Crikey, I've lost me mojo!

Well, it's been awhile since I updated my blog. I was a bit worried that google might have cancelled it actually. Anyways, I suppose an awful lot has happened since I last updated this thing. I haven't felt the urge to blog for ages because I've been on a nice high dose of SSRIs. Last spring and summer were pretty rough. After finishing my coursework I ended up with nothing to do except work part-time at the vegetarian cafe, which was nice, but left me with a lot of free time and not a lot of money, a bad mix. Thankfully I had some good friends in Leeds to hang with and they made sure I never went thirsty (or hungry!). I played a lot of cards and pool, and it was all good until I moved to London in July, then things went downhill. All sorts of things went wrong, we had no money, no furniture, etc. etc. London is a terrible place to be poor. Anyways, with no friends, no money, no job and nothing to do, I found myself smoking way too many cigarettes and drinking way too much whiskey so I figured I better start pulling myself up out of my tailspin, this involved upping my dosage significantly. I meet lots of people who tell me (very innocently) that they don't believe in treating psychological problems with medication. That's fine. Personally I have no scruples about it. Anyone who has ever been on a bad drug trip knows that mental fortitude and strong will can be blown away like whisps of smoke with the help of a tiny amount of chemicals. I'm not a solipsist, I believe in an objective reality, but if your brain is screwy it can be mighty hard to see. If you've never taken drugs, the best illustration is probably the feeling you have when you half wake up from a really weird or scary dream, imagine feeling like that all the time. People who are against (legal) drugs usually point to its addictive nature and are in favour of psycho-therapy or counselling. Having tried both, I can attest that people get at least as addicted to counselling, which is both far more expensive and far less effective. People spend their whole lives trying to resolve their 'issues' or face their 'problems' or some crap. For some this is what the really need, for many it is a total waste of time and money.

So anyways, the medicines did what they are designed to do and my life took a very positive turn. I got a fun job, uni started, and I've been exercising at the gym instead of drinking and smoking, life has been great. Unfortunately, the meds also caused me to lose my mojo. My academic performance has been lacklustre and I knew exactly why it was. So I've had to lower my dosage significantly in order to get back my intellectual fire, the effect has been almost instant. The world is no longer the beautiful place it was a couple weeks ago. Yesterday, as if to bring the point home, I saw one of those sights that really drives into your brain how screwed up the world is. As I walked across St. Clements chapel to LSE I saw a fat man with a white beard sprawled on his side. He was wearing a huge backpack and was quite inebriated so that he kind of flailed a bit like a turtle on its back. He was cloaked in a Union Jack flag, which he was wearing like a cape and on his face he had clown make-up but it was all smudged up and greasy. He also had a stuffed clown tied to his back pack. He was laying across the foot of a statue of Lord Gladstone, trying to open a can of tuna with a crappy tin-opener. Man, that whole scene was just so sad, irrational, and generally screwed-up that I almost turned around a went home.

So anyways, my serenity is gone, and once again life is strange and sometimes terrible. However, I'm getting my mojo back. I've learned that, at least regarding academic work, I can either be happy or productive, and right now I have to be productive - which often makes me quite happy. Also, I've got some raging insomnia to boot. Insomnia is a form of madness all its own. I don't know what it is but at 4 in the morning life seems very different. It's a sort of zombie existence.

So there it is, the blog is resurrected. Who knows how long it will last!