Andy's Blog

I seem to be spending an inordinately large amount of my life, at the moment, just waiting around. The problem is; I’m no bloody good at waiting!

Waiting for test results to come back, waiting for ordered items to be delivered… although to be fair some of these haven’t taken *THAT* long to be delivered, it’s just that my geeky heart can’t wait to get its greedy mitts on the latest play-thing.

Waiting for the next bout of unpleasantness to arrive, and more frustratingly waiting on the motorway for traffic to start to think about moving again.  This has gotten to the point where I am loading up the ol’ smartphone with some frankly quite bizarre music tracks to take my mind off the static here-n-now.

So in an attempt to wrestle back some control, and inject a little deviation from the normal run-o-the-mill, I’ve decided to finally get around to doing some things I’ve been promising myself but have been thinking “it can wait”…

..It probably can, but I don’t think I want to any longer.

Granted it’s not anything life changing, but every so often a little “what the hell” can’t hurt and is good for the soul.  It also gives you the chance to remove yourself from all those little ‘waits’ that are trundling along, admittedly slowly, but will at some point arrive – what to do at that point is another blog post altogether!

I feel like this sometimes..

I am angry and pissed off.  Not something I am usually either of very often.

Sitting here with the music playing very loudly and very fast.  The choice of listening material is probably not a very good one for climbing out of this mood, but Iron Maiden is suiting me very well at the moment.

There is a certain requirement on my part to maintain a number of ‘faces’; normal, work, karate and mine.  Each of these having a time when they come out and to compartmentalise what I am really thinking, to switch off, to almost ignore the realities of some situations.  What’s probably a little worrying is that the private ‘face’ is starting to look like Eddie in the picture here; angry and more than a little unreasonable.

It’s probably a good idea to find a little ‘steam venting’ diversion somewhere and get back to a more sociable face.  Maybe just after this..

…maybe

It’s not something I have done for a long time, which is rather strange as it is something that I used to love.  Not sure whether it’s the ever-advancement of age, the bearing of responsibilities, or just simply forgetting the pleasure of it.

However there I was.

Not intentionally.

Sitting with the car door open, whilst waiting, watching the rain come down.  Not a deluge, just a gentle pattering now that the cold snap has let up a little.  I love the smell of rain, the sound of it as it hits the trees, roofs and other objects, the peace of it.

The melancholic background music probably helped the aesthetics of the moment… before reality decided to rudely interrupt.

I must do that again. Inner karma, at least for a little while, has been restored.

Parties to go to, a level of expectation to attend, and I just can’t get the energy to go.

In all honesty this is probably just me being overly self-indulgent; but also to a certain extent tiredness, popped pills making me feeling like crap, so much so I nearly had an ‘episode’ during my karate lesson today, and a smidgeon of worry about the thought of a section of my head being gauged out.

Which I suppose is perfectly natural and all part of being of the male fraternity, as most women would have you believe!

To some personal time then..

Not firing at one hundred percent at the moment, which is really rather annoying.

It’s always said that the things that matter most are hard won but easily lost, and this seems to be happening somewhat frequently… with only one thing constant; yours truly.  So the blame seems to lie in one place only and am not entirely sure what to do about that.

In the meantime the goal of nearly 5 years hard, and sometimes frustrating, work is starting to look like it may be achievable.

Nothing is ever guaranteed, of course, but as Lao Tzu wrote; “A journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step”.  So time to put one, solitary, foot in front of the other and see whether this now personal journey gets me to where I want to go..

..minus those hard won and easily lost.

I am not the world’s greatest conversationalist, and to be honest I am more than comfortable with silence.

I always try and find at least a small part of the day to just sit back, sometimes with a book, and just listen to nothing. To divorce yourself from the day-to-day, from the hassles, the grind, the daily demands on your time, the responsibilities you seemed to have gathered around yourself without even knowing… If only for a little time.

So have a little silence on me.  A little you time to sit back, do nothing, contemplate and chill.

I’ve had enough of being an adult for the moment, so I am sat down with The Complete Collection of Bill Watterson’s excellent Calvin & Hobbes comic strips.  There are worse ways to develop an ethos on which to live your life, but no better way to just chill at the end of a long day.

I’ve been reading these for the past few days, and have even plagiarised some of their more memorable quotes, which seems to have been taken rather more literally than I had originally anticipated.  Ah well, you can’t always help what others decide what you’re all about.

So I’ll continue to be the quiet one in the corner, to be the idiot on the internet, to make sure I always go “Oof” at the right time, to be the pain in the ass when your room begins to fester, to be the geek who’ll fix your PC, to smile at the pants, to step aside without complaint… but more importantly, and outside of your conception, the big kid I’ve always been on the inside.

As the Chris Antonak quote goes; “Aging is mandatory, maturity is optional.”

Life, as the old 80′s song insists, is what you make it.. which is a somewhat sobering thought as I look out over a rain drenched Abington Park.

There are many things that both friends and family will quote at you, in wordishly wise ways, and sometimes with a zen-like look on their face and voice; but however much you shake a stick at it, and this is probably age related (another year, another candle to burn), sometimes you just need to drop back, find your own space, crank up the music that defines your here-and-now and…..

…and?  Well you’ll know what works for you, as for me, I am still mid “and…’ing”.

There’s a mental image running around my head that would speak far more volumes than any number of words could convey in how things are at the moment.  Sometimes, and only sometimes, words are easy

…but not enough.. or way too much.

I’ve spoken before about how a song, a snippet of lyrics taken out of context, an image, or some other medium, provide a far more accurate and personal reflection of self at a point in time.

I won’t try and put into words what the mental image is, inoffensive as it is, as that seems counter intuitive. Maybe later, when I have some personal time, I will search for something that matches it on the big, bad, t’interweb… or, god forbid, put my artistic abilities to the test and actually translate from mental image to physical medium.

Until then I’ll share one of the ‘lyrics out of context’, that I mentioned earlier.  It’s from a song by Madness and perversely it’s probably the one bit that makes the song sound darker than it’s actual intent – which is exactly the opposite;

Standing up in the falling down
In so much rain I could almost drown.

If I ever do manage to scribble the image down I’ll make sure to add it to the blog… maybe.  However now seems a perfect time to plug in some headphones, hit ‘random’ on the playlist, and see if I can either create some new audible monuments or just lose self in the moment.

…not a unique sentiment at the moment!

It’s true, I have reached a kind of prolonged brain-fart.  The brain is whirring around, as much as it ever does, the fingers are itchy to put something down in words, but all that comes out is some slightly stale air.

As much as I want to jot down the daily doings of me, in some kind of narcissistic ‘dear diary’, the truth is that not an awful lot of interest happens.  Life certainly isn’t in any shape or form as life-and-death as Ann Frank’s, or as tally-ho-trousers-down-and-up-the-constituents as Alan Clark’s.

So I find myself, during lunchtime at work, again within one of the music pods, sitting in front of this blog wondering what the hell to write down?  Life, as I see it, is pretty much consisting of the following;

1. Work is work.  I work in a Bank designing computer systems, how exactly exciting do you think that can get?   Of course, the slightly annoying element of me being no longer required come 31st December does cause some concern… but 31st DECEMBER?!  That’s like a lifetime away! (feel free to point me in the direction of this post in 2011 and rub my face in it if things don’t entirely work out the way I hope)
2. Karate is still providing the source of me getting beaten up in various, and intriguing, ways by multiple peoples.  Just as an aside a new lesson has been learnt; do NOT do leg exercises at the Gym just before a karate lesson later that evening.  The results are not impressive and the scowling by ones Sensei is something frightening to behold.
3. Home-life is home-life.  Trying to resolve the latest home based dramas; house, heating, repairs, family arguments, money, etc, etc. is starting to feel like work.  In the spirit of holding my hand up though, this is no different than anyone else.  However the feeling of just throwing the arms up in the air with some of the new drama’s and say “Fine, I give up, have it your way!” is just too strong at the moment.
4. Sleep is not sleep.  ‘Nuff said.
5. Go back to step #1

In my actual verbal self I am a person who doesn’t mind not having something to say.  I am completely comfortable, when I have nothing of interest to say, in saying nothing at all.  I don’t have the gift of the gab or have a hundred and one amusing anecdotes with which to regale friends and colleagues alike, and as seen from the above there’s nothing of note to bore the poor person I happen to be with about.

I just wish I had the same control when it came to blogging, although why blog in the first place if that were to be the case?  Here’s as good a place as any to dump any brain-fartage and it’s not as though anyone reads the thing!

There, “ramble” done and dumped onto the t’interweb along with all the other rubbish that inhabit it.  No violence (or at least none seen), or porn (that would be too terrifying a vision to dwell on) or conclusion to this post….

…just a faint stale smell, depending on how long after I posted this you read it, and a slightly relieved feeling on my part to expel it albeit somewhat publicly (which is very rude).