9 Destinations, six pints of various ciders, one cocktail, a fishbowl, 6 jagerbombs, one vodka lemonade and several sips of other peoples drinks

There were many highs, a few lows and definitely one or two moments that got out of hand but I’m still standing, staggering. A right of passage or a right to worry with the influenced alcoholic culture will there be a time when everything makes perfect sense that you don’t have to sterilise your over-thinking thoughts.

Am I a sheep or is it a tool in the uphill struggle. However there comes a moment of brief clarity every drinking night where I stare off into the distance and my thoughts land on one person. One person always the same person not a family member or a close friend, a person where we both find it hard to string words to make a sentence not alone a conversation.

Where moments of a touch, a brush of a hoodie or a conversation that has managed to materialise but fades as fast as it was created. When every touch makes you think of nothing but that warm sensation that allows you to dream the impossible, when taken away drops you like a china vase.

The feeling of piecing the parts together only for the glue to evaporate causing more broken components. Like a puppet master killing you softly until the pieces are so small its hard to link two of them together even to function anymore.

Lots of metaphors I know, I guess what I’m trying to say how do you know who is good for you or actually manipulating your personality in order to use you. Is this brief silence in the alcoholic sea a path or a realisation of the unhealthy things in my life.

He offered me a hug once but I keep reciting a similar situation but not sure what it means?

“do you want a hug?”

“I need a hug but not from you.”

“Why not?”

“Because you create these feelings I can’t control towards you and though you might just be being friendly or tired. Its over-friendly which I don’t mind but were barely friends we rarely speak but then you touch me and I start over thinking and I think if you liked me as just a friend you would stop touching and respect me.”

“[blank]”

and it ends I don’t know his response or at least it comes in two parts.

1. The I’m not gay one where he decides to completely cut off communication

2. I do like you but not sure what I’m feeling.

He could be just as confused as me. I don’t know where this would lead us but it would give me comfort that he does like me even if he is confused. Though the first alternative face to face rejection, I’ve stayed well away from it to stay in my own comfort bubble but it might be good to test how strong a person I really am.

Over and out people

Happy Easter!

Jake

Micro Details

I guess sometimes you forget what you’ve achieved and what people before you have. In the whole scheme of things you could look at your achievements as being pressured society led, you can zoom out of your magnified world and not even be a spec in proportion to the universe however that doesn’t stop us exploring the fascinating micro details.

We are all micro details but no matter how small we are, we are part of something spectacular.  Looking back the milestones that have got me to this point may seem soul destroying but will power has pulled me through. Will power is the purest symbol of your inner strength.

To be aware of the illusion but never stop embracing it.

The you without the blurred edges

Every outcome has an emotion like every emotion has an outcome. You may be so self involved with indeed yourself that you forget the emotions of everyone around. However the moment you stop to pause and find the peace in the commotion surrounding you, you realise that you’ve been working to hard to make others happy. Happiness is an overused term, “Where do you want to be in the future?” “I just want to be happy” but happiness doesn’t come without  sadness,  the happier you get the sadder your emotions will counter. “I just want peacefulness” I don’t want the communication of the world at my fingertips and flowing around me, I just want to be here. I want to be in the moment that’s not a metaphor for being spontaneous but just to feel like your purest self without the need of intervention or communication.

Close enough, miles away

I had formed a personality that protected me against comments or allowed me to act a certain way but if I stripped this back who would I be?

Wouldn’t I just be a previous version of myself but was the previous version the better one. Am I working to hard to uphold this persona is it a weight on my physical self or would a more controlled restricted one allow me to be weightless and stable.

I hadn’t had a conversation with him for days other than the brief ‘hi’ he usually sustains the conversation has he read something in a magazine, where I should be the one to create one. This does not come naturally to me and thats when we seized all communication. Quite frankly I wasn’t trying hard enough to be in his presence anymore, I heard in the muffled depths of the kitchen that he had a girlfriend.

I couldn’t even be jealous of what I could never obtain. I knew where we stood from the outset but I still liked to entertain the idea but the idea was just a pencil sketch that could easily be rubbed away.

The New Year.

So with a clear head and a stable mind I begin the year alcohol free however though I don’t have the intention of keeping this up throughout 2015 at least I can say it was a good start. I also realised that the pub had been an anchor for my life last year which is slightly contradicting seeing your at one of the most unstable states whilst inside a pub (well I am).

However though I had began to implement different activities around my work life in 2014 I would like to incorporate many more coming in the new year. I hate the cliche of a fresh new start because its a new year but it does hold some significants just because the false illusion that it can be different.

For some reason I do have a real feeling that 2015 will be different but only because of the foundations that I had built from previous years.

The List

So its that time of year again New Years Eve a time to celebrate the year that has past and to welcome the next one to the present. Where people will make a promise to themselves and not uphold it, who will respect you if you can’t respect yourself. However like a dying kid in a blockbuster movie I’m going to write a list of things I ‘HOPE’ to achieve or at least look to fulfil.

The List

Number 1: Respect who you were last year and build on what you’ve achieved.

Number 2: Move out! Create a new path that may crash and burn but at least you attempted   it.

Number 3: Get into cycling. Cycle at least once a month.

Number 4: Don’t give up on your job because its an easy option but when it is right, be it in 2015 or 2050.

Number 5: Find someone important to you or find the potential in someone you already know.

Number 6: Actually finish a story you have started and publish on wordpress.

Number 7: Create a new portfolio + CV you are proud of

Number 8: Visit California plus one other place you never even thought of going.

Number 9: Go quad biking

Number 10: Don’t look back explore the country you live in.

Number 11: Do something daring! Like bungee jumping.

Number 12: Don’t override the old you to be the new you.

Jake

An Intimate Moment

This was no accidental brushing of clothes but figuring it out was just as hard. When we were cramped into a small meeting room I could feel his body heat while are hoodies had an intimate moment. An INTIMATE moment is that what I want?

From the moment I see his face in the morning I crave to be within his presence so when these rare occasions come to fruition, I’m unprepared. However I don’t crave or quite frankly want his penis inside me or mine inside him but rather I just want his company, his touch and his embrace.

Swivelling around from my computer, there he stood waiting, not for me.

Not for anyone in particular however he was in my allocated territory, I mean I didn’t piss on it  to claim this section of the room or anything nevertheless he was here. He was in front of me but only because I had made him in front of me and he had decided to stand there.

“Can you help me” he asked. Im generally inclinced to say no.
“Yeah what with?”
“We need help lift a pallette in,” he explained. I thought a pallete would be reasonably small having worked in a supermarket the palletes contained bread and were only a metre long. However this pallete needed 4 people to move it from its outdoor position.

The winter was beginning to adjust its fundemental ice cold tempature but I had been caught out by the prolonged summer and the studio warmth. I was in a thin tshirt so I tensed and rubbed by arms to reciruclate the blood flow.

Thats when he rubbed my arms in a abrupt shake it wasn’t rough but nor was it caring. It was…. a question maybe not directly from him but maybe indirectly from me.

Make a choice, what do you want? Do you want the waves to be unsteady unkowning until they drown your last breath or do you want to reach a place where the sea is steady. Are you ready?

Float in water

All I feel is sadness, I thought I wanted to move out of my parents house but moving out would be committing to this. Prospect is a deceiving word searching through the shit for a golden ticket but there is no golden ticket just prospect. Bizarrely theres hope and comfort in the sadness but for now all I feel is exhausted!

I just want to float in water, failing that drown.

I was committing to things and committing to things meant being attached to them. These weren’t short term plans that can change in an instant but long term unwavering ones. I was suffocating myself.

It was probably nothing but what if it was something

I might be blowing this totally out of proportion but I’ve never been so bewildered in my life, something happened and it was strange. Before you think its one of those tragic hopeful love stories that I’ve been writing about, you will be sadly mistaken this was the literal strange.

strange/streɪn(d)ʒ/

adjective unusual or surprising; difficult to understand or explain. not previously visited, seen, or encountered; unfamiliar or alien. (of a subatomic particle) having a non-zero value for strangeness.

Just incase you were unaware of the literal meaning of strange. So this was definitely unusual and it was surprising, very difficult to understand and extremely hard to explain due to the difficulty of not understanding.

Ok, I need to make this fair try to be unbiased and impartial even though it involved me but your going to need some background. If you’ve had the pleasure of reading my other posts you might already know a few things about me.

For starters I’m 21 and I studied graphic design, now I find myself in a studio full of creatives, we are segmented into groups these are called PODS. These pods feature a Senior Designer (Line Manager), Designer and Artworker. I am the Artworker, I am the youngest in the studio consequently I am the youngest in the POD, age in this pod reflects hierarchy next is a female part-time designer who also studied graphic design in the United Kingdom so we both get on well. Next is the most superior of the group being the highest ranked also makes him the oldest of our trio what divides him from us is that he comes from Japan and has lived in France in total he speaks three languages however his english isn’t fluent but still understandable.

What divides them both from me is that the designer has 10 years of experience within the company and the Senior Designer has 3 however I’ve only been here for 3 months. Though its been turbulent its also been durable but we need to get to what happened…

It was coming to 5 which is the time I get to go home however a late request had come through to upload a few files on the online server. This involved finding the files without sitting down I decided to bend over my chair and quickly discover the folder before heading home, quite naturally.

However in this period of time my line manager who sits adjacent to me was approaching his seat while noticing I was bent over. He must of caught a glimpse of my underwear peaking out from underneath my trousers and decided to lightly pull them back so the elastic sprang to my skin. In confusion and annoyance I turned round with a harsh angry expression warning him to back off after letting me finish uploading the images, he decided to confront me “why did you give me this serious expression? IT WAS ONLY A JOKE” He tensed while he spat the words out as if they were poison.

I explained slightly bemused by what had happened, “That I was trying to upload these files before I leave and I didn’t really understand what the joke was.” This was later followed up by him telling me, “that it was a light hearted joke trying to bond with the team” this provoked a poison reciprocation, “WELL MAYBE NOT EVERYTHING IS FUNNY!”

I don’t understand is there a joke in this that I failed to miss? some sort of culture divide? lad banter? It was probably nothing some sort of in the moment miss judgement of the humorous spectrum but what if something runs deeper and I become one of those people who plays down the signs until something striking happens and you I was to naive to see the criminal in front of me.

No negative is without a positive

Everywhere we look its hard to see the light through the fog, maybe its not about finding the light but being comfortable where you stand. I read an article recently about steps you can take to overcome depression and though I am at a point where I feel numbly sad, I still feel myself or maybe I’m just content with seeing myself this way. Anyway the article suggested writing your thoughts and balancing the negatives with the positives.

Negative: I work with a liar who would like to lie for me. Positive: I am not him. I do not lie.

Negative: I have no true friends at my workplace. Positive: I’m content with my own company and happiness is only there when you want to see it.

Negative: I dislike my new job. Positive: I have a job and achieved a goal by obtaining this opportunity

Negative: I argue a lot. Positive: I like to express my opinion and reflect on what the other person said or believes.

Negative: People see me as a vulnerable little boy. Who is naive and suggestible Positive: In my eyes I am strong and open minded.

That didn’t make me feel better at all.