Andy's Blog

For better or worse things are-a-changing around here.  First visible change, to the outside world at least, will be the car!  The mighty Volvo will be packed up soon and returned to the Volvo dealer, which is a wee bit of a shame as I actually quite liked the car – but needs must.  Actually what will hurt most is losing the 80GB built in mp3 player, which when crammed with tracks-a-plenty will talk to you as you browse through your uploaded goodies.

I shall miss the old girl’s metallic voice mispronouncing all the album and artist names.  Now, how to hook up the iPhone to the replacement old banger?  At the moment music is my great escape, especially during the commute to work – my ‘acceptable’ bit of reflection time with no sour looks when the music is pumped upto 11 on the dial.

Mood music at the moment is definitely on the darker side of the rainbow at the moment;

• The Drugs Don’t Work by The Verve
• The Artifact And Living by Michael Andrews
• Chasing Cars by Snow Patrol
• Pale Shelter by Tears for Fears
• Pilot by Alisha’s Attic
• Mad World by Tears for Fears (or performed by Michael Andrews/Gary Jules)

On the plus side, and probably a reflection of something deep and profound, I have managed to tag and update the music collection.  So now 14,580 songs (or 1,070 albums) have been tagged, categorised, and album artwork added – which all makes the iPhone/iPod look a lot more visually pleasing!

Now what else can I do to fill up the long nights?

This week I am taking a ‘timeout’ from pretty much everything, including work.  The battery’s are drained from far too much that is currently going on, although Karate is not part of that timeout; everybody needs an outlet, somewhere to let off steam.

To be honest, one of the reasons that facebook was removed, apart from those stated in a previous post, was to retreat into the background rather than have a potential train wreck in a very public forum.  That, and just being plain tired and finding it difficult to maintain some necessary deceptions.

Blogging will continue as normal, this isn’t a full retreat into my shell after all, whilst trying to maintain some air of mystery.  Next challenge is to try and put on an air of normality at Senior Karate Class this Tuesday, which’ll be hard as some there are a better judge of mood than is sometimes comfortable!

Sometimes hitting the random button within xkcd comes up with some little gems of prescience… or am I, as a friend once said, looking too hard for something that’s not essentially there?

Maybe..

For those of you not geek enough to know what the above actually means, it translates from computer speak to; “Life does not equal Facebook”

You would think, from the barrage of emails I have received, that my decision to remove myself from the facebook world was akin to jumping off a cliff with a pitiful wail of “Goodbye cruel world….”

I think in retrospect if I was to ever jump of a cliff I would try my absolute hardest to make that funny “waaahoohohoooo” noise that cartoon characters make – what a way to go… and be remembered

Actually, the reason I decided to remove myself from facebook was pretty much the opposite of trying to remove myself from life, more to try and re-engage in it.  I don’t think it was only me, but I started to find that;

• I was spending an inordinate amount of time just flicking back to facebook, almost unconciously, checking what people were upto, moving my cars in parking wars and numerous other little games that I would be invited to.
• It ‘seemed’ that I had started living my life in one line status updates at a time.  A case of life imitating facebook, instead of the other way round.  This also led to an absolute glut of maudlin status updates!
• More importantly, and the main reason why I decided to remove facebook, I was starting to use facebook as my main source of information about friends and family, rather than actually just speaking or visiting them.

This last point was the more important to me.  It was proving too easy to just see how a friend was, post a witty or consoling one line comment under their status update and feel that somehow you had done your bit as a friend, etc.

I think it’s time I picked up the phone a little more, or even better visit those friends I haven’t actually seen for a long while – to tear myself away from the computer and to engage with life a little more than I am at the moment…

Radical eh?

I think it is probably time I gave people a rest and stop disturbing people relentlessly so I am in the process of removing my facebook account (how hard is that!), as well as removing one of my MSN accounts.

The MSN is ridiculously easy to do, however the facebook account is proving a REAL pain!  Deactivating it really doesn’t do anything, everything stays on there but you can no longer sign onto it… how is that deactivated?

Ah well, the work continues!

These past few days have not been the best, by a long shot, that I have had and consequently I have been either been moping around or in a particularly foul mood.  Having the mp3 player flick between Alicia’s Attic and Iron Maiden can be disconcerting to people who happen to listen in (I must turn down the volume)!

However after yet another long night staring up at the ceiling, this time with a generous amount of Gaymers Cider to help the ol’ brain cells, I have decided that I should stop worrying about those thing that I can no longer control.  I have also stopped worrying about the consequences of my conversations with people too; they are going to be upset/happy/angry/bewildered/running-to-the-hills whichever way I decide to roll things – so why bother playing it any other way than straight?

So from today, or last night if you wish to be pedantic, I am just going to play along with the cards that I have been dealt with and stop trying to change things that obviously can’t or won’t be changed.  So, to those people I have chatted to recently and who have decided “this is too much now”; I understand and thankyou for all the chats, they have helped me tremendously and I wish you well for the future – and to those still sticking around.. the maudling posts have now stopped!

Consequently the mood today is: Good.

Of course this is helped, a HUGE amount, by the fact that my mate has decided I need to blow some cobwebs out, at insane speeds, and let me have use of his bike this lunchtime!

mp3 player filled with classic Bon Jovi tracks, raybans that fit in the helmet found, and attitude set appropriately. If you wonder what that black blur that just passed you was….

The problem with leading an Internet life is that sometimes the things you wish to offload in a very public way, i.e. via a blog, have to be communicated in a sort of code, using vague but hopefully meaningful phrases that convey their impact without actually letting on entirely what is going on, apart from to those people who are in the know.

This, unfortunately, doesn’t always work quite to plan!  Messages are lost in translation, or even missed completely.  The vague too vague, and the intended audience unsure as to what the hell has just been said, even to those people who *are* in the know!

Blogs by their very nature are NOT the whole truth of a person, they can’t be – no one would ever divulge that amount of information about themselves or their feelings for fear of ridicule, hurt, or in worst cases social stigmatism (depending on how exotic your truth is!).

Until I feel braver about divulging more about myself… viva la code breaking whilst I do some discreet anonymous blogging elsewhere!

Sometimes a single, simple, yet profound remark or post lifts a veil on a person’s underlying sadness, or anger, that with hindsight was probably always on display but not understood.

A little while ago, in one of my darker moods, i had updated my facebook status to “Andy thinks honesty, wrapped in humour, is sometimes the best deception” thinking that this was a self defense mechanism unique to myself.  In the cold, crisp, Autumn daylight this ‘seems’ to be more universal than I had imagined.

Some people had questioned my use of the word ‘deception’, but I did then, and still do now, think it was the right word.  The deception is always two-fold, and for the most part done with the best of intentions;

There is always the human need to share your feelings with others, whether it be good or bad news, but also to protect those people we are opening up to.  We never intentionally want others to feel bad or worried for or about us, so protect them with a joke, a lessening of the impact that the news is having on us.

More importantly, we are to a certain extent trying to deceive ourselves.  We don’t want to believe that the situation has gotten to the point we find ourselves in. If we can make light of it, then it can’t be all that bad… can it?

Unfortunately all we can do, in situations like this, is to stand back, hope that things are not as bad as they seem, but be available whenever needed and to earn the badge; “friend”

Now is the time for big decisions to be made, or maybe ever-so-slightly later due to waiting for the right time to broach the subject and people to be available for their views.

It certainly feels like I am running to stay stood still at the moment, so I have decided to fill up the iPhone with an esoteric mix of music and have a wander around the local park to try and get some perspective and clear the head.

“Shuffle” mode on the iPhone is an interesting beast at the best of times, flicking from Fleetwood Mac to Metallica and then onto early Genesis – try setting your mood to THAT mix!

Woke up a wee bit late this morning which meant that all spaces in the works multi-storey carpark were full, requiring me to find the overflow car park which I have never used before…. and it’s 10 minutes before work starts! Buggar!

Thank gawd for the herd instinct, just follow the car in front and hope he isn’t trying to find his way to Skegness. He wasn’t. Unfortunately where we did finally end up, the overflow car park, was a wee bit further than a 10 minute walk from the office. Double-Buggar!

However, the walk from car park to office in the bright crisp morning, listening to The Clash on my iPhone at full tilt was a rare pleasure. I think I may have to do that again!

Forecast for the day: Looking up!

Pop Quiz: What song was I listening to?