2008 #38 - Weight Lifting

Well, it's over. For a few weeks at least, i'm the only person living in this house and I no longer have to worry about being the target of the guy i've been calling a nut this week. I feel different tonight, as if a giant weight had been lifted from my shoulders. I also feel remorse.

I'm not a religious person in any sense of the word. I am unchristened (remind me to talk about people's reaction to that sometime, whoa) and don't have a strong belief in any kind of god, but I can still recognise and try to live by the few good things that certain religions teach. I refer here, to turning the other cheek.

Last night, the night after the night with no sleep, I woke at 4:30am to more banging. 20 minutes later he was at my door. This was unexpected, as the landlord had actually warned him against bothering me again on his last night in the property on punishment of eventual eviction (he can move him immediately, but only end a tenancy with standard notice). Now, I have been scared in this situation, and it has certainly been a rough few days, but given that I think I at least partly understand what's happening with this guy, and the fact that I knew he would be gone from my life today, I regret my reaction.

Filled with my new sense of victory, no longer scared of invasion after figuring out what I could use to defend myself in the flat, In my head I was willing him to come to the door, something which he didn't do on the previous night. The feeling is best described by the phrase "right, now it's my turn". Previous conversations have started in exactly the same way and ended in confusion and a shake of the head as he headed back upstairs. This morning, I yelled at him. For some reason fuelled by his backing off in reaction to my now raised voice, he closes with "relax, you're alright" I closed with "but you're not alright are you, i've had enough, go upstairs, go to sleep, fuck off!"

In the minutes and hours following the conversation I was proud at the speed and relative clarity of my response. By the time he was moving his stuff out (out of sight of me entirely) I felt less good about it, and by the time the landlord returned and we briefly discussed the matter it pretty much hit home that my reaction, if it had any impact, could only negatively influence him.

In my defence, I had just been woken for the third time in 20 minutes, and his yelling from upstairs included the last two words of my sentence. The stress was affecting me - I was shaking like a leaf as I walked to the door and literally shaking like a lawnmower afterwards for about 10 minutes. The difference is, I know what i'm doing, whereas he clearly doesn't, and wasn't willing to accept that his delusion wasn't real, so really all I did was bully him into submission. I didn't reassure him, or reason with him. I didn't take the time to think that given this was definitely the end of the matter, there was nothing to be achieved by making him feel worse.

My insistance that I cannot let this stranger negatively influence my life stands true, but I had already achieved that end by the time I did this. It won't keep me awake, and it's not the worst thing I ever did by a long shot, but it's made today bittersweet, given the weight has been lifted and i'm otherwise much happier.

I often think I have the nice guy curse, but mine is a double curse. I am selfish, and I don't consider others as much as I should, but everybody thinks I'm this nice guy. I have all the fun of being the arsehole that the ladies love but generally exhibiting all the traits which means I get the nice guy brushoff. Result, feel bad about myself at home on my own, and write about it to record it, move past it and stop thinking about it, allowing me to move on to something else, like my goals.

1. A few takeaways got eaten last week. This week planning to not do that so much. I talk of cycles occasionally. If one cycle is definite in my life, it's eating patterns. I will phase between eating well for a while then eating badly for a while. These goals have made the cycles shorter, but i'm not sure they have decreased the frequency of the bad part of the cycle much. Tuna is back in Asda so lunch is back on track.

2. Believe it or not I didn't hit rock bottom in poker. Still not freerolling, but 5-6 losses off broke rather than 1-2 now. I have played some extra games during my last few days off work while dealing with the neighbourly problems. That's okay - the rule is about work nights.

3. Took some photos of my old broken guitar to see if I could get some advice from a local repair guy on the feasibility of fixing and selling. Not bad close-ups I must say.

4. A rather fun weekend. Listened to a song called "This Ones Going to Leave a Bruise" just before leaving the house, a nice and recent LTJ song with the premise that even after all this time, the going out as if you were still 21 actually stands for something, with the crowd of familiar faces that you may or may not know. Flash forward a few hours. I jump up to the DJ's stage to make a request, make it, then attempt a slick descent. Slick it wasn't. Painful, it now is. At the time it didn't hurt at all. So, when I walk home drunk and wake up bruised, i'd like to thank each of you. Doing a little better keeping in touch with people this week overall.

5. Been picking up the acoustic a lot this week. I have learned that I don't place enough importance in the type of pick i'm using. I only recently learned that all these different colours of dunlop picks are of different thicknesses. I always picked my favorite colours! Acoustically i'm far better off with something a bit thinner. I was mislead on this in the past, believing a heavy pick was necessary to get a loud enough sound from the strings/box. Back then, my lack of volume was actually caused by the instrument I was playing. My two newer acoustics could and can make plenty of noise with a light pick.

6. Work goals were reviewed, and mostly similar to past ones, though this time shoehorned to make my very specific role fit my very non-specific job title of project supervisor. I have some new responsibilities to set up some interfaces, which I am dreading in the good way. If there's one think i need at work right now it's to widen my network. Having now reached the top of my grade it could be some time before I get a real terms payrise again, if ever. That's a sobering thought given how quickly my income has risen in the past three years. I can still make effective raises myself - i believe I am 4-5 years from having paid off my student loan, and of course there's always the chance or choice of losing my commute. The raise I have just got is about the amount I spend on fuel in a year. Funny to think about, although irrelevant as i've always had to pay for it anyway. In about a year all my immediate colleagues will finally have to start paying too, and i'll feel just a little less hard done by, even though I personally gain nothing. Tie this back to early on in this post - I am more of an arsehole than you think I am. Fuck this is getting long.

7. After my diatribe last week this will be shorter. I wanna be artistic! It's all I can think at this point is going to get me closer to the meaning I long for. It's not just music. I'd love to design, draw, paint, dance, act, host. Most of those I haven't tried, and those I have tried, results weren't encouraging. I see the art in good code and despise bad code. Elegant algorithms are also artistic, but they don't touch people. A good fast interface and good fast running, people like, but it's a stretch to hope it will touch somebody - influence them enough to rethink things. Some would argue Apple and Jobs do manage this, but there's an enormous scam element to that story - it's more than artistic vs the world at large. It's more like a cult than a company. I will continue on my quest to find something artistic that I do well enough to.. keep doing it. I'll never make any money in this field, i'm guessing. Nobody else does, even the talented.

8. Full fail two weeks running. My mindset isn't even entertaining the possibility of cycling right now for no good reason I can find. I will try to resist the temptation to ignore this for another week. Did the title of this post imply I had been doing some weight lifting? No, I don't believe so.

No long final thoughts this time. You've read enough. Just to say again, if you're ever in a situation where you can turn the other cheek, when there is no risk of any loss to yourself, but risk of harming another in some way, no matter how small - just do it. I didn't, but I wish I had. This post would have been half the length!