The Boyfriend blog...

So I have a boyfriend. Gosh. Those of you who've followed my blogs may note with some joy (I would hope) that this is an amazing place for me to be in. I've moved from a socio-path wannabe to someone who has taken arguably the first step into a deeper relationship then mere friendship. So what should I say in this blog? Hoorah! It's happened and now my blog is over? Me thinkest not, and I should hope (lots of hope in this blog eh?) that you dear reader would agree.

The other day whilst having a great Christmas lunch with some friends one of them commented how he felt sorry that I wrote my blog. Not because I wrote so badly mind you, but because I seemed so confused and lost in the world. I question/ed everything. I seem to be uncertain of anything and always frantically, and enthusiastically trying to answer a very diverse range of topics that all center around my life. He went on to say that his life was sorted. He'd either answered or grown bored of trying to answer the major questions in his universe and was content. He felt sorry for me, and I felt sorry for him.

Yes his life is sorted in that very human way: Wife, house, car, dogs, and kids on the way. He has reached his career goal, and now is just saving up to finish off his life in comfort. I know I'm over-simplifying his world, and that I'm sure raising kids is perhaps the greatest science experiment of them all, but surely that can't just be it? I mean to reproduce is - and with India's population as an example - painfully easy. To raise good, decent kids, is tricky but with enough electro-shock therapy , do-able. But to stop thinking about life's little mysteries and why the sky is blue (don't care so don't share) is to me to give up on potentially finding more wonder in the universe.

I'm not religious by any stretch, but the more I learn about how bizarre and wonderful the human brain is, the more I want to experience. I don't want to be stuck in a reproductive dead-end (if you'll excuse the oxymoron). Once kids arrive the time for wonder about the simple things in life (and the simpler they are the more complex the answers it seems) ends, and the time of screaming and laughing and growing begins. Does one have time to think about why a certain perfume makes us feel horney whilst another leaves us thinking of mothers day?

Or perhaps I spend my timing thinking about these things to avoid thinking about other things? Is me, thinking about my thoughts, a waste in it's own right? I think I think there for I am I think? Why is my friend so sure that what he thinks is fine, whilst I challenge what I think all the time? Is he so happy with who he is and his place in the world that he doesn't need to think about it? Am I so unhappy in my place that I want to change it so much I have to constantly think about ways of doing that?

My answer to that is no. The other day I was sitting in a burger place eating a huge burger with my boyfriend (ha you wondered when I'd get around to actually talking about him). I'm a million miles away from all my close friends, it's raining, it's a Sunday afternoon, and I haven't slept much (I spent the night at his house, in his bed). I'm stiff (sex eight times in 16 hours or so), and the burger and beer is making me feel a little sick. I'm looking at this magnificent plain tree light against another black Jozi sky. And I felt for one brief moment that I was happy. I didn't know what I was feeling for a while. It was completeness. For a brief time the world vanished. I felt his warm hands in mine, and knew that I'd achieved something special.

I was pulled out of it a moment later but to me that must be what my friend feels. His world is complete. But does it last? Or will his world collapse when he's 50 and he runs off to prove that he's still got it? Because he didn't question himself, he just gave up when bliss arrived? The alternative is that bliss arrived because he stopped thinking and just lived it. So is too much thinking a bad thing?

In previous blogs I've written about not allowing oneself to talk oneself out of doing things just because one could. Well I still agree with this statement. But now I need to add to it:

Don't not do something because you think it won't work.

Sometimes you must resist doing anything to let it work.

Gosh what bad English. Even I'm not sure that's what I mean. But it's what I feel. I'm not going to think this one. I'm going to let my Boyfriend be. I'm going to be me. I'm going to go with the flow and see where we end up. I'm not going to blinker myself and deny what's happening, but I'm also not going to think and think and think about what to do and what not to do. I'm going to do what I feel I should do at the time. No holds barred.

I hope this works cause otherwise I'll look like a twit. So here's the thing: Do you do what you do because you think you should do it? Or because you didn't think you should do it, you FELT you should do it? I've never gone with the 'feeling' to do something. This will be a new experience for me...

Just a game...a new level of incompetence

Wow, two blogs in almost as many days. Well the first one was a serious one with serious implications which my wonderful friends have all taken the time to comment on, and comment on beautifully as usual. So now I want to turn to something a little less serious, for all it's seriousnessnessness... ness.

I play a game called Dungeons and Dragons. I've blogged about my frustrations with my players in Durban, and now I'm going to blog about it again, here in Johannesburg. Here is a game that I love playing because it's an interactive story telling exercise, and wonderful couple of hours of pretending to be in another world.

And yet I keep finding myself at odds with people I normally wouldn't be at odds with. In Durban it was players who used the rules to control my game. Up here it's players demanding that I read the rules so that I can control my game. Rules, rules, rules. And why don't I read the rules I hear you ask? Why not just pick up the 1000's of pages of rules and commit them to memory? Well... there are 100's of pages to start with. I've got the core mechanics down, but all the little extra bits...

Why is it that I don't care about the rules in this game, and yet others are so obsessed by them? To me, if something is dramatic then that is great. Forget if rule X says that I must multiply 3.4 by the number of orcs to get some kind of ratio to work out how much gold its got. But it leads me to ponder: Why don't I want to read the rules? The more these poor players demand that I read them, the less inclined I am. The more they complain about me not knowing the rules, the more I refuse to know the rules.

Why? It's got to the point now where things that were leant out in friendship are being returned, money owed repaid, and all ties of friendship seem to be breaking apart. For me this means fairly little. I'm old enough to know who my true friends are, and cynical enough to not care about new ones that don't last because there are always more. It's sad because these particular 'mates' I really felt I could be friends with outside of 'the game'. But that doesn't answer the question as to why this simple little thing - the rules of a make-believe game - can be so important to people.

And more importantly why I am so flatly refusing to learn them. I was trying to think about it this morning, and then again after squash this evening and the only thing I can think of is that I'm afraid that even after I learn all the rules I still won't make a good game master. Perhaps I am using the rules as a defense? I'm not very good because I don't know the rules... not I'm not very good because I'm just not very good. Know your level of incompetence a cameraman once told me.

He feels that everyone has levels of incompetence - the point you reach when you are no longer competent or capable at a given task. Is my level of of incompetence so low with regards to this game that I am ashamed of it? Is my level of incompetence as a story-teller low? Am I a bad storyteller? I cannot believe so, although I was told by someone that I am a better actor than a director or writer... was that a compliment to my acting, or a serious dig at me as a storyteller?

Perhaps I am? Perhaps I am not a very good storyteller, but a better performer? Is this a bad thing? Should this stop me from trying to be a good storyteller? Should I look at my career and move from behind the camera to in front of it? John Candy made a fortune as the fat man in all his films. So perhaps I should. But at what point does one stop trying to reach ones dreams and go in a different direction?

Do I dream of getting an Oscar for playing a mental wheelchair-bound apartheid victim? No, but I do enjoy playing the various roles in dungeons and dragons. Putting on an act. Showing off my many accents, and breathing life into my characters. God is that it? Is that really it? Am I a Quinton Tarantino? A wannabe actor who needs to write his own material in order to get into a film?

I'm not convinced of it as a totality. I want to write my various documentaries and films because I feel they are an amazing subject that deserve to be told and recorded. But perhaps I should look at moving into the other side of the screen. I do enjoy the sound of my own voice, I must admit. I like the way it sounds, how it modulates, and can, at a thought shift and convey a totally 'different' me. It's one of the few things about myself that I can actually say: Fuck, I'm good at that. Hmmm....

This is an interesting place I find myself in. Secretly I get a rush out of people being entertained by me. I think I've even blogged about it before, but perhaps that is really where I want to be? Or is it simply an easier route? I think it is immeasurably easier to act than to write/direct/edit a film. Am I just trying to bow out? Again I don't think so. Have I been using my D&D groups all these years as captive audiences to my performance? No wonder they - most of them - got tired and frustrated. The Actor does not need to know the rules! The Actor must simply Act. Everyone else must just watch. That may be painting too heavy a portrait of my game, but I think it paints a fairly complete one.

So now that I need to question my career and start to look at moving outside of my world, I ask you reader - are you following your true calling or are you simply playing to a different captive audience? Begs a thought doesn't it?

Relationships...and other things

What is it that pulls two people together? And what is it that pulls them apart? When I think of the millions of people who are married (happily or otherwise) I wonder how they did it? How did they find people they could be compatible with? When I look at people I am attracted to - physically - I actually don't want the mind. I want that person for sex. I want to touch their body, rub up against it, and be fucked by it. Afterwards I want them to go home. I don't want them to sms me a thousand times, I don't want long phone conversations about nothing. I just want sex.

Then when I look at people I'd want to live with, to share my life with there is no single person I've met thus far that I would say: Forever till the day I die. Am I simply too self centered? Too specific in what I want? I know the word before I even try to spell it - narcissistic. I want myself. Except thin. I want someone who is funny, who reads Terry Pratchett, who loves Jean-Luc, thinks the last three star wars films were crap, finds it amusing to talk in funny accents... who is British by pretense and upbringing not by nationality. I want me.

Except why do I have such low self worth? It's getting better and better as time progresses, I think I'm learning not to care too much about things and how people see me. I think also that every time I take a knock to my ego, my temper flares. And I feel stupid, so terribly stupid at the same time. So why do I want me? And is it so bizarre that this is the case?

I don't know. When I look at my wonderful friends, each one of them possess some aspect that I want and take joy in and have fun with. Some are adventurous, some are comical, some are serious, others are fools. Some are creative geniuses, others are amazed and awed by simple things. If I could take each aspect from them, and build a human from it, that's the person I would want to spend the rest of my life with.

Does this make me a terrible person? So self absorbed that I can't look beyond myself? Am I so arrogant that I am perfect that I think of others as unworthy? I don't think so. I don't know. I don't want someone who compliments me. Someone who is quiet, reliable, hard-working, clever, who'll laugh at my jokes. I want someone who will stand up for themselves, argue, fight, laugh because it's funny, and then make a counter joke. I want an equal in design, not status.

Do I want a fat person? Or a large person as some people so kindly call me? I don't care. I'll have sex with the pretty boys, but will have a life partner with the One. So how is it that others don't seem to have this self desire? Surely what others strive for is what they want in their partners? I don't want a partner who is not creatively wild. I don't want a partner who doesn't obsess over their job. I don't want a partner who doesn't 'get' Monty P, or laugh at a Terry Pratchett. I'm not saying I want a partner who is in the film industry etc. Although that would be nice.

It would make things easy. And perhaps there is my true issue? Am I looking for the easy way out instead of the hard, making it work, route? Is it better to find it difficult to love someone than to find someone who is easy to love?

I think this is an interesting thought experiment for everyone to do. Get your pencils ready:

What would happen if I met myself?

Well I'd look him up and down and knock him off as some kind of gay creative who doesn't work out at all. Probably lazy. Then when he starts to speak I'd get a little buzz. Surely there are not that many people who know so much about so many irrelevant things? How could anyone be so passionate about some woman in the boer war? And now he's making stupid sarcastic jokes which are fairly amusing. But he's stubborn. God how stubborn. And he manipulates the crowds. Gets them thinking about other things whilst he makes decisions that benefit himself first... Hmmm... we shall fight over that. What is he doing now? Drawing? Writing? Making something. We could do that together... since we're both fairly good at it.

Although I might clash with myself in terms of leadership, proved that we both had enough savvy to talk about it - which I think we would - it could be shared. A united leadership is a strong leadership. What we couldn't do! Create, write, make, forge...

But I see my friends all trying to marry not themselves, but people who need something from them. Need support, need protection, need money, need to dominate. When I think about all the married relationships I know of, not one of them was equal. My grandparents used to have a power struggle with my grandfather always bowing down. My parents had the same problem, except my father refused to bow down to my grandmother (odd that isn't it, and she could never understand why).

Is that truly what love is then? The finding of someone whom you can 'use' to fill your need? A need to be relied upon? A need to go around helping? Why do people not marry because of a common desire? A common objective?

Again therein lies perhaps my downfall - why a common objective? Why can't people just marry because they want to? Why must there be some useful product at the end? Why must I find someone who will help me and I can help with in creating a painting or writing a play? Why should I not just be happy with someone who likes it when I write, will offer a bit of advice from a distance, but is busy clipping the begonia's?

My therapist once asked me why I am always so busy. At the time we decided it was because I was using as an ego boost, as a way of avoiding things that needed to be dealt with. I think he was right at that time, and I still think I do to a large degree do that, but as my patient boss keeps pointing out, I have to learn to not take on so much. Which I am doing thanks to him. But I still like to do things. A lazy Sunday with nothing to do? I don't really remember ever having one. I'm always doing something because I enjoy it.

Why write this blog? Because I enjoy it. And also it opens up my thoughts, gives me pause for thought as it were. And maybe it might help someone one day? Who knows.

So am I just a selfish, self absorbed arsehole who really just deserves to wank in a corner until I'm dead? Or am I simply too complex a person to manage to find the need for someone else in my world and so place such high demands on that someone that they can't exist? Or am I simply afraid of a relationship, and so use high standards? I don't know. If this was a film I'd have to learn to just live and let things flow, to stop thinking about them, and just go... but I know how those things are written, and I also know that I can't do that. It's not who I am.

Oh well reader, it is an interesting question I feel. One that I shall ponder for some time to come.

Ps. I just want to thank all of you wonderful people for putting up with all this crap over the last year. You have no idea how much it really has helped me. I really mean it. Thanks guys.

Can I please find a sexual partner who:

So far I have had a few sexual partners who:

Are charming, good looking, and on first dates end up naked in my bed. Who smell nice, have beautiful bodies, talk far less than I do, and who don't mind me worshiping their flesh. Who are timid and shy but who've I've forced into making the first move because I'm too damned self depreciating. Who are polite, don't drink nearly as much coffee (milk) as I do. Who are by nature either naturally fit or who volunteer to go to a gym (regularly). Who take my clothes off first, and then let me take their clothes of, slowly, and with romantic intent (of a half starved sexual maniac). Who, on the face of it, are really nice people, and who, when you dig a bit deeper are normal human beings. Who are not nearly as bizarre, odd, weird, nerdish, geekish, or British as I am.

In short I have as yet to sleep with anyone that I have not found totally attractive. Sadly I have as yet to sleep with anyone... at all if one goes by the traditional notions of sexual activity: Foreplay, rigorous intercourse, and then climatic moaning, followed by an awkward moment of what to do with the resultant juices. I've had everything except the last two.

Now I have a growing fear that I may never personally experience them. I'm not sure. I've just spent the last hour rubbing, sucking, pulling, and dare I say it, licking a relative stranger. And yet I'm comfortable with this. I however do not seem to be able to reach a climax. Although my partners before this one were never really interested in me achieving that, this one (tonight) was. OK, granted I'd released earlier in the day, and I realize that I may not have the stamina I once had, but it was a non-event tonight. Not that he achieved anything else either, he was in a rush. Supposidly coming back next weekend.

But he's given me a list of things that need to be done:

1 - I need to sleep more. I thought 7 - 8 hours a night was good. Apparently I may need deeper sleep. I shall look into not consuming coffee 4 hours before bedtime. But what does that leave me with? Horlicks?

2 - I need to shave. Now shaving has always been a sore point for me. Literally and figuratively. I don't like doing it because it takes up a lot of time, and to be honest I've never been able to tell if I look better with, or without a beard. It is a scraggly thing reminiscent of a fat fifty year old lesbians bush I will admit but I think it gives me a certain... maturity. And yes I hear Professor Mature screaming here. OK, so I'll shave. It'll grow back.

3 - I need a bedside lamp. This one I whole-heartedly agree with. The light in my room is insufferably half a meter too far for me to reach from my bed, especially when I have a mouth attached to my penis. So a lamp it is.

4 - I need to eat healthy food. Well I don't eat unhealthy food - as in poisonous, rotten, or contaminated, that should count? Towards the calories it would seem. OK, so just what is healthy? And more importantly can I simply put healthy into the microwave for 3 minutes and then eat it? If not, it's a waste of my time.

5 - I need to go to gym. I know I do. But it's going to eat into my time. Stop fucking grinning, I can see it from here.

Time. OK, I get it. No time for shaving, eating healthy, exercise, and orgasming. So what is so important about the time I do have? What is so important that I want to spend all my time on stuff that has none of the above benefits?

Computer games. I log onto the net the moment I get home. I look at porn sometimes. But mostly I play games. It's social - kinda. I play with some people whom I know where they live in the world, I know their online names, and sometimes their real names. I know that I have to heal them, and that each night we need to run into a dungeon to find levers to pull to open doors to kill monsters to get the treasure to buy armour and stuff to go into dungeons to find leavers...

I have a headache already. WHY?

Well on the surface it gives me a wonderful sense of minor satisfaction. I walk away to my bed thinking - so tomorrow I can run into a dungeon to pull a level etc. so I can go up a level to run into bigger dungeons to pull bigger levers... WTF is wrong with me?

Surely it makes sense to focus all that energy - about five hours a day - on solving some real world problems? Surely the real game is more important than a fake one that counts for nothing but time wasting? How is this in any way legal? It's worse than drugs or alcohol. At least those impair your thinking. Online gaming is purely voluntary with social peer pressure from across the globe as loud as the speakers that get plugged into the computer.

I know why. It's easier. In the space of a month or two I can become an all powerful, fear me, shit hot Cleric capable of healing all those other all powerful, fear me, shit hot clerics/fighters/thieves/wizards. In a couple of months at the gym I might loose a few centimeters, I may build a little muscle, but the gut, the man-boobs, and the other flabby bits will still be there.

It's going to take years... being a cleric is easy, and when I don't get it right, or we all die in a dungeon I can just log off and go masturbate. My boss would take a dim view of me if every time after a meeting went badly with a client I did the same, I'm sure. "Where's he going?" "Oh... he failed the meeting, the monster won." "Ah...bathroom?" "Yup." Smirks all around and then an avoidance of any substances on the ceiling in the bathroom for a week (as opposed to them touching substances on the fucking ceiling, what crap am I writing here? And why the fuck are you reading it?).

Today is the 1st of November 2009. I shall not see another one, hopefully. I don't want to make one of those: Tomorrow is the first day of the rest of my life statements. It is a day, it's the first 2nd of November 2009 of my life. I don't make those statements because I very seldom keep them. There have been a few - this year I will get a car. I will have sex before I'm 30... oh shit. I've got 350 odd days left to finish that one off (technically). So what I'm going to say is that I am going to try to shift my focus from time spent on easy and 'cheap' victories, to time spent on some real world issues.

However this does not mean that I abandon all those activities that distract me from the world. Fantasy is part of who I am, and I believe that I need to spend time totally absorbed in another place to actually function in this one. I am not Vulcan - to use a fantastical character as way of describing a real world personality. So I'm going to now take time for myself... in a personal way. That of grooming and personal health.

This leads me to wonder about how others perceive me in terms of personal grooming, and I'm amazed I've had as many sexual encounters as I've had. It also may answer one or two questions regarding how my employees think of me. Curious. I sense another blog. Well there are two now pending, one on racism, and the other now on personal grooming. So watch this space, when I have the time... har har I couldn't resist now could I?

So if I spend all my time avoiding things, am I along in this? Or do you dear reader also avoid and abnegate yourself from time to time? Till next time, love, ejaculation, and joy.

I hate it when I learn something...

It has been four months since my last entry here. How my world has changed. I've moved cities, moved provinces, and changed jobs. No longer do I need to worry about wanting to sleep with students, now I'm in the big world of Children's Television. And although I love my new city - Jozi -and I love the pace, the hard work, and the long hours, I hate Kids shows. You dumb down everything, simplify it until you feel embarrassed by it. But that is not why I'm here dear reader. Oh no. I'm here because I learned a lesson today. At least I hope I learned a lesson. Someone help me if I didn't.

This kids show isn't running smoothly. There are lots of delays for lots of reasons. I've been playing this high-flyer solve it person - as I usually do. I've been taking on a lot of side work related to the project - costumes, sets, technicals, scripts etc. My original job was simply to oversee the animation. I haven't been inside the animation studio for weeks. Now that the animations are behind a full two weeks in production the shit hit the fan, got spread about the room, and slid downwards onto my desk. And I raged. I raged against how much other stuff I was doing, how could I possibly oversee the animation as well? I raged against my animators - graduates with no industry experience for not pulling up their socks, and for behaving like kids. I wrote emails that detailed in length why is was that I was never around.

And then my boss politely pointed out that it was I who have volunteered for it all. I'd taken it on my plate. People had asked if it could be done, and I'd said yes. I'd heaped all this extra work onto myself and left myself so bogged down that I couldn't move. Then to 'escape' the pressure of the situation, I'd hived off to the berg to go shoot a documentary on dinosaurs, further adding more to my plate, and pushing everything that was on it, off to the side. I had dug myself in as deep as I could without even realizing it. Well I realized it this morning. No answer I could give could explain away that I had simply not done what I'd promised to do.

So I sat down and wrote an email (to all those who have ever recieved emails from me stop smiling) to the producers. I took full responsibility for my actions (or lack there of) and promised to make things right. But how? How now to turn the shit into compost so that I could grow a product (here ends the farmers reference). Well there has been a saying that has been banging around in my head all month: Face what's in front of you. So that is what I started to do. I made a list of everything that needed to be done and started working on it.

I haven't finished anything on that list yet, but tomorrow is another day. But what inspired me to write this post today is that I want to know this from you dear reader:

As humans we should all strive to better ourselves. As employees who are not content to plod through employment we should always seek to find innovative ways to further our company and our work, but and here's what I learned today, we must make sure we don't get lost in the innovative future plans and forget the present projects. So there must be a fine line between doing the work in front of you, and doing the planning for the future work. That's a balance I need to find, and I suspect will spend quite some time in learning.

So I hope that you take something from this, even if it's a moment relaxation that we are all dealing with other peoples compost, but that sometimes our own manure is involved, and most of the time, we're the ones causing the shit in the first place...

My 13 year old just hit 15...

I could never understand why my younger sister so openly rebelled against myself, my mother, and my grandparents. She refused to wear 'decent' clothes, and wanted to do things to her hair that the rest of us thought foolish. But now I find myself have sms screaming matches with my mother on these very subjects! When I told her about my tattoo she was gobsmacked. This quickly gave way to my mothers usual shocked indifference, which then shifted finally to her typical plea for 'sanity' and for me to 'make the right decisions' not for her sake, but for my own.

Now I love my mother, and I understand where she is coming from. She loves me and doesn't want to see me do things to myself now that I may regret when I'm older. There is a certain irony in her desires, and perhaps it is because of those ironies that I find myself turning from loving son who never set a foot wrong, and who is fairly anal about abiding by the rules, into a screamin 15 year rebel who fights against his parents and sneaks out of the house - blow your rules! Why? Why do I find it so hard to not simply agree with my mother, nod wisely about her concerns, understand her concerns, and then quietly go and do what I want anyway. After all, it would make her life a lot easier - she'd be less stressed for one thing. Which in turn would make me feel like less of a monster for going against her wishes.

What is boils down to though is that I don't believe she is right. I think she is very, very wrong. Perhaps I am in rebel mode, perhaps all this sex has addled my brain. Perhaps I'm so obssessed with fitting in that I'm doing stupid things just to impress my friends. Sounds like a normal 15 year old kid to me. When I was 15 I was playing Star Trek, domineering my friends, working out how to manipulate people into doing my bidding, and generally being a control freak. Now, I'm still playing Star Trek (some things never change), but now I'm supporting my friends, I'm not judging them on their actions, in fact I'm encouraging them to discover their true nature. Surely this is a better thing?

And so what if this is all based on emotional backwash from sex or from nearly being 30 or from just being fed up with pretending to be an old person? I am not going to justify to you or anyone why I want a tattoo. Or why Iwant to do X and not Y. And I feel that I shouldn't need to do that for my parents either. What I choose to do, or choose not to do is my OWN decision. Right or wrong I need to learn for myself. So that perhaps one day I can tell someone - hey tattoos might seem cool, but wait till your skin falls off. At least though I will have first hand knowledge because I will have done it. This then raises that age old retort - oh so you going to stick your hand in the fire just once? Or jump off a bridge? Or take drugs? The answer to this should be yes and no. No I'm not going to stick my hand in the fire you fucktard because it will fucking burn. This is called a scientific principle. Jump off a bridge? Is it safe? Has an expert in the field said so? If so, then yes, I'll jump. If not, then I might not. Take drugs? Well perhaps. Am I with trusted friends or total coke-head strangers? I will never know what it's like if I don't try. And if I do try, and I do get addicted, well that speaks of a deeper psychological problem which will then be dealt with.

In short I feel we as Humans can be told about certain things that have definates. Speed and you will get a fine. Play with a snake and you will get bitten. But when it comes to 'if', 'what about', and 'because I say so' we tend to loose credibility. We spend enough of our time telling ourselves these stupid projections: If I ask her out, she'll probably slap me because I don't believe in myself. To have others do it for us, I think we are more resistant to them because they may be mirroring the very thoughts inside our own heads. So with this in mind I now have a second maxim to which I shall devote my life:

1 - Speak your mind, those that matter don't mind, those that mind don't matter.
2 - You don't know until you try (unless it's a given).

And the only way it can be a given is if it can be proven with fact and maths. Put a gun to your head and pull the trigger - you will die. Get your ear pierced it may, or may not stretch all the way down to your toes over time.

It's like deciding to have a relationship or not based on whether you think you'll need to break up with the person in the future. It's fucking self defeating. So stop with the lectures, stop with the conjectures, stop with the projectures about what if, maybe, might, possibly, or don't you think. Either give me proof, or shut the fuck up. This then leads me to faith.

Yes I know not the strongest link I've ever written, but it's the second part of what is on my mind at the moment. My possibly-boyfriend-but-we-don't-know-yet-as-we're-still-testing-something is a believer in god (I refuse the capitol letter on point). I am not. I have tried it, and thought genuinly that I was at one stage. But at present I am not. I'm fanatical in my adherance to my belief in not believing. I will argue about it till the cows come home. There is no deity running around making things happen.

But there have been some truly strange things happening recently. I shall list them chronologically for your benefit:

1 - One night I spent in the arms of some lover I discovered his liking of being nibbled. The next morning my flatmate related a dream of his from the previous night wherein he got so frustrated with his partner that he ate him. I thought that was odd.

2 - My present partner was convinced I'd met someone named Peter for lunch. I don't know anyone called Peter. However a few days later I returned home from a business trip early to discover a distant friend and his brother were coming over, a brother named: Peter.

3 - I have been a loyal subscriber to a dating website for the better part of six years. In that time I've met a total of 2 people, 1 of whom I actually met and shagged. Since finding my present squeeze (whom I a very fond of) I have had no less than four out of the blue requests from said dating site from individuals who would not normally talk to me.

Now I know these seem like major points of god-like testing/karma etc. And I'd been inclined to brush them off with that arguement. But what it got me thinking about was why do I so desperately NOT want a god in my life? What is it that I am so reluctant to embrace? My first response to that is: Well that's like wondering why you don't believe in the planet being run by spacemonkey's who control everyone's thoughts via their sperm which they slip into KFC. It's just a stupid, misguided, self serving, population control idea. So no point in believing. But what has led me to this place of such cynical denial? Why am I so 'enlightened' and yet seemingly so many around me are not?

I don't have an answer. I shall go and look for one. Till then, rebel against your elders, they know jack, do something you've always wanted to do, and try figure out why you do or do not need a god in your existance...and then share with us.

Self Value... Self worth ... Self ish?

Recently my ego has been ballooning. Thanks in part to two wonderful men who've come into my world, but sadly left it as suddenly as they entered. What this has done for me as a person is unfathomable. I have realized I can now do and feel what I want. I got a tattoo (dragon naturally), bought clothes that I personally considered hideous just three weeks ago, am wearing a necklace (skull naturally), and am seriously considering getting my eyebrow pierced. Why? Because I realized that I don't like my body, I find it fat, flabby, and oddly shaped. Diets and eating plans don't seem to be a workable solution, and gym is on the cards, provided I can find the money. But it's not that I'm trying to hide my body from the world.

That was one of Professor Matures primary weapons - old style clothes. Big showy items that were so bright, loud, or hideous that the eyes of the viewer were drawn to the cloth not the flesh. It's difficult to see the person underneath the clown suit. But for me a tattoo is usually very sexy. I love them, I think they are works of art. The same with the other things. I just think they look cool. At least that is my primary motivation. And apart from the tattoo the other things are temporary by and large. Changing clothes styles has been a process, and will still be a process once summer comes back I'm sure. But at least my students can't complain about me wearing fashions that went out of style with Queen Victoria.

But that is not what this blog is about I don't think. Having the courage to go and do things I have always wanted to do, but been too afraid to do because of what OTHER people might think has in part given me the power to push myself to do other things beyond personal grooming. Recently I made my second short film of this year. Two in the space of a month. How very tiring, but wonderful at the same time. For the last one though I needed an actor for the role of a doctor. I couldn't find anyone, and all my usual suspects had flown to the stage to earn real money. So I had to play the role myself.

To say that I was nervous would be a lie. I was excited. I was acting opposite a great actor who has been exceptionally patient with me, being in both my short films. My good friend was directing this segment of the film, and my wonderful students from the college I lecture were filling in as crew. I wanted to have fun, to strut my stuff, and to see if I could abnegate myself into the role. I did the performance several times, for the various camera angles, and then asked if it was OK. Everyone naturally said yes. Having edited the sequence now I think it is fairly funny (it's supposed to be btw) and that it works. Could it have been better? I think that it could have been. Is my acting believable? I don't know. I cannot externalise my internal critic. I look at my face, at my hands, at my actions and wonder - is it good? Or just OK?

I really enjoyed the experience, and would like to do it again. But now I wonder if anyone else thinks I should do it again? My self value is high at the moment. I'm doing exactly what I want to do, and I'm not restricted by my own self. This is a goal I've been after for a long time. I'm satisfied that I've given 100 percent of myself to this project. A rare thing for me. It is MINE. In terms of self worth though, am I worthy of trying to act? I have meeting actors who feel they are great performers, but are in actually not very good. I don't want to be one of those. Someone who can't see their own weaknesses. But how does one develop that critical skill? I don't have a comparison. I performed the role like this, so and so like that. His was better. Why? I don't have that. I also can't imagine how I'd perform the role any other way.

But then I stop the wonder: If it makes me happy, perhaps I should continue anyway, regardless of my actual capacity? But then am I not being selfish in so far as misplacing my attentions? Perhaps I should stick to directing? Or to script-writing? Forget acting, leave that up to the professionals? Are you, beloved reader, in a similar situation? Restrained by feelings of uncertainty? If so I dare you to do one thing you are not sure about. Something small. Like wearing a pink shirt, or dyeing your hair. Do something which feels huge, but is in reality really small. It's amazing how one small act can sometimes give you the freedom to do a big act. Seek out the tiny, the small, and make a change, it's remarkable the avalanche that can be caused...