Life Reflections:

One thing I have been trying to make sense of is why I moved from Edinburgh.  When I lived inEdinburgh, I felt incredibly fulfilled - I know I was younger but I felt as though I knew people and I felt happy a good deal of the time - it was always tempered by lack of money I suppose but I never felt ridulously poor - perhaps this was a delusion.  What really floored me though was losing Jokey - I did realise how much I loved her and how horrible it was that I couldn't get to see her - I was also haunted by the idea that I would never quite be god enough for her - I forgot though that when I was with her for that short week and during the weeks afterwards that we kept in touch I felt as though I could, and would do anything - I was confident in my writing, and in my luck and I really felt ready to fit in with Jokeys friends flirt with them impress them at what a deep sensitive witty and attractive man I was before teling them how much i loved Jokey and whisking her away.  That and a career in writing or ournalism (itself something that Jokey would have loved) would have completed our picture.  Dammit I was even prepared for her to have the odd fling - so taken with her fascination for life that I was I would have expected her to have been temporarily dazzled by someoe eventually.

Suffice it to say that I didn't tell her this - nor I think did I really understand that she may have felt it too- she said she did once but when I teased her about coming to stay with me only in the festival I didn't think that perhaps she was scared to come and see me without an excuse - we did have quite a powerful connection.  It did get ruined though - she eventually saw someone else - proximity is the key - and I faded away.

After I faded away, I felt really lost - jokey wrote to me soon after to say that she was lost too and she blamed that on us - funny that if we'd both had better friends or talked more we might have realised that we were lost without each other.  She'd probably look at this and laugh - so I'm going to say that from the persective of my feelings - this isn't ridiculous to me.

I do now have a reticence to throw myself in - I have met girls (well really only one or two) that made me feel a spark of the same feelings I had for Jokey - but now they are always from girls in relationships - and I never know what to do - I know that I could perhaps charm them and sleep with them but I want more than that - so in the end I don't do anything again sure that they will in reality be better off with someone else.  I still forget that me performing and happy is really a sight to behold - its only when I am unhappy, feel that no-one cares for me and can't see the future that I start to lose my ambition and get stuck in the pack (yes a sad running a race analogy - but that is how I feel as though I have been the person who bet on the race and won but then somehow got caught up in it without the proper training.

It was after Jokey that things started going badly - I had a little fling with a girl from work that again thrilled me with the possibilty that I could fall in love - but she then went to Australia - kept in touch but seemed contemptous that I had not done something similarly exciting in the same year - and had seemed to sadly wait for her.  I didn't just to this of course but I again was stuck in the low income=low abition trap.  It does seem to me that for some people the world of work instead of being a liberator is like the weeds on the bottom of a pond when you are trying to swim - forever holding you back and getting in the way.  Work for me - even though sometimes enjoyable has this quality - I look back and remember my life as really only being a few days long after a year - and with a small income the problem is worse - you also have nothing to show for that ridiculous sarifice apart from not being dead and a couple of CDs or so.

Sorry - I digressed again - but its hard to make sense when there are so many tie-ups with the present - and that's part of the problem - I don't quite feel like an adult yet - Jokey made me think of marriage, a life in London my favourite city and of travel and different possibilities - my friends have all had these even without the life I imagined with Jokey - it seems as though I always just manage to get the worst deal - even when we are all using luck.  I'll give an example - temp jobs after college - my friends go to agancies get offered several jobs all paying more than £200 a week plus overtime (this is ten years ago).  I do the same get offerd similar amounts of jobs only mine are less well paid - there is some promise of overtime but it never materialises - I have less money than them - they think I am stingy and 'bad with money' (my job in this example ended up paying me less than £150 a week - they on the other hand were taking home £300 on some weeks - about what i earn now).  This is what really screwed up my relationship with Jokey - she was being asked out by the London Middle class with money in the family and from the jobs - and I was still working like a 16 year old.

I have always thought that working well and showing skills to managers would impress them - When I have managed people I have always looked out for talent and given responsibility and inclusion in decisions for those who were able to do so - yet when I have shown abilities and talent and good arguments for inclusion in a decision these input have been resented and rejected.  Sometimes people say 'oh you threaten managers' and 'they are just jealous' but how in Christ have people with such low moral fibre ever been promoted in the first place?  What a strange and stupid world - I like the plumber theory of management - you should never ever ever put a plumber on a big job if every time he goes near the pipes they leak - but this is what we do with managers - they get promoted even if they were terrible managers in the last job.

I'm digressing again! - Jokey was the relationship I wanted and felt prepared for - we got on we had similar philosophies and we were attracted to each other.  She said things to me that no-ne had said to me before in a way that made me believe them.   After her I lurched around, tried to fall in love again, failed - moved out of the house I was staying in, cutting ties with the people that lived there and whose company I enjoyed and moved to another property.  During this time my sister had a breakdown - during which I was on the phone to her - I still think that I didn't help.   This made me feel worse - not only was everything in my life dissolving but my family who I thought had wanted me to do well were heaping piles of difficulty on me.  I know that sounds selfish but at the time I wanted support and help - my friends to were utterly utterly useless.  They knew I really liked Jokey but when I disappeared from contact with them no-one called and when I made contact with them - they bitched about how I hadn't called and said that it was all my fault.  Funny that 'Friends' can so easily turn into 'aquaintances' when they aren't getting any benefit from your company.  This experience was also shocking and eye-opening to me - to have freinds who would sit and listen to you telling them about how you thought it was important to visit people in their own home so they feel like they exist there - who would love it when you would travel 30 miles and walk through dodgy estates to see them in their home - who would then refuse ever to come and see you in yours saying 'well its a bit out of the way' and 'we were in town what did you want us to do come out of it just to see you' - amazing.

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One thing I do know about myself is that I spend a lot of my time being in a 'watching' rather than 'doing' state.  I know, for example, that when I do fall in love with people it is always people who a) make me want to do things or b) who make me feel as though anything is possible or c) make me try things I talk about but don't know.

the funny thing is that I find it very easy to push myself to do things that I think I ought to do but that aren't what I really really want to do, and also those things that people don't do because they think other people will think they are odd.   I put in this category horse riding - most people I knew at Uni wouldn't ever learn horse riding because they think it is what posh, rich people do, and so they feel excluded and deliberately hate it.  I learnt to ride horses because I loved it, and because I thought it was one of those things that people think you can't do because you haven't already done it... so I did it.     I can't, however, seem to have the same attitude with work.

Jokey was one of those people who would encourage me to do anything, Jakki made me feel as though I would do anything for her, Ann, who is a friend I have at the moment has similar qualities .. ie. that her approval is very readily earnt and pleasing to hear.  

I do feel as though I am like a roadie who wants to be in a band but never can because he's roadie-ing and only gets to pretend on the quiet.  this is true of my marketing knowledge, my idea-generation, my counselling and tutoring, my journalism, my modelling (life modelling isn't real modelling!) etc etc and I know a lot of it is because when i have looked around for cues to see if what I think is realistic or an expression of ego, I see people go quiet and turn away instead of encourage me.

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 The Karma Principal.

Ok this is one I don't understand - I often do things for other people and make extra effort for them only to find that when I want similar back I don;t get it, or I only get the promise of it.  Some examples - I am usually really positive about other people's achievements - I tell people what I think they are good at and why I think they deserve to do well.  I even offer to help them do well and back it up.  I don't often get this sort of help from friends - in the same way as above I would go out of my way to visit people in their homes, help them with moving in and complement them on their houses.  I get the opposite I get people never bothering to come and visit, not wanting to spend time in my house and constantly insulting it - even when I have lived in nicer houses than they have.  Perhaps I choose poorly with friends or perhaps I'm the sort of person people like to knock.  I did it last night I offered to help Stephen go forward with his new business - even though it will put his earnings above mine he probably won't be expecting to pay me for my help.   I helped Karl start a jousting business but didn't get anything back from that, and yet the most important things to me, encouragement and perhaps a little help on my house are rarely offered and rarely given.

I need to remember that many people are quietly in competition with each other, not tying to support.

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 Dad Playing Against

I've just started to really realise how much my dad has been playing against me. Its interesting because he did pay for me to go to University (well he topped up the grant a bit) and you would think he ould want me to do well but I remember when I was a kid he did put a lot of effort into proving I was rubbish - he had an idea that was subtly drummed in that I would end up on the street.  Not sure why he didn't try to be interested in what I was interested in for myself.  I remember after my graduation instead of advising me and encouraging me to get a job that reflected the study he advised me to get a job as a van driver for a company he knew - he never recognised my achievement with my degree.  It sent me a message that my dad thought I was worth less than I thought I was, and that even with a degreee I should really aim for shit jobs.  When I got my a-levels it was 'why didn't you do better?'.

I did a Marketing degree.  My dad was one of the best salesmen in the world for an American company (General Electric) and he had worked in the motor industry before that similarly. The knowledge and experience as well as the ambition he could have passed on would have been very useful but he didn't pass anything on like that.  I went on in the dark without realising that I had a professional dad that could have been giving me the help and encouragement other professional dads were giving their kids but I didn't get any of that.  In fact I can't remember my parents encouraging anything ambitious for me - or at least ever encouraging the things I was ambitious about - I get lots of help and encouragement to stay in shit jobs and I get lots of warnings about how I should be subservient but none about how I should be the person in charge or how I have viewpoints that are realistic.

Even now my dad is happiest when he can prove that I have screwed up.  Currently I really really desparately want to get out f my job because it is messing up my life self esteem relationships view of myself status progression -- everything .. and the advice my parents give is 'stay in it, hope for the best'.  I tell them my managers are messing with me and taking advantage - their encouragement 'ooh don't upset them'.

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Let me see now.   Friends.  

Its quite depressing really.  When I lived in Edinburgh I had what I thought were a lot of friends, some close, some wide, but all of them friends of some sort.  I ended up with quite a large group of friends who seemed to be on my side, and I thought the relationships were quite warm, but then something happened - a combination I guess of my moving out of the loop, and out of the city centre, and then a slow realisation that my involvement always came from me calling others and happening upon invites rather than being there at the centre.  It finally became more obvious when I realised that people I had thought of as good friends of mine only stayed elsewhere when they came through.  I don't think they realised that I was upset and hurt by this, but that too was a representation of the problem rather than a way to a solution.

Then some terrible things happened to me in my personal life, things where friends are really needed, but instead mine seemed to get further away.  My sister went into a mental health hospital with severe depression.  Those i knew who had had similar things happen that I had tried to support them through took steps away from me and I didn't hear from them again.   It is a terrible thing to have to carry, that realisation and horror that all those people who you thought were your friends, who you thought you were having fun with, were in fact going to abandon you when things weren't going well.

In retrospect I wasn't the first this had happened to - and to my shame I didn't challenge it very well when it was happening to someone else - my friend Matt had stayed on the fringes of the group suffering a little from M.E. and a somewhat broken-up family and relationship with brothers, and soon I overheard conversations like 'Matt is really rude' and 'Matt has gone into hiding' - I was still visiting him occasionally. Perhaps he too was starting to notice how it was he that made the effort and when that faded, no-one wondered where he was or looked out for him either.

Its terrible that people can be so blinkered to what might be happening to those around them - but that is the fate of people who feel that their relatively good situation is all their own making and anyone elses bad situation is not their fault.  This just isn;t the version of friendship I understand.

Anyway it turns out that after I held back on contact, because I was so down and confused by my sister's problems, and also the loss of a long-distance relationship that I had had high hopes for (and still feels very much at the core of what I want in my life) and  my friends at the time just weren't there, and/or didn't care.   I have to admit that at the time I was also very aware that friends that did get visited a lot had flats in the right cities, or jobs in the right kind of firms, but I didn't think all of them were that shallow.

Suffice it to say that the loss of such a large group of what I thought were friends has been an incredible burden on me, even leaving me reluctant to form too many friendships since.   My image of myself as a good friend has also been shattered - perhaps it was my fault, perhaps I wasn't considerate enough, perhaps I was too neglectful - perhaps I was useful in some way and that disappeared.    I do know with horrible accuracy that if I had had a flat in chelsea, or new york I'd have had my 'friends' crawling all over me, or too if I had been a commissioning editor somewhere, (actually I have commissioned TV companies, ironically, for science promos and research events at Warwick!) and they knew about it, a number of them too would have fallen over themselves to be in touch.

Rather sadly I found on facebook photos of a recent party where nearly all the friends and related friends had been invited and I had not - the photos look almost exctly (bar age) like a set of photos that I had taken when I was part of this group and they look like I can reach out and touch them, but I just wasn't invited, just wasn't wanted and am no longer relevant to them.  This has spoilt a good chunk of my memories and I wonder if they realise the hurt that, collectively, they have placed on me, and that I feel as a result.    Its odd how people who seem so nice and comfortable to be around, can be so poor at times of need.