Ms A. Laney thoughts

SO I guess I've wrote a fair bit about video games huh...that wasn't originally my intention, originally my intention was for this to be a companion piece to a youtube vlogging...thing...I'm getting set up, but, because I basically can't start that until the end of June, and I'm impatient, I decided to start this early..because I'm like that, I get not so much bored but intensely interested (already talked about how I can get obsessed quite easily) in other things, other areas, other conversations or debates or stories, whatever...which is why I reviewed the pre-E3 conferences. That wasn't planned, hell, I didn't even have the idea until quite near the end of the first presentation, and I just thought to myself "hey, you know what would be a challenge? writing this shit up!" and I was right! it was a challenge! But it was a fun thing to do, I got the first three presentations written up within an hour and fifteen minutes of the thing finishing and I had to be fast, I was basically writing in the breaks between each one, which wasn't all that long....they're not my greatest pieces of work, but I think the exercise was a decent practice....I didn't do all of E3 because as I said, this wasn't planned, I basically had a day where I had nothing to do and these things were going on, so I thought I might as well use the time to do something constructive. So I took notes on the shows, read what people were saying, sifted through the hyperbole, it was deceptively fun.

So yeah, companion piece....see, I'm going to John Moores University in September, to study journalism, and I thought it'd be interesting to keep a record of that experience. Not necessarily in strict academic terms, but more just a recording, written and filmed, of the whole thing. Because it's something I've wanted to do for a very long time now, not the video thing (but yeah, actually, that also) but the university thing. See, I left school nine years ago and it's kind of...well, it's not been great for a whole lot of reasons. I wanted to go to university back then, so I went into sixth form at my secondary school to complete an International Baccalaureate...which the school closed down in its first year (it was a two year course). Which was a kick in the teeth. It didn't help that the girl I loved, and was going out with dumped me for my one of oldest friends and my other friends just straight up abandoned me (well, most of them did, a few didn't) because...reasons....went to college to try and get back on track, and did the first year fine, well, kind of, I dropped one of the courses straight away, psychology, basically because it bored me. I don't mean to sound big headed, but half the stuff I knew already and the other half of what was being taught was outdated and flat out wrong and I just couldn't reduce myself to towing the line just to complete a course. Basically, I was stupid and I cut my nose off to spite my face. Then in my second year I got my hands on money, a lot of money, and I died...well, okay, I didn't die, but it's honestly surprising that I survived. Because I started drinking...like...a lot. I was a mess, just utterly depressed and lonely and life was just bleak. I've always been depressed, a born cynic, I still am to this day, but that year was the worst I've ever felt. I wanted to go to university, but I didn't really know what for, or what to do. I'd wanted to do journalism forever, but what kind, where, for what purpose and it just began to grate, this sort of seemingly unending spiral of existentialist questioning, suddenly I wasn't asking questions about education, I was asking them about every aspect of my life. Why bother with anything when you consider the enormity of existence? It went on and on. Every day seemed to bring a new low and looking back at it just leaves me numb, because I still feel that pain, that despair and honestly, I'm scared of that happening ever again.

Because it will, I'm a very emotional person. People who know me will be like "whaaaat? but you're always so calm and collected, so stoic and aloof." Yeah...the reason for that is basically to try and avoid the depression again. Because I get too attached to people, when they leave I feel lost and I over analyse everything. "Why didn't they laugh at that joke?", "That smile didn't seem genuine." "Why aren't they talking, what are they doing, why aren't they talking to me?!" and I do realise that everyone has thoughts similar to these, of course they do, it's human nature, but it's only recently that I've started to be able to get over that. It used to be that I would agonise over every little thing someone said or did, because I basically didn't trust anyone (I used to be massively trusting, and that just led to people seemingly going out of their way to destroy the trust I placed in them) and it was just so mentally and emotionally exhausting.

I drifted along for years on this exhaustion. It was just a kind of lethargy, a genuine apathy to doing anything really. About the only thing I did do that was actually constructive was read. I read everything I could get my hands on, mostly as a form of escapism. There was a better world out there, I just had to find a way to claw myself back up there. People often say that the first step is the hardest step to take, bullshit. The first step is easy, it's just a random movement forward that means nothing, the steps after that, however, the ones you take to keep moving forward, well they're the important ones. That's what I'm doing at the moment, just trying to keep focussed on moving forward, because if I stop I am afraid I'll fall back into that spiral, I don't know if I'd have the strength to pull myself out of it again.

I don't know, like I said at the beginning, I don't really plan anything, so this has been a bit of a moan and a depressive blog, and for that I apologise. These things are basically me just talking about whatever is on my mind at the moment and I guess this is what was there this time, just the need to explain (kind of) why I am the way that I am, the search quest ("quest" makes it seem more heroic!) for validation continues!

...I think next time I'm going to write an actual plan and (maybe) stick to it, instead of just waffling....