From Here Onwards

I used to write one of these at every turn of the year, but it got a little exhausting talking about the past and the future at intervals where my life saw little change. Last year, I… did nothing, and this year I shall… hopefully do things! It began to feel like empty words. So, as we’re twenty days into January, please feel free to take this as a hint that this is not a scheduled yearly blog post, but one that I’m writing because I actually have things to say.

I’ve spent a lot of my twenties beating myself up about the state of my life. I grew up with grandiose ideas about becoming a world famous story teller who’d change the way people thought about the world! Fast forward to last year, when I’m sitting through a faculty meeting at work, listening to my boss tell us that we wouldn’t realistically be working here if part of us didn’t enjoy the work. No, I think, I’m working here because I’m trapped within my own limitations and only my friends here keep me sane. I still work there. I recently had an attendance review meeting because I took four unpaid days off in four months for being curled up in bed with the flu. It’s going real well.

So how come I’m not a world famous story teller? Well, I have a few theories about that (sans the world famous part). And this year… well, starting from the end of last year, because I wasn’t waiting for an arbitrary New Year’s Resolution before changing my life… this year I’m following up on my theories. For starters, I’m seeing someone about ADHD. I have nothing to share yet, so don’t assume I have it – there are people in my life who certainly don’t think I do – but personally, it’d go a long way to explaining why I have such difficulty not just with sticking to a single idea long enough to see it through, but also with plenty of every day problems in real life. Speaking of which, I’m also starting an online CBT course thing for anxiety! I won’t get into oversharing, but I think that a lot of my issues in life come from a generalised variety of anxiety, and so far it would seem that doctors agree.

So I’m not promising to write a novel this year, because I tried brute forcing that last year and I got four chapters into my first draft before having a crisis of confidence and binning the thing. But I am promising to work on myself. If ADHD and anxiety aren’t the issue, something else is, I know that much by now. I’ve barely dipped my toe into figuring this stuff out but I already feel more confident for the small scraps of validation that my investigations have brought me so far. Maybe I’m not just shit. Maybe I’m facing some real obstacles. Maybe I always have.

On a lighter note, another thing I want to do in 2023 is read more books! I’ve become super engrossed in comic books these last few years, so it’s not that I’ve not been reading exactly, but on the novel front, I’ve been mired seven books into the Wheel of Time series for some months now. Unfortunately, this fantasy epic becomes a notorious slog for the middle three books, and in my stubbornness to not give up I’ve ended up forsaking almost everything else. Last year, I read four books, two of them Wheel of Time novels. (The other two were Good Omens and Sylvanas, a World of Warcraft tie-in novel. Both are excellent.) This year, my aim is to read 15 books by the end of the year, which may not sound difficult to you, but… remember the possible-ADHD thing? I use Audible nowadays to listen to books on the way to work, as I have a tough time keeping my attention on the real physical deal. Unfortunately, Audible only gives out 12 book tokens over the course of a year, so 15 books may actually be an issue! Ah well. I’ll figure it out.

Thanks for reading. I hope your 2023 proves as fruitful as mine is planning to be. I’m considering changing the name of this blog from Perpetually Perturbed to The Tombstone Project, after the real-time memoirs project that every blog post here contributes to. What do you think? Let me know!

Happy New Year

So at the beginning of every year I like to make a blog post covering a retrospective of the last year, or a target for the next year. First, though, I should probably address the fact that I’ve not written or published anything here since July. This is for a few reasons.

First of all, I’ll mention that I do run a gaming blog, where I’ve published four (and a half) posts between July and now, including a recent 3.5k post about my top 10 games of the year. So technically I have been blogging, but not in a fashion that’s relevant to this particular space. Gaming is easier to write about because it’s a hobby and it’s what I know. And I’ve actually done a lot of it in the past year. Unlike writing.

Additionally, I did write a blog post for this space at the beginning of the December. A very detailed, very pragmatically written account of grief that I put a lot of work into and was very proud of. After much consideration and reflection, however, I decided that this was ultimately too personal to publish as a public piece and sent it to some friends instead.

2017 also saw me pick up my second job. With the two jobs combined I work 29 hours a week, mostly as split shifts and at one point, often without a day off throughout the week. This is fine, but it’s not a lifestyle that encourages the pursuing of personal projects in my downtime. When I have free time, I want to be gaming. I still love writing, but it’s ultimately a difficult and productive activity which detracts further from any relaxation. (Suck it up, right? Sure.)

But the biggest contributor to the emptiness on this page is motivation. It’s probably also the most boring thing to read about, so I apologise, but I’ll be attempting to go into detail here.

Throughout the years my motivation to write and produce content has been running at an increasingly lower ebb. This isn’t because I don’t enjoy it, but because – as well as the reason of busyness above – a sort of pit of cynicism and disillusionment grows within me with each passing day. Actively I stray from it, guiding myself to continue believing in things and enjoying events like Christmas and so on. But passively, as a default, I find myself having a hard time bothering to produce content because of a combination of prior failures and the sheer amount of people like me making content and going unrecognised by the world. I tell myself that talent rises to the forefront of creative industries, but then I find low quality content dominating the mainstream while anything thought-provoking or legitimately engaging is buried under a sea of neglected media. In this day and age it’s impossible to tell whether you’re somebody with talent who’s work has never been acknowledged, or another of the mediocre millions who waste their time giving themselves to thin air before finally falling silent.

So why bother when I could find guaranteed gratification in hobbies instead?

Nothing really happened in 2017. I got a new job. I enjoyed my hobbies. I got angry at politicians. I met nobody life-changing. I don’t particularly feel like doing a reflective blog post due to the alarming stagnation of my life. I don’t have a resolution for 2018. I don’t really want to think about it.

Happy New Year.

2016 in Retrospect – Change

I find that change, in retrospect, brings out the most emotion in me. Whether it’s the loss of friends or the beginning of some new era of my life, I’m always struck by the ever-changing nature of life, and how, through tragedy and comedy, the world is ushered into new chapters and can never be the same as it once was. And I used to find that horrifying, but now, I find it quite the opposite. But, to be less vague and emotional:

At the beginning of this year, I acknowledged how it would be a defining year for me, as it’d mark the end of my time at University and, somewhat alarmingly to me at the time, was going to force me out into the “real world” in pursuit of a job. Which, yeah, I should definitely have gotten before leaving uni, but that’s a self-criticism for another time. My New Year’s Resolution for 2016 was ‘Actualization’, meaning… well, I’ll let last year’s blog post speak for itself:

I will write my dissertation. I will finish my degree. I will find a job and I will live with it and in it. I will write fiction, and I will work on a story, and I will learn to live outside of my comfort zone even if that currently scares me in irrational volumes. I have spent twenty years of my life hanging back, for multitudes of reasons, and it’s time to stop. And just saying it won’t make it any easier, or make me any less likely to fail. But it’s time to start trying to try.

I’m delighted to say that I managed to achieve this, for the most part. I most certainly finished my dissertation. I graduated University with a 2:1 in Creative Writing. And I’ve got myself a job that I actually enjoy going to, and that I’m pretty good at… or, so I like to think. Of course, I’ve not written or published any fictional works, and I’m certainly not financially independent. But this is a blog post for looking back on 2016, and my (self-inflicted) descent into penniless hell is 2017’s demon to tackle.

2016 has personally been a mixed bag for me. On the one hand, I graduated, achieved elements of the previously mentioned actualization resolution, and actively developed as a person in regards to maturing into the adult world and learning to get shit done. (Not that I’m by any means perfect.) But I’ve also had low points; creative stagnancy and personal emotions have caused many gloomy days. I’ve said more goodbyes than I’d care to this year, either through circumstances of natural change or of my own volition. I’ve had to introduce elements of frustration and negativity into my life to keep my head above water in certain situations. And the future is as unknown and as frightening to me as it was at the end of 2015, a feeling I’d hoped to have conquered by the end of this year.

As far as the state of the world goes, I can’t say it’s been amazing. Democratic votes such as Brexit and Trump have been a sour note for me and my world views; the spread of hatred and violence appears not to have slowed one bit, and the prospects for next year are, to put it simply, glum. That being said, one should never count their politicians before they’ve declared war (sorry, that was awful), and you can never tell what the future will bring.

As for the so called Curse of 2016, I’ve been somewhat lucky in not knowing many of the celebrities who have passed away, though the recent loss of Carrie Fisher has been a personal note of sadness. What is getting me down is the irrationality of those who lean too heavily on the idea that 2016 is a year to escape from death; comments on Carrie Fisher’s health during her hospitalisation that claimed that we merely needed to make it to 2017 for her to be okay caused me to grit my teeth on many an occasion. It’s hard to put into words exactly what irritates me about this, but the general gist of it is that while it has most definitely been an unfortunate year regarding the frequency of famous deaths, the notion that it will simply cease in 2017 is highly irrational; these years, these groups of months only exist because we perceive them to, and to base your feelings and expectations around this is exactly the kind of ignorance that this world cannot afford to entertain right now. Anyone over the age of 40 can’t so much as cough now without social media making jibes about hiding them away and keeping them safe until the passing of the year, which I’d personally find somewhat offensive were these comments directed at me.

But hey, rant over. 2016 is (almost) a closed book, to be either shelved or stowed away in the attic and forgotten, depending on who you are. We’re mere hours away from a whole new year, and, human perspective or not, it’s always exciting and intriguing to try and predict just what kind of retrospective I’ll be writing a year from now.

Happy New Year. I’ll see you on January 1st.

(Sidenote: This evening I discovered the song Soon Soon by Tom Rosenthal which put me into the state of mind to write this blog post. It is a charming song with a beautiful music video, and I highly recommend it.)

New Year’s Resolve

It’s that time of the year where we all talk of how awful this year was and how everything will change in the next- wait, hang on a minute, we’ve done that one already. But viewpoints change over time, so we’ll truly start as we mean to continue:

Happy New Year! To some people, the turn of the year means nothing, but for the majority it’s a time of self-reflection and prospective planning. Last year I ragged on this a little bit, saying that people shouldn’t make themselves wait for the New Year before doing this, but in retrospect, anything that causes masses of people to find it within themselves to improve their lifestyle gets a thumbs up from me.

Last year, my New Year’s Resolution was to update my blog more frequently. In all honesty, I kind of forgot about this after a few months and it seemed that this place would forever be yet another writer’s abandoned project, doomed to the depths of WordPress save for the occasional, half-hearted polish. Resolutions are resolutions, however, because they’re a necessary improvement which nags at the back of our minds, and though I didn’t remember it to be a resolution as such, I came back on the 1st September announcing weekly blog posts across both my sites. So for once, I can actually say I achieved my goals! I don’t plan on halting the updates any time soon and I thank you all for reading my ramblings. To be honest, I’ve still only just started.

Personally, 2015 was a bit of a stagnant year for me. I didn’t really do anything new besides put effort into this blog, and I’m really not that much different of a person than I was the year before. It’s not exactly been a bad year (though it’s definitely had its lows), and it’s not been something I’ve disliked living in (apart from the aforementioned lows). If you wanted to call it a calm before the storm, then it’d be an overcast, chilly kind of calm.

2016… is going to be a decisive year for me. I finish my Creative Writing degree and finally have to face the world whether I like it or not. That may sound terribly cowardly, and it probably is, but it’s something that I’m going to have to deal with. I often remark that I still feel like a child at 20; well, if that’s the case, then it’s time to grow up and face responsibility. And when it comes to me, that is so, so much easier said than done. But facts are facts. If I’m the same person at the end of the year as I am at the start of it, then I’ll be in a very tough spot.

But that’s the thing, isn’t it? Whenever we wonder what we’ll be like exactly one year from now, we picture somebody who has grown in bounds, conquered fear and forged success; somebody who has become confident, found someone to live their life with, stepped outside their comfort zone and made the area outside it just as cozy. I envision this every year, and if you go back and read last year’s New Year’s blog posts, you may find them laced with that anticipation. And the troubling thought that crossed my mind is that, if you showed January, 2015 Kristian what January, 2016 Kristian was like, he’d lose all motivation and hope and consider the year a write-off.

On a less… morbid… note, I have here my new New Year’s Resolution, considering how splendidly the last one turned out! (Can’t believe I’m writing that without sarcasm.) After pondering a few ideas that ranged from fortifying self-confidence to accepting responsibility to gaining independence, I decided to fence them all into one word. My New Year’s Resolution is simply this:

Actualization.

I will write my dissertation. I will finish my degree. I will find a job and I will live with it and in it. I will write fiction, and I will work on a story, and I will learn to live outside of my comfort zone even if that currently scares me in irrational volumes. I have spent twenty years of my life hanging back, for multitudes of reasons, and it’s time to stop. And just saying it won’t make it any easier, or make me any less likely to fail. But it’s time to start trying to try.

And if I make this public, then maybe it’ll just be too humiliating to allow myself to fail.

Okay, Here’s an *Actual* New Year’s Post

I fully expect to contradict the opinions I presented in my previous blog post “Turn of the Year”. But self-contradiction is fun, right?

So I, like everyone else, enjoy evaluating the previous year before stepping into the next. The only problem is I usually forget about everything that’s happened in the year and end up waffling for fifty paragraphs about the last three months or so. But I won’t exactly be doing that here, because, well, I’ve never really been all that personal on this blog. If I wanted to, I could write endless blog posts about what’s going on in my brain, but I know from experience that that’s a terrible idea for a plethora of reasons. I actually have loose plans to write a blog post on that, so look forward to that vague possibility!

So instead of giving you my life story, I’ll try to keep things relevant.

Whilst it’s true that I started my Creative Writing university course in September of 2013, 2014 has seen most of the action in that regard; the majority of my first year and the beginning of the second have, of course, occurred in the last twelve months. And it’s a positive! Being the only guy in my year / group / class / whatever can be a downer at times, but I definitely like the people on my course. My one flaw in that regard is that I’m nowhere near sociable enough to know them that well outside of uni. And on the subject of university, I’m currently lacking some direction on my current pieces of coursework, so that’s quite lame. But I’ve got the opportunity to study something I love, and I got a First in my first truly important piece of coursework, so I can hardly complain, right?

On the subject of positives, I became an Uncle this year! Twice! My step-sister introduced us to the ever-cheerful Molly in September, and just last week (yes, Christmas Eve) my other step-sister welcomed Chloe to the world! As cousins who are essentially the same age, I expect a lifelong rivalry of biblical proportions.

A bunch of other stuff has happened this year that hasn’t been quite so awesome. Some of it’s personal, some of it’s to do with the world (and I know everyone always says that past year sucked, but 2014 really has been quite miserable in world news), and all of it makes me want to exclaim “ugh” in a magical way which will resonate with every living human being and cause them to turn their heads and nod in a consolidatory show of empathy. (There is no reason for consolidatory to not be a word, damnit.) But, seeing as the world does not revolve around me (or you, or anyone really, you’re mad if you think it does) I’ll have to make do with my sporadic Twitter rants.

My New Year’s Resolution. I know we went over this in Turn of the Year, but whatever, it doesn’t hurt. My resolution is going to be linked to this blog. As I’m sure you’re aware if you follow my blog (<3), I don’t update this place very often. My average is maybe one post every month and a half or so. And the reason for this is I’m always trying to filter what I write about. I try to make sure that it isn’t about something that only a limited amount of readers have knowledge in, that it’s something I can write at least semi-professionally about, and that it isn’t too self-centered, as we’ve already talked about. This has led to my blog posts being about one of two things: society, or writing. Usually society. And considering I’ve never studied any form of sociology, I think it’s time to change that.

Starting January 1st, or whenever the hell I feel like it, I’ll be writing more blog posts about more types of things! About how I’ve inherited my sister’s love for cheese, or how Steven Moffat is both a good and terrible writer for Doctor Who, or how the webcomic Questionable Content is really very awesome. I want too write about why Eastenders is rubbish and how I just listened to an audiobook/adventure/thing (Dalek War) and it’s opened my eyes to a new way of storytelling. Would you stick with me if I decided to branch out and write about those things instead of just why humanity is a bit shit?

Anyway, New Year’s food beckons! I shall publish this and get back to you in 2015! Thank you for reading my blog! The only thing better than rambling to oneself is rambling to other people!

Turn of the Year

It’s that time of the year where we all talk of how awful this year was and how everything will change in the next year. But don’t worry, I’m not here to be jaded and cynical about how this great revelation seemingly happens every year.

No, what irks me is that people will hold off on making any big changes to their lives until the New Year. “The New Year is when I’m finally going to stop doing this and start doing that and everything will change.” And that’s brilliant! Go, you! Stop doing that thing! Start doing that other thing! Show those things who’s boss! Become Lord of the Things! But bad puns aside, did it have to wait until January 1st, 2015? And if you slip up and fail, are you going to condemn yourself to wait until January 1st, 2016 to try again?

I’m hardly the person to be ranting about motivation – <ethereal being of your choice> knows I could use some of that – but the amount of people in the world who seem to believe that dates are fixtures of life in which everything has to revolve around unnerve me. There is absolutely nothing wrong with beginning your Mind Reform on the 5th April. Go ahead and start your Physical Rejuvination on November 18th, if it suits you. Hell, you could even break your Listing in Rules of Three habit on October 31st, nobody will stop you. Do not wait for the right moment; take the moment for yourself.

Over the next few days on Facebook you’re likely to see someone saying “New Year, New Me”. And that’s absolutely fine. I, for one, would consider making a status on July 17th (or whenever the hell an epiphany feels like showing up) saying “New Friday, New Me”. The message behind the sentiment is the same, so why not try for something a little bit different?

Inevitably, you will also see people saying “Ugh, great, time for the ‘New Year, New Me’ bullshit.” And whilst this blog post isn’t specifically dealing with cynical/jaded mannerisms towards common ways of thinking (which, newsflash, become common ways of thinking themselves), I’d just like to take the time to point at those statuses and say this:

NO.

BAD STATUS.

YOU WILL STOP WITH THE SUPERIOR CYNICISM COMPLEX NOW, THANK YOU VERY MUCH.