I'm going to split this post into two themes. Firstly, real life, and my inner world.

Real world

I find it hard to get up most days, but not as hard as it used to be. Mum keeps grating at me for being 'overweight' and saying I should get a haircut (probably because my hair loss is more and more evident).

Lately I've taken to some new special interests. I like making scrapbooks from magazines and newspapers. I like to put together political stories with celebrity stories; stories that try to show the newspaper's line on being all forward thinking and revolutionary in terms of gender equality, and then the next page: WHICH OSCAR STARS HAVE UGLY FEET? We all have a sidebar of shame in this modern 4G age.

I've also taken a liking to buying action figures. I started off after seeing a really cheap £1.50 action figure in wilkinsons, then I bought another, and another, then a 3-pack with a vehicle, then another, then another. Then I bought some halo action figures from the entertainer toy shop. They were about 10x cheaper than I see them priced in nerd comic shops. I'm kind of reminded of Hank in Breaking Bad (which I have recently finished watching) who has a fascination with rocks after his injury left him unable to walk.

At work, things are ...changing? My contract at the sentinel ended. I'm now on track to re-sign in June. I'll have to take some mandatory time off (so I don't get full employment rights). I'm doing some shambly work later today. I haven't done any shambly work in a good while, possibly 2-3 months. I have been less and less available for working in events, I also suppose that I have been less willing too. Not as many hours plus the labour is more intensive than doing admin/payroll/PA stuff.

At the moment I am in my underpants feeling that my life is in a shamble. It has been worse I should be honest, It has been better too. My feeling at the moment is something like this: I need to make my future now, from everytthing I do from putting away the recycling to sending out PhD applications.

I also went to a university open day - my former headmaster and a few alumnus were there.

Head World

About once or twice I have been laying down, and I entered an imagined scenario. Throughout my life, since I was about 9 or so, I used to imagine worlds in my head and other adventures that I might be having in some parallel world. In doing so, I would imagine things from piloting the millenium falcon (I was 9, give me a break) to in my later teens imagining that I would meet future versions of myself. I imagined that we would all meet together in this odd psychic domain of imagination and talk about things. As I get older, I return to this thought, this meditation. I saw myself now in that psychic imagination and I envisaged myself around the time I was doing my masters. The younger me was imagining another world, as he was in the throes of purging, in real life that younger me was laying on the floor of the grad school toilet, between vomiting sessions. The current, older me was laying down also.

In this domain of imagination, the younger me and current me talked. I asked him if he had any general life advice, his advice was to fight everything with every aspect of my being. I asked him if that's how he lived his life and he implied yes by flexing his muscles (which as it happened were less than mine are now but he thought he was big). The current me asked younger me if he lived by that credo, why was he hiding in a toilet, imagining a world away from the one he was with me. A metaphorical door appeared, two doors. One that went back to my time and one that went back to his.

I said to my past self: you could follow your own advice and go through that door, get up and get out of that toilet. The younger me found it difficult, for that moment I felt exactly what that younger me did and I was taken back to that day I was laying there. The floor was clean and the toilet didn't smell too much of piss. The younger me paused and struggled, asking me: what advice would you give me?

Take care of yourself, I said. I knew what he was going to ask then, which was whether I took that advice. I said something like: I do more than you currently take care of yourself, but I could probably do better. He then asked me why I am staying in this domain of imagination, why I haven't walked through my door and faced the demons of my present.

I paused and I realised that I should. I then said: "I just want to be here a little bit longer, with you, with what you are feeling and who you were, before I go back to my world". I stayed just for a moment, like that last hug or kiss goodbye with a lover, knowing it has to end and knowing as your lips partt and your bodies move away, its truly over. I held on but not for too long. Then I went through that door, I didn't look back but I knew he stayed in that room for longer than I did.

I walked out of that door and entered my real world. My problems of the present, my situation. It is very hard to do, and to some extent its quite boring. But its what I need right now.