Artificial Incompetence

In an ideal world the careers we pursue would be guided by our strengths, our aptitude would determine our success and we would be rewarded with merit for how good we are at doing our jobs. This concept is known as meritocracy and it's usually primarily in the context of governments, namely those which claim to appoint people to their key positions based on ability and proven track records. If you've paid attention to politics in recent years even briefly so, then you will know this claim is patently untrue. This isn't a political post though, much as there is to say on the matter I would mostly be echoing what you've already heard a thousand times over.

What interests me about the idea of meritocracy is its application beyond government to everyone else and the jobs that they do. Judgement of politicians to one side, they are not the only people we see in jobs and feel they're in the wrong profession. The truth is that capitalism doesn't reward ability it rewards durability - or permanence. The people who remain in their jobs are those that can withstand the pressure of their job, even if they're crap at it.

The Dark Side of ASMR

By now most people probably know what ASMR is, it stands for Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response and describes an involuntary sensory response triggered by an external stimulus such as sight, sound, or touch. The sensation is best described as a tingle that emanates from a trigger point and passes through the body in a wave of nervous stimulation.

I watch a lot of ASMR videos on YouTube, some of them with active focus where the video is the only thing I fixate on, and others more passively as a background whilst I work. They provide a sense of comfort and relaxation that helps relieve anxiety. As far as tingles are concerned, the first time I ever felt ASMR was when I was a kid and didn't know what it was. Every time I would get my head shaved I would feel a shiver wash over me when the electric razor passed by my ear. This trigger is the only one that I've never become immune to, no matter how often I hear it.

Go Again?

You can tell how old someone is mentally when you ask them to make a decision based on an impulse and measure the hesitation that follows. When I was 18 years old I thought nothing of applying to University in London whilst living here in Northern Ireland. The distance wasn't a factor in the decision making process at all. In fact the choice of University was at first random, there were 6 places to fill on the University application form known as a UCAS form, I had filled 4 places with the Universities I thought I would choose from, and filled the final two places with Universities that looked interesting but were ultimately chosen at random.

It wasn't until after I was invited to an open day, and received an offer that I actually considered the possibility of living in London with any serious weight. If you asked me to do the same thing now as a 35 year old - approaching 36 in a few weeks, the hesitation is incalculable. It's not just a hypothetical idea either for me now, it's a realistic possibility. Here in the UK there are a growing number of Degree Apprenticeship programmes, these have no age limit and work on the basis of applying for a job to an employer, if accepted you work at a discount whilst also studying for a degree alongside your job, at the end of the first 3 or 4 years you are then awarded a Degree. Essentially this is the equivalent of an employer sponsoring your degree.

Halcyon Lights

The world that turns knows not our remiss
Nor the warm embrace of a lover's kiss
It turns forever with each passing day
Now void of the words you used to say

Your loss was felt by those who remain
A loss marked by most intimate of pain
In the echo of the night your music plays
With a sombre yearning for bygone days

As we remember your heart beneath halcyon lights
Striving to reach all those promised heights
Yet darkness swells as we watch this world burn
In sorrow we beseech why would you return?

Romeo and Julian

As a gay man I am blessed and cursed by the fact that beyond higher education, society doesn't really know what to do with me. What I mean by this is that in contrast to a straight person, their life has a set path that society expects them to follow; they're born, attend education, graduate, date, marry, have kids, and raise those kids to do the same. Every major life goal or milestone that society expects of straight people centres around this path, from renting and eventually buying a home big enough to house those kids, getting a job where you earn enough to support them, even marriage as a concept was tightly linked to having children.

As a gay man though, the expectation to get married isn't placed on us, even in the rare instances where it is, there's no time frame that we're pressured into. If you're straight you're expected to be married and have your first kid by 30, if you wait longer then you're going to end up in the position where you'll already be feeling the effects of ageing and find it difficult to keep up with those children. For gay men as neither can get pregnant this time pressure isn't present because the assumption is that you will adopt if you do have kids. That is if there is any expectation to get married and have kids at all, many cultures and communities actively push against the idea of gay parents - which is ridiculous, the idea that gay parents will make kids gay is just asinine, having straight parents didn't make me straight.

Normalcy

People's attitudes to intelligence can tell you a lot about their insecurities. When I was a kid I learned quite early in my life that people only valued your intelligence as long as they didn't perceive it as a threat, and as long as it didn't make them feel inadequate. I was top of my class for a time, but that position made me a target for bullies to the point where I intentionally dumbed myself down in school. I didn't see the merit in pushing to be first when all that got me was hostility from those around me. This held true throughout my Primary and Secondary Education, I did what I needed to pass each class with a comfortable margin and made little effort to apply myself further.

This drew the ire of teachers who accused me of not taking my education seriously, I pushed back out of spite and sat at the top of my class in a handful of subjects again mainly to shut up the teachers not because I had a vested interest in doing well. I was already being bullied for other reasons at that point, so it didn't make much difference to me.

The Psychology of Food

I think I need to fundamentally reassess my relationship with food. When I was a child my family regularly went through financial fluctuations in our budget, there were times when we had extra money which was when we occasionally had takeout; there were also times when our budget was comfortable those were the times when we ate regularly and also had between meal snacks, and between-between meal snacks. Then there were times when money was tight so we'd only really eat at our regularly dinner time in the evening, and a light breakfast which was usually just cereal or toast.

There was an element of guilt associated with uneaten food, the times when money was tight this element of guilt was at its highest and conversely when money was expendable the guilt for not eating everything I was given was less, but not completely absent. That mentality prevailed for my childhood and teenage years. The problem with all of this was that I had never been able to regulate my metabolism no matter how much or how little I ate because my circadian rhythm - the time when I wake and sleep - was never in sync with my family. I have posited that this is related to my Nystagmus, the ramification being that I've never been able to sleep willingly or at a regular time because I only ever sleep out of exhaustion.

Write for yourself, first and foremost

If you're of a creative mindset, whatever the form of expression you use as an outlet for your creativity there is inevitably the question of who you create for - do you create for yourself, or for others, or do you try and find a balance between both of these influences?

When you create for yourself, ultimately the act of creation is a form of self expression, and introspection. Everything you create ultimately comes from somewhere inside of you, what you choose to express reflects an internal state. This becomes the most difficult to face when you create characters you want to hate, even if you draw from external influences for inspiration, the character you create is an extension of you. In order to convey what a character thinks and feels, and how they act, you have to embody the mentality of the character which forces you to face the reality that what the character does is an impression of what you yourself would do in their situation.