Darfuria

I have been looking for a job for a while now, as, contrary to common belief, I do actually want to be employed. A little while back I applied for a position reviewing and writing guides for instant messaging applications at about.com. I forgot all about the fact that I had applied, and recently received a reply saying that I have been accepted on to the preparation course, which starts at the end of this week. If I get through that then I will hopefully be writing for them.

Other than that I went to an interview at a company called Integrity last week. I found out about the programmer/tech support position through an agency. Unfortunately I didn’t get the job, though. Also, another agency contacted me last night saying that they have a position avaible, but I was contacted this morning with apologies, saying that the position had already been filled. Oh well.

So, the job hunt continues, and I’m getting quite bored of it. I can’t bring myself to work in retail, unfortunately. It would stress me out too much, which would certainly lead to a lot of stress problems that I really don’t want to have to go through.

I’ve mentioned countless times that travelling on the bus without my MP3 player is a fantastic way to provoke a game of “ruthlessly stab the passengers” in my head. However, I really don’t think I’ve quite emphasised enough how much the general high-pitched rhetorical condescension that spews from the parent’s mouth to the child, who quite fucking obviously isn’t interested in the ducks that are swimming in the river, because they’re trying to avoid concussion caused by the bus driver driving like a hyperglycemic midget with PD. Oh yes I went there.

Another thing that really, really gets to me - and I realise that I’m just being pedantic - is the way that my doctor has to finish every sentence he bloody well says with a stupid informal, colloquial word:

“Hello, mate.”, “How are you, mate?”

The best one had to be:

“Hi, mate? How are you, mate? Mate, you look wet. Is it raining out there, ma-”
“YOU’RE SAT NEXT TO A FUCKING WINDOW. YOU CAN SEE IT’S FUCKING RAINING. STOP MAKING POINTLESS FUCKING SMALL-TALK WITH ME LIKE I’M YOUR AUTISTIC DAUGHTER AND TELL ME WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH ME!”

Okay, so I didn’t reply with those exact words, but part of me wishes…

On a slightly fluffier, cute, yet still mildly annoying note, another cat seems to have moved in. This is the third time that a cat has moved in - although thanks to karma, or simply bad luck, one of them was run over. This one’s just plain stupid though. I’m going to conform to stereotype for one moment here and say it’s like the chaviest of chavs in the cat family. I put it in a sink full of water and held it there until I was content. I chased it with compressed air. I’ve pushed it through the cat flap. I’ve held it over the fence in a very elegant Lion King manner. Still it comes back. I swear it was bottle-fed White Lightning from birth, ‘innit blud?’

Blah blah blah.

My lovely girlfriend has given me the plague. When I say the plague, I mean manflu. And we all know that’s worse, right? It’s a medical fact. Sure it is. Anyway. Why are colds nocturnal? They’re the viruses that suffer insomnia, honestly. I don’t have the greatest sleep pattern in the world, but colds just take the biscuit and dunk it in a cup of hard-earned snot. Right now I’m looking forwards to regaining a sense of smell and being able to breathe without it feeling like there’s a feather vibrating next to my tonsils.

This post is going to be a bit of a diary entry, but nevermind.

Ever since I was about 11 years old, I can remember my body completely negleting the standard sleeping pattern. I would be able to sleep normally, although for my whole life I have been terrible with mornings, and have only gotten worse with them through time. However, if I wanted to stay awake, I would quite easily be able to until 3 or 4 am, which is quite late for someone of that age.

As I got older I found myself staying up late more often. That might have had something to do with spending time with my Dad. My Dad being quite a creature of the night himself; he has always had the theory “what’s the point in lying there, staring at the ceiling, when you could be getting things done?”. I think I’ve followed those footsteps to some extent, but I don’t know if that is the cause of my sleeping issues.

Around this time two years ago I was just leaving college, and therefore I had nothing to commit myself to. I had a lot of goals, but for some reason I just wasn’t motivated to achieve them. Five years had passed since I first noticed my somewhat idiosyncratic sleeping pattern and it had somewhat developed in that time. Five years later I was in a position where I was rarely tired before 1am, regardless of the amount of sleep I had gotten the night before. I remember going through weeks of school, going to bed at 4am and getting up at 7am. Waking up was complete torture, but I have always been terrible at it. However, come 10 or 11 am I was wide awake, and I wouldn’t have been tired again until around 2 or 3 am the next day. It did catch up with me eventually, and that’s when I would sleep.

Naturally, with 5 years of irregular sleeping behind me, things certainly hadn’t improved. I didn’t really think it as strange. I always just said I enjoyed the night time. It never really seemed to have much of an effect on me, and I don’t think other people really noticed it much. Mum would tell me off for staying up so late on school nights, but most of the time I did get up and make it out of the door on time, so I don’t think she really minded. I was lucky enough to not have a ‘bed time’ when I was in my younger teenage years.

Now, 7 years later, things are even worse, and right now I really don’t feel like I get enough respect for my sleeping problems. I went to my doctor a few months ago because I was going through a rough time and was having a lot of anxiety attacks. During that time my sleeping was as regular for me as it ever was, however, I brought it up when I was in my appointment anyway. Curiously the doctor prescribed me with sleeping pills. Pretty strong sleeping pills actually. 20x weaker than your standard elephant tranqualiser, which is worrying when you think about it. Needless to say the sleeping pills did help me sleep, although I did suffer the side effects quite heavily. At the time I was working, so I did have to be up at 7am. This meant for me, trying to go to bed at a reasonable hour. However, I never seemed to find enough time in my day and rarely made it to bed before 1am. Most of the time I was fine with this, however there were days when it would take me hours and hours to sleep. On the odd occasion I actually didn’t sleep at all.

When I go to bed I am usually tired, which is why I go to bed. I don’t go to bed because it is a certain time and I think “I really should be in bed” because I know far too well that I will only be lying there for a long time. Yet, even when I am tired it takes me a long time to fall asleep unless I have been awake for a very long time. For the past seven years I have thought it only natural for it to take a long time to fall asleep. It usually takes me sometime around an hour, though often more. Apparently a lot of people fall asleep quite quickly though, which strikes me as bizarre. I have never really thought of my sleeping problems as something serious. In fact, a lot of the time I quite like the fact my body clock seems to be calibrated to an entirely different planet because it means I can enjoy staying up late.

As I mentioned before, this time two years ago I was at a stage when I didn’t have to commit myself to anything. I didn’t have to be up at a certain time and therefore I didn’t go to bed until I really was tired. Inevitably this resulted in me becoming quite nocturnal, and rather isolated too. I would often say goodnight to Mum and say good morning to her as well. Going to bed at around 9 or 10 in the morning and getting up at anywhere between 2 and 6 pm. This was one of the very few times in the past seven years that my sleeping pattern felt right. When I woke up, I woke up refreshed. I felt like I had slept, and had a good sleep. A lot of the time, as far as I can remember, I even had good dreams. During the time I was working, I hardly dreamt at all.

I’m in the same position now, two years later. I don’t have anything to commit myself to - although I should. And now that I am in this position, and reflecting upon my sleep, things are still getting noticably worse, and indeed I don’t feel as if I get enough respect for this problem. I remember the times when Mum was ill. When she couldn’t even leave the house and for the most part people respected that. I have never really understood mental problems in depth for the simple reason that, as far as I am aware, I have never suffered a mental problem. However, I respected the fact she was unable to leave the house sometimes, for whatever reason. So often do I get the “you should go to bed earlier” passing conversation, and it really irritates me. It feels as if people simply think that I choose to stay up late because I like it. That is kind of true, I do like staying up late. I love the night. But I really do wish that at least some of the time I could go to bed at 9 pm and actually get to sleep. Perhaps people just don’t appreciate what it is like to be able to sleep at more acceptable hours of the day, I don’t know.

Seven years on, things are getting worse all of the time. The quality of my thoughts and the mood I am in often depends on the sleep I have had, and even on the times I have slept from and to. I could easily stay up for a day or two now without even thinking about it. Yet, if I do that, my mind does slowly fade and I really don’t like that happening. I don’t have any sleeping pills right now and part of me wants to go back to the doctor and get some. Is it really a wise idea though? Do I really want to be on medication for the rest of my life because of a sleeping disorder? Do I really want to suffer the depression and laugh cynically to myself everytime I pick up the box and read “Warning, may cause drowsiness”?

I will never forget reading the news article about B-people that Ben put on his blog. I will never forget reading that and wishing it was a system that was in our society.

Will sleeping disorders ever be more recognised and appreciated? I hope so.

I hate figures of speech. They are the verbal bullet wounds that plague this world with their rhetorical inconsistency. They annoy me.

I was on the bus earlier and the idiots behind me were talking about what they had bought at the shop recently. One of them said:

“I bought 3 DVDs for a tenner. You can’t beat that.”

I must have been in a ‘great, let’s get irritated by someone who probably puts an apostrophe in the word “DVDs”‘ mood, because I got annoyed by it. I was so tempted to turn around and say:

“Well actually I could beat that. So there. That’s what you get for being an idiot and saying such a stupid thing”

Every time I’m on the bus without my headphones on I always get off at my stop with less respect and appreciation for the human race and more hatred for children and single parents.

I am going to make it a life goal to give a short yet witty reply to every figure of speech I hear that is aimed at me. The next person who says “I’ve told you a thousand times” will be punished.

Yes I like my italic formatting. It’s nice.