Almighty then…

I talked to Matt last night about his non-denomination church. 2,000 people go every week, there are no limits to how many times you can go and there is no set routine throughout the service. They follow the message of the bible strictly, but try and apply it to modern life, such as one man who made a rap song about Jesus. I’ve been thinking about faith and religion for the last 6 months, figuring out what it means to me, I haven’t been to church for about 8 years…I was so fed up and un-inspired with it, going every Sunday became a chore, something a religion should not be reduced to. But lately I’ve been feeling as though religion is about to enter my life again. This church that Matt talks about appeals to me, I must admit…I know of a few people who attend and they all seem to be well mannered and decent folk, they seem to have a fulfilment or a happiness about them, maybe its just coincidence or I’m only seeing a front, either way it strikes a chord with me. God to me for the last few years has been someone I pray to for good fortunes, someone I blame when something goes wrong and someone to look over me, my family and friends. I still pray every night and there is one story in the bible that fascinates me. When Jesus died on the cross and then came back to life, he ascended to heaven and blessed all the disciples with the holy spirit, this holy spirit gave these people the confidence in themselves to express there beliefs. Wouldn’t we all want the holy spirit? To have no fear of any situation, to truly strive for what we want in life? Matt says this is one of the things they address, they try to breed this holy spirit into members.
But I dunno, my view on Catholicism has been scarred by such things as “We do not agree with gays” this is a ridiculous viewpoint in my opinion and I cannot support it. There are many other things that disturb me about Catholicism, such as the famous collection plate, every Sunday I went to church this was made out to be the main part of the mass, with the priest frothing at the mouth when seeing all those £10.00 notes thrown in. Then there is all those choir boys that are molested by the priests, I’ll say no more about that.
All these factors nearly spoil the religion, if I could have a conversation with God, I’d ask him about all these problems, and I know the God I believe in would not agree with any of them and that’s what essentially keeps my torch for my faith burning, because I believe God is a good guy and that he does try to bring balance in the world. I’ll try not to get too romantic about it, as there is no physical presence of the big man and it us who make the decision to get out of bed every morning. But I’ll always look up to the sky when I’m feeling down and pray for better days, and I’ll always be thanking him under my breath when something good happens, I’d like to think of God as not the Almighty, but more like a big brother and a friend.
So I went out last night, had a few drinks and had a few laughs. Work this morning was OK, I was sat next to Sally so as usually we had a laugh/awkwardness…and Danny Williams beat Mike Tyson, although Danny is a Brit, Mike Tyson is still my boxer.
And Leeds beat Hibs 3-1, bring on Derby next week!

Another one bites the dust

This is my second blog today, I just have to write some things down, at least so they are out there. There’s a fear inside of me, a part of me that is very scared. My social inability is the main thing holding me back, tomorrow night there is a work party for someone who is leaving , as soon as I found out about this on Tuesday, I started fretting…thinking of embarrassing moments that could occur and worrying who will be down there. I know my fears are irrational, but I just cannot help them. Ever since my time at upper school, I’ve been a wreck socially. Tomorrow night is like a test, if I don’t go….I’m backing out and I won’t even have respect for myself, it could be the prototype for the rest of my life, always ducking out of challenges and avoiding what should be enjoyable fun. I said to myself after this summer is out, it’s a new term and it has to be beginning to something different, perhaps a different me or at least a more confident me. I’ve been waiting around for too long and so what if I have to get embarrassed a few times or if I have confrontations, that’s part of life and I have to take part. It is scary and while a lot of people probably wont ever have to face these kind of inner-demons, I’d like to know people who feel how I do.
The 3 years since leaving school has been a re-building process, one of my best friends and I used to hang out everyday until I called It off last year, it had to stop…I had to take that risk then and now I have to take risks again. Its just about confidence and belief. I know if there is anyone who will ever actually read this, they will think “what a loser” but I just can’t help the way I was made. G’night all

Please leave a message after the beep

I called work this morning and stuttered the words “I can’t make it, I’m ill”, one of the supervisors Steve answered “Well what should I put down for you?” I thought for a couple of moments and replied “Just say I’m fluey”
“Fluey?” he said
“Yes, I don’t know the spelling though”
And so now I have the day off, I’m not actually that ill but I didn’t get to sleep till late last night because we have no water and I just could not be arsed. Other people have had so many days off due to “illness”, that I thought I could sneak one in….doesn’t harm anyone right?
There will be some wrath to incur tomorrow, but it’s totally worth it. As I explained last week, Thursdays are very different to the rest of the week and not in a nice way. So I’ve blobbed for today, does this make me an unreliable person? It doesn’t, simply because my position at work is not high enough to be considered a threat. One of the things that interests me about the world of business is the power, the sheer power. If you are deemed in authority, you have responsibility and as the film Spiderman so often quotes “With great power comes great responsibility” while this is true, certainly the reverse of this is true as well. If you are a manger, you have a responsibility to uphold company policy and to try and improve the current situation, but you also have the power to change things, whether it be shift patterns, pay rates or even the staff. This is what I am intrigued with, I’m not in that situation so I cannot say form experience, but I’m curious to know what that feels like….I’m sure it’s a buzz, if only for a little while.
This also contributes to my career cross-roads, do I try and fulfil my creative side, or do I try and nurture my more materialistic and it has to be said, realistic side. I will try and do both, I don’t know how I will do it…but I’ll try damned hard.
The football part of me is starting to take over again and I’m excited about the start of the new season, with all the goings on at Leeds for the last 2 years, I am still optimistic, we are a big club and if managed right at both board level and playing level we can once again have a great future, fingers crossed.
I talked to Sally again last night, we kind of both forgot about the other night, I really felt like she would hold a grudge, but she didn’t and contacted me first….as far as I’m concerned its just another reason why I like her so much.

Early morning

I really like out of hours, whether it be early in the morning or late at night. Admittedly, I haven’t gotten up early in a while, unless I’m starting work or at college. But I would really like to get up at about 5 or 6 and go for a jog with my dog. There’s a real peacefulness about early morning, before the rush of 7 till 9, you take a look around the streets and everything is quiet and empty, it’s the same later at night as well, but it just looks a lot scarier. I don’t live in the kind of area where you can go for a nice walk in the middle of the afternoon, there’s always a threat of getting caught up in some kind of trouble. There are no parks locally and the only place to walk around where there is a bit of green, is the golf course. This is no good, so you have to work around it but it usually just means I end up staying indoors which is a shame.
It doesn’t look like I’ll be going on holiday this year, I’m not too bothered as the last few years of holidays have been pretty naff. I’m sick of going to places in England, where all you get is a beach, an arcade, and through the roof parking fee’s. I told my parent last year that I’m not going on another holiday in England for a long time. If I’m going on holiday now, I want it to be somewhere very different, I want to see alternative cultures….that’s not trying to be snooty, it’s just I cannot stand another holiday in England.
I’ve also managed to bugger whatever relationship I had with Sally last night. I don’t know how it happened but there was break down in communication and she got the wrong end of the stick, and there were a lot of double standards going on, she could say something but I couldn’t. So that makes work this afternoon extra-tense. Amy also didn’t acknowledge me last night, which is disappointing, I thought we had a good chat the night before.
I was reading Dave’s latest blog entry at http://dave.squizzle.org, and his nerves of starting his new job really brought back memories of me last year with mine. I’m always so shaky when I start somewhere new, so nervous that my stomach feels like it’s in a vice.

The Irish girl

Sally said I should move over to her section at work last night. I agreed. In her section was the kind of new girl Amy, the girl I stated as being “Model calibre”. I didn’t realise how shallow I could be until last night, all the males in the contact centre think she is very attractive…as do I. So I moved over to her section and sat next to her, and I spent the next hour trying to stir up some conversation. The next hour went and my success rate was at 0%, but I then sat back in my chair and tried to critique what the hell I was doing. I was only trying to get to know her because of how she looked, my brain it seemed had done one of those connection chains e.g:
- Sit in her area
- Start talking to her
- She’ll like you if you put on the charm
- You’ll go out with her
- You’ll go home with her
- You may even get to sleep with her
Hold on I thought, first off, this has no chance of working out, simply because she’s way out of me league and second of all…she just isn’t like that. You see what happened was, after I stopped myself in my tacks, I just thought “be friendly and try to get to know her genuinely”, don’t go after her because of her looks, just be a real person. Suddenly other people existed again and I was having conversations with a few different people, and when it came to talking to Amy, I was much more relaxed and things went along a lot smoother. She’s a very catholic girl, she’s by no means a prude….but she does have standards, something a lot of the girls at work could do with. So as my shift drew to a close, I said goodnight to her and I now feel as though I have another friend at work, with no alternative agenda. It’s weird how these experiences can effect the way you want to progress as a person, and I guess all these struggling teenage years are really the building blocks of you’re future self.

Un-Emotional

I’m having one of those great days where I’m not down and I’m not too up…I just feel fine, I’m always at my happiest when I’m not emotional. If I get nostalgic or regretful, it usually leads to me feeling anxious and unsettled, but today I feel very balanced. The one thing Monday has going for it I suppose, is that it is an uneventful day, nothing exciting is supposed to happen, so when it doesn’t you’re not disappointed. The problem I sometimes find is that later on during the week I may feel as though I should be doing something wild and fun, or I start thinking about my life too much. I think a lot of people misunderstand Mondays, you need Mondays to make the weekend feel better. I was actually born on a Monday, so I’ve always been trying to tell people that Monday is a good day but they just think I’m a nutter.
This summer has seen my interest in other sports rise dramatically, probably because Leeds are doing so poorly that I need to find positives elsewhere. I’m just sick of all the rubbish surrounding football at the minute, I enjoyed Euro 2004 but leading up to the new season its just been about who Chelsea will buy, who Sven is knocking up and what is wrong with David Beckham. It annoys me because football is my favourite sport, but when I watched Wimbledon this year, or the Cricket test series, I found myself enjoying these sports more than the football. Something which I have never experienced before. I even watch F1 now and I am genuinely enthusiastic for Jensen Button.
But the new football season starts soon and all the same emotions all football fans go through will no doubt happen again. God bless football.

Yes I’m feeling a lot better now…

What a difference a day makes. I read Loners blog http://lonerthoughts.blogspot.com/ and it really hit home. I won’t repeat what it said, just go to that link, but it made me step outside of how I was feeling and look at things in an alterative perspective. Last night I was feeling very beat up and when I look back to how I was feeling, it seems almost selfish. I don’t want to say cliché things such as “there’s poverty in the world how can you complain” but I do realise that all of my problems and heart ache are in my head…and I just have to deal with that and try to cure it, or at least live my life how I want to.
I’m sure I’ll feel like that again and I will probably blog it down, but I must remember to keep a perspective on things and not have a knee-jerk reaction.
An Irish girl has just started at our work called Amy, all I will say is *Model Calibre*

……and I can’t download anything for some reason, WinMx won’t find anything, I want to download some James Brown songs such as sex machine and soul man but WinMx won’t allow it.

You talkin’ to me?….Well I’m the only one here

I start work at 9:00 AM tomorrow morning, so my Friday night feels very limited. I’m very worried about my shift tomorrow, for some reason Sam and Sally were taking the mick out of me behind my back….that hurts. I’ve been reading up on why I blush so much when talking to more than one person at once, the closet thing I could find was something called social anxiety and the cure is counselling, if this problem carries on I will definitely consider going, but for now I’m going to try and work through it myself.

I couldn’t have just been a normal person, lol.

I’m actually not laughing out loud, but it makes me even more sad if I don’t try to bring some light to the dark.
I really yearn for the days of my childhood, when nothing was complicated and relationships were easier to build, where my confidence was sky high 24/7, when there were no financial concerns or a career to worry about. But now, bah, forget about it….everything seems like a big mess, I just hate it when people pile on the stress.
But I try not to look at hating everything, I have to try to be more balanced and look at the overall picture of life, I just can’t wait until my teen years are over, it will be like a metaphoric weight off my shoulders. Why does life become so much harder? Our minds expand but maybe this just complicates everything, if growing old does anything, it makes you cynical until one day we are innocent no more and the world stops looking like a cloud. Sometimes I just want to fly away to a warm paradise and leave this industrial world behind, I’m tired of grey mornings and wet summers, and I’m tired of been unhappy.
Oh well, whatever, never mind

Morning sickness

My mum shouts me “Time to get up!”, ugh, the worst words I ever heard. I cannot manage mornings, I can’t eat, my work is incompetent and I’m constantly irritable. It’s always freezing cold, regardless of the weather and when I get a wash it feels like either the water has turned to acid or my skin is just super-sensitive, and morning breath is the foulest thing ever. I’ve never bothered to look into why morning breath occurs, I would prefer to stay ignorant of it and just rant on about it a few times a week, it has no purpose other than to stun you’re family members and when you come across your own morning breath you nearly pass out. And that’s not the only thing about the mornings….what is the deal with my hair? It just randomly sticks up. If I get up at 10:00 Am, my hair is fine. If I get up at 6:30, my hair is just an un-cooperative mess, nothing works, including gels and water. My mum said “put some conditioner in it”, I said “No mum”.
Work on a Thursday mornings is different to say the least. The relaxed people I meet on my usual late shift have transformed into ignorant and arrogant foes. But I guess we all just feel as pissed off as one another.
All this craziness led to a massive error this morning, a real big error. I work in a call centre and what is the one thing you cannot do??? Mouth off at a customer…..when you thought you were talking to someone else but you were really talking to Mr. Holland. Damn. He rang up and started ranting on about his charges, he said he spoke to someone and demanded that I put him through to this same person. So I did some detective work and found the person he was referring to, however this person was busy with another call and asked me to grab Mr. Holland’s phone number, so I went back to Mr.Holland and asked for his phone number, but he just said “no”, I went back to this person who had dealt with him before and said “This idiot won’t give us his phone number the ******” there was no response, and then all I saw on my phone was “Customer”, I realised I had just said it all to this git. Mr Holland then started to rant and rave, so I panicked and hung up on him. At this point I’m hoping he doesn’t call back, so I press ready and wait for the next call, 10 minutes passes by and then I get a call where the guy just asks “What’s my name”, I again panic, hesitate and say my name is John. He asks why I paused briefly and then says “You’re Alex aren’t you!!!”…I owned up and said “well my middle name is John” (it isn’t) and he asked to be put through to a supervisor
My team manager, Adam is awesome, he saved my arse today. I told him what happened and he said “No worries, happens to us all and I’ll deal with it”. You may be reading this thinking what I did was not that bad, but unfortunately where I work there has already been 4 sackings just this week, for offences far less than what I pulled. This job may just be a filler, but I do not want to get sacked. I don’t want to be the guy who couldn’t hold down a call centre job. It’s still dodgy however, if someone above Adam finds out, then I’m done.
So that’s my exciting morning, I’m sure I’ll look back and laugh at it, when I’m down at the job centre Monday morning…

You wouldn’t like me when I’m angry…

I seriously feel that if I become any more frustrated I will morph into the Hulk. I woke up feeling anxious, I don’t feel depressed, but on the verge of saying “fuck it!” to everything, haha….I think I’m too mild mannered to do that. When I look at myself, I see my biggest personality flaw as being the fact I am not comfortable with showing people who I am in an open way. When it comes to discussions and such, I always stick to my own views, but I feel as though people look at me and think I’m too generic. There is nothing about me that shows people I have conviction in my actions. I’ve had the same hair-cut for years and I’ve always wanted to change that but I’m too worried of the stick that I might take for doing so. A couple of posts back I talked about fashion and how people judge others by what they wear, I still stand by this viewpoint, but if someone says they change their fashion to suit someone else’s taste, or to fit into a crowd….I think that is a form of selling out, selling out you’re soul, but in a way I am doing the same thing by saying no to what I want deep down. Part of me is saying “Go for it, express yourself” while the other part is saying “If you change just one bit, you are going to be slated mercilessly for it”
As you can see, I’m quite an insecure person. I’m so afraid of presenting myself that I’m the guy watching through the window, wishing he was inside. Things will have to change though, even I recognise that, there’s only so much you can put up with, other people can cause enough problems without you heaping them on yourself. Maybe that’s the never-ending battle of life, how you deal with…yourself.
And now for some news about my life. I played football last night and won for the 2nd week in a row. I scored a pretty good goal and then feigned injury for the last 15 minutes because I was so knackered and didn’t want to look like a bad player. Sally looked great last night, good enough to make my interest in her keep rising, but so high that I realise I have no chance. I’m not sure what part of her personality attracts me but it does, she can be very snappy and her sense of humour can be non-existent at times, but my brain is still saying “No chance mate”, my heart is saying “ Hey man, you never know” and my penis is saying “ God damnit will you do something right for once!”
My final blog thought is: Wouldn’t it be cool if I COULD turn into the Hulk!

Welcome to the Jungle

I’ve been lucky enough in life to have met friends at all stages in my life, from my first friends in the neighbourhood through lower and upper schools up to now at college and work, but you could probably count on one hand the number of true friends I have. I lost touch with school friends after I left and while this makes me regret how things have turned out, I don’t feel as though I’m missing out. I’m not the type of person who needs social activity 24/7, I like my space and time, of coarse too much is unhealthy, but I have learned to cope with solitude just from being an only child. I’d rather have a few people I could really talk to, rather than a lot of people I couldn’t.
Why am I rambling on like this? well, 2 people are leaving work at the end of this month, 2 people I have gotten to know pretty well. One of them, Sam, was there at the start, we did our training together and met all the people we know at the same time. He left university a year ago after getting a degree in psychology but has decided to go back to get a higher masters degree because he cannot find a job. We both got split up into different sections at work for about the last 3 months, so we haven’t talked a great deal but I still felt asif he was someone I could really talk to, it’s a shame he is going, I genuinely feel gutted about it. The other lad is Rob, my perception of him has changed a lot over the coarse of the last year. At first I didn’t really take to him, he seemed to always be trying to impress other people, but eventually we got to know each other and we have similar characters. He’s somebody else I will be gutted to see go.
I always get nostalgic when something changes in my life, I find change difficult to handle and I don’t really like to change myself. But I guess it is necessary to succeed in life. This jungle of a world we live in is waiting for us, waiting for our mistakes and our successes, but wherever we go it’s good to have friends in the same situation.
I won’t end this entry on a cheesy line like that, I’ll finish by saying….Leeds United have taken Brain Deane on their pre-season tour.
Yup.

There’s always a girl…

A couple of months ago I was invited to a poetry convention in America, with the possibility of winning $1,000. Yipee I thought, opportunities like this do not come around often. However, on the invitation it said I could invite 1 person to come along with me, thus ruling out parents and friends (how could you invite 1 person over another?). It left me thinking about who I could go with instead, I wouldn’t bother going alone, it would be an empty experience. So there’s this girl at work, who we can call “Sally”, so Sally has been working a little while longer than me and I’ve gotten to know her fairly well.
Ya know how when you meet someone you have a certain feeling about them (I’m not talking about the feeling in you’re pants here!) and make it a goal to get to know them better. This was the case with Sally, I was attracted to her from the beginning and I have always been trying to get to know her better for months. The problem is she has no interest in me at all, but unfortunately being a Taurus, stubbornness rules the day and even if its just 1% of my brain saying so, I still think I have some kind of chance. That was until the other day. I tried to subtlety bring up the poetry thing over e-mails we were sending each other. At my work when you can’t sit next to someone we have an intranet system in which you can send each other notes. Anyways, I told her that I was in a competition and that I had to go to America, but I wasn’t sure because there was no-one to go with. I then got that golden e-mail back that simply said the words….I’ll go with you…..I sat up straight not believing what I had just read and responded by saying “I’m not really sure how much it would cost, but it will be a lot of fun!”, the dream though was quickly over as she sent me:

From “Sally” :
R.E - Hello

Yea I would deffo love to go, if you paid for me and I could bring along this person I’m interested in…oh and “Yoko”

*Yoko is a friend of hers, whose real name I will not reveal, so I’ll just call her Yoko*

Now after reading this, even my brain said “You aint got no chance fool”. I actually chuckled to myself, because I couldn’t believe I thought I may have had a chance, that chuckle soon faded into a deep silence however. I looked over at her, and just stared for a few moments, thinking about what it may actually feel like if this girl was ever interested in me. The cold reality is that I don’t really seem to have the X-factor when it comes to pulling the ladies, I’m not the typical 19 year old who only thinks about scoring, I would actually like to be in a relationship and all the things that go along with it…I’m just that type of person.
I get a lot of criticism regarding my fashion sense, and I admit that I simply kwow nothing about colour schemes, or what matches with what or any of that stuff. I cannot believe that we live in a culture that ranks fashion so highly, people actually judge other people by what they wear!??! This is just crazy.
Sally said I should go for more of a hippy look and alter my fashion sense that way. Right, ‘cos hippies think about fashion that much. Ugh. I can guarantee I have never judged someone’s character by the way they look, even when they have blue hair and pierced eyelids, yet it seems people judge me all the time by the way I dress. I just have a plain style, t-shirt and pants….that’s it. I hate fashion, its another way of separating people, “you belong in this and I belong in that” how are we ever going to get any unity at all when people are that shallow, but if you are reading this and prioritise fashion highly in you’re life, then let me offer this advice: Don’t judge somebody’s character before you’ve even met them.

So I’m sat in the middle of a room…

And I freeze up. My chest starts pounding and my face starts to shade red. Damn.
I’ve decided to finally blog my life down on the world wide web as a kind of dodgy therapy method, and if only one person reads every 3 months, at least someone knows how I was feeling at that time.
The first line in this first entry explains my situation at work yesterday, I work part-time in a call centre while attending college. I’ve just finished a maths coarse and I am looking to do something creative next year, something I enjoy. But anyways, at my work place there are many varied people who work there and they all seem to have extreme self confidence, whereas I do not, and yesterday I was sat in a section where there are about 7 of us, suddenly a couple of hours into my shift the focus of attention turns to me and they were all saying something different - which made it worse, I started to panic and I went bright red, and the last thing you need to hear when you are embarrassed is “You’re turning red”, yes thanks for that observation I really need that pointing out in front of everyone. After a few minutes I have calmed down, my face has calmed down and they are back to talking about soaps or whatever. But all this made me think about my personality, am I that insecure that I cannot handle talking to a group of people?
I’m not even close to having a career path, and one of the major contributing factors in this, is that I am so insecure about who I am as a person. I find it hard to admit to what I like for fear of rejection and as I mention above I cannot handle groups of people. I’m not too sure what to do about this except to keep trying to improve my characteristics….
I do feel like an outcast, different to everybody else….but ask me again in a couple of days and I may feel entirely different. I guess that’s life, it’ll kick you in the balls before it will help you out.
I also support Leeds United. Damn.