Category Archives: Personal Data

Smells Like Teen Spirit

Day 2: I need to make a phone call. I don’t wanna look too keen. Gonna write this first and then do it, yeah, that’s a good plan.

Today, we explain the difficulties with relationships via the medium of Hairdressing.

The Next Chapter Bar

A woman’s relationship with her hairdresser is both complex and incredibly subtle. You trust a (reasonably) total stranger to make you look fabulous, and not to destroy self confidence in the process. That whole thing with Samson and his locks equalling strength? Utterly spot on. When stuff does go wrong, it often means the end of your relationship. The chances you’ll hand over cash again to someone who turned your hair purple when you wanted blonde? Fairly slim.

I’d been with the same salon for a LONG time. I’d gone there before my son was born, cycled through two stylists, and the day I came home with purple hair having not asked for it was significant. When younger a lot of hairstyles happened, a few colours, but the desire to go 100% mermaid has never stuck. It isn’t me, and to have it imposed accidentally was not really as shocking as might have been the case. It made a tough decision a lot easier: it was time to leave.

When your stylist can’t get your name right… absolutely the right moment to move on.

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So, I’ve bounced between a few places in the intervening period, finding empathy in a couple of stylists, but never the desire to stay, until I took my daughter for a trim at the local hairdressers and found a young lady who is, quite frankly, welcome breath of fresh air. She’s professional and thorough but what I get most from her is the fact that there are no pretensions of anything. She is what she is, and that is what matters. For too long I was simply anonymous. Now, I feel genuinely wanted.

That’s the key in all relationships, I realise. To be a part of something where you don’t feel as if you’re doing all the work, or that you’ve been included because that’s what you think other people would do to look relevant. You shouldn’t be friends with someone  because of who they know, or what that relationship could provide. It just happens. Clicking a button then contributing no effort is not friendship. Reading about another person’s life and adding nothing of value to it is not friendship.

Just because you follow someone does not entitle you to part of their existence.

followback

Actual copy from a Robot-based ‘we increase your following for you’ website.

Robots continue to create an illusion of care and interest that, in many cases, will never exist. It is all about the business of ‘appearing’ popular and successful, without the genitalia-achingly tough task of talking to every person, establishing trust and belief, before moving on. Truly popular people end up that way because they focus on their desires 24/7, and keep on giving, in a way that cannot be faked or indeed replicated. Looking at my Twitter feed, more and more the genuine hard workers are abundantly apparent, putting lesser mortals in the shade.

It is a fine destination to aim for, continuing to be reassuringly inspirational.

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Not everything online has to be drama, but amazingly that doesn’t stop a lot of people aspiring towards just that. It’s not like there’s no other stress in the World right now either. I get that some of you want online to be your own safe, secure little Utopia of Calm. The reality of existence is that if you wilfully ignore one thing, it’ll happen with others, and that’s never a state of affairs that will ever end well. That lesson has been learnt the hard way. Friendship isn’t just turning up for the good stuff and ignoring the bad. That’s not how this works.

If this matters enough to you, make the effort.

Randy Scouse Git

DAY 3: No exercise, wood cooked pizza, video games. How was your Friday night?

The Next Chapter Bar

Happiness is an odd thing. You can be down and annoyed at one thing and then, suddenly BANG you’re on Cloud 9, giddy with possibilities that never even existed a moment previously. That, I realise, is why coping with success must be quite tough for those whose emotions don’t normally work this way. I’ve spent a lifetime swinging crazily from one extreme to another, often without warning. Only now come the realisation how useful this is going to be moving forward.

No word on what happened yet, but there will be, you can bet many things on that. What yesterday has done in my brain is dislodge a lot of concern over Stuff in the Past where, it is likely, brain was far too harsh on self’s ability and capability to produce what was needed. There’s also a realisation that, quite probably, that not gaining opportunities that were craved so badly in the past have nothing to do with my ability, but people not liking what I was.

I was the toxic person others wanted out of their lives. I was the one who caused trouble and instability by calling a spade a fucking digging implement. You didn’t diss the hand that fed you, certainly never capitalising from it. Looking back on the last ten years,  the irony that this was ahead of my time makes me laugh.  Crucially a living was never made a from the very thing so many people accused me of being. I cut my teeth writing honest, loving and often really difficult pieces that I’m still immensely proud of, ultimately fuelling hope.

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The people who attacked me and made drama with me at its core did so for their ends and nothing else. The straw that broke everything was so fucking petty and trivial that even now it makes me laugh out loud: after that point, however, the lesson was learnt. If people are so lost in their own worlds that they only ever see themselves in what you write? You don’t get it, do you? We’re all the same. Everybody is human. 

When I wrote that thing in my timeline to remind myself that not everything needs to be shared, you assumed it was about you… every time, for years on end, it was the same, sad realisation that how I speak is interpreted however the fuck everybody else wants and there’s not a damn thing that will change that. However clear and basic a point that is made, somebody will decide you’re attacking them, or using them to fuel your own delusions of grandeur.

resistenceisfutile

Strong people scare everybody. Not because they’re destroying your lives or taking your jobs, but because they could, unless you stop them first. Notice the lack of personal pronouns here too. I don’t need to wave any sexual cards around this argument, this is not pronouncement at a section of society. This is EVERYBODY. Those of you who don’t like the potential that anyone could turn up and ruin the lovely Utopia you created to protect you from the horrible people in the world who want to change things and move evolution onwards… I see you. Welcome to Armageddon.

People use sexuality as a means by which pronouncement is made, battle lines are drawn. It’s why girls can’t play video games. It’s why girls can’t do most things, and we know how THAT is currently working out in society right now… but there’s more insidious things that make me realise that many people just don’t want anything to change ever. Defining your own gender is wrong, attacking those that do the only sensible way to keep humanity pure.

These are the desperate thoughts of individuals who can never look forward.

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As my audience widens, and it is, someone will undoubtedly come back to these blogs and comb through them, trying to find a sense of what I really am. When you get to this one, you can draw a line. BEFORE this, and that post in the week about finally being able to define myself with words, everything else was leading up to this point now. HERE is where the game really changed, and a new direction was forged. This is the culmination of all the work over a decade to finally release myself from Depression.

Here is where everything moves forward.

Sunrise

DAY 3: I’m a  recovering addict, trying my best not to sound like an evangelist. It’s a tough ask, some days, especially when the weight of evidence shows how gullible I was. Companies are to blame for feeding addiction, and in due course one can only hope common sense will prevail… but don’t bet on that. However, if as individuals we are unable to discern truth in our own shortcomings and failings, all is lost.

This, in a certain light, utterly is confirmation bias at work. Someone else (as a result of my flagrant disregard of The Community) is already indignantly decrying this attack on freedom of choice, and that’s absolutely fine. However, if you continue to throw money at companies whose entire modus operandi is to get you to do just that, stop complaining they don’t cater to your tastes. That’s when you take your money away and go elsewhere. No really, that’s how it should work.

If it doesn’t…? Who has the problem here, exactly?

I do love my gaming friends. Some have moved on, others staunchly remain wedded to their MMO’s of choice and all of them wear gaming as a badge of honour. It is how you know if someone’s gonna grasp your point of view or not: meeting gamers makes a ton of metaphors applicable in any conversation. It’s the difference between awkward and relaxed, almost instantly.

Currently I have a History of the Internet poetry collection under submission and once it is summarily rejected (because half the references will be lost on people judging) I will go about getting it published myself. This is what I am. Like it or not, good or bad, there is never the means to separate gamer from woman. It’s why indignation rises over cheap stereotyping, that this same stupid, pointless rhetoric hasn’t gone away for the 40 years I’ve played.

This whole ridiculous argument isn’t about women being good at games, it’s about women being good at ANYTHING and part of me wants that association to be 360 No Scoped back into the 8 bit age. I don’t fucking care how good or bad I am, I deserve the right to play unchallenged.

This is a fundamental problem with Humanity that really should have been fixed by now.

Rejecting a space which is specifically designated as one in which performers may do as they wish is artistically limiting, Kanye.

You need to listen to more people, mate.