This Is Me.......

Something amazing will happen tomorrow. Something so profound and earth shattering that it could actually tip the axis of the Earth by 10%, so we all fall screaming off the world and into the cold, empty blackness of space, never to be heard from again. And when mystical and benign archaeological aliens visit our silent and lonely planet hundreds of years later, all that they will find to document our entire existence will be a Miley Cyrus CD playing on continuous loop as someone didn’t get a chance to turn it off before they fell off the world. Well, you wouldn’t, would you? And then the aliens will then nuke the planet from orbit, as it’s the only way to be sure.

Er, where was I?

Oh yeah, this amazing thing.

My blog turns one year old tomorrow.

A magnificent achievement, do you not think?

Well I do.

Now some of you will have been with me from the start as I took my first few faltering steps into the world of blogging, very much like a new born lamb learning to take its first few steps, not having a clue what it was doing and quite possibly defecating on itself every 20 minutes. Some of you stayed, many of you buggered off when you realised that it actually doesn’t get any better than this, but I know who the hardcore faithful are, and as always, I am blessed by you all.

But I have also picked up many new readers as well, and for many of you, all you know of me is from whatever blog entry you started from, so you may have missed anything relating to my background and who I am.

So, to get all you lovely new people up to speed, I thought I would write up a personal CV for you all, just so you get an idea of the man behind the words (for those of you who can’t be arsed to read all the way through this, I can give you the abridged version. Dan=TWAT)

Dan

Some shithole called Romford

Tel: 017- Yeah, right!

Email: IknowthatifIgiveyouthislotsofladieswillstartstalkingme@gmail.com

Personal Profile
I am a narcissistic cynical bastard who literally hates around about 99.9% of the human race. Chances are that if you are standing there talking to me, my face will probably look like it’s interested in what you are saying. I will be making all the right notions, nodding, smiling, making the “Hmmmmmn, good point” noise when its needed, all that kind of jazz, but in reality, in the centre of my mind, I am probably thinking of the best way to kill you. That is not a joke, I am fantasying about murdering you. But please, tell me how your day was.

I don’t know why most people annoy me. It could be the fact that I am getting older, or it could be the fact that most of the world is populated by idiots whose sole purpose it seems it to get in my face, make a really high pitched annoying sound, and then astound me with their own stupidity. It has resulted in a form of Tourettes where I have no qualms about swearing at complete strangers when they do this, and will more than likely get me beaten up very severely one day by a big man with a tattoo which reads: Mother. In many respects, I will probably deserve it when it happens.

But I can be quite nice as well. I have a slight sentimental streak that can sometimes be evident in my writing, so in between the bitterness and bile, these small nuggets of sweetness make me feel like less of a grumpy dickhead.

As you may have gathered from my last blog entry, I am a bit directionless and don’t really know what I am doing with my life, but to be honest, that is probably the same as you right now who is reading these words with your own very two eyeballs. So we are the same, you and I. You poor, poor bastard.

Key Skills and Achievements
· I am an amazing writer who can create sentences so brilliant that they could probably make you black out from their power.
· I am an expert liar.
· I once ate a whole packet of milk chocolate digestive biscuits on my own and felt strangely proud afterwards.
· I have a sense of humour that is often called “Dry” and can normally result in people never knowing if I am being serious or not. I like this.
· I can geek out quite often. I am comfortable with this.
· I can decide within 30 seconds of meeting you if I am going to like you or not.

Life and Employment History

Boyfriend to Kates, All over the place 2004- Present Day
· Kates is an OCD mentalist who has no control over her emotions and can explode with the ferocity of a volcano in a bad mood. I am a repressed, emotionless male who can only express himself through anger and quiet rage and finds it almost impossible to connect with most people. In many ways we are the ideal couple. We balance out each other’s crazy until we actually resemble “normal” people. I am lucky to have her. I can’t quite say that I could reverse that statement.
· My duties include offering sage and excellent advice that will always be ignored, providing genuine and heartfelt comments to combat insecurities that will also be ignored, arranging curries to be brought to wherever we are, being an emotional support, making Kates laugh after a shit day (either with or without clothes on, normally laughter increases without clothing), hugs, perplexing her with my many flaws and strange behaviours, owning a beard because Kates told me she likes it, being a mystery to her even after six years of being together, trying to be a better man.
· This is a full time position, it can be very hard work, but the rewards are limitless.

Cat owner to Dotty, Romford 2006- Present Day
· Dotty is my cat who I live with (man that makes me sound gay) and who is probably about as hard work as my girlfriend, if not more.
· My duties include feeding, cleaning out the litter tray, feeding, being a Dan shaped cushion for her to lie on at night, feeding, object of fun, feeding, thing to stare at, normally at around four in the morning, which will then result in feeding.
· It is very hard having two demanding women in your life.

Employment Advisor, London 2010- Present Day
· My current job and the only thing that I have done work wise that I actually enjoy and think I am any good at. That’s all I have to say on the matter.

Bank Bloke, London 2006- 2009
· My worst ever job, working for one of the UK’s largest banks. No word of a lie, this job very nearly resulted in my losing my mind and health. It’s very hard to get fired up about something you have zero interest in. I quit one day, just took off my tie and walked out with Simple Mind’s Don’t you forget about me playing in my head. It was the coolest thing I had ever done. I was then out of work for seven months, which resulted in it being the stupidest thing I have ever done.
· My duties included staring at clients as they babbled compete bullshit to me over the reason why they were overdrawn, and then wondering how many years I would get inside if I just leant over and smashed them over the head with my PC monitor, feigning fake enthusiasm when the newest interest rates were released and how I was going to apply them to whatever product I was selling, thinking of ways in which I could end my own life.
· I didn’t like that job very much

Hobbies and interests

I love to write. It is the only thing I feel that I’m any good at. Don’t get me wrong, I know I’m not brilliant, but I know out of all the things I can do, writing is what I am best at (to be honest though, seeing as how some of the others things I can do consists of reciting all the lyrics to Rupert and the frog chorus, insulting people, and telling you who directed what film and the year it was released, the writing thing probably isn’t the boldest claim in the world).

I love football and support West Ham, the team the fits my psychological profile perfectly, and I actually met Kates through them, so that’s even more a reason to like them.

So that was a brief little potted history of me. Please feel free to ask any questions that you want and I will try and answer them.

And on a final note, after one year of doing this, I would like to say a massive thank you to anyone who has signed up (and even left), given advice, left nice comments (of which I am shit at replying to lately, please don’t think they are being ignored), and just generally made this whole experience the fun that it has been. It would be very lonely and pointless writing a blog if there weren’t people like you out there reading. So thank you.

Existential Crisis In Romford......

Alright? Been awhile, hasn’t it?

During my brief hiatus from blogging, quite recently I have had a nagging thought buzzing around in my head like a pissed up bluebottle.

This nagging thought has been flaring up in my mindscape during really odd moments. It’s happened when I’ve been lying in bed at night, trying to sleep, when I’m walking home after a long day at work, and when I've been staring, brain-dead with drool hanging from my bottom lip, at the rows of food in Tesco’s trying to fire up my tired mind into deciding what to buy for dinner that night.

Do you want to know what that thought is?

Actually, probably not. But it wouldn’t be much of a blog post if I didn’t tell you, so here goes.

I have absolutely no idea who I am.

Now this rather profound, and dare I say it, little bit pretentious thought could be the result of two things.

1) It could be due to the fact that it’s my birthday in a few weeks time; so it is purely the natural response to being another year older and still being in exactly the same position in life as to where I was when I was 21.

2) Or it could be the early onset of Alzheimer’s

And seeing as at this precise moment in time I still have most of my marbles rattling around freely in my head (though I did find myself standing in my living room last Wednesday, stark bullock naked bar one black sock, and not having any clue what I was doing or why I had entered the room), my guess for the cause of this thought is purely on number 1.

You can kind of get a good angle on where you a positioned in life from the greeting that is printed on the front of your birthday card. So at the moment my position in life is boyfriend. Something that I am not displeased with, mind you.

I’m not a husband, a son, an uncle, a father, nor a brother. So is that really enough for me? Is that where I should be at the age of 32? Shouldn’t I be more by now than just “Boyfriend”?

Though saying that, if Hallmark suddenly started making a card with a pure white front and the single word TWAT printed dead centre, then I would definitely be getting that mailed through my letterbox. I wouldn’t be able to leave the house due to the huge pile that would arrive every morning and not just be confined to birthdays and special occasions.

I could live with that.

I remember when I was at my primary school and it was in my last week of being there before I left to join secondary school. I was sitting on some steps with my best friend Stephen O’Brian, and a strange, almost melancholy feeling was coming over the pair of us. I know, mental, isn’t it? Two ten year old boys feeling melancholy. The only thing I should have been melancholy about was why I never got picked for kiss chase. But melancholy we were.

“I can’t believe we are leaving in a week,” Stephen said to me.

“I know. I can’t believe I’m 11 in a few months,” I replied. And we both shook our heads at how life can pass you by so quickly.

We were ten!

And yet at all the landmark ages in life, this feeling of everything slipping by too quickly has always plagued me.

When I turned 18, I was sat in the pub with my friends, celebrating my ascent into manhood, and it scared me. Things were slowly revving up and adulthood was just on the horizon. Looking back now that I am in my 30’s, it amazes me that I couldn’t just enjoy just being really, and I mean, really young, rather than worry about what was coming up. But I have always had this fear that I wouldn’t amount to much and just screw everything up, because that’s just simply what I do. I know that I will probably look back to my 30’s when I’m an ancient and decrepit 40 year old husk of a man and think they were the best years of my life.

My mind is wrong, I know.

Admittedly the only thing I can remember about the next landmark age reached, the grand old age of 21, was having a four hour conversation with a lampshade. How and why I was having a four hour conversation with a lampshade is probably not something I should go into now. But I did. And it was weird.

But when I turned 21, there was one set of digits to me that signified getting older, and that figure was the age of 25. I don’t know why, but to me that was old.

25 wasn’t just being a young person anymore. 25 was crossing the threshold into something else. It was that slipping and sliding sensation of being at the top of something huge, and then hurtling all the way down with no way of stopping yourself.

And do you know what, I was only bloody right.

25, 26, 27, 28, 29. All of them past me by in a blur, each year getting shorter and shorter, until one day, when I woke up and found out that I was 30, it was then that I realised that I really hate being right all the time. My alarm went off that day and I just stared at it and mouthed the word: bollocks.

Now I know everyone hates the thought of getting older, but I’ve always assumed that for most people, the passage of time always comes along with progression as well. You change as a person and your lifestyle changes with it. You get married, you have children, you start up your own families, and then set out on the same adventure that your parents did when they were your age.

I haven’t done any of that.

I’m still the same as I was when I was 21 (minus the inclination that having a deep and meaningful with a lampshade was a rather brilliant idea). I’ve never married. I’m childless. I have no family of my own to speak of. And I also have no urge for any of them right now either.

Is that right?

Now I’m not saying I never want them, but at this present moment in time, I have no desire for them either. And yet I feel this tremendous pressure that I should at least be considering them. I’m getting older, that’s a given fact (plus I have been pissing and moaning about for the last 20 minutes, if you haven’t noticed?). Next year I will be at exactly the same age as my dad when he had me. By then he was married to my mum, had a mortgage, and wasn’t some stupid twat with a beard like me.

He was an adult.

And a much better one that I will ever be.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that I don’t want to be lying on my deathbed when I’m old and wrinkly and have any major regrets about wasted opportunities.

What I would like to be doing, when lying all wrinkly and old on my deathbed, is to be wearing a skin-tight white sparkly catsuit that is slashed to the navel revealing wiry man hair, coupled with huge 15 inch platform shoes, simply because I think that would be a rather cool and befitting way to remember me by.

But I digress.

I know you have to take things at your own time, but surely I’m not alone in feeling this pressure to be moulding myself into something that I’m clearly not quite ready for just yet?

Well, I’m throwing it over to you dear reader. What’s your experience of this? And am I alone in what I’m feeling?

And who else thinks the catsuit thing rocks?

Oh, it’s good to see you again by the way. I’ve missed you.