I used to curl round you during the night,
Instead now I’m now deported to the floor,
You look down at me and I give you a fright,
Am I so hideous? Remember how things were before?

When I could caress your head,
Play with your knees,
And you would allow me in your bed,
Would you look at me, please?

Perhaps I’m too lumpy and bumpy,
And a little out of shape,
Some may say frumpy,
And maybe overweight.

But I keep asking myself,
What did I do wrong?
Nothing, I think – it was just your wealth,
That forced you to buy that mong.

I hope she keeps you warmer than I did,
For I am destined for the bin,
Perhaps one day you’ll have a kid,
I hope you enjoy living in sin.

This is a silly poem I’ve written about getting a new duvet.

As the evening draws to a close,
Gentle butterflies brush my nose,
Calmly scattered by the breeze,
Flying away into the trees.

Little bunnies eating grass,
And then quick! Off to bed en masse,
Snuggling down in their burrows,
Soothing their mother’s worn out furrows.

Breathing in the sweet eve air,
I spot a stallion and a mare,
Cantering into their simple stable,
Their bodies close like a cradle.

Gold, orange and red lines appear,
The growing murk is not to fear,
Fleeting clouds streak the sky,
Making shapes with my eye.

It is surely my favourite time of day,
Knowing the darkness is here to stay,
Strolling down across the lawn,
Never wanting for the morn.

Walking in the evening is a must,
For anyone who loves the dusk,
Nature is something to behold,
I sight that’ll never get old.

Back into the house, warm and safe,
Back to my troubles and my strafe.

So, last weekend I went camping with my old housemates (plus some) in the North York Moors. To be more accurate it was in a barn. A converted barn; it had no straw, which I was a little disappointed with to be honest. Although, there were cows in the barn next door, so they made up for the lack of medieval facilities. It was a part joint birthday celebration for Emily and Sarah, part goodbye Sarah thing and part York/Cromer street reunion.

A couple of my friends wanted me to blog about it, because, apparently my round up of last year that I posted in January was “depressing”. Now, I never wrote that entry to sound depressing and having read some snippets of it a couple of weeks ago I wonder what exactly it was I was smoking when I wrote it. Having said that; from what I remember most of it was how I remember it, but just because I might have found last year a bit depressing doesn’t mean that it was anyone else’s fault but my own. I plan to write a “6 month-in” blog later this month.

Anyhow, they mentioned perhaps I should do a blog with negatives and one with positives. However, I don’t need to write any negatives (except one that I’ll mention later), because last weekend was good. In fact, it was great. And – without trying to sound like pricks I hate who write on facebook “Just want to thank the boiiis/girlies for a great night out”; who needs to actually thank your friends constantly for being friends? We should all be grown up enough to realise that love is there without it having to be said every two minutes. We don’t need to be showing off our emotions, just because it makes us different to Arnold Schwarzenegger (who, as we all know, is entirely emotionless except when it comes to California (come!)) and this doesn’t mean we need to flaunt it in everyone’s faces by cracking up on TV because we killed someone in a pool or indeed telling the whole of facebook that you “love Jimbo – he’s the best boyf in teh wrld, lyk! Bought us one ov ‘em diaphragms! Sexi!” – I do love being with that group of people, even though it it wasn’t just the six of us, but the group seemed to gel and get on.

I still had the odd pangs of whatever, but because I’m so comfortable with these people it didn’t matter and I coped. Everyone else was there before me, as I couldn’t even get a mere hour off work to come down a bit earlier so Jason drove me, Zandra and her boyfriend Patrick down. We managed to get a bit lost due to google’s inaptitude at being able to direct a shit down a U-bend. Still, we got there and immediately started by getting drunk. We had an enourmous amount of booze and food. We partied (I hate myself) until dawn watching the sun peak its head over a cow’s arse.

The next day, after being “rudely” awoken at 9.30am by some of the group, we made our way to Whitby, which is a lovely place. It was such a sunny weekend that the North sea looked quite inviting; fear not. I didn’t even paddle – I’ve been warned off this particular sea before. Plus “me mam said I can’t get wet”.

Fish and chips, the abbey (well, the church next to it) and ice cream (I went without this as I’m trying this new diet called anorexia) followed with another confusing car journey back. The moors look pretty much like all the other moors. There are  some nice little villages, but I reckon they just keep driving quickly ahead of you and slightly changing their appearance to confuddle you even more. V and I stopped for directions at a very nice lady’s house who seemed to own a peacock. Barbeque and more drinking ensued when we got back (sadly, the peacock was a bit stringy, so we had to throw most of it away).

At this point I kind of realised our dear ex-housemate Sarah was leaving us the following week to pursue a career as either a bar lady or world’s heaviest woman in Australia for a year. It’s sad and whilst I don’t talk to her on the phone all the time or something at least I know she’s in the same country and we’ll see each other every other month or so according to the semi-regular pattern we’ve established since leaving uni. I’m sure we’ll all cope but the distance is pretty massive (a bit like Sarah herself).

Anyhow, the next day we went back to York to sit in V and Kirsty’s back garden and be pelted with water balloons for most of the afternoon by the delightful children next door. Aren’t kids special? After a misguided game of rounders in the field next door it was time for me to go home.

Getting home I thought I’d lost my phone, which then turns up in my dad’s car two days later – oops. Already told O2 I lost it, so it’s locked. Thinking it was lost made me feel quite annoyed and this spoilt an otherwise lovely weekend.

That was quite a whistle stop tour of the weekend, but to put everything in would be meaningless and I’m not sure I can explain the game of “candles” effectively enough in a blog (though, I hear V is approaching a massive games company with this idea). In all, it was a lovely weekend. Nice to catch up, celebrate and commiserate with everyone.

I just want them all to know that I love the contraceptive aid they gave me – it fits lush, lyk.

Ever think about your life in a “Sliding Doors” kind of way? I do all the time. What would my life be life if I did one tiny thing differently? Where would I be? What would I be doing? Sometimes I just take a moment thinking about the tiny thing I’ve just done and see if it would go somewhere else if I hadn’t done it or done it differently.

For example, what happened if I tripped over in the dark just now sending the lasagne I was warming up all over the kitchen floor? Well, certainly not prattling on about it in my blog, that’s for sure! It’s nice to just have a think about stuff like that, but also highly dangerous. You can get so caught up in your parallel universe that this universe is shit and you wish you had thrown that lasagne on the floor – at least you’d be with a beautiful model in a mansion with your dream job now.

Dreams always work themselves out to better than reality; that’s why they’re dreams. The unreachable. And reality is such. The unknowable. You can’t always predict how something’s going to go or how you’re going to react to certain situations.

I can’t believe that it’s nearly been 6 months since the start of this year and nearly a year since I left university. I kind of want to say uni was a waste of my life, but I think I’ve learnt a lot about many things (not just my chosen subject) and to disregard it as an abomination would be unfair. I’ll be blogging about this in a few weeks, when it is 6 months since I wrote my New Year one. I read that back the other day and I think I was high or something when I wrote it – some things are so out there. It’s the whole “Sliding Doors” thing again. It’s the whole learning thing again. How much someone can change in 6 months…

Anyway, to end I’m going to tell you that I’m:

looking forward to:

• going to Edinburgh next week
• going barning in two weeks
• getting a life
• getting a job I want

And that I’m not looking forward to:

• going to bed
• getting up
• repeating one and two
• going to work

Byes.

I knew I’d have to write a post explaining my video, so here it is. It seems a few people think that I am guarding my “A Minute a Day” idea like some sort of blood-thirsty animal intent on giving anyone rabies who dares to use any part of the format. This simply isn’t true – it was hardly a genius idea and it wasn’t particularly original. You certainly can’t get annoyed if people use an idea or theme that they see on YouTube.

There’s a theory (and I can’t remember exactly what it say nor who actually said it; I learnt this on my degree – do you really expect me to have taken this in?) that says there are only a certain amount of stories (I think it was seven or something, gosh) and similarly there are only a certain amount of video ideas or at least formats that can be made from this medium of Internet videos. People’s vlogging styles are fairly unique, but really most are just copying others they’ve seen. There’s nothing wrong with this, because it’s how everything else works. BBC produce something that’s popular and ITV will then make this something, but usually a shoddier version and then five will see it and eat it and poop it out, but then claim it was “original” because they put their presenter ON the desk instead of behind it, or some shit like that.

Protecting an idea to the teeth is a good idea if it was a good idea to begin with and you stand to lose money/friends/movie rights/All Bran over it. The thing with YouTube is that it’s mainly free and there are no guarantees to your copyright being safeguarded nor is there an allusion to this. Granted, you could probably make a case if you needed to – just like the posting a copy to yourself trick.

What I actually meant by “when people start copying you” (or whatever) in my video was that I said “it’s refreshing not to have to update everything all the time” and that a certian YouTuber (nerimon) had said something similar in his VEDA videos because he’d been a ponse and deleted loads of accounts on the Internet and I just didn’t want to sound like I was copying him and joining his merry band of bandwagon jumpers. I’d decided not to update anything (facebook, twitter, YT, this blog, but not dailybooth, oddly), as his “VEDA” idea had pissed me off – I feel he’s quite stuck up and he just generally annoys me and this was me sticking it to “the man” in a woman-pissed-off-with-her-boyfriend-as-he’s-watching-football-rather-than-giving-her-a-back-rub-because-she’s-on-her period-kind-of-way. Or in another way: a pointless waste of time – no one knows!

I don’t know, I think what I was trying to convey with the little bit of actual talking I did in that video is that I’d had a jolly nice time without having to contribute my thoughts and updates to the world, but also that I wasn’t bumming Alex Day just because he’d come to a similar revelation (or money-making-scheme in his case) but because he was doing his crappy vlog-everytime-he-has-a-shit he was able to tell everyone about this revelation sooner than I was (funnily enough on this Internet thing that he despises telling everyone about/wasting his life on… I wonder how this plan was formulated without Max Clifford?) and therefore I might look like I wanted to take him round the back of Safeway carpark and do him in the bushes, whilst a dog did a shit on my shoes, or something.

Just wanted to clear things up, even if, after reading this back, it just confuses the situation more…

“Why don’t you just grow up?” is an inflammatory phrase. One that is probably said too much and has probably got many an angsty teenager riled up. Something I’ve learnt today is that no matter how much you say it someone it won’t make a blind bit of difference. When you’re an angsty youngster you don’t see anyone else’s point of view… so I’m told. I’m sure I still am a bit angsty and “misunderstood”, but to me I’m not really. I think I’ve always been fairly reasonable no matter my age. Want some tea? Sure, I’ll serve that up to you from my plastic teapot and it’ll probably be dilutey orange. Need someone to sing at your concert? I can do that from the top of my orange slide and then go down it after my performance. What an exit. Smooth.

I suppose because, to me, my family comes first and their happiness is usually the top of my list. Which is why I’ll always try and compromise between them and my friends rather than take one side or the other. My brothers seem to be different concentrating more on their friends than they do the family. Which, is often infuriating and makes me wonder why I bother to change my plans for them when they don’t ever seem to want to extend me the same courtesy.

This kind of thinking not only upsets me, but also my mum. They never appear to notice the distress they cause in the household nor do they seem to care. It angers me, saddens me and confuses me.

Life for me is about moderation and compromise. It’s not always about having your own way – if this was the case I’d probably never leave the house and eat myself to death with the help of mature cheddar and mayonnaise. People are too afraid to have a little sadness in their lives. Without sadness you can never truly be happy (I’m sure someone said this, but I can’t find who). Perhaps I’m too sad all the time and too moderated and I shouldn’t necessarily try and inflict my sadness on others, but a little bit certainly does no harm!

“They say the family of the twenty-first century is made up of friends, not relatives” – increasingly true and equally sad. I’m not saying spend the whole of your life devoting yourself to your family, but I reckon more and more people neglect theirs in favour of people they can pick. I really want to get over the point to my brothers that family will always be there for you and it’s certainly harder for them to dump you as quickly as friends can. Friends can chose when to care but, usually, family can’t. My parents have given all of us a good, fair start at life and repaying them by not caring isn’t really nice and possibly something that in the future could destroy what’s left of this family’s dynamic. I’m not sure if they’re too immature, too stubborn or just too stupid not to get this into their heads.

It worries me because my parents are on the older side of life and I’d hate my brothers to miss time with their parents, because I’ll know they’ll miss them when they’re gone and most likely regret any time they misspent. I wish I could make things work better, but we can’t have all our wishes.

I don’t think I can say any more on this subject, because I feel like I’m repeating myself and also that I sound like the angsty, unreasonable kid I was describing earlier.

Well, now I feel I can update a little more on this old thing called the Internet. Unfortunately, I’m going to have to kick off this post in the same vein as my previous two posts, which by the way weren’t some kind of attention seeking ploy – this is my blog to write down whatever I feel is necessary. Writing it in Word and leaving it in some folder marked “Me boo hoos and hahas”, just won’t cut it, I’m afraid.

I feel SO frustrated and unmotivated lately. I really can’t be bothered with anything. I’m currently off work for 5 days and all I can think is “what am I going to do?”, because I certainly have no friends around here any more and to make things worse I’m still quite ill from my newly contracted swine flu, that I went in every day last week to work with. I would have gone down to York if a) it wasn’t my brother’s birthday tomorrow and b) I didn’t feel dizzy every time I stand up not to mention my sore throat, which talking all day on the phone has done little to help with.

Today, I decided I’d do a vlog for the Mr & Mrs YouTube; I wrote the stupid thing, but didn’t have enough motivation to actually film the damn thing. I need to remove a whole section, because it’s preachy, unnecessary and not funny. Not even that but I couldn’t do anything else all day. I didn’t have any TV or films I wanted to watch, I certainly didn’t fancy reading, nothing on the Internet to do and just anything I tried seemed wrong and too much effort. It annoys me, but I feel helpless and just generally suppressed. I get more active in the evening, but conversely because of my routine during the week I also get really tired and have to go to bed.

In a way I much prefer being at work, because then I have something to do, I don’t have to think about things much – I go in, do my 7 and a half hours and come home. Well, that’s it in theory. But I’m still worrying a lot about work when I really shouldn’t. I know what to do and how to go about it, but I’m still unsure of myself. I’m glad this week that I imposed a “no asking” rule, which was only to be broken if I had completely no idea what to do. Anyway, this is something I need to address – feeling anxious about going to work, being at work and then subsequently worrying about leaving work isn’t something that’s healthy. But, at least I’m semi-motivated about that.

I want to leave and get a better job in something I want to do. This is kind of a weird attitude to have, as I’ve only been there 2.5 months, but I always said it would be temporary. Having said that, the amount of people I spoke to who said “I only came here with the allusion that I was staying for a year max – I’ve been here 4 years!” when I first started was not only terrifying but something that I really need to avoid. My basic plan is to try and be moved offices and then at least I’ll be in the right city and then I can think about moving jobs. Or, even better, if I just moved them both at the same time, simultaneously. Neat. Succinct. Lovely.

Anyway, I plan to do a couple of videos over these few days off, update this and the main site to bring it up to scratch or something and generally try and cheer the fuck up. No matter how hard I’m going to find that being bored out of my mind.

I’m me. You’re you. I’ve said this before. I can’t help who I am any more than you can. But sometimes it’s difficult thinking that this is who I am and I’m unlikely to be able to become someone else. Not that I really want to be someone else, but sometimes you feel that perhaps your life would be better if you were someone else, someone who could deal with things better and just, generally be better at life.

I am shit at life. I’m not a good person to chat to on the phone, online or even in person. I pretend I’m good at certain things but no ones perfect. I worry too much. I’m an introvert. I like things just so. I’m weird and not in a particularly good way. I’d like to be better. I want to better.

Sometimes writing this makes me feel better, but if I ever look back at it I know it’ll make me feel worse. I shouldn’t let myself get like this. I should talk more, I should be a better person, but sometimes it’s difficult. I often feel so far down that I’ll never be able to get back up and yet sometimes so high that I’ll never have to come down.

It’s Saturday night and I’m by myself. There’s no one online that wants to say more than two words to me and I certainly have no one in real life to speak to. My brothers don’t want to know because I’m too serious for them. My parents are into different things. I have no friends that live near me, or if I do they’re not here and won’t always be here.

Someone tried to make me talk about this on MSN the other night – I didn’t like it. I don’t like that some people want to try and “fix” you. I used to be like that, but I think I realised two things; not everyone can be fixed, and not everyone wants to be fixed. I’m not sure which I am, but I don’t like people trying. It’s perhaps best that I go for the help rather than it’s offered to me.

This is all ramblings. It’s shit. It’s declarative sentences about my life and who I am. It’s not a good blog post and probably something I shouldn’t post. But I will. Because I’m like that. Because it might make me feel better for a couple of minutes.

Let’s get some more down me and see how I feel then.

I kind of want to say “work is blaggin me head, lyk”, but it’s not really. It’s just making me not think. It’s making me think all about tax and not about ideas. On an average day, before starting full time work, I’d have at the very least 2 or 3 ideas for something, anything a day. A YouTube video idea, a sketch, a TV show (drama/comedy/gameshow), film, book or whatever. I’m not saying that any of these ideas were good in fact most of them were in cloud cuckoo land, but at least I was thinking in a creative way and noting down some of the better ones and have a small bank of them to see me through (however, further refining is definitely needed).

Now that I’ve started working and having to get up at 7am (that’s usually my bed time) my mind is pretty blank. It’s possibly that I’m trying to learn so much about my job in one go and so as not to forget it I’m only letting my brain concentrate on the learning of tax credits and not on thinking of getting the Chuckle Brothers together with Chris Moyles for a one off cookery-type gameshow called “From Me to You: Dishes from the fat, old and largely unfunny” in which the two entities would go head-to-head mixing out-dated jokes, lard and cooking tips, such as “I always stick a bit of celery with my lard – it gives it an extra kick, plus it’s healthy!”

The only idea I’ve had this week is (and I’ll possibly do this one day) “Nancy does Rocky”. As in the Nancy character doing the famous running up and down stairs scene from “Rocky 400″ to promote a new series of Question Teen. There are a few things wrong with this (not even counting the logistics of such a feat) and I feel it’s a pretty poor and unimaginative idea. I seriously cannot think of another idea that’s gone through my head. I just hope that once this tax stuff gets in my head I can stop concentrating on it so heavily and get back to more ideas – plus have the time and energy to actually attempt them!

There are a couple of things I want to start writing; some YouTube things for my personal channel, including collabs and some YT things for other people (or rather to offer them my writings and see what they say). There’s a script I want to start writing, just to see where it’s going in my head and don’t get me started on a short story… Well, actually, do.

When I stop training (still got another two weeks) and go on my normal 9.30-6 shifts (with four Saturdays, 2 Sundays and one late night each week in a 16 week period) I hope it’ll return and that I can jot some ideas down on my “lunch break”.

I still need to actually write the final episode of QT and even then I don’t know when I’ll film it, as I’m off out this weekend with Sarah and Emily. I’m aiming to write it tonight (not happening – going to bed now) and film it tomorrow and/or Saturday. hmmm. We’ll see.

Hello. I’m boring. I talk, almost non-stop, about the things I like and the things I’ve done. “Did you see the other day that on YouTube…”, “Have you read that book by Max Barry?” and my favourite just now; “Did you know that if you’re 25 or over and work 30 hours a week then you might be entitled to some working tax credits?”

Trouble is, everyone else is boring, too. They talk, almost non-stop, about the things they like and the things they’ve done. “Have you seen my hair? I got it done at XXX and they charged me XXX..”, “Well, my fiancé and I have been engaged for 10 years…” and the most people I have interaction with’s favourite one just now; “God – is that all we have to do?!”

I want to talk to other people with similar interests to me and similar views. Whilst it’s nice once in a while to hear someone talking about how they winched themselves out of the lawn or how they spent four hours putting together an IKEA wardrobe, I don’t feel the need to discuss these things at length. Same with me – I’m sure with my new job I will go on and on about tax credits and my day. I can’t help it. You can’t help it. We’re just like that. We’re all striving to find someone who listens long enough and actually be interested in anything you say or, at the very least, pretend that they know what you’re on about and love you for it anyway.

I suppose that’s what I find most difficult about making new friends. Either actually being interested in what they say or actually pretending to be interested in what they’re saying. I think I pull either or both of those off, but sometimes I get the distinct impression that most people get bored talking to me. They’ll interrupt or change the topic altogether. This has to be something to do with me rather than everyone else. I’m obviously so socially inept that I can’t string a good, interesting sentence together that’s directed at someone I’m interested in being, at least, superficially friendly with. Not that I think my friendships are one dimensional, but a lot of work-related friendships are fairly superficial.

Virtually everyone talks about how they hate small-talk, but how else do we get on and find out little nuggets about people and base our friendships with them from that? Without it, we’d be flying blind; not able to ask how their cousin’s dog’s Bar Mitzvah was or ask them how it was working down the mine when they were a kid.

I’m a quiet person (unless I know the other person well), which is something I cannot escape, no matter how many times I tell myself that I’m not. People seem afraid of someone who doesn’t talk much. If you sit next to someone you kind of know you MUST talk to them. Just something. Anything. “Did you see that they’re making non-energy saving bulbs illegal?” That’s the crap that comes out of my mouth. Nothing they’re interested in probably. However, I find that kind of crap endlessly riveting – if only someone else did.

I find it hard to gain someone’s friendship and I think others find it hard to befriend me, so I’m almost permanently in a state of small-talk with someone – “How was your mother’s frontal lobotomy?” “Not bad. She enjoys shouting at cats now because she reckons they’re Satan’s pawns in an ever growing Satanic movement to steal her underwear.” “Oh, yes. I’ve heard people can be different after the operation.” What a conversation killer.

I’ve obviously managed to get over this cyclical state of small-talk with certain people, but find it really hard to get to that next stage. Perhaps I should consider becoming a hermit. I got some spam the other day with good offers on caves – I’ll definitely have to email that nice Mr O. bin Laden back.