Dear Diary


I have no Idea who I am sometimes. I keep regressing to the music I liked in my early 20s, probably because I really liked my hair back then. I feel lost in time.

But there's other things recently that make me feel lost in time:

• I've just been with a man recently
• I play a sport regularly as part of a social club
• I train a lot
• I sleep regularly and get up relatively early

These arent the things that i thought were me.

A big storm is coming and I must not be complacent. I know the temptation is that I enjoy life as it is but the earthquake will shatter me. I have to brace myself for it. For now, all things are on hold, all bets are off. 

Dear Diary,

This weekend consisted of: gym on saturday, resting after gym, catching up on stuff then playing no mans sky, and a lot of wanking; then on sunday - sleeping a lot, going to the gym, eating a bit, and planning my week. I didn't spend much time looking at the news and it felt a little satisfying to plan my week.

I also bought a prom ticket to see Rattle conduct - I love how he focusses on the more avant garde things

Dear Diary,

One thing that has been on my mind is the importance of a tidy bed, and a tidy home. From that, all things flow.

My knee is still injured so I've only done light gym work. I fell asleep this afternoon after gym this morning. I think I'll allow it, I need to plan my week

Dear Diary,

I hurt my knee.

Fuck

I might be overtraining.

Following the sage advice of Comedian Issy Suttie from her standup routines, I'll frame this post in the form of 5 observations, and 5 things I can be happy about in life

Observations:

• I hurt my knee today at the gym, what hurt the most was my pride
• I've been offered a contract at work
• I had sex with a trans guy on friday, he wants to meet up again
• My friend has a drinking problem and it's souring the friendship group
• I have a hole in my favourite trousers. I need to get new ones from uniqlo, and as I'm already there, I'll buy some things

Things to be happy about

• Apparently I am sensitive and thats a very nice sexy thing 
• I have massive traps that people look at when I flex them
• Transguy said I have a gorgeous cock (blush)
• There's a difference in life between the way I see myself and the way people see me
• I'm less worried about money than I used to be when I wrote on this blog in the past

2004

The day I got my a level results. It used to be a big momentous day on this anniversary. However in recent years a reminder of things that disappointed me in life

2012 (marked in my diary)

The night out that was epic, that every time I retell the story in my mind it becomes more epic and probably more false. We saw expendables 2 with the guys, had a night out, my crew ended up in a girls house with two gay guys and all of them were trying to pull us. I gave my mate one of my condoms because he got lucky. He gave it back to me (not the same one of course!) a while later

2016

I'm working at the TV guide today. just another day. I'm feeling a bit heavy set because of physical pain issues and so many things hanging on my mind and weighing my emotions down.

I went to the gym after work, then did a gym class. It sailed by and as I got home I bought a few ciders to drink and some beef to eat. I found as I got home that my new phone sim came in (which caused me an hour of grief to sort out the number {ongoing story}).

I then got...my contract for work. I've been offered a job. It's a nice amount of K's, health insurance. I never believed it would happen. My self esteem must be so low that I feel undeserving of human dignity or respect. I have gone through a lot in my mind, experienced torments and night terrors that have distressed me that I cannot tell anyone about because they are so terrifying. My world and my life recently has been a torment.

Someone said to me recently that I can spend more of my time living and choose not to spend so much of my time re-living things. I work in a national paper where the big things happen that send waves around the world (except now as its slow news month), I've done it so much that I just call it thursday.

I need to take things at my stride. I am changing as a person lately. Perhaps these are the changes that were overdue. I am good at my job.

Dear Diary,

I'm carrying something. I'm carrying something so terrible it will change and poison the world around me and everything in my life. This is what I carry that I feel so burdened with that takes away from all of the good that I've done in my life recently.

Today I managed to go home early. I sneaked out without anyone noticing, well, people noticed but what I mean is that nobody immediately needed me.

I got home early, it was a really horrible train journey but I dived into my phone in order to hide from what was a sweaty, humid and packed carriage. I went to lidl on the way home, which is something I am increasingly doing. I bought a watermelon, which I haven't done before.

I cooked my usual, ribeye steak. I milled about a bit, had a couple of conversations with my dad and then I got on with what I had been wanting to do all day - play No Man's Sky. Today on the Radio 4 today programme, there was a piece about pornography addiction. It stuck on my mind because the last time I had sex I recognised there were 'issues'. I think I should cease my mental habits and try to change my nature a bit.

After playing no man's sky (stopped after motion sickness), I decided to get on with some forward planning for the week. I have been setting what I call 'non priority schema' tasks (NPS) which involves things that I have been meaning to do or that I generally do but wouldn't unless I was totally deliberate about it. I also went through some post it notes that I left on my google keep which made my to do list appear quite unruly.

I dived into the task I've been avoiding for ages, catching up on the post it notes. A lot of these tasks I had put off and having done them I feel a satisfaction.

I've been thinking about (overthinking even) how I compare to the past versions of me. It is an obsession of mine. I idolise the past version of me that did the 'A' levels and got 100% in exams. The later version of me during the undergrad years lived in that shadow, and yet he discovered a different and fulfilling sense of self, with a different darkness as well. When I had the eating disorder, my thinking was -- skewered. Thinking about my life and my past is a way of coming to terms with the things that were skewered, confronting.

I had some night terrors this morning, and yesterday afternoon as well. They were unspeakably horrific, but wouldn/'t make sense if I could tell you what they were. I think that I'm acheiving a sense of excellence in my life, although I also think that there are darknesses that blight me.

Perhaps all things are a mix of good and bad. At a good party, there are the unresolved problems in friendships, the awkward conversations, and then those really good bits too.

I need to let them pat me on the back and say good job. I'm shrugging it off too much.

Speaking of Shrugging. I'm planning to do another 12 week fitness programme.

Dear Diary,

My life is sometimes like a lost episode, or breaking bad when they have the flashbacks. I am constantly reminded of memories of the past. That's often in the background of my mind and experiences.

Thursday:

Editor has left the magazine and we are going to a piss up in his honour. Editor says: 'I don't have as much social anxiety because everyone here is here for me tonight!'. I get lots of bizarre comments about my body which make me feel uncomfortable. Not because of what they said (although it is), but because of my own issues.

One guy hugs me and says my body is like stone and he could rest in my arms all night, which was a bit gay for a very macho man to say. What liberating times we live in to be so genderfucked to say such things (not sarcasm). Editor then says I'm the buffest guy on the desk. I feel strangely proud of that. But then that pride turns to Christian/Catholic pride (the sin which should invoke shame).

Another guy says to me later on in the night: when you have your hair down (out of the bun) you look like a God. I blush. I then say trying to hold my composure - I know that a little bit already. I then wink at him

Flashback: Sweaty sex with my first love, my hair over her face as I'm on top of her in penetrative sex. She loves the feeling of my hair fully over her head and face, longer than hers, longer than most men's, down almost to my hips (when wet). I Didn't realise it then but I really was a sex god.

I smile, thinking of this memory, in another conversation, in another time period, in another era of my life, in another version of who I am supposed to be.

I went home on the tube, with some colleagues.

I am in my darkest points of my life. In hospital, being assessed by duty nurses. Filling out forms in a panic. I believe my life is over

I try to hide the fact that I feel a real sense that I fit in to this motley crew of folks.

I get home. The olympics are on. I watch the badminton. I eat some shitty junk food and can't be arsed to eat my protein. I sit in my clothes

I've come home on my own after many nights out. Feeling alcohol filled and alone with my thoughts. In those instances I wonder what is worse: facing my demons while drunk, or facing them sober. Of course sober means another thing to me - not the absence of any influences of alcohol or things like that, but the calm reflective and hard look on my life

It's a night out, everyone is about to finish their master's degrees. I am eating with a world famous Kant scholar with university professors. I am star struck.

Last night was a night out, I met esteemed cartoonists, editors of big wig publications, radio critics, tv critics, people who know people, media types and I hold my own in conversations. I like how I am asked personal questions from my colleagues and team. I never thought my life could be like this.

It's a wednesday, I think. I can't remember. I wake up at 6-7pm every night because I can't sleep and I can't stay awake atthe same time. The only succour I have is through masturbating and going to eat horrible chinese food that isn't like the place back home. I think about how I want to kill myself. I was going to go back home this weekend to for a family birthay, sister's 30th. I never made it. Yet I didn't die.

But maybe I did. I sometimes believe that I've been dead for a while, and the life that has happened since then is some bizarre sorcery that stops me from decomposing. I am decomposing, my mind and body warping into something I don't recognise.

Dear Diary,

lately I feel that reading anything particularly technical, like philosophy or music, upsets me and invokes a certain kind of adverse reaction.

Not sure if this is also related. Today I was pratciting clarinet in the garden. I felt very insecure, my breathing and tone was awful, my embouchure was fucked and my finger-tongue co-ordination is shot to shit. I felt very insecure, very vulnerable,inferior.

I need to work on clarinet a lot more, and piano. Back when my teacher died I picked up the instrument again and I've kept it up to some small degree ever since, however in recent months it's gone down a bit.

I've also made a bad decision just now to have a can of kopparberg after I walked home from the community garden. I am supposed to go to the gym in 25 mins but instead I feel drowzy.

God alcohol feels good, I miss drinking ciders.

In other news, I've got a new editor at work (one of about 5 editors I work under). We are having a big meeting later on monday morning. I'm scared and excited. I'm eager to please and yet I want to be as supportive and professional as possible. It's pretty cool that we are getting more female editors at work.

Dear Diary,

I wonder what life will be like when the day comes when I'm without my parents, who supported me through my disability and through all the awfulness I've brought them in recent years.

There was a time a few years back, when my godmother died (also very close friend and neighbour and basically family), when they had to leave the country for reasons too long to go into, and I was left to help sort out the wedding for her widower.

I felt at that point in my life that I suddenly grew up and shit got real. I also felt a sense of assurance that I can be a mature person once in a while. The heaviness was difficult though. To be serious and sombre and keep up the show for everyone else also meant that I had a diminished repetoire of emotions that I'd normally have.

To put a crass analogy, it is like when Hot Rod in transformers had to take up the mantle of being the leader of the autobot transformers after Optimus died, and in an episode in season 3, he gave up his powers to give the matrix back to Optimus who was reanimated temporarily (long story), he turned back into his carefree and younger hot rod self.

I think there will come a point where I face a seriously mature situation where I can't revert again. I  think that I've already reached it a few times.

Tonight I'm clearing up my feedly starred items. It's about 500 days of saved philosophy papers, encyclopaedia articles and opeds