Rob, Rambling - A lot of things interest me...

Is having fights a sign of being in a more mature, longer term relationship? The girlfriend and I seem to have had more arguments in the last two months than the previous two years, although they’re still very few and far between.

We seem to end up having arguments about the bigger things in life: where we’re heading; marriage; religion; our future; etc. Thankfully, we don’t argue about minor, trivial things, which I guess is a good sign.

I just struggle to talk about the deeper things, I guess. I enjoy living life day to day, and figure that if today was great then tomorrow will be better. And that’s how I feel about our relationship too: I enjoy each day more than the last, because things aren’t necessarily changing.

It’s when we talk about the future, the changes that something like marriage will bring, that I find myself not wanting these changes. I’m comfortable with how it is, I really am, and I don’t feel the need to introduce unnecessary changes to anything.

Call it comfort, call it fear, call it what you will, but it’s how I am. I like my life right now, I really do, and I don’t see why it has to change.

And, with a nod to the whole theory of the act of merely observing something changing it, when we begin to talk about changes, then the relationship itself changes too. I’ve felt more uncomfortable recently than I have done previously, purely because we’ve started talking about these things.

It’s not that I don’t want to get married, have kids, and do all that. It’s that I feel I’ll just know when the time is right to do those things. I don’t want a time-frame, or pressure to do certain things by a certain time. I’ll do it when I’m good and ready, really.

She wants reassurance from me that I’m in this for the long term, and that I’m not going to just decide one day that it’s not working. I can see it from her perspective, I can, but I struggle to see how I can provide absolute reassurance when I simply don’t know myself.

I love this girl, and never want to let her go, but I find it incredibly difficult to adjust myself to doing/saying exactly what she wants. She’s been in long-term relationships before; I haven’t. I’m still learning it all as I go, and probably fucking it up a lot. One previous girlfriend used to call me (only half-jokingly) a terrible boyfriend.

I think we cleared things up last night, but who knows.

sabine asked: If you could choose a ride on a unicorn through a forest of golden apple trees (you were allowed to take one home as a souvenir) or a scuba adventure to Atlatis (no souvenirs allowed!), which would you choose and why?

Firstly, I have to admit to never having ridden a horse, and nor have I ever scuba-dived. I’m assuming that lessons for either of these are included, whichever I choose?

I think I’d take the trip to Atlantis, despite not being able to take anything home with me. When it comes to real-life holidays, I’m not big on buying physical souvenirs or sending postcards. I take a lot of photos, and video nowadays, and for me a holiday is about the experience of being there, wherever it may be.

Whenever I think of Atlantis (not that often, admittedly), I sort of see a Pompeii-esque town, frozen in time, with people on the streets exactly as they were when the city collapsed into the sea. It’d be cool to see that kind of image/setting, of a lost time and civilisation.

Whilst the financial gains of the golden apple tree forest is alluring, money isn’t everything, honestly. Although with enough golden apples I could afford to take a trip to Atlantis afterwards. Hmm.

And unicorns are just a bit girly, aren’t they? I’m thinking of that scene in Dodgeball when Vince Vaughn goes to Christine Taylor’s house and it’s full of unicorn paraphrenalia.

Having said all that, I’m going to wimp out and choose a middle ground. A middle ground, however, that is freaking awesome.

I would choose to ride a narwhal to Atlantis for a look round, even if I couldn’t take any souvenirs. Narwhals are probably my favourite animals, and they’re actually real too!

I’m visualising the narwhal talking to me (bear with me) as we descend to the bottom of the ocean, and then using its tusk to point out interesting things as we go through the aquatic streets of Atlantis. I’m sitting on its back, as it glides between the submerged buildings, turning corners and investigating everything.

I genuinely am visualising this, for what it’s worth, and it looks gooooood.

I’ve spent the last hour going through photos from the year I lived in Heidelberg, Germany during 2004-05, and it’s made me realise that I suck at staying in touch with people. I made some amazing friends during my time there, from all over the world, and there’s very few that I still speak to regularly, and even fewer that I have physically seen since we all went our separate ways.

I saw one particularly funny photo and emailed it to one of the girls, along with some general catch-up news, and she just happened to be online. An hour later, chatting, and it seems like only yesterday that we were saying our tearful goodbyes in Heidelberg.

I think I’m going to upload a batch of those photos to facebook, and start a tagging frenzy, just to get back in touch with a load of people. I’m too lazy to write 100 individual emails at the moment.

I’ve heard a rumour that a reunion is planned for some point this summer, as it will will be five years since we were all there. I would love to go, and it’d be great to see some familiar faces once more. I never should’ve let them get away from me, but at least I can try to start talking to them again…

There are times when I realise just how anal I can be in making sure that everything is 100% correct and in order. I’ve just added myself to GoodReads, and have spent the last half hour making sure that each of the books I imported from my LibraryThing account have exactly the right cover on them.

I can’t just go with the default one that GoodReads pulls from Amazon or wherever. Nope, I’ve got to delve into the book’s entry and find the correct cover for the edition I have. And when it’s something like Anna Karenina with eleventy billion different versions, it takes some time to get the right one.

Anyways, it’s complete now, so feel free to add me if you’re on either GoodReads or LibraryThing. I have to say that I prefer LibraryThing right now, but GoodReads seems to be the more popular site for the time being.

The amount of unsent emails I write is bordering on ridiculous levels. I get on my high horse far too quickly and type out some seriously lengthy paragraphs, and then think to myself: “this person doesn’t want to hear this. Why are you writing to them as if you know them?”

And you know why it is? It’s because I think I do know you. I think I’ve read enough of you over the last couple of years to have an opinion on your life and the way you live it. I won’t criticise, never, but I’ll try to help you in any way I can, even if I’m the wrong side of the Atlantic, the country, or even just London.

But I never send these emails.

I don’t even save them as drafts. I just write the few hundred words, bang them out as if I was some kind of motherfucking agony uncle, and then delete them before anyone can read them. It probably helps me more to write them than it ever will for the potential recipient to receive them.

It’s me working out my demons, putting my thoughts into words and sentences. I’ve not yet faced the situations which these people find themselves in, but it’s as if by giving them advice I’m also preparing myself for the same situations at a future stage in life.

And then I don’t give them that advice, sentiment or opinion. I keep it for myself, I hoard it, I bottle it up.

How can I then judge the worthiness, the practicality, and the effectiveness of this advice? I’m operating on a closed-circuit, feedback loop. I think that by considering these situations, I’m prepared to face them.

But yet I’m not. I’ve got no fucking clue how I’d cope with a marriage, a divorce, a child, a death. I’ve dealt with some of these things in my 25 years on this planet, absolutely, but there’s no way I can even begin to scrape the surface of human experience.

Yes, I’ve had to deal with a parent battling with cancer (and ultimately surviving, thankfully). Yes, death has been an ever-present facet of my life since I was around 18, and I’ve been to more funerals than I would have liked to have been to at this stage in my life, but this is nothing. It’s fuck all.

And yet I find myself wanting to write, to opine. It’s cathartic, it really is. I’m trying to help someone else, but it’s really me whom I’m helping. I’m looking to experience the gamut of human emotions without facing them myself. I’m living my life vicariously, for fuck’s sake.

And I wish I had the balls to send these emails, but I figure that people can sort themselves out, given time and space. And they do, generally, from what I read.

And I know that I can sort myself out when I inevitably come to face these situations, because I know that people have dealt with them before, and that they have come out the other side, positively.

Hope springs eternal, as they say.

I was listening to Kevin Smith’s latest SModcast on the way to work this morning, and one of the tangents the guys went off on was concerning your facial expression when you’re getting a massage. Do you smile, look like you’re enjoying it, or maintain a stoic distance from it all?

I remembered it at lunchtime when I went for a haircut, given by a fairly pretty lady in a salon just near my office. As I was cocooned in the gown and being trimmed, I found myself staring at my reflection, realising just how serious I looked. And then it hit me that I always look like this when I’m getting my hair cut, unless I’m back home at my mate’s barbershop and we’re shooting the shit.

The thing is, I actually quite like getting my hair cut. It’s very relaxing, and it’s one of those rare moments when I don’t have to think about anything else whatsoever. Unfortunately, it seems that my drifting off face is remarkably similar to my stern, don’t fuck with me face.

So, to all of the people that have ever cut my hair over the years, and thought that I was pissed off at them, I apologise.

It was around half past midnight last night that I realised that I still have an incredibly infantile and stupid sense of humour. I was halfway through watching the second Jackass film for the first time, and I was absolutely wetting myself at their antics.

There’s still something ridiculously funny about watching those guys do some really stupid stuff to themselves. It’s schadenfreude at its most gloriously imbecilic and basic level, and I’ve no shame at admitting to laughing at them as they proceeded to beat themselves up in comical fashion.

What I will admit to, however, is that a couple of the skits I had to watch through my fingers or even skip past entirely. Steve-O seems to revel in the extreme, and the whole fishhook through the cheek thing had me a little uneasy. Once he was in the water with the sharks, which was a whole lot more dangerous, I found myself laughing once again. Odd.

The one I couldn’t watch was when he put a leech on his eyeball. I had to change the channel. I have a real thing with eyes, and find anything to do with them really squeamish. Even the thought of leeches and eyes this morning has my stomach seizing up.

But the film as a whole still made me laugh so much. I love the little funny bits between the main skits, such as jumping onto the side of a moving velcro lorry in a sticky bodysuit. Little things like that amuse me.

Go read Diary of a Starved Football Fan for an insight into how it is to be me this summer.

Thank fuck for the tennis, rugby and cricket, is all I say. Still, the football season will soon be upon us again.