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September 24th, 2008
12:00 pm - One more year.
So that's it, then. I can officially (according to the age/2+7 metric) no longer date teenagers. Not that I'd want to. Bloody teenagers. Wow, did I just say that? I am getting old...
While reason tells me I am only a day older than I was yesterday, it's hard not to get swept up in it. 26. What's that number all about? No longer in the 18-25 bracket. Mainly I feel guilt. I'm supposed to be a proper grown-up now, or something? Of course, I believe that the fact that I'm not is a signifier not of a personal flaw but of a cultural paradigm-shift towards a more leisurely, ludic, relaxed society. I'm a bit ahead of the curve on that one, but that's not in and of itself such a bad thing.
Mainly it's easier to feel guilt than it is to loudly complain "I'm not crazy! It's the rest of the world that's crazy!" There's plenty of cultural reinforcement of the idea that shifting from the spartan to the sybaritic is something to be resisted. But, y'know, fuck that shit. Growing up is supposed to engender in me some kind of work ethic, according to the rules, but really I can't look at the pretensions of authenticity and the glorification of graft without finding it completely absurd; both primitive and sinister. This isn't to say I promote laziness, but I do promote doing your own thing. An effort towards "being real" is laudable, but not when that effort is an obsession which comes with preconceived baggage of what 'real' actually means. Then it's just unhealthy.
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April 3rd, 2008
06:53 pm - Adventures in the savage south
The despair and panic that came down over the weekend continued through Monday, so much so that I was actually scared to get on the bus to Dundee. But not wanting to let Nathan down, since I see him so rarely now he's started teacher training in Aberystwyth and resolutely refuses to return to Aberdeen (can't say I blame him), I forced myself down to the bus station and went travelling.
The days in Alyth were characterised by not very much. Some watching TV, some trying and failing to fix my mum's computer problems (a document had 'somehow' reverted to a version from six weeks earlier), some playing with the dogs, some eating food, some reading and a lot of sleeping, which brought bizarre and disturbing dreams I'd rather forget. But I felt okay. I felt better than I had before the journey, and better than I have since I got back. That's something, I suppose.
A lot of my time was spent considering exactly what has caused this sudden despair. I think I overshot a bit and hit the motherlode, because I may just have figured out the cause of every problem I have in the world. It's complicated, private and requires a pretty much complete rendition of my life story, so I'm not going to post it here, but I have the problem. I've always thought that specifically identifying the problem was the hard part, and that finding the solution after that was easier, but that appears not to be so in this case. Nevertheless, it's an important step.
Today Nathan and I went into Dundee before I got my bus and he started driving back to Luton. After a scramble up the Law, we went for lunch. The sun was shining (I was shocked!) and it was a generally happy time. Then a few hours later, I got back here, and everything fell apart again.
I'd say more, but I do hate talking about myself (which is, I suspect, in fact related to the uberissue). Anyway, I'm back. Hi!
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February 16th, 2008
04:13 pm - Things that make me feel good.
First of all, profound apologies to anyone (really, anyone RL-like) if I've been acting a bit weird lately. Well, I act weird all the time, because I am weird, but this was weird in a bad way. Which my usual weirdness isn't. I hope? Anyway, yes, sorry. Normal happy bouncy Allan service will resume immediately.
There are several contributors to my recovery into awesomeness, and I will list some of these now.
![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) selen_aria looking after me and generally being made of win. ♥
- etail Therapy. I spent way more than I can afford on the new Prima Vocaloid from Zero G, which uses Yamaha's Vocaloid 2 engine (if you know Hatsune Miku and Kagamine Rin and Len, and let's face it you'd have to be as ignorant as me not to have heard of them, it's the same technology they use) and is basically a virtual soprano. Awesome! A little hard to use, though.
- Speaking of Hatsune Miku, this:-
Let's face it, that couldn't fail to make anyone happy.
- Getting the new Symphonika album today when the 200 copies that exist (and will ever exist) in the world are not supposed to be released until Monday.
- More Vocaloid goodness, Kagamine Rin singing Ievan Polkka (yes, the leekspin song: Though it's generally accepted that Miku is the new Loituma Girl, Rin sings it better).
Life is good.
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January 1st, 2008
08:19 am - Re-evaluating contradictions
I feel a good deal better now. I'm tempted to delete the completely over-the-top previous post, but I know you don't get as much drama as you'd like. You love it!
Now it's 2008, and no time to lose. Time to start re-evaluating my life.
Being of a somewhat rationalist (in the layman's sense of the word -- a term which incidentally I don't particularly like -- rather than the capital-R philosophical sense) persuasion, it's surprising that I am so fascinated by contradictions. I adore them and think they're rather unfairly maligned when they're described as unreasonable. Well, they are unreasonable, but that's only a bad thing if you consider reason to be unquestionably the center of the world.
One such contradiction in my life is exactly that fascination with contradictions despite being rationalist. Another contradiction to that rationalism is a tendency to romantic dreaming. And within my romantic life there is a further contradiction. The rationalist in me is fairly dismissive of astrology, but I know astrology and the astrological argot is a pretty accurate description of this contradiction.
When and where I was born, the Sun was in Libra, and other notable factors were the Moon in Sagittarius and the Ascendant in Taurus (and, given that the Ascendant was in Taurus, Venus was the ruling planet, and was in Virgo). The Libran aspect of course seeks balance and stability (and this may in fact be why I love contradictions so much, because they are inherently not one-sided) and the Taurean aspect rejects change. The Sagittarian aspect, however, lives for change, revels in it. The ruling planet being Venus, this in my life translates to an obsession with the romantic idea of 'forever' -- or perhaps "happily ever after" -- joined inextricably with a need to keep shaking things up, to keep finding new goals and moving on, brought by the Sagittarian aspect. I always associate that idea with my piratical ancestry. I am born of outlaw stock, and there is genuine pirate blood in my veins. I imagine that that side of my romantic ideals is attributable to that heritage.
Now that I think about it, this contradiction is a lot like the duality of the Chinese Taijitu -- the Yin and the Yang -- (about which I, of course, posted recently) so perhaps there is precedent for resolving that problem, or at least balancing out the two sides. I'm a Libra, I should be good at that ;D
What's hard is when the rationalist in me comes back up, demands that everything be questioned, well, rationally, and comes across this contradiction...
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November 18th, 2007
01:44 pm - Hello!
I am not (I hope) a bad drunk. I could be so much more of an arse than I am, so that's okay. What I am, though, is a terrible hungover. As with most people, I assume, hangovers really bring out the self-pity in me, as if I'm the only one in the world with problems, or at least the only important one. It gets worse though, because then I start to feel self-pity that I must be the only one in the world who feels that much self-pity, and that makes me an awful person. It's hilarious, really. Maybe it's just because hangovers aren't that frequent with me, because I never (even, I guess, including today) get them that bad - except if I've been in the remote vicinity of Lambrini, for some reason. Go figure.
Of course, the ritual of an eg²:Σb-1(n)ωiΔ followed by some fruit juice followed by a huge bottle of Irn-Bru made me feel so much better.
I fuzzily groped at consciousness this morning wondering if the pounding was in my head or from my neighbour's music. Turned out it was both, the music resonating in my skull. I managed to fall asleep again for a little while before the space right beneath my window was filled with a flood of hyperactive little shits darling little angels, shouting and jumping about. That seemed to last forever, but eventually they were subdued... by a fucking pipe band. Sunday mornings were not made for these things, and now I know how my mother (who would have been about my age at the time) felt when my brother and I would wake her up at some unholy hour on our weekend visits to the farm.
Sorry this is a totally 'me' entry. I try to avoid that, but what the hangover demands, the hangover gets.
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