Dentists

I've finally been to see a dentist today. It's been somewhere in the region of 4-5 years since my last visit to one. I'm not scared of them, I just couldn't sort it out. The result was pretty much exactly what I thought it would be, and so, I have a appointment in two and a half weeks.

The rest of today is going to be spent resting though. The last few days have taken their toll and I'm quite thoroughly spent.

That said, I'm noticing something cool. I'm getting more energy to spend each day, each week. I think I'm getting to the point where I'm ready to start looking at work again. Just part time for the moment, up to 16 hours. I'm still quite aware that a full time job is out of my reach at the moment, (I'm far too low level or some such gaming reference) but things are getting better.

I still have some things I need to work through mentally about work and routines, but I think I could probably hold a part time job now. I keep looking at things online and thinking about it, but so far nothing's caught my eye as a 'I want to do that'.

I'll keep looking though!

Operation 'Epic Birthday Card'

I've got 4 autographs, and I'm hoping to catch Steve Davis to make it 5, I might send it at that point. Shame he got knocked out of the tournament though.

Hanging around here is fun, the crowd is mostly cool too, and because I'm wandering around with a silly grin, most people are just smiling in response to the smile.

I'm having fun, I wish I'd been down here yesterday, but I wasn't feeling well enough for it.

I'm sat in the Winter Gardens having a cup of tea, and then I'm going to go try get on the table for a frame.

Fun Fun!

Edited to Add:

I got to play a game on the table! It was fun!

I met Cliff Thornburn, who was friendly. Who helped me get Steve Davis' autograph! Whee.

Much fun. It was all pretty cool.

Okay, enough for today...

So... Awake at 5am, accidentally. The alarms were set for 6am, but I woke up pre-emptively, feeling like I had had about 20 minutes sleep.

Check my mail, get dressed/made up/ready, hopped on a bus, got into town, realised I'd left something I might need at home (“This is going well so... Crap.”) then hopped on another bus onto my destination...

The lost city of Atlantis... Wait, I'm not working on fic, I'm trying to write a journal... Try again...

Another bus onto my destination...

The Sheffield GIC, aka, The Porterbrook Clinic, aka, little building round the back because ours is being redecorated...

Oh... Okay.

Dr. wait, no... Prof Wylie was a nice chap, like all reports had lead me to believe. No army of evil robots to deal with (That's Dr. Wily, folks. Stolen Joke is stolen.)

Anyway, he was cool. I met a few other people who work there too, and have my next appointment lined up for the 24th of next month. It's a bloodwork appointment, so needles and whatnot as far as I'm expecting. No biggie.

Sit around for a bit, have a coffee. Then, catching up over breakfast. Could have gone on for longer, but there was work to be done. So yeah.

Walk. From there, down Ecclesall Road. Stop at every charity shop on the way. Don't buy everything you think looks nice. Buy a couple of items that you need, see a nice pair of red shoes that you've been looking for, for ages now, and get them too... Damn. Buy a card for my Dad's birthday.

So I get to town, and set about my grand scheme to give my Dad a birthday card he'll appreciate. What's that? The Snooker World Championship is on (Woo Snooker!) and my Dad like snooker you say? Oh right, I'll just lurk around the Winter Gardens and get passing Snooker players to sign a card for him. That'd be Awesome... Plus, I enjoy Snooker a little bit too, so I get to see people, in the flesh, that I've only seen on TV before. I know people back in Bradford that enjoy it too, that I'm in contact with, and she's stuck at work! (Ha ha ha!)

So now, my feet hurt from standing around too long trying to get Snooker players attentions (they do not look happy, and a computer casing bashed into one of my ankles the other day and it's a little swollen), and I'm quite literally knackered from having woken up so early today. Tomorrow, I'll go back to the Winter Gardens and trawl some more autographs for my Dad's birthday card. They're also letting people play on the table there too, so I might, nerve willing, see about having a go too!

Ed'c Dryd Desa. Ykyeh.

E's ryjehk y vyenmo viwwo tyo. E ryt uha oacdantyo duu, pid E yd maycd ryt cusadrehk du tu.

Dutyo E's zicd ceddehk ynuiht drehgehk uv drehk'c du tu. Ed'c hud kuehk famm.

Vun druca uv oui fru lyh nayt drec. E's tuehk drec po ryht. E tu syga secdygac cusadesac.

E fuga ib du yh asbdo ruica dutyo, sayhehk E'ja hu etay frana sa ruicasyda ec. Ed'c y meddma muhamo.

E's dnoehk du drehg uv fyoc du bnabyna vun sa dneb du dra GIC uh Monday; E's hud lusehk ib fedr yhodrehk druikr. Sa pnyeh ed'c suna ehdanacdat eh tuehk drehkc mega drec.

E fahd uid mycd hekrd. Drana fyc y gehgo saad-ib, frana fa bmyoat fedr nuba. E cbahd cusa desa deat ib, frela fyc jano namyqehk yht lydryndel. Ed fuga sa ib vnus y bnaddo vimmo rayt-cbyla. E cmabd jano famm yvdanfyntc. E haat dryd geht uv drehk suna uvdah, pid ed ec y geht uv drehk dryd oui haat y namydeuhcreb fedr cusauha du kad uvdah.

Drec ryc dinhat ehdu nyhtus lnyb. E drehg E famm ku bmao Dungeon Keeper 2 huf. E's y meddma  punat naymmo.

Wahooooooooooo!

I just had a phone call:

I've got my first GIC appointment on the 26th!

Awesomesauce!

*happy dance*

God Damn Phones to Hell.

If I have to correct someone who thinks my name is "Lewis" when I tell them my name, one more time I'm going to go f****** mental.

On the up side, I called the GIC today. On the downside, they couldn't tell me what I wanted to know, and it pissed me off.

*grumbles*

Today sucks ass. Totally.

I woke up early, snoozed through to mid afternoon.

I didn't sleep well because something I was planning to go to tonight seemed to be a terrible idea thanks to some new info that came up last night, and I spent the night thinking about how upsetting and aggravating it is.

I've spent the day trying to sort out bits of official ID, to realise that my driving licence is actually back in Bradford. So while I've got some things sorted, I don't actually have any ID I'm happy to go waving about at the moment.

I used to like Thursdays...

*blink blink* is it done now?

What a day!

Hammers are a characteristic of my mornings at the moment, in that, around 9am they start and they don't stop until after I've woken up. This morning was no exception, as I awoke for a busy busy day.

I've had a good day, too, so I've barely been worried/depressive.

I collected some more pills from the pharmacy, after collecting my prescription from the doctors, then I caught a bus from there into town, because my brother was waiting there. A short wait later and my mum showed up too. This was all planned though, so it was okay.

We had lunch! We went shopping! Whoo! I got a new dress, and an accessory for my 360 (no more buying batteries for me!) I also found something rare: Final Fantasy Anthology (4&5) and it was the European version too.

So it took me a few hours before I stopped going “OhMyGodI'veGotFinalFantasyAnthologyWheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!”

It's only the only PSX Final Fantasy release I've *never* had before, I was well chuffed, even if I have had to jiggle my finances around so I could afford it (I often change my financial plans around at the last second, so I'd semi-budgeted a buffer for stuff like this. All it really means is that I'll have to wait a couple of weeks before I get the D&D PHB3.)

So, after wandering around town for a while, my mum and brother go home, and I go sit in the cafe at the museum and have tea. Whuu! It was good to see them, I was a little unenthusiastic about it being visited because the attention seems to be mostly because of me doing this whole transition thing, but I am glad I did see them.

Today is being a good day. I'm pretty happy at this point. I send a couple of texts, one to find out if a friend of mine is around, having received a text from them this morning asking me if I wanted to do something today, as they were visiting from Leeds. Their timing was great...

So yes, they came, and my friend had a friend who had a baby who was adorable. I want a baby now, she was sooooo cute! Er, yeah, it's not the first time I've felt that, but it was the strongest this time around. So, we got tea, and I played with the baby a little, and caught up on my friends news. I didn't stay with them long, because I had some place else to go to.

D&D game! Whaa! Fun! Was an interesting session, to say the least. We found something plottish, and a superpowered owlbear, which was challenging. Also, Juliet (my character) is finding the rest of the party decidedly odd:  A kleptomaniac gnome, and a dwarf that has adopted an owlbear baby. Who knows what the party Elf is going to end up doing to weird her out. Personally I feel a little in over my head playing her. Juliet's got the 'party leader' flag, it feels like, or at least, if it comes down to talking, she's the one who's good at it, and me, still trying to wrap my head around the setting, is muddling through.

Awesome day is awesome. Now to spend the next week recovering!

Me and Christianity: History

I've been in touch with someone recently I was pretty close to when I was in the later years of my church involvement, I've got a couple of contacts that were, but I'm bouncing conversational emails back and forth with her and it feels more active than the others. I've been thinking about me and my old faith a lot recently, I'm not going back to it, but the whole thing is making me wholly uncomfortable. It's a mixture of many things, how Easter has just been and gone and people are going on about it, how there is a big, obnoxious cross on a tower just across the road from my bedroom window, how my memory keeps recalling some of the more atrocious crap I've had to put up with while being at the church. Whatever it is, it's reached a critical mass in my head, and I've decided it's time to let it out.

I'm not completely anti-religion, or anti-faith. I've seen lives actually get ludicrously better because of finding a god, (I'm thinking of people who have gone from being wrecked drug addicts to pillars of the community,) and give people a reason to keep going and making a difference in the world. I feel like it is a bit like a crutch, or training wheels, to give people what they need in order to be as strong as they are. I think some people are inherently strong, and that religion or faith gives them the reason, and direction, to unhook themselves from the grip of things holding them back and display their entire strength of character.

That said, the authority hating part of me finds the Church and its organisation inherently repulsive. I don't even have to go as far as finding out about paedophilic priests to get to that point. My revulsion is a lot more personal to me, and the things that the organisation has inflicted on me.

So that makes me atheist, or sometimes agnostic, or whatever, last thing I want is another label to add to my ever increasingly list of them that someone somewhere is likely to get all judgemental about. On judgementalism, it is fairly bloody irritating to see people be judgemental against something for being judgemental. Is it me or is that the most blinding case of hypocrisy ever? For me, I don't get to be judgemental about anything, I'm sick of being the object of judgementalism, and if I want to see the end of judgemental attitudes, I can't exactly be the one sitting there with a list of them as long as the worst of judgemental types.

I remember a nice little catchphrase that came up, in a time where catchphrases seemed to be cropping up all the time (which made me feel varying degrees of sick,) was to hate the sin and love the sinner. IE. What you're doing is wrong, but I still value you as a human being. I don't believe the church organisation really does that so well at all. On the list of things I'm likely to do, walking into a church while it is being used for Christian stuff is fairly down towards the end. While most people are actually cool, it is likely to be a hotspot of judgementalism and outright hatred, in a similar sort of way to wandering outside at certain times and places is sure-fire way to get the stuffing kicked out of you.

So really, apart from the holier-than-thou judgemental attitudes that seem to breed in the petri-dish of religion (and religion is certainly not the only place this happens, I'm aware), I don't really have that much of a problem with it. I don't believe, which is as much a thing of being sceptical of most things, people, and authorities, than having specific proof of its non-truthfulness. That most religions don't do a good job of proving themselves true doesn't help their cases (God being unwilling to do party tricks to go 'hello I'm here', because God wants faith, and faith based on proof isn't good enough). I'm specifically not getting into the exact reasoning why I don't believe simply because I don't want to have the “you're wrong about this” conversation with someone online.

I wanted to let out a little of some of the things I've experienced of people within the church too. In fairness, this makes them 'bad' people who happen to be Christians. I was respected by, and got treated better by, other Christians. So I don't see all Christians as a group of people who are nasty and evil. Just that a couple of people who I have met, were complete bastards. These people are ones who I just really really hope I'll never bump into, ever again. I'm not going to now though. My point now is that bad people don't prove a religion bad/wrong.


Of course, I've written all this without actually going into my actual church history.

I was taken to a lot of youth based things for a while between 8 and 12, refused to go between then and 14, at which point I got an invite to the 14-18's bible study group. I was at that and did an alpha course during it, among other things. The bible study group regularly took over a service once a month, and over the course of my time with them I led services and rose to actually delivering a sermon. After I turned 18 I stayed with the group, but eventually left because I wanted to move up to more grown up roles.

At 20 I was put forth for a gap year training program, which my church paid for. The programme involved one day a week of bible study/topical training, and the rest of the week working for a couple of church projects, and having a part time job at the same time. One project was called KidzKlub, (weekly evangelisic saturday-morning-television-esqe club, something I now find morally questionable at best,) which was just being set up at the time, by the church I called my home church. I think it was their hope that I would stay with the children's outreach, because when I wanted once again, to move onto more grown up orientated roles, I found myself without much support. During this time I read through and made my own annotations on the Bible in its canon entirety.

From 21 to 23 I ran two bible study groups. One, my housemate at the time and myself ran between us, and the other was held by the main church for under 35's. The main church eventually asked us to stop running our home group, so we stopped, and I continued to help run the second group. After a while, the groups leadership distilled to three of us, and at that point it became very much my own group to do with as I liked. At the time I had stopped going to the main church, because quite frankly, it was dull, fake, and more about spectacle than actual biblical teaching and support, which was what had led me and my old housemate to start our group in the first place, and what I wanted, after having had it for a year with my gap year programme and no longer having it.

I spent a lot of time in that period with very mixed feelings. I was a cynical believer, distrusting and very bitter at a few things, as my home church got progressively worse, and people I had liked and had support from had begun to leave and had left me behind. In some ways, my distrust for authority began to grow here.

At 23, the main church asked me to leave because I wasn't going on the Sunday mornings. Instead of yielding and going back to a service that was superficial I decided I would leave. The group I was leading fell apart, and I was no longer involved in any kind of church activity. About three months after that I lost pretty much my faith, focus, and determination and another three after that I became depressed. Things that I had minor troubles with became much harder to deal with, and things I was trying to ignore and control stopped being things I needed to ignore or control. The depression, in regards to all this, feels like the thing that hit me once I was left with no support network. I think, to a large extent, what it did for me is give me people to be there for me, which was a huge factor in keeping myself 'sane'.

While I am told that Christianity is not exclusive of people such as myself, I don't feel the need to go back to it. I don't feel it relevant to my life, and definitely don't want the pressure and life that came with it. It's a part of my past that has hurt me a lot. The suggestion I go back to it is like putting a knife in my hand and telling me to stab myself in the gut; it's not going to happen. The topic still makes me cringe and uncomfortable when it comes up. One of the reasons I changed my name entirely, fore-, sur-, and middle name, was because of the things I did with the church; I no longer wanted the name so associated with those deeds.

So yeah, it's an entirely dead and buried aspect of me that may get raised and sent to heaven, if such a thing could happen, but it's not something I believe or hope for, or seek refuge in.

Thursday Afternoon: The Morning After

I had a doctors appointment in the morning. It was a routine appointment, but I had one of them flashes of inspiration on Tuesday night, which highlighted anxiety as the main reason I don't go out sometimes. Some days, I just can't push myself above the worries and doubts of how other people will be about me, or how I look, especially if I'm tired or stressed, because that will make me give up before I'm even close to trying to push past it. I took this to the doctor, and I'm now taking Citalopram, I know my general stance is that I don't like taking pills to feel good, but I'm overriding that with the basic need to be functional. My worries stop me doing stuff, then I feel like crap, then I worry more. I have so much I want to do, but I keep getting hung up on things and not doing anything. I need to break that cycle, and if medication is the way to go, then that's the way I'm going.

I've been saying I was going to get in touch with the GIC about where I am on the waiting list, but the doctor offered to get in touch with them to find out where I was instead. This takes a little strain off me, and if I'd have realised I could have asked them to do it, I probably would have a lot sooner than now.

I picked up some shopping on the way home, because I was in need of more tea, and I got myself a treat for getting out.

Getting home was easy, getting back out again was a hard. I had some food, sorted out a couple of minor household things, and pushed myself back out of the door when I saw a bus on its way. I'd wanted to do some shopping, and there were some things I wanted. I ended up spending more than I wanted to, but I at least managed to get the shopping I wanted to do out of my system.

I had a great day overall. It felt really progressive, and, with the exception of the taxi-driver on the way home, I didn't notice any unnecessary fuss from randoms. (The taxi-driver called me sir, several times, and did I correct him? No. Small steps, when I get better I'll make more of a fuss when people mis-gender me.)

Something that has changed though, is that I'm taking more personal responsibility for the way things are in my life. I know that things around me are a bit crappy, but instead of waiting for them to get better, I'm trying to sort out the problems in myself out first. Instead of saying “when things get better” I'm saying “when I get better” which feels like a whole world of more productive, because it's something that is more personally achievable at this point. When I get better, and can do more, I can get on with doing the things to make the situation better. It seems to make more sense as a course of action.

And finally, I picked up a copy of The Orange Box for the 360 on a whim. I now have more than one Xbox 360 game (I still maintain that the only reason I bought the damn thing was for FF13, and that is was way cheaper than getting a PS3 for only one game,) Either way, once I finally finish up Final Fantasy 13 (120 hours and counting,) I'll have a reason to not pack up the 360 until I want to play FF13 again.