Set in my ways

It has only been a few days into being another year older and I realise something that is both sad but true.

 

I am set in my ways. Not so much the stereotypical daily routines of getting up, washed, dressed and then out the door but the more subtle ways which have crept up on me without even noticing it and have started to govern my psyche.

 

I do not like being let down, I do not like being ignored and I do not forgive easily.

 

Who does, you may be thinking to yourself, but for me it is that I have long ago given up listening to the media, colleagues and even some friends as to what is right and wrong and for the longest time I have only followed my own instincts of what is right from wrong.

 

So when I say that I do not like being let down, what I mean to say is that I do not like the feeling of being let down, whether anyone has actually let me down or it is just bad timing / justified mitigating circumstances or simply circumstances beyond their control.

 

Similarly is that I do not like feeling that I am being ignored, a strong and negative emotion that does not really subside when I find out that the person who I felt was ignoring me was just extraordinarily busy and did in fact think of me a few times and was planning on getting in touch as soon as they got a spare thirty seconds to themselves.

 

Worse of all is that I do not forgive easily, which is made all the deeper when reflecting upon the first two problems.

 

For example, when someone I invite to my birthday party does not show up and does not let me know I feel very sad and let down. When the same person does not take my calls and does not reply to my texts I get terribly down feeling ignored.

Yet when I find out that the person did remember my birthday but was out of contact and could not tell me I find it very hard to accept as a justified excuse and our friendship suffers because of it.

 

These three emotional flaws may well be my greatest drawbacks in life, and indeed in finding a lasting relationship, as I will often take great offense when none was intended and not forgive them quickly enough thus missing out or souring future happy events.

 

However, when I think about it long enough, I am an honest and open person and these are not feelings that I hide, so for my peace of mind, if someone is going to be unreliable the best thing for them to do is to let me know in advance, and likewise it will mend bridges far quicker if they were to make a bit of a fuss over me the next time we do meet up.

 

( For reference the absolutee worse thing to do with me, when I am feeling let down and ignored, is to get all defensive and try to defend your position firmly, as that will get my back up instantly and often make me just turn around and walk away. )

First Official Booking

At around 11.50pm on Wednesday 23rd April I cautiously allowed my lifelong dream to take its next step towards reality by officially going online and booking the very first leg of my journey around the world.

 

Yes indeedy, for now at exactly 1.30pm ( Greenwich mean time ) on Saturday 27th 2008 I will be flying from London Gatwick, to Toulouse France.

 

After months of plotting, planning, deliberation, discussion, confusion, realisation, rehashing and boring everyone that I hold dear to tears, I have now transcended from merely imagining how I would go travel around to actually really booking and paying my way around the world.

 

I feel as if a great weight of expectancy and uncertainty has lifted from my shoulders, and now that I have taken this first step all I have to do now is to keep putting one foot in front of the other and do my best from falling over.

 

As of this moment I am no longer the person who only talks or wants to go around the world, I am now the person who reached !!!

Impatience

I think that generally I am a nice guy, but at the moment so many things are niggling at my plans that I am starting to lose it, and the first to suffer are always those closest to me, as they will invariably be the ones who I see most of, but I am trying hard to stay calm and only release the anger at those who truly merit it.

My financial plans have been rocked by a succession of small delays, hidden costs, problems and hiccups, which are having a progressive knock on effect, and if I can't start booking flights soon then the costs will go up, making things seem even worse.

At present my home PC is down for the count, needing a major overhaul of its interior, which is preventing me from updating the many files I have and so I am feeling a little lost at sea with no way of getting my bearings.

Realising that I have been let down before on more than one occasion when I have travelled to a foreign country, I am far from happy about making plans to visit far flung people in places that I cannot even pronounce properly if they are only able to write to me once every few months.

With less than six months to go I do not feel at all confident in making long reaching plans to someone that will only contact me once more before I leave the UK, { especially if that person only writes a line or two saying that they want me to chat with them on MSN. }, and so I hoped by telling my various international pen pals when I was planning to meet them, that this would encourage them to make slightly more effort in keeping in touch with me.

However, in true 'best laid plans' style almost the reverse seems to be the case, and so now I am seriously considering scrapping certain extended legs of the journey as the person who I am meant to be meeting there is now displaying signs of unreliability.

As evidence of my growing frustration and annoyance at this undesirably high level of neglect I now recently gone through my contacts list and anyone that has not contacted me in the last few months have been simply deleted from my contact list, and thus will no longer for a part of my plans or receive any more contact from me, {unless they write back a seriously decent and continuous amount of emails in the near future}.

This may seem like a hard line to take, but I am not risking getting stuck on a chicken wire bus in the middle of nowhere trying to argue or defend myself in a foreign language just to prevent myself from being evicted by the local authorities all because there was a last minute change on someoneelse's part and they couldn't be bothered to tell me til it was too late.

And so, if anyone is reading this who is, or who knows of, a pen pal of mine that has not contacted me in several months and is still under the much deluded idea that I am going to take the time, money and effort to go all around the world right to the very front door of someone who can't even be bothered to send me a progressive, informative or companionship building email at least once a month, then I have only a few words of comment to say to you.

" WAKE UP - SMELL THE COFFEE AND START ACTING LIKE A PROPER FRIEND !!!  "

A shared secret

I just thought I would share with you a little secret. Today I went into work and did nothing and still got paid.
Excellent ... well, not quite and if you want to know why it isn't just read on.

I arrived at work today on time, switched on my computer, had a cup of tea, read some emails and had some Wheetabix from the box under my desk that I had bought for just such an occasion a few days earlier.

A bit later I opened an excel document or two, recalculated my finances and rejigged how I can get from here to there and back again without having to rob banks in between.

My first glance at the clock said that it was only 10.01am.

I then had to explain and prove to the firms managing director that 8% of £22,000 was not £4,000.

I then sent a rambling email around the office asking for staff to not return their expense forms unsigned, undated and with ticks all down the page instead of numbers ( it was an EXCEL document with automatic cross casting and grand totalling after all ! ).

My second glance at the clock told me it was only 11.25am. I start to hate the clock.

I scratched my chin, made polite conversation about the football game last night and tried to hide the fact that I had an empty desk.

The demon clock gleefully told me it was now as late as 11.31am!

I opened up a few different applications and whiled away a good hour or so by highlighting sections with the mice and then switching back and forth between the packages and stroking my chin a lot in contemplation.

Then I went for lunch, dropped another sold book off to the post office and came back to my desk.

In an effort to keep myself awake I made a cup of treble strength coffee, extra sugar so that it was drinkable and then tried to wedge paperclips in my eyes without anyone noticing.

I refilled both photocopiers with paper and toner, refilled the small little paper cups in the water vending machine, refilled the various printers and fax machines.

Sad to say the next time I looked up at the clock it was only 2.08pm.

A hour or so later I made a quick personal phone call on my mobile, tried to avoid the hating stares from my colleagues who have work coming out of their ears, and cleaned my desk of the little bits of fluff that get trapped at the bottom of mice and in keyboards.

A bit later still I had went for a stroll around the office, then came back to find nothing had changed.
It was still only 3.54pm.

I read a few personal emails viewing my browser in a tiny envelope window at the bottom of my screen to try and stop the rest of the staff from spotting it and / or reading what was there.

I forward casted a few excel documents to take my replacement up until the year 2015 without ever needing to create any new documents.

It was still only 4.55pm.

I made another cup of tea, replaced the mini paperclips I'd earlier inserted into my eyes with the industrial size ones, refined Einstein's theory of relativity and memorised pi to the millionth decimal place.

It was still only 5.20pm.

Then, to kill a bit of time before clocking off, I went and hid away in the bathroom until I could hear other people start to pack up, when I could then feel safe to return to my desk, deftly switch my computer off, grab my jacket and rucksack and after signing myself out made my way back to Victoria train station.

On the train ride home the stress of my high powered executive job almost ... almost prevented me from falling into a deep coma the second my head hit the back of the padded BR seat. Personally I think that I'm probably suffering from fatigue due to the physical demands of my position!

And as I sit here now, the only thing that is preventing me from stripping naked and running deep into the night at the fearful thought that "It is only Wednesday and tomorrow when I go in to work I will have even less work to do that I did have today !!!" is the saving grace that the big countdown is on and progressing steadily.

In 162 days time I will never have to go back to my desk again and boy, do I need a light at the end of the tunnel to keep on doing this mind numbingly boring routine.

Balloon Theory on Life

On the train into work this morning I had an epiphany.

Life is like a mass of brightly colourful yet minutely flawed open ended balloons which we spend forever keeping afloat.

Let me try to explain :-

In life we all have things we need to do and things we want to do.

The balloons of the things we truly need we blow hardest and longest into, the balloons of the things we like and want we give slightly less effort into, and the balloons of the things we no longer want or need we often ignore and leave til there is nothing left but the fully deflated balloon as a memory of what we once were felt as important but no longer.

Every balloon needs to be kept inflated periodically in order for it not to fully deflate, and with only one mouth with which to blow from the more time spent on blowing up one balloon also means the less time there is to spread among the other balloons.

When we become obsessed over something we spend so much time blowing up that balloon that all the other elements of our life suffer, and this is what I believe happens with drug addicts and work-alcoholics, whose home life, social life and finally their health fail after they spend all their focus on only one main balloon in their life.

I have looked on the net and so far I cannot see anyone else claim that life is like this, so I guess that I am happy to claim this theory as mine.

And now that I have officially claimed this theory as mine I can take my time and refine the theory til it is waterproof, this being only a rough draft of a much bigger idea.