Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.
– Albert Einstein
Side note: This was originally typed on the 15th August 2012 whilst we had no internet. I do not wish to reread this but at the time I knew that I wanted to post it so I'm going to trust past-me's judgement. It's mainly ramblings focused around one main point. If you make it through it to the end, I'll salute you.
I’ve come to realise that I am terrible at committing myself
to a project, to staying on top of things. Maybe it’s partially to do with my
age but it is also just me as well – I know that I’m a lazy person and I know
that I should do something about this but it’s finding the effort. I find
myself doing that a lot these past few years, it’s too much effort to just do
something and instead I put it back and before long the work load has piled up
at I’m unbelievably stressed. I know this, yet I don’t do anything about it.
Long term time management I’m not too great at however for things such as
getting ready for work I have countless little yellow sticky notes covering my
bedside table where I have had to write out my agenda for that morning
alongside times for when I do this. My parents find this weird and ‘OCD’ish but
it helps me stay on time and not misjudge how long I have to get ready. I’ve
only ever been late for work twice since I started working when I was about
fourteen so I’m not too bad in that retrospect… it’s just longterm. At college
I allowed coursework to build, I let it get on top of me until I was stressing
and rushing to get things done at the last minute. I know that I’m a student
and that’s what students do but it didn’t work out too greatly for me – my A
Level results were hardly great now were they.
I do know where I am headed with this but I feel like there
are so many different topics that I need to address first before I get to the
my main point. The internet is down right now (Again may I add - BT, you’re
just so wonderful…) and I’ve just been looking through my old writing. I have a
ton of folders on my laptop within each other which all have about four years’
worth of writing documents in them. I love writing, I truly do. I know I’m not
great at it and there is always room for improvement but it’s something I’ve
always done. I remember sitting on the computer when I was younger, writing
stories about fairies and such. And then when Lindsey came around, Beki and I
discovered fanfiction and so the writing began. ‘Fanfiction’ I hear you
snigger! I know it may be lame and half of you will not see the point in it but
I don’t know, if I hadn’t written a ton of it at a teenager I probably would
agree with you that it’s lame. I do love it though, it’s the kind of person
that I am. I obsess over things and need more. That’s what I love about
writing, the world is your oyster. You can create scenarios, fantasies and
adventures and sculpt them however you like. I have a ton of notebooks in my
bedroom and I can see them from my spot on my bed now. Every single one of
those notebooks has a part of me in them – starting from when I was thirteen
years old and received a Green Day notebook from my bestfriend. I first used it
as a diary but then began to write stories in it. Band-fanfiction mind you but
I still loved it. I would write for hours and hours on end until I finished
that notebook and then moved onto the next and then the next and so forth. You
can see why I didn’t have a crazy childhood like most people my age now right?
I hardly had a exciting alcohol infused youth but I loved it none the less. You
know what I enjoyed the most? The research. Finding out the things that I
needed to for a little ficlet that I would soon grow bored of. The one that
always sticks in my mind was based on a dream that I had and the amount of
research that I put into that story was substantial. I loved learning
interesting new things and learning things about weapons and such. Most of my
writing is on my laptop nowadays… I miss writing in my notebooks but it’s just
easier to edit and rewrite when it’s all on a word document.
Anybody that knows me well enough would tell you that I
become obsessed with things though. Says it’s a film series, I need to watch
every film, read every book, write my own interpretations and fiction to go
along with the story. It’s just an urge that I feel, I need to get it out of my
system and I just need more and to know that I can write and create my own
little worlds is intensely satisfying. I’m like it with people as well,
‘Cillian Murphy’ for example is the infatuation right now. I don’t know, it
always seems to be a bad guy – I guess they do say that we go for the bad boys…
but then again, a murderous psychotic villain by the name of Scarecrow may be
going a little bit far for the ‘bad-boy’ image (not to mention Jackson Rippner,
The Joker, Draco and Snape). At least it’s not drugs I’m into…
The point being though is as much as I love writing I always
seem to get bored or distracted and move on. As I’ve grown older each separate
story has become progressively longer and I’ve put a lot more time and effort
into them as I did before. But still, it’s fanfiction. As soon as I start
writing an original fiction, I’ll work on it for a month straight at the most
before I get the urge to write a new ficlet or end up getting distracted by a
new fandom. I need help, I know. Maybe I’ll grow out of it, who knows, but in a
way it does drive me insane. My attention span has improved but it still pretty
much that of an eleven year old. I would love a penpal, I have always said this
and whenever I get the chance I just end up ruining it. First there was Kayla
who I met on vampirefreaks. We wrote a couple of times and then I just never
ended up getting around to writing back to her – which I still feel guilty
about may I add. This is where all of this post kind of came from, whilst
looking through my folders I found two writing documents with emails on from
someone that had contacted me about a year and a half ago. We emailed quite a
few times but you know it’s a bit strange when you don’t know who the person is
– you question whether they’re who they say they are, is it actually someone
you know that’s lying to you, how do you trust them when you don’t have a face
to go on. And even when you do have a photograph what’s to say it hasn’t been
stolen. I know why I’m personally so worried about this but with these emails I
just let them slowly stop. I hate it but I couldn’t push it from my mind that
it was someone I knew that was just messing with me… or worse someone that I
didn’t know that was trying to get into my head. I don’t know, maybe I’m
sounding paranoid but how do you truly know when you’re hidden behind a
computer screen. My parents always told me not to talk to strangers which in a
way is what made me do it – I like to believe that I’m not stupid enough to
just meet up with someone that I don’t know though. That is our generation
though, we have tumblr, we have chatrooms, twitter, facebook, all these mediums
in which we can easily to talk to others that we don’t know about interests
that we share.
I don’t know, just rereading these emails made me rethink
things. Maybe I escaped something there by ignoring the emails in the end or
maybe I ruined what could’ve been an interesting friendship. I guess I’ll never
truly know. I know you shouldn’t regret things, everything happens for a reason
I suppose but it makes you think when you assess a situation and think ‘what
if?’. I regret not having a closer relationship with my grandpa, I regret not
having kept going for teas on Wednesdays for fish and chips, I regret Dom and I
growing apart as well as other friendships from college seeming to fade, I regret
not pushing myself harder for my A-Levels, I regret not making the most of
school and college and the friendships whilst they were still there. As I
consider the outcomes of these events though I find that I have gained new
friendships through some of these terrible circumstances and I have grown
closer to other family members as to not have the distance happen again –
without wanting to sound like a cliché, without the bad I wouldn’t have those
certain little good things in my life.
If anyone actually made it through all of that then I salute
you, it’s not often that I just sit down and mindlessly babble onto a word
document. I guess certain conversations, mindsets and a lack of internet make
you think. I doubt I’ll reread this or edit it so it shall be posted as it is,
mistakes and all.
‘The boat
bobbed up and down calmly in the clear water. Faintly I could hear people
speaking in so many different languages whether it be English, Turkish or maybe
even German - but I never really took in any of their conversations as I stared
down at what looked like a whole other world. Honestly I was happier to stay on
the boat than go ashore so I sat with my legs up on the side board with the sun
burning down on me with such an intense heat. The natural light reflected off
of the surface of the sea and made the water seem like it was glittering;
everything about the country seemed to be filled with temptation. It was like
God was testing me, seeing if I’d reach for the forbidden fruit and leap from
the hot metal bars into the cool ocean. I sang a song softly to myself as a
smaller motor boat pulled up alongside ours. Everything was just so tranquil;
the fairytale mountains nearby, the flashes of colour as fish swam in schools,
the fresh sea breeze that whipped and knotted my hair. Honestly, I had wished
to miss the trip before but in that moment I was glad that I had come along.’
