Valentines Day

Yet another Hallmark holiday, designed by the greetings card industry to extract money out of all of us. Except those of us who are alone for Valentines. Thank you very much world, I am painfully aware that I am all alone and dateless for Valentines. I really don’t need to be seeing all these hearts and banners and exclamations of love everywhere I go just now. Wheres my holiday, the one that celebrates being sad and alone!

Like meals for two at the supermarket and single person supplement on hotel rooms, Valentines day is the enemy of single people everywhere. Nobody likes to be reminded of their shortcomings or their failings, or things about themselves that they don’t particularly like. Imagine if you were constantly told all the time that you were overweight. It’s not pleasant is it? We overweight people know we are, and don’t need the reminding. And because of that, most reasonable people in society don’t go around telling people, ‘Hey, you look fat’. Yet this same society has no problem making fun of people who are single, like you are not a complete person unless you have a significant other in your life.

I’m telling you, World, that it is okay to be single, and it doesn’t make me any less of a person…

I think we’re alone now…

…doesn’t seem to be anyone around

There seems to be a recurring them in my life just now where people I know and like depart my life never to be seen again. It’s the nature of the work that I do now that people are around for limited periods of time, and then they return to their home country, or move on somewhere else. People that I get to know well, and become good friends with leave, and I’m left with a hole where they once were. It has happened countless times to me over the last year, and the sad thing is that they are never replaced. It is really difficult when you get close to people, enjoy their company, where they make you laugh and feel better about yourself, and suddenly they’re gone. With each departing person, I find it gets harder and harder.

The problem I can see at the moment is the conflict between spending as much time as possible with someone you know is leaving because you know time is short, or recognizing that they are leaving and standing off a little. I know that the more time spent with people I like, the more I get to know them, and the better a friend they become. And then I loose them. And sometimes I think it’s just too painful. I know however, that the right thing to do is to enjoy the moment, live for now, hang out, spend the time, because we do not know what the future will bring.

It just gets lonely being alone all the time

Enter Kiltman

Today has been a long tough day. Didn’t get off to the best of starts with two very crowded trains, so I had people in my pocket all the way down here today. Doesn’t help with my mood much. I knew that it was going to be a Metallica day. Angry music for an angry person. Its been this way really since I came back after New Year. Not sure how much longer things can carry on this way. I’m going to explode, or blow up or something. I have some training days next week, which will hopefully help.

Home again to be by myself, find something healthy for tea, and attempt to entertain myself so my evening doesn’t drag along as badly as my day has.

I took a photo out my office window today, which shows that my window is really dirty, but also that I have a reasonable view. I have a window, which is more than most can say here.

View from the window

I got the Kiwi Fruit blues

I’m having one of my down days today. Everything seems to be bothering me today and getting me down. I’ve not felt like this for a few weeks, and this is definitely the first time this year. I had hoped that I’d kicked this, but here it is, still here.

Four days into my ‘healthy’ regime, and I already had my ‘bad’ day yesterday, mainly I think because Monday and Tuesday had left me so hungry. So today I brought into work a yogurt pot for mid morning, and a kiwi fruit for mid afternoon. Kiwi fruit sure don’t taste as good as a Galaxy Caramel Chocolate Bar.

I ate the kiwi fruit like a boiled egg, lobbed off the top and dug in with my spoon. Feels so strange. I’m going to have to get used to them I guess

I’ve got to like Green Tea over the last few weeks, so hopefully I can do the same with this fruit nonsense

And another thing, I think I need to stop being interested in and thinking about woman, they only make me depressed. From now on, it’s just me, the green tea, and the kiwi fruit

Getting Old

I’m 31. And recently I’ve been feeling really old. Things that don’t seem that long ago actually are quite some years ago. In the last week I realized……..

• I have been working for ten years this year
• It is twenty years since I started Secondary School, or High School
• It is now eight years that I have been going to watch Scotland play international rugby
• It is twelve years since I went to live in Boston for a year
• It is five years since I came to work in Amsterdam

I really don’t know where the time goes. I remember when I was a teenager, I wanted to be older, so that I could drive, so that I could drink legally, so that I could be a grown up. And I remember my mother saying to me that once you reached 21, every year after that would go past quicker and quicker. And of course I didn’t believe her. And now, ten years on from 21, I realize how true those words are.

I was reading an interview with the Scotland rugby captain, he’s a similar age to me. He was commenting on the new players in the squad, and how young they were, being in there early 20s. He went on to explain that it just didn’t seem possible that guys with birth dates in the mid 80s could be playing in the same team as him. I think a guy played on Saturday, and he was 21, born January 1987. Stuff like that makes me feel old!

Ups & Downs

Something that has long held me curious is mood swings. And in particular downward mood swings. At least twice a week, for no apparent reason at all, I find myself having really bad days, where I feel angry at the world, with everything getting me down. There is no trigger that I am aware of that makes me feel this way, and in almost all instances I wake up the next day and I am back to ‘normal’ and don’t feel quite so down. I’d really love to get a handle on the logic that makes me feel this way. On days like today when this happens, I just want the day to be over. It brings with is a real sense of lethargy, laziness, and a general lack of interest in everything. On days like these I become a little bit of an actor, trying my best to act ‘normal’ to those around me so that I don’t let anyone see how I feel, or bring anyone else around me down.

Ideally, I’d figure out what causes these ups & downs so I could do something about them, but thus far, it seems to be completely random. I’ve thought long and hard about it and I can’t put my finger on anything specific that seems to cause it. Recently, I’ve just started to accept that this happens, deal with it as best as I can, and hope that the next day the feeling has gone again and I am back to ‘normal’. This time, it started last night, I was watching a DVD, a Kevin Smith movie, and I just became uninterested in it. An early night followed, which resulted in me wakening up this morning in a bit of a funk. It’s all very weird!