Take your pick

Howdy do! So, it's been a long time since my last blog and the reasons for that are as varied and many as they are boring and tedious but the short answer is that I didn't have much access to the internet...I mean, I had it on my phone, but my phone is an ancient piece of shit (well, no, that's not fair, it's a good little phone for, you know, actually phoning people...i.e. the actual reason for which it was created...) that hates these new-fangled, devil-ridden inventions such as the internet and Bluetooth and mp3s, sure, it can use them, sometimes, if I really force it to, but for the most part the thing just leers at me if I come at it with the request to check my email....

Anywho, that's by-the-by, so what will I be talking about today?! Well, it's me so you know that I'm going to be talking about one of three things, my love of video games, university/education in general or tales of my childhood with philosophical ramblings interjected haphazardly into the main narrative...so take a guess! Are you taking a guess? If you guess rightly you'll win a small pot of jam (you even get to pick which flavour!) and an all expenses paid trip to the Moon! (*winning participants must be able to supply their own pot for the jam to go in, their own spacesuit and breathing apparatus and there is no cash alternative available, entrants must be over 18 and have blue eyes (today) or brown eyes (tomorrow) to enter).

Did you guess rightly? Did you?! DID YOU?! Well, if you did, or didn't, or didn't even attempt to, here is the answer! All of the above! Hah, that wasn't even an option, no prizes for you! (Please don't report me to the games commission or whatever it's called, I can't go back to prison again for the first time! I am a sweet and delicate thing, I wouldn't last a day without snapping and burning the place down...)

See, it's very nearly here...today's date, if you are unaware (or are reading this in the future, or the past! Which I tell you would be some trick indeed!) is the third of September....which means that I move out of my house in four days time....my course induction is now under a week away...It's all getting rather real and that's making me quite nervous. It's very strange, because this has been my dream for, well... basically...ever...certainly as long as I can remember and I can remember very long into the past indeed (well, possibly, probably, hopefully...though how would I know if I'd forgotten things entirely....makes one think, certainly) and now that it's basically here...I'm quite...no...very...I'm very nervous about it all. I mean, because of one reason and the others I'm getting into this game quite late, and I'd like to blame other people for it, but really it's all been down to me. I think I've talked about it before, that a person can't choose what happens to them, but they can choose how they react and that I reacted poorly, and I did! There's a sense of relief that this point is finally here, it feels like I've finally clawed my way up to where I should have been six/seven years ago if I hadn't just let go of wanting, well, anything but drinking and playing video games really....and you know, that sounds fun as shit, and it is! Up to a point...It's depressing, just brutally mind numbing and when you get to that state because of depression in the first place, it is just a crushing existence. There's little point in getting out of bed, hell, there's little point in going to bed in the first place, so your sleeping pattern gets all out of whack, which just depresses you further! (Look it up, I think it's seratonin or something, lack of sleep causes lack of it, lack of it causes depression) It really is just this vicious cycle.

It's a really weird thing though, depression, because it is also a crutch, it's a reason to not try and improve, a sort of "oh, why bother" mentality and before you jump on my back and start screaming like some demented howler monkey that that's not true...it is. I'm not saying that everyone suffering from it is like that, because they're not, they genuinely do have chemical imbalances in their brain that stop them from being able to enjoy life or look forward with any kind of optimism, I've known and continue to know people who fall into that category...which makes me annoyed when people play off it. You know, the lazy bastards who just don't want to work so they pretend to be depressed to commit benefit fraud, who use it as an excuse to avoid looking for work, to get out of having responsibilities. But mostly, I hate it because it harms people who have the actual illness, who need the actual help. Think about it, if a hypothetical drug was developed that cured depression and was given to people who weren't depressed but who were fleecing the system for money, even if it makes them as happy as balls they would still report themselves as depressed even though the drugs ostensibly "worked" and the pharmaceutical companies go back to the drawing board...though they're not too arsed about it, because hey, more money for them in developing new treatments right? But yeah, it's not just drugs, it's care workers and social workers, the people who look after these "depressed" people, if their techniques don't "work" on them, they have to adapt them unnecessarily, time and again. It's not just depression that people do this on though, don't think I'm ragging just on them, it's everything where people aren't really a part of the thing but use it to further their own means to the detriment of the people who are really trying to deal with it. Like the looters who "join in" with the riots that happened all over the UK a couple of years ago after the Duggan shooting. The cause, the movement didn't matter to them, they weren't looking to improve the world, people weren't talking about the social change that should have happened after it thanks to them, they were talking about how it was terrible that these riots happened at all. People forget that the first "riot" was actually a peaceful protest wanting an explanation for the shooting. Like the depression thing, it becomes curing "symptoms" that don't exist in the actual condition.

I'm not sure how this became so serious so fast, and I feel kind of bad about that, so, some levity to finish for you all....a horse walks into a bar and the barman says "why the long face?" and the horse says "my wife just died in childbirth...the foal died as well"....waaaaait, that's not light hearted at all! Well, I tried! Lord help me but I tried! *puts jet pack on* now, goodbye! *jetpacks away*