I am bottling up too much stress and frustration lately. I am really on the edge. Seriously, one word, one small motion and I think Iight go insane.

Work is really not as satisfying as it used to be; my Omikuji from the new year and my life don’t seem to match. I do not feel lucky and I do not feel that sticking this out will do any good for me.

My soul and body are overflowing with stress and fatigue. I don’t know if it’s just my state of mind but my heart is going it’s own way. Maybe it’s delusional, and it’s more likely just a channel for my messed up life but these precious rays of light are keeping me going. Small distractions are keeping me grounded.

Valentines is coming up soon. I said that I wished it would hurry up and be March, but in all honesty I just want to be able to enjoy the day without negative emotions – resentment, loneliness and sadness.

Anyway, tonight I had dinner with some friends – Chinese hot pot. It was actually really tasty! It had all sorts of mushrooms, cabbage, herbs and spices. A welcome and much needed distraction from life.

My head is too full.

The escape to ME cannot come sooner. Only a month. I await miracles.

Still dreaming… Scratch that. make that a nightmare.

BBQで上司に説教されて、あの時は全然気にしてなかったんだけど、the more I think about it, the more I wonder… what the hell am I doing? Where is my life going?

I know my blog entries tend to centre around the same topics over and over again. I understand how boring and dull my life must seem to you all. I wish I could write about something more interesting. I wish I could be more positive.

I like to think I used to be an outgoing, happy kid… but to be honest, that happy self probably went into hibernation a long long time ago. 最近は本当に楽しいって思ったのは何度も歩けど、正直those happy times are so shortlived, it scares me. The moment, we 解散, all that happiness slips aways って感じ。超情けないな。

These moments of fragility are so frequent these days, it seriously adds to the never-ending stresses that I seem to create for myself. It’s a vicious circle.

In my life, I like to think that I have priorities… family, friends, work, etc, etc… but then, sometimes I think, what the hell is the point of having priorities if they don’t make me happy. Seriously, I can’t explain this.

Does being a 社会人 mean that conversation revolves around work, weekend plans, romantic happenings (if any), vacation plans… ok, I have no idea what other conversation there is, but life feels a little stale recently. I think I need a little more excitement… nothing crazy, but to be honest, I think I need something that really gets my heart racing.

You know, sometimes when you have that feeling of wanting to let your frustration out by punching something? or maybe, screaming at the top of your voice. The feeling of being trapped in this shell, self created or imposed by the environment I’m in, it’s tiring.

Honestly, I do not regret for a single minute the decision to come over here. I just want to be able to show that my life is just as great, if not better, than everybody that remained in London. At the moment, the only reason for my life being better is, I’m in Tokyo, you lot aren’t. But seriously, that’s shallow… The screaming I want to do… I don’t want it to be about frustration, stresses, etc.. I want it to be about my fantastic life… the awesome things I’m doing…

I’d hoped the past week would kick start something, change something… all the events I went to, all the people I met up with, everything… and nothing. Meeting up with new friends, friends from work, uni friends, old friends from 5-10 years ago…. all of it was fantastic! I really did enjoy seeing everyone. Catching up, shooting the breeze, whatever. I hate to say this, but I want more.

Unsatisfactory.

In Other News

In other news, I bought a new laptop. After 5 years of serving me extremely well, my laptop finally died. Over the years, I’ve made some adjustments like, adding new RAM, remapping my keyboard to work around broken keys, putting up with a dodgy sound system, living with an extremely noisy, most likely loose, fan…. and the final straw… the screen losing all brightness – not completely dark but, so dark that you can just about see the outline of a window.

Anyway, I bought the new studio xps 13. It’s snazzy, yes. But I still miss my old laptop. I mean, after 5 years, I had it set up near perfectly. Shortcuts, applications, settings, etc. I have to redo all of that.

I previously spoke up having near everything backed up online. Admittedly, I started that as I forsaw the day that my laptop would die. However, getting my new laptop I was faced with a difficult choice. After near 4 years working, studying and living on Ubuntu… was I going to install it on my new laptop or not? I mean, study is no more – work is at work, and living? well, living is just the internet, email and the occasional editing of some document. I don’t play games on my laptop these days… programming is mainly limited to work… I’m going to try migrating back to Windows. A heavily modified Windows environment obviously. Trying to integrate as much of the best features of linux into Windows is going to a mighty difficult task, but it’s a challenge I’m going to attempt to tackle. To be honest, being such a new computer, I reckon Ubuntu would still have a few quirks it would need to sort out… plus, the latest release has been full of bugs. In a few months time, either I would have successfully migrated to the cloud, or I’ll be installing the next release of Ubuntu, or maybe 7?

Either way, it looks like it’ll take me a few weeks to get used to this new machine.

Anyway, to all the geeks out there, I’d just like to say…

svn-ing your entire computer has its challenges and is frustrating at times, but it can be worthwhile. Admittedly, it’s near impossible to have compatibility with Windows and Linux on the same repository, plus, I have yet to successfully test this out across multiple machines, but it’s a lot easier than the stupid network drive set up. The damn thing keeps losing connection every time I try to bloody copy a large file and it’s too damn laggy to stream media off!

Finally…

I’m currently in the middle of watching the Robocop: Prime Directives mini tv series. It’s メチャ懐かしい！ I think I’m turning to the past more and more often these days…. so not good.

In similar news… I was talking with a friend about actresses that are our types… we couldn’t really name any recent ones *shock* we realised that we’re old enough to have lived through more than one ‘era’ … are we from the Bullock, Kidman, Aniston, Ryan, Roberts era? Does that era include Portman, Johannson, Jolie, etc? Either way, to have lived through more than one era for anything, be it movies, tv series, politics, music… that is a scary thought!

I had a bit of a shopping spree last week. Kind of retail therapy but not really, as it wasn’t very theraputic… I bought 4 new games:

1. No More Heroes (Wii)
2. Wii Sport Resort (Wii)
3. Pikmin 2 (Wii)
4. InFamous (PS3)

I have yet to play anything other than 1. but I’m really looking forward to inviting some friends round to test out the Motion Plus thing on Resort. Will most likely blog about it once I do. But yeah, No More Heroes is turning out to be pretty interesting.. will review that too soon!

Anyway, last words…

Who the hell reads my blog these days anyway?

I haven’t written anything in a while. Life has been more than a little hectic the past few weeks and for a variety of reasons, I haven’t had done a full weeks worth of work for the past few weeks.

Anyway, self and family are paramount and thankfully I work under an extremely understanding boss. Times like this, hopefully infrequent, do provide an ideal opportunity for reflection.

The next few weeks, months and years will no doubt define the rest of my life; that’s been true for a while. However, paraphrasing a well known quote, it’s not how you fall, it’s how you land that’s important. These hurdles set surrounding me need to be overcome and priorities need to be reorganised. Though, despite all that, I feel that what was important previously are not unimportant… but need to be looked at in a different light. I still want to excel at work. Learn more, experience more, be more. Also, what needs to be done – just get it done. What needs to be said – just say it. Expectations need to be surpassed.

The fragility of life is reflected in the fragility of emotion, the fragility of self. But, life can also be strength. Time to reflect that…

It’s strange how a day can flip your world upside down. Maybe it’s just one of those days that comes by every once in a while but then again, sometimes those odd days can draw out into a week, or a fortnight.

Last night I was thinking, maybe those dreams you have, that people have, sometimes disappear… will that boat sail away eventually? Am I just becoming too passive with the way things are right now?

I guess with all that uncertainty around me can rattle that inner strength.

It started to make me wonder where home is. I want to go home. Where is home.

I wish I had someone I could call up for a quick drink.

Recently I’ve been obsessively chewing more gum, drinking more coffee, eating more junk snack food…. so can’t be a good sign. seriously, maybe the title of this entry should be “unsprung”

I feel incredibly lost and confused. I wouldn’t say depressed or sad and I don’t really want to put a negative spin on this feeling but it is a complicated mirage of feelings.

Anything and anyone can be misunderstood or misinterpreted and that is definitely the last thing I want.

I went to Hong Kong for a weekend and returned feeling incredibly refreshed but within a few days work stress had returned to critical levels and to add to all the mess in my head, everyone is cross examining my life. To be honest, I really like that people are taking an interest in me, but it has made me consider my situation a lot. Thinking can be incredibly tiring sometimes.

I have walked through a million scenarios over the past god knows how long but the frustrating thing is that none of the scenarios lead anywhere helpful.

I know how it looks. I know how it really is – on my side at least. I know what I want. I just don’t know how to tie all those things together and make it happen.

I realised a few days back that I should be more honest with myself and others. Even after realising how guarded I am over this stuff, it is so difficult to just come out and be open about such things.

I’m not sure what else to say. Some people may say I’m still young. Some people may say that I’m still so pure, innocent or even naive. Sometimes I just wish that someone would just sort things out for me. I seem to be missing some guts.

why why why why why why why why

I thought I’d finished with the whole figuring out where my future lay but with this unexpected turn of events, I have the opportunity to figure it all out again.

The whole unravelling of my future has left me dazed, unbalanced and any other word which can describe this unsettling plethora of feelings; I have somewhat lost confidence – have I lost my way after the first step?

I really have no idea if I want to stay in this industry or not at the moment. I didn’t expect to feel how I felt today; I didn’t really know what to expect.

All I can do is fight on. Believe in myself. Rediscover that lost path.

Last night was billed by IC as the biggest Summer Ball in London. For me, the Summer Ball was probably the last night I’d see many of my friends. Since receiving the confirmation email for my flight to Japan I’ve felt somewhat unsettled. Unsettled, neither in a good or bad way. Just unsure as to how to feel about all of this. Even though I live for this life changing moments and cherish them deeply when they do happen, it’s never easy to actually go through one; not that I’ve lived a turbulent lifestyle.

On the contrary, I probably have had one of the least turbulent lifestyles imaginable. Looking back over the years, I suppose the major events of my life would include:

• going to Japan for a term and living in Hokkaido when I was 9 or 10
• starting DC life
• ending DC life
• the world tour
• starting uni
• the 6 month summer of last year

and now, ending uni. But, it’s not just ending university. It’s ending the educational part of my life. It’s leaving the London life behind. It’s starting from scratch. It’s scary.

Less than 2 months to go until I leave for Tokyo. Less than a month of experiencing London. Less than a week of the student life.

Some people can bottle this kind of anger, frustration and stress up without venting it. Sometimes I can manage it too but I don’t know if it’s because I wasn’t particularly happy at the time or whatever, but my mood has not improved. Firstly, going out of my way to buy some food for tonight. I wouldn’t have minded if I was asked politely… Returning home, I cooked up some risotto… I felt generous and cooked a lot… Seeing the risotto and heading to the pub… ignored.

The day start off with so much promise this morning…

Why is my life filled with so much stress…

I feel like crap.

Tonight, Manchester United were crowned Champions of Europe. Along with winning the English Premier League 10 days ago, that makes them double winners. The match tonight started off as a classic encounter between two heavy weights of the English league with an enthralling first half of end to end football. The Reds dominated possession and the ball for large parts of the first half but a lapse in concentration and some unfortunate deflections left the score drawn at half time. The second half was all Blue and my heart stopped with every wave of attack by Chelsea. It didn’t look like Man U were likely to score, but thankfully, I also believed that with each clearance of another Chelsea attack, neither were the Blues.

So, the match went into extra time with some weary legs out there, and clutching my red squishy cushiony thing (I don’t know the technical term for the squishy cushiony thing I have) I watched extra time. Things were turning ugly with fouls, tempers flaring and a lack of beautiful football. An altercation between some of the players ended up with a number of players yellow carded and Drogba sent off. Penalties was imminent.

Anyway, as most of you will no doubt have read the reports or watched the game live, I will stop with this commentary. Suffice to say, I had a feeling Ronaldo may miss but I have never thought of Terry as a penalty taker and so it proved. Along with the fantastic save by the great Dutchman (not quite a Great Dane), the trophy was ours! Woooo~~

Barraged with a lottery of text messages from various parties, some celebratory and others slightly hostile, I sit here in the afterglow of another entertaining night of football. I can’t wait until the Euros!

1999 was a special year. A treble winning season and those two spectacular late goals, is a feeling unmatched. I have to mention the legend that is Ryan Giggs. He didn’t play a massive part in tonight’s game but he is one of a kind. It’s a shame he’s Welsh but along with Paul Scholes, they are truly Manchester United. Many great players have pulled on the red shirt over the years, Cantona, Solskjaer, Schmeichel… the list goes on and all were great players of the past decade but no one can say that Giggs has not played his part in shaping the history at the great club. ….woooo football is awesome!!!