are both wonderful, hard working, caring and lovely people. But at the end of the day, I just didn't like living there.

If I had to put my finger on the problem, I think I'd have to say it was losing my friend Nick when I was nine. We grew up together pretty much from birth. He lived two doors down the street and we were practically inseparable, when we both finished primary school though, my family moved house a little further out of town and his family moved off to Cheshire within the same few weeks.

The thing was, that both me and Nick were such good friends, that I don't think I had much in the way of the social skills required to make new friends, I hadn't leant them simply because I didn't need to.

So the next few years, until I left school and went to college, were pretty shitty for me, partly because I ended up being a loner, or spending all my time with people who were even more socially inept than me. Mostly being a loner though. There were other reasons for my misery, but I'll keep them for another day.

Years later, when I was a teen, I got to meet Nick again, he came back to our home town to visit his gran, he was still cool. Later I went over to visit him at his Mother's place (his parents had divorced by then) in Manchester, we promised to keep in touch, but you know how kids are, we never managed it.

I still don't think I have got over losing my best friend from all those years ago.

The calm has landed.

I'm in the zone today, I am bullet proof.

I have said all the right things, done all the right things and been the right guy for the job.

I have worked for first time in weeks, yeah I know I was going to do that the other day, but I got sidetracked. And do you know what, the working felt good. I enjoyed it.

I think the self destructive me has gone on holiday for a while, I was thinking about upping the doses on the medicine, but maybe I'll be able to cope after all.

I'm still thinking about jacking this job in, and doing something a little more involving, and to that end I have been contacted by a friend of a friend, who needs a consultant with my talents, so a meeting has been planned for the end of next month, fingers crossed, I could maybe double my income and start to work only 3 days a week and still keep things a little better financially than they are now.

I seem to have clicked at work with a number of people who seemed a little distant, not sure if they were taking their time to warm to me, or my new mood is shining though, we shall see in the future no doubt.

If I can just get though the next 15 minutes, I just may be able to keep my foot out of my mouth...

(Looks at watch... Takes temporary vow of silence...)

More insights tomorrow. Ooooh, and if I'm miserable as sin come tomorrow, I think we can safely say I have a mania issue and its of to Google to investigate bi-polar disorders!

Laters.

Ring variant resolution...

The game of "The Ring" that I had negotiated my own mental state into, has played itself to resolution.

I was carrying on like an emotionally stunted retard as usual.

I apologise to all one and a half of my loyal followers.

I think we all understand why I fear emotions now huh?

Watch the emotional graph for the next asymptote when it arrives! An honourable mention to the first person who can spot one coming. :)

Toilet Seats

I think its worth tackling this perennial problem, everyone knows about this issue, but there seems not to be a commonly accepted solution.

So time for a bit of analysis from ACF...

OK, we all know that women want the seat down, and that men want the seat up, we all also know that no matter which one we prefer, its always the opposite. This is Sod's (or Murphy's depending on who you ask) Law.

Now forgive me for getting into the details of excretive functions, but, if we assume a 5:1 ratio of pee to poop, and women need all six down, but men need only one down, we end up with a final ratio of 7:5 for down to up.

Now, I'm all in favour of men taking a seated visit in the middle of the night, the guidance systems are not too hot at the best of times, but waking from sleep and stumbling to the bathroom half comatose, is a sure fire bet for micturation up the walls, on the ceiling, in the bath, and in fact conservatively we can estimate that about 5% of the final product ends up in the toilet. (And 10% on the feet! Ugh!)

So factoring in a night time visit each for member of the couple, we have a ratio of 9:5.

We can go on from here and analyse how many times the seat must go up and down, and I'm not even going to suggest that a man shouldn't lift the seat, and should attempt some highly focused, "smaller target" practice, we all know that is just not going to work, hitting the harder target is too much like hard work, small target work is just plain foolishness or self delusion.

So here is my simple answer...

If you need the toilet seat in one position or the other, move the seat to the required position, when you have finished and you want to put the seat down, or up, do so.

And if you are upset that the seat is not in the ideal position for you when you arrive, can I tactfully suggest that you GET THE FUCK OVER IT! Because lets face it, in the grand scheme of things, its not a big deal is it?

Kids are starving in Africa, people are shooting each other and bombing each other in the Middle East, fundamentalists are killing hostages and shipping bombs to the West, all these things are important.

You have food, medicine, shelter, clean water and clothes, putting you in the top 10% of humanity in the "Haves to Have-nots" scale. Lets face it, your biggest worry is your broadband going down for half an hour so you can't IM your friends.

Given all of the above, can I suggest that you back off and don't give your partner a hard time about this? Just get a grip and ask, "Is this really important, or am I just being an uptight asshat?".

I think you'll find that in the majority of cases you're being the uptight asshat, so why stress yourself out, life doesn't go all your own way, live with it, life is not going to change to accommodate you.

Yours Faithfully,

Mr. Uptight Asshat.

Hanging in the balance

And so it feels like I am playing a version of the "The Ring" today...

Only this is a friend I'm playing the game with, not a partner.

Once more I made the fatal mistake of saying something hurt when it happened last time.

See, I have the rules, but... but what? But I'm still a fucking idiot I guess.

Oh this sucks! Fuckit.

[Edit: As Boo has correctly pointed out, yes I can be a drama queen!]

A great weekend

I spent the whole of yesterday and today wandering around the streets of London with my friend P, and visiting bits of architecture usually closed to the public, yay for London Open House weekend!

I'm quite exhausted, so the details will be brief.

Saturday
Visited Trellick Tower, excellent views. The architect Erno Goldfinger famously fell out with Ian Fleming, hence why one of the James Bond bad guys was called Goldfinger. There you go, your shit trivia fact for the day!
Stopped by the queue for 30 St. Mary Axe (AKA The gherkin) and laughed a lot! (Word are not enough to describe how long it was.)
We then went on to the Christ Church in Spittalfields, interior detail was incredible.
Headed down for an Indonesian lunch at Spittalfields Marked (highly recommended).
And finally Customs House on the Thames, nice to see what customs confiscates. :)

Sunday
Started queuing at 8:30AM for the opening at 10:30AM of the gherkin, queued for 3 hours (Some people were waiting for the opening at 6:30AM!) The picture on the faces of those arriving at 10:30 and seeing the queue twice found the building already was a wonder to behold, the sheer incredulity was awesome, and as more people arrive it just kept coming.
The views where excellent from the top observation platform and from the empty floor in the middle of the building. And the quality of the paper towels in the toilets was second to none!
We then decamped for more food at Spittalfields Market, this time at Square Pie, again I can highly recommend the food at this market! I may have to visit more often in future...
We then headed down by the Bank of England Museum, but the queue was huge so we carried on to Bank tube station and on the Docklands Light Railway to the Limehouse Accumulator, which is more machine than building, and was used to drive the hydraulics that ran the Limehouse docks, locks and whatnot.

A good day all in all, but I'm shattered.

P.S. I was also clever enough to wind up V later in the evening, no good day can pass it would seem, without me putting my foot in my mouth.