Friday, August 8
I suggest reading the post below about Wednesday before moving on to Thursday and Friday... Trust me, it makes more sense.Thursday
I swallowed my pride on Thursday, ringing Bailey's (my employment agency) to tell them that I was available for next week. They rang me back not long after to inquire as to my availability for today. I said yes, planning to at least keep the peace with my parents for a while, and the guy told me that I could work from 6am till 1pm at this place in Frome, a town about 20 minutes away from my house. I had been to the place before, a few years back, and I knew it wasn't that bad. This cheered my parents up a tiny amount, and they were pretty civil to me for the rest of the day.
Thursday night was a bastard, because I had to go to bed early so I could wake up at 5am. *shudders* It's always on nights like these that everything you want to do all happens at once. There was a drinking session / party at a mate's house which I had to turn down, and I had to miss the second half of Pulp Fiction, which was on one of the movie channels I get. I fucking love that film, and have only seen it once before. I watched up to the bit where Mia has an OD and Vincent is about to inject her, then went to bed. Actually, I managed to watch The Animal, the Rob Schneider film. Fairly funny, a good way to waste 90 minutes. There's an absolute bird in it too, the one in the white dress. Mmmm.
I could not sleep Thursday night, my mind was buzzing with ideas for various things, including how to write this blog entry, and also the design for Version 2 of this blog. Stay tuned for that one. Eventually I fell asleep, probably for only 4 or so hours before the alarm went off to signal the start of...
Friday
You're going to love this one.
As I said below (above?), I had a job lined up for Friday, hence the 5am alarm. Where I was working is a place called Milklink, which is a creamery. Guess what they produce there... I'd worked there before, and knew my way (roughly) around the place. What exciting job did they have in store for me today? Stacking fucking pots of single cream on fucking pallets, then starting all over again on the next pallet. I swear a machine could do it much more efficiently than a person. Speaking of which, I really need to get hold of a copy of T1 and T2 before I go see T3 in the near future.
To cap it all, there wasn't even any music piped through onto the factory floor. I struggle to do anything without music (Around The World by Daft Punk is playing at the moment), so this was a major downer. A plus was this girl that was working there. I would place her age-wise as the same as me, maybe give or take a year either way. We all had hairnets on (more of which in a second), as well as these stupid jumpsuit things, so I couldn't make out much about her, other than her face. She was above average prettiness, perhaps bordering on beautiful, but she had these stylish black-rimmed glasses on. Regular readers will know that I really find glasses a turn-on, especially thick black-rimmed ones. I struggled to keep my eyes off here when I wasn't concentrating avidly (ahem) on the job in hand. I tell you, if I never see one of these pots of cream again, it will be too soon by far.
And now for the best bit. If you haven't already looked at RobCam, do so now, and then click here for a better look at it. Yes, I am wearing a hairnet and a "beardnet." "Beardnet" isn't the official term, but is my appreciative name for that bastard thing I had to wear. And all because I haven't shaved for nearly a month. I like my beard-type thing, but if I'm given a food-based job next week I'll shave it off. And that's a promise.
One quick thing, whilst I was typing all of this out (it has turned out to be epic, hasn't it?) my lovely lady friend, Elena rang me. I hadn't heard from her for a while, and we were chatting about this and that. 25 minutes later we said our goodbyes, which must be a record for me. I a terrible telephonist, I like to say my piece and get on with the rest of the day as soon as possible. Oh well, a new Rob? I think not. Elena is just lovely and such an easy person to talk to. See you soon Elena, love you loads.
Also, I've become a book-reading demon in the past week. This is what happens when you don't work. I've managed to re-read The Dice Man by Luke Rhinehart, one of my favourite books ever, as well as reading Fermat's Last Theorem by Simon Singh for the first time. That was a really interesting read, especially the proofs (prooves?) for various "fundamental" mathematical concepts contained in the appendices. I've just started Twelve by Nick McDonnell again, mainly because it's a really fast-paced book which I can finish by the end of the weekend. My next challenge? It's a toss-up between Dante's Divine Comedy and Homer's Iliad. I'm highbrow, don't you know?
Events That Have Happened, Possibly Chronologically
A few days away from a computer never did anyone any harm. Except those that are addicted to computers. I would wholeheartedly include myself in that group. I seem unable to sleep at night if I haven't got near a computer during that day. It's always the days that I don't get near a computer that my mind is buzzing with ideas and things to do when I do get on a computer. Anyway, enough of that, I'm here now faithful reader(s), prepare for an epic journey into the last 3 days of my life. And when I say "epic," I actually mean "slightly interesting." You have been warned. I'll continue in a roughly chronological order, but be prepared for some foreshadowing and referencing to later dates. I'm rambling, aren't I?
Wednesday
Wednesday started off like any normal day, in that I rolled out of bed around midday, to be confronted by my parents wanting to "talk." You should know by now that these "talks" are in fact lectures and excuses to generally moan at me. This time it was concerning the fact that I hadn't been socialising with my parents at all for the past week or so. I can't help it, I just prefer my own company. My Dad left to go shopping or something, and my Mum tried to do the "What's wrong with you?" thing. 101 questions followed: "Have you fallen out with your mates?"; "Is there something you're not telling us?"; "Are you having second thoughts about university?"; and so on and so forth. My answer to all of these was "no," because that's the truth.
My Mum was getting a little exasperated at this point, and straight out asked me why I don't choose to spend time with them, and prefer not to be in the same room as them. I thought "fuck it," and said what had been going over and over in my mind for the past 3 to 4 months. "I find you boring. I find you repetitive. I find your conversation topics dull and uninteresting. I don't share your tastes in TV programmes. I find you hypocritical and two-faced." In retrospect that was a bad idea. My Mum was initially upset and vanished upstairs. I went up to get washed and dressed, and she burst into my room, shouting and bawling at me. She then turned to my CD stacks and said "How's this for dull and boring?!" followed by her thrusting some of my CDs onto the floor, snapping them and breaking the cases left, right and centre. Check Evidence A. Oh yeah, this was preceded by hitting me on the shoulder, I forgot about that. She doesn't hurt when she hits like that, it's just her letting out raw emotion.
Anyway, by breaking my CDs she really set me off. I was in tears, angry tears, and it took all of my self-control not to swing out at her. I also somehow refrained from punching the door of my wardrobe, for reasons I'm not entirely certain of. I threw on some clothes and stormed out of the house. This was the hottest day of the year, yet I walked along the canal near my house for a couple of hours, still in rage for the first half-hour or so. I planned this slightly, by stopping off at a newsagents on the way to the canal to buy a big bottle of water. A very, very good idea, due to the heat that was everywhere around.
Mum rang me on my mobile after about an hour, to tell me that the results of my blood test were in at the Doctor's surgery. This was a blood test I had to determine whether I had Glandular Fever or not. She couldn't get the results, since I was over 16 or something, so I rang up and found out that the test was negative, which meant I didn't have Glandular Fever. I was relieved at this, since I didn't particularly fancy being laid up for 3 months doing fuck-all. My Mum had asked me to ring her back straight away, but I left it a few minutes, just to let her get worried. I'm a bastard, I know.
After that, I walked for a bit more, up this ridiculously big hill for no apparent reason. By this stage, I was a good 6 or so miles from home, and it was just after 2pm. I couldn't be arsed to walk back, so I took my parents up on the offer of a lift back to the house which they had earlier given me. My Dad came and picked me up, and we drove back in a stony silence. Then it was time for a proper "talk." Again, I mean a lecture...
This time my Dad dropped the ultimate bombshell on me: either I find a job within the next week, or they will kick me out of the house for good. I agreed to this (what else was I supposed to do?), and went upstairs to brood / mull it over.
The phrase "life-changing" is thrown around a lot these days. This, however, was a truly life-changing decision. For the past week or so, I hadn't been working, mainly because I'd been pretty ill, but partly because I just didn't want to. I'd had enough of doing shit jobs and wanted out. It was with this in mind that I seriously contemplated taking them up on the threat of kicking me out. I guess I'm too proud / stubborn to go back to doing these shit jobs. This wasn't one of those teenage "my parents hate me so I'm going to leave them forever" thoughts. This was a serious option for me. I began having these ideas about what to do and where to live for the next 5 weeks before I move into my student accomodation with the other guys. A little 1-bed place in London would do me fine.
I popped out that evening to go play some snooker with a mate of mine, which he beat me at, the bastard. And that was Wednesday.
Tuesday, August 5
Bad Day?
Hmm, so yesterday was a very bad day. See my post for the proof. Today was a whole lot better. Sort of.
No results for my blood test yet, which is annoying / worrying me. I had it done on Friday for fuck's sake! Today is now Tuesday, sort it out. Stupid, crappy NHS. Well, at least it's free. I think I'm getting slightly worried about it, I keep thinking about stupid, completely unlikely things such as "What if
I'm HIV positive?" and other crap like that. Hypochondria? Maybe.
Another boring day today, sitting in front of the TV watching random crap. I even managed to fit in an entire film. That Final Fantasy film was on, the entirely computer-generated one. If I remember rightly, it got panned by the critics for being pretty without being a good film. I thoroughly enjoyed it, even though I've never played any of the games on a Playstation. It was definitely very much a piece of eye-candy, but the storyline was good. It had slightly too many film cliches in it for my liking, including: hero(ine) with a dark secret; powerful evil man with a personal vendetta to settle; injured soldier willing to stay behind and sacrifice his own life to save the others (always a black guy too, what's with that?); "you saved my life, now I'm going to save yours"; spirit winning over brute firepower; and to finish with, that all-time classic of foreshadowing the entire second half of the film with dream sequences early on. Hooray. It's still a worthwhile way to spend a couple of hours though.
I lost at snooker tonight too to Eddie, which I'm not happy about. He must have been practising since I played him last. Never mind, I still whip him at pool every time I play him, and seeing as that's a beer-related game, I'll cope.
Monday, August 4
I am tired. I am tired of my life right now. I am tired of my parents. I am tired of my friends. I am tired of the rut that I find myself in. I am tired of the guilt complex which accompanies me to sleep each night if I haven't posted anything on this blog. I am tired of the way in which the world and its unhabitants expects of me. I am tired of fulfilling those expectations. I am tired of not rebelling. I am tired of those who are claiming to be rebellious. I am tired of everyone around me. I am tired of posting meaningless crap which nobody is ever going to remember on this blog and message boards. I am tired of human interaction. I am tired of conversation. I am tired of being social. I am tired of everything. I am tired of being told what to do. I am tired of thinking for myself. I am tired of being me. I am tired of trying to change myself. I am tired of this relationship-oriented society that we live in, and of being forced to conform to the ideals of that society. I am tired of not conforming to those ideals. I am tired of consciously trying to be unconscious. I am tired of taunting myself by having goals for the future. I am tired of having unfulfilled goals. I am tired of being alone. I am tired of being unhappy. I am tired of myself. I am tired of others. I am tired of not being able to change myself or others. I am tired of not being in love. I am tired of resigning myself to the fact that I will never be in love. I am tired of convincing myself that I will eventually find love. I am tired of just about fucking everything.I think that this is in medical terms called depression.
