It was in the middle of one of the cold sleepless nights, that have become all too frequent recently, that it hit me. I am wasting away. Years of Procrastination and putting things off have left me on a a knife-edge academically and mentally and it is now really really starting to kill what is left of me and i need to change something really badly or i fear that that i am going to tumble down a very dark and deep abyss.
So how did this happen? How did the Tom Radley that graduated with BA in Archaeology and bodily stepped into a new life in Reading 18 months ago end up like this? Well that and more is the subject of this first blog post.
I moved back to reading in September 2010 intending to get employment in retail and began by distributing CVs and applying for dozens of jobs every week for about a month then it was about a dozen then it dropped to half a dozen. The constant stream of rejection made it (and still does) seem pointless why bother if i wasn't even going to get a reply? Why even try if my skill set was not what they where looking for? THe answer, my head told me, was that i could cost by not really caring and just drift which is where this all started where every thing got out of hand. Then granddad was diagnosed with throat cancer. At first that didn't seem like it was real then every phone call from my mum might bring the news that he was gone and that only added to the worries that where in my head which in turn led to me procrastinating even more. While all of this was going on i was separated from Zoe Claire Glanville my girlfriend of some 3 and a half years who i had never really spent more than 2 weeks away from at any time now we where apart for roughly 3 out of every 4 weeks and even then i would only see her for 2 or 3 days at a time which dragged me deeper into a malaise. I have never been good at motivating myself this is partially due to the ADHD but it was made all the harder with the negativity in m life and going into 2011 i was carrying a lot of baggage.
This was added to in mid march when my uncle on my mums side left my Aunt (my aunt is the blood relative). My mums side of the Family has always been the stable one and here it was falling apart quite spectaculy and worry about my Cousins and my aunt dragged me down even further i had by this point lost all motivation and was only applying for a couple of Jobs a month though i had sent off an application to do the Msc i am now on.
Getting on this course despite everything was beacon of hope that briefly uplifted me and gave me short lasted up surge in both confidence that lasted until granddad died. Granddad died the same day as another friend lost their grand father and came after a great day out with my house mates and brother at the colchester oyster fair i should of known that day had been too good to be true. Then four days later i was burgled. I lost my laptop and my camera. Though my housemate lost more it hit me hard that laptop was my life and to make matters worse i did not have insurance. From then on i just sort of drifted things briefly started to look up when my girlfriend started to look for housing but then she had to have an abortion and once again i was left numb and at the edge.
While there have been good times such as the day i spent at Reading Festival most of the rest of the year i have just sort of drifted along not doing anything with the levels of procrastination building up and this has nearly cost me my degree. It has also led to me through acts of my own stupidity severely out of pocket and very very much in trouble.
So things are going to change they have to change otherwise as mentioned in my intro a dark and horrible place awaits and i am not going to let that happen. This blog will be a chronicle of my attempts to grow as a person , a collection of my general meaning less rambles and some video game and Film reviews but most of all it will be something for me to do that isn't sitting on my leather arm chair in my PJs playing Skyrim for 8 hours. I Just hope i can keep this up and the sleepless nights go away.
