Type 1 Diabetes

So early last year, exactly one week before Valentine’s day in fact, I was diagnosed with Type 1 Diabetes... or as I like to sometimes call it, the diabeetus. First I will tell you about how I found out (because I think it was kind of funny) and then what it actually means.



A blue circle is the symbol for diabetes

 I had some blood taken earlier in the week to test for all the standard things due to an unrelated eye issue I was having at the time known as Eyeritis. They wanted to try and figure out what might have been causing it. Skip forward a couple of days and I was getting ready for work in the morning when the phone rings. I answer and our family doctor is on the line which is no big deal because she is actually a long time close family friend, but she want's to talk to me which is a little unusual. She tells me that she got my blood results and I need to come into her practice as soon as possible, forget about going to work, just get there ASAP... and then she hangs up.

I have no idea what is going on, she didn't say what the reason I had to come in so urgently was other than it was in the results of my blood test. Being the person I am I immediately predicted the worst and instantly thought "it is terminal and I am going to die." I didn't tell anyone else what had just happened; I calmly packed up my things for work and left the house without a word.

In the car on the way there I forced myself to come to terms with my inevitable mortality and tried to imagine what it would be like to tell my friends and family that I was going to die. By the time I got to the doctor’s office I was pretty sure I had a pretty good handle on it and had pretty much accepted my fate. I walk in, the doctor ushers me straight through, I sit down, she looks at me sternly in the eyes and say's "you have type one diabetes."

 

What I use to test my blood every day



 I can honestly say I don't think I have ever been so glad to get bad news in my life, relief washed over me, I let out a big sigh and just smiled back at her. I think she was surprised at how well I was taking this news. My mum just so happens to work right next door to the practice and I told my doc asked if I wanted her to tell my mum for me, I agreed better her than me. After a few minutes of the boring diabetes information was being described to me like I was little child by one of the other doctors I suddenly hear the very familiar sound of my mum bursting into tears and getting hysterical. I was glad I agreed for the doc to tell her rather than doing it myself at that moment. I didn't really want to have to deal with that right then; I was going through my own shit. She bursts into the room and does the standard motherly stuff like hugs and crying etc. while I am just smiling like a dumb-ass the whole time.

The rest of the day consisted of learning about diabetes management which I will tell you a little bit about now.

I have Type 1 Diabetes, there is also Type 2 as well as Gestational Diabetes that make up the major three types. What all three have in common is the body's inability to process carbohydrates (sugars).

 Gestational Diabetes happens to some mothers during pregnancy. The following is described at www.healthinsite.gov.au
While the carbohydrate intolerance usually returns to normal after the birth, the mother has a significant risk of developing permanent diabetes while the baby is more likely to develop obesity and impaired glucose tolerance and/or diabetes later in life.

Type 2 Diabetes is the most common and also most widely known form of diabetes affecting 85-90% of all diabetics. If you have heard of Diabetes before, this is probably the type you are familiar with. This is sometimes a genetic issue and can sometimes happen to completely healthy people if there is a family history, but mostly it is caused by factors such as lack of exercise, bad diet, obesity, high blood pressure, and generally bad lifestyle choices. Type 2 can usually be treated with diet change, exercise, and medication, but sometimes it later requires regular injections if it worsens enough over time.



A hot girl holding what I use to inject insulin every day



Type 1 Diabetes is what I have. It accounts for around 10-15% of people with ongoing diabetes and therefor receives a whole lot less attention by media and doctors and research on it gets a whole lot less funding. Generally when I tell people I have "Type 1" diabetes they usually ask "is that the bad one?" and I cannot be bothered going into the specifics of the differences between the different types every single time so I usually just agree with them. Type 1 is an auto-immune disease were my own immune system attacks the cells that create insulin in my pancreas. It generally happens to younger people and used to be called juvenile-onset diabetes but also happens to people often as old as 40. It is generally considered to be triggered by viruses and is not preventable.

I am required to test my blood before every meal and also inject myself with insulin before nearly every meal depending on the carb count of the food and my blood sugar levels. I had to learn how to calculate the carb count of everything I eat and inject the right amount of insulin for each meal. If I inject too much I can go hypoglycaemic and pass out. If it's really bad I can fall into a coma (and die I guess). If it goes the other way and I don't inject and eat something with lots of carbs (sugars) me body tries to get rid of the excess blood sugar by eliminating it in the urine. This increases the amount of urine significantly, and often leads to dehydration so severe that it can cause seizures, coma, and even death. I need to have my insulin and blood testing until on me at all times as well as having a source of sugar nearby just in case I go into a hypo. I have to be very careful with my diet and try to exercise regularly (which is a little bit of an issue due to a heart problem I have right now that I will go into in another post).

Ongoing bad management of diabetes can cause many health problems in the long run... Fuck I'm just going to throw this in here for people that actually read this far, I am at work typing this up and one of the work guys just brought in a delicious cake made by his whife who is an amazing professional chef... and I just stood there and stared at them all eating that cake... FML.

Where was I? Oh yeah, health problems. If it is badly treated, or sometimes just after having the disease for many, many years, it can cause retina damage, kidney damage and kidney disease, increased risk of heart attack, high blood pressure, high cholesterol. But the most commonly known one is nerve damage, particularly in the extremities such as feet and hands. Diabetes is the leading cause of amputation in the world and diabetics account for somewhere around 50% of all amputations.

And that's it, I'd be surprised if anyone actually read all of that, I know it's my longest ever post and has heaps of info but if anyone has any questions for me about anything at all please feel free to ask in the comments. Thanks for reading.

Two Years Later - Finally A Big Ass Update

Here is the short tl;dr update of everything that has happened, mostly in 2012. I found out I have Type 1 diabetes and have to stick myself with needles 3 times a day for the rest of my life, got Sarcoidosis in various organs, Iritis in my eyes, another unknown eye issue that no one can figure out what it actually is but I might require injections into my eyeballs, appendicitis and needed to have an appendectomy which then got an internal infection and landed me straight back in hospital, an enlarged heart that does not pump at normal capacity, parents got fully divorced and lost their house, moved back in with my grandparents.

Fuck all that, 2012 has legit been one of the best years of my life.

I also went overseas for the first time in my life, visited USA and stayed in L.A. and Las Vegas. I went to Comic Con Australia and dressed up as Batman and stayed with good internet friends from interstate and had heaps of fun. I got into online dating and actually went on some dates, did some other things, got into a relationship, made friends, surprised myself, surprised other people.

I am going to go into more details about all of these things over the coming days / weeks because there is no way I could go into details about all of these things in one massive post, you would die of boredom and no one wants to read that much about some guy on the internet's life all at once. So stay tuned if you're interested in reading some crazy, interesting, sad, happy, exciting, and sometimes downright shocking stories.

(Yes, I really am going to start posting regularly again now... I promise)

I'm moving up the corperate ladder people!

...well kinda, I guess. I am currently training a new staff member to do my job and I will be moving to a more technical position in IT. Unfortunately what this will mean is that for the next few weeks I will probably be posting much less because most of the posts I make on this Blog are done during work hours.

For the next few days or so I will be training the new staff member everything I can so I will be flat out... and I can't exactly just start typing up Blog posts in front of her. After I am done training her I will need to be training in my new position which will take a little while, then after that I will be pretty flat out in the first few weeks at least trying to learn as much as I can before I can really settle into the position and even think about getting free time to type up some stuff for you guys.

I will still post some stuff during that time but because I will have to do it at home it will most likely be much less frequent. But I'm sure I can come up with something for you to decide about changing my life during that time :D

AFL - Aussie Rules Football

AFL (Australian Football League) is the professional / national league of Australian Rules Football. The game is played with two teams of 22 players, 18 on the field and 4 interchangers. The game is played with an oval shaped ball on an oval shaped field (a modified cricket field). The game is played in quartes, with a 6 minute break between each quarter but a 20 minute break at half time. The four quarters are each 20 minutes, with the clock stopping when the ball is out of play. The aim is simply to score more points than the other team.

A football oval with the playing positions listed

The game is played by either kicking, hand-balling, or running with the ball, throwing the ball is not allowed. When running with the ball they must bounce the ball at least every 15 meters or pass it to another player. Players must always dispose of the ball by either a kick or a handpass. The most basic and most frequently used method of kicking the ball is by holding it out in front of you and 'dropping' it onto your foot as you kick forward, similar to how a soccer goal keeper kicks the ball onto the field. Soccer kicking the ball, punching the ball, etc. are all allowed, only throwing the ball is against the rules and results in a free kick for the other team. Dropping the ball also results in a free kick to the opposition.

The game stars with a coin toss to determine beginning directions. Then the ball is bounced in the centre of the field by an umpire and one team member from each side jumps for the ball and attempts to knock it towards another team member to gain possession. There are positions for players on the field but all players are free to move anywhere on the field during the game.

Scoring might seem a little weird to people new to the game. The aim is to kick the ball between the other teams posts. There are 4 posts at each end of the field. One team aims for one set of posts and vice versa. The teams interchange which direction they kick each quarter. When the ball is kicked between the two big (centre) posts that is a 'goal' which scores 6 points. If the ball is kicked between a small and big post (outer posts) that is a 'behind' which is 1 point. If the ball goes through any of the posts but makes contact with the defending team before crossing the line it is only 1 point even if it goes through the centre posts. If a team scores a goal the ball is returned to the centre of the field to begin play with a bounce. If only a behind (point) is scored the defending team then starts with the ball at their goal line between the centre posts.

Players are allowed to tackle the player that is in possession of the ball. If the player that is tackled does not handpass or kick the ball before getting pulled to the ground a free kick is awarded to the opposing team. If the player getting tackled drops or throws the ball a free kick is awarded. Although tackles are allowed, tackles that are considered too high (grabbing around the neck or head) are against the rules and a free kick will be awarded to the player that was tackled. Pushing in the back is also against the rules but a clean tackle from behind is fine though.

Marking the ball is another rule that some people do not understand at first. A mark is when a player catches the ball directly from a kick from either a team mate or the opposition. If the kick travels over 15m (distance is estimated at the discretion of the umpires) before being marked, the player has the option to pay the mark (basically take a free kick) or to play on. If the player takes the mark he will usually stop when he marks the ball and if an opposing player is about to tackle him he may do something to indicate he is taking the mark such as stop and stick out his hand or something. If the player marks the ball while being tackled or while diving or falling it is usually just considered that he will take the mark. When a player takes the mark the opposition are not allowed to tackle the player, the player is free for 10-15 seconds or so to kick the ball (usually the umpires will allow more time if the playing is going for a kick for goal, particularly for a long distance or hard angle kick). If the player decides to run with the ball that is considered a play on and he can now be tackled.

For more info check the Wikipedia pages:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_rules_football
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laws_of_Australian_football
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_rules_football_tactics_and_skills

Here are the highlights from the Grand Final, Only the 3rd time a Grand Final has ever drawn. My team is Collingwood (the Magpies, in black and white stripes):

Quick Updates

Here are some quick updates on recent events.

The old friend I saw last week called me on Friday night to come over to his place to hang out. Went over, there were some other people there and his girlfriend who I'd never met before. Had a couple of drinks, talked, hung out, listened to music, went home.

AFL (Australian Football) Grand Final was today, my team was in it, went to my uncle's house, my uncles team is the other team that was in it, there were aunties, uncles, cousins, grandparents, etc. there, got drunk, screamed and yelled at the TV... it ended up being a draw, there will be another game next week to decide the winners, going to go back over and get drunk again next week.

Family are visiting from interstate, going to go hang out with them tomorrow, go to the shops or something.

It looks like the majority of comments on the last post were in favour of sticking with what I am doing now with the weights while watching shows thing. I might keep an eye out just in case a club does strike my fancy but I will just stick with the weights at home for now. The biking idea was good too, I used to bike a lot. Also thanks for all the great comments.

There is a poll over there somewhere =>

Decide My Future - Fitness Edition

I have been recently working my way through the anime Baki The Grappler (great anime btw) and being the highly suggestible person that I am it made me want to get big and lift some weights. So I did one set of dumbbell curls and now feel like the most buff motherfucker on the planet.

I thought what I'd mention today is my history of fitness / unfitness. I have mentioned before that I used to do martial arts but I also did competitive swimming. Up until I was 17 I trained Monday to Saturday, sometimes multiple times a day. I would train swimming with my swim club in the morning before school and train Taekwondo in the afternoons. I even trained twice on Saturdays.

I could literally swim before I could walk and I started Karate not long after I started walking. I left Karate for Taekwondo because I wanted full contact competition. In Taekwondo I became state champion five times and national champion twice. In swimming the best I did was make it to the state championships for 100m backstroke and 100m butterfly. I made it to the finals for butterfly but did not place. I made the school cross country team every year and made the school swim team every year.

I was one fit motherfucker.

when I was 17 I first injured my ankle and weakened the ligaments in my ankle which put me out of any sport for a while, when I finally got better and was about to start training again I injured my knee badly. I was at the BMX track and stacked it, dislocating my knee and tearing my PCL (a ligament in the back of the knee). This took me out of action for a long time. I was on crutches for months and it took a lot longer to recover completely, although it is an injury which will never be completely fixed without surgery, which I do not plan on having.

After that I moved with my family interstate and started TAFE (similar to college for you Americans) and did not get back into training at all. After a while I put on a lot weight. When you train as much as I did your calorie intake is much higher than a normal person because you require immense amounts of energy to burn during training. When I suddenly stopped training it is nearly impossible to also suddenly cut your food intake at the same time. I was eating 4+ times the recommended calories for a normal person. So obviously I put on a lot of weight.

At my peak I hit about 125kg (metric system motherfuckers... it's about 275 pounds) The weird thing though is, when I was way overweight like that I had no problem getting girlfriends, and I'm not talking girls my size, I'm talking hot girls that even at my physical peak I would have considered out of my league. The other thing is at this point, although I was not 'fit' I was way stronger than I was when I was training. I could lift things that I could never lift before and can not lift now. I had big arms and a massive chest, even if they were covered with fat.

After a while I made a decision to loose the weight. I immediately cut my food intake by half, completely stopped eating all the junk food snacks, and at the same time try to speed up my metabolism by basically eating many times during the day but in small, low energy portions. After a few weeks of much stomach pain I think my stomach actually shrunk and I would become full with much less food. After a while this just became the way I lived without thinking about it and I started loosing a lot of weight without even realising it. Over time I began eating more and more but the weight kept coming off and I didn't realise because I never actually weighed myself during this time. (and it was also the time when I kind of stopped having any normal type of social interactions with people)

When I finally realised I had actually lost a lot of weight was when someone got me a new t-shirt for Christmas and it was a medium and I put it on and it actually fit me. I looked at myself in the mirror thinking 'WTF?' and then decided to weigh myself to see what I weighed now. Last time I had weighed myself I was about 120kg... when I got on the scale it said 85kg. I actually thought there was something wrong with the scale and tried again. I had lost 35kg without even realising it, mostly because by this time I was back to eating whatever I want and it no longer affected me.

So now I am... actually I have not weighed myself recently... but somewhere around the 77kg-82kg area. The thing is now I feel so weak. First I was super fit, then I was pretty damn strong when I was fat, now I am neither. I want to start trying to do something again but I don't know what. There are a lot of weights at my house that I can use at any time to bulk up and get stronger, but at the same time my real passion is doing martial arts and getting fitter. But to train martial arts I would need to join a club, which means paying them money and taking up a lot of my time which even now I feel I do not have enough time to give. I don't even have enough time to choose between playing a game and watching a movie or some anime. I literally had to completely stop gaming for the last few weeks to find the time to watch Baki The Grappler (which I still have not finished).

To overcome the time restraints at the moment I have taken a pair of dumbbells and some extra weight up to my room and I just do some sets while watching shows at the same time.

So what is your opinion on this? Should I just keep doing what I'm doing and just lift some weights in my room while watching shows? or should I cave in, join a club, start training again, and have even less / almost no time to do the things I love like gaming and watching anime and movies?

I guess there is also the social interaction that comes with being in a club, and also the possibility that some day down the track I could become a better fighter than I ever was before and one day be a champion again...

... that post turned out way longer than I expected.

TLDR; gaming, anime, and doing weights in my room? or join a martial arts club and have no time for shit?

Games - X3: Terran Conflict

Today I am going to talk about my favourite game / series of games of all time. The latest in the X Universe series of games is X3: Terran Conflict. I could go on about these games forever so I am going to try and keep this a brief as I can.

When ever I try and classify the genre of the X Universe games I usually describe them as 'first person roll playing, action, empire building space sim' or a space trading combat sim. X3: TC is a single player only game that bases its game play over 4 distinct areas of Trade, Fight, Build, and Think. The game is set in a Universe that consists of hundreds of sectors that are connected by Jump Gates in the far future.

Trade - Trading does not just mean 'buy X here and sell Y here' like other games. Sure trading will start out that way but once your account grows with credits you will find yourself creating and managing entire trading empires and actually affecting the economy of the entire universe.

Check out the Trade trailer:


Fight - There are many starting options for the game where you can begin as any chosen race in multiple situations. Most game starts will plant you in a little scout ship or a medium fighter class ship to begin with. Each race has multiple ships of all classes making hundreds of ships available from little scouts, transporters, trading ships, frigates, bombers, and many more up to destroyers and carriers which are over a thousand times the size of some of the smaller ships. You can grow from owning one little scout ship to one day controlling entire fleets of destroyers. You can align yourself or make enemies of any of the races, even become a notorious pirate and make the lawless pirate sectors your home.

Check out the Fight trailer:


Build - It may be a little while before you start building your first space station, but when you do the feeling of achievement is amazing. Then before long you will raise the funds to build another and another until you are not only building stations but entire interconnected complexes containing many joined stations. Before long entire sectors, maybe even entire areas of the universe will be under the control of your trading empire.

Check out the Build trailer:


Think - There are many story line missions that you can play through if you choose, but you are at no time forced to do so. You can leave the missions at any time and then come back to them later. Another great thing about X3:TC is, although it is based after the events of the previous X games, you do not have to play them first because you are no longer the main character (Julian Brennan) from the previous games. There are also unlimited small missions and jobs to complete to make extra credits from transporting passengers to defending stations from attacks to even building stations for other corporations.

Check out the Think trailer:


The one major criticism that is given to this game is that the learning curve is immense. Most people give up on the game early on because it really throws you in the deep end with no tutorial or training. If you can get past the first few hours of game play you will really start to get into it.

The one major acclaim I have for this game is the games community. It has one of the biggest modding communities, right up there with the Elder Scrolls modding community. The best fan made content and mods are often included into later updates of the game. The forums are massive and I have literally never had to post there because I have always been able to find the answers to any question I have had about the game. Egosoft even has released an update for the game the removes the Tages DRM security so you don't have to have the disk in the drive to play. I don't know of any other company that gives the option to turn off their game security for its community.

TLDR: X3: Terran Conflict is an awesome game and you should play it.

Here is another trailer for no other reason than the fact that it is one cool fucking trailer:

Shows - The Shield

One of those things I do a lot is watch many TV shows, usually on my PC... that I may or may not have downloaded from the internets. And the one I want to mention today is one that actually finished a few years ago called The Shield.

I have to admit that I am not really a fan of cop shows on TV, but The Shield is the exception to the rule for me. In my personal opinion, it is the best cop show I have ever seen. Now being in the mindset I was in when The Shield was in it's early years I thought 'oh great, another crappy cop show to add to the ever growing list of a million other crappy cop shows' and did not give it much thought, so it was not until years later that I was re-introduced to the show by a friend.

The thing you have to take into account with The Shield is that, unlike most other cop shows, you can not just watch random episodes here and there because, unlike other cop shows, there is one EPIC ongoing storyline that runs through the entire 7 seasons of the show, not separate stories for each episode. If you just want to check out an episode to see what the show is like make sure you watch the pilot episode (Season 1 Episode 1) and if it does not blow your mind in that very first episode then don't bother with the rest of the show. (Blew my mind when I watched it, did not expect what happened at all)

Things that make The Shield awesome:

Detective Vic Mackey, the most bad ass cop you will find on film. He makes Dirty Harry look like Paul Blart: Mall Cop. Although he is the main character there are many times through the show when you don't know if you love him or hate him, or if he is the good guy or the bad guy. Most people would say he is both (but mostly bad). You love to hate him and hate to love him. You will call him pathetic yet praise him like a hero. You will want him dead yet feel sorry and sympathise with him. On Bravo TV's countdown of the 100 Greatest Television Characters, Michael Chiklis described Mackey as "a cross between Hannibal Lecter and Dirty Harry." Also he probably has the biggest Wikipedia page dedicated to a single character from a single TV show I have seen.

Epic story. And when I say epic, I mean a non stop, action packed, edge of you seat, continuous story that spans the entire 7 years of the show. None of that 'chasing a different bad guy every show' bullshit, or even every season. If you can not watch every single episode, do not bother watching it at all because every episode is vital to the story.

Guest stars are another thing that The Shield does completely different to other shows. When you see a guest star appear on a show you usually expect them for a single episode, maybe two if they have a good character. When a guest star appears on The Shield, they stick around for an entire fucking season! Or even 2 seasons if they are awesome enough. And I'm not talking about crappy celebrities trying to break into acting as guest stars, I'm talking awesome actors like Glenn Close, Forest Whitaker, and Anthony Anderson.

The Shield has won Emmys, Golden Globes, AFI awards, Satellite Awards, and has been nominated for Screen Actors Guild Awards and Ewwy Awards.

The show finished back in 2008 and when it did it left a massive hole in my show watching activities that needed to be filled. And after looking around I found out that many of the production team from The Shield had moved onto another show called Sons of Anarchy. I'm not going to go far into SoA right now but it is another fantastic show and just started its 3rd season.

TLDR; The Shield is fucking awesome and you should watch it.

Also check out this video of 'Solving Crimes the Vic Mackey Way':

I Fail at Woman

So today I was once again reminded how forgettable I am and how much I fail at life. And once again it is to do with a girl... or lack of girl.

(I even gave her one of these premium mice)

I got a call from one of the employees saying that their mouse had gone faulty and they needed a replacement. She sounded familiar so I looked her up and saw that she was actually a girl I knew. She was actually the last girl I almost dated. I knew her sister and she introduced us and we hung out a couple of times and kind of hit it off but it never went any further than that.

That was something like 5 years ago and I have not had a girlfriend between then and now.

Anyway I remembered her and for some reason was sure she would remember me if she saw me, so I told her to drop by my desk with the faulty mouse and I will give her a new one (I even gave her one of the premium mice... it has more buttons and everything!).

So she comes past and I can immediately tell she has no idea who I am. So, being the idiot I am, I start with the "Hey, you look familiar" crap... she does not buy it and I can tell she is thinking I'm some douche trying to hit on her. She gives me the "Oh, you've probably just seen me around before or something" and tries to escape, but no! I can not let her get away now... not until she remembers me. Now I am determined to get her to remember me.
As she turns to run away from me I say "Hey wait a sec... what's your surname?" I immediately think 'why the fuck would she give me her surname, now she thinks I want to e-stalk her or something.' But by now she is a deer in the headlights and does not know what to do, so she tells me her surname and I say "Isn't your sister (insert sisters name here)?"
"... Um... Yes..."
"Oh yeah... I used to hang out with her... back in the day..."
"......"
"......"
>.>
<.<
And after a shitload of awkward silence and looking around at nothing she turns around and walks away, and I am left standing there, once again thinking about how much I fail at women.

Oh, and she clearly did not remember me after all that.

Going out?

Last night I worked up some motivation and I decided that I was going to go out to a club and pretend to be a social guy.

Well that was the plan anyway. What actually happened was a little less exciting. I had a shower and a shave, made myself look decent, looked at myself in the mirror and said "damn boy you lookin` fiiine" (note: may not have actually been looking fine)

I was feeling pretty tyred, I had actually been feeling sleepy all day, but I was not going to let that stop me. I had a look at the time and it was not even 9pm yet so I thought I would have a lay down a rest a bit before going out so I would not feel so sleepy when I head out at about 10:30pm. So I lay down on my bed and BAM! I wake up and it's 7:30am.

This was going to be the third time I'd gone out for some form of social interaction (not including family birthdays) all year... I guess not.

On a semi related note, one of my little cousins is turning 12 today and is having her birthday at LaserTag (Zone3). I'm 24 and I will be playing LazerTag with a bunch of 12 year olds... and this is the most exiting thing I will have done all year.

CAN'T WAIT!

A pink t-shirt

At my work, fridays are considered a casual day where people can dress in a more relaxed manner such as t-shirts and jeans or shorts if it's warm enough. I have a fascination with having to wear all of the clothing I own and when I see something in my wardrobe that I have not worn for a while I feel a compulsion to wear it. Today it was a pink t-shirt. I only own one pink t-shirt and it deserves to be worn damit!

When I put it on I was sure it looked sensible and not over the top and something along the lines of this:

But the moment I walked into the office my opinion of myself changed instantly and I had a feeling that when people looked at me what they saw was something more along the lines of this:

I think I look like a douche... I mean, the t-shirt does not even have a collar, I am not wearing a cap, I don't have a fake tan or any tattoos or anything, but everyone I look at that looks back at me gives me the distinct feeling that in their head I must be the biggest fucking douche on the planet...

... I guess what I am saying is I should wear this pink t-shirt more often.

A little regret and my out of control imagination

My usual attitude towards pretty much any situation is generally identical nearly every time... something along the lines of 'I don't really give a fuck.' But today for some reason a little bit of regret hit me.

Now how I am going to explain this is by going through explaining first the girl, then my current personal situation, and then my insane mind. And the other thing I need to do is to warn you that this is not some epic cool story bro, it's just an example on how my imagination sometimes takes the smallest insignificant situation and blows it way out of control in my head.

What happened was I was leaving work and as I walked through the car park towards my car I looked over to my right and saw a girl that I have seen before.

The Girl: Many of my lunch breaks consist of a trip across the road to Subway and this day was no exception. But as I walk through the door and line up in the queue I see a girl waiting at the register for a smoothy she already ordered and for some reason I can not fucking take my eyes off her. I don't find anything particularly special about her, in fact if anything she is spectacularly plain. She has straight long black hair, very white skin (no tan at all), a decent figure (not super fit but in NO way fat), and even nicely dressed.

She looks at me for a moment and then quickly looks away, then does not look at me again which already gives me the impression she is in no way interested. When she leaves I watch her and see that she walks across the road and into the building next to the one I work in which is also used by the same organisation I work for so now I know she works at the same place I do... and that's all I know.

As soon as I get back to my desk I spend the rest of my lunch going through random names on the staff directory intranet page hoping to come across her picture and find out her name (there are literally thousands of staff listed in the directory so realistically I had no chance of finding her).

I have only seen her one other time at Subway after that and basically the same thing happened and she did not look at me at all.

My Current Situation: I am 24 years old and I have not had a girlfriend for something like 6 years. No one night stands, no fuck buddy, basically no female friendship of any kind for 6 or so years. What's even worse is I have also had very minimal male friendship over the last few years also. When I was 18 I moved interstate and about 2000km away (metric system motherfucker, deal with it). I had to make all new friends which I did, and I kept those friendships for a few years but over time we drifted apart and now the closest thing I have to friendship is two guys I know that I usually am lucky to be in contact with maybe once every few months.

The problem with this type of a lack of social interaction, especially in relation to women, is that the problem itself is what makes the problem worse. As time goes on with less and less social interaction you grow more and more socially awkward. As you grow more and more socially awkward it becomes harder and harder to partake in social interaction.
It is pretty hard for the guy with no friends to get invited to a party. You don't exactly look like a guy that girls what to get to know when you go to the cinema by yourself. It's pretty hard to get the motivation to go to a night club when you realise you are going all by yourself, and the times you do convince yourself to go you feel like a retard because, lets face it, you at a nightclub by yourself.

My Insane Mind: I look across the parking lot and see the girl. She is doing that thing when you are in a rush but not enough of a rush for an all out sprint, she is running, then walking, then running, then walking some more etc. Once again I can not take my eyes off her and she looks across in my direction a few times but I can not be sure if she is actually looking at me or not as there is a bit of distance between us. We are walking parallel to each other and I see her pause for a moment an take her shoes off so she can move faster and/or easier and there is something about her running down the street with her bare feet that I find very sexy. She continues down the road and I go to my car.

As I am driving down the road and turn a corner I see her heading the same direction still doing the run/walk thing. Just before I catch up to her an idea flashes in my mind "what if I pull up beside her and ask her if she needs a lift since she looks like she is in some kind of rush to get wherever she is going?" but as soon as the thought enters my head I get a mix of just thinking "pfft that's just stupid, who gets in some strangers car? someone looking to get raped that's who" and "oh dear god a girl!" then it is already too late and I am going past her and I get my last moment of "If I slam on my breaks now maybe I can still do it." But I don't... and then my insane imagination takes over.

For the next half an hour my mind takes over and my body goes into 'auto-drive-yourself-home' mode and it's almost like I am not even looking at the road while I drive. My imagination runs completely out of control and creates all these fictional situations from her refusing the lift, to her taking the lift, to different fictional conversations we have while she is in my car. From finding out she already has a boyfriend to finding out she is just not interested, or that she is even a lesbian. From where I drive her to all the different ways I could ask her out and even just what her name is... and it keeps going! I am only about half way home now so my insane mind goes to the extreme and begins go fantasise an entire fictional relationship from our first date, to meeting up at work, further dating, eventually taking her home, far later even meeting my parents and getting married.

I barely even realise that I am now sitting in my car... at home... parked in my driveway... with the motor running. I 'wake up' and my out of control imagination finally releases it's grip on me and as I am walking to my front door, thinking about what just happened, about how a half an hour drive home felt like and entire lifetime...

... and then I realise how insane I am to have basically created an entire relationship in my head simply by driving past some girl I don't even know.

TLDR; I am fucking crazy and have no control over my imagination.

These things I do... Short Films

Since I can't think about anything better to mention at the moment, lets hear about another one of these things I do...

When I am on my lunch break at work I like to watch short films while I eat. In fact I like to watch short films whenever I find I have a little free time but not enough time to watch a full length feature film. My favourite place to find good short films online is on the video streaming site Vimeo and for the last few months I have been spending my lunch breaks working my way through all the videos on the Vancouver Film School (VFS) channel.

You may be more aware of the work of VFS than you think if you have seen the movie District 9 as director Neill Blokamp is a VFS alumni as well as many of the production staff and effects staff that worked on the movie. In fact, over 40 former VFS students were involved in the making of District 9.

The VFS channel on Vimeo consists of hundreds of works done by VFS students and are of the highest quality. If you are interested in short films, mini documentaries, or even things such as sound design or animation I highly recommend checking out the VFS channel on Vimeo by clicking here.

These things I do...

Welcome to another edition of These Things I Do...

This is something I am sure a lot of other people also do, and in fact I am doing it right now. I waste excessive amounts of time on the internet doing pointless stuff and things, but I think that a lot of the time I take it a bit further than most people. I have created more free websites and forums and blogs and even social networks than I can even remember. This always happens while I am at work and really should be working. It normally goes something like this:

'Oh look, they are offering free sub domains, maybe I will just take a couple of minutes and sign up so I can use it later at some point...'
... I then spend the entire rest of the day setting up a new site or forum that no one will ever visit while my work load gets out of control.

These things I do...

I have a lot of things I do that always make me wonder if other people do these things too. So I decided I will start going through some of these things one by one here, and the first one that comes to mind is this:

I always bring my Nintendo DS with me to work (and yes, I am at work right now) and every time I go to the toilet I slip my DS into my pocket and spend about 10-15 minutes on the toilet playing games on my DS.

I am currently playing my way through Final Fantasy Tactics A2 and I would have to say that it is my favourite game on the DS thus far. FF Tactics A2 is the sequel to what was my favourite game on the Gameboy Advance Final Fantasy Tactics Advance. It is a turn based strategy rpg, but what really makes it stand alone from other Final Fantasy games is that the story takes a back seat to the action (more action, less story) which I like.

Having a look at my saved game reveals I have been playing FF Tactics A2 for nearly 100 hours in total which is far more than any other hand held game I have ever played, even the Pokimans. Don't worry, not all those hours were played on the work toilet.

So thats one of 'those things I do' that I consider maybe a little wierd on my part. I will follow this up with other wierd 'things I do' in further posts.