Wednesday 22 January 2014

Priority

My dreams aren't entirely dead yet, but I often fear that they've been coffin shopping behind my back recently. This week's morbid musing stems from the fact, just as with the case of Christmas, I have taken time away from my normal work/sleep routine to visit the ever-presents of my life. Just as with the case of Christmas, my thoughts have wandered in the direction of "no direction" and how, for possibly the billionth time in my life, I realise I have no idea what I'm doing or where I'm going. Furthermore, for possibly the only time in my life, I realise that such a thought is crippling me. Not physically. That would be impossible. I mean psychologically. But you got that; you're clever, you understand hyperbole.

In an attempt to force myself out of mental cripple-dom, I've had the epiphany to start approaching life with a new mindset. One which says that I am an adult, I can do whatever I want, wherever I want, for I have no ties to any people or place. That probably sounds like a linguistic slap in the face to the people who know me, but trust me, I have reasons to justify my words. And they are reasons that I've had to keep telling myself in order, as I opened this paragraph with, stop being mentally tied down.

Over the last three years or so, I've come into contact with various people by way of university study. Some of those people have proven themselves to be smart, open-minded intellectuals. Some of them proved to be alcoholics-in-waiting. Some proved to be warm and caring, and some proved that simply opening their mouths was more than I could handle. On the other side, I've come away with, what many ex-students call, friends for life. The only issue here is that life gets in the way, as do the lives of all those other people. But still, Facebook friends for life is better than nought.

Meanwhile, back from whence I came, all the old friends I had have also sprouted lives and seem to have peeled away one by one until the only "old friends" left are few and far between. Returning to my origins would feel like taking a step back career-wise whilst not broadening my social circles. Basically, the point I'm labouring towards here is that whilst I've met, befriended and am determined to stay in contact with several people from on my travels, none of them are realistically a strong enough reason to keep me around, and ultimately, what I'm going to do for a living is my number one priority. So yeah, all point and sneer at the guy over there typing this shit. Point and sneer at his selfishness.

On that mental note of not being tied down by personal human connections, my mind is free to explore career-oriented possibilities wherever I actually want and doing whatever I want. My main problem here is that I've always been indecisive. Hell, I've stopped writing this particular load of babble three times up to now because I wasn't sure if I could be bothered with carrying on.

And that's not just a recent thing. I studied Art at school, segued into Graphic Design at university, abandoned that for retail work, found myself again with Film Production, somehow spun that into Creative Writing and have now wound up back in retail. I've enjoyed aspects of all of them, but I still don't know how I want a further career to pan out like. Over the last few days, I've even dug into mental lists of stuff I am still yet to explore. Needless to say, my browser currently has multiple tabs open that relate to the basics of Flash animation, computer coding and interactive game design and development. Evidently, I'm never satisfied.

I still have avenues I want to trundle down but somewhere along the way I need to make a living. And while making that living along the way I need somewhere to live. Before me is a vast freedom to seek out roles related to what I'm capable of right now coupled with the freedom of being able to travel wherever those roles may take me. My biggest stumbling block right now, though, is the fact that I'm a fairly social creature and would be abandoning every aspect of social life I know and have currently. Once I get over that and feel able to loosen those people ties (I would never want to cut them completely), I'll be able to embrace that freedom and that sense of the unknown in a slightly more positive light once more.

By the way, I apologise if all of that made absolutely no sense, but like I said, brain's a bit crippled right now.

Wednesday 8 January 2014

Explaining Religion

Sometimes my mind drifts off. When this happens, the brain follows one particular thought train, but doesn't stick with it for very long. Soon after disembarking, my mindstuff suddenly regales itself with "Let's Go To The Mall", the song from the Robin Sparkles episode of How I Met Your Mother. That's probably because I've been watching endless repeats of those episodes in a similar fashion to the way E4 treated Friends for years. In light of this recent lifestyle, meaningful thoughts and thoughts in which I search for any meaning have been abruptly halted by twee bubblegum pop songs that proclaim how cool it is to go to an indoor shopping centre with friends.

I've recently conducted fabricated conversations between myself and my young nephew set in the future. Here, he plays the role of himself as a young teenager - his mind brimming with questions about life, the universe and everything - whilst I play the all-knowledgeable, wise, advice-giving uncle I keep kidding myself I'll one day be to him. In these hypothetical conversations, he's asked me about a multitude of topics: history, relationships, politics, religion. However, simply because of the fact that at this precise moment he is still actually a toddler, my way of speaking to him in the future in my head borders on patronising baby-speak. Yeah, that's right, you try explaining the concept of religion to a four-year-old whilst trying not to forget to take your robot pal with you when we go to the mall, today. Now tell me you don't have a massive headache.

Forget the toddler bit though. Imagine a human being, any human being. Actually no, better yet, an alien. An alien just about clever enough to understand our language, cultural practices and able to survive in the environment of our planet, yet not informed enough to know a single thing about the concept of religion. Now try explaining religion, without implicating anybody or any belief system as good or bad, right or wrong, and without causing offense to anybody or any belief system through any prejudices or scepticisms brought on by personal viewpoint. Explain religion. And you're not allowed to get a headache or to be sidetracked by the jingles in your head that keep vying for your attention.

I've found that the only way to describe religion comes down to two words: essentially stories. But you can't boil religion down to just two words when it just produces another mesh of thought-lines on top of that, and then another one on top of that. In its simplest terms, one group of people have a set of stories with morals and meanings, meanwhile another group of people have another set of stories with morals and meanings. Then another, then another, then some other ones after that, but by that point you're straying far from the realms of religion and slipping down the scale towards Tumblr-based fan-fiction. Seriously, if Christianity was a modern-day anime series, there'd be a plethora of tales and fan art depicting the on-again, off-again made-up relationship between Jesus and Moses, despite the fact that they lived in entirely different centuries. How the fuck did I get here?

With many different religions floating about and many different stories relating to each one, that well-educated alien or teenage toddler nephew in the future in my head who doesn't even exist yet but still totally exists will start to wonder something along the lines of "why don't we all just believe the same stories then?" or even the much more likely "so which religion is the right one?" And that's where we, as humans - as utterly stupid, simpleton humans - fall down. There is no right answer as far as we can ever be concerned. Even if there is a right answer there's no possible way that we moronic, Earth-bound, thick as absolute pig-shit humans could ever find out, or even come up with the means to find out. We humans have done some wondrous, genius things with our time here. Medical advancements, technological progression, intricate storytelling; they're all grand achievements from our fellow kind, but there's only so far we can go, and proving religion is well out of our puny, pathetic reach.

Since we have no way to prove our religious ideals, we then have to resort to convincing each other that we're right and everyone else is wrong. Humans are stubborn and fickle like that and it's at this point I start to blame the kettle. I was in the kitchen at the time I had this imaginary nephew conversation. This stubbornness and borderline ego-centricity that we are right sometimes overspills, and depending on your viewpoint of your religion - whether the stories are a set of metaphorical and symbolic messages to stick by for harmonious living with your fellow man, or a set of literal instructions to be fundamentally stuck by to the letter - this overspilling of righteousness manifests itself as conflict. And boy, do we clever, stupid, genius low-life humans know how to do conflict?

You then have to inform your alien or made-up teenager about "the bad man" and "the good guys" in your most patronising toddler-talker-toer voice. But wait, didn't I tell you you can't use terms like "good" and "bad"? Look at it from the opposite side. Sure, for some, religion leads people to acts of public atrocity, but as far as they're concerned, they're doing right by their stories. Who is anyone else to tell them they're the bad guys. Nobody's right or wrong, or good or bad here. Everyone follows morals and ideals for harmonious living, but they also have conflicting ideas about the stories and are too stupid enough to realise that's why they hate each other. And absolutely none of this can be described easily or effectively to any child. Each person has to grow up in the world, follow whatever's taught to them and - providing they can keep their mind open a sliver - discover the bigger picture as a young adult and try, feebly, to get their head around it without causing themselves any undue stress. Fucking sink.

Hopefully, the kids will see the beauty of life and that, ultimately, religion shouldn't matter. That's not to say religion is stupid and I absolutely hate it and everyone in the world is wrong except me. Religion is extremely important in the ways that it keeps people together and gives them a sense of purpose and a set of codes and ethics to live by so that they can treat people as actual people without pissing everyone off too much. But religion isn't the be-all and end-all of us. Or at least it shouldn't be. The most important thing is people and the sense of goodness that they share with each other; sharing good times with good company, having fun in a wide variety of places and situations, whether at home or at a popular hang-out spot.

Because, at the mall, having fun is what it's all aboot.

Wednesday 1 January 2014

...And A Crappy New Year

Two years ago now-ish (during that period of New Year where it's technically 2012 but still feels like yesterday night), a friend of mine in touch with their spiritual side told me I'd find love very soon, offering the only timeframe of "before 2015". Please bear in mind my brain was still swimming in Jack Daniel's and there's a very good chance I've simply invented this portion of the night just to give myself some delusional sense of security. In fact, I brought this event up with that same anonymous friend some time later and was met with denial of such a conversation ever taking place. My friend then went on to blame the consumption of alcohol for the fickleness of memory, and considering we were the only sentient beings present at the time of the supposed conversation, I think I can say with all certainty that there can be absolutely no certainty as to what actually happened that night. Hell, we could've rented unicycles, thrown them into a shark-infested river and sang long lost hits of the Spice Girls at the top of our lungs whilst spinning around uncontrollably for all I know. In my version of events though, I was prophesised to be single for no longer than three more years, and despite the fact that I'm far more sceptical of divination and psychic predictions now than I ever have been, I've found that I still seem to be clinging onto that thought for dear life. And it seems I'm clinging onto that vague sense of optimism quite simply because the alternative is, frankly, rather embarrassing.

I've never been in a serious relationship, or any relationship. Well, there was that one time when I was seventeen where I met someone, asked her out (to which she reluctantly accepted) and spent two weeks chatting with online, never really seeing face-to-face. Ultimately, the whole thing ended when she informed me of how she didn't really feel like she wanted to be in a relationship right now. I accepted her request for termination and went about my days as I had done before I met her. We've never spoken since, but I hear that she and the guy she got together with a week later are still going strong.

Since then, I've breezed through life lonely as the day ma birthed me, never having much of a chance to lay with somebody in the dark. The only opportunities for bedroom activity that ever presented themselves occurred in that period of late-teenage sexual frustration, confusion and sense if experimentation wherein some blokes also seemed physically appealing considering they had a pulse. A small number of homoerotic encounters ensued, both with extremely limited degrees of intimacy that they might as well not have happened at all. Needless to say, alcohol was a significant influence there.

It's at this point in the tale, one might wonder if any of this is true at all since it seems horribly unfeasible that someone could make it to 24 having never had a lasting, functional relationship with another similarly aged person or any naughty bedroom activity that could actually be considered naughty bedroom activity. The thing one needs to bear in mind here, in that case, is that the message I'm conveying is that I'm a perpetually single, emotionally retarded, sexually inexperienced male in his mid-20s. Nobody would make that up. Heck, if anything, I should be lying by trying to convince you that I'm an extremely virile character who got laid every night he spent throughout his time at University and bragging about how many bitches I've intercoursed and how many fingers I've pussied.

According to the initial New Year prophecy I got given, two full years have now passed meaning that the love of my life that was most definitely promised to me will appear at some point over the next twelve months. With chaos now playing a much more significant role in causality than fate ever did, one could understand my scepticism here. If not, go back and read that last paragraph. Done? Good. Now do you believe me, or do I have to spell it out for you? *sigh* Fine. I'm fucking lonely. And the only thing that's kept me trundling on this long is sheer faith in the fact that things will eventually work out "one day", both in love and career. Each day, however, has presented more of a struggle than the last with what little faith and optimism I have being cut down further and further. And I feel that if I have to keep up with that spiritual struggling for another 364 days, only to see that it's kept me in that very same physically and emotionally virginic state, there may well just be no faith left to diminish.

That's why I say a massive "screw you" to any notions of a predetermined destiny and consider the possible ramifications of extending that "find a girlfriend" deadline. Over this seasonal period, a recently engaged relative (of a similar age to me, just to kick me in the balls while I'm already down with no indication of ever getting up any time soon) announced the time and place of the upcoming nuptials. A wedding in mid-2016 taking place abroad means that those who wish to attend -slash- spend a week in New York City will need to start saving around about now to get that two-and-a-half year head start as far as finances go. Don't get me wrong, I know there's a lot of cynicism in my tone today but I'm very much looking forward to such a trip. However, at the same time, I need to digress back to an extended "soulmate finding" deadline.

If I extend that deadline, that gives me two-and-a-half years to become enamoured with somebody, instead of just the one remaining year I have left under the current delusion. Takes the pressure off a bit really and means that I don't necessarily need to enter 2015 with a raucous "...and a crappy New Year" when I inevitably reach next January alone; after all, I'll still have time left before I feel like a total failure. The flip side of all this, though, is that if I do reach the late Spring of 2016 and still haven't managed to convince somebody, anybody, to spend a veritable chunk of their own personal time with me, then I'll be forced to conclude that something is most definitely wrong with me.

But still, New York though!