#personal a bit

Me: I am... off? I dunno how to put it, really. You ever just think there are infinite choices and you have no idea which to pick? Well, that's sorta how I feel. That and I thought oh, I will hang out with Cody and his friends, he never invites me out it'll be fun and I'll see a slice of his life and well I feel like a broken human, they all smoked pot and watched UFC and I literally felt exactly like I did at 18 around other people smoking pot and playing video games. They seem so happy like just “dicking off” and I felt just soo.. guilty? Maybe.. like I am wasting what little life I have and well, I am not "chill". I liked seeing their smiling faces but I, myself, was not that happy and was sorta an "outsider". At some point we watched this girl fight in UFC stuff, and the one got her ass handed to her, the winner wound up with a huge knot on her eye socket and a bunch of blood and such and was addressing her fans and I thought we "enjoy" this? I mean, she is suffering we have created a system where it is okay to just beat on each other for money, that's just "okay" with us?Because... what, “fun”? And then I felt sub-human. Like god, I wish all of this felt normal and I didn't overthink every last moment of my life wondering how this all affects the final bottom line, of death. Like all of life's experiences are a +/- sum and I am just hoping for more +'s to my life and feel like I am doing no harm and leaving the world a bit better off for my existence, but god do I wish I could turn all that off and just stare at a screen where people beat on each other and feel like oh, yeah.. this is AWESOME! But instead, nope.. I feel shitty, guilty, nauseous and generally anxious and fearful and want to console the strangers on the screen who actively chose to participate. I feel like they had no better options and some part of me feels sad for them..it reminded me of being 18, watching strippers at a strip club because I was finally of age and growing nauseous and crying and having all the strippers get weirded out because well, they were trying to show me a good time and all my male friends were like well, Lauren likes women she'll love this.. but I wanted to scoop each one up and tell them they didn't have to do this, they looked numb on some level I hadn't ever seen. Like to their soul and I wanted to help, I don't know how.. but I wanted to.

I’ve been quiet recently. Sorry about that. I’ve been working on what to say. It’s been an awful couple of weeks in the world. Orlando was awful and the reactions to it ranged from beautiful to also fucking awful. I was angry and hurt.

Then something else happened a little closer to home.

As you may have figured out, I’m British. We’re having a referendum here about whether or not we should stay in the EU. It’s a referendum that, quite frankly, happened for the wrong reasons. It happened so the current government could win the support of the far right during the last elections. I don’t know if they thought they could put it off or people would forget but it’s happening and it’s dragged up a lot of really horrible scum to the surface. In the typical British way, a lot of us laughed them off and poked fun. Nigel Farage, what a twat. I think a lot of people hoped in the beginning it would all be over quickly and we could carry on as normal. Instead, we’ve been faced with a lot of uncomfortable truths about the UK.

This week, MP Jo Cox was murdered while doing her job. She was an advocate for various charities and had talked recently about how much more we should be doing to help our fellow human beings. Her murderer, who possibly had mental health issues but was definitely a fucking terrorist, shouted ‘Britain First’.

This doesn’t happen in Britain often. Especially not after the Troubles died down and the IRA were less active. Since 1990, only two MPs have been attacked, both stabbed, and only one of those died. It was a huge shock to the system for the country. She was a fairly new MP with a child. She was a part of the institution at the centre of British life.

So when this man claims to be defending Britain I can only think this:

fun update: I think i’m gonna lay off the digital for a while. I don’t mean I’m leaving or I’m not uploading or I’m quitting altogether, but doing digital work is causing me stress I really don’t need right now. For at least a few days, I’m going to try and work traditionally only.