"We're the MTV generation. We feel neither highs nor lows"

Is it just me or is the world really bloody miserable at the minute? Despite my natural penchant for pessimism I have actually been trying to be a bit more positive about things in general, but on days like this it really feels like we're just going to hell in a handcart, no matter what we do.

There's near-apocalyptic weather that's resulting in floods all over the British Isles. The government gets increasingly useless by the day. The economy and employment rates are in the shitter, particularly in Northern Ireland. Headlines are full of crime and abuse and car crashes. The most positive story on the BBC news website for NI at the minute is about new buses. Yay.

And it's not that I think that the news media should be selling us good news stories to hide the reality of the situation that we're in - people need to rememeber that the economy is still fairly fucked, and that the government is still shite, and that the NI assembly, at least, are about as much use as scuba gear for penguins. Well, I'm presuming that scuba gear wouldn't be much use for penguins since they can swim fine on their own, but maybe they want to get into deep sea diving or something, what do I know?

My point is, why is the world so feckin miserable and apathetic? Why isn't there someone or something riling us up to overthrow the government or to make things better for ourselves? Why don't we care? I honestly have no idea. I like to think that I have principles and values that I would fight for (not necessarily in a literal sense since I bruise like a Ross Geller), and I want someone or something to come along and inspire me. But anytime inspiration pops along, it seems to let us down and disappoint. Is that because our expectations are too high? We expect everything to be perfect but we don't do a damn thing about it when it's not? Is it because of too much tv, too much capitalism, too much consumerism, too much materialism, too much McDonalds?

I genuinely have no answers, by the way. I'm just wondering. You'd think that with so much of life being so bleak these days that there would be any number of vacuums to fill the void of hope, inspiration and the desire for change, but there doesn't seem to be. I mean ok, we had the Olympics, and that was great - despite being in no way a sports fan, I got really swept up in it but just a few short weeks later and I'm considering the hermit life. If nothing else, it'd keep me dry and away from this rain. So long as I found a cave on high ground, I guess.

I often feel somewhat envious of people (like my parents and siblings) who lived in somewhat harsher times, when there was really something to fight against. They lived through the civil rights movement of the 60s, the horrendous Troubles, the possibly even more horrendous Margaret Thatcher (side note: my sister - a student in the late 80s - once chased a car thief in her pyjamas and slippers with an anti-Thatcher placard. True story). By the time I was a student, no one gave a damn about any kind of politics or issue other than what bar to go to. There were no marches, no protests, no kind of political awareness, even.

But we still have so much to fight for. Even the protests against the coalition have died down, despite them being as shit and stupid as ever.

And rather tellingly, I've just run out of steam writing this. Says it all, really, doesn't it?

The times, they need to start changing.

I need a new start.

This has no relevance to this post whatsoever, but I like it so I'm putting it here anyway. That's just how I roll.

I have no idea what that should be, or look like, or really have even the slightest clue what it should involve. I just know that things have to change.

I've been very adament since turning a certain number that I still don't like to say/type out loud that I still feel young. And I do, in a lot of ways. Unlike most of my friends from university I don't feel the need to settle down or act like an old aged pensioner. I still like to actually go out and enjoy myself and don't think that there's any such thing as being too old to go out and dance and what not. I also love Muppets more than a grown woman should, so that definitely helps keep me young.

But I am feeling like I'm getting too old to still be stuck in a rut, waiting for real grown up life to begin. If anything is going to change, I have to do something about it now before it really is too late and before I really am too old for it.

And whilst there are lots of things that I both want and need to change in my life - my lack of friends and/or social life, my weight, my mental health - it's work that I need to change first, I think.

I've never really understood how some people can just be happy in any old job. How they can be happy just having the security of a paycheck coming in every month, regardless of whether or not the job means anything to them or whether they feel like they're achieving anything in life. I don't mean to sound like I'm judging people like that - I'm not. They just have different priorities to me. Maybe they just care more about their family life and relationships and what not and see a job as just a way to pay the bills. That's fine, but it's just not me. Maybe partly because some part of me has always been aware that I'm not exactly blessed in the friendship/relationship/dealing with people department, but I've always felt like my job would be what I'm about. That I needed a career where I felt fulfilled, that that would be my purpose in life.

And maybe being in a job that is so....not any of those things...is part of what makes me so miserably unhappy with my life. I don't know why I always thought it would be so easy though. I somehow managed to get through a good 20-odd years of my life thinking that being a good student and having a passion for something would be enough. I have no idea where I got this idea from. Although my siblings would contend that I was spoiled because I was the youngest by almost a whole generation, I definitely did not have any sort of priviledged upbringing. My parents are working class, they come from working class backgrounds and we never had much of anything when I was a kid. I was always acutely aware of the value of money, that things didn't come easily and that our family never had the best of luck, so colour me perplexed that I somehow grew up with this fantasy that things would just fall into place and that I'd be some award-winning writer by now.

Maybe fantasy is the key word there - maybe I got too caught up in various fantasies as coping mechanisms throughout my life and didn't want to let go of them and have to view the world as it really was. But that is both a conversation for a therapist, and besides the point right now.

For the point is that I have to do something. I have to take some risks and do some hard things to make a change. I honestly don't know how I will get through the rest of my life like this if I don't. At this point I don't even feel like it's a choice anymore, I feel like it's do or die.

But what to do? I have no idea. I know what I've always wanted to do - write. But how the hell do you make a career out of that? Plenty of people more talented and more driven than me have failed. I'd be happy in some sort of media-ish job that gave me a bit of spare time to write, and that might give me contacts that could one day lead to something, but "some sort of media-ish job" is not very specific. What I'm experienced in is so niche and specialised that it's pretty much impossible to find employment doing the same thing elsewhere.

Pretty much my attitude to life right now.

So what else do I do? Do I re-train in something? And if so, what? And where? I basically want to be Charlie Brooker, but there's no training course in that, sadly. Although if there were, I reckon I'd be a shoe-in. Telly addict? Check. Quite the geek? Check. Miserablist who's never happier than when ranting and complaining about the world and media? Hells to the yeah.

I know that I can't just snap my fingers and immediately change my life. I know that it will take time, and will power, and stamina and that I'll have to face a fair amount of rejection. But if I could just start moving in the right direction, that'd be something. I want to and I feel at least a bit more energized about this than normal, but I genuinely do not know what direction I need to be moving in. I have no idea how to get to where I want to go, and no idea how to find out.

I mean if I want to be a writer, does that mean that I want to go into journalism? I entertained the notion of being a reporter for a brief time in my early teens, but that was mostly a desire to be Lois Lane, I think. I'd love to write blog/column/opinion type pieces (much the way Brooker does - you see a pattern here?) but I don't know if journalism is necessarily the right way into that, especially as I wouldn't be either that good at or interested in news reporting.

So should I just keep writing in my spare time, maybe take whatever part-time writing courses I can find the time and money for and accept having a less than stellar, but still vaguely related media job? Ok, but what should that job be? There is a job that I want, and it's one that I've applied for recently, but it's also the sort of job that probably several thousand other people applied for so my chances are somewhere around slim to none. And it's also the kind of job that hardly ever comes along.

Keep your fingers crossed for me, internetz.

 
I guess all I can do for now is just keep looking, keep trying to think of new things to look for/places to look for something that might vaguely fit me, and keep writing. I've definitely been falling behind with writing over the last while. It's a big ask sometimes to overcome the inertia, the exhaustion, the pissed-off-at-the-world-and-everything-in-it-ness, but I sure as hell won't get anywhere if I don't try. So while I may not have all the answers, or even the right questions at the minute, I can at least write. 

Hunt for Health. Fuckin hell.

Right, I haven't posted here in a while and I was hoping that I'd maybe come back to the oul blogging thing with something sensational and insightful and inspiring and generally amazing and brilliant and really well thought out, but today's cabinet reshuffle has somewhat taken over my best intentions and I need to have a bit of a rant about that instead.

WHAT THE FUCK IS CAMERON AT YOU FUCKING PLASTIC FACED POSHTARD FUCKING FUCKER?!?!?!!!

Giving Jeremy Hunt - the biggest fucking tool in his cabinet, possibly (and god knows, that's saying something), and giving him a PROMOTION???? To the fucking HEALTH DEPARTMENT???!!! Jesus fucking wept. We'll be lucky if the NHS lasts till the end of the day with that wee wankshaft in charge.

I mean for pity's sake, has he no sense?! Everything that Hunt the Cunt fucked up over the News International bid, the fact that inquiry clearly showed him up to be an idiot who couldn't run a paper round let alone a bloody ministry, and who had no idea of what was and wasn't professionally appropriate. I mean, how did he get to be a minister in the first place, was it like, "Collect twelve crisp packets and become a government minister" things? 

To let him stay in the cabinet at all was bloody ridiculous, this was Cameron's opportunity to get him out quietly without having to fire him after all the News International bid stuff, but to give him Health?! The health service in the UK is in complete disarray, it needs completely reorganised and reinvigorated, and its principles and priorities re-examined and reaffirmed. It does not need reduced to cinders, which is what will happen approximately 3.5 hrs after Hunt gets to his new office. There is no way in hell he is competent enough - let alone inspired, insightful or astute enough - to make the sort of changes that need to be made. 

This is quite literally people's lives that Cameron is dicking around with - I mean, would you want this twat:

anywhere near your healthcare decisions?

Just when you think the country can't get any more screwed, along come the Tories. Well done, lads. Well done.