Dark into light.

I feel like I might be a little bit optimistic.

I feel like I might be a little bit happy.

REALLY?

I have things to look forward to.

I'm such a jinx though; I am a little bit scared that all the good things will disappear. Again. Then again, don't I deserve these good things? From time to time? I think so. Maybe. A little bit.

I over-think and therefore, overcomplicate everything.

"There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so". - Hamlet (Act II, Scene II).

SO. I'm not. I give up! (For a bit. Like. A week?) Someone else make the decisions. You! There! You make my decisions for me. I'll just follow you. Whatever you say. That's a bit like life anyway, isn't it?

I'm fed up of being a mess.

One of those phrases from my late teenage/uni days which has always made me think was "fill your boots". A common, fairly obnoxious thing to say. However, it was always something that I felt that I SHOULD be doing. I mean, come on. "Sort your life out Coleman". How many times did I hear that? Surely I should have learned to look after myself several years ago. Protect your heart, trust no one, depend only upon yourself.

I just LOVE trusting people though. I love letting people in, only to get stabbed in the face by my own rage. Why can't I pull myself together? These days I am such a wallower. Misery loves its own company in my opinion.

FUCK. I'm wallowing right now, whilst I type this. That insurmountable pressure is always so present right now. I wait for some word, some SIGN because I'm too afraid to do anything myself. I make a list (as always) only to rip it up. I never used to rip them up. I think I'm getting worse.

I miss you. I love you. Empty.

Oh dear.

People assume that because you do not work in a job which is relevant to what you class as your personal "expertise" that either you don't have two brain cells to rub together, or that you are lazy, or that you have no confidence in your own abilities. I think those three pretty much sum up most people in this economic climate. Is today the day when things will change? Can people afford to take the risk and jump in feet first without bearing in mind what the consequences might be?

Employments risks in 2011 seems worse than ever. Redundancy, job shortages, you name it, you'll know someone who has experienced these problems. I myself recently almost lost my job and it fills you with this uncertain fear. You might not like your job, but is there anything else you could do right now? I know that I most certainly do not have much faith in myself. I struggle to compensate for my own lack of enthusiasm about my future, let alone to try and be enthusiastic to yet another person who asks me what I'm going to do with my degree(s).

How many people do I know who actually work in a field of interest which their degree was in? 3. Perhaps 4. Out of so many people that I know of who went to university in the past couple of years, maybe 5% have a job they want to do for the foreseeable future. That is a sad and alarming statistic. Those days of "finish one job on a Friday, start a new one on the following Monday" have existed for years. The state of the economy and its impacts upon the "average" person have become so detrimental that people face poverty in more ways than one.


Yet, you go to a city centre on a Saturday and the place is full of people with money to burn. This is something that I cannot come to terms with in my own head. The rich most certainly haven't particularly lost anything, although reading in the newspaper the other day about Adele being taxed 4 million pounds makes one widen one's eyes. So where exactly will this 4 million pounds of a taxpayers money go? Where does the billions of pounds that we pay in tax go? Somewhere to line someone's pockets? This isn't a third world country; that shouldn't be happening. It shouldn't happen there either. Bribery and forgery. Yada yada yada. It's old news now isn't it? No. It isn't. It's disgusting and people should feel demoralised in the fact that we live in a society where it is better to step over someone to get where you want, rather than to even step on them.

I think that the prospect of September looming towards me like a big monster has made me think twice about the job market and about a career. I still have no idea what I want to do and I am getting sick of being asked. However, in this climate, can I refuse any work? Does this mean I would have to sacrifice some dreams, just so that maybe I have to stay in Stoke longer? Is travelling really an option? You're meant to be able to do anything that you want, but how can you?

The M word.

So Kate and William did it. My best friend did it last year.

Marriage. Matrimony. The declaration to another that you will love them forever. Pretty much.

I watched the Royal wedding. It was without a doubt spectacular; as it should be. However, what about people who invite the Prince of Monaco, but he's too busy to attend? Are weddings all about who you invite? Are they about just the two of you, enjoying your moment in the sun? Are couples buying into an image when they get married? Are they hoping that there will be a couture dress and an 18-tiered cake in it for them? I think the sanctity of marriage has been lost in some cases. Divorce is common, as are affairs. There's also these dramatically long engagements, spanning years, decades, whatever. My own humble opinion is that engagement is the precursor to marriage, not the place you wait forever to never be asked again if you want to be wed.

I have stated frequently that I don't think I will ever get married. I can not see myself walking down the aisle, or signing the big book with the fancy pen. However, after watching THE wedding, I sort of changed my mind. I mean, I'm not a royalist in any shape or form. When I watched them, however, I could sort of see myself, mirrored in the nerves, in the coyness, in the laughter and the little comments. The actual intimacy, although it appeared to be lost, was actually there in parts and I liked it.

I may never marry a prince, there aren't that many going spare these days, but what if there is someone who would meet me at the end of the alter? Someone who was like me; who could see the point in it all. Who wanted to declare something personal, to me, no one else, apart from those who would be eavesdropping from the pews. Perhaps romance isn't really dead. Perhaps there is someone else who thought romance was dead. Then they decide to think again. Is there someone from everyone? I have seen people fall in love, as we all have and I have seen it break down. I have been a part of that breakdown. I've fallen in love and out of it and been pushed out of it too. When is the time when you decide that it's okay to get hurt. It's okay to put yourself out there. Make a fool of yourself. I do not do that willingly.

Perhaps it actually lingers where you least expect it. Romance. Love. Whatever. Maybe I'll find it. Maybe. Maybe I did and it's gone now. Who knows really.

Birthday DOOOOOOOOOOM.

Time for a quick, cheeky blog.

SO, I am turning the biggish 22 on Sunday. Time for a small reflection on recent and less recent days of my life. In a generalised way.

So, on the 3rd April, 1989. I was born. 21 and a bit years and here I am now. Writing to you. It's been a funny old life thus far. Just as everyone's life is full of light and dark. Each person's darkness plummets to different levels. As does their light. As it refracts around your personality, your achievements, your soul, it makes you believe that getting older is OKAY. I mean, we don't have a choice. I believe our paths are already laid out for us to tread. The broken glass and painful cobbles are put there to test us all. It can't all be grass and rainbows you know. I like the variation though. I like the feeling of a vicious mood, almost as much as I like not having a care in the world.

Everyone always says, "Oh you are SO young" and all of those kinds of things, but I feel I have somewhat of an older head on my shoulders and not in some sick, sodomising kind of way. Growing up with responsibility and fewer aspirations makes a person think long before they have to. I'm glad that I decided to slow down my thinking. NOT. I need to step it up. Always needing to step up.

So, as I age, as we all do, there are a few things on mind. Prospects, careers, friends, relationships, the time space continuum. All very important factors in one's life. I never understand how one tiny mind can have so much whirring around inside of it. Like a small model of merry-go-round. Round and round. The same thoughts; the same horses.

Happy birthday me. Here's to the next twenty-two years and twenty-two million thoughts.

Impractical boundaries.

Feeling very contemplative in the face of another Sunday of cold cups of tea and mountains of books.

I got to thinking about boundaries; specifically the impractical kind. When you know what you want, but those walls get built up between you and that thing that you want. How can you deal with this in the face of adversity? Do you just turn around, metaphorically, and go home, trying to reconcile yourself with the fact that perhaps, this isn't going to work out how you planned? All those hours you spent pondering how GREAT it could really be. Then you come to a realisation that a) you don't live in a dream world i.e. inside your own head because that is mental and b) life is fucking unfair. Making those lists makes you put things into something we all like to call "perspective". In fact, perspective is a massive lie. I know this because I don't have any perspective.

I have selfishness and awkwardness and tweeness and a handful of broken thoughts.

Is there a way of overcoming such boundaries? Well, sacrifice is one thing. Sacrificing your happiness and someone else's happiness. Throwing comfort out of the window for the long haul. If you put aside your own happiness for the short-term, does this make you happier in the long-term? I don't think so. I actually think that maybe it COULD, but human nature is so passive and full of what-ifs, that nobody is really happy.(?).

However, so you're in this place where you've realised (list) that a) you haven't got what you want, so that can't make you happy, b)you're miserable because you haven't got what you want and have decided that it's "for the best" for it to be this way and c)you're miserable because you're making another list. Perhaps I just enjoy lists and also, being miserable. Maybe I don't want to "cheer up". Stop hanging a fucking smile on an empty thought.

The impracticality of life is in stark contrast to how we are "supposed" to feel. We (I apologise for using "we" if you don't really feel like this. I do love to generalise) are "supposed" to be optimistic when all "we" do is get knocked back again. and again. and aga... you know where I'm going.

I suggest that when you want something you can't have, that it is best to just not give up. You're going to be miserable either way. So why not have a little hope, whilst you can?

Do you remember the first time?

Can you remember what it was like to be a teenager?

Those vague, hormonal, confused, angst-induced, tearful, growth-spurt days of old. Well, has anything much changed since being a teenager? Do you know what you want to do with your life? Are you fed up of hearing friends tell you that your life needs some direction? Well, this could sound like some kind of Talk To Frank advert, or some kind of plea to say that yes, suicide is good for some. (Bit ridiculous).

Life is what YOU make it. Doesn't matter if it's all gone wrong (how can it have done, really?) or that you aren't following the "designated path" of a graduate/employee/student/cleaner/life coach. I didn't have many aspirations as a teenager. Not to fuck up too much was about it. Or get pregnant. That was another no-no for me. So you can't really say it was all negative.

I have absolutely no idea what I want to do with my life. Yet. Unrealistic goals put aside of course. I could still be a pilot. Maybe. Not long ago, I had a massive sob on my dear mother's shoulder about how life was shit and that I didn't know what I wanted. Of course, she put everything into perspective that I had so many more opportunities than she ever had, or ever will have. That I had so much to give etc. Wise clichés from Momma C as always. But when other people start to put pressure on you, start to question your motives for doing things, what do you say in return? Piss off, I'm working it out whilst reading Vogue? Surely life is about MORE than knowing what you want to do at the tender age of 22? (Maybe I will still be advocating individualism by the time I reach the tender age of 40). Surely life is like one big puzzle; that you just work it out one day at a time? I'm all for having goals, but doesn't "not staying in my pyjamas all day" count as a life goal? I think it does.

There is so much emphasis on getting a career and falling in love and having a house and children and pets and a dishwasher and a fridge/freezer with an ice-maker and SETTLING DOWN that it seems that youth has disappeared into an abyss of cheap labour and mobile top-ups. I long for those days gone by where all I had to worry about was if my mother was going to notice if I had cut my own hair. It seems that life is now ruled by the minority; those who do have a career/a partner/a "life" and that the majority could quite possibly be looking in from the outside; looking in through the double-glazed portholes of someone else's "perfect life".

W. H. Auden.

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message He Is Dead,
Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last for ever: I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now: put out every one;
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun;
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood.
For nothing now can ever come to any good.

Social acceptance and social networking. Are they the same thing?

I have been told that I am too worried about what everybody else thinks and what everybody else reads. Is this a fair statement? We all conform to the likes of Facebook, Twitter, even writing this blog is conforming to that kind of social construction of a virtual society. I want to know how it's possible to be that elusive thing; to be "different". I mean, look at the people who believe they don't care. They are too busy talking about how much they don't care that they might as well shoot themselves in the head in a shopping centre in comparison to the song and dance they are making about being so very unlike anybody else.

So what's wrong with being "like everyone else"? Show me an example of somebody who is so fucking different? Treading on eggshells has become part of life. I do not think there is a way, in this Zeitgeist that we can avoid doing it any longer. People who spread their opinions far and wide which are not appreciated are labelled; heretics, racists, misogynists, you name it, they're it. The sheer volume of media being vomited into our lives everyday and the constant diatribe which issues from people we define to be important within our Facebook pages has meant that life as knew it changed into life as we now know it. Those 400 friends you have accumulated when realistically we care for probably less than 10% of them. Friend counts, amount of pictures tagged, updating your status. What does it all mean? Personal enjoyment? Looking good? Appearances? Who knows. It's a personal affiliation with such 'institutes' that has made us into the society of people who can no longer converse over the phone.

In the end, who cares if you like The Cure or secretly you spend most of your nights still listening to your Boyzone back catalogue. If somebody cannot accept you for who you are, then you should have the guts to walk away from somebody so pretentious, because, secretly, they probably like JLS. Oh and then block them from your Facebook account and retweet a bitchy tweet about them. E-revenge is sweet.